Saturday, February 12, 2011

Modern School: Crushing Unions by Any Means Necessary

Crushing Unions by Any Means Necessary

by Michael Dunn

While Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has threatened to strip public employees of their union protections and force them to go to work at gunpoint, a superior court judge in Los Angeles has ordered Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to disregard its contractual obligation to use seniority rules when laying off teachers. LAUSD has announced that they plan to send pink slips to over 4,500 teachers and 500 other school employees. For the first time ever they will not be bound

Del Valle for Mayor | For All Chicago For Every Neighborhood: Interview with Miguel del Valle--Chicago Tonight

Interview with Miguel del Valle--Chicago Tonight

FEBRUARY 10, 2011

From Chicago Tonight, 2.10.2011

Bikers Ride to Support Miguel Del Valle for Mayor of Chicago

by Joanna2011

A video of bikers that support Miguel Del Valle for the next mayor of Chicago. Everyday, real citizens of Chicago discuss why they support Miguel Del Valle.

YAF Purges Ron Paul « Student Activism

YAF Purges Ron Paul

by Angus Johnston

Yep, that’s the word they used. “Purge.”

In a post on the Young Americans for Freedom blog, it was announced today that the group has “voted to purge Rep. Ron Paul” from its National Advisory Board because of his “delusional and disturbing

A Pedagogy of Culture and Power: School Reform for Social Justice | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

A Pedagogy of Culture and Power: School Reform for Social Justice

by larrycuban

Should public schools in a democracy prepare students for what is or what should be?

This question has been asked repeatedly by reformers since John Dewey’s “Pedagogic Creed” appeared in 1897. The question continues in reformers’ quest for KIPP-like schooling for poor children of color or those reformers who swear by common core standards making U.S. schools competitive with Shanghai and Singapore, and, of course, advocates for transforming schools into high-tech havens. Don’t forget those who see schools as agents for reducing obesity in children.

Finally, add those champions of “critical pedagogy” to that list of what public schools in a democracy should be doing. Beyond preparing students with the language, social, and academic skills for a highly competitive labor market (e.g., KIPP, Common Core Standards), “critical pedagogy” and its various incarnations seek to equip low-income minority students with the language skills and academic content to analyze the culture and structures of power in the U.S. and use both to gain access to equal opportunities and alter the trajectories of their lives with

Not-To-Be-Missed Reports From Teach For America Celebration | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Larry Ferlazzo

Not-To-Be-Missed Reports From Teach For America Celebration

Filed under school reform

Yesterday, on the eve of Teach For America’s twentieth anniversary celebration, I posted The Best Posts & Articles Raising Concerns About Teach For America.

Education Notes Online has been “live blogging” from the event, and they are not to be missed. In a tweet, Diane Ravitch called the posts “hilarious/depressing.”

Here are links to the first three updates — go directly to the blog for additional ones:

Madison, Wisconsin needs a Tahrir Square. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Madison, Wisconsin needs a Tahrir Square.

by Fred Klonsky

Who would have imagined that teachers and other public employees would be forced to work at the point of a bayonet?

Last week, the newly elected Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, said that he would balance the state’s budget by outlawing the collective bargaining rights of the state’s unionized public employees.

Today it is reported that Walker (now renamed “Hosni” Walker) has threatened to call out the National Guard to

My Brother on Tahrir Square « Bill Ayers

My Brother on Tahrir Square

by billayers

by Rick Ayers

February 11, 2011

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

William Butler Yeats penned those lines after the Irish Easter uprising of 1916. And how haunting and true they remain. Watch the explosions of joy at Tahrir Square and across the Middle East. The people of Egypt have changed much more than the experts grasp in their cramped little calculations of power and containment can even imagine. They have shattered the myths of powerlessness, the notion that a regime built on repression and violence is impregnable. For a generation, in the Middle East and around the world, the smothering blanket of cynicism, hung over demonstrations, mobilizations, and activism.

But the people of Tunisia and Egypt have shattered that picture. They have reinvented once again, as every generation must, the innovative dance that is a mass movement. Gone forever – or at least for a long time – is

Seattle Public Schools community blog: Focus on Student Achievement

Focus on Student Achievement

by Charlie Mas

I just added a comment to the thread about the Seattle Speaks event in which I noted that, despite saying that the conversation would focus on student achievement, the bulk of the time was taken up discussing the Strategic Plan - which is a management plan, not an academic plan - and the teacher contract. Neither of these matters has anything more than a peripheral impact on student achievement.

So let's talk about student achievement for real.

In 2010, 83.5% of Seattle Public Schools 10th graders passed the writing portion of the HSPE. 74.4% passed in reading, 46.6% in science, and 44.7% in math. That's for all 10th graders.

Those who qualify for free or reduced price lunch had

Teachers' Union Ad Blasts Mayor For Underfunding Schools - NY1.com

Teachers' Union Ad Blasts Mayor For Underfunding Schools

By: NY1 News

The United Federation of Teachers has unveiled a new advertisement that calls on the mayor to protect teachers and schools.

The 30-second spot blasts Bloomberg for protecting wealthy New Yorkers as public schools remain underfunded, and says the mayor "sees things differently than the rest of us."

Mayor is playing a dangerous game • The Brooklyn Paper

Mayor is playing a dangerous game

BY MICHAEL MULGREW

for The Brooklyn Paper

First, the mayor said he’d have to lay off 21,000 teachers, a quarter of the city’s teachers. Then, three days later, he backtracked. He sounded almost disappointed when he said, “We’ll have to find another way” to deal with anticipated budget cuts. The next day, the governor released his budget proposal and declared, “There will be absolutely no need for layoffs.”

Gov. Cuomo is right: There is no need to lay off educators, even amidst ongoing fiscal challenges that the state faces. But for weeks and weeks Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Cathie Black have been running around telling everyone that layoffs are coming and therefore we need to abolish seniority rules that ensure layoffs happen in an impartial way.

The mayor’s real agenda has nothing to do with the necessity or lack thereof of layoffs and everything to do with City Hall’s determination to attack teachers. Instead of seeing layoffs as the disaster they would be for the city’s children and treating them as a last resort, the mayor and the chancellor have embraced them as an excuse to let principals fire whomever they want. But even

Not everyone's sold on Michelle Rhee, Gov. Scott's education adviser - St. Petersburg Times

Not everyone's sold on Michelle Rhee, Gov. Scott's education adviser

Florida's lawmakers were starstruck.

Before them stood Michelle Rhee, the former Washington D.C. public schools chancellor recently featured on Oprah, on a Newsweek cover and in the documentary film Waiting for Superman.

"I am here today to ask you to keep being a leader," Rhee said, urging members of two education committees to tackle one the few reforms that Florida has yet to achieve: a streamlined way to get "ineffective" teachers out of the classroom. "There is so much more to do."

Senate Pre-K-12 committee chairman Steve Wise called her a movie star and even Sen. Eleanor Sobel, a more skeptical Broward Democrat, gave a nod to Rhee for "bringing new energy to the education debate."

The Answer Sheet - Teacher: If I were Bill Gates (here’s how I would help improve the profession)

Teacher: If I were Bill Gates (here’s how I would help improve the profession)

This is part of a commentary written by Susan Engel, senior lecturer in psychology and director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College. The full article, originally titled, “What It Takes to Become a Great Teacher,” was published in the Teachers College Record. By Susan Engel If I were Bill Gates (or someone like him) here is what I would do: I would endow several of the best colleges and universities to create a new kind of teacher education program. Entrance to these programs would require good grades from a liberal arts institution (it’s hard to be a good teacher if you yourself are not well educated), a well written and lively essay, and an intensive interview. The goal would be to attract ambitious, smart, thoughtful people, who demonstrate some of the interpersonal qualities essential to good teaching: comfort and ease with others, a genuine love of kids, and

The Best Resources To See Who Might Fall Next After Mubarak… | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

The Best Resources To See Who Might Fall Next After Mubarak…

by Larry Ferlazzo

I’ve previously posted The Best Multimedia Celebrating Mubarak’s Downfall and The Best Sites For Learning About The Protests In Egypt.

It’s obviously not clear if there will be a further “domino” effect, but there are several accessible resources that suggest — if there is — who might fall next.

Here are my choices for The Best Resources To See Who Might Fall Next After Mubarak…:

Here’s a very useful article from MSNBC titled

House GOP Looks to Slash Education Spending - Politics K-12 - Education Week

House GOP Looks to Slash Education Spending

by Alyson Klein

House Republican leaders put out a bill last night that would slice and dice education funding far below current levels and far below what President Barack Obama wanted in his never-enacted fiscal year 2011 budget request. (List of cuts is here.)

The measure, which would continue federal funding for rest of the fiscal year, takes aim at some programs that were previously considered untouchable, including special education spending and Pell Grants to help low-and-moderate income students pay for college. Overall it would cut $4.9 billion from the U.S. Department of Education's fiscal year 2010 budget of $63.7 billion.

"This absolutely would be the largest cuts ever in history for education programs," said Joel Packer, a principal with the Raben Group in Washington, who works with the Committee for Education Funding, a coalition that advocates for increasing education spending.

The bill would cover fiscal year 2011, which technically started back on Oct. 1. Most of the federal government,

Some thoughts from just one of many teachers in the crosshairs. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Some thoughts from just one of many teachers in the crosshairs.

by Fred Klonsky

I want to share some thoughts about the last few days of being a teacher in the crosshairs of the right-wing bullies who want to take away our unions and our democratic rights to speak out for what we think is right.

I’m writing this a day after the fall of Mubarak in Egypt and a victory of the Egyptian people in their fight for democracy.

It never stops, you know.

The fight for democracy and the fight against those who would steal it away. It never stops. It goes on everywhere in the world. And it never stops.

Many years ago I learned the words of the Civil Right Movement song that went, “They say that freedom is a constant struggle. We struggle so long. We must be free.”

Why me?

Why is the Education Action Group

Modern School: The Impending Violent Demise of Unions

The Impending Violent Demise of Unions

by Michael Dunn

In 1981, Reagan fired the striking PATCO air traffic controllers, imprisoning many. Spain had a similar response this year when their airport workers went on strike, forcing them back to work at gunpoint and imprisoning those who refused. While the justification in all these cases was that the strikes were a threat to public safety, national security or the smooth functioning of government, the real reason was always to secure profits. Now Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin says he’ll call up the National Guard if state employees fail to show up for work in response to his austerity budget proposal. (Imagine how dangerous it would be if Wisconsin teachers and government employees failed to come to work for even a day.)

Obviously, when politicians make such threats, they realize that they have already provoked us with

The Answer Sheet - Unsolicited advice for Teach for America on its 20th anniversary

Unsolicited advice for Teach for America on its 20th anniversary

This piece was written by Alexander Russo, a former Democratic Senate aide who writes "This Week In Education" blog. His book about a dramatic school turnaround effort in Los Angeles, "Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors," is coming out next month from Jossey-Bass. By Alexander Russo Here are five completely unsolicited ideas for Teach for America's next 20 years, on the occasion of its first two decades: 1) Tell locals to pick one or several struggling schools, stuff them with corps members and alumns over the course of two or three years, and show everyone what you can really do at the the whole school level. Rinse, lather, repeat. 2) Stop expanding to new cities and do more in the cities you’re already in. Create two or three "superlocals" to get involved in reform, short of operating schools but well beyond the current menu o

ERN Advertisements; Gates Funding? « DFER Watch

ERN Advertisements; Gates Funding?

by kennethlibby

On Thursday, Gotham Schools reported that Education Reform Now is running a seven figure ad campaign in NY aimed at seniority. One of the teachers in the ad, former investment banker Jane Viau, is a board member of Educators 4 Excellence, which was incubated by ERN. A NY Post article about the ad notes ERN …Read more

Black History Month an Opportunity to Pay Tribute to African American Heroes | California Progress Report

Black History Month an Opportunity to Pay Tribute to African American Heroes

by megan

By Assemblymember Steven Bradford

SACRAMENTO – In this Democratic Weekly Address, Assemblymember Steven Bradford (D-Gardena), Chair of the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee, notes the Assembly is proudly joining in celebrating Black History Month this February. Bradford also discusses the opening of a California Museum exhibit honoring California’s Freedom Riders, relating his own experience re-enacting the 1964 Freedom Ride. Bradford adds that the history of the United States is rich with inspirational stories of great African American men and women “whose actions, words, and achievements have worked to change things for the better.”

Click onto the following link for the English language MP3 file. The running time is 1:53.
http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/Newsline/Audio/20110211RadioAddressEnglishBlackHistoryBradford.mp3

NEW AND UPDATED: An evening with Diane Ravitch | DeFENSE

NEW AND UPDATED: An evening with Diane Ravitch

by admin

Plan to attend An Evening with Diane Ravitch

Moderated by Eli Stokols, Fox 31 News

Event location is changed and now free to the public

In order to open this great opportunity up to more Colorado residents with a passion for education, we are happy to announce Diane Ravitch will now speak at a larger venue. Augustana Lutheran Church is the new location (see address). To further encourage community participation, we are opening this event to the public free of charge. However, attendees are still encouraged to register so we know how many are coming. Walk‐ins will be welcome the night of the event, if there is space. While the church can seat many more people than the previous venue, space is still limited.

You will not want to miss the chance to hear the author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School

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