Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Diversity policy voted down in tense meeting - Wake County - NewsObserver.com

Diversity policy voted down in tense meeting - Wake County - NewsObserver.com:

"RALEIGH -- In a chaotic and conflict-filled meeting, Wake County's school board voted Tuesday night to kill the district's long-standing diversity policy and begin implementing neighborhood schools.

By a 5-4 vote, the board gave the first of two approvals needed to pass a resolution calling for abandoning busing for diversity, a policy that has won Wake national recognition and has been an important factor in student assignments for decades. The resolution calls for assigning students to schools in their communities.

The vote, which signals fundamental change for the state's largest district, came at the end of a day of tense, emotional meetings."

The sessions started at 10 a.m. and included grim budget news from Superintendent Del Burns. There was a closed-door session to decide whether Burns, a strong supporter of the diversity policy, would be fired before he retires June 30. And as afternoon stretched toward evening, there were hours of public comment, including a near-violent disturbance over a speaker's accusations of racism.

Supporters of the board's ruling coalition hailed the diversity vote as a step toward providing families more stability. But critics complained the measure would lead to resegregation and deepen the academic divide between impoverished and affluent schools. In a spirited impromptu demonstration after the vote, they vowed to keep fighting and echoed the civil rights protesters of the 1960s.

"Don't get discouraged!" said the Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, who has threatened to sue the board if policies result in resegregation. "Get your head up! We've got some courts we may need to get into."

City eyes tech education overhaul

'Clusters' would focus on health careers, business, finance and culinary arts

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

By Eleanor Chute, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Pittsburgh Public Schools administration has unveiled a proposal for high school career and technical education that would require $38 million in capital improvements.
The proposal calls for the district to be divided into three "regional clusters" aimed at ensuring all students have access to three programs: health careers; information technology, business and finance; and culinary arts.
In addition, some high schools also would have "signature programming" -- such as robotics or auto body repair.
Students participating in the signature programming would have to attend a high school within the same region, but a process may be created to permit transfers.
"I think this plan is a very cost-effective way of maximizing career and technical education's potential to help with our strategies around having opportunities for kids after high school," said school Superintendent Mark Roosevelt.
Derrick Lopez, assistant superintendent of secondary schools, and Angela Mike, acting executive director of career and technical education, presented the proposal to the school board Tuesday evening.
Board members had some questions about how the plan would work and will talk about it more at a public meeting to be scheduled.

Performance Pay Adiosed in Arizona � The Quick and the Ed

Teacher performance based pay looks like it’s about to be shown the door in the Grand Canyon State. A judge ruled Arizona’s Career Ladder program unconstitutional because it isn’t open to all its districts. Expanding the program will cost $175 million—an unlikely feat as the state attempts to recover from the economic recession. The court gave the Arizona legislature a choice of expanding the program or ceasing it.

Implemented in the mid-1980s, the program aimed at increasing student achievement by recruiting top teaching talent. Rather than using a conventional schedule to shell out salaries, teachers were paid on demonstrated student progress. There has been no new funding since 1994, and only 28 of the 200 + districts in Arizona have implemented the program.

Too bad for the 28 districts (which educate one-third of the state’s students)—according to a 2007 study, the program works.

The study compared the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) scores between schools from both Career Ladder and conventional districts for two consecutive school years, holding constant school size, socio-economic status and location. Put differently, the model evaluated the AIMS scores only for like schools: upper-income to upper income, rural to rural, etc. On average, Career

The Educated Reporter: The family that studies calculus together, stays together.

The Educated Reporter: The family that studies calculus together, stays together.
THE EDUCATED REPORTER

The family that studies calculus together, stays together.

I kind of love this story by Bonnie Miller Rubin of the Chicago Tribune, about moms and daughters attending community college together. (No accident that it is not about fathers and sons, by the way.) Personally I can’t imagine it, maybe because while my mother did go back to school recently, it was to clown college. Seriously.

My favorite is the kicker quote, in which a 19-year-old marvels that her mother

Careers In Math And The Sciences? Juggle Deadly Chemicals and Electricity? Rubbish! - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Frustrating is not the word. I just took time out from my busy day to read up on STEM, as advised by a worthy but misguided junior "colleague". High time, I believe, to bring back the old Common Room rule that addressing senior academic staff except in writing is the polite way to communicate with one's elders and betters. Let Adjunct Professors debate day-to-day trivialities amongst themselves and leave those deemed worthy of tenure to contemplate pressing matters of import, such as improving one's US News and World Report ranking with some new on-campus tea shops.

Anyway, my interest was piqued as I presumed I was about to enter the fray debating whether sociopathic, liberal high schools should be allowed to breed their own stem cells, only to find that STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and math. Why on earth use one misleading word when four will do?

It turns out that the fine folk at ASQ (American Society for Quality) have commissioned research to work out whether teachers were inspiring their charges sufficiently to make them want to become food scientists, telephone hygienists and computer hackers. The sample they worked with will be referred in future by me as SIGHS! or Selected Ignorami at High Schools. Basically, the research showed (surprise, surprise) that teachers were not selling their SIGHS! compellingly on a career in the sciences. What a waste of time, money and effort!

Eduflack: Mark Your Ed Reform Calendars

Mark Your Ed Reform Calendars

To paraphrase from edu-son's favorite band, Black Eyed Peas, this week's gonna be a good week ... at least for those in the education reform community. We have core standards, and RttT, and ESEA, oh my!

According to Education Daily, National Governors Association officials are now saying that the much-anticipated draft K-12 common core standards (reading and math) will be released next week. Assuming protocols hold, we'll all then have 30 days to respond, react, and critique under the public comment period. It seems NGA and the Council of Chief State School Officers is still working toward finalization of the K-12 and college/career ready standards by June, so that states can adopt them by July (as called for under Race to the Top).

And speaking of the great Race, EdWeek's Michele McNeil is reporting at the Politics K-12 blogthat Phase One RttT finalists will be announced Thursday, March 4 (that's tomorrow, folks) at 11:30 a.m. The list of nominees will be announced online by ED's communications office. Those finalists will then be coming to DC to put on a nice little Ides of March show for the judges, with initial awards slated to come before we've played a full month of baseball.

Two State Board of Education incumbents lose in GOP primary TRAIL BLAZERS Blog | The Dallas Morning News

TRAIL BLAZERS Blog | The Dallas Morning News

Two State Board of Education incumbents lose in GOP primary

Mount Pleasant Republican Thomas Ratliff narrowly beat State Board of Education member and prominent social conservative Don McLeroy in the GOP primary Tuesday, while long-time board member Geraldine Miller of Dallaswas upset by Dallas high school educator George Clayton. Ratliff (right) and McLeroy were expected to have a close race, but Miller was favored in her contest because of a big edge in campaign funds and her long-time incumbency. She has served on the board since 1984 and never had a close election race before.

Ratliff waged a strong campaign and outspent McLeroy for the board seat, which represents Collin County and much of Northeast Texas, but McLeroy also ran a strong race as he tried to capitalize on recent victories by the social conservative bloc on the 15-member education board. Among the successes were changes in curriculum standards for science, history and English. Ratliff accused McLeroy and his allies of ignoring the advice of teachers and education groups in their decisions - and of politicizing the curriculum requirements such as on teaching of evolution in science classes. Ratliff, a legislative consultant and lobbyist, carried 50.5 percent of the vote

McLeroy had been bounced as chairman of the board last summer after Senate Democrats blocked his nomination, raising many of the same arguments as Ratliff, the son of former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff. His primary loss means one less seat for the social conservative bloc, which now holds seven seats. Another member of the bloc, Ken Mercer of San Antonio, easily won

Jerry Brown Announcement Video

Jerry Brown announces his candidacy for Governor of California. Let's get California working again.

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Furious times at Central Falls The Educated Guess

The Educated Guess

Furious times at Central Falls

Posted in No Child Left Behind

Central Falls High School offers a cautionary tale for California as districts await notification of which 187 failing schools must be restructured.
Late last month, the superintendent of the small Rhode Island district fired all of Central Falls’ 93 staff members – 74 teachers, the principal, counselors and other employees – as the first step toward turning around the low-income, largely Hispanic school. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan praised Superintendent Frances Gallo’s courage, and President Obama on Monday condoned the mass firings as a necessary last resort. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called it another example of scapegoating teachers. Author Diane Ravitch called the tactic “mean and punitive” – more evidence of No Child Left Behind gone wild.
(Read more and comment on this post)

Schools Matter: Ravitch on the Central Falls Massacre

Duncan's Extortion Effort to Make Title I Funding Contingent on Adoption of Gates-Broad National Testing Plan

The edu-thugs who came up with the RTTT plan to bribe states to adopt the Business Roundtable plan for segregated corporate schooling in America have done themselves one better. It is called extortion, and it says simply: if you want to keep your Title I money intact, play ball with us on P-21.

No, a P-21 is not a new Pentagon weapon but, rather, a weapon that is being developed by the charlatans who are paid to turn unrestrained corporate greed into national education policies that feed that same corporate greed at the expense of American children. From Ed Week:

Ravitch on the Central Falls Massacre

An interesting take by former neocon ed policy guru, Dr. Diane Ravitch. From HuffPo:

FIRST, LET'S FIRE ALL THE TEACHERS!
By Diane Ravitch

Imagine that you are a teacher in a high school in a high-poverty district. Many of your students don't speak English. Some don't attend school regularly because they have to earn money or babysit with their siblings while their parents are looking for work. Some come to school unprepared because they didn't do their homework.

But you are idealistic and dedicated, you work with each of the students, you do your best to teach them reading, writing, science, math, history, whatever your subject. But despite your best efforts, many of your students can't read very well (they are struggling to learn English), and many of them don't graduate. If your school eliminated all its standards, you could easily push up the graduation rate.

About 45 minutes away is another high school in a much better neighborhood. Its statistics are far better than yours. The children are almost all born in the U.S., and their parents are almost all college graduates with good jobs. Their kids don't go to school hungry, they have their own room and their own computer, and they have stellar test scores to boot. Their graduation rate is very impressive, and most of their graduates go to college.

What teachers want: Supportive leadership Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Education- Everything you need to know about the world of education.

What teachers want: Supportive leadership

Massive new survey ranks support above pay as key to teacher retention

MORE ON EDUCATION

Teacher Judy Leak-Bowers, at Watkins Elementary in Southeast D.C. (TWP).

Rise & Shine: HS guidance counselors get low marks from grads | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: HS guidance counselors get low marks from grads | GothamSchools:

Rise & Shine: HS guidance counselors get low marks from grads

by Philissa Cramer

Arne Duncan is set to tell most states that they didn’t win Race to the Top funds. (Wall Street Journal)
The possible elimination of student Metrocards is dominating this week’s MTA hearings. (Daily News)
Diane Ravitch’s education policy about-face is the subject of her new book. (Times, GothamSchools)
A new study finds young people don’t think much of their high school counselors. (Times, USA Today)
The largest-ever survey of teachers finds they want good principals. (Washington Post, Seattle Times)
Los Angeles’s school board will warn 5,200 employees that they could be laid off. (AP)

This Week In Education

This Week In Education
Supportive leadership helps retain top teachers WP Nick Anderson: A national survey of more than 40,000 public school teachers suggests that while higher salaries are far more likely than performance pay to help keep top talent in the classroom, supportive leadership trumps financial incentives.

US teachers more interested in reform than money Donna Gordon Blankinship AP: U.S. teachers are more interested in school reform and student achievement than their paychecks, according to a massive new survey.

Board Passes Plan to Restrict Busing of Students AP: The board that controls schools in Raleigh voted 5 to 4 on Tuesday to begin moving away from a policy of busing children throughout the district to achieve economic diversity.

Duncan to Name States Qualifying for School Grants WSJ: Mr. Duncan has won bipartisan support for Race to the Top, but that could change as lawmakers and governors realize only a small minority of states may emerge as winners.

States Band Together to Increase Graduation Rates for CollegeAP: Seventeen states have formed an alliance to improve college completion rates. The nonprofit group has raised $12 million.

Union files state complaint over RI school firings Eric Tucker AP: A teachers' union has filed a state labor complaint over a school board's plan to turn around one of Rhode Island's worst-performing high schools by firing the entire faculty.

Local News | Gates Foundation survey: How 40,000 teachers would fix America's schools | Seattle Times Newspaper

Local News | Gates Foundation survey: How 40,000 teachers would fix America's schools | Seattle Times
Newspaper

What do teachers want?

Supportive principals more than higher salaries.

Digital media more than textbooks.

Evaluations based on how much their students learn, rather than principals' observations.

Those are a few findings from what's thought to be the largest-ever survey of American public-school teachers, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Scholastic publishing company.

Over the phone and online, about 40,000 teachers answered questions about what they need to help more students achieve, and what they think about issues such as merit pay, testing and common learning standards.

The results offer a rich look at the challenges and frustrations of teachers and underscore how deeply many care about their work. Seven out of 10, for example, reported that they attend student events at night or on weekends.

For the Gates Foundation, the goal was to highlight teacher opinions on how best to improve the nation's schools — a debate taking place in school districts and state capitols across the nation.

"We wanted to put teacher's voices front and center in the debate around education reform," said Vicki Phillips, the Gates Foundation's education director. "Teachers are on the front line of this work every day ... it doesn't make sense not to be talking to teachers."

Harris Interactive conducted the survey from mid-March through mid-June last year. Teachers weren't told who sponsored the survey.

Enough teachers responded that the results were broken out by state, and sometimes by age, or the median

From the ugliness at S. Phila. High, a hero emerges | Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/02/2010

From the ugliness at S. Phila. High, a hero emerges

By Jeff Gammage and Kristen A. Graham

Inquirer Staff Writers

When Violet Sutton-Lawson saw what was happening in the South Philadelphia High hallway - an Asian student sprawled on the floor, being beaten by a mob - she didn't stop to think. She reacted.
Sutton-Lawson put her hands together like a swimmer on a platform, then dived into the crowd, her momentum propelling her through the mass of bodies and onto the boy on the ground.
She wrapped her arms around him, then glared up at the eight to 10 attackers.
"Get away! Get out!" she shouted. "Ain't none of you going to touch him!"
Sutton-Lawson, 58, looked so fierce that the assailants paused, taken aback.
In that moment, school police and staff arrived, pulling away the attackers and ending the assault. Sutton-Lawson helped the boy search for his glasses, which had been knocked off in the fray.
It was 12:31 p.m. Dec. 3.
Amid a day of terrible violence, Sutton-Lawson insisted on peace.
Two minutes after protecting the boy on the hallway floor, she again risked serious injury by using her body to shield a small group of Asian students from a larger crowd of African American assailants in the lunchroom.
"I can't worry about me when I see some children being torn apart," she said in an interview at her home. "I went right to the problem."
People who know her weren't surprised.
"That's Violet," said Joseph Ritvalsky, the retired

A Gloomy Future For An Entire Jobless Generation | NEWS JUNKIE POST

Better be thinking about learning an extra trade or getting another college degree because according to employment trends, the job market for working Americans in the future seems pretty dire.

Late last year, Forbes published an opinion piece by former Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich titled, “Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back” where he writes about the declining jobs in the manufacturing sector and how these jobs are, well, not coming back.

Blue collar workers and their families have been the worse affected by these disappearing jobs at car assembly and part plants, in the garment and apparel industry, etc. A total of 22 million jobs were gone between 1995 and 2002 and the jobs losses continue to rise.

According to Reich, even manufacturing jobs are disappearing in China. The reason? Higher productivity, more robots taking jobs away from real humans, and an explosion in the high tech industry.

At the turn of the 20th century, the assembly line opened the door to a mass of job opportunities to men and women alike. The two World Wars produced a boom in the manufacturing industry — many Americans reached the middle class and others became quite wealthy due to this. It was a prosperous time in America which led to many of our modern achievements, but that America is now gone.

The impact on seniors

Poverty among the elderly has been rising over the past decade, according to a Census Bureau report released onMarch 2. About 13 percent of the population is made out of people over 65 and, get this: 9.7 percent of them live in poverty. That means that only 3.3 percent of seniors are well-off.

Remember these were seniors that lived through the time period when manufacturing jobs exploded. Sure, many of them didn’t necessarily hold manufacturing jobs, but a good portion of them did. So, if seniors today are not making ends meet even though they lived their younger years during a time of many opportunities, what do you think is going to happen to people today who have lost their jobs and have no savings in let’s say, 30 more years? Will these also be seniors who will be living in poverty? Most likely.

The impact on you

With the rapid decline of manufacturing jobs in states like Ohio, Michigan, California, New York, etc., the job market becomes more saturated — the pool of blue collar workers needing to work becomes gigantic and their opportunities for employment shrink by the day. Most of those are out of work will never be able to work in manufacturing again.

Schwarzenegger calls for immigration reform, but Feds ill equipped | CAIVN

Appearing on Fox News with Greta Van Susteren (Feb. 23), Governor Schwarzenegger briefly emphasized the need for immigration reform in light of California’s economic woes. “We've got to go and make a decision so that people can come to this country legitimately, rather than having quotas there, because we need the farm workers,” said Gov. Schwarzenegger. “We need the construction workers. We need to have people do certain jobs that maybe that we cannot fill otherwise,” he said.

Another immigrant demographic Schwarzenegger desires to reach is foreign students in California for schooling. Schwarzenegger thinks it's a problem that students spend a few years in California and are sent back upon completing their education. “I think they should stay here. They should work here. And they should take that knowledge that they have gained in California and put it to good use for California if they're studying here,” he said.

Portraying himself as a politician tough on illegal immigration, Schwarzenegger said that his state’s strict laws forbid undocumented workers from working in the state. “Well, as you know, we have strict laws that you can't hire anyone that is here undocumented in the state,” he said. However, he also acknowledged the current system’s cracks, noting illegal immigration somewhat effects California’s spiraling economy.

“There's people that break the law, and all those kind of things. But the fact of the matter is, yes, it does have -- create an extra burden on our economy and also on our budget situation.” In California’s recovery efforts and the governor’s claims of illegals breaking the law, the state is dealing with a delicate balancing act and needs to juggle these two issues.

Governor Schwarzenegger's call for immigration reform is problematic in its own right, appearing to hold contradicting stances at times. As congressional members seek to impose a

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