Thursday, April 8, 2010

Do You Understand My Job? � InterACT

Do You Understand My Job?

by David B. Cohen

So here we are: teachers around the country accused of evading accountability, while lawmakers try to impose accountability and accept none, bemoaning the state of educational systems they’ve neglected for decades.

The people of Florida are witnessing the tragic emergence an education “reform” bill that threatens to compromise the integrity of the state’s assessment and accountability for years to come. But it’s not just Florida. Every time I hear a politician, pundit, or public citizen claim that they can tell from one test if a teacher is doing their job effectively, I know that they do not understand students, tests, or even the nature of my job. I hope InterACT can become a blog that tackles those misconceptions, one or two at a time, in an effort to redirect public attention to measures that would actually improve teaching and learning.
Today’s question is “Do you understand my job?” It is directed to the test-loving lawmakers in Tallahassee, their brethren in Sacramento, and other legislatures around the nation. It is directed to Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, and the cheerleaders raising their pom-poms for the Race to the Top.
If they offer the answer that my job is to teach my students according to the state standards for my subject and grade level, I agree. How many of those people have seen those standards, or if they did see them, remember them? Let me tell you about my job. (And though I speak from the perspective of a California English teacher, I believe the arguments that follow can be generalized in some degree for other teachers as well).
I am charged with teaching English Language Arts to 9th and 10th graders. The California English Language Arts Standards are divided into four categories, four modes of language use: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Out of those four, the California Standards Tests claim to assess a portion of the reading standards and a portion of the writing standards. How about that? The test provides a partial assessment of two of the four areas I’m supposed to teach. Wouldn’t that be like assessing the work of a homebuilder based on floors, walls, and plumbing, while ignoring the ceiling, roof, and electricity? You might assume that excellent or shoddy work

Charter schools feel weight of down economy - Thursday, April 8, 2010 | 2 a.m. - Las Vegas Sun

Charter schools feel weight of down economy

In their hope to find the best education for their children, some parents turn to charter schools — campuses that rely on public funding but which, governed by a state-approved charter, operate more independently than mainstream public schools.

The effort can pay off in multiple ways, with the parents wielding more control over the principal, the curriculum, staffing and scheduling — all factors that, the thinking goes, will lead to a higher-achieving campus or at least help avoid the challenges facing many public schools.

In the best of times, finding people willing — and qualified — to start a charter school is a heavy burden. There are facilities to line up, meetings to attend and students to recruit.

The recession appears to be taking its toll on this underrepresented sector of Nevada’s public education system.

The number of charter schools nationally increased to 5,043 last year, from 3,977 in 2006.

But even as the U.S. Education Department offers significant financial aid to encourage the creation of charter schools, the majority of pending applications with the Nevada Education Department appear stalled, and key deadlines have been missed for the 2010-11 academic year. And existing charter schools a

"Will Work For Experience": The Unpaid Intern - RedEye Royalty

"Will Work For Experience": The Unpaid Intern

During the summer of 2008, I took six classes. Six classes, 24 credits: Twice what DePaul considers to be the load of a "full-time" student. I did it all while putting in a good 30 hours a week working a job in a completely different field than the one I was pursuing.

Why did I do this? Because I just loved school so much? Because I hated summer? I'm a masochist? So I'd have something to blog about?

No, and those are terrible, terrible guesses. I gave up my last official summer as a college student so that I could wrap up my undergraduate career after the following fall quarter. It's not that I disliked school, or really had any major qualms with being a legit "Super Senior". (Or as a friend once put it, doing a "Victory Lap".)

No, it was not so much that I wanted to be finished with school, it was that I wanted to get started on the rest of my life.

The career part, that is.

Because that's how it works right? You go to school, you study a subject, and once deemed "ready" by an institution, you go out into the world with your degree in hand and a list of all your extra-curricular activities and a recommendation from your supervisor at the ice cream parlor you worked at every summer and you get yourself that low paying, but full-time, salaried, entry-level position full of growth and potential.

The Argonaut: Top Stories

LAUSD agrees to delay inter-district transfer policy after hearing from parents, adjacent school districts

BY GARY WALKER

Under pressure from angry parents and concerned contiguous school districts, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education has retreated from its earlier decision to disallow students from transferring to other areas to attend school.

LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines announced to the board at its Tuesday, April 6th meeting that he had reconsidered altering the district’s inter-transfer policy after consulting with the county superintendent of education and hearing from upset parents who came to address the board about the change in transfer procedures.

“I’d like to make it perfectly clear that LAUSD has made great strides in improving the educational options for students who reside within the boundaries of our school district,” Cortines told the board. “We have award-winning magnet programs, a number of California Distinguished schools, and campuses with small learning communities and personalized instruction.

“However, to minimize the impact on students, I have asked staff to delay implementation of the new district-wide procedure. This will provide us with ample time to review the reasons for requests for transfers, analyze them and respond with solutions that may cause parents to reexamine the various educational options and opportunities that LAUSD has to offer,” he said.

Last month, Cortines notified parents and LAUSD employees that the district would no longer allow students to attend schools outside LAUSD boundaries after the board asked him to seek other approaches to help close its $640 million budget deficit. The nation’s second largest school district plans to lay off teachers and other district employees, as well as

New Approach Needed to Help Latinos in STEM Fields - USC News

New Approach Needed to Help Latinos in STEM Fields

By Ana Beatriz Cholo on April 7, 2010 7:59 AM

For transfer rates to improve, colleges and universities must dramatically reshape how science and mathematics is taught, according to a report released by the USC Center for Urban Education at the USC Rossier School of Education.

In addition, National Science Foundation funding should be directed toward research and experimental programming that involves new curriculum in mathematics education.

The report was the primary focus of a conference call co-hosted by the Campaign for College Opportunity, an advocacy organization whose mission is to ensure that California produces 1 million additional college graduates between now and 2025 to meet the workforce demands of the future.

The recommendations in the report emphasize that faculty from community colleges and four-year universities should be brought together to plan and implement curricular innovations.

“In California, perhaps more than anywhere else in the country, we are losing far too many Latino and Latina community college students to what is undeniably a long, drawn out, skills-based remedial mathematics curriculum,” said Alicia C. Dowd, co-director of the Center for Urban Education and an associate professor of higher education. “We need a fundamentally new approach.”

The report also highlights the need to expand access for Latino transfer students to bachelor’s degrees in biological and environmental sciences and in engineering.

Hispanic serving institutions outperform non-Hispanic serving institutions in terms of awarding transfer students bachelor’s degrees in computer science, mathematics and STEM-related fields,

Rethinking High School Education in Oakland - Bay Area Blog - NYTimes.com

Rethinking High School Education in Oakland

By RACHEL GROSS

Rachel GrossChristopher Scheer talks with Ana Reding before letting the class loose to produce a newspaper.

It’s almost deadline, and Christopher Scheer’s journalism class at Skyline High in Oakland is working feverishly on the upcoming issue of The Oracle, their school paper.

Computer keys clack. Time ticks down.

They’re editing articles, writing editorials, designing page layouts. To coin a phrase (or not), it’s something of a baptism by fire, but the students are learning skills and how to work independently and under pressure.

Alice Han pauses for a moment from her work configuring a page.

“It can be pretty stressful,” she tells me from behind a computer screen.

While President Obama prepares to reveal his education revamp aimed at bringing the nation’s educational standards up to speed with the rest of the world, Oakland Unified and other districts are already rethinking academics at a local level.

Mr. Scheer’s class at Skyline High, a school where more than half of about 1,990 students qualify for free- and reduced-price lunches, is an example of

Palo Alto school district gets federal money for suicide prevention efforts - San Jose Mercury News

Palo Alto school district gets federal money for suicide prevention efforts

By Diana Samuels

Daily News Staff Writer

Posted: 04/07/2010 10:33:32 PM PDT

Updated: 04/08/2010 12:38:05 AM PDT

In the wake of a series of teenage suicides by train the past year, the Palo Alto Unified School District is getting a $50,000 grant from the federal government to enhance its mental health services for students.

The U.S. Department of Education announced Wednesday that Palo Alto was among three districts selected to receive "Project School Emergency Response to Violence" (SERV) grants. The grants go to districts that have experienced a traumatic event and need money to "respond to the event and re-establish a safe learning environment," according to an education department statement.

"Within the last nine months, the Palo Alto, Calif., community has been tragically impacted by four youth suicides," the statement says. "Even though the district has provided counseling and other services to its students, it still faces numerous challenges in responding to students' needs and requests for mental health services."

In applying for the grant, the district said it would use the funds to hire someone to screen and coordinate therapists and psychiatrists. Funds also could be used for grief counseling, a peer support program, targeted depression screening for students, suicide awareness training for teachers, or to create a Web site about suicide intervention for parents, students and school staff.

This fiscal year, Project SERV has distributed more than $1.1 million in grants. Along with Palo Alto, grants to

State has little power to correct failing schools, experts say - Redlands Daily Facts

State has little power to correct failing schools, experts say

James Rufus Koren, Staff Writer

Posted: 04/07/2010 05:53:56 PM PDT

State and local school officials say California can take over a public school that habitually performs poorly, but it's never done so, leaving San Bernardino's low-performing schools faced with nothing but an empty threat.

While officials and experts disagree on the best way to judge schools' performance, they do seem to agree that federal and state education laws don't give schools much of a reason to improve.

The revelation points to a huge flaw in the nation's No Child Left Behind Act, which aimed to compel failing schools to get better.

"There has been no instance where either the federal or state government has stepped in and said, `This is unacceptable,"' said David Plank, an education professor at Stanford University. "It's not a genuine (threat). Districts don't take it seriously."

A day after saying the state could take over troubled schools, Fred Balcom, director of district and school improvement for the California Department of Education, said the state might not have that power after all.

"The California Constitution may prohibit us from doing that," he said.

Plank, executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education, a nonpartisan group run by Stanford University, UC Berkeley and the University of Southern California, said the emptiness of that threat illustrates a

California's Big Whiff on Education-Reform Money - Page 1 - News - Los Angeles - LA Weekly

California's Big Whiff on Education-Reform Money

What the hell led to the "Race to the Top" rejection from Obama?

Comments (0)By Jason S. Mandell Thursday, Apr 8 2010

For a minute there, it looked as if California might finally begin stitching up a few gaping wounds in its education system. State officials had spent much of the winter drafting reforms included in a proposal that they believed would charm Obama's Department of Education into handing over up to $700 million in "Race to the Top" funds.

"I thought we had a really good shot," says Rick Miller, then–deputy superintendent of the Department of Education, who helped write the application to the feds.

Miller and lots of influential players, from the media to politicians, were blindly optimistic about where California stood with Obama and his education czar, Arne Duncan. The L.A. Times offered a sunny outlook, reporting: "California does have some advantages going into the competition. ... Some parts of California's application could set it apart."

Then in early March, California didn't even make a list of 15 state finalists plus Washington D.C. "I was extremely disappointed," says Lydia Grant, a parent battling L.A. Unified officials over safety and truancy issues at Mount Gleason Middle School in Sunland-Tujunga.

The other shoe dropped on March 29, when only two of the 16 finalists were awarded a combined $600 million — Tennessee and Delaware. The White House released its scoring

KALW : CA losing steam in race for $3.4 billion in Federal Education Dollars

CA losing steam in race for $3.4 billion in Federal Education Dollars

California has already lost out on the first round of Federal Race to the Top Education dollars, and now because of poor relations with the teachers union and a troublesome data system, state officials may not even try to compete for the second round worth nearly $3.4 billion dollars in education grants.

Earlier this year, California came in 27th out of 41 states that applied for the first round of funding, winning only 354 points out of a total 500 points available. States were given points based on how much support the state had in applying for the funding. Delaware and Tennessee won the first round. Delaware will receive approximately $100 million and Tennessee $500 million to implement their comprehensive school reform plans over the next four years.

When California submitted it's first application, only about half of the local school districts said they would participate and in those districts, only one quarter of the teachers unions signed on.

In evaluating California's application, the reviewers wrote, "The lack of union buy-in at this stage raises serious concerns about the ability of California to implement the Race to the Top reforms," adding that "significant points were deducated for the state's lack of union buy-in."

Race to the Top is President Obama's attempt to infuse federal dollars into schools and districts willing to implement key reforms. The contest is encouraging states to create more charter schools and tie teacher pay to student performance. The California Teachers Association

Megan Fox plays a teacher for latest role... in campaign video attacking U.S. education cuts | Mail Online

Megan Fox plays a teacher for latest role... in campaign video attacking U.S. education cuts

By CHRIS JOHNSON
Last updated at 12:53 PM on 08th April 2010

Megan Fox becomes an unwitting teacher as she speak out against U.S. educational budget cuts in a new campaign video.

The Transformers star and boyfriend Brian Austin Green slam California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for slashing funds for public schools in the state.

In the sketch, posted yesterday on comic website FunnyorDie.com yesterday, Fox is accidentally placed as a teacher, janitor, nurse and Korean translator for a classroom way over capacity.

Megan Fox ends up in a classroom packed full of children as part of a sketch campaigning over the school funding cuts in California

She becomes the unwitting teacher of the class with the pupils informing her the staff have been laid off

During the 3½-minute long video, Fox talks with the children in the packed classroom, who tell her most of the staff have been laid off.

At the end of the sketch, Green and Fox urge people to 'call, write and annoy the governor until he cries for his mommy'.

Jennifer's Body actress Megan, 23, says more than $17billion has been cut from state educational programs over the past two years.

She is joined in the video by her boyfriend Brian Austin Green

Then 36-year-old Green, whose eight-year-old son Kassius is in the public schooling system, says the 'terminators in Sacramento' plan to cut another $2.5 billion.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said last month that budget cuts have caused a 17 percent jump in the number of school districts facing financial uncertainty.

The campaign video had been viewed more than 340,000 times to date.

They urge people to 'call, write and annoy' California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger until her 'cries for his mommy'

Details of how to get involved with the campaign, as shown at the end of the video

Capitol Weekly: Raising the filing fee for ballot initiatives harms the public

Raising the filing fee for ballot initiatives harms the public

By Jasmyne Cannick | 04/08/10 12:00 AM PST

It is precisely underhanded and sneaky actions like the passage of AB 1832, a Democratic sponsored piece of legislation that raises the ballot initiative filing fee over a six-year period from $200 to $2,000, that make me raise an eyebrow whenever I hear a lawmaker proclaim how important California voters are to the political process and that our ideas matter.

Authored by Democratic Assemblymember Lori Saldana, passed through California’s majority Democratic Assembly 43-22 with no debate and no Republicans voting for it, AB 1832 now heads over to the California state Senate for approval.

This political trickery has me congratulating the state Assembly on outdoing both the Los Angeles Unified School District and the City of L.A. in sending the worst mixed message ever. Yes—the state Assembly’s passage of AB 1832 outdoes the LAUSD’s “I believe the children are our future…but let’s cut the school year down a smidgen, the amount of teachers on staff, while raising classroom sizes to alleviate budget constrains” and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s “The uh, City of uh Los Angeles has uh run out of money…but I will uh still continue to uh get paid while I ask uh that city employees to take furloughs and uh be laid off.”

There are very few avenues for the People to advance their ideas in today’s political climate. If support for new legislation can’t be found from a member of the state’s Legislature willing to carry it, and that is often the case, ballot initiatives have been a popular way for the People take their concerns straight to the voters, bypassing the state Legislature.

One might look at the pending initiatives vying to qualify for this year’s ballot and conclude that the state Assembly’s support of the fee hike directly relates to the number of recent anti-Legislature initiatives up for consideration.

With proposed statutes dealing with everything from California’s budget process to the ability of lawmakers to vote on legislation that directly related to their campaign contributors and the popular Citizens for a Part-Time Legislature—a constitutional amendment to cut the legislative session and lawmaker’s pay by 50 percent — it makes you wonder if Sacramento lawmakers are trying to put an

As state defers payments, some school districts take out loans - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

As state defers payments, some school districts take out loans

By Diana Lambert
dlambert@sacbee.com

Published: Thursday, Apr. 8, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1A

The Natomas Unified School District paid $300,000 in interest this school year – enough to have saved three counselors from being laid off – on a $12 million loan to keep its lights on and staff paid.

It took out the loan because the state of California has failed to send money in a timely fashion, deferring payments to the school district until the state can come up with the money it owes Natomas Unified for operations for the current school year.

The state in general sends fewer dollars to California schools these days – a total of $18 billion less over the last two years. And much of the money districts do receive is coming late – sometimes as much as five months after the payments originally were scheduled.

Instead, when the due date comes for state payments, districts are getting only a percentage of what they are owed. For example, $2 billion of the amount that the state was supposed to send public schools in February won't show up until July. An additional $1.7 billion due in April and May will show up in August. The bulk of the June payment has been pushed off until July, the beginning of the 2010-11 fiscal year.

"What happened with the state over the years is they've started a habit of borrowing from the next year and they've imposed that on school

Impasse near, teachers told: Sac City schools chief to present demands tonight - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

Impasse near, teachers told: Sac City schools chief to present demands tonight

By Melody Gutierrez
mgutierrez@sacbee.com

Published: Thursday, Apr. 8, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1B

The Sacramento City Unified School District will unveil its proposal tonight for concessions it is asking the teachers union to make to save teacher jobs, programs and smaller class sizes.

Superintendent Jonathan Raymond said informal talks with the Sacramento City Teachers Association had broken down, and the district was taking the necessary legal steps before declaring an impasse. Should that happen, a state mediator would be assigned to help resolve it.

"We've been trying through informal talks to get an agreement and we weren't able to," Raymond said Wednesday. "We are going to try all remedies under the law. I'm confident our teachers will do what's right."

Teachers association President Linda Tuttle did not return calls Wednesday. She said last month that the union doesn't have to open its contract

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