Sunday, April 25, 2010

Capo strike closely watched across state - News - The Orange County Register

Education communities across the state have watched closely as teachers in Orange County's second-largest school district walked picket lines for two days last week.

But while other cash-strapped districts are dealing with the same stalled negotiations with their teachers unions, experts say the strike in the Capistrano Unified School District was largely the product of years of aggressive politicking unmatched by most districts.

Teachers walk the picket line Thursday at the entrance to Aliso Niguel High School in Aliso Viejo on the first day of a teacher strike that has crippled student programs and services across the 52,000-student Capistrano Unified School District.

FILE PHOTO: MARK RIGHTMIRE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

More from Education

About 100 school districts across the state, including three in Orange County, are at impasse with their teachers unions – unable to hash out an employment contract, and with the state assigning mediators to each. That's four times the average of districts at impasse each year, according to the Sacramento-based school-finance consulting firm School Services of California.

Even so, Capistrano Unified has accelerated past all those other districts, becoming the first district in California this year to be confronted with a teacher strike. The Oakland Unified School District may follow suit; its teachers union is planning a one-day strike Thursday.

"It's part of a larger populist uprising that seems to be occurring in certain parts of the country," said political scientist Fred Smoller, who studies local government and school boards at Irvine's Brandman University, part of the Chapman University system. "It's not just about the 10 percent pay cut (in Capistrano Unified). It's about things not being perceived as fair. And when the system is not perceived as fair, that's different than people being asked to make a joint sacrifice."

Capistrano Unified's school board last month unilaterally imposed a 10.1 percent pay cut on the district's 2,200 teachers after nearly a year of unsuccessful negotiations.

Teachers decried the imposition, and after about three weeks of intense rancor and unsuccessful attempts to sit down with the district to talk through the imposed cut, union leaders decided to begin striking Thursday.

The end result of California's first teachers strike this year could significantly sway negotiations between unions and districts statewide or even lead the way to more strikes, experts say.

"A lot of interested parties are going to have to look at Capistrano," said Ron Bennett, president of School Services of California. "If it is perceived the strike was beneficial to one side or other, that might be a

Allison Stacey Cowles, Educational Advocate, Dies at 75 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Allison Stacey Cowles, Educational Advocate, Dies at 75

By JAMES BARRON

Published: April 25, 2010

Allison Stacey Cowles, a longtime trustee of Wellesley College who was the wife of a newspaper publisher in Spokane, Wash., and, after he died, of the former publisher of The New York Times, died Saturday night in Spokane, Wash. She was 75.

Enlarge This Image

Colvin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review, via Associated Press

Allison Stacey Cowles in 1996.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said her son, William Stacey Cowles.

Ms. Cowles was an influential advocate for educational and conservation programs, both in New York and in Washington State. But her ties to Wellesley were particularly strong. As a student there she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was editor of The Wellesley News in 1955, the year she graduated.

As the Wellesley president Diana Chapman Walsh noted in 1999, Ms. Cowles inhabited the world of newspaper publishing for the rest of her life. Her first husband was William H. Cowles III, whose family owns The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. He died in 1992.

Four years later she married Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, whose family controls The New York Times. He was publisher of the paper and chairman and chief executive of The New York Times Company; he is currently the company’s chairman emeritus.

When Ms. Cowles left Wellesley, she was set on becoming a history professor. She received a master’s degree in history from Radcliffe College and studied for a doctorate while Mr.

Students Organize Against Arizona Immigration Law � Student Activism

Students Organize Against Arizona Immigration Law

by Angus Johnston

A sweeping new immigration enforcement bill signed into law by the governor of Arizona on Friday has met with immediate opposition from students and others around the nation.
The law, known as SB 1070, has many elements, but its most controversial is a mandate that police officers to detain people they believe to be in the United States illegally.
President Obama on Friday described the law as a threat to “trust between police and our communities” and to “basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.” The Archbishop of Los Angeles has compared the law’s provisions to Nazism.
SB 1070 provoked mass student protests even before it was signed — on Thursday morning more than a thousand Phoenix-area high school students walked out of classes and marched on the state capitol to demand that governor Jan Brewer veto the bill.
Dream Activist, a website by and for students organizing for immigration reform, reports that rallies and vigils

The Carrot That Feels Like a Stick � Tangerine, Florida

The Carrot That Feels Like a Stick

Privatization Will Not Help Us Achieve Our Goals: An Interview with Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch is a prominent historian of education, the author of a dozen books including Edspeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords and Jargon (2007), The Language Police (2003) and Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (2000).

Diane is not a political type, but neither is she afraid of controversy. In recent years she’s become a lightning rod for controversy. She has been embroiled in an ongoing battle in the press with Joel Klein, the Chancellor of the New York City public schools, about academic achievement. Here she takes on both Arne Duncan and NCLB!
**

The Interview

The Obama Administration and nearly every state have now endorsed national or common standards. Is this a good thing? Or is now the time to get worried, the logic being that, when ‘everyone’ is for something, the rest of us should watch out?

I have favored common standards for a long time. When I worked for Bush I in the early 1990s, I helped to launch federally funded projects to develop voluntary national standards in the arts, English, history, geography, civics, economics, science, and other essential school subjects. Some of the projects were successful; others were not. The whole enterprise foundered because a) it was not authorized by Congress, and b) it came to fruition during the transition between two

NorthJersey.com: Teacher brain drain looming

Christie plan may prompt mass teacher retirements, analysis shows

Sunday, April 25, 2010
LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY APRIL 25, 2010, 12:09 PM

BY LISA FLEISHER AND SEAN SPOSITO

STATE HOUSE BUREAU

4 Comments

Governor Christie’s plan to get long-serving teachers to retire this summer could drain lots of experience from some districts, while largely sparing charter schools staffed by younger educators, an analysis shows.

FILE PHOTO

Governor Christie’s plan to get long-serving teachers to retire this summer could drain lots of experience from some districts.

Christie wants to cut pension and health benefits for current teachers, but would allow those who retire by Aug. 1 to get a free pass. The state’s largest teachers union says the plan, which has not been submitted to the Legislature yet, could prompt mass retirements.
The analysis shows more than 29,300 of the state’s nearly 143,750 certified teachers — about 20 percent of the workforce — qualified for retirement, either through age or years worked, according to data from the 2008-09 school year, the latest available. Some teachers may have since retired, died or otherwise left the system.
In Bergen County, the percentage is in keeping with the state average: About a fifth of its 13,926 teachers, or 2,820, would be eligible for retirement.

BY THE NUMBERS

County	Eligible	Total	%
Bergen	2,820	13,926	20.2
Passaic	1,999	8,163	24.5
Morris	1,619	8,382	19.3
Hudson	2,173	8,195	26.5
New Jersey	29,328	143,733	20.4
Source: New Jersey Department of Education

The portion is higher in Passaic County, where 24.5 percent, or 1,999, of 8,163 teachers are eligible.
Nearly a third of the number in Passaic County are Paterson teachers. According to the data, 660 of the city’s 2,764, teachers are eligible. Retirements could help avert some of the 775 layoffs looming in the city schools. But Peter Tirri, the teachers union president, said the retirement of large numbers of veteran educators would be chaotic.
"You need relationships with parents, you’ve got to establish roots in a school," Tirri said.
The number of eligible teachers exceeds the averages in some smaller districts in North Jersey.
In Carlstadt, nearly 39 percent, or 21 of the 54 teachers in the district, are eligible. The district has one school, as does Alpine, where 10 of 27 teachers, or 37 percent, are eligible. In Ringwood, 45 of 135 would be eligible, fully a third of the teaching staff, according to the data.
The analysis also found:

Florida & Tampa Bay schools blog - The Gradebook

Separate bill for teacher bonuses, class size coming

The folks at lobbytools.com report this from today's Florida budget negotiations:

"Budget negotiators also agreed to shift $21.2 million set aside for teacher bonuses out of the state budget and into a separate piece of legislation. That bill contains several controversial provisions, including a requirement that school districts must hold public hearings to inform parents what must be done to comply with class size requirements. The House also wants to use that bill to order the creation of a teacher quality task force that would come up with a new merit pay plan for teachers tied to student performance similar to what was included in SB 6, which was vetoed by Gov. Charlie Crist.

The Legislature has placed a constitutional amendment on the 2010 ballot to ease class size requirements and some Democrats have

Can Messy Be A Sign Of Brilliance? - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Can Messy Be A Sign Of Brilliance?

"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind,
then what are we to think of an empty desk?"

---Einstein

The photograph above is from Einstein's office in Princeton from Life magazine (via PicDit) in 1955.

From Einstein we move to Agatha Christie, where Slate has fun romping through her writing "habits", gleaned from author John Curran's discoveries taken from his new book, "Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks". Excerpts From Slate:

AgathaChristie.book

"She was clever, learned, and unflinching when it came to plunging a paper knife into a man's back or poisoning an old lady with strychnine. Agatha Christie, the author of more than 60 crime novels, six straight novels, more than 140 short stories, 22 plays, and uncounted poems, wrote with matchless poise about death, greed, and, on occasion, truly nasty, motiveless evil. About 20 years ago, I read all of Christie's crime novels. Today, I would kill for the chance once more to stumble on one of her bodies . . . ."

" . . . You could never guess the murderers until she unveiled them, and then you had that fantastic sensation of surprise and - at the same time - utter inevitability. Ah! . . .This perfect dissonance - for which there is probably

Open Letter to Bay Area NBCTs � InterACT

Open Letter to Bay Area NBCTs

by ACT Guest Bloggers

Today’s Guest Author:
Sandy Dean, Director of the National Board Resource Center, at Stanford University.
The letter below was sent to National Board Certified Teachers who are, or have been part of the National Board Resource Center (NBRC) community at Stanford University, from its director, Sandy Dean. In particular, it is addressed to the most recently certified teachers. In over a decade of support for National Board candidates, the NBRC has become a model for candidate support programs around the country, and through it support for hundreds of local teachers, it has helped elevate the quality of teaching around the San Francisco Bay Area.
Dear Colleagues in the National Board Community,
This announcement and invitation are coming later this year than in years past for several reasons. The biggest one is that I was not sure we would have funding to continue our National Board Support program. Thankfully, we will continue with funding from the Stuart and Hewlett Foundations. Now, the question is are there teachers out there who have the heart and will to pursue National Board certification even when many of the incentives are gone? I hope you who have certified and know what Board certification can do for your teaching will offer encouragement to your colleagues out there who are reluctant, discouraged, or both.
In an ironic way, the reasons to encourage as many of our teaching colleagues to become certified have never been greater. No matter where you teach you have probably felt the sting being inflicted on the teaching profession by those who would have us believe that good teachers arrive fully developed and able to make a difference simply by virtue of will and some subject matter knowledge. If you are one of the NBCTs who has taken issue with such beliefs but does not yet know what else to do, I would suggest that it is time for all of us who love this work to take steps to own our profession because we cannot control what we do not own. We are clearly not in control right now, and I am not truly sure that we have ever owned our profession. Taking ownership and control seems to me to recommend two strategies. The first is to ensure that we have the professional authority from which to speak about good teaching. I know, as do most of you, that National Board certification is an avenue to develop that professional authority. That has always been the most compelling reason to undertake the hard work of candidacy. The second strategy is to add the voices of every Board certified teacher to the work of our newest initiative at the National Board Resource Center. The Accomplished California Teachers network is a group of distinguished teachers who are contributing to education policy discussions in California through reports, outreach to policymakers and invested public, blogs, articles, and whatever other opportunities present themselves. We are looking forward to the release of our first report on the subject of teacher evaluation in the next few weeks. There will be more to come.
I invite you, then, to do two things:
1. Invite a colleague whom you believe has the right stuff to pursue certification. (Subsidies for candidate fees are

Sacramento's Fremont closure plan puts adult education on the chopping block | News10.net | Sacramento, California | News

Sacramento's Fremont closure plan puts adult education on the chopping block

SACRAMENTO, CA - Teachers and students at Fremont Adult School were dismayed to learn Thursday that due to proposed budget cuts, this will probably be the last semester they will be able to take classes at their beloved school.

The Sacramento Unified School District is planning to cut Adult Education by 35 percent, or nearly $5,000,000. That means the 90-year-old school is slated for closure by this summer.

The school provides English as a second language (ESL) programs and classes to help students obtain their high school diploma (GED).

Teachers say students from all over the world have attended Fremont School to pursue their American dream, mastering English and earning high school diplomas with many going on to college.

Some Fremont students said the school is the first place where they are introduced to the American way of life.

"I like the teachers," said Luisa Lozano, an immigrant from Colombia. "The teachers are wonderful teachers. The teachers are the most dedicated teachers. They teach us not just English, they teach us

Colo. teacher bill ignites firestorm of support, opposition - The Denver Post

Colo. teacher bill ignites firestorm of support, opposition

Meyer
The Denver Post

POSTED: 04/25/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

UPDATED: 04/25/2010 01:02:20 AM MDT

Colo. Teachers
Apr 25:
Colorado Sen. Johnston, a former principal pushing tenure reform

High school English teacher Ben Jackson isn't afraid of a proposed state law that would tie his job status to how well his students do on tests. It's a teacher's job, Jackson said, to instill students with a "desire to succeed," to make them care about state exams — even ones that don't affect their grades. The legislation would ensure schools keep teachers "not because they grow older, but because they get better," Jackson said.

But to Jason Nurton, who teaches reading at a Fort Collins middle school, it is unfair to "judge a teacher's effectiveness on one test, on one day, when the student has absolutely no buy-in."

Nurton concedes Colorado should reform its teacher evaluation system, but not with Senate Bill 191

KYW Newsradio 1060 Philadelphia - Pa. Education Sec. To Head Allentown's School District

Pa. Education Sec. to Head Allentown's School District

by KYW’s Tony Romeo

Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Education is stepping down to become superintendent of the Allentown School District.

After five years at the helm of the state Department of Education, Gerald Zahorchak will step down May 7th. Zahorchak
believes he leaves the department with a strong infrastructure to carry on:

“There’s never, ever a good time to leave, but in an administration, it’s inevitable that you will have to leave. I think we’ve created the kind of systems in this administration that will be bridges that have been built that will be walked over for a long, long time.”

Q&A: NP strike questions from our readers - The ReporterNews: Serving North Penn, Indian Valley and neighboring communities

Q&A: NP strike questions from our readers

Published: Sunday, April 25, 2010

1 comment(s) | Email to a friend | Print version | ShareThis |

RSS Feeds

By DAN SOKIL

Throughout the current contract dispute between the North Penn Education Association and the district's school board, readers of The Reporter have asked numerous questions in online comments, calls to our Sound Off line, and via e-mail.

Below are some frequent questions asked by Reporter readers and answers from key figures in the NPSD and NPEA, or from statements or documents made available by both sides.

Q: What could happen in Monday's court hearing?

A: "At this point, the contractual hours for the teachers union have to be met, so we expect to go into the courtroom on Monday to seek an injunction to force them to go back to work on Wednesday," said school board President Vince Sherpinsky.

"The word is that we just have to be in Norristown and get whatever judge is available to hear the case. We could be heard at 9 a.m., it could be 5 p.m., we just don't know. We're hoping that we are heard earlier rather than later, and that there's some breakthrough that can get us back into school on Tuesday rather than on Wednesday," said NPEA President Alan Malachowski.

Q: What's the difference between "real dollars" and "step increases"?

Negotiations continue in Capistrano teacher strike | 89.3 KPCC

Negotiations continue in Capistrano teacher strike

April 24, 2010 | KPCC Wire Services | KPCC

Negotiations continued today between the Capistrano Unified School District and its teachers, who are on strike because of 10.1 percent pay cuts.

No progress was reported Friday. Officials from the school district were unavailable for comment today.

Latest News and Comment from Education