Monday, May 31, 2010

N.J. education commissioner prefers 'educational effectiveness' over seniority when cutting teacher jobs | NJ.com

N.J. education commissioner prefers 'educational effectiveness' over seniority when cutting teacher jobs

By Bob Braun/Star-Ledger Columnist

May 31, 2010, 7:58AM

Patti Sapone/The Star-LedgerNJ Education Commissioner Bret Schundler speaks to Garden State Coalition of Schools (GSCS) about education reform at the Forsgate Country Club in Monroe Township on 5/26/10.

Bret Schundler is like no education commissioner the state has ever had. He’s not an educator, but a businessman and a politician. He is more of an advocate for private schools than for public schools. He is a true believer in parental choice, something he deems "a human right."

And, in the midst of an ugly fight between his governor and the state’s largest teachers union, his spokesman refers to New Jersey schools as "wretched" — just when they led the nation in a countrywide test of educational achievement.

Okay, so he repudiated the word "wretched" when legislators and educators protested — but what does he really think of the public schools he is constitutionally sworn to support?

That’s not an easy question to answer, even after sitting with Schundler for three hours and talking about the schools.

While he conceded some New Jersey public schools are doing well, he also clearly believes that things have to change and that private schools, without their union rules and bureaucracies, are the models for reform.

But then he suggested veteran teachers should pack it in and retire for the good of the schools.

He said he was concerned about staffing the schools: Education is a "labor intensive service," he said and you need bodies to be there. Thousands of

Political Affairs Magazine - The Otherworldly Attack on Public Education

The Otherworldly Attack on Public Education

By Carl Bloice

Original source: Black Commemtator

The crisis in U.S. public education is beginning to read like something out of the theater of the absurd.

Now they are getting rid of summer school.

The Associated Press reported Sunday: "Across the country, districts are cutting summer school because it's just too expensive to keep. The cuts started when the recession began and have worsened, affecting more children and more essential programs that help struggling students." A survey found that over one third of the school districts in the country are looking at cutting out summer school starting this fall. And who are the students who will be hit hardest by this move? "Experts say studies show summer break tends to widen the achievement gap between poor students and their more affluent peers whose parents can more easily afford things like educational vacations, camps and sports teams," said AP.

"Most people generally think summer is a great time for kids to be kids, a time for something different, a time for all kinds of exploration and enrichment," Ron Fairchild, chief executive officer of the National Summer Learning Association, told the news agency. "Our mythology about summer learning really runs counter to the reality of what this really is like for kids in low-income communities and for their families when this faucet of public support shuts off."

The same day this news was broadcast, the New York Times magazine ran a lengthy front page article about the ongoing efforts to confront the teachers unions and pictured classroom instructors as the impediment to improving the quality of education. At the same time, ironically, the cartoonist Jeff Danziger drew a classroom where two heavies are dragging a teacher out the door while proclaiming: "Good news, we figured out what was costing so much about public education." In the background, someone is hooking up a video monitor.

It remains a mystery to me that an administration that can spend millions of dollars to bribe states into facilitating its quite controversial school "reform" programs can't come up with the resources to stave off the pending mass layoffs of teachers. It can't be that the White House has adopted the reactionaries' tactic of starving public education until it falls to privatization. Education Secretary Arne Duncan appears to be genuinely alarmed at the economic crisis in public education.

"The cuts come even as President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan call for longer school days and shorter summer breaks," observed AP. "But in many states, districts cutting summer school outnumber those using stimulus money to expand their offerings." "At a time when we need to work harder to close achievement gaps and prepare every child for college and career, cutting summer school is the wrong way to go," Duncan told reporters.

Schools can help parents The Brunswick News - Home Page

The Brunswick News - Home Page

Schools can help parents

5/31/2010

By ERIKA CAPEK The Brunswick News

Parent involvement workers don't have to be certified teachers, yet their role in the school system is an important one.

A full-time or part-time parent involvement worker will be at every elementary school this fall, except Oglethorpe Point Elementary School, and at each middle school, said Marihelen Newman, Glynn County family involvement specialist.

Newman said the goal of parent involvement workers is to empower parents and support families.

"We're available to help parents navigate the school system and navigate through the jargon that educators use," Newman said.

Parent involvement efforts are funded through Title 1 federal funds, which schools receive based on the percentage of students from low-income families.

Newman said the majority of parent involvement workers deal with parents but sometimes try to have a parent and child come in together.

Topics they help parents with include test-taking strategies for children, the importance of attendance for children and working with children who have learning disorders.

They focus on more than just academics.

California passes bill to counteract ‘disturbing’ Texas curriculum | Raw Story

California passes bill to counteract ‘disturbing’ Texas curriculum

By Sahil Kapur
Sunday, May 30th, 2010 -- 10:23 am

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Measure ensures Texas standards don't 'creep into our textbooks,' senator tells Raw Story

texastextbooks California passes bill to counteract disturbing Texas curriculum

The California Senate on Friday approvedlegislation that sends a clear message to Texas and textbook publishers: don't mess with our kids' minds.

"My bill begins the process of ensuring that California students will not end up being taught with Texas standards," State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), who authored and sponsored the legislation, said in an interview. Texas standards had better not "creep into our textbooks," he said.

The S.B. 1451 measure – approved on a bipartisan vote of 25-5 – requires California's Board of Education to examine and report any discrepancies between the new Texas standards and California's standards. "At that point," Yee told Raw Story, "we will make it very, very clear that we won't accept textbooks that minimize the contributions of minorities and propagate the close connection between church and state."

Story continues below...

Teachers' seniority rights under assault in Cleveland, across the nation | cleveland.com

Teachers' seniority rights under assault in Cleveland, across the nation

By Thomas Ott, The Plain Dealer

May 31, 2010, 6:00AM

Gus Chan, The Plain DealerCleveland schools Chief Executive Officer Eugene Sanders, shown in a photo from April, wants to weaken teachers' seniority rights through current contract negotiations.

Previous story

The most important book in the Cleveland school district is being rewritten: The union contract

Teachers' seniority rights are under fire from public officials and policy experts who say experience and effectiveness don't always go hand in hand.

The grip seniority holds on schools has gained attention as money runs short and education leaders, including Cleveland's, slash jobs by the hundreds. Its effects also come into play as urban school districts wrestle with how to place the right teachers in schools serving low-income, or so-called "hard to serve," populations.

Cleveland schools Chief Executive Eugene Sanders has acknowledged a desire to dismantle the district's seniority system as part of difficult contract negotiations going on now. Union leaders, wary of giving up seniority rights without a trustworthy alternative, do not deny that the issue could lead to a strike.

Barring an agreement on concessions, Cleveland is set to ax 546 teachers in June. The cuts will sweep out large blocs of staff in 10 popular "innovation schools," where side agreements with the teachers union allow principals to disregard seniority in hiring, reaching outside the system if they think it's necessary. Such newer teachers will be among the first to go.

One of the innovation schools, Warner Girls Leadership Academy, a single-gender elementary school, will say goodbye to 11 of its 18 teachers. The vacancies will have to be filled from within the union.

Principal Lesley Jones Sessler puts a brave face on the situation, saying the school will persevere.

"We can still be successful," she said. "Nowhere was it written that my teachers would be protected from something like this."

But foundations that invested millions of dollars in the innovation schools

Neumann taps public funds for private schools - JSOnline

Neumann taps public funds for private schools

Rick Wood

Shawn Vogel (left), Trinidey Brown and Vincent Trentadue color in the K-4 class at the HOPE Christian school at 3601 N. Port Washington Ave. earlier this year.

Republican governor candidate started HOPE Christian Schools

By Lee Bergquist and Erin Richards of the Journal Sentinel

Posted: May 30, 2010 |(30) COMMENTS

Republican businessman Mark Neumann started his first taxpayer-funded school with 49 students, and in eight years enrollment has mushroomed to nearly 1,000 students in four schools.

Neumann, a candidate for governor who preaches smaller government and fiscal conservatism, has used his entrepreneurial skills to tap private and public funds - including federal stimulus dollars - to start schools in poor neighborhoods.

The former member of the U.S. House operates three religious-based schools in Milwaukee, a fourth nonreligious school in Phoenix and has plans to build clusters of schools across the country.

The Nashotah businessman is part of a growing national movement from the private sector that is providing poor neighborhoods an alternative to traditional public schools.

There are signs the schools are achieving one of their primary goals of getting students into post-secondary schools.

HOPE Christian's high school has had two graduating classes before this spring, and has posted acceptance rates at post-secondary schools of 85% in 2008 and 92% in 2009.

By comparison, a Milwaukee Public Schools study of graduating classes in 2005 to 2007 showed a post-secondary enrollment of nearly 46%.

Neumann has used education and his business experience to contrast himself with his two opponents - fellow Republican Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker and Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom

The Answer Sheet - School junk food ban works, study finds

The Answer Sheet- School junk food ban works, study finds

School junk food ban works, study finds

Banning junk food from schools actually does have a beneficial effect on students, a new research study shows.

Schools that eliminated junk food from a la carte lines during school lunch hours have seen an 18 percent reduction in overweight or obese students, according to a new study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The researchers, Associate Professor of Marketing Patricia Kennedy and Associate Professor of Finance Mary McGarvey, examined nutrition policies as well as survey information from students, parents and administrators at eight Midwestern schools, and then considered a range of other factors to gauge the effect of schools’ food policies on students’ weight.

The study suggests expanding the Agriculture Department’s current ban on selling so-called Foods of Limited Nutritional Value during school

EducationNews.org Teachers' seniority rights under assault in Cleveland, across the nation

EducationNews.org

Black Boys and Shakespeare

5.30.10 - Matt Amaral - I once asked my students to write about the cultural differences between them and the other cultures they see around them. I don’t

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Hard work pays off for teachers helping Fondren turn around

5.31.10 - Results of the bonuses program at struggling Fondren Middle could have a ripple effect among leaders and lawmakers looking for ways to boost student achievement. ...

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Teachers' seniority rights under assault in Cleveland, across the nation

5.31.10 - Teachers' seniority rights are under fire from public officials and policy experts who say experience and effectiveness don't always go hand in hand...

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State trying again for $250m US education grant

5.31.10 - Massachusetts is taking another shot at getting millions of federal dollars to create new programs and overhaul failing schools....

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Teachers union may not sway schools chief race

Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, May 31, 2010

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For nearly three decades, California's largest teachers union has all but handpicked the candidate who went on to win the race for state superintendent of public instruction.
It was pretty much a given for the candidate: Get the California Teachers Association's campaign cash, gain the support of most other education groups in the state and win the race.
This year is different.
In a packed field of 12 candidates, three have emerged as the top contenders for the nonpartisan job. All three are Democrats, two of whom are splitting the support of the education establishment, and a third who has attracted support of non-establishment education reformers.
The three include former South Bay schools superintendent Larry Aceves; state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles; and Assemblyman Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch.
Torlakson won the previously coveted backing from the 325,000-member teachers union, but the union has fallen out of favor with some voters for opposing education reforms that would require evaluation of teachers using test scores, more charter schools and changes to teacher seniority rights.

Torlakson on the defensive

As a result, Torlakson, a legislator since 1996, has found himself in the unusual position of having to defend more than flaunt the endorsement, which has so far included a $12,500 contribution.
Aceves, a Sacramento outsider, has the backing of the Association of California School Administrators and a few hundred individual school district officials, as well as newspaper endorsements from his opponents' home turfs - the Los Angeles Times and the Contra Costa Times, making him a real contender in a race that seemingly had been a battle between two career politicians.
Romero, in the Legislature since 1998, has cast herself as a maverick bucking the status quo. Education reformers like Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and the Broad Foundation's Eli Broad, advocates of increased competition in schools and parent empowerment in education, have lined up behind her.
She is rolling the dice that she can win without the support of the teachers or other

DAVE MCNEELY: Education board brings state unwanted attention � Standard-Times

DAVE MCNEELY: Education board brings state unwanted attention

SAN ANGELO, Texas — The State Board of Education’s revision of curriculum standards to reflect the right-leaning opinions of the so-called “conservative” Republican majority that currently dominates the board is the latest example of helping Texas look like Baja Arkansas.

Just as the ecstasy in other states over Gov. Rick Perry’s hint Texas might secede from the United States had died down, and many Texans heaved a sigh of relief after Arizona’s effort to make cops into border control officers had won away our “Kick me!” sign, the State Board’s Hole-in-the-Head gang went and took it back.

While the board majority was bending school curriculum standards well to the right, there were enough TV satellite trucks parked outside the education building to make NASA jealous. The national and international publicity was, shall we say, less than laudatory.

The board majority rammed through changes that included intimating that the Civil War was more about states’ rights than slavery; said that the term “democratic” should be replaced by “constitutional republic” when referring to the United States government; and removed a requirement that sociology students “explain how institutional racism is evident in American society.”

The good news is that the board reversed its proposed removal of Thomas Jefferson, lead author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, from a list of political philosophers for students to study in world history.

Two days before the final vote on May 21, three Democratic candidates for the board showed reporters at state Democratic Party headquarters a foot-high stack of almost 5,000 petition signatures protesting the board’s intentions.

They said they would present them to the board, asking that the proposed curriculum changes be postponed.

Assuming in advance that wouldn’t happen, they said that if elected, in January they

Monday, May 31, 2010