Sunday, August 1, 2010

Pair posing as painters steal computers from Philadelphia schools | Philadelphia Inquirer | 07/31/2010

Pair posing as painters steal computers from Philadelphia schools

By Martha Woodall

Inquirer Staff Writer

A pair of thieves wearing dust masks stole $13,600 worth of computers from two city elementary schools in the last week by posing as painters.
The incidents are the latest computer-equipment thefts from district buildings in the last school year. District officials said Friday they could not say how much had been stolen. But an internal report obtained by The Inquirer put the value of computers stolen in that period at $615,000.
In the latest crimes, the men, believed to be in their 20s, are sought for the thefts of 12 laptops from Kinsey School in West Oak Lane on July 22 and of an iMac desktop computer from the Pennell School in Ogontz on Wednesday.
In each case, the duo showed up shortly after building engineers opened the schools at 7 a.m. and before most summer employees had arrived.
"We have had a spate of computer thefts over the last two years," said James B. Golden Jr., the district's chief safety

School Tech Connect: Reviewing Obama's Urban League Speech

Reviewing Obama's Urban League Speech

by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)

I hadn't seen the Democracy Now coverage of the President's defense of his contradicted-by-obvious-evidence ideology at the Urban League until tonight. Here it is:

After the speech, Diane Ravitch once again dismantles the arguments behind Race To The Flop and the Blueprint. Leonie Haimson further points out that all of the rhetoric around closing the racial achievement gap is based on fabrications. Duncan, Daley, Klein, Bloomberg--- they're the Goldman Sachs of mayoral control of schools: they'll sell you any pile of crap you're willing to buy.

The President is way into the woods on this particular matter; he's never been wronger about anything in his life, I'm pretty sure. I wonder if it's all part of his grand strategy to get the base to stay home during the next round of elections. Because the people who cheer this stuff on, they're going to vote for the Party of No, and they're motivated. President Obama has certainly achieved a raft of worthwhile victories but they don't seem to be

NorthJersey.com: The Big Leap to kindergarten (or middle school)

The Big Leap to kindergarten (or middle school)

Sunday, August 1, 2010

BY VANESSA DRUCKMAN

THE PARENT PAPER

display story on 1 pagePage 1 2 >>

As storefronts fill with back-to-school signs and stacks of colorful notebooks, kids begin dreading the loss of the freedom of summer. But often, it is the parents who are filled with the most anxiety. This is especially true when kids are beginning elementary or middle school, and parents aren’t sure how best to help their kids make the transition.
This fall, Laura Epstein, a mother of four in Maplewood, will be sending her oldest off to kindergarten. Although he is excited, she is filled with questions that keep her up at night, "Will he find his classroom once he gets there? Will he get on the right bus home? Will he be feeling scared and alone? It is hard to give up the control and oversight you're used to having, and just trust everything will be OK." It’s also hard to know what it is teachers and school administrators expect of children this age.
That first day of kindergarten can often be harder for the parents than for the

Yes, Even Billionaires Face Dilemmas in Giving Money for School Reform � Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Yes, Even Billionaires Face Dilemmas in Giving Money for School Reform

by larrycuban

While big foundations face many issues in giving money to reform U.S. schools, two dilemmas in grant-giving arise again and again.

The first dilemma involves foundations’ strategies to inject new ideas into urban districts to change the status quo: They can give money to urban districts for locally-designed programs (e.g., new technologies, coaches to execute an experimental reading curriculum, professional learning communities) and then hold their collective breath that these funded programs will make meaningful changes in classrooms. Or they can arm-wrestle (or jawbone or lure–pick your metaphor) those same educators into taking gobs of cash to put innovations into practice that altered districts elsewhere even when locals are uncertain the reforms will help them (e.g., small high schools, pay-for-teacher-performance plans, charters).

The second dilemma that big spending foundations (Gates, Broad, Walton, etc.) do not like to discuss publicly

The Case for Routine Randomization � The Quick and the Ed

The Case for Routine Randomization

by Kevin Carey

One of the interesting aspects of the $320,000 kindergarten teacher study is that the study wasn’t originally designed to estimate the value of unusually effective kindergarten teachers. It was designed to study the effects of class size reduction. That was the policy intervention people were interested in back in the 1980s when the well-known Tennessee STAR experiment was created. There’s no way its designers could have known that a series of econometric studies finding huge differences in effectiveness among teachers with similar credentials would subsequently emerge, profoundly changing the way people think about the profession and making class size reduction passe.

Which makes me think that school districts should start randomly assigning some of their students to teachers

Stanford professors find works of art from darkest moments of Holocaust - San Jose Mercury News

Stanford professors find works of art from darkest moments of Holocaust

A husband-wife team of Stanford professors are on a quest to bring greater recognition to these forbidden, and almost forgotten, works. Their research has led to a pair of courses in the emerging field of 'creative resistance' '” one for Stanford undergraduates and another for adults in Stanford Continuing Studies '” which will be offered later this year.

East Side Union students spend educational, inspirational weekend at Santa Clara University

East Side board places parcel tax on budget

San Jose's new cop-watcher wants to moonlight as mediator

SJSU to take spring applications, although enrollment still uncertain

San Jose: 'Frightening' record turnout for free school backpack sign-up

Schools Matter: Caryl Crowell: Why don't all schools want scripted test prep?

Caryl Crowell: Why don't all schools want scripted test prep?

by skrashen

Sent to the Arizona Star

The Star is right to encourage parents to scrutinize school report cards, but not for the reasons you cite. While you noted that Catalina Foothills, Vail and Tanque Verde districts earned excelling labels, I wonder how many of your subscribers read between the lines and recognized that those are, not coincidentally, the wealthiest areas in the Tucson valley.

Nationally, schools that have 70% or more middle-class or affluent students do well on state, national and

Saturday, July 31, 2010

1990 Milwaukie High School grads find American dream despite tough odds | OregonLive.com

1990 Milwaukie High School grads find American dream despite tough odds

Published: Saturday, July 31, 2010, 12:00 PM

Bill Graves, The Oregonian
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Doug Beghtel/The OregonianMembers of the Milwaukie High School class of 1990 gather for a casual evening at Macadam's Bar & Grill in Southwest Portland as part of their 20th reunion. A survey of the class five years out of high school in 1995 showed that most had yet to find their footing in life and were still scrambling to complete college or find a stable job.

Fifteen years ago, the American dream looked like a long shot for Milwaukie High School's class of 1990, when five years out of high school most members still faced uncertain job prospects and a shapeless future.

But at least some of those who showed up for the class's 20th reunion in Portland last weekend proved that persistence and hard work still deliver a home, family and middle-class life, even when the odds seemed stacked against them.

In 1995, Milwaukie High graduate Mercedes Cochran Cook, already married with two children, seemed mired too deep in obligations to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. Classmate Stacey Baker seemed to have squandered her college degree on a receptionist job for a shoe company, and Jonathan Heiden was scrambling from job to job as he tried to support his wife and daughter.

Today, Cochran Cook is a professional actress, Baker has traveled around the world outfitting athletes for the Olympics, and Heiden has a stable job driving a garbage truck, earning enough to support his family and buy a home.

"I figured out how to make a living doing what I love in Oregon," says Cochran Cook. "I'm pretty proud of that."

A team of Oregonian reporters in 1995 set out to track down graduates of Milwaukie High's class of 1990 to see how well a typical Oregon high school prepared young people for their next stage in life, whether work or college. The team chose Milwaukie because it was, in almost every way,

Twenty years of Japanese American waterfront memorial to civil rights

By Carolina Hidalgo, The Oregonian

July 30, 2010, 11:15AM

On the west bank of the Willamette River, between the Burnside and Steel bridges, stretches a 100-year story. Through poems engraved in granite stones, it chronicles decades of hard work, injustice, new beginnings and, finally, hope. Full story »

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School district administrators: Just what do they do to earn their pay anyway?

By Wendy Owen, The Oregonian

July 30, 2010, 11:00AM

At budget time, people want to know why school districts don't trim more from the top. Calendars of top schools officials show that they are busy. Full story »

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Top 12 administrative salaries for 5 Oregon school districts

By The Oregonian

July 30, 2010, 11:00AM

How the Hillsboro School District's top 12 administrative salaries compare with other districts in Washington County and other districts of like size. Full story »

Weblogg-ed � Not “What” You Know

Not “What” You Know

by Will Richardson

From Michael Schrage in the Harvard Business Review:

When I look at who is getting hired, purported knowledge almost always matters less than demonstrable skills. The distinctions aren’t subtle; they’re immense. How do they manifest themselves? These hires don’t have resumes highlighting educational pedigrees and accomplishments; their resumes emphasize their skill sets. Instead of listing aspirations and achievements, these resumes present portfolios around performance. They link to blogs, published articles, PowerPoint presentations, podcasts and webinars the candidates produced. The traditional two-page resume has been turned into a “personal productivity portal” that empowers prospective employers to quite literally interact with their candidate’s work.
Unsurprisingly, this simultaneously complements and reinforces the employer-side due diligence

The Best Sites For Learning About The Flooding In Pakistan | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

The Best Sites For Learning About The Flooding In Pakistan Pakistan is being hit by terrible flooding, and I thought readers might find it useful to see this short compilation of related resources. I’m also adding this list to A Compilation Of “The Best…” Lists About Natural Disasters. Here, so far, are my ...

“Tours From Above” Tours From Above is a new site hosting spectacular aerial panoramic images from around the world. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Panoramas. Thanks to Google Maps Mania for the tip.

Recordr.tv Recordr.tv is a very simple application that lets you make online video or just a audio messages that you can send online. No registration is required. The only negative is that you can see the most recent messages other people sent, which can be ...

Our Five Thousand Year Obsession with the Angry Father Figure | Lefty Parent

Our Five Thousand Year Obsession with the Angry Father Figure

by Cooper Zale

I find our human history a fascinating narrative, an evolutionary adventure that appears often to unfold as an exciting three steps forward followed by a frustrating two steps back. Particularly from my reading of Riane Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade, Karen Armstrong’s A History of God and The Battle for God, Allan Johnson’s The Gender Knot, and Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence, I have come to this admittedly provocative framing of the last five millennia of our tenure on planet Earth. “Who’s your daddy?” has been the operative organizing principle of human society, but it is past time that we move beyond this obsession with parental figures to a question more like, “Who’re your peers?”

I go back 5000 years based on the archeological findings of Marija Gimbutas as woven into the historical

NY Times declares NEA the winner! “The most retrograde union.” � Fred Klonsky's blog

NY Times declares NEA the winner! “The most retrograde union.”

by preaprez

My retired teacher buddy from the Western ‘burbs sends me this note:

Look Fred. We’re the more retrograde teacher union! I believe that means we’re actually a union and not an educational reform group (Illinois might be an exception!)

He’s referring to the editorial in today’s NY Times:

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Sunday, August 1, 2010