Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Newark official on Race to the Top panel said he flagged error before presentation | NJ.com

Newark official on Race to the Top panel said he flagged error before presentation

Published: Tuesday, September 07, 2010, 1:16 PM Updated: Tuesday, September 07, 2010, 1:16 PM

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file photoExecutive Assisstant of Innovation and Change at Newark Public Schools Daniel Gohl is at far left in this video screen grab from New Jersey's interview during the Race to the Top process.

TRENTON — A Newark Public Schools official who helped present New Jersey's Race to the Top application in Washington, D.C., said today he flagged a crucial error less than a week before the presentation — but was told by consultants there was no chance to correct an answer after the deadline.

Dan Gohl, in charge of innovation and change in Newark schools, said he noticed the error six days before the presentation but he did not tell former Education Commissioner Bret Schundler or others in the state education department about the error.

Speaking at an Assembly committee hearing on the failed grant application, Gohl said he was told "anything that was submitted on June 1 timestamped a final document, and that's all we can speak to" in the presentation.

When asked why he didn't raise the issue with other officials in the state, Gohl said he was

Some Charters Could Face Hurdles Tapping Edujobs Funds - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Some Charters Could Face Hurdles Tapping Edujobs Funds

by Alyson Klein

Charter school advocates are dismayed that some charters may have a tough time tapping funds from the $10 billion Education Jobs Fund, which is meant to help stave off teacher layoffs.

The issue? It's very complicated, but basically, it comes down to the fact that in some districts and states, some charter school teachers are employees of a charter management organization or an educational management organization, not a school district.

"There's a lot of head scratching," said Brooks Garber, the vice president for federal advocacy at the National

Back to School: New York Times Resources for Social Studies and History - NYTimes.com

Back to School: New York Times Resources for Social Studies and History

By HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO

Photograph by Reinhard Hunger. Set design by Sarah IllenbergerThe search terms displayed above were selected from a list of 8,000 collected by Experian Hitwise that drove traffic to news sites in the United States for the week ending April 24, 2010.Go to related Teaching Topics page on Research »

Whether your school year started in August or is just getting underway, here are some basic ways to use The New York Times use this year with your social studies and history students.

Ideas for all subjects, including social studies, are here. Check back tomorrow for more ideas for science, health and technology, and Thursday for language arts and fine arts. And our lesson plans start back up next week – have you

Little Rock 9 member Jefferson Thomas dies in Ohio - Boston.com

Little Rock 9 member Jefferson Thomas dies in Ohio

FILE - Jefferson Thomas in 1957, one of nine African American who integrated Little Rock Central High School while federal troops patrolled the campus, is seen in an 1957 file photo. Jefferson Thomas died Sunday, Sept. 5, 2010 in Columbus, Ohio, said fellow Little Rock Nine member Minnijean Trickey Brown. He was 68. (AP Photo, File)

By Tom Parsons

Associated Press Writer / September 6, 2010

Text size – +

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Jefferson Thomas was fast and athletic and often played pickup basketball with white students while growing up in Little Rock in the 1950s.

But when Thomas became one of nine black students to integrate Arkansas' largest high school, many of his basketball buddies weren't happy to see him in their classes.

"One of them said, 'Well I don't mind playing basketball or football with you or anything. You guys are good at sports.

Just Wondering � The Quick and the Ed

Just Wondering

by Kevin Carey

If, as Bill Turque reports, the line being peddled by Michelle Rhee’s critics is “don’t worry, all of the progress we’ve made over the last three years in DCPS won’t be derailed if Fenty loses the election and Rhee steps down / is fired,” then why, exactly, are they her critics in the first place?

Hechinger Report | Community colleges try innovative ways to improve retention, completion and transfer rates

Community colleges try innovative ways to improve retention, completion and transfer rates

by Casey Selix

Inver Hills Community College

This is the time of year Inver Hills Community College Vice President Barbara Read stands in the door of the admissions office and greets a new student with a four-word question: “What is your goal?”

The question goes to the heart of the college’s five-year-old “Finish What You Start” effort to improve retention, completion and transfer rates. Whether a student is there to earn credits before transferring to a four-year

DFER SPIN: Fenty has a tough week ahead of him

Time to shake off the long-weekend. Adrian Fenty’s primary election day is one week away.

From Fenty's first day as mayor of Washington DC, he has addressed the district's troubled school system head-on. Education reform has been his administration's hallmark, as he's focused on results and accountability. The student outcomes already apparent just a few years into his tenure are astounding.

Fenty’s education restructuring plan gave him mayoral control of the district's schools, enabling him to appoint a schools chancellor who answers directly to him. DC's dynamic chancellor Michelle Rhee, a true reform champion, has already said she'll quit if Fenty loses. Rhee has drawn plain lines in the sand where adult interests like tenure trump the interests of students. One of the most important results is that she's demonstrated the kinds of reforms that are possible when would-be reformers throughout the country are willing to get messy. Her departure would be a massive setback for the reform movement.

Cartoons: How Everyone Else Looks At Education - District 299: Chicago Public Schools Blog

Cartoons: How Everyone Else Looks At Education Here are some cartoons from around the country showing a taste of how the rest of the world thinks about public schools (via Slate):

First Day Successes And Failures [image: jackpurcell_crop.jpg] How's it going? How'd it go? Getting to school, the first classes, new students or teachers, new schools, new grades or classes -- so many things that are new or different at the start of a new school year. Are you ...

AM News: School Starts, Changes Large & Small [image: Thumbnail image for news2.gif] What's new at Chicago Public Schools Sun Times: Enrollment is expected to rise by 1,400 -- to 410,000 students -- at the nation's third-largest school district... Chicago Public Schools Deal With Cuts, Teacher ...

The Educated Reporter: Our L.A. Times value-added podcast available.

Our L.A. Times value-added podcast available.

The podcast for EWA’s audioconference with Los Angeles Times journalists about their value-added project is up on our homepage—click on the first “What’s New” item.

National Journal Online -- Education Experts -- The New Assessments

The New Assessments

Last week, as part of the Race to the Top federal grant competition, the Education Department awarded two groups of states $330 million to develop the next generation of student assessments. The money, which will be disbursed over the next four years, goes to the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Together the winning groups represent 44 states; the others have declined to participate. The forthcoming assessments are the counterpart to the common standards in English and math that the administration is pushing states to adopt.

According to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, both of the winning applicants will develop evaluation systems that avoid pressuring teachers "to teach to a test that doesn't measure what really matters." Instead, Duncan maintains, the assessments will "measure real student knowledge and skills."

Given the information available from the applicants' proposals, does one group hold more promise than the other for delivering superior assessments? Will the new assessments succeed in Duncan's promise to measure real student knowledge and skills?

-- Eliza Krigman, NationalJournal.com

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RESPONDED ON SEPTEMBER 7, 2010 10:23 AM

While Waiting For The New Tests...

Diane Ravitch

Research Professor Of Education, New York University

I am hoping that the new assessments will be better than the current crop of standardized tests. Many people (including Secretary Arne Duncan) agree that the current standardized tests are inadequate, that learning bubble-guessing is not a good use of students' time, and that we need tests that

How Davis Guggenheim's Documentary 'Waiting for “Superman”' Will Further Fuel the Education Debate -- New York Magazine

Schools: The Disaster Movie

A debate has been raging over why our education system is failing. A new documentary by the director of An Inconvenient Truth throws fuel on the fire.

18 Comments | Add Yours

By John Heilemann
Published Sep 5, 2010

Waiting for "Superman" is a paean to reformers like Washington, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee (left), while it casts AFT president Randi Weingarten (right), in the words of Variety, as "something of a foaming satanic beast."

(Photo: Mike McGregor)

The Harlem-based educator and activist Geoffrey Canada first met the filmmaker Davis Guggenheim in 2008, when Canada was in Los Angeles raising money for the Children’s Defense Fund, which he chairs. Guggenheim told Canada that he was making a documentary about the crisis in America’s schools and implored him to be in it. Canada had heard this pitch before, more times than he could count, from a stream of camera-toting do-gooders whose movies were destined to be seen by audiences smaller than the crowd on a rainy

Warning. School calendar. Bureaucrats in charge. � Fred Klonsky's blog

Warning. School calendar. Bureaucrats in charge.

by preaprez

For many teachers and students in urban school districts this is the first day back. They join millions of other students and teachers who have been in classrooms for two weeks or more.

There are few things as goofy as the school calendar.

This year Chicago’s public schools began a program of so-called (Same number of days, just reconfigured) year-round schools. It has been brutal for working parents trying to coordinate childcare in a world of summers

ASCD Inservice: Research Says: Choice Is a Matter of Degree

Research Says: Choice Is a Matter of Degree

Student projects can draw on student motivation to showcase critical thinking skills and content knowledge. These outcomes, however, are not a given. The "Research Says . . . " column in this month's EL sifts the data to deliver these guidelines for designing student projects: consider who and what is driving the assignment.

While choice is a motivator in student work, too many choices can actually demotivate students. Offer limited choices

After test score criticism, Klein allows more planning time | GothamSchools

After test score criticism, Klein allows more planning time

by Philissa Cramer

Teachers are starting the school year with 37.5 more minutes a week to figure out how to raise test scores.

In an email sent to principals on Friday, Chancellor Joel Klein announced that schools are now allowed to convert one period of tutoring time into teacher planning sessions aimed at boosting scores. The four-times-weekly, 37.5-minute sessions were introduced in February 2006 for teachers to offer small-group instruction.

“This time must be used in a structured way to look at data and student work, to examine curriculum and

EducationNews.org - Chicago schools have 'new eyes and ears on the street'

Chicago schools have 'new eyes and ears on the street'

9.7.20 - Wearing neon yellow vests and packing cell phones, more than a dozen "community watchers'' will line the busiest street leading to Corliss High School for a mile today as a new Safe Passage program sweeps across the city's public high schools. These new "eyes and ears on the street" already have made some kids feel safer at Corliss, a year-round school that launched its Safe Passage program in early August when its classes began... FULL ARTICLE AT CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

For-profit colleges under fire EducationNews.org

EducationNews.org

For-profit colleges under fire
9.7.10 - Federal officials want to cut financial aid at schools like ITT and University of Phoenix when students fall behind repaying their loans.

Earlier cutoff date to enter kindergarten a step closer in California
9.7.10 - A bill that would require pupils entering kindergarten to reach 5 by Sept. 1 and that would create another level of instruction for younger children was passed by the Legislature and awaits the governor's signature. ...

Using Facebook can 'lower exam results by up to 20%'
9.7.10 - Students who use Facebook while they study get significantly lower grades than those who do not, a new study has revealed. ...

Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits
9.7.10 - BENEDICT CAREY - Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are "visual learners" and others are auditory; some are "left-brain" students, others "right-brain." In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas....

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