Monday, November 8, 2010

Obama fields tough questions from Indian students - latimes.com

Obama fields tough questions from Indian students

In Mumbai, he defends the United States' support of Pakistan and urges India to gradually mend fences with its neighbor. The president also calls for easing trade restrictions on the U.S.

First lady Michelle Obama turned in an enthusiastic performance of the Kholi dance. "She was moving," the president said of his wife later. (EPA)

By Christi Parsons and Don Lee, Los Angeles Times

November 8, 2010

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Reporting from Mumbai, India, and Washington —

President Obama, challenged by Indian students Sunday to explain why the United States had not labeled Pakistan a terrorist state, defended his administration's efforts to help the Pakistani government root out extremism and urged Indians to remember their own stake in promoting their longtime rival's stability.

Obama's call to India for a gradual rapprochement with Pakistan, made during a sometimes lively town hall-style meeting at St. Xavier's College in the Indian city of Mumbai, is likely to be repeated at a speech Monday to the Parliament in New Delhi.

This Week In Education: Media: The Importance Of Disclosing Campaign Giving

Media: The Importance Of Disclosing Campaign Giving

by Alexander Russo

Last week's disclosure that MSNB's Keith Olbermann -- and Fox's Joe Scarborough -- had previously undisclosed campaign donations has become Washington's lastest tempest in a teapot, following closely on the NPR Juan Williams / Nina Totenberg debacle -- but it's as good a time as any to ponder the question of how me we know or don't know about the folks we trust to give us the education news and commentary -- print reporters, broadcast folks and regular pundits. Traditionally most fulltime journalists are required not to participate in campaigns (NPR recently told its staff not to go to the

Ed Reform as the Compliance Police � The Core Knowledge Blog

Ed Reform as the Compliance Police

by Robert Pondiscio
November 8th, 2010

Tags: charter schools, education reform, teacher evaluation
Posted in Educational Policy, accountability | No Comments »

Has the battle cry of ed reform evolved from “Just win, baby!” to “Just comply, baby?”

Time was when ed reform had a single focus: accountability for results, observes Fordham’s Mike Petrilli. But now, frustrated with the glacial pace of improvement and results, the impulse is to push for “change anywhere, anytime, anyhow—even if that means engaging in the same sort of regulating and rule-making and program-creating and money-spending that we once abhorred.”

The most obvious example Petrilli cites is Race to the Top which, rather than reward results, “lavished money on those jurisdictions willing to pledge themselves to a set of prescriptive reforms.” Then too, there are reformers pushing teacher quality who ”rightly point out that today’s evaluation systems are a total joke,” Petrilli writes.

“But here’s their mistake: they are doing this pushing primarily at the state

Sticking it to the Schools Suck Industry | California Progress Report

Sticking it to the Schools Suck Industry

by christine

By Peter Schrag

John Mockler has rarely been timid in his opinions about education policy. But he’s never been more in-your-face than in his blasts at what he’s been calling “the California Schools Suck Industry” and the “statistical pornography” of the business groups, foundations, politicians and journalists who are its principal members.

Late last month, in a teleconference run by Steve Rees and his School Wise Press, he went at it again, contending, with a fusillade of numbers, that California schools were doing a lot better than most of us were being told. They were not categorically failing, were not deeply flawed, and that anyone who claimed otherwise was peddling “drivel.”

"Principal's Pick" Banned Again - No One Cares - District 299: Chicago Public Schools Blog

Teaching: Scripted Curricula Cripple Teachers [image: Overwhelm_life21] During Miss Mimi's rookie year, her school used a scripted reading program and a games-based math program. In her second year of teaching, it adopted a balanced literacy approach to reading and writing, began a brand new word ...

"Principal's Pick" Banned Again - No One Cares [image: 1276084025971.gif] For all the attention and concern generated by last week's announced plan for magnet and SE schools this year, the decision to ban principal picks for a second year has generated relatively little attention compared to last ...

AM News: More Possibilities For Interim [image: Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for news2.gif] Report: Del Valle may be offered CPS spot ABC7.. hopeful is trying to grab a top position with Chicago Public Schools. Mayor Richard Daley is looking to name a replacement ...

Hechinger Report | State deals with wave of teacher accountability reform

State deals with wave of teacher accountability reform

by Alan J. Borsuk

An educational earthquake aimed at improving the effectiveness of teachers is rumbling across the nation.

So far, the quake is only beginning to affect Wisconsin. But the tremors of change are already being felt here, and more are coming.

In the process, a new world of teaching is being built.

Nationwide, the federal government and giant philanthropies such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are putting hundreds of millions of dollars into underwriting work in dozens of states and cities on better ways to

IEA Board votes to move RA from Hyatt. � Fred Klonsky's blog

IEA Board votes to move RA from Hyatt.

by Fred Klonsky

From Ken Swanson, IEA President:

For some weeks now we have been quietly prepping for the possibility we would have to move our Representative Assembly from the Hyatt Hotel in Rosemont we have used for many years. This hotel is one of a number of Hyatt hotels involved in a longstanding labor dispute with UNITE HERE, the union representing hotel workers.

We will share more later about the dispute. What is important to communicate now is that the Board of Directors voted unanimously to act in accordance with my recommendation that we do whatever is necessary to support our union bretheren in this dispute and if that means we have to move to other hotels and significantly adjust the RA schedule we will do so. The Board also heard a report related to this matter from the IEA RA Board Subcommittee.

I know there has been some speculation about this issue among some members and in fact some false assumptions have surfaced regarding the amount of attention we have or had not been giving this matter.

There is much to be worked out, as I am sure you can understand. So, we really don’t have answers to the

What Libertarians (Often) Miss About “Free Choice” and Markets � Student Activism

What Libertarians (Often) Miss About “Free Choice” and Markets

by Angus Johnston

There’s a lot to like about libertarianism. The idea that people should, in general, be left alone to make their own decisions and control their own destinies is a righteous and important one. But there’s a narrowness of focus in a lot of libertarian argumentation that I find incredibly frustrating.

Take this piece from the libertarian magazine Reason. In it, Steve Chapman claims that by regulating Happy Meals and trying to tax soda, politicians in San Francisco and New York are acting as “food police” — telling us what we can and can’t eat.

The reality is, though, that none of the politicians Chapman slams are trying to ban anything. The San Francisco law doesn’t stop parents from buying their kids fries or burgers, it just regulates which foods can be bundled with toys. And the New York proposal wouldn’t halt sales of sodas, it’d just tax them a bit more.

In today’s United States, attempts to actually ban products on moral grounds are thankfully quite rare. But by framing regulatory schemes like these as contests between free choice and state nannyism, libertarians often obscure the real dynamics at play in business-consumer relationships, and let insidious governmental acts off the hook.

Consider, for example, the recent New York Times exposé of the federal government’s role in promoting the sale

Considering a Small High School? � EdVox

Considering a Small High School?

by edvoxny

By Norm Fruchter

The deadline to file applications for NYC high schools is December 3^rd, 2010. Current high school choice involves almost 400 schools, of which more than half are relatively small high schools (serving grades 9-12) and secondary schools (serving grades 6-12). These small schools are relatively new; the first 50 were started in the mid-1990s, and most of the rest were created since 2002. The high school choice process has always been complicated and pressured for many students and their families; the existence of so many new small high schools increases that complexity. So what do we know about these new small high schools?

The city’s small high schools have already been extensively studied. Generally, the findings show that small schools overall enroll higher percentages of Black and Latino students, higher percentages of students from poor families, and higher percentages of poorly performing students, than the city’s high schools as a whole. However, historically, the small high schools have enrolled fewer Special Education and ELL students, though

Hechinger Report | For-profit colleges try to improve grad rates, hoping for Republican support

For-profit colleges try to improve grad rates, hoping for Republican support

by Joanne Jacobs

Fast-growing for-profit colleges, under fire for saddling students with unmanageable debt, are rolling out new policies aimed at raising graduation rates while also hoping a Republican-controlled House will block unfavorable legislation.

“We have a great opportunity to educate (the newly elected representatives) on the value our sector plays in the higher education system and the economy,” said Harris Miller, president of the 1,800-member Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU). Miller is hoping President Barack Obama’s push to get more Americans to complete college could mean education will become an area of bipartisan agreement in a divided Congress.

The Republicans’ pledge to cut federal spending also could mean less money for student loans and grants,

Legal Update: Friday Arrests & Court Dates � occupy california

Legal Update: Friday Arrests & Court Dates

by *

from supportoakland100:

On Friday, former BART cop Johannes Mehserle was given a jail sentence of 2 years for the ‘involuntary manslaughter’ of Oscar Grant. Subtracting time served and ‘good behavior’, Mehserle will be back on the streets in as little as 7 months.

Community members took to the streets in protest, and after the cops sealed an entire city block off, calling it a ‘crime scene’, 152 people were arrested. That is more arrests than ANY other Oscar Grant-related protest as of yet.

Most arrestees have been cited on misdemeanor charges and released. Those folks all have mass arraignments in the first week of December. We will be calling for a mass show of court support for those days. Stay Tuned.

A Cauldron of Opposition in Duncan’s Hometown: Rank-and-File Teachers Score Huge Victory

COVER STORIES • FIGHTING FOR OUR SCHOOLS

A Cauldron of Opposition in Duncan’s Hometown •
Rank-and-File Teachers Score Huge Victory
An Interview with Karen Lewis and Jackson Potter
By Bob Peterson and Jody Sokolower
The new leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union explains how they won and where they're going.

Proving Grounds • School “Rheeform” in Washington, D.C.
By Leigh Dingerson
Michelle Rhee is the exemplar of Duncan's school “reform.” What's really happening to children and teachers in D.C.?

FEATURES

Who Can Stay Here? Documentation and Citizenship in Children’s Literature
By Grace Cornell
Picture books about immigration and citizenship rarely portray the issues that children from immigrant families face every day. Here is a framework to help teachers choose books and open discussion.

The Other Internment • Teaching the Hidden Story of Japanese Latin Americans during WWII
By Moé Yonamine
A role play engages students in exploration of a little-known piece of history—the deportation of people of Japanese origin from Latin American countries to U.S. internment camps and back to Japan as POWs.

EDITORIAL • Teacher Layoffs and War
By the editors of Rethinking Schools

There's a lot more inside this issue.

Reformers turn into compliance police — Joanne Jacobs

Reformers turn into compliance police

by Joanne

Education reformers used to push for holding schools accountable for results, writes Mike Petrilli on Flypaper. Now many reformers, desperate for change, have become compliance cops, “engaging in the same sort of regulating and rulemaking and program-creating and money-spending that we once abhorred.”

As I wrote yesterday, for example, Race to the Top wasn’t satisfied with rewarding states that already had a track record of boosting student learning. Instead, it lavished money on those jurisdictions willing to pledge themselves to a set of prescriptive reforms that reflected the regnant progressive orthodoxy, circa 2009. Its focus was on rules, process, promises, and money.

To correct for meaningless teacher evaluations “reformers push for rigorous sheep-from-goats evaluation systems that take student learning into account.” But they’re pushing for change at the state level. Districts hire and

The SAT: Getting Mediocre Rich Kids Into College Since 1926 | Education | Change.org

The SAT: Getting Mediocre Rich Kids Into College Since 1926

by Marc Dadigan

Perhaps to settle all doubts whether they're the union's most rabidly prejudiced state, Arizona voters last week banned the use of affirmative action in college admissions because it discriminates against white people.

But for this fuzzy logic to pass muster, voters had to ignore or remain blissfully ignorant of the myriad ways the college admissions system is already skewed to favor kids who are rich, mediocre and white.

The SAT is probably the system's most efficient instrument at creating an uneven playing field. I know this because back in high school I, a mediocre white student of privilege, was a beneficiary of the SAT.

I scored a little over 1200 the first time, but because my family could afford it, I took an SAT prep class, studied some vocabulary lists, and with minimal effort improved my score by nearly 200 points.

Overnight, I transformed myself into a legit elite private school applicant, and, of course, it had nothing to do with my abilities as a student or my intelligence.

Rich kids have greater access to prep classes, prep books and tutoring than low-income and many minority students, and, thus, are more likely to do well. The College Board, the pseudo non-profit that designs and promotes the test, argues coaching doesn't make a difference, but then why does it sell SAT prep books for $25

A skunk at the garden party. � Fred Klonsky's blog

A skunk at the garden party.

by Fred Klonsky

The IEA leadership takes some credit for defeating the awful Teapublican candidate for Illinois governor, Bill Brady. And it is deserved.

In a post on their website they describe their tactics:

For this election, IEA did things much differently than in the past. We used “social media” for political purposes for the first time. Never before have we used email and the IEA Website to the extent we did this year to provide

N.J. activists, parents warn against promoting charter schools as fix for education system | NJ.com

N.J. activists, parents warn against promoting charter schools as fix for education system

Published: Monday, November 08, 2010, 6:30 AM Updated: Monday, November 08, 2010, 6:46 AM

Bob Braun/Star-Ledger Columnist
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Andrew Mills/The Star-LedgerGov. Chris Christie is a proponent of charter schools.

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TRENTON — From Washington to Trenton to Newark, political leaders from both parties — including President Barack Obama and Gov. Chris Christie — are promoting charter schools as an answer to perceived public school failure. And the privately run but publicly funded schools receive support from some of the wealthiest and most famous people on the planet.

But a few activists based in Princeton — some charter school parents — and a Rutgers researcher want their voices heard above the cheerleading. They warn charters are not panaceas.

"We are not against charter schools," says Julia Sass Rubin of Princeton, whose daughter attends one. She is part of an organization called Save Our Schools-New Jersey (SOS-NJ). "But we have serious concerns about cost and accountability."

Bruce Baker, a faculty member at Rutgers’

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Monday, November 8, 2010