Latest News and Comment from Education

Saturday, November 20, 2010

The Coopmike48 Daily, Education

The Coopmike48 Daily, Education

The Coopmike48 Daily
edweek.org - Published Online: November 12, 2010Published in Print: November 17, 2010, as Why I Will Not Teach to the TestCommentary —Bob Dahm ByKelly Gallagher Premium article access courtesy of Edweek.org.In ...

mikeklonsky
globecampus.ca - A national student group has started a fight to de-regulate textbooks, claiming that opening up the market could save debt-ridden students up to $30-million per year. Since book importation reg...

EDUBEAT
edreformer.com - by Tom Vander ArkNovember 19, 2010 The education sector has not historically been very dynamic, but this year things changed. Despite the recession, we have seen more start-ups and more cool applic...

tvanderark
commondreams.org - Whittier Elementary School is a lot like other public schools in low-income areas of Chicago. Located in the Mexican immigrant neighborhood of Pilsen, it lacks many basic resources that parents and...

EDUBEAT
virtualschooling.wordpress.com - Another item that was posted in one of the iNACOL forums during the Virtual School Symposium. iNACOL Announces Updated National Report: A National Primer on K-12 Online Learning, Version 2 Glendale...

mcleod
bigeducationape.blogspot.com - THE ASSOCIATED PRESSOLYMPIA, Wash. -- Gov. Chris Gregoire is asking Washington citizens and educators to go online by Thanksgiving to fill out a survey on education reform.The survey will help stat...

Social Justice, CPS, School Reform, conservative - TrackitFan

Social Justice, CPS, School Reform, conservative - TrackitFan
Social Justice vs Conservative View of School Reform


Here is the progressive social justice point of view for school reform:

Principles of School Reform:
1. *Public schools are responsible to the community, not to the marketplace.
2. *Schools must be actively multicultural and anti-racist, promoting social justice for all.
3. *Curriculum must be geared to learning for life and the needs of a multicultural democracy.
4. *All children and all schools must receive adequate resources.
5. *Reform must center on the classroom and the needs of children.
6. *Good teachers are essential to good schools.

Read more: http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/trackitfan/2010/11/social-justice-vs-conservative-view-of-school-reform.html#ixzz15poYDyia

District's poor deserve same public-school education as its affluent

District's poor deserve same public-school education as its affluent

District's poor deserve same public-school education as its affluent


Friday, November 19, 2010; 9:31 PM
The uneven distribution of teacher talent in the D.C. schools is unacceptable in a nation that views education as the path to the American dream. ["Top teachers have uneven reach in District," Metro, Nov. 13].
Across the United States, school districts that have a mix of affluent and high-poverty neighborhoods are vulnerable to creating an "opportunity gap" in which the more wealthy kids have better resources and those better resources lead to better outcomes.
In some instances, not only are their teachers better credentialed, more experienced and more talented, but children in affluent areas also have a stronger, more challenging curriculum and learn in buildings that are in far better condition than those of their poorer peers.

War Culture « Bill Ayers

War Culture « Bill Ayers

War Culture

Currently teaching a seminar in Europe, I’m reminded once again just how isolating it can be to live inside the US, breathing the anesthetizing air of privilege and walking the treacherous terrain of denial. Wherever I go, discovering that I’m an American, folks strike a kind of pitying stance, assuming that as an American, educated in American schools, I will have no facility with language (and likely a relatively weak grasp of English), a badly distorted and in large parts vacant sense of history, and zero geographic literacy—quick! Draw a free-hand sketch of Iraq or Afghanistan! Find Palestine on a blank map of the world! Name every country with a US military base inside its sovereign territory!

Thankfully, people have an almost universal capacity to make a hard distinction between the American people and the US government. Bus drivers, bakers, waitresses are as kind and generous and hospitable as they can possibly be, but spend an extra minute or two, and each will explain in no uncertain terms the contempt they share for US policy in the world. It’s a wake-up, and that’s why I think we all need to get out more, to scrape some of the scales off our vision and to see the US through other eyes.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s much to love and to cherish in America, starting with the land itself and its wild and unruly people, our dizzying diversity, our restless traditions of migration and our admirable history of resistance and rebellion and disobedience, our vast creativity and large imaginative spaces, our overall queerness. Admit

LULAC mentoring has Farmers Branch mayor, principal at odds | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Latest News

LULAC mentoring has Farmers Branch mayor, principal at odds | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Latest News

LULAC mentoring has Farmers Branch mayor, principal at odds

08:15 AM CST on Saturday, November 20, 2010

By AVI SELK / The Dallas Morning News
aselk@dallasnews.com

A student mentoring program has kicked off a furor in Farmers Branch, once again pitting some city leaders against the League of United Latin American Citizens.

The principal was thrilled this year when LULAC picked R.L. Turner High School for a two-year, $20,000 national grant-funded dropout prevention program. Similarly to others it runs in schools across the country, the Hispanic advocacy group brings in community role models to steer at-risk students toward graduation and college.

LULAC mentoring has raised barely a murmur outside the hallways of other North Texas schools. But in Farmers Branch, where the group

N.Y. Schools Chief Names Panel on City Chancellor - NYTimes.com

N.Y. Schools Chief Names Panel on City Chancellor - NYTimes.com

Panel on Pick for Schools Has Close Ties to Bloomberg

New York State’s top education official on Friday named an advisory panel of eight experts, at least half of them with strong connections to the Bloomberg administration, to help him decide whether to approve Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s controversial choice to run the city’s school system.

Education Commissioner David M. Steiner

Dennis Cook/Associated Press

Andrés A. Alonso, the Baltimore schools’ chief executive.

Brad Barket/Getty Images

Louise Mirrer, president of New-York Historical Society.

Three panelists selected by David M. Steiner, the state education commissioner, worked as senior officials at the city’s Department of Education.

One of those three now works at a foundation that was, for many years, the vehicle for Mr. Bloomberg’s personal charitable donations.

A fourth panelist is the head of a museum that has received almost half a million dollars from Mr. Bloomberg in donations since he took office.

The eight panelists share deep experience in the education field as academics and administrators. It is precisely the kind of experience that Mr. Bloomberg’s choice for chancellor, Cathleen P. Black, the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, lacks.

Mr. Steiner must decide whether to grant Ms. Black a waiver from state law requiring leaders of school districts to have substantial education credentials and experience.

Citing the prerogative of mayoral control over the schools, the Bloomberg administration has argued that she is

Schools Matter: Learning About KIPP: Lesson 3, Social Justice in Blackface

Schools Matter: Learning About KIPP: Lesson 3, Social Justice in Blackface

Learning About KIPP: Lesson 3, Social Justice in Blackface


Below is Part 3 of this chapter on KIPP. Here are links to Parts One and Two.

. . . . KIPP’s organizational compliance model
In response to an extensive New York Times Magazine article by Paul Tough (2006) that lavishly praised KIPP and its methods, researcher Howard Berlak (2006) reported at the online discussion group, Assessment Reform Network (ARN), his recent own visit to a KIPP school in San Francisco:
When I was there children who followed all the rules were given points that could be exchanged for goodies at the school store. Those who resisted the rules or were slackers wore a large sign pinned to their clothes labeled "miscreant." Miscreants sat apart from the others at all times including lunch, were denied recess and participation in all other school projects and events.
. . . . I've spent many years in schools. This one felt like a humane, low security prison or somethin

4LAKids -: DISTRICT RELEASES SCHOOL EXPERIENCE SURVEY RESULTS [Disaggregated 'School Report Card' data] + ●●smf's 2¢

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: DISTRICT RELEASES SCHOOL EXPERIENCE SURVEY RESULTS [Disaggregated 'School Report Card' data] + ●●smf's 2¢

Plummeting teacher morale in Seattle’s Public Schools — a serious issue | Seattle Education 2010

Plummeting teacher morale in Seattle’s Public Schools — a serious issue | Seattle Education 2010

Plummeting teacher morale in Seattle’s Public Schools — a serious issue

Here are some concerns I shared in a letter to School Board Director Kay Smith-Blum this week, after her disappointing vote in favor of Teach for America, Inc. I urge all members of the school board to investigate this matter of collapsing teacher morale, which is happening on their watch, largely as a result of the frenetic barrage of dubious “reforms” being imposed upon our teachers, schools and children these past three years under the current district leadership, and with this board’s mostly unquestioning approval.

I understand that we will not always agree. But I honestly believe that with full information about TFA, Inc. and those behind it and where they are heading with it and other corporate ed reform agenda items, you would have voted differently.

The Answer Sheet - The Matthew Effect, Plinko, and the achievement gap

The Answer Sheet - The Matthew Effect, Plinko, and the achievement gap

The Matthew Effect, Plinko, and the achievement gap

This was written by Jared Joiner, a graduate of Montgomery County Public Schools who is now working towards a masters degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. It refers to a Century Foundation report called “Housing Policy is School Policy," that said low-income students do beter in school when they are given a chance to live in better neighborhoods and attend schools with wealthier classmates. Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, wrote about the report on this blog in response to a piece I had posted. By Jared Joiner The argument for integration of low-income students into more affluent schools is that it offers an opportunity to level the playing field and provide high expectations to students who are not traditionally held to the same schooling standards as the white upper and middle class. However, as a Black male who attended Montgomery County Public Schools

I found the exceptional qualification « JD2718

I found the exceptional qualification « JD2718

I found the exceptional qualification

NOVEMBER 20, 2010 AM30 9:52 AM

Being nominated by Michael Bloomberg is an exceptional qualification, right?

Schools Matter: NCTE passes sense of the house motion disapproving of national standards

Schools Matter: NCTE passes sense of the house motion disapproving of national standards

NCTE passes sense of the house motion disapproving of national standards

Sense of the House Motion

Passed, November 19, 2010

National Council of Teachers of English

The NCTE expresses disapproval of the concept of national standards to be applied to all students and of the specifics of those written by the National