Damn Good Education Daily

Damn Good Education Daily

Damn Good Education Daily

Miguel del Valle echoes Harold Washington in long Greg Hinz Blogs

chicagobusiness.com - Miguel del Valle echoes Harold Washington in long-shot mayoral bid Posted by Greg H. at 11/29/2010 11:31 AM CST on Chicago Business Miguel del Valle isn't the only candidate for mayor to use the...

fklonsky

The Answer Sheet - Ravitch answers Gates

voices.washingtonpost.com - In a paean to Bill Gates, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter calls Diane Ravitch the Microsoft founder's "chief adversary."It's the world's richest (or second richest) man vs. an education historian and New...

TeacherReality

What do you want to talk about during this week's (11/30) #edchat? (via @web20classroom)

twtpoll.com - Total: 44 votes 1) What should teacher assessment/observations look like to meet the needs of the teacher, as well as the needs of the education system? [ 20% (9 votes) ] 2) What is the educati...

tomwhitby

State Ed Commissioner Caves to Pressure from the Billionaire Boys Club

huffingtonpost.com - In an attempt to "compromise" and satisfy everyone, State Education Commissioner David M. Steiner appears to have satisfied no one. Cathie Black may now have the waiver needed to get the job of New...

DianeRavitch

Everytime You Use “It,” They Win — The Jose Vilson

thejosevilson.com - Ace VenturaYou ever have that one friend who has that daft, irritating catch phrase they picked up from some movie or TV show and he just wouldn’t stop saying it? I probably agitated my younger bro...

Bobb: Trade school reform for funds | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Bobb: Trade school reform for funds | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Bobb: Trade school reform for funds

Additional aid needed for Detroit and other districts

Robert C. Bobb

Public education in Michigan needs an academic and financial renaissance. Forty-two school districts in Michigan, from southeastern Michigan to the Upper Peninsula, are operating under state-mandated Deficit Elimination Plan (DEP) scenarios, and that number is expected to increase significantly each year.

For districts whose legacy or structural deficits exceed 8 percent to 10 percent of annual revenues, especially those whose enrollments are trending downward, which means losses in state funding, there comes a point where administrations cannot cut their way out of the deficit pattern without seriously eroding academic quality.

Intractable deficit

In my own 30-plus years of managing cities with budgets up to $8 billion, I have not encountered a situation where budgets could not be fully balanced. However, in the Detroit Public Schools, the closure of 59 (nearly one in three) schools, $105 million in bargaining unit concessions, elimination of $272 million in budget requests, aggressive outsourcing of major operational areas including student transportation and security,

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20101130/OPINION01/11300312/Bobb--Trade-school-reform-for-funds#ixzz16lwQelsF

A Waiver That Seems Larger Than the Law | NBC New York

A Waiver That Seems Larger Than the Law | NBC New York

A Waiver That Seems Larger Than the Law

By GABE PRESSMAN

Updated 8:00 PM EST, Mon, Nov 29, 2010

BUZZ UP!

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It’s getting to be a habit.

Every time the Mayor appoints a new Schools Chancellor, he asks Albany to waive the law -- that is, virtually ignore it -- for the sake of getting us the best person possible.

He got a waiver for Joel Klein, who has run the schools for nine years. And, when his choice to replace Klein, Cathie Black, a publishing executive, didn’t have the qualifications, Mayor Bloomberg and the state education commissioner, David Steiner, engineered a deal. She would appoint a deputy with strong educational credentials and she’d get a waiver too.

It’s as though state law exists just to be flouted. There is an old song that contains the line: "Whatever Lola want, Lola gets." And that

Catch Today's Live Stream Show of The Same Thing Dust-Up :: Frederick M. Hess

Catch Today's Live Stream Show of The Same Thing Dust-Up :: Frederick M. Hess

Catch Today's Live Stream Show of The Same Thing Dust-Up

by Frederick M. Hess • Nov 30, 2010 at 8:20 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

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Albert Einstein reportedly once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." As I note in my new book, The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers Get Stuck in Yesterday's Ideas, apocryphal or not, this line is a devastating assessment of a half century's worth of school reform. To avoid educational insanity, we need to recognize how circumstances have changed and embrace a diverse array of reform efforts suited to the twenty-first century.

A year ago, my friend Diane Ravitch raised a furor when she charged in The Death and Life of the Great American School System that advocates of test-based accountability, mayoral control, and charter schooling had overpromised and naively imagined that these structural measures could "fix" schooling. This ferocious blast was well-timed and well-aimed, and resonated mightily. Ravitch went much further, however, labeling such measures a sinister assault on public education. Her useful blast at faddism got ensnared in a familiar trap: her stance allows the compromises and accidents from a century ago that shaped today's public schools and

Ravitch: ‘Be good parents’ — Joanne Jacobs

Ravitch: ‘Be good parents’ — Joanne Jacobs

Ravitch: ‘Be good parents’

by Joanne

Instead of adopting Common Core Standards, which haven’t been field tested, states should adopt Massachusetts’ “stellar” standards, said Diane Ravitch in an interview with the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram and Gazette.

Once a common core is in place, she recommends no-stakes testing similar to the National Assessment of Education Progress. High-stakes tests, such as the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System and other tests used under No Child Left Behind, lead to cheating, gaming the system and inflated scores, she said.

“You’ve got to have some kind of idea of what good education is and act on it without having a whip

Report: Education reforms yield higher test scores | California Watch

Report: Education reforms yield higher test scores | California Watch

Report: Education reforms yield higher test scores

by Louis Freedberg

Louis Freedberg

A major squabble between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his adversaries on K-12 funding early in his administration has had a positive outcome: higher test scores in many of the state's lowest performing schools.

That is the finding of a report to be released today by the California Teachers Association on a $3 billion program established as a result of a settlement to a lawsuit filed against Schwarzenegger by the CTA and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell five years ago.

At the time, the CTA and O'Connell alleged that Schwarzenegger had failed to fully fund the schools under

This Week In Education: Charts: Whatever Happened to Boston and Long Beach?

This Week In Education: Charts: Whatever Happened to Boston and Long Beach?

Charts: Whatever Happened to Boston and Long Beach?

by Alexander Russo

A new McKinsey report on school improvement lists Long Beach, Boston, and Aspire charters as examples of sustained improvement (PDF) and attempts to synthesize the factors that

Waiver in hand, Bloomberg and Black head to a Bronx school | GothamSchools

Waiver in hand, Bloomberg and Black head to a Bronx school | GothamSchools

Waiver in hand, Bloomberg and Black head to a Bronx school

by Philissa Cramer

It’s the first day of school for chancellor-in-waiting Cathie Black.

The morning after receiving permission from the state to make Black the city’s new schools chief, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is taking her to meet some of the students and teachers who will soon be in her charge. Bloomberg and Black, along with Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, will greet parents and students as they arrive at PS 109 in the Bronx.

Home to a gifted program, PS 109 is one of the top-performing elementary schools in District 9, scoring an A on its most recent progress report and getting extra credit for boosting its weakest students’ test scores. Principal

Rise & Shine: A call for teeth for the No. 2 position at Tweed

by Philissa Cramer

• Cathie Black got the waiver she needs to be chancellor. (GS, Times, Post, WSJ, DN, NY1, WNYC)
• Despite the deal, Mayor Bloomberg said there won’t be any power-sharing at the DOE. (WSJ)
• The Times says Bloomberg must assure New Yorkers that the chief academic officer has real power.
• Teachers are trying again to convert struggling Columbus HS to a charter school. (GothamSchools)
• A 9-year-old girl says bullies forced her to drink toilet water at PS 22 in Brooklyn. (Post)
• The national high school graduation rate is rising, to 75 percent in 2008. (Times)

The Answer Sheet - Ravitch answers Gates

The Answer Sheet - Ravitch answers Gates

Ravitch answers Gates

In a paean to Bill Gates, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter calls Diane Ravitch the Microsoft founder's "chief adversary." It's the world's richest (or second richest) man vs. an education historian and New York University research professor. Gates, through his philanthropic foundation, has invested billions of dollars in education experiments and now has a pivotal role in reform efforts. Ravitch, the author of the bestselling The Death and Life of the Great American School System, has become the most vocal opponent of the Obama administration's education policy. She says Gates is backing the wrong initiatives and harming public schools.

Report: Number of 'dropout factories' declines

The number of U.S. “dropout factory” high schools declined from 2002 through 2008, a new report says, but close to 40 percent of minority students continue to fail to graduate with their class. According to the report, called "Building a Grad Nation” and being released today, the pace of improvement is too slow to meet a national goal of a 90 percent graduation rate by 2020. The number of dropout factory high schools fell by 261, from a high of 2,007 in 2002 to 1,746 in 2008, a decline of 13 percent, the report said, and the actual number of students in these schools dropped by 15 percent. “Dropout factories,” first identified by Johns Hopkins University researchers early in this decade, are defined as schools at which less than 60 percent of students who started as freshmen are still enrolled four years later. Half of the nation’s dropouts are believed

Schools Matter: More on the "STEM shortage"

Schools Matter: More on the "STEM shortage"

More on the "STEM shortage"

by skrashen

A story in the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the percentage of foreign students studying for PhD's in science and engineering in the US is down.

Of great interest is this paragraph discussing the reasons for the drop:

"The Obama administration and the Bush administration before it both sought to encourage such enrollment,

School Tech Connect: Ravitch Blasts The Oligarch

School Tech Connect: Ravitch Blasts The Oligarch

Ravitch Blasts The Oligarch

by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)

I admire Diane Ravitch. She rips Bill Gates a new one in Valerie's column today; go read it. Most of us tend to forget this: