Thursday, December 2, 2010

Today we voted and who can miss an ugly orange sweater like that? « Fred Klonsky's blog

The Reformy Agenda: “An inside job.” There are few more despicable characters in American corporate history than the Waltons. And I don’t mean the nice family from the TV series. I’m talking about the founders of Wal-Mart. A Big box bottom feeder is what Wal-Mart is. Anti-union, low ...

Today we voted and who can miss an ugly orange sweater like that? It is the ugliest sweater I own. I bought it at Target on sale. It is bright orange. It is the color of a construction vest on the interstate. I bought it because I know how the IEA RA works. I’ve gone since Bob Haisman ran ‘em. I wear it because I ...

Rickey Hendon gives one of the great speeches on the floor of the IL senate for civil unions. “When I sit here, I hear adulterers, and womanizers, and folks cheatin’ on their wives, and down-low brothers, sayin’they gonna vote against this bill, IT TURNS MY STOMACH, THE HYPOCRISY drippin’in this chamber right now. We know what you do at night! ...

NYC Public School Parents: Where in the World is Chancellor Black?

Where in the World is Chancellor Black?

by Patrick J. Sullivan

The news blackout on our new chancellor continues into its third week. Education beat reporters are starting to get testy as they chased rumors of Cathie Black appearances around town. Here's Beth Fertig'snon-coverage from WNYC:

Outgoing Schools Chancellor Joel Klein allowed reporters to follow him on visits to schools when he first took office in 2002. His schedule was also routinely released by the Department of Education.
But the department has been unusually secretive about Black's schedule. She has not granted any interviews to the media since Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced her appointment

The Latest on the DREAM Act « Student Activism

The Latest on the DREAM Act

by Angus Johnston

Two big developments yesterday in the effort to pass the DREAM Act in the current lame duck session of Congress…

First, Harry Reid and Dick Durbin have introduced a new, scaled-down version of the bill in hopes of tempting wavering senators to join the team. The changes to the bill are major, and they make vote-counting a lot more difficult, at least in the short term. The new bill may shift a large number of votes, or none — it’s just impossible to say right now. If I get word on new commitments, I’ll pass them along in an update.

Second, though, is the big hitch. Yesterday all 42 Senate Republicans signed a pledge to filibuster any and all

Queens Teacher: How a Billionaire Control$ the World

How a Billionaire Control$ the World

by Queens Teacher

Tax Free Corporate Billions Leveraged to Take Over Social Policy Making
from Schools Matter

The new Gates Foundation financials are out, and things look much improved in 2009 following the 2008 meltdown. When you click on this chart to enlarge it, you will see that the Gates Foundation now has nearly 30,000 millions of dollars (that's 30 billion) to use as it sees fit to bribe, to silence,

The Battle for Seattle: Part One | Seattle Education 2010

The Battle for Seattle: Part One

by seattleducation2010

Part 1

Someone asked me recently to describe the presence of the Broad Foundation in Seattle. At first I thought that would be an easy task because it all started with our superintendent, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, right?

Well, not really. It started several years before she arrived on the scene here in Seattle and it started with two people, Don Nielson and Joseph Olchefske.

The Broad Foundation’s goal is to privatize our public school system by way of charter schools. Eli Broad has become influential over the years, beginning in 1999, in transforming school districts around the country to his vision of what education should be. As Mr. Broad makes clear in a recent post on the Huffington Post, he does

School Tech Connect: Civil Unions in Illinois

Civil Unions in Illinois Thank you, Greg Harris, Sarah Feingoltz, Harry Osterman, Barbara Flynn Currie, John Fritchey, Deborah Mell, Constance Howard, David Koehler, Heather Steans, John Cullerton, Carol Ronen, Governor Quinn, Rick Garcia, and all of the other tireless people ...

Where Do The Children Play? I dunno; we've taken recess away to drill for reading and math tests. One in ten American children now have a diagnosis of ADHD. I know I'm supposed to be writing about how fabulous Twitter is, or how neat the new Google Labs are, but honestly? I can't ...

Words Escape Him I've been trying to read between the lines of this NEA press release and its associated post about the roundtable discussion held with Van Roekel and Duncan. NEA is trying to push collaboration, which as Michelle Rhee would tell you is like totally ...

Niggas Is Doing They Homework, Yo — The Jose Vilson

Niggas Is Doing They Homework, Yo

by Jose

Jay-Z, Cornel West, and Harry Belafonte before Decoded Talk

I had the pleasure and misfortune of running into videos my former students get involved with, and one of them featured a gang from one of the neighborhoods my school represents. I watched a bit of it, annoyed that these pseudo-gangsters would put their videos on YouTube (“Real gangsters move in silence …” – Biggie), but more perturbed because they paraded in a coterie down a set of project buildings. I watched as the faces I once knew, who I never taught but I saw promise to their teachers they would do better, yelled in defiance to the camera about another pseudo-gang and how “pussy” they were and how this set of misguided youth is more malignant than the other.

One even observed that their rival group never gets out and made this quip: “Niggas is doing they homework, yo!” and laughed heartily.

Inside, I sat there and boiled. On a day like today, remembering the types of struggles a small but powerful group went through to extract consent from the majority rule to do the things “niggas” like these take for granted. If they had been that loud in their projects during the time Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in the front of a

Where Can Teachers Find Collegiality Today? - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Where Can Teachers Find Collegiality Today?

By Deborah Meier on December 2, 2010 8:51 AM | No comments |

Dear Diane,

Sometimes the outrages of our wealthy fellow citizens stagger me, and I feel incoherent in face of the offenses they commit on a daily basis. It hurts most of all when I see decent people caught in the web—as victims or even winners. The events in New York City are shameful. Enjoy the fact that Bill Gates sees you as the worst of his adversaries. Still, we've got to stop agreeing so much!

It's a relief these days to shift from contemplating the ugly takeover of our public institutions by private wealth—at a time when these very same people have undermined the economy of the nation itself—to talk about what fascinated me for 45 years. It was not the politics of schooling.

A new book by Ryan Teves that just arrived in my mailbox is worth reading. Teves is a math and science secondary school teacher who now runs a tutoring service in Scott Valley, Calif. It's called In Defense of the American Teen and

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Damn Good Education Daily

Report: Education reforms yield higher test scores

californiawatch.org - Arvind Balaraman/freedigitalphotos.net 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 sc...

emilyschoolsyou

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...

cajacobson

Bill Gates Listens to the Wrong People - Bridging Differences

blogs.edweek.org - Dear Deborah,I hope you and your family had a happy Thanksgiving, and I wish the same to all of our readers and friends.The struggle for control of American education continues to evolve at a dizzy...

mikeklonsky

The Edublog Awards 2010 are GO! – The Edublog Awards

edublogawards.com - Nov 11th, 2010 by Sue Waters. Here’s what you’ve all been waiting for! The Edublogs Awards 2010 is now underway. We’re following the same approach as last two years, namely asking you to: Post your...

tomwhitby

Nominations for Edublog Awards, 2010 « InterACT

accomplishedcaliforniateachers.wordpress.com - Here are my nominations for the The 2010 Edublog Awards. I thought I’d crank this out in half an hour, and it has taken days. I realize I owe a great debt to all of these educators and writers wh...

Black-out on Black's Whereabouts? - WNYC

Black-out on Black's Whereabouts?

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

By Beth Fertig

It's A Free Country
Read. Argue. Listen. Act.
More

Incoming chancellor Cathie Black visited two elementary schools in Queens today. But just where she went remained a mystery until late in the afternoon.

The city's Department of Education said Black visited PS 111 and PS 78 with Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan and City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, both of Queens.

Outgoing Schools Chancellor Joel Klein allowed reporters to follow him on visits to schools when he first took office in 2002. His schedule was also routinely released by the Department of Education.

But the department has been unusually secretive about Black's schedule. She has not granted any interviews to the media since Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced her appointment on November 9th. She answered a few questions at a press conference that day and then made a brief comment to New York Post columnist Cindy Adams about how her appointment came out of left field.

Black took a few more questions yesterday after visiting PS 109 in the Bronx but didn't talk about policy, noting it was only her first day. A parent interrupted to ask her views on closing failing schools and Black said, "All of these things are very important and challenging questions and we'll come up with what we believe are the right answers."

It was Black's first visit to a public school since the state education commissioner granted her a waiver

The Answer Sheet - Sponsors tell story of Jeb Bush ed convention

Sponsors tell story of Jeb Bush ed convention

If you have any doubt about the direction of where school reform is headed in this country, look at the sponsors of former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s two-day education conference in Washington, D.C. The conference, which ended today, was the work of the Foundation for Education Excellence, Bush’s vehicle for staying at the forefront of school reform efforts not only in Florida but across the country (he says he’s not running for president in 2012 but a lot of people don’t quite believe him).

NYC Public School Parents: Too Good to Be True? WWCBD*?

Too Good to Be True? WWCBD*?

by Steve Koss

“If it looks to good to be true, it’s probably not.”

It’s an adage as old as the hills, but it’s also an excellent reminder to stay skeptical (think Bernie Madoff, for one), and a signal that questions should perhaps be asked or audits conducted.

Which brings us to the latest “too good to be true story” story in NYC public schools and the system’s deeply flawed Progress Report system: the Theater Arts Production Company school in the Bronx. A combined middle school and high school, TAPCo as it is known was this year’s big winner in the high school report card category with an A grade and the city’s highest ranking score of 106.3 points. Last year, TAPCo received an A as well, but its 85.8-point score put it in the 89th percentile of NYC public high schools, or somewhere around 50th – 60th place in the rankings. Its one-year leapfrogging to #1 in the DOE’s measurement of “progress,” is noteworthy, although a bit short of miraculous. Nevertheless, the result was sufficiently notable to merit a

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