Me First, Students Second, on Huffington Post — The Jose Vilson

Me First, Students Second, on Huffington Post — The Jose Vilson

Me First, Students Second, on Huffington Post

by Jose

From the Huff:

After all, it’s about the students first. In the nation’s capital, where the poverty rate is close to 20 percent and the largest school systems continue to get more third-party vendors and lobbyists (like her company), some of her first words were “We will no longer describe failure as the result of vast impersonal forces like poverty or a broken bureaucracy.” Her failure to even mention poverty as a huge factor in this capitalist system pales in comparison to the vanishing act of those words in the lexicon of the cabal of education reformers. As someone whose message reeks of popular consent, she’s put a playhouse mirror on her entire message and reflected it so it

Remainders: Black’s nuanced take on releasing teacher ratings | GothamSchools

Remainders: Black’s nuanced take on releasing teacher ratings | GothamSchools

Remainders: Black’s nuanced take on releasing teacher ratings

by Philissa Cramer

• Francis Lewis High School students have extended an open invitation to Cathie Black. (NY1)
• Black can see both sides of the debate over releasing teacher ratings, she told the Daily News.
• Unusually for high school, one Bronx teacher has “looped” with many of his students. (JD2718)
• The city’s policy on bringing the holiday season to school: Discuss, but don’t endorse. (Insideschools)
• David Bloomfield: The way Cathie Black was chosen has fatally damaged her leadership. (EdVox)
• Parents say they don’t understand why the city wants to close MS 571 in Prospect Heights. (The Local)
• Two years after delivering a scathing review, an expert praises a Boston charter school. (Mike Goldstein)
• A top DOE charter school official is leaving to head the Hebrew Charter School Center. (JTA)
• Advice for teachers who want to write lessons about national education news stories. (Learning Network)
• An assistant principal at Grover Cleveland HS in Queens is bringing geocaching to his students. (Times)
• Geoffrey Canada says libraries play an important role in improving schools. (School Library Journal)
• A $3 billion Ca. initiative to lower class size and add counselors is working, a study says. (EdWeek)
• Students should rate their teachers, but not on anonymous sites, says one teacher. (Pissed Off Teacher)
• A teacher reports being told her school is going charter, then not. (Peace in the Classroom)
• Students at Brooklyn’s John Jay campus aren’t happy about a new school moving in. (OTBKB)

Schools Matter: Stop the Corporate Closure of 11 Boston Public Schools: We Can Do This

Schools Matter: Stop the Corporate Closure of 11 Boston Public Schools: We Can Do This

Stop the Corporate Closure of 11 Boston Public Schools: We Can Do This

by Jim Horn

Click poster to enlarge, copy, and share.

Be at English High 5 pm Wednesday December 14, 144 McBride Street. Let your voices be heard to stop this stealth takeover by the corporate foundations. Let's do this!

Capitol Alert: New bill requires gay history in textbooks to fight bullying

Capitol Alert: New bill requires gay history in textbooks to fight bullying

New bill requires gay history in textbooks to fight bullying

Openly gay state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill today that would require public school materials to include the historical contributions of gay people as a way to fight bullying.

Leno's Senate Bill 48 is similar to a proposal that was approved by the Legislature in 2006 but vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"Most textbooks don't include any historical information about the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) movement, which has great significance to both California and U.S. history," Leno said in a press release. Leno was recently named to prominent leadership as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

Leno added: "Our collective silence on this issue perpetuates negative stereotypes of LGBT people and leads to increased bullying of young people."

The bill's aim is to work information about historical figures and events into materials that are up for

Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/12/sen-leno-hopes-gay-history-bil.html#ixzz182ScL1Pj

Schools Matter: Founding Leaders of the Status Quo Call for No Labels, Just Dollar $igns

Schools Matter: Founding Leaders of the Status Quo Call for No Labels, Just Dollar $igns

Founding Leaders of the Status Quo Call for No Labels, Just Dollar $igns

by Jim Horn

Originally inspired by Lee Atwater's brain-rotting politics of personal destruction, the corporate swindlers of the Business Roundtable in the late 80s created a bipartisan network of political prostitutes, leeches, think tankers, and yes men who would use their influence to advance the bare-knuckled and relentless attack by the BR and the Chamber on public institutions, an ongoing attack that is fueled by a divisive and corrosive rhetoric that labels, slanders, intimidates, and destroys. Pols of both parties have been bought in this effort over the past 15 years, and for long time it seemed that the corporate socialists would prevail with ease. They still might.

What these greed merchants and social antiquarians couldn't count on, however, is the overreaching and overarching greed that resulted in the Heist of the Century by the Wall Street banksters who just couldn't get enough of a good thing. The fallout has hurt the Billionaire Boys Club, those arrogant pricksters of white privileg

Is this data-driven decision-making? « Failing Schools

Is this data-driven decision-making? « Failing Schools

Is this data-driven decision-making?

DECEMBER 13, 2010

by Sabrina

Accountability and results. That’s what school reform à la NCLB and RTTT is supposed to be all about, right? In order to ensure that all kids are getting the education they need and deserve, we need to set high goals and expectations, and then “measure to see if we’re gettin’ results.“ When we measure (and measure and measure…), and find that we’re not getting results, we have to do something about it. That’s the primary justification for turnarounds where teachers are fired en masse, and when schools are closed or converted to charters.

So why doesn’t this same hard-line approach seem to apply to supplemental educational services (SES) providers? The No Child Left Behind act stipulates that low-income children in low-performing schools are entitled to receive tutoring to help bring them up to grade level, at no

Leonie Haimson: Bloomberg, Cathie Black, Bill Gates, and the Condescension of the Oligarchy

Leonie Haimson: Bloomberg, Cathie Black, Bill Gates, and the Condescension of the Oligarchy

Bloomberg, Cathie Black, Bill Gates, and the Condescension of the Oligarchy

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Read More: Bill Gates , Cathie Black , Class Size , Joel Klein , Michael Bloomberg , Oligarchs , Patrick Sullivan ,Rupert Murdoch , Teaching Profession , New York News

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Despite their insistence that nothing matters more than the quality of teaching, the oligarchy of corporate reformers and billionaires that is currently driving education policy in this country has launched a sharp attack on the whole concept of professionalism in the field of public education.

This trend has culminated in Mayor Bloomberg's recent appointment of a magazine executive, Cathie Black, as New York City Schools Chancellor, despite the fact that she has no education experience, training, or demonstrated interest in the field of public education. Though she cited her membership on an advisory board of a Harlem charter school, this apparently did not actually involve any meetings or actual involvement on her part, and the school itself has been riddled with problems, including high levels of teacher attrition and student suspensions.

The oligarchy's determined attack on professionalism in the field of education is also implicit in the

New Chancellor Cathie Black's take on value-added teacher data: It's not black and white

New Chancellor Cathie Black's take on value-added teacher data: It's not black and white

JOSHUA GREENMAN

Monday, December 13th 2010, 2:02 PM

RELATED NEWS

• Howard: Free the teachers

When incoming Schools Chancellor Cathie Black visited the Daily News editorial board last week, it was clear she was already embroiled in the first big conflict of her tenure.

It involves the Department of Education's controversial plans to release value-added data that would enable the media to rank, from first to last, thousands of teachers based on the test-score gains of their students.

But this conflict isn't unfolding via angry exchanges between Black and parent advocates or the teachers union, as you might expect. The wrestling match is happening inside Black's own head.

First, a quick primer. Last summer, the Los Angeles Times got hold of the test-score improvement statistics for more than 6,000 third- through fifth-grade teachers in that city's public school system - and put out the scores, in a searchable database, for all to see.

The local teachers union was apoplectic, insisting that this information was intended to

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/12/13/2010-12-13_new_chancellor_cathie_blacks_take_on_valueadded_teacher_data_its_not_black_and_w.html#ixzz1820yzTUC