Thursday, December 16, 2010

Damn Good Education Daily

This Week In Education: Thompson: "The War on Teachers"

scholasticadministrator.typepad.com - December 15, 2010 | Posted At: 09:40 AM | Author: john thompson If you have any doubt that the "war on teachers" is doing serious harm to students, listen to Claudio Sanchez's " All Things Consider...

alexanderrusso

Waiting For Superman: A Postmortem - Rick Hess Straight Up

blogs.edweek.org - Earlier this fall, there was lots of excitement about Waiting For Superman. It was the talk of the town for a bit, prompted NBC to discover education for a week, and made a school reform icon out o...

mikeklonsky

The Real Lessons of PISA - Bridging Differences

blogs.edweek.org - Dear Deborah,When the results of the latest international assessment—the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA—were released, our national leaders sounded an alarm about a national ...

mikeklonsky

Nearly three-quarters of CUNY freshman need remedial classes

nydailynews.com - Nearly three-quarters of city high school students entering City University community colleges failed placement exams in reading, math and writing this year.About 74% of first-time freshmen who gra...

leoniehaimson

Unbelievable urban school safety statistics

pheedcontent.com - There is something very odd in the otherwise fine story by my colleague Bill Turque about security deteriorating at Dunbar High School in D.C. In a chart comparing the number of late summer and fal...

alexanderrusso

L.A. teachers union won't accept pay cuts, 'value-added' evaluations - latimes.com

L.A. teachers union won't accept pay cuts, 'value-added' evaluations

UTLA leaders dispute criticisms from the mayor and others, but reiterate their firm opposition to furloughs, larger classes and use of students' test scores to evaluate teachers' performance.

Teachers and parents applaud UTLA Vice President Julie Washington, right, at a news conference. She said the union was "setting the record straight" after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa accused teachers of obstructing school reform. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times / December 15, 2010)

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L.A. Unified to seek corporate sponsors

By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times

December 16, 2010

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The state's largest teachers union Wednesday fired an early salvo in contract negotiations, serving notice that it wouldn't accept pay cuts easily and that it won't consider linking teacher evaluations to student test scores in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The afternoon news conference, at union headquarters in Koreatown, was a familiar exercise in

California's confused priorities: More money on prisons than education | mydesert.com | The Desert Sun

California's confused priorities: More money on prisons than education

READERS • THE DESERT SUN • DECEMBER 16, 2010

How long must incarceration take precedence over education? Since 1995, California has consistently spent more money on its prison system than on its educational system.

This can be traced to the influence of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. This union strives to build as many prisons and imprison as many people in them as possible. The association was

Former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee says she's been in Cathie Black's shoes - NYPOST.com

Rhee-son to believe in Black

By LEN MANIACE and YOAV GONEN

Last Updated: 7:22 AM, December 16, 2010

Posted: 12:57 AM, December 16, 2010

Comments: 0

Rhee's been in Black's shoes.

Former Washington, DC schools chief Michelle Rhee said her appointment to the post three years ago was met with nearly identical opposition to that being faced by incoming New York City Schools Chancellor Cathie Black.

"People were [effectively] rioting in the street, saying, 'How can somebody who's never run a school, who's never run a school district, do this job?" Rhee told The Post at a Manhattan Institute event in Midtown yesterday.

"And I think what I showed is that you don't necessarily have to have been a superintendent before," added Rhee, who launched the Students First advocacy group earlier this month.

BLACK

"She's shown in her experience in

Matthews to Michelle Rhee: Stay Away From Those Ideological Fools on the Right! | NewsBusters.org

Matthews to Michelle Rhee: Stay Away From Those Ideological Fools on the Right!

By Geoffrey Dickens | December 15, 2010 | 18:18

On Wednesday's Hardball, Chris Matthews brought on former Washington D.C. chancellor of public schools Michelle Rhee to discuss the state of public education in this country and praised her for work on the part of students but also warned her to "stay away from the right wing" because she was "too good to be grabbed by some ideological fool."

After Rhee explained to Matthews why public school students needed an organization like the one she founded, Students First, to counterbalance the influence of the teachers unions, Matthews congratulated her for not becoming a tool of conservatives.

(video after the jump)

(audio available here)

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