”The same people who gave Madigan and Cullerton all that money to push their agenda to break up the public schools, Stand for Children, are putting money into the mayor’s race too. And so obviously they’re not giving any to me. Nor
hank you Ms Lippen-Holz and Mrs. Gayley!
Dear Mr. Klonsky,
Thank you for your coverage of the Del Valle event tonight. I can bring this to your attention solely due to the vigilance of educators such as yourself, but there’s an unnecessary apostrophe in “Clerk’s” in the fifth quote listed in the post.
I am not certain whether the credit should go to Ms. Lippen-Holtz from the fourth grade of Bethany Elementary, or Mrs. Gayley from the fifth.
Warm regards,
Erika
But Justin’s reason for bringing it up–an upcoming Fordham Institute event organized around the premise that “When it comes to low-performing schools, we seem to be witnessing the same thing over and over—not unlike the classic movie, Groundhog Day”– illustrates how the movie’s underlying message has become a bit obscured
(Yesterday, you heard Susan Lee Schwartz talk about New York City public education reality. Today, Stuart Goldurs, who calls himself "L.A. Public Education Examiner," takes a shot at describing LAUSD's version of the same premeditated failure - DO YOU SEE THE SIMILARITY?
Recently, the City of Bell, California made the headlines when the long term corruption of its city officials came to
“These people drop every ball they pick up.” –A Beloved Former Colleague, speaking about our administration
How many ideas do you think there are for improving the academic achievement of low-income, minority students?
Nevermind…It’s too many. Let’s make it smaller. How many ideas do you think there are for doing vocabulary work before a difficult reading? (Then multiply these ideas by a differentiation factor.)
How many ideas are there about the best student data to track and how to track it? (Dear Lord, how we go round and round on this one…) How should students be grouped? How often should I call parents, since they’re the
During a typical dismissal, hundreds of students can be seen surging off the Kennedy campus.
They carry backpacks, iPods and textbooks. They joke with their friends as they walk down Tibbett Avenue, talk on their cell phones and greet the crossing guard waiting on the corner of West 230th Street with a nod, smile or fist bump.
It is impossible to tell which ones hail from the Bronx School of Law and Finance, where students have access to state-of-the-art technology. You cannot pick out who is from the Marble Hill School for International Studies, which was one of only five schools in the City to receive more than 100 points on its Progress Report in 2009-2010.
But when you check out the statistics, talk to teachers and look at students’ downcast, worried faces it is easy to tell that John F. Kennedy High School doesn’t belong.
In December, the Department of Education proposed that Kennedy be phased out and replaced with two schools by 2014. JFK has suffered for years from low test scores, corruption, violence and overcrowding. But how can a school that shares the same building as some of the top schools in the
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has created a website to help students learn about civics issues.
I’ve previously posted about the site, and its games. One of them — Cast Your Vote — is pretty good, and it’s on The Best Websites For Learning About Civic Participation & Citizenship. There are a lot of interactives there, but I think most of them are overly-complicated — even for native English speakers. “Cast Your Vote,” though, puts you in the role of a person at a political debate asking questions and evaluating the
I am here at a Chicago north side cafe with a dozen and a half other bloggers who are supporting Miguel Del Valle for mayor of Chicago.
People are introducing themselves, their histories, their work and why they support Del Valle for mayor.
“I worked for Harold.”
“The City Clerk’s office works now.”
Have Tea Party conservatives made their first major statement on how public schools should operate? The Washington Post's Stephanie McCrummen suggests they have. She takes us to North Carolina's Wake County, where a "majority-Republican school board backed by national tea party conservatives" abolished long-standing policies designed to promote school integration, which the majority criticized as social engineering.
Some background is helpful: In the 1970s, officials in Raleigh--North Carolina's state capital--knit the city and its suburbs together into one vast Wake Country School District so that children in
Andy Cutraro for Bloomberg Businessweek
My parents were not union activists. My mother was a teacher who went on strike at terrific financial sacrifice to the family, and my father was an electrical engineer who lost his job through no fault of his own. It made me question the central notion of capitalism—that if you work hard, you'll have plenty of opportunity.
After finishing law school, I went to work on Wall Street and then became counsel at the United Federation of Teachers, the union for educators in New York City public schools. In 1998, I became president. When I first joined UFT, the city
In 2003, the Heritage Foundation conducted a congressionalsurvey on school choice. Of those who responded, 41 percent of U.S. representatives and 46 percent of U.S. senators said they send, or have sent, at least one of their children to a private school.
Contrary to what the venture capitalists and public hucksters say, when it comes to selecting a school for their children, average American parents have little if any real choice. The local public school is the only campus in town, unless you are wealthy enough to avoid them. The new labyrinths of despair being designed by Wall Street in the form of charter schools and soon vouchers, the ultimate wet dream of Wall Street, is hardly ‘choice’; it is more like forcing our children to herd into
Here’s an interesting one about the unintended consequences of college admissions policies.
In 1996 a federal appeals court declared the affirmative action program then in effect for admission to the University of Texas unconstitutional. Barred by the courts from considering race in university admissions, the Texas state legislature moved to create an alternate, “race blind” mechanism for improving diversity in the UT system.
The solution the legislature crafted was a law, passed in 1998, providing that any student who graduated in the top ten percent of his or her high school class would be guaranteed acceptance to the UT school of his or her choice. This policy, it was expected, would increase UT enrollment from many schools with high proportions of
Posted Tuesday, September 21, 2010 — 12:45 PM
Rewarding teachers with bonus pay, in the absence of any other support programs, does not raise student test scores, according to a new study issued today by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of education and human development in partnership with the RAND Corporation.
Watch highlights of the announcement.
Watch the full announcement with Q&A.
This and other findings from a three-year experiment – the first scientific study of performance pay ever conducted in the United States – were released at a conference on evaluating and rewarding educator effectiveness hosted by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt.
Paying teachers bonuses based on their performance has been a controversial issue nationwide
"Never stop fighting for your child and for what's right," Angelo Stevens, Andrew's father, told us at Change.org after he found out about the victory.
The school, which had demanded additional certification and argued that teachers could do the same job as the trained service dog, caved to public outcry, including an appearance by Andrew and his family on the TODAY
