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Friday, January 21, 2011

More on Rhee’s Move To Sacramento — We’re “Behind The Curve” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

More on Rhee’s Move To Sacramento — We’re “Behind The Curve” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

More on Rhee’s Move To Sacramento — “We’re Behind The Curve”

by Larry Ferlazzo

Today, the Sacramento Bee ran a fairly extensive front page story on Michelle Rhee’s move here. Headlined Former D.C. schools chief to headquarter new education advocacy lobby in Sacramento, it also discusses her local plans:

Rhee said there are “many local organizations we have talked about working in concert with” and that StudentsFirst likely would partner with Stand Up, another education nonprofit started by Johnson.

As far as Rhee is concerned, there is much work to be done. “Sacramento is probably behind the curve in terms of some of the progressive work being done around the country,” Rhee said.

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Rahm is the bought and paid for anti-teacher candidate. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Rahm is the bought and paid for anti-teacher candidate. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Rahm is the bought and paid for anti-teacher candidate.

by Fred Klonsky

While the teacher union-bashing Oregon-based Stand for Children outfit isn’t officially endorsing anyone for mayor of Chicago, their financial angels overlap.

Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller points out that 20% of Chicago millionaires for Rahm are also big contributors to SFC.

Who are they?

Elizabeth Crown, a member of the Henry Crown family, gave Stand for Children $500K and Emanuel $114K.

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Mark Kirk likes state default plan. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Mark Kirk likes state default plan. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Mark Kirk likes state default plan.

by Fred Klonsky

Illinois GOP Senator Mark Kirk has joined in the chorus of those who would change the law to allow states to go into default. It would, among a number of things, result in public employee pensions being put at greater risk.

CBS:

Freshman U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) says bankruptcy should be considered as an option for some states – such as Illinois – looking to get out from under

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Conservative group questions whether SBOE member can serve | The Education Front Blog | dallasnews.com

Conservative group questions whether SBOE member can serve | The Education Front Blog | dallasnews.com

Conservative group questions whether SBOE member can serve

by Terrence Stutz/Reporter

ratliff.jpg

State Board of Education Chairwoman Gail Lowe said Friday she will seek an opinion from the attorney general on whether a new board member meets statutory requirements to serve. Lowe announced the action after a social conservative group questioned whether board member Thomas Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant (right), is eligible to serve because he is a lobbyist. The question was raised by the Texas Eagle Forum, which supported Ratliff's opponent - Don McLeroy - in the GOP primary last year.

Texas Eagle Forum President Pat Carlson said a provision in the 1995 Texas Education Code prohibits anyone from serving on the board who is registered as a lobbyist for a business or association that does business with the Texas Education Agency. "Concerns have been raised...that all SBOE members are not in compliance with this statute," she said. "My question today is who would I ask for an investigation of this matter?" She never mentioned Ratliff by named in addressing

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The Answer Sheet - Say it isn’t so on IMPACT, Mayor Gray

The Answer Sheet - Say it isn’t so on IMPACT, Mayor Gray

Say it isn’t so on IMPACT, Mayor Gray

By Valerie Strauss

Here’s why I was so disappointed to read my colleague Bill Turque’s report on a plan by D.C. schools officials to have the flawed IMPACT teacher evaluation system reviewed by a Harvard think tank:

1) I was optimistic that new Mayor Vincent Gray was serious about fixing the problem when he said at a recent public forum that the evaluation system --instituted under former Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee -- was unfair to teachers. In his own words:

"I guess I would say at this stage... it’s a step in the right direction, but it’s got a long way to go to be a fair evaluation of our teachers. And frankly any system that isn’t sensitive to the differences in challenges of the kids in the schools only encourages teachers to teach in one

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Shanker Blog » The “Jobless” Recovery: Implications For Education?

Shanker Blog » The “Jobless” Recovery: Implications For Education?

The “Jobless” Recovery: Implications For Education?

by James R. Stone

Our guest author today is James R. Stone, professor and director of the National Research Center for Career & Technical Education at the University of Louisville.

The headline of the USA Today article reads: “Tense Time for Workers, As Career Paths Fade Away” (January 13, 2011). The article notes that while most key economic indicators have improved over the past two years, the unemployment rate has remained persistently high. This is a jobless recovery.

Is this a time for pessimism or a time for a reality check?

This is not the first jobless recovery. The recession of the early 1990s spawned books with titles such as The Jobless Future (1994), A Future of Lousy Jobs (1990), The End of Work (1995), The End of Affluence (1995), and When Work Disappears (1996). Any one of those, and many other, similarly-titled books and articles could

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Schools Matter: Will a Koch Brothers Handout Save John Tedesco's House?

Schools Matter: Will a Koch Brothers Handout Save John Tedesco's House?

Will a Koch Brothers Handout Save John Tedesco's House?

by Jim Horn
It's been quite a week for Little John. On MLK Day, the same day Raleigh's mayor and North Carolina's governor were attending a Martin Luther King Prayer breakfast and calling out Tedesco and the Gang of Five as "way off track," Tedesco was appearing on Fox Business Network, where he defended the re-segregation school policy as good business.
. . . Tedesco told Gerri Willis of the Willis Report that the decision is primarily a "money-saving issue."

"We spend $72 million a year on a fleet of 925 buses for transportation... We spend a lot of time getting 5 and 6-year-old kids on bus stops at 5:30, 6:30 in the morning on one side of the county to commute an hour to the other side of the county with 10 kids on a bus here and 10 kids on a
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4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: PARENTS IRATE OVER LAUSD LOCKDOWNS: Police and school officials trade blame over the lack of services for students during search for a suspect in the Woodland Hills area.

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: PARENTS IRATE OVER LAUSD LOCKDOWNS: Police and school officials trade blame over the lack of services for students during search for a suspect in the Woodland Hills area.

PARENTS IRATE OVER LAUSD LOCKDOWNS: Police and school officials trade blame over the lack of services for students during search for a suspect in the Woodland Hills area.

BY HOWARD BLUME AND ANDREW BLANKSTEIN, LOS ANGELES TIMES | HTTP://LAT.MS/FKNUZI

Extra security

Police officers keep an eye on things outside El Camino Real High School as students arrive for class a day after the Woodland Hills campus was locked down when a school police officer was shot nearby. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times / January 20, 2011)

January 21, 2011 - Thousands of students were kept in classrooms without food, water or access to restrooms longer than necessary, the Los Angeles school district's police chief acknowledged, as officials coped with complaints from parents frustrated once more with the district's handling of an emergency situation.

Students from nine San Fernando Valley schools were in lockdown for as long as five hours as officers combed campuses and neighborhoods for

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National strike ‘not off the table’ if states reverse teacher tenure - Yahoo! News

National strike ‘not off the table’ if states reverse teacher tenure - Yahoo! News

National strike ‘not off the table’ if states reverse teacher tenure

By Liz Goodwin

Will education reformers seize upon states' economic insecurity to end teacher tenure?

Such a plan has won backing from former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who writes in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that the opportunity to ditch tenure and other bulwarks of the present education system represents a "bright side" of crippling state budget deficits in 2011.

"Public support is building for a frontal attack on the educational status quo," she writes. "And policy makers are rising to the challenge, not only because their budgets are tighter than ever, but also because they see an opportunity to reverse the current trend of discouraging academic results for our children."

Rhee singles out teacher tenure for elimination. In most states, tenure guarantees teachers extra job security after they are rated satisfactory for a probationary period of two to seven years. After that point, administrators cannot fire a teacher unless they can prove in a hearing that he or she is incompetent or has committed a

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ASCD Inservice: What's Wrong With Madeline Hunter? (1985)

ASCD Inservice: What's Wrong With Madeline Hunter? (1985)

What's Wrong With Madeline Hunter? (1985)

The backlash against Madeline Hunter reached the pages of Educational Leadership in the form of"What's Wrong with Madeline Hunter?" a stinging rebuke penned by . . . Madeline Hunter. Of course this was no takedown, but a defense of her methods through a diligent debunking of what Hunter saw as myths about it.

Read the article: "What's Wrong With Madeline Hunter?" (PDF)

It's a measure of the impact of Hunter that she writes of herself in the third person: "Madeline Hunter" was both her name and a teaching method and philosophy whose ubiquity in the world of education inevitably drew a good deal of criticism. Perhaps the most fundamental criticism—or myth, according to Hunter—is that "the model is rigid and stifles creativity."

In fact, she insists the model is merely a solid foundation on which teachers can be creative and improvisational: "The Taj

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Viewpoints: Brown sours on rigid reforms for schools - Sacramento Opinion - Sacramento Editorial | Sacramento Bee

Viewpoints: Brown sours on rigid reforms for schools - Sacramento Opinion - Sacramento Editorial | Sacramento Bee

Viewpoints: Brown sours on rigid reforms for schools

By Peter Schrag
Special to The Bee
Published: Friday, Jan. 21, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 13A
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Peter Schrag

When Gov. Jerry Brown replaced seven members of the State Board of Education earlier this month with seven appointees of his own, the overnight response could have been predicted: This was political payback to the unions, especially to the California Teachers Association, which had spent big bucks to get him elected.

That may have been one-third correct. The unions had never been happy with the Schwarzenegger board, and especially the tilt of some of its members toward charter schools and test-based evaluations of teachers. Brown's appointment of Pat Rucker, CTA's hard-nosed lobbyist, seemed to confirm the payback theory.

But the real significance of the school board changes – both for California and maybe for national education policy – may be more far-reaching.

Both the new members and Brown's own ideas about education – the other day he called himself a



Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/21/3340220/brown-sours-on-rigid-reforms-for.html#ixzz1Bgor8572
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IndyStar.com | Don’t mix private and public | The Session | The Indianapolis Star

IndyStar.com | Don’t mix private and public | The Session | The Indianapolis Star

Don’t mix private and public


Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma’s proposed bill to expand charter schools (HB 1002) would allow three new groups to authorize public charter schools, one of which is private colleges and universities. That should not happen.

Private college boards are privately appointed, are not accountable to the public and should not be given authority to commit public tax dollars to K-12 public charter schools. Many private colleges are sectarian while charter schools are to be non-sectarian. Mixing

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Parents graded on school prep

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American Thinker: Is Michelle Rhee Good for Students?

American Thinker: Is Michelle Rhee Good for Students?

Is Michelle Rhee Good for Students?

By M. Catharine Evans and Ann Kane
Recently appearing with Bill Gates on the Oprah show, Michelle Rhee, former DC Public Schools Chancellor, has been traveling the PR circuit to promote her new program StudentsFirst.org. She has waged war against status quo public education and teachers' unions, and declares public education in this country has been "a bureaucracy about adults. We absolutely must look at education through a new prism. We must put students first."
Her words sound good, but after looking into her three year teaching stint as a Teach for America recruit at Harlem Park Elementary in Baltimore, her claim that "students performing far below grade level quickly achieve at the highest levels -- if they're exposed to a quality programs," left us wondering how well she did there. One chronicler of Rhee's term as a "miracle worker" in Baltimore
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Is there a secret plan to have states default on their public employee pensions? « Fred Klonsky's blog

Is there a secret plan to have states default on their public employee pensions? « Fred Klonsky's blog

Is there a secret plan to have state’s default on their public employee pensions?

by Fred Klonsky

I’m 62 years old. I plan to retire in June of 2012. Although I am fully vested in Social Security, as a teacher I am prevented by federal law from collecting it when I retire. My only guaranteed pension is the Teacher Retirement System into which I am paying 10% of my salary.

So imagine the feeling in my stomach while I was drinking my coffee this morning when I read this in the NY Times:

Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states

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As a Christian, it’s my God-given responsibility to offend you in any way possible « EducationCEO's Blog

As a Christian, it’s my God-given responsibility to offend you in any way possible « EducationCEO's Blog

As a Christian, it’s my God-given responsibility to offend you in any way possible 

Ouch. It literally turned my stomach to write that title, but that is the exact attitude that some self-proclaimed Christians exude. They judge non-Christians, homosexuals/gays, single mothers (never the fathers of those out-of-wedlock babies), and anyone else who does not fit into their definition of a Christian. Never mind that simple and straight-to-the-point verse that says: ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’ (Matthew 7:1) Simply stated: Remember when you point the finger, three are pointing back at you. But sadly, not very many people are willing to openly judge the decision of the Cherokee County Board of Educationto continue holding commencement ceremonies inside a church even though Jewish students have expressed their discomfort with the venue selection. I have a few issues with the board’s decision and the lack of support shown for the impending graduates as well as former Jewish students who missed their graduations because they were held in churches…
1. Did our country decide to do away with the ‘separation of church and state’ thingy and someone forgot to click ‘Send’ on the memo? If not, then why are
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Charter schools expand with public, private money - Boston.com

Charter schools expand with public, private money - Boston.com

Charter schools expand with public, private money

By Terence Chea
Associated Press / January 21, 2011
Text size – +

OAKLAND, Calif.—As cash-strapped school districts lay off teachers and close campuses, publicly funded charter schools are flourishing and altering the landscape of public education.

Despite a painful economic downturn, the charter school movement is expanding rapidly across the country with support from the Obama administration, wealthy donors such as Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, and the highly publicized documentary "Waiting for Superman."

Charter schools typically receive a mixture of public and private money and operate free of many regulations that govern traditional public schools in

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New Posts on Parents 4 democratic Schools 1-21-11 Get Involved- Read Education News

New Posts on Parents 4 democratic Schools
Get Involved- Read Education News


Parents 4 democratic Schools

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