FEA suing state over pay cuts to for pension contribution « Tangerine, Florida

FEA suing state over pay cuts to for pension contribution « Tangerine, Florida

FEA suing state over pay cuts to for pension contribution

by 5redherrings

Via Passing Notes

TALLAHASSEE – The Florida Education Association has filed a lawsuit today in Circuit Court in Tallahassee seeking to stop the 3 percent pay cut on teachers, school employees and other workers imposed by the Florida Legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Scott.

The lawsuit asserts that the Legislature enacted legislation that was unconstitutional when that body required that 3 percent of the salaries of active members of the Florida Retirement System (FRS) be taken from such employees to serve as “contributions” toward their retirement benefits. The lawsuit further contends that the actions by the Legislature to reduce the cost-of-living benefits of those employees were also unconstitutional.

“This pay cut was used by legislative leadership to make up a budget shortfall on the backs of

Nutrition Education Partnership Between National Education Association Health Information Network and Nestle in... -- CHICAGO, June 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Nutrition Education Partnership Between National Education Association Health Information Network and Nestle in... -- CHICAGO, June 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Nutrition Education Partnership Between National Education Association Health Information Network and Nestle in the U.S.

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Healthy Steps for Healthy Lives: Free Instructional Resource for Educators

CHICAGO, June 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Education Association Health Information Network (NEA HIN) has partnered with Nestle in the United States to expand its nutrition and physical activity education resources for educators. The program, Healthy Steps for Healthy Lives, provides free instructional materials that support educators' efforts to teach students in grades K-3 about being healthy. Healthy Steps for Healthy Lives will be released during the 2011 NEA Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly in Chicago, June 30 – July 2.

"The childhood obesity crisis in America is well documented. Educators can empower children by teaching them about the importance of nutrition and physical activity. Through the Healthy Steps for Healthy Lives program, hands-on materials that encourage healthy habits are available for classroom use," said Jerald Newberry, Executive Director, NEA Health Information Network. "This partnership has allowed us to tap Nestle's wealth of nutrition expertise and well-established nutrition-education credentials to create fantastic, fun and free tools for educators."

Grouped into three themes – THINK healthy, EAT healthy and MOVE healthy – the Healthy Steps for Healthy Lives learning activities address a variety of learning styles and skill sets. The materials incorporate feedback from educators who tested the activities in focus groups and pilot programs in three U.S. schools. The program also helps educators incorporate the revised

Once Homeless, Now Headed to Harvard voiceofsandiego.org: Education

voiceofsandiego.org: Education

Once Homeless, Now Headed to HarvardComments (3) | 2:30 pm

As she trudged with her mother back to the shelter, Alicia Zamora practiced her reading on billboards. She counted bathroom tiles with her brother for fun. Sometimes she even pored over the nutrition facts on the back of a box of crackers or apple juice. She also remembers going without food at all.

Alicia had trouble hearing in school, plagued with ear infections that her mother chalked up to the stuffy air in the homeless shelter. They were lucky to get a room of their own, but her mom was so leery of the used beds that she bought an air mattress for them to sleep on. Alicia got in trouble when she popped it.

Fourteen years later, it would be easy for Alicia to shelve those memories away. Now she is known as the Madison High valedictorian, the prom queen, the girl going on to Harvard University. But that world has never drifted far from her mind. You can still hear it there, even as she rhapsodizes about college.

Read the rest of this article

Wikipedia Gradually Accepted in College Classrooms - US News and World Report

Wikipedia Gradually Accepted in College Classrooms - US News and World Report

Wikipedia Gradually Accepted in College Classrooms

Professors don't want students to rely on the site but admit it's a useful starting point for research.

By BRIAN BURNSED

Posted: June 20, 2011

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In 1775, Paul Revere boisterously rung bells to warn colonists of an impending influx of British soldiers.

Actually, he didn't. But anyone who visited the Wikipedia page dedicated to Revere earlier this month may have thought that to be the case. The erroneous addition was made in the wake of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's flummoxed ramblings regarding the famed colonist that were caught on camera and soon went viral. Though the additions to the Wikipedia entry—likely added by a supporter to give credence to Palin's claims—were soon removed by Wikipedia's editors, the instance highlighted the problem inherent in Wikipedia's crowd sourcing nature: Errors, though they may be caught, can still be posted, viewed, and absorbed by impressionable minds.

[See how social media is influencing students' use of slang.]

This is precisely why college professors almost universally bar students from citing any

AM News: You Make The Call - District 299: Chicago Public Schools Blog

AM News: You Make The Call - District 299: Chicago Public Schools Blog

AM News: You Make The Call

by Alexander Russo

Emanuel reflects on accomplishments after first 30 days in 'great job' Sun Times: The checklist displayed Thursday includes 23 initiatives that Emanuel views as accomplishments.. Chicago Teachers Union chief on vacation? Sneed: A strike may be looming if Chicago teachers' salaries aren't increased, but it reportedly is not deterring Karen Lewis from going on a planned vacation... Parents Stand By Chicago Teachers NBC: A group of 15 parents gathered at Price Elementary, 4357 S. Drexel, on Friday morning to rally in favor of the four percent annual raises the new Chicago Public Schools board turned down this week... Chicago High School for the Arts might move to Doolittle West Sun Times: The Chicago High School for the Arts won't be moving from its too-small South Side location to Wells High School on the West Side, after all... Laptops with personal data on 10,400 teachers, students stolen Sun Times: Two laptop computers containing personal information on more than 10,000 Chicago area teachers and students were stolen -- but officials don't believe the data has been used by the

All Education Matters: My Own Personal Stalin: To A Delusional Enough Person Who Continues To Lie about my Character

All Education Matters: My Own Personal Stalin: To A Delusional Enough Person Who Continues To Lie about my Character

My Own Personal Stalin: To A Delusional Enough Person Who Continues To Lie about my Character

by C. Cryn Johannsen

Copyright Notice: If you are not reading this at All Education Matters, and unless I've explicitly given an individual or entity permission to publish my work, this post has been illegally appropriated. Please read original content here.

If you have heard problematic claims made about my character, please feel free to email me about it (ccrynjohannnsen AT gmail DOT com) and avoid feeding the trolls.

Michelle Rhee– the Sarah Palin of the education reform movement

Michelle Rhee– the Sarah Palin of the education reform movement

Michelle Rhee– the Sarah Palin of the education reform movement

by admin

Written by Marc Osgoode Smith, for the Morton Report. Read the original here.

“The pendulum appears to be swinging in “Ed Reform 2.0.” The education policy community is starting to question the all-or-nothing “data-driven assessment” mantra of former Washington DC School Chancellor — and national poster child of the reform movement — Michelle Rhee. …

–her beloved “data” revealed shortcomings in her execution. It also revealed an over-reliance on teacher-union bashing as political red meat and polarizing rhetoric to intimidate.

The primary criticism of Rhee’s platform is its insistence upon constant “data-driven assessments” of students that measured student abilities with two-page data synopses made up of color graphs and pie charts. “We didn’t have time to instruct them on the material on the assessments, because we were always taking assessments,”

How did Howard Fuller’s Voucher School Get a City Charter? « Larry Miller's Blog

How did Howard Fuller’s Voucher School Get a City Charter? « Larry Miller's Blog

How did Howard Fuller’s Voucher School Get a City Charter?

by millerlf

Alan Borsuk has continually lambasted MPS schools when they show poor performance. Yet in a June 19 article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he takes an entirely different stand toward Howard Fuller.

Borsuk interviewed Fuller about the CEO Leadership Academy, a voucher school in which Fuller is personally involved and whose outcomes have for the most part been dismal. Fuller is quoted as saying “…how hard it is to achieve educational success in a high-poverty, urban setting…” – something he says he has realized in the last two years as a result of his day-to-day involvement. “It’s a very, very sobering experience,” he says.

When MPS educators who have been in the trenches for a long time make this very point, Borsuk dismisses their perspective as excuses and vague promises of reform. Yet he praises Fuller for having gotten a City charter for the failing CEO Leadership Academy.

I suggest that Alan Borsuk conduct another interview and start by asking Dr. Fuller the following questions:

Shanker Blog » Teacher Quality Only Matters If Students Come To School

Shanker Blog » Teacher Quality Only Matters If Students Come To School

Teacher Quality Only Matters If Students Come To School

by Matthew Di Carlo

The “no excuses” mantra in education started with an irrefutable premise: Nobody should use poverty as an excuse to tolerate dysfunctional pubic schools. For some (but not all) people, it eventually became an accusation as well, hurled at those who brought up the fact – often in a perfectly reasonable manner – that there is a strong, demonstrated relationship between income and achievement. But in its most virulent form, “no excuses” fosters the colonization of additional problems for which schools and teachers can be “held accountable.”

Former DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee and her fiancée, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, were hosted by the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service for a discussion on education that aired on C-Span a few weeks ago. The moderator asked the panelists for their views on the dismal conditions in many cities, and how that relates to efforts to improve neighborhood schools.

Rhee recounted a story from the final year of her chancellorship, in which she visited a school unannounced,

We Want and Need Parents at the Table - Arlington, VA, United States, ASCD EDge Blog post

We Want and Need Parents at the Table - Arlington, VA, United States, ASCD EDge Blog post

We Want and Need Parents at the Table

Walter’s blog archive: http://surfaquarium.com/blog.htm

Mirror site: http://surfaquarium.blogspot.com/2011/06/we-want-and-need-parents-at-table.html

OK so you’ve got all the stakeholders at the table: the students, teachers, administrators, unions, lawmakers, state and federal education agencies, professional education associations, teacher preparation programs, education technology experts, visionary gurus….even the deep-pocketed philanthropists who want their say. Let’s throw a few more tables together...it’s getting crowded...and more chairs….we need elbow room...

But wait, there’s still something or someone missing. You would think with this many interests represented at the table we’d have it covered. Let’s see...we have everyone with a self-interest in seeing education move forward...no wait….no we don’t. There are no parents at the table.

What do you MEAN parents have no place at the table? What do you MEAN they are glad just to have childcare covered all day? What do you MEAN they have abrogated most of their child-rearing responsibilities and left you to pick them up piecemeal behind them? In an age of

Celebrating mothers on Father’s Day | Being Latino Online Magazine

Celebrating mothers on Father’s Day | Being Latino Online Magazine

Celebrating mothers on Father’s Day

by Adriana Villavicencio

Father’s Day. For some, the holiday is about celebrating dad with a tie and a well-cooked pernil. For some of us, though, Father’s Day can be a painful reminder that our fathers aren’t here – sometimes by his choosing, sometimes not. In either case, the week of weepy commercials featuring picture perfect fathers and stores stocked with cards about the best dads on earth can make someone without a father around want to hide until the third Monday of June.

But perhaps we should expand our notion of Father’s Day to include those who have been likefathers. Those who will not ever replace them, but who have contributed to our lives in the special ways that fathers do.

Often, these people are our very own moms. Twenty five percent of Hispanic children are raised by single mothers who must serve, out of necessity, as mother and father (and everything else) to their children. That’s why on Father’s Day, I celebrate my mom. I am thankful to my dad for giving me life, my proclivity to dance all night, and my penchant for clothes with flair and fancy shoes. But on Father’s Day, I celebrate my mother for all the gifts she gave and lessons she passed on.

Querida madrecita,

You may not have taught me how to kick a ball around, but you taught me how to roll with the

Gaston Caperton: The Educational Crisis of Young Men of Color

Gaston Caperton: The Educational Crisis of Young Men of Color

Gaston Caperton: The Educational Crisis of Young Men of Color

from Education on The Huffington Post by Gaston Caperton

Since this nation was founded over two centuries ago, there has been nearly constant tension between tradition and evolution. Yet over the years, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, the forces of progress have haltingly advanced, and continue to do so today. After all, just fifty years ago businesses still hung signs that screamed, "For Whites Only"; universities openly discriminated; and the government struggled mightily to suppress the memory of "separate but equal."

There's no doubt that our country has come a long way. But few would argue that our progress is complete, and it continues to mask a deeper dysfunction of the status quo.

There is an education crisis facing young men of color. It's not on the front page of the newspaper. People aren't organizing on Facebook or Twitter. But it's out there, and if we fail to address this crisis together, the education level of the entire American workforce will decline for the first time in our history.

President Obama has challenged our nation to reclaim its position as the world-leader in college degrees, and

Duncan Warns Congress: Revise NCLB or I Will - High School Notes (usnews.com)

Duncan Warns Congress: Revise NCLB or I Will - High School Notes (usnews.com)

Duncan Warns Congress: Revise NCLB or I Will

By JASON KOEBLER

Posted: June 20, 2011

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Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said if Congress does not reauthorize and amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)—popularly known as No Child Left Behind—he will take actions to amend the law himself.

A clause in the law permits the secretary of education to waive certain parts of the act—a power Duncan said he would consider use if states agree to enact reforms.

[Learn about a bill that may improve graduation rates.]

ESEA was up for renewal and an overhaul in 2007, but Congress opted to extend the law on a year-to-year basis. The law, proposed by then-President George W. Bush and passed in 2001, set a goal of making all children "proficient" in reading and math by 2014. In March, Duncan told Congress the law was "broken," and said that up to 82 percent of all public schools could miss targets set by No Child Left Behind.

President Obama has also asked Congress to revise the bill, saying the benchmarks it set

Straight Up Conservation: KIPP CEO Richard Barth on the College Completion Challenge :: Frederick M. Hess

Straight Up Conservation: KIPP CEO Richard Barth on the College Completion Challenge :: Frederick M. Hess

Straight Up Conservation: KIPP CEO Richard Barth on the College Completion Challenge

by Frederick M. Hess • Jun 20, 2011 at 8:20 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

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Richard Barth is CEO and President of the KIPP Foundation, supporting KIPP schools that now enroll over 27,000 students at 99 campuses. Just recently, KIPP released its long-term study of its earliest cohorts--those students who had completed eighth grade ten or more years ago from its initial Houston and New York City campuses. The report found that 33% had finished college within six years. These results were cheered by some as "a substantial and commendable improvement relative to today's status quo" and a welcome example of transparency. At the same time, the KIPP leadership readily noted that these results mean even its heralded schools can do much better. Last week, I had the chance to chat with Richard about the findings, what KIPP's learning about getting its kids through college, and the risks and rewards of this kind of transparency.

Rick Hess: So, you all recently issued a report tracking the first cohort of KIPP students. What prompted you all to do the research? After all, most middle schools don't track the college completion rate of their alums.