Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Who’s the most influential educator in America? | Taking Note

Who’s the most influential educator in America?

by TED on 28. JUN, 2011 in ARNE DUNCAN, EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION, EDUCATIONAL LANGUAGE, FRED ROGERS, MICHELLE RHEE, POLITICS, PRESIDENT OBAMA, TFA, TESTING, INNOVATION, JOEL KLEIN, MEDIA, SCHOOL REFORM, TEACHING

As always, remember that John’s book The Influence of Teachers is for sale at Amazon.

A month or so ago, I speculated about the most influential person in American education — then two weeks ago I expanded upon those musings in a feature for the New York Daily News. In both columns I put forth four nominees — Wendy Kopp, Big Bird, Arne Duncan and Joel Klein — and chose Joel for his remarkable network of eleven protégés now influencing what happens in schools and classrooms around the nation.

I was attacked for my choice by people who feel that his influence has been negative, or even destructive. Few seemed to notice that I neither praised nor condemned the former Chancellor’s policies. No one challenged that he changed New York City schools in dramatic ways — nor could they. Remember that before mayoral control, New York City had 32 separate districts, quite a few of them

Dick Durbin: New Life for DREAM..PLEASE Show Support Here - Hispanically Speaking News

Dick Durbin: New Life for DREAM Act…PLEASE Show Support Here

Today’s Contributor is Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois

More than 10 years ago, I wrote the DREAM Act to address an injustice: thousands of promising young people who were brought here as children—without a choice—and grew up pledging allegiance to the American flag are not able to fully contribute to this country.

The DREAM Act would allow this select group of students with great potential a chance to earn legal status if they: have good moral character, have lived in the U.S. for at least five years, came here before the age of 16, earn a high school degree, and complete at least two years of college or military service in good standing.

I have been fighting to pass the DREAM Act ever since.

With help from you and 27,000 citizen co-sponsors of the DREAM Act, we now have a real shot at giving these bright young people a chance at the American Dream.

That’s because today, I will be chairing the first-ever hearing on the DREAM Act to discuss how it will make our country stronger.

But I need your help to convince a few more of my colleagues to support its passage.

Will you ask your friends and family to join you as a citizen co-sponsor of the DREAM Act? Click here to use our simple tell-a-friend tool—and help give a select group of bright immigrant students the chance to contribute more fully to America.

I know we don’t have an easy road ahead, but I am hopeful that today’s hearing will provide us with the platform needed to illustrate how these young people—who have lived in America much of their lives, sat in our classrooms, and know no other home—deserve the chance to be legal, fully contributing members to society.

Please, help me give them that chance.

Thank you for standing with me, and for helping me do right by these young people.

Sincerely,

Dick Durbin
U.S. Senator

Content, Timing of TV Can Take Toll on Kids’ Sleep

Study found violent content, evening screen time shortens shut-eye for preschoolers.

Sleep problems common to the toddler set are made worse both by violent media content and greater evening use of televisions, computers or video games, a new study suggests.

Reviewing parent surveys and media diaries from 617 preschoolers, Seattle researchers found that each additional hour of evening media use was linked to a significant jump in sleep problems, as was viewing of violent content at any time during the day.

CANCELED: June 28th VIP Reception of Newly Appointed Consul General of Mexico

This Week In Education: AM News: Duncan Sends Test Integrity Letter To States

AM News: Duncan Sends Test Integrity Letter To States

by Alexander Russo

Duncan letter stresses testing integrity Baltimore Sun: The Sun obtained a letter sent Friday from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to all state superintendents stressing the importance of testing integrity.

Teacher Evaluation System Examines Classroom Performance NYT: Spurred by President Obama and his $5 billion Race to the Top grant competition, some 20 states, including New York, and thousands of school districts are overhauling the way they grade teachers, and many have sent people to study Impact.

Mass. board to vote on new teacher evaluations AP: Public school teachers could soon be evaluated on student performance in the classroom and on Massachusetts standardized tests.

Anonymous Donor Gives Thousands to Tulsa Public Schools: Tulsa (Ok.) Public Schools received a very generous donation from an anonymous donor.

Texas Is Not Paying Dues to National Governor's Group, Either EdWeek: Texas, because of financial concerns, "hasn't been been a part of NGA for years," said Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Rick Perry, in an e-mail.

Dems’ budget, Take 2: Prop 98 with a twist | Thoughts on Public Education

Dems’ budget, Take 2: Prop 98 with a twist
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Big cuts for education if revenues don't come

Posted on 6/28/11 • Categorized as Jerry Brown, State Budget, Taxes

By John Fensterwald - Educated Guess

Giving K-12 and community colleges more money with one hand and taking it away with the other, Democratic leaders are proposing a balanced budget that would fund K-12 schools at last year’s level while meeting the state obligation to education under Proposition 98. They are doing this without $10 billion in temporary taxes that Republicans refuse to extend. No easy feat, this is budgeting with a twist – of the arm of education groups, which could sue over budget maneuvers (but probably won’t).

Nine days ago, Democratic lawmakers passed a state budget by majority vote, which Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed. Today they will try again, only with Brown’s full support. After months

Performance-based budgets can create impact when done smartly - by Nancy Shulock

by Nancy Shulock

As the nation’s colleges and universities struggle with limited budgets and greater demands for increased degree completions, states are once again looking at performance-based funding as a way to increase efficiency and reward institutions for access and success. Earlier models of performance-based funding encountered well-deserved resistance and criticism and were often short-lived. Adopting performance-based funding is [...]

The problem with how we evaluate success in ed reform - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

The problem with how we evaluate success in ed reform

By Valerie Strauss

This was written by Matthew Di Carlo, senior fellow at the non-profit Albert Shanker Institute, located in Washington, D.C. This postoriginally appeared on the institute’s blog.

By Matthew Di Carlo

In the mid-1990s, after a long and contentious debate, the U.S. Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which President Clinton signed into law. It is usually called the “Welfare Reform Act,” as it effectively ended the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program (which is what most people mean when they say “welfare,” even though it was [and its successor is] only a tiny part of our welfare state). Established during the New Deal, AFDC was mostly designed to give assistance to needy young children (it was later expanded to include support for their

13 Ways of looking at breakfast for schoolchildren -- *This piece on school breakfasts was written by Jill Davidson, managing director of the Coalition of Essential Schools, and was published in the July issue of the East Side Monthly as well as on Davidson’s blog. * Read full article >>

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: If you're at #iste11 and Serious about Global Collaboration: Today at 5pm

If you're at #iste11 and Serious about Global Collaboration: Today at 5pm Today, Tuesday, at 5pm in Rm PACC 123, Julie Lindsay will be leading a birds of a feather designed to help schools find each other and begin global collaboration. Flat Classroom Conference 2009 Doha, Qatar The audience will be peppered with our ...

Daily Education & Technology News for Schools 06/28/2011 - Create a Facebook Page | Custom Fan Page Design - Pagemodo If you are a school and need help with your facebook page, this may be the option. Every school should have a facebook page in addition to your website. ...

A Quick Reminder from Philly « Cooperative Catalyst

A Quick Reminder from Philly I step outside the ed tech echo chamber and wander around Philadelphia with Javi the Hippie. We stop at random locations, breathing in the art, letting it cleanse us from the buzzing white noise of a techno-conference. Some cities keep their art in ...

definitely normal? My daughter asks Google to define success via her cell phone. Twenty seconds and her phone spits out the following: Perhaps we could take heed. Are we keeping from things that matter because we’re afraid to allow for no ...

Clarence Thomas Thinks Teenagers Have No Free Speech Rights « Student Activism

Clarence Thomas Thinks Teenagers Have No Free Speech Rights

by Angus Johnston

1 person liked this

Yesterday the Supreme Court struck down a California law banning the sale of certain video games to children without their parents’ consent, and Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed. In a long and history-heavy dissent, he argued that minors properly have no First Amendment rights to read or view anything that their parents have not consented to let them access.

Strikingly, though, his dissent went even further, arguing that in early America — and thus, by his reading of the

NYC Educator: You're Not Graduating After All, Sorry about That Scholarship

You're Not Graduating After All, Sorry about That Scholarship

by Miss Eyre

One does not become an education blogger in New York City without having the stomach for some depressing stories. Today, for example, I was all set to write a happy-go-lucky "Hey, it's the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!!!!" post and wish you all a happy summer vacation. But that was before I switched on the news in the wee hours of the morning (for the last time until September, I do hope) and heard this story.

You see, the graduating class of Performance Conservatory High School in the Bronx (all 23 of them, which I imagine is a problem in and of itself) was short 9 of its members yesterday. These 9 members were informed that they would not be graduating yesterday morning. How did this happen? Bureaucratic incompetence? Apathy or ignorance on the part of guidance and administration? We don't know yet, and naturally an investigation is pending. But as a teacher, I have to admit that I'm just as confused as the kids involved. One young lady said she had 48 credits and 5 Regents exams, which, to me, sounds like she met the graduation requirements.

This would be bad enough if it had happened in, say, April. If some kind of mix-up had transpired a couple of

What's the NCEE's Problem with Agassi et al.? :: Frederick M. Hess

What's the NCEE's Problem with Agassi et al.?

by Frederick M. Hess • Jun 28, 2011 at 8:13 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

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Andre Agassi, the former tennis champ and high school dropout, and Canyon Capital Realty Advisors, recently announced the creation of a real estate fund that will spend $500 million to capitalize on and promote the movement for U.S. charter schools. The Canyon-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund plans to develop more than 75 urban campuses with space for about 40,000 students over three to four years, according to a statement from Canyon Capital and Agassi Ventures LLC. The partners already have drawn investments from Citigroup, Intel, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

I had the opportunity to meet Agassi a few months back in Vegas and was terrifically impressed. I found him smart, thoughtful, humble, and interested in listening; in truth, I found him a whole lot more impressive than any number of education officials, experts, consultants, and professors that I've encountered. Having a smart, wildly successful, internationally regarded tennis champ pouring his passion into launching great schools would seem

Schools Matter: Brooklyn Ascend Brought to Earth by Former Teacher, Part 3

Brooklyn Ascend Brought to Earth by Former Teacher, Part 3

by Jim Horn

In this email, Emily Kennedy recounts what happened at the Brooklyn Ascend's abusive testing sweatshop during what was supposed to be Spring Break, 2011:

Spring Break Academy

In the months leading up to the state exam, we began to hear about the need to target our “bubble kids.” In New York State, a child needs to score a 3 on the state exam in order to be considered “proficient.” The “bubble kids” were those who had demonstrated that they were close to achieving proficient scores, or had indeed scored 3’s on mock exams (which we gave out each month) but not by enough points that we could feel confident they would pass the real test in May. These were the kids, we were told, that we really needed to “zero in on.”

And so the school came up with a plan to have these kids come in over their spring vacation for “Spring Break Academy,” so that they wouldn’t “slip” during this time. To me, the idea sounded cruel. After

Updates to the CA School Funding Map Tool, May 15-June 15, 2011

by cynthia

UPDATE as of June 12, 2011: Governor Brown says there’ll be a vote on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 in the legislature on tax extension and the budget come hell or high water.

Governor Jerry Brown: June 15 Deadline for CA Budget Vote

Go to the California School Funding Map Tool here.

If you haven’t called any of the people who live in areas represented by Republican holdouts, here’s why Monday and Tuesday are do-or-die for calls: the first-draft maps for State Senate, Assembly, and Congressional seats have come out. Find out how redistricting will impact you here. Hard-core conservatives will not fare well. The LA Times, in analyzing the impact of redistricting on the state’s GOP, has this to say (quoting GOP advisers

Teaching in Turnaround Schools: Second Time Around | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teaching in Turnaround Schools: Second Time Around

by larrycuban

As I approach the second anniversary of my blog, I will be returning to particular posts in the past 24 months that hit themes I believe are important in reform and classroom practice. In presenting the post again, I will update facts in an introduction to the post and then make a few comments.

This post originally appeared August 11, 2009. Rafe Esquith continues to teach, Sarah Fine is no longer teaching. The questions I ask here are ones that I have mentioned numerous times over the past two years as crucial for anyone who makes, adopts, and implements policy–that means school boards, superintendents, legislators, principals, and teachers–to answer.

Lots of stories from principals, parents, and students reveal practices that range from marvelous to malign. Individual teachers give us a sense of what happens in their classrooms. Rafe Esquith in LA writes about his lessons and his kids’ experiences in an elementary school; Sarah Fine, an English teacher in a D.C. charter school, tells of her successes and failures. But beyond stories and first-hand accounts, helpful as they are in

Daily Kos: Proof we do NOT have the world's best health care system

Proof we do NOT have the world's best health care system

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

can been seen in one basic fact:

in the US life expectancy for both men in women puts the US in 37th place in the world, with that for women dropping in much of the country.

That immediately grabbed my attention as I read Living longer? Not in US by Derrick Jackson in today's Boston Globe

There I read

Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation this month published a county-by-county analysis of life expectancy. From 1987 to 1997, there were 227 counties where female life expectancy dropped. From 1997 to 2007, the number of counties where women’s life expectancy dropped exploded to 737.

In 2,054 of the nation's 3,147 counties, life expectancies for women fell further behind the 10 nations with the

Let’s Get It Right After Ackerman Leaves « City School Stories

Notes from the Field « City School Stories

Notes from the Field

by fmurphy

Let’s Get It Right After Ackerman Leaves

Submitted by Frank Murphy on June 28, 2011

In March of 2011, the Seattle School Board voted to terminate the contract of its Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Marie Goodloe-Johnson. This decision was made after the Board determined that Goodloe-Johnson had mismanaged a financial scandal involving a mid-level manager of the district. An audit of the district’s finances had revealed improper activity in the district’s small business contracting program.

This marked the end of the tumultuous three and half year tenure of Goodloe-Johnson in Seattle. Extensive reporting of the many controversies that swirled around this Broad Academy-trained superintendent can be found on the Seattle Education blog. This post, Ten + Reasons Why the Seattle Public Schools Superintendent, Dr. Marie Goodloe-Johnson, Should Be Fired With Cause, provides a comprehensive summary of her policy and program initiatives.

As I read this particular piece, I could not help but note the similarities between the actions of this Broad-trained

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Tuesday, June 28, 2011