Thursday, July 21, 2011

The ‘No Excuses’ Approach - Tired Tucson Teacher

TIRED TUCSON TEACHER

The ‘No Excuses’ Approach

by Marc Severson on Jul. 21, 2011, under Uncategorized

I read with interest the article by my collegue, Loretta Hunnicutt 1).
While I laud Ms Hunnicutt’s ‘no excuses’ approach to the issue of whether the effect of HB2281 is a fable or fairy tale I have to disagree with the assessment that “experienced teachers in well-funded classrooms” are the equalizer in education. I do not want anyone to think I denigrate the importance of experienced teachers and adequate funding for classrooms would be heavenly while well-funded classrooms are simply a dream or perhaps a distant memory.

My argument is with the term ‘equalizer’. I have seen experienced teachers, and many and many a year ago in a kingdom in the desert, I taught in a well-funded district. Yet there were still those students who faltered, fell behind, could not keep up. In fact there were many of them. Beyond the factors mentioned by Ms. Hunnicutt there are significant pressures

My Best Posts On Building Parent Engagement In Schools — 2011 (So Far) | Engaging Parents In School...

My Best Posts On Building Parent Engagement In Schools — 2011 (So Far)

by Larry Ferlazzo

I usually just do a year-end list on parent engagement posts and many other topics, but it gets a little crazy having to review all of my zillion posts at once. So, to make it easier for me — and perhaps, to make it a little more useful to readers — I’m going to start publishing mid-year lists, too. These won’t be ranked, unlike my year-end “The Best…” lists, and just because a post appears on a mid-year list doesn’t guarantee it will be included in an end-of-the-year one. But, at least, I won’t have to review all my year’s posts in December…

Why do politicians blow up when asked where their kids go to school? « Parents Across America

Why do politicians blow up when asked where their kids go to school?

by leoniehaimson

Rahm Emanuel, the new Mayor of Chicago, walks out of an NBC interview when asked when asked what school he intends to enroll his children in. He intones: “My children are not an instrument of me being mayor.” But everyone else’s children are. Check out the video here and below.

If the report in the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet is correct, he has chosen the Lab School, where Obama sent his own kids, where Duncan went to school himself, and where they will likely receive small classes, a well-rounded education and little high-stakes testing, the opposite of the regime he has chosen for Chicago’s public schoolchildren .

See also NJ Gov. Chris Christie’s similar response in a video below, when asked this

Nation's fourth-largest school district adds gender identity protections

Steve Rothaus' Gay South Florida

Equality Florida: Nation's fourth-largest school district adds gender identity protections

From Equality Florida Blog:

Miami-Dade School District, the fourth largest in the nation, has added gender identity to their harassment and anti-bullying policy.
Equality Florida along with and members of our Miami-Dade Safe Schools Coalition have worked for more than a decade to expand these vital protections and Miami remained one of the few large Florida cities without such a policy, until now.
With this latest victory, 1.55 million students representing

Rupert and Wendi Murdoch backed a scandal-ridden city school | GothamSchools

Rupert and Wendi Murdoch backed a scandal-ridden city school

by Philissa Cramer

Besides his Joel Klein hire, his company’s $27 million state testing contract, and his entrance into education politics, there’s another schools angle to Rupert Murdoch, the embattled media tycoon.

Long before Murdoch’s News Corporation was accused of employing illegal news-gathering strategies, Murdoch and his wife, Wendi Deng Murdoch, were supporters of the Shuang Wen School. The Chinatown dual-language school was revealed last year to be illegally charging families for mandatory Chinese instruction.

In 2004, the Murdochs pledged three years of financial support for Shuang Wen’s after school programs, according to an article published in a city’s Chinese language paper at the time. That pledge amounted to half a

Duncan’s Dilemma « Parents Across America

Duncan’s Dilemma

by leoniehaimson

This perceptive piece is reprinted with permission from the American Enterprise blog. Members of Parents Across America agree that Duncan’s policies are arbitrary, overreach his authority, and conflict with public opinion about how our schools should be improved.

By Whitney Downs

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, education writer Stephanie Banchero highlighted the increasing impatience among state leaders over Congress’s inability to “fix” No Child Left Behind. Reauthorization of the law, which

The Best Posts About Public Officials (& Non-Elected “Reformers) Sending Their Children To Private Schools | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

The Best Posts About Public Officials (& Non-Elected “Reformers) Sending Their Children To Private Schools

by Larry Ferlazzo

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel stormed out of an interview today because he was angry about being asked about why he enrolled his kids in a private school.

I respect his right, and the rights of other public officials and non-elected school reformers, to make decisions that they think are best for their children. I just wish they felt as strongly about creating similar learning opportunities in public schools for everybody else.

Here are my choices for The Best Posts About Public Officials (& Non-Elected “Reformers) Sending Their

Opinion: A high-octane ed reform campaign is coming | EdNewsColorado

Opinion: A high-octane ed reform campaign is coming

National education blogger Alexander Russo broke news yesterday about a new and well-funded education reform advocacy campaign that will launch in Denver next week.

Called “One Chance Colorado,” the eight- to 10-week campaign will use billboards, TV ads, bus stop posters and web-based strategies to push for “accountability at every level;” recruiting and supporting strong teachers and getting rid of weak ones; investing in good schools and “rapidly addressing” underperforming schools; and putting education ahead of politics.

There will also be a “field organizing” component to the campaign.

People involved in the campaign were reluctant to discuss it ahead of next week’s official launch. But

NYC Public School Parents: Class sizes to rise to thirty in elementary schools next year?

Class sizes to rise to thirty in elementary schools next year?

by Leonie Haimson

I have heard from several sources that elementary school principals have been told by their network leaders to plan for average class size of thirty in grades K-5 next year. (see letter below from the School Leadership Team at PS 3.)

This would represent an increase of 6.4 children per class compared to last year; or an increase of 27%, and would represent the largest class sizes in these grades in at least twenty years or more.

When Dennis Walcott was testifying before the NYC Council, he said that even with 4100 teacher layoffs, he

Two of Pa.'s largest charters part of test score probe | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Two of Pa.'s largest charters part of test score probe

by Benjamin Herold on Jul 18 2011 Posted in Latest news

Tags:

Two of the largest charters in Pennsylvania, Chester Community Charter School (CCCS) and the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School (PA Cyber), are among the 89 schools across the state that are to be investigated for statistical irregularities on 2009 standardized tests.

In all, 10 Pennsylvania charters were found to have 2009 test scores warranting further inquiry, according to a recently revealed state reportmeant to identify "potential test results that may have been earned unfairly."

The rest of the 89 schools are spread over 38 school districts. State Secretary of Education Ronald Tomalis has directed those districts to conduct investigations in all their traditional public schools that were heavily flagged in the study. The charters with unusual results will investigate themselves, according to

ACTION United community "veto" budget rally

by thenotebook

Professionals for Progress leader Emmanuel Bussie (center) joined State Rep. Babette Josephs (left), ACTION United leader D. William Browning, and others for a rally at City Hall today urging Mayor Nutter to challenge Gov. Corbett's education budget cuts. Bussie proposed that attendees head to City Council and demand "not just change, but transformation."

Sponsored by ACTION United, the rally drew a small crowd of teachers, parents, and activists who are working

All Around the Interwebs - Dana Goldstein

All Around the Interwebs

by Dana Goldstein

Check out my new piece at Slate, which puts the Atlanta standardized test cheating scandal in some historical perspecitve. Sadly, this is not an isolated case:

In the late 1980s, states began to experiment with offering schools financial awards for improving test scores. As the local media filled with optimistic stories about rising scores, a West Virginia doctor named John Cannell wondered why so many of his teenage patients complained of feeling lost at school. In 1988, Cannell published a classic research paper (PDF) reporting that most school districts in all 50 states boasted average test scores higher than their state's average—a statistical impossibility if the districts had been honest about performance. In his indispensible 2008 book Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us, Harvard psychometrician Daniel Koretz writes, "This phenomenon quickly became known as the 'Lake Wobegon effect,' after Garrison Keillor's mythical town where 'all the women are strong, all the

Shanker Blog » A "Decent Work" Solution To America's Jobs Crisis

A “Decent Work” Solution To America’s Jobs Crisis

Posted by Randall Garton on July 21, 2011

Decent work? Some days, it sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? It also brings to mind an old saying, favored by the AFL-CIO’s late president, Lane Kirkland, that if work were so great, the rich would have kept it for themselves.

But the truth is that work is one of life’s realities. For most people, it is the sole source of income. Work also can bring great personal satisfaction. Whether self-employed or working for a large multinational corporation, we all aspire to jobs that are interesting, safe, and pay a good wage with benefits – a job that can support a family, with something left over. Even these days, when people are happy to have ANY job, we still want THAT kind of a job: Decent work at decent pay.

But “decent work” is much more than a daydream – it is a concrete social and economic policy issue that is at the heart of a decade-long campaign by a major United Nations agency, the International Labor Organization, (ILO). Since 1999, the ILO, with support from member governments as well as employer and labor representatives, has pushed the “Decent Work Agenda“. This document declares that “work is central to

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel chooses private school for kids - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel chooses private school for kids

by Valerie Strauss

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who strongly supports school reform that centers on standardized test-based accountability for students, schools and teachers, has decided to send his children to a private school that doesn’t obsess on standardized tests.

Emanuel, who served in the White House as President Obama’s chief of staff for a few years, and his wife have chosen, according to a local radio station CBS News 2 in Chicago, to send their three children to the prestigiousUniversity of Chicago Laboratory Schools in Hyde Park.

Read full article >>

Misrepresenting the “Preponderance of the Evidence” Standard on Campus Sexual Assault Hearings « Student Activism

Misrepresenting the “Preponderance of the Evidence” Standard on Campus Sexual Assault Hearings

by Angus Johnston

The Department of Education recently issued new guidelines on campus policies on sexual assault, including a directive that judicial bodies investigating sexual assault allegations employ the “preponderance of the evidence” standard in their deliberations.

“Preponderance of the evidence” is the standard commonly used in resolving civil cases — lawsuits — in the United States. It basically means that the question at hand will be resolved by a determination of which party’s version of events is more likely to be true. (“Beyond a reasonable doubt” is the standard of guilt used in criminal cases in the US, and there are other standards used in other circumstances, too.)

I don’t yet have an opinion on the DOE’s directive, and I think it’s an important question, so I’ve been reading up

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Quotable: Karen Lewis

Quotable: Karen Lewis

by Mike Klonsky

On the mayor's decision to send his kids to Chicago Lab, a well-funded private school
“We understand why he would choose a school with small class sizes, a broad, rich curriculum that offers world languages, the arts and physical education, a focus on critical thinking not test-taking, a teacher and an assistant in every elementary classroom and paid, high-quality professional development for

Why I’m Marching Forward (It’s The Only Direction) | Edwize

Why I’m Marching Forward (It’s The Only Direction)

by José Vilson

[Editor's note: José Luis Vilson is a math teacher, coach, and data analyst for a middle school in Manhattan. He blogs at The Jose Vilson where this post first appeared.]

You’ve got to be wondering what a teacher like me is doing marching against the “reform” trends. For those of you unfamiliar with my background, I graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Syracuse University. A year later, after 6-8 months of unemployment and a stint as a data entry person at an educational database firm, I went into the NYC Teaching Fellows program, an offshoot of Michelle Rhee’s New Teacher Project. On the surface, I’m a perfect candidate to follow the corporatist thinking about education, and should be easily molded into the dominant thinking from elites who ostensibly believe they’re going into education for the common good. All it takes is the right amount of fear, the right amount of frustration, the right amount of ignorance, and the right amount of failure to tip people into the hands of those who wish to rotate our profession backwards.

Fortunately for me, I lucked out. And if you’re reading this, I’m thinking the same goes for you.

You see, I teach at a school that, somewhere along the line, decided to value veteran leadership and

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: CALIFORNIA COLLEGE SYSTEM IN DECLINE, STUDY FINDS +Study: "Consequences of Neglect"

CALIFORNIA COLLEGE SYSTEM IN DECLINE, STUDY FINDS +Study: "Consequences of Neglect"

The state no longer is a leader in such areas as affordability, preparation of high school graduates and college-going rates, according to researchers at Cal State Sacramento.

BY CARLA RIVERA, LOS ANGELES TIMES | HTTP://LAT.MS/R12XQC

Cal State Long Beach

Thousands of Cal State Long Beach students, teachers and parents rally during a national day of protests against education funding cuts. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times / March 4, 2010)

July 21, 2011 - California's higher education system is in decline, with fewer students able to afford college, falling college participation rates and dwindling state support, according to a study released Wednesday.

The report suggests that the state, once celebrated nationally for its three-tiered system of public colleges, has lost status as a leader in such areas as affordability, preparation of high school graduates, college-going rates and investment

Principal Apportionment, Fiscal Year 2011-12 - Principal Apportionment (CA Dept of Education)

Principal Apportionment, Fiscal Year 2011-12

Distribution of funds for local educational agencies (LEAs) in support of the public school system. Includes elementary school, high school and unified school districts; charter schools; and county offices of education.

Advance Apportionment

Certified July 20, 2011

Apportionment Letter - 20-Jul-2011

Calculations to determine the Advance Apportionment

Funding Exhibits - Advance Apportionment

Funding Excel Files - Advance Apportionment
Detail report of the Advance Apportionment Summary and Payment Schedule Summary.

Special Apportionments for Charter Schools

Pupil Estimates for New or Significantly Expanding Charters (PENSEC)

Resources

2011-12 Principal Apportionment Deadlines (School Districts and COEs)

2011-12 Principal Apportionment Deadlines (Charter Schools)

2011-12 Principal Apportionment At-A-Glance Calendar (DOC; 204KB; 1p.)
Accessible Alternative Version of the 2011-12 Principal Apportionment At-A-Glance Calendar
A one page fiscal year calendar showing key deadlines for school district, COE, and charter school data.

Questions: Office of Principal Apportionment and Special Education | 916-324-4541
Office of Charter Apportionments and District Reorganization | 916-324-4541

NYC Educator: Penny Wise, Pound Criminal

Penny Wise, Pound Criminal

by NYC Educator

Mayor Bloomberg has to prioritize, of course, as he applies his financial genius to the ruinous 3.2 billion dollar surplus this year. He's brilliantly managed to avoid firing 4,000 teachers, but has managed to lose a good 8,000 over the last three years. This is an important achievement as it saves a bundle for no-bid deal to give personal info about 1.1 million school kids to Rupert Murdoch, who's now purchased Joel Klein. Klein, as you may recall, presided over the DOE as it took a billion dollars to reduce class sizes and magically made them go up.

In yet another innovative coup, Mayor Bloomberg is replacing the filthy no. 6 oil that his people say costs

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