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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Big Education Ape: 8-24-11 AM Poverty Poverty Poverty Poverty EDition

Big Education Ape: Ed News Now:
Big Education Ape: Ed News Now
Published by Coopmike48 – 6 news spotters today

Most New York Students Are Not College-Ready

nytimes.com - New York State education officials released a new set of graduation statistics on Monday that show fewer than half of students in the state are leaving high school prepared for college and well-pay...

DianeRavitch

What Works To Close The Education Gap : NPR

npr.org - Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required. REBECCA ROBERTS, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Re...

mikeklonsky

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coopmike48 Revised Rules on Financial Conflicts - Inside Higher Ed -http://t.co/byGOZcWabout 1 minute ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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coopmike48 Read Save Our Schools March NEWS on http://t.co/4XmJWyp#SOSMARCH· reply · retweet · favorite

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coopmike48 City plans to cut 800 public school workers for school year as budget -http://t.co/O7vGtL54 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite

EducationSee all

School Daze — The Icehouse Gang

icehousegang.com - As Hubert Humphrey might have said, the Ice House Gang is just pleased as punch to give a shout-out to a couple members whose writing dazzled in The New York Times this past Sunday. That is, our ow...

DianeRavitch

The Real Cheating Scandal of Standardized Tests - Miller

miller-mccune.com - Opinion: The widening circle of cheating scandals on standardized tests should fuel the movement to reduce the stakes these exams have on public education in the U.S.As the list of states and citie...

DianeRavitch

Dallas Value Added Study — More Analysis

garyrubinstein.teachforus.org - A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I did my own analysis of the 1997 study which is always quoted by Rhee about how 3 effective teachers in a row vs. 3 ineffective teachers in a row is life changin...

DianeRavitch

SocietySee all

Mayor Bloomberg's Charity Pipeline - WSJ.com

online.wsj.com - As the clock ticks toward his exit from City Hall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has begun to bulk up the payroll at his private charitable foundation by tapping at least one steady source of personnel: ...

leoniehaimson

Tea Party Makes Me Feel Sorry For The Onion

firedoglake.com - Photo Credit: Chuck Coker The Onion: Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous transgressions, self-described American patriot Kyle Mortensen, 47, is a vehement defender of ...

coopmike48

PoliticsSee all

GOP Decries Class Warfare on the Tragically Rich

crooksandliars.com - Click here for larger image. Judging from the furious reaction of some of the gilded-class crowd and their Republican protectors, billionaire Warren Buffett struck a nerve with his plea to Congress...

mikeklonsky

EnvironmentSee all

The Scramble for Access to Libya’s Oil Wealth Begins

nytimes.com - Even before Libyan rebels could take full control of Tripoli, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini of Italy said on state television Monday that the Italian oil company Eni “will have a No. 1 role in t...

mikeklonsky

Video

nypost.com - Department of Education officials are attempting to whitewash missteps that allowed students to stew inside a toxic Bronx school for months, parents charged yesterday.Despite finding levels of the ...

leoniehaimson

Whirlwind in Sonoma and Marin

dailycensored.com - A few months ago, I was lying in bed enjoying the morning sunrise over the mountain range. The coastal fog had settled upon the open field next to the apple orchard. A gentle breeze was blowing in ...

coopmike48

Art & EntertainmentSee all

Ryan Gosling Breaks up Street Fight in East Village

dnainfo.com - MANHATTAN— Actor Ryan Gosling played the role of real-life superhero while helping break up a street fight in Astor Place.The Academy Award-nominated star is purportedly seen in a video intervening...

leoniehaimson

Two Fat Men Walk Into a Bar…And Meet Chris Matthews

addictinginfo.org - Two sides of the same coin: hot air.Update! Actually, I learned something from this exercise that shouldn’t have surprised me, but which sparked a memory: Rush Limbaugh, expostulating about M...

coopmike48

An Animated Argument Against Copyright Law - Entertainment

theatlanticwire.com - J.K. Rowling will be making money off of the Harry Potter books until the 23rd-century thanks to the twisted history of intellectual property law in the United States. Unfamiliar with how and why c...

coopmike48

TechnologySee all

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Schools Matter: Steve Brill = Corporate Shill

Schools Matter: Steve Brill = Corporate Shill:

Steve Brill = Corporate Shill

by Jim Horn
Randy Shaw has a number of things to say in this piece about Michelle "Erasure" Rhee and the defensive posturing of oligarch education reform, but my favorite part has to do with the new book by corporate stooge, Steve Brill:
When I saw notorious anti-teachers union Steve Brill had a book on education on the front-page of the August 21 New York Times Sunday Book Review, and that the review was written by a private school teacher who has problems with unions, I assumed the worst. But this book by a legal entrepreneur with no educational background failed to even convince a sympathetic critic that teachers unions are the problem with American education.

As reviewer Sara Mosle writes:

“Yet Brill wants us to believe that unions are the primary – even sole – cause of failing public
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Modern School: Screw Standardized Tests (and here's how)

Modern School: Screw Standardized Tests (and here's how):

Screw Standardized Tests (and here's how)

by Michael Dunn
Here's the link to Opt Out of Standardized Tests, with links to groups fighting standardized tests and a wiki you can contribute to.

(Thanks to Schools Matter for sharing this one).

Opt Out Groups on Facebook

Parents & Kids Against Standardized Testing (Opt Out of State Testing)
  • Page for parents, teachers, students of all beliefs and backgrounds.
Parents & Kids Against Standardized Testing ( Opt Out of State Testing )
  • Group for parents, teachers, students of all beliefs and backgrounds.
OPT OUT OF THE STATE TEST : The National Movement
  • Group for parents, teachers, students whose primary focus is the preservation of public schools through
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Is Testing Inhibiting the Development of Creativity in Children? | Scathing Purple Musings

Is Testing Inhibiting the Development of Creativity in Children? | Scathing Purple Musings:

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Is Testing Inhibiting the Development of Creativity in Children?

by Bob Sikes

Reseachers have evidence which leads them to believes so:

It sounds like the complaint of a jaded adult: Kids these days are narrow-minded and just not as creative as they used to be.

But researchers say they are finding exactly that. In a 2010 study of about 300,000 creativity tests going back to the 1970s, Kyung Hee Kim, a creativity researcher at the College of William and Mary, found creativity has decreased among American children in recent years. Since 1990, children have become less able to produce unique and unusual ideas. They are also less humorous, less imaginative and less able to elaborate on ideas, Kim said.

Has modern society really extinguished the creative spark among our youth?

Experts say creativity is innate, so it can’t really be lost. But it needs to be nurtured.

“It’s not that creativity can necessarily disappear,” said Ron Beghetto, an education psychologist

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LAUSD and Green Dot Should Talk - Locke High School's Ace Academy Does Not Have to Be a Casualty of Business as Usual - Perdaily.com

LAUSD and Green Dot Should Talk - Locke High School's Ace Academy Does Not Have to Be a Casualty of Business as Usual - Perdaily.com:

LAUSD and Green Dot Should Talk - Locke High School's Ace Academy Does Not Have to Be a Casualty of Business as Usual

by Leonard Isenberg
Ace Academy.jpeg
(Mensaje se repite en Español)

(For a national view of public education reform see the end of this blog post)

Several years ago Green Dot Schools then CEO Steve Barr did a video interview for a documentary on public education that I was working on. In it he said, "We can turn around Locke High School in a year." It occurred to me at the time that if you could make up for all the damage that had been done to these students in South Central (I'm not politically correct, since changing the name hasn't changed the reality for the better in this area), then none of us would have to go to 13 years of K-12 education.

It is now years later, where only 14 of the original 500 student class graduated and only 85 of a recent 1400
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Cool Cat Teacher Blog: On Leadership

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: On Leadership:

On Leadership

by coolcatteacher@gmail.com (Victoria A Davis, Cool Cat Teacher)
Day 111: Fly By
Great leaders hire people smarter, more innovative, and better than themselves.

Poor leaders want to be the smartest one in the room. They always make sure they are.

Great leaders care about those who work for and with them... their life stories, their hobbies, their interests. They know that personal lives can effect professional careers more often than not and to know an employee and care is the key to unleashing their potential at work.

Poor leaders only care about themselves. They will tell their grand heroic story of their own
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Dissension within charter ranks | Thoughts on Public Education

Dissension within charter ranks | Thoughts on Public Education:

Fresno exception to summer school cuts - by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess Faced with budget cuts and given flexibility to shift money as they see fit, 25 of California’s 30 largest school districts cut back summer school this year, many of them substantially, compared with three years ago, according to a survey by the ...

Dissension within charter ranks - by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess A multimillion dollar gift from the Walton Family Foundation (see accompanying post) will arm the California Charter Schools Assn. against its many foes, but its immediate challenge is a family feud – a split with the other chief charter advocate in ...

Walton pumps up charter assn. - by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess The Walton Family Foundation, already the largest contributor to the California Charter Schools Association, has pledged $15 million over the next three years, doubling its yearly donation and upping the charter organization’s $14 million budget by a ...
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Why great teachers aren’t enough to make schools work - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Why great teachers aren’t enough to make schools work - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:

Why great teachers aren’t enough to make schools work This *was written by Harold Kwalwasser, former general counsel of the Los Angeles Unified School District, an education consultant and writer in Washington D.C. He is the author of the upcoming book, “Renewal, A User’s Guide to Remaking American ...

How the world looks to today’s college freshmen To today’s college freshmen, the following things are true: *Music has always been available via free downloads. *Fake Christmas trees have always outsold real ones. Read full article >>

What all East Coast schools should do now The earthquake that rocked the Eastern Seaboard on Tuesday is a reminder that schools need to brush up on quake protocol — and while they are at it, throw in a lesson about the theory of plate tectonics. The 5.8 earthquake — which could be the ...
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NYC Educator: Cat Got Your Tongue?

NYC Educator: Cat Got Your Tongue?:

Cat Got Your Tongue?

by Miss Eyre
In connection with NYC Educator's post on cheating yesterday, I wanted to share this gemwith you in case you haven't caught it. Michelle Rhee, media darling of the education world, seems to have gone awfully quiet with respect to investigations into widespread cheating in the D.C. public schools during her tenure as chancellor. It would seem that the cat, perhaps an adorable furry one as pictured at left, has Ms. Rhee's tongue.

I hate to kick someone when she's down, I really do. If she has any sense of shame, disappointment, or confusion about these allegations, I can understand why she would find it difficult to share that. As well, if she feels
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The Washington Teacher: Why is Michelle Rhee Silent on the DC Cheating Scandal?

The Washington Teacher: Why is Michelle Rhee Silent on the DC Cheating Scandal?:

Why is Michelle Rhee Silent on the DC Cheating Scandal?

by Candi Peterson
Disclaimer: I am not writing in my official capacity as WTU General Vice President, but rather as an announced candidate in the 2013 WTU elections and WTU member.
Candi Peterson

Michelle Rhee is refusing to talk to USA Today reporters about the testing cheating scandal that occurred on her watch while she was DC Public Schools Chancellor (2007-10). Hmmmm inquiring minds want to know why Ms. Rhee, with her infamous gift of gab won't open
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