Thursday, September 22, 2011

Big Education Ape: 9-22-11 AM Low poverty rates = high scores on int'l tests EDition

Big Education Ape: Ed News Now:

Published by Coopmike48 – 5 news spotters today

Low poverty rates = high scores on int'l tests

michaelklonsky.blogspot.com - An email from a colleague in California caused me to reflect once again on the results of the 2009 PISA exams. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide evaluation o...

mikeklonsky

Global Effort to Recruit Teachers Expands

nytimes.com - Teach for All, an international network of educational nonprofit groups modeled on Teach for America, has grown rapidly since its founding four years ago and now has some 1,500 teachers heading cla...

DianeRavitch

TODAYonline | Singapore | Taking the stress out of school

todayonline.com - Taking the stress out of school MOE will review practices to give kids 'holistic, balanced' education: Education Minister Heng by Tan Weizhen 12:54 PM Sep 22, 2011 SINGAPORE - In a move to steer sc...

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coopmike48 Elizabeth Warren Class Warfare Video | Mediaite - http://t.co/Px4tKMvI7 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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Fischer Interview on New Orleans Charter Schools - Video

bloomberg.com - Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Kelly Fischer, one of the plaintiffs in a special-education discrimination lawsuit against the state of Louisiana, says last year she was discouraged by a number of charter ...

leoniehaimson

Santorum Google | Santorum Definition | What Is Santorum

mediaite.com - GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has, for a while now, had to contend with a rather unique PR problem: Dealing with columnist Dan Savage‘s overwhelmingly successful campaign to introduce a ne...

coopmike48

Blog U.: Long Distance Mom: Not Even Past - Mama PhD

insidehighered.com - By Elizabeth Coffman September 21, 2011 7:18 pm EDT I’ve seen two films recently that reflect on the lives of women who work away from their children for jobs, opportunity and money. The Help, base...

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Rupert Murdoch giving keynote at Jeb Bush’s ed reform summit

schoolingintheownershipsociety.blogspot.com - “We were motivated to invite Mr. Murdoch after reading his eloquent speech before G8 Summit on leveraging the power of technology to improve education.” -- Jaryn Emhof, communications director fo...

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‘Unfailing’ ignorance - NYPOST.com

nypost.com - On the scale of dumb and dumber, it is hard to top this one: a football player, his team losing by 50 points, scores a TD and spikes the ball in the end zone in macho triumph. Or this one: New York...

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Bronx DA seek indictments for 17 cops

nydailynews.com - Getty "It's going to be the biggest scandal this department has seen in a long time," said one source said of the ticket-fixing investigation. Prosecutors will ask a grand jury Tuesday to indict 17...

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A Day of Shame for Georgia

readersupportednews.org - Bianca Jagger writes: "The execution of Troy Davis is nothing less than state-sanctioned murder. Today, the 20th of September 2011, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles refused clemency t...

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Troy Davis wants polygraph ahead of execution

reuters.com - ATLANTA | Wed Sep 21, 2011 8:59am EDT ATLANTA (Reuters) - A condemned man set to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday for killing a Georgia police officer in a high-profile case wants a pol...

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Hot News & Views | AlterNet

alternet.org - It's bedtime, children, so put on your jammies, scootch under the covers, and I'll tell you another "Perry Tale."Once again, the Texas-governor-who-wants-to-be-your-president is flitting hither, th...

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Home - Inside Higher Ed

insidehighered.com - February 24, 2011 The return of ROTC to some campuses -- seemingly assured by the end of the military's policy against gay service members -- may be hitting a few bumps.More February 24, 2011 City ...

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Common National Standards Not the Right Fix For Our Schools « PWC Education Reform Blog

Common National Standards Not the Right Fix For Our Schools « PWC Education Reform Blog:

Common National Standards Not the Right Fix For Our Schools

September 21, 2011 — pwceducationreform

Common national standards are not the right fix for our public schools, so said Jay Greene in his testimony before the US House Subcommittee on Early Education, Elementary, and Secondary Education. Jay has provided his written testimony on his blog here.

Jay says that the assumption underlying the push for common national standards is bogus:


“There is a large effort underway to change educational standards, curriculum, and assessments by centralizing the process. This effort is based on the belief that we will get more rigorous standards and better student outcomes if standards, curriculum, and assessments are determined, or at least coordinated, at the national level. It began with the use of Race to the Top to push states to adopt the Common Core standards, but will also require national curriculum and assessments to be fully implemented.

I believe this centralized approach is mistaken. The best way to produce high academic standards and better

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The Killing of Troy Davis | The Nation

The Killing of Troy Davis | The Nation:

The Killing of Troy Davis

The Editors
September 21, 2011

If the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has its way, Troy Anthony Davis will be killed by lethal injection at 7 pmon September 21. His body will be carried out of the maximum-security prison in Jackson, the word “homicide” printed on his death certificate—the thirty-fourth US prisoner put to death this year.

The killing of Troy Davis would mark a devastating end to a case that inspired a global mobilization against the death penalty. Davis, 42, has faced execution four times in the past four years for a 1989 murder in Savannah, despite serious doubts about his guilt. His conviction hinged on nine witnesses—no physical evidence linked him to the crime—seven of whom later recanted their testimony. Some described being coerced by police. Others point to a different man—the eighth witness, who first implicated Davis—as the real killer. “If I knew then what I know now,” juror Brenda Forrest said in 2009, “Troy Davis would not be on death row.”

Forrest was one of several people who met with members of the pardons board on September 19 to plead for Davis’s life. Others


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Reforming teacher evaluations: Let’s do it | Thoughts on Public Education

Reforming teacher evaluations: Let’s do it | Thoughts on Public Education:

Reforming teacher evaluations: Let’s do it - by John Affeldt and Melia Franklin

by John Affeldt and Melia Franklin
Ask students what made the most difference to their education and chances are they will point to an especially good – or bad – teacher. Ask parents about the quality of their child’s education and one of the first topics they’ll discuss will be the quality of their child’s teachers. Every California student deserves a [...]

Midyear cuts looking likelier - by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess

by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess
In the latest Field Poll, two-thirds of voters said it was a bad idea for the Legislature to impose automatic midyear cuts in K-12 and higher education if revenues come up short. Based on the latest economic data, a lot of Californians could be angry come January. The state’s cash receipts in August, combined with the [...]
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Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… - …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… - …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL:

“How Many Really?” Is An Interesting Tool How Many Really? is a BBC interactive that shows you how many people were affected by or participated in major historical events, and then you can compare other numbers with them. It’s a sister site to last year’s BBC’s tool, How Big Really? That ...
“Talking WeeMee” & Other iPhone Apps For Speaking Practice I’m just starting to use iPhone apps with my English Language Learners, and they’re loving it. These puppet/avatar apps reduce student fear because the “puppets” are on the screen with their voices, but their faces are not visible. I’ve previously ...
YouTube Makes Dramatic Addition To Video Editing Features Yesterday, I updated Not The “Best,” But A List… Of Online Video Editorswith new additions from YouTube and other sites. Today, YouTube has just announced another major upgrade to their video-editing abilities by integrating the Magisto tool (that’s ...
“Reasons For The “Downgrade” In Respect For Teachers” Reasons For The “Downgrade” In Respect For Teachers is the title of this week’s teacher advice column I just posted at Education Week Teacher. It features guest responses from the President of the National Education Association and from Barnett ...
This Week’s “Links I Should Have Posted About, But Didn’t” I have a huge backlog of resources that I’ve been planning to post about in this blog but, just because of time constraints, have not gotten around to doing so. Instead of letting that backlog grow bigger, I regularly grab a few and list them here ...
YouTube Makes Dramatic Addition To Video Editing Features Yesterday, I updated Not The “Best,” But A List… Of Online Video Editorswith new additions from YouTube and other sites. Today, YouTube has just announced another major upgrade to their video-editing abilities by integrating the Magisto tool (that’s ...
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The problem with Obama’s plan to issue NCLB waivers - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

The problem with Obama’s plan to issue NCLB waivers - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:

The problem with Obama’s plan to issue NCLB waivers

By

President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan would do well to listen to Daniel Domenech on the subject of issuing states waivers from key provisions of No Child Left Behind.

Obama is expected to announce on Friday the details of his plan to issue the waivers, according to this story by my colleague, Lyndsey Layton.

Last month administration officials announced that because of the


Republican bills in Congress don’t solve NCLB’s main problems

by Valerie Strauss

This was written by Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, a Boston-based non-profit dedicated to ending the misuse of tests . A different version was published on the National Journal Education blog.

By Monty Neill

If you're a parent or teacher fed up with the way high-stakes testing drives more and more of what happens in school, a new bill from Sen. Lamar Alexander and some Republican colleagues offers little hope of relief. Their package of five bills to change the federal No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) would help by getting rid of the disastrous Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) provisions which mandate all schools reach 100% proficiency by 2014. However, the bills keep too much testing in place and does nothing to address the way the current law increases educational inequity by turning schools for poor children into test prep centers and little else.

Read full article >>
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Obama prepares to revamp ‘No Child Left Behind’ education law - The Boston Globe

Obama prepares to revamp ‘No Child Left Behind’ education law - The Boston Globe:

Key parts of schools law to end

Obama team sees flaws in Bush-era plan, alters rules

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post / September 22, 2011
Text size – +

WASHINGTON - President Obama is poised to broaden federal influence in schools by scrapping key elements of No Child Left Behind, the George W. Bush administration’s signature education law, and substituting his own brand of school reform.

While unpopular with Republicans in Congress and some in the educational establishment, the move is drawing applause from governors struggling to meet the demands of the nine-year-old law.

Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are scheduled tomorrow to detail plans to waive some of the law’s toughest requirements, including the goal that every student be proficient in math and reading by 2014, or their schools could

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We're firing our best teachers | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/22/2011

We're firing our best teachers | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/22/2011:

We're firing our best teachers

By Michelle Rhee

Kristen Briggs was one of about a thousand educators who lost their jobs teaching in Philadelphia schools this year. But to her students, she was much more than a statistic.

Briggs, who taught special education at Lincoln High School, is the kind of teacher any principal would hasten to hire - and never willingly let go. But Briggs' principal didn't have a choice in the matter.

She was laid off under an antiquated and harmful policy known as "last in, first out," or "LIFO" for short. It requires that when layoffs occur, the last teachers hired are the first fired - regardless of their effectiveness as teachers.

This is the policy under which all those Philadelphia teachers were removed from their jobs when the district had to cut costs this summer. Pennsylvania requires a LIFO approach whenever budget shortfalls lead to layoffs.

Layoffs are always upsetting, but going about them without considering teachers' performance makes them much worse - especially for children. Nothing in our schools is as critical to students' learning as the work of teachers.

Common sense suggests that LIFO ought to be scrapped, and research confirms it. An Urban

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Daily Kos: Why Walden matters now

Daily Kos: Why Walden matters now:

Why Walden matters now

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

is the title of this remarkable Boston Globe op ed by Wen Stephenson, a former editor of the paper's Ideas section. He is go to Walden before heading into Boston

to join the Moving Planet rally at Columbus Park and call for the world’s leaders to get serious about moving beyond fossil fuels.

But this is not about environmentalism. Stephenson makes the point that Walden and Thoreau's other writings were about

“Nature,’’ as he wrote in “Walking’’ and “man as an inhabitant, or part and parcel of Nature.’’ It was our relationship, as human beings - physically, morally, spiritually, politically - to the world in which
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The Educated Reporter: Rare Opportunity for Student Journalists: Apply Now for IRE Training

The Educated Reporter: Rare Opportunity for Student Journalists: Apply Now for IRE Training:

Rare Opportunity for Student Journalists: Apply Now for IRE Training

by Emily Richmond

Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) is looking for a few good students journalists who want to be great.
IRE, along with the Education Writers Association and the Student Press Law Center, is preparing to launch the 2012 Campus Coverage Project, the third year of a program that helps college and university students sharpen their investigative skills.
Applications are now being accepted from college students nationwide, and 75 individuals will be selected to participate.
Here's what you need to know:
*Students will take part in a workshop from Jan. 5-8, 2012 at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University in Phoenix.
*Campus-coverage issues and overall reporting techniques and skills will be the focus of the sessions.
*Travel and lodging expenses will be covered, courtesy of the Lumina Foundation.
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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: IN THE MAILBOX

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: IN THE MAILBOX:

IN THE MAILBOX

Dear Mike,

At 11:08 pm, the state of Georgia killed Troy Davis. Just before he was executed, Troy maintained his innocence, urged people to dig deeper into the case to find the truth, and said "For those about to take my life, may God have mercy on your souls, may God bless your souls." It's a tragic day for Troy, for his family, and for equality, fairness, and justice.

It's hard to know what to say at a time like this. In this moment, and in the days and weeks before Troy's execution, we've felt all kinds of things — anger, sadness, inspiration, hope and hopelessness. This is a time to mourn and
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Let’s Get on With the Business of the SRC « City School Stories

Let’s Get on With the Business of the SRC « City School Stories:

Let’s Get on With the Business of the SRC

by fmurphy

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy on September 22, 201

Now that Arlene Ackerman has been forced out as the superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia and Robert Archie, chairman of the School Reform Commission has resigned his post, can we at last concentrate on the issues that will most affect our school students?

For most of the last few months, we have been preoccupied with the drama that has swirled around Ackerman’s tumultuous tenure and her acrimonious departure. Archie’s alleged involvement in backroom dealings concerning the awarding of school management contracts has likewise dominated our attention.

The public outrage directed at these two failed leaders has been a distraction. The amount of media attention they received regarding their missteps has unfortunately overshadowed many more important matters, e.g. the

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NYC Educator: Classroom Technology: If It Ain't Broke, It Will Be Soon

NYC Educator: Classroom Technology: If It Ain't Broke, It Will Be Soon:

Classroom Technology: If It Ain't Broke, It Will Be Soon

by Miss Eyre
I saw this article in GothamSchools that discusses how Teach for America teachers were given iPads from Apple. It sparked some thoughts I've had recently about technology in the classroom.

First of all, I'm a technology skeptic when it comes to the classroom. That doesn't mean that I don't believe kids need instruction on how to use technology effectively, creatively, ethically, and safely; of course they do, and schools should provide it in 2011. That's all fine. What I mean, though, is that I'm skeptical of using
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An Urban Teacher's Education: Classroom Mangament 101

An Urban Teacher's Education: Classroom Mangament 101:

Classroom Mangament 101

by James Boutin
It's about three weeks into our school year, and I'm only just beginning to tread water rather than drown. I am, once again, a new teacher. And while I don't have to relearn a lot of important teaching skills that can act like anvils attached to the ankles of a teacher new to the profession, I do have some big hurdles to clear, which include: developing a discipline system that works with my school, developing a data collection system with the materials I have in my classroom, writing and implementing a curriculum for my world history course and advisory, developing relationships with families and staff members, and tweaking the existing curriculum provided by the district for my language arts course.

As a result of the time I've devoted to my new classroom, I've been away from education policy for a while. In fact, I don't have a clue what's going on in the world of education outside of my school (and the Tacoma teacher's strike). Therefore, I thought I'd blog on - get this - teaching.

This year, I have two freshman language arts classes, one freshman advisory, and one sophomore world history
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