Podcast: The “brutal work” of turnarounds | EdNewsColorado

Podcast: The “brutal work” of turnarounds | EdNewsColorado:

Podcast: The “brutal work” of turnarounds

Written by EdNews staff on Oct 23rd, 2011. | Copyright © EdNewsColorado.org

National education blogger Alexander Russo decided to write a book about the Green Dot Public Schoolstakeover and turnaround of Los Angeles’ troubled Locke High School because it was one of the most audacious efforts ever undertaken by a charter management organization.

Russo’s book, “Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors” came out earlier this year. It gives the Locke turnaround effort a mixed review, and some of its subjects feel the same way about the book.

Alexander Russo

“All of the people in the book are mad at me and most of them are still not talking to me,” Russo said during an appearance in Denver last week. “And that’s sort of a good sign, I think.”

Russo’s blog, This Week in Education, generates occasional controversy in the world of public

Why Teach for America isn’t ‘the answer’ - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Why Teach for America isn’t ‘the answer’ - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:

Why Teach for America isn’t ‘the answer’

By Valerie Strauss

This was written by educator Anthony Cody, who worked for 24 years in the Oakland schools, 18 years teaching science at a high-needs school and six years as a mentor and coach of teachers. He is a National Board-certified teacher. A version of this post appeared on hisEducation Week Teacher blog, Living in Dialogue .

In this post Cody refers to a letter from the Coalition for Teaching Quality -- 82 organizations representing civil rights, parent, community, disability, and education advocates -- demanding that Congress re-commit to the objective that all children should have a well-prepared teacher. It was sent as the Senate and House are wrestling with how to rewrite No Child Left Behind, the law formally known as the Elementary

Schools Matter: Teachers Want Corporate America Assessed

Schools Matter: Teachers Want Corporate America Assessed:

Teachers Want Corporate America Assessed

by Judy Rabin

It has been a week since last Saturday when I stood in Times Square penned in behind barricaded fences in a sea of tens of thousands protesters at the Occupy Wall Street rally. As an education blogger, I was on the lookout for teachers when I saw a man with a large yellow sign that read, “Teachers Want Corporate America Assessed.”

The message was loud and clear -- it is time for educators to turn the table on the corporations and politicians and begin evaluating, measuring and assessing their performance. Here are some well-known statistics: 25 million people are out of work or underemployed, 50 million people have no access to health insurance and one in five children in the U.S. is living in poverty. Everyone but the wealthy are corporate America's collateral damage and the country is on the brink of revolution. So far, the protests have been relatively peaceful but unless there is real change, if history is any

Budget Cuts Now Make it More Expensive for Florida’s Students to Attend UF Than Vanderbilt | Scathing Purple Musings

Budget Cuts Now Make it More Expensive for Florida’s Students to Attend UF Than Vanderbilt | Scathing Purple Musings:

Budget Cuts Now Make it More Expensive for Florida’s Students to Attend UF Than Vanderbilt

by Bob Sikes

Are the realities of a decade of Republican budget cuts to public education finally coming home to roost?

Friday’s Orlando Sentinel story revealed that since 1995, Florida has paid out $754.2 million to companies in an attempt to create jobs in Florida. While 224,286 were promised, only 73,669 were delivered. This equals a cost of $10,237 per job or about 4609 jobs per year. It should be left up to economist as to whether or not this has any value for Floridians. But when considered against Republican cuts to education over the last decade, the picture looks quite different.

In a Gainesville Suneditorial this week, former Florida governor and US Senator Bob Graham was quoted. Wrote

John Thompson: Will Duncan Learn Lessons from Chicago? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

John Thompson: Will Duncan Learn Lessons from Chicago? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher:

John Thompson: Will Duncan Learn Lessons from Chicago?

by Anthony Cody

Guest post by John Thompson.

In 2009, I assumed that President Obama appointed Arne Duncan to split the differences between data-driven and traditional reformers. I sure hoped the President did not think that a non-educator who became the CEO of Chicago schools at the age of 37 would have had the opportunity to learn how schools actually work. I hoped that Duncan understood that the briefings he received in that position were based on numbers that often said little about teaching and learning.

Duncan served at the end of a twenty year experiment in "reform." I doubt that he had much direct knowledge about the reasons why standardized metrics are so flawed, but Duncan had access to the Consortium of Chicago School Research. Surely he could have been influenced by one of the greatest research organizations in education or any other field.

So, the latest study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research (download here) could play an essential

Student loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion this year – USATODAY.com

Student loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion this year – USATODAY.com:

Student loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion this year

By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY

Updated 4d 23h ago

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Students and workers seeking retraining are borrowing extraordinary amounts of money through federal loan programs, potentially putting a huge burden on the backs of young people looking for jobs and trying to start careers.

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  By Butch Dill, AP

  Full-time undergrads borrowed an average of 4,963 last year, according to the College Board.

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By Butch Dill, AP

Full-time undergrads borrowed an average of 4,963 last year, according to the College Board.

The amount of student loans taken out last year crossed the $100 billion mark for the first time and total loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion for the first time this year. Americans now owe more on student loans than on credit cards, reports the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Students are borrowing twice what they did a decade ago after adjusting for inflation, the College Boardreports. Total outstanding debt has doubled in the past five years — a sharp contrast to consumers reducing what's owed on home loans and credit cards.

• MORE: For-profit colleges focus of student loan issue

#ows The $1 Trillion Student Loan Rip-Off: How an Entire Generation Was Tricked into Taking on Crushing Debt That Just Enriches Banks | | AlterNet

The $1 Trillion Student Loan Rip-Off: How an Entire Generation Was Tricked into Taking on Crushing Debt That Just Enriches Banks | | AlterNet:

The $1 Trillion Student Loan Rip-Off: How an Entire Generation Was Tricked into Taking on Crushing Debt That Just Enriches Banks

By Alex Pareene, Salon
Posted on October 20, 2011, Printed on October 23, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152809/the_%241_trillion_student_loan_rip-off%3A_how_an_entire_generation_was_tricked_into_taking_on_crushing_debt_that_just_enriches_banks

USA Today says that at some point this year, student loan debt will exceed $1 trillion, surpassing even credit card debt. Felix Salmon says the number is closer to $550 billion. Either way total student loan debt is rising as other debts have tailed off. Delinquency has increased, too, since the height of the financial crisis.
It’s a huge mess.
Some people have noticed that “student loan debt” comes up a lot among the Wall Street Occupiers and the members of the 99 percent movement. Often, older people, who either attended school when tuition was reasonable, or who didn’t attend college at all in an era when a high school diploma was enough of a qualification for a stable, middle-class career, tend to think this is all the entitled whining of spoiled kids. They don’t understand that these kids accepted a home mortgage worth of debt before they ever even had a regular income, based on phony promises,

A City Education: Two Sides to Every School's Story - Education - GOOD

A City Education: Two Sides to Every School's Story - Education - GOOD:

A City Education: Two Sides to Every School's Story

by Liz Warden

In our A City Education series, two City Year corps members share their experiences working as tutors and mentors in schools in hopes of closing the achievement gap and ending the dropout crisis.

Radio voice recorder? Check. Headphones? Check. Microphone? Check. Reporter's notebook? Check.

After four years as a journalism major at the University of Southern California, I was ready to cover my first protest and first education story. On the March 4, 2010 Day of Action, cities across the country mobilized to draw attention to the public education crisis.

I knew the protest would give me one of the keys to a good story: conflict. Read any newspaper, and you’ll see schools covered in a disheartening, conflict-driven way—discussing controversial policies about budgets, test scores, teacher evaluations, lawsuits, and more. Most education stories remind our country that many of our

Official Google Reader Blog: Upcoming changes to Reader: a new look, new Google+ features, and some clean-up

Official Google Reader Blog: Upcoming changes to Reader: a new look, new Google+ features, and some clean-up:

Upcoming changes to Reader: a new look, new Google+ features, and some clean-up

Posted by Alan Green, Software Engineer

In the next week, we’ll be making some highly requested changes to Google Reader. First, we’re going to introduce a brand new design (like many of Google’s other products) that we hope you love. Second, we’re going to bring Reader and Google+ closer together, so you can share the best of your feeds with just the right circles.

As a result of these changes, we also think it's important to clean things up a bit. Many of Reader's social features will soon be available via Google+, so in a week's time we'll be retiring things like friending, following and shared link blogs inside of Reader.

We think the end result is better than what's available today, and you can sign up for Google+ right now to start prepping Reader-specific circles. We recognize, however, that some of you may feel like the product is no longer for you. That's why we will also be extending Reader's subscription export feature to include the following items. Your data belongs to you, after all, and we want to make sure you can take it with you.

• Your subscriptions
• Your shared items
• Your friends
• Your likes
• Your starred items

Like always, the new Google Reader will be a great place to read and share your feeds. And in addition to Google+, you'll still be able to share to almost any service using Send To. We're looking forward to launching the new features very soon.

Watching math videos for credit « JD2718

Watching math videos for credit « JD2718:

Watching math videos for credit

by jd2718

A question. For my freshmen algebra classes.

I love the Vi Hart videos. I like that Vi looks like the VI at the bottom of some clocks, or like the VI in VI Lenin. But mostly I like how fast she talks and how much she makes fun of math class while talking about nothing but math (and interesting tangent) and how cleverly she drops in cultural references and bad puns and so forth.

I also like the fruity platonic solids, and how to eat candy dots, and the music boxes made of paper, and, well, she’s just kind of cool, you know?

Is there a reason to make kids watch the mathy videos, other than me really liking them, and the elephants? How would I structure their use? Or unstructure them? Could I assign a four minute video for homework, and for “bonus” credit ask them to write up one detail that looked interesting or strange or compelling? Or ask them to

The American Nightmare: Student Debt Will Be A Long-Term Drag On The Economy - Forbes

The American Nightmare: Student Debt Will Be A Long-Term Drag On The Economy - Forbes:

The American Nightmare: Student Debt Will Be A Long-Term Drag On The Economy

With the Occupy Wall Street protests entering their fifth week and growing, one issue that’s frequently brought up is the crushing student debt burdensthat many face. In an era of high unemployment and stagnant wages, student loan defaults have reached their highest level in more than a decade. Outstanding student loan debt is projected to reach $1 trillion by year’s end. Barely more than a third of loan holders are actively paying down their debts, indicating that the burden may be too much for many. What effect will the ballooning student debt load have on the economy in the long term? According to Alan Nasser, professor emeritus of political economy at Evergreen State University, the American dream is about to become the

Declining numbers of blacks seen in math, science - Boston.com

Declining numbers of blacks seen in math, science - Boston.com:

Declining numbers of blacks seen in math, science

By Jesse Washington

AP National Writer / October 23, 2011

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With black unemployment reaching historic levels, banks laying off tens of thousands and law school graduates waiting tables, why aren't more African-Americans looking toward science, technology, engineering and math -- the still-hiring careers known as STEM?

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The answer turns out to be a complex equation of self-doubt, stereotypes, discouragement and economics -- and sometimes just wrong perceptions of what math and science are all about.

The percentage of African-Americans earning STEM degrees has fallen during the last decade. It may seem far-fetched for an undereducated black population to aspire to become chemists or computer scientists, but the door is wide open,

A Teacher’s Voice « My Island View

A Teacher’s Voice « My Island View:

An Educator’s Voice

by tomwhitby

Yesterday, I participated in a wonderful public discussion on Education. The best part about this discussion was that it was with predominantly real educators, people who actually teach, volunteering their time and expertise on the subject of education. They discussed real issues of education and the real impediments to reform from a real educator’s point of view. There were representatives of: teachers, administrators, IT people, school board members, and parents. Dell sponsored the event, so they had three members on the panel, but they were all personnel who worked with teachers in schools for technology solutions in education. Dell never once pitched their product. The only obvious missing representation was that of the student. This point was addressed late in the discussion. The entire five-hour discussion was Live Streamed in real-time and there was a constant flow of back channel tweets during the entire presentation. Back Channeling is a stream of comments on the discussion from observers. Twitter is most often the source of back channels. There was also a chat screen on the Live Stream site. This was a very transparent discussion, which was video-taped and posted online for all to

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Murdoch's horrifying vision of public education

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Murdoch's horrifying vision of public education:

Murdoch's horrifying vision of public education

by Mike Klonsky

Rupert Murdoch (r) shakes hands with former New York City schools chief and now News Corp. employee Joel Klein during Murdoch’s keynote address at the National Summit on Education Reform. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Julianne Hing writes for Colorlines:

Banish the image of a classic American classroom from your mind—chalkboard, desks and all. The future of education has arrived, and next-era classrooms look like, well, call centers: students

When charter schools get too picky - Class Struggle - The Washington Post

When charter schools get too picky - Class Struggle - The Washington Post:

When charter schools get too picky

By Jay Mathews

The Pacific Collegiate School in Santa Cruz, Calif., is a public charter school. It must hold a random lottery when it has more applicants than vacancies. It is not supposed to be selective.

Yet somehow its average SAT score has risen to the top tenth of one percent among all public schools nationally. Less than ten percent of its students are low-income, compared to 40 percent in its city. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that the school is allowed to ask (not require, its principal emphasizes) that every family donate $3,000 and 40 hours of volunteer time a year.

As a supporter of the charter school movement, I get grief from people who say that charters—independent public schools using tax dollars—are private schools in disguise. They are almost always wrong about that, but there are enough Pacific Collegiate situations to make me wonder if the rules need revision.

Places like California, where the law allows some preferences, are more likely to have this problem than D.C. The District’s charter law and

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… - The Best Resources To Help Students Learn About Occupy Wall Street #ows

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… - The Best Resources To Help Students Learn About Occupy Wall Street:

The Best Resources To Help Students Learn About Occupy Wall Street

by Larry Ferlazzo

It seems to me that Occupy Wall Street has grown so much over the past few weeks that it’s pretty difficult to not discuss it in the classroom. I thought readers might find a list of related resources useful.

Two previously posted “The Best..” lists might also be helpful:

The Best Sites For Learning About Protests In History

The Best Resources About Wealth & Income Inequality

Here are my choices for The Best Resources To Help Students Learn About Occupy Wall Street, and I hope readers will contribute more:

Who Are the 99%? Ways to Teach About Occupy Wall Street is from The New York Times Learning Network.