A Call to Action! « The Whole Child Blog « Whole Child Education

A Call to Action! « The Whole Child Blog « Whole Child Education:

A Call to Action!

by ASCD Whole Child Bloggers

The We the People initiative is the Obama administration’s effort to provide citizens with a new way to petition the administration to take action on a range of important issues facing the United States. If a petition garners 25,000 signatures within 30 days, White House staff reviews it, sends it to the appropriate policy experts, and issues an official response.

Today ASCD is taking advantage of this initiative and petitioning the administration to make whole child education a national priority. We petition the Obama administration to establish a President’s Council on the Whole Child to help students be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged, and we urge you to add your voice in support of this holistic and child-centered push for education at the executive office level.

Pending ESEA reauthorization bills in Congress continue the No Child Left Behind Act‘s unfortunate legacy of elevating reading and math test scores above all other core academic subjects and above more comprehensive

Should Schools be More or Less Democratic?

Should Schools be More or Less Democratic?:

Should Schools be More or Less Democratic?

by Sam

Like most parents of a young child, I’m trying to decide which environment will be the best for my son when he enters a public school for the first time next fall. At nearly every open house my wife and I attend, cheerful administrators and educators tout the advantage of being a “participatory” school, and of “giving children the opportunity to learn and work in groups.” Send your child here, they tell us, and he’ll acquire a core set of democratic skills – from working collaboratively to acting empathetically – that will help him successfully negotiate our increasingly interconnected global community.

Sounds great, I say – until I open my Sunday New York Times and read a cover story warning against the rise of a new type of groupthink. “Most of us now work in teams,” writes author Susan Cain, “in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in. But there’s a problem

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Common Ground

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Common Ground:

Common Ground

by Charlie Mas

I have been reading a lot of Education Reform material this week. Some of their blogs are even busier than ours. When I read things by the more responsible and less hysterical members of that community I see a lot that makes sense to me. In fact, I see a lot that I could have written myself.

I also read a lot of stuff that makes no sense at all.

So let's try to sort through this and determine if we can't find some common ground.

Education Reform have two primary agenda items: charter schools and "teacher quality". I can't support either of the first two, but I understand their concerns. Perhaps their concerns can be addressed through some more responsible structures than the ones they are proposing. They also seem to be deeply interested in education

Sabrina Stevens Shupe: The Other Trouble With 'Elites'

Sabrina Stevens Shupe: The Other Trouble With 'Elites':

Sabrina Stevens Shupe

Teacher-turned-activist, writer

GET UPDATES FROM SABRINA STEVENS SHUPE

The Other Trouble With 'Elites'

Wednesday morning, Denver progressive radio host David Sirota had DPS Superintendent (and Boulder, Colo. resident) Tom Boasberg on his show. The segment picked up on a point from Sirota's recent opinion piece, "America's dangerously removed elite": the significance of a high-profile school superintendent who, as neither an educator or a DPS parent, has virtually no stakeholder ties to the school district he runs.

Listening to Boasberg's comments, I was annoyed (though by now, not surprised) at his refusal to veer away from the standard DPS talking points, and I was grateful that I and other callers had the chance to address at least some of the problems he brushed over. But I spent the rest of the day irked by the

RheeFirst! » The Education Optimists: baking bread without the yeast

RheeFirst! » The Education Optimists: baking bread without the yeast:

The Education Optimists: baking bread without the yeast

by admin

Written by Liam Goldrick for The Education Optimists. Read the entire post here.
“[Rhee] limits her call to “rethink” teaching policy to “how we assign, retain, evaluate, and pay educators” and to “teacher-layoff and teacher-tenure policies.” (And she casts the issue of retention purely as one about so-called “last-in, first-out” employment policies rather than about school leadership, collaboration or working conditions.)

The utter absence of any focus or mention of teacher development either in this op-ed or in her organization’s

Retired D.C. teacher says he was thrown out of ed data summit

admin at RheeFirst! - 1 minute ago

"The summit, which started on Wednesday and starred Duncan and Rhee, the former D.C. schools chancellor, is part of the Data Quality Campaign, a national effort to promote data-driven education reform. The pamphlet, which you can see here, is titled “Problems with Using ‘Data’ to Fix Our Schools Or, ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out.’ According to Brandenburg, security guards approached him after he had handed out about a dozen pamphlets and told him that he had to leave because the summit hosts didn’t want him there. He was told he could not stay even if he stopped distributing pamphlets, B... more »

The Education Optimists: baking bread without the yeast

admin at RheeFirst! - 1 minute ago

"[Rhee] limits her call to "rethink" teaching policy to "how we assign, retain, evaluate, and pay educators" and to "teacher-layoff and teacher-tenure policies." (And she casts the issue of retention purely as one about so-called "last-in, first-out" employment policies rather than about school leadership, collaboration or working conditions.) The utter absence of any focus or mention of teacher development either in this op-ed or in her organization's (StudentsFirst) expansive policy agenda leaves me wondering if Rhee believes that teachers are capable of learning and improving. If... more »

The Education Reformer Cabal (Rhee, Duncan, Gates) gets called out at a Data Quality Campaign Conference. It was NOT appreciated.

admin at RheeFirst! - 2 hours ago

"One brave retired math teacher (who should know something about numbers and how research is gathered and interpreted) showed up yesterday at the DQC conference providing information on data quality and information about some of the speakers. He gave pamphlets to attendees on how data is easily skewed so education reformers such as Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan can make their claims that data and technology are imperative to ensure education excellence. The DQC didn't want any other research other than theirs presented. He was asked to leave by a policeman and he complied."

Rhee’s credibility questioned at Data Quality Summit– leafletters praised by audience

admin at RheeFirst! - 19 hours ago

On January 18th, the Data Quality Campaign convened their National Data Summit in Washington, DC. Several education speakers were invited, including Michelle Rhee, whose presence was perplexing. During her watch as chancellor of DC schools, the most widespread test cheating in the nation occurred, far surpassing the Atlanta cheating scandal. It was massive data forgery. But Rhee scuttled an investigation into the cheating, continued to make policy decisions, and fired teachers based on the invalid test scores. So much for data quality and integrity. We leafleted at this event. Much t... more »

Rhee critic thrown out of “Summit”. So much for freedom of speech…

admin at RheeFirst! - 20 hours ago

"I was giving out a leaflet discussing — data quality and information about some of the speakers. Not positive towards a couple of the speakers, to be accurate. Someone in the conference administration asked me to give up the leaflets, which I declined to do. Soon I was talking to security officers, who told me that I was not allowed to be in the hotel, at the specific request of the tenant — that is, the “Data Quality Campaign” management. Let me also point out that DCQ is a Gates-funded group. Arne Duncan, and Michelle Rhee are both on the agenda of this conference today as speaker... more »

6 reasons Michelle Rhee is bad for students and schools

admin at RheeFirst! - 1 day ago

"I think that people like Ms. Rhee are instrumental in hurting teachers and public schools in general. On the one hand she talks about the importance of teachers and on the other hand she teams with right-wing governors to undermine those same teachers. She acts as if no one is watching, or no one notices. That to me is a sign of her extreme narcissism."

GFBrandenburg’s updates on Rhee cheating scandals in DC

admin at RheeFirst! - 2 days ago

"The only conclusion I can draw is that AT A MINIMUM a lot of individuals personally and collectively benefited from large scale cheating in DCPS, and also worked together to resist any inquiries that would prove cheating, as much as they could. There was no desire to seek out wrongdoing, partly because that sort of wrongdoing was precisely what gave Michelle Rhee her public reputation and a salary and speaking fees worth many millions of dollars by this point. I also charge that some of the less widespread cheating irregularities have probably resulted in an unknown number of teach... more »

The art of talking simplistically: Rhee talks ed reform and poverty

admin at RheeFirst! - 5 days ago

*Note: Rhee has perfected the art of simplistic thinking, shorn of nuances and packaged in bumper sticker prose. See below, for example.* * And watchthis video by D.C. parents and teachersthat contradicts her simplisms. * "Q: One of our listeners wants to know what impact on a student’s success or failure in school does their home environment and socio-economic status have? Or do you think that a student’s success or failure in school is entirely the teacher’s responsibility? A: A kid’s success in school is not entirely contingent upon any one factor; it’s actually both. When you have ... more »

Rhee spin on defeat of her Ohio anti-collective bargaining bill– the people contradicted themselves

admin at RheeFirst! - 5 days ago

"Q: Do you think your reform efforts will be successful here in Ohio, where in November we saw a pretty resounding defeat of Issue 2 by voters? Rhee: Unfortunately, what happened with the collective bargaining piece is that a lot of different things got mixed in together and I don’t think the defeat of SB 5 at all represents people’s desire to maintain the status quo in education reform. I think quite to the contrary, if you look at polling in the state it does show that an overwhelming percentage of Ohioans really do want to see change in the public schools. They know that reform is... more »

“Michelle Rhee” is to “Data” as “Counterfeiter” is to “Dollar Bill”

admin at RheeFirst! - 6 days ago

There are very few public figures who have a looser connection with the truth, with facts, and with data, than Michelle Rhee. But she’s coming to DC next week as a featured panel member of something called the Data Quality Campaign, along with Arne Duncan, another educational DEformer who is unfortunately head of the US Education Department. The event details are here: it takes place 1:30 to 5pm at the Renaissance Washington Hotel next Wednesday 1-18-2012 on the south edge of Mount Vernon Square here in DC. It appears that the panel will advocate national, multiple-choice testing for... more »

Principal fired by Rhee named Person of the Year

admin at RheeFirst! - 1 week ago

*See related video here* "'He was booted [by former chancellor Michelle Rhee] out of Hardy Middle School, which he had built into a high-performing institution. Then, he was forced to sit for months in a central-office cubicle before being shipped to what some described as Siberia: a struggling school east of the Anacostia River that had ripped through several administrative leaders,' Barras wrote. Patrick Pope was expected to quit. Instead, he has turned the tiny elementary from a troubled under-achiever to an award-winning success that was recently given a $500,000 federal grant t... more »

Watch Michelle Rhee pull a Romney: loves to fire people

admin at RheeFirst! - 1 week ago

From Michael Winerip's New York Times article: "*Always, she preens for the cameras. Early in her chancellorship, she was trailed for a story by the education correspondent of 'PBS NewsHour,' John Merrow.* *At one point, Ms. Rhee asked if his crew wanted to watch her fire a principal. 'We were totally stunned,' Mr. Merrow said.* *She let them set up the camera behind the principal and videotape the entire firing. 'The principal seemed dazed,' said Mr. Merrow. 'I’ve been reporting 35 years and never seen anything like it.'"* It takes a strong stomach, but you can watch the video belo... more »

Are D.C. school officials hiding test data?

admin at RheeFirst! - 1 week ago

*Note: Although these tests occurred in 2011, one year after Rhee's departure from DC, the DC school personnel that administered them are the same personnel and system that she put in place.* "Is this an intentional effort to deny parents, voters and taxpayers the information they need to judge the integrity of D.C. test results? [instead of releasing the results DC] is going to hire another consultant to do another investigation. That will likely keep parents, teachers and students in the dark for a long time. Caveon visited some schools and did some interviews. In nearly every cas... more »

Unsolved Mystery: DC Public Schools Cheating Scandal– I​s there a cover up?

admin at RheeFirst! - 1 week ago

"The Washington DC school system's failure to hold higher-ups accountable for their 2008-2010 test cheating scandal has led to more speculation that some are intentionally stonewalling attempts to get at the truth. ... ... Mayor Gray took the opportunity to reference Michelle Rhee’s tenure in DC. Gray suggested the investigations “do nothing to tarnish former Chancellor Michelle Rhee…We’re not looking to continue or detract from her legacy…the results speak for themselves.” Rhee built her reputation on improving test scores in DC and is currently criss-crossing the country pushing ed... more »

WashPost: 2011 DCPS suspicious erasures decline– so do test scores

admin at RheeFirst! - 1 week ago

That’s a drop of nearly 50 percent from 253 classrooms in 2009. The 128 classrooms represent less than 3 percent of the total number of classrooms in which students were tested. ... The 2011 numbers continue a trend in which the decline in suspicious erasures--which officials credit to improved security--has been accompanied by flat or falling test scores. The 2011 data released this week show the highest concentration of high-erasure classrooms in the third grade, where 21 of 303 rooms (6.9 percent) were flagged in math tests and 6.3 percent in reading exams. Why erasure rates are ... more »