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Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Big Education Ape: 2-7-12 AM NO more school closings: IT'S TIME TO OCCUPY THE PEP! EDition #ASKARNE

Big Education Ape: Ed News Now:
Big Education Ape: Ed News Now

Published by Coopmike48 – 7 news spotters today

NO more school closings: IT'S TIME TO OCCUPY THE PEP!

nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com - IT'S TIME TO OCCUPY THE PEP THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9TH, 5:30PMBrooklyn Technical High School, 29 Fort Greene Pl (between Fulton and Dekalb) in BrooklynNear the Nevins 2/3/4/5 or the Dekalb B/D/N/Q/R Ba...

leoniehaimson

Secretaries Duncan and Solis Meet with DREAMers

ed.gov - Secretaries Hilda Solis and Arne Duncan meet with students during one of Duncan's regular "Student Voices" sessions. Official Department of Education photo by Leslie Williams. “Opportunity.” A powe...

arneduncan

Choice schools not outperforming MPS

jsonline.com - March 29, 2011 | Students in Milwaukee's school choice program performed worse than or about the same as students in Milwaukee Public Schools in math and reading on the latest statewide test, accor...

DianeRavitch

LA Youth » School cuts survey results

layouth.com - In October L.A. Youth asked readers about budget cuts at their schools and more than 1,850 teens responded. I could relate to the students who took the survey because I’ve seen similar bad conditio...

leoniehaimson

Saul Alinsky, Who?

commondreams.org - And now, a word about a good American being demonized, despite being long dead. Saul Alinsky is not around to defend himself, but that hasn’t kept Newt Gingrich from using his name to whip up the f...

fklonsky

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coopmike48 Mary Ann Rankins on how the National Math Science Initiative prepares math teachers | dallasnews.com -goo.gl/qfDEV10 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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coopmike48 Rise & Shine: Upstate school closures set to be accelerated | GothamSchools - goo.gl/UYhFu9 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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coopmike48 The Innovative Educator: The Innovative Educator’s Five Fave Ways to Create a Global Communication Center with Google - goo.gl/lcNco9 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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Obama’s coming "flexibility" debacle

edexcellence.net - yes Michael J. Petrilli / February 6, 2012 An announcement on education waivers is anticipated this week. Don’t expect the reaction to be positive, for it appears that the President and his educa...

DianeRavitch

Bob Lyons. TRS Trustee. What happens next? « Fred Klonsky

preaprez.wordpress.com - Making predictions is hard especially about the future. – Yogi Berra What Happens Next For months now we have seen a carefully orchestrated campaign of news stories designed to convince the people ...

fklonsky

SocietySee all

Stop Corporate Funded Voter Suppression

act.colorofchange.org - Dear President/CEO and Board, I want to alert you to the fact that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – which your company funds – is pushing discriminatory voter ID legislation that ...

mikeklonsky

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Romney campaign takes aim at rival Santorum

news.yahoo.com - CENTENNIAL, Colo. (Reuters) - Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney on Monday focused his campaign's firepower on Rick Santorum to head off the former senator's surge in two of three stat...

mikeklonsky

Rick Perry "not slipping off into the sunset"

cbsnews.com - Texas Gov. Rick Perry, on the campaign trail in late January, 2012, in North Charleston, South Carolina. (Getty Images) (AP) ROUND ROCK, Texas - Rick Perry acknowledged Monday that he's not used t...

mikeklonsky

CrimeSee all

Ca. school closing for 2 days over teacher arrests

boston.com - LOS ANGELES—The superintendent of schools is meeting with worried parents and classes are canceled for two days at a Southern California elementary school where two teachers are suspected of lewd a...

coopmike48

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In my mailbox

michaelklonsky.blogspot.com - Dear Parents and Community Members, As concerned parents we ask that you call Mr. Brizard, Chicago Board of Education CEO, on Tuesday, January 31, and urge him to immediately withdraw pl...

mikeklonsky

Occupy Pittsburgh Facing Noon Eviction Deadline

occupywallst.org - Posted 0 minutes ago on Feb. 6, 2012, 12:03 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt Following a court issued injunction on behalf of BNY Mellon ordering the removal of "all tents and other structures, camping equ...

coopmike48

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Budget overshadows push for local control over schools | UTSanDiego.com

Budget overshadows push for local control over schools | UTSanDiego.com:

Budget overshadows push for local control over schools

Educators like Brown's focus, but worry about the money

Gov. Jerry Brown’s education agenda is framed by an underlying commitment to hand off more control to local school officials, whether it’s over budgets or tests.

“To me, we should set broad goals and have a good accountability system, leaving the real work to those closest to the students,” Brown told Californians in his State of the State address last month.

To that end, Brown has laid down a number of guiding principles in his budget that, coupled with policy proposals, have encouraged school officials eager to cut many of Sacramento’s strings.

However, scattered acclaim over Brown’s policy directions is being muffled by growing alarm over the central element of his proposed 2012-13 budget: relying on voters to approve a November tax increase initiative to provide money to schools. Rejection would result in an

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Schools Matter: Nobody objects to teachers being evaluated on their effectiveness. Using gains on standardized tests is a bad way to do it.

Schools Matter: Nobody objects to teachers being evaluated on their effectiveness. Using gains on standardized tests is a bad way to do it.:

Nobody objects to teachers being evaluated on their effectiveness. Using gains on standardized tests is a bad way to do it.

by skrashen
Need for better evaluation system
Published in USA Today, Feb. 7, 2012
The article "States weaken tenure rights for teachers" emphasizes the importance of evaluating teacher effectiveness. A major problem is that these evaluations are often based on students' gains on standardized tests, called "value-added" measures.
A number of studies have shown that value-added measures are very unstable: Teachers' ratings based on previous years are weak predictors of test scores at the end of a year with new students. A teacher who
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Tuesday is Virtual Lobby Day. The Illinois General Assembly is back. The Civic Committee is back. So are we. « Fred Klonsky

Tuesday is Virtual Lobby Day. The Illinois General Assembly is back. The Civic Committee is back. So are we. « Fred Klonsky:

Tuesday is Virtual Lobby Day. The Illinois General Assembly is back. The Civic Committee is back. So are we.

by Fred Klonsky

TRS Trustee Bob Lyons’ report, published here yesterday, pretty much lays out what is going to happen this year.

Another assault on teacher pensions in Illinois.

The IEA leadership has decided not to have teachers go to Springfield this May for Lobby Day. It’s not a decision is think is smart. But it’s not the first time.

So it is Pension Call Tuesday once again.

Here is the IEA direct email site for contacting your legislators.

Here is the IEA direct email site for contacting the state’s political leadership.

Start today and make a contact every Tuesday.

“Don’t mess with our TRS.

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The Lives and Dreams of Our Children « City School Stories

The Lives and Dreams of Our Children « City School Stories:

The Lives and Dreams of Our Children

by fmurphy

Teacher Stories

Submitted by Angela Chan on February 7, 2012

As a classroom teacher, my position would likely not be among those eliminated within the next weeks to close the $61 million budget gap by June. Still, it was painful to read the list of items on the SRC’s “Options Menu” during that Thursday, January 19th meeting. How many more colleagues’ lives will be affected by massive layoffs, and how will the students cope? School police officers, nurses, bilingual counseling assistants, teachers, music programs, athletics—how do they matter in the lives of our students, and how do students experience the loss of these resources and relationships?

Like many public school students in Philadelphia, my students are adjusting to the instability of losing teachers and staff who were laid off last year. This year we are doing our best to live with our losses and work within our new school community. Besides the sadness of severed relationships with caring adults who are no longer here, we are adjusting to the loss of basic things to run classrooms. When we faced a shortage of trash bags, my

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Will the real Transitional Kindergarten stand up | Thoughts on Public Education

Will the real Transitional Kindergarten stand up | Thoughts on Public Education:

Will the real Transitional Kindergarten stand up - by Kathryn Baron

by Kathryn Baron
It’s getting so that understanding the budgetary machinations of Transitional Kindergarten requires a master’s degree, or maybe a Little Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Pin. In the month since Gov. Brown released his 2012-13 budget plan and recommended canceling Transitional Kindergarten (TK), supporters have found it hard to keep track of what the administration is proposing and [...]

LAO praises Brown budget … - by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess

by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess
With some differences over details, the Legislative Analyst’s Office has commended Gov. Jerry Brown’s overall approach to school spending and what he’d do with the higher taxes he’s asking voters to approve. Where they disagree is over what should happen if the extra money doesn’t come and the state budget has to be cut. In an [...]
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How New Technologies Can End Age-Graded Schools (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How New Technologies Can End Age-Graded Schools (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

How New Technologies Can End Age-Graded Schools (Part 3)

by larrycuban

Using high-tech devices smartly can customize the age-graded school out of existence. But it won’t happen.

Nowhere in Parts 1 and 2 on age-graded schools did I mention the uses of technology. I have claimed in those two posts that, first, as a mid-19th century reform the K-12 organization has been a resounding success. It is the model for school organization here and abroad; its longevity as a reform is unchallenged. Second, while efforts to ungrade schools with teams of teachers leading multi-age classrooms have appeared from time to time, they have never seriously challenged the dominance of age-graded schools.

So what about high-tech as the vehicle for upending the age-graded school? Why not replace self-contained

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School Tech Connect: Books Before Bytes

School Tech Connect: Books Before Bytes:

Books Before Bytes

by noreply@blogger.com (Tim)
I don't disagree with this, and I'm a huge tech fan. There's no reason why we can't have both. This blog is written on a $300 netbook running open source software; if anything in the world were ever scalable, it's this kind of thing.

I hate that word, by the way. Scalable. You know you're talking to someone who isn't actually working with kids when you hear the word scalable. Except when I use it of course.

Anyway, I'm a person who reads books, and I can tell this: the experience is qualitatively different from reading other things. Kids need to read a lot of books--- they need reading workshops, they need to be liberated from the
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Another Pro-Charter School Bill “Rammed Through” Florida Senate Committee | Scathing Purple Musings

Another Pro-Charter School Bill “Rammed Through” Florida Senate Committee | Scathing Purple Musings:

Another Pro-Charter School Bill “Rammed Through” Florida Senate Committee

by Bob Sikes

Reports Matt Dixon in the Florida-Times Union:

TALLAHASSEE – Legislation that would, among other things, require county school districts to share a pot of construction money with charter schools was rammed through a Senate committee Monday, leaving 12 hostile amendments on the table

At issue is about $1.9 billion that 40 school districts — including Duval and St. Johns — raise from taxpayers mostly for construction projects. Current law allows districts to share some of that money with charter schools, but most don’t.

Under the bill sponsored by state Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, that sharing would be

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Jersey Jazzman: Charter Schools=Low Teacher Pay

Jersey Jazzman: Charter Schools=Low Teacher Pay:

Charter Schools=Low Teacher Pay

by Duke
Some of you may be wondering why, as a teacher, I spend so much time questioning the orthodoxy surrounding charters schools. Part of it is that I really can't stand the mendacity surrounding so much of the hype around charters. Part of it is that charter-mania feeds into a notion that everything is just fine for poor kids with the exception of their greedy, disinterested teachers.

But, I must confess, part of it is that charters often seem to be a clear threat to teacher pay, benefits, and workplace protections. Take our friend Amir Khan and his Regis Academy Charter School. Khan, for example, isvery scared of the Tenured Boogeyman:
Also, he said there will be no tenure for teachers and that he believes in
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