School Tech Connect: The Crane Deal's A Crock

School Tech Connect: The Crane Deal's A Crock:

The Crane Deal's A Crock

by noreply@blogger.com (Tim)

I started to regret saying anything positive about the Crane “deal” the instant I heard that Rahm had praised it. In the very same nanosecond, I started to worry that the deal won't be what it seems, that it would be steeped in patronage, and that it would somehow turn out to be a disaster for the neighborhood Crane serves and the teachers who work there. That's just how things roll under Rahm.

Of course, I could be wrong, but in the cold light of day this is what I started to realize. Let me list these things as

Things That Will Never Be Addressed

by noreply@blogger.com (Tim)

For example, this matter.

We are concerned that not all children will receive a well-rounded education, especially kids who are in schools with a high achievement gap and high drop-out rate. We do not believe that extending the day to include only more core subjects will address the achievement gap that separates too many of our city’s children.

Here's what's going to happen. There will be news articles about how wonderful recess, art music, and PE are and how quality, not just quantity is the new plan. Then, down the road, you'll start reading in non-

Rahm Emanuel: Protests over school closings ‘noise associated with change’ - Chicago Sun-Times

Rahm Emanuel: Protests over school closings ‘noise associated with change’ - Chicago Sun-Times:

Rahm Emanuel: Protests over school closings ‘noise associated with change’

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com February 23, 2012 2:34PM

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Mayor Rahm Emanuel visited with preschoolers at Metropolitan Family Services at 3249 N. Central Ave. L-r: Yeasbeth Ortiz, Serena Reyes and Izabella Lagunas-Hernandez. | Al Podgorski~Chicago Sun-Times

RELATED STORIES

• Board of Education OKs shake-ups for 17 schools

Updated: February 24, 2012 2:24AM

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Thursday he’s sensitive to the “noise associated with change” caused by the decision to close or turn around 17 underperforming schools, but he said he’s more concerned about the deafening “silence of failure.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. and Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis denounced the school board’s actions as “educational apartheid,” noting that the overwhelming majority of students impacted are black and brown.

On Thursday, Emanuel countered the racism charge with a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that’s also a

Occupy Dallas interrupts DISD meeting, members escorted out | Dallas ISD Blog | dallasnews.com

Occupy Dallas interrupts DISD meeting, members escorted out | Dallas ISD Blog | dallasnews.com:

Occupy Dallas interrupts DISD meeting, members escorted out

by Tawnell Hobbs/Reporter

Some Occupy Dallas members were removed from a Dallas ISD board meeting on Thursday after breaking out in loud chant. The group was escorted out of the auditorium by DISD police. They were protesting various issues, including the board's recent decision to close 11 schools and its approval to extend teacher workdays by 45 minutes without more pay. Below is a video that I shot of the disruption.

DISD trustees approve changes to residency policy, Alliance-AFT protests before meeting

by Tawnell Hobbs/Reporter

(Photo caption: Alliance-AFT teachers association held a protest before DISD's board meeting got underway on Thursday.The members were protesting a 45-minute workday extension and the possibility of DISD outsourcing custodial work). From the board meeting: The Dallas ISD superintendent and some top-level employees will still have to live in the school district's boundaries under an amendment approved by trustees on Thursday. But some top employees, who mainly make up the third-tier of the district's leadership, will no longer be required to reside within the district under the change. Board president Lew Blackburn called the amendment "a compromise,"

Why The New York Times Is Asking Me To Validate Myself | The Jose Vilson

Why The New York Times Is Asking Me To Validate Myself | The Jose Vilson:

Why The New York Times Is Asking Me To Validate Myself

by Jose

Not sure if you’ve heard, but, against their own wishes -ahem-, the NYC Department of Education is releasing their infamous Teacher Data Reports, a set of papers ostensibly compiling a teacher’s student scores on English and Math scores from 3rd to 8th grade to determine their effectiveness, normalizing scores for effects like poverty and growth. For anyone that finds this as absurd as I do, you’ll know that not only is there a huge margin of error on using such a report to determine teacher effectiveness, it’s so narrow and limited that parents probably won’t get much information about the teacher they

NYC Educator: Bullets Are Only One Small Part of the Gun

NYC Educator: Bullets Are Only One Small Part of the Gun:

Bullets Are Only One Small Part of the Gun

by NYC Educator

So says Mike Klonsky, on whether VAM, or value-added, should be part of any evaluation system. This notwithstanding, there are various ways of looking at New York's new evaluation system, and UFT High School VP Leo Casey may not see eye to eye with Klonsky.

I'd like nothing more than to agree with Casey. This would mean that all my colleagues and I were not in danger of arbitrary and capricious dismissal based on the junk science that is VAM. In fact, I very much admired Casey's recent piece, In Bad Faith, which nailed the DOE on its abject hypocrisy in the negotiation process.

However, I tend to agree with Diane Ravitch and

Missouri Education Watchdog: In Ten Years, Maybe the Food Police in Schools will be Arrested for their Actions Which Led to...Eating Disorders

Missouri Education Watchdog: In Ten Years, Maybe the Food Police in Schools will be Arrested for their Actions Which Led to...Eating Disorders:

In Ten Years, Maybe the Food Police in Schools will be Arrested for their Actions Which Led to...Eating Disorders

by stlgretchen

The government obsession of obesity and controlling student food choices may result in unintended consequences.

Producing fit workers for the society might just boomerang into producing a generation of children with increasing emotional problems. While the food police is obsessing about regulating calorie and

GATEECA, The Department of Eugenics, and Barack Obama’s Racism To the Top – Part I « Living Behind the Gates

GATEECA, The Department of Eugenics, and Barack Obama’s Racism To the Top – Part I « Living Behind the Gates:

GATEECA, The Department of Eugenics, and Barack Obama’s Racism To the Top – Part I

by livingbehindthegates

“As night-fall does not come at once, neither does oppression…It is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air — however slight — lest we become victims of the darkness.” ~ Justice William O. Douglas

“Historically, eugenics has been used as a justification for coercive state-sponsored discrimination and human rights violations, such as forced sterilization of persons who appear to have – or are claimed to have – genetic defects, the killing of the institutionalized and, in some cases, outright

GATEECA – Part 2

by livingbehindthegates

Vincent: [narrating] “I belonged to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of your skin. No, we now have discrimination down to a science.” ~ Gattaca, IMDb

Question: Are all lives really equal and do they all require measurement to determine their value?

GATEECA – Part 3

by livingbehindthegates

Human Farming

Racism to the Top – Human Farming in Rahm Emanuel’s Mayoral controlled Chicago:

The Ed Show – Education for the Fittest

The rest were dispensable, born to be a burden to the rest.

GATEECA – Part 4

by livingbehindthegates

Question: Is all this talk of Eugenics limited to my paranoia or to conspiracy theorists? Am I alone in connecting education and Eugenics in the modern era of technology?

Answer: In a 2011 piece, Eugenic Legacies Still Influence Education by David Cohen, he writes:

“One of the most important guiding principles in education is in loco parentis – we are morally and legally obliged to act “in place of the parent” when children are in our care. That principle is the main reason for the sharply negative and visceral reaction I had when I read about John F. Kennedy High School using color-coded identification cards based on student test scores, and then a later article describing a similar program at Cypress High School (both in Orange County, California). According to the Orange County Register, the different cards also led to different

Schools Matter: Lobbyists Making the Rounds In Tallahassee for Bill Offering More in Corporate Welfare Check for Charters

Schools Matter: Lobbyists Making the Rounds In Tallahassee for Bill Offering More in Corporate Welfare Check for Charters:

Lobbyists Making the Rounds In Tallahassee for Bill Offering More in Corporate Welfare Check for Charters

by Jim Horn

From Miami Herald:

By Kathleen McGrory and Scott Hiaasen
shiaasen@miamiherald.com

A legislative plan to give charter schools a cut of local school districts’ construction money would steer millions of additional dollars to large charter-school networks that are already sitting on tens of millions of dollars in cash, records show.

The charter-school industry is lobbying hard in the capital to gain a share of tax dollars raised by school districts to cover the construction and maintenance costs of traditional public schools — tax revenue that has dropped dramatically in recent years with plummeting real-estate values

ASHES ON THE FLY « Teachers Fight Back

ASHES ON THE FLY « Teachers Fight Back:

ASHES ON THE FLY

by alkleen

Just saw a television news piece about Ash Wednesday. There was a local priest who was dispensing ashes to parishioners on the street as they drove by in their cars. The priest was acting like a worker at a fast food drive through window. Parishioners drove up, rolled down their window, the priest placed the ashes on their foreheads and blessed them, and off they drove. Ashes on the fly! What next ? And what does this have to do with education ?

This might be a stretch, but the above incident reminds me of what has taken place in our schools and with a whole generation of parents when it comes to the area of self-esteem for children. Our parents and schools have been dishing out endless praise and rewards for our children in the hopes of instilling self-esteem in them. It’s as if the children ride by on their bikes while the teachers and parents hand out doses of self-esteem. The children

Questionable Signatures End California Parent Trigger Effort | Scathing Purple Musings

Questionable Signatures End California Parent Trigger Effort | Scathing Purple Musings:

Questionable Signatures End California Parent Trigger Effort

by Bob Sikes

Is this what Ricks Scott wants in Florida communities to leverage in his charter school cronies? From Sean Cavanagh in State Ed Watch:

A high-profile attempt to use a “parent-trigger” law to convert a traditional public California school to a charter was rejected by the local school board, after divisions over the plans surfaced in the community.

The superintendent of the Adelanto School District, northeast of Los Angeles, recommended that the board reject a parent petition to make the changeover, saying only 235 of 460 signatures submitted could be verified, short of the threshold necessary for the changeover, according to theLos Angeles Times. The board agreed, by a 5-0 vote.

A group of parents in the community had pushed to convert Desert Trails Elementary to a charter

CARE TO TALK ABOUT LAUSD STAFF DISCIPLINARY PROCESS? (Interesa hablar del LAUSD PROCESO DISCIPLINARIO DEL PERSONAL?) - Perdaily.com

CARE TO TALK ABOUT LAUSD STAFF DISCIPLINARY PROCESS? (Interesa hablar del LAUSD PROCESO DISCIPLINARIO DEL PERSONAL?) - Perdaily.com:

CARE TO TALK ABOUT LAUSD STAFF DISCIPLINARY PROCESS? (Interesa hablar del LAUSD PROCESO DISCIPLINARIO DEL PERSONAL?)

by Leonard Isenberg

(Mensaje se repite en Español)

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

If you are finding what Superintendent John Deasy is saying about the LAUSD disciplinary process to be something less than factual, now is your chance to have your say, while maintaining you anonymity. Sharon McNary of KPCC is interested in hearing from you and will respect your anonymity, because she understands the justifiable fear of reprisals you might have.

If you don't like what has been going on and you would like public education at LAUSD to get back to something resembling the institution that once existed,

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The noise of change

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The noise of change:

The noise of change

by Mike Klonsky

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Thursday he’s sensitive to the “noise associated with change.” -- Sun-Times

Somehow the words, "sensitive" and "Rahm" just don't sound right in the same sentence. Chicago's mayor claims he's in a big hurry to make "radical" change and that his so-called reforms can't wait.

“I cannot wait another year and allow a child to be caught in a school system that, for five years running, has been on the watch list or the troubled list with no prospect of getting off of it. … Nothing to me is worse in the sense of discrimination than leaving kids in a system that, year-in-

"Survival of the Fittest" in Rahm's Chicago

by Mike Klonsky

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