Latest News and Comment from Education

Show All

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Big Education Ape: 2-28-12 AM State board re-examines statewide rights for charters EDition #soschat

Big Education Ape: PARENTS CAN!:
Big Education Ape: PARENTS CAN!

Published by Coopmike48 – 7 news spotters today

To Be Black at Stuyvesant High

nytimes.com - LIKE a city unto itself, Stuyvesant High School, in Lower Manhattan, is broken into neighborhoods, official and otherwise. The math department is on the 4th of its 10 floors; biology is on the 7th....

DianeRavitch

Analyzing Released NYC Value-Added Data Part 2

garyrubinstein.teachforus.org - In part 1 I demonstrated there was little correlation between how a teacher was rated in 2009 to how that same teacher was rated in 2010. So what can be more crazy than a teacher being rated highl...

leoniehaimson

Tested : CJR

cjr.org - Eleven New York City education reporters were huddling on e-mail last October 20, musing over ways to collectively pry a schedule of school closings out of a stubborn press office, when the chatter...

DianeRavitch

U.K.'s version of Duncan in bed with Murdoch, Klein

schoolingintheownershipsociety.blogspot.com - Brit Ed Sec. Michael Gove "I'd expect in the next [few] months we'd be making some acquisitions," Klein told the Financial Times. "There's the willingness to put in significant capital." The mos...

mikeklonsky

State Eyes Shielding Teachers - WSJ.com

online.wsj.com - As New York City parents and teachers struggled Monday to make sense of recently published schoolteacher rankings, education officials considered making future releases illegal to protect a fragile...

leoniehaimson

Live Twitter stream on

@coopmike48/big-edu-ape-news-11

coopmike48 profile

coopmike48 Have kids? Then please sit down with them at the #KidsAreHeroeswebsite. bit.ly/bTvvNd #DT@KidsAreHeroesabout 1 minute ago · reply · retweet · favorite

coopmike48 profile

coopmike48 Roxbury first-graders to recite ‘I Have a Dream’ speech for Obama - The Boston Globe - goo.gl/f8iBf4 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite

EducationSee all

SocietySee all

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

michaelklonsky.blogspot.com - “This is an amazing panel, so I’m thrilled to be part of it,” Mr. Duncan said in his opening comment. Investigator Richard Hyde “I’m shocked that the secretary of education would be fraternizing ...

mikeklonsky

PoliticsSee all

BusinessSee all

New State Bank Bills Address Credit and Housing Crises

dissidentvoice.org - Seventeen states have now introduced bills for state-owned banks, and others are in the works. Hawaii’s innovative state bank bill addresses the foreclosure mess. County-owned banks are being pro...

coopmike48

LeisureSee all

My Friends, The Cops | The Jose Vilson

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - My Friends, The Cops | The Jose Vilson:My Friends, The Copsby JoseBefore the turn of the century, my friends and I took spring walks from school to home, following the route of the M14D, which runs...

coopmike48

Arts community demanding spotlight in Las Vegas

articles.boston.com - The five-acre campus will host touring Broadway shows, jazz artists and classical singers, as well as the Las Vegas Philharmonic and Nevada Ballet Theatre, two local institutions often drowned out ...

coopmike48

WorldSee all

Clifton teachers rally for new contract

northjersey.com - CLIFTON – Teachers rallied outside school district headquarters Monday for a second time this month to urge management and their union to strike an agreement on a new contract and end a long impass...

coopmike48

#eduRead this paperSee all

My Friends, The Cops | The Jose Vilson

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - My Friends, The Cops | The Jose Vilson:My Friends, The Copsby JoseBefore the turn of the century, my friends and I took spring walks from school to home, following the route of the M14D, which runs...

coopmike48

#whatsthepointRead this paperSee all

Video

nypost.com - The city’s top-performing teachers have one thing in common: They’re almost all women.Ratings released by the Department of Education of more than 12,000 fourth- through eighth-grade teachers show ...

DianeRavitch

VideosSee all


Posted by at

NY principal: Teacher scores inaccurate at my school - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

NY principal: Teacher scores inaccurate at my school - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:

NY principal: Teacher scores inaccurate at my school

by Valerie Strauss

The information below comes from Elizabeth Phillips, principal of P.S. 321 in Park Slope, N.Y., about how badlythe newly released rankings of New York City public school teachers reflect the reality at her school. Phillips wrote that she is “absolutely sick” about the public release of the Teacher Data Reports (TDR) of some 18,000 teachers based entirely on student standardized test scores. And, she said, the amount of data that is wrong is “staggering.”

Read full article >>

School psychologists: Shortage amid increased need

by Valerie Strauss

This was written by Mark Phillips, professor emeritus of secondary education at San Francisco State University and author of a monthly column on education for the Marin Independent Journal .

By Mark Phillips

Read full article >>
Posted by at

solidaridad: Please come battle New West Charter on Tuesday!

solidaridad: Please come battle New West Charter on Tuesday!:

Please come battle New West Charter on Tuesday!

by Robert D. Skeels * rdsathene
Please come battle New West Charter on Tuesday!Join hundreds of community members, students, teachers and parents are going to City Hall in force to protect West LA from the effects of that the relocation of New West Charter could cause, namely:

  1. Insane traffic at all hours of the day
  2. Use of public funds to gain a rent subsidy just because they are near a Title 1 Elementary school
  3. Possible continued underserving of the local West LA community and its students by a charter that doesn't answer to the community itself
  4. Please examine the attached documents for more info!

Show up at City Hall (200 N. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012) on February 28, 2012 3:00pm. Be counted by politicians and take a stand against something.

Please call Councilman Rosendahl on his cell phone: (310) 367-0237 and remind him of his responsibility to his constituents!

February 22, 2012

Re: CPC-2011-1923-CU-SPR
ENV-2011-1924-MND

To:
Councilman Ed Reyes
Councilman Jose Huizar
Councilman Mitch Englander
Councilman Bill Rosendahl

Cc: Len Nguyen

As a member of the WLA Neighborhood Council’s PLUM committee, I have consistently voted to

Save Pre-School in LAUSD Rally and Press Conference

by Robert D. Skeels * rdsathene
Please join the parents of 28th Street, Roberti and Trinity Early Education Centers, along with UTLA Central Area as we protest to Save Pre-School in LAUSD. We cannot allow LAUSD to close down our Early Education Centers and SRLDP programs.

What: SAVE PRE-SCHOOL IN LAUSD Rally and Press Conference
When: Thursday, March 1st 2012, 3:00pm
Where: LAUSD Building, 333. S. Beaudry Ave. Los Angeles CA 90017
Who: Parents, Teachers, and Community Groups and you!

March 1st is also a National Day of Action to Save Public Education. Many Universities will be staging walkouts, teach-ins, and other actions. We join in solidarity with these student activists as we know that the road o college begins at Preschool!

Communities and Families Resisting Proposition 39 Charter Colocations

Communities & Families Resisting Proposition 39 Charter Colocations

by Robert D. Skeels * rdsathene
"Colocation is eviction... It doesn't mean sharing, it means displacement." — NY State Senator Bill Perkins

A facebook group for schools, communities and families struggling against the divisive and inequitable law that allows private charter school corporations to seize and occupy space on public school campuses.

Communities and Families Resisting Proposition 39 Charter Colocations
Posted by at

Virtual Lobby Day Tuesday. School board members can do it too. « Fred Klonsky

Virtual Lobby Day Tuesday. School board members can do it too. « Fred Klonsky:

Virtual Lobby Day Tuesday. School board members can do it too.

by Fred Klonsky

The IEA may not be mobilizing people to go to Springfield. But teachers in this area want to go anyway. So we’re looking into getting a bus (maybe two) and heading down to the Capitol after Spring break.

Sometimes things are too important to be left to those in charge.

But today is today. Time to send an email or make the call to your local state senator and state representative.

The corporate Civic Committee’s Ty Fahner three-tier bill, SB512 is still out there. Senate President John Cullerton is pushing hard at shifting the state’s pension obligations to local school districts. There’s a bill to tax retiree benefits and another plan by the governor to cut state payments to the retiree health insurance, TRIP.

By the way. I’ve heard that the plan to shift the pension obligation to local districts has sent shivers up the spines of school board members. Some of them read this blog. They can use the IEA website too.

You can contact your legislators here.

And while you at it, use the Chicago Teachers Union website to contact your people about Senator Iris Martinez’s bill to stop school closings. There site is here. Her Committee is meeting on it today.

Posted by at

Missouri Education Watchdog: Common Core Standards. The Death of Exceptionalism and the Individual. Welcome to the Religion of Arne Duncan. Universalism.

Missouri Education Watchdog: Common Core Standards. The Death of Exceptionalism and the Individual. Welcome to the Religion of Arne Duncan. Universalism.:

Common Core Standards. The Death of Exceptionalism and the Individual. Welcome to the Religion of Arne Duncan. Universalism.

by stlgretchen
This is a most biting and wonderful article on what Common Core standards represent from Canada Free Press...think fascism, entitlement mentality, anarchy, equal outcome, and waste of taxpayer dollars:


Searching deeper into the Core Standards, the true intent is clear, “all children can and should learn to high
Posted by at

NYC Educator: We're All in This Together

NYC Educator: We're All in This Together:

We're All in This Together

by Miss Eyre
As you may remember, back in my middle-school-teaching days, I had a Teacher Data Report. I blogged about it, shrugged it off, and didn't give it much more thought.

Until Friday, of course.

Many of my friends still teach middle school, God love them, and so I spent a lot of time over the weekend consoling friends whose data reports didn't shake out so well. They, of course, were decidedly less pumped than usual to go back to work today.

I now teach high school, so most of my colleagues didn't have the pleasure of having their names attached
Posted by at

The Educated Reporter: Teach For America: Does High Turnover Hurt Student Achievement?

The Educated Reporter: Teach For America: Does High Turnover Hurt Student Achievement?:

Teach For America: Does High Turnover Hurt Student Achievement?

by Emily Richmond
In a New Haven middle school, a Teach For America teacher is facing a dilemma that is likely familiar to many of her "corps" colleagues -- should she continue building on her early record of success reaching students, or give up an often-frustrating job when her two-year commitment ends in June?

The New Haven Independent's Melissa Baily's thoughtful profile a young teacher at a crossroads highlights the challenges of working with high-need student populations, particularly in an era where educators face significant pressure to prove they are having a positive impact on their students.

Plenty has been written about the TFA model, which recruits recent college graduates to work in some of the '
Posted by at

Big Apple’s Rotten Ratings « InterACT

Big Apple’s Rotten Ratings « InterACT:

Big Apple’s Rotten Ratings

by David B. Cohen

If you’ve been following the news in education or in New York City recently, you’ve no doubt heard about the city releasing it’s “value-added” calculations of test data, putatively showing – with high degrees of error – the effectiveness of teachers. I’ve made it somewhat of a crusade to fight against the validity of this approach to teacher evaluation, and I won’t rehash the whole set of arguments here and now. (Though I did provide links to some of my prior posts, below). If you want to look more deeply into the current events in New York City, you can find a good list of responses provided by – who else? – Larry Ferlazzo.

So far, I think the best image from the whole fiasco comes from math teacher Gary Rubinstein, who ran the numbers himself, a bunch of different ways. The first analysis works on the premise that a teacher should not become dramatically better or worse in one year. He compared the data for 13,000 teachers over two consecutive years and found this – a virtually random distribution:

graph

Value-added teacher ratings correlation over two years - image by Gary Rubinstein

Read more of Gary’s analysis – Part 1 and Part 2.

When it comes to close examination of issues involving research and statistics, another source I read frequently

Posted by at

Teachers Evaluations to Be Made Public Under Parent Trigger Legislation | Scathing Purple Musings

Teachers Evaluations to Be Made Public Under Parent Trigger Legislation | Scathing Purple Musings:

Teachers Evaluations to Be Made Public Under Parent Trigger Legislation

by Bob Sikes

In posting on news that New York City would be posting the controversial decision to make the city’s teacher’s value-added evaluation public, Gradebook’s Jeff Solochek explained that thesame is on the way for Florida. Only legislators are doing so in a particularly stealth way by embedding details within parent trigger legislation. Solochek explains:

Florida’s public records law already makes its teacher evaluations open for viewing a year after they’re filed. SB 736 required the state to create an annual list of teachers by their new evaluation ratings (highly effective through needs improvement), while also mandating that schools inform parents if their children are in classrooms with teachers needing improvement.

The parent trigger bill now coursing through the Legislature would amp up these requirements, going so far as to bar schools from placing children in a classroom with a teacher needing

Posted by at

LAUSD'S LATINO MAJORITY AND REVERSE RACISM (Mayoría latina del LAUSD y racismo a la inversa) - Perdaily.com

LAUSD'S LATINO MAJORITY AND REVERSE RACISM (Mayoría latina del LAUSD y racismo a la inversa) - Perdaily.com:

LAUSD'S LATINO MAJORITY AND REVERSE RACISM (Mayoría latina del LAUSD y racismo a la inversa)

by Leonard Isenberg
Reverse racist.jpg
(Mensaje se repite en Español)

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

The positive American identity is based on a heterogeneous model that has always taken what this country is at any time, combined it - often with an ambivalent and begrudging attitude - with the diverse ethnic identities of the tired and poor huddled masses yearning to be free, who have come or been brought here in search of a better life. Up until now, this has constantly created a new and more dynamic synthesis of what it means to be an American. This in turn has made this country and those who make it up more viable than we were
Posted by at

Jersey Jazzman: Fool Me Twice...

Jersey Jazzman: Fool Me Twice...:

Fool Me Twice...

by Duke
When ACTING NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf worked in NYC, he swore that teacher evaluation data would NEVER be released to the public. Last week, it was.

Now, he's making the same promises in New Jersey. How do you think this will turn out?
Yesterday, acting education commissioner Chris Cerf tried to quell worries and said he would be against public disclosure of individual teachers' scores.
"I don't believe in that," Cerf said in an interview last night. "It is counterproductive, and I believe it is not something we should put out. And especially putting that out in isolation, it's against everything we want to do."
ACTING Commissioner, the folks you worked with at the NYCDOE were the ones who urged the NYC press to
Posted by at

Three CA Education Revenue Initiatives for November, 2012? A Comparison, Because Voters Will Probably Only Support One

Three CA Education Revenue Initiatives for November, 2012? A Comparison, Because Voters Will Probably Only Support One:

Three CA Education Revenue Initiatives for November, 2012? A Comparison, Because Voters Will Probably Only Support One

by cynthia

I recently had the opportunity to hear Molly Munger describe in detail to the California PTA how her proposed ballot initiative, Our Children, Our Future, would produce revenue to pay for K-12 public education.

Governor Brown‘s Schools and Local Public Safety Act ballot initiative proposal has also been public for some time, as has the Courage Campaign‘s proposed ballot initiative (pdf). All three are in the process of collecting signatures to be certified by the California Secretary of State to appear on the November 6, 2012 ballot.

With the process still fluid enough to influence, yet with much at stake and a great deal of political brinksmanship and back channel horse-trading still to take place, I’d like to open up the discussion of the merits of the three possible initiatives now because I feel we Californians are being asked to thread the needle.No one initiative seems to contain the best way of funding public schools and addressing a budget deficit left over from the Schwarzenegger administration of about $9.2 billion. Instead, each initiative has its strengths and weaknesses. If all three make it to the ballot, there’ll be chaos, and there are mutual exclusivity clauses that complicate voting for all three.

Moreover, there are currently bills under consideration in the California Assembly and Senate that would greatly

Posted by at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)