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Sunday, May 6, 2012

Big Education Ape: 5-6-12 AM Charter Schools - Dividing Communities since 1991 EDition #edreform

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

Published by Coopmike48 – 7 news spotters today

Charter Schools - Dividing Communities since 1991

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS WEBSITE CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS A compilation of news articles about charter schools which have been charged with, or are highly suspected of, tampering with admissio...
coopmike48

Teaching Me About Teaching

nytimes.com - Next week is National Teacher Appreciation Week, and, as far as I’m concerned, they don’t get nearly enough. On Tuesday, the United States Department of Education is hoping that people ...
arneduncan

DIANE RAVITCH TO GIVE 2012 EDUCATION JUSTICE LECTURE

edlawcenter.org - Each spring, ELC hosts an awards ceremony and reception to honor individuals and organizations for their commitment to public education. The reception is also an important fundraising event; contri...
DianeRavitch

Usual Faux Reforms in Connecticut « Diane Ravitch's blog

dianeravitch.net - A reader asked if I am following the battle over what is misleadingly called school reform in Connecticut. Indeed I am, largely tHrough the efforts of three smart Connecticut blogger-writers: Jonat...
DianeRavitch

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coopmike48 Big Education Ape: Rally to support discontinued Bronx teacher « JD2718 bit.ly/IvE5Xx4 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite
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coopmike48 Big Education Ape: In controversial move, LAUSD's Deasy wants to raise high-school graduation requirements - LA Dai... bit.ly/IvE9GP3 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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Slogans That Didn't Quite Make the Cut :: Frederick M. Hess

frederickhess.org - by Frederick M. Hess  •  May 4, 2012 at 8:23 amCross-posted from Education Weekhttp://www.frederickhess.org/2012/05/slogans-that-didnt-quite-make-the-cutI was tasked with emcee'ing an open mike nig...
DianeRavitch

Selling Schools Out | Corporate Accountability

theinvestigativefund.org - If the national movement to "reform" public education through vouchers, charters and privatization has a laboratory, it is Florida. It was one of the first states to undertake a program of "virtual...
mikeklonsky

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The Powers of New York

nytimes.com - By CLYDE HABERMAN Tony Cenicola/The New York Times Clockwise from top left: the officials Patricia E. Harris, Raymond W. Kelly and Merryl H. Tisch; and the newer faces Masamichi Udagawa, Sigi Moesl...
leoniehaimson

Direct Fail

5280.com - This article is a finalist for the 2012 National Magazine Awards in the public interest category. It is also a finalist for a 2012 City and Regional Magazine Award in the civic journalism category....
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Married To The Ed Reform Mob

schooltechconnect.com - I'm nowhere near gifted enough with language to describe the abject expression on the face of Daniel Biss today when I magically appeared at his fundraiser at Senator Heather Steans' house in Ander...
tbfurman

Married To The Ed Reform Mob

schooltechconnect.com - I'm nowhere near gifted enough with language to describe the abject expression on the face of Daniel Biss today when I magically appeared at his fundraiser at Senator Heather Steans' house in Ander...
fklonsky

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Univision's "Despierta America" Celebrates 15 Years

hispanicallyspeakingnews.com - Published at 10:20 pm EST, May 5, 2012 Univision morning show “Despierta America” (Wake Up America), the highest-rated among Hispanics, celebrated its 15th anniversary Friday with a special featuri...
coopmike48

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Advanced degrees provide added security

boston.com - Nothing like a deep recession and weak recovery to focus workers on a key question: What can I do to stay employed? The answer for many: get an advanced degree. Most local universities offer part-t...
coopmike48

WorldSee all

S. Ore. students walk out in support of teachers

columbian.com - EAGLE POINT, Ore. (AP) -- About 100 students walked out of class in support of teachers and other employees threatening to strike in Eagle Point in Southern Oregon. The Mail Tribune newspaper (http...
fklonsky

#edreformRead this paperSee all

Married To The Ed Reform Mob

schooltechconnect.com - I'm nowhere near gifted enough with language to describe the abject expression on the face of Daniel Biss today when I magically appeared at his fundraiser at Senator Heather Steans' house in Ander...
tbfurman

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Why Local Public Schools Should Not Be Turned Over to Charter School Companies to Run - Wait, What?

Why Local Public Schools Should Not Be Turned Over to Charter School Companies to Run - Wait, What?:


Why Local Public Schools Should Not Be Turned Over to Charter School Companies to Run

by jonpelto



Late last week, Representative Gary Holder-Winfield of New Haven and most of the members of the General Assembly’s Black and Puerto Rican Caucus held a press conference to speak out about Governor Malloy’s “education reform” legislation.
These legislators, some of the finest and most dedicated in the General Assembly, had important things to say about the “education reform” debate.
Despite what the “reformers” sent out in their blast emails, Representative Holder-Winfield made it very clear that the minority legislators were not endorsing Malloy’s version of the “education reform bill” or the governor’s “Commissioner’s Network” plan, but he did say that the minority legislators supported the proposal to allow the commissioner of education to take over a community’s school and give it to a charter school company to run.
Rick Green, the Hartford Courant columnist applauded the legislators saying “successful charter school models — such as Jumoke Academy in Hartford or the Achievement First 


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Education Report: Election week and political dissent within the Oakland teachers union - Inside Bay Area

Education Report: Election week and political dissent within the Oakland teachers union - Inside Bay Area:


Education Report: Election week and political dissent within the Oakland teachers union

Posted:   05/06/2012 12:00:00 AM PDT

This is a sampling of The Education Report, Katy Murphy's Oakland schools blog. Read more atwww.IBAbuzz.com/education. Follow her at Twitter.com/KatyMurphy.
May 1: It's election week for the Oakland teachers union, and that has extra significance this year. Betty Olson-Jones, the Oakland Education Association president since 2006 (since I've been covering Oakland schools!), has reached her term limit. She will be succeeded by Mark Airgood or Trish Gorham.
Olson-Jones has endorsed Gorham -- as well as Steve Neat, Chaz Garcia, Vincent Tolliver, Janan Apaydin, Manny Lopez and Andy Young for seats on the union's 16-member executive board.
You can find the complete list of candidates and their statements on the blog, as well as the election's outcome, when it's reported.
A year ago, I wrote about a small group of teachers called Oakland TIES (Oakland Teachers for Innovative and 
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Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Do you have customers, or students in your classroom and school?

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Do you have customers, or students in your classroom and school?:


Do you have customers, or students in your classroom and school?

by alicemercer
House Rules
Someone on #edchat on twitter posted a quip that was hard to figure out about auto repair shops and how we didn’t get to know our “customers” in education. Twitter is like a cocktail party, and I definitely walked into that conversation mid-way, so he might have been making an excellent point, but I really do not like using the word “customer” to describe the families that we serve as public school educators. I don’t like it because it makes a number of assumptions about customers, and the service they receive in private businesses.
Public schools take all comers. The number off students going to “alternative” placements is pretty darn small, and even then, their education is still the financial and legal responsibility of the school district where they live. 
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Daily Kos: An Alternative to the Common Core

Daily Kos: An Alternative to the Common Core:


An Alternative to the Common Core

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)
For much of our modern era, our culture thought of the human heart as a machine that would wear out after a given number of heart beats. People with heart disease were put in bed to prolong their lives.
That is a quote from this op-ed in the Ogden Utah Standard-Examiner, which I am going to urge you to read.  The author is Lynn Stoddard, a retired educator from Utah now in his 80s, who is perhaps best known for his development some 25 years ago of an approach called Educating for Human Greatness (and which is now promoted in the revised book he co-wrote with Anthony Dallman-Jones).Lynn's approach is very different than what we are seeing in the current version of the standards movement.  The best way to grasp is to take the time to read the relatively brief op ed (from which I am not allowed to quote further -  again, you can read it here
Below the fold I want to place it in the larger context of the current thrust in educational policy.


"Taking Out Dick Lugar" - Dana Milbank without snark

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)
When Indiana Republicans go to the polls on Tuesday, they will do more than choose a candidate for the Senate. They will choose between party and country.
  So begins this well written column by the usually snarky Dana Milbank.  In it he provides a clear contrast between Senator Dick Lugar, certainly no liberal but an important voice for nuclear sanity, and the the tea-party hothead and favorite Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock.  The second paragraph clearly indicates the thrust of the column:  
That’s a stark assessment but true. On one side is a man who has made it his life’s work to build a cross-aisle consensus for keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states. On the other side is a man who mocks his opponent for such efforts and who talks more about fighting Democrats than fighting America’s enemies.
Milbank not only goes through the important achievements of Lugar's tenure in the Senate, such as the1992 Nunn-Lugar Act "which has disarmed thousands of Soviet nuclear warheads once aimed at the United States."  He also shows how Mourdock has distorted statements of President Obama to try to tarnish Lugar with being insufficiently conservative:  Mourdock cuts off a presidential statement about working with Obama without 
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A City Education: Teaching the Value of Education Beyond State Tests - Education - GOOD

A City Education: Teaching the Value of Education Beyond State Tests - Education - GOOD:


A City Education: Teaching the Value of Education Beyond State Tests

by Liz Dwyer
testpreptutoring
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.
"Why are we still meeting? The test is over," one of my English Language Arts students asked me during a recent tutoring session. He and his classmates had completed three days of New York State testing for ELA the week before and had three more days of math testing to come. I empathized with the tired seventh-grader, but explained to him that we would be meeting to study until June.

I’d heard about "the test" since school started back in September. Teachers and students talked about the first 
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The Innovative Educator: Using Cell Phones to Support Student Engagement & Achievement in Speaking and Listening

The Innovative Educator: Using Cell Phones to Support Student Engagement & Achievement in Speaking and Listening:


Using Cell Phones to Support Student Engagement & Achievement in Speaking and Listening

by noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Nielsen)

Cell phones are a terrific tool to support student engagement and achievement in speaking and listening.  Here are some ways that teachers are using cell phones to do just that by using tools like Google Voice and Voki and functions like video.  

Oral Reports
There are many great tools to capture voice with cell phones. Google voice is one such tool that is free and easy to use and enables educators to capture voice messages from students without providing them with their direct phone number. The power of this kicks in when you realize that what Google Voice does is become a repository for oral reports, assignments, or sound bites. Not only is it a repository, but teachers
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Missouri Education Watchdog: Stanford Business Common Sense Study, Innovative Teachers (Homeschooling Parents) and #firearneduncan in the Sunday Education Weekly Reader 05.06.12

Missouri Education Watchdog: Stanford Business Common Sense Study, Innovative Teachers (Homeschooling Parents) and #firearneduncan in the Sunday Education Weekly Reader 05.06.12:


Stanford Business Common Sense Study, Innovative Teachers (Homeschooling Parents) and #firearneduncan in the Sunday Education Weekly Reader 05.06.12

by stlgretchen


Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader for 05.06.2012.  Some visual soundbites from twitter:

  • Stanford Business creates video on how intervention strategies can help children in school. Listen carefully.  Parse it down into common sense language.  Do we need professors and professional studies to now instruct teachers/parents that if they support and nurture children and instill values, that's the child's best chance at success?  Really?  And Arne Duncan says it's all about being data driven and common core standards.  Shocking on so many levels....Video: Prof. Cohen explains how a carefully timed social-pscyhological intervention can close the achievement gap -
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“the period of invisible punishment” | The G Bitch Spot

“the period of invisible punishment” | The G Bitch Spot:


“the period of invisible punishment”

by G Bitch
One theorist, Iris Marion Young, relying on a famous “birdcage” metaphor, explains it this way: If one thinks about racism by examining only one wire of the cage, or one form of disadvantage, it is difficult to understand how and why the bird is trapped. Only a large number of wires arranged in a specific way, and connected to one another, serve to enclose the bird and to ensure that it cannot escape [184].
This, in brief, is how [the system of mass incarceration] works: The War on Drugs is the vehicle through which extraordinary numbers of black men are forced into the cage. The entrapment occurs in three distinct phases…. The first stage is the roundup. Vast numbers of people are swept into the criminal justice system by the police, who conduct drug operations primarily in poor communities of color. They are rewarded in cash–through drug forfeiture laws and federal grant 
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Saturday, May 5, 2012

From pineapples to small schools, alum Mike Klonsky's work is no small talk | University of Illinois at Chicago | College of Education

From pineapples to small schools, alum Mike Klonsky's work is no small talk | University of Illinois at Chicago | College of Education:


From pineapples to small schools, alum Mike Klonsky's work is no small talk


Professor Michael Klonsky teaches in the College of Education at DePaul University in Chicago. He also serves as the national director of the Small Schools Workshop, and on the national steering committee of Save Our Schools, a national movement dedicated to supporting public schools. Klonsky has blogged, spoken and written extensively on school reform issues with a focus on urban school restructuring. Klonsky received his MA in Education Studies in 1992 and his PhD in Curriculum & Instruction from UIC in 1996. He talks with Communications Director Eva Moon.

Can you talk about how your UIC education laid the groundwork for your future work?
The college, under both of our deans, Larry Braskamp and then Vicki Chou, was a wonderful place to learn and develop as an educator. My personal interaction with some of the leading lights in the curriculum field exposed me to a broad range of theoretical and practical approaches to public education. It was Dr. [William] Schubert who first and most creatively raised these three fundamental questions to his graduate students: "What knowledge is most worthwhile? Why is it worthwhile? And how is it acquired or created?" 
Can you tell me how you got your start on the small schools road?
The early school reform movement engaged hundreds of mostly young teachers in transformation efforts within their own schools. Many began approaching those of us within the COE who had been 
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Inside the Academy: Diane Ravitch


DIANE RAVITCH is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education. She is also a nonresident senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Ravitch, a member of the National Academy of Education, has previously taught at Teachers College, Columbia University and lectured widely in Europe and Asia on issues of democracy and civic education. Serving as an advocate for public education through government service, Ravitch championed the creation of voluntary state and national standards as the Assistant Secretary of Education under the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
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Schools Matter: ExxonMobil Ads for Corporate Education Reform

Schools Matter: ExxonMobil Ads for Corporate Education Reform:


ExxonMobil Ads for Corporate Education Reform

by Jim Horn







ExxonMobil is one of the chief sources of ad revenue that feeds the obscenely-inflated cash prizes of the PGA.  The Masters--brought to you by ExxonMobil, Jim Nance croons, from all the Augusta National Golf Club, the entirely pristine, manicured, and all-male bastion just miles from a ghosty and deserted streets downtown Augusta that even the panhandlers have deserted.

During the past week, I've seen 2 ads during PGA events from ExxonMobil's new campaign to keep corporate education reform alive: one pimping for the Rotten Core Standards and the other lying about how badly American students are in math and science .  Can you imagine how bad the PR situation must be for the other members of the Billionaire Boys Club, when they have to recruit Exxon as their front man?  Now if I wanted to sell an idea that required the buy-in of American parents or the citizenry in general, would I choose one of the top 5 most hated companies on Planet Earth to run my ads?  Think about it.

Think, too, of what ExxonMobil could do for science education if they were not interested in putting their oil 
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Back at the Red Line. Why I’m a sucker to Tony. « Fred Klonsky

Back at the Red Line. Why I’m a sucker to Tony. « Fred Klonsky:


Back at the Red Line. Why I’m a sucker to Tony.

by Fred Klonsky
On Friday I’m back at the Red Line Tap.
There’s Tony at the bar.
Tony is always at the bar, so that’s not a surprise.
“You look like crap,” says Tony. “Let me buy you one.”
“Long week,” I say.
“Seven days, like always,” says Tony, who has no permanent relationship with the capitalist system that I am of 
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Opportunity Knocks - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher

Opportunity Knocks - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher:


Opportunity Knocks

by Nancy Flanagan


Here's a new one for the ol' Reformy Thesaurus: the "Opportunity Culture" in education.
Sure sounds good, doesn't it? Who doesn't want our American kids to have more opportunities in life? Except--oops--this campaign, rolled out by Public Impact, is actually about opportunities for "teacherpreneurs" to make more money by teaching oversized classes--and of course, for school districts to seize that same opportunity to save money through "innovative" staffing models.
How did this exciting window of opportunity emerge? Public Impact explains:
Only 25 percent of classes are taught by excellent teachers. With an excellent teacher versus an average teacher, students make about an extra half-year of progress every year--closing achievement gaps fast, leaping ahead to become honors students, and surging forward like top international peers.
That's a whole lot of leaping and surging. Unfortunately, it's based on a faux statistic, sitting triumphantly on apyramid of dubious research, prettied up with some post-modern infographics. Like other overhyped blah-blah of 
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In controversial move, LAUSD's Deasy wants to raise high-school graduation requirements - LA Daily News

In controversial move, LAUSD's Deasy wants to raise high-school graduation requirements - LA Daily News:


In controversial move, LAUSD's Deasy wants to raise high-school graduation requirements

By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer
Posted:   05/05/2012 05:22:47 PM PDT
Updated:   05/05/2012 05:24:44 PM PDT

Students in teacher James Schwagle's physics lab at Francis Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley do an experiment to graph velocity vs. time. The LAUSD board is set next week to consider a change in the curriculum that would require every student to take college-prep classes to graduate. Physics is one of the courses that could become mandatory. (John McCoy/Staff Photographer)
He's moved aggressively to weed out ineffective teachers, raise English-learners to language proficiency, make schools safer and engage more parents.Superintendent John Deasy is now poised to launch the next big piece in his model for reforming the Los Angeles Unified School District, a controversial move that would toughen the curriculum and grading scale to make every high school graduate eligible for entry to a state university.
His proposal is politically contentious, generating debate about his strategy to overhaul a system where just half the students now graduate from high school. Against the backdrop of a financial crisis and without a strong support system in place, will those now struggling to learn basic math be challenged by the rigors of Algebra II, or will they falter along the way?
"We have to think long and hard about what we're doing," said board member Steve Zimmer. "This policy is 
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Paul Vallas, vassal and executioner of public schools: Dateline New Orleans, Haiti and Philadelphia | Dailycensored.com

Paul Vallas, vassal and executioner of public schools: Dateline New Orleans, Haiti and Philadelphia | Dailycensored.com:

Paul Vallas, vassal and executioner of public schools: Dateline New Orleans, Haiti and Philadelphia

Written by Education, World NewsMay 5, 2012
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Readers might remember the distasteful case of gun-for-hire, former Superintendent of the Philadelphia School District and New Orleans School District, Paul Vallas and his erstwhile dismantling of New Orleans’ school district after Hurricane Katrina.  Vallas was on hand to help fire the entire New Orleans unionized teacher’s labor force and impose conservative, Paul T. Hill’s dreadful disaster capitalist policies on the fledgling school district (http://dailycensored.com/2009/12/15/teachers-unions-and-charter-schools-taking-race-to-the-top-money-and-starving-public-schools-their-teachers-and-students/).
 As I wrote back in 2009, this was all an effort to smash and grab districts all over the country and force them to submit to privatization through charter 
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