Michelle Obama on her garden, her future and her role in 2012 campaign – USATODAY.com

Michelle Obama on her garden, her future and her role in 2012 campaign – USATODAY.com:

Michelle Obama on her garden, her future and the campaign

By Susan Page, USA TODAY

Updated 1h 6m ago

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WASHINGTON – Michelle Obama is eager to show off the flourishing White Housevegetable garden, but she's also keeping an eye out for her two daughters to get home from school.

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  By Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images
  Michelle Obama and a schoolgirl work in the White House garden.

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By Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images

Michelle Obama and a schoolgirl work in the White House garden.

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"I just want to make sure that all of the homework that we do for the week was finished or being done," she explains, then mimics a child's assurance: "I don't have anything to do; I'm done." She rolls her eyes with a mother's skepticism.

She has been tending the White House garden with similarly determined oversight, chronicled in her first 

Geaux Teacher!: ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY!

Geaux Teacher!: ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY!:

ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY!

by noreply@blogger.com (Lee Barrios, M.Ed., NBCT)

I am re-posting another article that describes the attack on public education and its undermining of our democratic way of life. This one comes from South Carolina. As more and more of these stories reach the mainstream media, the public will realize that what qualified educators have been saying for a number of years is really true. 

You will find the post and the comments by readers that follow at:http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/28-8


Published on Monday, May 28, 2012 by Schools Matter blog

The States: More Bully Politics of Education Reform 
by P. L. Thomas 


From South Carolina to New Jersey to Wisconsin—and all across the U.S.—universal public education is under assault by the bully politics of education reform.

In my home state of South Carolina, Governor Haley and Superintendent Zais, neither of whom have experience or expertise in education, are seeking to attack unions (although SC is a non-union, right-to-work state), 

Figuring out your district’s weighted funding | Thoughts on Public Education

Figuring out your district’s weighted funding | Thoughts on Public Education:

Figuring out your district’s weighted funding

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It takes calculating; yardstick is 47% increase by 2018-19

Posted on 5/29/12 • Categorized as Equity issues, Revenue and taxes, Student spending

By John Fensterwald - Educated Guess

The state Department of Finance has released the district allocations under Gov. Jerry Brown’s revised plan for weighted student funding that shaves off the peaks, fills in the valleys and includes other changes that make allotments flatter, arguably fairer and potentially more politically palatable to those who criticized aspects of the formula.

The 77-page spread sheet of district and charter school allocations doesn’t reveal – and inquiring minds will want to know – how districts compare with one another and with a statewide average once the formula is fully funded in 2018-19. The raw numbers are there 

Daily Kos: JFK would have been 95 today

Daily Kos: JFK would have been 95 today:

JFK would have been 95 today

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

We tend to forget how young Kennedy was when he was elected, and still how young he was when he died.
He remains the youngest man ever elected president.
He died at the earliest age of any man to serve as President.
He was the first President born after 1900 - his immediate predecessor, Dwight David Eisenhower, had been born in 1890, graduating from West Point 2 years before Kennedy was born.
The last three presidents have been younger than I am.  As young as Clinton was when sworn in, he was still older than Kennedy, who was the first president younger than my father, himself a veteran of WWII.
That presidency serves as a demarcation in American history.  Not all that occurred on JFK's watch was good - after all, we embarked on the Vietnam adventure, its beginning now 50 years ago.  We had the Bay of Pigs.
But Kennedy drew a line on Civil Rights which was important.  He committed us to space exploration.  He drew an important line on Cuba, and manage to end that confrontation without conflict.
Whatever we may think of him as a man, however we may think of parts of his presidency, it is certainly appropriate today to pause and reflect.  His presidency may have been short, but its impact was important.
His death marked a loss of innocence for our nation.  Remember, he rode in an open top car.
John F. Kennedy   May 29, 1917 -  November 22, 1963.

Who Will Vouchers Benefit in Louisiana? « Diane Ravitch's blog

Who Will Vouchers Benefit in Louisiana? « Diane Ravitch's blog:

Who Will Vouchers Benefit in Louisiana?

by dianerav

As Mitt Romney continues his advocacy for vouchers, he should follow  developments in Louisiana.
As I mentioned in a previous post, the New Living Word School has offered to nearly quadruple its student enrollment, from 122 to 437, even though it lacks the facilities or teachers for the new students. Millions of public dollars will flow to this small church school, where students spend most of their class time watching DVDs.
A reader alerted me that another little school that will reap the benefits from the voucher program is the Eternity Christian Academy in Calcasieu Parish. It currently enrolls 14 students. It has offered to take in 135 new

Will Public Education in Muskegon Heights Die?

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 hour ago

According to the latest reports, the emergency manager in Muskegon Heights, Michigan, proposes to kill off public education and replace the public schools with charter schools. The reason for this is that Muskegon Heights has a debt of $12 million. So the emergency manager figures that it is best to replace all the public schools [...]

Who Did Thomas Friedman Talk to in Seattle?

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 hours ago

In Sunday’s New York Times, celebrated columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that he had “a recent discussion in Seattle with a group of educators.” One of them surprised him by saying that “even though their state did not win President Obama’ education ‘Race to the Top,’ that program was critical in spurring educational reform in Washington [...]

Did John Adams Say That?

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 hours ago

A reader sent me this quote from John Adams. I can’t verify it. Does anyone have the original source? “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in [...]

Kirp vs. Liebman on Integration & Reform

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 hours ago

David L. Kirp asked in a recent article why our society has abandoned school integration since it is “the one tool that has been shown to work.” Kirp wrote: “To the current reformers, integration is at best an irrelevance and at worst an excuse to shift attention away from shoddy teaching. But a spate of [...]

Who Will Vouchers Benefit in Louisiana?

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 hours ago

As Mitt Romney continues his advocacy for vouchers, he should follow developments in Louisiana. As I mentioned in a previous post, the New Living Word School has offered to nearly quadruple its student enrollment, from 122 to 437, even though it lacks the facilities or teachers for the new students. Millions of public dollars will [...]

NY State Ed Dept: Lie to Students

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago

As you may know, there has been growing parent dissatisfaction about the amount of testing that their children are subjected to. initially, the tests and test prep increased because officials wanted to measure student growth on tests. Then, the testing increased because officials want to measure teacher quality. From the vantage of parents, the school [...]

Fahrenheit 451 in NYC

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago

I read the other day that Occupy Wall Street and its librarians are suing the New York Police Department for destroying the OWS library of 3,600 books. The librarians had carefully catalogued every book they received. People checked them out and returned them, no questions asked. When the police destroyed the OWS encampment at Zuccotti [...]

How Charters Compete

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago

A while back, I read a story in the New York Times that really bothered me. It explained that neighborhood public schools are now compelled to “market” themselves because of competition with charters. In Harlem, charters are omnipresent, and the city administration has closed many public schools to make way for charters. New York City [...]

When Charters Compete

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago

I live in New York City, where charters are aggressively expanding. Many, perhaps most, of our charters have hedge fund managers on their board of directors. They want to win. They want higher test scores than the neighborhood public school. They compete with one another and they compete with the neighborhood school. The city government–which [...]

Does Public Education Matter?

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago

Yesterday I wrote a blog about a tiny rural district in Idaho where the community did everything possible to support their school but it wasn’t good enough. The tax base was so meager that the school was in deficit, and budget cuts were putting the school in peril. A reader commented that this was an [...]

Animal Lover Alert

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago

This is my blog, and there’s no rule that says I’m only allowed to write about education. Right now, I want to write about the animals I lost in the past three years. It’s been really hard because I miss them. I miss them every day. Molly, a Tibetan terrier, died in 2010 at the [...]

These Folks Love Their School

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago

What happens to a small town in Idaho whose residents love their public school, support it, paint the building, fix it up, tax themselves to pay for it, but is suffering because of state budget cuts? Raise taxes? Well, they are already paying 17 times the rate of the state’s wealthy districts. Because of its [...]

Open Letter to Georgia Teachers

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago

In my experience, if you want to find a sympathetic ear in the media for public education, find someone who has a relative who teaches. Jon Stewart never fell for the teacher-bashing mania because his mother was a teacher. I have been interviewed on several occasions by talk show hosts who confessed that their mother [...]

The Itty Bitty Voucher Plan

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago

According to a story in today’s Alexandria (La.) “Daily Town Talk,” large parts of Louisiana have no private schools taking part in the voucher program. They prefer to wait and see or just keep their distance. Some say they have no seats available; in one case, a school principal said her board members were “philosophically [...]

Keep an Eye on Jindal’s Reforms

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago

I just came across an interesting statistic about Louisiana that puts the Jindal education reform plan into context.* The majority of white children in Louisiana do not go to public school. The majority of white children go to private schools. Black children are the majority in the public schools of Louisiana. According to Census data, [...]

School Reform in Louisiana, As If

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago

The State Education Department in Louisiana has given approval to the New Living Word School in Ruston, Louisiana, to accept 315 voucher students. The school currently has 122 students, so if it can enroll its full complement of voucher students, it will nearly quadruple in size. The New Living Word School will accept the largest [...]

Calling All Parents!

dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago

In an earlier post, I described how a parent organization called out Scantron, the testing company, for inserting a blatantly propagandistic item into its standardized tests. The reading passage was about the alleged superiority of charters as education reform and named a fictitious “multi-millionaire” who sends his own children to a charter. Public school students [...]

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Romney throws a right. Obama ducks.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Romney throws a right. Obama ducks.:

Romney throws a right. Obama ducks.

by Mike Klonsky

I must admit, I was glad when Mitt Romney fired the first education salvo across the Democrats' bow last Wednesday at the Latino Coalition annual economic summit in Washington. My fear was that both parties were going to avoid mentioning the E-word right up through November. I thought, now that Romney has come out openly and purposefully, in a white paper,  with his party's anti-public school line, including support for vouchers, larger class size and a direct, unambiguous assault on teacher unions, Pres. Obama would have no choice other than to respond.

But not only did the president and education chief Arne Duncan personally duck out of sight on this one, in the one instance where Team Obama did respond -- on teacher unions -- they revealed to all those who still have illusions, the Democrats' own complicity in the corporate version of school "reform".

The exchange has gone something like this:

Romney: President Obama has been a tool of the teachers union,  unwilling to stand up to the "union bosses" and he has caved in to greedy teachers and their demands for collective bargaining rights and smaller class size.

Arnie Duncan Drops By… - Wait, What?

Arnie Duncan Drops By… - Wait, What?:

Arnie Duncan Drops By…

by jonpelto

Today, U.S. Secretary Arnie Duncan and Governor Dan Malloy will be holding a press conference about “education reform” and the Connecticut legislation that increases the number of standardized tests, seeks to improve test scores and begins the process of tying test scores to teacher evaluations so that administrators can determine which teachers to keep and which to let go.

Word on the street is that Duncan will be announcing that Connecticut has or will get the Now Child Left Behind “waiver” that actually requires even more standardized tests.

Malloy, of course, is the guy who said he doesn’t mind teaching to the test as long as the test scores go up.

When President Obama appointed Duncan his Secretary of Education, he claimed that the guy had turned Chicago’s School System around and raised standardized test scores 

Geniuses: born or made? - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Geniuses: born or made? - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:

Geniuses: born or made?

by Valerie Strauss

Jack Andraka is a 15-year-old kid from Maryland who just won the world’s largest and most important high school science fair by devising a new way to detect pancreatic cancer in its early stages.
And then there’s Lori Anne Madison, the 6-year-old Virginia girl who is the youngest student ever to qualify for the National Spelling Bee — but she’s more than just a great speller. The prodigy, who lives in Prince William County, was reading at the age of 2.
Read full article >>

The mistake policymakers make about teaching

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 3 hours ago

This *was written by Larry Cuban, a former high school social studies teacher (14 years, including seven at Cardozo and Roosevelt high schools in the District), district superintendent (seven years in Arlington, VA) and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. His latest book is “As Good As It Gets: What School Reform Brought to Austin.” This appeared on his blog.* Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]

Memorial Day quiz: Test yourself

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 21 hours ago

Here’s a quiz to test yourself on how much you know about Memorial Day and the wars in which U.S. soldiers have fought and died. Answers, with a bit of history, follow the questions. *1. Memorial Day was a response to the loss of American lives in which war? * Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]

For Memorial Day: A different way to commemorate

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 1 day ago

Memorial Day commemorations ordinarily involve parades, concerts, barbecues, sporting events and a lot of flag-waving. Here's a more introspective way to commemorate the national holiday: Read some poetry about war. It’s a great way for parents and teacherss to help children understand the emotion bebhind war — the glory and the horror. Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]

VP Biden commencement speech to ‘9/11 generation’ at U.S. Military Academy

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 2 days ago

Here is the full text of the commencement speech that Vice President Joe Biden delived on Saturday to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., obtained from the Office of the Vice President: *THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) It’s a great honor to be here. * Read full article >> [image: Add to Facebook] [image: Add to Twitter] [image: Add to Reddit] [image: Add to StumbleUpon]

Social Media: Help or Hindrance to Education Reform? « My Island View

Social Media: Help or Hindrance to Education Reform? « My Island View:

Social Media: Help or Hindrance to Education Reform?

by tomwhitby

I recently had a lengthy discussion, ironically on Twitter, with a very tech-savvy educator friend about his concerns that big ideas in education might be getting drowned out as a result of the continuing discussions about Social Media and connectedness for educators.  I hope I am categorizing that correctly. My friend felt that Social Media is a powerful medium that can be used to learn, but too much attention is given to it at the expense of other powerful ideas. According to him,” it’s still all pretty much primordial soup.
Of course, being a social media advocate, his comments have been tumbling in my head since we had our conversation. Did others believe this?  Is Social Media being discussed and addressed as a more important idea than education reform or, pedagogy, or methodology in education? Is it a distraction rather than a means for transformation? Are the big ideas being missed?
We all learn from other people. We created places where we could come in contact with people who could share their ideas with us, so we that we could learn. Those face to face connections have never been completely 

Missouri Education Watchdog: What's REALLY Happening in Schools? Common Core Control Coming Soon to Your Public School...or Home School...or Private School.

Missouri Education Watchdog: What's REALLY Happening in Schools? Common Core Control Coming Soon to Your Public School...or Home School...or Private School.:

What's REALLY Happening in Schools? Common Core Control Coming Soon to Your Public School...or Home School...or Private School.

by stlgretchen

I'm a mother of four children. Thanks again for the nice compliment. I appreciate it. 

Another pathetic tid-bit is that after 35 parents went to a School Commission meeting,with complaints such as "I have a degree in finance and I can't understand how to help my third grader with her math homework, the Principal called in a Pearson sales rep to sell us on the book.  When parents weren't satisfied, the Principal finally responded in frustration, "Look, I know parents don't like this kind of math because it isn't how any of us were taught, but we have to teach it this way because this is what is going to be on the PAARCC assessment."

Heather

Sent from my iPhone

On May 24, 2012, at 4:42 PM, loguek@aol.com wrote:

You said it so well and it's based on what you see happening in your children's education.

So many times, I don't think people get it until it impacts them.  They need to know they can't homeschool or private school any longer 

Los Angeles school police citations draw federal scrutiny | California Watch

Los Angeles school police citations draw federal scrutiny | California Watch:

Los Angeles school police citations draw federal scrutiny

by Susan Ferriss

Anonymous

Vanessa Romo/KPCC.org Students protest in Los Angeles against school police tickets issued heavily at middle schools, low-income schools. 

Alexander Johnson arrived at Barack Obama Global Preparatory Academy to pick up his 12-year-old after school on May 19, 2011. When his son, A.J. didn’t appear, Johnson went inside the Los Angeles middle school. What he found was devastating.
A.J. and a friend had gotten into a physical altercation over a basketball game, and school staff had summoned not parents, but police officers. Neither boy was injured, and the school ended up suspending his son for only one day, Johnson said. But officers wrote up a court citation and decided, on the spot, to also handcuff and 

No Charter School. Yes, Public Waldorf School | California Progress Report

No Charter School. Yes, Public Waldorf School | California Progress Report:

No Charter School. Yes, Public Waldorf School

by jeffson

By Robert Ovetz, Ph.D.
Across the state public schools are threatened with a “death by a thousand cuts” of budget cuts, rising class sizes, standardized tests, and teacher lay-offs that set our children up for failure. Waiting in the wings is the charter school industrial complex seeking to turn our public schools into the next profit making industry. Schools and even entire districts are being shut down and re-opened as privatized charter schools in New Orleans, Detroit, Chicago, Washington DC, and Philadelphia.
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How to Tax California’s One Percent

by jeffson

By Lenny Goldberg, California Tax Reform Association, andRoy Ulrich, Goldman School of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley
Jerry Brown’s most recent budget proposal takes a meat ax to vital programs, including Medi-Cal and in home support services (IHHS). Why do we refer to them as “vital?” IHHS, for example, helps the disabled and seniors live safely in their own homes, thus obviating the need to place them in more costly outside facilities.
The governor’s plan represents the latest and worst in a spending cuts-only approach which California seems to specialize in. Reaping the benefits of this approach are the rich and powerful. The losers are those without high-priced lobbyists: the poor and the weak.
There are several potential revenue sources the rich and powerful have been able to avoid while other states, including a few very red ones, have seen fit to tap them.
read more

Study: Cal/OSHA Inspections Save Lives

by jeffson

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