Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Rahm sends millions in TIF money to Penny -- not to schools

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Rahm sends millions in TIF money to Penny -- not to schools:

Rahm sends millions in TIF money to Penny -- not to schools

by Mike Klonsky

I'm still on the road but trying to keep up on Chicago happenings. Stunned but not surprised to see that Rahm isdelivering millions from his TIF slush fund to his billionaire pal Penny Pritzker for her new Hyatt Hotel.

Pritzker sits on the mayor's hand-picked school board. She's also Pres. Obama's chief campaign fundraiser.  Pritzker is also an anti-union hard-liner who's trying to bust the union at Hyatt. She's claiming that there's no money left in the budget for even small teacher raises. The union argues that TIF money can be used to help solve the crisis. But Rahm obviously has his own priorities. Pritzker obviously has a conflict of interests.

“This one example shows the fundamental corruption in the way things are done here,” said David Orlikoff of the Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign, a labor and community coalition growing out 

Jersey Jazzman: Mayoral Control Ain't Awesome

Jersey Jazzman: Mayoral Control Ain't Awesome:

Mayoral Control Ain't Awesome

by Duke

The Star-Ledger's Tom Moran loves mayoral control of schools:

The real resolution of this conflict should come in November, when four of Caffrey’s leading critics on the board face re-election. This case perfectly illustrates the hazards presented by the toxic politics that all school reformers face. It is a screaming argument in favor of mayoral control of urban schools. [emphasis mine]

It's because, even though school boards are elected, they just can't be trusted - like in Newark:

There is more to this story than the wishes of a backward board elected in a vote 

Jersey Jazzman: Tea Partyin' = Teacher Bashin'

Jersey Jazzman: Tea Partyin' = Teacher Bashin':

Tea Partyin' = Teacher Bashin'

by Duke

Maureen Castriotta is no ordinary suburban school board member.

Castriotta serves on the Roxbury, NJ Board of Education, a high-performing system in Morris County. She urged the defeat of her own board's budget in 2011, and supported a slate of anti-union, cost-cutting board candidates (they lost).

Castriotta got into hot water with her fellow board members back in 2010 during Chris Christie's War On Schools. At the time, high school students in some districts were organizing protests against Christie's draconian school budget cuts. The Roxbury administration decided the best course of action was to allow a student protest but to manage it, hopefully creating a safer atmosphere than an unsupervised, spontaneous 

Disaster Capitalism, K-12 Education, and Corporate Takeovers of Progressive Organizations | Crooks and Liars

Disaster Capitalism, K-12 Education, and Corporate Takeovers of Progressive Organizations | Crooks and Liars:

Disaster Capitalism, K-12 Education, and Corporate Takeovers of Progressive Organizations

43 comments

By karoli

This is how fundamental democratic institutions and progressive organizations get co-opted by corporate interests. Find an issue like, say, education reform, partner up with right-wing interests to undermine public education as a fundamental right of every child in this country, and let billionaires direct the flow of dollars into competing efforts.
Along the way, it's useful to toss some corporate money at progressive organizations in order to give the appearance  that right-wing corporate policies are somehow progressive. This is exactly what has happened with Stand for Children and Change.org. Their union-busting petition microtargeted at Chicago teachers highlights how they have been played "at the edges" to promote ideas that are not at all progressive.

This video and the paragraphs above may be all you need to be convinced. But if you want the details, continue reading below the fold.
Last week, 90 percent of Chicago's teachers participated

Expresso :: Issue of the Week: National Voucher Group Meddles in Milwaukee Democratic Primaries

Expresso :: Issue of the Week: National Voucher Group Meddles in Milwaukee Democratic Primaries:

Issue of the Week: National Voucher Group Meddles in Milwaukee Democratic Primaries

Plus: Hero of the Week

By Shepherd Express Staff

 

It's happened before and it's happening again.

The American Federation for Children (AFC)—a Washington, D.C.-based pro-school-privatization group funded by some of the wealthiest Republican activists in the country—is supporting some Milwaukee candidates in the Democratic primaries.

This year, AFC is spending thousands of dollars on independent expenditures in support of candidates Elizabeth Coggs in Senate District 6, Millie Coby in Assembly District 10, Jason Fields in Assembly District 11, Fields' brother Jarett Fields in Assembly District 18, and Tracey Dent in Assembly District 17.

National pro-voucher groups typically dump money into races late in the game to skirt campaign-finance reporting deadlines so that all of their post-deadline spending doesn't show 

Chicago Teachers Union Update on Contract Negotiations| www.ctunet.com

Chicago Teachers Union | www.ctunet.com:

Update on Contract Negotiations:

“Contract is not Settled; …We Continue To Bargain In Good Faith

and Members Continue to Prepare For A Work Stoppage”

 

CHICAGO – The Chicago Teachers Union is currently in contract negotiations with the Chicago Public Schools and has been since November 2011. While much has been made of the interim agreement in which the Union was able to successfully stop the threat of a 7 hour and 40 minute work day as well as force the District to hire displaced (tenured) teachers in over 500 new positions, the parties have not reached a new contract agreement.

Educators have been without a contract since June 30.

Despite the interim agreement, there are many open issues still on the negotiating table in which there has been little movement. Public school educators also remain concerned about the District’s refusal to provide adequate wrap-around services for students severely impacted by poverty and violence in addition to threats of ballooning class sizes. Teachers are concerned about the new evaluation process of which 40 percent of the review is based on how students perform on standardized tests. Job security, health benefits and teacher pay have not been resolved.

While we continue to bargain in good faith, CTU members continue to prepare for a work stoppage in September when most of them are required to return to the classroom.    State law requires a “cooling off period” of 30 days after the issuing of a fact-finder’s report.At the end of this period, or thereafter, the CTU may strike provided it has first given the District a 10-day notice of the intent to strike.

It should be noted that movement at the bargaining table came only after nearly 10,000 people marched in downtown Chicago in support of a fair contract and more resources for neighborhood schools. This dramatic action was followed by a historic vote, where 90 percent of CTU members voted 98 percent to authorize a strike.

We recognize strikes are not popular. HowevePublish Postr, they are the strongest tool public workers have in ensuring their rights are not trampled upon and working conditions are fair and equitable. The CTU is fighting for strong, well-resourced neighborhood schools where students, regardless of their zip code, will have equal access to a high quality education.

Chicago is a world-class city and it deserves world-class neighborhood schools. Teachers, paraprofessionals and school clinicians are prepared to do what it takes to protect their jobs, their students and their schools.                                     ###

Why Are All the Smart Kids Cheating?

Why Are All the Smart Kids Cheating?:

Why Are All the Smart Kids Cheating?

by guest blogger

Image via onlinedegrees.org

This video by the New York Times illustrates just how much faster sprinter Usain Bolt is than Olympic medalists of yore.  The video’s key takeaway is that the crème de la crème of athletes have over the years pushed themselves to consistently higher standards.  Whereas breaking 10 seconds used to seem nearly impossible, it is now all but a requirement of medaling in the 100m sprint.  While the Olympics has a comprehensive drug testing program to keep its athletes from abusing performance-enhancing substances as they pursue better athleticism, America’s high schools lack the ability to place similar checks on student academic performance.  Students are improving their grades just like sprinters are improving their times; but in schools, cheating among the best and the brightest in order to attain those high grades has become a pervasive problem and in some cases the norm.
Take, for example, the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, N.Y., where 71 students were caught cheating on New York’s Regents exam (and those were only the ones whose involvement was proven). These “cheaters” are unlikely to be found participating in immoral activities on the regular, yet each of them justified cheating by weighing it against the consequences of a less-than-stellar score on the high-stakes Regents

Three Big Numbers to Watch

by Kris Amundson

Meetings at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) help state policymakers with both big picture issues (how will the Affordable Care Act affect your budget) to specific details. Education Sector’s Kris Amundson was at their annual summit this week in Chicago. Here are three important numbers she brought back from the conference.
On state budgets: 6. That’s the number of states that report they feel “optimistic” about their state’s economic outlook for Fiscal 2013. A total of 33 states foresee a “stable” economic outlook, and 11 states say they are concerned. Six is also the number of states that are members of what NCSL calls the “Billionaires’ 

Local Control = Real Freedom | Truth in American Education

Local Control = Real Freedom | Truth in American Education:

Local Control = Real Freedom

by Shane Vander Hart

I was shocked – SHOCKED to read this in a newspaper editorial because most have, by and large, embraced the centralization of education at the state and federal levels.  I almost wanted to cry, ok I’m exaggerating, but it is great to see that the editorial board of The Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel gets it.
An excerpt:

There is a need, of course, for input from all levels of government on maintaining superior public education. The greatest need is for local input, but the pressure from both state and federal governments is for greater control from farther distances. Before we lose local control altogether, we ought to consider just what we will be giving up.

The very premise of this nation is that the more decisions are made closest to the people they affect, the better off we are. The farther away we move from local solutions based on local 

Secret teacher evaluations part of 'compromise' | The Asbury Park Press NJ | APP.com

Secret teacher evaluations part of 'compromise' | The Asbury Park Press NJ | APP.com:

Secret teacher evaluations part of 'compromise'

Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf speaks after Governor Chris Christie signed the Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for the Children of New Jersey (TEACHN) Act at Von E. Mauger Middle School in Middlesex, N.J. on Monday, Aug. 6, 2012. (Governor's Office/Tim Larsen) / Office of the Governor

Gov. Chris Christie, along with legislators and leaders of teacher unions, has lined up to keep the results of teacher evaluations secret from the public, though Christie said the issue was “among certain points of compromise” in a new education bill.

The Republican governor signed teacher tenure legislation into law Monday during a visit to Mauger Middle School in Middlesex.

The job security of tenure will be tied to the evaluations.

Proponents of the new law say teachers still will be held to task for their performance. But the privacy clause has been panned by parents and other stakeholders, who say they won’t know what was detailed in a teacher’s review under a plan that will cost millions of dollars to implement.

“From my perspective, the most significant 

Cover up: Erase to the top. « Fred Klonsky

Cover up: Erase to the top. « Fred Klonsky:

Cover up: Erase to the top.

by Fred Klonsky

USA Today:

A 17-month investigation into possible cheating on standardized tests at Washington, D.C., public schools focused on only one school and did not expand to any other school with rising test scores and suspiciously high rates of wrong answers changed to right ones.

In a report issued Wednesday, city investigators said they found no reason to probe more than one elementary school, Noyes Education Campus, whose principal resigned in the wake of a USA 

Missouri Education Watchdog: Why You Should Read The FERPA Form This Year

Missouri Education Watchdog: Why You Should Read The FERPA Form This Year:

Why You Should Read The FERPA Form This Year

by Anngie

Many parents are busy filling out dozens of school forms right now.  Mixed in that paperwork is the FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) form that indicates your approval for the school to share your child's data. In years past most people paid little attention to this form as it seemed to apply mostly to sharingtranscripts with colleges, military recruiters and school ring companies. They were most critical to families with messy domestic situations, people in witness protection or extreme privacy fanatics.

But given the regulatory changes that were approved recently by the DoEd, more parents should be paying closer attention to what they put in those forms. The new FERPA rules to allow all data collected by the school to be shared with the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Corrections, private researchers 

LAUSD/UTLA Pushing Value Added Model VAM Allowing: Neo-instrumentality and zombie functionalism | Dailycensored.com

LAUSD/UTLA Pushing Value Added Model VAM Allowing: Neo-instrumentality and zombie functionalism | Dailycensored.com:

LAUSD/UTLA Pushing Value Added Model VAM Allowing: Neo-instrumentality and zombie functionalism

by Danny Weil

I read this earlier this week and had to agree with much of what is stated.  The Value Added Model of Education (VAM) — notice the clever use of the words ‘value’ and ‘added’ — this would have made Orwell’s head jerk for it is this type of doublespeak that we find throughout the poisonous educational ‘debate’.

There is clearly little value in removing literature, music, playgrounds, recreation and other humanitarian pursuits from the curriculum for children and then force them to take test all day long under the tutleage of bordom and tyranny.  In fact, it is immoral.

The “Disinterest Compounded Daily Model” (DCDM) my name for the value added model adopted by UTLA and fashioned like garments by people who have no idea of what education is, entails or strives to become an ideological one size fits all uniform that students are told they must wear to enter the low paid or no paid work force.  This is an example of education being administered, not educational opportunities being offered by teachers.

The child abusers who design these bludgeoning devices in the name of education

For African American Students: An Election Year Promise | LFA: Join The Conversation - Public School Insights

For African American Students: An Election Year Promise | LFA: Join The Conversation - Public School Insights:

For African American Students: An Election Year Promise

by Tarsi Dunlop

President Obama recently established an education initiative for African American students. The goal: Provide them greater access “to a complete and competitive education from the time they're born through the time they get a career.”
There is little doubt that the timing of such an announcement coincides with November’s election,  yet to suggest that such an initiative is merely politically symbolic is a defeatist assessment. A renewed focus on the achievement gap between black and white students, indeed between white students and many minority groups, is an opportunity for the education community to push for greater investment in the work they’ve been doing for years to produce better outcomes for students of color.
read more

The Stonewall to Protect Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Teach for America | Scathing Purple Musings

The Stonewall to Protect Michelle Rhee and Teach for America | Scathing Purple Musings:

The Stonewall to Protect Michelle Rhee and Teach for America

by Bob Sikes

One time Michelle Rhee apologist, Jay Mathews, predicted a cover-up. He got one. Wrote Mathews in June of the snail’s pace of the DC inspector generals investigation of test-cheating which occurred on Rhee’s watch as DC chancellor:

What about all those erasures? (Current) D.C. schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson seems uninterested in the question. “I am pleased that this investigation is complete and that the vast majority of our schools were cleared of any wrongdoing,” she said.
I have been a reporter for 45 years. I have seen many cover-ups. This looks like one to me, and to many educators I have spoken to. D.C. officials have never investigated in any depth the wrong-to-right erasures that the District’s testing company began reporting in 2008.

Mathews was proved correct in yesterday’s release of  the report. For USA Today:

Great parent teacher discussion in Hyde Park Parents United for Responsible Education

Parents United for Responsible Education » Blog Archive » Great parent teacher discussion in Hyde Park:

Great parent teacher discussion in Hyde Park

by admin

That's me in the middle

Last night’s forum at the United Church of Hyde Park seemed to help everyone feel better about whatever comes out of the ongoing teacher contract negotiations.
I shared the front table with several teachers from HP and other areas, and was impressed along with the rest of the listeners about the passion the teachers expressed as well as the amount of excellent information that was shared about such topics as the value of small class size, overuse of testing, and the national context of the 

Letter: To improve education, start by tackling poverty | NJ.com

Letter: To improve education, start by tackling poverty | NJ.com:

Letter: To improve education, start by tackling poverty

Published: Thursday, August 09, 2012, 10:25 AM

Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesEducation Secretary Arne Duncan is pictured in this file photo. He spoke with Star-Ledger editorial page editor Tom Moran about school reform.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan shamefully promotes the myth that America’s education problem is its teachers and their associations, when the data are clearly contrary. (“Better education starts with best educators,” Aug. 5).

Duncan’s office said National Assessment of Educational Progress data show contractual bargaining states overall outperform weaker or nonunionized states. The most comprehensive charter study performed to date, by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, demonstrated charter schools were twice as likely to produce underperforming students in traditional public schools and underserve special-needs populations.

A 2009 study by the American Institutes for Research shows that in six states where collective bargaining by teachers is allowed — New Jersey, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New 

Bad Teachers Can Get Better After Some Types Of Evaluation, Harvard Study Finds

Bad Teachers Can Get Better After Some Types Of Evaluation, Harvard Study Finds:

Bad Teachers Can Get Better After Some Types Of Evaluation, Harvard Study Finds

by Joy Resmovits

The question of what to do with bad teachers has stymied America's education system of late, sparking chaotic protests in state capitals and vitriolic debate in a recent congressional hearing. It has also stoked the movementknown as 'education reform,' which has zeroed in on teacher quality by urging school districts to sort the star teachers from the duds, and reward or punish them accordingly.

The idea is that America's schools would be able to increase their students' test scores if only they had better teachers. Since 2007, this wave of education reformers -- in particular Democrats for Education Reform, a group backed by President Barack Obama and hedge fund donors -- has clashed with teachers unions in their pursuit of making the field of education as discerning in its personnel choices as, say, that of finance. Good teachers should be promoted and retained, reformers contend, instead of being treated like identical pieces on an assembly line, who are rewarded with tenure for their staying power or seniority. But what to do with the 

Truly Confounding Data | Mr. Teachbad

Truly Confounding Data | Mr. Teachbad:

Truly Confounding Data

by teachbad

Can some­body help me? I can’t make heads or tails of this lit­tle bar graph I put together.  It’s obvi­ous that we have an unfor­tu­nate con­cen­tra­tion of Bad Teach­ers in Wards 7 and 8. That’s the big story here, but is there any­thing else?

PLEASE HELP!!

Note on the data: School data is aver­age com­bined pro­fi­ciency in read­ing and math for all tra­di­tional pub­lic schools in each ward of the city (no char­ters) on the DC CAS, our ‘state’ NCLB test. This aver­age com­bines ele­men­tary and sec­ondary schools and does not weight for size of stu­dent body. Poverty data is the aver­age per­cent of chil­dren liv­ing in poverty in each ward from 2005–2009.

Shanker Blog » The Louisiana Voucher Accountability Sweepstakes

Shanker Blog » The Louisiana Voucher Accountability Sweepstakes:

The Louisiana Voucher Accountability Sweepstakes

by Matthew Di Carlo

The situation with vouchers in Louisiana is obviously quite complicated, and there are strong opinions on both sides of the issue, but I’d like to comment quickly on the new “accountability” provision. It’s a great example of how, too often, people focus on the concept of accountability and ignore how it is actually implemented in policy.
Quick and dirty background: Louisiana will be allowing students to receive vouchers (tuition to attend private schools) if their public schools are sufficiently low-performing, according to their “school performance score” (SPS). As discussed here, the SPS is based primarily on how highly students score, rather than whether they’re making progress, and thus tells you relatively little about the actual effectiveness of schools per se. For instance, the vouchers will be awarded mostly to schools serving larger proportions of disadvantaged students, even if many of those schools are compelling large gains (though such progress cannot be assessed adequately