Friday, September 21, 2012

by Fred Klonsky

SBAC Technology Readiness Tool Spring 2012 Summary - Assessment Information (CA Dept of Education)

SBAC Technology Readiness Tool Spring 2012 Summary - Assessment Information (CA Dept of Education):

SBAC Technology Readiness Tool Spring 2012 Summary

A statewide summary of the information collected by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium Technology Readiness Tool for the Spring 2012 data collection window.

The Technology Readiness Tool (TRT) collects school-level information technology information to help the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and member states evaluate the technology at schools as it relates to the Smarter Balanced online student assessment system.

The first data collection window (Spring 2012) was open from April 16, 2012 until June 30, 2012. The data collected in the window will be used as a baseline inventory to help the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium determine the minimum system requirements for existing devices for using the Smarter Balanced system. The data are self-reported, unverified, and unaudited.

In California, 4,377 schools (42%) representing 456 districts submitted complete TRT information. An additional 1,237 schools submitted partial information. The district submission status report (XLS) shows the school completion percentage for each district in California.

The following information summarizes some of the data elements collected by the TRT for California schools. The Devices File Import Layout and School Survey File Import Layout Web pages provide descriptions for each of the data elements collected by the TRT.

Device Operating System

Total schools reporting device operating system information: 5,153 (representing 507 districts)

Total devices with operating system information: 613,996

CONTINUED @ SBAC Technology Readiness Tool Spring 2012 Summary - Assessment Information (CA Dept of Education)

SBAC IT Readiness Tool - Information on the Web-based tool used by districts to report each school's current information technology (IT) as it relates to the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) assessments.
SBAC IT Readiness Tool Parameters - Spring 2012 - A list of the parameters collected by the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium's (SBAC) Information Technology (IT) Readiness Tool for the Spring 2012 data collection.

State Schools Chief Issues Statement on SB 1070 Signing

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson today issued the following statement upon Governor Jerry Brown's signing of Senate Bill 1070, which reauthorizes and revises the Career Technical Education Pathways Initiative.

"I've made career technical education a top priority for one simple reason: it works. Students in these programs graduate at higher rates, and they do so prepared for lasting success in college and careers. I'm delighted the Pro Tem, his fellow legislators, and Governor Brown acted to extend and strengthen a program that already has a proven history of investing in successful education, training, and workforce development pathways—from middle school all the way to community college—in regions across California."

Since its inception in 2005, the Career Technical Education Pathways Initiative has served nearly 750,000 California students in middle school, high school, and college. These and other investments have developed or revised courses and provided trainings and/or externships. They have also supported, among other programs, California Partnership Academies, Career Advancement Academies, and the Teacher Preparation Pipeline. The initiative was set to sunset at the end of 2012.

Torlakson sponsored the bill. Supporters of its extension and strengthening have included the California Chamber of Commerce, the California State PTA, the University of California, and the R.E.A.L. Coalition, which includes the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the Bay Area Council, the Southern California Leadership Council, and several chambers of commerce, among others.

# # # #

Tom Torlakson — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5206, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

"Won't Back Down" Film Pushes ALEC Parent Trigger Proposal | PR Watch

"Won't Back Down" Film Pushes ALEC Parent Trigger Proposal | PR Watch:

"Won't Back Down" Film Pushes ALEC Parent Trigger Proposal

by Mary Bottari — September 19, 2012 - 10:00am

Topics: Banking

Projects: ALEC Exposed

National education group taps Nashville for special screening of 'parent trigger' film | Nashville City Paper

National education group taps Nashville for special screening of 'parent trigger' film | Nashville City Paper:

National education group taps Nashville for special screening of 'parent trigger' film
By Joey Garrison

Stealing Schools = Won't Back Down (click Picture)

In the way the documentary “Waiting for 'Superman' ” became the critics’ pick for charter school enthusiasts in 2010, education reformers are already turning to “Won’t Back Down” to shed light on a new cause: the “parent trigger” law.

And though the film won’t go nationwide until Sept. 28, Nashville is set to receive a special sneak preview.

The education group StudentsFirst — led by controversial former Washington, D.C., School Chancellor Michelle Rhee — has selected Nashville, along with 17 other cities, to receive a special screening of the film. The Nashville premier is set for 6 p.m. on Sept. 24 at Regal Opry Mills.

The screening is by invitation only and not open to the general public.

Francisco Castillo, StudentsFirst’s deputy national press secretary, told The City Paper the event in Nashville would include a panel discussion, though the slate of panelists still isn’t finalized.

One notable name already set to attend is charter school champion Mayor Karl Dean. According to his press secretary Bonna Johnson, Dean will give welcoming remarks

Beware of AstroTurf Ed Reformers

Just Like Michelle Rhee's Students first only BETTER

Astroturf lobbying refers to political organizations or campaigns that appear to be made up of grassroots activists but are actually organized and run by corporate interests seeking to further their own agendas. Such groups are often typified by innocent-sounding names that have been chosen specifically to disguise the group's true backers

Just Like Michelle Rhee's

Students first Astroturf lobbying (only Better)

Other Astroturf lobbying groups

Just Like Michelle Rhee's

Students first Astroturf lobbying (only Better)

MIDDLE CLASS STILL ELUDES SOME TEACHERS « Teachers Fight Back

MIDDLE CLASS STILL ELUDES SOME TEACHERS « Teachers Fight Back:

MIDDLE CLASS STILL ELUDES SOME TEACHERS

by alkleen

Just saw a news report that gives the income of people in the U.S. who would be considered “middle class”. To be “middle class” in America, you need to fall between the yearly incomes of $39,418 and $118,255. Wow, that’s “middle class”? If that’s the case, we sure have a good deal of teachers who have yet to reach that $39,418 level and are certainly not “middle class”.
It’s also safe to assume that most teachers are not anywhere near the top end of the “middle class” category. I would place most teachers in the lower third of the “middle class” income. For a job that almost everyone agrees is one of the most important in the world, a teacher’s income is still very low and doesn’t reflect the critical nature of the job.
The current state of teachers’ salaries would be much lower than they currently are if it wasn’t for teacher unions.

Daily Kos: "The Difficult Thirty Percent" Redux: The Equity Gap 2012

Daily Kos: "The Difficult Thirty Percent" Redux: The Equity Gap 2012:

"The Difficult Thirty Percent" Redux: The Equity Gap 2012

by rss@dailykos.com (plthomasEdD)

Ralph Ellison, celebrated author of Invisible Man, spoke in September 1963 at a teachers' conference "...to discuss 'these children,' the difficult thirty percent. We know this very well; it has been hammered out again and again." Ellison was addressing the educational failures of African American children in U.S. public schools, including drop outs.
Rejecting the prevalent deficit perspective of his era, Ellison bravely asserted, "There is no such thing as a culturally deprived kid." In his confrontation of stereotypes about race and poverty as well as the historical failure of public education to challenge the racism and inequity of mid-twentieth century America, Ellison concluded with:

I don’t know what intelligence is. But this I do know, both from life and from literature: whenever

Why some of the best universities are giving away their courses | Pacific NW | The Seattle Times

Why some of the best universities are giving away their courses | Pacific NW | The Seattle Times:

Why some of the best universities are giving away their courses

Each has answers, but, basically, it comes down to ...

By Katherine Long

PREV 1 of 7 NEXT

The Linden family is really into free online education. Clockwise from top left: Greg Linden; his wife, Corina; son, Jacob, 10; and daughter Tatiana, 9. Jacob is using a calculator to enter data to advance through an introductory physics class offered by Udacity, a collection of free online courses started by a Stanford University professor.

KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES

The Linden family is really into free online education. Clockwise from top left: Greg Linden; his wife, Corina; son, Jacob, 10; and daughter Tatiana, 9. Jacob is using a calculator to enter data to advance through an introductory physics class offered by Udacity, a collection of free online courses started by a Stanford University professor.

Pacific NW Magazine is on Facebook

Join Lily (virtually speaking) @ NBC Student Town Hall - Lily's Blackboard | Lily's Blackboard

Join Lily (virtually speaking) @ NBC Student Town Hall - Lily's Blackboard | Lily's Blackboard:

Join Lily (virtually speaking) @ NBC Student Town Hall

Sep 21st, 2012

by Lily.

Join Lily at the Education Nation 2012 Student Town Hall where Melissa Harris-Perry hosts students for the first Education Nation at The New York Public Library. You can follow live here on Lily’s Blackboard on Sunday, Sept 23rd at 10:00am (ET)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Comments? Ideas? Join the conversation here.

Banned in Park Ridge. « Fred Klonsky

Banned in Park Ridge. « Fred Klonsky:

Banned in Park Ridge.

by Fred Klonsky

Was it something I said?
Earlier today I did a post that mentioned the contract settlement in Park Ridge. That is the district I just retired from and was, for a ten-year period of time, the union president.
I noted that it was a contract that was bargained well by the Park Ridge Education Association negotiating team. I pointed out that it contained a modest cost of living adjustment and some gains for teacher voice in curriculum creation.
But I also mentioned the District’s huge 40% budget surplus. What do local taxpayers think when their homes

Violence, Technology, and Education: Putting Accountability in the Right Perspective — Whole Child Education

Violence, Technology, and Education: Putting Accountability in the Right Perspective — Whole Child Education:

Violence, Technology, and Education: Putting Accountability in the Right Perspective

September 21, 2012 by ASCD Whole Child Bloggers

Post submitted by Tess Pajaron of Open Colleges, an online course provider based in Australia. She regularly writes about study and work abroad experiences and advocates for education.

Would you believe me if I told you that when the telephone was invented, people didn't believe it would eventually become part of their daily lives?

In fact, the telephone was vilified. Some called it "the instrument of the devil." TheNew York Times, in 1876, reported that the telephone will "empty the concert-halls and the churches" as it enables people to listen to lectures, sermons, and concerts from the comfort of their own homes. You can see where the argument was going.

Sounds familiar? It should.

Because the same criticism applied to pretty much all major inventions of the last century, the phonograph was forecasted to be the cause of the demise of books and reading—and that boys of the future will "never have to learn his letters or to wrestle with the spelling book." And the television, as you probably know, is

Radical Scholarship: Peter Lang titles win 8 Critics' Choice Book Awards from the American Educational Studies Association

Radical Scholarship: Peter Lang titles win 8 Critics' Choice Book Awards from the American Educational Studies Association:

Peter Lang titles win 8 Critics' Choice Book Awards from the American Educational Studies Association

Gorlewski, Julie A. / Porfilio, Brad J. / Gorlewski, David A. (eds.)
Using Standards and High-Stakes Testing for Students
Exploiting Power with Critical Pedagogy

Series: Counterpoints - Volume 425

Year of Publication: 2012

New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2012. XIV, 271 pp., num. fig.
ISBN 978-1-4331-1555-4 pb. (Softcover)
ISBN 978-1-4331-1556-1 hb. (Hardcover)

Weight: 0.420 kg, 0.926 lbs

RheeFirst! » Something funny about Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s TNTP bio

RheeFirst! » Something funny about Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s TNTP bio:

Something funny about Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s TNTP bio

by admin

Before she started StudentsFirst, Rhee ran an education consultancy called The New Teacher Project (TNTP). Her bio on the old TNTP website is very interesting. Rhee’s short biography stays pretty much the same from2001 through 2003. And then, this line appears:
“Her teaching career started at Harlem Park Community School in Baltimore, MD, where her outstanding success in the classroom earned her acclaim on Good Morning America and The Home Show, as well as in the Wall Street Journal and the Hartford Courant.”
It sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? In her three short years as a teacher in Baltimore, Rhee somehow managed to earn accolades from Good Morning America and The Wall Street Journal? What’s Rhee’s secret? Good ole’ fashioned resume inflation, as it turns out. Only the Hartford Courant covered Rhee’s school. Rhee was mentioned in the piece, but not lauded for her “outstanding success.”
Just like

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Live From the Heartland tomorrow morning

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Live From the Heartland tomorrow morning:

Live From the Heartland tomorrow morning

by Mike Klonsky

JOIN KATY HOGAN AND MICHAEL JAMES FOR THE

LIVE FROM THE HEARTLAND SHOW. Sat. 9 am

Live at the Heartland Cafe • on air 88.7 • on line www.wluw.org• www.youtube.com/heartlandmedia

Saturday, 9/22: Mike Klonsky

Our featured guest is Mike Klonsky. Mike is one of the Live from the Heartland Show's regular commentators on education and other important matters. He joins us this Saturday to share information and analysis on the recent Chicago teachers strike. We'll look at the CTU, the CPS and the implications for education nationwide.

From Mike's blog: "Out on the picket lines I saw teachers in small groups, reading the tentative contract, line-by-line and discussing it. Talk about your participatory democracy. Here it is, right on

Videos Reveal Frustration with the Chicago Strike - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

Videos Reveal Frustration with the Chicago Strike - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher:

Videos Reveal Frustration with the Chicago Strike

by Anthony Cody

Follow me on Twitter at @AnthonyCody
This has been the year of the revealing video. This week we saw that Governor Romney and many of his millionaire donors view almost half the country as parasitic dependents. That famous 47% includes many of our students.
Last summer's video of Stand For Children leader Jonah Edelman at a conservative gathering in Aspen revealed how his group had maneuvered to pass a law that they thought would make a strike in Chicago impossible.
Our schools are being starved of funding, at a time when taxes have never been lower, and the concentration of wealth has never been higher. The four hundred richest Americans saw their wealth grow by 13% in 2011,

David Coleman: “I’m Scared of Rewarding BS” « The Core Knowledge Blog

David Coleman: “I’m Scared of Rewarding BS” « The Core Knowledge Blog:

David Coleman: “I’m Scared of Rewarding BS”

by Robert Pondiscio
September 21st, 2012

Tags: Checker Finn, Common Core State Standards, Dana Goldstein, David Coleman,Literacy, The Atlantic
Posted in Curriculum, Education News | No Comments »

Dana Goldstein’s profile of Common Core State Standards architect David Coleman is up at The Atlantic, and it’s a must-read. For better or for worse, she writes, his ideas are transforming American education as we know it. The money quote: “I’m scared of rewarding bullshit,” Coleman tells Goldstein. “I don’t think it’s costless at all.”

“By bullshit, Coleman means the sort of watered-down curriculum that has become the norm in many American classrooms. For nearly two centuries, the United States resisted the idea, generally accepted abroad, that all students should share a certain body of knowledge and develop a specific set of skills. The ethos of local control is so ingrained in the American school system—and rifts over culture-war land mines such as teaching evolutionary theory are so deep—that even when the country began to slip

The 6 P’s for Education « My Island View

The 6 P’s for Education « My Island View:

The 6 P’s for Education

by tomwhitby

Dell Computer has sponsored four education Think Tanks over the last year, or so, and I have been fortunate to participate in three of them. At each get-together educators, education related organizers, education industry executives, and most recently students, were brought together in an open discussion on the weighty topics of education and education reform. All of the discussions were video-taped, and live-streamed, and even animated on a mural to a viewing audience. The final production was archived to a special website maintained by Dell. During these discussions the participants were even tweeting out discussion ideas in real-time, which reflected out to the growing community of connected educators on Twitter. Transparency abounds at these Dell Computer think tanks.
Each of the groups is given four to six general topics of concern in education to discuss for about forty-five minutes to an hour. Since the members are all invited guests, they are usually intelligent, passionate, and well-

How our love for numbers warps school reform - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

How our love for numbers warps school reform - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:

How our love for numbers warps school reform

By Valerie Strauss

Americans have a love affair with numbers. Here Alfie Kohn, the author of 12 books about education and human behavior, explains why this has become a problem when it comes to school reform. His books include “The Schools Our Children Deserve,” “The Homework Myth,” and “Feel-Bad Education... And Other Contrarian Essays on Children & Schooling.” He lives (actually) in the Boston area and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org. This is a slightly expanded version of an essay that was first published in the September 19 issue of Education Week”

By Alfie Kohn

“As we tend to value the results of education for their measurableness, so we tend to undervalue and at last ignore those results which are too intrinsically valuable to be measured.”

-- Edmond G. A. Holmes, chief inspector of elementary schoolsfor Great Britain, 1911

The reason that standardized test results tend to be so uninformative and misleading is closely related to the reason that these tests are so popular in the first place. That, in turn, is connected to our attraction to

(bigstock)— and the trouble with — grades, rubrics, and various practices commended to us as “data-

Fred,
Thank you so much to Fred and all the CPS teachers that came out to support the Peet’s Workers Group on Tuesday. It meant so much that after 9 exhausting days on the front lines you came up to stand in support of the coffee workers!
- Rae

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