Is Rick Scott a wildcard on 'parent trigger' bill? | Tampa Bay Times

Is Rick Scott a wildcard on 'parent trigger' bill? | Tampa Bay Times:

Is Rick Scott a wildcard on 'parent trigger' bill?

• Kathleen McGrory, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau

Thursday, March 7, 2013 6:44pm

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TALLAHASSEE — A bill that empowers parents.

A bill that hands public schools over to private interests.

A red herring.

No matter what you think of the so-called "parent trigger" proposal, one thing was made clear Thursday: The bill will be among the most contentious of the legislative session.

The proposal, which would allow parents to petition for dramatic changes at failing public schools, including having a charter school company take over, won the approval of a House education subcommittee Thursday by an 8-5 vote along party lines.

It was also the subject of a memo from Education Commissioner Tony Bennett to Rep. Carlos Trujillo and Sen. Kelli Stargel that pointed out some potential pitfalls. Gov. Rick Scott acknowledged Bennett's memo had already made its way to his 

UPDATE: Gun incident at Grady High highlights socio-economic divide. Can students overcome differences? | Get Schooled

Gun incident at Grady High highlights socio-economic divide. Can students overcome differences? | Get Schooled:

Questions for DeKalb school board candidates: Vision, inspiration, student achievement

by Maureen Downey

Here are the questions sent to the 400 applicants for the DeKalb Board of Education. (AJC)

Gun incident at Grady High highlights socio-economic divide. Can students overcome differences?

by Maureen Downey

Grady High student Joe Lavine shot this photo of the gun in the accidental shooting at Grady on Feb. 27. (Joe Lavine, The Southerner)

One of the strongest images to emerge from the accidental shooting 10 days ago at Grady High School was a photo taken by a student photographer who was in-between classes when a classmate accidentally shot herself in the leg in a school courtyard. Grady senior Joe Lavine is on the staff of  high school’s nationally acclaimed student newspaper, The Southerner.
Lavine has written a guest column about the shooting. (Lavine is interviewing today for a college scholarship. Good luck to him.)

By Joe Lavine
Yes, I took the picture of  the gun a Grady High classmate accidentally discharged  last week in 

Sac Unified May Lay Off 20 Teachers | KTXL FOX40

Sac Unified May Lay Off 20 Teachers | KTXL FOX40:

Sac Unified May Lay Off 20 Teachers

• 

  8 hours ago
  by Luana Munoz
  Reporter
• Sacramento Unified Considers Closing 11 Elementary Schools 

SACRAMENTO-

It has been an ongoing battle as parents push to save schools from closing, but tonight more frustrating news.

As the district looks to save money parents and teachers are bearing the brunt.

Proposed budget reductions would cut 20 teacher positions, a grant writing position and many more all to save the district $5.7 million including school closures.

“That tells me, as a parent, that perhaps the district isn’t putting children first,” said parent Darlene Anderson.

The district maintains declining enrollment is their main reason for closing seven schools.

Parents ask why the district is investing more money in high priority schools and in expanding schools rather than using the ones they have.

“At a time when we are in a big crunch for fiscal dollars we are talking about restructuring the

Read more at http://fox40.com/2013/03/07/sac-unified-may-lay-off-20-teachers/#jT12wdI8Qz5WhDde.99 

Read more: http://fox40.com/2013/03/07/sac-unified-may-lay-off-20-teachers/#ixzz2MxlfwFL3

SRC votes to close Germantown High, Fulton and Kinsey elementaries; spares Roosevelt | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

SRC votes to close Germantown High, Fulton and Kinsey elementaries; spares Roosevelt | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

SRC votes to close Germantown High, Fulton and Kinsey elementaries; spares Roosevelt

by thenotebook

by Aaron Moselle
Vera Primus' eyes said it all. Her words added an exclamation point.
"I'm just floored," said a teary Primus, Germantown High School's alumni association president on Thursday night after learning that her alma mater would close at school-year's end. "They don't care nothing about these kids."

Image: 

Image Caption: 

A rally for neighborhood schools took place outside the Atrium on Thursday before a School Reform Commission vote on whether to close 29 neighborhood schools.

Photo Credits: 

Kimberly Paynter/WHYY

read more

Notes from the news, March 8

by thenotebook

SRC votes to close 23 schools, spares 4. Notebook
Protesting ... mostly in vain. Notebook
SRC votes to close 23 schools, spare four. Inquirer
School Reform Commission shuts down 23, saves 4 schools. Daily News
Philadelphia Officials Vote to Close 23 Schools. NY Times
Philadelphia to close 23 public schools; Randi Weingarten arrested at protest. Answer Sheet/Washington Post
Randi Weingarten arrested for protesting Philadelphia school closure hearing. HuffPost
Parents and teachers react to school closings. CBS Philly
Philly school-closings vote marked by protests, arrests and raw emotion. NewsWorks
News summary from Keystone State Education Coalition

---

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Notes from the news
read more

Give me your tired test prep assignments, your poor #CCSS homework examples… – @ the chalk face

Give me your tired test prep assignments, your poor #CCSS homework examples… – @ the chalk face:

Give me your tired test prep assignments, your poor #CCSS homework examples…

by Chris Cerrone

… your huddled students yearning to learn free from corporate education reform.
Here At the Chalkface we have had several articles that have been widely read and shared recently:
http://atthechalkface.com/2012/12/12/is-your-child-getting-a-worksheet-education/
http://atthechalkface.com/2013/03/05/kindergarteners-get-ready-to-confront-the-new-economy/
http://atthechalkface.com/2013/03/06/guess-the-grade-level-of-this-common-core-homework/
The theme of these pieces is test preparation and Common Core worksheets/homework assignments.  These articles are examples of the harm corporate education reform is having on our children and the themes have

@thinkprogress makes the progressive case against higher tuition costs. Careful. #highered

by Chalk Face, PhD

Progressives frequently lament the increasing costs of higher education, as Think Progress does here. Young persons are saddled with debt and this is a very troubling situation.
As a faculty member, I have a somewhat different perspective. I suppose it’s easy, from a student’s perspective, to criticize all aspects of a university for rising tuition costs. It seems as if there’s a fee for everything nowadays.Overall, state investment in public higher education is declining. Without a drastic reduction in services, universities are in a bind and they need to increase tuition.
It may seem to the student that these tuition costs are increasing for no good reason. But let me assure you,

The crowd at #SXSWedu and #edtech could ultimately learn from this.

by Chalk Face, PhD

A great article from the NYT on Sunday comes at a pretty good time, given the passing of SXSW in Austin, TX these last few days. I was, of course, not in Texas, but I followed conversations and happenings online related to education, or the hashtag #SXSWedu. You get the impression that a lot of tech gurus descended upon the event to sell their wares as the greatest solution for public education. From the NYT article:

Such digital humanitarianism aims to generate good will on the outside and boost morale on the inside. After all, saving the world might be a price worth paying for destroying everyone’s privacy, while a larger-than-life mission might convince young and idealistic employees that they are not 

Joy Resmovits: Diane Ravitch Launches Network For Public Education; Closure News In Philadelphia, Chicago, New York -- Ed Today

Joy Resmovits: Diane Ravitch Launches Network For Public Education; Closure News In Philadelphia, Chicago, New York -- Ed Today:

Diane Ravitch Launches Network For Public Education; Closure News In Philadelphia, Chicago, New York -- Ed Today

by Joy Resmovits

THE NETWORK FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION (CLICK PICTURE)

 

WE ARE MANY. THERE IS POWER IN OUR NUMBERS. TOGETHER, WE WILL SAVE OUR SCHOOLS. THE NETWORK FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION

Diane Ravitch's New Group On Wednesday morning, a group of education activists across the country -- including Leonie Haimson, Anthony Cody, and Diane Ravitch, the fierce historian-cum-reform-fighter -- announced the launch of the Network for Public Education. The group aims to fight off state advocacy groups such as StudentsFirst and Democrats for Education Reform that push a particular school-related agenda including charter schools and teacher evaluations based, in part, on student test scores. Ravitch told Politics K12 that the group plans to endorse specific candidates, but won't be donating to them -- unlike the groups they're fighting.

How is it funded? According to a spreadsheet of funders Cody sent me yesterday, all the donations are pretty small from some names that are familiar in the space. By Wednesday at around 10 a.m., the group's largest donation was $250. "The total, four hours post launch, is $3155, and about 90 donors," he said in an email at the time. By 4 p.m., that number was up to $4,000, Cody the Times.

As for the unions -- Randi tweeted her support, but I'm waiting to hear back from the National Education 

Schools Matter: Weingarten Gets Arrested for the Cameras in Philadelphia While Remaining Janus-Faced on Charter Schools

Schools Matter: Weingarten Gets Arrested for the Cameras in Philadelphia While Remaining Janus-Faced on Charter Schools:

Weingarten Gets Arrested for the Cameras in Philadelphia While Remaining Janus-Faced on Charter Schools

by Jim Horn

Randi Weingarten is in Philadelphia, pretending to put herself in between the closing of 23 schools and the opening of a new batch of corporate welfare charter schools to replace them.  Below is her staged arrest.  Seems pretty calm there, Randi.

Popout

Now when you go on the AFT website and start to look at the charter-friendly historical revisionism that Randi's lawyer chums have put together there for teacher consumption, it is hard to see why Randi would be in Philadelphia getting her arrested to stop the spread of charter schools, which she obviously embraces.  FromAFT's website:

In a landmark address in 1988, former AFT president Albert Shanker became one of the first education leaders to champion the concept of charter schools. Shanker envisioned teacher-led 

Daily Kos: Conservative Leadership Poor Stewardship of Public Funds

Daily Kos: Conservative Leadership Poor Stewardship of Public Funds:

Conservative Leadership Poor Stewardship of Public Funds

by rss@dailykos.com (plthomasEdD)

In South Carolina and across the U.S., conservative leadership of education reform has failed to fulfill a foundational commitment to traditional values, good stewardship of public funds. [1]
The evidence of that failed stewardship is best exposed in commitments to three education reform policies: Adopting and implementing Common Core State Standards (CCSS), designing and implementing new tests based on CCSS, and proposing and field-testing revised teacher evaluations based on value-added models (VAM).
SC committed a tremendous amount of time and public funding to the accountability movement thirty years ago as one of the first states to implement state standards and high-stakes testing. After three decades of 

Jersey Jazzman: God Bless Randi Weingarten

Jersey Jazzman: God Bless Randi Weingarten:

God Bless Randi Weingarten

by Duke

Lord knows I've had my disagreements with Randi Weingarten in the past - good faith disagreements, yes, but strong disagreements nonetheless.

Let me be among the first to say, however, that this took a lot of guts:

Randi Weingarten and other protestors were arrested and hauled off in handcuffs while demonstrating against school closings in Philadelphia. Neither the Mayor nor the School Reform Commission was willing to meet with Weingarten.

After her release from custody, said the article in the Huffington Post,

“Weingarten said she sees the school closure plan as siphoning money away from public schools, since the plan doesn’t touch charter schools. “This was really a plan to eliminate public education,” Weingarten said. “This is not about how to fix public schools, but to close them — not how to stabilize but to destabilize public schooling.”

Ed Notes Online: Chicago Teacher Union PRES. At NYCoRE conf Sat. March 16th

Ed Notes Online: Chicago Teacher Union PRES. At NYCoRE conf Sat. March 16th:

Chicago Teacher Union PRES. At NYCoRE conf Sat. March 16th

by ed notes online

And MORE and Change the Stakes too. I'm so excited. Given that Sat all day is tied up with FIRST LEGO League robotics at Javits (come on down - free and open to public) and next Sat with NYCORE, and since we still have one car and my wife won't be able to go to the gym, I expect to be living in the reconstruction zone of my house by St. Patrick's Day.


Hi all,

Next sat, March 16th, is the NYCoRE annual. Its an amazing conference with great workshops (list here). 

But ALSO....Karen Lewis, the dynamic president of the Chicago Teacher's Union is the keynote. This is an opportunity you should not miss. 

     

There will also be many of MORE's top candidates for UFT leadership in attendance and MORE has a workshop and a table where you can learn more about the movement to transform the UFT.

Please register on line by following the link below.

Here are some links to MORE related videos.

MORE website: here

MORE campaign video (only 4 minutes) here

Julie Cavanagh, MORE presidential candidate, speaking this week at Murray Bergtraum HS here

Conference Workshops Online Registration Open NYCoRE 4th Annual Conference March 16th, 2013  Click Here to Register  Read Workshop Descriptions! Location:   Vanguard High School 317 East 67th Street  New York, NY 10065 Time:   8:45 am- 6:00 pm Keynote: Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago's Teachers Union   accompanied by DJ ULTRAMAN, Benji Chang, Post-Doctoral Fellow with IUME Teachers College Conference Overview A school should be the center of a community -- a place that feeds the minds and hearts of its young people, a place that celebrates the neighborhood's cultural and linguistic heritage, a place that provides the tools for a community to deepen its self-understanding and broaden its understanding of its connections to the broader world. Across the country, however, the ability of educational institutions to serve these purposes is being severely damaged. Schools are increasingly seen as opportunities for the wealthy and powerful to make a profit, or to further their own political agendas. While these agendas affect different groups in a variety of ways, in such seemingly disconnected policies as school closings, teacher bashing, and the banning of ethnic studies programs, a common thread emerges:  disregard for the histories, needs and people served by local public schools. But in response to these dehumanizing, profit-driven policies, communities are fighting back. People are coming together, supporting, valuing and caring for one another as individuals with unique histories and experiences, rather than as statistics. Communities are reaching out, forming new connections, building bridges, strengthening ties. From the Chicago teachers and the parents who supported them in their recent strike, to the work that teachers do in their classrooms, we are working to listen to one another, and to hear each other's voices over the din of the empty rhetoric of politicians, and to bring our voices together in a call for justice.  About NYCoRE  New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) is a group of public school educators committed to fighting for social justice in our school system and society at large, by organizing and mobilizing teachers, developing curriculum, and working with community, parent, and student organizations. We are educators who believe that education is an integral part of social change and that we must work both inside and outside the classroom because the struggle for justice does not end when the school bell rings.  NYCoRE members hold in common nine Points of Unity which can be found here:  http://www.nycore.org/nycore-info/points-of-unity/   Click Here to Register    Support provided by the Union Square Award, a project of the Tides Center. New York Collective of Radical Educators www.nycore.org

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