Big Education Ape - Mid Day Banana Break
by Michael Dunn
Want your child to flower academically? That’s what inBloom Inc. says it will do by accessing your child’s social security number, test scores, hobbies, learning disabilities, attendance records, career goals, homework completion records, and other personal data, in order to develop “personalized” learning aids that it will sell back to you or your school district.
Private Education Companies are School Officials According to Fed
inBloom’s new $100 million database has been in operation for three months, the Business Insider reports. Funded by the Gates Foundation, with its infrastructure built by Amplify Education, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s New’s Corp, the database was designed to acquire and monitor student data from kindergarten through high school. It already contains files on millions of children, according to Reuters. While local school officials retain legal control over the information, federal law allows them to share these files with private
by Valerie Strauss
You won’t believe what a bill called “The Reasonable School Discipline Act of 2013″ and introduced in the Maryland legislature is intended to accomplish. (Or maybe you will.) My colleague Michael Rosenwald calls it a bill “to protect Pop-Tart guns.” …
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by Alexander Russo
Expressing concern about increasing divisiveness between LAUSD and the teachers union, the
LA Times editorial page calls for a
more thoughtful, balanced approach to making much-needed improvements, including a proposal for LAUSD to make student achievement less than 30
by Hillel Aron
PEAC member Alex Caputo-Pearl, left, at a UTLA-led Steve Zimmer phone bank
Tomorrow’s much-anticipated House of Representatives debate over District 6 endorsements isn’t the only potentially divisive issue UTLA’s governing body has on tap this Spring.
Next month, members of the teachers union will also vote on a new
initiative to demand various things from
There may be no topic more controversial in the world of education than value-added assessment—essentially judging and ranking teachers based on how well they can get students to improve their scores on standardized tests. Almost all of the discussion has centered around the question of whether or not it is appropriate to make test scores the determining factor in a teacher’s performance rating. But beyond the headlines and the lawsuits, there is an issue that has gone completely unaddressed. No one is asking how value-added assessments may affect the very students that this evaluation system is intended to help. By my count, there are at least ten separate ways in which value-added assessment either does not accurately measure the needs of a student or is actually harmful to a child’s education. Until these flaws are addressed, value-added assessment will be nothing more than a toy for politicians and headline writers, not a serious tool for improving learning.
1. The premise of value-added assessment is that standardized tests are an accurate and decisive measure of student learning. In fact, standardized testing is neither definitive nor especially reliable. City and state exams are snapshots, not in-depth diagnostic tools.
by Deepa Fernandes
How soon is too soon to talk about sex in schools? Credit: Photo by c.a.muller via Flickr Creative Commons
When it comes to talking to kids about sex -- what should they know and when? I was wondering about this last night, when I stumbled on a show on Nick Jr where an interviewer was pretending to be a small child, asking people those oh-so innocent questions that get parents all tangled up. “What is intercourse?” “Why does my penis change size?” “What’s that tiny diaper you wear, Mom?”
Put on the spot, the parents were embarrassed, tongue tied and generally came up with odd responses. Which got me wondering what a parent should say when a young child asks these kinds of questions. How young is too young to talk about it?
In California, schools have to teach HIV/AIDS prevention once in middle school and once in high school,
by Hechinger Report
For the third consecutive year,
The Hechinger Report has been honored with National Awards for Education writing from the
Education Writers Association. Our brand of solutions-oriented, in-depth writing about education has been appearing in major publications across the U.S. since May, 2010. Five
Report writers are among the
winners of the 2012 National Awards for Education Reporting, announced Tuesday by the
Education Writers Association. Sarah Carr won first prize for beat reporting, for stories covering k-12 education in the South. Carr’s
by Maureen Downey
Here is the list of 63 people interviewed by the governor’s panel and the districts for which they were under consideration. (The districts are the numbers next to their names. Remember, DeKalb has two super districts.) The governor is scheduled to announce six board members from this list tomorrow at 11 a.m.
“I am overwhelmed by the extraordinary group of people in DeKalb County who stepped forward to try to help their community,” said Gov. Nathan Deal. “I greatly appreciate the nominating panel’s hard work and the difficult choices the members faced when narrowing down a field with so many excellent candidates. These individuals have worked with the best interests of DeKalb’s children in mind, and I’m proud of the progress we have made. Protecting the opportunities of our youngest generation is a sacred trust; I want DeKalb’s parents, students, teachers and homeowners to know, it’s a trust I will keep.”
The list:
by Alexander Russo
Last week’s School Board primary outcome wasn’t a win or even a mixed result for Mayor Villaraigosa and his merry band of reformers, according to former state senator Gloria Romero. It was a big loss.
Romero has had public disagreements with Villaraigosa in the past, and she first made her
negative assessmentof the outcome in an
LA Times piece last week.
Now, in a new
Orange County Register commentary, the head of Democrats for Education Reform (
DFER) – California writes, “The balance of power on the school board has shifted away from the mayor, who overreached, and from the broader reform community.”
Villaraigosa and the reform coalition weren’t the only parties at fault during the contentious primary, according to
The Education Writers Association is pleased to announce the winners of the 2012 National Awards for Education Reporting, recognizing dogged journalism, accomplished storytelling, and insightful analysis produced by print, radio and online media outlets across the country.
The 62 winning entries, chosen from among hundreds of submissions, came from newsrooms as small as nursery schools and as large as college dormitories. First-place winners are eligible for the Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize for Distinguished Education Reporting, whose winner will be announced on May 4th during EWA’s 66th National Seminar. All winners will be honored at the event, which is being held from May 2-4 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
Contest judging was conducted independently, under the direction of Chief Judge Tamara M. Cooke Henry, Ph.D., of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland. In all, 25 judges reviewed hundreds of submissions, many coming within a hair's breadth of winning one of the three prizes possible in each category.
Below, you will find individual pages to all the winning entries. Clearly, they are worth a read.
I. GENERAL NEWS OUTLETS, SMALL NEWSROOM: Print or online journalism publications with 25 or fewer FTE
by Valerie Strauss
Sometimes a nice little story is just the ticket, and here’s one: A custodian at a Texas high school won the national LifeChanger of the Year award for his efforts to help and mentor students. Charles Clark, head custodian at …
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by Duke
If you're a teacher or a parent in New Jersey, get used to this acronym:
SGP.
One prevailing question both during and after the meeting had to do with how the process would work, especially the tests scores and a complex formula called “student growth percentiles” (SGP) that will measures students’ progress against that of comparable peers.
The state is expected to release its first SGP scores for overall school performance this month, based on 2011-2012 tests, but has only started to share them for individual teachers. [emphasis mine]
Here's the key to understanding SGPs: as their "inventor,"
Damian Betebenner says, SGPs are a
descriptivemeasure. They measure student "growth," relative to other students, but
SGPs make no attempt to determine
by Matthew Haag
by jonpelto
State employees who are eligible may elect to retire in lieu of layoff under the terms of the new Stipulated Agreement between the Malloy Administration and SEBAC:
State employee employed as of December 1, 2012 and you are a member of the Connecticut State Employees Retirement System (SERS). Offer applies to non-represented employees, including managers, as well as to members of all bargaining units.
Prior to August 31, 2011 you were under the age of 55 AND had twenty-five or more years of service.
SERS members must irrevocably elect to retire in lieu of layoff AND sign a stipulated agreement by May 1, 2013.
Retirement date: Eligible Tier I members must retire no later than July 1, 2013. Tier 2
Source: [b]New Haven Register[/b]
NEWTOWN — The Board of Finance voted unanimously Monday night to set aside $420,000 in the contingency fund for the coming year for 4.3 armed security positions, allowing all seven of public schools to have armed police officers or the equivalent.
The ...
by Editor Admin
We are beyond thrilled to announce
Monique Coleman will cohost the March 18th Chat! We’ll let her amazing accolades speak for themselves.
From
GirlUp: Monique Coleman is most recognized as Taylor McKessie from the tremendously successful High School Musical franchise, as well as the 4th place contestant on season 3 of ABC’s hit show, Dancing with the Stars.
From the
United Nations: The UN appointed Disney Actress and youth activist Monique Coleman as a “Youth
What does it take to transform a school? As a teacher and magnet advisor for the Environmental Studies Magnet program at Thomas Starr King Middle School in Los Angeles' Silver Lake neighborhood, I know there is no silver bullet solution. But I can share what has transformed King: strong leadership, supported teachers, and plenty of parental and community involvement.
I have been teaching at King for 13 years and we serve a 1,517 student population that is 86 percent minority. About 16 percent of students are English Language Learners and over 85 percent qualify for free or reduced price lunch. I also live up the hill from the school, which gives me a different perspective on the transformation that’s
by Joanna Seow
Chancellor Walcott looks on as an I.S. 292 student reads a statement against the city’s plan to move the middle grades of the UFT Charter School into her building. (Nell Gluckman)
At Monday night’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting, there was a single moment of consensus: All of the panel members voted to support the proposed location for Eagle Academy for Young Men of Harlem.
But for the rest of the meeting, as expected, the panel members split along the same lines that have divided
by Melissa Westbrook
Zakiyyah McWilliams has been selected by Superintendent Banda as the Executive Director of Special Education.
From the announcement:
Ms. McWilliams brings to Seattle more than 30 years of experience in education, with a strong emphasis on students with special needs. In her role, she will oversee all aspects of our Special Education department and will communicate and collaborate with families, staff and administrative staff.
Ms. McWilliams comes to us from the Compton Unified School District, where she started in 2007 as Special Education Program Administrator and since 2011, has been the Administrator of the Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) Support and Compliance. She is currently Compton’s lead for disproportionality and focused
by Irene Sege
Carolyn Lyons, president and CEO of Strategies for Children, issued the following statement today on the resignation yesterday of Early Education and Care Commissioner Sherri Killins: “We at Strategies for Children and our Early Education for All Campaign thank former Commissioner Killins for her leadership on behalf of the commonwealth’s young children and families. She [...]
Our public schools have just gained a strong group of champions. As youmay have heard, the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, state Senator William Delgado, and the chairs of the Illinois General Assembly’s Black and Latino Caucuses, state Representatives Ken Dunkin and Cynthia Soto, have called for a moratorium on all school closings until the Board presents a 10-year Educational Facilities Master Plan, as mandated by state law.
