UPDATE: Teacher Common Core Survey Results Missouri Education Watchdog: Common Core Editorials and PR Pieces: Give us "Just the Facts". No More Spin.

Missouri Education Watchdog: Common Core Editorials and PR Pieces: Give us "Just the Facts". No More Spin.:

Teacher Common Core Survey Results

by stlgretchen

From Utah:

 Utah teachers speak out against common core --anonymously-- on this survey just released today. http://fb.me/11JPpZLWm 

Some comments from the survey:

I opposed Common Core Standards and assessments because they are poorly considered.  The language standard is based upon whole language methods which have a long history of being ineffective and even harmful to developing language skills.  The math standards are likewise proven faulty.  Other standards in Literature, Handwriting, etc. are not based upon sound reasoning.  I fully accept that individuals may use these systems if they disagree with 

Common Core Editorials and PR Pieces: Give us "Just the Facts". No More Spin.

by stlgretchen

Message to Common Core proponents:  No more spin.

Common Core proponents love to tout their educational reform as providing "data driven" instructionand this increased testing and data mining will create smarter students.  It's a pity and educational malfeasance that their arguments and policies are not supported by data and research.  This editorial from az.central.com  Common Core is right path is a prime example of statements disguised as fact and contempt for those who dare to question the policy and process of the adoption/implementation of  the standards:  

Fill in the blank. Decisions about Arizona public education should be based on:

The Future of Teaching is 4 Bad Asses | EduShyster

The Future of Teaching is 4 Bad Asses | EduShyster:

The Future of Teaching is 4 Bad Asses

by edushyster2012

Good news lovers of excellence. The future of teaching has arrived and it is for *bad asses* only. What is a bad ass, you ask? Chances are, if you have to ask the question, you are not one and hence not remotely qualified to apply for the following actual job that I have merely copied and pasted verbatim. Lest you think that is something that I am making up, I refer you to the actual job posting here. But don’t delay—bad asses move fast. They know that excellence never rests and that the achievement gap won’t close itself.

We Actually Don’t Know What To Call This Job — Are You Interested?

Match Education – Boston, Massachusetts, United States
This job has components of: teacher, principal, and teacher coach.  Ahem.  Let us explain. 

Schools Matter: Urban Schools: Failure by Design

Schools Matter: Urban Schools: Failure by Design:

Urban Schools: Failure by Design

by Douglas Storm

GUEST POST: John Harris Loflin, Education-Community Action Team

Urban schools are not broken: Moving to a 21^st century vision of urban education

The crisis is not about education at all. It’s about power.

                                                                          ~ James Baldwin

The idea that the Indianapolis Public School System (IPS) is broken and needs fixing is the basis for the current local school reform debate. (See Indy Star 03.16.12, “A broken system” by Kelly Bentley.) This assertion leaves unchallenged facts showing wealthier communities have better educational opportunities than low-income. It doesn’t make sense then to compare schools across these communities and then pronounce IPS as failing.

Urban schools produce academic failure at alarming rates. Yet, this happens inside a system designed to essentially predetermine winners and losers: one set of schools has the resources that ensure success and 

It’s over. – @ the chalk face

It’s over. – @ the chalk face:

It’s over.

by Chalk Face, PhD

This will perhaps be one of my most depressing posts on education in recent years.
It’s over.
This is on the heels of massive and unprecedented school closures in Chicago.
It is now officially over. Are you familiar with the myth of Cassandra, the daughter of Priam and Hecuba, who was cursed with accurate predilection, but the total inability to convince others of the veracity of her claims? Despite her best efforts, Troy still fell.
What hath blogging wrought? Nothing.
What hath editorials, commentary, and cute graphics wrought? Nothing.
What hath rallies, networks, newsletters, conventions

UPDATE: The Flase Narrative Florida House Republicans Are Using to Defend Parent Trigger + How Parent Trigger Puts Florida’s Fine Arts Education at Risk | Scathing Purple Musings

How Parent Trigger Puts Florida’s Fine Arts Education at Risk | Scathing Purple Musings:

The Flase Narrative Florida House Republicans Are Using to Defend Parent Trigger

by Bob Sikes

The phrase of the day was “give parents a seat at the table.”
Watching today’s meeting of the House Education Committee for HB 867 on The Florida Channel  revealed the clear philosophical divide between the two sides on Parent Trigger. Under sharp questions from Democrats, bill sponsor Carlos Trujillo was forced to affirm that the concerns of opponents are justified.
1. An out-of-state group like Parent Revolution can come in can signatures because of “first amendment protections.”
2. No, a reverse trigger cannot be implemented as “parents can just choose to withdraw from the school created after Trigger.
3. No, the final decision is not up to local school boards as “disputes will be taken to the state board.”
Along with Trujillo, at least two other republican legislators – Janet Adkins of Fernandina Beach and Elizabeth Porter of Lake City – defended their support with a deceptively ambiguous “give parents a seat at the table.” 

How Parent Trigger Puts Florida’s Fine Arts Education at Risk

by Bob Sikes

Getting little play in this year’s Parent Trigger bill is the so-called parent notification clause. Parent advocacy group, Fund Education Now, sees the danger in Carlos Truillo’s bill for families and children who choose fine arts:

March 21, 2013, Orlando, Fl… Fund Education Now, a leading Florida public education advocacy group, issued a sharp warning today that HB 867 Parent Empowerment/Parent Trigger by Rep. Carlos Trujillo puts Florida public school music and fine arts programs at risk by banning students from the classroom of any teacher evaluated as “low performing” according to high-stakes test scores, averaged school-wide, of students they do not teach.
Florida public schools often only hire a single band, drama, chorus or art teacher. Despite these limited resources, Parent Trigger places a 1 year ban on students taking classes from a performing 

A challenge to Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee | SocialistWorker.org

A challenge to Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee | SocialistWorker.org:

A challenge to Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee

Jesse Hagopian, a teacher at Garfield High School, where teachers have refused to administer MAP standardized tests, responds to the criticisms of a school deformer.

March 21, 2013

Michelle Rhee

MAYBE I shouldn't have stood up and said, "Welcome to Seattle," while wearing my Garfield High School hoodie when Michelle Rhee took the stage at a recent town hall event in Seattle.

Rhee--the prominent corporate education reform advocate, former Washington, D.C., Public Schools Chancellor, and CEO of the ironically named "Students First" organization--now has Seattle in her crosshairs. In her March 5 op-ed for the Seattle Times, Rhee berated teachers at Garfield and other Seattle schools for their boycott of the district-required MAP test.

She began her piece: "Seattle public-school students should pay attention. They're getting a front-row, real-world lesson in how the actions of adults can distract from what's best for students." But don't get your hopes up--this wasn't a long-overdue acknowledgment of the events surrounding the testing scandal when she was commanding the D.C. public schools.

With only a little investigation of the facts of the MAP test boycott, Rhee would have 

Alabama sex education law requires teachers to say that being gay is illegal - Salon.com

Alabama sex education law requires teachers to say that being gay is illegal - Salon.com:

Alabama sex education law requires teachers to say that being gay is illegal

Students and lawmakers want to repeal a 1992 law that claims being gay is a crime and "not publicly acceptable" VIDEO

(Credit: YouTube)

Two Alabama high school students and an unlikely team of state legislators want to repeal a 1992 law requiring educators to teach that being gay is a crime and “not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public.” While there is no evidence to suggest that the sex education law is currently being enforced, the students still want to see the misleading (and hateful) language removed.

High school activists Sarah Noone and Adam Pratt think the law promotes anti-gay bullying, and a bipartisan team in the state legislature may help them in their effort to repeal it — but for very different reasons.

State Rep. Patricia Todd, a Democrat and Alabama’s first openly gay state legislator, thinks the 

The Weekly Cheddar : blue cheddar

The Weekly Cheddar : blue cheddar:

The Weekly Cheddar

March 22, 2013

By bluecheddar

This is an abnormally abbreviated weekly round-up of Wisconsin political news from the past week because I have to get on the road to Red Cliff. If I missed good stuff, please give me a comment. Thanks and stay strong, badgers.

Bullying bill would create fines for teachers

Bad River Band Establishes Legal Defense Fund to Stop Proposed Iron-Ore Mine

(In other words, Scott Walker is a big troll.) Scott Walker Trying to Provoke Those Opposed to Massive Open Pit Mine

Scott Walker opens up about White House ambitions
This is possibly the weirdest thing he’s said in the past two years: “pointedly declined to pledge to serve a full four-year term if he’s reelected next year.”

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 3-22-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

NYC Offers Tips About Test Anxiety

by dianerav

NYC officials prepared a guide
for parents to help their children survive the stress and trauma of the upcoming tests.
Please read it.
It sounds chilling.
It says the state is about to subject your child to an ordeal. Here is how you should deal with it.
What do you think?
http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/745FABA2-C5B2-46AF-BD52-5687683F4D77/0/SupportingYourChild1pagerforParents22013FINALESEnglish.pd

Wharton Professor: The Skills Gap Is Bunk

by dianerav

How many times have you heard Arne Duncan or some corporate easer complain that they have to outsource jos because Americans lack the skills that their industry needs?
A new book by Wharton School of Professor Peter Capelli debunks th claim in his new book “Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs?”
Andrea Gabor reviews the book here. It sounds like a good read and sharp rebuke to those who continue to bash our public schools.

Chris Cerf Is Certain….and Wrong

by dianerav

New Jersey’s Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf has the good fortune to be leader of a state with some of the best schools and school districts in the nation. New Jersey also has some districts with high concentrations of poverty and racial segregation, where test scores are very low.
But New Jersey–inspired by the example of Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top–will attempt to raise test scores by imposing a teacher evaluation program. Will this address the root cause of poor academic achievement? Of course not.
In theory, it will identify the “best” teachers and the “bad” teachers

Ohio Charter Schools: A Bad Deal for Kids and Taxpayers

by dianerav

When Ohio first opened charter schools, advocates claimed they could “save poor kids from failing schools,” while costing less. They would be so effective that at-risk students would learn more, even close the achievement gap. And they would be so efficient that the state would pay less for education.
Of course, it hasn’t worked out this way. A new analysis by a public policy think tank in Ohio reveals that charters cost more than public schools, and with rare exceptions, get worse results.
Meanwhile, the charters siphon money away from more effective public schools.
Innovation Ohio reports:
“Innovation Ohio has analyzed data from the Ohio Department of Education that demonstrates that the way 

Stephen Krashen On Marc Tucker and the Common Core Standards

by dianerav

Marc Tucker has written two posts on his blog saying that I am wrong not to support the Common Core standards.
Stephen Krashen, the eminent literacy scholar, disagrees with Tucker. He posted this response on Tucker’s blog and shared it with me.
Krashen writes:
We need to distinguish discussion (1) of the content of the standards and (2) whether we should have standards.
The content of the standards
Contrary to Tucker’s assertion, it is easy to field-test the standards. If standards are simply “what we want

Diane in the Evening 3-21-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 3 hours ago

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: Outrage! School Closings in Chicago by dianerav Guess whose schools were closed? The poorest, the neediest, the children of color. Now the charter operators will decide which ones they want. They will take the “strivers.” Who will take the others? Which children will be left behind in the era of No Child Left Behind? Which children come in last in Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top? How will the PR folks spin the mass closure of 50 public schools as a victory in “the civil rights issue of our TFA: Follow the Money by... more »

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » I’ll get something written up for you

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » I’ll get something written up for you:

I’ll get something written up for you

by alicemercer

I’ve been doing a lot with short constructed writing response. Part of this is due to trainings I’m going to on Common Core for my district. The standards emphasize a written response that sites the information from the text the question is based on. I’m not in love with the standards, but feel I can live with the upper-elementary level ones (mostly because as Tom Hoffman points out, it’s not like their worse than what was here before). I make no claims about their appropriateness for primary (the fact that NO early childhood educators or experts were included in their development is appalling), and high school (where the discussions of implementation have degenerated into a ridiculous metrics like “50% of text reading should be informational” – like you don’t get information from reading Moby Dick?).
I’ll be writing a post soon on the results of this exploration of writing I’ve been doing (two thumbs up, IMHO) for those who prefer action in the classroom to my gassing on about policy, etc. which I’ll continue to do in here in the remainder of this post.
Why am I doing this? Frankly, Common Core is a convenient excuse, and not my main reason. I love having 

Ed Notes Online: Change the Stakes Open Letter to Walcott

Ed Notes Online: Change the Stakes Open Letter to Walcott:

Change the Stakes Open Letter to Walcott

by ed notes online

Change the Stakes – an organization of parents and educators committed to replacing such tests with more meaningful forms of assessment – urges you to publicly pledge that scores from this year’s state English Language Arts (ELA) and math tests will not be used to penalize students, teachers or schools. The upcoming testing cycle represents an unprecedented grand experiment: the exams, and the standards on which they are based, are new and untested.  --- Letter to Walcott from CTS

----how excited I was to hear that NYC parents are mobilizing to take action against the testing-madness.... we don't want classrooms or schools to be "data-driven," we want them to be child-driven, learning-driven and data-informed. Good luck and let us know in Chicago how we can be supportive.....  
In cahoots, Bill (Ayers)

When people ask where is GEM at now I respond there are 2 branches: one is involved with MORE and the other has morphed into Change the Stakes, which is a true parent/educator/statistician (Fred Smith) grassroots partnership organization here in NYC, including elementary through college teachers and even principals. CTS works with other testing groups like Parent Voices and Time Out From Testing (TOFT), all of which were involved in organizing the great Pearson pineapple protest last May. Look for more action especially around the opt-out 

March 25 Chat – #StuVoice Hangout! Student Voice

Student Voice:

March 25 Chat – #StuVoice Hangout!

by Editor Admin

The #StuVoice Twitter chat for March 25 will largely be driven by you and your questions! Student Voice Live!will happen before you know it.The prompt for the Twitter chat is simple: What questions do you have about this awesome event?
Additionally, this chat will coincide with a star-laden Google+ hangout! All chatters are highly encouraged to tune in to both events!
From Google+:
On Sat., Apr. 13th, approximately 200 students and their supporters will join together in NYC at Student Voice Live! http://dell.to/100BfSx – a student summit created by and for students – that will provide students with the tools to exercise their voices, while positioning them to be the champions of bridging the partisan gap in education policy.
To preview this event, join event co-hosts Colton Bradford and Monique Coleman, along with students Alex Pratt and Line Dalile for a special Google Hangout.
They will engage in a conversation centered on the importance of the student voice and why they are excited to participate in the April 13th event. It will take place in conjunction with the weekly #StuVoice Twitter chat at 7:30pm CST on Mon., Mar. 25th.
This Hangout will be hosted from the +Dell page so come on over to our page to watch the live feed.
Can’t make it? This On Air #DellHangout will be recorded and available for playback later.
Remember to use the hashtag #DellHangout and to stay in the loop!
#hangout #Windows #SMB #DellHangout #StuVoice #DoMoreEDU

School Tech Connect: Unilateral Disarmament

School Tech Connect: Unilateral Disarmament:

Unilateral Disarmament

by noreply@blogger.com (Tim Furman)

I just want to point out that we're back on the phones today because the senate is about to send some highly unconstitutional stuff to the governor, in spite of the senators taking some kind of oath of office.

This is probably the day where the only arrow we have left in the quiver is a clause in the Constitution, and we already know how two branches of the state government feel about that.

And yet, I still don't have access to a list of IFT members who live in Heather Steans' district, nor do IEA members have such a list. So, while I would be perfectly happy to take a personal day and go stop traffic in front 

Jesse Sharkey and Wendy Katten

Jesse Sharkey and Wendy Katten on Chicago Tonight. Distribute widely.



I'm still reeling from B3's "Where were the parents?" meme. Previously I thought she was off her meds. Now I think she's insanely arrogant.

Where was Chicago mayor when school closings were announced?:

Where was Chicago mayor when school closings were announced?

Posted by Valerie Strauss on March 22, 2013 at 12:37 am

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Rahm Emanuel / Paul Beaty (AP)

Where was Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel when city officials made the controversial announcement that the district would close 54 public schools this year, the largest number of public schools to close in a mass action in the country’s history?

Emanuel wasn’t in Chicago on Thursday. He wasn’t in Illinois. He was on a skiing vacation out West with his family because his children are on spring break, Chicago media reported.

This isn’t to begrudge the mayor a vacation with his family, but it is to wonder why the controversial decision to close 54 schools — most of them in the African-American and Hispanic communities — was made when he wasn’t in town. Shouldn’t the mayor have been there to announce such a historic moment in his administration of Chicago?

Chicago Teachers Union President Nancy Lewis, who blasted the closings in this statement 

NYC Educator: There Is No Past. There Is No Future. But I'm Putting It on the Test Anyway.

NYC Educator: There Is No Past. There Is No Future. But I'm Putting It on the Test Anyway.:

There Is No Past. There Is No Future. But I'm Putting It on the Test Anyway.

by NYC Educator

We have seasons, and a new one just began. But in my beginning ESL class, it's past tense season. Past tense in English is no walk in the park. There are dozens of irregular verbs, and they're among the most-used verbs in our language. We went to the park, sawthe ducks on the pond, ate a pretzel, and drank some water.

On the positive side, you don't need to conjugate past tense in English. That is, I, you, he, she, they, we and it all had a nice day. There is no annoying s to place at the end of the verb, and you don't need to wonder whether it's s or es, unless you're Dan Quayle correcting a young student's correct spelling of potato.

On the other hand, while I went to the movies, I didn't go to the restaurant. Did you go to the park? Why, after I 

Swiss Cheese Argument for School Reform: Add Another Hole | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Swiss Cheese Argument for School Reform: Add Another Hole | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Swiss Cheese Argument for School Reform: Add Another Hole

by larrycuban

The prevailing rationale for school reform for the past thirty years, repeated by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, is that there is a skills mismatch between what employers need in an information-based economy and graduates coming out of U.S. schools.

That lack of math,science, and technical skills among high school graduates means that employers cannot find job-seekers, just out of school or unemployed experienced workers, who can fill vacancies. Unfilled vacancies leave companies elsewhere grabbing a larger share of the market for goods and services that U.S. firms could 

Solution to Student Debt is to Get the Banks Out of the Education Business | Dissident Voice

Solution to Student Debt is to Get the Banks Out of the Education Business | Dissident Voice:

Solution to Student Debt is to Get the Banks Out of the Education Business

by The Real News Network (TRNN)

Michael Hudson, a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City: Crippling student debt, which is also a drag on the whole economy, developed as governments pushed the burden of higher education costs onto students and pushed them into the arms of the banks.

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