Friday, March 29, 2013

Indictments may come today in APS cheating scandal. Grand jury looking at suppressed report on “culture of wrongdoing” at one school | Get Schooled

Indictments may come today in APS cheating scandal. Grand jury looking at suppressed report on “culture of wrongdoing” at one school | Get Schooled:

Indictments may come today in APS cheating scandal. Grand jury looking at suppressed report on “culture of wrongdoing” at one school

by Maureen Downey

The AJC is expecting indictments possibly later today related to the APS cheating scandal first brought to light by the newspaper. When those indictments come down, please be sure to come back to the blog as there will be a lot to discuss about who was indicted and who was not.
The AJC is already reporting that the grand jury looking at the APS cheating scandal has been focusing in part on D.H. Stanton Elementary School where it appears that data skewing was common.
According to the AJC: (Please read the entire story before commenting. This is an excerpt.)

An internal inquiry confirmed a”culture of wrongdoings” at D.H. Stanton Elementary School in Atlanta: Attendance records were falsified. Disciplinary files were doctored. Friends of the principal got paid for tutoring they never performed. And the principal covered up reports that staff members had physically abused students.
Special investigators appointed to dig into widespread cheating on standardized tests in …

Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium: Not very smart or balanced. – @ the chalk face

Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium: Not very smart or balanced. – @ the chalk face:

Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium: Not very smart or balanced.

by Timothy D. Slekar

My turn to say it.

“The common core is nothing more than a new product designed to suck tax dollars from public schools. The tax dollars will be spent on assessment systems that do nothing for children, teachers and schools.”

How do I know? I received an invitation from the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities to review the Achievement Level Descriptors and College Content-Readiness on the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium’s web site. I went to the site and before I even had the chance to start my review I read:

ALDs describe performance on a standardized test in terms of levels or categories of performance.

Whoomp there it is!
Anyone that knows anything about high stakes standardized tests knows that performance on these tests is

Florida’s New High School Requirements and Alternatives Show Legislators Were Listening | Scathing Purple Musings

Florida’s New High School Requirements and Alternatives Show Legislators Were Listening | Scathing Purple Musings:

Florida’s New High School Requirements and Alternatives Show Legislators Were Listening

by Bob Sikes

Some could say that they even offered a mea culpa. From Travis Pillow in the Tallahassee Democrat:

The expansion of career education has been tied to broader changes to high school graduation requirements in competing proposals advanced by both House and Senate.
Right now, students must pass the geometry exam to graduate under a law passed in 2010, which took full effect this year. Legg, the Senate’s Education chairman, said that “perhaps in our zeal to raise standards” lawmakers had created “artificial roadblocks to success” by making more of the end-of-course exams mandatory for would-be graduates.
Under the Senate’s bill, end-of-course exams would count for 30 percent of students’ grades in classes other than tenth-grade English and Algebra I, where the exams would remain mandatory.

The Right Leans In | The Nation

The Right Leans In | The Nation:

The Right Leans In

Lee Fang

March 26, 2013 | This article appeared in the April 15, 2013 edition of The Nation.

The mood at the beginning of the meeting matched the weather: gray and dreary. The warm-up speaker told a joke about how local Republicans could merit placement on the endangered species list, which met with polite laughter. Talk of the most recent presidential election elicited audible groans.

This article was reported in collaboration with the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, where Lee Fang is a reporting fellow. It is adapted from his new book, The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right, which is scheduled for publication on April 24 by the New Press.

About the Author

Lee Fang

Lee Fang is a reporting fellow with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. He covers money in politics,...

Also by the Author

Microsoft Helps Sponsor CPAC's Anti-Gay Conference (Gender and Sexuality, Lobbies, Politics)

Microsoft, a company staking out a public position as pro-equality, helps underwrite a conservative group pushing to exclude gays from the Republican Party.

Lee Fang

Charles Koch Reflects on Last Election, Promises to Do More to 'Persuade Politicians' (US Politics,Lobbies, Politics)

In a letter to thousands of employees, Charles Koch writes about the last election and his plans for the future.

Lee Fang

Days after Barack Obama took the oath of office for his second term, about 400 GOP donors gathered in a downtown San Francisco hotel to hear Jim DeMint—who had just resigned from the Senate to take a $1-million-a-year job as head of the Heritage Foundation—explain the way forward.

“This is a battle we can win, and we are winning in many places around the country,” DeMint told the assembled donors

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 3-29-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

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

Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch

Beware of Self-promotion When Your Stats Are Bad

by dianerav

Julian Vasquez Heilig is one of the bloggers I enjoy enormously because he has the statistical smarts and energy to vet dubious claims. Follow his blog. He always has smart insights, with the data to back them up. It is called cloakinginequity.com.
The other day I put up a post about an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that asserted that Texas needs many, many, many standardized tests because students don’t know the classics. Presumably, the more

Is Michelle Rhee a “Public School Parent?”

by dianerav

The Los Angeles Times is trying to figure out why Michelle Rhee is so evasive about being “a public school parent.”
Rhee lives in Sacramento. Her daughters live in Nashville, where her ex-husband is State Commissioner of Education (having been communication director for TFA). He is a major proponent of charters and vouchers.
In Tennessee, she told the Nashville reporters that she is “a public school parent.”
For some reason, she prefers not to admit that one of her daughters attends an elite private school in Nashville that has small classes, lovely facilities, a rich curriculum, and experienced teachers; better yet, the students do not take standardized tests. (Rhee herself graduated from an elite private school in Toledo, Ohio, with similar

Naison: Why I Won’t Let TFA Recruit My Students

by dianerav

Mark NAISON is a professor of African-American Studies at Fordham University.
In this article, he explains why he will not permit TFA to recruit in his classes.
First, he became angry when he discovered that the organization gave preference to Ivy League graduates over his own students, who had grown up in many of the communities where TFA was placing its recruits.
But this is what his rejection came down to:
“Until Teach For America becomes committed to training lifetime educators and raises the length of service to

My Non-Debate with Marc Tucker: My Response

by dianerav

Marc Tucker has published what he says will be the final round in his debate with me.
He noticed that I have never actually responded to his first two posts. I printed the views of others.
I have not debated him because I don’t see how it is possible to debate a hypothetical.
OK, we can debate whether the moon is made of green cheese, but I am too busy to debate that.
Or we could debate whether test scores will go up or fall if we give every student access to medical care.

Vouchers Don’t Work: Evidence from Milwaukee

by dianerav

Now that 17 states have authorized vouchers to “save kids from failing schools,” it is time to review the evidence from Milwaukee, which has had vouchers for 22 years.
The “independent evaluator” of the Milwaukee and D.C. voucher programs is Patrick J. Wolf of the University of Arkansas. As we learned during school choice week earlier this year, Wolf is a strong supporter of school choice and he even wrote an editorial saying that his home state of Minnesota needs more school choice because it was in danger of falling behind Arkansas in doing so. How much more independent can an evaluator be? It is perhaps also noteworthy that the University of Arkansas is generously funded by Arkansas’s biggest philanthropy, the Walton Foundation, which pours millions every year into charters and vouchers and anything that has the possibility of undermining public schools.
Not even Wolf’s evaluations have shown any test score advantage for students who get vouchers, whether in DC

Why I Admire Rod Rock

by dianerav

Last year, I placed Rod Rock of the Clarkston school district in Michigan on the honor roll. A member of his staff sent me his latest letter to his colleagues, and I realized I not only respect Rod Rock, I admire him. He represents the highest values of American education.
He reminds us how adults are supposed to care for young people. He is not subservient to fads or gurus or politicians. He is not intimidated by Arne Duncan or Rick Snyder.
He is an educator. Don’t you wish there were more like him?
Here is the letter he sent to his staff:
From: Rod Rock
Date: Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 10:26 PM
Subject: Thoughts
To: All CCS Staff
Colleagues:
I know that I write often to you and I hope that you will tolerate one more rambling (at least until the next one).

Deshotels: Oprah Inadvertently Reveals Charter Secrets

by dianerav

Mike Deshotels is one of Louisiana’s tireless bloggers who demand old-fashioned things like honesty and integrity.
In this post, Mike says that the Oprah show on Steve Barr’s takeover of a New Orleans high school inadvertently reveals charter secrets of success.
Barr no longer runs Green Dot. He had some

How the Gates Foundation Undermines Teachers’ Rights

by dianerav

I often re-read this amazing article in the New York Times to remind me of the agenda of the Gates Foundation.
It has a double agenda, like all the corporate reform groups it supports. It publicly speaks of support and collaboration with teachers, but it funds organizations that actively campaign against any job protections for teachers.
Gates himself has said that class size is unimportant and that he would rather see larger classes with higher-quality teachers (but not, we can be certain, for his own children). The same sentiment is often echoed by

UPDATE: NOTES FROM DIANE + A Report from Chicago | The Network For Public Education

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 1 hour ago

A Report from Chicago | The Network For Public Education: NOTES FROM DIANE – MARCH 29, 2013 by admin [image: Diane Ravitch President]Diane Ravitch President Dear Friends and Allies, The major issue of the day is the rapid increase in school closings in cities across the nation. The latest and most outrageous example is the decision of the Chicago Public Schools to close 54 public schools and displace some 30,000 students. This is unprecedented in American history. This is the bitter fruit of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. As alarming as the Chicago action is, what is eve... more »

Diane in the Evening 3-28-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 6 hours ago

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: NOTES FROM DIANE – MARCH 29, 2013 by admin Diane Ravitch President Dear Friends and Allies, [image: Diane Ravitch President]The major issue of the day is the rapid increase in school closings in cities across the nation. The latest and most outrageous example is the decision of the Chicago Public Schools to close 54 public schools and displace some 30,000 students. This is unprecedented in American history. This is the bitter fruit of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. As alarming as the Chicago action i... more »

Your Children For Sale . . . Sold!

by crazycrawfish

There is an insidious plot unfolding all around us that poses a grave danger to our children, and to many adults. Not many people know about this yet, or understand the implications of what is happening, so I thought you would like to know. I’ve seen a few pieces that show both sides of this issue, the good and the bad, but I really don’t think the “bad” has received nearly enough attention. The bad far outweighs the good that is being touted, but most of the articles I’ve read touch on the bad, and don’t delve into the dirty details or address the scope of just how “bad” things could get. I will attempt to do so, by thinking like the soulless profiteer and ruthless predator, and I will show you what you can do about this. Hopefully I can scare you enough that you will be inspired to do something about this before it is too late. There is still hope for many of you, but you must act now.
For starters, FERPA, the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act, has been gutted. You can’t tell that from the summarized version that is posted on the US Department of Education website. However under Arne

The Campaign to Save Our Children

by crazycrawfish

You may want to read my previous article before you dive into this:
First you will need to contact your local LEA, or school district, and demand they stop using Social security numbers as your child’s state identifier. I have already taken this step for my own children and can verify it works. This is a little known fact, but SSNs can only be required by federal agencies for federal benefits. States do not have the authority to require SSNs, and school districts are forbidden by law from requiring a SSN to keep a student enrolled or to enroll a student. This information is contained in the Student Information Guide I used to curate when I worked at the Louisiana Department of Education. Our lawyers required me to put this information in our SIS guide, but in an inconspicuous spot.

UPDATE: Patrick J. Buchanan again appears on the scene Daily Kos: Paul Krugman: "Cheating Our Children"

Daily Kos: Paul Krugman: "Cheating Our Children":

Patrick J. Buchanan again appears on the scene

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

He has what I consider to be an outrageous piece in American Conservative of which I am aware only because it was featured among the five best columns of the day in an email I receive from Atlantic Magazine. If you must, you can read Can One Nation Have Two Moralities?.
I past below the comment I offered in response, which I do not know if it will be suppressed - as of my posting this, it is "awaiting moderation"

America has NEVER had one morality, and on this - as on so many other issues - Mr. Buchanan simply does not know American history.Surely as a Catholic of Irish background he should know the history of discrimination against Irish - the signs in Boston that used to say no Irish or dogs need apply - and the forced Protestantization in American public schools that led the Catholic Bishops to establish a separate school system.
Part of our nation saw nothing immoral with enslaving other human beings at the same time we ha

Paul Krugman: "Cheating Our Children"

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

So, about that fiscal crisis — the one that would, any day now, turn us into Greece. Greece, I tell you: Never mind.

By now we know, as Krugman has told us before, and as he uses these words to open this New York Timescolumn, our situation is for lots of reasons totally unlike that of Greece.After referring to the Chicken Little nature of the arguments we have been hearing, we then encounter the following blunt words at the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd paragraphs:

Suddenly, the argument has changed: It’s not about the crisis next month; it’s about the long run, about not cheating our children. The deficit, we’re told, is really a moral issue.There’s just one problem: The new argument is as bad as the old one. Yes, we are cheating our children, but the deficit has nothing to do with it.

Please keep reading.

On this day, March 29

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

Popout
in 1981, at the 54th Academy Awards, "Chariots of Fire" won best picture and three other Oscars, including Best Score.
The composer of that score, and of the theme in the opening scene is known as Vangelis, whose real name was Evangelos Papathanassiou, who was celebrating nis 38th birthday, having been bonr 3/29/1943 near Volos. He was also the composer of the scores for Blade Runner; 1492,The Conquest of Paradise; Alexander; and his music was used for the Carl Sagan TV series Cosmos.
The movie takes some creative license with history, but is largely based on historical fact.
The opening scene, with the theme, is one of the most memorable in film history.
Surely worth this brief remembering on this day.
Peace.

Key education activists protesting in D.C. next week

Key education activists protesting in D.C. next week:

Key education activists protesting in D.C. next week

Posted by Valerie Strauss on March 29, 2013 at 6:00 am

Comments

Education activists opposed to corporate-based school reform are converging on Washington D.C. next week for the second annual United Opt Out National event on the grounds of the U.S. Education Department. Among those who will be speaking at the event are education historian Diane Ravitch, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, veteran educator Deborah Meier, and early childhood expert Nancy Carlsson-Paige.

The four-day event — to be attended by teachers, students, parents and others — will start on April 4th and include a march to the White House in an effort to get the attention of President Obama, who has been a big disappointment to people who thought he would push progressive school reform policies. Instead, his Education Department has pushed a corporate-based reform agenda that includes an accountability system based on standardized tests — against the advice of assessment experts — and initiatives that have fueled the privatization of public education and attacks on teachers.

The Opt Out event is part of a growing revolt against standardized test-based school reform. Students have staged protests in different states; school boards across the country have passed resolutions against high-stakes tests; teachers staged a strike in Chicago and in

The Mediterranean Diet and school reform

by Valerie Strauss

What does the Mediterranean Diet tell us about school reform? Martin Blank tells us in the following post. Blank is president of the Institute for Educational Leadership and director of the Coalition for Community Schools, an alliance of organizations in … Continue reading →

Missouri Education Watchdog: DESE States Common Core Effective without Empirical Evidence

Missouri Education Watchdog: DESE States Common Core Effective without Empirical Evidence:

DESE States Common Core Effective without Empirical Evidence

by stlgretchen

Missouri DESE released this statement:

Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro says the new Common Core State Standards are relevant to the real world that would focus on the knowledge and skills in areas such as Mathematics and English Language Arts, that students will need in order to succeed in life after high school.

There is no research/data with this statement and it is interesting DESE (and other state educational agencies) have dropped the claim that these standards are "internationally benchmarked". When pressed to support these claims, DESE took that phrase off their talking point sheets.

Here is a peer reviewed and research based study from Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice ,The “Common Core” Standards Initiative: An Effective Reform Tool?, July 2010, which raised questions on the effectiveness and adoption process of common core standards. Some of the findings of

The Educated Reporter: Two Takes on the `Well-Being' of Teachers

The Educated Reporter: Two Takes on the `Well-Being' of Teachers:

Two Takes on the `Well-Being' of Teachers

by Emily Richmond

Teachers rank second only to physicians when it comes to reporting the sense of "well-being" they derive from their chosen profession, a new Gallup Poll has found.

The poll asked more than 170,000 people, more than 9,000 of whom were teachers, to create a "Well-Being Index," based on answers to questions about their physical, emotional and fiscal health.

So how does the new poll stack up against the recent headlines proclaiming that teacher job satisfaction had fallen to a 25-year low in the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher? As New York Times education reporterMotoko Rich noted, the findings really aren't that far apart.

While the percentage of teachers in the Metlife survey who were "very satisfied" dropped to 39 percent from 62 percent in 2008, there were still 43 percent of teachers who described themselves as 'somewhat satisfied." The

Blackboard Wars episodes 5 and 6 | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Blackboard Wars episodes 5 and 6 | Gary Rubinstein's Blog:

Blackboard Wars episodes 5 and 6

by Gary Rubinstein

So the first season of Blackboard Wars has ended and, as I expected, it reached the conclusion it was created to. Yes, ‘reform’ isn’t easy. The community resists radical change, even when it is what is best for it. The early ‘success’ of this school and its teachers validates the idea that all you need to accomplish a ‘turnaround’ is a $1.5 million dollar SIG grant to use, in part, on a charismatic leader and some new teachers who, despite their inexperience, have high expectations for all kids.
In the last episode, we get our first inklings of ‘early success’ at this school. At one of the board meetings, open to the community, Dr. T says that 63% of their 9th graders have scored above basic on the Read 180 test. Read 180 is a program which may very well be a good one. Students take three tests throughout the year and as this is only four months into the school year, we’re not sure if this was how they did on the first or second test. This is not an ‘official’ state test, but a diagnostic, and since we don’t know what those incoming students’ levels were, it is hard to interpret whether this is good or not.
I don’t see how a school can take much credit for students they have only known for four months, though. I know that this school has a somewhat unusual demographic because when they started the turnaround, they did not give the school any new 9th graders last year. So the current 9th graders are generally all first time 9th graders. As the years progress, however, that won’t be the case in this school and it will be interesting to see

Friday, March 29, 2013

The Right Leans In

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