Thursday, August 8, 2013

8-8-13 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:



New Times-Siena Poll: Quinn, Thompson, De Blasio
From the NY Times:Christine C. Quinn is leading the crowded field in the Democratic primary race for New York City mayor, lifted by support among Manhattanites and higher-income voters, the latest New York Times/Siena College poll finds. But just over a month before the Sept. 10 primary, Ms. Quinn is still well below the level needed to avoid a runoff, and many voters remain undecided.Ms. Quinn, t

Bill Thompson Calls For Christine Quinn To Release Legal Documents From Slush Fund Investigation
Thompson and Quinn continuing to go at each other:Bill Thompson’s mayoral campaign is calling on opposing mayoral candidate City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to release legal documents from a federal investigation into the City Council around five years ago.The “slush fund scandal” was revealed in news reports in 2008 alleging city funds were being allocated to non-existent “phony charities” an

State Audit Finds NYSED Commissioner King And Regents Chancellor Tisch Conduct Almost No Oversight Of For-Profit Career Schools
Looks like the accountability-meisters at the NYSED and the Regents don't care all that much about accountability for the for-profit career school sector: A host of private career schools have been operating without state licenses because of “alarmingly little oversight” by state education officials, state Controller Thomas DiNapoli says in a new audit. The audit, obtained by the Daily News, also
Bill Thompson Says He Will Add "Trust" To Contract Negotiations
From Azi Paybarah at Capital NY:Right before Bill Thompson began a press conference to discuss New York students' plummeting test scores, outside a high school on East 56th Street, an English teacher named Ethel Richards walked by, then stopped.Richards, who lives in Brooklyn and works at Frederick Douglas Academy VI in Far Rockaway, told me and a couple of other reporters who were standing there
Anthony Weiner's Sexting Partner Endorses Christine Quinn, The Nation Endorses Bill De Blasio
Not sure this endorsement helps either Weiner or Quinn:Anthony Weiner’s sexting gal pal Sydney Leathers is wading into the mayor’s race once again.In an interview with Complex, Ms. Leathers, the self-professed “political junkie” who traded racy messages and photos with Mr. Weiner long after he resigned from Congress, enthusiastically endorsed City Council Speaker Christine Quinn for mayor.“Obvious

How Success Academy Fared Against Other Renowned Charter Networks
I posted earlier today about the miraculous statistics Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy Schools garnered on the new Common Core tests.Scores across the state plummeted on the 3rd-8th grade ELA and math exams, but Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy schools bucked that trend with some amazing scores:There were some charter networks that boasted victory — like the aptly named Success Academy Charter Scho

Just How Did They Get To Be So Successful At Success Academy?
Yesterday before the Common Core test scores were released, Gotham Schools offered a handy guide for what to watch for:Here was the first of those items (emphasis added):Where are the outliers? All scores are expected to be low, but some will be lower than others. And some will almost certain fall by much less than the average. Identifying those outliers will be a first step in telling the story o

Startling Statistics From The Common Core Tests
From the NY Times:On the English exam, 3 percent of nonnative speakers were deemed proficient, and 6 percent of students with disabilities passed. Essentially, if you are an ESL student or a student with an IEP, you will not pass the Common Core exams.Can't wait until they change the high school Regents exams.As things stand now, we've already seen some support services students forced to sit for

  Business Leaders Speak To New Yorkers About Common Core
Buried near the bottom of the NY Times article on the Common Core tests is this doozy:New York’s bleak scores could prompt unease among elected officials who have staked their reputations on rising test scores. “For educators and parents who aren’t crazy about testing to begin with, one can understand why they feel like they’re being subjected to bait-and-switch,” said Frederick M. Hess, an educat
8-7-13 Perdido Street School
Perdido Street School: Joel Klein, The Man Who Hawked Inflated Test Scores As Chancellor, Lectures People About Inflated Test ScoresYou can't make this stuff up.Here's the former NYCDOE chancellor and current head of Rupert Murdoch's for profit education technology division, Joel Klein, lecturing people about how inflated New York's test scores were in the past:For years, states around the country

8-8-13 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.

Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.:











You may not like Lisa and Michael Madigan. But neither do they.
It turns out that we are not the only ones who don’t like the Madigan clan. Neither do they. Reports Greg Hinz in today’s Crains: What’s the truth?  It’s possible there was an understanding. She thought he was going to go and didn’t discover the truth until it was too late.  More likely, I think, Ms. Madigan intended to run anyhow, until the Metra mess and the related failure of lawmakers to pass


Chicago is a union town. ALEC can’t hide.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onDuJbH2OKQ&feature=player_embedded] . The American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization responsible for literally writing some of the most anti-worker, anti-democratic legislation for state legislators to introduce, tried to hold their 40th anniversary meeting quietly in Chicago this week. But Chicago is a union town. And union members were in


The Real News. ALEC turns 40. Chicago protesters will throw them a party in the streets.
Brendan Fisher: After forty years, corporate-funded ALEC remains an organization filled with secrecy. Protest today, Thursday. Noon. The Palmer House. 15 E. Washington. Chicago.


The in box. Arthur Goldstein on the Common Core.
  Arthur Goldstein teaches English as a Second Language at Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows, Queens. My friend NY teacher Arthur Goldstein sent me this article in today’s Daily News.   I’m trying to imagine what my principal would tell me if I proposed giving tests that caused more than half of my kids to fail. My principal is a big guy, and there are a lot of windows in his office. I
  
8-7-13 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.
Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.: Illinois will pay an extra $130 million in interest on a bond issue this week. Thank the Civic Committee.. By his own admission, Civic Committee head Ty Fahner met with the bond rating agencies and told them to lower Illinois’ ratings. They did what he asked. As the question and the answer in the vide

Teachers For Social Justice: ALEC Protest, City Council Education Committee Meeting and Bud Billiken Parade

Teachers For Social Justice: ALEC Protest, City Council Education Committee Meeting and Bud Billiken Parade:

ALEC Protest, City Council Education Committee Meeting and Bud Billiken Parade

AUGUST 7, 2013 LEAVE A COMMENT
Join CTU & GEM Members This Week 


Thursday, August 8 at 12 pm     
Students, Teachers, Clergy, Workers opened a week
of ALEC protests - Photo @phillipcantor

17 E Monroe (at Wabash & Monroe)
Protest the ALEC conference from 12 pm to 1 pm outside of the Palmer House (17 E Monroe)!  There will be a picket line, press conference, and banner drops from the L tracks.             
    

RSVP to Rebecca Martรญnez


Friday, August 9 at 10 am
121 N LaSalle
The City Council Committee on Education (led by Latasha Thomas) is holding a hearing on the CPS budget cuts and layoffs.  We are organizing a presence at this hearing.

RSVP to Marty Ritter


Saturday, August 10 at 10:30 am
35th and King Dr.
Join CTU for the Bud Billiken Parade!  This is a fantastic annual event, and we will have a big contingent, including marching band.  Please join us!  We will meet at 35th and King Dr. and walk over to join the parade.  After the parade, join us for a picnic behind Dyett School on the Midway at 51st St, one block east of King Dr.  We will serve complimentary hamburgers, hotdogs, and drinks.

RSVP to Brandon Johnson or 773-456-3191. 

UPDATE: Indiana Finds “Manipulations” of School Grades Occurred Under Bennett’s Watch | Scathing Purple Musings

Indiana Finds “Manipulations” of School Grades Occurred Under Bennett’s Watch | Scathing Purple Musings:

Here We Go….AFT, Indiana Teacher Union Makes Public Records Request For All Contacts Between Bennett, ALEC and Bush Foundations
From Orlando Sentinel reporter Leslie Postal: The American Federation of Teachers — and its Indiana affiliate — announced today it has made a possibly sweeping public records request of the Indiana Department of Education, seeking “all communications between former Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, ALEC and others since

Indiana Finds “Manipulations” of School Grades Occurred Under Bennett’s Watch

 

The reporter who broke the Tony Bennett grade change story is continuing to follow up. As per numerous requests, current Indians superintendent Glenda Ritz announced yesterday that last year’s grade categories had been “manipulated” on Bennett’s watch. From AP reporter Tom LoBianco:
Indiana’s top education official on Wednesday acknowledged “manipulation” in the way the state’s schools are graded, the latest fallout from an Associated Press report that found her predecessor worked behind the scenes to improve the score of a charter school founded by an influential Republican donor.
Superintendent Glenda Ritz told state school board members that this year’s school ratings would be held up, at least temporarily, as a result of the independent review into the A-F grading system and left open the possibility some of last year’s grades could be changed.
The system was established by Tony Bennett, a rising star in the education reform movement, who last week resigned from his new job as Florida’s schools chief amid the scandal in Indiana.
“Upon our preliminary examination, the department has verified that there was manipulation of calculation categories and the department has also 

NYC Educator: Here in Bizarro World Massive Failure Is Good News

NYC Educator: Here in Bizarro World Massive Failure Is Good News:

Here in Bizarro World Massive Failure Is Good News

I just read at Diane Ravitch's blog that Mayor Bloomberg has joined fellow know-nothings Joel Klein and Arne Duncan in hailing the massive failure on Common Core exams as a good sign. I'm rarely at a loss for words, but I don't know precisely what to say to this.

How on earth is a two-thirds failure rate anything to boast about? This is the same guy who, after defying the twice-voiced electoral will of the people, bought himself a third term. Am I the only one who remembers the surreptitiously Gates-funded motto, "Keep It Going, New York?" Actually, what Bloomberg and Geoffrey Canada, who was running the campaign, wanted to keep going was a test score rise based entirely on the tests having been dumbed-down. And then when the gains were made moot, which Ravitch had predicted years earlier, Bloomberg and Klein said that was a victory too.

So here's the message from Michael Bloomberg. If test scores go up, it's a great success. If they stay the same, it is also a great success. And if they plummet, that is also a great victory. I keep saying, "Being reformy means never having to say you're sorry," 

Gates pours millions in new grants to change teaching profession

Gates pours millions in new grants to change teaching profession:

Gates pours millions in new grants to change teaching profession

(Andrew Harrer/BLOOMBERG)
(Andrew Harrer/BLOOMBERG)
The Gates Foundation is spending millions of dollars in new grants that will further its already vast and controversial influence on public education. After spending hundreds of millions of dollars to to develop teacher assessment systems, it is putting many millions more into that issue, as well as into the creation of new online “adaptive” courses, the implementation of the Common Core standards, and more.
The foundation has plowed billions into K-12 reform in the last decade or so (first creating small schools and then teacher evaluation systems that used student test scores) but also in recent years has expanded into higher education. Recent articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education detailed the nearly half a billion dollars the foundation has spent to help remake the higher education into one that Gates prefers, which is focused on getting more students degrees faster through technology and what is called “competency-based learning,” and which is wrapped around an accountability system based on testing.
Foundation grants in July include those for teacher evaluation, development and the creation of new “standards” for the profession. Several school districts won multimillion-dollar grants, including one for $10 million to “support the Denver Public Schools in finding, growing and keeping talented educators in the district to ensure their students have an effective teacher in every classroom every year.” The National Education 

8-8-13 Ed Notes Online

Ed Notes Online:



Former NY St Ed Comm David Milton Steiner Opines in NY Post as StudentsFirstNY Quotes Randi
I pledge allegiance to ed deformAfter Cathie Black does Milton have any credibility left? This Milton is has less vision than the real one. What a NYSED Commish crew over last 18 years. From Dickie Boy Richard Mills through John King. These people are a joke. Leonie posted this tidbit: On disastrous scores StudentsFirstNY cites Randi in defense of the Common Core (!!)  & misquotes Diane in one

Nysed Approves Trojan Horse Project For Public Schools
Struggling to fill seats, drum up false demand and justify hollow, multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, charter schools have come up with an ingenious TROJAN HORSE strategy in which they will poach students from popular public schools -- and get paid to do it!" .... Lorna F, parent This story in the DN the other day inspired the comment above.NYSED charter schools getting $4.5 million state g


Understanding Test Results as Shock Doctrine While UFT Spins a Different Tale
The new Common Core exams and test scores are politically motivated, and are based neither on reason or evidence.  They were pre-ordained to fit the ideological goals of Commissioner King and the other educrats who are intent on imposing damaging policies on our schools.... Leonie Haimson, NYCPSP blog , five reasons not to trust the new scoresThat the head of the NYC teachers union should accept t

Parents and Educators Reject Official Explanations for Dismal State Test Scores
Call for full transparency in state testing program and an end to the use of standardized tests for promotion, teacher evaluation and closing schools... Change the StakesHere is a follow-up to my earlier post:T-Day: For Deformers, Mission Accomplished. By now the scores have come out and they are a disaster. Some great comments floating out there but they will wait for another followup post later.
T-Day: For Deformers, Mission Accomplished
Shouldn't these tests that get students career and college ready be prevalent for students of high school, not little 9 year old boys and girls in 3rd grade? Parents of NYC, you are all being played!... South Bronx SchoolToday is lousy test score reveal day (LTSR) for  the tests given this past school year. Let me get this straight. You spend an entire year prepping for a test given in May and don

YESTERDAY

Joel Klein: The Good News in Lower Test Scores. HUH? Plus NY State Ed Cwies Bitter Tears
Shock doctrine at work. 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the state exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math.  Only 5% of students in Rochester passed. Statewide, only 31 percent of students passed the exams in reading and math..... Leonie HaimsonIs this the same Joel Klein who ran our schools for 10 years and was constantly taking bows for increased test scores an
8-6-13 Ed Notes Online
Ed Notes Online: A Little Andy Borowitz Humor for a Warm Summer Day - EnjoyMr. Bezos said he had been oblivious to his online shopping error until earlier today, when he saw an unusual charge for two hundred and fifty million dollars on his American Express statement. Amazon Founder Says He Clicked on Washington Post by MistakeRead more at newyorker.com1 by ed notes online / 6min UFT History, Earl