FCMAT » Cali Education Headlines Monday, August 12, 2013

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STAR test questions and answers posted to social media at 16 schools

Education Headlines

Monday, August 12, 2013

S.J. school warned over cellphone pic of STAR test

An East Union High student in Manteca put the school on a short list of 16 statewide threatened with sanctions for snapping a cellphone picture of a standardized test question and then posting it on social media.

California Supreme Court to rule on insulin shots to diabetic students

The case pits parents who want voluntarily trained, non-nursing staff and faculty to give the shots to their children against a nurses' union claiming inappropriately administered shots could lead to harm and even tragedy.

After Sandy Hook, schools start the year with heightened security

As schools across Southern California prepare to open, teachers, parents and students will find increased security on their campuses, including surveillance cameras, more safety patrols, revised lockdown measures and fewer open gates.

Fewer local high-schoolers prepped for university

Mother Lode high schoolers are still taking fewer college preparatory classes than their peers in other regions, but many forge their own path to four-year universities.

LAUSD giving principals, teachers 'live shooter' training

Prompted by last year's massacre in Newtown, Conn., Los Angeles Unified is instructing administrators and faculty in how to keep students safe if there's a gunman on campus.

Fensterwald: Common Core poses big challenge for students, big opportunity for teachers

With an emphasis on developing verbal and analytical skills, the new Common Core standards will pose a big step up for most students. For English learners, who comprise a quarter of California’s children, it’ll seem more like a pole vault.

Volunteers rally around science center in San Pedro

When school starts Monday in the city of Los Angeles, the clock starts ticking for San Pedro's long beleaguered science center.

Galt elementary school district to offer online classes

Elementary and middle school students whose parents are seeking a customized learning pace while still enjoying on-campus activities such as band and field trips can enroll in a new online school in Galt.

School menus phasing out peanut products

The tragic death of 13-year-old Natalie Giorgi of Carmichael, whose throat swelled shut last month after she tasted a peanut-laced treat, has schools re-examining meal practices in order to keep children safe.

STAR test questions and answers posted to social media at 16 schools

State education officials remained confident Friday that the leaking of questions from a statewide test to social media did not result in massive cheating on the exam taken last spring.

Local educators help teachers prepare for launch of Common Core

As school districts across the nation prepare for the launch of a new set of national learning standards next year, local educators are taking steps to ensure that no Humboldt County teacher or student will be left behind.

California's new law has teachers paying more for school supplies

Resulting from the settlement of a lawsuit against the state, the law reinforces the California Constitution's guarantee of a free public education.

Friday, August 9, 2013

Kern, state test scores edge down slightly

Student performance on the annual Standardized Testing and Reporting, or STAR, assessments dipped slightly in Kern County and statewide in the 2012-13 school year, a decline generally attributed to cuts to school funding and the transition to new state academic standards.

County mirrors statewide trend with STARS dip

The figures are a slip away from gains of the past couple of years, but they mirror a dip in test performance across California, and education officials point to budget cuts and a shift in curriculum standards as the reasons for the change.

Test scores above average, but no growth

San Diego County students again outpaced statewide averages in standardized test scores released Thursday, but steady gains seen in recent years locally and throughout California have leveled off.

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Children on Medicare are prescribed anti-psychotic drugs at 4 times rate of those privately insured

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Children on Medicare are prescribed anti-psychotic drugs at 4 times rate of those privately insured:

Children on Medicare are prescribed anti-psychotic drugs at 4 times rate of those privately insured

Drug makers for years have been making billions marketing antipsychotic and antidepressents for use in schools and foster homes on children with behavioral issues.

Now Barron's and WSJ report that the feds are investigating the over-prescribing of anti-psychotic drugs like Abilify (now the nation's No. 1 prescription drug) to children from low-income families on Medicare. The children, often diagnosed with "behavioral problems" such as bipolar disorder or "irritability" associated with autism, or even kids with ADHD, are prescribed antipsychotics at four times the rate of privately insured children, according to a study by Stephen Crystal, a professor of health policy at Rutgers University, that looked at data from 2004 on 6- to 17-year-old children in seven states.

Government Medicaid data indicate that some of the prescriptions are being written for very young children. An analysis by Mathematica found that in 2008, 19,045 children age 5 and under were prescribed antipsychotics through Medicaid, 3% of recipients under 20, up from 7,759 in 1999, according to James Verdier, a senior fellow at the organization. Some were under a year old, including one listed as a month old. In New York, a spokesman for the state health department said some children between ages 1 and 2 received antipsychotics for 

Proposed Constitutional Amendment Aims to Secure Parent Rights | Heartlander Magazine

Proposed Constitutional Amendment Aims to Secure Parent Rights | Heartlander Magazine:

Proposed Constitutional Amendment Aims to Secure Parent Rights

August 10, 2013

KATHLYN SHIRLEY

Kathlyn Shirley writes from Washington, DC. (read full bio)

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Rep. Mark Meadows has proposed amending the U.S. Constitution to guarantee parents have the supreme right of educating, caring for, and otherwise directing the upbringing of their children. House Joint Resolution 50, currently co-sponsored by 56 other members of Congress, secures parents the “fundamental right” to choose the form of education they wish for their children, including public, private, religious or home schools.

“This amendment to our Constitution would ensure that these decisions are made not by faceless bureaucrats but by parents who love their children and know them best,” said Meadows (R-North Carolina) in a statement. Similar bills in each of the past four congressional sessions have become known as “parental rights initiatives.” Last year’s version had 85 cosponsors.

Parent rights have come under “very serious attacks by every level of government,” says Heidi Holan, the Illinois State Coordinator for ParentalRights.org, which is spearheading the effort. Common Core requirements, for example, could be challenged on constitutional basis if this amendment was ratified, she said.

The U.S. Senate will soon reconsider a United Nations treaty on disabilities that would give primary 

Promethean Plan: A Teacher on Fulfilling the Intent of the Common Core « The Core Knowledge Blog

Promethean Plan: A Teacher on Fulfilling the Intent of the Common Core « The Core Knowledge Blog:

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Promethean Plan: A Teacher on Fulfilling the Intent of the Common Core

by Guest Blogger
August 12th, 2013

Tags: common core standards, Mark Anderson
Posted in No category | No Comments »

By Mark Anderson

Mark Anderson, who became a NYC Teaching Fellow after working in retail and hospitality management, now teaches at Jonas Bronck Academy in the Bronx. His writing on educational improvement has appeared in Gotham Schools, the Times Union, VIVA Teachers, and other venues.

Prometheus Brings Fire to Mankind, by Heinrich Friedrich Fuger, c. 1817

As a special education teacher in the Bronx, I have worked in self-contained and inclusive settings, first in an elementary, and now, in a middle school. I welcome the Common Core standards as beneficial to transforming practice in my school and classroom, and have worked to interpret them as a NYC Common Core ELA Fellow, as well as create curriculum and materials aligned to them within my own school, and with other teachers across the nation as part of the 2013 LearnZillion “Dream Team.”

I believe that the adoption of the Common Core standards has provided us with a golden window of opportunity for engaging and challenging our students with rich content, empowering teachers as scholars and content experts, and establishing a modicum of academic coherency in classrooms across our nation.

Here’s how we can all too easily squander this great opportunity:

• Allowing skills-based teaching to remain predominant.
• Placing the burden of teaching literacy entirely on ELA.
• Infantilizing teachers.

If we perpetuate these three practices, then the Common Core will do little to transform 

Corporate Education Reform Goes to College: San Francisco is the “Chicago of Higher Education”:

Corporate Education Reform Goes to College: San Francisco is the “Chicago of Higher Education”

by JIM MILLER on AUGUST 12, 2013 · 0 COMMENTS

in CULTURE, ECONOMY, EDUCATION, LABOR, UNDER THE PERFECT SUN

By Jim Miller

This summer few people outside of the Bay Area probably noted what was one of the most important stories about higher education in America: City College of San Francisco (CCSF) is losing its accreditation.

After years of wrangling, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), one of the seven regional accreditors in the western United States whose job it is to ensure the quality of higher education programs announced that CCSF was losing its accreditation in July of 2014.

Why should you care? Because ACCJC’s decision had very little to do with the quality of instruction and much more to do with imposing a new business model on community colleges that narrows their mission and opens the door to more privatization in American higher education. And San Francisco is being used as an example to intimidate other colleges to fall in line with ACCJC’s questionable “reform” agenda. Thus, what happened in San Francisco could happen in San Diego.

The reaction to this extreme punishment for CCSF, an institution that serves 90,000 students, many of them working class, immigrant, or in adult education, and had never been sanctioned 

How come officials could predict results on new test scores?:

How come officials could predict results on new test scores?

By Valerie Strauss, Published: August 12 at 10:45 amE-mail the writer

New scores from standardized tests   aligned with the Common Core State Standards were released earlier this month in New York, and, as expected, the number of students who did well plummeted. This decline was predicted by New York State officials. How did they know? Here to explain in an eye-opening piece is award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York, who has for more than a year chronicled on the test-driven reform in her state (here, and here and hereand here, for example). Burris was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010,  tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She is the co-author of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student test scores. It has been signed by more than 1,535 New York principals and more than 6,500 teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens. You can read the letter by clicking here. 

(Update: New details)

By Carol Burris

The mystery and complexity that surrounds the setting of test cut-scores evoke feelings of awe and puzzlement. It is a method as stupefying as those used by the Amazing Kreskin to make predictions and read minds.  We, the audience, are to suspend our 

Common Core may create common problem for Georgia and other... | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com

Common Core may create common problem for Georgia and other... | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com:

Common Core may create common problem for Georgia and other states: Lower test scores 

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Testing costs

Previous Posts

• Back to school for most kids: But where are the rest? 
  August 12, 2013
• Should APS hold off opening any charter schools until pensions lawsuit is resolved? 
  August 9, 2013
• Great teacher series: The energy and creativity of Grady High School's Dave Winter 
  August 8, 2013

By Maureen Downey

Several readers alerted me to education historian Diane Ravitch’s op-ed in the New York Daily News about the drop in student test scores in New York as a result of introducing new tests aligned with the Common Core State Standards.

Georgia’s first statewide test reflective of the higher standards and more advanced content in the Common Core was the End of Course Test in coordinate algebra.

A large majority — 63 percent — of students who took the coordinate algebra test this past spring failed to meet the state standard.. Ten of the 15 school districts in the metro area had failure rates above 50 percent, including Clayton County (77.9 percent), Atlanta Public Schools (77 percent) and DeKalb County (74.3 percent).}

"The coordinate algebra results give us a first look at the new level of rigor that is coming with new federal criteria for statetests, where the expectations to mee standards will increase significantly, " Georgia school Superintendent John Barge said when the test results were released.

Here is an excerpt of Ravitch's essay. Before commenting, please read the full piece here:

Test scores across New York State have collapsed, new results released Wednesday showed. Last year, 55% of students in the state passed the reading test; 65% passed 

Teachers Spend Own Money On Necessity Items For Their Students: Report (SLIDESHOW):

Teachers Spend Own Money On Necessity Items For Their Students: Report (SLIDESHOW)

Many teachers routinely spend money out of their own pockets on necessity items for their students, according to a nationwide survey conducted byAdoptAClassroom.org.

The organization surveyed 1,188 K-12 teachers from public, private and charter schools throughout the country, and found that the vast majority of teachers -- 91 percent -- reported purchasing things for their students that ranged from food and snacks, to personal care items like toothbrushes and soap.

“This survey of our teachers makes one thing abundantly clear: teachers are not only educating students, but through their out-of-pocket purchases, teachers are tackling major social issues such as homelessness, poverty, hunger and teaching students basic life skills,” said James Rosenberg, founder of AdoptAClassroom.org. “Again and again, we see it happen -- when society lets kids down, it’s teachers who step in to fill the gap.”

According to a news release, more than 15 million children in the United States live in households that can’t provide all the resources they need to succeed in school.Previous research has found teachers spend up to $1,000 each year on these items, a total of $1.3 billion.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the items teachers reported buying for their students, according to the AdoptAClassroom survey results:

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Teacher Spending On Students

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Public Schools: The Victims, Not the Cause, of Massive Inequality | janresseger

Public Schools: The Victims, Not the Cause, of Massive Inequality | janresseger:

Public Schools: The Victims, Not the Cause, of Massive Inequality

A couple of years ago Paul Reville, then Massachusetts Education Secretary declared: “Some want to make the absurd argument that the reason low-income youngsters do poorly is that, mysteriously, all the incompetency in our education systems has coincidentally aggregated around low income students.  In this view, all we need to do is scrub the system of incompetency and all will be well…”

This is the idea, widely held, that it is all the teachers’ fault.  Extending this idea tells us that our problem is tenure or bad colleges of education training teachers badly.

Such ideas, foolish as they may sound to those of us who know something about inequality of educational opportunity, seem appealing because the problem can be fixed by merely firing our way into a better future.

We struggle to grasp and connect the web of issues that converge to drive inequality for children.  And if we can grasp the scope of the problem, it seems overwhelming.

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz helps us this morning in The Wrong Lesson