9-10-13 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:

89% Counted - De Blasio At 39.7%

de Blasio trudging toward 40% at 39.7% with 89% of precincts in... Hispanic (no good DB) and black (good DB) are what's out.— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) September 11, 2013Going to be really, really close.

by reality-based edu... / 2min mark as read  //  save

86% - 39.6% For De Blasio

Yikes - right at the cusp...

by reality-based edu... / 10min 

84% Counted - De Blasio 39.5%

Still looking like a runoff...

by reality-based edu... / 12min 

76% - De Blasio 39.4%

Upper West Side, areas around Park Slope still to be counted.Also, large parts of Queens left, parts of the Bronx too.It's going to be close.Right now, not looking like De Blasio gets over the 40%.

0min 

Almost Three Quarters Counted, De Blasio Just Under 40%

Maybe Bill de Blasio needed Norm Scott's vote after all.He has to get 40% or higher to avoid a runoff.With 72% counted, he's at 39.3%.

5min 

Latest Exit Poll Update Has De Blasio Now At 40%

That's down from 43% a while back.Starting to look like we're in for a close one - runoff/no runoff.So much for an early bedtime...

8min 

TODAY

Almost Two-Thirds Of The Vote Reported, We're Looking At A Runoff Between De Blasio And Thompson

39.2% for de Blasio, 25.9% for Thompson.Hasn't been much fluctuation from those percentages for some time.

by reality-based edu... / 11min 

40% Of Vote Counted, De Blasio At 39%, Thompson At 25.8%, Quinn At 15.4%

Anybody who says the UFT endorsement was the "kiss of death" for Thompson doesn't know anything about politics.Where would Thompson's percentage be without that UFT support?You can bet it wouldn't be 25.8%.Not with the kind of candidate he is.

by reality-based edu... / 25min 

Exit Poll Updates Show Thompson Gaining Strength

Thompson has gained in every single exit update so far... Just keep in mind.— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) September 11, 2013 Exit poll update: de Blasio 42%, Thompson 26%... Keep in mind this stuff will update. So that 43% meant nothing really.— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) September 11, 2013As always, if exit polls were accurate, John Kerry blah blah blah... Take nothing for granted other th

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Exit Polls Show De Blasio Sweeping Almost Every Category

It's amazing, really.Take a look. It's quite possible de Blasio didn't need Norm Scott's vote.Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, all other religious, all the boroughs. all age groups. both genders...Wow.Again, exit polls - but looking a lot like the last set of public polls conducted late last week.

by reality-based edu... / 1h 

Spitzer Is Going To Have A Tough Time Winning If Exit Polls Are Right

A little less than half of the voters in today's primary were white.Here are the exit poll breakdowns for the comptroller race:Few racial divides in race for mayor, exits show. But in comptroller race Spitzer wins blacks 64-35 while whites for for Stringer 32-68— Andrew Grossman (@A_Grossman) September 11, 2013If nearly half of the voters in the primary were white and Spitzer lost whites to String

by reality-based edu... / 1h 

Exit Polls Have De Blasio 43%, Thompson 25%, Quinn 18%

Times reported them here.These exit polls look a lot like that last round of polling from Quinnipiac and Marist. But don't forget, there are absentee ballots and the like to count and those were often sent in before de Blasio's surge.Also, if exit polling was a science, John Kerry would have just finished up his second term.

by reality-based edu... / 14min 

2/3rds Of Primary Voters With Children In School Say Public Schools Either Same Or Worse Since Bloomberg Took Over

We've seen these very numbers before in polls conducted by the public polling outfits.Now we get the same numbers from the exit polling:On education, parents of public school children were divided as to how the schools have fared under Mr. Bloomberg. About a third said public schools stayed the same under his tenure, while about equal numbers said they had become better or gotten worse.There's you

by reality-based edu... / 24min 

Andrew Cuomo Turns 9/11 Commemoration Into A Campaign Event

When did 9/11 commemorations turn into the Daytona-500?Gov. Andrew Cuomo, performer and songwriter Billy Joel, and Orange County Choppers star Paul Teutul, Jr. tomorrow morning will participate in a tribute motorcycle ride to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The ride begins at 7 a.m. at FDNY Rescue 1 and concludes at around 8 a.m. According to a press advisory, the ride wi

by reality-based edu... / 2h 

What's Wrong With You, Anthony?

 Reid Pillifant took a look at Weiner at the end of this race and concluded that Weiner is worse off now than before he started: Weiner has tried to frame his endurance and impressive imperviousness to embarrassment as a sign of the mettle needed to run the city.But unless he dramatically outperforms the polls on Tuesday, Weiner will end the campaign worse off than when he started.When he entered

by reality-based edu... / 0min 

Newspapers Endorsements - Kiss Of Death For Quinn?

As Mario Diaz noted on WPIX, Christine Quinn dropped to third place after all three of the daily NYC newspapers endorsed her. There are many unknowns about today's primary.Will de Blasio hit 40% and avoid a runoff?If Thompson hits his "magic mark" of 25%, does that keep de Blasio from hitting 40%?Can Stringer's GOTV operation beat Spitzer's money?Which two candidates in the public advocate's race

by reality-based edu... / 12min 

Andrew Cuomo Must Be Held Accountable For His Damaging Policies To Schools And Students

Diane Ravitch:New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called for the “death penalty” for failing schools recently, setting off a war of words between those who believe in closing struggling schools and those who want to kill them and fire the staff.Bruce Baker takes a different view. Here he demonstrates that Néw York has a funding system that is unfair to the schools with the neediest students.Instead of

by reality-based edu... / 11min 

Reports Coming In About Voting Machine Malfunctions All Over The City

Third World election apparatus:Heard of problems at TOP Civic Center, machines not working. Going to verify. @BOENYC— Jumaane D. Williams (@JumaaneWilliams) September 10, 2013 Poll site problems in Bronx. VM breakdown at IS 74 in Hunts Pt. BOE tech called. Voting on paper til VM repaired.— Michael Benjamin (@SquarePeg_Dem) September 10, 2013 @nycboe running 3rd world election. Every machine at Par

by reality-based edu... / 0min 

Primary Day

I made some predictions and endorsements for the mayor's race yesterday morning. In case you missed that post amidst all the fun of the first day of classes yesterday, you can read it here.Tonight you can follow the vote count here.And of course we'll be updating you here at Perdido Street School blog on the results as they come in.As you work today, there will be rumors of exit polls on Twitter a

by reality-based edu... / 2h   

9-9-13 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School: Final Quinnipiac Poll: De Blasio 39%, Thompson 25%, Quinn 18%From Bloomberg News:Bill de Blasio has support from 39 percent of likely Democratic voters, just shy of the 40 percent he needs in tomorrow’s election to avoid a runoff with his closest competitor, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.De Blasio, 52, elected four years ago to the citywide watchdog office of pub

by mike simpson / 10h 

Order in the Classroom | toteachornototeach

Order in the Classroom | toteachornototeach:

Order in the Classroom 

by Andreas Schleicher

There was a good reason why our teachers demanded our attention in class: it wasn’t about power; it was about performance — ours. As new analyses from PISA show, the disciplinary climate in schools is strongly related to student performance.

You might be surprised to learn that, according to the reports of students who participated in PISA 2009, most students in most PISA-participating countries and economies enjoy orderly classrooms. That is true for the U.S. even more so than for countries on average. Across OECD countries, more than two out of three students reported that never or hardly ever is there noise and disorder in their classrooms. In some countries, classrooms are models of orderliness: fewer than one in 10 students in Thailand and Korea reported that they cannot work well in class because of disruptions, and fewer than one in 10 students in Japan, Kazakhstan and Shanghai-China reported that their teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down before they can begin class.

But orderly classrooms are not ends in themselves; they seem to be the preconditions for learning. In 55 countries and economies that participated in PISA 2009, students in schools where the classroom climate is more conducive to learning tend to perform better. True, schools with more positive disciplinary climates also tend to have other qualities that are related to better student performance. For example, the students in these schools generally come from more socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds. Indeed, in 36 countries and economies, there is a positive relationship between schools’ disciplinary climate and the average socioeconomic status of their students.

But PISA results show that even after accounting for the socioeconomic status and other characteristics of both students and the schools they attend, including the educational resources available to the school, the way the school is governed, and how the school assesses the performance of its students and itself, in 31 countries and economies, 

How big can Teach For America get?:

How big can Teach For America get?

By Valerie Strauss, Published: September 10 at 4:00 amE-mail the writer

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TFA founder Wendy Kopp

Even in school districts where teachers have been laid off because of budget cuts, Teach For America manages to keep expanding. An education blogger in Massachusetts who writes about corporate-influenced reform on the website EduShyster.com, writes about this in the following post.

From EduShyster.com:

When news broke this past summer that Teach for America was expanding its presence in Chicago amid the largest school closings in that city’s history and the layoffs of thousands of teachers and school staff, the reaction was swift, furious and extended well beyond the usual chorus of TFA detractors. At the time, I argued that the heated-back-and-forth, while welcome, missed the point. In city after city, TFA has largely abandoned its earlier mission of staffing hard-to-fill positions in public schools, serving instead as a placement agency for urban charters. In Chicago, however, TFA’s role appears to go far beyond providing labor for the fast-growing charter sector. An internal TFA document indicates that the organization has a plan to dramatically expand the number of charter schools in the city.

The document, a slide from Chicago TFA’s January 2013 Board of Directors meeting, is reproduced below. (You can view the original here or here). The five-year charter management organization or CMO growth plan forecasts a dramatic expansion of privately-run charters in the city. The 52 new schools projected below would serve more than 30,000 students.

TFA Chicago’s response
I shared the document with TFA Chicago’s executive director, Josh Anderson, both to 

The ‘grim new normal’ in Philadelphia schools

Consider this: The constitution of Pennsylvania says that the state legislature must provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth.   Now consider what students and … Continue reading →    

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Missouri Education Watchdog: The Fallacy of the Purple Squirrel

Missouri Education Watchdog: The Fallacy of the Purple Squirrel:

The Fallacy of the Purple Squirrel

Public education gets the blame for producing dumb students and not providing business with qualified candidates. The ball is 100% in the school's and teacher's court right? Hold on a minute. Let's look at some U.S. business hiring practices that may also be contributing the problem. And then let's ask the geniuses at the Business Roundtable what they are going to do to fix their end of the problem.

The lament from business is "Oh boo hoo, we can't find any good candidates with the skills we want. The public education system just sends us dumber and dumber kids."  They then point to cherry picked statistics, like PISA and TIMMS score comparisons with other countries, to prove that those statements are true. But let's take a moment to examine their statements.

The moats, fortified walls and iron gates of ancient fortresses are easily overcome defenses compared to today's equivalent, the Human Resources department which can keep out even the bravest warrior and most qualified candidate for a position. When a company says they can't find any "good" candidates, consider the purple squirrel. The Urban Dictionary says this about purple squirrels, "For all practical purposes, there is no such thing as a 'Purple Squirrel'; not in nature and not in the job market. It is a metaphor used by recruiters to identify the unrealistic 

Louisiana Educator: State Superintendent Praises Low Teacher Ratings at Some Schools

Louisiana Educator: State Superintendent Praises Low Teacher Ratings at Some Schools:

State Superintendent Praises Low Teacher Ratings at Some Schools

Bassett Questions Harsh Evaluations

Do the highest performing schools in the state have more Highly Effective - and less Ineffective - teachers than the average? No, says State Superintendent John White.

Thursday, eighteen high-performing schools were recognized for awarding low numbers of the highest ratings to teachers. Each school ranked in the top ten percent of either student proficiency or improvement in proficiency rate on state assessments.

According to the Compass Report on teacher evaluations, statewide, over half the teachers were rated Highly Effective for student growth as measured against their Student Learning Targets. However, in these 18 schools, less than ten percent of teachers received that rating. They also rated teachers as Ineffective at over four times the state average.

Student Learning Targets (SLTs) are goals set for students by teachers and principals at the beginning of the year. Teachers are evaluated by how well their students attain those goals.

“These schools show the great results that can be achieved when educators have high expectations for the students they teach,” said State Superintendent John White. “By raising the bar for what children are expected to achieve academically, educators raised