11-26-13 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:

Cuomo Warns Unions They Need A "Reality Adjustment"

Colby Hamilton at DNAinfo:MIDTOWN — Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned the city’s municipal labor unions Tuesday that they should be prepared to signficantly manage expectations as they prepare to sit down and negotiate new contracts with soon-to-be-mayor Bill de Blasio.While he praised the unions for their “superb” willingness to help the city during tight times in the past — most notably during the fiscal

by reality-based edu... / 53min 

“Tell The Assembly We’re Coming For Them. We’re Coming For Them, We’re Angry And We Vote!” - Parent At Common Core Forum

More protests on the Gospel of the Common Core tour:BINGHAMTON — Bearing signs reading “We are human, not machines,” “Oust the King” and “End Fed Ed,” Binghamton area residents let state Education Commissioner John King see — and hear — their discontent with Common Core state standards.“Tell the assembly we’re coming for them. We’re coming for them, we’re angry and we vote,” said Christina Bangel,

by reality-based edu... / 1:25 PM UTC-8 

Cuomo's Job Performance Ratings

After a Siena poll showed Andrew Cuomo with a 44%-56% job performance rating last week, a new Quinnipiac poll released today shows a different story:New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who saw his job approval rating drop in Quinnipiac University polls in the first six months of the year, opens his reelection bid with a 62 - 25 percent approval rating today. Marist released a poll yesterday finding

by reality-based edu... / 46min skip  //  save

NYSED Commissioner John King: Elementary School Teachers To Blame For Common Core Opposition

First, he said there is no turning back:State Education Commissioner John King defended the Common Core curriculum during a tour of the Binghamton region on Monday while acknowledging some difficulty in rolling out the standards.“Any time you try to raise standards across 45 states, it’s going to be a complicated process,” King said.King is traveling throughout the state to explain the initiative

by reality-based edu... / 3h 

Merryl Tisch Get A Subpoena From The Moreland Commission Yet?

Of course she hasn't - but she should.We learned on Sunday that Regents Chancellor Tisch paid out of her own pocket for private employees to run NYSED offices - at least the first million came from the Tisch family fortune.Millions more came from the Gates Foundation, General Electric and a bunch of other corporate entities - $19 million in total from more than two dozen private employees.These pr

by reality-based edu... / 6h 

11-25-13 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School: Cuomo's Education Reform Agenda ExposedTim Farley wrote a letter to Governor Cuomo, part of which made it to the Times Union.In it, Farley shows just how much of the NY State reform agenda is Cuomo's agenda.He notes how Cuomo has been trying to distance himself from the state reform agenda in recent days, as public outrage over the reforms has grown, then writes:  This seems

by mike simpson / 9h 

11-26-13 Truth in American Education

Truth in American Education:

Should American High Schools Prepare any Students for STEM? Common Core Doesn’t Think So

When states adopted Common Core’s mathematics standards, they were told (among other things) that these standards would make all high school students “college- and career-ready” and strengthen the critical pipeline for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).However, with the exception of a few standards in trigonometry, the math standards end after Algebra II, as James Milgram, professo

by Sandra Stotsky / 5min 

New York Principles Send An Open Letter to Parents

An open letter signed by 545 Principals across New York State was addressed to the parents of elementary, middle, and high school students in New York.  They address several points:NYS testing has increased dramatically.The tests were too long.Ambiguous questions appeared throughout the exams.Children have reacted viscerally to the tests.The low passing rate was predicted.The college readiness ben

by Shane Vander Hart / 2h skip  //  save

Rigor of the State Standards Doesn’t Correlate With Student Achievement

Ramesh Ponnuru makes an excellent point in his op/ed at Bloomberg:For that matter, how common will that core really be? Classroom practice doesn’t always reflect the standards written in a state’s official documents. That’s one reason the rigor of state standards doesn’t correlate with student achievement. But ensuring uniformity in practice would require the kind of heavy-handed central governing

by Shane Vander Hart / 3h 

Two States Delay Fully Implementing PARCC | Truth in American Education

Two States Delay Fully Implementing PARCC | Truth in American Education: Two States Delay Fully Implementing PARCCFiled in Common Core Assessments by Shane Vander Hart on November 25, 2013 • 0 Comments9Two states last week made moves to address Common Core concerns, specifically the implementation of the PARCC assessment.Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White announced a 10-year plan whi

by mike simpson / 5h 

UPDATE: Let Senator Williams Know We Want Charter School Accountability, Stop Bill 1085. Join us at his office, | WeArePCAPS

Let Senator Williams Know We Want Charter School Accountability, Stop Bill 1085. Join us at his office, | WeArePCAPS:

Comly Elementary Student Gets to the Heart of Our School Crisis

by wearepcaps / 29min 

Let Senator Williams Know We Want Charter School Accountability, Stop Bill 1085. Join us at his office,

Top legislators join critics of proposed regs for new funding formula | EdSource Today

Top legislators join critics of proposed regs for new funding formula | EdSource Today:

Top legislators join critics of proposed regs for new funding formula

November 25th, 2013 | Add a Comment | 
By John Fensterwald

In a letter on Monday, leaders of the state Senate and Assembly criticized proposed regulations on state funding for the state’s neediest students as inconsistent with the intent of the new school finance law.

Their letter to the State Board of Education, which must adopt the regulations in January, adds an exclamation point to similar criticisms from organizations representing low-income students, foster youth and English learners. Legislators and advocates are arguing that the proposed regulations for the Local Control Funding Formula or LCFF would give districts too much flexibility to decide how to spend money targeted for high-needs students.

Signing the letter were Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg; Assembly Speaker John Pérez; Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco; Assembly Budget Committee Chairwoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley; Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Judy Liu, D-Glendale; and Assembly Education Committee Chairwoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo.

The three-page letter suggests nine changes to the regulations and the proposed template for the Local Control and Accountability Plan or LCAP, which the State Board also is considering. Starting the next school year, every district and charter school will be required to adopt an LCAP, detailing how they will respond to  the eight priorities, including school climate, parent engagement and 

Shanker Blog » ESEA Waivers And The Perpetuation Of Poor Educational Measurement

Shanker Blog » ESEA Waivers And The Perpetuation Of Poor Educational Measurement:

ESEA Waivers And The Perpetuation Of Poor Educational Measurement

Posted by Matthew Di Carlo on November 26, 2013

Some of the best research out there is a product not of sophisticated statistical methods or complex research designs, but rather of painstaking manual data collection. A good example is a recent paper by Morgan Polikoff, Andrew McEachin, Stephani Wrabel and Matthew Duque, which was published in the latest issue of the journalEducational Researcher.

Polikoff and his colleagues performed a task that makes most of the rest of us cringe: They read and coded every one of the over 40 state applications for ESEA flexibility, or “waivers.” The end product is a simple but highly useful presentation of the measures states are using to identify “priority” (low-performing) and “focus” (schools “contributing to achievement gaps”) schools. The results are disturbing to anyone who believes that strong measurement should guide educational decisions.

There’s plenty of great data and discussion in the paper, but consider just one central finding: How states are identifying priority (i.e., lowest-performing) schools at the elementary level (the measures are of course a bit different for secondary schools).

There are 42 states with accepted waiver applications. Out of these 42, 17 exclusively use some version of proficiency or other cutpoint-based rates to identify priority schools. Another 23 employ a composite index consisting of different measures, but in most of these indexes, proficiency still plays the dominant role. Finally, another two 

Open Congress : Major Bill Actions Education - U.S. Congress - OpenCongress

Education - U.S. Congress - OpenCongress:

Bill Introduced: S. 1704: Affordable College Textbook Act

A bill to expand the use of open textbooks in order to achieve savings for students.

4h skip  //  save

Bill Introduced: H.R. 3538: Affordable College Textbook Act

To expand the use of open textbooks in order to achieve savings for students.

7h 

Bill Introduced: H.R. 3461: Strong Start for America's Children Act of 2013

To support early learning.

7h 

Bill Introduced: H.R. 3538: Affordable College Textbook Act

To expand the use of open textbooks in order to achieve savings for students.

6h 

Bill Introduced: S. 1704: Affordable College Textbook Act

A bill to expand the use of open textbooks in order to achieve savings for students.

6h skip  //  save

Bill Introduced: H.R. 3461: Strong Start for America's Children Act of 2013

To support early learning.

6h 

NYC Educator: Oh, the Horror

NYC Educator: Oh, the Horror:

Oh, the Horror

Charter school operators, who enroll about 6% of the city's students, are recoiling in shock from Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio's decision to represent the other 94% of city schoolchildren in his transition team. Don't they read Gotham Schools? If they did, they'd know that charters should be covered at least half the time, if not all the time.

What is with this guy, including public school parents like Zakiyah Ansari on his team? Doesn't he know she's an advocate for public school children? Mayor Bloomberg never paid the slightest attention to her. Bloomberg knew that what was important was finding ways to pay charter operators three times what the NYC schools chancellor made, and indeed there are now several charter moguls raking in big bucks as a result.

How are Bloomberg's BFFs going to continue hopping onto the gravy train if this trend continues? Are we going to actually spend city funds on public schoolchildren instead? That would be an outrage. Why would entrepreneurs come to NYC if they can't make money off the sweat of our children? It's bad enough we outlawed child labor. Now, just when we're finally figuring how to make money off the little urchins, along comes liberal de Blasio to throw a monkey wrench into the works.

Naturally charter school advocates are outraged. Eva Moskowitz made her kids, their parents, and her at-will 

Parents Make Better Teachers (Sara Mosle) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Parents Make Better Teachers (Sara Mosle) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Parents Make Better Teachers (Sara Mosle)

Sara Mosle teaches writing at Philip’s Academy Charter School in Newark, N.J., and has written about education for Slate, the New York Times, and The Atlantic among other publications. This appeared in Slate, August 30, 2013.

In a recent [New York Times] article, Motoko Rich described how many schools are now exclusively hiring teachers and principals in their early 20s who work for just two to three years before leaving education altogether. Instead of deploring this trend, charter programs have embraced a pool of eager, young, and idealistic college graduates, many in or fresh out of Teach for America, who are willing to work long, grueling hours for low pay and with no promise of a sustained career path.

The Times focuses on the resulting turnover and inexperience among these educators. Studies show that schools with high rates of teacher attrition perform poorly on average and that many educators don’t hone their skills until their third year in the classroom or beyond. The Times article, however, neglects another downside to charters’ emphasis on youthful hiring: Many schools launch with few or no adults on staff who know first-hand what it’s like to be a parent.

If you aren’t a parent, maybe this won’t strike you as odd. It wouldn’t have 

DeBlasio Appoints One of the Best Parent Advocates to Transition Team | janresseger

DeBlasio Appoints One of the Best Parent Advocates to Transition Team | janresseger:

DeBlasio Appoints One of the Best Parent Advocates to Transition Team

Posted on November 26, 2013 by janresseger

The New York Daily News reports that New York City Mayor-Elect Bill DeBlasio has appointed Ms. Zakiyah Ansari to his 60 member transition team.  Ms. Ansari will be weighing in on matters as important as the choice of New York’s next school chancellor.

As a parent of eight children, all of whom have graduated from or are currently attending New York City public schools, and as advocacy director for the New York Alliance for Education Justice, Ms. Ansari has been among the most effective critics of the closure of pubic schools in New York City and the co-location of charter schools into buildings that also house traditional public schools.

She has led statewide protests in Albany for fair school funding under the Campaign for Fiscal Equity court case remedy and she has been a persistent and outspoken critic o

'It Feels Like Education Malpractice' - Hope Reese - The Atlantic

'It Feels Like Education Malpractice' - Hope Reese - The Atlantic:

'It Feels Like Education Malpractice'

What one woman learned from 10 years of teaching in a New York City public school

 

Jim Young/Reuters

Laurel Sturt was a 46-year-old fashion designer in New York City whose career trajectory took an unlikely shift one day on the subway. A self-proclaimed social activist, Sturt noticed an ad for a Teaching Fellows program. Then and there, she decided to quit her job in fashion design and shift her focus to her real passion: helping others. She enrolled in the two-year program and was assigned to teach at an elementary school in a high-poverty neighborhood near the South Bronx.

A decade later, Sturt has written about the experience in her provocative memoir Davonte’s Inferno: Ten Years in the New York Public School Gulag. I spoke with her about how her time in the classroom affected her views on education today.

---

You got into teaching at the age of 46, which is later than most. What 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Making learning authentic

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Making learning authentic:

Making learning authentic

With attacks mounting on colleges of education, including from Sec. of Ed Arne Duncan, I'm happy to read the occasional story about good young teachers who learned their skills in good teacher training programs. Yesterday's piece in DNAinfo gives us a snapshot of 5th-grade teacher Heather Reed at Chicago's Pritzker Elementary, teaching the way it's supposed to be done. Ms. Reed comes out of DePaul's teacher ed program.

Now in her eighth year of teaching at Pritzker School, Reed said her approach to teaching "relies heavily on making learning authentic to my students" because "if a topic doesn't matter to them, or they can't find something interesting in it, they're not very likely to understand or remember it."

Quotables

Billionaire Rauner

Bruce Rauner

“Capitalism is the greatest poverty-fighting