5-1-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter:

The common core: A bad solution aimed at the wrong problem

Sent to Newsweek Alexander Nazaryan ("Sorry, Louis C.K., but You’re Wrong About Common Core," May 1) says our schools need the increased "rigor" of the common core because they are so bad: "China, South Korea and Germany are leaving us in the chalk dust, most Americans can barely find America on the map ...".Not so.  When researchers control for the effect of povert

by skrashen / 16min 

Almost Half of Worcester Central School Students Refuse State Tests

4/30/2014Nearly half the students at Worcester Central School refused to take mandated tests in third through eighth grades. Thanks to a concerted social media effort, 45 percent of the students--maybe the highest percentage in the state--opted out of the English Language Arts and math tests. Repercussions for the school lie in the future and are unclear, according to Superintendent Bill Diamond.

2 by Jim Horn / 51min

Notes from the Road: Some Observations about What is Wrong with the Good Fight

by Doug MartinDuring my talk recently to the Southeast Education Task Force in Indianapolis, a member of the Indiana Department of Education said there wasn’t a manufactured crisis in education, that our kids were indeed, many of them, failing.  She quoted some Ph.D  who appeared with Condi Rice recently, the former Bush official who has a Exxon tankernamed after her and helped the profiteers hand

26 by Doug Martin / 4h 

4-30-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter: Teachers at International HS at Prospect Heights Refuse to Give NYC ELA TestFrom Monty Neill: **Media Advisory**  26 Teachers and Staff of International High School at Prospect  Heights refuse to give NYC ELA Performance Assessment Test  WHEN: Thursday, May 1, 2014, 7:45-8:20am,  WHERE: International High School at Prospect Heights, 883 Classon  Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11225  WHAT: Teach

by mike simpson / 8h 

5-1-14 Scathing Purple Musings | Color me purple in Florida

Scathing Purple Musings | Color me purple in Florida, red in Washington, dark sky-blue in Israel and public school in Education:

Step Up for Students Misleading Use of Pro-Voucher Study

Step Up for Students is getting faster at rapid response. Late last week, Dr. Rosa Castro Feinberg’s expose regarding voucher schools poor record of implementation and service for English language learners. Step Up for Students’ (SUFS) board member Julio Fuentes responded to Castro’s piece, Castro Feinberg countered and a few hours ago, Fuentes, um, re-countered. Fuentes predictably surrounded his

by Bob Sikes / 50min 

Will Sachs, Montford Amendments Be Too Much for Senate Voucher Advocates?

Late yesterday and this morning, Sen. Maria Sachs (D-Delray Beach) and Sen. Bill Montford (D-Tallahassee) have inserted amendments into SB 1512 which will make senate voucher advocates put up, or shut up on accountability for voucher schools. From Sachs filed moments ago: Upon release of information from the Learning Service Institute in accordance with paragraph (9)(j), reporting to a scholarship

by Bob Sikes / 17min hide  //  save

Another Day, Another Misrepresentation of Opposition to Vouchers

The institutional straw man defense of taxpayer-funded school vouchers continues. In an opinion piece Don’t Blame Vouchers for Poor Science Instruction another American Enterprise Institute scholar takes the plunge. Writes Michael Q. McShane in the Tallahassee Democrat: Re: “Science has a spot in voucher debates” (My View, April 16). I share Brandon Haught’s desire for sound science education in F

by Bob Sikes / 4h 

4-30-14 Scathing Purple Musings | Color me purple in Florida

Scathing Purple Musings | Color me purple in Florida, red in Washington, dark sky-blue in Israel and public school in Education: Today’s Voucher Expansion Vote Will Forever Define Senate RepublicansA 2013 report from Charity Navigator gives Step Up for Students high marks as administrator of Florida’s voucher system, the misleading named the Florida Tax Credit Program. The report in PR Web quotes

by mike simpson / 8h 

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit 5-1-14

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit:

Bullets Fly, But The Test Must Go On

By Maggie Terry / commentary in EdSource Today | http://bit.ly/1miIFMc This commentary was written the day last month that 10th graders in Los Angeles were due to take the math portion of the California High School Exit Exam. April 9th, 2014  ::  Five pops that sounded like fireworks. Short and crisp. Totally misplaced at 8:05 a.m. Who lights fireworks on a Wednesday morning? But it

by smf / 4min 

BAD TEACHERS OR CORRUPT SYSTEM? LAUSD cracks down on alleged misconduct

student journalism by Holly San Nicolas, managing editor of the Hollywood High School Crimson Chronicle | http://bit.ly/1higAkJ ▲Screen capture  of pp.7 of the online version of the February 2014 Crimson Chronicle

by smf / 36min 

The authentic local voice for Local Control Funding speaks out …but were they/will they/should they be heard?: LA UNIFIED STUDENTS ASK VLADOVIC TO USE “INDEX” FOR NEEDS

by Michael Janofsky, LA School Report | http://bit.ly/1iNL56x Fremont High students, on their way to see LAUSD Board President Richard Vladovic Posted on April 30, 2014 2:50 pm ::  After weeks of trying, a group of students from Fremont High School finally got a meeting yesterday in the office of LA Unified Board President Richard Vladovic to promote their Special Need Index for use in the

by smf / 26min 

Mayday! Mayday!! - Miramonte civil lawsuits in disarray: LAUSD BRINGS IN NEW LAWYERS, ADMITS SHREDDING DOCUMENTS

…OK, this may be semantic overreach; I’m not sure that LAUSD’s defense was ever “in array!”  Awry maybe? LAUSD Assigns New Law Firm to Miramonte Child Abuse Cases LAUSD had initially hired the Sedgwick Law Firm, with chief attorney Thomas Delaney at the onset of the Miramonte scandal. By John Cadiz Klemack, KNBC News | NBC Southern California |  http://

by smf / 13min 

DISTRICT 1 CANDIDATES FORUM | Thursday, May 1 | 7:00PM | Hamilton High School

2014 Community Town Hall Meeting: LAUSD School Board Candidate Forum A public Q&A about the future of our schools For the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), this is a time of unprecedented changes and challenges. Public debate continues over testing and core curricula, teacher tenure and the role of unions, the introduction of computer tablets and other technologies, breakfast in

1 by smf / 8h 

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit 4-30-14

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: 3 stories: ALEX CAPUTO-PEARL ELECTED UTLA PRESIDENTAlex Caputo-Pearl won elected president of the United Teachers Los Angeles, defeating incumbent Warren Fletcher in a runoff vote. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times / March 4, 2014) Alex Caputo-Pearl wins runoff election to head L.A. teachers union Howard Blume , LA Times | http://lat.ms/1u4Q3jS  Apr

by mike simpson / 6h 

5-1-13 Curmudgucation Week

CURMUDGUCATION:

Sorry, Newsweek, But You're wrong About Louis C. K.

My first thought when I read Alexander Nazaryan's response to Louis C. K.'s Common Core tirade was, "Wow! What an ass!"This is not an insult. Readers of this blog know that the what-an-ass writing style is one of my favorites, and I have been an ass frequently. I don't have the luxury of being an ass for a national newsmaga-- well, newsthingy. But it's a skill I respect.Unfortunately, th

by Peter Greene / 7min 

Teacher Merit Badges

Earlier this week, Metro Nashville Public Schools unveiled a new virtual merit badge system to reward teachers who take on extras. The idea was facing resistance about fifteen seconds after it was introduced. Kelly Henderson, the districts executive director of instruction, compared the system to Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. Jill Speering of the school board responded, "I'm sorry-- that doesn'

by Peter Greene / 1min 

Throwing Away

It seems like some kind of joke to call a movement "un-American," but I think the Reformy Status Quo has earned that adjective.Here's the thing about us as a country, as a culture. We fight. We struggle. We have sometimes extremely violent, deadly battles among the many smaller tribes that make up this country. But as a nation we are built to accommodate all these differences, and so eve

1 by Peter Greene / 1h

4-30-13 Curmudgucation Week

CURMUDGUCATION: Is There No Common Ground? Well.....I sympathize with Peter DeWitt, the former K-5 principal who has morphed into a pundit/trainer. In his blog at EdWeek he can often be found trying to chart a course between the Scylla of the CCSS-based Reformsters and the Charybdis of rabid opposition to any changey things in school while sailing under the Pigpen's Black Cloud of corporate deceit

by mike simpson / 9h 

5-1-14 @ The Chalk Face

@ THE CHALK FACE:

The 2008 Common Core Sales Job: Part One

In 2008, the National Governors Association (NGA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and Achieve, Inc., released a report, Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-class Education. The Gates and GE foundations funded the report. The content of this report begs for careful examination. Thus, I plan to examine it closely in […]

2 by deutsch29 / 20min 

Revisiting James Baldwin’s “Black English”

Revisiting James Baldwin’s “Black English”. via Revisiting James Baldwin’s “Black English”.

1 by plthomasedd / 39min 

Discussing Research Methodology with the Gates Foundation

Rick Hess, in “A Small Request for My Friends at Gates,” was kind enough to urge the Gates Foundation to consider three of my research proposals. Rick Cantrell, the Senior Program Officer for Research and Data, responded to Rick’s post. Dr. Cantrell and I talked for nearly 1-1/2 hours. I would again like to thank […]

2 by John Thompson / 1h 

4-30-14 @ The Chalk Face

@ THE CHALK FACE: More on Two AmericasMore on Two Americas. via More on Two Americas.1 by plthomasedd / 23min  All Week 4-29-14 @ THE CHALK FACE@ THE CHALK FACE: Joanne Barkan’s Three Types of Criticism of Edu-PhilanthropyDiane Ravitch recently praised Joanne Barkan’s “How to Criticize ‘Big Philanthropy’ Effectively.” Barkan’s excellent analysis was first presented at the March 2014 Network for Pu

by mike simpson / 7h 

5-1-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:

At First Glance, A Disastrous Contract Deal Made By Michael Mulgrew, UFT

A few years of zeroes, they threw the ATR's under the bus, they just enshrined merit pay and they are set to allow 200 schools to operate without UFT contractual rules, allowing for longer schools days/years and other "innovations": The new contract would begin, retroactively, on November 1, 2009, and provide retroactive four percent pay raises for 2009 and 2010–comparable to the increas

by reality-based edu... / 25min 

De Blasio, Mulgrew Announce New UFT Contract Deal

And so, we have a deal:Mayor Bill de Blasio, confronting a key challenge of his first year in office, announced what he called a “landmark” labor deal on Thursday with New York City’s largest teachers’ union that officials said would provide a framework for dozens of other outstanding contracts with the municipal work force. The deal, hammered out in marathon negotiations this week, will grant $3.

by reality-based edu... / 1min 

UFT Contract Update - New Work Rules, Including "Expedited Termination Hearings" For ATR's

Not a done deal, but here's an update, via Daily Politics:Details are not final, but three sources briefed on the contract outlined significant changes to work rules and new projects in the city schools that could be covered in the contract, including:-- The city could open dozens of new schools free of some teachers union contract rules and city regulations to help foster innovation. Parent-teach

by reality-based edu... / 18min 

UFT Contract Agreement Has Hitches

Juan Gonzalez details the fissures between the "uniformed" unions and the "civilian" unions over the tentative UFT contract deal:The tentative UFT deal includes two years of 4% retroactive pay increases for teachers, who have been without a contract since November 2009 — longer than nearly all other city unions. Increases in subsequent years would be far smaller — about 1% per

by reality-based edu... / 2h 

4-30-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School: Eva Moskowitz Full Of Crap As UsualEva Moskowitz raised $7.75 million dollars from her Wall Street and corporate backers at the second annual spring fundraiser for Success Academies.Think about that number for a minute - $7.75 million.Then, as she was thanking the governor and the legislature at her spring fundraiser for forcing New York City to either co-locate her schools

by mike simpson / 9h 

Memo to Barack Obama: The folks who educate teachers would like to share some lessons on positive accountability with you | Hechinger Report

Memo to Barack Obama: The folks who educate teachers would like to share some lessons on positive accountability with you | Hechinger Report:

Memo to Barack Obama: The folks who educate teachers would like to share some lessons on positive accountability with you

Why “value-added metrics” are really just the opposite

By Beverly Falk

As the parent of children who attended public schools and an educator who has been a teacher of children, a school leader, and now a teacher-educator and director of a teacher-education program, I welcome the Obama administration’s efforts to ensure that educator preparation programs support their graduates to do the absolute best for the children entrusted to their care.

Beverly Falk

How they do this, however, can be helpful or harmful, depending on the kind of information they use to hold programs accountable and on what is done as a result of collecting that information. Examples of this kind of helpful data that can be used for accountability purposes include:

• Surveys of graduates and their employers about how well-prepared the graduates are for the many different aspects of teaching – this allows faculty to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and adjust their programs accordingly.

• Tracking where education-school graduates go and how long they remain in the field of teaching – this could offer insight to how prepared graduates are for the field, as research to date indicates that more poorly prepared teachers drop out more quickly.

• Statistics about how many teacher education candidates pass performance assessments (used for certification or program completion) that demonstrate how well they can actually teach – this information opens our eyes to new directions for instruction and needs in the classroom. Several such performance assessments have recently been developed and are being used in many states to license beginning teachers – much like the bar exam in law and the medical licensing exam for physicians. Just as passing rates on these tests are reported for professional schools in law and medicine, they could be reported for schools of education, as well.

Data that can be harmful, however, are data that don’t reflect the actual work of teachers and/or programs and that are used punitively rather than for improvement. An example of this kind of accountability practice that is not only unhelpful but also harmful is the Obama administration’s proposal to withhold TEACH grants from students in particular universities on the basis of test scores of students who are taught by their graduates.

The idea of evaluating teacher preparation programs using test scores of students taught by the graduates of those programs, referred to as “value-added measures – VAM,” is fraught with problems, not only for evaluating graduates but also for evaluating individual teachers. The so-called value-added metrics have been found to be both highly unstable – shifting dramatically from year to year, based in large part on who the teachers teach –- and biased against particular groups of teachers, like those who teach new English learners, special education students, and even gifted and talented students who have already hit the ceiling on the grade-level tests (and therefore cannot show growth on those tests). The National Research Council and several research organizations have Memo to Barack Obama: The folks who educate teachers would like to share some lessons on positive accountability with you | Hechinger Report:

William Rhoden of NY Times writes on Donald Sterling

William Rhoden of NY Times writes on Donald Sterling:

William Rhoden of NY Times writes on Donald Sterling

byteacherkenFollow

 
 
• Email
 
• 4 Comments / 4 New

in a piece titled A Verdict on Comments, but the Conversation Isn’t Overand subtitled "Sterling’s Remarks Offer Chance to Examine Racism."

I am not going to offer a great deal of commentary of my own.  The only purpose to this post is to get you to read what Rhoden, an African-American sportswriter, has to offer.  I have seen him commenting on this story on television, and was impressed by his cogency, and thus when I read his column this morning decided if it were not featured in the pundit roundup I would take time to make it more visible.

So if you will, follow below the fold for some sample material and explanation of why I think you should read it.

After the appropriate introductory material, including noting that Silver had to do what he did, given the reaction of both sponsors and players, Rhoden transfers to the main thrust of his article, which can be seen in these two paragraphs:

On one level, the Sterling story is about athletes’ demanding respect from a team owner who does not necessarily want black people at his games or in his “culture.” But more than that, it is a continuing narrative about structural racism in professional sports and beyond. The problem is less about words used in a private conversation and more about institutionalized bigotry expressed in action.

I think about this when I walk into press boxes across the country, with waves of news 

William Rhoden of NY Times writes on Donald Sterling:

Who Do We Ally With? - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Who Do We Ally With? - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

Who Do We Ally With?

By Deborah Meier on May 1, 2014 9:29 AM

Deborah Meier's conversation with Mike Klonsky continues today.

Dear Mike,

You're right. I'm wrong. Blogs should be short and sweet (or nasty). I see I've corrupted your style with mine. (This refers, readers, to a phone conversation Mike and I had about the proper form of blogging, which I have a hard time with.)

So, I woke up this morning and tossed out my thoughtful original response, and here's an off-the-top-of-my-head alternate reaction, written after reading the latest issue of Education Week (which sponsors this dialogue).

The rapidity with which so-called school reform is moving—without any democratic input, much less input from those who are most affected—is indeed scary! There's not even some phony rhetoric about democracy anymore. And its "job preparation" jargon is completely phony as well. There aren't enough good paying jobs for the currently "well-schooled," regardless of their academic majors. To keep wages from slipping back further (as profits move up) we're watching our democracy slip backward as well. It's truly a "counter-revolution" we're witnessing—with changes undertaken that will be hard to reverse.

Of late, teaching is not a field I'm comfortable seeing my grandchildren or their friends entering. But ... that's too hard for me to acknowledge. But, in fact, more than teaching is at stake. So. How do we fight them?

I'm for making every damned coalition necessary—even if it means switching allies now and then—to slow this down. And that means simultaneously building a movement on behalf of education of, Who Do We Ally With? - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

The Shriver Report – Raising a Child (and a New Generation) with Autism

The Shriver Report – Raising a Child (and a New Generation) with Autism:

Raising a Child (and a New Generation) with Autism

JACQUELINE KELLY | 05.01.2014

When asked about the challenges of being a mom to a child with special needs, the first thing that comes to mind is that there is not enough time. Not enough time to laugh, to cry, to teach, to learn, to work, to play. You see, my son Jake is 16, and at 6’2” he seems so capable; he is handsome, intelligent, humorous, loving, and yet he is absolutely not ready to become an adult in 14 months.

Jake is on the autism spectrum. And even now, after years of struggling to form apologies and presentations of the “bright side”, it is still difficult to explain precisely what that means. With the surge of autism awareness in the media, many realize that autism is a spectrum, but what many do not realize is that each person on the spectrum is a kaleidoscope unto their own.

There are vast challenges, not the least of which are schooling and behavior modification. However the biggest challenge by far is not necessarily Jake’s problems fitting into society, but rather society’s problem allowing him to fit in. The daily hurdles in deciding if and when we can take an outing and where we will go and how many people will be there and how much anxiety this might cause is a high-wire algorithm, a decision-making process that vibrates at such a high frequency that it can only be described as a mother’s instinct to protect her young.

It is lonely in our world. Not many welcome Jake into their homes because he can be emotional and because I am “not as fun” when I am looking after him. Along with invitations that ceased were flat-out boycotts where I was told that Jake was not allowed. Of course I was welcome, but only without my child.

Has this been difficult for me? Sure. But even more difficult is his query, “How come I don’t have friends?” Indeed, it is problematic to schedule play-dates with Jake’s classmates because often they do not return messages and being that the apple does not fall far from the autism tree, neither do their parents.

There was a time when I might have written about the incredible The Shriver Report – Raising a Child (and a New Generation) with Autism: