5-14-14 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District):

Commentary: Why aren’t we listening to our teachers?

I’m fed up with the inefficiency of the judicial system! I’m going to become a judge. I may not be a lawyer, but I’ve been a law-abiding citizen all my life, I mean, how hard could it be? I have 20 years of business experience in the TV industry. When I blow into the courtroom demanding accountability, I am going to shake things up! Who needs legal experience when you understand the bottom line? W

3 by Ellie Herman / 25min 

Board defies district, keeps open 2 charters in Watts

Students rejoice at news to keep open New Designs Center in Watts The Los Angeles Unified school board faced long hours of personal and emotional pleas yesterday on a vast array of issues, including how to spend $837 million in money directed to helping low-income students, children in foster care and English learners. A parade of community members addressing the board at the end, each speaking fo

by Vanessa Romo / 0min hide  //  save

Editorial: Doubts about teacher evaluations and test scores

Via The Los Angeles Times | By the Editorial Board A new study out of USC and the University of Pennsylvania finds that value-added measurements — a way of using student test scores to evaluate teacher performance — aren’t a very good way of judging teacher quality. This isn’t the first study to cast doubt on what has become a linchpin educational policy of the Obama administration but there’s an

0min 

Morning Read: Brown urges 30-year fix for CA teacher pensions

In revised budget, Governor details 30-year plan to fix teacher pensions Gov. Jerry Brown is predicting that the state will take in $2.4 billion more in revenue in 2014-15 than initially estimated, but highly expectant education leaders won’t get a piece of it to implement the Common Core state standards or make a down payment for universal preschool. They can count on the double-digit spending in

28min 

5-13-14 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District): LIVESTREAM coverage of today’s LAUSD school board meetingToday the Los Angeles Unified School Board tackles a hefty agenda that includes hammering out details of next year’s budget in a meeting that could extend late into the evening. While there’s no vote on the budget until early summer, the board has b

by mike simpson / 21h 

Q&A with Randi Weingarten: Is Australia’s conservative government doing more about school equity than the Obama administration? | Hechinger Report

Q&A with Randi Weingarten: Is Australia’s conservative government doing more about school equity than the Obama administration? | Hechinger Report:

Q&A with Randi Weingarten: Is Australia’s conservative government doing more about school equity than the Obama administration?

By Sarah Butrymowicz

President of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten has traveled the globe, to places like Argentina, Finland and Singapore, to bring lessons back from foreign education systems to the United States. She spent three days in Australia in April, visiting schools and talking to union officials from across the country.

Australia, like the United States, is a diverse country with a significant percentage of students living in poverty. Both countries perform below the world’s best on international assessments and are trying similar things, like expanding school choice and adopting new standards, to improve their position.

In February, I took my own trip down under to learn about Australia’s policies for tackling truancyand elevating the teaching profession. A conservative government had assumed control about five months prior, and educators talked to me about their concerns that the “Gonski Report,” a 2011 report that recommended ways to improve education funding and address inequities, would no longer be honored. It disappeared from all government websites in late 2013, but resurfaced in January.

Australian students in their final year of high school take a break during a conference about what to do after graduation. The country is trying to boost its high school completion rates to 90 percent. (Photo: Sarah Butrymowicz)

Teachers are still concerned, Weingarten said, when we talked to compare notes. Here are some of her other impressions from the trip:

Question: What were some of your initial reactions from your time in Australia?

Answer: The thing that was great was going to the schools. The elementary school where dozens of languages were spoken at home. There was a school near a detention center. We saw a performance by the students in an intensive English program and we’re still singing the song ‘I’m proud to be a refugee.’ The second chance school that we saw. One of the students said that the teachers there saved her life. We met a couple of students who had suffered breakdowns or severe anxiety brought on by the stress of national standardized tests.

What I was really, really struck by was the potential of Gonski. You had business support, you had the government support, where they talked about over $15 billion in new funds. There was a majority of members associated with Catholic education unanimously agreed that school funding had to be overhauled. There’s a huge, huge, huge set of resources for public schools and schools serving large numbers of disadvantaged students. Where you see that there was this huge push by [the] union to Q&A with Randi Weingarten: Is Australia’s conservative government doing more about school equity than the Obama administration? | Hechinger Report:

My Interview with Counterpunch | deutsch29

My Interview with Counterpunch | deutsch29:

My Interview with Counterpunch

May 14, 2014

Sacramento jounralist Seth Sandronsky learned of the release of my book, A Chronicle of Echoes, and requested an interview on the book and other issues, including questions about my personal history and varied education reform topics.

His interview is posted in the online publication, Counterpunch

May 14, 2014

 An Interview With Mercedes K. Schneider

Bill Gates and the Push to Privatize Public Education

by SETH SANDRONSKY

Mercedes K. Schneider holds degrees in secondary education (English and German), guidance and counseling, and applied statistics and research methods. She is finishing her 19th full-time year of teaching, 14 of which have been as a certified teacher in the traditional public school classroom. Schneider lives in her native southern Louisiana and blogs on education issues at deutsch29.wordpress.com. Information Age Publishing just released Schneider’s first book, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education, which is climbing in popularity on Amazon. Her book unpacks the whys and wherefores of the groups and people propelling the corporate assault on the nation’s public K-12 schools. She and I conducted this interview via email.

Seth Sandronsky: Talk about who you are and the actors (family influences) and factors (class interests) that produced Mercedes K. Schneider today.

Mercedes K. Schneider: One major influence on my development was my father. He thought I was smart and strong, and he told people so in front of me. He also enjoyed conversing with me about history and politics (he served in World War II under Army General George Patton). He died when I was only 12 (today happens to be the 34th anniversary of his funeral), but his influence on me during my formative years was undeniable. He allowed me to work part time at an early age (11 years). He also allowed me to pursue my varied interests despite their unusualness. For example, I had a Honda CT 70 minibike, and I remember sitting on our patio cleaning the carburetor as he watched. I also rebuilt bicycles and sold them and repaired appliances. He was clearly proud of me.

Another major influence was my teachers. I am a product of public schools and state universities. So many of my teachers took obvious pleasure in my abilities. I am able to function well in both math and English. I did not know until I was an adult that My Interview with Counterpunch | deutsch29:

5-14-14 @ The Chalk Face

@ THE CHALK FACE:

Arne Duncan’s “Principal Ambassadors”: Federally Monitored “Local Control”??

A notable corporate reform ploy is to starve school districts of funding and then turn around and offer some “assistance”– which amounts to little more than a district’s selling its autonomy to the corporate reform machine. Corporate reform is flush with cash, and it wants to leverage its cash in order to trap school systems […]

by deutsch29 / 46min 

My Interview with Counterpunch

Sacramento jounralist Seth Sandronsky learned of the release of my book, A Chronicle of Echoes, and requested an interview on the book and other issues, including questions about my personal history and varied education reform topics. His interview is posted in the online publication, Counterpunch May 14, 2014  An Interview With Mercedes K. Schneider Bill Gates […]

1 by deutsch29 / 19min 

5-11-14 @ The Chalk Face

@ THE CHALK FACE: For Mother’s Day, embrace the complicationsIt’s hard for me not to be slightly cynical on special days like this because they’re largely capitalist confections created by skilled marketers. Take a look at how far we’ve come from the original connotations of “Mother’s Day,” from the Zinn History Project. What began as a call to action, now we eat brunch and exchange […]1 by Shaun

by mike simpson / 15min 

LEAs face a big tab for teacher pensions under Brown’s plan :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

LEAs face a big tab for teacher pensions under Brown’s plan :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

MAY 14, 2014

LEAs face a big tab for teacher pensions under Brown’s plan

by Kimberly Beltran

(Calif.) The financial contribution school districts will make to help close an unfunded liability of $74 billion in teacher pensions will jump nearly 11 percent under Gov. Jerry Brown’s May budget proposal released Tuesday.

As happy as some school managers are that Brown is taking seriously the problems facing the California State Teacher Retirement System, they also worry about meeting the new obligation using existing resources provided under the Local Control Funding Formula – expected to cover a growing  array of student services.

“We appreciate the governor recognizing the need to shore up CalSTRS in the near future, including increased contribution from state employers and teachers,” said Josephine Lucey, president of the California School Boards Association and a school trustee in the Cupertino Union School District, said in a statement.

“However, this increase could impact future increases in overall education funding which cries out for a need to discuss the adequacy of school funding,” she said.

Edgar Zazueta, a legislative advocate for the Los Angeles Unified School District, took to Twitter shortly after the governor released his plan expressing the same concern: “Applaud Governor's efforts 2 take on teacher pensions but very concerned w/ the timing & how it impacts LCFF efforts w/ community #cabudget.”

Brown’s revised 2014-15 budget plan, released Tuesday morning, would add little new funding for LEAs face a big tab for teacher pensions under Brown’s plan :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

 

Mixed bag of results with teacher evaluations

(Ill.) Despite overwhelming success in getting states to upgrade teacher evaluation systems, the Obama administration can point to only mixed results translating the campaign into higher student performance, according to a new report sponsored by the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation.

by Tom Chorneau / 22min 

End of School Privatization in Las Vegas » Resist the Privatization of America

End of School Privatization in Las Vegas » Resist the Privatization of America:

End of School Privatization in Las Vegas

 Saturday, 15 March 2014

Did School District get its $100 million worth from for-profit company?

When Edison came to town in 2001, the for-profit education management company promised to deliver dramatic improvements in test scores among Las Vegas’ lowest-performing students.

Thirteen years later, the Clark County School District has forked over $103.6 million in taxpayer money to Edison with mixed results to show for it.

Last month, Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky announced that the nation’s fifth-largest school system would sever its ties with the nation’s largest school management company by the end of this year.

Skorkowsky’s decision ends one of the longest and most expensive school privatization experiments in the country. With Edison on its way out, education observers are left questioning: Was the pricey school operator worth the money?

“They did show some improvement at the schools,” School Board member Carolyn Edwards told KNPR. “But really, the question for me comes down to: Was it a good return on our investment? I’m not sure that it was.”

•••

The Edison school model, named for Thomas Edison, reinvented school privatization by combining elements from school voucher programs and charter school management companies.

Instead of forcing districts to cede total control of public schools to a private company, Edison partnered with districts to educate students in so-called Edison “partnership” schools.

Like school vouchers, in which taxpayer money is given to families to send their children to private schools, districts allocated state per-pupil funding and federal grant money to Edison partnership schools.

In return, Edison operated the schools.

By the early 2000s, Edison had scored multimillion-dollar contracts to operate public schools in major cities such as Baltimore and Philadelphia. At its height, Edison operated more than 150 public schools in more than 20 states.

Edison schools are highly structured, using similar textbooks, instructional techniques and daily schedules. Schools have an hour of additional instruction time, teachers are given time to coordinate and parents are required to attend four parent-teacher conferences a year.

Supporters say the model can save public education, but critics decry the “cookie-cutter approach” to education and are leery of having a private company running public schools.

The concept of bringing outside people into schools was very new in 2000,” Edison Learning spokesman Michael Serpe said. “There has always been that sense that the local community has the best sense of what is the best means of educating their community. We’ve had to fight that.”

•••

In 2001, the Clark County School Board approved Edison’s initial five-year contract. The company was given $30 million to operate seven campuses: West Middle School and Cahlan, Crestwood, Lincoln, Lynch, Park and Ronnow elementary schools.

Immediately, Edison was greeted with protests from community activists, teachers union members and several political leaders. The Nevada State Education Association launched an unsuccessful lawsuit to try to stop Edison from “taking over” schools and “kidnapping” students.

Some principals and teachers also pushed back against Edison.

“There were quite a few people who were fighting it,” said Elizondo-Edison Principal Keith France. “There was extra paperwork, and expectations were higher for Edison. People were just not going to do it. They wanted to wait it out, but it took.”

The profitability of Edison’s model was questioned soon after it arrived in Clark County. In 2002, Edison’s stock, EDSN — which began publicly trading on End of School Privatization in Las Vegas » Resist the Privatization of America:

The Broad Foundation's Bruce Reed on education reform, teachers and charters - Los Angeles Times

The Broad Foundation's Bruce Reed on education reform, teachers and charters - Los Angeles Times:

The Broad Foundation's Bruce Reed on education reform, teachers and charters

The Broad Foundation's education initiatives began 15 years ago, but the organization is just now getting its first president, and his surname isn't Broad. Bruce Reed is tasked with minding the foundation's investments and its work on K-12 reform, which has shaken the educational apple tree. The foundation spends about $60 million a year on things like training school superintendents and supporting charter schools. Reed, an Idahoan, changed coasts after three decades deeply entrenched in D.C., working on campaigns and/or policy for Al Gore, the Clintons, Barack Obama and, most recently, Vice President Joe Biden. He switched reform teams but didn't leave the playing field.

When Eli Broad hired you, did he ask you to change anything at the foundation?

The new president of the Broad Foundation spent nearly 30 years on policy matters in D.C.; now he'll play the same game but for a different team.

His first request was that I [look] back and see what worked, what hasn't, and how we can make the most difference. There are things we plan to do: The foundation's work is well known in L.A., not so well known nationally. We're looking to partner with other like-minded foundations — Bloomberg, Gates, Walton, the Emerson Collective — to do more to press the cause of education reform nationally.

We're trying to provide more and better options in urban schools by increasing the number of good charters and closing down bad charters.

Are there too many bad charters?

Yes. In places where the authorizers never look back at the results. The challenge is to get rid of the ones on the low end and expand the high end. There are high-quality charter management organizations that do extraordinary work. It's much harder for the first-timer or mom-and-pop shop trying to figure this out as it goes along.

Charter supporters emphasize "autonomy." Autonomy from what?

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School districts have made the mistake of thinking they know best. Centralized bureaucracies need to focus on things they do well: managing facilities [and] transportation, making sure the rules are fair. But they're not good at telling a teacher or principal everything he or she ought to do.

"Accountability" is another charter movement word — accountability to whom? Private reform groups like yours, or the public? Parents? Charters use public education money.

We oppose vouchers, we oppose privatization, so all the money we give goes to public school efforts, but the schools and other organizations that help schools don't have to take the money. One of our main obligations is to track what works and what doesn't. That's not the practice everywhere in the philanthropic world.

Is a business model, with the emphasis on the bottom line, a good one for reforming schools?

Insisting that every teacher should be an effective teacher shouldn't pose an existential threat to the system.- Bruce Reed, new president of the Broad Foundation

I don't see it as a business model. It's imperative for any organization, public or private, to hold itself accountable for delivering the goods. Education is not a business, but public schools owe the public a great product.

Do for-profit charters challenge that?

Most of the best charters are nonprofit. We believe in keeping public money in the public system. The best charter school operators, like the best principals and teachers, don't go in this for the money

Personalized learning is a new emphasis in school reform. Isn't charter education already personalized?

It should be, but the new technology can make it easier for teachers to tailor education to a student's needs.

What about the iPad experiment to bring technology into LAUSD classrooms?

The impulse is the right one. Schools shouldn't be the last holdout in the information age.The Broad Foundation's Bruce Reed on education reform, teachers and charters - Los Angeles Times:

5-14-14 The Whole Child Blog — Today on the Whole Child Symposium Virtual: Education Policy and Schools — Whole Child Education

Today on the Whole Child Symposium Virtual: Education Policy and Schools — Whole Child Education:

THE WHOLE CHILD BLOG

Today on the Whole Child Symposium Virtual: Education Policy and Schools

May 14, 2014 by Whole Child Symposium

ASCD's inaugural Whole Child Symposium concludes this week with a series of virtual panels featuring school leaders, policy experts, teachers, and students. You can register, participate live, and join in the discussions on social media. Each panel will discuss what currently works in education, what we will need in the future to be successful, and how this can be accomplished.

EDUCATION POLICY: 11:00 A.M.–12:30 P.M., EASTERN TIME

Register now!

David Griffith, ASCD's director of Public Policy, moderates a panel discussion on the future of education as it relates to global education policy now and in the future, including the role of policy, equity, autonomy, and what we can learn from other countries. Panelists include

• David Edwards (@daveswords), is the deputy general secretary at Education International, where he is responsible for their work in the areas of education policy, employment, and research.
• Joyce Elliott (@xjelliott) is a former teacher and current member of the Arkansas Senate, representing the 31st District. She is chairman of several important committees, including the Whole Child–Whole Community Program, as well as the vice chair of the Senate Education Committee.
• Paul Reville is the Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and the former Massachusetts Secretary of Education.
• Pasi Sahlberg (@pasi_sahlberg) is a Finnish educator and scholar, and a current visiting professor of practice at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

SCHOOLS: 2:00–3:30 P.M., EASTERN TIME

Register now!

Sean Slade, ASCD's director of Whole Child Programs, moderates a panel discussion on what's currently happening in schools and what's needed in the future to be successful, focusing on school-community connections, the influence of the principal, and accountability. Panelists include

• Peter DeWitt (@PeterMDeWitt) is a former principal and is known for his work as a blogger, writer, editor, and visible learning trainer. His work focuses on creating inclusive school environments, teacher evaluations, and connected leadership.
• Sharon Jacobs is a public school educator with more than 20 years of experience, and the founding principal of Washington Montessori School—the 2014 Vision in Action: ASCD Whole Child Award winner.
• Elizabeth Partoyan (@epartoyan) is a senior fellow at the Forum for Youth Investment. Formally trained as an educational psychologist, she has been working for social justice in American public education and communities for more than 20 years.
• James Stronge is a noted author, education consultant focusing on teacher and leader effectiveness, and the Heritage Professor of Education at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

Don't forget to register for Thursday's sessions on classroom instruction and students.

Follow the Whole Child Symposium conversation here on the blog, share your thoughts in the comments and by e-mail, and pose your questions on Twitter using the hashtag #WCSymposium2014.

Learn more at www.ascd.org/wcsymposium.

5-12-14 The Whole Child Blog — Whole Child Education

Not Worried About the EOG — Whole Child Education: THE WHOLE CHILD BLOGNot Worried About the EOGMay 12, 2014 by Steven WeberAcross the United States, students have started test prep. Students march through test packet after test packet with the goal of increasing test scores on a standardized test. In North Carolina, all elementary schools administer the End-of-Grade (EOG) Test. The test is a stan

by mike simpson / 20h 

5-14-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter:

Study Should Spark New Lawsuits Against Teacher Eval Based on VAM

From the summary at Brookings:The federal government has spurred the creation of a new generation of teacher evaluation systems at the state level through more than $4 billion in Race to the Top funding to 19 states and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) accountability waivers to 43 states. A majority of states have passed laws requiring the adoption of teacher evaluation systems that incorporate student

2 by Jim Horn / 31min 

5-13-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter: Responding to Joanne Jacobs on Her KIPP "Character" DefenseJoanne Jacobs applies her own distinct brand of mild mommish corporate apologia to defend against the insightful essay last week by Jeff Snyder on KIPP's "value-free" character indoctrination program developed by Dr. Martin Seligman and Dave Levin.  In fact, Joanne would be entirely on board if Dave and

by mike simpson / 21h