Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Working Families Party eyeing Diane Ravitch as possible challenger against Gov. Cuomo - NY Daily News

Working Families Party eyeing Diane Ravitch as possible challenger against Gov. Cuomo - NY Daily News:

Working Families Party eyeing Diane Ravitch as possible challenger against Gov. Cuomo

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Published: Wednesday, May 28, 2014, 11:38 AM

Updated: Wednesday, May 28, 2014, 12:54 PM

The Working Families Party is eying education activist Diane Ravitch as its gubernatorial candidate should the liberal minor party decide to withhold its backing of Gov. Cuomo, a source told the Daily News Wednesday morning.

The party has spoken to Ravitch, 75, about possibly being its nominee and she has expressed interest, the source said.

"Either way, she'll have a role at Saturday's (WFP) convention," the source said.

It's still unclear in which direction the party will go.

As the Daily News reported in Wednesday's editions, Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio and leaders from key unions that help make up the Working Family Party met with party leaders Bill Lipton and Dan Cantor Tuesday to discuss backing the governor for reelection.

Cuomo wants the line to help build up any potential victory over Republican Rob Astorino. The Daily News reported Monday that Cuomo is threatening to toss the Republicans from the Senate leadership coalition by working to reunite the chambers fractured Democrats unless the GOP agrees to a full statewide campaign public finance system--a major priority for the WFP--before next month's end of the legislation session.

But many of the 200 activists who make up the Working Families Party state committee that ultimately decides on which candidate to choose are upset with Cuomo, particularly over his successful push for corporate tax cuts, charter school protections, and opposition to parts of de Blasio's agenda.

If she runs, Ravitch's candidacy would put a spotlight on charter schools, one of the issues that appears to be a source of conflict between Cuomo and the Working Families Party.

Like the many of the party's leaders, Ravitch is an opponent of charter schools.

"Billionaires like privately managed schools. Parents are lured with glittering promises of getting their kids a sure ticket to college. Politicians want to appear to be champions of 'school reform' with charters," Ravitch wrote in the Los Angeles Times last year.

"But charters will not end the poverty at the root of low academic performance or transform our

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: For immediate release from N.C. NAACP

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: For immediate release from N.C. NAACP:

For immediate release from N.C. NAACP

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 28, 2014

Contact: Sarah Bufkin, NC NAACP - smbufkin@gmail.com or 404.285.3413

Workers and Clergy Members Arrested in Speaker Thom Tillis' Office for Petitioning to Repeal a Flood of Unjust, Destructive Laws Hurting North Carolina

We Shall Not Be Moved | Tillis 15

RALEIGH, NC - Hundreds of North Carolinians showed up yesterday to lobby their state legislators to repent for the harm they have caused, to repeal the flood of extreme policies passed last year and to restore confidence in our elected officials. Among them were 15 moral witnesses who visited Speaker Thom Tillis' office at 3:30 pm yesterday and who staged a sit-in when the speaker chose not to meet with them.

After nearly 12 hours of protest - and numerous warnings from the General Assembly authorities - eight workers from McDonald's, Wendy's and Bojangles; four clergy members; a nationally recognized housing expert and a retired public school employee were arrested in NC House Speaker Thom Tillis' office around 2 am Wednesday morning.

"Tonight, we put a face on the real harm these policies are inflicting across our state," said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the North Carolina NAACP. "Our state lawmakers should adhere two fundamental principles: first, that legislators should be governing for the good of the whole, and second, as our state constitution lays out, that 'beneficent provision for the poor, the unfortunate and the orphan is one of the first duties of a civilized and a Christian state.' Speaker Tillis, Senate Leader Berger and Gov. McCrory have broken with both of these principles, particularly in their decisions to deny Medicaid expansion, to repeal the EITC, to cut back unemployment benefits and to pass a tax plan that benefits only the wealthiest few. They pass extreme

As if Rahm didn't know...

MAYOR PLAYS DUMB ON POT ARRESTS... He asks top cop McCarthy to explain why misdemeanor marijuana possession means one thing on the North Side — and a very different thing on the South and West Sides. On North Side, cops write tickets for bogarting. On South and West sides its prison.ANSWER: The same reason Rahm's school closings and selective-enrollment school openings mean one thing on the North

by Mike Klonsky / 59min hide // save

We need a living wage

R.I.P. Maya Angelou (1928-2014)Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less. -- Note to self LIVING WAGE...While Ra

7 by Mike Klonsky / 5h

YESTERDAY

Weekend Quotables

Christie tells Baraka, "We are the deciders..."Gov. Chris Christie to Mayor Baraka"I also made very clear to [Baraka] that it is the state government that runs the school system in Newark, and that while I will talk with him and hear his ideas, that we are the deciders on what happens in the school system.” -- Thom HartmanChicago Alderman "Slow Eddie" Burke“There are a lot

1 by Mike Klonsky / 1d

LAUSD ENDS TEACHERS JAIL- WHY NOW? - Perdaily.com

LAUSD ENDS TEACHERS JAIL- WHY NOW? - Perdaily.com:

LAUSD ENDS TEACHERS JAIL- WHY NOW?

(Mensaje se repite en Español)

The recent decision by LAUSD's General Counsel David Holmquist to no longer require the housing of teachers at LAUSD offices during school hours, while teachers were under supposed investigation of the charges against them, seems to pose more questions than it answers.

1. If it's okay now to allow these teachers to remain at home, what is different? Why couldn't this have been done years ago, instead of the mass incarceration of teachers who should have been presumed innocent until proven guilty by the District in a neutral forum, where LAUSD- and not the teacher- had the obligation of showing culpable actions on the part of the teacher in a timely manner and not the purposefully protracted process designed to break teachers will and ability to defend their innocence.

2. If Holmquist now feels its okay to allow teachers to be housed at their homes, why has he done a complete about face on this issue, what has changed? Why in the recent past have some teachers been kept incarcerated for over 4 years, while the charges against them were supposedly being investigated, but now its okay to let them be at home during the school work day? In the past, LAUSD justified the incarceration of teachers as motivated by protecting students from these alleged bad/immoral teachers. As a matter of course, LAUSD has hit almost every teacher it goes after with an alleged violation of California Education Code 44939- a morals charge. This is done so that teachers can be ultimately deprived of salary and benefits in a move by LAUSD to make it harder for targeted teachers to resist their firing. So what's different now?

3 Up until this cancellation of "teacher jail" by Holmquist, how come some teachers were incarcerated for as little as two hours, but other teachers spent a full 6 hours required to remain at LAUSD offices doing nothing in complete isolation? Did any of this have to do with the inflammatory nature of images of teachers being shown by the media sitting around a room and getting paid to do absolutely nothing?

4. Is there any good faith belief on the part of any administrator at LAUSD that teachers confined to "rubber rooms" have really done LAUSD ENDS TEACHERS JAIL- WHY NOW? - Perdaily.com:

Wayne Au featured at a Think and Drink this evening | Seattle Education

Wayne Au featured at a Think and Drink this evening | Seattle Education:

Wayne Au featured at a Think and Drink this evening

On Different Tracks: Race, Class and Education, a Think & Drink conversation

7 p.m. Wednesday, May 28, 2014

The Royal Room, 5000 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118

Press Release:

SEATTLE – Join Humanities Washington for our next Think & Drink event, On Different Tracks: Race, Class and Education, at The Royal Room in Columbia City May 28. This event will bring community members together in a comfortable, restaurant setting for an open discussion on the difficult subjects of race, class and education. We will ask: How does race and socioeconomic status affect educational access and achievement? What are the challenges of teaching a changing student population? And how do these issues play out in the Seattle area?

Even though high school dropout rates are declining nationwide, those rates still differ markedly by race and socioeconomic status. In Washington state in 2010, graduation rates were at 73% for white students, 69% for Asian students, 55% for Latino students, 51% for black students and only 31% for Native American students. (Source: Report by Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center.)

This discussion will be led by Wayne Au and Claudia Rowe and moderated by Tonya Mosley. A former Seattle Public high school teacher and graduate of Garfield, Au is an associate professor of education at the University of Washington, Bothell, where he also serves as chair of the campus Diversity Council. Rowe has been an award-winning social issues journalist for more than 20 years, writing most recently for The New York Wayne Au featured at a Think and Drink this evening | Seattle Education:

5/28/2014 – Education Accountability We Can Believe In

5/28/2014 – Education Accountability We Can Believe In:

5/28/2014 – Education Accountability We Can Believe In

May 28, 2014 Subscribe

THIS WEEK: Boosting School Funding Erases Graduation Gap … Education’s New Jim Crow … Lawmakers Clueless On Charter Schools … Resistance To Standardized Tests … Costs Of Closing EdTech Gap

TOP STORY

Education Accountability We Can Believe In

By Jeff Bryant

“For years, education policy at nearly every level has been obsessed with an outcomes-only focus – namely, scores on standardized tests – with less and less emphasis placed on the inputs into our children’s schooling … The results have been not only detrimental to children and schools, they haven’t produced much in the way of better outcomes … Surely it’s time for alternatives to this mindless direction, and fortunately, such alternatives are being proposed from multiple sources. But are leaders paying attention?”
Read more …

NEWS AND VIEWS

Boosting School Funding 20 Percent Erased The Graduation Gap Between Rich And Poor Students

Vox.com

“Spending more money on educating children in poor districts can dramatically change the trajectory of those children’s lives … Additional money spent educating a child from a poor family made that child more likely to graduate high school, less likely to fall into poverty as an adult and more likely to complete an additional year of education … On some measures, such as the high school graduation rate, the gains from a 20% boost in funding at all levels of education were enough to entirely erase the gap between poor students and students from wealthier families … The effects held even when controlling for the impact of other social programs.”
Read more …

Are School Closings The ‘New Jim Crow’? Activists File Civil Rights Complaints.

The Washington Post

“Complaints sent to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and the Justice Department, charge that students of color from Newark, Chicago and New Orleans have been disproportionately affected by school closures and charter-school expansions … Shuttered schools have been replaced by public charter schools, which are funded by taxpayers but are privately operated … Activists said local and state governments neglected and starved the neighborhood schools of resources, guaranteeing their poor quality. They argue that the charter schools that opened as replacements generally were not academically better. Meanwhile, the shuttering of neighborhood schools has damaged African American communities … Said Karran Harper Royal, a New Orleans parent and a public education advocate. ‘Most African American parents in New Orleans don’t have the choice of neighborhood schools, unlike their white counterparts.’”
Read more …

Despite Shocking Reports Of Fraud At Charter Schools, Lawmakers Miss Opportunity To Increase Oversight

The Nation

“Lawmakers in the House largely missed an opportunity to strengthen oversight of charter schools, passing a bill to encourage charter school growth by boosting federal funding without including several amendments that were offered to increase transparency and accountability. The bill … increases federal funding for charters from $250 million to $300 million … The fact that Democrats did not rally around bids for better oversight indicates how murky the party’s education platform has grown … ‘Why is it that we think this is such a valid method of instruction and structure that we are willing to invest nine figures worth of federal money in those programs when we’re starving programs like Title 1 and IDEA?’ asked Representative Tim Bishop of New York.”
Read more …

The Gathering Resistance to Standardized Tests

Rethinking Schools

“In the wake of a decade-long barrage of standardized tests unleashed by No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and now the Common Core, a movement of resistance has emerged around the country in the last year … In what came to be known as ‘Education Spring’ … More affluent, predominantly white activists will need to develop an anti-racist understanding of the movement against standardized testing and the barriers that communities of color face to joining – including the very real fear from parents of color that their children’s schools will be shut down if they don’t encourage them to score well on the tests … Not only do these tests narrow the curriculum, kill creativity, and degrade the quality of education for everyone, they also funnel black and brown youth into prison in unprecedented numbers … A multiracial fightback against the testing industrial complex … has the potential to change the terms of the education reform debate.”
Read more …

How Can Schools Close The Technology Gap And How Much Will It Cost?

The Hechinger Report

“Reaching the goal of putting every teacher and student on an Internet device, and making sure it can actually connect to the Internet, will require a major financial investment … High-poverty urban and rural districts … will likely require significant help from the federal government because their budgets tend to rely more on federal funding than on state aid and local property taxes. But given the strain on school budgets in recent years, experts say middle-income districts also need help … A survey … found that only 2.3% of responding districts had wireless … 93% said the current E-rate funding didn’t fully meet their needs. 18% said they’d applied for money to fund internal systems and were rejected. 37% said they didn’t bother, although they needed the money… Solving the hardware problems by getting the broadband and devices to schools is just the first step in closing the technology gap. Once schools are wired and teachers and students have devices in hand, next they have to learn how to use them effectively.”
Read more …

Probems with Brickman & Petrilli’s Analysis of Common Core as an Election Issue | Truth in American Education

Probems with Brickman & Petrilli’s Analysis of Common Core as an Election Issue | Truth in American Education:

Probems with Brickman & Petrilli’s Analysis of Common Core as an Election Issue

Filed in Common Core State Standards by Shane Vander Hart on May 28, 2014 • 0 Comments

Michael Brickman and Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute wrote an article at Townhall.com asserting that those who advocate for the Common Core has an advantage in Republican primaries than those who oppose Common Core.

There are some problems with this article. First it is poorly sourced. Go figure. We *never* expect that from Common Core advocates.

Second, it is a logical fallacy to state that incumbents won re-election based on their advocacy for the Common Core while at the same time stating that Common Core opponents in Indiana who knocked off incumbents didn’t do so on their Common Core opposition alone. They need to be consistent. When I addressed the Indiana races I did recognize that it wasn’t the only issue. I certainly didn’t deny that social issues were at play. At least I provided an honest analysis; we can’t say the same about Brickman and Petrilli.

Third, they made some false statements regarding the Ohio Republican primary.

Heidi Huber from Ohioans Against Common Core said in a email on Monday:

The Ohio Citizens Pac candidate losses are a broad brush being applied to all challenges in Ohio and Kelly Kohls was not an Ohioans Against Common Core candidate. In fact, we did not distribute her materials in order that we could put all attention and resources to a viable and critical challenge to incumbent Stautberg. He was heavily protected and funded by the Party. We beat the Party hacks the old fashioned way, knocking on every door of
Probems with Brickman & Petrilli’s Analysis of Common Core as an Election Issue | Truth in American Education:

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Wednesday, May 28, 2014