7-10-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:

Who Is The Intended Audience For Andrew Cuomo's Book?

State of Politics:The publication of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s forthcoming book “All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics and Life” is being pushed back from August to Sept. 16, according to this publisher HarperCollins. The Wall Street Journal reported this morning the book will receive a 200,000-copy first print — an unusually large run. The book’s cover, also, was switched from a picture

by reality-based edu... / 38min 

Robert Jackson Hammers Cuomo Over His Charter School Giveaway

From Will Bredderman at Politicker:Former Manhattan Councilman Robert Jackson—a challenger to State Senator Adriano Espaillat—blasted Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio last night on education issues, while rooting for Mr. Cuomo’s longshot primary opponent Zephyr Teachout.The former councilman cheered loudly for Ms. Teachout as she criticized the governor in remarks at the second annual If

by reality-based edu... / 1min

Meritocracy American Style Redux: Chelsea Clinton Edition

I've already covered the absurdity of Chelsea Clinton getting paid $600,000 a year by NBC to work as a special correspondent and the even bigger absurdity of Clinton saying publicly that she deserved that compensation because she works hard.The absurdity grew to new heights yesterday when it was disclosed that Chelsea gets paid $75,000 every time she gives a speech:There is a new Clinton paid to d

by reality-based edu... / 22min 

Texas In The Vanguard Of The Anti-Common Core Movement

Texas never jumped on the CCSS bandwagon, but the vehemence of this opposition is interesting:AUSTIN — Attorney General Greg Abbott’s gubernatorial campaign turned up the rhetoric against federal education standards Monday, soliciting donations with a fiery call to arms that “We must crush Common Core.”“Help Greg Abbott ensure that President Obama’s Common Core stays OUT of the Lone Star State by

by reality-based edu... / 59min hide  //  save

What Would Mark Twain Think About The Common Core?

David Perrin in The Atlantic:It's not hard to guess what another great American satirist would have had to say about the Common Core curriculum. Mark Twain had an abiding concern with education, and he treated formal schooling derisively in his writings. His 1917 autobiography describes his education in the mid-19th century, at the dawn of the public school movement; his acerbic portrayal of Mr. D

by reality-based edu... / 2h 

Wisconsin May Be Next To Drop The Common Core

From Urban Milwaukee:If you think there was a fight over Common Core educational standards in the Capitol earlier this year, think again. Interviews with dozens of candidates show that it was just a warm-up for the war coming next year over those standards. No matter who is elected governor, and which party controls the Senate in the 2015-16 session, Assembly Republicans – who all sides privately

by reality-based edu... / 4h 

7-9-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School: MTA Looks To Get Congress Involved In MTA/LIRR Unions DisputeFrom the NY Post:The MTA’s negotiations with unions representing LIRR workers broke down Tuesday afternoon, 12 days before hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders would be left stranded by a strike.With the walkout looming, MTA Chairman Thomas Prendergast penned a letter to US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Min

by mike simpson / 8h 

empathyeducates – The Dirty, Little Secret in America’s Education Wars? Money Matters

empathyeducates – The Dirty, Little Secret in America’s Education Wars? Money Matters:

• 

The Dirty, Little Secret in America’s Education Wars? Money Matters

Photograph; From left to right: Five year old Taylor Weber, in pink in middle, helps her older brother Andrew Weber, 8, right in green, hold up a protest sign they made by hand. The two go to Hutchinson Elementary School in Lakewood and are on a furlough day from school. At left are Chole Meldahl, 5, who attends Stober Elementary School and Logan Gill, in sunglasses, 8, who attends Red Rocks Elementary School. | The Denver Post | Helen H. Richardson

By Jeff Bryant | Originally Published at Campaign for America’s Future. June 20, 2014

Spending more money on schools is what most people really want. Yet what we’ve been seeing is a ‘reform’ agenda that emphasizes anything but.

An interesting twist in the ever-fascinating narrative of Republican politics unfolded in Mississippi this month when political operatives in the campaign to reelect U.S. Senator Thad Cochran to another term attacked their primary challenger for wanting to “deeply cut federal education dollars on which Mississippi schools rely.”

Wait a sec – don’t all Republicans, especially from deep red states in the South, want to deeply cut federal spending? Apparently not, according to what the article identified as, “establishment Republicans” backing the senator, who they say “would protect money for students and teachers.”

The dirty, little secret in America’s education wars is that spending more money on schools is what most people really want – and for good reason, because it really tends to help. Yet what we’ve been seeing in the “reform” agenda that has dominated the debate is an emphasis on anything but.

The conventional wisdom tends to be that asking for more money is a policy cop-out – throwing money at the problem, while the Very Serious People grapple with the ever-more-so weighty topics of Value Added Measures and Adequate Yearly Progress.

Meanwhile, in other sectors, the act of merely spending more money matters a lot to people who are also taken pretty seriously – like the folks at the International Monetary Fund. When the IMF announced its recent decision to downgrade its forecast for U.S. economic growth in the coming year, a significant reason empathyeducates – The Dirty, Little Secret in America’s Education Wars? Money Matters:

No, Gay Isn’t the New Black

Photograph; Ernest Owens | Ernest Media Empire, Incorporated. By Ernest Owens | Originally Published at Huffington Post. Black Voices. July 8, 2014 5:38 PM EDT As society “progress,” we have become a bunch of cultural sycophants obsessed with creating false affirmations and pseudo-solidarities. I quite frankly cannot […]

by empathy / 7h 

UPDATE: Marie Corfield: NJ BOE Testimony Part II + Educators stand up, speak out, fight back: NJBOE Testimony Part l

Marie Corfield: Educators stand up, speak out, fight back: NJBOE Testimony Part l:

NJ BOE Testimony Part III: Horror Stories from Paterson

Be sure to check out NJEA member testimony at the NJ State Board of Education Parts I and II. So, you think you have it bad. You think your administrators didn’t fully implement the new evaluation system. You think you could have gotten a higher score in this domain or that. How would you like to be an educator in a state controlled district? Paterson Education Association member, Gennaro Torto

by noreply@blogger.c... / 45min 

NJ BOE Testimony Part II: Was human error or intentional omission to blame for PARCC pilot report?

In part 2 of this series of posts on NJEA's July 9th lobby day at the state Board of Ed, Spanish teacher and education activist, Heidi Maria Brown, questions Data Commissioner Bari Erlichson's obvious omission of any negative feedback on the state's PARCC trials, and why some board members have not done more to get to the truth.◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊Good afternoon. My name is Heidi Maria Brown. I’m

by noreply@blogger.c... / 20min 

Educators stand up, speak out, fight back: NJBOE Testimony Part l

Yesterday was an NJEA Lobby Day at the NJ State Board of Education, and as usual, our members didn't disappoint. There was a good crowd, among which were many first-time speakers. I'm proud to be part of an association that includes so many articulate and passionate educators who know the facts and are not blinded by empty rhetoric nor cowed by bullying and aggression. I'm optimistic that the number of new speakers is a sign that more voices will join what I call 'The Fight' as we inch closer to PARCC testing madness. In the next few posts I'll be highlighting some of the testimony.

NJEA has been pressuring the state board and the state legislature to slow down the implementation of the PARCC testing and form a task force to study the efficacy of the tests and the Common Core. S2154/A3081, the bill originally sponsored by Sen. Jeff Van Drew (D-Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland), made it out of committee and the assembly with overwhelming bipartisan support. As of this writing, we are anxiously waiting to see if Senate President Steve Sweeney will post it for a vote. Save Our Schools NJ has been posting updates on their Facebook page as information becomes available, and NJ Spotlight is reporting that Gov. Christie may opt for some sort of compromise. The details are still unclear, but a decision could be made this week. 

What is very clear however, is that educators all across the state are overwhelmed by the increased burden of teaching to a test that has never been proven to do what it claims to do. Far too much instructional time is now devoted to test prep of one form or another, and far too little time is available for educators to do the job right. And starting with the 2014-2015 school year, we go live with this new evaluation system where PARCC scores count for 30% of some educators' summative evaluations.   

The following testimony is from 7th grade math educator, Mary Steinhauer. She highlights the fact that, when PARCC goes live, educators may be working for 6 additional months before they know the results of their evaluation. If the aim of this new system is to weed out all those 'bad teachers', why would it be structured so as to let them remain on the job an additional half year?

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There are three things I would like to discuss with you today:

1. Evaluations
2. Testing - PARCC
3. SGO/SGP scoring

First, I want to say thank you for allowing me this time to address you. I am a 35+ years classroom teacher representing Burlington County Education Association as the Marie Corfield: Educators stand up, speak out, fight back: NJBOE Testimony Part l:

NEA Repudiates Arne Duncan, Demands America Pay Closer Attention | janresseger

NEA Repudiates Arne Duncan, Demands America Pay Closer Attention | janresseger:

NEA Repudiates Arne Duncan, Demands America Pay Closer Attention

Posted on July 10, 2014 by janresseger

It shouldn’t really be surprising that the delegates at the National Education Association’s recent convention passed a resolution calling on U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to resign.

• Arne Duncan, through regulations of the U.S. Department of Education, has made the granting of federal waivers from the most onerous penalties of the No Child Left Behind Act contingent on states’ evaluating school teachers based on econometric formulas derived from students’ scores on the state standardized tests required by No Child Left Behind.  This despite a warning from the American Statistical Association that such formulas are likely to be unreliable.

• Arne Duncan called what happened in New Orleans after the 2005 hurricane that destroyed much of the city and paved the way for the firing of all of the city’s public school teachers and the subsequent charterization of the entire school district a great opportunity.  Duncan said:  “The best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster.”

• Back in 2010, Arne Duncan lauded the so-called “turnaround” of the high school in Central Falls, Rhode Island, a restructure based on firing the principal and all the teachers.

• The U.S. Department of Education makes grants to Teach for America, a program that provides—through five-week summer training—a crash-course, alternate route to teacher certification for college graduates who are otherwise untrained as teachers.  TFA teachers commit for 2 years, not for an entire career.

• Last month, Arne Duncan celebrated the California decision in Vergara, in which a local judge found due-process protections for teachers unconstitutional.  (The case has been stayed while on appeal.)

• Arne Duncan once announced at a meeting I attended: “Good charters are part of the NEA Repudiates Arne Duncan, Demands America Pay Closer Attention | janresseger:

An Urban Teacher's Education: On Shutting Teachers Up

An Urban Teacher's Education: On Shutting Teachers Up:

On Shutting Teachers Up

Nothing but net for Nancy Flanagan the other day in her post over at Teacher in a Strange Landentitled, "Shutting Teachers Up."

She writes, "When practitioners aren't allowed to openly share their critical perspectives, they lose the ability to speak their own truths and use first-hand experience as a lever for change."

And, "Any number of thoughtful, intelligent, provocative voices in education operate behind pseudonyms, to give them the cover they need. But there's something about writing under your own authentic identity, having to own what you write and defend your words from criticism, that's quintessentially democratic, and a mark of honest journalism."

And, "Technology has led us to the point where anyone can publish and anyone can opine. Money makes it possible for the profiteers to have the loudest voices at the same time as public employees are worried about losing their modest jobs. It's no way to pursue bona fide excellence in public education. If that was ever our genuine aim..."

You know, when I started in this profession I had this attribute I thought was ambition. I later named it idealism. Now think of as naivety.

I was going to step into a school, infect others with my powerfully positive attitude, and change some lives. I was going to report what I saw in schools, and enrage others about the inequities that existed there.

I initially began blogging under a pseudonym, "The Reflective Educator." I wasn't particularly carefuAn Urban Teacher's Education: On Shutting Teachers Up:

Study: Teacher associations in Georgia among nation's weakest | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com

Study: Teacher associations in Georgia among nation's weakest | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com:



Study: Teacher associations in Georgia among nation's weakest 

Previous Posts

• Get ready: Goodbye CRCT and EOCT. Hello Georgia Milestones. 
  July 9, 2014
• Which districts get best return on education spending? Gwinnett at top. Atlanta near bottom.
  July 9, 2014
• Money matters: More than one in six US teens confused about even simple spending 
  July 9, 2014

By Maureen Downey

A few posters routinely cite the role of teacher "unions" in Georgia in influencing education policy. So, I thought thefindings of a new study on the state-by-state power of teacher unionswere worth sharing.

The Fordham Institute and Education Reform Now examined 37 different variables  --  resources and membership, involvement in politics, scope of bargaining, state policies and perceived Influence --  to determine the power and influence of state-level unions.  The Georgia teacher groups are not called unions, but associations --they don't qualify as unions as they lack collective bargaining power.

Georgia’s teacher associations rank near the bottom in power and influence, 45th.

The study says:

“Georgia’s teacher associations are weak across the board, not surprising in a state in which collective bargaining is prohibited — and whose politics are fairly conservative. They have few resources and a weak reputation. While teacher employment policies are somewhat union-favorable, charter laws are not, and the associations stayed out of the way when lawmakers enacted reforms en route to receiving Race to the Top award.

Georgia’s two state-level teacher associations (one affiliated with the NEA, the other with the AFT) have limited financial and membership resources. Collective bargaining is prohibited in the state, and just 54.8 percent of its teachers belong to teacher 

Study: Teacher associations in Georgia among nation's weakest | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com:

Data is Fool’s Gold of the Common Core | WagTheDog

Data is Fool’s Gold of the Common Core | WagTheDog:

Data is Fool’s Gold of the Common Core

Teachers should strive to meet the individual needs of their students, not the “needs” of standards or tests. There should be high academic expectations for all students, but to expect everyone, regardless of ability/disability, to meet those standards simultaneously and in the same way is foolish and inherently unfair.

Standardized tests are toxic for the Common Core and they are the primary reason for the botched implementation efforts around the country. These tests do not generate comprehensive or reliable data regarding constructivist learning that is called for in the Learning Standards.

The tests have been coupled with the Standards anyway because states that received Race to the Top incentives to implement the Common Core are required to use standardized assessments to evaluate teacher performance.

Schools have rushed to “unpack” the standards and hastily rolled out poorly designed scripted curriculum materials primarily to prepare students for the high stakes tests (that supposedly measure their teachers performance) rather than prepare students for learning.

The Common Core testing regime is more about satisfying data-driven enthusiasts’ ‘thirst” Data is Fool’s Gold of the Common Core | WagTheDog:

SKrashen: Literacy Education: Need We Start Early?

SKrashen: Literacy Education: Need We Start Early?:

Literacy Education: Need We Start Early?

Stephen Krashen

Language and Language Teaching, Vol 3, number 2, issue 6: pp 1-7. 2014

Most people are convinced that children will have a powerful head start in reading if they are introduced to sounds and letters well before they start school. The conclusions of this paper are these: For the development of English literacy, early explicit teaching fails, but later, absorption in interesting and comprehensible reading works very well.

Early Literacy: Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness (PA) is the ability to divide a word into its component sounds, i.e.  the ability to take the word ‘pit’, and divide it into ‘pe’ ‘i’ and ‘te’. It is thus an aural ability.  It is frequently claimed that phonemic awareness is a prerequisite to learning to read, and children must be “trained” in phonemic awareness in kindergarten and grade 1, and even in preschool. Research and observations have however cast doubts on this claim, and suggest that phonemic awareness, beyond the most basic level, is the result of reading, not a cause.

No Evidence that PA Training Improves Reading Comprehension

Children who receive training in phonemic awareness improve on tests of phonemic awareness, but there is no evidence to suggest that PA training benefits reading comprehension, i.e. performance in tests in which children have to understand what they read. A review of research literature (Krashen, 2001a) produced only six studies and eleven comparisons in which researchers attempt to see if PA training has an impact on reading comprehension. Only three of the six studies dealt with English-speaking children. These studies revealed low, zero and even negative scores for the impact of PA training on comprehension, and in some studies the number of children who underwent the training was very small. There was only one study that reported substantial impact as well as statistically significant results in favor of those trained in SKrashen: Literacy Education: Need We Start Early?:

By getting it half right feds get it all wrong :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

By getting it half right feds get it all wrong :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

JULY 10, 2014

By getting it half right feds get it all wrong

by Lee Funk

After taking a step forward by incorporating student outcomes into the accountability index for students with disabilities, the Office of Special Education Programs promptly took a gigantic leap backward by relying solely on standardized testing as the only measure of program performance.

Politicians are glib when it comes to making pronouncements that sound invigorating on the surface but impenetrable, if not down-right obtuse, upon further consideration. Arne Duncan’s recent statement in support of the new federal standards is just one more example of this tradition.

“We must be honest about student performance, so that we can give all students the supports and services they need to succeed,” he announced.

The problem is that the results his department has chosen to measure are not necessarily the most “honest” indicators. As a matter of fact, considering the totality of special education, and the mixture of student needs therein, they are not even close.

The so called “Results Matrix” that will be used along with the traditional compliance elements in program reviews for Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act will be composed of participation and proficiency percentages of fourth and eighth grade SWD on statewide assessments and the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

That’s it. 

It makes a person wonder if anyone in the administration has ever looked at an individualized education plan or, for that matter, ever truly pondered the meaning of “free appropriate public education,” not to mention “least restrictive environment.”

If anyone had, in fact, engaged in any of the aforementioned cognitive exercises, at least three concepts would have become apparent.

First of all, academics are not always the first order of business for special education pupils. Often IEP teams write objectives for pre-requisite skills that must be attained long before scholastic achievement can be addressed. Suppose, for By getting it half right feds get it all wrong :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Schoolwide Program status may provide broader benefits

Your annual evaluation for Title I effectiveness is the time to determine whether your Schoolwide Program schools are addressing the needs of their most at-risk students.  

by Rick Carder / 6h 

Report urges more active state role in Common Core | EdSource

Report urges more active state role in Common Core | EdSource:

CREDIT: ALISON YIN FOR EDSOURCE

The Common Core State Standards require non-fiction books in subjects such as history and science, as seen in this Oakland, Calif., classroom.

Report urges more active state role in Common Core

July 9, 2014 | By John Fensterwald | 1 Comment



•  SHARE THIS ARTICLE

The move to local control under the state’s new funding and accountability system has given school districts much leeway in adopting the Common Core State Standards, the challenging math and English language arts standards that California and 41 other states and Washington, D.C., have adopted. And that flexibility, concludes a new report by researchers from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, has the potential to create disparities in implementation the state should reduce.

“In California’s newly decentralized policy system the main responsibility for addressing many of these issues falls to local educators, but our research makes it clear that the capacity to address them successfully is sorely lacking in many parts of the state,” the report states. Local control, it says, cannot take the place of a stronger state role.

The 16-page report, “Implementing Common Core State Standards in California: A Report from the Field,” was based on discussions with educators in three dozen districts and county offices of education, four charter school organizations and two education organizations. Its principal author is Milbrey McLaughlin, the founding director of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities and an education policy professor at Stanford.

With the administration of the first official tests in the new standards less than a year away, the authors found that most districts lacked a comprehensive, coherent plan for the Common Core and that most didn’t have a unifying curriculum tying grades together. There have been promising regional collaborations among districts, but most of the work has been lesson planning by teachers at the school level. While teachers felt energized by the ability to shape what they’ll teach, they universally complained about the lack of time to prepare for the new standards, an overwhelming array of materials and textbooks to choose from and inconsistent quality of professional development, especially for English learners. The new standards are, as one teacher told researchers, “liberating in so many ways but also overwhelming and frightening.”

“If I stacked up the 25 largest districts, about half of them are  capable of and conditioned to thinking ahead in putting together plans and mobilizing people. Others are not unwilling to do that – they are not capable of doing it for a variety of reasons,” said David Gordon, superintendent of the Sacramento County Office of Education. 

Principals and administrators, who are supposed to lead school and district efforts, feel equally anxious. “Many have no experience with Report urges more active state role in Common Core | EdSource:

Will the LCAP become just another obscure acronym?

There is a danger that the Local Control and Accountability Plans recently adopted by every California school district will experience the same unfortunate fate as the School Accountability Report Cards, or SARCs, which all schools are still required to produce each year. The SARCs – which long preceded the LCAP as one of the myriad acronyms in the public school’s bureaucratic lexicon – have......

by Louis Freedberg / 9h

Still Waiting in Lines, Nine Years Later | Crazy Crawfish's Blog

Still Waiting in Lines, Nine Years Later | Crazy Crawfish's Blog:

Crazy Crawfish's Blog

Zesty Louisiana Education Politics

Still Waiting in Lines, Nine Years Later

Posted on July 10, 2014

0

crazycrawfish:

One of the tragic truths behind all the hype about choice. Congrats to all tbe Reformers for extending the tragedy of Katrina out 9 years later and still going. I can’t wait till i can queue in lines all day like they used to have in communist Russia to try and enroll my kids in school only to be turned away and told to try again tomorrow. What a choice.

Thanks for sharing, Karran.

Originally posted on Education Talk New Orleans:

July 9th, over 800 parents try to enroll their children in public schools in New Orleans through the Recovery School District’s One App process.

Nine years after the state takeover of our schools, parents find themselves standing in line for education.

This post was going to be very different. I was going to write about how my day started. I just deleted what I’d written because of a text I received from a parent today.

In the text she writes:

“I don’t think I will be there tomorrow I can’t handle all those people. I have flash back from Katherine when we had to stand in line for food &water for our children in the heat now we have to do it for education . So every Charte school can get a head count to get there money that’s not beneficial to our Kids .”

No, I did not…

View original 675 more words

Sam Pirozzolo Loves Money From Unions

http://www.southbronxschool.com:

Sam Pirozzolo Loves Money From Unions

Mona Davids has been in the news lately due to her publicity seeking, attention seeking lawsuit to have a judge declare tenure and seniority unconstitutional.She has been dissected, but not vilified, hereand here. But she is not alone in this.

Where every Kirk has his Spock, every Laurel his Hardy, ever Frick his Frack, every Laverne her Shirley, Mona has her Schlamozel. His name is Sam Pirozzolo,Vice President of NYC parents Union.

Who is Sam? Well one can read his official bio, but it seems to leave out that Sam lives the American dream as a small business owner. Sam owns Steinway Eye Care Center in Astoria, Queens. We here at SBSB applaud Sam and his initiative in living out the American dream as a small business owner as well as a provider of a valuable service to the Astoria Community.

But there seems to be a problem.

Sam, though a proud (We are assuming) American, seems to have an issue with unions, at least the UFT. He will never besmirch himself in taking any kind monies or business from unions, he has his principles, correct?

The Crack Team has learned over the course of the last 24 hours that Sam loves unions as long as he can make a buck of the backs of the workers.

Sam's optical store is a provider for;http://www.southbronxschool.com:

NYC Educator: Battle of the Titans

NYC Educator: Battle of the Titans:

Battle of the Titans

In California, a bunch of rich guys got together and pushed a lawsuit designed to shoot teacher tenure right smack between the eyes. After all, if you can't get the law changed, you go wherever your wallet takes you. So in the case of Vergara they've won for the moment, and those awful teachers will have fewer job protections if appeals aren't sustained.

Here in NY it's a little tougher. First of all, the arguments in California were crap to begin with. Firing more teachers will not address the conditions in America that lead children to fail in school. But it's a whole lot cheaper and more efficient to blame teachers than deal with poverty, or people who need to work multiple jobs to barely keep their heads above water. After all, how will Whitney Tilson's hedge fund profit from Walmart and McDonald's if they have to pay workers a living wage?

So here in New York, we heard a great deal from self-appointed education/ legal expert Campbell Brown about how we needed to get rid of teacher tenure. But wait--before Campbell Brown could do it, another self-appointed education/ legal expert, Mona Davids, filed a suit. So the question now becomes which one of these people is out to get us more?

It's tough to say. Brown is married to some bigshot on Students First NY, and is an ex-talking head on CNN. Davids runs something called the NY Parents Union, and vacillates between supporting charters, supporting public education, and going for the throat of working teachers. It appears the whole attacking teachers thing garners more attention this week, so that's what the NY Parents Union is doing. Who knows when they meet, or who's a member other than some unsuccessful Staten Island politician whose name I can't remember? Like Brown, she has a group, it has a NYC Educator: Battle of the Titans:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: More fudging the numbers on Chicago's horrific gun violence

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: More fudging the numbers on Chicago's horrific gun violence:

More fudging the numbers on Chicago's horrific gun violence

Gwen Ifill interviews Chicago Tonight's Paris Shutz on the PBS News Hourabout the city's killing fields, after the horrible July 4th weekend when 82 people were shot, 14 fatally. Nobody seems to have a handle on the actual numbers from that weekend and PBS strangely offers three different weekend shooting totals ("up to 80", "58 people were injured in 50 shootings", "at least 14 dead, more than 80 wounded") in this same story. Ifill thinks it's because news organizations are using different times for the start of the weekend. Even if that's the case, there's still a huge unexplained spread -- 50 to 82 people shot -- because the media can't agree on when a 3-day weekend begins and ends. I think there's a lot more to it than that. Shooting numbers have turned into a political game being played by the mayor and Supt. McCarthy.

GWEN IFILL: How do you keep track of these numbers? We know that there are some discussions about a couple of police-involved shootings. We know there are some questions about what counts as a domestic shooting, what counts as an accidental shooting, what counts as a gang shooting.

PARIS SCHUTZ: Right. Sure.

Well, over the long term, over decades, homicides are down in Chicago, as they are in New York or L.A. They’re less than half of what they were in the ’90s. But year to year, they may be down 10, they may be down 20 from the year before. And by law, the police department and the coroner’s office has to report every homicide, but there are ways that some say they fudge those numbers.

For instance, if there’s a murder that happens or a homicide that Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: More fudging the numbers on Chicago's horrific gun violence: