LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 7-27-14 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

Robert Berkman: The New York Times Stinks at Math

Robert Berkman, who has been teaching math for thirty years, takes issue with the article by Elizabeth Green in the New York Times magazine called Why Americans Stink at Math. While he has great admiration for Green’s writing skills, he thinks she is an American who is not good at math. He writes: “The first place where Green goes wrong is when she cites “national test results” about mathematics

by dianeravitch / 2min 

Denver Teachers Suing District to Protest Forced Layoffs

In 2010, Colorado State Senator Michael Johnston took credit for a piece of legislation called Senate Bill 191, which he said would produce “Great Schools, Great Teachers, Great Principals.” Its main feature was tying teacher evaluation to their students’ scores, which counted for 50%. But it included other time bombs. One allowed districts to lay off teachers for various reasons. Now seven teache

5 by dianeravitch / 24min

North Carolina House Passes Bill to Shield Salaries of For-profit Charter Managers

Lindsay Wagner of the NC Policy Watch reports that the NC House passed a bill to guard the privacy of salaries paid to employees of for-profit charter management companies, even though they are paid with public funds. The bill also removes protection of LGBT students that had been in earlier versions. She writes: “While the bill, SB 793, or Charter School Modifications, clarifies that the salarie

by dianeravitch / 0min

Why the Election in Georgia Matters

Bertis Downs is a native of Georgia and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education. He writes: This is the best electoral news in a long time– Georgia Democrat Valarie Wilson won the runoff for state school superintendent, and it wasn’t even close: http://bit.ly/Us7qNi I am proud to be one of her supporters. And on the Republican side a longtime educator, Richard Woods, won in a

7 by dianeravitch / 57min hide  //  save

Lisa Graves: Will the Koch Brothers Buy American Politics?

Lisa Graves was one of the creators of the website ALECExposed. She has followed the money, and she here describes a dangerous threat to American democracy by the billionaire Koch brothers, ALEC, and others who seek control by the super-rich. They want to bust unions and privatize schools. Graves says that progressives must stand together. I agree. That’s why I grow frustrated when union members a

21 by dianeravitch / 1h 

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH ALL WEEK LONG Diane Ravitch's blog 7-26-14 #thankateacher #EDCHAT #P2

Diane Ravitch's blogLISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH ALL WEEK LONGDIANE RAVITCH'S BLOGEduShyster: If You Could Ask Arne Duncan Just One Question……EduShyster’s guest blogger Patrick Hayes, a fifth-grade teacher from Charleston, South Carolina, asks a simple question: “If you could ask Arne Duncan just one question what would it be?” Try this one: “what would you get Bill gates for Boss’s Day? The man has ev

by mike simpson / 9h 

7-27-14 Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL:

The Best Resources On Why Breakfast Is Important For Teenagers

© 2009 Jonathan Lin, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio I’m preparing some new lessons for this year, and one will be on the importance of breakfast. I’m adding this list to The Best Resources To Help Promote A Physically Healthy Lifestyle For Our Students. Let me know if you have other suggestions: Breakfast ‘keeps teenagers lean’ is from the BBC. A Better Breakfast Can Boost a Child’s Brainpower is

by Larry Ferlazzo / 25min

“Breaking News” Is An Engaging Tool For Reading…News

Breaking News is a current events news-reader designed in an intriguing way. You can type in whatever topic you want to read about — soccer, major news, refugees — and you’re provided with a list of headlines to stories about it. Clicking on the headlines will take you to the story. But the real interesting part of the site is that if you click on a globe icon on the upper right of the page, you’

by Larry Ferlazzo / 16min 

The Best Resources To Help Promote A Physically Healthy Lifestyle For Our Students

© 2014 Juhan Sonin, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio I’ve published a fair amount number of posts about lessons and tools I use to help promote a physically healthy lifestyle for my students, including research that shows how essential it is for learning. I thought it would be useful to me, and to readers, if I tried to bring them all together in one post. First, I’ll start off with what I think are the

by Larry Ferlazzo / 7h hide  //  save

Still Looking For Student Project Ideas That Include Family Engagement

© 2010 Selena N. B. H., Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio Earlier this year, I published The Best Student Projects That Need Family Engagement — Contribute Your Lessons! over at my parent engagement blog. I heard from a number of teachers sharing projects they have their students do that include some kind of specific family involvement, ranging from interviews to collecting bugs. You can read about them

by Larry Ferlazzo / 7h 

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Week… 7-26-14 …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EF

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFLLARRY FERLAZZO’S WEBSITES OF THE DAYJuly’s Best Tweets — Part FourEvery month I make a few short lists highlighting my choices of the best resources I through (and learned from) Twitter, but didn’t necessarily include them in posts here on my blog. I’ve already shared in earlier posts several new resources I found on Twitter

by mike simpson / 9h

7-27-14 Perdido Street School Week

Perdido Street School:

Andrew Cuomo Held Hostage: Day Seven

It's been seven days since Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has been seen in in public, five days since the NY Times published its expose on Cuomo's Moreland Commission machinations:… And on the 7th day, he once again had no public events: Sunday marks a week since @NYGovCuomo poked head up. An administration record?— Capitol Confidential (@TUCapCon) July 27, 2014 For all out there wondering when the gove

by reality-based edu... / 9min 

Campbell Brown Uses A Paid Organizer Of StudentsFirstNY As The Face Of Her Tenure/Seniority Lawsuit

From the Daily News: Seven families will file suit Monday to end teacher tenure in the fiercest attack yet on job protections enjoyed by New York State educators. The families, including five from some of the most impoverished communities in the city, claim their children were underserved in school due to incompetent teachers who only kept their jobs because of tenure rules that violate kids’ con

by reality-based edu... / 1min 

7-26-14 Perdido Street School Week

Perdido Street School: Perdido Street School WeekCuomo Meddled With His Other Commissions And Panels TooMichael Grunwald reports in TIME Magazine that the Moreland Commission tackling public corruption is not the first time Andrew Cuomo has meddled in one of his panels:Before New York Governor Andrew Cuomo set up a supposedly independent commission to investigate political corruption in Albany—a c

by mike simpson / 8h 

7-27-14 Schools Matter All Week

Schools Matter:

Now That Education Has Been the "Civil Rights Issue of Our Generation" for a Generation . . .

. . . it's worth asking how's that working out for those duplicitous policy elites who pretend to believe such nonsense.  Apparently, much more grit is going to required to grind poor and brown children down into that magical stuff that high test scores are made from.  From Kids Count 2014:

by Jim Horn / 2min 

Haslam Continues Ed Policy Based on Secrecy, Favoritism, and Dupliicty

Washington County School Board member Jack Leonard speaks Friday outside the district's central office as state Reps. Matthew Hill, Micah Van Huss and Tony Shipley listen. (Nathan Baker/Johnson City Press)Bill Haslam is up for re-election this year, and if Tennesseans can see beyond the ends of the Obama-hating noses, they will send this anti-democratic oligarch back to the corporate offices of P

by Jim Horn / 29min 

7-26-14 Schools Matter All Week

Schools Matter:  Schools Matter All WeekValue-Added Modeling (VAM) is pseudoscience, but profitable pseudosciences persist"While value-added models are intended estimate teacher effects on student achievement growth, they fail to do so in any accurate or precise way. — Professor Bruce Baker" Back in early April I penned a piece for K12NN on The American Statistical Association's (ASA) pa

by mike simpson / 9h 

7-27-14 Curmudgucation Week

CURMUDGUCATION:

Why Teachers Should Be Paid Less ??!!

Over at the Federalist, Jason Richwine has produced a spectacularly bad piece of thought leadership entitled "Why We Shouldn't Raise Teacher Pay." (h/t to Curmudgucator Shannon Jenkins). It's just as bad as you think it will be.So why should we look at it.Often, the bad arguments circulating the world of thinkiness are tucked away, hidden in the midst of not-entirely-stupid things. They

4 by Peter Greene / 13min 

Pearson Set Cut Scores for NYS

Over at lohud, actual journalists like Gary Stern have been working long hours trying to pry loose some facts from the state of New York, and it's worth the while of folks from all states to see what they've dug up because it's a bright red warning flag about how the CCSS-linked testing program actually works.Gannett Publishing had to pry open the state with a large, legal-sized crowbar just to ge

34 by Peter Greene / 1h 

7-26-14 Curmudgucation Week

CURMUDGUCATION:Curmudgucation WeekCollege Students vs. Faux JournalismHuffPo recently ran what could be called a graphics-rich story (basically two big graphics plus captioning) that is sure to have some folks sounding the alarm bell, and there's no question that the data are striking.The basic takeaway is this-- in no states in the US do the majority of students finish college in four years. Virg

by mike simpson / 8h 

DON'T SHOOT ME! Read Maureen Dowd's column

DON'T SHOOT ME! Read Maureen Dowd's column:

DON'T SHOOT ME! Read Maureen Dowd's column

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which is titled Angell in the Outfield, and is about the wonderful writer Roger Angell, being honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame.

If you love baseball and/or love good writing and you do not already know the work of Roger Angell, long-time fiction editor of The New Yorker, it is long past time for you to address that deficit.

This column by Dowd lacks any snark.

It is a tribute to a great writer.

It is well written, for example (see below, my sneaky way to get you to keep reading!) -

It begins like this:

ROGER ANGELL takes off his brown J. Press sports coat and blue cap, yanks out his hearing aids, stashes his cane, and sits down for a shave and haircut at Delta barbershop at 72nd and Lex., the same spot he’s patronized for 40 years. “I don’t see Henry Kissinger doing any interviews in a barbershop,” he says dryly.

Not bad writing, and a sense of the sharpness of mind of the 93 year old Angell, who stays sharp, according to the piece, by memorizing poetry and writing blogs.  In the paragraph where she offers that, Dowd sources it by linking to This Old Man, a piece by Angell from the DON'T SHOOT ME! Read Maureen Dowd's column:

NYC Educator: NYSYUT President Karen Mageee Explains How Common Core Enables Life, the Universe, and Everything

NYC Educator: NYSYUT President Karen Mageee Explains How Common Core Enables Life, the Universe, and Everything:

NYSYUT President Karen Mageee Explains How Common Core Enables Life, the Universe, and Everything

In recent debate over the Common Core, NYSUT president, Karen Magee, said:

"I pose the questions to you today: If not standards, then what? A free-for-all? Everyone does what they please? No common base? No common method to look at what they're doing? ... The implementation of the common core in New York was absolutely an embarrassment; we were testing before we were teaching; the materials were not developmentally appropriate. That being said, we have an opportunity."

Magee is absolutely right.  The roll out of the Common Core in NY State was an "embarrassment" of grand proportions.  And, as we all know and can easily agree, we never had standards before the Common Core was handed down to us.  In fact, in delving into my archives, I discovered a picture of our planet pre-Common Core, barren, desolate, dry of ideas and pathetically "standardless."

The Educational Landscape Pre-Common Core:

Common Core made civilization possible.  Now, look how far we have come.

Civilization as it Stands Today, Many Thanks Owed to the Common Core:

Here are some pro-Common Core testimonials to further prove my point:NYC Educator: NYSYUT President Karen Mageee Explains How Common Core Enables Life, the Universe, and Everything:

Louisiana Educator: White Refuses to Release Raw LEAP Cut Scores

Louisiana Educator: White Refuses to Release Raw LEAP Cut Scores:

White Refuses to Release Raw LEAP Cut Scores

A press statement accompanying the release of the Spring 2014 LEAP and iLEAP testing results announced that the percentage of students receiving a rating of "mastery" on the LEAP had improved this year and the percentage of students rated "basic" remained steady this year despite the inclusion of more "rigorous" Common Core aligned questions on this year's tests. The press release from the LDOE stated:

"The Department of Education today announced that on LEAP and iLEAP tests aligned to more challenging learning standards, the percentage of students performing at the state’s 2025 expectation of “mastery” (level 4 out of 5) increased in both English Language Arts and math, while the percentage of students performing at the state’s expectation level established in 1999, “basic” (level 3 out of 5), remained steady."

Using critical thinking skills to decipher the real meaning of the above statement, I began to ask myself "Does this press release mean that more students got a higher percentage of answers correct on this year's test than they did last year even though the test was supposed to be more difficult?" Also I wondered: "Does performance at a level of 4 out of 5 mean that students got 80% of the questions on the test correct? Does a rating of "basic" mean that a student got at least 60% (3 out of 5) of the questions right?" But after studying the technical explanations at the LDOE website, I concluded that the press release tells us nothing about what percentage of correct answers are represented by the ratings of "basic" and "mastery".  It also really tells us nothing about whether students got more or fewer right answers on this year's test compared to last year. To figure that out we would have to know the raw scores equivalent to such ratings. . . . and John White is not telling us the raw scores: the percentage of correct answers required to produce a rating of basic or mastery.

You see it turns out that the raw scores, or percentage of correct answers for the ratings of "basic" and "mastery" can be changed from year-to-year based upon judgements made by the LDOE and the testing company employed by the Louisiana Educator: White Refuses to Release Raw LEAP Cut Scores:

Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Are Your Fav #EdTech Resources Keeping Student Data Safe? Find Out!

Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Are Your Fav #EdTech Resources Keeping Student Data Safe? Find Out!:

Are Your Fav #EdTech Resources Keeping Student Data Safe? Find Out!

Are you an innovative educator who loves using digital media, but is a little concerned about the safety of student data?

Do you wonder if your classroom tech use is CIPA and FERPA compliant?  

You are not alone.

This is a hot media topic which often gives us cause for concern. Being concerned is good. Being armed with the facts is better.

This came to my attention recently, because innovative educators (in threads like this one) provided me with articles that made them second-guess their use of certain technology resources.

I did some investigating and here is what I discovered.

The resource: Edmodo

The article: A  NY Times article from last year about student data security.

My discoveries:

Edmodo has had SSL encryption in place as an option for users since 2011, and in July 2013, SSL encryption was made the default. Edmodo has also worked with their developer/app partners to have them make their apps SSL encrypted as well.

Tony Porterfield is the parent of a child whose school district rolled out Edmodo district-wide. What he describes in the NY Times article is a hypothetical situation - there have never been any data breaches.

Edmodo appreciates parents and users like Porterfield who bring these issues to their attention as it only makes their services stronger. Members of their senior team met with Porterfield to specifically address his concerns.

In addition, Edmodo does not have advertising on the platform, nor does the company rent or sell student information to third parties for marketing or advertising purposes. Edmodo has a Chief Privacy Officer and a User Trust & Safety Team, whose everyday responsibilities are to continually monitor and improve the safety and security of Edmodo’s services.

This InformationWeek article followed the NY Times article and talks about Edmodo addressing the issue.

The resource: Google Apps for Education and MS Office 365

The article:  A Safe.Gov article from January 2014 about data mining.

My discoveries: 

The article is a bit misleading in that it implies that scanning email is uncommon. The reality is that every email provider scans email with algorithms to provide services like anti-spam, spell check and Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Are Your Fav #EdTech Resources Keeping Student Data Safe? Find Out!: