Should state sue Arne Duncan to get No Child waiver back? | Education Lab Blog | Seattle Times

Should state sue Arne Duncan to get No Child waiver back? | Education Lab Blog | Seattle Times:

Should state sue Arne Duncan to get No Child waiver back?

Posted by John Higgins

The executive director of the association that represents Washington school superintendents says Washington state should challenge the revocation of the state’s waiver from the No Child Left Behind law in federal court.

In April, Washington became the first state in the country to lose its waiver when state lawmakers decided against mandating the use of state test scores in teacher evaluations.

In his group’s August newsletter, Executive Director Bill Keim tells the members of the Washington Association of School Administrators that he’s long been concerned about the “unfettered federal intervention into what used to be the states’ domain — operating our public schools.”

Which is why Keim likes the idea of challenging the waiver revocation in federal court, an ideafloated last month by Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education policy group based in Washington D.C.

Petrilli argues that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan does not have the authority to set conditions for waivers, such as the teacher-evaluation requirement, that are beyond the scope of the federal education law.

He has the right to offer greater flexibility to the states when it comes to the law’s ‘adequate yearly progress’ measures and other parts of its accountability system. What he has no constitutional right to do is dream up new mandates out of thin air and make flexibility contingent upon their embrace by supplicant states.

The Seattle school district last month asked the feds to reinstate the waiver for its own schools, arguing that its unique teacher evaluation system, negotiated with the Seattle Education Association, meets Duncan’s conditions.

The district hopes to get an answer before Aug. 20, the date it plans to mail letters to parents informing them their children attend failing schools, which is among the consequences of losing the waiver.

In the meantime, Washington and other states are preparing to send those letters, which will have Should state sue Arne Duncan to get No Child waiver back? | Education Lab Blog | Seattle Times:

NYC Educator: To Punch or Not to Punch? What Would Mulgrew Do?

NYC Educator: To Punch or Not to Punch? What Would Mulgrew Do?:

To Punch or Not to Punch? What Would Mulgrew Do?

It was pretty surprising to read that Mike Mulgrew told the AFT convention that if anyone tried to take his Common Core, he'd punch them in the face. Evidently, this particular corporate reform is so valuable to us that we must fight for it. And since we have no voice whatsoever in AFT matters, with all union voice vested in the 800 rubber stamp loyalty oath signers we paid two million dollars in dues for Mulgrew to drag to LA, I guess that's the only voice we get.

When Bill Gates decided that teachers needed to be rated by test scores, Mulgrew was not punchy in the least. In fact, he told the DA a few years back that we needed to be part of this great experiment, and in my school several teachers got paid as he conducted an important experiment that none of his employees appeared to understand. This, of course, was a precursor to the brilliant Race to the Top, which led to NY State's APPR law. In fact, the UFT President participated in negotiating this law, and though I know not one single teacher who likes it, he was far from putting up his dukes over it.

When mayoral control came in, the UFT supported it. When it was proven beyond question to be a disaster, we supported it again. As a result of mayoral control, schools all over the city closed, and thousands of teachers ended up as ATRs. Some will never teach their own classes again. In fact, when Bill de Blasio became mayor and tried to stop this nonsense, he was overridden by Governor Cuomo and the legislature. Mike Mulgrew not only punched no one in the face, but lifted not a finger to stop this from happening. Could this have been some quid pro Cuomo? Only he and NYC Educator: To Punch or Not to Punch? What Would Mulgrew Do?:

Geaux Teacher!: John White Uses His Bully Pulpit

Geaux Teacher!: John White Uses His Bully Pulpit:

John White Uses His

Bully Pulpit

I found SuperintendentWhite's "Welcome Back a To School" post offensive so I told him this:

John -

You need to stop using LDE as your bully pulpit. In your desperation to justify your failed attempts to promote national standards as one of Jeb Bush's Chiefs for Change and to barker your PARCC test for Pearson,  you are abandoning professionalism.  If you insist on having your day in court you will succeed only in further squandering taxpayer money that should be used in the classroom.  You disparage at being "personally attacked" but you persist in what appears to be your own extraordinarily determined effort to implement an initiative that has huge national opposition.  

As you know, since the last school year ended, there have been a number of attempts to slow progress in Louisiana, and to stop the implementation of higher expectations and the assessments that measure our progress when compared with states around the country. These issues are now in the courts, and in the weeks to come, there will surely be more discussion of these issues in the media. You do not deserve this, and your kids do not deserve this.

Our 2004 revised Louisiana State Standards and GLEs were focused on  "higher standards" and "rigor" and preparing students for the workplace....... Read Cecil Picard's letter here. http://www.doe.state.la.us/lde/uploads/2909.pdf 

Our standards were NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED by, for example, The Fordham Institute and Edweek's Quality Counts. The distorted use of that terminology to mean Common Core exclusively is dishonest. 

What does "Nationally Recognized Standards" mean?  Well here is one of hundreds of Geaux Teacher!: John White Uses His Bully Pulpit:

Saving John Mac «Education Talk New Orleans Education Talk New Orleans

Saving John Mac «Education Talk New Orleans Education Talk New Orleans:

Saving John MacWednesday, Aug 6 2014 

Charter Schools and Education Reform and Fake Community Involvement and RSD BESE,charter schools, Community, Education Reform, LDOE, louisiana department of education, New Orleans Schools edutalknola 10:30 pm

2 Open Letters to the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education

The Recovery School District has neglected this school for too long. It’s time to return it to the Orleans Parish School Board

John Mc Donogh High School  was one of the first high schools to open in the Recovery School District after Hurricane Katrina.  Almost from the beginning,  the John Mc Donogh community sought to work with the Recovery School District (RSD)  to improve the school and instill in it, the kinds of programs that the community knew were necessary for the success of the children in New Orleans.  At every turn the community’s efforts were rebuffed, eventually in favor of chartering the school under Future is Now Schools.  The RSD closed John Mc Donogh High School at the end of the 2013-2014 school year.  The John Mc Donogh Steering committee has never given up and will never give up.  It has garnered the support of the Orleans Parish School Board in requesting the return of John Mac and has secured more than 500 signatures on apetition.  Members of the steering committee and attorney Willie Zanders appeared before the July 30, 2014  Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) committee of the whole to request the return of John Mac.  Attorney Willie Zanders  presented 9 very compelling reasons why the BESE should return John Mc Donogh High School to the jurisdiction of the Orleans Parish School Board in his July 30, 2014 Open Letter.

(Be sure to click on the links in the letters)

BESE Committee members listening to the testimony of community members

During the July 30, 2014 BESE meeting, Vice President James Garvey stated that the board needed to seek a legal opinion to determine if it has the authority to return the school, or was this a decision to be made by Recovery School District Superintendent Patrick Dobard.  Attorney Willie Zanders lays out a very thorough analysis that shows that BESE does indeed have the authority to return John Mac to the Orleans Parish School Board in an Open Letter dated August 4, 2014.

Support the John Mc Donogh High School Steering Committee by liking their Facebook Page and signing the petition.

Saving John Mac «Education Talk New Orleans Education Talk New Orleans:

It's Not the Firing; It's the Threatening | Peter Greene

It's Not the Firing; It's the Threatening | Peter Greene:

It's Not the Firing; It's the Threatening

Yesterday, Twitter blew up with responses to Whoopi Goldberg and The View having one more uninformed discussion of tenure (and, really, we need to talk about why, from Louis CK to Colbert to Goldberg, education discussions keep being driven by the work of comedians).

"#WithoutTenure I can be fired for...." was the Tweet template of the day, and even though I rode that bus for a bit, it occurs to me this morning that it misses the point.

It's true that in the absence of tenure, teachers can (and are) fired for all manner of ridiculous things. That's unjust and unfair. As some folks never tire of pointing out, that kind of injustice is endemic in many jobs (Why people would think that the response to injustice is to demand more injustice for more people is a whole conversation of its own). That doesn't change a thing. Firing a teacher for standing up for a student or attending the wrong church or being too far up the pay scale -- those would all be injustices. But as bad as that would be, it's not the feature of a tenureless world that would most damage education.

It's not the firing. It's the threat of firing.

Firing ends a teacher's career. The threat of firing allows other people to control every day of that teacher's career.

The threat of firing is the great "Do this or else..." It takes all the powerful people a teacher must deal with and arms each one with a nuclear device.

Give my child the lead in the school play, or else. Stop assigning homework to those kids, or else. Implement these bad practices, or else. Keep quiet about how we are going to spend the taxpayers' money, or else. Forget about the bullying you saw, or else. Don't speak up about administration conduct, or else. Teach these materials even though you know they're wrong, or else. Stop advocating for your students, or else.

Firing simply stops a teacher from doing her job.

The threat of firing coerces her into doing the job poorly.

The lack of tenure, of due process, of any requirement that a school district only fire teachers for some actual legitimate reason -- it interferes with teachers' ability to do the job they were hired to do. It forces teachers to work under a chilling cloud where their best professional judgment, their desire to advocate for and help students, their It's Not the Firing; It's the Threatening | Peter Greene:

Pueblo SD70 in CO Attempts to Enforce Testing via Online Registration Form - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform

Pueblo SD70 in CO Attempts to Enforce Testing via Online Registration Form - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform:

Pueblo SD70 in CO Attempts to Enforce Testing via Online Registration Form

As Opt Out/Refusal of high stakes testing takes corporate ed. reform by storm this year we will be sharing information as quickly as possible to alert members to potential scenarios districts will use to push back against our determined efforts to refuse high stakes testing as we reclaim our public schools.  The following screen shot is from an online enrollment form required for Pueblo County School District 70 in Colorado.  Look carefully at the form (by Info Snap – an electronic form the district is using – it is a Pearson product). Simply click on picture to enlarge. A Pueblo SD70 parent has asked that the district  remove the section regarding Contract for Admissions, which states a student must participate in all school, district and state testing. The enrollment form also states that a child may need to be transferred to another school if they violate any of the conditions outlined in the statement of contract for admissions. We received information from another Pueblo SD70 parent who simply skipped this question and completed the registration form; as we get more info. we will keep you updated. We share this in an effort to expose pushback tactics  so that others may be prepared to fight back. Please check your state opt out/refusal guide for more information and share this post widely. We refuse these tests as an act of civil disobedience.  It is our parental right to refuse these tests and protect our children from a corporate/business model which denies our children the opportunity to think and develop as problem solving citizens.  These tests are creating immense profit for corporations while our schools are slowly starved of funding which could be used for classroom resources, small class size, art, music, PE, counselors, librarians, nurses, teachers and more. Attempts to halt opt out/refusal will be intense in 2014-2015 because the Common Core tests (PARCC/SBAC) must succeed in order for corporate profit to thrive and ultimately privatize our public schools – in other words – folks will be hell bent on getting our Pueblo SD70 in CO Attempts to Enforce Testing via Online Registration Form - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform:

My 2014-15 “Back to School” Post | deutsch29

My 2014-15 “Back to School” Post | deutsch29:

My 2014-15 “Back to School” Post

August 6, 2014

I started my 2014-15 school year on Monday, August 4. On Thursday, August 7 (which happens to be tomorrow), the students return.  Thus, the three days beginning this week have been faculty professional days.

I planned to write a different, more research-based post in the days prior to my students’ return, but mentally, I feel like I am on vacation after spending two months writing my second book. Starting school requires a different energy than the intense self-discipline I had to impose upon myself in order to complete a book in a summer. (I do enjoy writing; however, in order to complete a book before returning to school, I often had to write whether I felt like it or not. That’s just how it works.)

In many ways, starting a school year after having written so much this summer (not only the book, but also blog posts) is like exhaling a deep breath.

So, no lengthy investigative post for now.

Instead, I would like to offer a word regarding the very beginning of my 2014-15 school year.

It was nothing like last year’s start, when Louisiana State Superintendent John White decided to speed up Common Core (CCSS) implementation by a full year. When I returned, I and my colleagues faced “the CCSS sales job” in which we were told we were going to “do this thing.” By October 2013, our local school board approved an anti-CCSS resolution that our local superintendent and local union president both signed.

However, our district still considered itself “in” CCSS since CCSS was adopted at the state level.

Well. It seems now that the state is suing itself over CCSS and the related Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) tests. And not only the state is suing itself, but also a charter-backed, pro-CCSS group is suing part of the state (the Governor Jindal part), and 17 legislators and approximately 200 parents and students are suing the state board of education (BESE) for improper adoption of CCSS.

The suit of the 17 legislators et al. suing BESE and the Louisiana Department of My 2014-15 “Back to School” Post | deutsch29:

Who Should Go, the Public Education Privatizers or the Teachers? You be the Judge

Who Should Go, the Public Education Privatizers or the Teachers? You be the Judge:

Who Should Go, the Public Education Privatizers or the Teachers? You be the Judge

• 
• 

27 Jun 2014

Written by Kathleen Carroll

INSIDE EDUCATION POLITICS-One of the main goals of the public education privatizers has been to make it easier, legally, to fire teachers. Understanding this goal is not difficult. You fire more teachers; you show how bad the public education system is with so many bad teachers. This in turn justifies systemic change or more euphemistically referred to as education reform. And the reform is always the same, more charter schools, more online education, more testing, more replacement of teachers with Teach For America Troops/others. Education reform also always includes more for profit teacher preparation programs- because now not only are the public schools really bad according to the privatizers, but now we don’t have enough teachers in the profession, so we need to recruit more and find alternative ways, short cuts, on how teachers get licensed- enter for profit teacher preparation programs $$$$. The public education privatizers have the perfect business plan- create chaos, justify change, make change, make profits. And the more change, the more profits to make. 

Add the constant false claim that there are so many sex offenders in the classroom that are impossible to get rid of, and the privatizers create the perfect distraction to fool the public while scooping up billions of tax dollars- all in the name of helping students. 

The problem that never gets addressed in the corporate controlled media is the serious human abuse taking place against teachers to achieve these privatizing ends. As the public education system gets primed with low wage, inexperienced, temporary teachers who cost less and don’t require benefits, the privatizers are also adding teacher bullies provided by the numerous education leadership academies trained to spy on, write up and report back on any outspoken critic of the privatization agenda. Some of the teacher bullies are Broad trained education consultants (privatizer moles). These bullies are right there working along side the teachers. 

So if a teacher happens to complain when school administrators hold back Black students in a English class, when in fact they qualify for advanced placement (an actual story), this teacher automatically becomes a target. She begins to get reassigned to classes where the majority of students have behavioral problems, she then gets assigned to subjects outside of what she is authorized to teach, and she is constantly monitored, watched and written up for even speaking to colleagues. As her every move is watched, and the privatizer moles continue to write her up, the teacher becomes more and more stressed. 

Eventually the dismissal will look like a problematic teacher was given numerous chances and failed to comply, when actually this was a serious case of on the job mental torture by the agents of the privatization agenda. No one is talking about these abuses, but they are happening across this country. Remember why the privatizers would want it to appear that Black students are failing, to justify the need for systemic change- more change- more profits. It is sickening. 

The public education privatizers, really scam artists, have even hijacked the civil rights movement to suggest that they are the only ones fighting to ensure equal educational opportunity- no mention ever of all the money they Who Should Go, the Public Education Privatizers or the Teachers? You be the Judge:

Frankenstein Fears His Monster: The Gates Foundation Wants You To Boycott High-Stakes Tests | Common Dreams

Frankenstein Fears His Monster: The Gates Foundation Wants You To Boycott High-Stakes Tests | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community:

Frankenstein Fears His Monster: The Gates Foundation Wants You To Boycott High-Stakes Tests

by

Jesse Hagopian

Microsoft founder Bill Gates. (Credit: flickr / cc / world economic forum)

“…the Gates Foundation agrees with those who’ve decided that assessment results should not be taken into account in high-stakes decisions on teacher evaluation or student promotion for the next two years, during this transition.”  — Vicki Phillips, director of the U.S. education program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

How do you know the United States is currently experiencing the largest revolt against high-stakes standardized testing in history?

Because even the alchemists responsible for concocting the horrific education policies designed to turn teaching and learning into a test score have been shaken hard enough to awaken from the nightmare scenario of fast-tracking high-stakes Common Core testing across the nation. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation issued a stunning announcementon Tuesday, saying that it supports a two-year moratorium on attaching high-stakes to teacher evaluations or student promotion on tests associated with the new Common Core State Standards.

Labor journalist Lee Sustar put it perfectly when he said of the Gates Foundation’s statement, “Dr. Frankenstein thought things got out of hand, too.”

The mad-pseudoscientists at the Gates Foundation have been the primary perpetrators of bizarre high-stakes test experiments in teacher evaluations, even as a growing body of research—including a report from the American Statistical Association—has debunked the validity of “value added method” testing models. The Gates Foundation has used its immense wealth to circumvent the democratic process to create the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) with very little input from educators. As Rethinking Schools editor Stan Karp wrote of the Common Core development process:

Because federal law prohibits the federal government from creating national standards and tests, the Common Core project was ostensibly designed as a state effort led by the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve, a private consulting firm. The Gates Foundation provided more than $160 million in funding, without which Common Core would not exist… According to teacher educator Nancy Carlsson-Paige: “In all, there were 135 people on the review panels for the Common Core. Not a single one of them was a K–3 classroom teacher or early childhood professional.” Parents were entirely missing. K–12 educators were mostly brought in after the fact to tweak and endorse the standards—and lend legitimacy to the results.

And thus the Gates Foundation’s unnatural methods brought to life the Common Core State Standards. As parents, students, and teachers around the nation have grown tired of being the targets of hazardous corporate experimentation and excluded from major policy decisions about education, they have built the largest revolt against the use of high-stakes standardized testing in our nations’ history. Teachers at my own Garfield High School in Seattle refused to administer the district mandated MAP test last year. This year, teachers at Saucedo Elementary were threatened with the revoking of their teaching certificates for refusing to administer a state exam, but have continued in their civil disobedience. Some 33,000 parents in New York State alone have opted their children out of tests in the current school year. Students from Portland to Rhode Island have led rallies and walkouts against the tests.

The Providence Student Union recently gathered at the Rhode Island Statehouse, dressed as rodents, to protest a state-wide standardized test recently incorporated into high school graduation requirements. Jose Serrano, a sophomore at The Met School, addressed the crowd saying, “The reason we are dressed like guinea pigs and lab rats is simple — that is how we are being treated. (The Rhode Island Department of Education) had a hypothesis — that high-stakes testing alone, without the extra resources our schools need, would solve our educational problems and radically improve our proficiency. But this was nothing more Frankenstein Fears His Monster: The Gates Foundation Wants You To Boycott High-Stakes Tests | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Teachers not teaching in subject areas? Why not?

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Teachers not teaching in subject areas? Why not?:

Teachers not teaching in subject areas? Why not?

One of the dumbest teacher-bashing headlines ever, appears on the front page of today's Trib. "Teachers may not know the subjects they cover". Are you kidding me?

According to the Tribune:

The assignment of teachers not properly trained and credentialed to teach a specific course — a practice that has come under fire nationwide — is facilitated by loopholes in state laws and rules as well as by district hiring practices. It has occurred even when applicants with the required qualifications were available, the newspaper found.

Teachers teaching out of their subject area? Well duh! Here's a flash for you. This isn't about incompetent teachers not knowing their subject area as the headline suggests. It's really about educational equity (not mentioned in the Trib article). It's about full and equitable school funding and an end to budget slashing. And it's about sub-contracting and privatization, including non-union, privately-run charters, where certification of teachers isn't always required.

Duncan applauds Vergara decision.

Finally, it's about official CPS policy fostered nationally, by Arne Duncan and his Race To The Top initiative which mandates the firing of thousands of experienced, certified teachers and replacing many of them with unqualified 5-week wonders from TFA. Duncan claims he wants all students to have access to "effective educators." Then he turns around and applauds the Vergaracourt ruling in California which essentially does away with teacher tenure and job protection and allows thousands of experienced, certified teachers to be replaced by principal and district favoritism (including racial and political favoritism).

Similar policies in Chicago have lead to a sharp decline in the number of African-American teachers. As the district's teaching force grows smaller and whiter, it is also becoming less credentialed. When Rahm and BBB fire hundreds of Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Teachers not teaching in subject areas? Why not?:

They Are Children | Bruce Lesley

They Are Children | Bruce Lesley:

They Are Children

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Children are "fleeing for their lives," according to journalist Sonia Navario, who has investigated the root causes, circumstances, and plight of vulnerable migrants who have been traveling -- often by themselves at enormous risk -- to the United States and other countries throughout the Americas from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

In the case of Cristian, an 11 year-old boy from Honduras that Navario interviewed in Honduras, his father was murdered in March by gangs, he witnessed the murder of three people who defied the narco-cartels that control much of the countryside, and a girl his age "resisted being robbed of $5. She was clubbed over the head and dragged off by two men who cut a hole in her throat, stuffed her panties in it, and left her body in a ravine across the street from Cristian's house."

In the case of Andrea, she was 13 years old when she was raped and forced into prostitution by the drug cartels in Honduras. Two years later, she managed to escape and fled to the United States for the United States two years and is now seeking humanitarian relief.

Cristian and Andrea are just two of the thousands of children in Central America who are fleeing their Central American homes and neighborhoods from such extreme violence. In fact, Honduras' homicide rate of 90.4 per 100,000 is the highest in the world - by a wide margin. The prevalence of drug cartels and gang violence and penetration in the country puts its murder rate at almost double the next most dangerous countries in the world, which include Guatemala and El Salvador.

In response, some of our political leaders have said they simply cannot imagine sending their children on an extremely dangerous journey to the United States and question the choices these families and children are making to come here.

But, that is precisely the point. Politicians cannot imagine it because these children are fleeing violence, rape, and fear that are unfathomable to us. These children are not leaving their home countries to make a perilous journey across hostile territory to the United States simply in search of a better job. They are children. And, as Sonia Navario says, many of them are "fleeing for their lives."

Compounding the Crisis and Making Things Far Worse

Current law is that children from Central America are afforded protections in theThey Are Children | Bruce Lesley: