8-8-14 Answer Sheet

Answer Sheet:

Strauss: The difference between ‘complex’ and ‘complicated’ — and why it matters in school reform

“Complex” isn’t the same thing as “complicated” — and the difference matters.  In this post, Stanford University’s Larry Cuban explains why in the context of school reform. Cuban was a high school social studies teacher for 14 years, a district superintendent (seven years in Arlington, VA), and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. His

by Valerie Strauss / 2min 

‘Nothing But Tears’ baby shampoo (because ‘it’s never too early’ to toughen up kids for school)

From the hilarious newspaper The Onion, a story with this headline: Johnson & Johnson Introduces ‘Nothing But Tears’ Shampoo to Toughen up Newborns. This tweet from the satirical newspaper says it all:   Because it’s never too early to grow the hell up! Guaranteed Kindergarten Ready! Extra Grit! http://t.co/QgXD46bUU3 pic.twitter.com/TJCsElGz8w — Emperor Bill Gates (@EmperorBill) […]

15 by Valerie Strauss / 7h 

8-7-14 Answer Sheet

Answer Sheet: Ten ways to fix the mess that is kindergartenI’ve posted a number of pieces recently about how kindergarten has been changing over the last decade or so. (See here, here, here and here.) Once a time for socialization and learning through play, school reformers have turned it into an academic exercise that, in some classrooms, leaves little or no time for play, recess […]by Valerie St

by mike simpson / 5h 

8-8-14 With A Brooklyn Accent: Teach for Life

With A Brooklyn Accent:

What We Want and Need- A Friday Afternoon Message to Arne Duncan:

We Need to show appreciation and respect for public school teachers and make them an integral part of every education policy making body.We need to develop strategies to attract and retain great teachers- teachers for life.We need to ramp up efforts to recruit and retain teachers of color.We need to transform schools in high needs areas into round the clock community centers and help them, not clo

by Mark Naison / 4min 

Teach for Life

My improbable initiative-- defund Teach for America and start a campaign called Teach for Life which encourages talented, idealistic young people to become teachers and STAY in the classroom. Such a campaign would treat teaching as the most important profession in the society, not something talented people leave after a few years to pursue careers in law, business, politics or "school leaders

by Mark Naison / 3h 

8-5-14 With A Brooklyn Accent: The rush to expose"Bad Teachers."

With A Brooklyn Accent: The rush to expose"Bad Teachers."The rush to expose"Bad Teachers."    From the mid 1940's to the mid 1950's, leaders in government, themedia, the trade union movement and the private sector spent anenormous amount of time and energy trying to expose and root outalleged Communists and Communist sympathizers. In the process, tens ofthousands of people lost

by mike simpson / 3h 

8-8-14 Hemlock on the Rocks

Hemlock on the Rocks:

Fwd: Common Core is the Most Dangerous Domestic Spying Program : Freedom Outpost

Even the Department of Education, though, admits that privacy is a concern, and that some of the data gathered may be "of a sensitive nature."  The information collected will be more than sensitive; much of it will also be completely unrelated to education.  Data collected will not only include grades, test scores, name, date of birth and social security number, it will also

by Rene Diedrich / 5h 

http://www.southbronxschool.com

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by Rene Diedrich / 6h 

How education reform drives gentrification | Al Jazeera America

Emma Christ, center, a Cleveland High School senior, at a rally organized by the Portland Student Union and the Portland Teachers Solidarity Campaign. The rally attracted students, parents and other unions in support of teachers during contract negotiations.Stephanie Yao Long/The Oregonian/Landov

by Rene Diedrich / 6h 

YESTERDAY

CONSIDER THESE POLITICAL CARTOONS - Are they accurate ? Or are they embellished and employed to humiliate the targets?

by Rene Diedrich / 8h 

B-LoEdScene: Randi Weingarten's Arrest - Cheap Stunt or Grandst...

B-LoEdScene: Randi Weingarten's Arrest - Cheap Stunt or Grandst...: So Randi Weingarten the Dr. Frankenstein of Concession Driven Unionism was cuffed and stuffed at a protest in Philly the other day. Wo...

by Rene Diedrich / 8h 

Another NYC TALE THAT LAUSD TEACHERS WILL FIND USEDUL: The Collusion And Inaction By The UFT And DOE Is The Major Cause Of The ATR Crises.

http://chaz11.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-collusion-and-inaction-by-uft-and.html The Collusion And Inaction By The UFT And DOE Is The Major Cause Of The ATR Crises. We all know that the deal between UFT President Randi Weingarten and Chancellor Joel Klein that resulted in the infamous 2005

by Rene Diedrich / 8h hide  //  save

Wall Street Hearts Charter Schools, Gets Rich Off Them | FDL News Desk

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/05/10/wall-street-hearts-charter-schools-gets-rich-off-them/ Wall Street has always put its money where its interests and beliefs lie. But it is far less common that so many financial heavyweights would adopt a social cause like charter schools and advance it with a

by Rene Diedrich / 8h 

8-7-14 Hemlock on the Rocks

Hemlock on the Rocks: CURMUDGUCATION: NYC Looks For Teachers on CraigslistCURMUDGUCATION: NYC Looks For Teachers on Craigslist: The NYC Teaching Collective (formerly the NYC Teaching Residency) seems to be have hatched from a simple idea-- why pay TFA to provide us w...by Rene Diedrich / 1h hide  //  saveKeep the Public in Public SchoolsProtest against school cuts in Culver City, California.Photo/

by mike simpson / 7h 

8-8-14 Curmudgucation

CURMUDGUCATION:

A Bad CCSS ELA Lesson Exemplar

TNTP recently posted an article in HuffPost that I've addressed elsewhere. But one portion of Rachel Evans' piece deserves its own look, because it's a great min-capsule of what is wrong with much so-called Common Core so-called lesson so-called planning.Learning to teach to the Common Core standards is sort of like learning to cook a complicated dish, with a lot of ingredients that you can’t just

19 by Peter Greene / 1h hide  //  save

TNTP Bravely Drowning In Irony

A recent HuffPost piece by TNTP's Rachel Evans is a fine example of the kind of bad argument being put forth in the world of ed these days. This is how Core supporters often work-- a construction of misdirection about how to use techniques we already know to combat problems we don't have.Evans opens with a picture of the poor, tired first year teachers of her Arizona Teaching Fellows seminar. Ariz

28 by Peter Greene / 2h 

8-7-14 Curmudgucation

CURMUDGUCATION: Study Says Money and Family Cast Long ShadowI'm just going to steal the lede from the article on John Hopkins HUB website in June:In a groundbreaking study, Johns Hopkins University researchers followed nearly 800 Baltimore schoolchildren for a quarter of a century, and discovered that their fates were substantially determined by the family they were born into.Karl Alexander and th

by mike simpson / 8h 

8-8-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:

Another Bloomberg NYCDOE Contractor Fraud Story

Mayor Bloomberg was a self-described financial genius who saved the city from financial ruin numerous times - and yet, the contractors his administration hired robbed the city blind.Here's the latest: A contractor for the city Department of Education was busted for allegedly scamming the city for more than $1 million with massive overcharges — including billing the city $572 for circuit breakers t

by reality-based edu... / 12min 

Will Governor Cuomo Skate Free From Moreland Mess?

The Wall Street Journal this morning:Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's prosecutors are now conducting a three-tiered investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.First, they are exploring whether they can take up cases the Moreland Commission was investigating. Second, they are investigating whether the Cuomo administration interfered in the commission's work, and why the comm

by reality-based edu... / 51min 

8-7-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School: Bridgegate Pulls Down Christie's Poll NumbersFrom Politico:New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s net approval rating is at its lowest point in three years, a new poll says.According to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday, 49 percent of New Jersey voters approve of the Republican governor’s job performance, compared with 47 percent who disapprove. That net approval rati

by mike simpson / 8h 

A Handbook for Creative Disruption of the Public Sector — Yikes! | janresseger

A Handbook for Creative Disruption of the Public Sector — Yikes! | janresseger:

A Handbook for Creative Disruption of the Public Sector — Yikes!

Posted on August 8, 2014 by janresseger

Here is a handbook, Public Sector, Disrupted: How Disruptive Innovation Can Help Government Achieve More for Less, for transformation of the public sector—including public schools—via creative disruption.  While it says it is published by Deloitte University Press, it is really just a report from Deloitte Development LLC, the business consultant.

Authored by William Eggers and published in 2013, it examines five cases in which Eggers believes creative disruption will break “seemingly immutable trade-offs” in the public sector where “costs and prices generally rise over time”:

• criminal justice via electronic monitoring;
• defense via unmanned aerial vehicles (drones);
• K-12 education via the “personalized learning experience” of on-line classes;
• higher education again via on-line learning; and
• the collection and analysis of intelligence via open source data analytics.

According to Eggers,”Disruptive innovation is about finding new business models that allow you to break traditional trade-offs.” In education, “The trade-off schools have faced is between the kind of standardized teaching that occurs in most public-school classrooms and the more personalized instruction a student might receive from a tutor or at an elite prep school… The trade-off, however, is that such reforms typically are quite expensive.  Online learning, or a blended learning environment of digital learning and traditional instruction, may be capable of breaking this trade-off.  How?  By personalizing the learning experience according to individual student learning styles and pace, and doing so without increasing the number of teachers.”  Not quite the same definition of personalization as the elite prep school?  Which classroom behaviors is Eggers collectively dismissing as “the kind of standardized teaching that occurs in most public-school classrooms”?  No matter.  Stay focused on how to disrupt.

Models of disruption, according to Eggers, “typically combine a disruptive idea with a A Handbook for Creative Disruption of the Public Sector — Yikes! | janresseger:

Persistence in Math Teaching Patterns: Deja Vu All Over Again | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Persistence in Math Teaching Patterns: Deja Vu All Over Again | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Persistence in Math Teaching Patterns: Deja Vu All Over Again

Math instruction took another big hit recently. “Big” because the New York Times,  one of the top U.S. newspapers ran it as a cover story of its magazine section. So here again, amid the Common Core standards in math that ask teachers to go beyond the “right” answer and periodic efforts over the past century (yes, I mean “century”) to move math teaching away from learning the rules of arithmetic, algebraic equations, and geometry proofs, comes another blast at how teachers teach math.

Elizabeth Green’s well-written article (drawn from a forthcoming book) on persistent patterns (mostly ineffective) in teachers implementing the New Math of the 1960s, the New NEW math of the 1980s, and now the math Common Core standards shines yet another light on the puzzle of why teachers teach as they do. And why policy after policy adopted to change math instruction has failed time and again in practice leaving each generation innumerate. Green has her own answers which to my experience as a teacher, historian, and researcher make a great deal of sense.

Moreover, as Green braids many threads together to explain persistence in poor math teaching, she also identifies others that begin to capture the complexity of  teaching. Her answers as to what to do are, however, largely unsatisfying because she excludes pieces necessary to complete the puzzle. Without the full puzzle picture on the jigsaw box, glomming onto a few pieces risks even yet another failure to remedy the puzzling persistence of poor math instructionPersistence in Math Teaching Patterns: Deja Vu All Over Again | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Russ on Reading: Value-Added Models' Fatal Flaw

Russ on Reading: Value-Added Models' Fatal Flaw:

Value-Added Models' Fatal Flaw

Much has been written about the corporate education reformers pet teacher evaluation tool the value-added model (VAM). A VAM is a statistical measure that attempts to account for a teacher’s effectiveness through student performance on standardized tests. These measures have been nearly universally discredited by study after study, most recently by the American Statistical Association, the leading professional organization for statisticians in the country. For an outstanding review of all that is bad about VAMs, I would recommend Rethinking Value-Added Models in Education: Critical Perspectives on Tests and Assessment-Based Accountability, by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley.

While VAMs do not come close to meeting the sniff test for reliability and validity, they have been forced down states’ throats as an accountability measure through the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program. Each of the 46 states that signed on is supposed to come up with a teacher evaluation system using VAMs in order to get a waiver from the impossible to achieve goals of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Whether VAMs are statistically suspect or not, they are doomed to fail. They have a fatal flaw that will insure that failure. Here is why.

What is the purpose of a program of teacher evaluation? For more than 95% of teachers the chief purpose of an evaluation is formative. In other words the evaluation is designed to help that teacher get better at teaching. Any smart Russ on Reading: Value-Added Models' Fatal Flaw:

Is there any billionaire, charter profiteer, poverty pimp, or right-wing ideologue that Alex Johnson won’t take money from?:

Is there any billionaire, charter profiteer, poverty pimp, or right-wing ideologue that Alex Johnson won’t take money from?

AUGUST 8, 2014 BY ROBERT D. SKEELS * RDSATHENE LEAVE A COMMENT

In calling for a special election, what Mark Ridley-Thomas, Alex Johnson, Rev. Tulloss, Corri Revere, and the charter schools along with their billionaire puppet masters are really saying is we have to hurt the children to protect the children.—Celes King IV

When it comes to corporate sponsors poverty pimp Alex Johnson puts top auto racing teams to shame.

We’ve looked at some of Alex “ALEC” Johnson’s funders during the primary election in The case against Alex Johnson. We looked at one of his prominent Independent Expenditures (IE) in Alex Johnson’s corporate SuperPAC run by Eli Broad’s Dan “students must pledge to capitalism” Chang. The latter article is even more important when we read that reactionary anti-public school operative Michelle Rhee and her right-wing funded “Students First” political organization donated dark money directly to Chang’s SuperPAC for Johnson:

This was the Caprice Young contribution. While she herself is extremely problematic, the fact that she’s working for the right-wing Laura and John Arnold Foundation was even more tantalizing. Arnold was the hedge fund manager who walked away with billions during the Enron scandal. The reactionary couple use the money to forward their extremist policies of union busting, pension looting, and school Is there any billionaire, charter profiteer, poverty pimp, or right-wing ideologue that Alex Johnson won’t take money from?: