Tuesday, August 12, 2014

8-12-14 Seattle Schools Community Forum Week

Advanced Learning Task Forces' Recommendations

Advanced Learning Task ForcesReport & Recommendations August 2014The Advanced Learning Task Forces met for more than 50 hours during the 2013-2014 school year to studyidentification and service delivery models for Highly Capable students. They found that many aspects of our Highly Capable/Accelerated Progress Program work well and do not require changes. The task forces believ

by Melissa Westbrook / 2min

Seattle Landmarks Board Votes to Hit Pause on Wilson-Pacific

From Indian Country Today media network:Plans to demolish a public school with strong ties to Seattle’s Native community have been sent back to the drawing board.The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board voted 7-1 on July 16 to designate Wilson-Pacific School a city landmark. That prevents Seattle Public Schools officials from proceeding with plans to demolish the school so a new school can be buil

by Melissa Westbrook / 9min

Tuesday Open Thread

A bit of dark place I find myself in. Robin Williams, a giant talent who I saw twice live in San Francisco (and once in a little bookstore), killed himself. Very sad.Then there's the essay by Joe Williams of DFER who says that "Suburbs Hold Key to Resolving Democratic Party's Tensions over School Choice."It's hard to know which is worse - the idea that the "school choice" is

by Melissa Westbrook / 6h

8-11-14 Seattle Schools Community Forum Week

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Charters - The Gift that Keeps on GivingThere's almost something humorous about charter stories today. They come faster and faster; stars who start charters that fail, financial scandals, and promises made and then broken.What's the funny part? Well, the supporters of 1240 said "we have a lot to learn from charters." I would agree and in more ways than

by mike simpson / 8h

8-12-14 With A Brooklyn Accent: Ferguson Missouri- Face of a Nation Where Poverty Has Moved to the Suburbs

With A Brooklyn Accent:

Ferguson Missouri- Face of a Nation Where Poverty Has Moved to the Suburbs

Fegruson Missouri, where the police killing of an unarmed young Black man sparked rioting yesterday, represents the demographic contours of a society changed by gentrification and demographic inversion.. There are now more poor people living in suburbs than there are in inner city neighborhoods. In New York, the most famous historically Black neighborhoods, Harlem and Bedford Stuyvestant, have exp

by Mark Naison / 5h

8-11-14 With A Brooklyn Accent: A Bronx View of the Killing of Michael Brown

With A Brooklyn Accent: A Bronx View of the Killing of Michael BrownThe Bronx is full of young people who take what happened to Michael Brown very personally. They go through metal detectors in schools. Get stopped and frisked in the streets. Are looked at with suspicion and contempt when they head into Manhattan. They see themselves in Michael Brown, as they did in Ramarley Graham who suffered a

by mike simpson / 2h

8-12-14 Hemlock on the Rocks

Hemlock on the Rocks:

A Few Reasons You Should Vote for George McKenna in Los Angeles School Board Race ACCORDING TO ELLEN LUBIC

http://dianeravitch.net/2014/08/10/a-few-reasons-you-should-vote-for-george-mckenna-in-los-angeles-race/Ellen Lubic of Los Angeles sent the following roundup of editorials and news stories endorsing George McKenna for the school board race in Los Angeles. Control of the board hinges on the outcome of this election. The vote takes place August 12. Ellen Lubic writes: Forgive this very long

by Rene Diedrich / 1min

GOOD RIDDANCE.: Michelle Rhee Will Step Down as CEO of Students First | Diane Ravitch's blog

http://dianeravitch.net/2014/08/12/breaking-news-michelle-rhee-will-step-down-as-ceo-of-students-first/Joy Resmovits of Huffington Post reports that Michelle Rhee is stepping down as leader of StudentsFirst, a group she founded in 2010. She is likely to remain a board member. She recently changed her name to Michelle Johnson. "StudentsFirst was launched on Oprah's TV talk show in late 2010 an

by Rene Diedrich / 43min

California’s 2014-2015 budget attacks education -JERRY BROWN, UNIONS AND LCFF CONSPIRE AGAINST TEACHERS

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/08/cali-a08.html By Theo Mclean 8 August 2014

by Rene Diedrich / 52min

Seeking to regain credibility, US teachers unions criticize Obama’s education secretary - World Socialist Web Site

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/07/22/conv-j22.html By Phyllis Scherrer 22 July 2014 After spending the last five-and-a-half years collaborating with the Obama administration's attack on teachers' jobs and conditions, the two teachers' unions in the US recently passed resolutions seeking to distance themselves from

by Rene Diedrich / 1h

Irresponsible Is As Irresponsible Does: LAUSDeasy Calls the Kettle Black – redqueeninla

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by Rene Diedrich / 2h hide // save

Your Vote Counts, South La

by Rene Diedrich / 3h

LAUSD Superintendent: "Let Us Begin Repair" | NBC Southern California

by Rene Diedrich / 3h

The political issues facing Los Angeles teachers

The following article from 12 August 2014 WSWS:]Introductory paragraphs below. Use this link to read full article and concolusion.http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/12/utla-a12.htmlBy Dan Conway and Jerry White 12 August 2014 Negotiations for a new three-year labor agreement are underway between the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

by Rene Diedrich / 34min

"We Do the Best We Can": Miramonte Moves Forward With Start of School Year | NBC Southern California

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Miramonte-Moves-Forward-With-Start-of-School-Year--270834621.html "We Do the Best We Can": Miramonte Moves Forward With Start of School Year news > local

by Rene Diedrich / 9h

8-11-14 Hemlock on the Rocks

Hemlock on the Rocks: In Case You MISSED it WalMart Spent $20 million to send 700 TFA interns to replace actual teachersNew post on CBS Los Angelesby Rene Diedrich / 7h Fwd: “A Farewell to Arms” – Take a deep breath. Get ready to face school closure, displacement , kill sites and lots of broken promises,"A Farewell to Arms" – Take a deep breath. Posted on May 30, 2011 by savehphs Things

by mike simpson / 9h

Yes, I am a teacher. No, I am not going to destroy society and your children | Valerie Braman | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Yes, I am a teacher. No, I am not going to destroy society and your children | Valerie Braman | Comment is free | theguardian.com:

Yes, I am a teacher. No, I am not going to destroy society and your children

The anti-union celebrities (and their secret backers) have taken the war on teachers public. But educators shouldn’t have to defend doing our job

I learned recently that I don’t live in the real world: before that, I’d assumed that if my degrees, certifications and teaching career didn’t qualify me as a resident of the “real world”, then the taxes, rent, car payments and student loans that I am dutifully paying off certainly would. But each time my eyes wander into the comments section of an education-related article, I’m told that my fellow educators and I inhabit an alternate universe in which we are the villains, responsible for all of society’s ills.

In the “real world”, I’ve been informed, the singular solution to the problems with education in America is to get rid of the teachers’ unions and even to just fire and replace all teachers, which would magically transport us all to this vaunted real world in which no educator should be entitled to pensions, affordable health benefits or due process. (In it, I’m certain I’d be wealthy enough to start using phrases like “job creators” and attending Chamber of Commerce events, instead of just standing outside of them to protest corporate tax breaks and cuts in education funding.)

In the “real world”, I didn’t choose my profession because I want to help my students develop into productive and successful citizens or because our neighborhoods and societies will flourish when educational opportunities and systems are strong – and, certainly, the union for which I work cares about none of that either. In that world, people entrust their children exclusively to grasping, greedy monsters and criminals who became teachers because of the massive salaries, premium benefits, minimal work hours and the joys of lording power over impressionable young people. (Nothing makes one feel more powerful than a room full of adolescents calling you “Miss!”)

But that sort of finger-pointing isn’t limited to those hiding safely behind screen names.

Take journalist-cum-teachers’-union-warmonger Campbell Brown, who has been busy on the talk-show circuit this summer spewing false research about “bad teachers” and bemoaning how impossible it is to fire them while refusing to disclose her funders or links to special interest Yes, I am a teacher. No, I am not going to destroy society and your children | Valerie Braman | Comment is free | theguardian.com:

Should it be Harder to Become a Teacher? Harder How? | Dana Goldstein

Should it be Harder to Become a Teacher? Harder How? | Dana Goldstein:

Should it be Harder to Become a Teacher? Harder How?

Amanda Ripley has a thoughtful piece at Slate on how states are passing regulations that raise the SAT score/GPA bar for getting accepted into teacher training programs. I thought a lot about this as I wrote The Teacher Wars, which is a history of teaching in America (out Sept. 2! Plug plug!). It became pretty obvious to me that one of the original sins of our public education system was the normal school, a special school for preparing teachers — segregated from other higher education — which originally accepted only women, because women were cheaper to employ en masse as teachers. These normal schools, which began opening in the 1830s, were, at first, a substitute for academic high school. They sometimes accepted students with the equivalent of only a sixth or seventh-grade education. Later, the normal schools evolved into many of today’s non-selective regional state colleges. These colleges continue to prepare the majority of American teachers, who enter the classroom with undergraduate degrees in education.

As early as the 1850s, smart people who cared about public schools began to critique the “normals.” Susan B. Anthony, who began her activist career organizing her fellow female teachers to demand higher pay, believed teachers would never be respected until they were educated alongside other white-collar professionals. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “It was not enough that the teachers of teachers should be trained in technical normal methods; they must also, so far as possible, be broad-minded, cultured men and women, to scatter civilization among a people whose ignorance was not simply of letters, but of life itself.”

Like Amanda (a friend and colleague, whose book I loved) I believe teaching is difficult, highly intellectual work. But here’s what I found in my research. First, while a teacher’s intellectual capacity — measured through the size of their vocabulary, for example, and their writing skill – seems to drive increased student achievement, there is a much more tenuous connection between teachers’ own standardized test scores, their grades, the selectivity of their colleges, and student learning. (High school level math seems to be an exception; there, the teacher’s own achievement matters more.) Research on highly-rated teachers who stay longterm in the profession, and who are willing to commit to work in high-poverty schools, Should it be Harder to Become a Teacher? Harder How? | Dana Goldstein:

Ohio next up in Common Core showdown :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Ohio next up in Common Core showdown :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

AUGUST 12, 2014

Ohio next up in Common Core showdown

by Alisha Kirby

(Ohio) Yet another bill to repeal the Common Core State Standards will be heard Aug. 18 in Columbus amid growing public opposition to the standards.

Authors, Ohio Speaker Pro Tempore Matt Huffman, R-Lima, and Rep. Andy Thompson, R-Marietta, announced a placeholder bill, House Bill 597, which they say will fully repeal the standards and replace them with standards that have been proven and developed by the state’s school districts, parents and teachers.

“Americans view Common Core as an intrusion by the federal government into a very personal matter: the education of their children,” Rep. Huffman said at a joint press conference July 29 with Rep. Thompson announcing the repeal. “This bill will work to address their concerns in order to find a solution.”

Ohio has become one of a number of states looking to repeal the standards, citing concerns over topics such as federal intrusion, poorly planned implementation and a lack of student data privacy. Similarly, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called for his state to repeal Common Core last month.

A portion of the Ohio proposal has been made available which shows only that the core-aligned English language arts and mathematics standards will be replaced with “academic content standards that have been proven and tested and will ensure the maintenance of local control over the implementation and use of the standards.”

It follows the introduction of a similar bill late last month that would prohibit the Ohio State Board of Education from adopting the standards, and the Department of Education from implementing them, and void all prior actions to do so.

The standards were approved in the state in 2010 with little issue, and the state’s web-based field tests of the Common Core with the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Ohio next up in Common Core showdown :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Twin Rivers applies LCFF mandate to engage community

(Calif.) Building on a year of positive change, Twin Rivers Superintendent Steve Martinez has set the bar higher for 2014-15 with a new program aimed at promoting student success though engagement.

by Tom Chorneau / 6h

Broken Promises in New Orleans | janresseger

Broken Promises in New Orleans | janresseger:

Broken Promises in New Orleans

Posted on August 12, 2014 by janresseger

There has been a lot of hype about the transformation to charter schools of almost all of the public schools in New Orleans. The transformation began with the destruction of the city by Hurricane Katrina just as the school year had begun in 2005. Powerful forces in Louisiana assisted by Margaret Spellings, then U.S. Secretary of Education and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation made enormous grants; the state seized almost all of New Orleans’ public schools into a state-managed Recovery School District that permanently laid off all of New Orleans’ teachers; and a mass of charter operators came to the city to bid for building sites where they would participate in what was seen by many as a grand experiment.

As school opens this fall—nine years later, all of the remaining traditional public schools in what has become the Recovery School District are opening as charter schools, authorized and operated by different appointed boards. The promoters of all this have made the numbers look as though the mass charterization has raised achievement, though this blog recently covered evidence that statistics can be made to show what those who present the data want the numbers to show.

What is clear is that many parents and others in the community have felt left out of a process which, although it features parental market choice, has sidestepped democracy and too often responded authentically neither to particular parents nor to the broader community. A new series by Danielle Dreilinger in the New Orleans Times-Picayune here and here (and also reprinted at the Hechinger Report here and here) traces just how administrators in the New Orleans Recovery School District forgot about their promise to save Paul L. Dunbar Elementary School by opening Layfayette Academy, operated by the local Choice Foundation and chosen after a thoughtful process involving many community organizations in the tiny but very engaged Hollygrove neighborhood.

One school building among 82 New Orleans sites to be assigned a charter operator—an agreement signed in 2010 between the Choice Foundation and then Superintendent Paul Vallas—a change of staff in the Recovery School District—the signed agreement misplaced during a nine year “siting”process—and a Knowledge Is Power (KIPP) charter operator instead granted control of the new building soon to be completed and opened in Hollygrove.

Dreilinger explains: “After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleanians had to rebuild. There were neighborhoods to reknit. There were schools to reinvent…. In Hollygrove, the two efforts Broken Promises in New Orleans | janresseger:

Shanker Blog » Differences In DC Teacher Evaluation Ratings By School Poverty

Shanker Blog » Differences In DC Teacher Evaluation Ratings By School Poverty:

Differences In DC Teacher Evaluation Ratings By School Poverty

Posted by Matthew Di Carlo on August 12, 2014

In a previous post, I discussed simple data from the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) on teacher turnover in high- versus lower-poverty schools. In that same report, which was issued by the D.C. Auditor and included, among other things, descriptive analyses by the excellent researchers from Mathematica, there is another very interesting table showing the evaluation ratings of DC teachers in 2010-11 by school poverty (and, indeed, DC officials deserve credit for making these kinds of data available to the public, as this is not the case in many other states).

DCPS’ well-known evaluation system (called IMPACT) varies between teachers in tested versus non-tested grades, but the final ratings are a weighted average of several components, including: the teaching and learning framework (classroom observations); commitment to the school community (attendance at meetings, mentoring, PD, etc.); schoolwide value-added; teacher-assessed student achievement data (local assessments); core professionalism (absences, etc.); and individual value-added (tested teachers only).

The table I want to discuss is on page 43 of the Auditor’s report, and it shows average IMPACT scores for each component and overall for teachers in high-poverty schools (80-100 percent free/reduced-price lunch), medium poverty schools (60-80 percent) and low-poverty schools (less than 60 percent). It is pasted below.

In short, this table suggests that there is a rather substantial discrepancy in IMPACT results between teachers in low-poverty schools versus their counterparts in medium- and high-poverty schools.

Specifically, you’ll notice that almost 30 percent of teachers in low-poverty schools receive the highest rating (“highly effective”), compared with just 7-10 percent in the other categories. In addition, just over seven percent of teachers in low-poverty schools receive one of the two lowest ratings (“minimally effective” or “ineffective,” both of which may result in dismissal), versus 18-21 percent in the medium- and high-poverty schools.

So, the relationship between school poverty and IMPACT ratings may not be linear, as the distributions for medium- and high-poverty schools are quite similar. Nevertheless, it seems very clear that IMPACT results are generally better among teachers in schools serving lower proportions of poor students (i.e., students eligible for subsidized lunch), and that the discrepancies are quite large.

One question is why these differences, which have been found elsewhere in both test-based and non-test-basedmeasures, arise.

Broadly speaking, there are two possible explanations (and they are not mutually exclusive). The first, put crudely, is Shanker Blog » Differences In DC Teacher Evaluation Ratings By School Poverty:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Quinn losing to the worst person in the world. Why?

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Quinn losing to the worst person in the world. Why?:

Quinn losing to the worst person in the world. Why?

Workers need more than a $1.75 raise.

Mimicking former MSNBC great Keith Olbermann, I'm willing to go out on a limb a say that billionaire Bruce Rauner is the worst person in the world. And few would disagree, although Pat Quinn's running mate Paul Vallas may have a lock on second place. While Quinn proudly takes credit ("I was born for this...") for slashing the pension benefits of the state's public-sector workers, Rauner has vowed to do away with collective-bargaining rights and unions altogether, a la Gov. Walker in Wisconsin.

So why does the worst person in the world, hated even by most Republicans, have a double-digit lead over Quinn the incumbent with just 12 weeks to go? This in a state where only 27% of voters vote Republican. I would argue that it's not just the money factor. And it's not only because running-mate Vallas has hardly lifted a finger to help Quinn. Rauner can't even spend all the dough he's raising, even while saturating the market for almost a year now with trite, negative, sometimes laughable ads (what ever happened to Bruce-the-Hammer?). I mean, there's only so much money you can spend on a campaign without moving beyond your own base. The rest, he's has had to spread around to a host of ultra-right-wing, Tea Party and Koch Bros.-aligned groups.

What ever happened to #Hammer & Shake?

My assessment? This is one of the worst the-other-guy's-a-crook("unpatriotic") campaigns in recent memory, which has to work in favor of the guy with the most money. Quinn's Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Quinn losing to the worst person in the world. Why?:

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