9-6-14 Schools Matter All Week

Schools Matter: 

 Schools Matter All Week

OECD's Efficiency Zealots Say Cutting Teacher Pay and Raising Class Size Would Be Good Policy, But Don't Do It

For my academic friends who are engaged in a new revisionism to write out effects of a hundred years of social efficiency domination in education policy, you may want to have a look at this. The OECD, the outfit that brings us PISA every so often, has taken to sub-contracting its nastier statistical tasks to other "research" firms.  The latest example is the Efficiency Index, contracted

2 by Jim Horn / 11min 

KIPP: Waiting for the Marshmallow While Getting the Fist

Educators have jumped on the bandwagon, hoping to teach the skills of delaying gratification to inner-city kids. Dave Levin, co-founder of KIPP (a network of charter schools) employs teaching these cognitive tricks to all his students, who also each wear T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Don’t eat the marshmallow!” SourceWhen you hear white middle class corporate reformers talking about the nee

4 by Jim Horn / 22h 

SEP 04

Mother Jones Story on Gates Core

A clip from a big story in Mother Jones.  How to Spend $200 million to buy what you want:

36 by Jim Horn / 1d 

U.S. Teachers Need to Stand with Teachers in Canada

Haven't seen much info on the ongoing teacher strike in British Columbia on the evening news or even education blogs but it's happening.Vancouver teachersTeachers chose to go on strike and only teachers can end the job action, Premier Christy Clark said Wednesday in her first recent public comments about the strike.Clark was pressed by reporters on how long her government would allow the strike to

4 by freetoteach / 1d 

Ravitch Warms to Tuckerism: Can Randi Be Far Ahead?

I posted the other day on the new (old) Tuckerism that Joe Nocera was promoting (again) in the New York Times.  Obviously, Tucker's THL (Testing Hysteria Lite) has resonated with the neolibs as a way to stave off the revolution against testing, while preserving its worst features and maintaining the attack on collective bargaining and due process.  Here is a key Tucker conclusion tucked into his r

3 by Jim Horn / 1d 

69 Hoops and No Appeal: Teacher Observation--Memphis Style

Point one that has to be remembered: half of Tennessee teacher evaluations are based on invalid, unreliable, and unfair test scores.  The other half is based on observations. Teachers who worked for months on a new observation process last year were eventually dismissed when they disagreed with the two most outrageous aspects of CorpEd's recipe for disaster: 1) an observation checklist with 69 ite

2 by Jim Horn / 1d 

SEP 03

Kevin Carey, Logically Adrift

Kevin Carey and the billionaire patrons of CorpEd who pay him to record his thought disorders in the New York Times are moving on from K-12 to more fertile education grounds to make money and to impose their idiocy.  Watch out, higher ed. With more and more young adults graduating from college with fewer good jobs available to them and the next generation of workers, the new normal for college gra

by Jim Horn / 2d 

SEP 02

Education Post: CorpEd's New Propaganda Sheet

Brought to you by Broad, Bloomberg, the Waltons, and an unnamed oligarch, the world's biggest edu-losers have hit upon a solution to prop up their self-serving and dysfunctional house of cards.From WaPo: By Lyndsey Layton September 1  Spend any time on Twitter or in the blogosphere and the national debate about public education quickly resembles a schoolyard brawl, complete with taunts, name-c

4 by Jim Horn / 3d 

Weingarten Now Blames Membership for Supporting Her Tyrannical Promotion of Common Core

In another cowardly move to avoid more public ridicule, Randi now blames her own manufactured delegate manipulation at the Los Angeles convention for her undying support of the Gates Core.

4 by Jim Horn / 3d 

Testing Hysteria Lite, by Marc Tucker

If you were to believe the spin in the New York Times the other day, you would think that Marc Tucker, who has long been Hillary Clinton's main man on education issues, had decided that high stakes testing was a thing of the past: "Tucker would not abolish tests, but he would have fewer of them. And they would have a different purpose." I downloaded Joe Nocera's new Tucker bible, Fixing

4 by Jim Horn / 3d 

SEP 01

Durham Schools Cutting Ties with Teach for America

A day to celebrate!  From the Herald-Sun:Aug. 30, 2014 @ 05:51 PM Gregory Childress DURHAM —The Durham school district will honor its current contract with Teach For America, but the national teacher training program’s future with Durham Public Schools is up in the air. The school board voted 6-1 last week to honor its commitment to TFA teachers, including five hired to work for DPS this school

by Jim Horn / 4d 

AUG 31

Lee County Board Member, Mary Fischer, Wants to Change Her Vote at 8:30 AM Tuesday Morning

Clip from News-Press.com:Opt-out may be a thing of the past.Lee County School Board member Mary Fischer said Friday afternoon that she changed her mind about the benefits of opting out, calling for the board to rescind the motion at a special school board meeting.Fischer, who served as the tiebreaker at Wednesday's 3-2 vote, called for the meeting to discuss repealing the sweeping decision. The me

6 by Jim Horn / 5d 

KIPP Must Get "Municipal Solid Waste Development Permit" Before Opening New School

In 2013 KIPP San Antonio bought a former sewing factory that was located on a solid waste disposal site as the venue for its next San Antonio corporate reform school.  KIPP paid the company that owned the toxic site over $3 million in money that was funneled through a holding company in Delaware. Below are two pages from the agreement.  Noteworthy is the bolded language on the second page, which r

2 by Jim Horn / 5d 

Citizen Jack's compendium of teacher reviews of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Empire

"They don't tolerate what we tolerate," she said several times. What is it HSA doesn't tolerate? According to my co-worker: disruptive children and parents who don't play an active role in their child's education. — Brian Jones"Jack," a frequent commenter on Professor Diane Ravitch's site, sent me the following compendium of reviews from a website that allows employees to rate

3 by Robert D. Skeels ... / 5d 

AUG 30

I Wish Richard Kahlenberg Could Be Right, But . . .

In the August 30 NYTimes, Richard Kahlenberg and Halley Potter offer us a pipe dream of a high performing charter school world, one with diverse student populations and unionized faculty, where pedagogical innovation and shared governance are realities of everyday life.   Sadly, Kahlenberg and Potter offer a thinnest sprinkle of evidence that either integrated or unionized charter schools are anyt

1 by Jim Horn / 6d hide  //  save

Obama Awards Contract to Student Loan Predators Who Swindled 60,000 Veteran Families

Sallie Mae has a long, dirty history (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) of preying on those dependent upon student loans for a college education.  Recently, the dirty bastards spun off a company, which according to Forbes, is really the old, rotten version of Sallie Mae that we have come to hate:The new company which is being spun out – Navient – is equivalent to the old Sallie Mae. It

2 by Jim Horn / 6d 

All Week 9-6-14 @ THE CHALK FACE

@ THE CHALK FACE : 

All Week @ THE CHALK FACE 

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Join Drs. Shaun Johnson and Tim Slekar 

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Call in to speak live with Tim and Shaun during the show, (805) 727-7111. 

You can also listen to our Monday "Sunday-Replay" at 7PM EST, and re-broadcasts of the archives every Tuesday and Thursday at 7PM EST.

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Video: Is Lafayette Parish Schools Selling a “Visual Strategy” or Common Core?

Let’s examine a program known as Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). They’ve been around for a while. It is important to note that VTS predates test-driven education “reform,” both the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB): VTS is a well-known program developed by Abigail Housen and Philip Yenawine more than twenty years ago, […]

2 by deutsch29 / 39min 

Ravitch Warms to Tuckerism: Can Randi Be Far Ahead?

Posted September 4 at Schools Matter. I posted the other day on the new (old) Tuckerism that Joe Nocera was promoting (again) in the New York Times.   Obviously, Tucker’s THL (Testing Hysteria Lite) has resonated with the neolibs as a way to stave off the revolution against testing, while preserving its worst features and maintaining […]

4 by Jim Horn / 1d 

SEP 02

Education Post: A Sorry Attempt to Repackage Privatization as “Conversation”

There is a test-score-driven, privatizing war on public schools and on the teaching profession. It is no secret that those chiefly financing the war stand above the chaos they create via their “philanthropy.” In short, they use their billions in order to promote their own ideal of American education privatization. And it seems that they […]

16 by deutsch29 / 3d 

Lessons To Be Learned from Elizabeth Green’s Building a Better Teacher

Elizabeth Green’s Building a Better Teacher contributes explicitly and implicitly to two key school reform debates. Although I’m not fully convinced by her main argument, she makes a great case that we can build a better teacher. The implicit issue is whether a concerted effort to improve teacher quality could drive reforms in high-poverty schools […]

3 by John Thompson / 3d 

SEP 01

Gates Grant to “Further Hardwire the Common Core Curriculum” ??

One way to ensure permanence in the field of electronics is to “hardwire”– which means to “permanently connect.” In electronics, “hardwiring” refers to circuitry. For billionaire public education purchaser Bill Gates, circuitry and mass education, it’s all the same. Bill Gates has already likened the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to circuitry, with the moronic […]

19 by deutsch29 / 4d 

A Tale of Two Students

This is a guest post from Loy Gross, upstate New York parent and advocate.   Proponents of Common Core State Standards and the New York tests associated with them try to convince us they are necessary. They say the standards make students college and career ready, and the New York tests provide an accurate measure […]

95 by Chris Cerrone / 4d 

The practice of lesson plan review

Beginning my second year back in the classroom, I am once again becoming aware of the obligatory lesson plan review by administration. I have no problem with this in theory, but I am curious as to the overall value of this practice. In many cases, schools are staffed by a lot of people who teach […]

24 by Shaun Johnson / 4d 

Dear PTA,

Dear ___________________ (Insert District/School PTA President’s name), Please accept my donation of $_____  to our school Parent Teacher Association.  I/We truly appreciate the dedication and time that our local PTA devotes to enhancing the educational and social opportunities for our children and their school. I/We are choosing to donate money to our school’s PTA as […]

100+ by Chris Cerrone / 4d 

AUG 31

EdNext and the “Promise” of “Charter Choice”–But Let’s Not Mention the FBI

I have written a couple of posts of late regarding the results of Education Next’s 2014 public opinion survey, especially as concerns EdNext’s and its editor-in-chief Paul Peterson’s attempts to sell the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to a public that is only half aware of CCSS– and with the half who are aware increasingly rejecting those […]

6 by deutsch29 / 5d 

The Soap Opera of Teacher “Tenure” in Louisiana and New York

I am a tenured, career public school teacher. As such, I realize I am Public Enemy Number One to the fiscally-well-backed, non-teaching finger-pointers who call themselves “education reformers.” If only I could be fired without recourse, American education would no longer be “failing”; the security of my country would be certain, and we would once […]

4 by deutsch29 / 5d hide  //  save

A Respectful Revolution: Questioning Union Practice as an Act of Loyalty

The most revolutionary act one can engage in is to tell the truth. -Howard Zinn        Does loyalty to one’s union require blind faith? Must one eschew raising questions and concerns to demonstrate solidarity? Over the past few weeks, I have asked myself these questions. Certainly, any organization worth protecting is worth holding up to […]

200+ by biancatanis / 5d 

To all the cynics out there about the “ice bucket challenge”

Yes, I’ve read the critiques. I get it. I actually never thought I’d actually do one, especially since I wasn’t nominated. But then school started, and I thought that this would set an interesting example for students. So, I did it, with a nomination of another staff member and a promise of a $100 donation […]

2 by Shaun Johnson / 5d