9-16-14 Hemlock on the Rocks

Hemlock on the Rocks:

Gloria Romero: Email retention essential for L.A. school district - The Orange County Register

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/district-635168-emails-lausd.html Gloria Romero: Email retention essential for L.A. school district Things seem to just keep disappearing in California's largest school district, Los Angeles Unified. First there was the revelation that iPads purchased for students were "missing," uncovering the bungled rollout plan. That was followed with news that the

by Rene Diedrich / 3min hide  //  save

What if LAUSD teachers strike and the administrators have to teach? - Los Angeles Public Education | Examiner.com

http://www.examiner.com/article/what-if-lausd-teachers-strike-and-the-administrators-have-to-teach What if LAUSD teachers strike and the administrators have to teach? The school district gets paid for each student in school. So, if the teachers go on strike, parents will be encouraged to have their children attend school. The district spokespeople will contend that everything will be in order and

by Rene Diedrich / 1h 

Armored Vehicle, Grenade Launchers At Disposal Of LAUSD Police Force « CBS Los Angeles

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/09/15/armored-tank-grenade-launchers-at-disposal-of-lausd-police-force/ Related Tags: LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Los Angeles Unified School District police officials are considering whether they need the armored vehicle and grenade launchers they received from the U.S. military. The military hardware at the disposal of LAUSD police officers includes a 20-foot-l

1 by Rene Diedrich / 1h 

Do You Have VIABLE Complaints Against LAUSD? Check this out ....

Teaching Community, Have you filled out your Grand Jury Complaint Form asking for theLos Angeles Grand Jury to investigate Superintendent Deasy forabuse of power ? If not review the forms attached.1) Grand Jury Complaint Example Form with 2nd Page Instructions2) Blank Grand Jury Complaint Form (to be printed out for mass dissemination) A) Any adult can file a complaint. Superintendent Deasy has wa

1 by Rene Diedrich / 8h hide  //  save

State Superintendent of Public Instruction : CANDIDATES FORUM 9-17-14 7PM

by Rene Diedrich / 9h 

Neoliberal Ascendancy: infiltration -consolidation

by Rene Diedrich / 9h 

9-16-14 Hemlock on the Rocks

Hemlock on the Rocks: Common Core: It Seemed Like a Good Idea Until It Existeddeutsch29 posted: "In 2008, Education Next asked 3,200 respondents (700 of whom were public school teachers) about their thoughts on having "the same set of educational standards" in order to "hold schools accountable." Respondents were divided into sub-samples and asked on" Respond to this

by mike simpson / 8h 

9-16-14 Curmudgucation - Research + Politics = Bad News

CURMUDGUCATION:

Research + Politics = Bad News

At the Fordham's flypaper blog, Andy Smarick has some sobering news. Yes, Smarick is from the reformster camp, but what he reports this week is concerning to anybody who cares about education in this country.Smarick is reporting about the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the government agency responsible for gathering and sorting the vast ocean of data related to American schools.

2 by Peter Greene / 1h 

Brookings Hits the Bathroom Scale

When it comes to amateurs dabbling in education, it's hard to beat the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings. Perhaps it's inevitable that economists want to weigh in education, since economics is another area in which everybody and his brother believes themselves expert.But Thomas Kane offers some grade A baloney with a side of ill-considered metaphor with "Never Diet Without a Bathr

5 by Peter Greene / 36min 

TPM & the Anti-Core Attack Problem

Over at Talking Points Memo, Conor P. Williams uses the pushback against Campbell Brown as a jumping off point for addressing what he diagnoses as an anti-core ad hominem attack problem.In the attacks sites, the heated rhetoric, the strong language, Williams sees an echo of the virulent opposition to She Who Will Not Be Named. And he draws a line to his own experience, in which he finds anti-core

1 by Peter Greene / 15min

Choice Finance Fantasies (Part II)

I love the internet. In particular, I love the way it allows for conversations to break out between people who would never meet or interact in real life. This is one of those conversations.First, I wrote this piece about what I see as some fallacies in the ideas behind choice financing. Soon afterwards, Neerav Kingsland wrote this response at the blog reliquishment. Kingsland is the former CEO of

12 by Peter Greene / 4h 

9-15-14 Curmudgucation - Granddad Learns About The Common Core

CURMUDGUCATION: Granddad Learns About The Common CoreAs your grandad would not say, "OMG!"The media group 617 has produced a video in support of the Core that is apparently intended to embarrass its opponents into silence. It has decidedly not worked out that way-- you will have a hard time finding the video, which seems to have suffered its own attack of embarrassment, but you can read

by mike simpson / 8h 

9-16-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:

Like Summer Never Happened

Someone at school said to me today "We've been back 11 days and it feels like we've been back for months."I said I felt the same way.Anybody else out there feeling like summer never happened?Bloomberg's gone, Cuomo's going to be lucky to escape prison, Obama's education reform agenda is coming apart, and yet so much of the nonsense at school continued unabated.Meeting after meeting, eval

by reality-based edu... / 1h 

Big Loss For Cuomo

The losses are mounting for Governor Cuomo:In a blow to the Cuomo administration – and a big win for the environmental community – the EPA has rejected almost all of the controversial funding approved by the Environmental Facilities Corp. for projects related to building a new Tappan Zee Bridge, deeming them ineligble for funding from revolving loan fund intended to pay for clean water initiatives

by reality-based edu... / 12min 

Charter School Advocates Sue New York State For More Money

What Governor Cuomo did for NYC charter schools by forcing the city to either find space for charters or pony up rent for private space?Charter advocates want that same advantage state-wide:A lawsuit filed by a group of charter-school supporters alleges that a chronic funding gap between charter schools and traditional public schools violates the state constitution and disproportionately hurts min

1 by reality-based edu... / 3h 

9-15-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School: Cuomo Had Black, Hispanic Troopers Removed From His Security ContingentAnother week, another Cuomo scandal:A month before Andrew Cuomo was elected governor in 2010, his top aides met privately with two State Police officials and proposed systematically replacing members of the governor's protective unit, including more than a dozen black troopers who suspected they were remo

by mike simpson / 8h 

Schools Open In Philadelphia, But Crisis Drags On | janresseger

Schools Open In Philadelphia, But Crisis Drags On | janresseger:

Schools Open In Philadelphia, But Crisis Drags On

Posted on September 16, 2014 by janresseger

Superintendent William Hite opened school in Philadelphia on September 8—based, it seems, on hope and a prayer.  It can’t be said that he could really even count on the good faith of the Pennsylvania general assembly, whose members went home for their late summer break without even passing enabling legislation for the local school district to levy a $2-per-pack cigarette tax to help close what remains an $81 million budget deficit.

The state legislature returned to Harrisburg yesterday, September 15, and, according to thePhiladelphia Inquirer, the House is expected to vote this week on the proposed legislation to permit the local cigarette tax.  Assuming House passage, the bill will then move to the state senate.

It is astounding that the financial morass created by the state of Pennsylvania for one of our nation’s largest school districts—and one that has been under state control since 2001—is not really being addressed.  William Green, chairman of the state’s own appointed School Reform Commission that functions like a school board, has been standing with Superintendent Hite in protest of the state’s policies, but to no avail.

When Hite announced on August 15 that the school district would gamble on future legislative action come mid-September, he did so, according to Education Week‘s “District Dossier” blog, by making cuts to programs that include: elimination of high school transportation for students within two miles of school, reduced services for 300 students pursuing multiple pathway to graduation, elimination of staff development for teachers even at schools facing severe challenges, cuts to cleaning and repairs in school buildings, elimination of 34 school police, and $800,000 in administrative cuts.  This is on top of the layoffs of thousands of teachers over the past two years and the closure of 24 school buildings in the spring of 2013. The Philadelphia Public School Notebook reports that Superintendent Hite intends the cuts he made in August to save $32 million; he hopes to restore some of these services if the cigarette tax can be enacted.

No one really knows how much the proposed cigarette tax would generate. The Notebookreports the cigarette tax is projected to provide $49 million this school year; according toSchools Open In Philadelphia, But Crisis Drags On | janresseger:

Nine years after Katrina, we’re still asking the wrong questions about education | The Hechinger Report

Nine years after Katrina, we’re still asking the wrong questions about education | The Hechinger Report:

Nine years after Katrina, we’re still asking the wrong questions about education

By Andre Perry

“Is the educational system better now than it was pre-Katrina?” It’s the question I hear more than any other. But the typical responses around test score growth miss how we should measure school performance in New Orleans.

It’s just over nine years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in August 2005, and we’re still asking the wrong questions.

Rusted scissors, coins and other debris sit on the floor of an elementary school in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans, La. File Photo. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

The operative question is are people in poverty better prepared for a disaster than before Katrina?I’m not talking about whether or not the city’s evacuation plan has improved. I’m asking if our impoverished neighbors have a greater likelihood of getting in cars, with gasoline, driving to North Louisiana, staying in hotels, eating, potentially enrolling in other schools or colleges and then eventually driving back to New Orleans, rebuilding their homes, getting business loans and having political influence to direct their own recovery?

In other words, is the realness of Katrina taken into consideration in our school reforms? Are we maximizing the opportunities that school reform gives us to equip New Orleanians for life? When you’ve been through a disaster like Katrina, preparedness is true to life.

We must close thecommunity gaps that make New Orleans the tale of two cities.

The nation looks to New Orleans for advice on education, but they need to be reminded why New Orleanians need better public schools. Around 100,000 people were held inside New Orleans, unable to escape for days. But let’s be clear, if Katrina didn’t barrel down the Gulf, a high percentage of that number couldn’t have left if they wanted to.

Floodwater didn’t trap 100,000 New Orleanians.

Katrina just exposed the greatest public policy disaster in the United States. It’s the same public policy disaster that lies in wait within many American cities. I used to say the failures of our educational system trapped largely black and brown bodies inside the Superdome and city. While the­re isn’t research that can tell us what school type those who were forced to huddle in the Superdome attended. It’s safe to say public schools failed them. However, policy failures in transportation, healthcare, policing and housing joined education to limit people’s ability to get out of harms way.

Over the last few months, I’ve released columns in the Washington Post and the Hechinger Report that essentially challenge if New Orleans and education reform are maximizing their opportunities to address what really traps people. These pieces have been met with extreme praise or criticism. The common theme among the criticisms is that schools can’t and shouldn’t treat all social ills.

Likewise, I’ve been told that school reform must focus on the needs of the child. As one person wrote Nine years after Katrina, we’re still asking the wrong questions about education | The Hechinger Report:

Inequitable Teacher Salaries Studied by Arkansas Legislature | EduSanity

Inequitable Teacher Salaries Studied by Arkansas Legislature | EduSanity:



INEQUITABLE TEACHER SALARIES STUDIED BY ARKANSAS LEGISLATURE

On September 9th I picked up a copy of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and read a story about teacher salaries titled “Lawmakers Study Salaries for Educators.” Of course this is something that I care about not only because I used to be a teacher and earned one of those for five years but also because I help prepare teachers at the University of Arkansas for careers in education, careers in which they’ll be compensated for the good work they do.



Let’s start by dispelling any myths: secondary English teachers work harder than any other teachers and they have more planning, reading, and responding (not grading) to do—by far—than any other discipline. Since I used to be an English teacher I’m probably biased, but I stayed up all night responding to papers with some frequency, averaging about four hours of sleep per night during the school week. After each paper I symbolically ran my fingers over the top of my head in a downward motion, my thinning hair thinning right in front of my eyes onto the students’ papers. I’d then tally in the upper corner of the paper how many individual hairs each took—the all time record was a six-page single spaced mess that cost me 22 hairs.



jason-alexander-george-costanza-baldI’ll blame my baldness on those papers, but what really made me lose hair was when I paid bills at the end of each month. Maybe I should say that instead of pay bills, I figured out which bills I could pay and which bills could be put off. I worked second and third jobs, taught summer school, coached football, debate, forensics, and even sponsored the class of 2004 for four years. Supplementing my all-consuming teaching job with other ways of making a meager 300/year stipend is, to date, some of the hardest money I’ve ever earned; my work history includes building fences, machining metal in a machine shop, hauling and stacking alfalfa hay, and mixing for a muffin company, a job which involved an 800 pound mixer and countless pallets of 50lb bags of flour and sugar.



Teaching is a wonderful career, and I’m honored to still be involved Inequitable Teacher Salaries Studied by Arkansas Legislature | EduSanity:

How the media help spread Cami’s lies | Bob Braun's Ledger

How the media help spread Cami’s lies | Bob Braun's Ledger:

How the media help spread Cami’s lies

It’s a lie. Some more polite than I might call it a half-truth or just a technical lie but I have had experiences with Anderson lies–remember how she denied sending out that letter about how kids would become criminals if they stayed home from school, the one she denied sending out? How she insisted she lived in Newark?

You have to hand this to Cami Anderson–she knows how to control the main-stream media. And not just her besotted swain at The Star-Ledger who often acts as if she were the Lady Guinevere and he was Sir Lancelot galloping to save her from burning at the stake. On NJTV, the Adubato/Christie television enterprise that won’t even talk about how The Star-Ledger has left Newark, Anderson is treated like a Mel Brooks version of an oracle whose evasive answers cannot be challenged. “How many parents stayed home from school the first day?” the anchor asked. Cami  answered a different question and the anchor obediently never brought the question up again.

Sigh. This was the profession I believed stood between freedom and tyranny. Now I watch The Star-Ledger morph into a daily campaign sheet for Chris Christie, spending scarce resources to send reporters trailing after him, delivering up breathless  reports about how he wowed them Arkansas to Mexico. Our Jersey guy could be president! Wowzah! Think of the clicks!

Sadly, even National Public Radio (NPR) gets a case of the Jell-O legs when it reports on Cami Anderson and her big strong Jersey Guy, Chris Christie. Recently, it allowed Anderson to repeat what she had told many media during impromptu press conferences on the first day of school.

This lie: Enrollment is up by 1,000 students.

A reader sent in this response to her lie and I am passing it on to you:

“There was a report on NPR yesterday and today which essentially honored How the media help spread Cami’s lies | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Chicago parents give school closures a poor report card | Al Jazeera America

Chicago parents give school closures a poor report card | Al Jazeera America:

Chicago parents give school closures a poor report card

A year after nearly 50 schools closed, overcrowding and safety are big concerns

CHICAGO — It’s the end of the first day of school, and Irene Robinson is making the rounds outside Anthony Overton Elementary, in Bronzeville, a historically black neighborhood on the city’s South Side. She shakes hands with other parents and stops a young boy running down the block: “Did you think you was going to walk by without giving me a hug?” she asks.

In the school’s windows is the reflection of children getting off the bus, and the summer air buzzes with breathless young voices. With the hubbub, it’s easy to forget that the building has been empty for the past year.

Now, Overton is just a bus stop on the route that former students travel to get to their new schools.

“I have nine grandchildren who go to the Chicago Public Schools, but six of them was kicked out of their school because they closed Anthony Overton,” says Robinson in a voice that quavers. She was interviewed last year by Al Jazeera America about her opposition to the closures; one year later, Robinson is just as angry.

Irene Robinson in the abandoned playground of Anthony Overton Elementary.

 Yana Kunichoff

Despite months of parent and union protests, the CPS boardvoted to shutter 49 schools in May 2013 — most of which, like Overton, were located in the city’s impoverished South and West Side neighborhoods. Of the 12,000 students who were affected by this decision, 90 percent are African-American.

The Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force, a group appointed by the Illinois state legislature to bring accountability to Chicago’s school closings and consolidations, called it “the largest downsizing of Chicago’s public school system ever undertaken.”

CPS is the third-largest school district in the country, and it has long struggled to equip its schools, which now number 665, down from more than 700 last year. Most were shut down, with students shifted elsewhere, while others were consolidated; according to the district, the decision was made to fix a $1 billion budget deficit and to better redistribute resources among schools in low-income areas. But one year later, the closing costs have overrun their budget and CPS insists it remains in a financial crisis, which has led to more cuts for neighborhood schools.

Parents who were assured that the school closures would provide more resources and a better education for their children say the promised benefits have yet to materialize, and many feel their children are worse off now than they were before.

Meanwhile, the number of charter and selective-enrollment schools has grown: more than 33 charter-school campuses have been opened since 2011, with seats for 23,000 students, according to the task force.

Pauline Lipman, a professor who studies education reform at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says, “The closures have created root shock — the same kind of effect as pulling a plant out of the ground.”

Overcrowded classrooms

Overton Elementary now serves as a bus stop. 

Yana Kunichoff

For CPS, whether a school is eligible for closure is a matter of math. The district uses a complicated formula that relies primarily on the number of children per classroom, a calculation that came under fire for not Chicago parents give school closures a poor report card | Al Jazeera America:

Teachers For Social Justice: Calling Educators and Organizations for TSJ Curriculum Fair 2014!

Teachers For Social Justice: Calling Educators and Organizations for TSJ Curriculum Fair 2014!:

Calling Educators and Organizations for TSJ Curriculum Fair 2014!

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014 LEAVE A COMMENT

TSJ Curriculum Fair 2014 Is Back! 1. Exhibit Curriculum, or 2. Have a Resource Table, or 3. Present a Workshop! Applications Available Below!

Do you want to exhibit your curriculum at the TSJ CF? Click here to apply. What does it mean to "exhibit" curriculum at the CF? Each teacher/exhibitor gets a table at the Fair to set up her/his materials. Many teachers exhibit curriculum by bringing a tri-fold board (like those science fair boards) and bring lesson or unit plans, student work, assignments, artifacts, video, whatever, to share their curriculum ideas. Many bring their students along who sit at the table and explain the work with their teachers. The CF is set up so that we can browse the "exhibits," talk with each other, and share lessons. Do you want to present a workshop? Click here to apply. What are the workshops? Although the main focus of the CF is person-to-person contact through the exhibitors at their tables, we also have a limited number of workshops. These range from curricular innovations about social justice pedagogy to, for example, using multicultural children's literature to organizing for educational justice. These provide more in-depth, interactive ways for teachers and students to share what they've been learning and doing in their classrooms, and for activists/organizers to create dialogue and spaces for learning and for all of us to bring democracy to education and Chicago. These are our schools! Do you want to have a resource table? Click here What's the difference between an "exhibit" and a "resource table?" Exhibitors are usually teachers who have taught a lesson, unit, or project, or who have some developed ideas to teach. We really encourage classroom teachers who are doing this work. Resource tables are usually for organizations that produce curriculum and resources for teachers and want to share them w/ others.

Shanker Blog » The Superintendent Factor

Shanker Blog » The Superintendent Factor:

The Superintendent Factor

Posted by Matthew Di Carlo on September 16, 2014

One of the more visible manifestations of what I have called “informal test-based accountability” — that is, how testing results play out in the media and public discourse — is the phenomenon of superintendents, particularly big city superintendents, making their reputations based on the results during their administrations.

In general, big city superintendents are expected to promise large testing increases, and their success or failure is to no small extent judged on whether those promises are fulfilled. Several superintendents almost seem to have built entire careers on a few (misinterpreted) points in proficiency rates or NAEP scale scores. This particular phenomenon, in my view, is rather curious. For one thing, any district leader will tell you that many of their core duties, such as improving administrative efficiency, communicating with parents and the community, strengthening districts’ financial situation, etc., might have little or no impact on short-term testing gains. In addition, even those policies that do have such an impact often take many years to show up in aggregate results.

In short, judging superintendents based largely on the testing results during their tenures seems misguided. A recentreport issued by the Brown Center at Brookings, and written by Matt Chingos, Grover Whitehurst and Katharine Lindquist, adds a little bit of empirical insight to this viewpoint.

The authors look at several outcomes, including superintendent tenure (usually quite short), and I would, as usual, encourage you to read the entire report. But one of the main analyses is what is called a variance decomposition. Variance decompositions, put simply, partition the variation in a given outcome (in this case, math test scores among fourth and fifth graders in North Carolina between 2001 and 2010) into portions that can be (cautiously) attributed to various factors. For example, one might examine how much variation is statistically “explained” by students, schools, districts and teachers.

Chingos et al. include a “level” in their decomposition that is virtually never part of these exercises – the superintendent in office. A summary of the results is presented in the graph below, which is taken directly from the report.

As you can see, most of the variation in testing outcomes (52 percent) is found between students (this is unmeasured, unobserved variation, including measurement error). An additional 38.8 percent is “explained” by the Shanker Blog » The Superintendent Factor:

NYC Educator: The First Test

NYC Educator: The First Test:

The First Test

Yesterday I wrote a test to give my beginners on Thursday. It's mostly easy, I think. I'd like them to do well. But you never know. Today a kid walked in who appeared to know absolutely zero English. If he blows the test I won't count it. The thing is, kids walk in every single day. He's missed maybe two weeks. He can catch up, though.

But he's far from the last. I will get new kids in month two, three and four. I'll get new kids in May and June. And while they talk about differentiating instruction, you can only go so far. You can't, for example, go back to day one a hundred times. Differentiating, to me, is a function of treating students as individuals. You can't just address them as though they are a room of potted plants, though I wouldn't be surprised if the Gates Foundation funded a study investigating that possibility. After all, Bill thinks teachers should be replaced with DVDs.

You never know what to expect when you're teaching beginners. Kids are very different. The number one predictor of success, or lack thereof, is generally whether or not the kid wants to be here. Imagine you were 15 years old and your parents dragged you to China. Imagine you didn't want to go there. How would you feel, with all these people speaking some strange language, eating weird food, while all your friends and loved ones were on the other side of the world?

Kids who don't want to be here tend to flock to people from their own country. They're terribly annoyed by crazy teachers like me who insist they use nothing but English in my classroom. What a wasted NYC Educator: The First Test:

Opinion: Snapshot of Our Schools Offers Worrisome Glimpse of Class of 2027 - NJ Spotlight

Opinion: Snapshot of Our Schools Offers Worrisome Glimpse of Class of 2027 - NJ Spotlight:

OPINION: SNAPSHOT OF OUR SCHOOLS OFFERS WORRISOME GLIMPSE OF CLASS OF 2027

MARK WEBER | SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

My kids were well-served by New Jersey’s public education system, but can all parents say the same?

Mark Weber

I’m an elementary music teacher, and we have a funny tradition that starts each year at my school.

All of the “specials” teachers and staff meet out in front and greet our students on the first day as they get off of their buses. While the homeroom teachers are busy preparing for the all-important first morning of classes, the rest of us say hello to our returning students, usually with added comments about how much they’ve grown in the little more than two months since we last saw them.

But that’s not the tradition. That starts as soon as the kindergarteners, barely bigger than their backpacks and clinging to the bus’s stair rail, step onto the school grounds for the first time as enrolled students. You might mistake them for Hollywood stars on the red carpet, considering how many times they’re being photographed.

You see, it’s not enough for some parents to just take pictures of their 5-year-olds as they get on the bus for the first time at the end of their driveways; these parents also want pictures as their children come off the bus. So, right after they send their little ones on their way, they jump into their cars, drive (not too fast) to the school, and photograph the historic moment.

I can’t blame these moms and dads: I wanted to capture every important moment with my two sons when they were young. All children grow up way too fast, and a family’s milestones -- especially the big ones, like the first day of school -- come and go quickly.

This year, however, watching our parents beam with pride at their kindergarteners was especially poignant for me. This is my last year as a K-12 parent; my youngest son will graduate this June. As a parent, this year will see my last back-to-school night, my last band concert, and my last high school sports event. This spring, my son leaves all those things behind him as he enters adulthood. But my wife and I leave these things behind as well -- and with more than a little tinge of sadness, no doubt.

A part of me envies these younger parents. I won’t pretend my sons’ school careers didn’t have their difficult moments -- what child’s school years are perfect? -- but my memories of their schooling are largely happy, and a part of me wishes I could relive them. I am very grateful for the time and talents of the many fine educators who served my children over the years; their example is largely the model I use for my own teaching.

But as I watched these parents and their young children embark on their new public school careers, I must admit I’m also worried. It’s been a decade and a half since my oldest son entered kindergarten, and public education has seen some dramatic Opinion: Snapshot of Our Schools Offers Worrisome Glimpse of Class of 2027 - NJ Spotlight: