Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 1/2/15

CORPORATE ED REFORM

The New Gold | Save Maine Schools

The New Gold | Save Maine Schools: The New GoldOnly a short time ago, I thought my husband was being paranoid when he asked me if I’d read the security agreement for an app I was about to download.“Does it tell you how it will use your data?” he asked.I shrugged and told him to relax. What could they possible find out about me that would be of concern?A year or so later, I still have a tendency to

by mike simpson / 3h 

CURMUDGUCATION: Resolutions for USED

CURMUDGUCATION: Resolutions for USED:Resolutions for USEDAfter I earlier took a swipe at Acting Pretend Secretary of Education John King's resolutions for the new year, blogger, author, activist and fellow trombonist Jose Luis Vilson asked me what my resolutions would be, were I the Secretary of Education. It's a fun question, so here we go-- if hell froze over and I were writing the resolutions f

by mike simpson / 4h 

Education: Everybody’s Got A Price! Stand Up And Refuse! Awesome Video About Data Mining & Sharing | Exceptional Delaware

Education: Everybody’s Got A Price! Stand Up And Refuse! Awesome Video About Data Mining & Sharing | Exceptional Delaware: Education: Everybody’s Got A Price! Stand Up And Refuse! Awesome Video About Data Mining & SharingThis video is making the rounds today on Youtube and Social Media.  It is excellent and puts everything a lot of us bloggers have been warning about for a long time now. 

by mike simpson / 5h 

Jersey Jazzman: Return To Teachers Village, Part IV: What's It Costing Us?

Jersey Jazzman: Return To Teachers Village, Part IV: What's It Costing Us?: Return To Teachers Village, Part IV: What's It Costing Us?Here are links to all of the posts in this series:Part I - IntroductionPart II - The TeachersPart III - The StudentsPart IV - What's It Costing Us? * * *Q: How much taxpayer money is flowing to Newark's Teachers Village?A: Quite a bit.All school districts, including

by mike simpson / 5h 

Why the new education secretary is a lightning rod - The Washington Post

Why the new education secretary is a lightning rod - The Washington Post: Why the new education secretary is a lightning rod A look at the home page of the U.S. Education Department confirms that Arne Duncan, education secretary for the past seven years, is officially gone and his successor, John B. King, Jr. is now in charge. But King, who joined the department in early 2015 as “senior advisor de

by mike simpson / 6h 

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Big Bucks, Big Data and Big Kafka

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Big Bucks, Big Data and Big Kafka: PA: Big Bucks, Big Data and Big KafkaFor the "Maybe You Got Into the Wrong Line of Work" file, courtesy of the fine people at Opt Out Pennsylvania.Pennsylvania's Department of Education late in 2015 (back when our legislature's failure to pass a budget was just a disaster and not yet an appalling, embarrassing disaster) awarded a gra

by mike simpson / 7h 

Schools Matter: Value Added Modeling Goes to Court

Schools Matter: Value Added Modeling Goes to Court: Value Added Modeling Goes to CourtWith numerous court cases filed to challenge the fairness, reliability, and/orvalidity of the various mis-applications of value-added modeling (VAM) to reward and punish teachers, it is appropriate to consider the huge body of evidence that may be shaped to drive a stake through the heart of the monstrous chimera

by mike simpson / 8h 

Students, Not Standards: Calling for Solidarity in 2016 | the becoming radical

Students, Not Standards: Calling for Solidarity in 2016 | the becoming radical: Students, Not Standards: Calling for Solidarity in 2016Many years ago, I was sitting in the last class session of the capstone secondary ELA methods course as part of my M.Ed. The guest speaker that day was my high school English teacher, the man responsible for my primary career path, Lynn Harrill.Lynn was friends wit

by mike simpson / 8h 

CURMUDGUCATION: John King's New Year

CURMUDGUCATION: John King's New Year: John King's New YearNew Acting Pretend Secretary of Education John King hit the ground running with New Year's wishes and this New year's tweetAs 2016 begins, I resolve to work hard for students, teachers, and anyone seeking a better life through education pic.twitter.com/8h8XqfkWXT— John King (@JohnKingatED) January 1, 2016Now, it's not that anybody is watchi

by mike simpson / 8h 

In D.C. schools, the racial gap is a chasm, not a crack - The Washington Post

In D.C. schools, the racial gap is a chasm, not a crack - The Washington Post: In D.C. schools, the racial gap is a chasm, not a crackThe final page has been turned on D.C. Public Schools’ 2015 calendar. But 2016 begins with the same uncompromising problem: the school system’s huge racial achievement gap.Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson called the results of last year’s standardized tests “soberi

by mike simpson / 8h 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Were Rahm & Rauner drinking Cuba Libres together in Havana?

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Were Rahm & Rauner drinking Cuba Libres together in Havana?: Were Rahm & Rauner drinking Cuba Libres together in Havana?Cuba libreSend lawyers, guns and money. The shit has hit the fan. -- Warren ZevonHappy New Year to all.And a special New Year's welcome back from Cuba goes out to both Mayor Emanuel andGOV. RAUNER. Got that last piece from reliable sources w

by mike simpson / 8h 

It's Not Easy Teaching Special Ed : NPR Ed : NPR

It's Not Easy Teaching Special Ed : NPR Ed : NPR: It's Not Easy Teaching Special EdIt's getting harder and harder to find quality special education teachers, which is why 49 out of 50 states report shortages.Why? It's a tough sell.Even if you're up for the low pay and noisy classrooms, special education adds another challenge: crushing paperwork.This is something I understand first hand. You see,

by mike simpson / 9h 

A tale of two school districts – and the N.C. legislature | The Charlotte Observer

A tale of two school districts – and the N.C. legislature | The Charlotte Observer: A tale of two school districts – and the N.C. legislature This is the tale of two cities – or more accurately, two school districts – where the majority of students are poor.The first is the Achievement School District in Tennessee, a district of 29 low-performing schools in Nashville and Memphis overseen by one su

by mike simpson / 9h 

Bringing Democracy to our K-12 Public Schools | Dissident Voice

Bringing Democracy to our K-12 Public Schools | Dissident Voice: Bringing Democracy to our K-12 Public SchoolsIf graded in terms of encouraging and developing a well-rounded and informed citizenry in a democratic country, the best most public schools I am familiar with would be a “D”.  Put simply and bluntly, our public primary and secondary schools, our community colleges and universities are bur

by mike simpson / 9h 

Entrance examination system is not working the way | Breaking News | 20160101 | Apple Daily

Entrance examination system is not working the way | Breaking News | 20160101 | Apple Daily: Entrance examination system is not working the wayAuthor: Li Yang (General Federation of National Union of Teachers Professional Development Fellow) Current Taiwan filled with a strong "self intimidation" atmosphere. Recently, presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen proposed a "comprehensive sch

by mike simpson / 9h 

YESTERDAY

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 1/1/15

CORPORATE ED REFORMNYC Public School Parents: Part II of the inBloom saga: what NYSED emails to the Gates Foundation from 2011 revealNYC Public School Parents: Part II of the inBloom saga: what NYSED emails to the Gates Foundation from 2011 reveal:Part II of the inBloom saga: what NYSED emails to the Gates Foundation from 2011 revealA few days ago I posted Part I of this saga, about how NYSED offi

by mike simpson / 23h 

The New Gold | Save Maine Schools

The New Gold | Save Maine Schools:

The New Gold

Only a short time ago, I thought my husband was being paranoid when he asked me if I’d read the security agreement for an app I was about to download.

“Does it tell you how it will use your data?” he asked.

I shrugged and told him to relax. What could they possible find out about me that would be of concern?

A year or so later, I still have a tendency to give out personal information with far too much haste, but – for the most part, at least – I no longer think my husband is paranoid when it comes to concerns over data collection.

 (You’re welcome, dear.)

The fact is, big data = BIG money  – this article even goes so far as to call it “the new gold”– and where opportunities for profit exist, boundaries will be pushed as far as possible.

We are in uncharted territory, and – inconvenient though it may be – we need to be on our toes with this, lest we end up traveling down The New Gold | Save Maine Schools:

CURMUDGUCATION: Resolutions for USED

CURMUDGUCATION: Resolutions for USED:
Resolutions for USED

After I earlier took a swipe at Acting Pretend Secretary of Education John King's resolutions for the new year, blogger, author, activist and fellow trombonist Jose Luis Vilson asked me what my resolutions would be, were I the Secretary of Education. It's a fun question, so here we go-- if hell froze over and I were writing the resolutions for the Ed Secretary's office, here's what I would resolve:

That we will do everything possible to see that each community in America has the tools and support it needed to create and maintain the great local school system that it dreamed of.

That means local control, local decision-making, local vision of what the schools should be. Every single community in America is different, and that means that every school is different, with different needs, goals, resources and aspirations. And nobody knows all of those factors better than the people in that community. But not all communities have the resources and support needed to make their dreams real. We will make sure that the USED is there to get them those resources-- and that does not mean giving some corporation a contract to provide what we decide the community needs. We will not tell the community what they need; they will tell us. If that means a lot of corporate interests go hungry, so be it.

We will not be there to tell them what "great" must look like or what goals they must embrace, or else. We will be there to make sure that no school's vision denies basic principles of democracy or CURMUDGUCATION: Resolutions for USED:

Education: Everybody’s Got A Price! Stand Up And Refuse! Awesome Video About Data Mining & Sharing | Exceptional Delaware

Education: Everybody’s Got A Price! Stand Up And Refuse! Awesome Video About Data Mining & Sharing | Exceptional Delaware:

Education: Everybody’s Got A Price! Stand Up And Refuse! Awesome Video About Data Mining & Sharing

This video is making the rounds today on Youtube and Social Media.  It is excellent and puts everything a lot of us bloggers have been warning about for a long time now.  Parents, not just in Delaware but all over the country, ask your schools what data is being collected on your children.  Ask them what is being shared.  If they won’t give you the answer, keep moving up the chain: district, school board, state DOE, US DOE, as far as you want to take it.  You may be able to FOIA this information depending on your state laws.  This isn’t about helping kids become college and career ready.  It’s about the data, and big, BIG money!

Education: Everybody’s Got A Price! Stand Up And Refuse! Awesome Video About Data Mining & Sharing | Exceptional Delaware:

Jersey Jazzman: Return To Teachers Village, Part IV: What's It Costing Us?

Jersey Jazzman: Return To Teachers Village, Part IV: What's It Costing Us?:

Return To Teachers Village, Part IV: What's It Costing Us?

Here are links to all of the posts in this series:

Part I - Introduction
Part II - The Teachers
Part III - The Students
Part IV - What's It Costing Us?

 * * *

Q: How much taxpayer money is flowing to Newark's Teachers Village?

A: Quite a bit.

All school districts, including charter schools, are required by the state to file a Comprehensive Annual Financing Report (CAFR) with the NJDOE. All of my numbers below come from these documents, but before I get to them, I'd like to point out a specific paragraph from the 2014 CAFR for Great Oaks Charter School.

Keep in mind that Great Oaks both leases space from TV for its school, and pays to put up its "tutor corps" in TV housing units. The tutors are not certificated teachers; they are recent college graduates, paid through federal AmeriCorps grants, who take on part of the instructional load at the charter.

Here's how Great Oaks sees the future of Newark, and its part in it:

The City has experienced a surge of large-scale economic development projects initiated by the private sector over the last decade. The increasing number of businesses relocating to the area is expected to result in an increase in employment level, which could result in an increased tax base, both residential and industrial, and an increase in annual daily enrollment. The period of economic development and expansion is expected to continue which suggests that the Charter School will continue to prosper. As our enrollment increases we plan to lease additional facilities at our current location and possibly in surrounding areas in the City. [emphasis mine]

I find this quite telling: this charter school sees the potential positive change in Newark's economic fortunes going hand-in-hand with its own growth. They anticipate diverting

- See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2016/01/return-to-teachers-village-part-iv.html#sthash.8eFyqjZ1.dpuf

Why the new education secretary is a lightning rod - The Washington Post

Why the new education secretary is a lightning rod - The Washington Post:

Why the new education secretary is a lightning rod

 A look at the home page of the U.S. Education Department confirms that Arne Duncan, education secretary for the past seven years, is officially gone and his successor, John B. King, Jr. is now in charge. But King, who joined the department in early 2015 as “senior advisor delegated duties of deputy secretary of education” does not have the same exact title as Duncan. King is “acting education secretary” — and there are important reasons for that.

One is that he became a lightning rod in his last job, from which he was given a push by the governor of New York. As a result, it is likely it would be harder than usual for President Obama to secure Senate approval for his appointment, and so the “acting” designation allows King to do the job without it.

King came to the federal department via New York, where for 3½ years he had been the state’s education commissioner during a critical time in the state’s school reform efforts. King’s résumé is impressive. From his official biography:

Prior to his arrival at the Department, Dr. King had served since 2011 as the commissioner of education for the state of New York. In that role, he served as chief executive officer of the State Education Department and as president of the University of the State of New York, overseeing the State’s elementary and secondary schools (serving 3.1 million students), public, independent and proprietary colleges and universities, libraries, museums, and numerous other educational institutions. Dr. King was one of the nation’s youngest state education leaders at the time of his appointment and the first African-American and Puerto Rican to serve as New York State education commissioner.…

Dr. King earned a Bachelor of Arts in Government from Harvard University, a Master of Arts in the teaching of social studies from Columbia University’s Teachers College, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Doctor of Education degree in educational administrative practice from Columbia University’s Teachers College. Dr. King was a 1995 Truman Scholar and received the James Madison Memorial Fellowship for secondary-level teaching of American history, American government, and social studies. Prior to joining the Department, in February 2011, Dr. King was appointed by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to serve on the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission. In addition, Dr. King served on the board of New Leaders for New Schools from 2005 to 2009, and is a 2008 Aspen Institute-NewSchools Entrepreneurial Leaders for Public Education Fellow.

Dr. King’s life story is an extraordinary testament to the power of education. Both of Dr. King’s parents were career New York City public school educators, whose example serves as an enduring inspiration. Dr. King’s parents both died from illness by the time he was 12, and he struggled to cope with their loss as he moved between family members and schools. He credits New York City public school teachers — particularly his teachers at P.S. 276 in Canarsie and Mark Twain J.H.S. in Coney Island — for saving his life by providing transformative educational experiences and 

Why the new education secretary is a lightning rod - The Washington Post:

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Big Bucks, Big Data and Big Kafka

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Big Bucks, Big Data and Big Kafka:

PA: Big Bucks, Big Data and Big Kafka

For the "Maybe You Got Into the Wrong Line of Work" file, courtesy of the fine people at Opt Out Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania's Department of Education late in 2015 (back when our legislature's failure to pass a budget was just a disaster and not yet an appalling, embarrassing disaster) awarded a grant for theexpansion of the Pennsylvania Information Management System (PIMS).

The expansion is supposed to make the educator dashboard "more usable, enhance its functionality and increase dashboard adoption by stakeholders." In other words, the state has noticed that hardly anybody uses PIMS because it's a huge pain in the butt that yields little useful information but takes half of your planning period just to try to navigate.

The state would also like to "provide training to participating LEAs and have access to tools and professional support materials that assist them to better use data to support instructional decision-making." In other words, they would like us to use test results to decide what to do in our classroom.

Of course, part of the problem with using test data to drive instruction is that in PA, as in many states, the intellectual property interests of the test manufacturers are valued over the instructional interests of the schools, teachers, and students. Before we give the test, we all take sign an oath that we will not look at the test, and if we inadvertently see it, we will never ever reveal what we've seen or use it withCURMUDGUCATION: PA: Big Bucks, Big Data and Big Kafka:

Schools Matter: Value Added Modeling Goes to Court

Schools Matter: Value Added Modeling Goes to Court:

Value Added Modeling Goes to Court

With numerous court cases filed to challenge the fairness, reliability, and/orvalidity of the various mis-applications of value-added modeling (VAM) to reward and punish teachers, it is appropriate to consider the huge body of evidence that may be shaped to drive a stake through the heart of the monstrous chimera that the tobacco-chewing Bill Sanders conjured just over 30 years ago from his ag desk at the University of Tennessee.  The following excerpt from The Mismeasure of Education considers the reliability issue, alone.  The other elements of the VAM critique comprise the remainder of Part 3 of the book.

 

. . . . In 1983, William Sanders was a station statistician at the UT Agricultural Campus and an adjunct professor in UT’s College of Business.  Based on his own experimentation with modeling the growth of farm animals and crops, Sanders proposed a hypothetical and reductive question:  Can student achievement growth data be used to determine teacher effectiveness?  He then built a statistical model, ran the data of 6,890 Knox County students through his model and answered his own question with an unequivocal affirmative. Proceeding from this single study, Sanders’ claims went beyond the customary correlational relationship between or among variables that statisticians find as patterns or trends in data.  He pronounced that teachers not only contributed to the rate of student growth, but that teacher effectiveness was in fact the most important variable in the rate of student growth: 

If the purpose of educational evaluation is to improve the educational process, and if such improvement is characterized by improved academic growth of students, then the inclusion of measures of the effectiveness of schools, schools systems, and teachers in facilitating such growth is essential if the purpose is to be realized. Of these three, determining the effectiveness of individual Schools Matter: Value Added Modeling Goes to Court:

Students, Not Standards: Calling for Solidarity in 2016 | the becoming radical

Students, Not Standards: Calling for Solidarity in 2016 | the becoming radical:

Students, Not Standards: Calling for Solidarity in 2016

Many years ago, I was sitting in the last class session of the capstone secondary ELA methods course as part of my M.Ed. The guest speaker that day was my high school English teacher, the man responsible for my primary career path, Lynn Harrill.

Lynn was friends with the professor, who was then working at the state department of education, I believe.

Toward the end of the class, the professor asked what we wanted our students to know when they left our classes. That question was followed by lingering silence.

Ever the eager student, I said, “I want them to know themselves,” and I caught a glimpse of Lynn smiling widely.

Of course, that is what Lynn had taught me, although most people probably assumed it was reading and writing Lynn had so expertly given his students (which, by the way, was also true).

This moment—one of a very idealistic and naive young teacher, me—comes back to me often, and despite my many failures as a teacher, that grounding goal has always guided me. Not to be simplistic, but I teach students—that’s why I teach.

While reading Four Stories That Homework Tells Children About School, Learning, & Life, I was struck by “STORY #3: School Is More Important Than Other Pursuits/Interests/Activities.”

And now I have to investigate that memory again.

Yes, Lynn Harrill changed my life by being my sophomore and junior English teacher in high school. He was gracious, kind, and encouraging to a deeply insecure and anxious teen (me) who had decided he was a math and science person—because that is what school had told me.

Junior high English classes had been mostly draconian English teachers, grammar book exercises, and diagramming sentences. The “English” content of those classes was easy (I made As), but I loathed it all, even the texts we were assigned to read (much of which we did not read).

Now, before I launch into whining, let me be clear that my story is about how school failed me—but that because of my tremendous privilege (white, male and—according to traditional schooling and standardized tests—high verbal and mathematical intelligence), the Students, Not Standards: Calling for Solidarity in 2016 | the becoming radical:

CURMUDGUCATION: John King's New Year

CURMUDGUCATION: John King's New Year:

John King's New Year

New Acting Pretend Secretary of Education John King hit the ground running with New Year's wishes and this New year's tweet

As 2016 begins, I resolve to work hard for students, teachers, and anyone seeking a better life through education pic.twitter.com/8h8XqfkWXT

— John King (@JohnKingatED) January 1, 2016

Now, it's not that anybody is watching King carefully to see which way he's going to jump-- his tenure as education chief in New York State already tells us what to expect. He has an inspiring back story, from which he himself appears to have missed the most important lessons. He has ahealthy ego, but he is not so keen on dealing with the public. The first words of his twitter profile are "Taught HS social studies" but not "for only a couple of years in a charter school." King is a fine example of a test-and-punish, privatizing reformster policy leader.

His three resolutions are... well, interesting.

Working to ensure that every student in America-- regardless of zip code or background-- has the opportunities a high-quality education provides.

First, let's note what this doesn't say. It doesn't say "Making sure that every community is served by a great school in their own zip code."

Second, "working to ensure" is politician to "try real hard" which may be more realistic than saying, "we are going to do this" but is also less aspirational. Given the lofty aspirations that USED likes to set for teachers and students, it seems like a lowball.

Finally-- the opportunities a high-quality education provides. That's a lot to unlock. When a wealthy, well-connected scion of a wealthy, well-connected family lands a great job opportunity, was that opportunity provided by education, or something else? This is a statement that invokes "zip code and background," the new euphemism for "non-wealthy and non-white" that pretends that socio-economic issues descend like weather systems upon randomly selected neighborhoods-- it invokes all CURMUDGUCATION: John King's New Year:

In D.C. schools, the racial gap is a chasm, not a crack - The Washington Post

In D.C. schools, the racial gap is a chasm, not a crack - The Washington Post:

In D.C. schools, the racial gap is a chasm, not a crack

The final page has been turned on D.C. Public Schools’ 2015 calendar. But 2016 begins with the same uncompromising problem: the school system’s huge racial achievement gap.

Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson called the results of last year’s standardized tests “sobering.” How about painful?

The tests, known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exams, or PARCC,showed that just 25 percent of D.C. students in the third through eighth grades met or exceeded expectations on new standardized tests in English. Only 24 percent met a new math benchmark.

And that was the good news.

Were it not for white test-takers in this majority-minority school system, the results would have been even worse.

Overall English and math proficiency rates reached 25 percent and 24 percent, respectively, only because white students, who make up 12 percent of the school system, scored proficiency rates of 79 percent in English and 70 percent in math.

The stark truth: Black students, who constitute 67 percent of the school population, had a 17 percent proficiency rate in both English and math, trailing Hispanics, who comprise 17 percent of the school population and recorded proficiency rates of 21 percent in English and 22 percent in math.

Translation: Beginning at least in the third grade, an overwhelming majority of black students are on a track that leads in the wrong direction — away from college-level work or a career after high school graduation.

Let that sink in.

The picture isn’t better for the city’s high school students. Of those who took a new geometry test, only 10 percent met proficiency standards. Twenty-five percent met proficiency standards in the new English test.

Again, the presence of white students prevented the dismal high school results from being even worse. Fifty-two percent of white students scored proficient or better in geometry, while 82 percent were college-ready in English.

Stack those rates against the 8 percent of Hispanic students and 4 percent of black students scoring proficient in geometry, and the 25 percent of Hispanic and 20 percent of black students reaching that mark in English.

Anyway you slice it, in this multiracial school system, black students bring up the rear.

Don’t blame the tests. They measure where the students are. Besides, the new standardized tests weren’t instruments imposed on the city from on high. A consortium of 11 states and the District developed the PARCC tests.

The tests only underscore what has been known for years: that the educational gap between the District’s white students and students of color is not a crack but a chasm. And African Americans and Hispanics are on the side that leads in the direction of lower earnings, part-time or dead-end jobs, and lives of turbulence.

Usually around this time in any conversation about schools, finger-pointing and the blame game get underway. “Who’s responsible for this mess?” “Whom can we hang it on?”

Time out. Let’s start the new year by dispensing with comforting lies and facing up to unpleasant truths.

Henderson and her teachers are not chiefly to blame for the District’s cavernous racial achievement gap. School officials didn’t make white kids more than four times likelier to be proficient in English than black students, and 10 times likelier in math, as the website DCist pointed out.

It helps when students go to school from homes where parental supervision is strong, where respect for teachers and other students is taught, and where In D.C. schools, the racial gap is a chasm, not a crack - The Washington Post:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Were Rahm & Rauner drinking Cuba Libres together in Havana?

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Were Rahm & Rauner drinking Cuba Libres together in Havana?:

Were Rahm & Rauner drinking Cuba Libres together in Havana?

Cuba libre

Send lawyers, guns and money. The shit has hit the fan. -- Warren Zevon

Happy New Year to all.

And a special New Year's welcome back from Cuba goes out to both Mayor Emanuel andGOV. RAUNER. Got that last piece from reliable sources who say they spotted the gov in Havana. Are reporters even curious? I mean, Rahm/Rauner wining and dining together in Cuba while the city sizzles and the state floods (literally).

At our family New Year's get together, we all wrote down our predictions for 2016 and put them in a box. No, not about weight loss. That's so 2015. Yes, it's all about politics. Mostly easy stuff like Hillary's winning in November. Against who? Rubio? I hear she's already shopping for new drapes for the White House.

The prediction box

I think I'm the only one predicting and early Rahm Emanuel exit. I just think that the persistence of the #RahmResign protests combined with federal investigations and e-mail leaks about his role in the cop-shooting cover-up, plus the deepening financial crisis and impending property tax revolt, all add up to an unmanageable city. He's got corporate and DNC undies in a twist.

I know that the cops want him gone. The sooner the better.

At least this cop does. Check out this video clip:Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Were Rahm & Rauner drinking Cuba Libres together in Havana?:

It's Not Easy Teaching Special Ed : NPR Ed : NPR

It's Not Easy Teaching Special Ed : NPR Ed : NPR:

It's Not Easy Teaching Special Ed

It's getting harder and harder to find quality special education teachers, which is why 49 out of 50 states report shortages.

Why? It's a tough sell.

Even if you're up for the low pay and noisy classrooms, special education adds another challenge: crushing paperwork.

This is something I understand first hand. You see, I was a special education teacher and I just couldn't hack it. Though I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it, I only lasted a year in the classroom.

I chose special education for what felt like the right reason. I wanted to help the students who struggle to learn. But I soon realized that was only a part of the job.

The paperwork, the meetings, the accountability. Eventually it got to me. I couldn't do it all and I got tired of showing up to a job I knew I couldn't do. It's that simple.

So, as I've been looking into the teacher shortage it hasn't felt like a revelation that people are leaving the profession. I get it.

But I have been curious about my friends and colleagues who have stayed. Especially one colleague in particular: Stephanie Johnson.

I know Stephanie from my college days. We were in the same special education program at Brigham Young University three years ago. But as a mother of three returning to school in her 40s, Stephanie wasn't your typical student.

She's now going on her third year teaching eighth grade math and ninth grade English to students with a wide range of disabilities at Oak Canyon Junior High School in Lindon, Utah, which is about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City.

'My Joy Is In The Classroom'

I visited Stephanie's classroom during a math lesson. She was reviewing how to find the slope of a line, through word problems. You know, x-axis y-axis type stuff. The students copied some problems from the board and got to work.It's Not Easy Teaching Special Ed : NPR Ed : NPR:

A tale of two school districts – and the N.C. legislature | The Charlotte Observer

A tale of two school districts – and the N.C. legislature | The Charlotte Observer:

A tale of two school districts – and the N.C. legislature 

This is the tale of two cities – or more accurately, two school districts – where the majority of students are poor.

The first is the Achievement School District in Tennessee, a district of 29 low-performing schools in Nashville and Memphis overseen by one superintendent. Most of the schools are managed by charter operators, though a few are under control of the local school districts.

DON WILLIAMSON

After four years of operation, the ASD shows no improvement in student achievement over non-ASD schools. Research from Vanderbilt University also shows that among the ASD schools, those managed by charter operators fared less well than those schools left under local control.

The report adds to the controversy over the ASD. In the past year, 22 legislative bills were filed over concerns with ASD, many in response to parental dissatisfaction. Now this week the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators has called for a moratorium on adding any more schools to the ASD.

So why are North Carolina legislators looking to Tennessee’s failed ASD as a model for schools here?

State Rep. Rob Bryan, a Charlotte Republican, has been spearheading legislation that would establish a school district similar to the Tennessee ASD. Under his initial proposal, the state would turn over five of the lowest-performing schools to charter operators who would answer to one superintendent. That proposal has been modified to put the focus on replacing principals at the selected schools.

Such a plan won’t help students in North Carolina, just as the ASD hasn’t helped those in Tennessee. Fortunately, North Carolina legislators can look to a successful model in one of the poorest school districts in Missouri.

North of St. Louis is Jennings, an impoverished community where only 13 percent of adults have a bachelor’s degree.

At the same time that Tennessee was establishing the ASD, Jennings hired Tiffany Anderson as their new superintendent. She zeroed in on poverty as the issue keeping students from achieving. Instead of demonizing teachers or parents, she tasked her staff with opening a live-in shelter for homeless high school teens, operating a food and clothes bank, providing regular access to pediatricians and mental health clinicians, and offering laundry services to needy families.

Instead of doubling down on test prep, she restored funding to arts, music, and danceA tale of two school districts – and the N.C. legislature | The Charlotte Observer:

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article52527360.html?ref=yfp#storylink=cpy

Bringing Democracy to our K-12 Public Schools | Dissident Voice

Bringing Democracy to our K-12 Public Schools | Dissident Voice:

Bringing Democracy to our K-12 Public Schools

If graded in terms of encouraging and developing a well-rounded and informed citizenry in a democratic country, the best most public schools I am familiar with would be a “D”.  Put simply and bluntly, our public primary and secondary schools, our community colleges and universities are bureaucratic institutions whose main social and intellectual aim and achievement is the indoctrination of students in the prevailing corporatist-consumerist-racist-sexist social norms and whose primary institutional interest is self-preservation.

Certainly some of the worst effects of this system have been leavened by imaginative and deeply dedicated teachers who have been fighting worthwhile and, too often, losing battles to offset them.  I speak from more than a little experience.  A sculptor and painter, I was also a teacher in a public high school for twenty five years and then taught in a community college for twenty years more and was very active in academic affairs and teachers’ unions at both institutions. I have seen myriad proposals for reform and a number of programs (some worthwhile, many not) come and go over the years while the quality of the institutions has continued to deteriorate. But so far I have searched in vain for a proposal which sees the undemocratic, pyramidal, unequal, costly, and ultimately irresponsible public educational structures as a fundamental component of school failure.  So what might a truly democratic structure for our public schools look like?  In this article I’m going to focus on what it might look like at the K-12 level.

What We Have Now

At the local level there are three groups that are primarily responsible for the operation of our K-12 school systems.

School Boards

Publicly elected (or in some cases mayor-selected) school boards are empowered with the operation of our public K – 12 school systems across the country.  They are usually a mirror reflection of the local power structure and its conventional, consumerist value systems. Most school board elections amount to little more than popularity contests that can provide an entrée for the ambitious to the local power elite but are more often aimed at affirming public approval of that élite. Though most candidates for board seats enthusiastically assert their support for public education in their communities, historically the boards’ main functions have been to keep local school taxes as low as possible, to assert in the name of the people the boards’ sovereignty over the schools (that is, the teachers and classified unions), and to create an ever-growing and well-paid administrative bureaucracy to enforce their decisions.

Under this system teachers are conceived of as employees in the classic capitalist sense while at the same time they are also supposed to embody the classic values of educators as enlightened exponents of humane values. These two conceptions of the teachers’ role are inherently contradictory, and this contradiction has been at the heart of many of the conflicts within school districts ever since. To be sure there are sometimes local rebellions against arbitrary and/or unpopular decisions of school boards, often spearheaded by unhappy teacher-led groups.  These can lead to the election of new board members, to the removal of administrators (frequently with expensive contract payouts), and to the hiring of new administrators. The effects of these changes are mostly superficial and usually short-lived.

Teachers’ Organizations

Teachers’ organizations grew out of the teachers’ inevitable resistance to autocratic school boards that treated teachers (mostly women, in the primary schools) as virtually indentured servants with poor salaries and benefits, no job security, and no say in their working conditions. The functioning of such systems proved so unworkable that even school administrators, who still Bringing Democracy to our K-12 Public Schools | Dissident Voice: