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Friday, March 10, 2017

Schools Matter: What Ending Regulations on ESSA Will Mean

Schools Matter: What Ending Regulations on ESSA Will Mean:

What Ending Regulations on ESSA Will Mean


Yesterday, Diane Ravitch had this bit of news at her blog:

. . . .The Senate also voted to roll back an Obama administration rule to “hold schools accountable,” which passed by only 50-49, over vociferous Democratic opposition. Frankly, I don’t know which rule this is. If it was the Obama-Duncan-King test-based accountability, then I think its repeal or elimination is a step forward. As we saw again and again over the past eight years, the Obama Department of Education had an obsessive devotion to test-based accountability that harmed students, teachers, and schools. If this is what the Senate knocked down, count me in. Even the znational Academy of Sciences issued a report critical of test-based accountability, but Duncan was as smitten with standardized testing as DeVos is smitten with vouchers.

Now we all know that Diane is busy, but is she too busy to find out that the squeaker bill resulted from a joint resolution introduced by Ravitch's close friend and former boss, Lamar Alexander.  

Is she too busy to find out before posting at her blog that this bill has nothing to do with ending test-based accountability? Did she not do her due diligence to find out the facts, or was she too much in a hurry to use opportunity to bash Obama, while ignoring the potential for this dangerous Congressional action by Schools Matter: What Ending Regulations on ESSA Will Mean:


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Hashtag To #BotorNot? Who funded the #CommonCore Project? (It’s not just Gates) – Missouri Education Watchdog

Hashtag To #BotorNot? Who funded the #CommonCore Project? (It’s not just Gates) – Missouri Education Watchdog:

Hashtag To #BotorNot? Who funded the #CommonCore Project? (It’s not just Gates)






Parents and grandparents who want only to have a say in their children’s education, to control how their data is collected and profiled, are made fun of yet again by the Gates Foundation and others in edtech.  #Awesome.  You can read all about the Gates, Milken, CPRE funded Hashtag CommonCore project to shame parents, incorrectly label those who oppose Common Core as extremists HERE.    See the money trail of who funded the project and their associations below.  (Thank you Muckety!)
We also wrote a poem, a sort of Ode to the Bots.   Enjoy.

Now for some fun.

Who funded the #CommonCore project?  and why?  (We think the answers speak for themselves, but you be the judge.)
Hashtag To #BotorNot? Who funded the #CommonCore Project? (It’s not just Gates) – Missouri Education Watchdog:
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Wassup Dudes! California Department of Education

California Department of Education:

Wassup Dudes! @ California Department of Education


CBEDS Data about Schools & Districts
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California Basic Educational Data System (CBEDS) downloadable data files for data about schools and districts for 2008–09 through current year.


Classified Staff by Race/Ethnicity & Gender
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Downloadable data files for classified staff by race/ethnicity, gender, and school for 2008–09 through current year.

Resources

What's New

Highlights




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Play That Funky Music (7 Steps Of Professional Growth) | Blue Cereal Education

Play That Funky Music (7 Steps Of Professional Growth) | Blue Cereal Education:

Play That Funky Music (7 Steps Of Professional Growth)

Image result for play that funky music animated gif


My ELA comrades are fond of discussing ‘universal themes’ and ‘common plots’ in literature and in life. I can’t speak to every book ever written, but I will confess I have a much better idea of who’s going to die and who’s going to betray the hero in any decent sci-fi or superhero movie now that I’ve sat in on a few literature classes.
Wild Cherry Cover
In a similar way, our personal journeys often share common elements. That’s why disparate support groups can build their discussions around the same 12 Steps without discounting each member's personal story, or church 'cell groups' can seek spiritual cohesion despite varied applications of the chosen text - every story is unique, but every story is the same.
We see this in history as well – it repeats itself, sort of, but never in quite the same ways. Universal themes and common plotlines seem to be, um… well - they seem to be universal. You know - common.
The ongoing kerfuffle over #edreform involves large-scale efforts to standardize curriculum, standardize tests, standardize teachers, and standardize kids. Good luck with that. In the meantime, while we decry the nonsense inherent in that approach, I'd like to outline the Seven Steps to Personal and Professional Growth which I believe apply equally well to educators and the common rabble alike. I'd like to suggest that a little personal reform, revival, or rebooting, is essential to break even over time - maybe actually grow.
Stay in place for long, and you're suddenly all kinds of left behind.
If some themes are universal, as my ELA brethren suggest, any classic tale of personal revival should work as a launching pad. I choose as mine the timeless wisdom of Wild Cherry.
Step One: Recognize when you’ve hit a rut or lost your edge.
Hey, do it now. Yay-hey.
Once I was a boogie singer playin' in a rock’n’roll band.
I never had no problems, yeah, burnin' down the one night stands.
When everything around me, yeah, got to start to feelin' so low…
The first step towards fixing anything or making a situation better is recognizing there's a problem. Call stuff what it is. Many times that's actually the most difficult part - identifying Play That Funky Music (7 Steps Of Professional Growth) | Blue Cereal Education:


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CURMUDGUCATION: Noble Teachers Forming Largest Charter Union

CURMUDGUCATION: Noble Teachers Forming Largest Charter Union:

Noble Teachers Forming Largest Charter Union



 The 800 teachers and staff of Chicago's Noble charter school chain is working to form the largest charter teacher union in the country.

 They would not become the first charter union in the country, or even in Chicago. In fact, the Aspire network of charter schools just averted a strike by their own teachers' union by agreeing to wage increases, shorter workdays, and, apparently, occasionally listening to their staff. Like the proposed Noble union, the Aspire teachers belong to the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (ACTS), a group affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers.

The Noble chain is one of Chicago's most prominent, founded in 1999. Its investors include Governor Bruce Rauner, the billionaire Pritzker family and Chicago Board of Education President Frank Clark. It's marketing literature makes plain where Noble's focus lies:

At Noble, success is the only option. 
 No excuses. We believe that no matter how far behind a student is when they enter ninth grade, they will succeed. No matter what their family’s income or education level is, they will succeed. No matter if their neighborhoods are plagued with violence or their peers are involved in gangs, they will succeed. At Noble, we hold everyone—students, teachers, and leadership—to the highest CURMUDGUCATION: Noble Teachers Forming Largest Charter Union:




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ICYMI Lily's Blackboard - Catch Up with NEA President Lily Eskelsen García

Lily's Blackboard - Updates from NEA President Lily Eskelsen García:

ICYMI Lily's Blackboard
Catch Up with NEA President Lily Eskelsen García






by Lily's Blackboard / 54min
We had a huge reading party at NEA. Joining use were several of the nation’s leading literacy organizations including Reading is Fundamental (RIF) and First Book along with actor, author and literacy advocate LeVar Burton and 12-year-old Marley Dias, an advocate for diversity in literature who founded #1000BlackGirlBooks. Check out this video: (You can skip the first few seconds :)
by Lily's Blackboard / 1h
Las Cruces Sun-News sat down with Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, when she visited Las Cruces Thursday for a ribbon-cutting at Lynn Middle School, the city’s first community school. Garcia spoke about why she feels community schools are important and the role they play in supporting students and their families. Read the interview here .
by Lily's Blackboard / 1h
Repealing the ACA will harm our students and their families by forcing cuts to critical programs. Mental health care, vision and hearing screenings, diabetes and asthma management are just some of what school children stand to lose. We will continue to defend the ACA and Medicaid, our country’s health care safety nets, and quality, affordable coverage for children and working families. It’s time



Calling New Educators


Nobody gets what you’re going through quite like your fellow educators, which is why we created why we created a new online hub just for you! More…







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UPDATE: Podcast: Hitting Left with Sue Sadlowski Garza on Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers radio. | Fred Klonsky

Chicago Alderwoman of the Tenth Ward, Sue Sadlowski Garza on Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers radio. | Fred Klonsky:

Chicago Alderwoman of the Tenth Ward, Sue Sadlowski Garza on Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers radio.
With Klonsky on the Mound


Friday morning Alderwoman Sue Sadlowski Garza joins my brother and me for an hour of conversation about International Women’s Day, her Dad, “Oil-Can” Ed Sadlowski and the steelworkers reform movement, the fight for ecological justice in the Tenth Ward, Chicago politics in “the old days,” and her historic win two years ago over the Chicago Machine of Rahm and what remained of the corrupt regime of “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak.
Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers is on LumpenRadio.com at 11Am. You can listen live at 105.5FM and live streaming from the web site (download the app). Later the show is available on MixCloud and as a podcast at Liberated Syndication and iTunes.Chicago Alderwoman of the Tenth Ward, Sue Sadlowski Garza on Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers radio. | Fred Klonsky:

Podcast: Hitting Left with Sue Sadlowski Garza
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Dispatches from Planet Pollyanna: Charter School Walkability Edition | educationdc

Dispatches from Planet Pollyanna: Charter School Walkability Edition | educationdc:

Dispatches from Planet Pollyanna: Charter School Walkability Edition
The other day, I participated in a phone call with several other people regarding the charter school walkability preference proposal. As you may recall, the mayor proposed on January 30 giving elementary-age students a preference in the lottery for charter schools if their by right DCPS schools are more than half a mile away from their homes and a charter school is closer.
(See more information here–there is even a survey, whose deadline is March 15, on the walkability proposal. You get to these lovely pieces of information by going to the deputy mayor for education’s (DME’s) website, going to the 6th tab (“Data Resources”) of the 7 drop-down tabs across the top of the home page, then choosing “proposed walkability preference analysis.” It’s all conveniently there! If you can find it.)
Anyhoo, that phone call the other day was held by the DME’s office in response to the fact that only one public meeting—this past Monday, attended by less than 20 people–was held on the charter school walkability proposal. The phone call itself was not publicized by the DME—and had only me and two other participants.
In the next week or two, the DME’s office will submit legislation for the charter walkability preference to the council—and the council will hold a hearing, as the proposal will require a change in the School Reform Act.
In the phone call, DME staff went through a slide deck presented at the public meeting, showing (on p. 4) that the goal of the walkability preference was “to improve access to walkable schools for our youngest students.”
But that was very different from what the DME herself, Jennifer Niles, said about a month ago, in a phone call with cross sector task force members about the preference proposal.
Then, the DME responded to a task force member’s query about helping Dispatches from Planet Pollyanna: Charter School Walkability Edition | educationdc:


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