Four Southwestern teachers return to class

Four Southwestern teachers return to class:

"CHULA VISTA:Four Southwestern College teachers who were suspended with pay after an Oct. 22 rally to protest class cuts have returned to work, college officials said yesterday.

The college would not provide their names.

The faculty’s union identified them as Phil Lopez, an English teacher;Janet Mazzarella, a math teacher;Dinorah Guadiana-Costa, a Spanish teacher; and Andrew Rempt, a creative writing teacher. Three of the teachers returned Thursday and the other Oct. 26, said Andrew MacNeill, the union’s vice president.

The college said it placed the teachers on leave while it investigated a personnel matter unrelated to the protest.MacNeill said he believes the suspensions were the result of tensions between the union and the college administration. Lopez is president of the Southwestern College Education Association and Mazzarella and Rempt are active members, he said."

Audit details ousted East Side schools Superintendent Bob Nunez's expenses - San Jose Mercury News

Audit details ousted East Side schools Superintendent Bob Nunez's expenses - San Jose Mercury News:

"Ousted Superintendent Bob Nunez routinely spent $1,000 a month for meals, travel and lodging and sometimes charged the cash-strapped East Side Union High School District as much as $4,000 a month.

The details were revealed for the first time Friday in a lengthy report into Nunez's spending habits that led to his departure last week from the struggling San Jose school district — complete with a $120,000 severance check.

The revelations were outlined in a 2,100-page report by the San Francisco law firm Hanson Bridgett, which reviewed two years' worth of Nunez's credit card spending. The report, commissioned by the East Side board, also concluded that Nunez did not improperly receive vacation pay or commit a conflict of interest."

Education Week: Lawmaker Wants Probe of E. Coli and School Lunches

Education Week: Lawmaker Wants Probe of E. Coli and School Lunches:

"The chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee wants an investigation into the risk of deadly E. coli getting into school lunches.
Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., is worried about a recent outbreak that killed at least two people and sickened about two dozen others in 11 states.
The E. coli outbreak was linked to ground beef produced by Fairbank Farms of Ashville, N.Y.

No schools were involved in the outbreak. But Miller said he's worried that tainted food might be purchased for school meal programs."

Should School Close When the Flu Hits? New Evidence for Educators - Inside School Research

Should School Close When the Flu Hits? New Evidence for Educators - Inside School Research:

"A study described today in the 'Science Daily' blog offers some timely advice for educators on the optimal time for shutting down schools when a flu outbreak strikes.
'You'd want to get a school closed before an epidemic peaks, to prevent transmission of the virus, but you also don't want to close a school unnecessarily,' explains John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and study co-author. However, he says, most schools base those decisions on fear, expediency, or politics.

To develop some evidence-based guidance for schools, Brownstein and colleagues from the Children's Hospital Boston Informatics Program and the University of Nigata in Japan analyzed data from 54 Japanese elementary schools over four consecutive flu seasons. They tested dozens of school-closing scenarios and finally decided that the ideal early-warning trigger should be when a school has an absentee rate of 4 percent or more for two days in a row."

Education Week: Texas Moves to Tighten Education School Standards

Education Week: Texas Moves to Tighten Education School Standards:

"Texas is among the first states to toughen its standards for colleges of education and other teacher-training programs amid criticism that too many are 'cash cows' that produce weak instructors.

Under a proposed new rating system, the programs would be held accountable for their graduates' effectiveness on the job especially regarding student achievement. Teacher programs that repeatedly fall short of the standards could lose their state accreditation.

'Those programs that are doing poorly and the result is poor teachers ought to get sanctioned,' said state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, who authored the bill this year requiring the more rigorous accreditation system."

(Re)Inspecting the STEM Pipeline - Curriculum Matters

(Re)Inspecting the STEM Pipeline - Curriculum Matters:

"Last week I wrote about a study that drew some intriguing conclusions about the state of the 'pipeline' of students entering math and science studies and fields. The analysis, by Hal Salzman of Rutgers University and Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University, found that the flow of students from K-12 schools to the workforce appears to be quite strong, contrary to the assertions of many policymakers today.

To the extent that students are leaving the pipeline, the authors found, they tend to be high-achieving students. In other words, young people don't seem to be fleeing those fields because of lack of ability, but because of other factors—such as that they don't find those jobs attractive for whatever reason."

Education Week: States Slow Standards Work Amid 'Common Core' Push

Education Week: States Slow Standards Work Amid 'Common Core' Push:

"As they wait to see how the latest push for common national standards plays out, some states are putting off or slowing the revision of their own academic standards to avoid wasted effort and spending.

At least four states—Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania—have halted revision of their standards for mathematics or English/language arts, the subjects that standards writers for the national initiative are turning to first. At least three other states have throttled back similar efforts until the grade-by-grade, K-12 common standards are made final in the coming months."

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, which are overseeing the “Common Core” effort to develop more-uniform expectations for the nation’s students, have already released a draft of college- and career-readiness standards for math and English/language arts. ("New Standards Draft Offers More Details," Sept. 30, 2009.)

Family Engagement as a Shared Responsibility

Family Engagement as a Shared Responsibility

Family involvement is a shared responsibility, consisting of three major dimensions: the opportunities that schools and communities offer parents and other family members to support and enrich their children's learning; mutually agreed upon, or co-constructed, roles; and learning from personal experiences, peers, research, and other resources about how to engage families in children's learning. In this issue, we apply our new, broader definition of family engagement to the ways in which families, communities, and schools work together to share responsibility for student learning.

Two new articles illustrate how co-constructed roles can work in practice: Voices from the field recounts the story of a parent, school principal, and family advocate sharing responsibility for creating a solution to a school problem, and our featured teaching case describes how a mother enlisted the help of a community organization to communicate with a school principal after her son was suspended. In addition, we introduce a tool to help school districts and other organizations think through the development of systemic family engagement policies and programs.

We also introduce a newly developed section of our website that houses all of Harvard Family Research Project's policy-related work in one convenient location. And, as always, we provide a listing of new family involvement articles, news, and resources.

Read the complete FINE Newsletter online.

Family Engagement: A Shared Responsibility
Seeing is Believing: Promising Practices for How School Districts Promote Family Engagement
How to Develop a Logic Model for Districtwide Family Engagement Strategies
Family Engagement Policy Resources
Featured Teaching Case: Suspension at Aurora Middle School Engagement
Co-Constructing Family Engagement Roles in Federal Way, Washington
Family Involvement News

Forget about rating teachers---rate schools instead. - Class Struggle - Jay Mathews on Education

Forget about rating teachers---rate schools instead. - Class Struggle - Jay Mathews on Education:

"Those unfortunate people in the District may worry about the quality of their teachers, and wait anxiously for the results of the school system’s controversial new evaluation of classroom techniques and test score improvement. But those of us in the Washington area suburbs don’t have to worry because we already know that close to 100 percent of our teachers are entirely satisfactory. How? Our school districts say so.

I asked suburban school officials to share the latest results from their teacher evaluations, which are usually done by principals and subject specialists. Here are the percentages of teachers rated satisfactory, in some cases called meeting or exceeding the standard: Alexandria 99 percent, Calvert 99.8 percent, Charles 98.4 percent, Culpeper 97 percent, Fairfax 99.1 percent, Falls Church 99.55 percent, Loudoun 99 percent, Montgomery 95 percent, Prince George’s 95.56 percent, and Prince William 98.3 percent."

Change IDEA, task force says: CITIZEN JOURNALISM: FYI - Washington Times

CITIZEN JOURNALISM: FYI - Washington Times:

Change IDEA, task force says

"The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is up for congressional reauthorization in 2010, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) last week released a report that offers data and insight and makes recommendations. For example, between 1995 and 2004, the number of students receiving IDEA services rose from 5.1 million to more than 6.1 million, 'and the largest increase occurred for students in middle level and high schools,' the report says.

The study also points out that English-language learners are overrepresented in special education classes, suggesting that most teachers have difficulty distinguishing students with learning disabilities from students struggling for other reasons, such as limited English."

NASSP - IDEA Legislative Recommendations

NASSP - IDEA Legislative Recommendations:

"On Nov. 3, 2009, NASSP released its Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Task Force Legislative Recommendations. The nine recommendations were developed by the IDEA Task Force, which is composed of 11 active middle level and high school principals or assistant principals and four representatives from institutions of higher education from across the country.

The mission of the task force was to study the effects of the federal IDEA law and regulatory language on school leaders and propose recommendations regarding the changes that should be incorporated into a newly reauthorized law."

click here to read NASSP Legislative Recommendations: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/15441864/IDEA-Legislative-Recommendations-National-Association-of-Secondary-School-Principals

The Chez Panisse Foundation

Cultivating a New Generation

The Chez Panisse Foundation envisions a school curriculum and school lunch program where growing, cooking, and sharing food at the table gives students the knowledge and values to build a humane and sustainable future.

The Edible Schoolyard (ESY), established in 1995, is a one-acre garden and kitchen classroom at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California. It is a program of the Chez Panisse Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by chef and author Alice Waters.
The garden started as a cover crop in a vacant lot with once-monthly student participation. More than a decade later, it is a thriving acre of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. Now, each student at King Middle School attends 12 to 30 sessions in ESY kitchen and garden classrooms, depending on grade level. ESY reaches each of the nearly 1,000 students at King Middle School.
The visibility of ESY has also increased. The program hosts over 1,000 visitors each year—from educators, to health professionals, to international delegates—and has inspired countless kitchen and garden programs. In 2005, we launched our first affiliate program in New Orleans, Louisiana. Today, we have a small network of Edible Schoolyard affiliate programs in cities across the country.

Bullying in Schools

Bullying in Schools:

"Online bullying has gotten a lot of attention lately, but a new study by the U.S. Justice Department and the C-D-C shows that the old fashioned kind of bullying hasn't gone away. According to the report, more than one in five of our children is physically bullied by other kids.

Alison was bullied in middle school. 'I'd be walking down the, walking down the hallway and they'd be like, 'Alison, you can take your mask off, it's not Halloween anymore.' Or, 'Alison, you're so ugly, no guy would ever kiss you',' she remembers.

Two students taunted Michelle in high school. 'Her and this boy were calling me a fat a-s-s, and the boy finally said 'man, fat people sure do stink', and so I said well why don't you take a bath?'

How do you help your child?"

Think B4 You Speak.com

The Civil Rights-Black Power Nexus in African American History

The Civil Rights-Black Power Nexus in African American History

A View from the East offers a detailed account of the development, operations and significance of the East Organization. Those who have studied the African-centered education movement and are familiar with events that shaped the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Experimental School District in New York City know of The East as the parent organization of Uhuru Sasa Shule (Freedom Now School). Taking the reader inside The East to explore dynamics of the organization and the personalities that shaped it, I contextualize them historically within the Civil Rights and Black Power movements and explore continuities between the two movements. For instance, 1967 marked the publication of Dr. King’s Where Do We Go from Here and also the emergence of the community control and independent Black school movements in urban centers across the country. These two movements grew almost simultaneously from the Freedom School efforts of the Civil Rights movement and an earlier tradition of establishing independent Black educational institutions predating the U.S. Civil War. The community control of public schools and the independent Black school movements of the 1960s situated themselves on what Dr. King called “political and social action” marked by a nebulous distinction between schooling and education, decision-making power and parental involvement, and divergent arguments advanced by African American educators and activists who advocated the transformation of urban schools and “making them work” and others who supported the idea of and forged independent Black schools. Former Civil Rights activists transformed by the Black Power movement and Black nationalists of the period constituted the latter group of independent Black school forgers in the 1960s, and quite a number of these schools still exist today.

Anti-taxers on school boards voted out | cincinnati.com | Cincinnati.Com

Anti-taxers on school boards voted out cincinnati.com Cincinnati.Com:

"The reign of the anti-school tax activists on area school boards was a short one."

One four-year term - starting with their taking office in January 2006 - and now voters decided last week that some of the region's highest profile activist board members are out.

Their one-and-done political trend was mainly focused in Greater Cincinnati's northern suburban districts, where four years ago an anti-school tax movement had grown to win enough voters to put like-minded candidates on the governing boards of a handful of Butler and Warren county school systems.

Fairfield School Board incumbent Arnie Engel, who tried four times to get elected to Fairfield Schools governing board before finally winning in fall 2005, this time finished a distant fourth in the race for three open seats.

In Warren County's Mason School Board race, self-proclaimed "Christian conservative" incumbent Jennifer Miller ended up fifth out of eight candidates vying for three seats.
In the Monroe school board race, fiscal conservative Mike Irwin lost his re-election bid, finishing dead last among five candidates.

Interactive Map: Leaders and Laggards

Interactive Map: Leaders and Laggards:

"Overview

Two years ago, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Center for American Progress, and Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute came together to grade the states on school performance. In that first Leaders and Laggards report, we found much to applaud but even more that requires urgent improvement. In this follow-up report, we turn our attention to the future, looking not at how states are performing today, but at what they are doing to prepare themselves for the challenges that lie ahead. Thus, some states with positive academic results receive poor grades on our measures of innovation, while others with lackluster scholarly achievement nevertheless earn high marks for policies that are creating an entrepreneurial culture in their schools. We chose this focus because, regardless of current academic accomplishment in each state, we believe innovative educational practices are vital to laying the groundwork for continuous and transformational change."

And change is essential. Put bluntly, we believe our education system needs to be reinvented. After decades of political inaction and ineffective reforms, our schools consistently produce students unready for the rigors of the modern workplace. The lack of preparedness is staggering. Roughly one in three eighth graders is proficient in reading. Most high schools graduate little more than two-thirds of their students on time. And even the students who do receive a high school diploma lack adequate skills: More than 33% of first-year college students require remediation in either math or English.
'
But we also believe that reinvention will never be accomplished with silver bullets. Our school system needs far-reaching innovation. It is archaic and broken, a relic of a time when high school graduates could expect to live prosperous lives, when steel and auto factories formed the backbone of the American economy, and when laptop computers and the Internet were the preserve of science fiction writers. And while the challenges are many--inflexible regulations, excessive bureaucracy, a dearth of fresh thinking--the bottom line is that most education institutions simply lack the tools, incentives, and opportunities to reinvent themselves in profoundly more effective ways.

By "innovation" we do not mean blindly celebrating every nifty-sounding reform. If anything, we have had too much of such educational innovation over the years, as evidenced by the sequential embrace of fads and the hurried cycling from one new "best practice" to another that so often characterizes K-12 schooling. States and school systems, in other words, have too long confused the novel with the useful. Rather, we believe innovation to be the process of leveraging new tools, talent, and management strategies to craft solutions that were not possible or necessary in an earlier era.

No more senior year of high school | detnews.com | The Detroit News

No more senior year of high school detnews.com The Detroit News:

"No more senior year of high school

Idea 34: Eliminate the senior year of high school.

Why: For far too many of Michigan's students, the 12th grade has become nothing more than state-subsidized dating. Educators and parents frequently discuss this 'senioritis,' the so-called disease when students stop worrying about their grades because they have already been accepted to a university or are more concerned about social activities during their last year of high school. Our children have matured at a faster pace, and technological advances have accelerated learning and knowledge exponentially.

AdvertisementBenefits: With the state investing about $1 billion per grade in K-12 education, a portion of these resources could be redirected to our community colleges and universities with a far better outcome for the individual and state."

The 'reform math' problem | Philadelphia Inquirer | 11/09/2009

The 'reform math' problem Philadelphia Inquirer 11/09/2009:

"Recent reports put the number of children with autism spectrum disorders at one in 100. Also in the news, following the latest national and state test results, is math education. What has escaped the media's attention is that these two topics are connected.

Their connection begins in the classrooms into which an ever higher proportion of children with autism spectrum disorders are being mainstreamed. More and more of these regular K-12 classrooms are using new 'reform math' programs such as Everyday Math, Investigations, and Connected Mathematics. In the Philadelphia area in particular, it's hard to find a public, private, or charter school that doesn't use reform math.

The prevalence of this curriculum is coinciding with widespread special needs. Students on the autism spectrum, however much they vary, share several basic traits. They don't perform well in unsupervised groups of peers. Many have trouble putting words together, and nearly all struggle with verbal comprehension to some extent."

Mayor at mid-term: How's he doing? | Philadelphia Daily News | 11/09/2009

Mayor at mid-term: How's he doing? Philadelphia Daily News 11/09/2009:

"IN 1991, WHEN Ed Rendell won election as mayor by a landslide, his chief political strategist, Neil Oxman, wrote in a memo: 'Remember, Ed Rendell has won a huge mandate for change. You can take over everything.'

Oxman could have written the same to another client, Michael Nutter, who won his own landslide two years ago last Friday as a wildly popular reformer with no help from labor or any other special-interest groups to succeed John Street.

Rendell, faced with a city on the brink of bankruptcy, charged in, taking on the unions, winning concessions and earning their ire, which didn't derail his future political aspirations.

Street, in his first 12 months, quickly settled his four municipal-union contracts, then did battle with the powerful Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, winning a longer school day and the beginning of a process that made a dent in seniority-based teacher assignments."

The American Spectator : Leaving Parents Behind

The American Spectator : Leaving Parents Behind:

"But school reformers have a long way to go where it counts: Addressing the interests of America's parents, who actually choose the schools to which they entrust their children, and helping them pick the best schools for their children in the first place.

At the moment, school reformers aren't considering situations such as that of the middle-class black couple in East Ridge, Tenn., just outside of Chattanooga, now deciding where to send their four-year-old son once he reaches kindergarten. They are skipping the schools offered by the local school district, Hamilton County Schools, for a private school option, but not because of the district's academic performance. Instead, it's because they don't want their son, who currently attends a nearly-all-white preschool, to continue being the only black male in his school."