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Monday, February 8, 2010

PBS: Next "Golden Age" Of Arts In America - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

PBS: Next "Golden Age" Of Arts In America - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.


Spearheaded By The Surge In New Media, PBS Prez Announces "Major Online Initiative"  Bringing Arts To Wider Audience In An Impassioned Speech In Los Angeles.


"I believe we have an opportunity to usher in another golden age of arts in America. I think in part, it begins with new media. . ."

"Advocates point out that art education boosts students' cognitive development, improves their confidence, and strengthens their problem solving skills. Students with a strong background in the arts tend to have better grade point averages, score better on reading and math tests, and have lower dropout rates."

 ". . .public schools aren't just putting history classes on the back burner;
they're taking them off the stove completely.
This is heartbreaking, and I think this is also a huge issue for us as a country."

              --- Paula A. Kerger, President & CEO, PBS


The following are excerpts of an important speech by Paula A. Kerger, President and CEO of PBS (Public Broadcasting Service.  It was delivered to Town Hall, Los Angeles on January 12, 2010 at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in downtown Los Angeles.
 
Kerger shares some thoughts on the importance of arts in public education, the disturbing realities and statistics of U.S. committment to the arts compared to other countries, the ramifications of budget cuts and NCLB (No Child Left Behind), and asks us to rise to the
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We want to hear from you! Sacramento City Unified School District

Sacramento City Unified School District

We want to hear from you! SURVEY


 
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Whither Professional Development in the Budget? - Teacher Beat - Education Week

Whither Professional Development in the Budget? - Teacher Beat - Education Week

Whither Professional Development in the Budget?

By Stephen Sawchuk on February 8, 2010 10:10 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Here's another teacher-related question on President Obama's budget request: Will it be good or bad for professional development?
If lawmakers go along with cutting the Title II state formula grant program by half a billion dollars, then there'd already be fewer funds for professional development, unless class- size reduction—a large percentage of current spending under the program—is excised as an allowable use of the money. (Expect the teachers' unions to fight that tooth and nail.)
And a few of the funding streams that have been consolidated were focused on professional development, such as the educational technology grants. The National Writing Project, one of the big success stories in professional development, also would be consolidated into the proposed new programs.
On the other hand, the budget names proposed new Title II programs "Excellent Instructional Teams," and says they'd support the collaborative use of data to improve teaching. And to be sure, it was never all that clear in the first place that the professional- development that districts were providing with federal funds was any good. The definition in the NCLB law specifies that the funds can't be used for one-day workshops, but it's hard to know how many of the nation's 14,000 school districts paid attention to that stipulation.
M. Rene Islas, a policy adviser to the National Staff Development Council, a professional-development advocacy group, seems cautiously optimistic about the budget language in this post. (You may remember that Islas headed up teacher-quality issues back at the Education Department between 2002 and 2006.) NSDC 
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NEA Priority Schools Campaign - Disrupting the Status Quo

YouTube- NEAABS's Channel

NEA Priority Schools Campaign - Disrupting the Status Quo
From: NEAABS | December 02, 2009 | 704 views
"Plain and simple, the status quo is not acceptable. We cannot continue to do in America what weve been doing to students for the last 20, 30, 50 years. The world has changed and we need a different system."
NEA President Dennis Van Roekel



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Valuing Good Teaching � The Quick and the Ed

Valuing Good Teaching � The Quick and the Ed



Research has shown time and again that experience matters in good teaching. What it hasn’t shown is that every experience matters equally. In fact, a teacher’s first few years on the job are by far the most important, and it has been demonstrated repeatedly that the vast majority of teaching improvement comes in the first few years on the job.

Unfortunately, districts have yet to utilize this research in any way. Instead, they set arbitrary teacher salary schedules that are based purely on a teacher’s years of experience and education credentials. They mostly do not reflect actual teacher performance year-to-year, but they don’t even take into consideration the career paths of the typical teacher.

To show what this looks like, I’ve graphed teacher salaries in four DC-area suburban districts (Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties in Maryland and Fairfax and Prince William Counties in Virginia) with average teacher effectiveness scores in mathematics. The effectiveness scores are value-added measures that compute a teacher’s ability to maintain or increase student scores on standardized tests of achievement. They are graphed according to differences from the average teacher, and they come from a recent paper which found effectiveness scores in line with prior research.

The maroon bars represent salaries for fully certified teachers with bachelor’s degrees only, and the blue bars are average salaries for fully certified teachers with Master’s degrees only. As the chart shows, salaries in these four districts increases almost linearly, although they grow much faster after teachers have 14 or 17 years of experience than when they have only a few.
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Momentum is building across America in support of the "Strike and National Day of Action to Defend Public Education" on March 4.


Momentum is building across America in support of the "Strike and National Day of Action to Defend Public Education" on March 4.








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Ruling on education funding should be game-changer for legislators | Peter Callaghan - The News Tribune | Seattle-Tacoma News, Weather, Sports, Jobs, Homes and Cars | South Puget Sound's Destination

Ruling on education funding should be game-changer for legislators | Peter Callaghan - The News Tribune | Seattle-Tacoma News, Weather, Sports, Jobs, Homes and Cars | South Puget Sound's Destination:

"It took King County Superior Court Judge John Erlick 100 pages to say what everyone has sensed for a long time. But when he says it, it carries a lot more weight.

“This court is left with no doubt that under the state’s current financing system the state is failing in its constitutional duty to make ample provision for the education of all children,” Erlick wrote in McCleary v. State of Washington.

It was the ruling that advocates for public education have been hoping for, and they celebrated. Politicians from the governor to candidates for the Legislature issued statements professing their love of education and commitment to its support.

You probably couldn’t tell from their comments that most of these politicians have had opportunities to follow the constitution and haven’t. They didn’t mention that they knew – or should have known – that each new program created and expanded would compete for dollars with what the constitution calls the state’s paramount duty.

And now, these same politicians who could have acted but didn’t have been given the task by Judge Erlick to fix things. That’s why this seemingly sweeping victory might end up being much less than that."
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Barack Obama No Child Left Behind Education Arne Duncan teachers unions Race to the Top | PressDemocrat.com

Barack Obama No Child Left Behind Education Arne Duncan teachers unions Race to the Top | PressDemocrat.com


President Barack Obama had been getting high marks in his first year in office for what seemed to be an insightful approach to education reform. Too bad he flunked the final.

Related Links:

Click to enlarge
Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Give Obama credit for what he got right. Somewhere along the line, perhaps during his stint as a community organizer, he figured out the three great truths about our mediocre public schools: They're plagued by low expectations; they exist for the benefit of the adults who work there, not the students; and many teachers will resist, with every fiber of their being, taking responsibility for what students are learning because they know it wouldn't reflect well on them.
Obama's “Race to the Top” initiative, which would evaluate teachers based on student performance and reward those states and school districts that practice innovative approaches to educating students, is a major step in the right direction.
Yet, unfortunately — in light of some of his recent public statements and his administration's plans to water down the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind education reform law — it's clear that Obama still has a lot to learn about what's broken in our public schools and how to fix it.
Real reformers should know better than to pursue incompatible agendas. You can't serve the interests of students and parents by demanding accountability from public schools and then turn around and pander to teachers unions by dismantling NCLB, which holds them accountable.
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Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Philadelphia Public School Notebook


Notes from the news, Feb. 8

Submitted by Erika Owens on Mon, 02/08/2010 - 10:06 Posted in Notes from the news | Permalink
Philly Schools Closed Monday NBC Philadelphia
Enjoy the day off. Good luck digging out! 
Pa. bill would expand overhaul of schoolsThe Inquirer
It would not affect Philadelphia, but would expand outside management in struggling districts throughout the state.
Former charter school administrator files whistleblower suit The Inquirer
The former Philadelphia Academy Charter School employee says she was improperly fired.
Ackerman excited about Promise Academies The Notebook blog
Promise Academies are Renaissance Schools that would be managed out of Ackerman's office.
The Next Steps: A Campaign to End Violence in Our Schools Philadelphia Education Justice blog
Next step is the announcement of a campaign at Wednesday's SRC meeting.
I Love This Job: A Follow Up Philly Teacher blog
More On Language Immersion Philly School Search blog
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voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence. - Southwestern College Pushed to the Brink by Brutal Power Struggle

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence. - Southwestern College Pushed to the Brink by Brutal Power Struggle:

"Andrew Rempt was correcting composition papers at his home when the doorbell rang.

Earlier that day, the Southwestern College English professor had stood with students protesting against class cuts. Now, the college's human resource director was standing on his doorstep alongside an armed campus police officer. Their message: Rempt and three other professors were banned from campus that night.

Three of them later learned they were being investigated for inciting students and not cooperating with campus police.

The incident enflamed the already volatile relationship between the South Bay community college's employees and Superintendent Raj K. Chopra. It has been an almost constant battle since Chopra was hired in August 2007, and there is no sign of letting up, even after the state's accreditation agency put the college on probation on Tuesday."
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National Journal Online -- Education Experts -- Are Charter Schools A Civil Rights Failure?

National Journal Online -- Education Experts -- Are Charter Schools A Civil Rights Failure?:

"Are Charter Schools A Civil Rights Failure?

A study released last week by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, concluded that although charter schools are a political success, they are a civil rights failure. The report found that charter schools are more racially homogenized than traditional public schools and asserted that those in the western United States are havens for white re-segregation.

Is this a fair characterization of the charter school movement?

-- Eliza Krigman, NationalJournal.com"

RESPONDED ON FEBRUARY 8, 2010 10:05 AM

Strategies of the 1970s have not worked

Greg Richmond
President & CEO, National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA)

RESPONDED ON FEBRUARY 8, 2010 9:35 AM

Disappointing Report

Nelson Smith
President & CEO, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

RESPONDED ON FEBRUARY 8, 2010 8:59 AM

Equity Doesn't Equal Integration

Eliza Krigman
NationalJournal.com
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Closure, reorganization on Modesto school board agenda - Featured Stories - Modbee.com

Closure, reorganization on Modesto school board agenda - Featured Stories - Modbee.com



Monday's Modesto City Schools board meeting is full of compelling items — closing Pearson Elementary School next school year, appointing an associate superintendent of curriculum, reorganizing district office administration and starting a dual-language program.
All are important decisions as the district prepares to slice at least $25 million from it's $250 million budget for next school year.
Modesto City Schools would be the third in Stanislaus County to close a school. Stanislaus Union and Empire Union districts closed one each for this school year.
Next to the district office in west Modesto, Pearson Elementary enrolls 280 students in kindergarten and first grades, according to 2008-09 data. It's one of the district's smallest and oldest campuses.
Students would attend Franklin Elementary School, half a mile away. About 670 students in grades two through six attend Franklin.
Officials have met with parents and staff at both schools and formed a steering committee that will continue to meet as the schools consolidate, according to a staff report.
The cost to combine the schools is about $12,000, the report says, but it does not include an estimate on how much the district would save by closing Pearson.
The average costs of running an elementary school are about $400,000, but Pearson is smaller, so savings likely would be less.
Superintendent Arturo Flores' plan to reorganize the district office to consolidate jobs and save money comes to the board for a second time. When last discussed Jan. 19, employee unions raised some objections to the district's figures.

Read more: http://www.modbee.com/featured/story/1038882.html#ixzz0exQwgFWP
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Jerry Large | Learning not to copy China | Seattle Times Newspaper

Jerry Large | Learning not to copy China | Seattle Times Newspaper


Learning not to copy China

Could it be we worry too much about China? I'd say so if that fretting is contributing to an erosion of our own strengths, an argument I'm hearing often.
Jerry Large
Seattle Times staff columnist
Related
Could it be we worry too much about China?
I'd say so if that fretting is contributing to an erosion of our own strengths, an argument I'm hearing often.
Yong Zhao, an education professor at Michigan State, will speak about that Wednesday in Seattle. (Visitwww.evergreenschool.org to register.)
He decries efforts to replicate the kind of education kids get in India and China with national standards and an intense focus on math and science at the expense of arts and the humanities.
He has a new book, "Catching up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization."
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The Educated Guess Data don’t tell full story in charter ’segregation’ study

The Educated Guess
Data don’t tell full story in charter ’segregation’ study
Posted in Charters
Anti-charter school boards and superintendents no doubt are bookmarking a report that found that charter schools nationwide and in California are more racially and ethnically segregated than traditional public schools. They’ll cite the study, by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA,  as a rationale for denying a charter application or creating new demographic obstacles, under the guise of integration, that many urban charter schools cannot overcome.
That would be terrible for minority families who choose charters as an alternative to their neighborhood failing schools.
(Read more and comment on this post)
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