Big Education Ape

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Former 'No Child Left Behind' Advocate Turns Critic : NPR

In 2005, former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch wrote, "We should thank President George W. Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act ... All this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents' generation."

Four years later, Ravitch has changed her mind.

"I was known as a conservative advocate of many of these policies," Ravitch says. "But I've looked at the evidence and I've concluded they're wrong. They've put us on the wrong track. I feel passionately about the improvement of public education and I don't think any of this is going to improve public education."

Ravitch has written a book about what she sees as the failure of No Child Left Behind called The Death and Life of the Great American School System. She says one of her biggest concerns is the way the law requires school districts to use standardized testing.

Emphasis On Test Scores Led To Cheating, Dishonesty

"The basic strategy is measuring and punishing," Ravitch says of No Child Left Behind. "And it turns out as a result of putting so much emphasis on the test scores, there's a lot of cheating going on, there's a lot of gaming the system. Instead of raising standards it's actually lowered standards because many states have 'dumbed down' their tests or changed the scoring of their tests to say that more kids are passing than actually are."

Some states contend that 80 to 90 percent of their children are proficient readers and have math proficiency as well, Ravitch notes. But in the same states, only 25 to 30 of the children test at a proficient level on national tests such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

"Secretary (of Education Arne) Duncan often says we're lying to our kids," Ravitch says. "And weare lying to our kids."

'There Should Not Be An Education Marketplace'

Part of the reason schools were so intent on achieving high tests scores was because they were competing with other schools for resources, which were often doled out on that basis alone.

Beyond The Riot:Looking Toward March 4 - The Daily Californian

(Editor's Note: This piece was written in collaboration with members of the Fee Strike Working Group and the Education Crisis Research Group.)

To many, the recent "riots" near Berkeley's campus seem ill-timed at best, and reprehensible at worst, even among ostensible supporters of the movement. We should not, however, allow fallout from this incident to distract us from the March 4 mobilizations occurring across 18 states. Whether the events of Feb. 26 hurt us or help us is beside the point. The movement to save the tatters of public education that remain in California and to defend democratic educational institutions has always contained a range of political opinions. Its diversity, in fact, is its greatest strength.

And so, drawing strength from our diversity, we mobilize for March 4, despite the administration's attempts to demonize the "rioters." More homogenous groups, pressing for "achievable" goals by patiently and carefully issuing demands rarely see them met by policy-makers with a stake in preserving business as usual. Successful movements have always been a collaborative and messy process between groups, individuals, factions and fractions who rarely agree. Tension produces dialogue-total agreement is neither realistic nor desirable. Regardless of how we differ on tactics, strategy, and ethics-in a word, politics-we share a fundamental

opposition to how the crisis of public education in California has been framed and acted upon by those in power.

If you read the paper Friday morning, you might have experienced a feeling of distance from those who took to the streets the night before. We encourage you to fight the urge to give up, the urge to walk away, or worse yet, the urge to police one another because of disagreement over tactics. There is always uncertainty surrounding tactical effectiveness. But there is absolute certainty about the consequences of disengagement from the movement.

The March 4 mobilizations will not stand or fall on whether we all agree. They will stand or fall on whether our numbers convey the grave urgency of the status of public education in California and the broken budgeting process which harms all Californians. While the powerful wring their hands, shed crocodile tears and say, "there is no alternative," we must insist. We've heard this excuse before, and we're still not falling for it.

On March 4, some of us will march to the seat of obstructionism in Sacramento, where cuts to the vulnerable are the answer to every fiscal question. Some of us will march on campuses in the East Bay and in San Francisco, showing that whatever happens in Sacramento, business as usual here at home cannot continue. Some of us have already taken action, seizing buildings and spaces on and off campus, in carnivals of insurrection. And some of us have supported our fellows even when we disagreed with their tactics, defending ourselves against police batons and paying for it in blood, bruises and broken bones. We all oppose those who have partnered with corporate capital against the students, workers and families of California. We are unafraid of the specter of guilt by association. Our spectrum of engagement keeps us growing. Attempts to slow us down, divide us, or trick us into

UC students protest to legislators over cuts

Sacramento -- Five UC students were arrested Monday
at the office of Assemblyman Jim Nielsen after refusing to leave unless the Gerber (Tehama County) Republican pledged to preserve funding for higher education and increase student diversity.
Dubbed "the Nielsen Five" by fellow students, those arrested at the Capitol were part of a 200-student lobbying effort intended to be a departure from the raucous, sometimes violent student protests on university campuses in recent months. More buttoned-down but equally angry, the students aimed their demands for more funding at state legislators Monday.
As Nielsen refused to meet with the students, California Highway Patrol officers guarded his door, and Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, tried to mediate the situation. He praised the five as they were led away.
"My hat's off to them," said Yee, who favors increased funding for UC. "Those are brave students."
It was a dramatic moment that stood in contrast to a day when small groups of students in business attire met with lawmakers or their aides to express frustration at Sacramento's failure to maintain its world-class public university systems. The students urged them to create a dedicated funding stream for higher education, fully fund Cal

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/02/BATB1C769N.DTL#ixzz0h1Sl2But

Following String of Racist Incidents, UC San Diego Students Occupy Chancellor's Office

Following String of Racist Incidents, UC San Diego Students Occupy Chancellor’s Office

Crowds of students stormed and occupied the office of a University of California, San Diego chancellor for six hours Friday after a noose was found hanging from a bookcase in the main library. The noose is only the latest in a string of incidents over the past few weeks. Protests were initially sparked by an off-campus party last month they called “Compton Cookout” that mocked Black History Month and denigrated African American women. UC San Diego has the smallest percentage of African American students in the nine-campus UC system. The Black Student Union at UC San Diego has declared the campus climate for racial minorities to be in a “state of emergency.” [includes rush transcript]

Calif. education leader Jack O'Connell, John Laird to join massive rally in Monterey | thecalifornian.com | The Salinas Californian

On Thursday, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell and former Assembly member John Laird of Santa Cruz will join students, faculty, staff, cheerleaders, athletes, parents and workers at Colton Hall in Monterey to demand that education in California be funded.

Colton Hall is the site of the first publicly funded school in California and where the California constitution

was written.

Other speakers will include Cesar Lara, executive director of the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council, county schools Superintendent Nancy Kotowski, and students and faculty from Hartnell College, Seaside High School, Monterey High School, Monterey Peninsula College, and California State University, Monterey Bay.

Entertainment will be supplied by the Seaside High drumline, the Monterey High Schoolband/cheerleaders and slam poets from the high schools and CSUMB.

Students, staff and faculty all across the state and nation are joining together Thursday to protest the recent massive cuts in education. This day of action is one of the first times in recent history that parents, students, teachers and staff from all segments of the educational sector - from pre-school to post-graduate - are uniting to make a joint stand on behalf of the precarious future of public education.

In the past few years, organizers say education in California has been underfunded and under attack.

They say California spends $2,400 less per student than the national average and ranks 46th in per-pupil funding. Community colleges

have increased enrollment by 3 percent over last fall but have been forced to decrease the number of classes that they offer. At CSUMB, more than 1,000 students have been turned away for next year, and organizers say tuition has gone up by 182 percent since 2002.

At a Watts school, layoffs take a heavy toll - latimes.com

When the Los Angeles Unified School District laid off thousands of teachers last spring, the school where I teach, Markham Middle School in Watts, was decimated. Already one of the lowest performing in the state, Markham lost more than half its teachers. The number was so high because inner-city schools like ours tend to have a disproportionate share of teachers just starting their careers, and in last year's layoffs, the most recently hired were the first to receive pink slips. But at Markham, many of those teachers were extremely dedicated and hoped to build a career at the school.

Because experienced teachers from throughout the district weren't lining up to transfer here, the school was left scrambling to staff classes. Today, months into the school year, many students are still without permanent teachers. Some teachers who received layoff notices agreed to stay on as long-term substitutes, working without the benefits we'd received the previous year.

I was one of them until January, when I was rehired by the district as a full-time teacher.

Currently, more than 20% of Markham's teaching staff consists of long-term substitutes, and as late as December, we still had six vacant classrooms where students were taught by a constantly rotating parade of substitutes. This kind of instability would be difficult at any school. But at a school like ours, where many students are desperately poor and often have language difficulties as well, it has been catastrophic.

In general, I think that decisions about a child's education should be made in the classroom, not the courtroom. But like a lot of other Markham teachers, I applaud the lawsuit filed last week by a coalition of civil rights attorneys to defend California's most neglected children by seeking to stop the layoffs at three inner-city middle schools.

William McGurn: California Students Complain About 'Tax Hikes' - WSJ.com

You don't often hear complaints about large and unfair tax hikes issuing from the ramparts of America's most progressive public university system.

Nevertheless, many faculty, students and staff on the 10 campuses of the University of California system are ticked off at how the state is handling its budget crisis. Last week, their anger over the resulting layoffs and tuition increases helped turn a dance party at Berkeley into a riot. The question now is whether on Thursday we will see more of the same at the protests, marches and teach-ins planned for what is being billed as a "Day of Action to Defend Public Education."

Angry protests involving the UC community are nothing new. What's interesting is the way some are characterizing their grievances. In an article for the Huffington Post earlier this month, Bob Samuels—a UCLA lecturer who also serves as a president for a faculty union—explained that "students have understood that the recent increases of student fees (tuition) by over 41% in one year is the same as a tax hike."

Mr. Samuels is right: Some of these students do understand it that way. "Let's call this what this really is," Berkeley sophomore Robbie Bruens told his former high school newspaper. "A big fat Schwarzenegger tax hike on middle class students and their families."

It's hard to blame them when you don't hear much better from people who ought to know better. A year ago, John Garamendi—then California's lieutenant governor and a University of California Regent—issued a press release declaring that a proposal for higher tuition fees was "nothing more than a $662 a year tax increase on every student at the University of California."

At an October Democratic rally at UC Davis, he was quoted as calling the tuition increases "the single biggest tax increase" in the last California budget. The next month he was elected to Congress.

Now, when professors and politicians cannot distinguish between a reduction in a state subsidy and an increase in taxes, we better understand the dismal shape of university and state finances. On further reflection, however, it seems we might have here what our president likes to

Editorial: We understand the protest for California education, but not the violence - ContraCostaTimes.com

THIS WEEK'S "Day of Action to Defend Public Education" could be a constructive uniting of students and faculty from local districts, community colleges and the state university systems to raise awareness of the unacceptable erosion of our public school systems.

Or, it could devolve into an deplorable day of violence.

Organizers must ensure that on Thursday we see the former, not the latter. Critical attempts to save California's education system depend on rational discussion, not the sort of destructive vandalism we saw last week on the UC Berkeley campus when a day of teach-ins on state school funding was followed by a nighttime party that served as an excuse for some to spray paint graffiti and break windows on and near the campus.

We understand the frustration, but violence is not the answer. Clearly, protesters have reason to be angry about state funding that has seen a growing portion of the state budget dedicated to prisons, while proportional spending on the state university system has shrunk.

Similarly, the rapid rise in the number of University of California administrators during the past decade is unacceptable. As The Sacramento Bee reported this week, student enrollment has increased 40 percent in the last 10 years, while senior administration has increased 97 percent, but full-time, tenured-track faculty has increased only 23 percent.

Priorities are wrong. We must find a way

to free up money to protect a public university system that was once a crown jewel and remains the envy of every other state in the nation, a world-class teaching and research institution that helps drive California's economy. We must redirect more of the available university funds to teaching and research.

Just as state lawmakers must not enable the gutting of our universities, they must stop the undermining of our K-12 public school system.

We cannot continue to cut music classes, shut down funding for school libraries, allow campuses to fall into disrepair, eliminate critical academic electives, wipe out after-school sports and lay off teachers, thereby forcing class sizes to soar.

At the same time, we encour

Tufts Daily - Budget cuts, fee increases draw anger of University of California students

For many high school students, the University of California (UC) system offers the perfect option for higher education. The UC system’s appeal, aside from the sunny California weather, lies in the competitive education it offers for in−state tuition fees at a fraction of the cost of a private university for California locals. In light of the recent economic crisis, however, the ability of the UC system to continue to offer financially appealing education is uncertain.

In November, University of California’s Board of Regents voted to raise tuition by 32 percent in response to a $637 million cut in state funding, resulting in a series of protests that are still ongoing months after the cuts took effect.

While the hike of student fees has been at the epicenter of student protests, other serious measures have been taken to cut costs. This past summer, 2,000 UC staff and faculty members were laid off. The rest of the staff and faculty are required to take furlough days — or short, unpaid leaves of absence. This has resulted in pay cuts of up to 10 percent, according to a press release issued last July by the Office of the President of the University of California. Class sizes are expected to increase as a result of the layoffs, and programs and classes are being cut.

“Mostly liberal arts related majors have been hit, like philosophy majors,” Jihan Batuman, a sophomore at UC Davis, said. “Those are the ones that are being cut the most.”

According to Batuman, the tuition increase has had a palpable effect on the UC campuses. “A friend of mine’s boyfriend couldn’t come back due to the fee increase; he couldn’t afford to be here anymore,” he said. “We all had to spend more money. Some students had to get jobs … Almost everybody knows someone who is being affected by this.”

These changes have been met by protests at the various campuses. UC Berkeley, known for its history of activism — most notably the Free Speech Movement in 1964 and 1965, a response to the university restricting on−campus political activities — has been bustling with student outrage.

Students Support Worker Demands for Independent Unions and End to Abuses : Indybay

Students Support Worker Demands for Independent Unions and End to Abuses : Indybay:

"CLAREMONT, California - The student movement made an unexpected move in solidarity with university employees in a large-scale action at Pomona College, a private institution and part of the Claremont consortium of colleges at the eastern edge of Los Angeles County. Well over a hundred students joined with numerous employees of the three campus dining commons, other Pomona employees, and a few faculty members to deliver a petition to Pomona President Oxtoby."

The mobilization began in the morning, when students from Pitzer College assembled on their campus, while Pomona students gathered on theirs. At about ten, the two contingents converged, singing the union hymn "No nos moverán."

Students, arm-in-arm with workers, entered the president's office two-by-two to deliver the signed petition demanding a neutral card check process to form a union. This is the process that would be permitted in all workplaces if the much-hyped but now-stalled Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would have become law.

The petition read, in part, "An NLRB-administered election, which permits management to campaign against the Union on work-time and create a climate of fear in the workplace, is not free and fair." It went on to demand employer neutrality in the workers' decision to organize, and recognition of a majority-backed union.

Previous efforts to organize food service workers on the campus have been thwarted by intimidation, collaboration between the administration and upper-level bureaucrats from established unions and bribery-based decertification drives by management.

This time, however, the workers are seeking an independent union to collectively bargain in their interest. Over 90 percent of the food service workers signed the petition.

Forming an independent union is the first step toward justice for the workers, who complain of poor salaries, few opportunities for advancement, abuses such as disallowance of breaks and working off the clock, and underemployment.

"The salaries that we have are miserable," reports Maria R. Garcia, a Pomona food service worker. "I've been working here for ten years already. I started at $8.40, and now it's $10.65 [per hour]. Two years without a raise. The first year, they said I didn't qualify because I was pregnant, and I had an injury. Another thing, we work for seven-and-a-half months of the year. So how do you support a family?" She made it clear that it wasn't an issue of disliking the job. "We like working here; we love working here. But with these conditions, it's hard. They just make it worse every year."

Monday, March 1, 2010

Students prepare for rallies against cuts�|�The Guardsman

Students prepare for rallies against cuts |The Guardsman

A confederation of grass roots organizers, students groups and union representatives will hold a series of actions in the coming weeks to combat cuts to state education and public services funding — a crisis activists blame on the California legislature’s crippled budgeting system.

Teach-in/town hall
A “teach-in/town hall” will be held today, Feb. 24, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Ocean campus in the Diego Rivera theater to “educate students about the ongoing education and budget crisis in California,” according to the American Federation of Teachers Local 2121 Web site.

“The real message is that no matter what you participate in, it’s important that you inform yourselves and spread the word,” AFT 2121 President Gus Goldstein said.

Unified day of action
The statewide coalition of activists calling for California budget reform are holding a day of action on March 4.

The day of action was decided on Oct. 24, 2009 during a statewide conference that also spawned the City College General Assembly.

“A group of 800 students, teachers and grass roots activists at campuses all over California came together on Oct. 24 and decided that we need to create a grass roots movement to make demands for education,” General Assembly representative Brian Cruz said. “To quote Frederick Douglas, ‘power concedes

Politics K-12 - Education Week

Politics K-12 - Education Week
Senators to Duncan: Don't Forget Rural Schools

Twenty-two Democratic senators from rural states are telling Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that he should make sure rural schools get a fair shot at all that competitive grant money the department is seeking in its fiscal year 2011 budget request.

The senators hail from largely rural states, many of which are considered "red" or "swing" states in presidential elections, including Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

You can read the full letter here, but the important point is that the senators appear especially concerned that some of the department's policy prescriptions (like charters and even extended-day programs) just don't work in really remote areas that have trouble supporting even one school. Instead, they're urging the department to check out other options, such as distance learning, that have a better shot of having an impact in rural communities.

Rural districts have often expressed concerns about the department's push for more competitive funding. They say that rural schools just don't have as much capacity as urban and suburban districts to go after competitive grants. The letter suggests that the department provide technical support to help rural

Is Union/Obama Split Related to 2008 Primaries Education Intelligence Agency

Is Union/Obama Split Related to 2008 Primaries? On November 4, 2008, the National Education Association called Barack Obama's election as President of the United States "a major victory for students and educators." To be sure, President Obama has done yeoman work supporting NEA's top priority: protecting teacher jobs. Much of the stimulus package was directed to maintaining the teaching force, and other federal spending was designed for the same end.

But the teachers' unions can't be happy with the policies that accompanied the money. Race to the Top, the call for an end to charter school caps, linking student and teacher performance - the President has embraced and championed ideas that are anathema to NEA and AFT.

The latest rift comes courtesy of the biggest education story of the past few weeks: the firing of the entire staff of Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. NEA and AFT issued a joint statement in support of the fired teachers and promoted a petition to reverse the "now-infamous decision."

President Obama, on the other hand, said:

"So if a school is struggling, we have to work with the principal and the teachers to find a solution. We've got to give them a chance to make meaningful improvements. But if a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn't show signs of improvement, then there's got to be a sense of accountability.

And that's what happened in Rhode Island last week at a chronically troubled school, when just 7 percent of 11th graders passed state math tests -- 7 percent. When a school board wasn't able to deliver change by other means, they voted to lay off the faculty and the staff. As my Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, says, our kids get only one chance at an education, and we need to get it right."

How did it come to this, after a crushing victory in November 2008? The rest of organized labor is asking the same question, as card check and health care flounder in legislative limbo. Perhaps the answer for all of them has its roots in campaign politics, rather than domestic policy.

It seems like ages ago now, but in 2007 Hillary Clinton was the heir-apparent to the Democratic nomination, particularly for the labor unions (though John Edwards also boasted some union backing). AFT, with its large New York membership, endorsed Hillary in October 2007. NEA could have immediately followed suit, but through the efforts of then-President Reg Weaver, a semi-secret Obama supporter, the union remained neutral.

The problem with that approach soon became apparent. Individual state affiliates began making their own endorsements, and they

GothamSchools - Breaking News and Analysis of the NYC Public Schools

We read the Moskowitz/Klein e-mails so that you don’t have to

by Elizabeth Green

Joel Klein and Eva Moskowitz at the Harlem Success lottery in April 2009. (GothamSchools)

There’s a lot more than school siting and closures in the 77 pages of e-mails between Chancellor Joel Klein and charter school operator Eva Moskowitz.

The e-mails, obtained by the Daily News, include a little bit of news — such as that Bill Clinton considered weighing in on the charter schools fight — and a lot of insight into the way Klein and Moskowitz think about the politics of education. We’ve read every word of the 150+ e-mails and have collected the highlights below.

A PERSONAL CHALLENGE: Moskowitz puts her expansion goal in personal terms, in an April 2007 e-mail to Klein: “I plan to be educating 8,000 of your children by 2013.”

SHE DIDN’T LIKE THE TWEED WORKFORCE, EITHER. We know that district school leaders and parents often clashed withGarth Harries, the Tweed official who

Obama announces get-tough strategy for struggling schools - washingtonpost.com

Obama announces get-tough strategy for struggling schools - washingtonpost.com:

"President Obama outlined Monday a get-tough strategy for turning around persistently struggling schools, offering an unprecedented increase in federal funding for local school systems that shake up their lowest-achieving campuses."

Speaking before a meeting of America's Promise Alliance, an education group founded by former secretary of state Colin L. Powell and his wife, Alma, Obama called curbing the nation's dropout problem a pressing economic and social imperative.
"This is a problem we cannot afford to accept and we cannot afford to ignore," Obama said at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters. "The stakes are too high -- for our children, for our economy and for our country."
According to a White House fact sheet, "Every school day, about 7,000 students decide to drop out of school -- a total of 1.2 million students each year -- and only about 70 percent of entering high school freshman graduate every year." As a result of this "dropout crisis," it said, the nation loses $319 billion a year in potential earnings.

The problem is concentrated in the nation's poorest schools and among minority students. Just 2,000 of America' schools -- about 12 percent of the nation's total -- account for half of the nation's dropouts, and more than 50 percent of them are African American or Latino. Boys are also much more likely than girls to be unsuccessful in school.
Obama has sought to combat the dropout problem with an infusion of federal aide for school districts that come up with innovative plans to help students graduate. The president's budget for the fiscal year that begins in October proposes $900 million for school turnaround grants, up from $546 million in fiscal 2010. The economic stimulus

HotSeat Interview: What Next For The Harlem Children's Zone? This Week In Education

This Week In Education

HotSeat Interview: What Next For The Harlem Children's Zone?

The dust is still settling around Helen Zelon's City Limits re-examination of the Harlem Children's Zone, one of the biggest, most critical looks that the program has ever received. It's unclear what happens next for HCZ or the replication efforts that are taking place around the country. Will momentum lag, or program requirements change?

For myself, I came away from reading Zelon's article with deeply mixed feelings. I was reminded of the power of easily graspable phrases ("conveyor belt," "tipping point," "contamination,"), the organizational zigs and zags hidden beneath the surface narrative of many nonprofits, the collateral damage among teachers and kids who function as guinea pigs, the reality that the impact of so many efforts have "eluded measurement" (as Zelon so delicately puts it). But Zelon's article also makes clear that big-sounding ideas and big personalities are, for better or worse, often a key element of what's needed to motivate change. Smaller, perhaps better, more consistently effective ideas may exist, but they fail to capture the imagination needed to motivate action. We want -- we need -- bold risk-taking from our leaders. If that's the case then perhaps we need to be grown-ups about the failures large and small that come from taking big risks.

On the Hot Seat, Zelon describes the "juggernaut" of praise that's surrounded the HCZ effort, the realization that there were lots of unanswered questions about HCZ, the challenges of reporting on the effort, and the uncomfortable experience of digging into a program that everyone seemed to think was a big success. Read Zelon's interview below.

Continue reading "HotSeat Interview: What Next For The Harlem Children's Zone?" »

Schools Matter: America's Broken Promise Alliance, or No Chamber of Commerce Left Behind

America's Broken Promise Alliance, or No Chamber of Commerce Left Behind

The President went to the center for national socialism, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, today to announce a new take-names-and-kick-ass accountability plan. No, no, no-- don't worry. The new tough measures are not about holding corporations accountable for ruining the economy, and it is not about holding Wall Street accountable for the leeches and banksters who got deliriously wealthy on the backs of American workers and homeowners, and it is not about holding Congress or the White House accountable for letting the insurance and pharmaceutical companies rape sick Americans with impunity, and it is not about holding the credit card companies accountable for blocking consumer protections or fair lending reforms.

Mr. Obama has some REAL accountability in mind for which there is ample bipartisan support: he and the Oligarchs want to fire the principals and teachers in America's poorest public schools for not solving the poverty problem that American corporations and government continue to ignore to the point of not even mentioning it--all the while mouthing cynical bromides about motivating test-choked and impoverished high schoolers to stay in segregated medium security facilities for some more tests and career-building exercises and inventories. It's a grad, grad, grad, grad, grad world.

Title I College- and Career-Ready Standards � The Quick and the Ed

Last week President Obama announced plans to require all states to certify that their standards were “college- and career-ready” in order to obtain their portion of $14.5 billion in federal education funds. This is the single largest pot of education money in the federal budget–it’s previously been called Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)–and it is the promise of this money that led to states following the rules in the ESEA, including those in the latest version, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. Theoretically any state could choose to opt out of these funds and their attached restrictions. Many states have threatened to pull out, but none have done so.

Would the college- and career-ready standards requirement be the last straw to push states over the limit? No, it wouldn’t, and the reason is because nothing will stop states from asserting their standards are preparing students for colleges and careers, even if they really are not. That’s federalism, and Obama is not likely to actually try to, nor could he, change it.

Others have pointed out that college- and career-ready is actually a higher standard than what exists now. Under current law, states just have to define a set of standards in math, reading, and science, have a set of assessments to measure student success, and then evaluate schools on whether students are “proficient” on those standards. States have set their standards at a rather low level; forcing those state standards to prepare students to be “college- and career-ready” would be a significantly higher benchmark.

The political opposition to No Child Left Behind has not really been about standards–most people believe it’s a good thing for teachers to have some

Race to the Top Madness - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Race to the Top Madness - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

"My colleague over at State EdWatch, Lesli Maxwell, and I teamed up to put together our Race to the Top Madness bracket. We should know the finalists any day now.

For more about the reasons behind our selections, check out Lesli's blog. In the meantime, here's our bracket predicting the finalists and the winners. Who would you cross off—or who would you add—if you did your own bracket?"

Meeting set to consider vandalism at UC Davis - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

A community meeting is scheduled for this evening to discuss offensive graffiti sprayed at the University of California, Davis, during the weekend.

The town all meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at Regan Main community building in the Segundo housing area on campus.

The vandalism at the UC Davis Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center was discovered about 12:30 p.m. Saturday. Derogatory words were directed at those who used the center.

The vandalism was present today at the building at the request of center officials.

"As a center we wanted not to immediately remove the vandalism in order to ensure that this hate crime does

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