Friday, January 7, 2011

Damn Good Education Daily

Geoffrey Canada Tells Stephen Colbert Racism Has Nothing to Do with the Achievement Gap - Education

good.is - Why isn’t public education fixed yet? According to the Harlem Children’s Zone founder and Waiting for Superman star Geoffrey Canada, if teachers unions didn’t exist, all would be well in our nation...

alexanderrusso

SAN DIEGO SCHOOLSRenewed Talk of School Closures Amid Rumbles of Budget Cuts

voiceofsandiego.org - Friday, Nov. 7, 2008 | Bracing for budget cuts that rival or exceed the reductions suffered by San Diego Unified last year, Superintendent Terry Grier has quietly tapped a committee of parent activ...

emilyschoolsyou

Class Struggle - Making college the goal helps non

pheedcontent.com - Thad Nodine, a researcher and writer based in Santa Cruz, Calif., recently sent me a report he did for the much-admired nonprofit organization Jobs for the Future. It was about the Hidalgo school d...

alexanderrusso

Teachers describe problems at Dunbar

washingtonpost.com - Geometry teacher Jessica Lilly found the fliers on the walls when she arrived at Dunbar Senior High School early one morning last month. They included a photo of a female student, with her name, ph...

DianeRavitch

Poll: Bloomberg approval lowest ever - Ben Smith

politico.com - January 06, 2011 New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is less popular than he's ever been in the wake of the city's mishandling of a large snowstorm last week. Bloomberg's approval rating stands at jus...

mikeklonsk

Queens Teacher: To the AFT/UFT: Where is OUR agenda?

To the AFT/UFT: Where is OUR agenda?

by Queens Teacher

From BeyondChron

The focus on competition, standardized test scores, teacher bashing, and privatization are at the core of the Whitehouse’s approach to public schools and will no doubt be a part of any legislative activity regarding reauthorizing federal education law, known popularly as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Coupled with the willful blindness to the centrality of anemic school funding levels and the tremendous role of child poverty on student performance, our expectations of Washington D.C. must continue to be low and skeptical as was predicted in this column from Duncan’s original appointment.

In so many ways, then, 2011 is poised to be a repeat of 2010, with all of its frustrations and extremes and politics as usual, but it’s also possible that we may have just gone past our ability to tolerate those politics. As families with children in the schools, we have no choice but to remain deeply engaged in the day to day struggles in classrooms and district board rooms to maintain, demand, and work for the best for our kids,. Yet we know that that work is made so much harder and more necessary by the relentless assault on the very

Research-based policy attacks on class size « Failing Schools

Research-based policy attacks on class size

JANUARY 7, 2011

by markfriedman1

EdWeek republished this article from the Dallas Morning News about the research-based attacks on class size in Texas. The aticle seems to be filled with the findings of “experts” and “research” that attempts to rhetorically minimize the effects of class room size on student learning. Due to curiosity on student views, I read this article with a class I was working with yesterday morning. We then took an informal verbal survey and, overwhelmingly, students recommended lower class sizes as a main factor in any attempt to help them achieve and learn more. When I brought up the question of teacher quality in relation to class room size they quickly pointed out, in disapproval, that the article quotes a Texas superintendent who says,

A bad teacher with 15 students is just as bad as with 25 students.

Students in the class were frustrated that the article did not talk about the effect of class room size

South Bend Tribune: Some views on parental involvement are flawed

Some views on parental involvement are flawed

VIEWPOINT

By MYKESHIA FOUNTAIN and IRENE GARCIA

Opinions expressed in The Tribune and in a Nov. 23 New York Times column, describe local and national problems with education and highlight how important parents are in resolving these very serious issues. Unfortunately, however, those pieces talked about parents negatively, with Thomas Friedman's Times column describing them as "under-involved" people who create "difficult home lives" for students.

Friedman's column even suggested that we need "better parents." This inflammatory language assumes that children from low-income neighborhoods always enter school with low levels of expectation and support. The truth is every neighborhood across our nation has both responsible parents and those who are overwhelmed and less effective. We agree that the home environment matters, but it is not always

Gregoire: Put K-12, higher ed under one dept. to save $

Plan would also give colleges more flexibility to raise tuition

By CHRIS GRYGIEL
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday proposed sweeping changes to Washington's school system that would centralize authority for kindergarten through the university level in in one giant department of education.

"We must create a student-focused education system that unites our scattered education agencies into a single department," Gregoire said at an Olympia news conference. "We will create an integrated education system, from pre-school to the Ph.D."

Lawmakers, facing a $4.6 billion deficit in the next two-year state budget, are looking for ways to save money. Last month $50 million was cut from public

Conor Williams - Can Mayor Gray make the grade on D.C. school reform?

Can Mayor Gray make the grade on D.C. school reform?

By Conor Williams

Thursday, January 6, 2011; 8:00 PM

I admit it: I'm among those who have had very serious doubts about Vincent Gray as D.C. mayor.

As a former urban teacher, I understand how fragile the District's progress on education reform still is. I know that changing the culture of a single school takes tremendous work. For instance, in an effort to inspire the elementary students in my Brooklyn school to prioritize college, we consciously praised "college behavior," warned students whose behavior was "taking them away from college," took them (kindergartners and up) to college campuses and sang multiple songs about college each day. That may seem excessive, but

Last Stand for Children First: Myron Miner on how to stretch your school dollar

Myron Miner on how to stretch your school dollar

by Last Stand for Children

Let's face it, the economy is not doing particularly well. Public worker unions have driven the economy off a steep cliff and school districts find themselves struggling to find the money to make meaningful reform and to adequately compensate the reformers who offer so much to their students. There is no reason for panic, however, like families across this great country, it's simply time to tighten your belt.

Any education reformer will tell you that the best teachers are young and fresh out of school. They may not have a lot of experience or training, but they make up for it with youthful enthusiasm. Who has more enthusiasm then your own 8th graders? Who is younger and fresher?

By having your 8th grade students teach the younger grades, the small children are given a teacher that they can relate to better because they are closer in

NYC Educator: Bill Gates Reaches Out

Bill Gates Reaches Out

by NYC Educator

Not content to have Arne Duncan and Barack Obama in his hip pocket, Bill Gates, along with his equally caring partner, the Wal-Mart family, is trying to rate the media. It's not sufficient that nonsensical propaganda films garner wide praise from clueless editorial boards, or that Obama shills for Gates and Oprah shills for Obama and NBC shills for Oprah.

No, Bill Gates wants Howard Stern to stop being king of all media so the goshdarn media will do whatever Bill Gates says it should do. After all, the President of the United States does whatever Bill says so why

This Week In Education: Washington DC: Duncan Criticizes Mayor's Selection Process

Washington DC: Duncan Criticizes Mayor's Selection Process I'm sure the mayor of Washington DC really enjoys having Secretary Duncan criticize his decision to do a national search for a new chancellor rather than making the interim into a permanent appointment. (Interim Schools Chancellor Gets Praise From ...

Media: Vaccine-Autism Link Was Scientific Fraud, Says New Report [image: image from www.pancreaticcanceraction.org]For years now, schools have been having to deal with parents who don't want their kids vaccinated for fear of a connection to autism, and the situation has continued despite the fact that the research ...

AM News: Budget Cuts & Anti-Bullying Laws [image: Newsneon] Congress unlikely to extend hand to ailing states Associated Press: Cut spending, raise taxes and fees, and accept billions of dollars from Congress. That's been the formula for states trying to survive the worst economy since the ...

Nominating Honig to State Board of Education is risky but worthy | Thoughts on Public Education

Nominating Honig to State Board of Education is risky but worthy
Share

He did more than anyone to raise standards

Posted on 1/06/11 • Categorized as Jerry Brown, State Board of Education

By Peter Schrag

Jerry Brown had no sooner nominated former California Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig to the state Board of Education this week than the ugly part of the Honig story crept back into the news: In 1993, Honig, possibly the most influential school leader in California’s history, was convicted on a felony conflict of interest charge and forced to resign. Three years later the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor, which now again makes him eligible to hold public office. But it may again haunt him –and haunt Brown for naming him.

The details of the old charges are too long to lay out in detail in this piece. In essence the hard-driving Honig was accused of steering some school district consulting contracts for parent training to his wife Nancy’s nonprofit Quality Education Project, which was headquartered in their San Francisco home.

It was a reckless thing to do, as some of Honig’s friends told him even then, but Honig was so certain that the services the QEP provided were the best thing for the schools that got them that the warnings were ignored.

The felony charge always smacked of a political witch hunt. Honig, a Democrat, never made

Whistleblower: Illegal school fees continue despite settlement | California Watch

Illegal school fees continue despite settlement, whistleblower says

by Corey G. Johnson

Corey G. Johnson

Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union settled a lawsuit accusing the Schwarzenegger administration of allowing school districts to charge students illegal fees for classes and extracurricular activities. The agreement with the state was touted as a victory for parents and the poor.

Yet a key parent advocate and whistleblower against the fees says school districts are simply changing their tactics to continue collecting fees. In a letter sent last week to Assemblyman Ricardo Lara, attorney Sally Smith says she's learned that San Diego Unified's Mira Mesa High School blocked ceramics students from firing clay art pieces unless they had paid a "material donation" charge of $20. Mira Mesa and others, according to documents reviewed by California Watch, are requiring students and parents to sign accountability contracts

Brown appoints ousted schools chief to state board

by Louis Freedberg

Louis Freedberg

In one of his first appointments, Gov. Jerry Brown has chosen Bill Honig, a once nationally acclaimed education leader who was effectively frozen out of the reform movement in the state for nearly 20 years, to serve on the State Board of Education.

Long before the era of term limits, Honig was elected to three four-year terms as state superintendent of public instruction, starting in 1983, but was forced to resign in 1993 as a result of one of the state's nastiest legal battles involving a statewide elected official – one that he and many supporters believed was politically motivated.

In an outcome that few expected, he was convicted on several conflict-of-interest felony charges and forced out of office. Those charges were later reduced to misdemeanors by the same judge who originally sentenced him.

Waiting for Superfraud « Failing Schools

Waiting for Superfraud

JANUARY 7, 2011

by markfriedman1

An excellent analysis of the issues and powers surrounding Waiting for Superman that we face in education by Arizona School Board Association Research Analyst Michael T Martin:

“Waiting for Superfraud”
by Michael T Martin
Public schools have to fail. There is no alternative. So give up trying to argue otherwise with facts and logic.
The mockumentary Waiting For Superman made this clear. Funded by millionaires, the movie told the story of some privatized schools in Harlem portrayed as saviors of children otherwise condemned to public schools. Privatized schools mostly funded by hedge fund millionaires on Wall Street. They spent two million dollars to promote

Daily Kos: experiencing the financial stress on teachers

experiencing the financial stress on teachers

by teacherken

which is becoming more and more of an issue. It affects a lot of teachers in my district. It is increasingly an issue that comes up when teachers in my building speak to me as union rep. And as I struggle to pay my own bills, it begins to hit home. Hard.

What is really painful for many of us is that it looks to only be getting worse.

Let me explain briefly, so that before you make comments about greedy teachers, or attack them and their unions, or anything else not particularly constructive, you have some sense of what many of us face.

The Answer Sheet - What 2010 education research really shows about reform

What 2010 education research really shows about reform

The following was written by Matthew Di Carlo, senior fellow at the non-profit Albert Shanker Institute, located in Washington, D.C. This post originally appeared on the institute’s blog. By Matthew Di Carlo "Race to the Top" and Waiting for Superman made 2010 a banner year for the market-based education reforms that dominate our national discourse. By contrast, a look at the “year in research” presents a rather different picture for the three pillars of this paradigm: merit pay, charter schools, and using value-added estimates in high-stakes decisions. There will always be exceptions (especially given the sheer volume of reports generated by think tanks, academics, and other players), and one year does not a body of research make. But a quick review of high-quality studies from independent, reputable researchers shows that 2010 was not a particularly good year for these policies.

Schools Matter: Seligman's Brainwashing Is Not Just for Captive KIPPsters Anymore

Seligman's Brainwashing Is Not Just for Captive KIPPsters Anymore

by Jim Horn

Jason Leopold has a great piece up at Truthout on the former CIA torture advisor and KIPP compliance guru, Martin Seligman, aka "Dr. Happy."

Seems that Seligman has leveraged his research on brainwashing poor schoolchildren into full-time happy scholars into a $30+ million dollar no-bid contract to pass the happiness bug to GIs who are coming back after multiple tours of duty with PTSD and worse.

Hey, if it can work in Philly to make children love their poverty and their abusive schooling, why can't it work in Kabul to make GIs unaffected by putting their comrades' pieces into bodybags? According to Seligman, "we're after creating an indomitable Army."

Now when GIs are done with being indomitable in the theaters of war, they can roll all that positivity into the

Thursday, January 6, 2011

State republicans oppose Gov. Jerry Brown's education board appointments | News10.net | Sacramento, California | Local News

State republicans oppose Gov. Jerry Brown's education board appointments

Maneeza Iqbal

Last updated 50 mins ago

Posted: 1/6/2011

SACRAMENTO, CA - Several Republican lawmakers oppose Gov. Jerry Brown's recent appointments to the California State Board of Education.

Brown appointed seven people to the board Wednesday, including former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig and California Teachers Association Lobbyist Patricia Rucker.

Honig was removed from office in the early 90's after being convicted for funneling state education money to an organization his wife ran out of their home. The felony charges were later reduced to misdemeanors.

"I think anybody that's been convicted of a felony even if it was downgraded is not the type of material that

Got Dough? Public School Reform in the Age of Venture Philanthropy

Thursday 06 January 2011

by: Joanne Barkan | Dissent Magazine | Op-Ed

Got Dough? Public School Reform in the Age of Venture Philanthropy
(Photo: dcJohn)

The cost of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has sufficed to define the national debate on education; sustain a crusade for a set of mostly ill-conceived reforms; and determine public policy at the local, state, and national levels. In the domain of venture philanthropy—where donors decide what social transformation they want to engineer and then design and fund projects to implement their vision—investing in education yields great bang for the buck.

Hundreds of private philanthropies together spend almost $4 billion annually to support or transform K–12 education, most of it directed to

UCSF Faculty Say 'No' to Juicier Pensions - The Bay Citizen

UCSF Faculty Say 'No' to Juicier Pensions

In a letter to UCSF CEO Mark Laret and others, faculty group calls executive threats demanding higher benefits "unseemly"

By ELIZABETH LESLY STEVENS on January 6, 2011 - 5:13 p.m. PST

start the discussion

Recommend

UCSF

CEO Mark Laret

In December, a group of three dozen of the University of California's highest-paid executives threatened legal action if they were not granted much-sweetened pensions--a move that would cost cash-strapped UC tens of millions.

Yesterday, the faculty association of UCSF sent a sharply worded letter to UCSF Medical Center CEO Mark Laret and others rebuking them for what the faculty described as an "unseemly" move amid the UC's financial crisis.

UC's pension fund is under-funded by about $22 billion, and UC last month announced changes to the pension system that tightened eligibility requirements and requires employees to make

Latest News and Comment from Education