Thursday, January 27, 2011

TFA teacher gets angry response from Ackerman | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

TFA teacher gets angry response from Ackerman

by thenotebook on Jan 26 2011

by Celeste Lavin

When the young teacher attending a panel discussion about men of color and education stood up to tell Superintendent Arlene Ackerman that the School District’s constant bureaucratic requirements impeded her ability to teach, she hardly expected what happened next.

Ackerman blew up at her and, in essence, told her to quit.

“What we need are teachers who don’t make excuses,” said Ackerman. “I don’t want to hear about bureaucracy. We have always had bureaucracies…. We are looking for people who say ‘I can teach a rock to read.’… If it is not the right place for you then you should find another place to go.”

The audience of about 400 people was stunned.

The event, at the University of Pennsylvania, was hosted by Teach for America

School-house blues - Bites - Opinions - January 27, 2011 - Sacramento News & Review

School-house blues

By Cosmo Garvin
cosmog@newsreview.com
More stories by this author...

This article was published on 01.27.11.

Margaret Fortune, who was the main pitch person and superintendent forKevin Johnson’s St. Hope schools back in the day, wants to open 10 charter schools—with nearly 5,000 students—in Sacramento County over the next decade.

And she wants to short-circuit the elected boards (and teachers unions) of several local school districts by going straight to the more sympathetic board of the Sacramento County Office of Education to get approval for her schools.

Not surprisingly, the trustees at the Sacramento City Unified School District, where many of the schools would be located, along with teachers unions and some parent groups are freaking at this unprecedented move.

“This proposal will just siphon off high-performing kids, along with their ADA, without doing anything to help those schools that need it most,” said parentKate Lennox at a meeting of the SCUSD board of trustees last week.

The trustees unanimously passed a resolution asking the SCOE to reject Fortune’s application

The political education of Michelle Rhee - Ben Smith and Byron Tau - POLITICO.com

The political education of Michelle Rhee

Michelle Rhee stands off to the side as Washington Mayor Vince Gray speaks to the media. | AP Photo

Michelle Rhee was probably the only person in Washington surprised by Fenty’s defeat. | AP PhotoClose

By BEN SMITH & BYRON TAU | 1/27/11 3:40 AM EST

Michelle Rhee turned up at work last September 13 utterly stunned.

“I really did think he was going to win,” she told her staff of her boss, Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty.

VIDEO: Rhee on Students First

VIDEO: Rhee steps down

Latest on POLITICO

POLITICO 44

“Yes, we know you did,” came the reply.

Rhee was probably the only person in Washington surprised by Fenty’s defeat. Even her fiance, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, told POLITICO he saw it coming.

Rhee had already amply demonstrated that she was terrible at politics. The toast of the Washington Post editorial board for shaking up the city’s troubled school system, she now

Duncan's school of wisdom

GEORGE F. WILL

Thursday, January 27, 2011

"Since 1995 the average mathematics score for fourth-graders jumped 11 points. At this rate we catch up with Singapore in a little over 80 years . . . assuming they don't improve."

- Norman R. Augustine,

retired CEO of Lockheed Martin

What America needs, says one American parent, is more parents who resemble South Korean parents. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, 46, a father of a third-grader and a first-grader, recalls the answer Barack Obama got when he asked South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, "What is the biggest education challenge you have?" Lee answered: "Parents are too demanding." They want their children to start learning English in first rather than second grade. Only 25 percent of U.S. elementary schools offer any foreign-language instruction.

Too many American parents, Duncan says, have "cognitive dissonance" concerning primary and secondary schools: They think their children's schools are fine, and that schools that

The Associated Press: AP Exclusive: Teach For America gets $100M

AP Exclusive: Teach For America gets $100M

(AP) – 3 hours ago

ATLANTA (AP) — Teach For America, the education organization that has placed recent college graduates in low-income public schools, is getting $100 million to launch its first-ever endowment in hopes of making the grass-roots organization a permanent fixture in education.

The program — which is now in communities from Atlanta to rural New Mexico to Los Angeles — announced Thursday that four philanthropists are joining to create a stable, long-term source of money. It's welcome news for an organization that had more than 46,000 applications for just 4,400 teaching slots this academic year.

"A few years ago we embraced the priority of making Teach For America an enduring American institution that can thrive as long as the problem we're working to address persists," said founde

NJ Spotlight | When Presidents Focus on Education, States Focus on Implementation

When Presidents Focus on Education, States Focus on Implementation
Now that President Obama has outlined his education policy, New Jersey and other states await the details

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By John Mooney, January 27 in Education |Post a Comment

The day after President Obama made education a central theme of his State of the Union address, lawmakers started talking the details of what federal rules will affect states like New Jersey in the coming years.

Topic A is the controversial No Child Left Behind Act, the federal law that in the last decade virtually remade testing and accountability in schools nationwide.

And in an unusual press call, top federal officials and legislators from both parties yesterday made clear their focus was more on "fixing" the law rather than starting over.

The testing that was a hallmark of the federal law is not going away, for instance, but instead they said changes would be coming in how the required exams would be administered and utilized, and

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Thursday, January 27, 2011