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Friday, May 27, 2011

Big Education Ape:5-27-11 AM Ed Reform Meets the Mets Edition

Big Education Ape: Ed News Now


Big Education Ape: Ed News Now

Published by Coopmike48 – 6 contributors today



Ed Reform Meets the Mets

nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com - May 26, 2011 (GBN News): Long suffering Mets fans may finally have found their knight in shining armor, when it was announced today that that hedge fund manager David Einhorn will be buying a subst...
DianeRavitch

9 States Get New Chance at Federal Education Aid

nytimes.com - Nine states that were also-rans in last year’s Race to the Top school improvement competition will get another chance, the Obama administration announced on Wednesday, though this time $200 million...
arneduncan

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Patriot Act Extension Came Down To The Wire : NPR

npr.org - Congress scrambled to renew three controversial provisions of the anti-terror Patriot Act that otherwise would have expired at midnight Thursday. Minutes before that deadline, President Obama was a...
mikeklonsky

How will Mayor Nutter fulfill his vow to rescue schools?

articles.philly.com - "It is a test of mayoral leadership, and I believe he's up to the job," former Gov. Mark Schweiker said. "This is a mayor who's finding his stride, and he can push this across the proverbial goal l...
coopmike48

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Your Illinois News Radar » Here comes the pension bill

capitolfax.com - * House Republican Leader Tom Cross unveiled his pension reform proposal yesterday… The plan, endorsed by the top Democrat and the top Republican in the Illinois House, would require many state emp...
tbfurman

Defined-Contribution Plan v. Defined-Benefit Plan

teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com - Ø With a Defined Contribution Plan (401k, 403b, 457), only your contributions are defined;Ø Your benefit is not guaranteed;Ø Your benefit is based upon investment earnings;Ø Your benefit ends w...
fklonsky

Questions Follow Leader of For-Profit Colleges

nytimes.com - In 2004, when Todd S. Nelson was chief executive of the University of Phoenix, the nation’s largest for-profit college, he signed a $9.8 million settlement with the Department of Education, which f...
coopmike48

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You Must Do This Now

schooltechconnect.com - You have to call. Faxes are also good. Letters are also good. But you absolutely have to call. Below is a clip from my own call to my state representative, whom I haven't met yet. During the call, ...
tbfurman

A Knife In The Heart Of Education

pissedoffteeacher.blogspot.com - I sat around all afternoon waiting for kids to show up so I could help them with their credit recovery assignments. Two showed up ten minutes into the first period. One had gotten the slip of pa...
coopmike48

School Tech Connect: With Democrats Like These...

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - School Tech Connect: With Democrats Like These...With Democrats Like These...by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)Here's a clip from the end of today's session. I've chosen to highlight the section wh...
coopmike48

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Judge strikes down Walker's collective bargaining law

host.madison.com - MARY SPICUZZA | mspicuzza@madison.com | 608-252-6122 madison.com | | Posted: Thursday, May 26, 2011 9:34 am A judge has struck down Gov. Scott Walker's controversial new collective bargaining law. ...
mikeklonsky

High court tosses ruling on interviewing children

boston.com - WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a lower court's ruling that authorities need warrants to talk to potential victims of sex abuse at school, without saying whether it thought the e...
coopmike48

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Teachers of Year fight test-based assessment - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Teachers of Year fight test-based assessment - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Teachers of Year fight test-based assessment

by Valerie Strauss

Here is a letter that eight New York State Teachers of the Year wrote to the state Board of Regents about their decision to evaluate teachers based on student standardized test scores.

Starting in the fall, 40 percent of the evaluations of teachers and principals in New York public schools will based on student test scores. State officials had reached an agreement on assessment with union officials but then unilaterally changed it.

I previously ran a letter sent to the Regents by a group of assessment experts who said that such test-based evaluation methods are not reliable and should not be used.

Read full article >>

The 84-year-old first grader — for real

by Valerie Strauss

The new movie “The First Grader” seems so far-fetched that you could be forgiven for thinking that it is fiction. It isn’t.

The film tells the story of Kimani Ng’ang’a Maruge, a man in his 80s who is desperate to learn to read after spending his youth fighting for Kenya’s liberation from British colonial rule, including long periods in detention camps where he was tortured .

Read full article >>
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Teenagers & Sleep | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Teenagers & Sleep | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...
Teenagers & Sleep Here are two new useful resources I’m adding to The Best Resources For Helping Teens Learn About The Importance Of Sleep: No Rest for the Weary? Analyzing Sleep Habits is from The New York Times Learning Network. Zombie Prevention: Your Child’s ...
Two Good Posts On School Reform I read two good posts on school reform today: Are Finnish schools the best in the world? comes from The Belfast Telegraph. I’m adding it to The Best Resources To Learn About Finland’s Education System. Linda Darling-Hammond on Teacher Evaluations ...
More Online Tools To Edit Videos Here are the newest additions to Not The “Best,” But A List… Of Online Video Editors: The YouTube video editor is already on that list, but it’s recently made several improvements. The 10,000 Words blog has a tutorial on the changes. JayCut is also ...
Resources On The Arrest Of Ratko Mladic As most readers probably know already, suspected war criminal Ratko Mladic was arrested today. He is accused of being responsible for committing horrific war crimes against Bosnian Muslims. His crimes may, or may not, exactly fit the definition of ...
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Remix of knowledge acquisition and practice are elements of Learning 2.0 | Thoughts on Public Education

Remix of knowledge acquisition and practice are elements of Learning 2.0 | Thoughts on Public Education

Remix of knowledge acquisition and practice are elements of Learning 2.0 - by Charles Taylor Kerchner

by Charles Taylor Kerchner
The words “remix” and “mashup” entered the vocabulary as descriptors of life in the digital age. They are also key to what I am calling Learning 2.0, the next full-scale version of public education. At the simplest level, these new terms are represented by three teenagers using Apple Garage Band to combine bits and pieces of [...]

The suspense is over - by Kathryn Baron

by Kathryn Baron
The wild budget rumpus is about to begin in earnest. Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s bill to give counties and school districts broader power to push for new taxes is headed to the Senate floor for a vote. SB 653 was among dozens of bills taken off the suspense file and passed Thursday by the [...]
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Michael Moore on what happens when you “sit at the table.” « Fred Klonsky's blog

Michael Moore on what happens when you “sit at the table.” « Fred Klonsky's blog

Michael Moore on what happens when you “sit at the table.”

by Fred Klonsky

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel held a telephone town hall meeting for RA delegates last night. Delegates could call in with questions. I called with a question about last year’s no confidence vote of Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top, what response we got from the administration and what that means for a July 2011 NEA endorsement of Obama.

I called shortly after the teleconference began. No surprise that I didn’t get to ask my question. And I missed the first quarter of the Bulls game while waiting.

The unusual early no-strings endorsement of Obama is part of the NEA’s sitting at the table strategy. If you object to their strategy, the leadership will tell you that if you don’t agree to discuss just about anything, you will have no influence on the outcome. In this case, Dennis argued that if we don’t endorse Obama this year, we won’t have any influence on the campaign.

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NYC Educator: Charters 4-Union 1

NYC Educator: Charters 4-Union 1

Charters 4-Union 1

by NYC Educator
That's the score at Gotham Schools.

On Wednesday, May 25th Gotham let us know there was going to be a charter school rally. After that, they told us the charter school rally forgot to mention it was targeting the NAACP, because evidently no one could figure out it was actually targeting union and public schools.

Then, Gotham told us that there was not only going to be the charter school rally they'd twice told us about, but also some others as well. After those three stories, they ran one the next day, in case we hadn't yet gotten the point, to tell us there had been a charter school rally. Gotham says the charter rally attracted 2,500 people.


On May 12th, the UFT held a rally that attracted 10,000
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Locating the Coordinates of School Reform in 2011 | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Locating the Coordinates of School Reform in 2011 | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Locating the Coordinates of School Reform in 2011

by larrycuban

Where is the U.S. in school reform now?

To answer this question, I will do what lawyers often do when arguing a case. I will stipulate certain statements as facts. These statements may not sound like facts but as an historian and practitioner of school reform I claim they are. Should readers quarrel with these statements, I do have supporting references and we can discuss those in dispute later. I stipulate the following:

FACT 1

Historically, school reformers have overstated defects in the existing system and made gloomy predictions of disaster. Then they have understated difficulties of changing the system by proposing rose-colored solutions.

Exhibit A is what has occurred over the past three decades.

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Education Nation – “Job One” Panel Reviewed « InterACT

Education Nation – “Job One” Panel Reviewed « InterACT

Education Nation – “Job One” Panel Reviewed

by ACT Guest Blog Posts

Lisa AlvaToday InterACT offers another guest post from a participant in the recent Education Nation programming in Los Angeles. Lisa Alva is a National Board Certified Teacher at Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles. She was on the panel at the Teacher Town Hall webcast, which has been the subject of some recent posts here at InterACT. Alva was in the audience on Thursday, May 19, when NBC convened a panel of business and community leaders under the banner “Job One” – described on their website as a discussion about “the needs of a 21st Century workforce and how best prepare our students for the

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The Big Picture: Privatizing Education, Part 2 | Seattle Education

The Big Picture: Privatizing Education, Part 2 | Seattle Education

The Big Picture: Privatizing Education, Part 2

by Kristin

by Kristin

The “education reform” sweeping the nation right now isn’t reform at all. It’s privatization and deregulation. Part One explained privatization and deregulation and explored the billionaires and corporations pushing for it. This section explains the strategy they’re using: using nonprofits. Part Three will show how the different aspects of “education reform” work together as a process — and how it can be stopped!

How Do They Get Power?

Billionaires and corporations exert their influence and push for privatization using a myriad of strategies, some obvious and some not. They can directly lobby the state and federal government for change. Through ownership of mass media, they can also put out PR in favor of privatization and deregulation, thereby swaying public officials and voters. Those strategies are fairly obvious.

But some of the ways that billionaires and corporations exert their influence are not so obvious. In fact, they’re

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Thursday, May 26, 2011

School Tech Connect: With Democrats Like These...

School Tech Connect: With Democrats Like These...

With Democrats Like These...

by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)
Here's a clip from the end of today's session. I've chosen to highlight the section where Daniel Bill (D-17) asks a couple of good technical questions. If I'm not mistaken, he also hints pretty strongly that he's probably going to be one of those Social Security privatizers later on in his career, so let's tuck that away. There's a lot going on in this clip, so feel free to chime in.
By the way, that's Michael Madigan front and center; he's there to bully the members into voting for this pile of crap, and Tom Cross next to him. Between the two of them, these
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The Downey Patriot - Popular programs victim of budget cuts

The Downey Patriot - Popular programs victim of budget cuts
Popular programs victim of budget cuts
May 26, 2011 | 37 views | 0 0 comments | 1 1 recommendations | email to a friend | print
California school districts -- wielding new fiscal flexibility granted by state lawmakers -- cut deeply into several popular programs to balance local budgets, according to a study of 10 diverse districts released this week.

Local educators in 2009 were granted total control over $4.5 billion that previously funded 40 regulated programs, a change made as Sacramento lawmakers cut educational spending by almost one-fifth. The new study begins to illuminate how local school boards changed spending on adult education, special programs for gifted students, new textbooks and other programs.

“District actions were driven mostly by the need to plug deficits in their budgets, rather than from careful evaluation of programs and priorities,” said Brian Stecher, a study co-author and senior social scientist at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. “How this continues to evolve will have important impacts on K-12 students across California.”


Read more:The Downey Patriot - Popular programs victim of budget cuts
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Los Angeles school board: Teachers' union candidate wins L.A. school board seat - latimes.com

Los Angeles school board: Teachers' union candidate wins L.A. school board seat - latimes.com

Teachers' union candidate wins L.A. school board seat

Retired teacher Bennett Kayser defeats Luis Sanchez, who was supported by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, for the last open seat on the board.

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By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times

May 27, 2011

Bennett Kayser, the candidate favored by the teachers union, won the last remaining open seat for the Los Angeles Board of Education on Thursday, beating Luis Sanchez, who was supported by the mayor.

"Teachers and teachers unions have been scapegoated, and I think we're on the road to vindication right now," Kayser said.

Kayser, a retired teacher, received about 10,700 votes, nearly 600 more than Sanchez, who is chief of staff for the current school board president, Monica Garcia. Voter turnout was less than 10%, and most ballots were cast by mail. Sanchez said he does not plan to ask for a recount.

The race to represent the 5th District, which covers the area

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Michelle Rhee pats DougCo schools on back for voucher program - The Denver Post

Michelle Rhee pats DougCo schools on back for voucher program - The Denver Post

Michelle Rhee pats DougCo schools on back for voucher program


By The Denver Post
POSTED: 05/26/2011 04:36:09 PM MDT

Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of Washington, D.C., schools, today in a speech in Denver congratulated the work of the Douglas County School District in implementing a voucher program.

Rhee said before her work in Washington, her Democratic affiliation contained her support for education reform to anything that wasn't vouchers — until she started talking to mothers who felt they had no good school options for their children.

"I was not going to be the one to tell these moms that they couldn't take the money, that they should stick it out with us and hopefully in five years we could get the schools performing — even though in the meantime



Read more:Michelle Rhee pats DougCo schools on back for voucher program - The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_18148310#ixzz1NVwRvgIq
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2011-12 School Year in Review: I’m still sane « EducationCEO's Blog

2011-12 School Year in Review: I’m still sane « EducationCEO's Blog

2011-12 School Year in Review: I’m still sane Leave a comment

With all the
faux pas
major screw-ups this school year, I naively thought the last 3 days would be peaceful and incident free. Just when I thought the Universe was conspiring for my greater good, I have yet another fire to extinguish with this school run by bumbling idiots. No more than twenty minutes after I enter the house, Boy Wonder asks me if he can have money to eat lunch tomorrow. Hmmm, that’s odd because the last time I checked, he was supposed to receive free breakfast and lunch at school. So, as mothers do, I unloaded a barrage of questions:
Me: Why didn’t you eat lunch today?
Boy Wonder: Because they didn’t serve lunch today?
Me: Why not? Did you eat breakfast at school today?
Boy Wonder: Yes.
Me: Well, what time do you normally eat lunch?
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