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Friday, June 10, 2011

Big Education Ape: 6-10-11 AM Pray-in for Mayor Bloomberg to reverse 'immoral' cuts to schools

Big Education Ape: Ed News Now
Big Education Ape: Ed News Now

Published by Coopmike48 – 7 contributors today



'The Acquisition of 16,905 Students'

huffingtonpost.com - Prior to my career in academia, I practiced law. I took my first job back in 1988 during a boom in so-called mergers and acquisitions. There were lots or reasons bandied about for why one corporati...
DianeRavitch

Blog posts on this issue

whitehouse.gov - The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 09, 2011 WASHINGTON, D.C. – The White House today announced the establishment of the first White House Rural Council. While...
coopmike48

Roosevelt’s turnaround pays off with higher grad rate

portlandtribune.com - By Jennifer Anderson The Portland Tribune, Jun 8, 2011, Updated 21.3 hours ago CHRISTOPHER ONSTOTT / TRIBUNE PHOTO Roosevelt High School Principal Charlene Williams led the school through its first...
arneduncan

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Delayed notice threatens turnout for run-off CEC elections

gothamschools.org - Add one more snag to the list of woes plaguing this year’s community education council elections. Dozens of run-off elections happened this week with such scant notice that several parent leaders s...
coopmike48

Yelena Siwinski confronts Walcott on class size

nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com - Yelena Siwinski, teacher at PS 193 in Brooklyn showed up for a meeting in District 22. Here is her account, which shows that still, even after being asked at two different consecutive City Council...
coopmike48

Summer lobby. Fall lobby. « Fred Klonsky's blog

preaprez.wordpress.com - Another morning, another pension meeting with teachers. This time with a large group in the Franklin school auditorium. Colleagues had lots of good ideas on how to make our unpaid hours of work mor...
fklonsky

PoliticsSee all


Reading, Writing, Breaking, Entering - Investors.com

investors.com - Limited Government: The Education Department in Washington apparently has its own SWAT team conducting dawn raids on people who bamboozle the federal bureaucracy. Call it big, dumb, dangerous gover...
mikeklonsky

Today's Teamster News 06.10.11

teamsternation.blogspot.com - Top Republican National Committee official involved in Wisconsin GOP shenanigans Washington Post ...A current top RNC official may have played a key role in developing the plan when he was with ...
coopmike48

Daily Kos: Afghanistan: We should declare victory and leave.

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - Daily Kos: Afghanistan: We should declare victory and leave.Afghanistan: We should declare victory and leave.by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)So says Eugene Robinson in a piece entitled A plan for A...
coopmike48

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Sign the petition in support of the NAACP, and MSBNC video

nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com - Check out the General Counsel of the NAACP Kim Keenan on MSNBC on June 6th, explaining the inequities in NYC public schools and why the NAACP has filed a lawsuit against the unfair charter school ...
leoniehaimson

Why They Oppose Background Checks

democurmudgeon.blogspot.com - The background check requirement only applies to Federal Firearms License holders. Private sellers are not required to screen their buyers in any way. Usually the question of background checks come...
coopmike48

The status of students | Being Latino Online Magazine

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - The status of students | Being Latino Online MagazineThe status of studentsby Cindy Tovarby Cindy TovarAll children, regardless of their legal status, are entitled to public education. Despite this...
coopmike48

BusinessSee all


Is this the new face of corporate school reform?

schoolingintheownershipsociety.blogspot.com - From May 31, 2011 Business Insider:At the end of 2010, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp paid almost $400m in cash to purchase 90% of Wireless Generation, a company that bills itself as "the leading provi...
mikeklonsky

"Reformer" Klein is a hustler supreme

schoolingintheownershipsociety.blogspot.com - He helps land Rupert Murdoch a $27 million no-bid contract from NY schools The money - part of the state's $700 million in Race to the Top winnings - will go to Wireless Generation, owned by Rupert...
mikeklonsky

Art & EntertainmentSee all


Home - Inside Higher Ed

insidehighered.com - February 24, 2011 The return of ROTC to some campuses -- seemingly assured by the end of the military's policy against gay service members -- may be hitting a few bumps.More February 24, 2011 City ...
coopmike48

TEDxNYEd Talk | vivirlaeducacion

vivirlaeducacion.com - Publicado el 10 Junio 2011Archivado en Josep | Desde el departamento de autopromoción desvergonzada viene mi charla TEDxNYEd que di hace unas semanas. Es un verdadero honor. Resulta increíblemente ...
coopmike48

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India's Call Center Workers Rack Up Complaints

womensenews.org - Female workers are widespread in the low-paying jobs in India's $40 billion business process outsourcing industry. Workplace hazards, ranging from stress-induced ailments to social lives shattered ...
coopmike48

#eduRead this paperSee all


School Tech Connect: Another Fax Won't Kill You...

bigeducationape.blogspot.com - School Tech Connect: Another Fax Won't Kill You...Another Fax Won't Kill You...by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)In for a penny, in for a pound...On good advice, I just faxed the governor regardin...
coopmike48

#edreformRead this paperSee all


Another Fax Won't Kill You...

schooltechconnect.com - In for a penny, in for a pound... On good advice, I just faxed the governor regarding SB 79, the bill sponsored by my own state senator that would in a nutshell provide an end-run around democrat...
tbfurman

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Schooling in the Ownership Society: Is this the new face of corporate school reform?

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Is this the new face of corporate school reform?

Is this the new face of corporate school reform?

by Mike Klonsky
From May 31, 2011 Business Insider:

At the end of 2010, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp paid almost $400m in cash to purchase 90% of Wireless
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The Best Resources For Learning About The “Next Generation” Of State Testing | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

The Best Resources For Learning About The “Next Generation” Of State Testing | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...
Now You Can Edit A Video Online Collaboratively With Stroome Stroome is a nice online editing tool that’s on Not The “Best,” But A List… Of Online Video Editors list. They’ve just added a feature called “groups” that lets you work with a….group of people to collaboratively edit a video. Because of that ...
More Resources For Encouraging Our Students To Attend College Here are the newest additions to The Best Resources For Showing Students Why They Should Continue Their Academic Career: A college education is your best bet is from CNN. Education Pays is an updated chart from The Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Best Resources For Learning About The “Next Generation” Of State Testing Things have certainly been hopping this week with various multi-state organizations preparing to spend millions of dollars from the Department of Education to develop the “next generation” of state testing. There are two tracks going on — one ...
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The status of students | Being Latino Online Magazine

The status of students | Being Latino Online Magazine

The status of students

by Cindy Tovar

by Cindy Tovar

All children, regardless of their legal status, are entitled to public education. Despite this federal law, school districts around the country are trying to make enrollment just a little bit harder for children who are undocumented.

Legislators are introducing bills that will require students and parents to provide proof of citizenship in order to attend public schools.They’re concerned about how much it costs to educate a child that is here illegally, or is the U.S. born child of an illegal immigrant. They want numbers and facts, but for what purpose? We can only speculate. Fortunately, the U.S. Department of Education saw this trend and sent out a memo reminding them that what they are trying to do is illegal.

North Carolina is persistent, though, proposing that principals and school administrators merely ask about

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A school reformer gets real - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

A school reformer gets real - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

A school reformer gets real

by Valerie Strauss

--

There’s been a ruckus in the education policy world since The New York Times published a piece on May 31 byeducation historian Diane Ravitch questioning whether schools hailed as success stories by the Obama administration were, in fact, so successful. The reaction by some of Ravitch’s critics was histrionic, including a puzzling Jonathan Alter diatribe (on Bloomberg Review) in which Education Secretary Arne Duncan was quoted as taking an ill-advised shot at her too.

But there was one piece from a Ravitch critic that made sense and here it is. The following essay, by Thomas B. Fordham Institute Executive Vice President Michael J. Petrilli, was first posted (in a slightly different format) on Fordham’s blog, Flypaper. Petrilli can be found on Twitter at @michaelpetrilli.

Read full article >>

How much does stress affect learning?

by Valerie Strauss

--

This was written by educator Anthony Cody, who taught science for 18 years in inner-city Oakland and now works with a team of science teacher-coaches that supports novice teachers. He is a National Board-certified teacher and an active member of the Teacher Leaders Network. This post appeared on his Education Week Teacher blog, Living in Dialogue.

Read full article >>
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California jumps to other test consortium | Thoughts on Public Education

California jumps to other test consortium | Thoughts on Public Education

California jumps to other test consortium

Teacher-focused SMARTER-Balanced has local ties

Posted on 6/10/11 • Categorized as Common Core standards, Standardized tests

By John Fensterwald - Educated Guess

In a decision with long-term policy implications, California has switched membership in the state-led consortiums that will create the standardized tests for the new nationwide Common Core math and English Language Arts standards.

California will become one of 18 governing states in the 30-state SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium. It is most closely identified with one of its chief advisers, Stanford University School of Education Professor and author Linda Darling-Hammond, an advocate for teachers and a sharp critic of the current generation of standardized tests.

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NYC Educator: Walcott's First Draft

NYC Educator: Walcott's First Draft

Walcott's First Draft

by NYC Educator
As Chancellor, I want the best for our kids. That's why I'm closing their schools, and allowing charters to take over. After all, charters are better than public schools17% of the time, so it's crucial we give our kids the chance to enroll in a grueling, dehumanizing lottery process in which they have a small chance of getting into one of these schools. That way, if they do, they have a 17% chance of getting a superior education. Me, I sent my kids to private schools until high school, because I don't take chances with my own kids.

In any case, I'd like to give the rest of you the opportunity to take that crapshot. I figure if 20% actually get into the charters, that 3.4% of your kids will have better schools. But consider this--if I can double the number of charters, 6.8% of your kids will have better schools. Perhaps one day I'll be remembered as the chancellor who managed to get 3.4% more kids better schools.

Let me tell you, I don't take this responsibility lightly. I want to close all the public schools the failing public
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Michigan follows Illinois’ lead in stripping teachers of tenure and seniority rights. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Michigan follows Illinois’ lead in stripping teachers of tenure and seniority rights. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Michigan follows Illinois’ lead in stripping teachers of tenure and seniority rights.

by Fred Klonsky

The Michigan House passed a bill that would strip teachers of many of their tenure and seniority rights. The Senate is expected to follow suit and the Tea Party Governor is expected to sign it.

This action follows on the heels of Illinois passing anti-seniority Senate Bill 7.

State Rep. Mark Ouimet, R-Scio Township, said: “Teachers still can’t be fired for arbitrary or political reasons under the legislation, but school officials and taxpayers will no longer have to deal with a costly tenure process to make needed changes.”

But just what constitutes “arbitrary and capricious”? Or, for that matter, what is an “effective” or “ineffective” teacher?

Those are questions that haunt Dan Quinn, an economics teacher at Grosse

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Daily Kos: Afghanistan: We should declare victory and leave.

Daily Kos: Afghanistan: We should declare victory and leave.

Afghanistan: We should declare victory and leave.

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

So says Eugene Robinson in a piece entitled A plan for Afghanistan: Declare victory — and leave. Being of the age I am, I am reminded of similar words from Republican Senator George Aiken of Vermont, who said of Vietnam “Let's declare victory and get out.”

The conclusion of the piece by Robinson, the whole of which I urge you to read, goes like this:

We wanted to depose the Taliban regime, and we did. We wanted to install a new government that answers to its constituents at the polls, and we did. We wanted to smash al-Qaeda’s infrastructure of training camps and havens, and we did. We wanted to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, and we did.

Even so, say the hawks, we have to stay in Afghanistan because of the dangerous instability

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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH STATEMENT ON UNION RIGHTS

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH STATEMENT ON UNION RIGHTS


SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH STATEMENT ON UNION RIGHTS

by Mike Klonsky
One of the many reasons I am marching along with thousands of others in D.C. on July 30th is in defense of union rights for teachers and other public workers. Here is the SOS position on Unions and Collective Bargainingprinted in full:

Unions and Collective Bargaining

Unions of all kinds are currently under political attack. Public employee unions are especially under fire, as we have seen in Wisconsin and now in other states. As members of public employee unions, teachers are particularly aware of the risks inherent in allowing such attacks to go unchallenged.

Those of us involved in organizing the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action
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Thursday, June 9, 2011

OMG2 CODENAME ORWEL:) Department of Education SWAT Team Raids Area Home Seeking Renegade Teacher

The Bennington Vale Evening Transcript: Department of Education SWAT Team Raids Area Home Seeking Renegade Teacher

Department of Education SWAT Team Raids Area Home Seeking Renegade Teacher

By BC Bass
Secret Law Enforcement Teams in Every Government Agency, Official Reveals


SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- A S.W.A.T. team, acting under orders from the U.S. Department of Education, raided a California home Tuesday and reportedly roughed up the owner, Thad Kittle, because of a student aid issue involving his estranged wife. One witness said, “They all had guns. They dragged him out in his boxer shorts, threw him to the ground and handcuffed him.” Kittle’s three children were also detained in the terrifying incident. His wife no longer lives at the address, and was not present.


The search warrant noted that authorities were seeking evidence related to Financial Aid Fraud, Conspiracy, Theft of Government Funds, False Statement to Government Agency and Wire Fraud. However, the judge who signed the warrant specifically deleted the line authorizing the search for “contraband or any other item that is immediately apparent to be evidence of a crime,” leading critics to question the use of excessive force...and why the Department of Education has an armed paramilitary.


Strength Lies in Attack, Not Defense
An official who oversees government enforcement services clarified on Thursday that federal agents with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), not local police or S.W.A.T. units, served the search warrant. Relti Floda, secretary of the Office of Recovery and Weaponized Enforcement Leverage (ORWEL), explained that the OIG is a semi-independent branch of the U.S. Department of Education that executes warrants for criminal offenses such as
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Listen to Ravitch, Alter talk past each other | EdNewsColorado

Listen to Ravitch, Alter talk past each other | EdNewsColorado

Listen to Ravitch, Alter talk past each other

by Alan Gottlieb

It’s billed as a debate, but the 35-minute session featuring Diane Ravitch and Jonathan Alter Wednesday on a local talk show was more two people filibustering than anything resembling a true give-and-take. Host David Sirota didn’t pretend to be a disinterested third party, coming down, as one would expect, firmly on Ravitch’s side. Listen to it here. (Thanks to GothamSchools)

Still, having the two on his program was a coup of sorts. The dust-up between them began when Ravitch wrote an op-ed last week in the New York Times, in which she questioned the “miracle” mythology around certain schools, including Denver’s Bruce Randolph. Alter, a long-time Newsweek correspondent who now writes for Bloomberg News, penned a column accusing Ravitch of attempting to derail current reforms. He called her “the education world’s very own Whittaker Chambers, the famous communist turned strident anti-communist of the

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School Tech Connect: Another Fax Won't Kill You...

School Tech Connect: Another Fax Won't Kill You...
School Tech Connect



Another Fax Won't Kill You...

by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)
In for a penny, in for a pound...

On good advice, I just faxed the governor regarding SB 79, the bill sponsored by my own state senator that would in a nutshell provide an end-run around democratically elected school boards all around the state. There is something slightly foul about this ed reform movement; they use legislative processes to reduce people's overall access to democracy. It's going to be their way or the highway.



As always, I'm available to help show your local organization how to use some very simple tools to get good response rates on political action. Why send out one message when you can send out 100; it's easy, and it's basically free.

If you're downstate or in the suburbs, you should be concerned about this particular bill. Some of the people behind it are hell bent on chartering away the entire public education system.

Incidentally, I lost the governor's fax number, so I went to one of the state local organizations for it. On their website, they have a suggested message for thanking the governor for signing SB7, the "reform" law for which I would be hard-pressed to describe a single positive outcome. For anyone.

We've lost our way. My neighbor is right; we have to re-think what it means to lobby.
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Schooling in the Ownership Society: "Reformer" Klein is a hustler supreme

Schooling in the Ownership Society: "Reformer" Klein is a hustler supreme

"Reformer" Klein is a hustler supreme

by Mike Klonsky
He helps land Rupert Murdoch a $27 million no-bid contract from NY schools

The money - part of the state's $700 million in Race to the Top winnings - will go to Wireless Generation, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., to develop software to track student test scores, among other things. Wireless Generation helped build a similar system in the city called Achievement Reporting and Innovation Systems, or ARIS, that has been widely criticized in the city. The contract would expand the ARIS system statewide.

In a request sent to the state controller's office in May to sign off on a no-bid process, officials cited the tight timeline for beginning the Race to the Top
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Shanker Blog » Great Expectations

Shanker Blog » Great Expectations

Great Expectations

Posted June 9, 2011

A couple of years ago, Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert explored the negative side of our unrealistically high expectations for artists and, more generally, for those who rely on their creativity to make a living. In ancient Rome, Gilbert recounts, creativity was associated with a sort of divine spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unfathomable reasons. The Romans referred to this intangible spirit as a genius. An individual was not a genius, but rather had a genius – a magical entity who was believed to live in the walls of an artist’s studio and who would come out and invisibly assist the artist with his/her work. The lesson Gilbert draws is one of humility (i.e., successes are not entirely ours – don’t be such a narcissist) and emancipatory relief (i.e., failures are not completely our fault either – can’t hurt to try).

What does all this have to do with education and teachers? It seems to me that our expectations for both teachers and artists are sometimes unrealistic and unproductive, if not detrimental. Great teachers are often portrayed as superheroes, unencumbered by anything that might distract them from their teaching crusade – “refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.” As a recent article in The Atlanticexplained, Teach for America now asks applicants to talk about how they have overcome the challenges in their lives and uses these answers to rate their perseverance.

Yet the meaning of “Great Teacher” rarely gets analyzed. Instead, our definition of greatness – or even competence – remains a convenient black box, leading some to suggest that the question of what makes a teacher great is less important than separating the wheat from the chaff. In turn, this reveals a simplistic and, in my view, negative

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The results are in……but don’t celebrate just yet! « EducationCEO's Blog

The results are in……but don’t celebrate just yet! « EducationCEO's Blog

The results are in……but don’t celebrate just yet! Leave a comment

Earlier this week, the Georgia Department of Education released the overall results for the Georgia High School Graduation Tests (GHSGT), which will become a thing of the past for the Freshman class of 2011 (READ: Performance for the state and districts as a whole, not the results for AYP subgroups. Those results will not be made public until mid to late-July) . I won’t go into my P.O.V. on phasing out the test here, instead I will save that for another day when I find myself putting off struggling to write. Today we got a glimpse of the overall performance on the state’s Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT), which is administered to kids in grades 3-8; those in grades 3, 5, and 8 are required to pass the Math and Reading tests in order to be promoted to the next grade. As I read the article in the AJC and Maureen Downey’s AJCGetSchooled blog, I didn’t even bother to dissect the scores or pop a bottle of champagne in celebration of the what they want you to think is good news. Instead, I pulled a few snip-its from the article, tweeted them, and added my own .02, which all follow below:

EDUCATIONCEO TheParentsEducator
Math scores highlight CRCT gains | ajc.com ajc.com/news/math-scor… #Georgia #CRCT #testing #education
EDUCATIONCEO TheParentsEducator
So they are spinning the test score results to say new Math curriculum might be working.How do we explain scores for h.s. students? #Georgia
EDUCATIONCEO TheParentsEducator
And why in the heck are schools ‘preparing’ for the test at beginning of year? Let teachers teach & test prep is not necessary.
EDUCATIONCEO TheParentsEducator
One student said a few questions were poorly written or confusing.http://ow.ly/5eoAZ (This comment from a student is especially troubling.)
EDUCATIONCEO TheParentsEducator
I won’t celebrate CRCT results until I see the AYP subgroup breakdown…which takes them FOREVER to release… #Georgia
And that last tweet is the motivation for writing this post: We cannot and should not measure everything our kids are supposed to learn based on one test,
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