Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Parents Across America Rejects Arne Duncan’s “Waiver” Proposal | Scathing Purple Musings

Parents Across America Rejects Arne Duncan’s “Waiver” Proposal

by Bob Sikes

Influential school advocacy group, Parents Across America, today rejected Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s controversial waiver proposal.

While Parents Across America (PAA) agrees that No Child Left Behind is an unrealistic, rigid and punitive law, the waivers that Duncan has now proposed are likely to be equally bad, if not worse. The Department of Education could force more states to adopt the Common Core Curriculum thus continuing to ignore the fact that it is illegal for the federal government to impose a national curriculum. The proposal is also likely to expand the destructive agenda of over-testing, school closings, and privatization, despite the fact that these policies have no scientific evidence to

Weekly Standard: President Cheats On School Reform : NPR

Weekly Standard: President Cheats On School Reform

by JOY PULLMANN

August 10, 2011

Joy Pullmann is managing editor of School Reform News and an education research fellow at The Heartland Institute.

The president has decided to take a tack on the largest federal education law he certainly wishes were available in budget battles: bypassing Congress and legislating through administrative agencies by offering states waivers in exchange for education policies he favors.

Adjacent to President Obama's press conference Monday concerning the national credit downgrade, Education Secretary Arne Duncan stepped up to blame Congress for failing to reauthorize No Child Left Behind by the fall deadline Duncan set. So, Duncan says, in September he will issue criteria for receiving Department of Education waivers.

A president and cabinet member insisting Congress do its job attends

"Mass Resistance" To Education Reform | The New Republic

"Mass Resistance" To Education Reform

Jonathan Chait
August 10, 2011 | 11:29 am
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Slideshow: A Brief History of Hippies on ‘Weekly Standard’ Covers

The GOP’s Debt Ceiling Cynicism Is Just the Beginning

The Two Crises And The Triumph Of Magical Thinking

The Obama administration is pursuing a second round of its education reform agenda. The first round was "Race to the Top," which created a competition among states for extra federal grants that would be won by states with the most impressive reforms. This time around, instead of dollars -- there is no new money to hand out -- the Department of Education is using regulatory relief. The 2001 No Child Left Behind law imposed fairly rigid requirements and standards. Everybody agrees it needs updating, but Congress is too dysfunctional to update it, and has been for several years running. So the Department is offering to waive the standards for states that comply with a second round of reform.

The anti-reform left is, naturally, up in arms. Former conservative education guru turned hard-left reform opponent Diane Ravitch tweets, "What is NOT federal role in education: telling schools what to do, how to reform, punishing them for not agreeing with

EVALUATING FAMILY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES - ADDRESSING MEASUREMENT CHALLENGES | 11 AM- Aug 18, 2011

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: US Dept of Ed, United Way, National PTA, SEDL and Harvard Webinar: EVALUATING FAMILY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES - ADDRESSING MEASUREMENT CHALLENGES | 11 AM- Aug 18, 2011

US Dept of Ed, United Way, National PTA, SEDL and Harvard Webinar: EVALUATING FAMILY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES - ADDRESSING MEASUREMENT CHALLENGES | 11 AM- Aug 18, 2011

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION'S PARENTAL INFORMATION AND RESOURCE CENTER | HTTP://BIT.LY/P2HKET

Quick Links for this Webinar
Webinar Description
Register Now

Webinar 8:
Evaluating Family Engagement Strategies: Addressing Measurement Challenges

The U.S. Department of Education and its partners United Way Worldwide, National PTA, SEDL, and Harvard Family Research Project invite you to participate in the eighth installment of this webinar series:
Evaluating Family Engagement Strategies: Addressing Measurement Challenges
August 18, 2011, 2:00–3:30 p.m. (EDT) [11am-12:30p.m. PDT]

Evaluating family engagement strategies to demonstrate their impact on student learning is essential for strengthening practice, and is becoming an increasingly important factor in securing program funding. Yet evaluation in this field is still in a developmental phase, and there are few clear guidelines available for identifying meaningful indicators of successful family engagement efforts.

This webinar will highlight promising approaches for evaluating family engagement strategies, address challenges in defining and measuring outcomes, and provide guidance for building evaluation into a family engagement plan from the beginning. By defining measurable objectives early in the planning process, it becomes possible to connect family engagement efforts to important milestones—such as increases in parents’ understanding of how to support learning at home—as well as the ultimate goal of increased student achievement.

Evaluating Family Engagement Strategies will be presented through a roundtable discussion among evaluation experts and will address questions such as:

What are some meaningful indicators of effective family engagement strategies?
What role does evaluation play in supporting the sustainability of family engagement efforts?
What roles do parents, school staff, and other stakeholders play in these evaluation efforts?
How would robust, ongoing evaluations help advance the family engagement field?

The roundtable format will allow ample time to address questions and comments from the webinar audience. We encourage your participation during the webinar discussion and also invite you to submit questions in advance anytime before August 18. You may submit questions via email to fine@gse.harvard.edu, or via Twitter, directing comments to @HFRP and using the hashtag #FEchat. Due to time restraints we will not be able to address all submissions.

Featured panelists include:

Moderator: Heather Weiss, Founder and Director, Harvard Family Research Project
Rebecca Maynard, Commissioner, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), U.S. Department of Education
Kate Gill Kressley, Senior Research Associate, RMC Research Corporation
Eric Dearing, Associate Professor of Applied Developmental Psychology, Lynch School of Education, Boston College
Amy Aparicio Clark, Project Director, Education Development Center, Inc.
Kathleen Hoover-Dempsey, Associate Professor of Psychology and Education, Vanderbilt University

Register Now

PREVIOUS WEBINARS AVAILABLE ONLINE

Webinar 7
Successful Transitions to High School: Promoting High School Success and Facilitating College Readiness

Webinar 6
Ensuring School Readiness Through Successful Transitions

Webinar 5
Building Strategic Partnerships to Foster Community Engagement in Education

Webinar 4
The Teacher-Parent Relationship: Using Professional Development to Improve Family and Community Engagement

Webinar 3
Data Driven: Making Student and School Data Accessible and Meaningful to Families

Webinar 2
A New Day: Family, School, and Community Engagement in Education Reform

Webinar 1
Transforming Schools Through Family, School, and Community Engagement

This webinar series is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education's Parental Information and Resource Center program. The content of this webinar series does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Education.

Freedom from No Child Left Behind? There’s a Catch voiceofsandiego.org: Education

voiceofsandiego.org: Education

Freedom from No Child Left Behind? There’s a CatchComments (4) | 10:49 am

The big news in the edu-world this week is that the feds are dangling something juicy in front of states sick of No Child Left Behind: A chance to wave aside the law's stringent testing goals.

The big catch is what they want in return and whether California is prepared to deliver it.

No Child Left Behind sets targets for student testing that critics say are unrealistic. Because the bar rises every year, more and more schools are considered failing, so many that the label is losing meaning. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called it "a slow-motion train wreck" in The New York Times.

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Going Beyond the SOS March by Recognizing the Politics Involved in the Way Forward | Scathing Purple Musings

Going Beyond the #SOSMarch by Recognizing the Politics Involved in the Way Forward | Scathing Purple Musings

Going Beyond the SOS March by Recognizing the Politics Involved in the Way Forward

by Bob Sikes

A teaching colleague from Washington mentioned in one of the FB pages I help administrate – Save Our Schools Florida - that she admired the activity on our page. When she told us about what they were beginning to do in her state, it made me realize that to transition from the energy of the SOS March it will be necessary to accept and recognize political realities. Battles will have to be fought on both national and state fronts. These most immediately will be found in the 2012 presidential race and in state legislatures currently in session.

Collaboration between states can be critical. We don’t seem to be doing this right now, but the school reform movement is sure doing so. Its rock stars like Michelle Rhee and Jeb Bush routinely make presentations to state legislatures. Billionaire funded groups like ALEC and Stand for Children hop from state-to-state to both

Paradoxes of Our Work « Cooperative Catalyst

Paradoxes of Our Work

by Kirsten Olson

The ability to hold two conflicting truths simultaneously isn’t easy. And that’s exactly what our work in education calls us to do at this moment.

I am just returning from the AERO and Holistic Education conferences, where I saw COOPsters David Loitz, Casey Caronna, Paul Freedman and Jen Groves. (Oh yeah!) One evening at AERO, a group gathered to talk about what IDEA has been learning over the past year. This prompted a reflection on my work as an educational activist and teacher over the past 15 years, and the paradoxes I hold in my work, as both a radical school critic, and a persistent hope monger in education.

As most of us here at the COOP already feel, we are at a moment of crisis in public education. Only a few

All Things Education: Accountability for what?

Accountability for what?

by Rachel Levy

I will soon put up a guest post in response to Virginia Heffernan's recent New York Times op-ed about "archaic" learning tools and products such as research papers. Thinking about this, as well as about Robert Pondiscio and Kathleen Porter-Magee's smart responses, I woke up this morning with the question:Accountability for what? in my head.

Part of what I was trying to demonstrate in my guest post on the Core Knowledge blog, which was inspired by this post by Robert Pondiscio, is that the accountability structures (which frankly, Pondiscio says are needed and which Porter-Magee's colleagues at Fordham advocate vigorously for) are going to drive what is taught and how it is taught. If accountability structures are based on high-stakes math and reading tests, then that's what's going to be taught. This is actually quite a traditional concept in education, that you look at the assessment (what you want students to know and to be able to do) and you work backwards from it. So if reading and math skills are what we want educators and schools to be accountable for on a yearly basis, that's what they're going

Jersey Jazzman: Newark: Taxation Without Representation

Newark: Taxation Without Representation

by Duke

I'm beginning to believe that the reason New Jersey doesn't have a standardized test in civics is that the children of Newark might then have to be taught that democracy means having a say in how your government is run. They might, in turn, question why democracy is not allowed in Newark:

Newark’s public schools will begin their 16th year of operating under state control next month, and a majority of advisory school board members want it to be the district’s last.
This summer, years after city schools were found to be so dysfunctional that state education officials assumed control of them, board members and public education

NYC Public School Parents: Our daily newpapers: four different takes on NYC test scores

Our daily newpapers: four different takes on NYC test scores

by Leonie Haimson

The Wall Street Journal says charter schools’ scores – especially those of Eva Moskowitz’s schools -- are so stellar that they should stop opponents in their tracks.

Of course! Privatization is the goal.

The Post says the test scores, though nothing stellar, should be commended.

Let’s keep boosting Bloomberg, half-heartedly,

Parents Across America rejects Duncan’s “waiver” proposal « Parents Across America

Parents Across America rejects Duncan’s “waiver” proposal

by leoniehaimson

National organization Parents Across America rejects Duncan’s “waiver” proposal and calls for complete overhaul of No Child Left Behind

The national organization Parents Across America opposes the proposal by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to offer “waivers” to states, exempting them from provisions of the law known as No Child Left Behind if they adopt education policies favored by Duncan.

While Parents Across America (PAA) agrees that No Child Left Behind is an unrealistic, rigid and punitive law, the waivers that Duncan has now proposed are likely to be equally bad, if not worse. The Department of Education could force more states to adopt the Common Core Curriculum thus continuing to ignore the fact that it is illegal for the federal government to impose a national curriculum. The proposal is also likely to expand the

SS and Science, the “Cinderella” Subjects! « Diary of a Public School Teacher!

SS and Science, the “Cinderella” Subjects!

by Oldschoolteach

I am now blogging in my sleep. I know it’s time for the new school year, because half of my dream was spent in a classroom where I was used an innovative method to teach about Bolivia. (And no, I don’t teach Bolivia, so ???) Anyway, just before I woke up, my conscious mind said something to the effect of, “Write about SS and Science not being important, blah, blah,blah, the rest was a haze.

I use “Cinderella” in the sense of the traditional fairy tales, the step sisters (in this case Reading and Math), get all the attention, and poor Cinderella gets none. (in this case two Cinderellas, SS and Science.) It irks me because a lot of critical thinking is done during Social Studies and Science, and it seems that we have

All Education Matters: Indebted Nation: Letters to the President

Indebted Nation: Letters to the President

by C. Cryn Johannsen

A number of you have asked me to draft letters to the President. So, I am launching a new series - "Letters to the President." Each week, AEM will send a letter to the President, urging him to take immediate measures to help those of us who are drowning in student loan debt.

As many of you are aware, by June of 2012, outstanding student loan debt will hit $1 trillion. As Arianna Huffington recently said on MSNBC, the situation is an "epidemic." It's so bad that 245,000 young college grads are turning to the escorting business to pay for their student loans.

Instructions (Please read carefully before sending! There are 5 easy steps):

Student-Teacher Social Media Restrictions Get Mixed Reactions - US News and World Report

Student-Teacher Social Media Restrictions Get Mixed Reactions

Some school districts have prohibited social media contact between students and teachers.

By RYAN LYTLE

Posted: August 10, 2011

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The traditional student-teacher relationship of the past used to begin and end at the classroom doors, with conversations that consisted of topics such as arithmetic, grammar, or history and rarely delved into the personal background of a student or teacher. Today, with the proliferation of social media, teachers and students have greater access to one's personal history than ever before.

With a "follow" or "friend confirmation," two people can have access to one another's personal lives—from photos to status updates that give deeper insight to an individual's previously

Shanker Blog » Melodramatic

Melodramatic

by Matthew Di Carlo

At a press conference earlier this week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the city’s 2011 test results. Wall Street Journal reporter Lisa Fleisher, who was on the scene, tweeted Mayor Bloomberg’s remarks. According to Fleisher, the mayor claimed that there was a “dramatic difference” between his city’s testing progress between 2010 and 2011, as compared with the rest of state.

Putting aside the fact that the results do not measure “progress” per se, but rather cohort changes – a comparison of cross-sectional data that measures the aggregate performance of two different groups of students – I must say that I was a little astounded by this claim. Fleisher was also kind enough to tweet a photograph that the mayor put on the screen in order to illustrate the “dramatic difference” between the gains of NYC students relative to their non-NYC counterparts across the state. Here it is:

This Week In Education: Reform: Illinois Teacher Reform Effort Comes In Last

Reform: Illinois Teacher Reform Effort Comes In Last [image: Picture 15] With funding from Walton, the pro-reform DC consulting firm Bellwether Partners has taken a look at several states' teacher quality reforms and rated the strength of the laws that have been passed. Not surprisingly (to me, at ...

AM News: MD Trains Teachers On Common Core [image: News2] Teacher's trained on new national curriculum Baltimore Sun: With 10 training sites and 4 representatives from each of Maryland's 1,450 schools required to attend, state officials are calling it the most comprehensive common core ...

Quotes: A Statistic Unlikely To Be Affected By Reform *[image: Quotes2] The number of homeless children in public schools increased 41 percent between the 2006-7 and 2008-9 school years.* -- CDF report via NYT's Charles Blow

Daily Kos: A must-read by Frankie Schaeffer

A must-read by Frankie Schaeffer

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

at Alternet, titled Michele Bachmann Was Inspired By My Dad and His Christian Reconstructionist Friends -- Here's Why That's Terrifying. It is, for an online piece, long.

But remember, Schaeffer was there at the creation of the modern religious right. His father, Francis Schaeffer, was one of its most important figures. He saw the rising influence of Rousas Rushdoony and that man's son-in-law Gary North.

(If you prefer not to page through 6 separate screens, there is a single-page version here)

Let me offer a paragraph that caught my eye:

America has a problem: It’s filled with people who take the Bible seriously. America has a blessing: It’s filled with people who take the Bible seriously. How does this blessing coexist with

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