By Bobbie Cratchit, September 13, 2011
I began to wonder about the school year ahead. I read about teachers being reinstated. I read about the new West Philadelphia High School. I read about Dr. Nunery and his plan to focus on the new school year. What would this change of leadership mean to our students and staff? I wasn’t sure, so I
Anger on both sides of Douglas County’s controversial school voucher program, its equally controversial performance-pay plan for teachers, and the perceived politicizing of the school board drove debate at a candidates forum Monday night, as six of the eight people seeking a seat on the county school board came together at a Highlands Ranch elementary school to field questions submitted by voters.
Douglas County school board candidates share a laugh during Monday's forum. From left, challenger Kevin Reilly and incumbent Craig Richardson, who oppose each other in District A, and Gail Frances, running in District C.
Douglas County voters will be asked this fall not only to fill three of seven seats on the school board, but also to approve a $20 million mill levy increase and $200 million bond issue, Questions 3A and 3B on the Douglas
School board officials in Los Angeles will determine today whether a deeper look into cheating is needed at one of its top-ranked charter schools, a district official said.
Fred Navarro, superintendent of the Lennox School District, said officials will discuss cheating allegations at Animo Leadership Charter High School at today's district board meeting. Animo is operated by Green Dot Public Schools and is overseen by Lennox.
Navarro said Green Dot chief executive Marco Petruzzi contacted him personally the day the allegations
Of the more than 57,000 Tongans in the United States, 40 percent – nearly 23,000 – live in California. But you won't find them identified in California data: The state does not require agencies to count them.
Under a bill awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown's approval, Tongans would be one of 10 additional Asian and Pacific Islander groups included in demographic data collected by two state agencies. Supporters say the expansion is an important first step in revealing disparities masked by aggregated ethnic data and in better targeting resources and services.
AB 1088, approved 57-22 by the state Assembly last week, would require the Department of Industrial Relations
Oh good. The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce is holding a hearing on Wednesday morning to examine problems with No Child Left Behind’s accountability system. And if there is one thing we need, it is one more hearing during which witnesses can repeat the same complaints they have made for years about the fatal flaws of NCLB and its Adequate Yearly Progress accountability system.
Read full article >>This was written by Paul Thomas, an associate professor of education at Furman University in South Carolina. A version of this post was published on the Daily Kos blog.
By Paul Thomas
Read full article >>
This needs to happen where the Federal and State governments are demanding more than the state coffers, cities, school districts or teachers can provide.
Dora
“Plaintiffs do not argue that resources equal student achievement. There is no guarantee. But not funding schools guarantees failure.”
Kenzo Kawanabe, plaintiffs’ attorney in closing.
By Lisa Weil, Policy Director, Great Education Colorado.
This political cartoon sums up the Lobato case: the state is failing its constitutional duty to provide a “thorough and uniform system of free public schools” because there is no rational connection between the standards and
It’s not like we didn’t say this would happen.
FairTest takes a look at what to anticipate from next week’s release of ACT scores.
What do SAT scores indicate about the effectiveness of “No Child Left Behind” in enhancing college readiness? Students in the high school class of 2011 have experienced the full scope of NCLB. They were in third grade, the first that must be tested, when the controversial federal law was signed. Its sponsors said
Missouri recently passed a law to severely limit online interactions between teachers and their students on social networking sites. It quickly became known as Missouri’s “Facebook Law,” and the state’s teachers union filed suit to block the new regulations from taking effect. A state judge has since struck the laww down as unconstitutional. On Monday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, the state's lawmakers were debating repealing the law and replacing it with requirements for school-based policies.
In a bizarre press release, former DC chancellor and StudentsFirst founder Michelle Rhee endorsed President Obama’s new job’s bill today. In doing so she couldn’t help herself but take a cheap shot at the effective system which favors seniority when budget cuts are made:
With our nation’s education system failing far too many students, it is good news to hear that additional resources are being dedicated to our schools. The best jobs plan is to reform our broken school system, and we are glad to see that recognized in the President’s approach. We hope those funds will be allocated and spent wisely, where they are most needed.
Given what’s at stake, we cannot afford to waste any dollars on policies that don’t work. We at StudentsFirst believe that no matter where a student comes from, he or she deserves the
In a weekend interview with GRADEBOOK, Democrat Rep. Rick Krisemen didn’t hold back when he characterized what Florida legislators have been up to as “a strategic plan to undermine public education.”
But what I have seen in my five years has been a strategic plan to undermine public education, to neuter it so they are not performing in the way we would like to see so as to push the agenda of expansion of vouchers and charter schools and destroying the teachers union. I think that is what the agenda has been. If you look at the past five years and the policies that have been put forth, that I think it pretty clearly what the agenda has been. And unfortunately to the negative impact on our state’s education, they have been successful
At some point, Florida’s bottom ten percent ranking on per pupil spending and a similar ranking for teacher
You may have caught this article from the Daily Newstaking a look at school overcrowding in this age of population explosion and budget contraction. I thought I could provide a teacher's-eye view of what overcrowding looks like in my school, while admitting that we are lucky to not be at Cardozo-like levels of overcrowding.
As always, remember that John’s book The Influence of Teachers is for sale at Amazon.
“In Classroom of the Future, Stagnant Scores” blared the headline in New York Times on September 4th. The paper’s editors decided that the top-of-the-fold story on Page 1 also warranted two full pages inside, plus four color photos and a graph. That’s a huge part of the news hole on any day, but particularly on Sunday, when circulation is at its highest.
The long piece is worth reading, but at the end of the day what stood out for me was what the articlefailed to take note of: the unimaginative uses of the technology, essentially digital versions of routine stuff: One teacher gave a true-false quiz but handed out wireless clickers for students to record their answers. In other classes, kids were playing a math game (“Alien Addition”) and an interactive spelling game, while other students were videotaping a skit that they could as easily have simply performed for
A crush of people at Cole’s for Will Guzzardi’s campaign for IL House.
I promised I would attend the opening of Will Guzzardi’s campaign for the state House seat from Logan Square’s 39th District. And I did.
I joined a crush of people at Cole’s bar on Milwaukee in the heart of Logan Square.
The incumbent is Toni Berrios, daughter
Honeymooners
Everyone calls this period the “honeymoon” on purpose. We lay the ground rules for the first few periods we encounter each other, get to know each other a bit, and make connections based on things we might have already observed. From there, we play nice, engaging in a light display of tug-and-pull, a diluted version of tug-of-war, sure to appear sometime later in the episode. Now isn’t the time for that, though. Right now, we’re just understanding the rules of engagement and playing along with them. Some might prefer to stay focused on these rules for the whole first week, but I’m ballsy. Why waste time when I can just demonstrate the rules through actual content?
I’m months away from a real honeymoon. This honeymoon’s about my own students.
The leg up I have on most teachers is that I get a flavor for classes before they even get to push my door handle.While other teachers locked themselves up in their rooms (to plan lessons and grade papers, I assume), I learned some of these classes, their leaders, and some of the knuckleheads that lined up in front of the dean’s office frequently for small to large infractions. When I first found out about the class I’d have in the year, I relished the opportunity. Sure, they had a couple of kids from the previous year. They have a certain character I can’t
