Bullying Is Not a Rite of Passage—Theme of White House LGBT Safe Schools Conference | ED.gov Blog

Bullying Is Not a Rite of Passage—Theme of White House LGBT Safe Schools Conference | ED.gov Blog:

Bullying Is Not a Rite of Passage—Theme of White House LGBT Safe Schools Conference

by Guest Blogger

With the goal of empowering and informing advocates on the ground about the federal resources available to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) community, White House officials joined federal and local partners at the first LGBT Conference on Safe Schools and Communities on March 20^th at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Over 400 attendees participated in sessions led by community organizations, the Departments of Justice, Education, Health and Human Services and the FBI. Topics ranged from civil rights and cyber bullying to family acceptance, domestic violence and safety and inclusion on college campuses.
Acknowledging the fear of reporting crimes and harassment in the LGBT community, Ft. Worth Police Chief Jeffrey Halstead said, “We will do everything we can to keep you safe.”  He noted how important it is to build relationships with the school, school security and the police, as well as LGBT community liaisons.

Michael Yudin meets Judy Shepard. Her son Matthew, a student at the University of Wyoming, was brutally murdered because he was gay. He is the inspiration for the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan addressed the group with a video message, saying when students are harassed or bullied it directly affects their work in the classroom and their desire to stay in school.
“These are serious, serious problems at schools and colleges, especially for LGBT youth,” he said, adding that we must dispel the myth that bullying is a normal rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up.  “We have a collective obligation to ensure that all schools are safe for all children. Every single student deserves the opportunity to learn and grow and achieve their potential without the threat or reality of harassment.”
ED’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education Michael Yudin said to the participants that the measure of success for all students is that they are on track to graduate high school ready to succeed in college or a career, but “we cannot get there if they don’t feel safe.” He added, “Our job is to ensure that schools are proactive in their approach to provide a safe, welcoming environment to learn for all kids.”
According to a study conducted over 10 years, 9 out of 10 LGBT students experienced harassment in school. Moreover, students with LGBT parents may not feel that their parents are welcome at school activities. Additionally, those students who do not conform to what are considered gender norms are more prone to being bullied. Geographically, LGBT students in the Midwest and South are more likely to be bullied than students in other regions.
Yudin outlined resources at www.stopbullying.gov and technical assistance available for schools, as well as the department’s guidance to schools for LGBT issues. The Centers for Disease Control of the Department of Health and Human Services also provides resources for the LGBT community. ED is currently working with the Department of Health and Human Services on a common definition of bullying.
–Helen Littlejohn is the Director for Communications and Outreach for the Western States, based in the Denver Regional Office

Schools Matter: Protect Your Children And Stop the Orgy of Tabulation: Opt Out!

Schools Matter: Protect Your Children And Stop the Orgy of Tabulation: Opt Out!:

Protect Your Children And Stop the Orgy of Tabulation: Opt Out!

by Jim Horn

Great resource guide below--do have a look and get involved.  This movement can bring an end the madness of high stakes standardized testing.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

MEASURING SUCCESS
Opting Out:  Families and Advocates Against Standardized Testing
Education Perspectives for the Central Valley

Pursuant to California Education Code 60615, parents have the right to opt their children out of the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Assessment.

And now for the burning question:
What about “Accountability”?  Isn’t standardized testing meant to hold teachers and schools accountable and to track progress?

These are the sound bites that drive political debates, the phrases that fall from the mouths of celebrated education reformers and the terms that fit nicely into newspaper 

The Washington State PTA Convention: Be There | Seattle Education

The Washington State PTA Convention: Be There | Seattle Education:

The Washington State PTA Convention: Be There

by seattleducation2011

There is a movement underfoot to take our rogue PTA back in the state of Washington.
It has been taken over with the likes of Stand for Children and the League of Education Voters (LEV) who have been setting the agenda for the WSPTA for the last two years, an agenda which includes merit pay for teachers, evaluating a teacher’s performance based on test scores and the introduction of charter schools in our state. What is  even more frightening is that since Lisa MacFarland, who founded LEV, is now with WA DFER, Democrats for Education Reform, the stakes have gone up. We have been watching the basic melding of LEV and DFER in our state and it’s not pretty.
Two SFC/LEV activists who are also PTA members, Chad Magendanz and Alison Meryweather, pushed through a resolution regarding charter schools at the legislative assembly and this resolution, couched in the language of “Equitable Educational Opportunities”, will be voted on at the PTA Convention in two weeks. If this resolution is 

Huge Quebec Student Strike Enters New Phase « Student Activism

Huge Quebec Student Strike Enters New Phase « Student Activism:

Huge Quebec Student Strike Enters New Phase

by Angus Johnston

Quebec’s ten-week student strike, now the longest in the province’s history, is reaching a critical point.
Although government officials continue to reject students’ demand that they reverse a planned tuition increase, Quebec education minister Line Beauchamp said Sunday that she is willing to meet with student leaders to discuss demands for reform in university governance. That concession was echoed the next day by Quebec’s premier, Jean Charest. Both insisted, however, that they would not meet with representatives of CLASSE, the group which represents the largest share of the striking students.
Various acts of vandalism and disruption have taken place in connection with the student strike in recent days, walls spray-painted and windows broken at a government minister’s office and the placing of bags of bricks on subway tracks. There have also been allegations, so far unconfirmed, that unused molotov cocktails were found 

Time to take a hard look at charter schools (Letter) | MLive.com

Time to take a hard look at charter schools (Letter) | MLive.com:

Time to take a hard look at charter schools (Letter)

Published: Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 6:00 AM

 By letter writers 
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I am not in the least surprised to hear that charter schools spend more on administration than they do on instruction. Here in Michigan, I would expect that result since 80 percent are for-profit charters.

How lovely to think that charter schools’ use of our tax money not only goes for more administrative cost than spent by the real public schools but that they also spend considerably less on instruction. In some states, Arizona for one, where a former student teacher of mine taught, the pay for charter school teachers is so low that teachers qualify for whatever Arizona’s equivalent of the bridge card is. I would not be surprised if Michigan’s charter teachers were equally poorly paid.

Can you imagine why these same schools and other for-profit schools are leaping like Asian carp on a hot day in the Illinois River at the prospect of cyberschools? Talk about not having to spend for instruction and being able to pour money into a system that pays per pupil for programs requiring 

Connecticut teachers' unions battles powerful outsiders over reform - Hartford Courant

Connecticut teachers' unions battles powerful outsiders over reform - Hartford Courant:

Teachers Union Battles Powerful Interests

OTHER OPINION

April 16, 2012|By PHIL APRUZZESE and MARY LOFTUS LEVINE, The Hartford Courant

"There is something awful going on in America. It has to do with scapegoating teachers, demonizing unions, and undermining education." That commentary is from former U.S. Assistant Commissioner of Education Diane Ravitch. Ravitch, who today is a professor and author, also is concerned about excluding teachers through top-down reforms. But that's exactly what anti-union forces are trying to do in Connecticut.

As education reform moves forward in the state legislature with a substitute education reform bill, teachers and their union now find themselves being told to take a seat on the bench by wealthy and powerful interests, from CEOs to charter management companies to out-of-state, ultraconservative, anti-union organizations. Make no mistake; they look to privatize education and run roughshod over teachers' rights in the closing weeks of what was supposed to be the collaborative "Year of Education."

Teachers are a mainstay of the middle class and part of the 99 percent. They wouldn't have much of a political voice without their union to give them a collective voice. So, if you wanted to minimize teachers' voices, you'd have to weaken their union by creating a false narrative. That narrative contends that the union is the protector of the status quo that's 

Missouri Education Watchdog: GAM vs. Tiger Moms

Missouri Education Watchdog: GAM vs. Tiger Moms:

GAM vs. Tiger Moms

by Anngie

Last year Amy Chua started a national debate about how hard parents should push their children to succeed. Her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother put a spotlight on the practices Chinese  mothers used to get their children to the top of the success heap.  Many Americans were appalled, but a slight note of worry was also struck by her comment to Meredith Vieira, "To be perfectly honest, I know that a lot of Asian parents are secretly shocked and horrified by many aspects of Western parenting," including "how much time Westerners allow their kids to waste — hours on Facebook and computer games — and in some ways, how poorly they prepare them for the future. It's a tough world out there." Many mothers worried, "What if she was right? What if our efforts to provide a nurturing environment for our children were actually making them weak and less able to compete?" The Gifted Association of Missouri (GAM) weighed in on this with Kirkwood parents last week when they answered the question, "Should we push our gifted child to excel?" In short, their answer was "No."

GAM's mission is to:

• Be a leader for gifted children in the school reform movement.
• Empower parents of gifted children to become informed and active advocates for their gifted children.
• Ensure adequate funding for the education of gifted children in Missouri.

In their Fall 2011 newsletter GAMbit, they wrote about this issue of seeking perfection. The phrase many parents 

Digital | Yes, University of Phoenix is disruptive; no, that doesn’t make it the end-all

Digital | Yes, University of Phoenix is disruptive; no, that doesn’t make it the end-all:

Yes, University of Phoenix is disruptive; no, that doesn’t make it the end-all

by Michael Horn

Many of my friends in the education world are fond of talking about how the University of Phoenix is not in fact a disruptive innovation.
They don’t just stop this statement with the University of Phoenix of course. I’m using the University of Phoenix as shorthand. What they mean are many of the distinctly online universities that have emerged over the last couple of decades—everyone from Kaplan University to DeVry to Bridgepoint.
They are wrong. These online universities are disruptive innovations relative to traditional universities. They are now on their own sustaining innovation track, which every disruptive innovation moves to as it grows, expands, improves, and marches up market. It’s also true that not all of them will succeed in these endeavors.
The fact that I’m saying they are disruptive innovations in the face of many saying they aren’t strikes me as ironic, given that I often find my job is to correct people who want to declare nearly everything disruptive and 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The War Metaphor

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The War Metaphor:

The War Metaphor

by Mike Klonsky

The war metaphor has been badly overused-- war on drugs, war on poverty -- but it still holds up in some cases. Dean Baker's Huffington piece, for example, describes The War on Public Sector Workers this way:

Politicians across the country are using heaping doses of the politics of envy to try to arouse the anger of workers. However, their targets are not the corporate CEOs pulling down tens of millions of dollars a year in pay and bonuses. Nor is it the Wall Street crew that got incredibly rich inflating the housing bubble and then took government handouts to stay alive through the bust. The targets of these politicians' wrath are school teachers, firefighters and other public sector workers.

The Republican's war on women is also very real, although it is often a bi-partisan war. It includes austerity and budget cutting which has pushed millions of women out of their jobs and crushed the living standards of their families. Most of the public sector workers listed above are women. Then there's the revived assault on the rights 

PSAT for 4-17-12 (Tax Day): Tell Penny, Vitale and Beinen to pay their fair share!

Parents United for Responsible Education » Blog Archive » PSAT for 4-17-12 (Tax Day): Tell Penny, Vitale and Beinen to pay their fair share!:

PSAT for 4-17-12 (Tax Day): Tell Penny, Vitale and Beinen to pay their fair share!

by admin

Lots of reasons to be frustrated and in a bad mood today – but a big one is the fact that many of our wealthy unelected CPS board members get out of paying their fair share of local property taxes, which our schools depend on for 35% of the budget.
Three of those members have saved nearly $200,000 among them, money that could be going toward the CPS budget.
CPS estimates no increase from this revenue source in the next two years, so our ability to maximize tax collection is even more important.
But some of the Chicago Public Schools Board of Education members, who are among the richest billionaires and millionaires in Chicago and the nation, are paying high-profile tax attorneys to ensure that they pay the least amount of property taxes possible.
When these millionaires get tax reductions, the rest of us have to make up the difference; every dollar they save is a dollar 

#SOSChat night! Tonight, @AnthonyCody and Mark Simon 9:00 pm EDT, 6:00 pm PDT

www.saveourschoolsmarch.org:

#SOSChat night! Tonight, @AnthonyCody and Mark Simon, on keeping teachers or letting them go. What's best? 9:00 pm EDT, 6:00 pm PDT.

What If School Was More Like Twitter? « My Island View

What If School Was More Like Twitter? « My Island View:

What If School Was More Like Twitter?

by tomwhitby

Every educator knows what their school is like, but few really understand what Twitter is like. The Twitter experience, like school, is different for everyone. One’s contribution to the effort in either of these endeavors has a great deal to do with producing the outcomes. Simply put, the more you put in, the more you get out. That at least is the theory.
I am fortunate to have a very large base of educators that I follow on Twitter and an even larger number of educators follow me. This affords me an ability to see a great deal of activity on Twitter in regard to how educators use it on a daily basis. I wish all educators had Professional Learning Networks like mine, but it is not a style of learning suited for everyone.  Nevertheless, I began wondering what it would be like if the types of sharing, collaboration, reflection and discussion that are continuing activities on Twitter could at least be attempted in the school building environment.
A bulk of the information exchange available on Twitter for instance comes in the form of links, or URL’s, which 

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Will you help the Hope for Slaves project? We need you. They need you.

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Will you help the Hope for Slaves project? We need you. They need you.:

Will you help the Hope for Slaves project? We need you. They need you.

by coolcatteacher@gmail.com (Victoria A Davis, Cool Cat Teacher)

We are two schools, Reading High School in Reading, Ohio and Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia. The Reading students have a business and marketing class taught by teacher Brian Page (@finedchat) and the Westwood students have a 3 week social media project that they do as part of Computer Fundamentals with teacher Vicki Davis (@coolcatteacher).

Would you help end slavery?

1. Buy jewelry from organizations supporting the elimination of human trafficking like Destiny Rescue and wear the jewelry on May 1st to show your support for the effort.
2. Take this request to your students, friends, and those in the blogosphere.
   (They would appreciate it - they've done what they can on their networks and they've asked me to help! Please show them the power of the network for this important cause.)
3. Will you support them by liking their pages, commenting and resharing their work in this effort?

Where they are sharing:

• wordpress blog:  http://hopeforslaves.com/
• Facebook fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/HopeForSlaves
• Twittert: @hope_for_slaves 
• Facebook "event" page for those buying jewelry and "attending" https://www.facebook.com/events/106911656108844/
• The hashtag we use and track is #endslavery as it is already in use. (See hashtags can save lives)

What are the students doing?

May 1st is "May Day" but we wanted it to be celebrated in a way relating to modern society. The students are asking everyone to buy jewelry made by those who have been freed from human slavery so that money will go into organizations that free slaves.

The students have chosen Destiny Rescue as their "official" organization but encourage everyone to find the organization of their choice that supports the end of "modern" day slavery.

The students are blogging, Tweeting, and working on Facebook to ask their friends and families to purchase and wear jewelry. They are educating themselves in a topic that is important to them.

Let's hear from the students:

Pain + Crime = Human Trafficking
When people think of crimes, most do not think of human trafficking. Human trafficking is the fastest growing and second largest criminal enterprise in the world. Most of the time, human trafficking is run by organized crime. There are an estimated 27 million adults and 13 million children trapped in slavery at this moment. Approximately 20,000 individuals are trafficked here, in the United States from other countries every year. This is small number compared with other countries. With help, we can end human trafficking once and for all! 

The RealityYou might have heard about human slavery, but do you know the facts behind the concept?
The facts

• What exactly is slavery? It’s when someone is forced to work without pay. They cannot walk away because they are “bought and owned.” Most are overworked and beaten.

• Human trafficking
 is modern day slave trade.

• 600,000-800,000 people are trafficked internationally each year.

• Think a slave is expensive? Think again. Ninety dollars is the average cost of a human slave.

• Slavery is illegal in all parts of the world, but it is happening everywhere.

• India and African countries hold the majority of the slaves in the world.

 The numbers

• There are 27 million slaves in the world today. If something is not done quickly to help these poor slaves, this number will go up.

• Although you may think the U.S. doesn’t have many slaves, 14,500-17,500 are brought into the country each year.

• 80% of these are women and children

• 1.2 million children trafficked every year.

• There are 27 million slaves worldwide.

Shocking, huh? Knowing the facts makes you realize how serious the matter is. Human slavery is not a trivial thing, and major steps need to be taken to stop it.

Related articles

• The Reality (hopeforslaves.com)
• Facts about Human Trafficking (hopeforslaves.com)
• Stand Up For The Slaves (hopeforslaves.com)
• Be a Voice (hopeforslaves.com)

Note: This is what happens when you take your passions and talk with your students and others. See Calling All Bloggers: Let's Free Slaves this Christmas. Many educators are beginning to realize that human trafficking is uniquely our issue because it victimizes the children we serve in a massive way. We love children and if we can't speak for them, who will. This isn't a cute, nice, pleasant issue but it is one we must address if we are to call ourselves modern.