High School Student Disarms Gunman…Gets Suspended? | TheBlaze.com

High School Student Disarms Gunman…Gets Suspended? | TheBlaze.com:

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT DISARMS GUNMAN…GETS SUSPENDED?

Mar. 2, 2013 10:12am Madeleine Morgenstern

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Image source: WFTX-TV

A Florida high school student wrestled a loaded gun away from another teen on the bus ride home this week and was slapped with a suspension in return.

The 16-year-old Cypress Lake High student in Fort Myers, Fla. told WFTX-TV there was “no doubt” he saved a life after grappling for the loaded .22 caliber revolver being aimed point-blank at another student on Tuesday.

“I think he was really going to shoot him right then and there,” said the suspended student, not identified by WFTX because of safety concerns. “Not taking no pity.”

The student said the suspect, a football player, threatened to shoot a teammate because he had been arguing with his friend.

Authorities confirmed to WFTX the weapon was indeed loaded, and the arrest report stated the 

UPDATE: Rahm’s BFF + The IEA’s Uncle Charlie. | Fred Klonsky

The IEA’s Uncle Charlie. | Fred Klonsky:

Dan Biss asks for input. Mark supplies it.

by Fred Klonsky

From Senator Dan Biss:

Senate Bill 35 (comprehensive pension reform). Like most people, I continue to believe that resolving Illinois’ terrible pension problem is the most important step toward righting our fiscal ship. As soon as I arrived in the Senate, I filed SB35 — and last Wednesday, I filed Amendment 1to reflect the most recent negotiations. This proposal has received a lot of attention — some positive, and some negative — from workers who believe it demands too much sacrifice of them, and from conservatives who oppose its strong funding guarantee and its preservation of a defined benefit

Rahm’s BFF, Bruce Rauner, sets up gubernatorial exploratory committee. Rich guys.

by Fred Klonsky

Bruce Rauner is a charter-loving, teacher union-hating rich guy who wants to be Illinois Governor.
Talk about your racial entitlement.
A Republican, he is thisclose to Democratic Party Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
He has now set up his exploratory committee. Capitolfax’s Rich Miller points out that there are a lot of rich guys on the list.
As my mom would say, “So, nu?”

Chairman: J.M. “Jim” Schultz, Effingham, IL – Founder of Open Prairie Ventures, 

The IEA’s Uncle Charlie.

by Fred Klonsky

A few days ago I was talking to a guy who is high up in the Illinois Federation of Teachers.
He told me that he didn’t understand the level of what he called vituperativeness in the IEA.
“But I guess it’s a family thing,” he said with a shrug.
I laughed to myself thinking, “Oh, so you know our Uncle Charlie.”
That would be the IEA’s Director of Communications Charles McBarron.
In service to whoever is President, whether it was Ken Swanson or now Cinda Klickna, he runs the IEA website and Facebook page with a bureaucratic and frequently incompetent iron fist.
A past leader of the IEA once laughingly compared IEA’s ability to control internal debate to that of Stalin.

In Chicago Nelson Soza of the Pilsen Alliance speaks about school closings.

by Fred Klonsky

Popout.
Last night at Malcom X College, CPS held their final Walton-funded hearing on school closings.

CUNY Pathways Showdown Looms as Another College Governance Body Declares Opposition |

CUNY Pathways Showdown Looms as Another College Governance Body Declares Opposition |:

CUNY Pathways Showdown Looms as Another College Governance Body Declares Opposition

by Angus Johnston

Pathways, the CUNY administration’s controversial system-wide general education plan, is supposed to be in place by this fall, but that goal will only be met by ignoring the stated views — and governance prerogatives — of a growing number of faculty and student governance bodies in the CUNY system.
Yesterday the College Senate at LaGuardia Community College in Queens — a joint student-faculty governance body — voted 23 to 7 to declare a moratorium on Pathways implementation, making LaGuardia the latest in a string of colleges to either decline to approve Pathways courses or actively declare their refusal to do so.
Last fall an administrator at Queensborough Community College was forced to back down from and apologize for a threat to dismantle the QCC English Department — canceling job searches, firing adjuncts, and eliminating full-time positions — in response to the department’s refusal to accept a Pathways plan to cut contact hours

Tuesday Roundup

from Student Activism by isabellenastasia1991

This occasional roundup of student movement stories is put together by Isabelle Nastasia, a CUNY undergrad, New York Students Rising organizer, and friend of this site. 

Featured Campus of the Day – Occidental College

[Trigger warning: contains discussion on sexual assault and campus policy]

Sexual Assault Reported Near Occidental College – NBC Los Angeles
A California College Hopes to Model Best Sexual Assault Policies - Ms. Magazine
Information on the student groups responsible for this organizing can be found here: Oxy Sexual Assault Coalition
A Tumblr that students and other community members are using to speak out: Dear Oxy
A good friend doing similar organizing at Cornell University responded to this news from Oxy by saying:

“This is tricky issue, because sometimes these alerts can endanger the survivor and the survivor might prefer not to have the police report released. we have these “crime alerts” sent to all the Cornell student 

National Standards, Local Control - Bridging Differences - Education Week

National Standards, Local Control - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

National Standards, Local Control

by Deborah Meier

Dear Deborah,
Now that I am into my first "Bridging" venture, I see the value of the format. Many discussions of education founder on both differing perspectives and a tyranny of language.
Our prior discussion of the re-authorization of the No Child Left Behind Act leads me to see important agreement even if described as disagreement, but I also see some talking past each other, and I finally see some fundamental differences.
Let me begin with a very important point of agreement. Local decisionmaking on how to provide education is essential, and it is foolhardy to interject top-down management of how schools hire staff, structure educational programs, and monitor what goes on. The intrusion of state and, worse, federal proclamations about how everybody in the school and classroom should perform has little hope of improving our schools.
Historically, states have tried to regulate local schools with the idea generally being preventing local school 

Four charter schools will be launched under initiative started by Mayor Bloomberg - NYPOST.com

Four charter schools will be launched under initiative started by Mayor Bloomberg - NYPOST.com:

Classy Mike wants to fund own schools

• By YOAV GONEN, Education Reporter
• Last Updated: 3:41 AM, March 5, 2013
• Posted: 1:31 AM, March 5, 2013

EXCLUSIVE

Mayor Bloomberg is backing — and also wants to bankroll — the creation of four charter high schools, The Post has learned.

The state Education Department has received applications to open the schools as part of the mayor’s Young Men’s Initiative, which is funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

In an unusual arrangement, members of the Mayor’s Office and top deputies in the city Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Readiness have been quietly working behind the scenes to design the schools — although charters are operated and managed independently from the city department.

Mike Theiler

If approved by the state Board of Regents, the four ReSolve high schools would open in September 2014, after Bloomberg’s third term has ended.

The schools, despite being funded by the Young Men’s Initiative, will serve both boys and girls

MORNING UPDATE: LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 3-5-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

The Smear Tactics of Corporate Reformers

by dianerav

Jersey Jazzman has pulled together an impressive collection of smears, wherein the corporate reformers’ attack machine tried to silence and/ or intimidate their critics.
JJ’s recitation brought to mind some of the many brushes I have had with the smear machine.
The first occurred in 2007, when I realized that someone in the NYC Department of Education was following me to my lectures and taping them. I saw this on four occasions and was curious but shrugged it off.
Then I realized what was going on when I read a sharp attack on me in the Néw York Post, calling me a “hypocritical critic.”
I later learned from journalists that the DOE was taping my lectures so they could compile a dossier called 

Breaking News! More $$$$ into Los Angeles Race

by dianerav

The Los Angeles Times reports two late donations to the campaign to elect a board that supports privatization.
The California Charter Schools Association put up $300,000.
Rupert Murdoch’s News America Corporation added $250,000.
The charter association anticipates increased numbers of privately managed charters with no supervision.
The Murdoch corporation has financial involvement through its subsidiary run by Joel Klein, who previously gave $25,000.
Los Angeles already has more charters than any other city in the nation. School board member Steve Zimmer had the temerity to propose that the board develop a policy for oversight of charters before creating new ones. Zimmer enraged the charter lobby, which wants no oversight and no moratorium.
Zimmer, who started his career in Teach for America and remained in the public schools as a career teacher, is 

What George Orwell Teaches Us About Corporate School Reform

by dianerav

An incisive essay posted on Valerie Strauss’s blog explains how we can use George Orwell’s classic 1984 to understand corporate-style school reform today.
The essay, written by North Carolina teacher Chris Gilbert, demonstrates that Orwell perfectly understood how lies, repeated often, tend to be accepted as truthful. Corporate reformers say the same things over and over again, expecting that in time their echo chamber will win out. Or, as Orwell puts it, “Myths which are believed in tend to become true.”
Gilbert gives as an example the familiar reformer claim that poverty doesn’t cause poor school performance, but 

Occupy DOE Calls on States to Drop Common Core Testing

by dianerav

This just in from organizers of protest demonstration in D.C. From April 4-7:
Campaign to Withdraw from Assessment Consortia
The Common Core was a clever plan hatched by the corporate sponsors of ACHIEVE to ensure that national standards based tests, now being completed by the federally financed PARCC and SBAC consortia, would be cemented in place for years to come. States were pressured to sign on with one of the consortia before the tests were even developed. State education officials still don’t know exactly what the PARCC or SBAC assessments will look like, though plans call for computer based testing 4 times a year with results tied to teacher evaluation. The PARCC and SBACC tests will be rolled out in full-force in 2014-2015 with millions of dollars being earmarked for schools to comply with specified technology requirements. This enormous investment in testing will be a windfall for Pearson, Wireless Generation and other profit seeking corporations. Meanwhile, kindergarten and first grade teachers in Baltimore and elsewhere report class sizes of 32+ and city schools across the nation continue 

Why Louisiana Judge Struck Down Tenure Law

by dianerav

Mercedes Schneider explains the significance of the Jindal legislation–Act 1–that was declared unconstitutional by a Louisiana judge yesterday.
The state constitution says that each piece of legislation shall deal with only one subject. It was on this procedural ground that the law was declared unconstitutional.
As Schneider shows, Act 1 covered numerous subjects. Its primary purposes were: first, to destroy the teaching profession; second, to remove the powers of local school boards; third, to make the state superintendent the 

If You Really, Really Want to Improve Schools, Close Them (Not Really)

by dianerav

Here is EduShyster, with her usual irreverence, telling us how to achieve true excellence:
Close public schools.
Close so many public schools that the public gives up and gets used to it.
Make grand promises.
As they sing in Chicago (not only the Broadway musical and the movie, but the actual city): “Give ‘em the old 

Diane in the Evening 3-4-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 2 hours ago

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: CEO of Walmart Foundation Picked for Key Obama Job: UPDATE by dianerav Sylvia Matthews Burwell, the head of the Walmart Foundation, has been selected by President Obama to take charge of the Office of Management and Budget. This is one of the most important policy jobs in the federal government. The director of OMB decides how money should be allocated, which programs should live and which should die. There are often intra-agency battles, but New York: Educators Have “Initiative Fatigue” by dianerav Please th... more »

Louisiana Educator: Congratulations to LFT; The Fight for Public Education Continues

Louisiana Educator: Congratulations to LFT; The Fight for Public Education Continues:

Congratulations to LFT; The Fight for Public Education Continues

by Michael Deshotels

The Louisiana Federation of Teachers and its president Steve Monaham deserve to be commended for anexcellent legal challenge to Governor Jindal's Act 1 of 2012. Judge Caldwell agreed with the Federation claim that the new law was unconstitutional and should be struck down in its entirety because it addressed several subjects instead of the one issue per bill required by the Constitution.

Act 1 was a very bad law and should never have been enacted. In passing Act 1 the Governor had rammed through several very bad ideas that I believe would pretty much destroy teaching as a profession in Louisiana and have taken away the rights of voters to run their own local schools. It made a mockery of school choice. The following points will remind my readers of the destruction of teacher and parent rights embodied in Act 1.

• Act 1 was designed to strip experienced teachers of the rights earned by a long 

Late donations bolster pro-Deasy school board candidates - latimes.com

Late donations bolster pro-Deasy school board candidates - latimes.com

Late donations bolster pro-Deasy school board candidates

Two eleventh hour donations have added financial muscle to a campaign seeking to bolster Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy through the results of Tuesday’s Board of Education elections.
The Sacramento-based California Charter Schools Assn. has donated $300,000. And New York City-based News America Inc. has donated $250,000, according to reports filed Monday with the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, which oversees local campaign spending.
The money has gone to a political action committee called the Coalition for School Reform, which has the endorsement of  Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and funding from a relatively small group of major donors. The largest donation is $1 million from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The coalition’s war chest now surpasses $3.8 million, according to campaign manager Janelle Erickson, who is on leave from her job as Villaraigosa’s deputy chief of staff.
The News America donation provides another link between the school-reform battles in the Big Apple and Los 

What it means for parents to support teachers + Our Public Ed Hero of the Day: Senator Vincent Hughes | Parents United for Public Education

Our Public Ed Hero of the Day: Senator Vincent Hughes | Parents United for Public Education:

Our Public Ed Hero of the Day: Senator Vincent Hughes

by parentsunitedphila

Senator Vincent Hughes visits Gompers Elementary, one of 29 schools slated for closure. (Source: senatorhughes.com)

Color us grateful.
In response to last week’s jaw-dropping summary of the District’s preliminary contract proposals to Philadelphia teachers, Senator Vince Hughes tweeted:

What it means for parents to support teachers

by helengym

This sign from last summer’s Chicago Teachers Union strike defines where parents and teachers should align. (Source: Associated Press)

Like many parents across the city, the preliminary release of some of the terms of the Philadelphia teachers contract made me heartsick. For months I had watched city and district leaders make promises about mass school closings – they were necessary for financial viability, they would concentrate resources in remaining schools, they would put more students in “high performing seats.” Of course, no such promises had ever been delivered upon by over a decade of studies of hundreds of school closings in cities all across the country.
But nothing brought home the betrayal of such statements more than the news of what Philadelphia school leaders like Paul Kihn, a former McKinsey strategist, were really focused on:

• dramatic wage & benefit concessions – as much as 26% for teachers earning just $55,000 per year;
• statements that for “teachers to advance, they must move out of the classroom”;
• eliminating step increases for teachers who get advanced degrees like masters and doctorates;

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss? | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss? | Gary Rubinstein's Blog:

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss?

by Gary Rubinstein

A few days ago The Pope of the Catholic church and The Pope of Teach For America, Wendy Kopp, both stepped down.
I was not always thrilled with the direction that Wendy Kopp was steering the organization in, and I publicly aired my grievances in my open letter to her.  I was pleased with her lengthy response.  Though she evaded my most important questions, she did admit that TFA needs to do a better job with highlighting alumni who have different views than the typical “shut ‘em down, fire ‘em, charter ‘em” approach of the most high profile alumni.
Taking over for Wendy are two co-CEOs, Matt Kramer and Elisa Villanueva-Beard.  I haven’t met either of them before.  From what I’ve read, Matt’s expertise is in management, though he has not been a teacher, while Villanueva-Beard was a 1998 corps member.
When I heard about this transition, I was hoping that maybe this was part of Teach For America changing direction and freeing themselves from the entrenchment they have with the corporate reform movement.  Wendy 

Worst is over: Sharp decline in districts in financial straits | EdSource Today

Worst is over: Sharp decline in districts in financial straits | EdSource Today:

Worst is over: Sharp decline in districts in financial straits - by John Fensterwald

by John Fensterwald

The number of school districts in financial distress has fallen significantly after cresting last year, according to a state report released Monday.

Qualified (in yellow) certifications and negative (in red) district financial certifications from 1999-2000 through last year. This year’s totals for the first interim for 2012-13, not shown, are 117 qualified and seven negative. Chart by FCMAT (click to enlarge).

Seven districts received a“negative” certification, the state’s gravest assessment of a district’s financial condition. This means that the state believes these districts will have trouble paying their bills this school year or next. An additional 117 districts received a “qualified” certification – a warning that, based on revenue projections, employee pay obligations and other financial commitments, they may have trouble this year or over the next two years. Together, the 124 districts are one out of eight of the state’s 1,043 districts and county offices.

While down only slightly from the 130 districts on the state’s 

Daily Kos: So maybe I am not as smart as people think

Daily Kos: So maybe I am not as smart as people think:

So maybe I am not as smart as people think

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

because I cannot understand how anyone can think a democratic republic can continue when those with more money get to buy elections and officials and write the rules and laws to their benefit while screwing the vast majority of the people.
If we are supposed to have the equal protection of the law why is some money more privileged than other money when it comes to taxation?
Is Capital really so much more valuable than LABOR that the former can pay 15% or less on earnings while labor starts with 7.65% of payroll taxes and has income taxes added on top of that?
How is it possible that a corporation can claim huge earnings to drive up its stock prices, then pay massive bonuses to its executives, yet somehow have no corporate tax liability?
If a corporation is a person, why cannot it be required to go to prison, to serve on a jury?

Suppose, just suppose . . .

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

facts spoke for themselves.
Why then we would not need historians
we would certainly not need pundits nor would we need editorial writers
we certainly would not need teachers to help us learn how to question and interpret
we would have lists of facts that spoke for themselves
Of course, we would still need people to determine which facts were empowered to speak
Those people would have to be trained or at least indoctrinated as to which facts to include

“Is this really all there is?” + The School-to-Workforce Pipeline: At Least it isn’t Prison – @ the chalk face

The School-to-Workforce Pipeline: At Least it isn’t Prison – @ the chalk face:

Guest Post: Nichole Berg. “Is this really all there is?”

by Timothy D. Slekar

As a teacher in this new political climate of school reform, teacher-bashing, high stakes testing, and arbitrary merit pay, I frequently find myself wondering, “Is this really all there is?
I mean, did I really spend all those years building my professional repertoire and meaningful relationships with kids just to have it all taken away and replaced with pacing guides and a barrage of initiatives and chores that occupy so much of my time that I have nothing left in the way of building a caring community with my students where they feel safe, appreciated and valued?
Did I choose the right field for my talents or would I be more effective elsewhere? For how much longer can I hold 

The School-to-Workforce Pipeline: At Least it isn’t Prison

by Kris Nielsen

Have you applied for a job online recently?  I’m sure that at least some of the 12.3 million unemployed Americans have.  Thank goodness for the Internet, right?  Instead of “pounding the pavement,” as my mother used to call it, you can just click your way through a dozen job applications online each day.  It sounds like a modern miracle.  Forget about suiting up and trying to make too many first face-to-face impressions; now you can go on a 400-mile job search in your PJs.
Now, ask those online job seekers how many callbacks they’ve received after 50 applications.  How about 100?  Why is no one calling?
If you have ever applied for a retail, customer service, food service, or other “entry-level” position–and assuming you passed the pre-screen (age, right to work, high school education, etc)–you have had the experience of sitting through anywhere from 30 to 100 multiple-choice questions before you’re done.  The introduction to the assessment tells you that they would like to ask you some questions that will better determine if you are a good