10-30-13 Wait What?

Wait What?:

Stefan Pryor expands his team of charter school advocates

As if Connecticut’s Alliance School Districts (the 30 poorest school districts in the state) weren’t having enough problems, Stefan Pryor has managed to pour even more salt into the wounds that are dragging down public education in Connecticut. Over at the State Department of Education, Stefan Pryor got rid of Connecticut’s experienced Leaders in Residence […]The post Stefan Pryor expands his team

by jonpelto / 3min 

Would the Captain please return to the bridge immediately!

You certainly can’t say that Governor Malloy is preoccupied with the minutia of running the state of Connecticut. In fact, it is probably more accurate to say that it appears that he finds the day-to-day administrative duties of serving as Connecticut’s Chief Executive Officer boring, annoying or, at the very least, a waste of his […]The post Would the Captain please return to the bridge immediate

3 by jonpelto / 0min 

Update on the effort to destroy the Clark Elementary School in Hartford

In a story entitled, “Hartford Officials Explain Charter School Choice,” the Hartford Courant’s Vanessa de la Torre explained that “Superintendent Christina Kishimoto has recommended Clark as the future site of the charter network’s second K-8 elementary school in Hartford, a proposal that has left some Clark parents stunned.” A Hartford Board of Education sub-committee meet […]The post Update on

10 by jonpelto / 37min 

10-29-13 Wait What?

Wait What?: Sarah Darer Littman among renowned authors to call out Obama on failure of corporate education reform lawsSarah Darer Littman, a fellow public education advocate, blogger and regular commentator here at Wait,What? is also an award-winning author of books for young people. Last week she and a number of other leading authors and illustrators wrote a powerful letter to President Obama abo

by mike simpson / 7h 

The Weekly Update: Money, power and corruption; Gates is not so sure his ideas will work…but, oh well; TFA, Inc cashes in again and more | Seattle Education

The Weekly Update: Money, power and corruption; Gates is not so sure his ideas will work…but, oh well; TFA, Inc cashes in again and more | Seattle Education:

The Weekly Update: Money, power and corruption; Gates is not so sure his ideas will work…but, oh well; TFA, Inc cashes in again and more

Corruption kills.

This post is dedicated to Laporshia Massey.

From Parents United for Public Education in Philadelphia:

Her name is Laporshia Massey and our hearts are breaking

Our hearts are breaking over the death of beautiful 12 year old Bryant Elementary student Laporshia Massey, who died following an asthma attack that apparently started at school.  We grieve for her entire family and the Bryant community.

According to the City Paper, Laporshia became ill during the school day. No nurse was scheduled. Laporshia called a family member, telling her repeatedly, “I can’t breathe. I 

10-30-13 Schools Matter

Schools Matter:

The Facts, Not the Spin, about Washington D.C.'s IMPACT Evaluation System

As U.C.L.A. School of Management Professor Samuel Culbert explained, a performance evaluation is as much of, "an expression of the evaluator's self-interests as it is a subordinate's attributes." Culbert argued that the institution of professional performance reviews is, "as destructive and fraudulent as it is ubiquitous." It is not just in educational evaluations where "a

8 by John Thompson / 10min 

Chief for Change, Janet Barresi, Doubles Down on Meaningless School Grading System

Chief Barresi What if the scientific community reveals that a state school policy produces meaningless and misleading results that conceal deep inequalities and mask others?  If you are one of Jeb Bush's Chiefs, you smile, ignore the facts, and proceed as if nothing happened:News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports |

2 by Jim Horn / 14min 

Terry Grier Makes Houston Schools Awful Enough to Win the Broad Prize

The picture above is of Arne Duncan and Eli Broad having a swell time at Barack Obama's inauguration party in 2008.  The picture below is Arne and Eli in 2013, this time accompanied by the poster boy for CorpEd's model of segregated urban reform schools, Terry Grier.  With his systemwide No Excuses model in place in Houston, Grier has made life so miserable for teachers and students alike that it

3 by Jim Horn / 22min 

Happy Halloween Ken Derstine PA Education Crisis Highlights

And this is just Philadelphia, scary stuff, I'm spookedPennsylvania Education Crisis Highlights - October 29th, 2013Pennsylvania Education Crisis Highlights is available online at http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/Blue text is a link to the full article.**************** Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools  | Save our Schools NJMonday

1 by Judy Rabin / 1h 

10-29-13 Schools Matter

Schools Matter: The Charlotte Danielson Who Is Getting Rich on the Misuse of Her Intellectual PropertyCharlotte Danielson has built a fence between herself and the misuse of her teacher evaluation scholarship.   I call it scholarship rather than research because there is little hard evidence that her system works to improve teaching.  Even so, CorpEd has paid the Danielson Group millions to use he

by mike simpson / 7h 

K-12 News Network | “Turnarounds” At Two Los Angeles Unified Schools Prompt Deeper Questions Over Practitioner Center Schools

K-12 News Network | “Turnarounds” At Two Los Angeles Unified Schools Prompt Deeper Questions Over Practitioner Center Schools:

“Turnarounds” At Two Los Angeles Unified Schools Prompt Deeper Questions Over Practitioner Center Schools

admin October 30, 2013 Charter Schools, Los Angeles, Parent Trigger, School Boards, School Districts 0

Who and what are Practitioner Center Schools, and what is 24th Street Elementary School like now that PCS is the Education Management Organization (EMO) operating it? Los Angeles Unified is no longer in charge of this public charter, or is it? Unusual procedures for transformation of two Los Angeles public schools under California’s “parent trigger” law differ from in-district transformation models and raise concerns in five key areas. K12NN sought (still seeks) answers via public records request.

Read K-12 News Network’s first investigative report.

“Turnarounds” At Two Los Angeles Unified Schools Prompt Deeper Questions Over
Practitioner Center Schools by k12newsnetwork

Study: New teachers more educated, of higher caliber | HechingerEd Blog

Study: New teachers more educated, of higher caliber | HechingerEd Blog:

Study: New teachers more educated, of higher caliber

Teaching may be attracting a more academically successful group of people compared to previous years, according to a new study released Wednesday.

Two researchers at the University of Washington examined four national data sets to determine how the characteristics of first-year teachers changed between 1993 and 2010. The study found that more new teachers have advanced degrees than ever before. During the 2007-08 school year, 26 percent of new teachers entered the classroom with a master’s degree, compared to 17 percent two decades earlier.

First-year teachers during the 2008-09 school year had an average SAT score that was 8 percentile rank points higher than the average score among new teachers in 2001. And for the first time, new teachers in 2008 had slightly higher average SAT scores than their peers entering other fields.

Research has found that a master’s degree does not necessarily guarantee, or even improve teacher quality. But a teacher’s cognitive skills and literacy skills, as measured by the SAT or other national exams, have been found to positively impact student achievement.

“The data are encouraging,” wrote the authors of the study, Dan Goldhaber and Joe Walch. “[This] may represent a reversal of the long-term trend of declining academic talent entering teaching.”

For years, colleges of education have battled reputations that they attract students with low test 

10-30-13 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.

Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.:

Bev Johns. SB 578 agreement.

After difficult negotiation, we have reached an agreement with the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and legislative staff to further amend Senate Bill 578. State Representative Linda Chapa LaVia, and State Senator Kirk Dillard are the Illinois House and Senate Chief Sponsors of SB 578. The amendment to the amendment adds the words “including special education teachers” and adds new catego

by Fred Klonsky / 3min 

Bob Lyons on TRS developments.

Bob Lyon represents retirees on the Teacher Retirement System board of trustees.

by Fred Klonsky / 15min

Don’t TRIP on this TRAIL.

The move by Illinois to change the Teachers Retirement Insurance Plan (TRIP) to the Total Retiree Advantage Illinois Plan (TRAIL or is TRAILP?) is going badly by any measure. Over the past several weeks I have tried to keep readers up to date with all the information I could gather. What I haven’t done is posted hearsay horror stories that I couldn’t confirm. The stories that go, “My brother’s sis

by Fred Klonsky / 2min 

CPS school closings. Many students left in behind.

Catalyst:   Level three is the lowest level school by the CPS board’s measure.   Catalyst’s analysis of the data on enrollment from the 1st, 10th and 20th day of school also showed that more than 2,000 students, including preschoolers and severely disabled students, were not enrolled anywhere on the first day of school. This figure represents about 18 percent of the 11,729 displaced students and

2 by Fred Klonsky / 49min mark as read  //  save

Travel day. Heading for Booo!klyn.

by Fred Klonsky / 1h 

10-29-13 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.

Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.: Teachers getting rich of of their pensions? No. But Wall Street is.  Rhode Island’s Treasurer funnels state pension funds into the accounts of her hedge fund friends. David Sirota continues his great work exposing the nation’s pension thievery. In Pennsylvania, for instance, the state pension’s invest

by mike simpson / 7h 

10-30-13 Education Research Report

Education Research Report:

EDUCATION RESEARCH REPORT

Wide Range of Assessments to Gauge Students’ Career and Technical Skills

While most states give one or more assessments of career readiness, technical, or employability skills to high school students, the types of tests used vary considerably across states and are sometimes decided at the school district level, according a new report by the Center on Education Policy (CEP). These career and technical assessments are distinct from the academic tests that states currentl

by Jonathan Kantrowi... / 13min 

More Graduates with High Academic Scores Now Enter Teaching

A new study released today finds the academic caliber of new teachers, entering the profession with a bachelor’s degree, has risen substantially since the early 2000s.The study’s authors use a variety of data sets to look at demographic and academic changes in the teaching profession and find that the average SAT scores of first-year teachers in 2008 was 8 percentile rank points higher than the av

by Jonathan Kantrowi... / 1h 

Two high schools and the road to full inclusion: A comparison study

This article documents a roadmap for developing fully inclusive school sites at the secondary level. Full inclusion is defined as placement in the general education classroom for all students with disabilities. Specifically, two large high schools located in suburban areas attempted to fully include over 300 students identified as needing special services. Students had varying disabilities, but ea

by Jonathan Kantrowi... / 1h 

Parental reactions: child referred for special education services

This study used the grief and loss model as conceptualized by Kubler-Ross (1969), Lamb (1988), and Kubler-Ross and Kessler (2005) as a foundation in examining parental reactions when a child has been referred for special education services. The model was expanded to include definitions of the concepts as applied to a special education setting and incorporated additional stages. Findings suggested

by Jonathan Kantrowi... / 1h 

Time in General Education and Achievement for Students With Disabilities

This study examined the relationship between hours in general education and achievement in reading and mathematics for students with disabilities. The study population included more than 1,300 students between the ages of 6 and 9 years old within 180 school districts. The relationship between hours in general education and achievement in reading and mathematics was explored while accounting for st

by Jonathan Kantrowi... / 2h 

Education Research Report: Challenging Common Core the Research: A Reanalysis of Text Complexity

Education Research Report: Challenging Common Core the Research: A Reanalysis of Text Complexity: EDUCATION RESEARCH REPORTChallenging Common Core the Research: A Reanalysis of Text ComplexityThis study offers an independent analysis of third- and sixth-grade reading textbooks used throughout the past century. Contrary to the authors of the English Language Arts component of the Common Core State

by mike simpson / 1h