ETS and College Board "deeply apologetic" for racist t-shirt

ETS and College Board "deeply apologetic" for racist t-shirt:

ETS AND COLLEGE BOARD "DEEPLY APOLOGETIC" FOR RACIST T-SHIRT

Joint statement addresses "culturally offensive actions" at AP World History Reading



So you may have heard about some of that racist bullsh*t that went down at the Educational Testing Service's annual AP World History Reading earlier this month in Salt Lake City. Some participants reported that, among other culturally insensitive behaviors, organizers printed up t-shirt designs featuring racist caricatures "inspired" by one of the exam questions. You can see images of the shirt here.

ETS and the College Board has issued a statement denouncing "culturally offensive actions" at the reading, apologizing for the distribution of the shirts and calling on ETS to discipline the individuals responsible:

Statement

Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the College Board have learned of culturally offensive actions during the AP® World History Reading in June 2014. We are outraged by these intolerable findings and are dedicated to preventing any such activities in the future.

As an annual tradition, teachers and professors who attend the AP Reading make independent decisions to create and sell themed T-shirts to their peers. Neither ETS nor the College Board has any involvement in the creation, distribution, or sale of these T-shirts. This year, the T-shirt and some comments made at the AP World History Reading were both culturally and racially insensitive. College Board officials were notified of these incidents after the AP World History Reading was over and the teachers had dispersed.

It is unacceptable that one of the AP Exam Readers created a T-shirt that mocked historical events that were the cause of great pain and suffering, and promulgated racist stereotypes that further marginalize a racial minority. Furthermore, it is entirely inappropriate that references to the AP Program were combined ETS and College Board "deeply apologetic" for racist t-shirt:

I graded the AP World History exam and all I got was this lousy racist t-shirt

I graded the AP World History exam and all I got was this lousy racist t-shirt: I GRADED THE AP WORLD HISTORY EXAM AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY RACIST T-SHIRT"Rampant cultural appropriation, cultural insensitivity, and straight up racism" at annual exam readingEvery year, the Education Testing Service (ETS) -- yes, the folks behind the SAT -- invites over a thousand high school and colle

by mike simpson / 8h 

6-27-14 Jersey Jazzman Jammin' All Week

Jersey Jazzman:

Charter School Cream Skimming Doesn't Always Pay Off

There's a bit of a "he said/she said" thing going on in Jersey City between the school district and a charter school:After telling Jersey City parents two weeks ago that the school district was investigating a possible data breach of personal student information, and then saying two days later that there was no data breach, school officials now allege that a local charter school did inde

by Duke / 0min 

6-26-14 Jersey Jazzman Jammin' All Week

Jersey Jazzman: Why Do We Need Tenure? Ask Elizabeth's TeachersMy post about Mike Mignone, the brave teacher and union leader in Belleville, NJ who is up on tenure charges, went viral this week. Mignone has been on unpaid leave pending his hearing; he alleges it's because he asked dared to question his school board about an outrageous surveillance system that includes a camera and microphone in ev

by mike simpson / 12h 

An open letter from the NEA and the educators of America These “test, label, and punish” policies have failed

NEA - Open Letter:

An open letter from the NEA and the educators of America

A generation ago, our nation enacted the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) which measured the quality of our schools by the state standardized reading and math test scores of students. Schools that did not make the required progress were labeled as failing and punished by being closed, turned into charters and/or having school staff fired.

These testing mandates provided critical information regarding students who struggle with basic math and reading skills, but the punitive sanctions they triggered have not improved our schools. These “test, label, and punish” policies have failed. We are no closer now to realizing educational opportunity for all students than we were when NCLB was enacted.

SIGN AND SHARE:

Join our national campaign to put the focus of public education on student learning

NEA - Open Letter:

It is now 2014, the year that NCLB declared that all our students would be proficient. They are not.  What they are is tired of testing, and we are too.  We now spend almost a third of our time in schools preparing students to take standardized tests, giving those tests, and reviewing the results of those tests.  There are hundreds of subjects that are not tested. Many are no longer taught at all or have been defunded and de-emphasized.  We did not become educators to drill students in standardized test taking. 

Our children’s education should not be about learning how to fill in the bubbles on standardized tests

In the last few years, rather than moving away from the failed policies of No Child Left Behind, our nation has doubled down on them.  We now give standardized tests to students who have not been taught the subjects being tested.  We use students’ test scores to evaluate teachers who not only did not teach the subject being tested, but did not even teach the students taking the test.  The resulting evaluations are no better than flipping a coin. 

It is time to end this toxic testing and implement real accountability in our public education system. We need an accountability system that is centered on our students and their needs, not test scores.  As educators who have dedicated our careers and lives to our students and their success, we will not stand silent while commercial standardized testing is used to reduce our public education system to wreckage. 

As educators, we know what works.  Students thrive when they enter kindergarten ready to learn, are challenged by high quality teachers and other education professionals, are taught to high standards with aligned curriculum, are assessed to determine what they have mastered and what they need help with, and receive individual attention when needed.

We also know that our students need strong family support and deserve excellent resources and school facilities. Too many of our schools do not meet these criteria.  Too often race and economic class demarcate the line between those students who receive a quality public education, and those who do not. 

Join with us to take back our public schools for all of our students.  With your help, we will:

• end the excessive and toxic testing in our schools;
• develop a real accountability system that prioritizes learning over labels; and
• ensure that each public school is a place in which every student thrives.

Join our national campaign to put the focus of public education on student learning.

In Solidarity —
America’s Educators

UPDATE: Reflections on Teaching » Is the glass half full? + Why Tenure?

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Why Tenure?:

Is the glass half full?

Student: My school district hires too many white teachers – The Washington Post is a really thoughtful first-person piece from a student in the New Orleans school system that was posted in a private teacher discussion group which I’m part of. Since it’s a private group, I’m going to talk pretty generally about that aspect of it. When I first looked at the discussion I thought it looked pretty goo

by alicemercer / 6min 

Why Tenure?

 In the aftermath of the initial Vergara decision, there are lots of questions about effects. Having taught in a public school under a turn-around model, where hiring and being retained, was based solely on the discretion of the site administrator, I think I already have a pretty good idea of what that will look like, and it’s not good for kids or the communities they live in.

This was at a low-performing, high-poverty school, with a large non-white, and English learner population. Just the sort of school that the Vegara suit claimed to want to “help”. With the turnaround model, we had many resources, and many programs. When implementing new programs, there are lots of bumps and honest feed-back is needed to make sure that things are on the right track.

There were many new teachers at the site, some who had come on in the prior year before the change, and others who had been at the site anywhere from three to over 10 years. Those that stayed on were pretty clear in supporting the idea that change was needed, and that would require a better focus on academics and teaching. These were not folks who wanted things to stay the same. One of the first people asked to leave was the union site representative, which was ironic, since he was a big proponent of a more rigorous academic focus while maintaining but Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Why Tenure?:

A series to explore summer learning loss | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

A series to explore summer learning loss | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

A series to explore summer learning loss

By Dorian Geiger on Jun 27, 2014 01:46 PM

 Too much downtime this summer could prove to be a major detriment to Philadelphia's students when they return to classes in fall.

The phenomenon of summer learning loss, often nicknamed "summer slide," is a nationwide dilemma that affects children, especially from kindergarten to 4th grade. They lose reading and math skills they learned during the school year over summer months and in the fall, they return to their studies having fallen behind.

Not having a coordinated effort to address this -- and so not having children reach their full potential, "of course it affects that child the most, it affects that family the most," said Vicki Ellis, the School District's liaison with the city.

But eventually, she added, "It affects our entire city, the workforce, and our neighborhoods."  

This summer, the District, city agencies and community organizations are launching a coordinated series of programs, through the Campaign for Grade Level Reading, with the goal of attacking summer learning loss head on.

For instance, 21 of the city's Department of Recreation summer camps will incorporate more structured literacy and math activities into their daily program, said Hedra Packman, the former Deputy Director of the Free Library who is serving as a consultant for the initiative. The library has been training the campa counselors.

In addition, other programs that already had a literacy component "are now being A series to explore summer learning loss | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

La. State Board Not “Bound by Law” to Either CCSS or PARCC | deutsch29

La. State Board Not “Bound by Law” to Either CCSS or PARCC | deutsch29:

La. State Board Not “Bound by Law” to Either CCSS or PARCC

June 27, 2014

On June 18, 2014, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal made the executive decision to remove Louisiana from the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and associated assessment, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).

The way that Jindal approached the issue was to cancel both the PARCC MOU stating that Louisiana agreed to help develop a set of CCSS tests to be shared by all states participating in the consortium as well as the CCSS memorandum of understanding (MOU) that he and former state superintendent Paul Pastorek signed in May 2009.

The CCSS MOU was created by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the two organizations that hold thelicense for CCSS. It is a legal document outlining CCSS development, adoption, usage, future revision, and federal role, as well as the intention that CCSS assessments would be developed via consortia, of which PARCC is one. (The other is the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, or SBAC.)

Jindal canceled Louisiana’s use of PARCC tests for 2014-15 based upon the failure of the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) to abide by Louisiana’s procurement laws.  In short, LDOE did not submit adoption of the PARCC tests to open bidding. (For a crash course in Louisiana procurement, click here.) On June 18, the Office of Contractual Renewal (OCR) asked Louisiana State Superintendent John White to produce the contract LDOE had for PARCC. Well. As it turns out, White had “spliced” the PARCC contract into an existing “sole source” contract with Data Recognition Corp (DRC). This shady action on White’s part prompted OCR Director Pamela Barfay Rice to open an investigation into all Louisiana testing contracts La. State Board Not “Bound by Law” to Either CCSS or PARCC | deutsch29:

Vermont and its Educators Lead the Way on Single Payer | NEA Today

Vermont and its Educators Lead the Way on Single Payer | NEA Today:

Vermont and its Educators Lead the Way on Single Payer

June 27, 2014 by twalker  
Filed under Featured News, Health Care Reform, Top Stories

Leave a Comment

By Mary Ellen Flannery

The same state that led the nation on same-sex marriage is now tackling another social justice issue: health care coverage for all of its residents.

Led by Gov. Peter Shumlin, with the strong support ofVT-NEA and its leaders, the state of Vermont is moving effectively toward becoming the first in the U.S. with a universal, publicly funded healthcare system. Also known as “single payer,” a universal system promises to contain the out-of-control costs of health care while delivering high-quality, comprehensive, and affordable care to all Vermonters, no matter their family income, employment status or background.

“Many people may have been surprised and a little curious (to hear) Vermont-NEA was backing the move toward universal, publicly funded health care,” wrote VT-NEA President Martha Allen this spring. “After all, the thinking goes, members of the state’s largest union already have comprehensive and affordable health insurance, so why on earth would they support Vermont’s efforts to become the first U.S. state to go down this road?

“The answer, of course, is that the creation of Green Mountain Care is good for Vermonters.”

Proponents of universal health care in Vermont, including many doctors and small business owners, began decades ago to pursue a unified health care system. In 2011, they won a key victory: Passage of Act 48, a state law requiring creation of a “universal and unified” health care system for the “public good” of all Vermont residents. Called “Green Mountain Care,” the new program must, by law, cover residents “in a seamless manner regardless of income, assets, health status, or availability of other health coverage.” It also must work to contain costs, provide patients with choices, and preserve and enhance primary care in Vermont’s communities.

“There’s no reason that anybody in Vermont, regardless of who they are, where they work, or what their health status is, should be without comprehensive, affordable health care,” said Mark Hage, VT-NEA’s health-policy expert. “We’ve been a leading player here to expand access to public health care  for Vermonters. This has always been important to us as a union. We believe it’s the right thing to do.”

If all goes well with the General Assembly’s next task—finding the money to pay for roughly $2 billionprogram— Vermonters will be enjoying Green Mountain Care in 2017, the first year that states may be permitted to enact a single-payer system under the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA). At that point, it could be a model for other states interested in following its lead.

“Vermont is a very progressive state,” said Ida Hellender, of the Physicians for a National Health Program.But the essential ingredients of Vermont’s health care system can be found anywhere: “They have doctors, they have hospitals, they have the same kinds of bodies that the rest of us do…”

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

NEA has long believed that “affordable comprehensive health care… is the right of every resident,” and that belief has been codified among the NEA resolutions adopted by the NEA Representative Assembly (RA) each summer. NEA also has resolved to support a single-payer system for the United States, and to Vermont and its Educators Lead the Way on Single Payer | NEA Today:

6-27-14 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District):

Findings of USC poll on teachers at odds with earlier survey

Press conference after Vergara ruling A Washington, D.C. polling firm has expressed disagreement with some of the findings in the PACE/USC Rossier School of Education poll that was released yesterday. The USC poll showed public opinion favored the decisions reached in Vergara v. California, striking down teacher protection laws. In a memo sent to LA School Report, Lake Research Partners said its o

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School bond measure may appear before CA voters on Nov. 4

Via Sac Bee | By Jim Miller A multibillion dollar water bond isn’t the only borrowing measure that could show up on voters’ ballots this fall. This week, legislation that would place a state school bond before voters Nov. 4 cleared another legislative committee with support from both sides of the aisle. Yet there remain multiple unknowns about Assembly Bill 2235: the amount of the bond, whether it

2 1h 

LAUSD board set to revoke Urban Village Middle School charter

Another charter school may be biting the dust. Urban Village Middle School in Baldwin Hills is likely getting its charter revoked after failing to remedy a slew of violations identified by LA Unified’s Charter Schools Division. The school board, which will vote on the issue at the regular board meeting on Tuesday, gave the school months to address a long list of infractions and says “it continues

by Vanessa Romo / 20min 

LAUSD using new ‘equity index’ to restore arts to areas of need

The plan to expand arts access for students across LA Unified and restore nearly $16 million in arts funding will include data gathered in a new Arts Equity Index, a tool to identify schools in greatest need of arts instruction. School board member Steve Zimmer, who proposed the idea at the board meeting Tuesday, called it the most comprehensive arts inventory the district has ever taken. To deter

by Vanessa Romo / 6min 

Morning Read: Former Obama aides let fly at teacher tenure

Obama alums join anti teachers union case Teachers unions are girding for a tough fight to defend tenure laws against a coming blitz of lawsuits — and an all-out public relations campaign led by former aides to President Barack Obama. The Incite Agency, founded by former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and former Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, will lead a national public relations d

2 1h 

6-26-14 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District): LA Unified creating online tool for parents to track student progressIn the coming school year, LA Unified plans to launch the Parent Access Support System Portal (PASSport), an interactive online tool to make it easier for parents to get more involved in their children’s education. As a one-stop portal,

by mike simpson / 21h 

Educating Gates Rally: Morna McDermott and Susan DuFresne on Vimeo

Educating Gates Rally: Morna McDermott and Susan DuFresne on Vimeo:

Educating Gates Rally: Morna McDermott and Susan DuFresne

from Schoolhouse Live PRO 4 hours ago NOT YET RATED

Morna McDermott and Susan DuFresne

Educating Gates Rally: Morna McDermott and Susan DuFresne from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.

6-27-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter:

Learn about TMoE at Chalkface Radio Interview Archive

Chalkface Radio has up a terrific interview archive.  Check it out. Here's the one Denise Wilburn and I did 10 months ago, soon after The Mismeasure of Education was published.  Current Politics Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Chalk Face on BlogTalkRadioJuly 12 will mark the one year since TMoE was published.  How time flies.  Buy the book at B&N or Powell's Books or IAP.  Please don't buy it

by Jim Horn / 4min 

6-26-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter: Corporate Education Reform: the "civil rights issue" up until it actually addresses civil rights issues like segregation"Children have a right and a need to have quality schools in their neighborhood." — Francis Howell School District White school district sends black kids back to failed schools The one upside to the article is that it clearly puts to lie the co

by mike simpson / 23h 

Newsroom - OECD:

Teachers love their job but feel undervalued, unsupported and unrecognised, says OECD

25/06/14 - Most teachers enjoy their job, despite feeling unsupported and unrecognised in schools and undervalued by society at large, according to a new OECD survey.

The OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) finds that more than nine out of ten teachers are satisfied with their jobs and nearly eight in ten would choose the teaching profession again. But fewer than one in three teachers believe teaching is a valued profession in society. Importantly, those countries where teachers feel valued tend to perform better in PISA.

More than 100,000 teachers and school leaders at lower secondary level (for students aged 11-16) in 34 countries and economies took part in the OECD survey. It aims to help countries develop a high-quality teaching profession by better understanding who teachers are and how they work.

The survey shows that too many teachers still work in isolation. Over half report rarely or never team-teaching with colleagues and only one third observe their colleagues teach. Feedback is also rare, with some 46% of teachers reporting they never receive any from their school leader, and less than a third (31%) believe that a consistently underperforming colleague would be dismissed.

But the survey shows that there is a lot teachers and school leaders can do about this: teachers who engage in collaborative learning have higher job satisfaction and confidence in their abilities. Participation in school decisions also boosts job satisfaction and makes teachers feel more valued in society. “We need to attract the best and brightest to join the profession. Teachers are the key in today’s knowledge economy, where a good education is an essential foundation for every child’s future success,” said Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills, launching the survey in Tokyo. “This survey provides strong evidence that teachers are open to change and keen to learn and develop throughout their careers. At the same time, they need to take more initiative to work with colleagues and school leaders, and take advantage of every opportunity for professional development.”

The survey challenges some stereotypical views of the profession. For example, job satisfaction rates are much more affected by classroom behaviour than class size. And most teachers find appraisals and feedback constructive: 62% of teachers, on average across countries, said that the feedback they receive in their school led to moderate or large improvements in their teaching practices. But between 22% and 45% of teachers in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Spain, and Sweden said that they have never received feedback in their current school, compared to an average of 13% across the 34 countries surveyed.

Other key findings include:

Teacher profiles

The teaching profession has become more feminised, with 68% of teachers being women, except in Japan. The average age is 43, with Singapore having the youngest teachers and Italy the oldest. More than nine in 10 (91%) have completed a university education and had teacher training (90%). A typical teacher has taught for around 16 years, usually full-time (82%) and on a permanent contract (83%).

School leaders

Around half of school leaders are male (51%), are around 50 years of age and have 21 years of teaching experience. They spend most (41%) of their time managing people and resources, planning and reporting. And while those with higher levels of instructional leadership reported higher job satisfaction, more than one in five (22%) have never had leadership training and 31% only after they became a principal.

In the classroom

The average class size is 24 students. Teachers spend an average of 19 hours per week teaching, ranging from 15 hours in Norway to 27 hours in Chile. But in about half of the countries, one in four teachers said they spend at least 30% of lesson time handling classroom disruptions and administrative tasks.

Of an average total of 38 hours of work, seven hours per week are spent preparing lessons, five hours per week marking, and two hours per week on school management, working with parents and extracurricular activities.

Most schools are well-resourced and teachers report positive relationships with their peers and school leaders. But more than a third of teachers work in schools where the principal reports significant staff shortages of qualified teachers, teachers for students with special needs, and support staff.

Starting at school and professional development

Two-thirds (66%) work in schools with formal induction programmes. The exceptions are Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Spain, where only between 20% and 30% of teachers work in schools with formal programmes.

Around nine in ten (88%) of teachers have had professional development in the past year, with more than three-quarters (between 76% and 91% of teachers) reporting it had had a positive impact on their teaching.

Teaching students with special needs was the area most teachers (22%) said they needed more training, followed by information and communications technology skills (19%).

Appraisals and feedback

Nearly 80% of teachers get feedback following classroom observation and two-thirds (64%) from analysis of student scores.

But formal appraisals have little impact on career advancement or financial recognition, according to most teachers. Annual pay rises are awarded regardless of performance in four-fifths (78%) of schools and 44% of teachers work in schools where formal appraisals have no impact on career advancement.

Around half of teachers also report feeling that most appraisals are carried out merely as administrative exercises and 43% say they are not strongly related to how they Newsroom - OECD:

CHICAGO POLICE TORTURE | Bill Ayers

CHICAGO POLICE TORTURE | Bill Ayers:

CHICAGO POLICE TORTURE

Saw the chilling and powerful “Death and the Maiden” at Victory Garden Theater last night, followed by an inspiring conversation with Chicago torture survivors and anti-torture activists and lawyers. Please see it, and also join the movement for reparations:change.org/petitions/pass-the-ordinance-seeking-reparations-for-the-chicago-police-torture-survivors

I was inspired to re-read the following written in 2008 by Bernardine Dohrn from our book Race Course: Against White Supremacy, but for the latest go to peopleslawoffice.com:

In 1969, a young man named Jon Burge returned to Chicago from military service in Viet Nam. Part of his assignment in Viet Nam was to guard and accompany detainees who were interrogated as suspected Viet Cong guerrillas at Dong Tam base, south of
Saigon. Army records show that 1,507 detainees were interrogated in the three-month period starting November 1, 1968, when Sergeant Burge was assigned to the Ninth Military Police Company of the Ninth Infantry Division. Back in Chicago, he joined the Chicago Police Department in 1970, and was assigned to Area Two, a police station on Chicago’s south side. Over a period of twenty years, as is now widely acknowledged, a group of white police officers engaged in the routine torture of more than one hundred
African American suspects at Area Two stationhouse. The torture methods included electrically shocking suspects’ testicles, tongues, and ears (using a “black box” from Vietnam and cattle prods), burning suspects by shackling them to boiling radiators, and
putting lit cigarettes on their arms, legs, and chests, suffocating them with typewriter covers, forcing gun barrels into their mouths to simulate mock executions, and depriving them of water, food, and sleep. All of the victims were African American men. More than thirty-five years later, not a single person has been indicted for these
crimes—a pattern of total impunity.
For the past three years, I’ve had the distressing but dynamic experience of teaching a law school seminar on torture. Simultaneously, I’ve had the good fortune of participating in the Chicago Coalition Against Police Torture with a large circle of CHICAGO POLICE TORTURE | Bill Ayers:

Positively Deviant School Reform?:

Positively Deviant School Reform?

FRIDAY, JUNE 27TH, 2014 AT 10:42 AM

If you had six months, little to no resources, and a clear mandate to solve a chronic country-wide problem – knowing that, if you failed, you would be asked to leave that country altogether – what would you do?

I ask because this was precisely the challenge Save the Children was faced with, in Vietnam, in the early 1990s. And the way they succeeded has great relevance for those of us who continue to struggle with other intractable problems (like, say, comprehensive school reform).

In 1990, two-thirds of Vietnamese children under the age of five were suffering from malnutrition. A string of typhoons had decimated the country’s central food staple: rice. Consequently, traditional supplemental feeding programs offered little more than a temporary solution.

Under these circumstances, Save the Children (STC) was asked to help Vietnam solve its widening problem of child malnutrition – and told that the solution could not come from more food, more money, or more resources of any kind: the people were going to have to solve the problem themselves. And if STC couldn’t help them figure out how in six months, its visa would not be renewed.

In response to these desperate circumstances, STC decided the first thing they should do was see if any of the country’s poorest families had children who weren’tmalnourished; surely, if there were, something valuable could be learned from them. As STC’s Jerry Sternin explains, “Aid workers visited households, asked questions, and, most importantly, observed how mothers and other family members fed and cared for their well-nourished kids.” And as it turned out, “in every instance where a poor family had a well-nourished child, the mother or father was collecting tiny shrimps or crabs or snails (the size of one joint of one finger) from the rice paddies and adding these to the child’s diet, along with the greens from sweet potato tops. Although readily available and free for the taking, the Positively Deviant School Reform?: