8-18-14 Hemlock on the Rocks

Hemlock on the Rocks:

Mulgrew: When You Look Up Union Thug in Your Urban Dictionary , HIS Photo is underneath the definition

Shameful Excuse for a Man  How much more do we need to see this for what it is ...RACKETEERING!  Note How Weingarten Yucks it up like Joe Pesci. 

by Rene Diedrich / 24min 

Teachers Scrambling to Schedule Students As Deasy's MISIS Malfunction Catches Heat from Caputo-Pearl

http://laschoolreport.com/teachers-union-blasts-deasy-again-for-new-computer-system/#comment-2379I don't approve of UTLA. Employing bully tactics like these is unnecessary and counterproductive. We cannot be so sure this issue is Deasy's fault either. Frankly, I am inclined to see it all as an elaborate ruse designed to keep the FBI and others out if records that betray ADA fraud among other

by Rene Diedrich / 51min 

LAUSD Tour of Duty

LAUSD Tour of Duty-libyernyth--clay--starbucks in the hoodFreezeNo bird in hands no bush shookHail Fire in  the Rubble of WattsSubbing : good ,bad and fuglyLittle blue duplexBanningIntern all bleeding Teachers lounge Bird Exuberance is exhausting HeathensShelter or segregateConfigurationsNapoleon Complex Emo bluesMarlo Duffin and MeFadedFaralistic (Raising  Bail for corpses)Question

by Rene Diedrich / 30min hide  //  save

Girl Scouts Get Badges For Mastering Common Core

Program Connections to State(and National) Curriculum StandardsThe content of all Girl Scout national proficiency badges and journeys have been correlated by grade level to national Common Core Standards, 21st Century Skillsstandards, Financial Literacy education standards, and curriculum such as Health and PE, Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies learning objectives for all 50 states

by Rene Diedrich / 1h 

The Corporate Hijacking of Public Education

The Corporate Hijacking of Public Education

by Rene Diedrich / 3h 

Inside the multimillion-dollar essay-scoring business | City Pages

Mike Kooiman Dan DiMaggio was blown away the first time he heard his boss say it. The pensive, bespectacled 25-year-old had been coming

by Rene Diedrich / 3h 

LAUSD's outrageous 'parent trigger' suspension - LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-le-0817-sunday-lausd-parent-trigger-20140817-story.html

by Rene Diedrich / 4h 

Sabotaging Those Political Tests (The New York State ELA and Math Assessments)

WordPress.com liberalteacher posted: "60,000 students who opted out plus a changed cut score (see here) equals one thing—an invalid and unreliable test. As

by Rene Diedrich / 4h 

APARTHEID IN AMERICA :Ferguson: Gentrification and its discontents | Al Jazeera America

U.S. SCOTT OLSON / GETTY IMAGES Ferguson: Gentrification and its discontents Gentrification is pushing poor people of color out of major cities and into deeper inequality August 15, 2014 1:11PM ET

by Rene Diedrich / 4h 

Never Again! Now The Evidence Is Irrefutable…

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by Rene Diedrich / 4h hide  //  save

Hemlock Greets Gatsby In L.A.U.S.D

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by Rene Diedrich / 4h 

8-17-14 Hemlock on the Rocks

Hemlock on the Rocks: Why Are Things As They Are? RICH GIBSON'S little red schoolhouse offers Ohanian, Rhee,Atlanta Cheats and Morehttp://www.richgibson.com/blog/Susan Ohanian on Combat-Ready Kiddies The Mission: Readiness Military Leaders for Kids website features the National Council on Teacher Quality ranking of top teacher education institutions–with the admonition No service member can enter

by mike simpson / 9h 

8-18-14 Curmudgucation

CURMUDGUCATION:

CCSS & the Men Behind the Curtain

Starr Sackstein is over at Education Week trying to make a case for the Core once again. And I'm going to disagree with her, once again.Sackstein has apparently evolved. The last time I responded to her, she was espousing the old "teach to the standards and the tests will take care of themselves" line. She has now moved on to "Well, yes, the tests are not good, but the Core is still

by Peter Greene / 42min

Sanders's Charter School Not Ready for Prime Time

The problem of athletic academies that push sports and ignore academics is not a new one.One recent growth industry has been the post-grad prep school, schools set up so that athletes who failed to make the necessary scores to qualify for NCAA play can take another year to make their numbers while still maintaining their sports edge. That tightening in standards grows out of repeated "discove

3 by Peter Greene / 21min hide  //  save

Accountability in the Age of the High Stakes Test

We've marched steadily toward accountability for over a decade now. Teachers must be held accountable. Schools must be held accountable.And not just in some fuzzy, non-specific manner. This accountability must come with real, hard consequences, say reformsters. Accountability means real consequences, financial consequences. If teachers aren't doing a great job, they should not get paid more. If th

27 by Peter Greene / 2h 

8-17-14 Curmudgucation

CURMUDGUCATION: The Non-fiction vs. Fiction IssueSince Common Core first shambled onto the education stage, teachers (particularly language teachers) have sounded the alarm about the infamous 70/30 split between fiction and non-fiction. "We'll have to drop studying Shakespeare to make room for reading instructions for IKEA shelving assembly," goes the complaint.As a high school English t

by mike simpson / 7h 

8-18-14 Perdido Street School Week

Perdido Street School:

Remember, Union Leaders Did Their "Endorsement" Work During Working Families Party Convention

I keep hearing some NYSUT people brag how NYSUT refused to endorse Andrew Cuomo for governor and am hearing from the same people that NYSUT is making sure the AFL-CIO does not endorse him either.All of this is fine, dandy and absolutely meaningless. I want to remind everybody that when it mattered, when Andrew Cuomo absolutely needed the union leadership - including the newly minted NYSUT leadersh

by reality-based edu... / 10min

Time For An Investigation Into New York State's Test Score Results, Data Tracking

Two stories from over the weekend show that the statistics and data issued by NYSED Commissioner John King and his merry men and women in reform at SED cannot be trusted.First, as I posted yesterday, the NY Post covered how NYSED lowered the cut score levels on this year's state Common Core exams, an act which resulted in slightly higher test scores:State officials touted increases in scores on to

by reality-based edu... / 3min 

8-17-14 Perdido Street School Week

Perdido Street School: How Much Longer Can Michael Mulgrew Stay In Power?The UFT has signed on as a co-sponsor for the Rev. Al "Rent-A-Collar" Sharpton's anti-police brutality march and it's not sitting well with the police unions who are now openly savaging UFT President Michael Mulgrew in the media:In an open letter to The Post, the spitting-mad boss of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Assoc

by mike simpson / 8h 

Marie Corfield: Revel Without a Cause

Marie Corfield: Revel Without a Cause:

Revel Without a Cause

Christie's big gamble on the Revel Casino comes up snake eyes for NJ citizens and pension funds.

The headline says it all. The gleaming new jewel of Atlantic City, the hoped-for savior of a town that makes its living off of hope, off of worshipping golden—and silver and green—idols will sink slowly into the sunset on September 1, and along with it thousands of jobs, millions in lost tax revenue, and billions in debt.

A stark contrast to the tacky kitsch and schmaltz of casinos like the Trump Taj Mahal, Showboat and Caesars Palace, the sleek, sophisticated Revel was supposed to usher in a new era in Atlantic City's revival and the state's casino gaming experience. An undulating steel blue wave cut by a giant shark fin, the Revel is the perfect metaphor for a pastime that dulls the senses like the beautiful but dangerous jellyfish so the great white can go in for the kill. Only this time the victim is not merely the hapless gambler with their bucket of quarters and free buffet pass; it's the house—the people of New Jersey.

Along with the closings of the Atlantic Club, Trump Plaza and Showboat this year, Revel will take with it thousands of jobs (albeit low wage, part time jobs), and the hopes and dreams of so many up and down the political and socioeconomic spectrum. And no one in charge knows when or if the bleeding will stop. And what happens when there's blood inMarie Corfield: Revel Without a Cause:

When Is Accountability Good For The Gander? – redqueeninla

When Is Accountability Good For The Gander? – redqueeninla:



When Is Accountability Good For The Gander?

Written by redqueeninla in LAUSD

…and isn’t that Buck supposed to have been stopping somewhere? Somewhere other than at the kids’ feet?

This past week, the first back in school for LAUSD kids, has seen an absolutely ridiculous mess due to MiSiS, the court-mandated, “Integrated Student Information System” more honestly termed, simply: “CriSiS”.

By their own admission, a “majority of district-run schools have reported being able to register students”, which implies, if you think about it, that …. a “near-majority” have not been able to register students.

Um, what? Why is this sort of pedantic word-parsing even emanating from the mouths of central administrators who are supposed to be working for our kids??

There have been reports of grade schoolers enrolled in High Schools and long-enrolled kids bumped from enrollment registers altogether. There have been reports of kids enrolled in the wrong school just because it was geographically closest to them, but not the right “type” (grade school rather than middle). There are reports of multiples bumping sibs from enrollment lists and random assignments of duplicate classes. There are reports of random omission of any class whatsoever from sporadic periods and classrooms of nonrandom gender imbalance. There are reports of classes enrolled to the seventy-kid mark and hundreds left waiting, classless, in auditoria and roaming the halls. There are reports of counselors spending many, many dozens of nervous-making above-and-beyond (unpaid) overtime-hours enrolling kids in classes, only to discover those enrollments didn’t “stick” afterall.

And while the administrators may be sweating bullets, it is actually the students who are suffering. For how long have how many been left twiddling thumbs awaiting administrative remedies, or relegated to incorrect classes while those with expectations of them proceed with either a deck too-full or one under-subscribed?

How can this be perceived as anything shy of disrespectful?

We have, after all, asked our children to curtail their summer formerly designed to inject some measure of autonomy and creativity within an otherwise overly-structured academic calendar year. Given how much these children have been forced to give up, can we not at the least usher them back into a systemWhen Is Accountability Good For The Gander? – redqueeninla:

NYC Educator: Take the Money and Run

NYC Educator: Take the Money and Run:

Take the Money and Run

I'm friendly with a pretty saavy ATR. I won't tell you his name, I won't tell you precisely who he's connected with, but I will tell you he knows people. In June, he met with a financial adviser and decided to take the ATR buyout. This way, he told me, he'd get not only the 19K or whatever it was, but he'd also get the retro pay that isn't retro pay. (It's explained a littlehere--not calling it retro in the actual language is how UFT and DOE rationalized excluding those who resigned, were fired, or moved into admin.)

I was pretty surprised when he told me last week he'd changed his mind, and had decided not to take the buyout. I asked him why and he told me he was no longer taking the deal. He told me that he'd come to the conclusion Bill de Blasio's second term, at this point, was not precisely a sure thing. He'd decided that if de Blasio did not make it to term two, the person who defeated him could be particularly vile, up to and including Eva Moskowitz.

Although the city may be sitting on a surplus, despite Michael Mulgrew telling teachers the "cupboard was bare" when presenting us a clearly substandard contract, there is a longstanding tradition of the city pleading poverty before the surplus appears.

In fact, while Bloomberg, for years, was denying us the 8% raise most other city unions got in 2008-2010 (most of which we'll get, interest-free, in five years), he used his fake budget crisis to rationalize and threaten layoffs. That's why ATR teachers were sent week to week school to school. I couldn't vote for this deal despite assurances from multiple UFT Unity acquaintances that the city was not competent enough to pull it NYC Educator: Take the Money and Run:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Ferguson Protester Lisha Williams. 

"It was no fight, it was no shots fired. The only ones who fired was police. All we did was march to the command center to fall to our knees and say, 'Don't shoot.' And they started shooting." --CNN

Malcolm London

Chicago poet, Malcolm London

"They don't talk about white-on-white crime in the news." -- Huffington 

Attorney Benjamin Crump

"What we're really asking for is simple justice. We're not asking for anything extraordinary. They just want what anybody else would want if their children were shot down in broad daylight." -- CNN

Justice Taney

Melissa Harris-Perry

 In 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that [Dred] Scott had no right to sue because as a black man he was never intended to be an American. Speaking of the clause in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” Taney wrote:

“It is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

The Network For Public Education | NPE Expands Board to Include Leading National Activists

The Network For Public Education | NPE Expands Board to Include Leading National Activists:

NPE Expands Board to Include Leading National Activists

August 18, 2014 NPE, NPE News, Year In Review

The Network for Public Education, a national organization working to protect and improve public education recently elected four new members to their Board of Directors: Xian Barrett, Jitu Brown, Carol Corbett Burris, and Kennet Santana.

Board President and Co-founder, Diane Ravitch says, “We are honored to have such distinguished and dedicated people join us in the fight to save public education.”

Xian Barrett is the Vice President of Engagement of New Voices Strategies.  In 2009 he was chosen Teaching Ambassador Fellow by the Department of Education. In Chicago, Barrett founded a citywide youth-led social justice organization, brought students to New Orleans for service learning and organized sister-city events with Japanese schools.  His philosophy of teaching is, “before the students lose interest in your instruction, ask them what they are passionate about and work with that—their learning belongs to them.”  Xian Barrett is the kind of teacher that we all dream our children will have.  Unfortunately, Barrett’s activism may have cost him his teaching job.  In 2012, his job was eliminated through ‘redefinition.” He believes strongly that only by hearing and acting upon the voices of educators, parents and students can we improve our educational system and world.

Jitu Brown is the national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance, a network of 30 grassroots community based organizations in 23 cities across the country organizing for community driven school improvement. Born and raised in the Rosemoor neighborhood on the far south side of Chicago, Jitu Brown also teaches African-American history at St. Leonard’s Adult High School, the only accredited high school in the nation that exclusively serves people who have been formerly incarcerated.  A believer in working locally and thinking globally, Jitu has taken youth leaders from KOCO to the United Nations, to the Passamaquoddy Native American reservation in Maine and to the UN Conference on Racism in South Africa.  He has been published in the national education magazine Rethinking Schools, appeared in Ebony magazine and on several talk shows, including MSNBC’s The Ed Show, Al Jazeera America, WBEZ’s Community Voices, Democracy Now and CLTV’s Gerard McClendon Live.

Carol Corbett Burris has served as principal of South Side High School in the Rockville Centre School District in NY since 2000.  Prior to becoming a principal, she was a teacher at both the middle and high school level.  She received her doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University. In 2010, she was named Educator of the Year by the School Administrators The Network For Public Education | NPE Expands Board to Include Leading National Activists:

8-17-14 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher

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

I support Carlos Rosa for 35th Ward Alderman.

State Representative-elect Will Guzzardi and State Senator Willie Degado with candidate Carlos Rosa.

by Fred Klonsky / 46min 

8-16-14 Fred All Week Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher

Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.: Fred All Week Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacherCPS bans parent Rousemary Vega.6 by Fred Klonsky / 15h Movement in Hinsdale D86- From HHSTA District 86 Negotiations Moving Forward. Teachers association and board of education work toward an agreement HINSDALE, IL. — August 15, 2

by mike simpson / 9h 

To Amanda Ripley: A Second TIME Article on Rhee is Long Overdue | deutsch29

To Amanda Ripley: A Second TIME Article on Rhee is Long Overdue | deutsch29:

To Amanda Ripley: A Second TIME Article on Rhee is Long Overdue

August 17, 2014

Michelle Rhee has failed as a test-driven education reformer.

Rhee taught for three years (1992-95) in Baltimore as part of Teach for America (TFA). By her own admission, her first year was terrible. She taped students’ mouths and made them bleed, and she dropped a student off after a filed trip at an unverified residence. For her second and third years, she taught as part of a team. Her students’ test scores were very low (Rhee’s first year: 20th percentile in reading and math on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills–CTBS; second year: reading, 15th percentile, and math, 38th percentile; third year, with notably fewer test taker than other district schools: reading, 45th percentile, and math, 55th percentile).

Contrast this to Rhee’s bragging that she raised 90 percent of student scores to the 90th percentile.

All of the above on Rhee is documented in chapter four of my book, A Chronicle of Echoes. The origins, mission, and funding of TFA are documented in chapter three.

Following her TFA stint, Rhee decided to “found” a teacher-training nonprofit, The New Teacher Project (TNTP), in order to train “great” teachers– which she herself never was according to her own definition of “great” as one who produces high student test scores. She was with TNTP until 2007. Information on the origin and claims of Rhee’s TNTP are documented in chapter sixteen of Echoes.

Then comes her time in DC.

Three and a Half Years as Chancellor Rhee

New York City Chancellor Joel Klein recommended Rhee as DC chancellor. A lawyer by trade, Klein himself was appointed as chancellor by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Klein’s accomplishments include lying about his “poor” upbringing; giving free public school space to hedge-funded charter schools; creating a “leadership academy” that was a joke for its “products, including Principal Andrew Buck, who refused to provide teachers with textbooks and bordered on illiterate as evidenced by his written communications with teachers.

Klein also groomed a number of protégés for positions of leadership nationwide. Their agenda was the common one for education privatizers, the centerpiece of which was making the entire life of a school system hinge upon standardized testing outcomes.

I discuss Klein in detail in chapters one and two of Echoes.

Rhee was not a Klein protégé. According to Rhee, she and Klein had “known each other for some time and worked closely together.” Apparently Klein had employed thousands of uncertified teachers in NYC, and Rhee (during her time at TNTP) had To Amanda Ripley: A Second TIME Article on Rhee is Long Overdue | deutsch29: