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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

“best of” list for education reformers

 “best of” list for education reformers 

1.     Joel Klein for setting the standard for superintendents.
2.     Mike Johnston for showing us how to lead in the state house.
3.     Davis Guggenheim and Madeline Sackler for their powerful filmmaking and help popularizing the ed reform movement.
4.     Deborah Gist for demonstrating the power for good in a state department of education.
5.     Rick Hess for being a true thought leader even though he sometimes plays the contrarian for fun.
6.     Michelle Rhee for taking no prisoners and getting “s***” done, watch out adult interests!
7.     Alan Gottlieb for developing a new standard for quality regional education journalism.
8.     John Danner of Rocketship Education for creating a truly innovative and effective school design.
9.     Geoffrey Canada for taking the “Zone” national and making American Express ads sexy and cool for ed reform. 
10. Arne Duncan for leading the most effective of federal education reform program in decades, even if Colorado and Louisana were robbed.
11. Doug Lemov and Steven Farr for documenting what works and how to do it.
12. Chris Christie teaming up with Cory Booker and doing ed reform jersey style.
13. Michael Bennet for winning so we can have ed reform leadership in the US Senate. 
14. Media powerhouses like NBC for setting a new standard with Education Nation, Oprah for spreading the word on reform, Colbert for making reformers hip while the LA Times fostered a great debate even if I don’t entirely agree with their methods.
Education Reform Now

To Fix Education: Fire Human Teachers, Hire Holograms | Dailycensored.com

To Fix Education: Fire Human Teachers, Hire Holograms | Dailycensored.com

To Fix Education: Fire Human Teachers, Hire Holograms

“50 years later, our generation’s Sputnik moment is back,” President Obama declared at a recent speech at Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; this time, however, we aren’t just losing to the formidable U.S.S.R., but now are being beaten senseless by wimpy little nations like Finland, for cripes sake.

Friggin’ Finland.

Thankfully, in Shanghai we have a far more scary-looking foe than Finland, one actually worthy of replacing the Red Scare. Fifty years after Sputnik, we still have a healthy fear of a communist takeover of our country, which has been fed not only by Glen Beck’s chalkboard conspiracy theories, but also by the reality that China owns most of our debt, a fact feverishly exploited by both liberals and conservatives to grab votes in the midterm election. Now, in outperforming us in the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), these communist children have given us a “wake-up call,” as Obama concludes, demonstrating that we are “in danger of falling behind,” and waking up to a Red Dawn.

Our imploded economy, and the subsequent Red Scare, has led to a

New law requires whooping cough vaccination for middle school students - Medical News - sacbee.com

New law requires whooping cough vaccination for middle school students - Medical News - sacbee.com

New law requires whooping cough vaccination for middle school students

Published: Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2010 - 3:20 pm

California middle and high school students will be required to be vaccinated against whooping cough after a new law takes effect next year.

The law, which goes into effect July 1, will apply to both public and private school students from 7th through 12th grades.

There has been a major uptick in the cases of pertussis, known as whooping cough, with more



Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/29/3287642/new-law-requires-whooping-cough.html#ixzz19XxSxen7

UC Execs Demand More Money « occupy california

UC Execs Demand More Money « occupy california

UC Execs Demand More Money

According to Nanette Asimov (SF Chronicle), 36 top UC executives are demanding better pensions (and threatening the UC with lawsuits), including a $5 million increase in pension liability and what would effectively be another $51 million in retroactive changes for the UC. The list of executives that signed the demand letter:

UC system’s central offices

Satish Ananthaswamy, CFA senior portfolio manager, Office of the Chief Information Officer

Marie Berggren, chief investment officer

William Coaker Jr., senior managing director of equity investments, Office of the Treasurer


Queens Teacher: The amazing truth about PISA scores

Queens Teacher: The amazing truth about PISA scores

The amazing truth about PISA scores

From the Super Economy Blog

The amazing truth about PISA scores: USA beats Western Europe, ties with Asia.

What I have learned recently and want to share with you is that once we correct (even crudely) for demography in the 2009 PISA scores, American students outperform Western Europe by significant margins and tie with Asian students. Jump to the graphs if you don't want to read my boring set-up and methodology.

The main theme in my blog is that we shouldn’t confuse policy with culture, and with demographic factors.

For instance, education scholars have known for decades that the home environment of the kids and the education levels of the parents are very important for student outcomes. We also know that immigrant kids have a more difficult time at school, in part because they don’t know the language.

Take me as an example. The school me and my brother attended was in a basement in Tehran, had no modern

Who Needs an Education Secretary? Maybe Not California - State EdWatch - Education Week

Who Needs an Education Secretary? Maybe Not California - State EdWatch - Education Week

Who Needs an Education Secretary? Maybe Not California

Expect lots of announcements in the coming weeks from newly elected governors naming their handpicked education secretaries, usually described as impassioned champions of "reform" (meaning the policies favored by their bosses).

New Mexico's governor named one last week. Iowa's gov picked his own today.

But that post-election tradition may not play out in California. That's because Democratic Gov.-elect Jerry Brown, who reclaimed the job he held a couple decades ago, promised during his campaign that he would eliminate the

Ilana Garon: Teach For America's 'Highly Qualified' Is Highly Misleading

Ilana Garon: Teach For America's 'Highly Qualified' Is Highly Misleading
Ilana Garon

Ilana Garon

Posted: December 29, 2010 12:15 PM

Seven years ago, when I began teaching high school in the Bronx as a NYC Teaching Fellow, I had every expectation of being the next Socrates. I had just completed a rigorous summer training program that I naïvely assumed would give me all the skills I needed to connect with my young charges and open their minds to the lyricism of Robert Frost's poetry or the pathos of Shakespearean tragedy. Through my determination, tenacity, and love of learning, I would not only ensure that my students passed their Regents exams; I would teach them to love English, and by extension, to take the whole of their studies more seriously.

The students had other ideas. My most vivid memory of those first two years involves a group of kids known by their teachers as the "sunshine class." (The kids traveled in blocks, so several teachers had the same group at different points during the day.) That season, the cafeteria served