Sent to the Washington Post, March 28, 2011
"Obama says standardized tests too punitive" (3/28/11) is baffling.
The president is calling for less standardized testing and less teaching to the test while his Department of Education is launching the most extensive standardized testing program ever seen in American education, one that goes far beyond the president's reasonable suggestion of a standardized test to be given every few years.
It is widely agreed that No Child Left Behind put too much emphasis on testing, but the new plan goes far
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said Monday that students should take fewer standardized tests and school performance should be measured in other ways. Too much testing makes education boring for kids, he said.
"Too often what we have been doing is using these tests to punish students," the president told students and parents at a town hall hosted by the Univision Spanish-language television network at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C.
Obama, who is pushing a rewrite of the nation's education law that would ease some of its rigid measurement tools, said policymakers should find a test that "everybody agrees makes sense" and administer it in less pressure-packed atmospheres, potentially every few years instead of annually.
Nutrition Services Division Information Alert | |
To: School Districts, Charter Schools, and County Offices of Education | Number: NSD-SNP-01-2011 |
Attention: Superintendents, Principals, Business Officials, Child Nutrition Directors | Date: March 2011 |
| Subject: Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program Grant Opportunities (July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012) for Elementary Schools | |
| Reference: Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP) Grants 2011-12 | |
The California Department of Education (CDE), Nutrition Services Division (NSD), announces a grant opportunity for elementary schools to participate in the national Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP). This FFVP grant period is July 1, 2011–June 30, 2012. The United States Department of Agriculture administers the FFVP at the federal level, and the NSD administers the FFVP in California.
All eligible agencies (please see “Grant Eligibility” section for more information) interested in receiving a 2011–12 FFVP grant must respond to this request for applications, including both current FFVP grantees (2010–11), and new FFVP applicants.
The purpose of the FFVP is to provide all children in a participating elementary school with a variety of free fresh fruit and vegetable snacks throughout the school day as a supplement to (and not part of) the school breakfast and school lunch programs, and to teach students about good nutrition. The FFVP also encourages schools to partner with other entities in the community to support their FFVP efforts.
The FFVP began as a pilot project authorized by Congress in 2002. The pilot provided funds to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables in four states. The purpose of the pilot was to determine the best practices for increasing fruit and vegetable consumption.
The success of the pilot led to the enactment of legislation in 2004 to expand the FFVP and to make it a permanent program under the National School Lunch Act. In May 2008, Congress permanently authorized the FFVP nationwide and provided a significant funding increase each year. California:California’s FFVP funding for the 2011–12 school year is expected to total $12 million. The CDE will provide funding for these grants as long as funds are available, and will award grants on a reimbursement basis. Grant awards will be based on student enrollment and range from $50 to $75 per student per school. As required by federal law, the NSD will rank applicant schools based on the percent of their students eligible for free/reduced-price meals, and will give funding priority to those with the highest percentages.
The following agencies are eligible to apply for a FFVP grant:
Hereinafter, the eligible agencies listed above will be referred to as School Food Authorities (SFA).
To be selected for a FFVP grant, a school must meet the following minimum criteria:
You may download the grant application package and instructions from the CDE Available Funding Web page athttp://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fo/af/.
The NSD must receive an original and one copy of the grant application package from the SFA postmarked or hand delivered by Tuesday, May 3, 2011. Applications postmarked after this date will not be accepted. The NSD will not process incomplete, illegible, or late applications. The NSD will not accept copies, faxed, or e-mail submission.
If you have questions, please contact David Hazeleaf, Analyst, by phone at 916-323-5757, or Elizabeth Moreno, Nutrition Education Consultant, by phone at 916-324-9749 or by e-mail at FFVP@cde.ca.gov.
Sam Dillon reported in Saturday’s New York Times that Steve Barr's spinoff organization has now changed its name in order to clarify the legal and operational separation between Barr’s current work and Green Dot Public Schools, Barr’s original organization. Dillon describes Green Dot and Barr as “going through a divorce” and is kind enough to mention some of the uncomfortable dynamics that led up to the split that are described in my forthcoming book.
The story behind Barr and Green Dot parting ways is understandably fascinating to education watchers, who rarely get to see any of the internal strife and sausage-making that goes on behind the velvet school reform curtain communicated to them by the mainstream media and reformy blogs. But internal conflicts and partings of ways aren’t really all that unusual in education or other fields (think politics, business, or entertainment). Jon Schnur left New Leaders just a few months ago after having gone through a slew of senior staff over the years. Richard Colvin departed less than two years after having announced the “new” Hechinger Institute. Co-founders Tom Toch and Andy Rotherham fell out with each other and their board and left Education Sector after just four years. The CDF and the Forum have had
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan's top business lobby gave the government the green light to scrap a planned cut in the corporate tax rate and urged firms to look at shifting production to western Japan as the nation grapples with its worst crisis since World War Two.
Hiromasa Yonekura, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, said the influential lobby would not fight the government if it decided to shelve a plan to lower the corporate tax rate, which at around 40 percent is among the highest in the industrialized world.
Economics Minister Kaoru Yosano suggested last week the government should reconsider the planned tax cut of 5 percentage points from April to prioritize spending on reconstruction and prevent the country's already massive debt pile from growing.
"I don't mind if the government skips cutting the corporate tax rate," Yonekura, who is also chairman of
Let Us Know Your Event for the April 4 Days of Action |  | ||||
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On and around April 4 in hundreds of large and small events nationwide, working people will gather to honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., and stand in solidarity with workers across the country who are facing unprecedented attacks on their rights and their jobs.
Are you planning an event? If so, be sure to add it to the We Are One event site. Click here to add an event. It might be a Colorado Springs candlelight vigil with union, civil rights and faith activists or a Baltimorescreening of the film “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop” for young trade union members followed by a discussion of attacks on unions and workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively.
Or, you can let us know other actions you plan to take to show your solidarity, including worksite actions in which you:
Get together with co-workers at lunchtime to e-mail or call your state legislators or congressional representatives or organize something as simple as a bake sale or carwash to help raise funds for working people fighting for a better life.
King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, while helping Memphis, Tenn., sanitation workers fight for the same workers’ rights that governors and state legislators in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states are now trying to eliminate. These assaults have sparked energy and built a solidarity movement to defend workers’ rights and middle-class jobs. You can be part of the April 4 week of We Are One actions.
Click here for more ideas and options and here for resources and materials.
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Once upon a time, professors led quiet lives, walking slowly from seminars to tea in panelled rooms. Nowadays they wake up in the middle of media storms. The latest scholar to whom this has happened is William Cronon, who teaches environmental and Western history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was famous, as scholars go, before the storm, for complex, vivid booksabout how Americans have shaped the land. A Rhodes Scholar and a MacArthur Fellow, he had also won university-wide teaching prizes, both at Yale and at Madison. He will be the next president of the
