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| "Bubbles" by John Isaac, 2003 (photographed by Grahamc99) |
Something tells me this will not end well:
New York City education officials are developing more than a dozen new standardized tests, but in a sign of the times, their main purpose will be to grade teachers, not the students who take them.
Elementary school students would most likely take at least one or two additional tests every year, beginning in the third grade. High school students could take up to eight additional tests a year, and middle school students would also have extra tests. These would be in addition to the state English, math and Regents exams that students already take.
The new tests are part of New York’s effort to comply with Race to the Top funding requirements which require states to rate teachers. While officials are attempting to make the tests more involved than simple multiple-
Ithaca public schools superintendent Nathan Bootz proposes making schools into prisons to improve things for students. I add a comment.
Published in Big Think
05/24/2011
Dear Governor Snyder,
In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren't we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to "fix" what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.
One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan. We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually tha
Open Government Advocates Strike Deal With UC, CSU On Transparency Act | |||||
Public Universities to Drop Opposition to Yee’s Bill, Sunshine Law Now Likely
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For the past three years, Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), along with open government advocates, students, and workers, have been trying to bring greater transparency and accountability to California’s public higher education institutions – University of California, California State University, and the state’s community college system. | |||||
 Assemblyman Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) has proposed AB 165, a bill that would reaffirm that student fees are illegal and set up an enforcement mechanism. Photographed here: Erik Gramajo, a junior at Polytechnic High School. (Katie Falkenberg / For The Times) |
Granted, school reform is not a sporting event, but generals and politicians routinely twin sports and public policy. In that spirit, I offer this suggestion: With last week's greatly downgraded assessment of "cheating" in Washington, D.C. schools, we need a referee to call a strike count on the campaign to smear former chancellor Michelle Rhee.
There appear to be two driving motives behind the movement to discredit Rhee. First, she draws media attention that makes her the most visible of the national reformers who, in recent months, have pushed through dramatic schools reforms.
Almost overnight, it seems, states such as Indiana, Colorado, Illinois, Ohio, Florida, Idaho and others have ushered in major education reforms at a rate thought impossible only a year ago. We've seen reformed focused on "real" teacher evaluations, test scores used as part of those evaluations, ending seniority-based layoff policies, and disrupting "forced placement" of teachers where unwanted teachers are shoehorned into
Due: Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Safe and Supportive Schools (S3) is a federal, three-year grant intended to support measurement of conditions for learning (known also as school climate) and targeted programmatic interventions to improve those conditions in selected high schools. The grant will target California's comprehensive high schools that demonstrate a strong commitment to improving school safety and climate, and that have the highest need in multiple areas of school climate, as measured by a school climate index. The S3 grant addresses issues of school safety and bullying, positive relationships and other learning supports, and student engagement.
Program Questions: Hilva Chan, e-mail: hchan@cde.ca.gov, tel. 916-319-0194
Downloading Questions: Coordinated School Health and Safety Office, e-mail:schoolhealth@cde.ca.gov, tel. 916-319-0914
| Document | Description |
|---|---|
| Cover Letter | Cover letter announcing the S3 request for applications. |
| Request for Applications (DOC; 386KB; 40pp.) | Overview, instructions, and application. |
| Document | Description |
|---|---|
General Assurances & Certifications | Required as a condition of receiving funds. Applicants do not need to sign and return them with the application; they must be downloaded and kept on file for compliance reviews, complaint investigations, or audits. Applicants that participate in the Consolidated Application - ConApp - should have a copy on file and do not need another copy. Program-specific assurances are not included here and should be listed separately on the Request for Application (RFA). |
More about Safe and Supportive Schools Programmatic Intervention
The problem is that not enough actual conversation is happening, and the people in the middle, whose minds we would sway, are left to follow whomever has the loudest voice, and the most money to promote their version of what schools should look like. Those of us at the Cooperative Catalyst are not being paid for our thoughts and
The National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based advocacy group famous for generating lots of controversial reports, has stepped into the fray again with a list of ESEA reauthorization proposals focused on the law's teacher-quality elements.
Before we dig into the recs, I should note that many Hill watchers don't put a lot of hope in getting a large-scale ESEA reauthorization bill done anytime soon. House Republican leaders, for instance, have indicated that they want to reserve teacher-quality discussions for this fall and work on smaller-scale bills in the meantime.
But that's not stopping NCTQ, whose recommendations are sure to produce some impassioned dialogue in the field. Among other things, it says the feds should:
• Require states to link teachers to students and to assessment results as a condition of receiving Title I funds.
• Transform the Title II State Teacher Quality grant into a competitive-grant program contingent on states' setting a definition of a "highly effective" teacher and evaluating all teachers each year, based partly on student
briefing by Education Coalition technical experts, Bob Wells of the Association of California School Administrators (at lectern) points to the devastation to the education program that would come with another $5 billion in cuts, as (from l.) California Teachers Association Advocate Estelle Lemieux and California School Boards Association’s Rick Pratt look on.
The Sacramento briefing for reporters brought home the point that the governor’s $3 billion increase in K-14 funding will only eliminate an existing funding deferral for the next school year. Lawmakers’ passing the tax
Originally posted on The Fight Back DC. Check out the original post for audio interviews with protest participants.
“We come down to D.C. today to protest the national campaign for vouchers,” said William Browning, legislative and education director of Action United, a social justice group in Pennsylvania.
“Wisconsin has had the voucher system for twenty years and has had no success,” Browning said last week outside the Washington Marriott where the right-wing American Federation for Children’s (AFC) education conference was taking place.
Speakers at the conference included Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle
In the wake of the revelation that Michelle Rhee lobbied to sneak teacher evaluation language into Ohio’s SB-5, here’s a short video about how teacher evaluation fared in DC.
Posted: 4:19PM, May 25, 2011
David Leonhardt’s excellent column on Amherst College’s successful efforts to enroll a more economically diverse student body highlights one of the great triumphs of American public relations: the ongoing ability of elite colleges to maintain a high moral standing in society while actively working to sustain the plutocracy. As Leonhardt notes, it is simply a fact that, in the aggregate, elite colleges convey an admissions advantage to the children of rich people, above and beyond considerations of academic merit, whereas they provide no such advantage to the children of poor people. Sometimes this happens through legacy preferences, sometimes by recruiting athletes in niche sports populated by the wealthy
From Emmy Partin’s review of Innovation Ohio’s report “Ohio’s E-schools: Funding Failure; Coddling Contributors”: “The mistruths in the report are plenty (a few are exposed in this short takefrom the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools), but the most egregious is this: that e-schools cost Ohio more than traditional schools. IO is correct that e-schools receive an average of $6,320 per pupil in funding from the state (via deductions from their students’ home school districts). The report goes on to say that this amount is 95 percent more than traditional schools receive from the state. This may be technically true, to a degree. One-hundred percent of e-school funding flows from state coffers; but a good chunk of district funding comes from local taxpayers and doesn’t pass through the state treasurer. Does that mean that local tax dollars shouldn’t and don’t figure into the equation when policymakers, the media, and the public are assessing education spending?” (Gadfly)
LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy’s reaction to the opposition he’s facing from the L.A. teachers union towards his teacher evaluation proposal: “I think there is a large disconnect between what the leadership has done and what the rank and file is saying to us. They’re not only excited about the evaluation system, but they’re chomping at the bit to use it.” (Los Angeles Times)
Derek Thompson asks, “Is College (Finally) Ready For Its Innovation Revolution?”: “Colleges rarely think about efficiency, because all the signals tell them to spend more money on fewer students. Theoretically, the most efficient school would give the highest quality education to the most people for the lowest price. In reality, national rankings reward universities for rejecting the highest number of applicants, teaching the fewest number of students per class, and spending the most per capita on resources. That doesn’t mean colleges are failing. It means the system suffers from an incentive to be inefficient.” (The Atlantic)
The Chronicle of Higher Education reporting on NCAA academic penalties: “The University of Connecticut men’s basketball team is the reigning NCAA champion, but it is also one of a handful of marquee basketball and football programs to receive penalties from the association this week for poor academic performance. …The Huskies’ score of 893 out of 1,000 points on the NCAA’s annual academic-progress report, released on Tuesday, was well below the cutoff point drawing a penalty of reduced scholarships for the team. Five other basketball and football programs in major athletic conferences scored below the NCAA’s benchmark of 925 out of a possible 1,000, down from a dozen big-time teams last year.” (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Tax Breaks for Big Oil vs. Education
Last week, the Senate was blocked from even considering a vote to eliminate subsidies for big oil companies. The following charts show what could be done with the tax breaks for oil companies to benefit students and public education.
DREAM Act
ESEA
Education Jobs Funding
President Obama has signed the $10 billion education jobs fund into law. The new law will help save the jobs of over 160,000 educators who had received pink slips. Below are resources to help your understanding of this major victory for students, educators, parents, and our nation.
