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Monday, April 16, 2012

An Ode To The Big Tests | The Jose Vilson

An Ode To The Big Tests | The Jose Vilson:


An Ode To The Big Tests

Here’s to you.
Here’s to the students who will be pelted with Scantron sheets and test booklets emblazoned with the shape of New York State, a place they’ve explored so little.
Here’s to the students who, after 140 days of mixed concentration for varied reasons, will be asked to focus all their energies on answering 50+ multiple choice and 9+ extended response questions they’ll have to take over the course of three days for English … and 3 days for math.
Here’s to the students who have different accommodations, whose friends only get 90 minutes of torture a day when they have to sit there for 120 or 180 minutes, wasting their lives away slowly by this excruciating process.
Here’s to the students who get labels like ELL (English Language Learner) and also have the misfortune of making it to eight grade, where a kid has to take an ELA, Math, Science, ESL, Field Test, and city-administered 

Modern School: Data-Free Reform: The Bunkum of “Multiple Learning Styles”

Modern School: Data-Free Reform: The Bunkum of “Multiple Learning Styles”:


Data-Free Reform: The Bunkum of “Multiple Learning Styles”


Every year teachers are asked to add more to their repertoire of teaching techniques, to work harder and longer to implement reforms that are supposed to improve student learning. If these reforms actually improved learning outcomes, the investment in professional development and teacher’s time might be worth it.

Teachers should be wary.

Administrators and proponents typically claim reforms are based on solid evidence and will enhance student learning and teachers routinely accept these claims, even though compelling evidence is rarely provided.

With scams like No Child Left Behind it was obvious that the benefits to students would be nominal or nonexistent and teachers opposed it from the start. However, teachers have uncritically accepted and embraced numerous other reforms and “theories” like Multiple Intelligences, popularized by Howard Gardner in the 1980s, and the notion that we must 

How to Destroy the Educational System » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

How to Destroy the Educational System » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names:


Take Away Their Funding, Terrorize Teachers, and Send Kids Somewhere Else

How to Destroy the Educational System

by ELIZABETH WALTERS
How can we improve public education for our children?
The answers to this question–and the perspectives on the current quality of public education in the United States–are as varied and individualized as the 55 million students who attend public school in this country. Recently, legislators in Louisiana, like their counterparts in many other states, have sought to improve their state’s educational climate. They have good reason for doing so–in its annual Kids COUNT ratings, meant to evaluate quality of life for children in each state and based on measurements that include educational indices, the Annie E. Casey Foundation consistently ranks Louisiana as 49th (thank you, Mississippi).
As a public-school teacher in Louisiana, I can think of many ways to improve public schools here, and I heard the same sentiments voiced by fellow teachers during a rally outside the Capitol in Baton Rouge as the legislation was being debated last week (April 4). It seems self-evident that one of the best ways to to improve public education would be to allocate more resources for public schools–to improve technology, to expand professional-development opportunities for teachers, to buy classroom supplies, up-to-date textbooks and all the other materials that come with a good education. Perhaps one of the best ways to improve public education would be to loosen the strictures that tie student and school evaluations to test preparation and instead to allow teachers to instruct students in the sort of project-based units supported by 

Stand ON Children First: New AstroTurf from Teacher in the Box


Just Like Michelle Rhee's Students first only BETTER


Astroturf lobbying refers to political organizations or campaigns that appear to be made up of grassroots activists but are actually organized and run by corporate interests seeking to further their own agendas. Such groups are often typified by innocent-sounding names that have been chosen specifically to disguise the group's true backers


Just Like Michelle Rhee's
 Students first Astroturf lobbying (only Better) 
we support:

  • Promoting voucher programs that drain public schools of resources by using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private school profits, and specifying that those schools must remain unregulated.
  • Offering private school vouchers with “universal eligibility” (using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private schools for the rich and others); “means-tested eligibility,” (using poverty as the first domino in an effort to privatize public schools ; and “universal eligibility with means-tested scholarship.” (Here, “scholarship” means using taxpayer dollars to pay private school tuition and/or profits.)
  • Creating a scheme to deem public schools “educationally bankrupt” to rationalize giving taxpayer dollars to almost completely unregulated private schools, rather than addressing any problems.
  • Setting up low-income students for failure in college by incentivizing early graduation for students in need of a complete high school education.
  • Certifying individuals with no education background as teachers, a move that would weaken the quality of education, that fails to recognize there is more to teaching than knowledge of a subject, and that would undermine the role and competitiveness of professional teachers.
  • Eliminating tenure for teachers in favor of “performance,” allowing districts to fire older teachers in favor of lower-cost young teachers.
  • Undermining teacher’s unions.
Other Astroturf lobbying groups love Stand ON Children First

Just Like Michelle Rhee's Students first only BETTER©
Proudly Sponsored by

School Tech Connect: Totally Not A Rant

School Tech Connect: Totally Not A Rant:


Totally Not A Rant

So... here's a cautionary tale, not a rant. It's going to sound like a rant. I'm not ranting, swear to God.

Anyway I get an email from my state representative, and it turns out she's having office hours at a place I can get to and I time I can make, if I A) drive instead of biking and B) haul ass.  Here's the relevant bit of email...

This email irks me a bit because I think wtf? Is revenue simply off the table forever? Anyhoo I drive to work, thinking the whole time about how weird it is to run a whole internal combustion engine for just one person.

But before I drive to work today, I do my homework. I prep like a madman, for a friggin' week. I read Glen's excellent series and I study the primary sources behind them. I'm briefed on CTBA's excellent case for a graduated income tax. I understand the 

Big Education Ape: 4-16-12 PM Big names contributing big(ish) money to board race EDition #EDCHAT #SOSCHAT

Big Education Ape: PARENTS CAN!:
Big Education Ape: PARENTS CAN!

Published by Coopmike48 – 7 news spotters today

- Wait, What?

jonathanpelto.com - Apr 16 jonpeltoAchievement First/ConnCAN, Education, Malloy, Michelle Rhee, Stefan Pryor, StudentsFirst Achievement First, Malloy, Michelle Rhee, Stefan Pryor, StudentsFirst Earlier today, Students...
DianeRavitch

Move Along! Nothing to See here!

slekar.blogspot.com - I am close to the edge! And from here the picture is perfectly clear. The American public system of education is being systematically, and purposely destroyed. This is not a statement from someo...
DianeRavitch

NCLB Outrages (Susan Ohanian Speaks Out)

susanohanian.org - Testing: How to Stop the Reign NOTE: NCLB testing begins tomorrow in New York, when 1.2 million kids begin to take the ELA and math tests in grades 3 - 8. This year the tests contain embedded multi...
DianeRavitch

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Schools chief to set rules  for subsidies | Home

theadvocate.com - Louisiana’s state superintendent of education will decide what tests and other scrutiny private and parochial schools face if they accept students who get state subsidies.The issue stems from the L...
DianeRavitch

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Tending Our Gardens « Cooperative Catalyst

coopcatalyst.wordpress.com - Ah, Spring. Now is the time where my family and I roll up our sleeves and dig into the dirt, preparing the soil for herbs, vegetables and flowers– up-rooting weeds, churning through the sun hardene...
coopmike48

On Love and Autism: Our Favorite Student Comments

learning.blogs.nytimes.com - Love on the Spectrum: In the video above, Jack Robison and Kirsten Lindsmith, two college students living in Greenfield, Mass., discuss how autism affects their lives and relationship.In mid-March,...
coopmike48

Why Do People Go To Yoga Classes?

slate.com - And I assume that some people do this. Back in the VCR days, I seem to recall a vogue for selling exercise tapes of various kinds. But it seems to me that rather than improved video distribution te...
coopmike48

PoliticsSee all

Americas Meeting Ends With Discord Over Cuba

nytimes.com - CARTAGENA, Colombia — A summit meeting of Western Hemisphere nations ended without a final statement of consensus on Sunday, after the United States and some Latin American nations remained sharply...
fklonsky

Our no-bid, win-win, Rahmadier

michaelklonsky.blogspot.com - Marc Boucher, from left, Bombardier vice president of operations; CTA President Forrest Claypool; and Mayor Rahm Emanuel check out a new rail car in November. The cars were later taken out of servi...
mikeklonsky

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Tepco’s Cheapskate Tactics Put World at Risk

dissidentvoice.org - Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. – Henry David Thoreau The system of nature, of which m...
mikeklonsky

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Why Congress is Putting Mark Twain on a Coin

democraticunderground.com - Here's a Twain story which most Congressmen have never read. Unpublished in his lifetime; it concerns the First Battle of Bud Dajo, sometimes referred to as the Moro Crater Massacre. Not coincident...
coopmike48

Jersey politicians & burning buildings

bluejersey.com - Some of us rush into a burning building when we know a neighbor is in need. And some of us don't. Two images in New Jersey politics piqued the interest of our friend cartoonist Rob Tornoe this week...
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