Monday, July 9, 2012

by John Merrow

Low income, high poverty high school students earning their AA degrees while they are still in high school? If you saw our two-part report on PBS NewsHour last week, you know it’s not a fantasy:

What’s more, this is not a flash in the pan or a new idea. The University of Chicago had a version in the 1940’s and 50’s. I remember great programs at LaGuardia Community College in the 1980’s, and Minnesota has had a vibrant post-secondary options programs in its high schools for years. Today, theEarly College High School Initiative includes 270 schools serving more than 75,000 students in 28

CTU on the west side. « Fred Klonsky

CTU on the west side. « Fred Klonsky:

CTU on the west side.

by Fred Klonsky

From the CTU:
Collective Bargaining – Fact Finding- Work Stoppage
What do these mean for students and parents?
Join the CTU for a community forum to discuss the next Chicago schools contract.

Wednesday, July 11th

6 to 7:30 PM

Sankofa Cultural and Business Center

5820 West Chicago Avenue

Forum sponsors:
Chicago NAACP – Westside Branch, South Austin Community Coalition (SACC), Westside Health Authority, PACE/Raise Your Hand-Illinois, and local elected officials.For more information contact:
Dwayne Truss at 773-879-5216 or Bernard Clay at 773-287-2290.

A Field Report on New York’s Educator Evaluation System « Diane Ravitch's blog

A Field Report on New York’s Educator Evaluation System « Diane Ravitch's blog:

A Field Report on New York’s Educator Evaluation System

by dianerav

The principals of New York State have been up in arms in opposition to the “educator evaluation” system that the New York State Education Department has designed. More than one-third of the principals across the state have bravely signed a petition in protest.
The reason for the evaluation system is that New York had the misfortune to “win” Race to the Top. The $700 million did not go to schools for urgent needs, but to meet the mandates imposed by the U.S. Department of Education. One costly mandate requires the state to evaluate principals and teachers, based in part on test scores. Despite the fact that no state or district has figured out how this will work or how it will improve

Justin Bieber vs. Selena Gomez: Race, Immigration and Who’s “American”Political News and Opinion from a Multicultural Point of View | Political News and Opinion from a Multicultural Point of View

Justin Bieber vs. Selena Gomez: Race, Immigration and Who’s “American”Political News and Opinion from a Multicultural Point of View | Political News and Opinion from a Multicultural Point of View:

Justin Bieber vs. Selena Gomez: Race, Immigration and Who’s “American”

There’s been a great deal of discussion about a new Pew Research Center report confirming that migrants from Asian countries now outnumber those from Latin America. The report uses broad brushstrokes to paint a picture of Asian migrants as a model minority, thus ignoring the very real challenges many Asian American communities face in terms of educational attainment, employment, immigration status, health access, and so forth. Nevertheless, it’s no coincidence that U.S. economic growth in theInformation Age, culminating in the dot-com boom on the 1990s, accompanied a rapid expansion in Asian migration, as well as Latin American migration.

There were only 500,000 immigrants from Asian countries in 1960, but 2.5 million in 1980. Thanks in part to the Immigration Act of 1990 the number of immigrants from Asian countries reached nearly 11 million by 2009. Thanks in part to theImmigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, immigrants from Latin American countries totaled nearly 8.5 million in 1990, reaching 16 million by 2000, and 21 million by 2010. 81% of economists surveyed believe that the rates of immigration experienced in the late 20th Century (both documented and

Seattle Schools Community Forum: News Roundup

Seattle Schools Community Forum: News Roundup:

News Roundup

by Melissa Westbrook

Today, yes today, is the last day to register to vote for the August 7th primary. Here's a link to do it online. The deadline for the General Election is October 8th.

Well, as one grass-roots group put it, sometimes the little guy does get heard. Check out this graph of the dropoff of "likes" at Michelle Rhee's Students First Facebook page. Looks like the word got out about her use of signing people up for her organization by luring them to sign petitions at Change.org. That or she's not getting much interest via Facebook anymore.

Also in the category of the little guy speaking up, here comes a story from the NY Times about a teacher, Harris Lirtzman, who spoke up for Special Education students. It's classic because after he spoke up, he was denied

Spending Unspent Funds « PWC Education Reform Blog

Spending Unspent Funds « PWC Education Reform Blog:

Spending Unspent Funds

by pwceducationreform

It seems the idea of taking a few weeks off this summer just isn’t going to happen. As power, internet, and phone service appears to have been restored in most areas of PWC, an issue has popped up that deserves more than the scant attention it’s getting on facebook and local blogs. That is the issue of what the county and school division do with excess funds at the end of the year (with a Hat Tip to the Sheriff of Nottingham, PWC , the facebook page MymoneyPAC, and others for raising this issue).

Carry forward, or unencumbered funds in accounting language, are money that is budgeted but unused at the end of a fiscal year. Government accounting rules require that all budgeted funds be used in a given fiscal year or carried forward, so at the end of each fiscal year government entities have to figure out what to do with any left over money.

The first priority is to make sure money is carried forward for orders that have been executed but haven’t been delivered or