4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: Opinion: HOW I BEAT THE POWERBROKERS IN A SCHOOL BOARD RACE

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: Opinion: HOW I BEAT THE POWERBROKERS IN A SCHOOL BOARD RACE:

Opinion: HOW I BEAT THE POWERBROKERS IN A SCHOOL BOARD RACE

by smf

BY BENNETT KAYSER, OP-ED IN THE LA DAILY NEWS | HTTP://BIT.LY/173VB2Q

3/28/2013 12:17:23 PM PDT  ::  In my 2011 school board race, I beat the big money.

My campaign coffers never topped $35,000. My opponent Luis Sanchez raised more than five times as much. Sanchez also benefited from the generous support of "independent" interests willing to spend millions to promote their agendas. He also had the backing of well-known elected officials. Sanchez had served as chief of staff for the current School Board President Monica Garcia -- who had served as chief of staff for then-board member Jose Huizar who is now a member of the Los Angeles City Council.

Big money, heavy connections and big machine politics are at it again in the up-coming school board race run-off on May 21 to represent east San Fernando Valley. Monica Ratliff is a teacher, and that's almost like being Satan to many of the very rich "reformers" willing to make mega-contributions. In this contest, Antonio Sanchez has big financial backers and connections. That's no surprise because he used to work for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigrosa, who has plenty of rich friends who care passionately, or so they say, about the students of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Why is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg reaching deep into his pockets to support candidates for the Los Angeles School Board? Shouldn't he focus on the New York City schools that still need major improvements? Why does Michelle Rhee, the former superintendent of the Washington D.C. public schools or the other outsiders willing to write huge checks care about our public schools? Let's call these self-proclaimed "reformers" what they really are -- reactionaries.

No matter how they pay to spin it, the b/millioniares are quite content to allow a two-tiered education system with more for the haves 

Daily Kos: Could paying a living wage help retail make better profits?

Daily Kos: Could paying a living wage help retail make better profits?:

Could paying a living wage help retail make better profits?

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

That seems to be the conclusion to be drawn from reading The Trader Joe's Lesson: How to Pay a Living Wage and Still Make Money in Retail, Sophie Quinton's story in the Atlantic which is subtitled "Companies that invest in higher salaries for low-level employees find success in a competitive market."
It focuses on three chains that pay their employees far more than most competitors, and treats employees as an asset, not as a cost to be contained or shed whenever possible.  Those three chains are QuikTrip, Trader Joe's, and Costco Wholesale.

All three are low-cost retailers, a sector that is traditionally known for relying on part-time, low-paid employees. Yet these companies have all found that the act of valuing workers can pay off in the form of increased sales and productivity.

 QuikTrip pays itsentry-level employees around $40,000 plus benefits, while the average cashier makes $20,230.  

Those high wages didn't stop QuikTrip from prospering in a hostile economic climate. While other 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: It's Duncan's Race To The Top that should have been indicted

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: It's Duncan's Race To The Top that should have been indicted:

It's Duncan's Race To The Top that should have been indicted

by Mike Klonsky

Indicted!

When the Atlanta test cheating scandal broke two years ago, Arne Duncan pooh-poohed it. He started out saying how "stunned" he was and then called it an "isolated" problem. 

"I think this is very isolated," Duncan said. "In Baltimore, there's two schools and they dealt with it. This (Atlanta) is an easy one to fix, with better test security.

Isolated? An easy one to fix?

Today AJC reports:

 Former Atlanta Public School Superintendent Beverly Hall and 34 others were indicted Friday indictment on charges of racketeering, theft by taking, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and false statements in connection with the cheating scnadall that has dogged Atlanta Public Schools for years.

How isolated is the Atlanta cheating scandal? According to a FairTest's press release we received this morning, cheating is widespread --in 37 States And D.C. to be exact. FairTest has the 

Too much to read… | Deborah Meier on Education

Too much to read… | Deborah Meier on Education:

Too much to read…

by debmeier

I get sent books, I buy them and I borrow them. I’m a sucker for a good title. But if they are in “my field” I think they deserve passing along. So here are some comments about ones I found I was glad t have read this past month or two.
1. Letters of Recommendation, by Maxine McClintock is a surprisingly engaging fictional dialogue between a high school teacher and a very sensitive student about the value of what they’ve has been engaged in. I kept turing down page corners (tsk tsk) and over time I shall be quoting from the author.
2. Citizenship Now, edited by Jon and Marjorie Ford consists of short essays by almost everyone I admire (including some I disagree with),and, NOTE, including a piece me on “Educating a Democracy”. I think it’s meant to be used in courses focused on civic education.
3. Ditto for Defending Childhood edited by Beverly Falk. The chapters are on important issues, such as George Madaus and Terrence Lee-St. John’s onStandardized Testing:Unheeded Issues That Impact Children’s Learning. 

Diane in the Evening 3-29-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

Astonishing Details of Atlanta Indictments for Cheating

by dianerav

The New York Times has an extended story on the indictments of educators for their alleged participation in cheating on tests.
Ex-superintendent Beverly Hall was one of 35 Atlanta educators indicted in the biggest cheating scandal in public school history.
A third-grade teacher agreed to wear a wire for the investigators:
She “admitted to Mr. Hyde [the investigator] that she was one of seven teachers — nicknamed “the chosen” — who sat in a locked windowless room every afternoon during the week of state testing, raising students’ scores by erasing wrong answers and making them right. She then agreed to wear a hidden electronic wire to school, 

G.F. Brandenburg Asks: If Indictments in Atlanta, Why Not D.C.?

by dianerav

G.F. Brandenburg is a retired math teacher who has a habit of plain speaking and a math teacher’s ability to get right to the point. His ability to dissect false claims using data is almost unparalleled; I say “almost,” because another math teacher, Gary Rubinstein, is good at this too.
In this post, he asks whether today’s indictments in Atlanta might be followed by similar indictments in the District of Columbia.
This is the question that many readers have raised.

Breaking News: Former Atlanta Superintendent Indicted

by dianerav

A report in the New York Times says that Dr. Beverly L. Hall was indicted by a grand jury for her role in the Atlanta cheating scandal.
The story says, in part:
“Investigators laid blame for the biggest standardized-test cheating scandal in the country’s history on the superintendent, Dr. Hall, who led the 50,000-student school system from 1999 until her resignation in 2011. Dr. Hall, who was hailed as National Superintendent of the Year in 2009 for her role in making Atlanta’s once-failing urban school district a model of improvement, had “emphasized test results and public praise to the exclusion of 

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 3-29-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 3 hours ago

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: [image: Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch] Naison: Why I Won’t Let TFA Recruit My Students by dianerav Mark NAISON is a professor of African-American Studies at Fordham University. In this article, he explains why he will not permit TFA to recruit in his classes. First, he became angry when he discovered that the organization gave preference to Ivy League graduates over his own students, who had grown up in many of the communities where TFA was placing its recruits. But this is what his rejection came ... more »

Thinking about sick days. | Fred Klonsky

Thinking about sick days. | Fred Klonsky:

Thinking about sick days.

by Fred Klonsky

One of the things about being retired is that I never have to worry about taking a paid sick day again.
“Who worries about taking a sick day?” you may ask.
Most teachers I know do.
They worry about who the sub will be. They worry about leaving plans. They worry that their students will miss a day of their invaluable presence.
I’m thinking about sick days because the city of New York is about to pass a law that requires companies which employ five people or more to provide paid sick days by 2014. Until then it covers companies that employ more than twenty. They estimate it will cover a million workers in New York.
San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Washington already have even stronger paid sick day requirements for 

State investigating $98 million grant for UNO charter schools - Chicago Sun-Times

State investigating $98 million grant for UNO charter schools - Chicago Sun-Times:

State investigating $98 million grant for UNO charter schools

BY DAN MIHALOPOULOS Staff Reporter dmihalopoulos@suntimes.com March 29, 2013 4:28PM

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Juan Rangel, CEO of the United Neighborhood Organization. | Brian Jackson~Sun-Times file photo

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• For insiders, community group UNO’s charter schools pay

Updated: March 29, 2013 4:48PM

 

Gov. Pat Quinn’s executive inspector general has opened an investigation into the politically influential United Neighborhood Organization’s use of a $98 million grant from Springfield for new charter schools, after a report in the Chicago Sun-Times that UNO gave millions of dollars in contracts for the schools to companies with ties to the organization’s top officials.

In a letter dated Feb. 14, Executive Inspector General Ricardo Meza’s office asked the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to turn over all records regarding the grant, state officials disclosed Friday.

Meza also sent a similar request to Juan Rangel, UNO’s chief executive officer, sources said.

Meza’s office said it has opened “an official investigation” into the UNO grant, according to a copy of the one-page letter that the Quinn administration released Friday in response to a request made under the state’s Freedom of Information Act.

The inspector general asked to be given copies of UNO’s state grant contracts and “any and all corresponding documentation,” including anything involving subcontractors, by Feb. 28.

Meza could not be reached Friday. A Quinn spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

UNO spokesman Ray Quintanilla said, “UNO recognizes the need to update and improve its internal procurement process to match our rapid growth within the last few years. We have said we can do better, which is why former Judge Wayne Andersen is conducting an independent analysis of UNO’s current policies which will outline a comprehensive set of policies that will modernize 

Michelle Rhee, a private school parent?:

Michelle Rhee, a private school parent?

Posted by Valerie Strauss on March 29, 2013 at 5:13 pm

The outspoken Michelle Rhee appears to be uncomfortable talking about where her children go to school in Nashville. Public or private? And why does it matter?

Her reluctance is detailed in this Los Angeles Times piece by Michael Mishak headlined, “Michelle Rhee, ‘a public school parent?’ ” Mishak reports that Erin Shaw, a spokesman for Rhee’s StudentsFirst anti-union organization, told the Times, “She is a public school parent.” Based on  that, the paper reported in an earlier story that her daughters attend public school in Nashville, where their father, Kevin Huffman, works as state commissioner of education. Rhee’s husband is Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.

But the American Federation of Teachers, one of the two biggest teachers unions in the country — both of which Rhee has made special targets of her education activism — challenged the public-school claim, Mishak writes, saying that one of Rhee’s daughters goes to a private school in Nashville. And education historian and activist Diane Ravitch wrote on her blog that a daughter of Rhee’s attends Harpeth Hall, an elite girls school for grades 

Read Dallas ISD school board candidates’ responses to Dallas Kids First questionnaire | Education Blog

Read Dallas ISD school board candidates’ responses to Dallas Kids First questionnaire | Education Blog:

Read Dallas ISD school board candidates’ responses to Dallas Kids First questionnaire

By Matthew Haag
mhaag@dallasnews.com
3:57 pm on March 29, 2013 | Permalink

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Dallas Kids First released its Dallas ISD candidate scorecards this week and then endorsed the board’s three incumbents in the May election.

Dallas Kids First’s roughly 1,000 members used the candidates’ responses to help pick the group’s endorsements. (The group’s members who contributed more than $200 to the political action committee weren’t allowed to participate in the endorsements.) And unlike the scorecards, Dallas Kids First didn’t post the candidates’ answers on its website.

But here they are:

Dallas ISD District 4