Geaux Teacher!: For Louisiana Board of Education Failure Was the Only Option!

Geaux Teacher!: For Louisiana Board of Education Failure Was the Only Option!:

For Louisiana Board of Education Failure Was the Only Option!

Retired teacher Mike Deshotels offers a pretty darn good synopsis of the June 1 BESE meeting.  If you missed it or want to spend a few hours witnessing an incredibly juvenile and idiotic display, you can watch the archived video when and if LDE makes it available.  Hard to believe that some of these  BESE members would allow their behavior to be captured for history to revisit. I am speaking of all members present with the exception of Beebe, Hill and Smith.  As for Superintendent White? His actions will be prime evidence when he is called into court.

http://streaming2.louisiana.gov/home

Louisiana Educator

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BESE Fails Posted: 02 Jul 2014 06:42 AM PDT I and many other educators and parents attended the BESE meeting Tuesday to watch BESE members and Superintendent White attempt to deal with the combination of curve balls and spit balls thrown at them by Governor Jindal. Instead of a ball game, it turned out to be a circus that lasted 6 hours and it was not entertaining. If our public education classrooms were run this way, teachers would all be fired. Thank goodness the education of our children does not really depend on the erratic behavior of BESE, White and Jindal. For a somewhat salacious and entertaining account of the meeting read the Crazy Crawfish blog here. Also, Mercedes Schneider gives you the big picture pointing out that a legal decision in New Mexico may affect PARCC in Louisiana. After the meeting, I spoke to a long time educator, local superintendent, and legislator (Mr Rogers Pope from Livingston Parish) who also attended the entire punishing meeting. He said that it is fortunate that no matter what BESE, White, and Jindal do, our teachers will be hard at work in a few weeks teaching their students in an effective manner and helping to prepare their students for life and careers just as they have always done. . . . . despite the higher powers over education who think they are soooooo important. Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, BESE and John White have the grandiose belief that all the silly rules they make, and all the hoops they devise for teachers and school principals to jump through really make a difference in the education of young people. They Geaux Teacher!: For Louisiana Board of Education Failure Was the Only Option!:

NEA president: Current testing system “will crumble” | Chalkbeat

NEA president: Current testing system “will crumble” | Chalkbeat:



NEA president: Current testing system “will crumble”

Nation's largest teachers union meeting in Denver

 Two National Education Association leaders Wednesday called for a massive reduction in the amount of student testing and predicted accountability systems based on such assessments “will crumble.”

Dennis Van Roekel, president of the 3 million-member NEA, told a handful of reporters (and several dozen cheering members), “This entire accountability system that’s based on tests will crumble. It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when.”

He appeared with Kerrie Dallman, president of the Colorado Education Association, an NEA affiliate. Dallman, citing a CEA teacher survey that concluded 30 percent of the school year is consumed by testing, said, “Let’s cap it at 5 percent.”

The two leaders appeared a day before the NEA’s representative assembly convenes for four days of elections, voting on resolutions and deciding on union initiatives for the upcoming year.

The national meeting at the Colorado Convention Center is the first in Colorado since 1962.

Testing, which has come under increasing criticism from state and national teacher groups in the last year, is expected to be a major topic of discussion. One agenda item proposes creation of a “NEA Campaign Against Toxic Testing” that “will conduct a comprehensive campaign to end the high stakes use of standardized tests, to sharply reduce the amount of student and instructional time consumed by tests, and to implement more effective forms of assessment and accountability.” (Read about full proposal here.)

Dennis Van Roekel (left) and Kerrie Dallman.

Van Roekel and Dallman pounded on those themes Wednesday, with Van Roekel saying testing “has failed the children of America” and “I don’t need five more years of the same results to show me which students aren’t getting what they need.”

Dallman criticized “the corporate-driven testing culture” and said it’s “taking the joy” out of schools.

“We are here to tell Colorado we are all moreNEA president: Current testing system “will crumble” | Chalkbeat: 

Corporate Free Speech and Teacher Gag Orders | Reclaim Reform

Corporate Free Speech and Teacher Gag Orders | Reclaim Reform:

Corporate Free Speech and Teacher Gag Orders

Posted on July 2, 2014by Ken Previti

The Supreme Court Five has refused freedom of speech for teachers and approved freedom of speech protections for corporations (the legal fiction of corporate personhood). Even freedom of religious rights has been granted to corporations who are allowed to refuse birth control pills as part of women’s healthcare coverage. (The vast majority of teachers are women.) This is political/corporate motivated judicial lunacy.

Gag orders against teachers for tests and evaluations, the use and abuse of Common Core State Standards, student needs, physical conditions within the school, etc. are nationwide. Gag orders. To oppose the gag orders is to lose a job and a career. This is corporate education reform lunacy.

Read about CCSS gags HERE.
Read about Pearson Testing gags HERE.
Read  and view about a kindergarten teacher in Missouri who testified about being gaggedHERE.
Read about Kansas teachers gagged from telling the truth about funding and truth HERE.

To tell the truth is today is often considered evil. A whisle-blower teacher is deemed dangerous. Often the term whistle-blower is now considered at least in the trouble-maker category, some might even say it is un-American. This is social lunacy.

Teachers, as some separate type of non-human rights entitled sub-category, are not Corporate Free Speech and Teacher Gag Orders | Reclaim Reform:

On the Intolerable Conditions of Many NYC Public School Buildings- A Teacher Comments Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association:

On the Intolerable Conditions of Many NYC Public School Buildings- A Teacher Comments

I had gotten into the habit of wearing polyester, or heavy, cotton blouses by mid May, fabric that should spare me the embarrassment of unsightly sweat stains left by pools of perspiration being seen by my students. It was ninety two degrees and my classroom, was not an oasis of learning as it should be but rather, a prison. Kids were forced to stay against their will, as we teachers were told to do everything in our power to ensure the students stayed the entire three hours to complete their exams. It was Regents week, and instead of students using all of their allotted time, several attempted to leave within the hour, only a third of the time provided to answer several multiple choice questions, constructed response questions, and in the case of English and History, two essays. The day before, I had proctored the Earth Science Regents and could not help but think of the water cycle as my skin baked: my sweat being the precipitation, my back, a mountain with a high gradient experiencing surface run off, and my shirt, the earth in which the precipitation that becomes ground water absorbs.

It was the third time that Karina attempted to hand me her exam, but I refused the exchange, as we were instructed to do; once an exam was handed in, a teacher could not give it back to the child. Nor could I speak directly to one student about the exam, so I generalized and began the usual reminder to “Make sure you’ve completed the entire test before handing it in” to the whole class while looking directly at Karina, signaling her to sit back down, though she did so reluctantly. After about fifteen more minutes in the sweltering heat, she couldn’t take it anymore and stormed to my desk, throwing down her exam.

“I’m done.”

I checked her exam and realized she had not completed an entire essay. “Karina, you didn’t even write the DBQ!”

“I don’t care. I’m irritable. I’m hot. I just want to leave now and take a freakin’ shower. I’ll take it again in Badass Teachers Association:

Full interview with Karen Lewis | abc7chicago.com

Full interview with Karen Lewis | abc7chicago.com:

FULL INTERVIEW WITH KAREN LEWIS

Children with mental illnesses struggle to find help as schools, hospital systems are decentralized | The Lens

Children with mental illnesses struggle to find help as schools, hospital systems are decentralized | The Lens:

Children with mental illnesses struggle to find help as schools, hospital systems are decentralized

New Orleans has become a case study in how children and families are affected by decentralization of public education and mental health systems. The problem is particularly urgent because more schoolchildren suffer from mental health issues here than in other parts of the country.

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One New Orleans 15-year-old with explosive disorder felt abandoned after the only therapist she trusted left town. A 14-year-old diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, who became suicidal and threatened others, had to travel 300 miles to get admitted to a hospital. A 6-year-old with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder was told he couldn’t come back to his public school until his mother found mental health care services for him.

In recent years, New Orleans has become a case study in how children and families are affected by rapid decentralization of public education and mental health systems.

In theory, the city’s families should have more options than ever when it comes to schools and mental health providers. But decentralization has wrought some unintended consequences, particularly for children with the most severe needs, whose needs aren’t always met by private operators.

The problem is particularly urgent in New Orleans, where more schoolchildren suffer from mental health issues than in other parts of the country.

A 2010 report by the Children’s Health Fund and Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health found that children displaced by Hurricane Katrina were 4.5 times more likely to have symptoms of a serious emotional disturbance than a group of demographically comparable children in a national survey.

Moreover, surveys of public school children in the city have found that between 40 and 60 percent qualify for trauma counseling, said Doug Walker, the clinical director at Mercy Family Center, which provides extensive mental health services for New Orleans children.

In New Orleans, decentralization of public services has affected children with mental health needs in three major ways.

“If a kid slips through the cracks, once that kid gets out on the street … there are people there who know how to use his mental illness for their own purposes …

“When one of them hurts or kills somebody, it’s too late.”
— Joe Smith, the chef at Cafe Reconcile, whose daughter had trouble finding help

First, Gov. Bobby Jindal has privatized or closed several hospitals, leading to an acute shortage of beds for children who require overnight stays for mental health crises. At the same time, the state has widened the pool of low-income children who are eligible for community-based mental health care, as well as the number of private operators eligible to serve them. The result is a landscape where quality varies tremendously and turnover for operators and staff can be high.

Meanwhile, the independently operated charter schools that have opened since Hurricane Katrina have no central office to rely on for social and counseling services. Because they are judged almost solely on test scores, some schools have Children with mental illnesses struggle to find help as schools, hospital systems are decentralized | The Lens:

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » College Ready vs. Out-of-Basement Ready: Shifting the Education Paradigm

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » College Ready vs. Out-of-Basement Ready: Shifting the Education Paradigm:

College Ready vs. Out-of-Basement Ready: Shifting the Education Paradigm

2 JULY 2014 256 NO COMMENT

Last year when my son graduated from college, I asked the question “can you stay out of my basement?” as I believe an important outcome of education is the ability to live out of one’s parent’s basement, that is, the ability to be an independent and contributing member of a society.

The Common Core and most education reforms around the world define the outcome of schooling as readiness for college and career readiness. But as recent statistics suggest, college-readiness, even college-graduation-readiness, does not lead to out-basement-readiness. Over 50% of recent college graduates in the US are unemployed or underemployed. The numbers are not much better in other parts of the world.

They are the “boomerang kids,” writes a New York Times magazine article last week. These were good students. They were ready for college. They paid for college (many with borrowed money). They completed all college requirements. They did not drop out. And they graduated from college. But they are back in their parents’ basement for there is no career for them, ready or not.

The reason is simpler than many would like to accept: education has been preparing our students for an economy that no longer exists. Technology and globalization have transformed our society. Machines and off-shoring have led to the disappearance of traditional middle class jobs—jobs our education have been making our children ready for.

The “boomerang kids” are not poorly educated, but miseducated. They were prepared to look for jobs, but Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » College Ready vs. Out-of-Basement Ready: Shifting the Education Paradigm:

District Chief Poll is Not “Nationally Representative Sample” | Truth in American Education

District Chief Poll is Not “Nationally Representative Sample” | Truth in American Education:

District Chief Poll is Not “Nationally Representative Sample”

Filed in Common Core State Standards by Shane Vander Hart on July 2, 2014 • 0 Comments

The Gallup/Education Week poll released yesterday that surveyed district superintendents’ thoughts on the Common Core State Standards I’m sure will be used by Common Core advocates in their promotional materials.

The most important thing to note is this statement below:

Roughly 1,800 superintendents took the online survey, which was administered in May and looked at a range of issues in K-12 public schooling, including school budgets, evaluating teachers, workforce development, and technology. The survey, however, was not a nationally representative sample. (emphasis mine)

If it is not nationally representative sample then it is a flawed one.  Also the sample size of 1800 I find strange as well.

Those two things alone indicate that we shouldn’t take this poll too seriously.

One thing you will not see highlighted in this poll is that nearly 3 out of 10 district superintendents find that the standards either will have no effect or decrease the quality of education.  While that certainly is not an overwhelming number it does indicate that there is not major consensus among district superintendents.  To hear Common Core advocates talk you would think there was close to 100% agreement among district superintendents.

7-2-14 The Whole Child Blog — What Questions Do You Have About the Common Core State Standards?

The Whole Child Blog — Whole Child Education:

THE WHOLE CHILD BLOG

What Questions Do You Have About the Common Core State Standards?

July 2, 2014 by Klea Scharberg

Although most states plan to fully implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) during the 2014–15 school year, many questions remain about what the standards are, how they were created, and how they will influence students' and teachers' daily work. The current issue of ASCD Policy Points (PDF) outlines basic facts about the standards that you can use not only for your own background knowledge, but also to inform your discussions with your colleagues, community members (including parents), and local policymakers.

Read more »

7-1-14 The Whole Child Blog — Turning Around the Teen Brain by Building Effort

The Whole Child Blog — Whole Child Education: Turning Around the Teen Brain by Building EffortNeuroplasticity means humans have the ability to change their brains through repeated, adaptive practice. Buy-in, however, can be a huge hurdle in getting students to invest effort in the actions that will grow their brains. "If the brain's not buying in, then it's not changing," author Eric Jen

by mike simpson / 21h 

7/2/2014 – Leaving Educators Off The Education Agenda:

7/2/2014 – Leaving Educators Off The Education Agenda

July 2, 2014 Subscribe

THIS WEEK: Gaps Start In Kindergarten … Common Core Support Plummets … Ed-Tech Increases Achievement Gaps … States Falter On School Turnarounds … United States Of Cruelty

TOP STORY

The Cost Of Leaving Educators Off The Education Agenda

By Jeff Bryant

“As too few expectations of the policy wonks in D.C. seem to catch hold at school and classroom levels, what certainly has ‘trickled down’ is the attitude that the voices of teachers don’t matter much … Education policy leaders today make a big to-do about teachers being ‘the most important in-school factor’ in a student’s academic achievement. So what does it say when you take that factor and muzzle it … What you get … is a negative impact on learning.”
Read more …

NEWS AND VIEWS

The Major Disadvantage Facing Black Students, Even In Kindergarten

The Huffington Post

“A recent analysis from liberal think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) outlines the severe segregation that exists among kindergarten classrooms … EPI found that while white kindergarteners largely attended classrooms with fellow white students living above the poverty line, black students were much more likely to be in classrooms with low-income peers of color … The phenomenon not only denies American students the intangible benefits of learning in more integrated classrooms, but it perpetuates the achievement gap between students of different racial and class backgrounds before they barely have had an opportunity to start their educations … ‘Research makes fairly clear that racial integration – enabling white students to learn together with black and Hispanic students, and vice versa – benefits all student groups,’ the EPI report, written by researchers Emma Garcia and Elaine Weiss, states.”
Read more …

Common Core Support Among Those With School-Age Kids Plummets

Rasmussen

“Support for Common Core among Americans with school-age children has fallen dramatically … A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 34% of American Adults with children of elementary or secondary school age now favor requiring all schools nationwide to meet the same Common Core education standards. That’s an 18-point drop from 52% in early November of last year … 47% oppose the imposition of the national standards, compared to 32% in the previous survey. Little changed are the 19% who are undecided.”
Read more …

Educational Technology Isn’t Leveling The Playing Field

The Hechinger Report

“While technology has often been hailed as the great equalizer of educational opportunity, a growing body of evidence indicates that in many cases, tech is actually having the opposite effect: it is increasing the gap between rich and poor, between whites and minorities, and between the school-ready and the less-prepared … Granted access to technology, affluent kids and poor kids use tech differently. They select different programs and features, engage in different types of mental activity, and come away with different kinds of knowledge and experience … As with books and reading, the most knowledgeable, most experienced, and most supported students are those best positioned to use computers to leap further ahead … This may stem in part from the influence of adults on children’s computer activities … These different patterns of use had quantifiable effects on the children’s learning … A computer in the hands of a disadvantaged child is in an important sense not the same thing as a computer in the hands of a child of privilege.”
Read more …

NCLB Waiver States Struggle To Turn Around Low-Performing Schools

Education Week

“According to an Education Week analysis of U.S. Department of Education monitoring reports … 17 out of 34 waiver states for which waiver monitoring reports have been released by the Education Department were cited for not following through on their plans for fixing up ‘priority’ schools – those bottom 5% of performers … 17 states were hit for not doing enough to help ‘focus’ schools, which are an additional 10% of troubled schools, including those with persistent achievement gaps … 9 states for not doing enough to improve student achievement at other Title I schools (those that get federal money for serving poor kids) … Where is implementation going well? Standards and assessments.”
Read more …

The United States Of Cruelty

Esquire

Columnist Charles Pierce writes, “There is a new kind of systematized cruelty in our daily lives, in how we relate to each other, and in how we treat our fellow citizens, and, therefore, there is a new kind of systematized cruelty in our politics as well … There is something different abroad in the politics now, perhaps because we are in the middle of an era of scarcity and because we have invested ourselves in a timid culture of austerity and doubt. The system seems too full now of opportunities to grind and to bully … In our politics, we have become masters of camouflage. We practice fiscal cruelty and call it an economy. We practice legal cruelty and call it justice. We practice environmental cruelty and call it opportunity. We practice vicarious cruelty and call it entertainment. We practice rhetorical cruelty and call it debate … The time for camouflage is over. Cruelty is cruelty. It should be recognized as a fundamental heresy against the political commonwealth and wrung out of all its institutions. That is the only way out.”
Read more …

Gates' Excuse for Poor Results of Educational Technology: "Unmotivated Students" - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

Gates' Excuse for Poor Results of Educational Technology: "Unmotivated Students" - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher:

Gates' Excuse for Poor Results of Educational Technology: "Unmotivated Students"

By Anthony Cody on July 2, 2014 12:18 PM

I have written a great deal about the Gates Foundation's role in education reform over the past several years. They have been a focus because no other entity has had such a wide-ranging impact on the institution of public education. In fact, by the end of the summer, I will publish a book entitled The Educator and the Oligarch, which will pull together much of my work related to the Gates Foundation.

4 more articles But recent comments he has made suggest he may be starting to see that even technology may not be all powerful. And this leads to some deeper questions about the viability of the entire education reform project. In Lyndsey Layton's recent interview, Gates had this to say:

Well, technology in the classroom doesn't have some stellar record up until now. ...technology has to deal with the fact that neither technology nor anything else has changed mass achievement in this country up till now. So, whatever reform, technology or otherwise, comes along, it's good to be skeptical because even as we have intensified resources going against education very substantially, we haven't moved achievement.

(the challenge is) ... to take these tools into the inner city where you have kids who don't think math is relevant to them and sitting there, paying attention. And we haven't done a good job of making that what they want to do.

Gates' recent comments in Los Alamos suggest where he places the blame.

New technology to engage students holds some promise, but Gates says it tends to only benefit those who are motivated.

"And the one thing we have a lot of in the United States is unmotivated students," Gates said.

A new report from researchers Susan Neuman and Donna Celano reinforces the idea that Gates' Excuse for Poor Results of Educational Technology: "Unmotivated Students" - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher:

7-2-14 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District):

LA Unified SEEDS program slow in sprouting but growth expected

Nearly two months after its launching, the LA Unified Sustainable Environment Enhancement Developments for Schools (SEEDS) initiative is off to a slow start. In May, nearly 70 school representatives, community partners and LAUSD employees attended the SEEDS program kick-off event, but only eight applications have come in so far. But no worries, said LAUSD’s chief facilities executive Mark Hovatter

by Yana Gracile / 6min 

Top 6 shockers: how Weingarten and Deasy agree on tenure

Courtesy: Aspen Ideas Festival The stage was set with the two public education luminaries, ready to square off on such lightning rod issues as tenure and teacher dismissal laws in the wake of last month’s Vergara trial: Randi Weingarten, leader of the nation’s second largest teachers organization, AFT, and Superintendent John Deasy, leader of the second largest school district in the country, Los

26min hide  //  save

LAUSD board approves labor deals — but not yet for teachers

The LA Unified School Board yesterday unanimously approved labor contracts for four of its major union partners, all of which would put (at least a little) more cash in the pockets of employees after years of devastating budget cuts  and furlough days. The district signed off on deals with Service Employees International Union Local 99 (SEIU), Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA) and Te

2 by Vanessa Romo / 56min 

Morning Read: LA based charter opens campuses in other states

Green Dot, based in L.A., plans to open schools in other states Green Dot Public Schools, a locally based group of charter campuses, announced this week it has set up a national organization to manage expansion into Tennessee and Washington. Green Dot has been one of the best known local charter organizations and one of the larger ones in the country, with 21 schools, 11,000 students and a $130-mi

4 56min 

7-1-14 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District): Morning Read: Vergara may be headed for lengthy appealsFinal ruling in Vergara could be years in coming Vergara v. California, in which a Superior Court judge struck down California’s teacher tenure, layoff and dismissal laws, may be headed for a lengthy appeals process. A clue to how long may lie in anot

by mike simpson / 21h