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Thursday, June 5, 2014

6-5-14 With A Brooklyn Accent: My Personal Journey into Eduction Activism

With A Brooklyn Accent:





The BAT Anamoly
The BAT Anamoly1. We oppose Common Core and fight for our unions to fight Common Core. We oppose it because it is undemocratic, expensive, discriminatory, undermines good teaching and learning and is a cash cow for powerful corporations.2. We part company with other opponents of Common Core when they support charter schools, vouchers, school privatization, and attacks on collective bargaining.3. O
by Mark Naison / 31min 


A Few Historical Reminders to Anti-CCSS Activists Who Have Become Enamored of Charter Schools
Reminder Number One:Remember NY State Education Commissioner John King? The biggest cheerleader for Common Core in the State of New York, who has ignored the voices of parents, teachers and students pointing out the damage done by Common Core Aligned Tests and the teaching methods they inspire? Commisioner King's only public education background, as an adult, was the three years he spent as princi
by Mark Naison / 3min 


Why The Charter School Industry Has Become as Big a Threat to Public Education as Common Core
In many parts of the country, unregulated, Corporate controlled charters are as big a threat to public education as Common Core. They represent crony capitalism at its worst, building on insider deals with politicians to legitimize high CEO salaries, private real estate deals, exemption from regulations that protect students and teachers from abusive practices and sometimes, outright theft of gove
by Mark Naison / 4h 


6-4-14 With A Brooklyn Accent: My Personal Journey into Eduction Activism
With A Brooklyn Accent: My Personal Journey into Eduction ActivismMy journey into education activism began  in the Spring of 2003  when I was asked to start an oral history project documenting the African American presence in Bronx Neighborhoods, which had been neglected by scholars of Bronx History as well as African American History in New York City.  The project was embraced by scores of commun
by mike simpson / 8h 
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6-5-14 Curmudgucation Week

CURMUDGUCATION:








The NEA Wants To Organize You
Over at EdWeek Seven Sawchuk writes about NEA's new push to reverse a steady decline in membership. It's about time. Membership is down a reported 230,000 teachers over the last three years. And that's before you even start counting the "reluctant" members. As far as I know, NEA doesn't keep track of this (and is probably happier not knowing), but not every NEA member actually wants to b
6 by Peter Greene / 35min 


FEE: A Floridian Trip through the Reformster Swamp
In twenty-one short paragraphs, Patricia Levesque of FEE (Foundation for Excellence in Education)  manages to set a new record for sheer Density of Wrong. This seems to be FEE's specialty; in the vast coal mine of Common Core Carbonized Crap, FEE demonstrates the Supermaniacal ability to squeeze the raw materials of wrong into a shining diamond of dopiness. Today's sweepstakes entry, "Student
8 by Peter Greene / 2h hide  //  save
An Open Letter To Michelle Labuski
It must have been some time yesterday that you and your colleagues discovered this post, taking you to task for your pro-Common Core post on engageNY. You responded on twitter with a simple "Not okay. And hurtful." A few of your colleagues responded in my comments section. You were all gentler, kinder, and more amenable to reason than I was in the original post. I understand how you migh
18 by Peter Greene / 3h 


6-4-14 Curmudgucation Week
CURMUDGUCATION: Why Your Evaluation Is DumbAs you contemplate your end of the year evaluation paperwork, you are probably thinking (and not for the first time), "This doesn't make any sense." And you are correct. Current practices in teacher evaluation do not make sense-- if you assume that the purpose of these evals is to actually evaluate teachers accurately and effectively.A good eval
by mike simpson / 8h 




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6-5-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:







Nothing More Edifying Than Brooklyn-Queens Day
Did everybody enjoy their PD today?Did anybody find any of it worthwhile?If so would love to hear what it is was.
by reality-based edu... / 46min 



The Information The Education Department Wants Collected On Students
Stephanie Simon at Politico:The Education Department’s list of recommended data points, developed with state officials, is exhaustive. It includes what type of dental insurance a student carries, whether she’s allergic to dog dander and whether she belongs to a sorority in college. Each disciplinary incident is broken down into more than a dozen data points, including the type of firearm involved,
by reality-based edu... / 0min hide  //  save
Juan Gonzalez: Ending Failed Education Policy Means Cleaning House At Tweed
In Juan Gonzalez's column on the Pearson field test protests arising around the state this week is this: Students and teachers at 1,100 city schools — plus an additional 3,000 statewide — are confronting more state-mandated tests this week. For the third straight year, the state and its testing company, Pearson, are conducting stand-alone field testing for several hundred thousand pupils — tests t
by reality-based edu... / 3h 
6-4-14 Perdido Street School
Perdido Street School: UFT Members Spoke: The UFT Leadership Couldn't Do Any Better Than This Accountable Talk yesterday:Technically, the contract passed with 77% of the vote of UFT members. I predicted 75%, which was the exact percentage of teachers who voted yes. School secretaries, paras, and social workers, who are not subject to many of the provisions that regular teachers are, voted almost 8
by mike simpson / 8h 




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Why Can't Politicians Get Out of Schooling? :: Frederick M. Hess

Why Can't Politicians Get Out of Schooling? :: Frederick M. Hess:



Why Can't Politicians Get Out of Schooling?

by Frederick M. Hess  •  Jun 5, 2014 at 8:25 am
Cross-posted from Education Week


Well, I'm starting to enter the back stretch on my next book, The Cage-Busting Teacher. It's due off to Harvard Ed Press in September, and should be out in early March. I thought I'd start sharing some of the themes, mostly because I'd love to hear your reactions, criticisms, questions, and suggestions. Today's is a topic that I'm often struck by, particularly when smart and engaged educators bemoan the fact that lawmakers won't let them be.
Talented educators regularly gripe to me about dumb accountability systems, teacher evaluation schemes, and such. They gripe about politicians who aren't willing to spend enough on schools, to listen to them, or to ask their advice. They exclaim that policymakers ought to mind their own business and let educators run the schools.
I get it. It's an understandable premise, especially for a hard-working, talented teacher. But I tell these folks they need to step back and look at this with fresh eyes. See how it looks to the policymakers, say. After all, public schools spend public dollars and hire public employees to serve the public's children. For better or worse, they're going to be governed by public officials. Those officials are going to set the policies that shape what educators can and can't do, how money is to be spent, how performance will be judged, who can be hired, and much else.
Now, you may say, "Hold up. Public officials haven't always done it this way." There are two responses here. One, is that you're wrong. Politicians and state bureaucrats have always written regulations about how money could be spent, how many kids could sit in a classroom, which textbooks would be used, what subjects had to be taught, who could teach, and so on. We're used to all this, though, so it can be less noticeable. Two, the reason that today's policy feels more invasive is because policymakers have been convinced that these older rules and regulations weren't getting the job done. So, they've adopted new policies around Why Can't Politicians Get Out of Schooling? :: Frederick M. Hess:
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Stage set for budget fight over more K-12 money :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Stage set for budget fight over more K-12 money :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:



Stage set for budget fight over more K-12 moneyJUNE 05, 2014

Stage set for budget fight over more K-12 money

by Kimberly Beltran

(Calif.) It’s not yet official, but school districts could be the beneficiaries of several billion more than what was proposed in Gov. Jerry Brown’s revised 2014-15 budget, released last month.
Still, a legislative conference committee, meeting for the first time Wednesday to reconcile spending differences between the two houses made few decisions on the K-12 proposals before them.
There does, however, appear to be growing consensus among Legislative leaders that more money should be used to support the new Local Control Funding Formula as well as Common Core implementation – how much remains in question.
Both houses also appear to be locked in on a far rosier revenue forecast than the one used by the Brown administration in preparing the revised May budget.
The Senate proposes adding $330 million in Prop. 98 funds to the administration’s plan to provide $4.5 billion for the Local Control Funding Formula. But the Senate would provide only $550,000 in one-time support for continued Common Core Implementation while the Assembly proposes $1.25 million.
Even if negotiations with the governor don’t produce meaningful gains for schools, lawmakers said next year will be a good one for schools.
“The good news is, that regardless of the scenario – whether we go with the administration’s revenue amounts or LAO’s – that our Prop. 98 funding levels will be from $4 billion to $6 billion more in this upcoming budget year than they were in the current budget year, and that is great news for our education system, for our kids and for the staff and teachers,” said Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, co-chair of the conference committee.
“I think it’s more than fair to say that both houses have been very clear in prioritizing the Stage set for budget fight over more K-12 money :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:
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Education Overturned – redqueeninla

Education Overturned – redqueeninla:



Education Overturned

Written by redqueeninla in Education




 “Teaching To The Test” is a pegagogical revolution. Far from benign, it amounts to a coup d’รฉtat of not only the minds of our children, but their hearts as well.

Informally, in my personal experience, I became vaguely aware by rumor during the 70′s that some students broke the rules and gamed standardized tests (e.g., SAT and other nationally-generated and administered, computer-graded, entrance exams) by spending a lot of money cramming extracurricularly, all for purportedly little or no gain. Unprofessionally, it was sniffed, some select classroom teachers even debased their craft by gearing its very content, the “curriculum”, toward standardized tests. In so narrowing the classes’ focus, these practitioners simultaneously devalued the tests by introducing bias, pandered to ambitious students and parents and capitulated to self-aggradizement at the expense of their very profession, scholastics.
Flash-forward forty years and it seems the essence of modern “Educational Reform” is to upend that formerly degenerate state of teaching and retool it as The Solution.
This is a new twist on The Big Lie where something wrong is repeated so loudly and frequently that it becomes gospel; this is actually reversing formerly-believed gospel and rebranding it as wrong while its inverse becomes the New Best Practice. The New Black is not just a competing color, but its reverse, the absence of color, say, White.
So in the New Educational Order, computerized Common Core “State” Standards (CCSS) are manifested in tests generated and administered nationally by non-educators, and instructional materials will be back-filled to “align” with the Standards as manifested in the tests.
Not only has it become desirable, therefore, to teach to a test, it is mandated.Teachers are being trained and installed in computerized lesson-administration, replacing experienced teachers of a previous generation who understood such Education Overturned – redqueeninla:
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Choosing to Remain Silent About the Dismantling of Urban Public Education | janresseger

Choosing to Remain Silent About the Dismantling of Urban Public Education | janresseger:



Choosing to Remain Silent About the Dismantling of Urban Public Education

Posted on  by 

In his blog last week, the Rev. John H. Thomas, formerly General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ and now a professor and administrator at Chicago Theological Seminary, sharply challenges the choice of mainline Protestant churches to remain silent about the injustices of today’s raging attack on urban public education in America.  “How is it,” he wonders, “that the growing privatization of one of this country’s most venerable public institutions, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of school children due to public school closures, inadequate public financing, alleged ‘turn around’ strategies, or the growth of charter networks, and now pervasive influence of private wealth through foundations controlled by money from places like Microsoft and Walmart has not awakened mainline churches to the plight and peril faced by public education?”
Rev. Thomas poses his challenge to the church: “…a foundational debate in this country over the role of the public in the education of our young people, the responsibility to defend democratic institutions like the public schools, and the influence of wealth in our common life, is taking place largely without the voice of the progressive mainline church.  This relative silence may reflect the growing marginalization of the mainline church in the American religious landscape.  It may also be part of the reason for that very marginalization.”
Why the silence?  Rev. Thomas’s critique lists seven likely reasons for the silence of the churches. Even if  you are not affiliated with a church, I believe Rev. Thomas’s theories may also speak to you, for he identifies a much broader dilemma that has come to pervade our increasingly unequal and segregated society.  Can we extend our empathy to our neighbors across the jurisdictional borders of our suburbs—to other parts of our state—to cities all the way across the country?
Here (in shortened form) are Rev. Thomas’s theories about why we are not paying enoughChoosing to Remain Silent About the Dismantling of Urban Public Education | janresseger: 
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Groups behind civil rights complaint call for resignation of state’s school superintendent | The Lens

Groups behind civil rights complaint call for resignation of state’s school superintendent | The Lens:



Groups behind civil rights complaint call for resignation of state’s school superintendent

By , Staff writer        
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Two community groups that recently charged the state’s Recovery School District with discrimination against African-American students called Thursday for state education chief John White’s resignation.
An open letter penned by the groups — the Coalition for Community Schools New Orleans and Conscious Concerned Citizens Controlling Community Changes (also known as “C-6”) — condemns White for not taking their concerns seriously.
The state superintendent of education told NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune in May that the civil rights complaint the groups filed against the state and RSD was factually “a joke” and a “political farce” prompted by two national teacher unions trying to get a toehold in the area.
The complaint decries school closures and alleges that the RSD, which White directed before becoming state superintendent of education, disproportionately closes low-performing schools with higher black populations. It also criticized the RSD, claiming — erroneously as it turns out — that the district let the city’s highest-performing schools bail out of the citywide enrollment process, OneApp, and continue with admissions requirements that complainants say shut out black students.
“As Superintendent, you should take seriously and investigate any charge of discrimination that harms students of color in Louisiana,” the letter to White reads.
“Your comments are reprehensible and prove you are not fit to be Louisiana State Superintendent of Education.”
The letter is signed by Frank J. Buckley, a John McDonogh High School alumnus, and parent advocate Karran Harper Royal, both long-time and highly vocal critics of the RSD.
Though not mentioned in the complaint, John Groups behind civil rights complaint call for resignation of state’s school superintendent | The Lens:
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What's Good for Rich Kids Is Good for Poor Ones, Too - Bridging Differences - Education Week

What's Good for Rich Kids Is Good for Poor Ones, Too - Bridging Differences - Education Week:



What's Good for Rich Kids Is Good for Poor Ones, Too

By Deborah Meier on June 5, 2014 9:07 AM


Deborah Meier writes again to Mike Klonsky today. She will post again next week on her summer reading recommendations before starting the blog's summer break.
Dear Mike,
It is galling when rich people in the ed policy field tell me that class size doesn't matter—and pay a lot to send their kids to schools with half as many students per class as urban schools. And city schools in fact generally have larger class sizes than "upstate" or "downstate" schools. Here, again,"urban" is a euphemism for you know who.
Ditto for arts, etc. You've spelled it out so clearly. As I told my 1949 high school graduation class (a NYC independent school) the other night (65th reunion), I mostly discovered that for starters I should try to duplicate the school I went to. And it works—for "those kids," too.
Of course, we improved on it, in part to adapt to our "audience" (students, community, and families), and in part because we had to think about some of the advantages that my peers had access to from their family connections. We did a lot extra to connect kids to other adults—above and beyond the school or family—who could be a networker for them, as well as providing a look into how the other half lives. But these wouldn't have been bad ideas for my own high school either, and I notice they are doing more of this now also. The "other half" may be a bit different for the students in the two schools.
So actually every child in America should have access to the wealth of talent and experience offered in elite private schools, PLUS ... for after school, weekend, and summer enrichment.
And even then it wouldn't be a level playing field. Just watch all the ways I advantage my four What's Good for Rich Kids Is Good for Poor Ones, Too - Bridging Differences - Education Week:
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NYC Educator: Where Are the Brooklyn Queens Days of Yesteryear?

NYC Educator: Where Are the Brooklyn Queens Days of Yesteryear?:



Where Are the Brooklyn Queens Days of Yesteryear?

This is the day when teachers in Brooklyn and Queens hold fond memories of Brooklyn Queens Days past. It was the best holiday in the whole world. No one knew what it was about. Sure there were stories, but they were contradictory and incomprehensible, and no one cared what they were anyway.

You didn't have to travel. There was no cooking. You didn't have to buy gifts for anyone, and no one asked you to do anything. Most of all, you didn't have to go to work.

Teachers in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island did, of course, and that made it all the more satisfying. Sure, they hated you and everything you stood for, but while they were crawling out of bed at the crack of dawn you were sleeping in, and contemplating where you'd be going to breakfast. Pancakes, maybe? Those ones with all that stuff on them that you wouldn't have time to eat if you were commuting to work? Or should you just sleep until lunchtime? Decisions, decisions.

But then came the 2005 contract, the one that was the bestest ever (kind of like the one that's bringing us that fabulous 2% raise), and just like that, Brooklyn Queens Day, the best day of the year, was gone forever. In its place were a bunch of meetings, PDs, and who knows what else?

Tell the kids they shouldn't be late, because being late is bad, and that's not good, and therefore you should fail them. It will teach them a valuable and indispensable lesson. Is that clear? OK, now let's talk about how we can pass absolutely everyone without exception no matter NYC Educator: Where Are the Brooklyn Queens Days of Yesteryear?:
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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Rahm's new kind of patronage with a new 'partner'

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Rahm's new kind of patronage with a new 'partner':



Rahm's new kind of patronage with a new 'partner'

Rahm's new "partner", IG Joe Ferguson
RAHM ON CHICAGO TONIGHT was like a broken record, last night, letting us know, no less than 6 times, that he and I.G. Joe Ferguson were now working as  "partners" to get the city out from under the burdensome and "expensive" federal Shakman decree. Problem is, Rahm's other "partners" have included Juan Rangel and his UNO charter hustlers who just got nailed for fraud by the SEC, his former Chicago Comptroller (now federal fugitive) Amer Ahmad, school operators AUSL, and Daley administration holdovers, Morgan Stanley's Parking Meters LLC, who the city is now defending from law suits. 
The newfound dรฉtente between the mayor and the city’s top watchdog comes after sometimes bitter and public feuds. In April of last year, Ferguson called out the mayor for refusing to cooperate with investigations and blocking his attempts to subpoena documents, and that it was reinforcing “deep seated doubts” about Chicago politics and corruption. 
The feud and threatened firing of Ferguson proved to be too heavy of a PR burden for the Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Rahm's new kind of patronage with a new 'partner':
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