Kevin Kosar, who earned his Ph.D. at NYU in a study of federal education policy, researched the use of the term “failing schools.” It was seldom used until 1990. Since then, as you can see when you open the link, it has become a commonplace term.
This is clearly political, since test scores for every group are higher today than they were in 1990, graduation rates are higher, and dropout rates are lower.
“Failing schools” is a term that enables privatizers to take over more public property and to enroll more students when their neighborhood school was closed.

Special episode of At the Chalk Face coming up at 5PM EST with Carol Burris

Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind waiver requirements have prompted states to make major changes to teacher evaluation policies.

This report offers state-by-state data that shows how often states evaluate teachers, how many levels states use to rate teachers, and how much of a teacher's evaluation is based on student data:

http://www.eveandersson.com/pi/
http://www.joyofpi.com/pilinks.html

Education Secretary Arne Duncan appeared at a Washington Post-sponsored conference on families today, and he sounded (mostly) highly reasonable: Early childhood education is the absolute “best long-term investment” that the country can make for kids, families and the economy, he … Continue reading →

It started out with a standardized writing prompt and was never intended to move outside of the small testing window. However, when students finished writing a persuasive text on whether students should  be allowed to have cell phones and MP3 players (a student aptly pointed out that banning MP3 players would still allow him to have an iPod, because they don’t use the MP3 format), they wanted to create their own BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies.
The Process
I began by asking students to create a series of questions. After tweaking the language, the guiding questions 

A Note from Steve Zimmer Friends, In less than 12 hours the polls will close on this historic school board race. This race is so close that we know every single vote will count. So I am asking you to send one last email blast, post one last facebook message, make one last phone call, talk to one more voter. Our message is very simple. Don't believe the lies of March. Never in the

The National PTA has just announced a partnership with Amazon Kindle:
The National PTA® today announced Amazon Kindle will be the exclusive sponsor of a new Family Reading Experience program to be hosted by local PTAs in cities across the United States. Throughout 2013, the National PTA and Kindle will work together to encourage family involvement with their children’s reading.
It seems to me that this next sentence is the most important part of the press release:

As the “Official E-reader of the National PTA,” Amazon Kindle will donate Kindles for the National PTA to 

State Senate takes field trip to Long Beach Los Angeles Times ... the world of work and careers," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). He said the Long Beach Unified School District is on the "cutting edge of linked learning in California," and is one of the top performing districts in ...

The teachers union’s entire strategy for defeating District 2 incumbent Monica Garcia is predicated on the race going to a runoff.  They’ve spent much of their money attacking her record, and if — as most insiders are predicting — Garcia fails to reach the 50 percent threshold required to avoid a runoff, UTLA has already endorsed all of Garcia’s possible opponents (except Isabel Vazquez) and can begin its general election campaign without any delay.
The union’s decision will be harder in District 6, where UTLA has endorsed multiple candidates but hasn’t yet spent any money supporting them. If front-runner Antonio Sanchez doesn’t reach 50 percent, then UTLA will have to decide whether to concede the race to a candidate who’s been endorsed by and received gobs of money from the Coalition for School Reform — and keep focus on defeating Garcia in District 2 — or go through the awkward process of un-endorsing Sanchez and throwing its weight behind Sanchez’s likely opponent, Monica Ratliff, who is, after all, a teacher and member of UTLA’s House of Representatives and has also already been 

With Reform Fervor in the Air, Local School Board Elections See Record Outside Spending
This year, huge amounts of money and passion are flowing down the ballot into the school board elections — part of an all-out war over public school reform. KCET
See also: LA School Report

The hosts of Fox News’ morning show on Tuesday proved that many adults have poor math skills by failing a simple quiz from their own children in an epic way. Fox & Friends hosts Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson and Brian Kilmeade noted that a recent study found that only about 5 percent of...

Garfield's library has entered the Follett Challenge.

"The Follett Challenge was designed to reward school libraries for their work applying technology, content and creativity in ways that engage students, foster literacy and promote critical thinking. "

The video is called "One Book, One School; Community Wide Reading for Plugged-In Teenagers" and was made one of our contributors, Johnny Calcagno and Garfield librarian, Janet Woodward.  The entire freshman class did a field trip to the International District, met with internment survivors, and did papers and projects on the book, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. 

If you have the time, please check out their video in support of their submission and give them a vote.  It's money 

From a reader:

White mothers of biracial daughters and sons are invited to participate in a study. I will be in Seattle April 10 - 14th to interview mothers for this critical study. Please let families know about the study and interested families can contact me.

[email protected]

Great story out of South Glens Falls, NY.  It seems that this high school has had a dance marathon since 1978 and this year donated the proceeds, nearly $500,000, to help people tackling huge life challenges.  From the AP:

 Statement from Superintendent Banda on The Center School race and social justice curriculum class (partial):

On Dec. 21, 2012, we received a complaint from a family at Center School alleging that the instructional activities used in the Citizenship and Social Justice: Advanced Placement Language and Compositions and Social Studies class included intimidating and discriminating actions, attitudes and classroom environment.

Our Human Resources Department then launched an investigation of this complaint, as is our process. At the 

It’s been nearly three years since Michael Mulgrew was elected to his first full term at the helm of the United Federation of Teachers, which means election season has arrived for the city’s teachers union. As would-be candidates work to meet Wednesday’s deadline to collect the signatures they need to get on the ballots in April, we’ll be keeping you up to date on Mulgrew’s re-election bid and about what to expect from the changing union landscape. What is clear is that there won’t be much suspense in the race for UFT president, as Mulgrew will almost certainly coast to a second full term. He’s backed by the union’s longtime dominant party, Unity, whose presidential candidate typically wins by a landslide. Three years ago, Mulgrew received 91 percent of the vote. The unified support that the union’s leadership typically receives is one of many ways that the union has remained powerful in the face of threats. In other ways, too, the elections are about more than Mulgrew. There will be hundreds of positions on the ballot, including 90 executive board positions and delegates to the national and state unions, many with significant ability to impact decision-making. 

When a cat and a dog start howling at the moon together, something is terribly wrong.
With Randi Weingarten and Arne Duncan howling in unison over the need to overhaul teacher training, I get immediately suspicious.  These two never seem to howl together for anything, and when they do…it is usually more self-serving than selfless.
Recently, Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has been touting the need for a streamlining of teacher certification, so that all teachers are held to the same standard.  This new system is meant to replace the multiple certification systems in place in all fifty states, geared toward making sure that “an 

Today the U.S. Department of Education released provisional school-level graduation rates for 2010-11 – the first school year for which all states used a common, rigorous measure for reporting high school graduates. The data release furthers the Department's efforts to provide transparent information to parents and students about their schools and ensure all schools are preparing students for college and careers.

Previously, the variety of methods states used to report high school graduation rates made comparisons among states unreliable. While the new measure is not comparable to previously reported rates, it provides a more accurate snapshot of high school graduation and can inform schools' efforts to improve going forward. States, districts and schools can use the new, common metric to promote greater accountability and to develop strategies that will reduce dropout rates and increase graduation rates in schools nationwide.

"Having good information is critical to making good decisions, and these high school graduation rates are a vital tool to help parents and school leaders make useful comparisons of student growth and success," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. "These data will also help state, district and school leaders better gauge progress and support their work to help more students graduate on time, ready for college and .

KCET explores what’s at stake in today’s Los Angeles School Board election, including snippets from the District 4 candidates, UTLA President Warren Fletcher, education advocate Diane Ravitch, and local parents. You can skim the transcript here.
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About 20 teachers sat down in the back room of a Carrow’s restaurant in Santa Monica last night making phone calls reminding registered voters to vote for UTLA-backed District 4 incumbent Steve Zimmer.
Volunteers were given cell phones, a list of phone numbers and were allowed to order a meal for up to $10 plus a drink (no alcohol though). The goal: call voters to remind them to vote.
“I wanted to see if you’ll join us in helping to elect Steve Zimmer tomorrow,” a tentative Grand View Elementary teacher Irene Perez said into the phone, as her son Kingston ate from a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

Still undecided about how to vote in District 4?  One helpful blogger put together some parent-focused questions for District 4 candidates Steve Zimmer and Kate Anderson. The questions – on parent fundraising, curriculum narrowing, teacher evaluatoin, and charter school co-___location and expansion  – are categorized by topic, with answers from each candidate conveniently lined up one next to the other. You can listen to them here.