IEA Executive Director Audrey Soglin.
At the end of last year’s IEA RA New Business Item 16 was passed.
It directed Executive Director Audrey Soglin to prepare a report on the negative impact of Senate Bill 7 on teachers in the state.
Audrey, as you might recall, was one of the authors of Senate Bill 7.
It effectively did away with tenure and seniority protections, tied performance reviews and job security to student test scores and required a 75% authorization vote by members of the Chicago Teachers Union (and applied only to members of the Chicago Teachers Union) in order to strike.
There have always been two talking points used by the leadership when discussing Senate Bill 7. And they are

I’m the only press at the IEA RA.

Highlights from the April 11 issue of New York Teacher:
State budget a major victory for schools
City schools are set to receive $319.5 million in new state funding for the coming school year, part of a statewide 4.9 percent increase in education aid that is the largest since the 2007 recession. The final budget, approved by state lawmakers on March 29, also extends the millionaire’s tax another three years.
Trailer park school
The field next to Richmond Hill HS in Queens doesn’t have a baseball diamond or soccer goal posts. Instead, it is cluttered with 22 trailers in which approximately 600 students from the overcrowded school have class. The existence of the trailers, which the DOE has been promising for years to replace with an annex, is just one of the many examples of the DOE’s neglect at Richmond Hill.
‘Bot stuff!
In the main competition of the New York City First Science and Technology Celebration this year, school teams had six weeks to design, build and program robots to remotely maneuver around an enclosed field, playing ultimate Frisbee and climbing a jungle gym.
The economics of good preschool
Every year, politicians’ promises to invest in early education seem to bloom like daffodils, then fade. Can a hard look at costs vs. benefits help us break this cycle?
Governance Task Force recommendations approved
The UFT delegates voted overwhelmingly on March 20 to support the 60-member UFT Task Force on School Governance’s recommendations to scale back mayoral control of the school system. “We are telling the city what parents already know: what we have doesn’t work,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said.
Combining learning, fun to help shape students
Nearly 500 teachers, paraprofessionals, parents and child care providers attended the UFT’s sixth annual Early Childhood Education Conference on March 16, entitled “Today We Shape Tomorrow.”
SESIS payments on the way!
Thanks to the UFT’s victory in arbitration, more than 31,000 members should be receiving back pay in April for the Special Education Student Information System work that they did after work hours between September 2011 and Dec. 31, 2012.
Forum message: Labor-community bond crucial
Unions today must organize whole communities, said the presidents of the UFT and the Chicago Teachers Union at a packed forum on union and community partnerships on March 15.

One problem of being a poster at the end of a long stream of a blogathon is the fear that anything one can offer will probably have already been said.   Despite that, I asked for this slot for a reason -  because there are some things still left to be said.
Much of our discussion has focused on the impact of applying Chained CPI to social safety net programs.  As someone who is already on Social Security, that of course affects me personally.  As I consider the impact of this idea and of raising the age of Medicare eligibility on those who do physical labor, I am tempted to borrow words from Rep. Alan Grayson, who on his first stint in Congress said of Republicans that their plan for for health care was that you should not get sick, but if you do, die quickly.  The impact of the soc-called Grand Bargain after which the President continues to lust could be described as wanting a large number of people to do one of two things
1.  if you can get/keep a job, keep working until

CTU Prez Karen Lewis called on the Mayor to raise taxes on the wealthiest Chicagoans rather than closing schools.

As advertised, we had lots of fun and raised some dough for the CORE Caucus of the CTU. Speeches were short and sweet. Lots of love and community building over good food and drink(s).

DNAInfo was there. Writes reporter Victoria Johnson:

Michael Harn, 45, a truck driver who came to show his support, said he thought Lewis and CORE 

I ended Part One explaining that there had been two large issues that arose during the meeting.  One is the rabbit hole I mentioned and the other is the funding of the Commission's work.

Here's the rabbit hole explained.

To get a charter from the state two things have to happen.  A charter applicant has to apply to just one authorizer and, after getting the authorizer's approval, then that approved application has to get to the State Board of Education for certification. 

However, as you may recall, 1240 is quite vague on the timing of turning in approved charters to the State Board of Education.  Many of us who opposed this measure called this section out, asking "what does this mean?"  It's actually much worse than I thought.  Here's the original text:

3) Upon the receipt of notice from an authorizer that a charter school has been approved,
the state board of education shall certify whether the approval is in compliance with the limits on the maximum 

Carol Burris at GEM/Change the Stakes Forum

Video below of Carol Burris with an intro by a very pregnant Julie Cavanagh at a GEM April 2012 forum on teacher evaluation. (And Julie still had 3 months to go - Jack was a big boy even before he was Jack).

Of course to Unity slugs it is way more important for Julie to speak at a stage-managed Delegate Assembly than to organize a forum bringing together Carol, Leonie Haimson, Gary Rubinstein and Arthur Goldstein (who couldn't be there due to a death in the family).

New York’s High School Principal of the Year, Burris is now a candidate for the award of National High School Principal of the Year, an award sponsored by the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) and The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. A principals institute and awards ceremony sponsored by NASSP and MetLife will be held in Washington, DC this fall. ---The Patch

How exciting if Carol wins the national award. What a strike against the ed deform industrial complex. Carol has 

Valerie Strauss writes that it is time for a thorough investigation of allegations of cheating during the tenure of Michelle Rhee as chancellor.
The leaking of the “smoking memo” to John Merrow shows that Rhee apparently was informed of likely cheating but chose not to investigate it.
Many questions are unanswered: what did she know and when did she know it? What did Adell Cothorne discover when she became principal? Why did no one follow up when she reported a cheating ring? Why was 

A reader sent this comment and a link to Chris Hayes’ interview with John Merrow:
“MSNBC’s Chris Hayes had John Merrow on his 4/12 evening show, ALL IN and the conversation was simply brutal towards Rhee….Chris very articulately pointed out how M Rhee rose to the top of the Ed Reform movement with only 3 years of limited personal experience in education. He ended his commentary by noting, in detail, how DC schools are in far worse condition today because of Rhee’s questionable policies……… like a cool breeze in a desert!
John was fabulous….Chris Hayes noted he would be following up with John Merrow in the future…stay tuned! “

Please read this statement by Bennett Kayser.
He ran against a heavily funded candidate for the Los Angeles school board, and he won.
He is a public school parent.
He is endorsing Monica Ratliff, because she too is running against the 

USA Today was first to report the cheating scandal in the District of Columbia.
Here is the follow-up story by Gregg Toppo, about the memo first leaked to John Merrow.
Eventually, the allegations were investigated by the DC Inspector General, who decided not to look at the erasure analysis or to interview many people. It was not the kind of full-scale investigation carried out in Atlanta by professionals. The DC Inspector General decided the cheating, if it happened, was not widespread.

in his NY Times column that begins:

News flash: Recent declines in the price of gold, which is off about 17 percent from its peak, show that this price can go down as well as up. You may consider this an obvious point, but, as an article in The Times on Thursday reports, it has come as a rude shock to many small gold investors, who imagined that they were buying the safest of all assets.

Krugman is focusing particularly on what he calls gold buggism, to distinguish it from treating gold as a sensible investment at some times.  He writes

No, being a goldbug means asserting that gold offers unique security in troubled times; it also means asserting that all would be well if we abolished the Federal Reserve and returned to the good old gold standard, in which the value of the dollar was fixed in terms of gold and that was that. And both forms of goldbuggism soared after 2008.

"Committee for Our Children", "B4 Kids", "Students First", etc. -  How do they constantly come up with these flowery, lofty titles.  They must lay awake all night thinking these up!  I'm sure that I can come with more apt titles for these organizations. How about:  "Committee for Stealing All We Can From Public Education" or

As you may know, the 2011-2013 Biennial Budget passed by Republicans and signed by Governor Walker gutted $1.6 billion in funding for our local public schools while also funneling money into private voucher schools. With the introduction of Governor Walker’s second budget, it appears the trend to devalue our children’s need for a quality education is continuing. Not only does the newly introduced budget provide a 0% increase in revenue limit growth, but it also continues to divert money to an unaccountable, unproven voucher experiment. This time around, the budget also tries to create a voucher 2.0 program by altering the existing format of our charter schools to make them more closely resemble their voucher school counterparts. Continue reading for more information about the proposed changes to Wisconsin’s charter and voucher school programs.
Implications of Creating a Charter School Board
While many Wisconsinites are aware of the proposed expansion of voucher schools in Wisconsin, the same cannot be said of plans to further privatize education in our state by creating a Charter School Oversight Board (CSOB), which would be attached to Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI), but ultimately act