Diane Ravtich at the AFT convention (video)

Students First is having a contest. We should participate.

From comments on Jon Pelto's blog

Students First...the Rheeject is offering prizes for the best blog post promoting PRO REFORM....whatever that may be.

Feel free to choose your favorite post here and send it along...email is included below...a Mrs. Robinson.

Copied from Ravitch...choose your two favorite pro reform posts from Jon's blog....maybe one of us can win the restaurant gift card. Yippee! This is not a joke. Sadly, it is real.

She even says she looks forward to reading our comments. Let's send as many as possible.

From: Catherine Robinson <crobinson@studentsfirst.org>
Date: July 26, 2012 9:58:12 PM EDT
To: Catherine Robinson <crobinson@studentsfirst.org>
Subject: rapid responses needed – and a contest!
Hi all,

I’m going to be in Orlando all next week for the KIPP Conference. If you’d like to meet up and discuss ways you can get more involved in our movement, please let me know!

Also, starting right now, there will be a monthly contest for the best rapid response. The more comments you leave on blog posts, the more times you can enter! Post a polite and persuasive pro-reform comment and email me the link so I can check it out.

That’s all you have to do!

At the end of the month (August 26th at midnight) I will announce the winner. Not only will that winner get a gift card to the restaurant or store of choice, but he or she will also be promoting the cause of real and transformative change in public schools! What could be better?
I look forward to reading your comments!

Have a wonderful weekend,
Catherine

–

Catherine Durkin Robinson
Regional Outreach Manager
Florida
M: (813) 453-4274
www.StudentsFirst.org
</crobinson@studentsfirst.org></crobinson@studentsfirst.org>

CT News Junkie | OP-ED | It’s Time to Reframe the Education Reform Debate

CT News Junkie | OP-ED | It’s Time to Reframe the Education Reform Debate: "Dianne Kaplan DeVries, project director for the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding (CCJEF) reminded members of the Education Cost-Sharing (ECS) Task force at a July 13 hearing that Connecticut “faces a serious school funding lawsuit, CCJEF v. Rell, a constitutional challenge brought because of the state’s systemic and long-term failure to adequately and equitably fund the public schools . . . The state may well argue that it has no more money to invest in Bridgeport or the schools, but that argument doesn’t cut the mustard. In state after state, judges are deaf to such arguments and are adamant that it’s the constitutional rights of school children that must trump all. Either the state will have to find new revenues or seriously rethink its prioritization of how it spends taxpayers’ money.”

Instead of seriously addressing funding, our governor chose to focus on teacher bashing and test scores, as if that’s worked well for the last 10 years. Additional funding for Connecticut’s 30 most needy districts (the “Alliance Districts”) is “conditional upon clear plans for reform.”"

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Wendy Lecker: State uses double standard when judging schools - StamfordAdvocate

Wendy Lecker: State uses double standard when judging schools - StamfordAdvocate: "Vertical-scale scores track changes in test scores at all performance levels. Considering barriers to achievement, such as poverty, language barriers and special education needs, the vertical-score system is a fairer view of student progress.

Nonetheless, AYP, not vertical-scale scores, forms the basis of major decisions regarding the fate of public schools and districts."

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Wendy Lecker: The cost of underfunding schools is high - StamfordAdvocate

Wendy Lecker: The cost of underfunding schools is high - StamfordAdvocate: "Society's failures fall on the doorstep of our schools. Children routinely suffer anxiety over possible eviction or a parent's unemployment. Teachers teach students who have children themselves; and those who rely on backpacks of donated food to ensure a meal.

Without enough social workers, school nurses and guidance counselors to mitigate these ills, children cannot concentrate on learning.

It is easy to see how the resource gap is directly related to the achievement gap."

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The Trouble With Online Education - NYTimes.com

The Trouble With Online Education - NYTimes.com: "A truly memorable college class, even a large one, is a collaboration between teacher and students. It’s a one-time-only event. Learning at its best is a collective enterprise, something we’ve known since Socrates. You can get knowledge from an Internet course if you’re highly motivated to learn. But in real courses the students and teachers come together and create an immediate and vital community of learning. A real course creates intellectual joy, at least in some. I don’t think an Internet course ever will. Internet learning promises to make intellectual life more sterile and abstract than it already is — and also, for teachers and for students alike, far more lonely."

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http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Hugh-Bailey-For-city-s-future-it-s-development-3705635.php

Gee, a connection between taxes and services like education??? What a novel idea.

Workingman's Constitution - NYTimes.com

Workingman's Constitution - NYTimes.com: "The distributive tradition has evolved, but its gist is simple and durable: you can’t have a republican government, and certainly not a constitutional democracy, amid gross material inequality.

That’s because gross economic inequality produces an oligarchy in which the wealthy rule. Insofar as it produces a lack of basic social goods at the bottom, gross inequality also destroys the material independence and security that democratic citizens require to participate on a roughly equal footing in political and social life. And access to such goods is essential to standing and respect in one’s own eyes and those of the community.

In the face of the court’s new constitutional offerings to the assault on the welfare and regulatory state, liberals must remind Americans of the constitutional promises and commitments that led us to create that state in the first place. They must remind lawmakers that there are constitutional stakes in attending to the economic needs and aspirations of ordinary Americans, their dread of poverty and their worries that mounting inequalities are eroding our democracy and its promises of fairness and opportunity."

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Well-known teacher leader assumes CEA administrative helm

Well-known teacher leader assumes CEA administrative helm: ""Connecticut's new law has the potential to be a model for the nation. However, it can only reach its potential if it is carefully rolled out with full consideration given to every consequence for students and teachers," said Waxenberg. "I look forward to working with incoming CEA President Sheila Cohen, Vice President Jeff Leake, the Board of Directors, and our association's distinguished staff as well as teachers across the state," he added.
Waxenberg, a former East Hartford Middle School math teacher, is highly respected among education stakeholders and in political circles. He served as Governor Lowell Weicker's director of policy. His credentials as a teacher leader are well established, since he served as CEA president for two terms beginning in 1988. After serving in that position, Waxenberg joined the CEA staff, holding positions as a field representative and director of government relations."

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Public Education: This is what democracy looks like: NEA leader says social justice key to teacher unionism

Public Education: This is what democracy looks like: NEA leader says social justice key to teacher unionism: "Covering a range of issues including voter suppression laws, Citizens United, inequality and poverty, immigration, stop and frisk police practices, and racial profiling, Stocks explained how the union has begun to deepen its ties to national civil rights and faith organizations to act against injustice.

At one point in his 28-minute speech after explaining the problem of racial profiling Stocks asked members to think about three questions:

“Does racial profiling start in our schools?”
“Does the pipeline to prison for minority students begin in our schools?”
“And if it does, what are we going to do about it?”

He recounted his and other NEA members’ participation in a recent march in New York City against the NYC police policy of “stop and frisk.”"

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www.saveourschoolsmarch.org

www.saveourschoolsmarch.org:
Last summer, we brought thousands of people to the SOS March and Rally in D.C. This August, teachers, parents, students and community activists are gathering again in the nation’s capitol at the SOS People’s Education Convention. Join us to adopt a People’s Principles on the most urgent issues facing public education. Let’s use this meeting as a chance to have our voices heard as we head towards November’s elections.

The three-day Save Our Schools Convention will include engaging workshops and panel presentations. Some of these will be informational. In each of the sessions, issues paramount in public education today will be discussed. Several sessions will facilitate brainstorming. Together attendees will develop new collective statements about public education. Other practicum will provide training on direct actions that can be shared at the state and local levels. Whatever your interest in education, we feel certain one of the caucuses will speak to you.

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Arbitrator rules for unions: Turnaround firing, rehiring reversed | GothamSchools

Arbitrator rules for unions: Turnaround firing, rehiring reversed | GothamSchools:

Unhappy that teacher evaluation talks had fallen through weeks before, Bloomberg made the plans a surprise centerpiece of his “State of the City” speech and said the city would purge the schools of “ineffective teachers” with or without tougher evaluations.

To make that happen, the city had to engineer what amounted to overnight school closures. But the UFT and the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators argued that even though the city followed its school closure process, the changes were “sham closures” designed for political ends.

The two sides made their cases this month during a fast-tracked, high-stakes arbitration process during which Bloomberg himself testified – a rare occurrence in city-union disputes, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said. Today, an arbitrator, Scott Buchheit, agreed with the unions.

“This decision is focused on the narrow issue of whether or not the mayor’s ‘new’ schools are really new,” said a union statement issued moments after the decision came down. “The larger issue, however, is that the centerpiece of the DOE’s school improvement strategy — closing struggling schools — does not work.”

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In a response to Education Week's article about expansion of charter schools below is a spot on assessment as far as I'm concerned. The title of the news article is Published Online: July 5, 2012

Prominent Charter Networks Eye Fresh Territory

This is the comment:
"Some teachers and administrators in charter schools may be doing great things (and some are doing terrible things), but scaling up the number of charters has broad ramifications, including the de-stabilization and possible destruction of American public education. 

There are numerous ways in which the high-intensity charter schools that serve low-income students have wound up with a more select group of students than that served by public schools serving roughly the same population:

1) Fewer students with disabilities 
2) Fewer students with serious disabilities
3) Fewer students with serious behavior problems
4) Students come from the more motivated/better-resource families among the overall low-income population--parents with the wherewithal to find out about the new school and the motivation and resources to put in an application for their child.
5) The high-intensity curriculum weeds out weaker students--they either self-select out or, in some cases, are pushed out.

Some of the charter chains have received massive financial support from private philanthropists. 

A 2010 article noted that nonprofit networks of charter operators such as Uncommon, KIPP and Aspire Public Schools — "have created only about 350 [schools] in the past decade, and required $500 million in philanthropic support." Some KIPP schools spend 50% more per pupil than comparable public schools.

With better resources and a more selective student body, it is no surprise that many charters boast better test scores. (Of course, many charters are at the bottom of the barrel in test scores, and scandals have plagued the for-profit charter world) 

However, as the charters expand, private support will be spread more thinly and the student body served will become less and less selective.

Given that average charters currently do no better than average public schools on test scores, it's reasonable to predict that simply expanding the number of charters will lead to a situation in which the average charter does noticeably worse than the average public school. 

Given that public school teachers are generally paid better and have more job security than teachers at charter schools, an expansion of charters also means a further weakening of the middle class.

Individual charters here and there may be important laboratories for innovation, but when you look at the big picture, any dramatic expansion of charters probably weakens education and America. 

I ate my first McDonald's French fry in the 1960s. If even McDonald's can't consistently deliver hot crispy fries after all these decades, I can't imagine why anyone would think that market-based approaches would consistently deliver excellence in education, which is vastly more complex and filled with uncertainties."

Evaluate this… - Wait, What?

Evaluate this… - Wait, What?: "Now, Malloy’s Commissioner of Education, Stefan Pryor, and his new administrative team are rushing to put the evaluation system in place.  Heading up the effort for Pryor is the new “interim chief talent officer for the state Department of Education.”  You know the “corporate reformers” have taken over when they start creating titles like “interim chief talent officer.”  The title alone warrants a six figure salary."

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Twenty Miles: The impact of poverty and language barriers on educational performance - Wait, What?

Twenty Miles: The impact of poverty and language barriers on educational performance - Wait, What?:

Instead of recognizing the impact poverty and language barriers actually have on educational outcomes, the “education reformers” claimed that if we just hold teachers accountable, test scores will go up and students will succeed.

Leaving out the significant under-funding that exists for Connecticut’s poorer districts, the “reformers” are convinced that the focus on standardized test scores can take the place of dealing with the barriers students face and the lack of adequate resources that are being devoted to our children’s education.

Governor Malloy went so far as to make it clear that he doesn’t mind a policy of teaching to the test, as long as test scores go up.

As a result of this type of thinking, instead of dealing with the under-funding, Connecticut’s new “education reform” law leads with a new teacher evaluation program.  Further, it’s a teacher evaluation system that relies on standardized test scores as a key measurement of whether a teacher should be allowed to keep teaching or whether they should be fired.

But the reformers can’t dismiss the fact that test scores are driven by factors well beyond the control of the teachers.

According to the Connecticut Department of Education, Weston spends a total of $45,503 per pupil, per year, with $24,471 of that going for “direct instructional expenditures.”

Twenty miles down the road, Bridgeport, Connecticut spends $13, 101 per student, per year, of which $8,037 goes for “direct “direct instructional expenditures.”

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‘No Child Left Behind’ Whittled Down Under Obama - NYTimes.com

‘No Child Left Behind’ Whittled Down Under Obama - NYTimes.com: "Critics question whether the waivers have done much to genuinely shift the focus of federal education reform, given their continued reliance on standardized tests. The waivers “should probably make the meh list,” said Joshua Starr, superintendent of the Montgomery County schools in Maryland, which was granted a waiver in May.

Mr. Starr said he believed that education reform should focus on incentives to help teachers collaborate and help students learn skills that could not simply be measured by tests.

“It is another example to me of how we’re not focused on the right things in the American education conversation today,” Mr. Starr said. “I have a lot of respect for Arne Duncan,” he added, referring to the secretary of education, “but it’s just sort of moving around the chairs on the Titanic.”"

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‘No Child Left Behind’ Whittled Down Under Obama - NYTimes.com

‘No Child Left Behind’ Whittled Down Under Obama - NYTimes.com: "Critics question whether the waivers have done much to genuinely shift the focus of federal education reform, given their continued reliance on standardized tests. The waivers “should probably make the meh list,” said Joshua Starr, superintendent of the Montgomery County schools in Maryland, which was granted a waiver in May.

Mr. Starr said he believed that education reform should focus on incentives to help teachers collaborate and help students learn skills that could not simply be measured by tests.

“It is another example to me of how we’re not focused on the right things in the American education conversation today,” Mr. Starr said. “I have a lot of respect for Arne Duncan,” he added, referring to the secretary of education, “but it’s just sort of moving around the chairs on the Titanic.”"

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NEA - NEA Honors Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Paul Krugman with 40th Annual Friend of Education Award

The NEA has given the Friend of Education award to Krugman who makes the link between social/economic justice & education achievement.

NEA - NEA Honors Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Paul Krugman with 40th Annual Friend of Education Award:

“The failure starts early: in America, the holes in the social safety net mean that both low-income mothers and their children are all too likely to suffer from poor nutrition and receive inadequate health care. It continues once children reach school age, where they encounter a system in which the affluent send their kids to good, well-financed public schools or, if they choose, to private schools, while less-advantaged children get a far worse education.

“Once they reach college age, those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds are far less likely to go to college — and vastly less likely to go to a top-tier school — than those luckier in their parentage. At the most selective, “Tier 1” schools, 74 percent of the entering class comes from the quarter of households that have the highest “socioeconomic status”; only 3 percent comes from the bottom quarter.

“And if children from our society’s lower rungs do manage to make it into a good college, the lack of financial support makes them far more likely to drop out than the children of the affluent, even if they have as much or more native ability. One long-term study by the Department of Education found that students with high test scores but low-income parents were less likely to complete college than students with low scores but affluent parents — loosely speaking, that smart poor kids are less likely than dumb rich kids to get a degree.”

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NEA - New Student Program Chair: Activism is Critical to Everything You Do

It's going to be up to us to hold the NEA to these principles.

NEA - New Student Program Chair: Activism is Critical to Everything You Do: "What do you think are the most pressing issues affecting students and new educators?

I think we need to make sure our policy leaders are always putting the needs of the students above the needs of any financial interest or corporation. We can’t look at a bottom line for what’s best for education, we have to make sure we are always working for the common good and for social justice.

We need to make sure policy leaders understand that public education is a right, and that we provide the best education to all students, not just, as Mitt Romney said recently, those who can afford it."

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Why Money Shouldn’t “Follow the Child” | AFT Connecticut

Why Money Shouldn’t “Follow the Child” | AFT Connecticut: "How much would a district have to lose before it just couldn’t afford to do business anymore? At what point does keeping a school district open remain viable? Remember what happened to our colleagues in Pennsylvania at the Chester Upland district. Charter school enrollment was growing, and it was generally felt that the charter schools were siphoning off resources from the public school district. The district reacted by cutting staff and abandoning classes in the arts and language, while the charter schools beefed up resources and offerings. But don't forget this: charter schools do not serve every student in the community, only select individual students. We must decide whether we are going to continue to support one of the institutions that has made our country great: public education for all. We need to keep investing in each child in the system, as well as investing in each other as a whole community."

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Education is no place for a quick fix - Connecticut Post

Education is no place for a quick fix - Connecticut Post: "Excel Bridgeport is "Amazed" by how much has been accomplished in only six months; they smile and gleefully say, "Imagine what can happen in a whole school year!" Indeed. Imagine. Because when the management team grifters leave, only your hopeful imaginations will remain. That's always the sad ending to a grfiter encounter. You have nothing but images of what might have been. Ask the families in Chicago and Philadelphia what's left after the grifters leave.

Let's consider some questions about what's needed in Bridgeport, all of which impact education "reform." Will the mayor, your city managers and the Bridgeport Regional Business Council have improved the number of jobs in your city? Will the conditions in which your children and you live have improved? "

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Timetable for new teacher evals short - Connecticut Post

Madness:

Timetable for new teacher evals short - Connecticut Post: "Under the system, pilot districts will essentially have the month of August to customize the system, train themselves and then others on how to carry it out.

Sandra Kase, chief administrative officer for Bridgeport Public Schools, said at least the process guarantees her cash-starved district additional money to train teachers, especially those deemed to be "developing" or "below standard."

"It is a lot of work all at one time," said Kase.

Bridgeport volunteered to pilot the teacher evaluation system even though it is also rewriting its curriculum this summer and is carrying out a multitude of changes designed to produce better student results.

The teacher evaluations will include four components, staring with an orientation during the first week of school, followed by a goal-setting conference between teacher and administrator, a mid-year check-in and an end-of-year summation.

Still unclear is what measure will be used to evaluate teachers who don't teach reading, math or science, the subjects on the state's standardized tests. That, officials say, is still being worked out."

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Daily Kos: Turning the tide on corporate education

Daily Kos: Turning the tide on corporate education: "If there's a dollar to be made by taking a public service provided by the government, privatizing it and inserting an unnecessary middleman to suck up profits at taxpayer expense, there will always be a corporation for that. The fact that these corporations who seek to profit at taxpayer expense have armies of lobbyists and politicians in Congress ready and waiting to do their bidding is bad enough, even when there is a progressive movement there to fight against it. But when this conservative shift toward private profit in any service is viewed by the public and the media as the progressive alternative to the status quo, that service may not be long for this world.
That is exactly the concern with the fate of public education."

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How can the Chicago Teachers Union win? | SocialistWorker.org

How can the Chicago Teachers Union win? | SocialistWorker.org:

What is working in their favor:
1. The CTU recommitted itself to organizing & activism.  Teachers elected new union representatives ready to fight back against corporatism rather than find compromise.
2. The Chicago Board of Ed. tried to ram through (or in some cases was successful) some of the "reform" changes we are seeing nationwide.
3. The CTU organized with community and parent activist groups like Teachers for Social Justice, the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, Occupy Chicago, Chicago Parents for Quality Education, and Parents 4 Teachers.
4. The CTU has gained support from other unions: Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241 & National Nurses United.

What is working against them:
1. Politicians who give verbal support but who cast politically expedient votes.
2. Lack of solidarity from other unions.
3. The AFT & NEA willingness to collaborate with corporatist reformers.



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Wendy Lecker: School takeovers disenfranchise poor districts - StamfordAdvocate

Wendy Lecker: School takeovers disenfranchise poor districts - StamfordAdvocate: "The Department of Education's chief financial officer reported that the district has been flat-funded for four years, despite rising costs and the expiration of millions of dollars in grants. The district faces a deficit of about $2 million and the possible loss of 60 of its 427 staff members. In 2008, the district's per-pupil funding was just below the others in its (the poorest) comparison group, called District Reference Group I. Now, its per-pupil funding is $900 below DRG I.

Given New London's severe lack of resources, it is a wonder the district's scores did not drop precipitously. In spite of these obstacles, the district has been able to maintain a steady level of achievement the past few years.

Astoundingly, this stable achievement level was the commissioner's pretext for the takeover. Declaring that there has not been a clear positive trajectory of improvement, the commissioner called for the appointment of a special master."

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