Saturday, June 29, 2013
California School Budgets
California School Budgets: Budget Agreement Maintains the Minimum Funding Level for Schools and Community Colleges in the May Revision Approved by voters ...
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Choosing Democracy: While teachers are tested, evaluated, and tested.....
While teachers are tested, evaluated, and tested.....: New York City School Chiefs Get Informal Job Checks Top School Administrators Haven't Been Subject to Formal Evaluations ...
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Choosing Democracy: Chicago Mayor Emanuel closes schools, war on teach...
Chicago Mayor Emanuel closes schools, war on teach...: CHICAGO MAYOR RAHM EMMANUEL'S WAR ON TEACHERS AND CHILDREN By David Bacon Equal Times, 6/25/13 http://www.equaltimes.org/opini...
Monday, June 24, 2013
Choosing Democracy: Education to rebuild the U.S.
Choosing Democracy: Education to rebuild the U.S.: An Education Declaration to Rebuild America Americans have long looked to our public schools to provide opportunities for...
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Choosing Democracy: ALEC on school choice and privatization
Choosing Democracy: ALEC on school choice and privatization: See at least the first 30 minutes. http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-united-states-of-alec-a-follow-up/
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Problems with Common Core Standards
Choosing Democracy: Problems with Common Core Standards: By the editors of Rethinking Schools It isn’t easy to find common ground on the Common Core . Already hailed as the “next big thi...
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Sacramento District closes schools serving the working poor
Sacramento District Ignores Report Suggesting Closing Schools for Affluent White Kids, Instead Shutters Seven Schools Filled with Poor and Minority Kids
Steven Hsieh
June 13, 2013 |
A Sacramento city school district is poised to close seven elementary schools, disproportionately hurting students in low-income and predominantly minority neighborhoods.
In response, twelve students and their parents filed a civil rights lawsuit, asking a federal court to block the closures. The suit claims that the Sacramento City Unified District’s decision “was motivated by an intent to discriminate against the minority populations” and will result in “a disastrous discriminatory effect on the poor, disadvantaged population which is served by these neighborhood schools slated for closure."
The complaint also notes that in choosing the schools it did for closure, Unified District ignored a report by a closure committee recommending the shuttering of four different schools in “older, affluent neighborhoods,” each with a 'white' student body in excess of 40 percent of the enrolled students.”
CBS Sacramento reports that dozens of parents and students rallied outside the courthouse Tuesday. Jonathan Tran of Hmong Innovating Politics, the group that organized the rally, told the station, “The district applied an arbitrary and illegitimate standard to target schools that are predominantly high in low-income and minority populations … At the end of the day, that is unacceptable.”
Friday, May 24, 2013
Chicago School Closings- 4 views
Chicago School Closings: The Largest in US History
Diane Ravitch, Karen Lewis, Randi Weingarten.
by Diane Ravitch
May 23, 2013
Never in U.S. history has a local school board - or any other board, appointed or elected - chosen to close 49 public schools.
Never.
That's what the Chicago Public Schools did yesterday.
Thousands of parents, students, and teachers objected, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his puppet board didn't care.
Yesterday was a day of infamy in Chicago and in the history of American education.
School boards exist to protect, improve, and support public schools, not to kill them.
The New York Times has written about this story and twice said that the school closings were the largest "in recent memory [2]." The Times wrote this despite my telling them - twice - that these were the largest mass closure ever. I wish the reporters would explain whose "memory" they were relying on. Just yesterday I explained in an email that no public school district had ever closed 49 schools at one time. On this issue, the "Times" is not the newspaper of record but the newspaper of "recent memory."
Why does it matter? The phraseology removes the truly historic destruction that Rahm Emanuel is inflicting on children and schools in his city. He is wantonly destroying public education. He is punishing the teachers' union for daring to strike last fall. He will open more charter schools, staffed by non-union teachers, to pick up the kids who lost their neighborhood schools. Some of them will be named for the equity investors who fund his campaigns.
Rahm and his friends will laugh about the way he displaced 40,000 kids.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
The tragedy in Oklahoma
Choosing Democracy: The tragedy in Oklahoma: In Moore, Oklahoma a teacher saved children's lives by covering them with her own body. No politicians were observed doing so. ...
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Choosing Democracy: Census Bureau ranks California 36th in school spe...
Choosing Democracy: Census Bureau ranks California 36th in school spe...: California’s per-pupil spending was $1,421 below the national average in 2011, placing it 36th in the nation accordin...
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Choosing Democracy: Minimum funding level for schools increased in May...
Choosing Democracy: Minimum funding level for schools increased in May...: Report of the California Budget Project 5/16/2013 Increased Revenues Boost the Minimum Funding Level fo...
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Choosing Democracy: k-12 Education Budget- The Governor's May Revise
Choosing Democracy: k-12 Education Budget- The Governor's May Revise: California. The Governor’s May Revise. Education Funding- From Dept. of Finance. With the passage of Proposition 30, the 2012...
Friday, May 10, 2013
Excellent new TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson on schools and creativity
New excellent talk.
Sir Ken Robinson.
On schools, education, teaching, and creativity.
“Education does not go on in the committee rooms of
legislatures.” May, 2013.
Thursday, May 02, 2013
Walmart heirs invest in Rhee's Students First
Laura Clawson.
StudentsFirst
has been having a rough week, what with the bad publicity around their choice
of one of the authors of Tennessee's "Don't Say Gay" bill as "reformer
of the year." The organization repudiated the
bill in response, but didn't disown the legislator. In the
meantime they've been blasted
by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party and many Democrats nationally who
are realizing just how poisonous Michelle Rhee's agenda is. But it's also been
a good week for StudentsFirst financially: The Walton Family
Foundation is donating $8 million over two years. Sorry, not
donating. "Investing."
Think about that for a minute. When
the Walmart heirs take a break from paying workers so little they qualify for
food stamps and refusing to pay Bangladeshi contractors enough to have fire
extinguishers in their factories, their philanthropic agenda is right in line
with the Michelle Rhee education policy agenda. This isn't a first, either; $8
million over two years represents an increase in the Walmart investment in
StudentsFirst, but the Waltons have already been a substantial source of money,
giving $3 million to StudentsFirst since late 2010. StudentsFirst is also only one of many
corporate education policy groups the Waltons have backed to the tune of $1
billion so far. Just what might a family whose vast wealth comes from low-wage
labor and fierce anti-unionism like so much about so-called education reform?
There's the obvious effort to bust teachers unions. But there's more than that.
As I wrote
last year:
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Choosing Democracy: Rhee strikes again - in California
Choosing Democracy: Rhee strikes again - in California: This morning's Sacramento Bee has a full page ad directed at the California Senate Education Committee. It claims to be in favor of...
Monday, April 29, 2013
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Choosing Democracy: Michelle Rhee's group endorses anti-gay legislator...
Choosing Democracy: Michelle Rhee's group endorses anti-gay legislator...: Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst is putting together quite the record as far as legislators it selects as "reformer of the year.&qu...
Monday, April 22, 2013
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Market based reforms don't work
Market-Oriented
Reforms' Rhetoric Trumps Reality
Top-down pressure from federal education policies such as Race
to the Top and No Child Left Behind, bolstered by organized advocacy efforts,
is making a popular set of market-oriented education “reforms” look more like
the new status quo than real reform. Reformers assert that test-based teacher
evaluation, increased access to charter schools, and the closure of “failing”
and under-enrolled schools will boost at-risk students’ achievement and narrow
longstanding race- and income-based achievement gaps. This new report from
the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education examines these assertions by
comparing the impacts of these reforms in three large urban school districts –
Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago – with student and school outcomes
over the same period in other large, high-poverty urban districts. The report
finds that the reforms deliver few benefits, often harm the students they
purport to help, and divert attention from a set of other, less visible
policies with more promise to weaken the link between poverty and low
educational attainment.
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