Colbert was brilliant last night.

Made a mockery of Wake County's T-Party rollback of deseg

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Disintegration
www.colbertnation.com

Message from Lake Michigan

Broader and Bolder...

The Broader, Bolder Approach to Education campaign (BBA), has announced it is preparing for new debates around re-authorization of "No Child Left Behind" (the Elementary and Secondary Education Act). NCLB has continued to be in force despite the clear lack of improved student outcomes and the law's expiration four years ago. Whether Congress engages this year in the long-overdue reauthorization process or again defers action, BBA says it will be a vocal participant in the debate.

BBA also announced the appointment of Elaine Weiss as its National Coordinator.

Ms. Weiss will be a regular spokesperson for BBA, will be our leading public advocate, and will direct public forums and media events that advance the campaign agenda. Elaine Weiss comes to BBA from the Pew Charitable Trusts, where she served as project manager for Pew's Partnership for America’s Economic Success campaign. Ms. Weiss is an attorney, a cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School, and will receive a Ph.D. in public policy from the George Washington University in May, 2011. She is a member of the Center for Disease Control's task force on child abuse, and has served as volunteer counsel for clients at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Arizona's law banning ethnic studies

"...Mr. Horne goes way overboard in trying keep high school students from studying works like Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” a classic educational text, or any effort to deepen students’ understanding of history, and their place in the world. Tucson school officials say that far from stoking teenage resentment, the program has helped students keep their grades up and stay in school."--New York Times editorial

New Orleans 5 years after Katrina

"Louisiana has a 63 percent high school graduation rate,” Mr. Turner said. “It has roughly a 60 percent adult literacy rate. We know that wealthy white people Uptown can read, right? But no one really cares if the public school system works because rich people’s kids are going to private schools.” -- Teacher Nat Turner

Michelle Rhee's testing madness

Many baby boomers will be retiring soon. Who will take our places? If teacher pay and evaluations rest entirely on test scores, the corruption of our school system will be complete. Perhaps we teachers and parents need a grassroots movement of our own!-- Anthony Cody, Edweek.

'We pauperize education'

"...The richest nation on Earth has never allocated enough resources to build sufficient schools, to compensate adequately its teachers, and to surround them with the prestige our work justifies. We squander funds on highways, on the frenetic pursuit of recreation, on the overabundance of overkill armament, but we pauperize education." 

-- From March 14, 1964 speech by Dr. Martin Luther King upon accepting the John Dewey Award from the United Federation of Teachers.

That old gang of mine

Ed Burke and Gery Chico are back together again at long last. Ald. Edward "Slow Eddie" Burke, powerful chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee announced his support for Chico, his longtime friend and protege, in the race for mayor.

Back in the day, Burke and Chico were both part of the infamous Vrdolyak 29, the all-white Chicago City Council's majority bloc that tried to thwart the city's first black mayor, Harold Washington. The 29 were led by Alderman Edward “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak of the 10th Ward and "Slow Eddie" from the 14th. Chico served as a staffer on Burke's committee and learned politics from his mentor, Burke. He later served as Mayor Daley's hand-picked school-board president.

According to today's Sun-Times:

In 1989, Burke dropped out of the mayor’s race and threw his support to Daley. The deal restored Burke to the role of Finance Committee chairman he had held during Council Wars...Chico served as a Finance Committee staffer under Burke during Council Wars. Burke’s 14th Ward Democratic Regular Democratic Organization circulated Chico’s nominating petitions. Members of the Chico family are longtime residents of the 14th Ward. ("Burke backing buddy Chico in mayoral race")

Ted McClelland (Ward Room) writes:

Chico is the candidate of powerful Southwest Sider bosses who want to stop Rahm Emanuel from establishing another autocratic regime. As Burke said this week, it’s going to be “a new day” in City Hall -- meaning he wants a more powerful City Council.

Racism & resegregation take hold in Wake County, N.C.

Gen Tata & Palin

"I'm talking about diversity sir," ABC11 I-Team reporter Jon Camp said."I'm talking about achievement," Tata replied. -- ABC News

According to the Washington Post, the Wake County School Board is turning back the clock on desegregation. Wake County's new T-Party superintendent, Gen. Tony Tata (Sarah Palin's buddy) looks to continue the school board's emphasis on "neighborhood schools." Tata told WRAL that he believes progress and diversity are two separate issues, and his focus is on the former. According to WaPo, school board member John Tedesco backs Tata's position, calling the district's deseg policies "outdated."

"This is Raleigh in 2010, not Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s -- my life is integrated. We need new paradigms."

Civil rights activists are picking up where they left off 40 years ago and are facing arrests and brutality by engaging in protests at the school board offices.

IN MY MAILBOX

Dear Michael Klonsky,

I want to thank you for your chapter "Power Philanthropy" in The Gates Foundation and the Future of U.S. "Public" Schools. I found it very helpful and quoted it in my article in the new issue of Dissent magazine. Below is the link to the article which I hope you will pass on to anyone who might find it useful:
http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781

All best,
Joanne Barkan

Duncan lied

Vivek Wadhwa

U.S. schools aren't really falling behind

Arne Duncan has been grabbing as much media time as he can, sounding the alarm that the U.S. is losing it's dominant position in the global education race to the top. He's been calling the results from the latest PISA tests, "a wake-up call" in order to spread panic and push through his corporate reform agenda. Duncan, running through the town square shouting, "the Chinese are coming," "the Finns are coming," conjures up memories of Cold War rhetoric after the Russians put Sputnik up in space. The fear mongering volume was turned up again during the Reagan years with the publication of A Nation at Risk.

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

In an official DOE press release, Duncan claims:

“Today’s PISA results show that America needs to urgently accelerate student learning to remain competitive in the global economy of the 21st century. More parents, teachers, and leaders need to recognize the reality that other high-achieving nations are both out-educating us and out-competing us....The results are especially troubling because PISA assesses applied knowledge and the higher-order thinking skills critical to success in the information age.”

It turns out (as usual) that most of this is a pile of crap. 

So says (not in those words, of course) Vivek Wadhwa, a visiting scholar at University of California-Berkeley, senior research associate at Harvard Law School, and director of research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University.

Writing in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Wadhwa argues:

"Much is made of the PISA test scores and rankings, but the international differences are actually quite small. Most of the U.S. ranking lags are not even statistically significant. The U.S. falls in the second rank on some measures and into the first on others. It produces more highest-performing students in science and reading than any other country does; in mathematics, it is second only to Japan. Moreover, one has to ask what the test results actually mean in the real world. Do high PISA rankings make students more likely to invent the next iPad? Google? I don't think so."

Gates' 'value-added' study is full of holes

"Slightly better than a coin toss"

A study released last month by the Gates Foundation supposedly offered up “some of the strongest evidence to date of the validity of ‘value-added’ analysis.” VAA makes the claim that teachers' effectiveness can be reliably estimated by gauging their students' progress on standardized tests.  But Jesse Rothstein, an economist at UC Berkeley, argues that the analyses in the report do not support its conclusions.

Rothstein reviewed the Gates study for the Think Twice think tank review project. His  review is published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado . Rothstein, who in 2009-10 served as Senior Economist for the Council of Economic Advisers and as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, has conducted research on the appropriate uses of student test score data, including the use of student achievement records to assess teacher quality.

He concludes: 

“A teacher who focuses on important, demanding skills and knowledge that are not tested may be misidentified as ineffective, while a fairly weak teacher who narrows [his or] her focus to the state test may be erroneously praised as effective.”

In other words, “teacher evaluations based on observed state test outcomes are only slightly better than coin tosses at identifying teachers whose students perform unusually well or badly on assessments of conceptual understanding."

Del Valle: 'Let's stop attacking teachers'

From today's Chicago Sun-Times

Mayoral candidate Miguel Del Valle slammed candidate Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday over Emanuel’s support for a bill that would curtail Chicago teachers’ right to strike.

“Let’s stop attacking teachers,” Del Valle said after a tour of Telpochcalli Elementary School on the Southwest Side. “Trying to take away teachers’ right to strike is a direct hit on the teachers. Let’s not try to punish the Chicago Teachers Union by saying ‘We are going to take away your right to strike’ when they haven’t had a strike in 23 years. I think it’s a slap in the face of teachers. I want to stop the teacher-bashing.”

Read the entire story here. 

Milwaukee study on school choice

Another new report out of the Univ. of Arkansas, has found little difference between charters and neighborhood schools when it comes to measurable learning outcomes.

Using regression models that produce the most precise estimates of 2007 achievement, our comparisons of students in our sample of independent Milwaukee charters to matched MPS students exhibit few significant effects of attending a charter school on achievement growth in either math or reading.

OK, how many ore of these do we really need. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Ethnic studies illegal in Arizona

“There’s a fierce anti-Latino sentiment in this state. These courses are about justice and equity, and what is happening is that the Legislature is trying to narrow the reality of those things. Who are the true Americans here — those embracing our inalienable rights or those trying to diminish them?”-- Augustine F. Romero, New York Times

No room at the reform table for educators

"A big part of the problem is that the conversation has been hijacked by corporate leaders who think they know best how to improve our schools." -- Greg Michie, author of Holler if you hear me, at The Answer Sheet.

U.S. ignores education funding at own peril

"Over the long term, the only way we're going to raise wages, grow the economy and improve American competitiveness is by investing in our people - especially their educations." --Robert Reich, S.F. Chronicle.

On Arizona shootings 

"We have nothing whatsoever to do with this," --Palin aide Rebecca Mansour, CBS News

Gates clears the bench

He sends in super-sub John Deasy to get things under control in L.A. But who's left on the bench? He's LAUSD's 4th superintendent in 5 years. This is what passes for school reform--corporate style. It gives new meaning to the term "City of the Angels." Angels, Gates and Broad, now run the city's schools.

A look at my 2008 post on Deasy's jumping ship in Prince Georges County, Md., will show you what to expect from him in the way of leadership. He was touted as a “superstar” and the great white hope of the power philanthropists, when he came into this predominantly poor, African-American district from Santa Monica. He bailed out when the district went broke and criticism in the black community began to mount.

"I think John is smart enough to get out of here, frankly, before the (expletive) hits the fan," said Doris A. Reed, the executive director of the Association of Supervisory and Administrative Personnel, the union that represents principals and other administrators.

Some of the expletive deleted Deasy has been running from concerns a scandal around his doctorate from the Univ. of Louisville and contracts he awarded back to a  university center run by his former dean and advisor.

Central Falls firings were first shots fired in current war on teachers

History may well record the mass teacher and staff firings at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island last February, as the opening salvo in this administration's war on teachers and their unions.

The firings sparked outrage among teachers, organized labor and parents. Students organized walkouts in support of their teachers. Supts. Gallo and Gist, who had led the assault with full support from Pres. Obama and Sec.Duncan, were ultimately forced to retreat and bring those teachers, who hadn't moved elsewhere, back into their classrooms. They were rehired only after the union agreed to a longer work day and made other concessions to try and save jobs. At the time, State Supt. Gist promised that the changes would result in "dramatic achievement."

But the damage to the school and to the economically-ravaged town of Central Falls was a fait accompli.

Eric Tucker writing in today's Washington Post describes the fallout from this devastating betrayal by an administration that only weeks earlier had  promised reform done "with teachers, not to them."

Writes Tucker:  

"President Barack Obama appeared to endorse the firings, saying drastic action may be warranted when schools show no signs of improvement. The White House declined to comment this week"   

Yes, Obama went so far as to call the mass firings, "courageous," a clear signal to state education leaders of what was demanded of them if they expected to receive their share of federal Race To Tbe Top funds.

As for the city itself, Tucker writes:

Heavily Hispanic Central Falls is Rhode Island's smallest and poorest city, with a population of nearly 19,000. One-quarter of families live in poverty and 65 percent speak a language other than English at home. The city is under the control of a state-appointed receiver, who says its problems are so dire that Central Falls should consider merging with neighboring Pawtucket. 

The mass firings have proven to be a disaster, both for school reform and for all the citizens of Central Falls. It's been a failed reform strategy everywhere it's been tried. Obama and Duncan are now tight-lipped about their support for the debacle. Ironically, AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten, in her latest call for an end to teacher resistance to Race To The Top,  is holding up the "reform" at Central Falls as a model of collaboration.

Because the district and the union had built a relationship based on trust, they refused to take the easy way out. They stepped outside their comfort zones, took on the very difficult task of crafting a new form of school governance, and, together, have taken promising steps to turn around these schools.

Collaboration indeed.

Wear Red for Ed follow-up

Tweet message from Bonnie Cunard

5 hours after your post, and I have reporters at my classroom door:) http://www.nbc-2.com/Global/story.asp?S=13781905 U are read far and wide:

IN THE MAILBOX

From Rico Gutstein at Teachers For Social Justice

Fight to Keep the "Public" in Public Education-What You Can Do! 

 

Wednesday, January 5, 2011 12:23 AM

TSJ, as part of the CTU-Community Board (a coalition of the Chicago Teachers Union and several community organizations), is working to derail the "Performance Counts" proposed legislation now in front of the IL lame-duck legislature as you read this. We're asking, no urging, people to take some IMMEDIATE action to let elected officials that we will NOT let them shift the blame for the economic crisis onto ordinary people and unions (specifically public sector unions, and most immediately, teachers unions-see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/business/02showdown.html?src=me&ref=general).

This legislation will basically turn teachers in Illinois into "at will" workers, hamper their capacity to unionize, eliminate seniority in hiring and layoffs, stop the union from being able to bargain class size, and basically eliminate due process and protection from arbitrary administrator actions. It is NOT about meeting the needs of the students in the state (see Rethinking Schools great editorial on "What's Up With All the Teacher Bashing?" at http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/24_04/edit244.shtml)

What can you do? Lots. First, familiarize yourself with the legislation and the CTU's plans to fight it, at: http://www.ctunet.com/blog/text/CTUmailer-STUDENTS-COUNT.pdf?1294071674

If you want to look at the bill itself, check out:
http://www.ctunet.com/blog/text/Performance-Counts.pdf?1294071376

Then: Contact your reps and let TSJ know who you called, who you reached, and their response-Email Rachel: rachel.serra@gmail.com

1. Call YOUR State Representative and Senator!.

2. Call every member of the Education Reform Committee and tell them you DON'T want Performance Counts (see the CTU's "Student Counts" platform at their website for an alternative)

Special Committee on Education Reform

    House members

    Co-Chair:Linda Chapa LaVia(D) (217) 558-1002

    Co-Chair :Roger L. Eddy (R) (618) 563-4128

    Member:Keith Farnham(D) (847) 841-7130

    Member:Jehan A. Gordon(D) (309) 681-1992

    Member:Robert W. Pritchard(R) (815) 748-3494

    Member:Darlene J. Senger(R) (630) 219-3090

    Member:Ed Sullivan, Jr.(R) (847) 566-5115

    Member:Karen A. Yarbrough(D) (708) 615-1747

    Senate members

    Co-Chair: Kimberly A. Lightford(D) (708) 343-7444

    Co-Chair:J. Bradley Burzynski (R) (815) 895-6318

    Edward D. Maloney (D) (773) 881-4180

    David Luechtefeld (R) (217) 782-8137

3. Take 5 friends and visit your State Representative and Senator; follow up with calls and emails.

4. Take a personal business day between January 4th-7th and the 11th to lobby in Springfield.
Contact your regional CTU organizer (if you're a CTU member) to register for the daily trips.

    * Northside-Matthew Luskin 312.329.6249- Instructional Areas 1, 2, 3, 19, 21, 25, 29
    * Westside-Christel Williams 312.329.6248- Instructional Areas 4, 6, 7,8,9, 27, 28
    * Southwest Side-Alix Gonzalez-Guevara 312.329.6247- Instructional Areas 10, 11, 12, 13,22, 23,26, 54
    * Southeast-Rosita Chatonda 312.329.6246- Instructional Areas 14, 15, 16, 17,18, 24, 53

5. Attend one of 4 regional meetings on January 6th at 4:00 till 5:30

    * Learn about the very real and IMMEDIATE threat posed by Springfield's House Committee on Education Reform, and the Performance Counts bill.
    * Learn about the CTU Students Count platform.
    * Learn how you can take direct, personal action to defend our rights as educators, to stand up for our students, and to win the war for public education in Illinois.

    NORTH:            Lane Tech High,

                    2501 W. Addison St.

    WEST:            Westinghouse College Prep,

                    3223 W. Franklin Blvd.

    SOUTHWEST:       Eberhart Elementary,

                    3400 W. 65th Pl.

    SOUTH:           Robeson High,

                    6835 S. Normal Blvd.

OWNERSHIP SOCIETY NEWS

Pro-charter 'fat cats' topped N.Y. campaign donors in 2010

Today's N.Y. Post reports that wealthy boosters of charter schools, led by billionaire hedge-funder Bruce Kovner, were among the top donors to candidates for state office in 2010. The financier gave $130,000 to Republican candidates in their successful effort to recapture the state Senate. Kovner sits on the board of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. But Mayor Bloomberg (richer than Kovner) contributed even more to the Limbaugh Party takeover and to anti-teacher union and charter school causes with nearly a million bucks of his personal money going to senate Republicans.

The man from J.P. Morgan

If there was any doubt about how fast the Obama administration is running to the right, one need only look at the likely appointment of Chicago Democratic kingpin Billy Daley to replace Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff.

Choosing the brother of Chicago's mayor and  J.P. Morgan's mid-west honcho, Daley, would make perfect Wall Street sense. The deal would also likely buy the outright support of the Daley family for the hated Emanuel in his apparent cakewalk into the mayor's office. But it sure doesn't bode well for progressive Democrats or those within the White House who are trying to defend health care reform and other pieces of progressive policy against the onslaught of the Limbaugh Party and blue-dog Democrats. Writes Ben Smith at Politico.com:

A Daley appointment would be an early signal of Obama's confidence that the party's left will ultimately have no choice but to show up and vote for him in 2012.

GOOD READS

Thanks for these, the best of recent review copies:

Click on covers for more.

IN MY MAILBOX

Wear Red For Ed

Mike,

We are a grassroots group of teachers and parents who use the Facebook Senate Bill 6 site to advocate public education We are looking for a way to raise awareness to the issues. Thus, the Wear Red for Ed day. We are urging people to get involved and informed. Here are some of our objections/positions:

Florida teachers and parents have joined again, as they did last Spring, to let our new Florida Governor know that we do have ideas and suggestions.

We recognize that 2011 offers an opportunity to improve our public schools. We do not, however, believe that the Florida Governor Rick Scott's voucher proposal is the positive, proactive move that is best for the education of our all of our children. A good hard look at the proposal reveals serious problems.

At the core, vouchers open the door for others to profit at the expense of taxpayers and, most importantly, at the expense of our children. The proposed voucher will not be enough for all students to afford high priced private schools.

Those who can not afford the difference in tuition will be left with few options. Some will turn to fly by night corporate charter schools that have less than a positive track record of success. Others will turn to online virtual schools, resulting in mass numbers of youth at home or on our streets - instead of in school. And the rest will be left to heavily tested, depleted, and de-funded public schools.

Schools will become market driven and education will be controlled more by profit than principle.

Essentially, there will be a quick and concise separation between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' in Florida. And, as we learned before in history, separate is not equal ... never has been, never will be.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled against vouchers in 2006, saying that Florida could not finance an alternative to public education. Our leaders and new Governor would do well to heed the advice our our ruling Court.

It is essential that we improve our public education... we do not need, nor have the Constitutional right, to replace our public education.

Floridians are calling for reform... not replacement. Keep Public Schools Public - STOP and listen to the stakeholders.... we are ready to offer better options.

Wear Red for Public Ed, Tuesday, Jan 4th

Thanks, Mike.
Bonnie Cunard, Parent &  teacher, SW Florida public school