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Monday, February 15, 2016

Dispute With New York City Threatens Success Academy’s Pre-K - The New York Times

Dispute With New York City Threatens Success Academy’s Pre-K - The New York Times:

Dispute With New York City Threatens Success Academy’s Pre-K



A critical deadline passed on Monday in a dispute between Success Academy charter schools and the de Blasio administration over the charter school network’s prekindergarten program, leaving its fate in doubt.
The disagreement arose last year after Success Academy refused to signNew York City’s contract for prekindergarten providers. As a result, the city has not paid Success for its prekindergarten program, which currently enrolls 72 children at three of the network’s schools.
In October, Success and a group of parents appealed to the New York State Education Department, accusing the city of violating state law by denying the network funds for its program. Last month, Success’s founder, Eva S. Moskowitz, wrote to the state education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia, saying that if the department did not make a decision “by February 15, 2016, we will have no choice but to cancel our pre-K classes for next year.”
On Monday, a spokesman for the Education Department said that it had not yet made a ruling.
“We’re moving as quickly as we can,” the spokesman, Dennis Tompkins, said. “It’s a complicated issue, and we want to get it right.”
A spokesman for Success Academy did not respond on Monday to an inquiry about whether the network would indeed cancel its prekindergarten program for next year.
The argument is another turn in a continuing battle between Ms. Moskowitz and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who served on the City Council together a decade ago. Mr. de Blasio is critical of charter schools, saying that they do not serve enough of the most difficult students and that they increase the burden on regular public schools. In his first year in office, he sought to block three Success Academy schools from getting space in public school buildings, only to reverse himself after Ms. Moskowitz’s supporters unleashed millions of dollars’ worth of television advertisements against him. Ms. Moskowitz repeatedly suggested that she might run against Mr. de Blasio when he sought re-election in 2017. In October she said that she had decided against it.
On the prekindergarten issue, Success argues that the city’s demand that it sign the contract violates state law, which it says gives a charter school’s authorizer, not the city, oversight of its prekindergarten programs. Success Academy’s schools are authorized by the State University of New York. The 

Fordham Institute Favors PARCC, Neglects Item Readability | deutsch29

Fordham Institute Favors PARCC, Neglects Item Readability | deutsch29:

Fordham Institute Favors PARCC, Neglects Item Readability


It seems that the Fordham Institute views itself as the grader of the corporate reform initiatives that it is paid to support. In July 2010, it graded the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and state standards– and found in favor of CCSS in this highly questionable, slanted report.
In February 2016, Fordham Institute released another report, this time on supposedly grading CCSS assessments based on CCSSO (Council of Chief State School Officers) criteria. Why the CCSSO criteria matters is anybody’s guess. Still, Fordham Institute has time and money to publish whatever ti will, and what Fordham Institute, uh. “found,” was that the two federally-funded, consortium-developed CCSS assessments are tops:
As our benchmark, we used the Council of Chief State School Officers’Criteria for Procuring and Evaluating High-Quality Assessments. We evaluated the summative (end-of-year) assessments in the capstone grades for elementary and middle school (grades 5 and 8). (The Human Resources Research Organization evaluated high-school assessments.)
Here’s just a sampling of what we found:

Solutions to and Analysis of Louisiana’s Budget Crisis – Crazy Crawfish

Solutions to and Analysis of Louisiana’s Budget Crisis – Crazy Crawfish:

Solutions to and Analysis of Louisiana’s Budget Crisis

I’ve been seeing numerous vitriolic statements from various folks recently assigning blame to each other over Louisiana’s budget crisis.  For those of you who don’t know, Louisiana is short approximately one billion dollars of general funding revenue. We have to make that deficit up over the next 4 months or we will start defaulting on our financial obligations.  Next fiscal year, starting July 1st, we are looking at a 2 billion dollar deficit.
Our entire general fund is roughly 9 billion dollars.  One outspoken critic, who has little room to talk, is our State Treasurer, John Kennedy.  Kennedy should have been warning us before things got as bad as they are.  Kennedy has been issuing numerous proposals to fix the current crisis, however many of the proposals from our Treasurer are based on misappropriating federal funds – like those allocated to welfare and food stamp recipients by the federal government, or involve inconsequential amounts that will take years of investigations to realize.
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The idea that “we should take care of our children before we take care of able bodied, childless adults” is a great philosophy and hard to argue with from an Solutions to and Analysis of Louisiana’s Budget Crisis – Crazy Crawfish:

A Retired Massachusetts Principal on her Teachers’ “Value-Added” | VAMboozled!

A Retired Massachusetts Principal on her Teachers’ “Value-Added” | VAMboozled!:

A Retired Massachusetts Principal on her Teachers’ “Value-Added”

A retired Massachusetts principal, named Linda Murdock, posted a post on her blog titled “Murdock’s EduCorner” about her experiences, as a principal, with “value-added,” or more specifically in her state the use of Student Growth Percentile (SGP) scores to estimate said “value-added.” It’s certainly worth reading as one thing I continue to find is that which we continue to find in the research on value-added models (VAMs) is also being realized by practitioners in the schools being required to use value-added output such as these. In this case, for example, while Murdock does not discuss the technical terms we use in the research (e.g., reliability, validity, and bias), she discusses these in pragmatic, real terms (e.g., year-to-year fluctuations, lack of relationship of SGP scores and other indicators of teacher effectiveness, and the extent to which certain sets of students can hinder teachers’ demonstrated growth or value-added, respectively). Hence, do give her post a read here, and also pasted in full below. Do also pay special attention to the bulleted sections in which she discusses these and other issues on a case-by-case basis.
Murdock writes:
At the end of the last school year, I was chatting with two excellent teachers, and our conversation turned to the new state-mandated teacher evaluation system and its use of student “growth scores” (“Student Growth Percentiles” or “SGPs” in Massachusetts) to measure a teacher’s “impact on student learning.”
“Guess we didn’t have much of an impact this year,” said one teacher.
The other teacher added, “It makes you feel about this high,” showing a tiny space between her thumb and forefinger.
Throughout the school, comments were similar — indicating that a major “impact” of the A Retired Massachusetts Principal on her Teachers’ “Value-Added” | VAMboozled!:

Equity, Race, Revolution & Reform in US Education: What has (not) changed? an anniversary program | Education Town Hall Forum

Equity, Race, Revolution & Reform in US Education: What has (not) changed? an anniversary program | Education Town Hall Forum:

Equity, Race, Revolution & Reform in US Education: What has (not) changed? an anniversary program

COMING THIS WEEK on the Education Town Hall —
To honor Black History Month and the Education Town Hall’s anniversary, join us on February 18, as host Thomas Byrd leads a conversation on where we are in U.S. education, in terms of equity, race, revolution & reform:  What has, and has not, changed since the mid-20th Century in U.S. education? Which, if any, school reform furthered racial equityWhat revolutions in education — in the classroom, through homeschooling, or otherwise — have succeeded, however locally or shot-term? Do mid-20th Century observations on education — from James Baldwin, Shirley Chisholm, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Black Panthers — still apply after 50 years or more?
Kymone_RonKymone Freeman, activist and homeschooling dad, will join feature reporter Virginia Spatz and engineer Ron Pinchback for this special anniversary discussion.
See below for some mid-20th Century statements on education: from James Baldwin, Shirley Chisholm, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Black Panthers. What, if anything, has changed?
Join the conversation Thursday, February 18, at 11 a.m. Eastern.
Listen via TuneIn or check back for recording.

The Education Town Hall broadcasts from Historic Anacostia
in Washington, DC, Thursdays at 11:00 a.m. Eastern
on We Act Radio.
Listen live via TuneIn.
Shows are archived for convenient listening shortly after broadcast.

Ed Notes Online: Rebecca Friedrichs in Mourning

Ed Notes Online: Rebecca Friedrichs in Mourning:

Rebecca Friedrichs in Mourning

The anti-union case being heard today by the Supreme Court: A backgrounder
Friedrichs: Please, pay me less.

Untold story: How Scalia's death blew up an anti-union group's grand legal strategy

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-scalia-s-death-anti-union-group-legal-strategy-20160214-column.html

The anti-union lawsuit known as Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Assn. is widely viewed as one of the leading casualties of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's death.

What's less well-known is how the anti-union plaintiffs connived to fast-track the case through the federal judiciary in order to get it before the court while it still harbored a conservative majority. Their method was to encourage the lower courts to rule against them, so they could file a quick appeal. But Scalia's passing is likely to leave a 4-4 deadlock over the case, so the last ruling, in which the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the teachers union, remains in force.
This wasn't how the anti-union group behind the lawsuit, the Center for Individual Rights, expected things to work out. As we write, the group's website still features a photograph of nominal plaintiff Rebecca Friedrichs and the center's lawyers standing in front of the Supreme Court on Jan. 10, looking plenty chuffed about that morning's oral arguments, which plainly went their way. The poet Robert Burns had a line for the subsequent developments: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley."*  
 
Here's the background, drawn in part from our previous coverage here and here.
The target of the Friedrichs lawsuit, and several others just like it, is the "agency" or "fair share" fee. Under the law and Ed Notes Online: Rebecca Friedrichs in Mourning:


Seattle Schools Community Forum: Protecting Your Student's Data (and Your Privacy)

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Protecting Your Student's Data (and Your Privacy):

Protecting Your Student's Data (and Your Privacy)

The Department of Education is seeking comment on a new student database.  From Student Privacy Matters:

The U.S. Department of Education intends to create a new student database to house the personally identifiable information of 12,000 students, 500 teachers and 104 principals from 104 unidentified schools in 12 school districts across the country.

The information collected on students will include vast amounts of sensitive data including, but not limited to, standardized test scores, race/ethnicity, individual education plan status, and discipline records in order to facilitate “a rigorous study of the effectiveness of providing data-driven instruction professional development to teachers and principals.” The Department of Education is accepting public comments about its data-collection plans untilFebruary 18, 2016.  There was an article about this plan in the Washington Post last month, before the comment period was extended.

Please send in your comments and join the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy in telling the Department of Education that the federal government should 
Seattle Schools Community Forum: Protecting Your Student's Data (and Your Privacy):

Understanding How Our Brains Learn | Creative by Nature

Understanding How Our Brains Learn | Creative by Nature:

Understanding How Our Brains Learn

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Over the last 30 years or so, researchers in cognitive science, education and developmental psychology have discovered some amazing things about how the human brain works, how our minds are naturally configured to develop skills, think creatively and continuously learn.
You’ve probably heard that we each use only about 10% of our brains. That’s not quite accurate. Actually, while we probably use less than 40% of the brain at any given moment, the patterns and regions of activation shift continuously throughout the day.
These PET scans (above) can help to make this discovery easier to understand. For every kind of structured activity you engage in there is a corresponding “skill” pattern of brain activity in your head- coordinated with specific sensory input, thoughts, emotions and movements of the body.
Constructing complex knowledge representations and skill patterns is what the brain does best, its designed for continuous growth and learns from direct observation, practice and experience. Since early childhood, our brains have constructed hundreds of unique skill patterns, what the developmental psychologist Donald Ford calls “behavior episode Understanding How Our Brains Learn | Creative by Nature:


Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 2/15/16



CORPORATE ED REFORM



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Scalia’s death likely to alter outcome in Friedrichs lawsuit | EdSource
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Some CT superintendents continue to violate parent’s civil rights and their own Code of Responsibility - Wait What?
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John Thompson: Opt Out is Frightening the Politicians  | Diane Ravitch's blog
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Sarah Davies: Excellence not Success
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Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty - The Washington Post
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Moskowitz’s Success Academy Is Being Sued Again | deutsch29
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Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 2/14/16
CORPORATE ED REFORMA state judge keeps Newark teachers on edge about health benefits |A state judge keeps Newark teachers on edge about health benefits |: A state judge keeps Newark teachers on edge about health benefitsCerf and Christie: Will they–and George Norcross– determine health benefits for Newark teachers?The future of health benefits for 4,000 Newark teachers and their families is still