Ed Deform Hypocrisy: Class Size - share with your anti-teacher Seda Relatives, Tchr Eval at Schools they pick for their kids, and Brizzard Resigning Today in Rochester

UPDATE:

Poor Chicago parents, teachers and kids! 

Brizard received a nearly unanimous no-confidence vote among Rochester folks. 

For more on how his policies have been deeply unpopular among Rochester stakeholders, see

http://communityeducationtaskforce.rocus.org/?p=162

Eli Broad and Joel Klein have a lot to answer for!

Rahm Emanuel to name new Chicago schools chief

By KIM JANSSEN Staff Reporter / kjanssen@suntimes.com Apr 18, 2011 11:13AM
Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel plans to name Rochester Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard (right) to be the Chicago Public Schools CEO. He'll replace Ron Huberman, who resigned last year.
Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel plans to name the man in charge of schools in Rochester, N.Y., to head Chicago’s public schools, The Associated Press is reporting.
Jean-Claude Brizard — who has headed the 32,000-student Rochester City School District since 2008 — was with Emanuel Monday awaiting the start of a news conference at Kelly High School on the Southwest Side.
Brizard signed a three-year contract there in February paying $235,000 a year but has clashed with the teachers union there.
Previously, he taught and worked as an administrator in New York City’s schools.
Brizard replaces Ron Huberman, who resigned last year. Since then, Terry Mazany has served as interim schools chief.

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Lots of stuff coming in. Leonie has a piece you should share on class size. Then there is the hypocritic oath taken by ed deforms :

I shall not send my own child to a school where teachers are evaluated based on test scores or where there are few senior/experienced teachers, or with high class sizes, or where my child must spend the day doing test prep, or where the school has a KIPP like discipline program.

From Leonie:
The education Deformers like to say that class size does NOT matter, only teacher "quality". That is why we must pay and fire teachers based on test scores. Read below a report from Leonie Haimson of Class size Matters that counters the education "deformers".


Last week, the Center for American Progress released a report by Matthew Chingos, who previously wrote a highly-flawed critique of Florida’s class size reduction program. (See my recent debate with Chingos on CNN.)

CAP has put out a series of crude reports posing as educational research, but this must be one of the least impressive. Despite its title, “The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction,” lowering class size is only one of K-12 four reforms that, according to the Institute of Education Sciences, have been proven to work through rigorous evidence.

In this report, Chingos falsely claims that that the benefits of smaller classes, as shown by the Tennessee STAR studies, faded out over time:

“The bump in test scores after one year would be impressive if it didn’t erode over time despite the continued use of small classes.”

Actually, follow up studies by Jeremy Finn reveal that students who were randomly assigned smaller classes in the early grades had significantly higher graduation and college-going rates. The gains were especially impressive for low-income students:

“For all students combined, 4 years in a small class in K–3 were associated with a significant increase in the likelihood of graduating from high school; the odds of graduating after having attended small classes for 4 years were increased by about 80.0%. Furthermore, the impact of attending a small class was especially noteworthy for students from low-income homes. Three years or more of small classes affected the graduation rates of low- SES students, increasing the odds of graduating by about 67.0% for 3 years and more than doubling the odds for 4 years.”

The report continues:

http://parentsacrossamerica.org/2011/04/more-clap-trap-from-cap-on-class-size-reduction

Combined w/ Winerip story tells a very sad story.

Teacher evaluations at the schools that Obama, Duncan picked for their kids

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/teacher-evaluations-at-the-schools-that-obama-duncan-picked-for-their-kids/2011/04/15/AF1S1cwD_story.html

By Valerie Strauss, Sunday, April 17, 10:35 PM

Bill Schechter taught history for 35 years at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in Sudbury, Mass. Now retired from the classroom, he supervises the student-teacher practicums of students earning master’s degrees in teaching at a local university. He is also a volunteer tutor at a Boston public school.

•  

A question occurred to Schechter recently when he was preparing testimony to give before the Massachusetts Board of Education, which will soon hold hearings on whether to base teacher evaluations on students’ standardized test scores — and if so, to what extent.

The question was: How do the schools serving the children of President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan handle this important school reform issue? He decided to find out.

The issue of linking a teacher’s salary and pay to how well students do on a standardized test has come to dominate the national education debate.

With the Obama administration’s support, more states are passing laws to connect teacher pay and test scores, even though experts on assessment say it is a bad idea.

The tests being used today were not designed to evaluate teachers (and they don’t do a good job of assessing students, either).

Furthermore, everybody who has ever taken a test understands that there are numerous factors that can affect how well someone does that have nothing to do with the teacher; kids who go to school hungry or tired or mentally ill or sick or anxious aren’t likely to do well, even if the teacher is to the teaching profession what Einstein was to physics.

Knowing that the Obama administration’s policies support linking teacher pay with test scores, Schechter wondered what Sidwell Friends School, the private Quaker school in Washington where Obama’s two children are enrolled, does regarding teacher pay-for-performance.

Schechter wondered the same about the Arlington County public school system, where Duncan’s children attend school.

This is part of what Schechter wrote to me:

“What did the president and the secretary seek and obtain for their own kids, where the important issue of teacher evaluation was concerned? The answers recently arrived in two e-mails:

“Arlington school district teacher, March 31, 2011: ‘We do not tie teacher evaluations to scores in the Arlington public school system.’

“Sidwell Friends faculty member, April 1, 2011:

“ ‘We don’t tie teacher pay to test scores because we don’t believe them to be a reliable indicator of teacher effectiveness.’ ”

straussv@washpost.com

Is he going elsewhere, say Chicago?  Hope not for their sake.

Jean-Claude Brizard expected to announce resignation today

9:38 AM, Apr. 18, 2011  |  

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20110418/NEWS01/110418008/Jean-Claude-Brizard-expected-announce-resignation-today?odyssey=nav|head

Purchase Image

Rochester City School District Superintendant Jean-Claude Brizard talks with the media recently about raising graduation standards. / JAMIE GERMANO staff photographer

Written by

Tiffany Lankes
Staff writer

School board President Malik Evans said this morning that Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard will likely announce his resignation this afternoon.
Evans said the board planned to meet in executive session to discuss its legal options regarding his contract and then hold a press conference.
Evans said he did not know where Brizard is planning to go.
School board members said last week that they had not been able to reach Brizard for several days amid rumors that he may be considering a job in another district.
Check back for more details as they become available.