Ed Notes Online: Susan Ohanian: The best rebuttal of the Common Core. The BEST.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Susan Ohanian: The best rebuttal of the Common Core. The BEST.

Susan has a plethora of common core critiques. Now, not being directly involved in teaching anymore, I really don't pay much attention to the details of common core. "So why are you opposed," I am often asked? Because of the people and orgs who are supporting it: Every ed deformer and the UFT/AFT. When Tweed and the UFT are on the same side, watch out.

Susan also highlights an article by MORE candidate for UFT Secretary Brian Jones:

Teaching By the Numbers
Brian Jones

2013-01-22
http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=1068

New York City teacher Brian Jones explains that standardized testing has more to do with controlling teachers than it does with improving learning.

Other bloggers like Ravitch and RBE have some CC pieces today:

Here is a batch of Susan's CC stuff (Updated):

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A Weapon of Mass Distraction
Susan Ohanian with letter by Stephen Krashen
blog
2013-01-18
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=409

Here's a little quiz on the Common Core posted at the Christian Science Monitor.

Their side is winning.

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Sense of Urgency
L2Gura
Stories from School: Practice Meets Policy blog
2013-01-24
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=408

This teacher presents very clearly the harm Common Core rigor is doing to first graders--and then presents the only answer

Common Core State (sic) Standards: An Example of Data-less Decision Making
Christopher H. Tienken
AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice
2011-01-01 http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=400

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The Common Core State (sic) Standards Update on the Ten Commandments Susan Ohanian
blog
2013-01-25 http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=406
Here's an update on the 10 Commandments.

------------------- Playtime's over, kindergartners: Standards Stressing Kids Out Susan Edelman
New York Post
2013-01-27 http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=407
The Common Core Standards are making kindergartners cry. Small wonder.

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Where Bill Gates Got the Idea to Call CCSS 'State' Standards http://susanohanian.org/cartoon_fetch.php?id=706

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The Final Word on the Common Core http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_cartoons.php?id=842

NON CC FROM SUSAN BELOW

Steve Krashen and I have a Test Your Public Ed Savvy quiz over at The Progressive. Please pass it on. The Progressive gives us a chance at talking to a different audience
http://www.progressive.org/test-your-public-ed-savvy

I have reprised my cover story for Phi Delta Kappan Goals 2000: What's in a Name? because it offers a quite thorough look at what brought us to where we are now. I am struck by how similar the language of ed reform is. I urge you to read this, definitely proof of that warning: Those who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it.
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=404
I've overloaded you with grim news. Don't miss the Good News: Bob Gliner's film is coming to PBS: Schools That Change Communities. We should rally around this film. It changes the conversation. http://susanohanian.org/show_yahoo.php?id=799
Plus some cartoons:
Why Isn't That Ever On the Test? http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_cartoons.php?id=844
Improving on Reading Tests http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_cartoons.php?id=843

Follow the Money Trail on Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CCSS Funding http://susanohanian.org/cartoon_fetch.php?id=707
Whew!
Susan
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Goals 2000: What's in a Name? Susan Ohanian
Phi Delta Kappan
2013-01-26 http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=404
I wrote this piece in 2000 and even I am surprised by how very depressingly current it still is. It is actually informative about how we got to where we are today.
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ASCD Poll About Arts as Handmaidens of Common Core Subjects Susan Ohanian
blog
2012-01-24 http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=401
One more attempt to reduce the important of the arts.

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Parents Beware! Teachers Had Better Wake Up Too Susan Ohanian with extensive quotes from 2 Parent
Daily Censored
2012-01-22 http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=399
This is the massive data system funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that will put your students' data up to the highest bidder and eat you alive. Why hasn't your union told you about any of this?

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To the editor Susan Ohanian
2012-01-23 http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1514
Sarcasm is undoubtedly a mistake in letters to the editor, but I like the letter.
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To the editor
Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus, USC
Education Week
2012-01-23 http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1514
GREAT letter.
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Go Team! Three Cheers!
Robert Bligh
2012-01-25 http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1498
Go, Nebraska gadfly and true school reformer, Robert Bligh!
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Schools That Change Communities Film Coming to PBS Susan Ohanian
0000-00-00 http://susanohanian.org/show_yahoo.php?id=799
Schools That Change Communities

, a one hour documentary about schools that use their communities as classrooms has begun airing on many public broadcasting system stations across the country. Watch it. Order it for your school board and PTA.
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Order the CD of the resistance:
"No Child Left Behind? Bring Back the Joy."
To order online (and hear samples from the songs) http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/dhbdrake4
Other orders: Send $15 to Susan Ohanian
P. O. Box 26
Charlotte, VT 05445

By the way, Susan is coming into town on May 4 to speak at a high stakes testing conference. I will keep you posted.

No comments:

"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cory-booker-clear-and-present-threat-public-education

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

This chapter looks interesting:

Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You can sign up for this free series at :
http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy Tyson
Professor of African American Studies and History
Duke University

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.
- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Full article with charts here.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

More at Substance

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.
Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Ed Notes Extended

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Susan Ohanian: The best rebuttal of the Common Core. The BEST.

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