Ed Notes Online: Saturday Special: Savaging Common Core

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Saturday Special: Savaging Common Core - New Content at SusanOhanian.Org!

Here is Susan with some weekend reading for your idle hands. Much better than watching the olympics or snow fall. She comments on an article in the Wall St. Journal by NYC High School teacher James Samuelson, who writes about the pleasure of teaching to the test. Has he tried it with 4 year-olds? Susan takes him to task.

Some appetizers from Susan O:

Feds Put Pre-K into Race to the Top

Tote that bookbag!
Learn those skills!
Learn to be compliant
And swallow Global Economy pills!

NCLB Cartoons

Training 4-year-olds For the Global Economy

On February 4, 2014, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced on a call with U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius that . . . this year's Race to the Top funding will support President Obama's call to provide high-quality preschool for all 4-year-olds from low- and moderate-income families . . .--Press Release

The Eggplant is back. Actually there are 1 1/2 Eggplants in this mailing. Here's one.

Teachers Who Administer Common Core Tests to Receive Valentino Bags
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_news.php?id=907

The unintentional Eggplant is a Wall Street Journal opinion piece: The Pleasures of Teaching to the Test.

And some cartoons:
This one is special to me right now. I just read the 451-page Vermont RTTT Early Childhood Grant to which the Feds awarded $37 million, and I feel sick. Sick and very very angry. So I made this cartoon. And I'm working on an expose of what these people are up to but I've only read 64 pages of the grant's 693-page Appendix. My theory is they figured nobody would read the Appendix. Anyway, here's a cartoon that is my reaction to Vermont's intentions:

Feds Put Pre-K into Race to the Top
http://susanohanian.org/cartoon_fetch.php?id=883

And more:

Pre-K Skills for the Global Economy
http://susanohanian.org/cartoon_fetch.php?id=882

Training 4-year-olds for the Global Economy
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_cartoons.php?id=1005

Rotten at the Core
http://susanohanian.org/cartoon_fetch.php?id=881

But the 1% will still get wrinkles
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_cartoons.php?id=1003

Rotten to the Core
http://susanohanian.org/cartoon_fetch.php?id=884

Teaching as a Career
http://susanohanian.org/cartoon_fetch.php?id=880

Susan

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The Pleasures Of 'Teaching To the Test'
Susan Ohanian

2014-02-13
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=668

Did the New York State Language Arts test really pose a question about the tone of Andrew Carnegie's writing? This teacher uses it as an example of how great the test is.

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Colorado and PARCC. What will be left? Just the Students and the Chromebooks
Peggy
Peg with Pen blog
2014-02-07
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=667

I understand that the lack of pedagogical principle in the Common Core is beyond the grasp of most corporate politicos, but can't they grasp the destructive finances required by the technology?

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How Common Core Devalues Great Literature
Anthony Esolen
Crisis Magazine
2014-02-06
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=666

There is a necessary alternative to Common Core, with its relentless, contemptible, soul-cramping, story-killing, pseudo-sophisticated, utilitarian focus.

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A Voice of New Mexico
Carol Singletary
press conference
2014-02-04
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=665

A New Mexico teacher speaks up--and does not hide her name.

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Remarks of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan: Seize the Day
Arne Duncan
speech at ASCD
2014-01-27
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=664

If the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sent me $100,000 for 'every English teacher who lamented the lack of close reading by students' before the arrival of the Common Core (as Arne claims), I'd still need to find $3.50 to buy a latte.

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Come read with me and be my Drone
Susan Ohanian

2014-02-06
http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=1152

With apologies to Christopher Marlowe.

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To the editor
Stephen Krashen
Washington Post
2014-02-07
http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1640

Stephen Krashen does it in two sentences.

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To the editor
Stephen Krashen, Professor Emeritus USC
Seattle Times
2014-02-05
http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1638

Another Krashen letter published!

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To the editor
Stephen Krashen
New York Times
2014-02-03
http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1638

As this letter points out, the distance between policy and profit is gone.

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Educational Management Corporation: for-profit disaster school may soon give up the ghost
Danny Weil
Daily Censored
2014-02-07
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1770

Education Management Corporation is one of the largest providers of post-secondary education in North America and they're being sued by the Feds. Take a look at who's connected with this for-profit education retail chain.

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Designed to Distract: Parsing the Unintelligible Corporatese
Colin McEnroe
Hartford Courant
2014-02-07
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1769

If you can read this deconstruction of educationese without laughing out loud, I'll be surprised.

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Teachers Who Administer Common Core Tests to Receive Valentino Bags
Susan Ohanian
blog
2014-02-08
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_news.php?id=907

The Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association are pleased to announce that with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Pearson, inBloom, and the American Federation of Teachers, all teachers administering the PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments as part of the Common Core Standards Initiative will receive a Valentino Crocodile Studded Tote from the Spring/Summer 2014 collection.
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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

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

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Saturday Special: Savaging Common Core - New Content at SusanOhanian.Org!

Feds Put Pre-K into Race to the Top

NCLB Cartoons

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