Ed Notes Online: Susan's Saturday Special

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Susan's Saturday Special

Ok, so Ohanian sent this out on Thursday. Why quibble? Lotsalinks for weekend perusal. And isn't today the longest day of the year? And I'm registered for a hot yoga class in Times Square with a few thousand people. I just me skip that one and stay home and read Susan's stuff.

A startling thing happened in the grocery store yesterday. I had the four pieces of fruit (at $3.99) a pound that I treat myself to once a year year. Gold dust. The clerk said, "Can I ask you what those are?"

I was so stunned in the moment about having to define apricots that it didn't occur to give one to the clerk. I mean, everyone should taste an apricot once in her life.

Thanks to Eric's good efforts, cartoons are back.

Universal Critical Thinking
http://susanohanian.org/cartoon_fetch.php?id=940

Ad in USA Today Trashes Teachers
http://susanohanian.org/cartoon_fetch.php?id=939

The other good news is that school is out, the weather is beautiful, and free reading abounds. Kids are finding books at the town library that they WANT to read. And I'm there to shelve the returns. Richard Allington's research shows that kids need access to 15 books of their choice over the summer to keep up their skills. Don't you wonder where kids in poverty are going to find those books? It would be a lot cheaper--and more beneficial--to give them those books than force them to go to summer remediation.

The Jindal item below has a slam on Arne Duncan than you probably won't read anywhere else.

Susan

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U.S. education secretary criticizes Gov. Bobby Jindal's Common Core turnabout, TV station reports
Danielle Dreilinger
Times Picayune
2014-06-17
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=716

Arne Duncan puts his foot in it, Petrilli attacks him on Twitter. And more.

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Over 80 PERCENT Of New York Residents Say Common Core Is A Disastrous Failure
Eric Owens
Daily Caller
2014-06-17
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=715

A poll shows a whopping 82 percent of New York state residents wanting to abandon the Common Core Standards Initiative.

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'Sit and Stare' to Prepare for Democracy?
John Merrow

2014-06-18
http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=1176

I take it as a hopeful sign that a mainstream reporter comes close to supporting those who opt out of testing.

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Seniority, Tenure and the Vergara Decision
Jack Gerson and Andy Libson

2014-06-18
http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=1175

In discussing the Vergara decision, the authors insist that the situation is long past the time when people should be calling for 'calm.'

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To the editor
Shlomo Groll
Wall Street Journal
2014-06-18
http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1690

The Wall Street Journal publishes a letter that takes them to task.

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To the editor
Stephen Krashen
Taiwan News
2014-06-18
http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1689

A terrible New York Times article is reprinted in the Taiwan News, and Krashen takes them to task.

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To the editor
Stephen Krashen
The Guardian
2014-06-17
http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1688

Good respond to an incredibly awful article.

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To the editor
Joseph Mugivan
New York times
2014-06-06
http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1687

The author points out that kids spend a lot of time using grammar workbooks but not much time actually using that grammar in their own writing.

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Students of much-touted Success Academy charter school score too low on entrance exam for top city high schools
Juan Gonzalez
New York Daily News
2014-06-18
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1827

Shocking statistics from Harlem Success Academy 1.

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The Internet of very dumb things
Mark Morford
San Francisco Chronicle
2014-06-17
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1826

Morford posits all the app crap as high-fructose corn syrup of the Internet.

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U.S. Warning New York State on Teacher Evaluations
Leslie Brodie
Wall Street Journal
2014-06-18
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1825

The US Department of Education is threatening New York State over teacher evaluations. Your tax dollars at work.

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Tying high-stakes tests to teachers is harmful
Mark Henry
Houston Chronicle
0000-00-00
http://susanohanian.org/show_yahoo.php?id=857

Here's good news: a superintendent willing to speak truth to power.

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, June 21, 2014

Susan's Saturday Special

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