Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Carol Burris, Kathy Cashin, (Holy Cow) Jennifer Jennings on District 15 Panel, Dec. 9: TALKING ABOUT TESTING

I agree with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on just about nothing. I think Race to the Top is an evidence-free mess. I think the idea of a test worth teaching to is a willful misunderstanding of the science of testing. And I can’t agree with Duncan’s insistence that the cheating scandals that have garnered widespread attention in recent months are a parable about “rotten” school cultures and not a reflection on the incentives that we’ve forced upon teachers. But as I sat on the floor of a packed ballroom in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association last week, I was embarrassed—no, humiliated—that some of my colleagues booed the secretary of education when he approached the microphone for his keynote speech.....
You had the grace, the guts, and the patience not to reciprocate [EdNotesWTF].  If there is one lesson from this conference, Secretary Duncan, you showed America’s educational researchers that we can have a different debate—one in which we rely on ideas and open disagreement and reason, and not on schoolyard bravado.... Jennifer Jennings, Edweek, May 6, 2013, http://shar.es/lzWnS.
Jennifer for about 2 years was an active participant in that battle [against ed deform] and her own blog was under assault by the deformers as throwing bricks no matter how artistically she threw them.... Shades of how Randi and Unity Caucus chastised those who booed Bill Gates at the AFT2010 convention.....Ed Notes
 
This should be an interesting panel with Carol Burris, our current top level ed deform fighter, leading the way. And Jennifer Jennings, who I write more about below.

TALKING ABOUT TESTING
A Panel Discussion
hosted by
District 15 Community Education Council & PS 10

December 9, 2015
7-9 pm

Address:  Pre-K 280 for PS 10,
500 – 19th St. at 10th Ave.(formerly the Bishop Ford School)
Brooklyn

Panelists:
Carol Burris, Exec. Dir. Network for Public Education Foundation
Kathleen Cashin**, NY State Regent
Erika Gunderson, Asst. Principal, PS 172
Jennifer Jennings, Asst. Prof. of Sociology, NYU
Anita Skop, Superintendent of Schools, District 15


Panel presentations will be followed by a moderated discussion and Q & A.
BRING YOUR QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS

Note how they now moderate discussions by having people fill out index cards.

How interesting that Jennifer Jennings, our former leading battler against deform back in 2008, turns up at this event. Formerly known as Eduwonkette,  Jennifer was the masked avenger hero for many people in battling ed deform when she blogged anonymously as Eduwonkette in 2008.

eduwonkette Unmasked - NYC - Blogs - Education Week

Education Week
Aug 24, 2008 - You were a tad off.eduwonkette is written by Jennifer Jennings, a final year doctoral student in Sociology at Columbia University. I study many .

How Jennifer Jennings Tried to Cut School-Reform ... - NYC

New York Magazine
Aug 24, 2008 - Just a few days after she handed in her dissertation proposal, Jennifer Jennings, a soft-spoken Columbia sociology grad student who's wicked ...
After being introduced to Jennifer by Leonie Haimson at a rally over a closing of a large high school back in 2007, Jennifer asked me to meet with her to discuss the issues related to closing large schools and she came to some ICE events and we stayed in touch. When she decided to blog she consulted with me over strategies and a few days later she took off and the entire edu-nation became enthralled.

Only a small band of people knew who she was and we kept her secret until she revealed who she was and ended her blog and sort of disappeared. 

Actually, there was a curious Jennifer Jennings sighting when she emerged in 2013 to rebuke those who booed Arne Duncan at the AERA conference when Jennifer publicly apologized to Arne Duncan. 

The AERA conference is the leading yearly event of the chief academic educational research organization and many ed researchers know full well the destructive force unleashed on the American school system by the likes of Arne Duncan. Jennifer says, let's debate not throw bricks. But when one side has hedge fund ballistic missiles and the other has only bricks, to chastise them is so genteel in a world where war has been declared by one side on the other. And active engagement in fighting back on all fronts has actually managed to compensate for the massive tilt of the playing field. Jennifer for about 2 years was an active participant in that battle and her own blog was under assault by the deformers as throwing bricks no matter how artistically she threw them.

Jennifer is academic who clearly is not feeling the direct effects of ed deform on the entire educational community. Nice to Arne (and maybe by extension Eva Moskowitz) is not an option.

Shades of how Randi and Unity Caucus chastised those who booed Bill Gates at the AFT2010 convention.

I wrote back to back blogs on this event in May 2013:
EdNotesOnline: Jennifer Jennings (formerly Eduwonkette) apologizes to Secretary Duncan over the booing at AERA

May 7, 2013 - Jennifer Jennings is one of my favorite people of all time even though I disagree with almost ... Posted by Norm @ ed notes online at 11:38 PM.

Ed Notes Online: When Davids Boo Goliaths Do They Lack

ednotesonline.blogspot.com/.../when-davids-boo-goliaths-do-they-lack.h...
May 8, 2013 - As promised, I'm following up on yesterday's post "Jennifer Jennings (formerly Eduwonkette) apologizes to Secretary Duncan over the booing ...
Ravitch commented here:  Why Did Educators Boo Duncan? Jennings Apologizes.

Here are links to some of the research Jennifer did, with the wonderful Aaron Pallas as her advisor. 

Norm's Notes: Do new small schools in NYC enroll more ...

normsnotes2.blogspot.com/.../do-new-small-schools-in-nyc-enroll-more....
In a new report, NYU professor Jennifer Jennings and Teachers College professor Aaron Pallas ... Posted by ed notes online at Saturday, October 30, 2010 ...

New York City's Small Schools Experiment: Who's Benefiting?

normsnotes2.blogspot.com/.../new-york-citys-small-schools-experiment....
A research presentation by Jennifer Jennings and Aaron Pallas of Columbia University will be ... Posted by ed notes online at Monday, September 21, 2009 ...

Eduwonkette: The Turnaround at Evander Childs: A NYC ...

eduwonkette2.blogspot.com/.../turnaround-at-evander-childs-nyc-small....
Oct 9, 2007 - ed notes online said... How did the NY Times reporter miss this? It is the NY Times' agenda to support BloomKlein so "missing" this is not an ... 
**I don't count former Region 5 supt Cashin as a fighter against deform just yet since when she was in the system as District and Region supt she did so much to support it -- and there are still currently some awful  legacy principals in District 27 from her tenure. But I do believe that former deformers can be redeemed and reformed.)

*In 2008 I attended the one in NYC as Jennifer's stringer while she sat anonymously in the back of the room in front of a panel that included Andrew Rotherham, one of the original chief apologists for ed deform who used his blog Eduwonk as a weapon. When Jennifer went live with her blog, purposely named to chide Rotherham, he was charmed and publicized Eduwonkette widely the very first day - but later turned sour and was one of the chief pursuers trying to flush out her real identity.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Kathleen Cashin is a total hack! We had one of her Irish-American chums Maureen Ingram as our principal at PS 97 in Queens who was totally unqualified for the job. On her appointment to our school she immediately began terrorizing and harassing the teachers there to such a CRAZY extent that Cashin was called in twice to sort out all school votes of no confidence in her. Expertly and glibly she did so. Along with "Dr. Lavin" another shill for the school system they kept Maureen going in the system and she has since been rewarded with some bogus high level $s mentoring job in the system. All are fellow Irish-Americans with connections to the gated and racist Irish-American community of Breezy Point in Rockaway even though they all allegedly pretend to be "Christian". Anything she has to say is tainted and deeply offensive.