Public Education News Round-Up
I have many public ed stories that have piled up on my computer so here goes. (There won't be any charter school stories because there are so many of those, I'll be giving them a separate thread. The news is not good.)
Broadly-based education stories
Bill Moyers - As the School Year Ends, the Future of Public Education is in Jeopardy, June 2015
From Education Dive, Five K-12 Trends to Watch in 2016. They are:
From the ed blog, Curmudgucation, by teacher Emily Kaplan - No Excuse, Deceptive Metrics and School Success
From Education Week, a very compelling story about one state, New Mexico, and their desperate efforts to get students online.
School Boards
From Willamette Week, a fascinating story about a school board director who is "cranky, irritating, stubborn - and a surprising force for change in Portland Public Schools." This could be what our new board's focus might look like.
Common Core
From Campaign for America's Future, Common Core "Results" aren't really test scores.
Testing
From Diane Ravitch's blog, Yong Zhao and Pasi Sahlberg on why the director of the OECD in charter of international testing is wrong that American students are not overtested.
From Stop Common Core in Washington State, Conservatives for Exit Exams: A lesson in high-stakes testing
Special Education
From NPR: Behind the Shortage of Special Ed Teachers; Long Hours, Crushing Paperwork
Hard to Classify
Diane Ravitch on a 1950s Isaac Asimov story, The Fun They Had.
Counterpunch has a story by Susan Ohanian called "Who They Gonna Call? Bias at the New York Times on Education Reform." Truly important reading as the Times in NY seems as tone-deaf as the Times of Seattle.
Diane Ravitch had a great round-up article of who's who in ed reform and where are they today.
Broadly-based education stories
Bill Moyers - As the School Year Ends, the Future of Public Education is in Jeopardy, June 2015
From Education Dive, Five K-12 Trends to Watch in 2016. They are:
- budget crises in urban districts
- so-called personalized learning plans
- holistic approaches to learning
- Goodbye PARCC?
- Accountability for 'bad apple' charters
From the ed blog, Curmudgucation, by teacher Emily Kaplan - No Excuse, Deceptive Metrics and School Success
From Education Week, a very compelling story about one state, New Mexico, and their desperate efforts to get students online.
School Boards
From Willamette Week, a fascinating story about a school board director who is "cranky, irritating, stubborn - and a surprising force for change in Portland Public Schools." This could be what our new board's focus might look like.
Common Core
From Campaign for America's Future, Common Core "Results" aren't really test scores.
Testing
From Diane Ravitch's blog, Yong Zhao and Pasi Sahlberg on why the director of the OECD in charter of international testing is wrong that American students are not overtested.
From Stop Common Core in Washington State, Conservatives for Exit Exams: A lesson in high-stakes testing
Special Education
From NPR: Behind the Shortage of Special Ed Teachers; Long Hours, Crushing Paperwork
Hard to Classify
Diane Ravitch on a 1950s Isaac Asimov story, The Fun They Had.
Counterpunch has a story by Susan Ohanian called "Who They Gonna Call? Bias at the New York Times on Education Reform." Truly important reading as the Times in NY seems as tone-deaf as the Times of Seattle.
Diane Ravitch had a great round-up article of who's who in ed reform and where are they today.
Comments
From NPR: Behind the Shortage of Special Ed Teachers; Long Hours, Crushing Paperwork"
Please spare us the BS! Do people think the issue is simply the hours or the mythical "Crushing paper work" ? ...really?
I would say in SPS it's the lack of compliance and the lack of supports that demoralize SPED staff and send a warning signal out to the world...BEWARE OF SPS.
Yes beware, unless you like administrative hearings, because there are a boatload queued up.
I'm sorry, but does SEA pay you to post propaganda?
Getting old
OUtta Seattle
"Two other charters are now receiving state funds to serve as homeschool centers, although students still attend school just as they did before."
http://kuow.org/post/washington-charter-schools-get-creative-keep-state-funding
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But yes, if they were being asked to help a big corporation, well, it's all hands on deck.
But that means that NOTHING else should get thrown in the mix to distract them.
That's just silly.
The journalists–and Americans—have been kept in the dark while universities and many allied name-brand companies have quietly imported an extra workforce of at least 100,000 lower-wage foreign professionals in place of higher-wage American graduates, above the supposed annual cap of 85,000 new H-1Bs.
Less than one-sixth of these extra 100,000 outsourced hires are the so-called “high-tech” computer experts that dominate media coverage of the contentious H-1B private-sector outsourcing debate.
Instead, the universities’ off-the-books H-1B hires include 21,754 professors, lecturers and instructors, 20,566 doctors, clinicians and therapists, 25,175 researchers, post-docs and biologists, plus 30,000 financial planners, p.r. experts, writers, editors, sports coaches, designers, accountants, economists, statisticians, lawyers, architects, computer experts and much else. The universities have zero legal obligation to recruit Americans for these jobs.
These white-collar guest-workers are not immigrants — they are foreign professionals hired at low wages for six years to take outsourced, white-collar jobs in the United States. Many hope to stay in the United States, but most guest-workers return home after six years.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/05/industry-universities-hide-workforce-100000-extra-foreign-white-collar-h-1b-employees/
Lights out
Local unions may have to look more to statehouse lobbying when it comes to compensation package because it'll be the statehouse who will be funding it. Even with additional recent state funding infusion post-recession, there's quite a "shell game" going on with school district budgeting. Tacoma and Seattle just went through this.
http://www.kplu.org/post/heres-how-we-know-washington-schools-still-have-funding-problem
While urban school districts may argue the cost of living is less in rural/semi rural areas, remember these communities are hard pressed to draw professionals of any kind to live and work in rural places. Think quality of life - good comprehensive school with wide ranging electives offering for their own children, good healthcare without driving 40-60 miles to access or poor broadband availability, etc. We aren't talking about trendy restaurants, library, theaters, or Costco here. You have to (and should pay) people more to work and live in these places too.
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