CEA President issues Statement of support for CTU

September 10, 2012

Statement from CEA President Sheila Cohen in Support of Chicago Teachers Union

In this tough economic climate marked by increasing poverty, budget cuts, and attacks on the middle class and labor unions, we stand in solidarity with our professional colleagues, who continue to fight for the resources children need to ensure that all students succeed and have the best public education possible.

This strike is about the shared commitment for the future of our children and public education in America. Educators and students in our nation's classrooms are discouraged by broken promises and an environment that doesn't respect teachers as partners in educational achievement.

America's teachers all want what's best for their students and for the nation's public schools. That's why teachers are leading the movement toward advancing solutions to the country's most pressing challenges regarding public education, and focusing on equality and equity for all of America's children.

The Connecticut Education Association represents 43,000 teachers in Connecticut.

Contact: Nancy Andrews at nancya@cea.org or call 860-725-6317

Parents give “Won’t Back Down” movie trailer a thumbs down « Parents Across America

Parents give “Won’t Back Down” movie trailer a thumbs down « Parents Across America: "the storyline about the parent takeover has no resemblance to reality, says New York parent activist Leonie Haimson, a PAA co-founder. “The movie is supposedly based on a process called the ‘parent trigger,’ which purports to empower parents. But actually, the ‘parent trigger’ has a track record of 100 percent failure, and has pitted parents against parents and torn apart school communities at the two schools where it has been tried,” said Haimson. She points out that “Won’t Back Down” was produced by Walden Media, owned by conservative mogul Philip Anschutz, a major donor to anti-gay, creationist and other right-wing causes. Walden Media was the co-producer of the 2010 anti-public-education pseudo-documentary ‘Waiting for ‘Superman’.”"

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Parents give “Won’t Back Down” movie trailer a thumbs down « Parents Across America

Parents give “Won’t Back Down” movie trailer a thumbs down « Parents Across America: "the storyline about the parent takeover has no resemblance to reality, says New York parent activist Leonie Haimson, a PAA co-founder. “The movie is supposedly based on a process called the ‘parent trigger,’ which purports to empower parents. But actually, the ‘parent trigger’ has a track record of 100 percent failure, and has pitted parents against parents and torn apart school communities at the two schools where it has been tried,” said Haimson. She points out that “Won’t Back Down” was produced by Walden Media, owned by conservative mogul Philip Anschutz, a major donor to anti-gay, creationist and other right-wing causes. Walden Media was the co-producer of the 2010 anti-public-education pseudo-documentary ‘Waiting for ‘Superman’.”"

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Wendy Lecker: Tests fail at measuring student growth - StamfordAdvocate

Wendy Lecker: Tests fail at measuring student growth - StamfordAdvocate: "The DOE also decided what point on each scale represented appropriate achievement levels for each grade; i.e., what the "cut scores" were. Score above this point and you are "proficient." Score below it and you "fail." As the late education expert Gerald Bracey explained, cut scores are set by deciding in advance what percentage of students you want to fail; a procedure that is "both arbitrary and political."

So, what does the vertical-scale score tell a parent about how her child has progressed in math or reading? Not much. It is a rough approximation of what someone has called math or reading achievement.

The DOE claims that these vertical scales are tools to improve instruction and improve schools. However, as testing guru W. James Popham told me, scale scores have "essentially no diagnostic value whatever to teachers, parents or students.""

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Private firms eyeing profits from U.S. public schools | Reuters

Interim superintendent and chronic education reformer Paul Vallas said at the 6/25 Bridgeport BOE meeting that anyone who thinks they will make money in education is crazy.  Apparently there are some crazy people out there.

Private firms eyeing profits from U.S. public schools | Reuters: "The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the energy or technology sectors.

Traditionally, public education has been a tough market for private firms to break into -- fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy and fragmented into tens of thousands of individual schools and school districts from coast to coast.

Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They're pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education.

The conference last week at the University Club, billed as a how-to on "private equity investing in for-profit education companies," drew a full house of about 100."

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Students First is having a contest. We should participate.

From comments on Jon Pelto's blog

Students First...the Rheeject is offering prizes for the best blog post promoting PRO REFORM....whatever that may be.

Feel free to choose your favorite post here and send it along...email is included below...a Mrs. Robinson.

Copied from Ravitch...choose your two favorite pro reform posts from Jon's blog....maybe one of us can win the restaurant gift card. Yippee! This is not a joke. Sadly, it is real.

She even says she looks forward to reading our comments. Let's send as many as possible.

From: Catherine Robinson <crobinson@studentsfirst.org>
Date: July 26, 2012 9:58:12 PM EDT
To: Catherine Robinson <crobinson@studentsfirst.org>
Subject: rapid responses needed – and a contest!
Hi all,

I’m going to be in Orlando all next week for the KIPP Conference. If you’d like to meet up and discuss ways you can get more involved in our movement, please let me know!

Also, starting right now, there will be a monthly contest for the best rapid response. The more comments you leave on blog posts, the more times you can enter! Post a polite and persuasive pro-reform comment and email me the link so I can check it out.

That’s all you have to do!

At the end of the month (August 26th at midnight) I will announce the winner. Not only will that winner get a gift card to the restaurant or store of choice, but he or she will also be promoting the cause of real and transformative change in public schools! What could be better?

I look forward to reading your comments!
Have a wonderful weekend,
Catherine

–

Catherine Durkin Robinson
Regional Outreach Manager
Florida
M: (813) 453-4274
www.StudentsFirst.org
</crobinson@studentsfirst.org></crobinson@studentsfirst.org>

CT News Junkie | OP-ED | It’s Time to Reframe the Education Reform Debate

CT News Junkie | OP-ED | It’s Time to Reframe the Education Reform Debate: "Dianne Kaplan DeVries, project director for the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding (CCJEF) reminded members of the Education Cost-Sharing (ECS) Task force at a July 13 hearing that Connecticut “faces a serious school funding lawsuit, CCJEF v. Rell, a constitutional challenge brought because of the state’s systemic and long-term failure to adequately and equitably fund the public schools . . . The state may well argue that it has no more money to invest in Bridgeport or the schools, but that argument doesn’t cut the mustard. In state after state, judges are deaf to such arguments and are adamant that it’s the constitutional rights of school children that must trump all. Either the state will have to find new revenues or seriously rethink its prioritization of how it spends taxpayers’ money.”

Instead of seriously addressing funding, our governor chose to focus on teacher bashing and test scores, as if that’s worked well for the last 10 years. Additional funding for Connecticut’s 30 most needy districts (the “Alliance Districts”) is “conditional upon clear plans for reform.”

"

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