Carmen Farina expected to be appointed Chancellor NYC Schools

A former NYC school administrator Carmen Farina soon to be appointed Chancellor of the NYC Public Schools by Mayor elect Bill de Blasio at a junior high school in Brooklyn.

Pittsburgh school board drops $750,000 Teach For America contract

Here’s some education news that you don’t hear every day: The Pittsburgh school board is rescinding a $750,000 contract with Teach For America, and keeping open an elementary school slated to be shuttered. The board’s four new members, taking a new reform tact, drove the decision to drop the contract by a 6-2 vote with one abstention; in late November, before the new members were sworn in, the board approved the contract 6-3.

By Valerie Strauss,  Published: DECEMBER 19, 4:43 PM ET

Teach for America: A voice from Harvard

I am not interested in TFA.

"For one, I am far from ready to enter a classroom on my own. Indeed, in my experience Harvard students have increasingly acknowledged that TFA drastically underprepares its recruits for the reality of teaching. But more importantly, TFA is not only sending young, idealistic, and inexperienced college grads into schools in neighborhoods different from where they're from--it's also working to destroy the American public education system. As a hopeful future teacher, that is not something I could ever conscionably put my name behind."

By Sandra Y.L. Korn, Harvard Crimson

From: Valerie Strauss, The Answer Sheet

October 24, 2013,The Washington Post

Standardized tests poor indicators of cognitive outcomes

kwheatley comment, the Answer Sheet

Unfortunately, standardized tests are often poor indicators of even the cognitive outcomes we care about because the low-level knowledge and skills are what is easiest and cheapest to test. For example, many "reading tests" don't really test reading comprehension, and faster-climbing scores can actually signal inferior instruction. Ditto for mathematics.

I recommend reading "Standardized Minds" or "The Paradoxes of High-Stakes Testing" or "Making the Grades" for more on the limitations of these tests.

Unfortunately, one of the things we know about human development is that the physical, emotional, motivational, and cognitive are all connected and affect one another reciprocally. The idea that one can successfully improve education while attending to low-level cognitive outcomes but ignoring emotions, motivation, or even health and fitness is too silly for words.

Sadly, the very "reforms" intended to close the test score gap between rich and poor often make the real learning gap wider because the poorest kids get the most impoverished kind of test prep instead of getting a real education.

And no, teachers have not always taught to the test, and in fact, teaching to the test has been considered educational malpractice for much of my time in the field. Teaching to the test is like having a patient drink cold water before taking their temperature, then pretending you've cured the infection that caused their fever.

The Answer Sheet

http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/

The "Systematic Murder" of Philadelphia Public Schools

The "Systematic Murder" of Philadelphia Public Schools
In Philly there is money to build prisons that cost $100 a day to house a prisoner yet public schools allocated $145 million  less in the same period.

David Coleman and Common core: what's the story?

David Coleman, Common Core Writer, Gears Up For SAT Rewrite Joy ResmovitsAug 30, 2013 from HuffPost NEW YORK -- Growing up in downtown Manhattan as the son of a psychiatrist and a college president, David Coleman never wanted for stimulation. At the dinner table, his parents repeatedly told him that it wasn't his exam scores that mattered, but rather the quality of his ideas and inquiry. "They cared more about the quality of what I did and the engagement with ideas than they did about other measures of success," he said, speaking in his brightly-lit Columbus Circle office, where a black-and-white Martin Luther King Jr. photograph hangs on the wall. When Coleman heard stories of other parents who paid their kids to get high exam scores, he said, "I just thought how lucky I was." Now, Coleman is in charge of the most important test score a student can receive. As president of the College Board, a national education company, he is redesigning the SAT, the standardized test taken by many high school seniors as a part of the college application process. He is also expanding the Advanced Placement program, which offers college-level classes and tests for high school students. Coleman, a playful 43-year-old man who speaks at an urgent clip, is the most influential education figure you've never heard of. He is perhaps best known as the architect of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, meant to bring divergent state learning goals into alignment. Public schools in 47 states will begin teaching the Common Core in English language fields this fall. But as standardized testing comes increasingly under attack, and as teachers and politicians from both the left and right try to roll back the Common Core, Coleman's legacy is a bit up in the air. The controversy over Common Core has become particularly fraught as states adopt its learning goals. In Alabama, for instance, a Republican political activist recently compared adoption of the core to Adolf Hitler's indoctrination of German citizens. Although few states have dropped the Core entirely, several have distanced themselves from the program by withdrawing from the consortia charged with developing assessments to measure student achievement under its rubric. Coleman said he hopes the standards can succeed without full national participation in the consortia, but many Core proponents disagree. "You're going to end up with a bunch of states doing different things," said Andy Rotherham, a friend of Coleman's who worked in the Clinton administration and now leads Bellwether Education Partners, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm. "Some of the same issues will persist, which undermines the premise of Common Core." How did Coleman wind up in the middle of the 21st century's curriculum wars? His path started at his parents' dinner table and wended through selective New York public school Stuyvesant High, making an important pit stop at his bar mitzvah. After being asked to perform a deep exegesis of his Torah portion, Coleman extracted a lesson that would guide his career: "The idea that kids can do more than we think they can," he said. Asking 13-year-olds to give a speech is a bold charge, not unlike recommending AP courses to disadvantaged kids who don't see academic aptitude in themselves. "I wish kids could encounter more stretched opportunities like that in school -- all kids," Coleman said. After graduating from Stuyvesant, Coleman attended Yale and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, where he studied English literature. He also met Jason Zimba, a Common Core co-writer and lifelong friend who later taught mathematics at Bennington College, where Coleman's mother, Elizabeth, served as president. Zimba remembers hanging out in pubs and playing Risk with Coleman, who spent the rest of his time studying for exams. Coleman had a competitive streak and often won at Risk. "He's an astute observer of characters, so if he thinks you can handle it, he might celebrate [his victory over you]," he said. Upon returning to New York, Coleman applied for a high school teaching position and was turned down. Instead, he worked for consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he advised public schools and became a fixture at New York City Department of Education meetings. That's where he met David Sherman, then a vice president at the United Federation of Teachers. After one meeting, Coleman, then in his 20s, approached Sherman. "'I don't know you, but I want to introduce myself, because you seem to be the only person who knew what he was talking about,'" Sherman remembers Coleman saying. They stayed in touch. In 1999, when Zimba and Coleman developed their education startup, the Grow Network, Coleman turned to Sherman to tap into the grassroots involvement of teachers. Sherman became a mentor to Coleman. "I always told him he was too nice, that you need to stand up for what you believe in," Sherman said. And when Coleman began speaking to national audiences, Sherman chided Coleman for treating Washington crowds as if they were New Yorkers. "I said, 'David, you can't curse in front of a national audience, they get offended.'" While working on the Grow Network, Coleman tried to "fill the promise that assessment results could actually improve kids' lives," he said. But he found that educational problems ran deeper: The standards being measured by the tests "were so vast and vague, it's hard to make high-quality assessments." Coleman sold the Grow Network to McGraw-Hill and formed Student Achievement Partners, a not-for-profit that now helps states implement the Common Core. In 2008, he and Zimba co-wrote a seminal paper calling for "math and science standards that are fewer, clearer, higher." Before Coleman and Zimba published their paper, in 2008, the National Governors Association convened a group to create a set of unified national education standards. Because states write their own standards and exams, students who move across state lines might find themselves passing math in one state and failing in another. The governors sought to address this problem by creating common standards. Attracted to Coleman's idea of "fewer, clearer, higher," they tapped Student Achievement Partners to write those standards. "While sometimes I've been called an architect of their standards, I think their true architecture is evidence," Coleman said. "That's the binding secret of the standards." Coleman, Zimba and Sue Pimentel, an education consultant, made sure the standards reflect the skills students need to succeed after high school. While the standards were developed by state representatives, with help from the Gates Foundation, they received a new, powerful -- but in retrospect, potentially detrimental -- boost in 2009. That year, the Obama administration incentivized higher learning standards with billions of dollars in its Race to the Top competition, and recession-stunned states signed on to the Core. "The states were so desperate for money they were willing to just do it," said Andy Smarick, a Republican education policy expert who previously worked for the U.S. Department of Education. "So many states signed on so fast with a push from the federal government and there wasn't a fuss -- until now." As schools begin to implement the Core, far-right and far-left advocates are trying to roll it back. People like Ron Paul, the former libertarian-leaning Republican U.S. congressman from Texas, are waging campaigns against the Core, making the fight a tea party priority. Reached by phone, Paul said that he sees the Core as an "encroachment" that increases the federal government's control. "This is just another step, putting pressure on states to have a one-system, universal curriculum," he said. "This is the kind of thing that should not be permitted." Paul said he had not read "all of the standards, but that's in some ways irrelevant, because the principle is so bad." On the left, advocates such as Diane Ravitch, a former George H.W. Bush education official who is now a leading figure in opposition to the so-called education reform movement, say that the Core could lead to more assessments when students are already overburdened by excessive testing. "The conservative right is using it as an example of government control, a break with states' rights -- but it's voluntary," said Sherman, who now works as a special assistant to Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. "People like Ravitch are saying it has all of the testing and blah blah blah. I don't go along with that, either." Ravitch and other critics, though, also worry about the Core's contents. "There is no evidence that those who study these standards will be prepared for careers, because there is nothing in them that bears any relationship to careers," Ravitch recently wrote on The Huffington Post's blog. A major component of that evidence, according to the Common Core appendix, relies on the ACT's benchmark reports on college and career readiness. To define college and career readiness, the ACT surveyed U.S. colleges and determined how much a student has to know in a given subject to have a 50 percent or higher likelihood of earning a B, or a 75 percent or higher chance of earning a C. The reports follow students who take the ACT's through college. But even the ACT's education director has conceded that the reports are limited because they don't tie the students being studied to data about their life outcomes or careers. "It's like pointing a shotgun at a football field," said Anthony Carnevale, a Georgetown University professor who oversees the school's Center on Education and the Workforce, in an earlier interview. "The things mentioned in the ACT subject exams don't show up in tasks and activities of jobs -- any jobs." That limitation leads Carnevale to believe that the Core's academic focus could ultimately deepen rifts between students who are already on a path to college and those who plan to pursue a career straight out of high school. Those students, he says, could lose interest in more abstract subjects, like higher algebra, and drop out. "[Core proponents] can argue much more persuasively that the standards make you college ready, but not career ready," he said. To rebut arguments such as Carnevale's, Coleman has said that the Core will teach students how to think critically, a crucial skill in an ever-changing economy. Coleman said he thinks that when people like Paul do read the standards, they will support them. It's the substance, he said, that's brought Republicans such as Mike Huckabee and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on board. "Whatever missteps were made in the past with the administration and Race to the Top, the secretary has made very clear, this is and remains state led," Coleman said. "And any state can withdraw at any time, which is being demonstrated." But if more states drop out, the effort could lose momentum. "If it's adopted by a tiny number of states, it ceases to have the meaning it once had," said Tim Daly, president of the teacher placement firm TNTP. As the fight over the Core plays out, Coleman has taken a broader view on education. Last summer, the College Board announced that it would hire him to lead the organization. Since then, he has engaged the organization's members in redesigning the SAT, whose newest iteration will be unveiled in 2015. He's heard from organization members, who have said they want the SAT to test things that are relevant to college success. They've told him that students should be able to read and write clearly, and also have mastered a core set of mathematical concepts. "The core aspiration is to build an exam that much more clearly focuses on the skills that matter most," he said. Instead of obscure vocabulary words, students should be expected to show deep understanding of academic terms such as "synthesis" and "transform." Overall, Coleman hopes the exam will be more relevant to high school learning. "It has to engage teachers more deeply," he said. As students go back to school and stress over college applications this year, they probably don't know about the man with the funny socks in the Columbus Circle office who, in a sense, influences their future. "He's in this position to tie what kids are learning to what colleges are expecting," Smarick said. "Very few people in America today are having a bigger influence on what kids are learning than David Coleman." This story was written in partnership with the Jewish Daily Forward.

By Kenneth Zeichner During the last few years, The New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF), a major private funder of K-12 charter schools, has been intensely involved in creating and promoting a bill (the GREAT Act) in the U.S. Congress. This bill, if passed, would lead to the establishment of teacher and principal preparation programs that would not be subject to the same level of accountability as other state-approved programs. The bill is a part of a broader movement to disrupt the current system of college and university teacher education and replace it with deregulation, competition, and a market economy. The Answer Sheet Washington post

David Stockman on the Folly of Anti-Tax Crusades | BillMoyers.com

David Stockman on the Folly of Anti-Tax Crusades | BillMoyers.com

Why Are Walmart Billionaires Bankrolling Phony School 'Reform' In LA? | Perspectives, What Matters Today | BillMoyers.com

Why Are Walmart Billionaires Bankrolling Phony School 'Reform' In LA? | Perspectives, What Matters Today | BillMoyers.com

Pamela Brown to continue as superintendent 5 to 4 vote

Superintendent Pamela C. Brown is here to stay at least through the 2013-14 school year. And Lorey Schultz didn't get the support she needed to start her controversial $115,000 top media job with Superintendent Brown. It was a contentious board meeting held in the Buffalo Common Council Chambers tonight, Wednesday, Sept. 25, where Park District Rep. Carl Paladino motioned to dismiss Superintendent Brown. School board members Carl Paladino, John Licata, Jason McCarthy, James Sampson voted yes to support her dismissal, while Dr. Theresa Harris-Tigg,  Florence Johnson, Sharon Belton-Cottman, Mary Ruth Kapsiak and Dr. Barbara  Nevergold voted against her dismissal. On the school board chopping block was the consulting group Cross and Joftus who hired Dr. Mary Guinn. Board member Sampson motioned to end its contract with the district. It was sent to committee for legal department to review. Sampson thinks its contract with district not done right . West District board member Sampson motion to hold school board meeting every second Wednesday, starting next month passed. And Sam Radford from District Parent Coordinating Council told board they would appeal to the State Ed folks any board vote to approve district transfer plan tonight. Dr. J. Elliott responded the State Ed expects the transfer plan to be fully implemented with 2000 seats available by fall 2014. And a district official of student support services added State Ed expects plan by Sept. 30, and it will not allocate any additional building aid for the plan contending BPS has adequate space.

Lorey Schultz newest Buffalo public schools chief of public relations

Lorey Schultz newly appointed Chief of Public Relations for the Buffalo Schools  two years ago lived in Eggertsville, when Mayor Brown appointed her to his communications staff. A disgruntled citizen complained to the Fiscal Control Board contended  the appointment was politically motivated, the salary too high and wonder if she was going to give up her suburban residence for a phantom apartment in Buffalo though it appeared she sold the house in May the following year.

A Buffalo news story  said Superintendent Pamela C. Brown appointed Schultz  because  she " became convinced that the district needed more resources in community relations because of the volume of requests she gets to speak and respond to the community, Guinn said. “She gets multiple requests on the same day, at the same time, for many, many media and community outreach activities,” Guinn said.

Dr. Mary Guinn is the consultant hired last spring as an interim deputy superintendent brought here by Say Yes another consultant company the Buffalo Board of Education hired to conduct the superintendent search one year ago.

And Carl Paladino Park District School Board member has criticized the hiring of Dr. Guinn and her reorganization work in the district. Her salary at $179, 000, has been questioned as well though initially paid for  by Say Yes and foundation money, it is now coming from a state grant.

Although, Guinn was supposed to have left last June, she is still here, while Paladino complained at last school board meetintg that he had been informed she is supervising central office administrators though Superintendent Brown defended her consultant work for the district described her as a "coach" not a supervisor.  On Tuesday Dr. Guinn accompanied Superintendent Brown to the lecture Dr. Pedro Noguera presented at Westminster Charter School both  leaving later in the district chauffeur car.

Several school board members have criticized the appointment of Schultz to the newly appointed Chief of public relations asking why the position is needed in the first place since there already is a staff in central office  Elena  Cala Buscarino assigned this role.

Others question why Lorey Schultz hired when the public relations office in the central office in  City Hall if it needed another staff member perhaps it would have been more appropriate to appoint somebody who better reflects the demographic make up of the students and community not a former anchor who until one year ago was  a resident of Amherst.

Schultz was the assistant director of communications and marketing in the communications office in the Buffalo City Hall who previouy she worked for 17 years as a reporter at WIVB-TV Channel 4.

Mike Blake's Unbalanced Opinions: Letter to the Control Board re: Lorey Schultz hiring

New bill in congress to limit power of Arne Duncan

It was only a matter of time but it finally happened.
The National School Boards Association  Support for HR1386,  "The Local School Boards Governance and Flexibility Act," is a bill in Congress that limits the power of Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education. It's about time!

This bill is "To support the local decision-making functions of local educational agencies by limiting the authority of the Secretary of Education to issue regulations, rules, grant conditions, and guidance materials, and for other purposes."

02:32 Mar 30, 2013 Jkt 029200 PO 000

SEC. 3. AUTHORITY OF THE SECRETARY.
Unless specifically authorized by Federal law, the Secretary may not issue a Federal regulation, rule, grant condition, guidance material, or other requirement pertaining to a State educational agency or a local educational agency that—  and so on and so forth......

Introduced on March 2013, if this bill passes, the NYS Board of Regents will have to be rein in too awaken from its deep slumber at the switch limited as well from imposing unrealistic requirements and mandates to the education of NYS children such as abolishing the local high school diploma that has been a major contributing factor for the lower graduation rates in the State  that particularly had an impact on black and Latino students, commencing with the freshman  cohort of 2008.

New York State public schools "off the chain"

New York State public schools "off the chain"

Do you agree with the Buffalo School Board vote to deny the recent recommendations of Superintendent Brown?

Cast your vote in the poll on the Buffalo City Express News...

Buffalo school board voted against recommendations of Superintendent Brown

The Buffalo School Board in an unusual move voted
 3 in favor  to 4 against the recommendations of
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Pamela Brown to extend
the probationary period of four school principals and
deny tenure to one assistant high school principal.
Read more about this story by clicking on the
Link above...