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= = //** Welcome to the Support Wiki for National Board candidates attending National-Louis University! To the left, you will see the various topic areas that we are focusing on... Changed the look a little bit again. **//

= = ==For next week, we are going to talk about your work on the graphic organizers - deadline is Sunday, as always, for you to get them to me. Here are the readings that we will discuss in class next week as we cover the "how to-s" in teaching our students. Here are the articles... Reminder, week ten will be your presentations on your choice readings.== ==

also, here are the graphic organizers that I shared with you in class this past week... a couple of you asked for the blanks...


= = = News You May Have Missed: =

= R-E-S-P-E-C-T-ing Teachers? =

[|Abby Rapoport] February 17, 2012

A new teacher evaluation program from the Obama administration looks an awful lot like Race to the Top.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan took to //The Daily Show// Thursday night to discuss and defend his agency's latest initiative: Project RESPECT. The project looks a lot like 2009's Race to the Top, a chance for states (and in this case school districts) to compete for big grants if they offer ideas that conform to the department's priorities. But unlike Race to the Top, RESPECT is almost entirely focused on teachers and teacher evaluation. It's not likely the Republican-controlled Congress will fund the $5 billion program, which is part of the the president's budget proposal, but the initiative does offer a clearer sense of the department's priorities.

The plan emphasizes a need for higher salaries for teachers, but also pushes to reform job protections like teacher tenure and improving teaching colleges to make them more selective. If a state chooses not to compete, districts can apply for funds on their own or in concert. [|As Bloomberg News reports]:

The Obama administration began a push to tie teacher pay to performance instead of seniority, dangling a proposed $5 billion in incentives for U.S. states and districts that embrace the president’s approach.

The grant program, part of Obama’s $69.8 billion education—budget proposal for fiscal 2013, seeks to revamp tenure practices at elementary and secondary schools to make it easier to weed out underperformers and raise pay to attract top college graduates to the teaching profession

On the //Daily Show//, Duncan painted a glowing picture of the new project as a chance to reward teachers. Host Jon Stewart, with an audience that seemed to be made up of teachers, didn't let Duncan off the hook easily. "What you're describing doesn't seem to be matching their experience," he told the secretary of education. Not shockingly, Duncan stuck to his guns and defended the program. Merit pay, teacher tenure, and the like never came up in a big way.

The RESPECT project seems to be a sequel to the administration's Race to the Top effort. Race to the Top, which has already awarded the vast majority of its $4 billion in grants, identified priorities and then assigned points to applying states based on which criteria they met. Many state legislatures opted to change policy to become more competitive. Among the priorities were policies to create a favorable environment for charter schools and adoption of "common core" curriculum standards—an effort Duncan has vocally supported. To compete at all, [|states had to allow student performance data to be linked to teachers]. Linking allows for "value added" modeling, statistical models to show a teacher's impact on test scores. The practice is controversial with teachers and[| has recently come under academic scrutiny.]

This time around, Duncan has talked about judging teachers by more than just test performance. "It's not just about testing," he told Stewart. "You have to look at multiple measures." In his talk introducing RESPECT, Duncan mentioned "classroom observation, peer review, parent and student feedback" as all useful in examining teacher assessment. But the goal is clearly to get away from seniority as a key determinant in how much teachers make and whether they have job security.

The project's priorities are extremely similar to those of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested tens of millions in efforts to better evaluate teachers. (The Gates Foundation worked closely with Duncan when he headed Chicago's public schools and also helped finance the development of the core curriculum effort.) However the Gates Foundation is very controversial among teachers groups for its emphasis on throwing out teacher protections like tenure. [|In his talk announcing the project], Duncan referred to two Gates-funded groups, Teach Plus and the New Teachers Project, as expected partners. Teach Plus got a $4 million grant from Gates in 2009 while the New Teachers Project has received more than $15 million since 2007.

[|A //New York Times// article last year] highlighted just how active such groups have been in trying to reform teaching by campaigning for an end to traditional teacher protections like seniority.

> To that end, the foundation is financing educators to pose alternatives to union orthodoxies on issues like the seniority system and the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers. > In 2009, a Gates-financed group, the New Teacher Project, issued an influential report detailing how existing evaluation systems tended to give high ratings to nearly all teachers. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan cited it repeatedly and wrote rules into the federal Race to the Top grant competition encouraging states to overhaul those systems. Then a string of Gates-backed nonprofit groups worked to promote legislation across the country: at least 20 states, including New York, are now designing new evaluation systems.

It will be fascinating to see if the program can garner enough support to be politically viable. Duncan will need the thumbs up from teachers' unions, and so far the groups have been tepidly supportive. Teachers have come under significant pressure as state lawmakers have slashed funding for education, all the while expecting performance to improve. Teachers unions have pushed for teacher evaluations based on multiple factors rather than just tests, much like Duncan described. But Duncan is also allied with groups perceived to be hostile to teacher's unions. But without their support—and with a highly partisan Congress—it's hard to see how the program will come through. I suppose, as usual, it's best to keep watching.

=Obama Administration Seeks to Elevate Teaching Profession, Duncan to Launch RESPECT Project: Teacher-Led National Conversation= February 15, 2012

**Contact:** Press Office, (202) 401-1576, press@ed.gov

The Obama Administration's 2013 proposed budget includes a new $5 billion competitive program to challenge states and districts to work with teachers, unions, colleges of education and other stakeholders to comprehensively reform the field of teaching. The proposal touches on every phase of teaching from training and tenure to compensation and career opportunities. Today, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will hold a town hall meeting with teachers to launch the RESPECT Project, a national conversation led by active classroom teachers working temporarily for the Department to help inform the administration's proposal and the broader effort to reform teaching. RESPECT is an acronym that stands for **Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence and Collaborative Teaching**. "Our goal is to work with teachers and principals in rebuilding their profession and to elevate the teacher voice in federal, state and local education policy. Our larger goal is to make teaching not only America's most important profession, but also America's most respected profession," Duncan said. The administration's proposal builds on the President's State of the Union speech when he said: "Give [schools] the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn. That's a bargain worth making." Details of the program will be developed through budget negotiations with Congress and the competition process itself, but the proposal considers a broad range of reforms: "This effort will require the entire educational sector—states, districts, unions, principals, schools of education—to change, and teachers have to lead the change," Duncan said. "We need to change society's views of teaching—from the factory model of yesterday to the professional model of tomorrow—where teachers are revered as thinkers, leaders and nation-builders. No other profession carries a greater burden for securing our economic future. No other profession holds out more promise of opportunity to children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. And no other profession deserves more respect," he said.
 * Reforming teacher colleges and making them more selective.
 * Creating new career ladders for teachers.
 * Linking earnings more closely to performance rather than simply longevity or credentials.
 * Compensating teachers for working in challenging learning environments.
 * Making teacher salaries more competitive with other professions.
 * Improving professional development and providing time for collaboration.
 * Providing teachers with greater autonomy in exchange for greater accountability.
 * Building evaluation systems based on multiple measures, not just test scores.
 * Reforming tenure to raise the bar, protect good teachers, and promote accountability.

//Chicago Teachers Union Begins Negotiations Asking for 30% Raise//

By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah and [|Joel Hood], Chicago Tribune reporters February 17, 2012

The Chicago Teachers Union is asking for raises amounting to 30 percent over the next two years, the opening salvo in heated contract negotiations with school officials who are implementing a longer school day across [|Chicago Public Schools]next school year. Documents obtained by the Tribune show that in the face of Mayor [|Rahm Emanuel]'s expansion of the school day, the union has led with an offer seeking a 24 percent raise in the 2012-13 school year and a 5 percent increase the following year, the net effect being 30 percent.

It may be playing hardball, or it could be, as one education expert described it, an "exorbitant offer" that ignores the district's growing financial constraints. As she left CTU headquarters for contract negotiations Thursday, union President Karen Lewis declined to comment on the details of the proposal. "We are not negotiating this in the public," Lewis said. CTU spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin issued a statement, saying: "Our contract negotiations have just begun and are negotiated in good faith and not in the public. We have not authorized the release of any proposals outside of negotiations." The proposal also calls for reducing elementary school class sizes from 28 to 23 students and shrinking class sizes in the upper grade levels from about 31 students to 23.

The contract proposal, dated Feb. 1, makes no mention of Emanuel's longer school day initiative, which will add about 90 minutes to the school day in all CPS elementary schools beginning next fall.

However, the proposed wage increase is in line with the 27 percent salary hike union leaders said months ago would be the fair raise for extending their workday. The contract proposal also includes other incremental salary boosts such as those granted for adding a year of experience, referred to as a "step" increase, and for getting credits beyond a bachelor's degree, referred to as a "lane" increase, provisions that are in the current contract. "They clearly want to put a stake in the ground on what their additional time and responsibilities are worth," said Robin Steans, executive director of Advance Illinois, an education policy group. "That said, given the financial realities that the district is facing, it's hard to believe that anybody seriously expects that this is anywhere close to where negotiations will end."

Barbara Radner, director of [|DePaul University]'s Center for Urban Education, described the proposal as "unprecedented" and "really bold" but predicted it wouldn't go over well among the general public. "Union members will say: 'Yeah. Stand up for us,'" she said. "But in terms of public relations, everyone else will say, 'Is that a typo?'" The proposal also calls for the Board of Education to assign at least one art teacher, one music teacher, one librarian and one physical education teacher to each school. CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll declined to talk about the union's proposal or say what the district has offered in return.

New legislation supported by the mayor and signed by the governor last summer will make it harder for the union to strike. It also allowed CPS to impose a longer school day without union approval. Under mounting budget pressure, the school board rescinded the 4 percent raises CPS teachers were to get this school year under the current contact, which expires June 30. At a time when CPS' new leadership team under Emanuel was aggressively pushing through the longer school day plan, the school board's vote sparked outcry from the union and their supporters. The two sides eventually negotiated a truce: The union ended its legal battle against the extended day, and CPS agreed to stop offering schools and teachers financial incentives to vote to start it this school year. By then, a majority of teachers in 13 traditional CPS schools approved waivers to lengthen the day this school year.

Though it's early in the negotiating process, union officials say they have already been treated with "disrespect" by CPS. In a memo to union members last month, Lewis said a negotiator for CPS "rudely" referred to the CTU's 40-member negotiating team as "the audience" as the two sides began discussions. According to the CTU memo, the board's proposals include limiting prep periods and adding additional instructional duties for teachers. There was no mention of salary demands by the union.

=Study: Common Standards Will Not Affect Student Achievement=

By [|Catherine Gewertz] on February 16, 2012 9:23 AM

Will the Common Core State Standards improve student achievement? Not according to a new study out today. The crux of the argument in the [|Brookings Institution report] is that there is not much of a connection between standards—even rigorous ones—and student achievement. If there was a connection, we would have seen signs of improvement from states' own individual standards—all states have had standards since 2003—but NAEP scores don't bear that out, author Tom Loveless argues.

Loveless also points to a 2009 Brookings study that found no connection between the quality of states' standards and their students' NAEP scores. Loveless examines NAEP scores from 2003 to 2009 and finds no correlation between the quality of states' standards and NAEP gains during that period.

Loveless also looks at performance standards, or the "cut points" set for proficiency on states' tests, to examine the argument that the presumed higher cut scores on the future tests for the common standards will help drive better student achievement. Again, he finds that cut scores are unrelated to NAEP performance.

** If a Parent Who Reads to Her Child is "Good," is One Who Doesn't "Bad?" ** // If I'm in Chicago, then I'm in Illinois. I'm not in Chicago, therefore I must not be in Illinois. //

In the field of logic, that's an example of what's called "denying the antecedent" -- a logical fallacy that assumes that because // a // implies // b //, then // not a // implies // not b //. The fault in the logic is obvious in the example above, but the reasoning underlying such fallacies is not so uncommon in our daily lives. Many of us would probably agree, for instance, that parents who buy organic food products for their children must care a great deal about their kids' health and well-being. So do we believe the opposite to be true as well? I've heard parents say they would never feed their children any non-organic dairy product, and the unspoken implication seemed to be that a parent who would is bordering on being unfit.

But on the southwest side of Chicago, where I live, you have to go on a bit of a wild goose chase to even track down a gallon of organic milk. And if you're a parent struggling to make ends meet for your family, you're probably going to choose to spend $1.99 for a gallon at Aldi rather than $6.99 for organic at Whole Foods. Does that mean you don't care as much about the health of your child as organic-buying parents do? Fallacies can sometimes be heard in teachers' lounges, school hallways, and graduate education classes -- especially when the topic of discussion is low-income students and their families. A teacher friend once told me of a counselor at her school who, during a lunch-time discussion, expressed dismay at what she perceived as the limited experiences of some of her school's low-income Mexican-American students. "I can't believe these kids haven't been to Navy Pier," the woman said, referring to a downtown Chicago tourist attraction. "Their parents don't take them places. When I was little, my mom would pack up the car and take us to Grant Park." She added, "And we weren't rich, either. But she still took us places. The unspoken subtext was pretty clear to my friend: Since the counselor's mom had taken her on excursions, that meant she was a caring parent. And because her students' parents didn't take them places (at least according to the counselor), they must not be. Again -- if // a // implies // b //, // not a // must imply // not b //. Never mind that many parents at the school work low-wage jobs and may not own a car to pack for a day at the park. Besides, how much did the counselor really know about her kids' lives outside of school? How much of her comment was based on careful observation and listening, and how much on ill-formed assumptions?

Another area of school life where logical fallacies can paint poor parents as unconcerned or uncaring is their perceived involvement -- or lack of it -- in school activities. If we believe parents who participate at school in traditional ways -- showing up for open houses, volunteering to chaperone field trips -- do so because they value their child's education, then we may also believe that parents who don't participate in those ways simply don't care enough to do so. In fact, I've heard teachers voice this opinion, or something similar, a number of times. But it's important to take a closer look. A parent with a salaried position who takes a half day off to attend his daughter's school play likely wouldn't be penalized financially, and might even be congratulated by colleagues for being an involved parent. A dad who works as an hourly-wage security guard would get docked pay, and possibly reprimanded or worse, for doing the same.

As a teacher of teachers, one of the assignments I sometimes give my students is a "literacy autobiography," in which they reflect on their own memories of learning to read and write. In a typical class, where most students are from middle-class backgrounds and many grew up in two-parent families, common themes often show up in their essays. Students often recall being read to by a parent before bed each night, having a wide selection of books in their homes, or practicing their writing or spelling with a family member (usually their mother) before entering school as a kindergartener. Based on these memories, teachers in my classes usually conclude that their caregivers placed a high value on literacy and education. And in most cases they're probably right about that. But in their papers and their comments in class, it becomes clear that some also believe the inverse to be true: Parents who don't read to their kids nightly or have dozens of books in their home -- some of the parents of the kids they teach -- must not care much about their children learning to read and write. When I hear this assumption surfacing, I try to engage my students in discussing how our own experiences of literacy act as lenses by which we may judge others. We also talk about other, perhaps less visible, ways that low-income parents might be assisting in the literacy development of their children (for much more on this, see Catherine Compton-Lilly's [|//Re-Reading Families//]). But for some of the teachers in my classes, especially those who grew up in families with plenty of resources, it can still be hard to let go of a long-held belief: that parents who truly value education demonstrate it with certain actions and choices -- individual and societal circumstances be damned.

In an educational climate where the "no excuses" mantra is hailed by everyone from charter school operators to President Obama, such views may not be so surprising. But they are a troubling starting point for any teacher, and a recipe for misunderstanding when it comes to working respectfully with low-income students and families. The good news is that many teachers who work with poor children and families choose a more productive approach. Instead of denying antecedents, they begin with far different assumptions: that every parent cares, that every parent wants good things for their child, that every parent values education -- even if they don't all show it in the same way.

=** Entire School Staff Removed After Two Teachers Arrested on Sex Charges: **=

= Chicago Teachers Union Calls CPS Unused Vacation, Sick Days Payout Report 'Unfair' (VIDEO) =

The Chicago Teachers Union on Friday stated that a report finding that Chicago Public Schools, since 2006, paid out $265 million to ex-employees due to their unused vacation and sick days "unfairly characterizes teachers and paraprofessionals as abusing the system."

The finding that some 19,000 former CPS employees were paid out an average of just less than $14,000 upon their departure from the school system were the result of a joint investigation by the //Chicago Sun-Times// and Better Government Association.

Some former CPS employees have received six-figure payments as high as just more than $250,000 under the policy, including more than 300 principals and administrators who received more than $100,000. The BGA claims that some ex-employees used the payouts to boost their pension benefits. One prominent former employee -- former CEO Arne Duncan -- was paid $50,296.77 when he left his post to serve as secretary of education with the Obama administration.

CTU points out, in a statement posted on its blog, that teachers in the system only receive 10 paid sick days per year and are not compensated for maternity leave. The ones who qualify under the policy are those "who do all they can to never miss a day of work."

"These are the same professionals who come early, stay late and are now being asked to work even longer hours, while their benefits and pensions are under attack," the statement read. "The BGA report puts teachers in a Catch 22 -- if they use too many sick days they are given low ratings for bad attendance and if they accumulate too many they are falsely characterized as 'greedy' and 'abusing the system.' You can't have it both ways."

While the CPS employees were required to either work at least 20 years or reach the age of 65 before qualifying for the perk, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the policy, rare among private employers, is "unacceptable to the mayor and not consistent with the city's sick day policies for its own employees." He has put a hold on non-union unused sick day employee payments for CPS and its sister agencies while the policy goes under review.

"As mayor, my greatest responsibility is to ensure that Chicago government is transparent, accountable and responsive to city taxpayers," Emanuel said Friday, according to NBC Chicago. "That is why I have zero tolerance for waste or benefit abuses of any kind."

Duncan stated, in response to the report, that "people should take a good hard look at whether or not that policy makes any sense and whether it should be kept in place in these tight budget times," Politico reports.

CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll said in a statement that the school system plans to follow the mayor's directive and submit a plan, by Feb. 17, of how it will address the policy going forward.

"Mayor Emanuel made it clear that he finds the current policy unacceptable and CPS is facing difficult fiscal times," the statement read. "It is incumbent upon us to be fiscally conservative with every taxpayer dollar we spend to ensure that every available dollar is being invested in our students."

As of last fall, CPS, as it made its case for property taxes to be increased by the maximum amount possible, reported a budget shortfall of about $710 million. The system said its massive budget deficit was to blame when it rescinded contractually-obligated 4 percent raises for its teachers last summer.

NEA Officials Set Sail to Discuss Union Business - What do YOU think??

Imagine your organization is facing attacks from all sides. Imagine it’s losing members and revenue. Imagine governors and mayors – of both political parties – publicly denouncing your industry as “broken” and move swiftly to stifle your power and influence, while you flail away helplessly. What to do? What else to do but go down drinking?

That’s what members of the National Education Association’s National Staff Organization have apparently decided. The NSO is an association of sorts for teachers’ union staff – political and communications types.

Following an “[|Advocacy Retreat]” with the theme “[|Building Our Unionism],” members set sail on a [|7-day cruise] from Miami on February 5th “with stops at Cozumel, Grand Cayman Island and Isla Roatan.” Sounds fun! [In case the Facebook link disappears, never fear: here’s a [|PDF] of the NSO newsletter.]

Guess what union staff? There are going to be cameras all over the ship documenting your every move – from every Fuzzy Navel to every game of shuffle board. Just think how your rank-and-file members might appreciate seeing all the “fun in the sun” you’re having, courtesy of their dues dollars.

Dues payers – especially those in states with compulsory unionism – can think fondly this week about their “employees” cavorting in the Caribbean as they’re looking at layoffs, decreased pay and increased insurance co-pays.

(Technically, NEA staffers exist to serve the union members. That might come as a surprise to some, considering that those roles have been reversed for decades.)

Incredibly, this isn’t the first cruise NEA staffers have taken. Last year, the destination was the Mexican Rivera, [|according] to the trip’s contact person. Next year, who knows? As long as the members keep paying, who cares?

As the union staffers set sail, I hope they’ll remember the eyes of their dues-paying members are on them. //Bon voyage!//

= State Of The Union: Obama Touts College Affordability, Tough Love For Teachers =

from the Huffington Post January 25, 2012 Though education played a sizable role in President Barack Obama's third State of the Union address Tuesday evening -- even proving to be the speech's most-trafficked topic on Twitter -- teachers, union officials and experts are still making sense of what, exactly, the rhetoric means for America's classrooms.

"You can't say 'stop teaching to the test' while continuing to advocate high-stakes testing as the measure of [teacher] effectiveness," said Mike Hladio, a Pennsylvania teacher, referring to a line that garnered the president much applause. Obama's speech included a subtle rehashing of old policies; a measured tone that sympathized with teachers; and a few new proposals in both K through 12 and higher education that are still lean on specifics. New initiatives would add a focus on keeping kids in high school until they're 18, create a competition that incentivizes teacher effectiveness, partner businesses with community colleges, extend tuition tax credits, prevent a student-loan interest bump and make college more affordable -- though it is unclear which levers the federal government has on this last point. Obama sought to place education within his broader framework of the revival of America's middle class, stressing the issue of college affordability, an issue he's had his senior staff stump on in recent months. "To prepare for the jobs of tomorrow, our commitment to skills and education has to start earlier," Obama said Tuesday night.

In the speech, Obama cleverly played to the desires of his various education-related constituents. On the one hand, he appealed to the Democratic education-reform lobby, a group comprised of organizations such as Democrats for Education Reform that have come to be known for its desire to use data to fuel teacher personnel decisions. He did so by discussing the need to revamp teacher personnel practices to focus on merit instead of seniority. In that vein, he cited a much-quoted new study by Harvard and Columbia economists that shows that an effective teacher can increase lifetime earnings for a classroom by $250,000, though this boils down to much less on an annual, per-student level.

"Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let's offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn," Obama said. On the other hand, in the very same paragraph, he appealed to teachers' unions, a powerful Democratic voting bloc with which he has clashed in the past. "It was about not bashing teachers, having shared responsibility, but it's about creativity and their passion and stop[ping] teaching to the test," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told The Huffington Post. "The State of the Union is a statement of values. The statement to kids is, if you stop teaching to the test, you have to obviously evaluate teachers in a very different way." Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, was similarly pleased. "I liked the way he talked about teachers," he said in an interview.

While several teachers noted the gap between Obama's rhetoric and policies on teachers -- for example, it is unclear how his No Child Left Behind waivers minimize teaching to the test -- both union heads said they were entirely satisfied. In his speech, Obama proposed shifting federal financial aid away from colleges that don't tamp down their spiraling tuitions -- a policy that, with its incentive-based structure, mirrors his K-12 reforms. That same policy was articulated in U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's 2012 budget request, and would require a fundamental reworking of the higher education aid system. This presents something former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings couldn't do: as of now, money goes directly to students, so conditioning the aid would hurt students, not institutions. But Obama preemptively pushed against that shade of doubt. "The point is, it's possible," Obama said. "So let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can't stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down."

And the plan might have an ally in the Senate: Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), whose education committee earlier this week scheduled a hearing on college affordability for February. "I have argued that the more urgent task is in creating jobs and rebuilding the middle class," Harkin said in a statement Tuesday night. "This means continuing to make investments in areas like education and workforce training as well as securing pensions and ensuring college is affordable." In a document the administration circulated in tandem with the speech, the White House refers to Obama's request for a new state- and district-level competition that aims to bolster teacher quality by revamping teacher preparation, shaking up the personnel ladder, "reshaping tenure" and updating teacher evaluations. While administration officials have confirmed that this is neither an extension of the Race to the Top program or the Teacher Incentive Fund, they are keeping details close to the vest for now. Obama also hinted at a new dropout-curbing policy. "I call on every state to require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn eighteen," Obama said. As Duncan reiterated later Tuesday, "we're losing a million students from our schools to our streets each year." But such a policy can be expensive to implement, especially for recession-addled states. "The inattention to dropouts in a lot of states is shocking," said Andy Rotherham, an education consultant and former Clinton education advisor. "I'm sure states want to know who will pay for this."

**Why Chicago's Library Commissioner Had to Go... Chicago Sun Times - January 25, 2012**

Mary Dempsey — a tough-as-nails administrator with a passion for libraries — presided over the construction of dozens of new libraries in Chicago under a mayor who shared her love of building and books. But she met her match in Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was more concerned about cutting spending than preserving library services. Dempsey’s resignation — officially delivered to the mayor in November — was made public this week. She apparently was unwilling to preside over the dismantling of a library system she helped build but agreed to postpone her departure to minimize the impact of the cuts. The only surprise was that she didn’t walk sooner to protest the mayor’s decision to single out a library system that accounts for just 3 percent of city spending for 50 percent of the layoffs — the equivalent of 363 full-time employees. Dempsey is being replaced by Brian Bannon, chief information officer for the San Francisco public library system. Bannon once worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that helped bankroll a makeover of Chicago’s public high schools. Though Dempsey has chosen not to criticize Emanuel on her way out the door, sources said the tension between the mayor and his departing library commissioner has been palpable. Sources said Dempsey is livid that libraries were singled out for cuts that affect library services at all hours and not at all placated that a City Council rebellion forced the mayor to soften the cuts twice — once by reducing the number of layoffs and again with an end-run around the union representing library employees that will reopen libraries on Monday afternoons. Sources said Dempsey was equally furious that, in an attempt to justify the cuts, Emanuel insisted that Dempsey initially proposed closing a handful of libraries altogether. Dempsey denied ever making that suggestion. Emanuel blames Dempsey for the never-ending stream of protests about his library cuts. Sources said he lashed out at Dempsey for daring to talk to aldermen about the cuts and barred her from talking to the news media. Dempsey, who is married to millionaire personal injury attorney Phil Corboy, apparently decided she no longer wanted to work for a mayor who she felt had treated her and the library system with contempt. (BTW, he also removed the wife of former Governor Jim Thompson, Jayne Carr Thompson.)

It’s not the first time Dempsey has flashed her independent streak. In 2005, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley bounced his chief procurement officer and drafted a reluctant Dempsey to clean up a minority contracting program disgraced by scandal. In the course of cleaning house, Dempsey made waves by taking on powerful targets. They included: Tony Rezko, the now convicted former chief campaign fund-raiser for now-convicted former Gov. Rod Blagojevich; Elzie Higginbottom, Daley’s chief fund-raiser in the black community; construction giant F.H. Paschen; and the O’Hare Airport outpost of O’Brien’s restaurant, an Old Town institution. Daley didn’t want Dempsey to go that far, but he allowed her to return to the library job she loved after a six month stint in the temporary post. Daley thought so much of Dempsey’s administrative skills that he asked her to become his chief of staff and the chief executive officer of Chicago’s public schools, only to be turned down. Now, the woman who pioneered the popular “One Book, One Chicago” program is leaving the library system she championed. The question now is whether anyone will pick up her mantle to protect libraries from more cuts.

**Marian Wright Edelman article on the Effects of Changes in Immigration Laws on Children:**

Why Collaboration Works In Teaching
My TLN colleague, Marsha Ratzel, pointed me to this post by Ewan McIntosh, that claims, "Collaboration is the key influence in the quality of teaching." At the same time, he argues that most collaboration doesn't work.

In my experience, collaboration works, because teachers who engage in meaningful--not surface-level--collaboration, are part of **an intellectual community of teachers**, even if that community involves primarily just a few people. Teaching is both art and science. Looking to both those disciplines, we can see that very few scientists or artists would really be successful without being involved in communities built around the work being done in their fields. Scientists know other scientists' work and build on it. It's not about, "Hey wouldn't it be cool if we worked together on this project so we can say we worked together?" It's more like, "Hey, didn't you try something with this type of material in this type of environment before? How did it turn out, and what would you recommend I use for my project?" Scientists benefit from each other's experiences and thinking. This sharing happens both in person and through the reading and writing of articles and research studies in the field. Artists I know are interested in other people's art and build on one anothers ideas, both intentionally and without realizing it. There's a conscious discourse going on among artists and including art critics. Artists inspire and support one another, even though they often make their actual art alone. Teaching in a collaborative setting has teachers work in relation to one another in discussion, sharing of experience, resources, criticism, failures and possibilities. As long as we have a means to communicate, we do it naturally, because we share common ground and we are interested in exploring our differences.

Ariz. District Drops Ethnic Studies Classes
By [|Lesli A. Maxwell] Premium article access courtesy of Edweek.org.

With millions in state funding on the line, the school board in Tucson, Ariz., voted last week to shutter a popular [|Mexican-American studies program]. But the move is now raising questions about whether the district will be out of compliance with a federal court order to bring racial balance to its schools. By a vote of 4-1, the board agreed to suspend the district's controversial ethnic-studies program. Members said canceling the Mexican-American studies courses was necessary to prevent the 60,000-student Tucson Unified School District from losing nearly $15 million in state funding that John Huppenthal, the state schools chief, threatened to withhold. Mr. Huppenthal said the courses violate a new state law that prohibits public schools from offering courses that are designed for a particular ethnic group, advocate ethnic solidarity, or promote resentment toward a race or group of people. ([|"Tucson Students Aren't Deterred by Ethnic-Studies Controversy,"] Sept. 22, 2010.) Leaders of the Tucson district denied that the classes promoted resentment, and they appealed Mr. Huppenthal's decision. A ruling from an administrative-law judge late last month backed the state chief's position. After the school board's vote, district officials began immediately to convert the Mexican-American studies courses to "traditional" American history, American government, and American literature classes, said Cara Rene, a district spokeswoman. "We are working to ensure there is as little disruption as possible for students," Ms. Rene wrote in an email. "Students will not lose any credits that may risk promotion or graduation." Ms. Rene said teachers who taught the Mexican-American studies courses would now teach the more traditional courses and adapt the traditional curriculum to their classes. The district did not dissolve the Mexican-American studies department, which will continue to offer services to support academic achievement for Latino students, Ms. Rene said.

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The school system—in consultation with the Arizona education department—will create new courses for the 2012-13 school year that "will provide studies in diverse perspectives," Ms. Rene said. But the controversy over the program is far from settled. Tucson school officials now face legal questions about whether the decision to cancel the Mexican-American studies program jeopardizes its own plan—approved by the school board in 2009—to comply with a more than 3-decade-old federal desegregation order. A key part of the district's plan called for an expansion of its ethnic-studies programs, which a federal judge approved. Days before the board voted to end the program, the federal judge overseeing the district's desegregation case assigned a [|special master] to help district leaders develop a new plan to bring racial balance to the schools. One other legal challenge also remains unresolved. Eleven Tucson teachers and two students sued in federal court contending that the state law violates their First Amendment rights. U.S. Circuit Court Judge A. Wallace Tashima last week allowed the lawsuit to proceed, but ruled that only the students had standing to sue. While the battle over the program has been pitched in Arizona, one national civil rights activist said he doesn't expect the decision in Tucson to reverberate beyond the state, where the politics around immigration are particularly polarizing. "When these arguments flare up in the K-12 world, it's usually around how to present facts in a textbook or in curriculum," said Roger L. Rice, a civil rights lawyer who is the executive director of Multicultural Education, Training, and Advocacy, or META, in Somerville, Mass.

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services contributed to this article.

**Common Core Standards**
I don't know if you are aware of this, but there is a website that is dedicated to the Common Core Curriculum Mapping Project. You can join for $20 a year.. Here is their blurb. I am not endorsing this but so many of you are working on this project or are currently implementing it in your schools that I thought I would pass it along...

//As you know, Common Core’s Curriculum Maps in English Language Arts were written by teachers for teachers. We want working public school teachers to remain central to the further development of our ELA Maps and other tools and services that Maps users have requested. But we need your help.// //We hope you will become a contributing member of the Mapping Project. By paying a nominal fee for access to the new Maps, you will help Common Core to provide more comprehensive professional development; continue to revise the Maps to incorporate your feedback; review submitted lesson plans; and maintain the quality and security of the website. We also hope to use membership funds to respond to numerous requests for Maps in other subjects, including math and social studies.// //Membership costs just $20 a year. Members will be able to access a grade span of their choice in our Second Edition: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, or 9-12. Access to the entire second edition of our K-12 Maps is available for $60 annually. [|The original, first edition of the Maps remains available for free.]// //The Second Edition of the Maps contains://
 * //Guidance for differentiated instruction in each Sample Lesson Plan (formerly called “Mini-Maps”)//
 * //Revised and extended pacing guide for K-2 reading instruction//
 * //Nearly two hundred new writing, grammar, and research activities//
 * //Thirteen-step process for a senior research paper//
 * //More informational and contemporary texts throughout//
 * //Library of seventy digital resources//
 * //Art and art activities in all seventy-six units//
 * //New glossary of more than 375 ELA terms//

Here is the website if you are interested... www.commoncore.org

** Education Department Seeks Public Input To Prevent Cheating In Schools **

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WASHINGTON -- The Education Department wants the public's input to develop guidelines to prevent and detect cheating. The effort comes after several cheating scandals involving teachers. ======

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The department is accepting opinions until Feb. 16. It says it will use them to create recommendations to be distributed to states, local school districts and testing organizations. ======

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In December, state investigators in Georgia said dozens of educators in 11 schools in Georgia's Dougherty County either cheated or failed to prevent cheating on 2009 standardized tests. Earlier, they accused nearly 180 educators in almost half of Atlanta's 100 schools of cheating, dating back a decade. ======

Some experts say pressure to perform on tests created an environment that contributed to the cheating

 * Here are two other article regarding the same concerns...**



=Duncan: It's Time to Create Race to Top for Districts= By [|Michele McNeil] on January 18, 2012 10:07 AM Flush with $550 million in new Race to the Top money, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said he intends to use the vast majority of it to design a new competition just for school districts. In an interview with //Education Week// yesterday, Duncan for the first time foreshadowed what the department's next Race to the Top competition will look like. "I think we'll use it for the districts," he said. "You can do different things. You can do early childhood as a piece of that, or STEM as a piece of that. ... I don't want to commit, but the bulk of the money will go through districts...what we'll be asking of districts is still very much up for consideration." Duncan, in a 30-minute, wide-ranging interview, also addressed what he sees as the strength of his department's waiver plan, the weaknesses of congressional attempts to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and his desire to stay on as secretary through a second term if President Barack Obama is re-elected. In the fiscal year 2012 [|budget deal], Congress late last year awarded the department another $550 million to extend Race to the Top—Obama's signature education initiative—and this time allowed the money to be awarded directly to school districts, and not just to states. It's clear that Duncan sees the potential of investing a half-billion dollars in districts, especially in states that are, as he calls them, "less functional" and haven't won any other competitive grants. "I love that we played at the state level. I love that we played in the [|early childhood space]," said Duncan, who is expected to talk about the new Race to the Top in a speech before the nation's mayors in Washington today. "But I'm really really pleased now to have a chance to participate with districts, and there's a huge appetite there." Besides hammering out the details of what a new Race to the Top competition for districts would look like, Duncan's most immediate task is overseeing an ambitious new plan to grant states [|waivers] from many of the core components of the No Child Left Behind Act—his answer to Congress' inability, so far, to formally rewrite the law. Already, 11 states have [|applied] in the first round, with a second wave of applications due Feb. 21. Given the choice between sticking with his waiver strategy or having to live with one of the [|proposed versions] of a new ESEA Act offered by the House and Senate, he said the choice is clear. "No question the waivers are a stronger plan," he said. "I hope that changes. I hope at some point next month, six months from now, or next year that we get a strong bipartisan bill; unfortunately that's not reality." For the first time, Duncan telegraphed how tough he plans to be on states that win a waiver. It's the same kind of tough talk he engaged in before and during the original $4 billion Race to the Top competition for states. "I'm not promising anyone we're going to bat 1,000. We may grant a waiver to a state that makes its commitments in good faith but doesn't keep them," he said. "And just to be very clear, and just as in Race to the Top, if we need to revoke the waiver six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, because folks can't deliver on what they said, we're more than prepared to do that." He was almost as tough on states that [|don't apply for a waiver]—such as California—and decide to stick it out with the current NCLB requirements. Though he said it wasn't his first choice, he said he was prepared to withhold Title I money to states, if needed. "It is the law, so I think we have an obligation to enforce the law," Duncan said. "If it was warranted ... absolutely." (Chief of Staff Joanne Weiss added that any money withheld likely would be state administrative money, and not the Title I dollars that go directly to benefit students.) In Race to the Top, Duncan is starting to live up to that tough talk, most recently by putting Hawaii on [|"high-risk" grant status] and threatening to take away its $75 million award. Although the state has made progress in the last several days by reaching a [|tentative contract deal] with teachers, which was a major stumbling block for Race to the Top, he said it's too early to tell if Hawaii is out of the woods. And the same goes for New York, which he said he's monitoring closely as that state also [|stumbles] on its Race to the Top promises. As for his future, Duncan—a former Chicago schools' chief—made clear that if Obama is re-elected, he wants to stay on for another four years. "I'll have to see if he's sick of me first," Duncan said of the president. "I'd love to stay." He cited all the work that's left to do, such as bringing down "unacceptable" high school dropout rates, and raising the country's college graduation rate. "This work takes a long time. I said repeatedly I desperately wanted to do 10 years in Chicago. I did 7½, and literally this was the only job in the world that I would have left Chicago for," he said. "And I don't think there's a job in the world that I would leave this for. You gotta stick with this work, stick with it for the long long haul. I know how far we have to go."

=// We read the Star Teacher article by Martin Haberman last term and here is a copy of his obituary... He passed away on January 1, 2012. //= Haberman championed education for children in poverty Martin Haberman, distinguished professor emeritus in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) School of Education, died Sunday, Jan. 1 in Milwaukee at the age of 79. A memorial service is set for Sunday, Jan. 15 at Goodman-Bensman Funeral Home, 4750 N. Santa Monica Blvd. Whitefish Bay. Visitation will begin at 11 a.m. and the service will begin at 1 p.m. Haberman, who taught at UWM for 43 years, was a nationally known expert on preparing teachers, particularly teachers who worked with children living in poverty. Friends and colleagues remembered him for his fierce dedication to that work. “His passion for preparing quality teachers for children in urban poverty is his legacy to each of us,” wrote Haberman’s UWM faculty colleagues Hope Longwell-Grice and Linda Post in an email to School of Education faculty and staff. Since retiring from UWM in 2005, Haberman had continued his work on teacher preparation and selection with the Haberman Educational Foundation. The foundation’s national training staff travels to school districts all across the country and trains school leaders in the research-based Haberman Star Teacher/ Principal Selection protocols. These protocols help them select teachers and principals who will be most likely be able to work effectively with diverse students from poverty backgrounds. “The number of cities that use my teacher interviews bring in about 30,000 mature adults who will be effective with diverse children in poverty every year,” Haberman said in a 2005 interview. “If you estimate the number of children those teachers will reach, I’ m touching the lives of millions of kids in positive ways…and that’s a very, very warm feeling.” In the same interview, Haberman said his passion for teacher education grew out of his own experiences standing in a draft line in New York City during the Korean War. The key to remaining in college and out of the Army was scoring well on a 30-word test. While he was successful, he said, he saw many African-American, Puerto Rican and poor white men who couldn’t pass the test. “That experience changed my life.” He realized, he said, that “the fundamental inequities in the American public education system are life-threatening.” His goal became to change the education system for the children in poverty in urban schools. He went into teacher education, he said “because I felt I could have more influence there than as a teacher with no voice or ability to influence policies in highly bureaucratic urban schools or state departments of education.” Haberman, who earned his master’s and doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University, before coming to UWM in 1962, was the author of several books and numerous articles on teacher preparation. He was frequently cited in the national news media on teacher training and the factors contributing to teacher success. Early in his career in Milwaukee he developed an innovative internship program for liberal arts graduates which caught the attention of the late Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy. This became the model for the National Teacher Corps, which eventually prepared 100,000 teachers. “It was a notable failure,” Haberman said with his typically blunt honesty in the 2005 interview, “but I learned a lot about what doesn’t work and it made me famous.” He saw the Teacher Corps, which ran from 1963-72, as a learning experience. “I’m a firm believer in experimenting with teacher education models. We learned a lot about what worked and what didn’t work.” Building on that early experience and the years of research that followed, Haberman developed a significant body of knowledge on the ideology and behavior of effective teachers for diverse children and youth in urban poverty. “The surest and best way to improve the schooling and the lives of the approximately 15 million children and youth in poverty is to get them better teachers,” he said. At UWM and in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, Haberman said in the 2005 article, he found such a wonderful laboratory for experimenting with ideas to improve education that he never was tempted to go elsewhere. “I was very fortunate to be at UWM and in Milwaukee. They have also given me the opportunity to try anything I’ve ever wanted. I couldn’t have found a better place. UWM has been an absolute, perfect laboratory.” A tribute posted on Education News by Delia Stafford, executive director of the Haberman Educational Foundation, drew comments from educators all over the country. A former colleague, Wanda Blanchett, now dean of the School of Education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, posted: “We can only hope to live our lives as dedicated to the plight of this country’s most underserved children as Marty did – what a legacy of an unwavering commitment to social justice! ” “I loved him for his unyielding commitment, caustic sense of humor, truth telling, and keen insight,” Mark Larson, an assistant professor at National-Louis University, posted. “He told me once: ‘I’m a pragmatist doing the best I can with the world as it exists.’ He did damn well. He will be sorely missed, but the impact of his work will be felt for generations.” Haberman is survived by a daughter, Jill Eannelli; grandson Nicholas Eannelli and nephew Daniel Haberman His wife, Florence Haberman, preceded him in death.

// Video of the week: RtI Workshops and Information //
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** Our topic is multiculturalism in our classrooms, so I chose this video to share... **
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Please feel free to browse around the pages and I urge you to enter into discussions with your fellow candidates. To do this, you need to click on the page to the left that is closest to what you are looking for and then look for the discussion tab above. When you become comfortable, then start adding your own resources. We are a learning community and all are asked to contribute what they have found. Just keep in mind, we are all striving to be CLEAR, CONVINCING AND CONSISTENT as professional educators and National Board Certified Teachers!

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