Building Democracy

https://youtu.be/2dVtW9VqdUQ?si=nuGVk_ntF8d7jp6y

Sac City Teachers Prepare for a Strike

Sacramento City Teachers Vote to Okay Strike

Make S.C.U.S.D. a Destination District Rally

November 2nd, 4pm @ S.C.U.S.D. HQ








PLEASE JOIN THE TEACHERS OF THE SACRAMENTO CITY TEACHERS ASSOCIATION AND COMMUNITY ALLIES ON NOVEMBER 2ND @ 4PM

WHAT: 'MAKE S.C.U.S.D. A DESTINATION DISTRICT RALLY'

WHERE: - Serna Center, 5735 47th Avenue, Sacramento Ca 95824

WHEN: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2nd, 4pm

Please join educators, parents, students and community members to rally to stand with Sac City Teachers. The Sacramento City Unified School District is in the best financial position in its history.

It is currently sitting on $81 million dollars in reserves while hundreds of our students do not have fully qualified teachers in their classrooms. Sac City educators have united with parents, students and the community to put forward proposals that would make Sac City the Destination District.

What Chartering Could Have Been -

Deborah Meier.
Because charters are now an organized "movement" on behalf of ending public education (plus every other public enterprise?) without any interest in carrying out a nearly 60-year-old U.S. Supreme Court mandate (to integrate schools), it's important to expose them. They are also strong supporters, as a movement, for testing, high stakes, merit pay, and ending unions. I suspect it's a hopeless task to fight that agenda within the charters movement, but I admire those who do.

The part that scares me most is that this attack on public education goes along with an assumption long held by public school educators, too—an education philosophy that provides encouragement to those who've always said that those kids learn differently than more favored white and/or wealthy students. They encourage a dumbing down of education for precisely those whom earlier choice models argued should get what every rich man wants for his child, only more so. The only feature today's Deformers borrowed from the old reforms is choice, usually different choices for charters serving middle-class white students vs. those educating mostly poor African-American children. Too many have abandoned what we in New York City (and Chicago, Boston, etc.) saw as our real secret weapon: schools built around respect across lines of class, race, role, and age; built around curriculum, personalization, and accountability usually associated with the education of the ruling class. (The schools to which our presidents send their own children, for example.) The "Ten Essentials" were Ted Sizer's way of summarizing that spirit, which we expanded upon in our five Habits of Mind. They can't be reduced to a formula. But Ted believed, as I do, that we know respect when we see it even if it's hard to rate it numerically.

Duncan and RESPECT for teachers

At the Department of Education, Warm Snow Falls Up

By Anthony Cody on February 23, 2012 10:32 AM

As the Simpson family prepared to travel south of the equator to Brazil, Homer revealed some misconceptions. In opposite land, according to Bart's father, "warm snow falls up." Reading the latest press releases and speeches from the Department of Education, sometimes I feel as if this is where we have arrived.

For the past two years, the Department of Education policies have been roundly criticized by teachers. The latest response from Arne Duncan is a big public relations push bearing the title RESPECT -- Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence and Collaborative Teaching.

However, as in Homer's opposite-land, everything seems to be upside down.

In his speech launching the project last week, Secretary Duncan laid out what he feels are the problems afflicting the teaching profession.

The Department has solutions to each of these problems - but they often have pursued policies that actually make things worse. Here are the problems, and the solutions the Department of Ed has offered -- many of which are mandatory if states wish to qualify for Race to the Top or escape the ravages of NCLB:

Problem #1: "Many of our schools of education are mediocre at best. A staggering 62 percent of young teachers say they felt unprepared to enter the classroom."

Solution: Evaluate schools of education based on the test scores of the teachers they graduate. Use VAM scores to rate schools of education, and remove funding from those that do not produce teachers with sufficiently high VAM ratings. Since VAM ratings have been shown to be lower among teachers of English Language learners and special education students, programs that place teachers in these classrooms are likely to do poorly. All schools of education will feel significant pressure to prepare their teachers to focus on test scores.

Problem #2: "Many teachers are poorly trained and isolated in their classrooms."

Solution: Continue to support programs such as Teach For America, which places novice teachers in the most challenging classrooms with only five weeks of training.

Problem #3: "Teachers are given little time to succeed--and they are under increasing pressure to get results to meet accountability targets."

Bizarre. What agency of the federal government made competitive grants and the continuation of federal funding contingent on whether states created evaluation programs like the one released last week in New York, that will result in teachers being fired after two years of poor VAM ratings?

Respect for Teachers

Billed as a new initiative to rebuild the teaching profession and elevate teacher voice, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s new RESPECT Project (which stands for Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching) seeks to involve teachers and principals in a national conversation about teaching. The work builds on the more than 100 roundtable discussions that the Department of Education’s Teaching Ambassador Fellows have had with fellow teachers across the country and will continue to have throughout the year.
 
During a teacher town hall to launch the RESPECT Project, Duncan outlined his goals for revamping the teaching profession, which include

▪                Improving teacher preparation programs;

▪                Dramatically increasing teacher salaries and tying pay to job performance, skills, and demonstrated leadership ability;

▪                Establishing career ladders that allow for advancement and leadership opportunities without requiring teachers to completely leave the classroom;

▪                Improving professional development and providing teachers more time for meaningful collaboration;

▪                Providing teachers with greater classroom autonomy balanced with more accountability; and