Riots?

This is laughable. I laughed. The only time that the mayor and chancellor are going to think about listening to and addressing what the people want from their schools is when they fear their power is going to be revoked? Does this practice make us think that they are legitimately going to take our concerns seriously and act on them? Right. That's what I thought. This is ridiculous. Riots in the streets my foot.

MIKE'S 'RIOT' WARNING OVER SCHOOL CONTROL

By SALLY GOLDENBERG and YOAV GONEN

February 7, 2009-

In his strongest language yet on the issue, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday warned of "riots in the streets" if state lawmakers don't renew mayoral control of the city's schools.

"If they didn't do that, I think that there'd be riots in the streets, given the improvement" to schools, Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show.

The law that gave the mayor a majority control of the school policy board and the right to hire and fire a chancellor is set to expire in June.

Bloomberg, who's running for a third term, insisted that none of the reforms that helped boost the school system under his stewardship would have been possible under the old school board.

"Either there's going to be somebody in charge, or there's going to be a committee," he said. "Either management's going to run it, or the people that they manage are going to run it. Going back would be a disaster. And hopefully the Legislature, we can convince them."

Critics of Bloomberg's record on education - many of whom testified at a state Assembly hearing on the issue in Manhattan yesterday - said his dire warnings were off base.

"Bloomberg's bizarre comment only serves to underscore how completely out of touch he is with what public-school parents face every day," said Patrick Sullivan, one of 13 school policy board members whose appointments are at the heart of the mayoral-control debate.

Earlier this week, the teachers union called for the mayor to give up several of his appointments to the board thereby losing his majority hold.

Bloomberg's supporters dismissed the idea, insisting that control of the board was synonymous with mayoral control.

Asked about the issue after his testimony at yesterday's hearing, city Comptroller Bill Thompson said he hadn't made up his mind - even though he testified in support of mayoral control.

"I haven't made a final decision on that yet," said Thompson, a mayoral candidate and former community school-board president.

State Assembly members yesterday took shots at Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, particularly over what they called a lack of parent engagement and transparency.

Education Committee Chairwoman Catherine Nolan, citing her own experience as the mother of a public-school fifth-grader, said she had been hung up on by Department of Education employees tasked with assisting parents and ordered around harshly by school employees at a public event.

"The respect for parents starts at the top," Nolan said, eliciting applause from the crowd.

Klein agreed that it was "inappropriate" for parents to be treated that way, and said he was open to discussing changes to the law that would improve parental engagement.

He also said he was amenable to reviewing the way the department secured contracts with outside agencies, but he insisted that the current governing structure was essential to the success of the schools.

"If, in fact, every time you make a decision, people have the ability to either overrule you or terminate your job, you're not going to get the leaders you want," he said.

yoav.gonen@nypost.com

CollegeBoard to Debut an Eighth-Grade PSAT Exam

Princeton Review's Kanarek, however, said eighth grade is too late
to begin pulling together a college prep portfolio.
"Eighth grade is not the key year for college assessment. That's
sixth grade," he said."

By Gale Holland
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 8, 2008

High school students already face a battery of standardized tests on
their way to college. Now, the college testing frenzy is reaching into
middle school.

The College Board, which owns the SAT, PSAT and other tests, plans to
introduce an eighth-grade college assessment exam in 2010, a top
College Board official said this week.

The new test would be voluntary, said Wayne Camara, the vice president
for research and analysis at the New York-based nonprofit, who spoke
at a college enrollment conference at USC early this week. But critics
noted that the PSAT, which also is voluntary, was taken last year by
3.4 million students, and said the new test would just boost the
pressures for students considering college.

High school students now can take the PSAT in 10th or 11th grade to
practice for the SAT college entrance exam and to qualify for
educational aid programs including the National Merit Scholarship. But
younger students have been signing up for the PSAT in growing numbers,
perhaps to establish eligibility for gifted or enrichment programs, or
to measure college readiness.

The new test would be tailored to eighth-graders. And it would put
students on notice to start lining up the rigorous courses required by
selective colleges, Camara said.

"By the time they're taking the PSAT, it's much too late to determine
whether they should be taking algebra in the eighth grade, biology,
and other important gatekeeper classes needed for college," he said.
"This test will help schools identify students who have some talent
and could likely succeed if they take honors or AP courses, but have
not been recognized."

Some Southern California educators said they welcome the opportunity
to get students, particularly African Americans and Latinos who are
underrepresented in higher education, into the college game early.

Los Angeles Unified School District Senior Deputy Supt. Ramon C.
Cortines said he has proposed that the district offer all
eighth-graders the chance to take the PSAT beginning next year, as
many top private schools do. "Polytechnic, Westridge, Harvard-Westlake
all do," Cortines said. "Just because you go to a public school you
should still have the same opportunities."

Honey Koletty, a college counselor at Carson High School, agreed: "If
you want your kid to go to a highly selective institution, you really
do have to know in the eighth grade."

But critics questioned whether the College Board, whose SAT test is
coming under increasing scrutiny from universities, is pushing the
admissions frenzy into middle school simply to boost its revenue. The
exam will compete with testing rival ACT's Explore, an eighth-grade
assessment test used in Long Beach Unified School District and schools
across Southern California, an ACT spokesman said.

Nearly 1 million students took the Explore test in the 2005-06 school
year, the spokesman said.

"It's a brilliant marketing ploy, but it's pure Pablum," Paul Kanarek,
head of the Princeton Review test prep service in Southern California,
said of the College Board's pitch for the eighth-grade exam. "They're
locked in a death match with ACT over who takes the ACT or the SAT.
Once you buy into a certain product line, you're likely to stick with it."

Camara said the exam, which has not been named, is now undergoing
field development tests. It will be multiple-choice and will cover
critical reading, math and writing. A spokeswoman for the College
Board said it was too early to provide other details about its content.

Colleges would not use the exam's results, Camara said. "The test is
given in the eighth grade," he said. "By the time they apply to
school, [the results] would not be relevant."

Russlyn Ali, executive director of Education Trust-West, the Oakland
arm of a Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to improving education,
said many California public school students are first-generation
college aspirants who lack the background and information to map out
their own routes to higher education.

"That plays out in kids' real lives; most of them are taking a
hodgepodge of classes . . . and by the end of 11th grade it's too
late," Ali said.

Princeton Review's Kanarek, however, said eighth grade is too late to
begin pulling together a college prep portfolio.

"Eighth grade is not the key year for college assessment. That's sixth
grade," he said.

"Now we're going to have a preadmission test to get ready for the
preadmission test? Get ready to get ready to get ready?" said Robert
Schaeffer, public education director of Cambridge, Mass.-based
FairTest, which is critical of standardized testing. "To believe you
need an eighth-grade test on top of the PSAT and SAT is just insane."

Cortines said he welcomes the new test, as it will focus families and
teachers on what students need to succeed. The deputy superintendent
said he has asked the board to budget $125,000 for eighth-grade PSAT
tests in the coming school year.

At the same time, Cortines said he believes Los Angeles Unified
students are overtested. For example, many California high school
students now take the state standards tests, the state exit exam, the
SAT and SAT subject tests, the ACT and several Advanced Placement
tests, all in the junior year.

"We have people in Sacramento and in political offices that think that
accountability is testing. And accountability is not testing,"
Cortines said. "The eighth-grade California standards test . . .
should tell us how children are prepared for high school. I'm not sure
we need it again in the ninth grade . . . in the 10th grade, and then
the 11th grade. Teachers are so loaded down with tests they have very
little time to teach anymore."

Deborah Sigman, deputy superintendent of assessment and accountability
for the state Department of Education, defended the state-mandated tests.

"Our primary purpose is to check on how effectively are schools
preparing students, and we see them as very important," she said.

Several educators said they would wait to see the College Board's new
test before judging whether it will be useful.

"California has a very shabby test setup. A lot of these testing
outfits are entrepreneurial, they're trying to make a buck," said W.
James Popham, a professor emeritus of education at UCLA who has
written extensively about testing. "If there is a market to be served,
to add another test, they're more than willing to do that. But if the
test is well-conceived, it will have an instructional yield.

"But testing takes time, testing costs money. You really have to
demonstrate that the addition of another test is worth it. The jury is
still out on that."

gale.holland@latimes.com

Just for fun...

Here's a nice little song by singer-songwriter and storyteller, Tom Chapin about testing...

WWW.NotOnTheTest.com

Go, watch it. Now!

Talking about DEMOCRACY..........

Teacher faces dismissal for not getting book OK

Published January 24th, 2008

By Sarah True

Connie Heermann has been teaching for 27 years.
On Nov. 26, she was told to turn in her letter of resignation from Perry Meridian High School.
Earlier that month, she had handed out copies of The Freedom Writers Diary to her students to read.
Now she's at home, on administrative leave with pay, waiting for a Feb. 7 hearing with the school board to decide if she can keep her job.
Because it's a personnel matter, the hearing will probably be an executive session, or closed to the public, officials said.
She's not optimistic about her chances.
"My lawyer said the odds of winning a dismissal hearing are pretty low," she said, seated at dining room table in her Greenwood home.
Copies of the book, the movie, other novels and her recollection of the events leading to this stage are stacked neatly on the tablecloth.
The Freedom Writers Diary was written by underperforming students at a Long Beach, Calif., high school. Using their own voices and words, they talked, often explicitly, about their high school experiences and class discussions.
Their teacher was Erin Gruwell and her story was made into a movie. Heermann had attended Freedom Writers Institute training over the summer, a program for teachers about Gruwell's three-stage process for student success: Engage, Enlighten and Empower.
Heermann said she was excited to implement her July training to reach her students at Perry Meridian High School, students at the bottom of the school's four levels of English classes.
"There's the gifted and talented, then the accelerated college prep, then college prep, and then there's me," Heermann said, explaining her classes. The odds are against them to graduate, she explained. Some have experienced abuse, gangs and juvenile detention centers, and others have emancipated from their parents.
"These kids are survivors. If we were at war, I'd want them on my side," Heermann said, characterizing her students.
She'd found a sponsor to pay for 175 copies of the book. She asked for permission to use the book in class. Her school's principal, Joan Ellis, was hesitant, she said.
Heermann said, "they didn't want students to feel like the students in the book, and the profanity might cause trouble for the school."
She put the book reading on hold, having students read John Grisham's The Street Lawyer. As Heermann continued to read her students' journals, she was convinced they were ready to read The Freedom Writers Diary. She sent home permission slips, explaining the project, and allowing for an alternate book, The Wave, to be read if parents objected. All but one student had permission to read the book.
"The principal gave permission and said what we needed now was assistant superintendent permission. The central office has to OK the book," Heermann said.
She sent all of her materials to central office and heard nothing back about it, she said. She handed the books to her students in morning classes. That afternoon, she got an email from the principal asking her not to distribute books until there was further discussion.
Because the book was supplemental reading and not a textbook, it didn't have to go through the same approval process as a textbook. But she still needed permission from the district.

"She acted without clearance to pass out materials she should have gotten clearance for," said Perry Township school district attorney Jon Bailey. The books were examined by four levels of administration, he explained, and found to be inappropriate for the classroom.
"She got frustrated by that and went ahead and did it anyway," Bailey said.
"Here's my pivotal moment. I chose my fate," Heermann said. The next message Heermann got was that she needed to collect the books back from the students. If they didn't surrender the books, she had to write down their names.
"I respect my principal and my department chair," she said. Heermann blames the central office for the problems. "Central office is wishy-washy. Administrators are living in fear for their jobs."
Since being placed on administrative leave, the Christmas season was stress-free
Her husband, Tom, said, "She was putting in 60 hours a week. And she has to tutor an autistic daughter at night."
They have two children, Maggie, 13, and Dylan, 10.
Heermann would like to go back to teaching, though she's not optimistic. Because she has 27 years of teaching experience and makes about $60,000 a year, no other district is likely to hire her — she's too expensive, she said.
"I'd like to go back to the classroom. After 26 years, I found a program that works. And I had 14 weeks with these kids. I finally reached these kids."
Her husband has been totally supportive of her decision. "You don't have courage until you have to," he said. "We've found a lot of faith through this."

The Blog-O-Sphere Gets HUNGRY!

Bloggers twist Barack Obama's words
Friday, March 21st 2008, 4:00 AM

There's a new anti-Obama storyline whipping through cyberspace at the
speed of stupid.

Put simply, some Internet nitwits say Obama's comment that his white
grandmother - who made racist remarks and was fearful of blacks - was
a "typical white person" just proves he can't stop alienating white
voters.

Never mind that Obama's point, made casually Thursday on a
Philadelphia radio show, was to emphasize the important truth that
whites, including his elderly grandmother, are slowly winning the
fight to purge their hearts of poisonous prejudices.

That message was swiftly discarded as a gaggle of bloggers and
correspondents - whose collective contribution to an honest national
dialogue about race has been nil - pounced.

"Barack Obama basically called all white people racist," wrote
blogger/radio show host Taylor Marsh on the Huffington Post, neatly
avoiding the inconvenient fact that such a libel from the biracial
candidate would include (or half-include) himself.

Other political Web sites echoed Marsh's sentiment - Oooh! He
said 'white person'! Now he can't be President! - and conservatives
dutifully added it to their talking points.

Once again Obama, having scaled political heights undreamed of 90
days ago, finds himself bedeviled by his most formidable adversary: a
bored and biased press corps that refuses to recognize or report race
relations the way Americans actually live it.

Obama forecast this problem Tuesday in his groundbreaking race
relations speech, noting the media "has scoured every exit poll for
the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of
white and black, but black and brown as well."

I saw the phenomenon up close in South Carolina. Obama supporters
chanted, "It's not about race!" but hundreds of reporters - many of
whom had never set foot in the state before - pecked at their
keyboards and told America the primary was racially divided.

Were they kidding?

In South Carolina, Obama won 43 out of 46 counties; the richest, the
poorest and basically everything in between - including a majority of
white voters under 30. Of course, that didn't stop the spin.

Nor have the anti-Obama writers explained how he won so many votes in
places like Iowa, Utah, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming, where pretty
much the only voters are white. The default explanation - that those
states somehow don't count - doesn't make much sense.

Obama's daring attempt to initiate a frank national dialogue about
race - a challenge Hillary Clinton and John McCain seem unlikely to
meet - runs the risk of foundering on the rocky shore of smug
ignorance and indifference.

It's odd that the same reporters and pundits who give short shrift to
topics like housing segregation, discrimination and racial
disparities in credit and health have become experts on race
relations.

Ridiculous! All they're doing is seizing on nonissues like Obama's
remark to breathe life into a story line of racial division in the
presidential race, even where it doesn't exist.

Their confidently pessimistic predictions about white voters
abandoning Obama en masse have been wrong ever since they failed to
predict Obama's Iowa win or the stunning string of victories that
followed.

When the lull in primaries ends next month, voters will go about the
business of proving the so-called experts wrong once again.

elouis@nydailynews.com