Arne Duncan hailed the Senate bill produced by Senators Alexander and Murray as a good bipartisan effort.
Duncan was generally positive about the Alexander-Murray bill but said the Obama administration wants a final law to expand early childhood education and to place stronger demands on states to improve their worst-performing schools, among other things.
For example, “turning around schools” by closing them, firing teachers and principals.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Duncan has no clue, no ideas, no vision whatsoever. He is so done, and knows it.
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No, you are deceived. Duncan IS PLEASED with this Trojan horse of a bill because it is giving his Orwellian patrons power people can’t even wrap our minds around. It sounds very mild. “the Obama administration wants a final law to expand early childhood education. ”
All federal aid, all head start money, for our poorest children will be tied to compliance with providers like this one. I will cut and paste the goddamned link because you are all too busy and important to open it.
Here’s TSGold,
http://teachingstrategies.com/
“GOLDplus™ by Teaching Strategies uses rich data to help you plan ahead, track progress, and inform decisions that meet the needs of each child, every step of the way. So you can spend less time connecting the dots, and more time connecting with each child.”
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The official program description of the MANDATED kindergarten assessment component, imposed this year by the Massachusetts Departement of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE)
In collaboration with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, EEC is implementing the Massachusetts Kindergarten Entry Assessment (MKEA) system, which will support school districts in using a formative assessment tool that measures growth and learning across all developmental domains during the child’s kindergarten year. As part of the MKEA initiative, school districts will use a formative assessment tool that is evidence based and aligned with the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. EEC has identified Teaching Strategies-GOLD System as the assessment tool for cohorts 3 and 4.
Teaching Strategies GOLD is an assessment system for children from birth through kindergarten designed to help teachers: observe and document children’s development and learning over time; support, guide, and inform planning and instruction; identify children who might benefit from special help, screening, or further evaluation; and report and communicate with family members and others. Teaching Strategies GOLD also enables to teachers to (1) collect and gather child outcome information as one part of a larger accountability system and (2) provide reports to administrators to guide program planning and professional development opportunities. Teaching Strategies GOLD addresses the following Developmental Domains: (1) Social-Emotional, (2) Physical, (3) Language, (4) Cognition, (5) Literacy, (6) Mathematics, (7) Science and Technology, (8) Social Studies, (9) The Arts, and (10) English Language Acquisition.
http://www.mass.gov/edu/birth-grade-12/early-education-and-care/mkea/#description
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And here’s my union, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, standing up with our member locals and fighting Duncan on the ground, under the heel of these mandates, while Randi Weingarten and (sadly) Lily Eskelson Garcia dither up there on the podium.
We could use some help.
http://www.massteacher.org/issues_and_action/kindergarten_assessments.aspx
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He wants to keep Bush ideology that had no basis in research? What a moron.
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And an EVIL moron at that. Also…Duncan is just a has been everything.
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Diane, I happened to be looking for school closure information and ran into this Department of Ed site (for its School Improvement Grant) and found state-by-state stats that listed the total transformation schools in the state, then broke it down by type of transformation, including “closure.” The report is Cohort 1 Schools (SY 2010-11 Data) and is at
http://www2.ed.gov/programs/sif/sig_state_data_summary_sy10-11.pdf. And here a few numbers from the larger states:
Cal: 92 total transformations, 2 closures
TX: 48 total, no closures
FL: 71 total, no closures
NY: 25 total, no closures
PA: 52 total, 2 closures
This is early research for me, but school closures don’t seem to be a very popular option in the transformation world.
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As your research proceeds, is it possible that 2010-11 SYr was in time span allotted schools to improve under supervision? Will more recent years show different results? (e.g., Cami Anderson was appointed for Newark in 2011; Rahm Emanuel closed Chicago schools more recently.)
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Those figures are whack’. Give me a couple of hours and I can generate a list of the NAMES of schools that have been shut down and the property turned over to charter-school-linked real estate interests. I guess they have a way to go back and sanitize their own records to make it appear something else happened.
Improvement isn’t an issue at all. Don’t go along with the mealy-mouthed core of their lies. The goal is to get the schools, public budgets, and public properties under corporate management control.
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Constant threat of closure is sufficient?
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Duncan is looking for his next bed to lie in. Having dealt with some of these Washington bureaucrats outside of education, I’ve learned that they are always looking for the next job. Goodbye Arne. Maybe try out for a ball boy on some European basketball team?
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The Reading Professor: why do you think so little of ball boys that you expect them to lower their standards just to admit Arne Duncan to their ranks?
Please reconsider.
😎
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Basketball coach, author (“How I Got the Top to Turn Around’) or consultant
for Pearson.
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“The Duncan-Kruger Effect”
The Duncan-Kruger effect
Is rampant with reform
Where thinking has been checked
And chutzpah is the norm
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😎
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Duncan continues to, and forever will be, an edu-reformer bully villain.
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Well, DC Democrats said at the outset they would fight for testing and that’s all they got: testing.
Their interest in (existing) public schools begins and ends with our kids test scores.
I look forward to the next stern, scolding lecture from politicians and CEO’s on how we all have to “skill up!” and “compete!” when the Common Core test scores come out.
They’re going to hold our 3rd graders accountable no matter what happens! More grit!
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Now that we’ve brought “accountability!” to public schools, when do we get some government reform out of DC? They could start with some regulation on ethics, corruption and capture. It’s difficult for me to believe every problem in this country is directly attributable to the laziness and labor union membership of public school teachers.
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” It’s difficult for me to believe every problem in this country is directly attributable to the laziness and labor union membership of public school teachers.”
Well, okay, Chiara. Maybe ALL the labor unions are responsible for the downfall of this great country.
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Sarcasm alert.
If there are new readers, somebody might need to tell you this is an ironic rejoinder from a long-time fighter.
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Thanks, chemtchr. I was “in the moment.”
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Having begun teaching during the last big shortage, I always wonder how the new shortage will work. Let’s say that the “best and the brightest” opt for beginning their careers in business and silicon as soon as they graduate, rather than lose out to competitors. Now you fire everyone in low performing schools (which will be just about everyone if they can’t improve already high scores). Now you have to hire just about anyone (as we said in the late 60’s “warm bodies” or you have to make the “best and brightest” want to be unemployed for two months; be willing to be culture and behavior changers in some schools (even charters); be willing to pay for insurance against law suits they will encounter; hold at least a master’s degree; take multiple useless staff trainings; respect children, even when they insult you, cause problems in class, and enlist their parents to intimidate you; teach students with second grade level reading ability using grade level material; and will not mind being ineffective based on an invalid, unreliable test after working an eleven to twelve hour day and weekends (a norm for the average English teacher). I for one accepted these criteria, but that was the 60’s for you.
If that can’t be done, you just might have to have starting salaries comparable to investment bankers and code-writers. OR, reduce the level of education needed, and decide “certain” children can be taught by high-school graduates, and allow students to drop out after third/eighth grade if they are not interested in an education, After all, that’s how it was in the good old days, and one of my father’s friends became an atomic scientist. There’s your proof–one anecdote.
There are reasons for public education (unless you really want to live in a third world environment). There are also reasons for unions that actually work to the benefit of the public. Without job protection why work for less than you are actually worth–the love of kids? I guess very few people love kids, judging from the decline in teacher candidates. (I respect young people but did not “love” all of them. I loved my son. I didn’t expect his teachers to.)
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I enjoy having student teachers, I’ve had one every year for 6 years…until this year. Also know I won’t have one for next year.
Opt-out is also a choice for those college students who look at teaching as a career, and see little reason to consider it.
They, ahem, opt-out.
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