Come one, come all!
The Network for Public Education has opened early registration for the 2018 annual conference in Indianapolis, the heart of Pence ountry.
Please join us for an exciting event!
Meet education activists from across the country.
Meet your favorite bloggers.
Network with your allies.
Special rates for early registration.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Signed up, hope nothing prevents me from attending
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Having problems with signing up. Anyone else having problems?
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Hello Señor Swacker:
You may check your name if you type by mistake as “Joker” or “Trump fan”, or worse “EduRefomer Rhee/Campbell”… that is just a “kidding” suggestion, ha ha ha.
I might go under different name like Susu or Vivi (from SUrVIva)l I am sorry that I am in a mood to mock the internet which is not in our disposal or control (which most intelligent users are misled in communication.) Please take good care of your health in a soon retirement stage. I hope that you book has reached many educators, parents and students in 2018. Cheers. May.
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Hope all is well with you May.
Been retired almost three years now. Health is getting better. It’s all those new parts-LOL! Still working on the lower back and miscellaneous other things. But certainly feeling a lot better than last fall. Chronic excruciating pain sucks the life out of ya. At least we’ve gotten that pain taken care of. Now all the other pains don’t seem as bad. But hey, it’s all better than the other alternative, the deep nothingness, so I’ll continue to enjoy it all while I can.
Everywhere I go I try to pawn off the book onto whomever will take one. Maybe one day my Quixotic Quest of eliminating these bogus and harmful standardized tests will come to fruition. The evolution away from said testing is already happening in New Zealand, so there is a start!!!!
Take care!
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be sure to check the box where you agree to the terms of service. otherwise you will get an error notice and nothing works
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Can’t even get to that screen. I’ll try later in the evening. The furthest along I’ve gotten is the third screen and it hangs up. The internet out here isn’t the best, needless to say. The pipeline “fills up” pretty quickly. Not usually during the day, but I’d bet that it has something to do with all the on line testing that is going down these days. Just another reason to hate that crap, eh Richard Phelps.
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I’m going to check with the Oxford Dictionary to see if they would consider replacing Luddite with Swackerite. 😜 I had same problem.
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My Oxford Dictionary has been mum on that aspect! I’m proud to own a 1955 Oxford Dictionary-my birth year. Picked it up at a book sale for $2.00. It sits in a prized place in a cherry wood hutch that I made about 33 odd years ago along with the 1950’s Encyclopedias Americana from my childhood.
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GregB:
I just signed up. It’ll be my second NPE Conference, first since Chicago. My nametag will read Randal Hendee, in case you want to slander an old fart in person.
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How much is hotel? Is camping out of the question?
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Mate,
Contact Colleen Wood, coordinator for the conference at casacolleen@hotmail.com
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Drove to all the conferences so far. 1st NPE get together in Austin I slept in my car. 2nd conference in Chicago I stayed with friends. 3rd in North Carolina I camped in a state park. 4th one in Oakland I camped in a regional park up in the hills overlooking the Bay area. This year I’ll find a state park somewhere around Indy to camp in.
At $170/night for a hotel I just can’t do it. If it’s stupid weather-wise, I’ll get a cheap motel room in a small town for a third of the price of the convention hotel room.
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Yeah, I also camped in NC and will camp this year too.
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It’s the most wonderful time of the year!
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Looking forward to seeing you in Indy!
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I’ll be there with bells on!
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Indianapolis is a good pick, not so much for Pence but because Indiana ed reforms are sold hard all over the country. Indianapolis is very fashionable in ed reform circles right now- it’s the “portfolio” system. It’s exactly the same as the old “privatize all the schools” system, but it sounds better. Until you read it and immediately realize it’s exactly the same as all their other plans – they just use more politically palatable language.
We’re learning more and more about ECOT in Ohio. Apparently they had employees signing non disclosure agreements:
“A pair of government watchdog groups have requested information from Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow’s Toledo-based sponsor to see how much money the now shuttered online school may have paid out to former employees to keep them quiet.
The Associated Press first reported that a would-be whistleblower, a former ECOT technology employee, notified several state officials that ECOT had used software to intentionally manipulate its attendance data after questions had already been raised by the state.
That former employee, laid off before the school closed, had refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement that would have prohibited him from talking disparagingly about ECOT, sponsor Educational Services Center of Lake Erie West, and other entities affiliated with the e-school.”
I wonder how widespread this is in charterworld. Someone in government needs to go thru these layers of contracts and find out what these “public entities” are up to. Do they not have access to the contracts in Columbus? I don’t understand why they needed a “whistleblower”- the contracts charters enter into are secret?
http://www.toledoblade.com/City-Desk/2018/04/30/Groups-explore-extent-of-ECOT.html
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“Dettelbach, a former federal prosecutor, has said that Yost and other state officials have hurt the potential case against ECOT by not referring the matter quickly for criminal prosecution.
Yost’s office replies that its investigators interviewed the whistleblower multiple times and have considered the claims as part of an audit that is to be released soon. Only after that will any criminal referral, if warranted, take place.
Yost Spokesman Ben Marrison wouldn’t say whether the audit found criminal wrongdoing, but said of the auditor’s investigators, “They don’t need to run somewhere else and have somebody do the work. They do the work.”
Odd, though.
When Columbus Public Schools had “count” irregularities the state auditor sent armed agents into the schools to seize records. Criminal referrals were made immediately and the state auditor conducted a big show for media where they arrested public school employees and paraded them around publicly. Some of them pled, some of them went to trial, but it was front page news for weeks, a media show clearly orchestrated by the auditor.
Why are charter employees treated differently (and better) than public school employees? Why has it taken a decade to a get a criminal referral?
Why have we not seen a single named individual from ECOT or Lake Erie West named in media in connection to this scandal? What are their names? Who runs this “public” school, specifically? Which individuals? “ECOT” isn’t a person and either is “Lake Erie West”. Why can’t we get the names of the managers?
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These are the board members of ECOT:
Board
Members
Andrew Brush – President
Matthew Ottiger – 2nd Vice President
Pam Bennett – Parliamentarian
Shirley Spellman
Vincent Resor
Cindy Oddi
Steve Sellers
John Hamlin
I got them off the ECOT website. Someone could ask them why they didn’t provide any oversight to this school. A public school board would be named and asked and investigated by the auditor.
ECOT has a CEO and numerous other (highly paid) executives in their lavish corporate headquarters. What are their names? Who signed off on the lavish corporate headquarters that was 100% publicly funded, BTW?
Do they run this company or not? They’re all publicly-paid. Every dollar ECOT pays to managers comes from the public. Why do we get “an ECOT spokesperson” instead of the CEO of the company?
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