PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) - An Oregon high school English teacher will not be allowed to carry her gun to school, a state circuit court ruled on Friday in a decision closely watched by both sides of the gun debate.
Shirley Katz, who has a legal permit to carry a concealed handgun, argued she needed the Glock semi-automatic pistol to protect herself from her ex-husband. She sued the school district when it told her carrying a gun was against a district policy prohibiting guns.
Circuit Judge G. Philip Arnold agreed with the district, saying "The District has a right to enforce this policy." he noted that employees "accept their jobs subject to, and knowing, the policy."
"We are pleased," said Dr. Phil Long, superintendent of the Medford School District. "This case was a distraction from our real mission, which is educating children."
The teacher had support from pro-gun rights groups. In light of multiple school shootings, some gun advocates have argued that teachers, and maybe even students, should be armed to prevent such tragedies in the future.
In April, a student shot dead 32 people at Virginia Tech University and earlier this week a gun-wielding student killed eight people at a high school in Finland.
"I was not particularly surprised," said Kevin Starrett, executive director of the Oregon Firearms Federation, whose group paid the teacher's legal bills and is discussing an appeal.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Teacher Loses Battle to Take Glock to School
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Green Dot, Inc. and Weingarten Ready for the Bloomberg to Fire the Starting Gun
Weingarten has the troops mobilized and ready to give away their job security and autonomy. Wonder if she is angling for some of the Broad-Gates cash to fund her campaign for AFT president? Then Broad would own management (Green Dot, Inc.) and labor (AFT)--and, of course, the souls of the children. From New York Teacher:
Buffalo, NYC charter school teachers join union
Hector Ruiz Jr., community organizer at the UFT Bronx office, stands behind parents who come out in force to support the UFT-Green Dot charter school in New York City. Photo provided by UFT.
Friday, November 09, 2007
The Economist: The Bloomberg-Klein "grand plan to charterise the entire city school system"
Whoops! The cat is officially out of the bag, with the account of how Bloomberg & Klein plan to privatize the New York City Schools.It will not be simple sell, however, to convince the public to turn over the Schools to the corporate curriculum writers bought by Eli Broad, Bill Gates, and the Walton family, in schools where tenure is abolished and teachers do test score piece work, where the civic responsibility of providing for our children's educations has been relinquished to those who have have reduced the value of life to the formulae provided by consumer capitalists and their mantra of global competitiveness, where a child becomes a "scholar" in the bogus data factory that has replaced the idea of school, where she works overtime toward a future that poverty and racism will most likely disallow.
To get this charterising done, Bloomberg and Klein must hold up an example to show a skeptical public how they can tame poor black children while choking high test scores out of them. This is the miracle of KIPP, where children and parents must sign a contract that assures compliance and no complaining if a child is to be allowed to be brainwashed into believing that his future simply depends upon how hard he works, how nice he is. Otherwise, complainers or behavior problems or slackers are booted out, and in comes the next eager face from the waiting list of children whose parents are desperate for something other than the standard fare that Bloomberg and Klein provide to the poor of NYC. And if the child remains compliant, by the time he comes to see through the illusion, he will have learned that he, himself, must have not worked quite hard enough or that he was somehow less than nice to deserve the fate that he, indeed, could not have created.
A clip from The Economist:
THE 220 children are called scholars, not students, at the Excellence charter school in Brooklyn's impoverished Bedford-Stuyvesant district. To promote the highest expectations, the scholars—who are all boys, mostly black and more than half of whom get free or subsidised school lunches—are encouraged to think beyond school, to university. Outside each classroom is a plaque, with the name of a teacher's alma mater, and then the year (2024 in the case of the kindergarten), in which the boys will graduate from college.
Like the other charter schools that are fast multiplying across America, Excellence is an independently run public school that has been allowed greater flexibility in its operations in return for greater accountability, though it cannot select its pupils, instead choosing them by lottery. If it fails, the principal (head teacher) will be held accountable, and the school could be closed. Three years old, Excellence is living up to its name: 92% of its third-grade scholars (eight-year-olds, the oldest boys it has, so far) scored “advanced” or “proficient” in New York state English language exams this year, compared to an average (for fourth-graders) across the state of 68% and only 62% in the Big Apple. They did even better in mathematics.
This is the sort of performance that the mayor, Michael Bloomberg, now wants to extend from New York's 60 charter schools to all of the city's schools. On November 5th, the mayor and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, announced what is in effect the final piece in their grand plan to charterise the entire city school system. As charter schools remain politically contentious, though, they have been careful not to use that phrase in public.
When Mr Klein took the job in 2002, having led the Clinton administration's efforts to break up Microsoft, The Economist joked that he should try to do the same thing to New York's schools monopoly. He more or less has. Under the new scheme, every school run by the city will receive a public report card, with a grade that reflects both academic performance and surveys of students, parents and teachers. The first grades were given out this week. . . .
California's Ah-Hah Moment on High School Exit Exams
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The number of California high school dropouts spiked in 2006, the first year seniors were required to pass an exit exam to graduate, according to a report presented Wednesday to the state Board of Education.
The analysis found that 24,000 high school seniors dropped out in 2006, about 10,000 more than just four years earlier.
The information could give ammunition to lawmakers and others who have criticized the exam, as well as those who have lobbied for alternative assessments.
The firm that prepared the report, Human Resources Research Organization of Alexandria, Va., made several recommendations to the board, including a suggestion that California explore other ways for high school seniors to demonstrate proficiency. In Massachusetts and Washington state, for example, students can be judged on a portfolio of their high school work.
This is where the ideology of testing comes up against the reality of testing: the ones who can see beyond the ideology have an ah-hah moment--and those who cannot just have their eyes glaze over as they change the subject.
Remember these numbers?
- Of the 10 states with the highest percentage of African-Americans, 9 have high school exit exams.
- Of the state with the highest percentage of Hispanics or Latinos, 8 have high school exit exams.
- Of the 10 states with the highest percentage of whites, 1 has exit exams.
- Of the 10 states with the lowest graduation rates, all 10 have high school exit exams.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Charter School Crackdown in Ohio
Speaking of report cards, Ohio has finally decided to act on corrupt charter school scam that has drained hundreds of millions of dollars from Ohio taxpayers. From the NY Times:
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio became a test tube for the nation’s charter school movement during a decade of Republican rule here, when a wide-open authorization system and plenty of government seed money led to the schools’ explosive proliferation.
But their record has been spotty. This year, the state’s school report card gave more than half of Ohio’s 328 charter schools a D or an F.
Now its Democratic governor and attorney general, elected when Democrats won five of Ohio’s six top posts last November, are cracking down on the schools, which receive public money but are run by independent operators. And across the country, charter school advocates are watching nervously, fearful the backlash could spread.
Attorney General Marc Dann is suing to close three failing charter schools and says he is investigating dozens of others. It is the first effort by any attorney general to close low-performing charter schools.
Gov. Ted Strickland said he wanted to carry out his own crackdown.
“Perhaps somewhere, charter schools have been implemented in a defensible manner, where they have provided quality,” he said. “But the way they’ve been implemented in Ohio has been shameful. I think charter schools have been harmful, very harmful, to Ohio students.”
Some 4,000 charter schools now operate across the nation, most advertising themselves as a smaller, safer alternative to the neighborhood school. Nationwide, the movement has gained traction among Democrats, partly because of the successes of a few quality nonprofit operators.
But some charters are mediocre, and Ohio has a far higher failure rate than most states. Fifty-seven percent of its charter schools, most of which are in cities, are in academic watch or emergency, compared with 43 percent of traditional public schools in Ohio’s big cities.
Behind the Ohio charter failures are systemic weaknesses that include loopholes in oversight, a law allowing 70 government and private agencies to authorize new charters, and financial incentives that encourage sponsors to let schools stay open. . . .
Bloomberg Exempts NYC Charter Schools from Report Card
From the NY Post:
November 7, 2007 -- While the city graded 1,224 public schools from A to F for the first time this week, report cards for its 60 charter schools were stamped with a different mark: incomplete.That's because charter schools don't measure student, teacher and parent satisfaction using the same Department of Education surveys, officials say.
"We have to figure out a way to use their measure of parent satisfaction in a way to calculate a grade comparable to the grade of district schools," said Department of Education spokeswoman Melody Meyer.
Education officials said that there are legal obstacles to imposing the measures on all charters, but that steps were being taken to grade those schools whose charters were authorized by the city.
That explanation left even some charter-school operators scratching their heads.
"There's no reason we couldn't fill [the survey] out. We'd be happy to do that," said Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Charter Network, which operates a school in Harlem. "If you were a charter-school operator and the chancellor asked you to fill out a survey, would you do it? I would."
Those who questioned the immunity of charter schools from the grading scheme said it might wrongly suggest to parents that the schools have something to hide.
"I think it's a mistake not to assess them the same way public schools are assessed," said Merryl Tisch, vice chancellor of the state Board of Regents - one of the three charter-granting organizations in the state.
"There have been charter schools that have really struggled along the way," she said. "What's wrong with letting people know that?"
Advocates and others who work with charter schools argued that the high level of accountability built into charter school contracts should serve as enough of a public record.
Each charter school must establish strict goals for its students over a five-year period in order to have its charter renewed, and the annual assessments of those goals are publicly available, they said.
"I just don't know that it's necessary to have a grading system since you have this level of accountability that's built into the system," said Jeff Maclin, vice president of communications for the New York Center for Charter Schools Excellence.
But some parents said that having different accountability standards did not prevent the city from figuring out some way to assign grades to charter schools.
"By all means they should be graded," said David Bloomfield, a member of the Citywide Council on High Schools.
Wonder how NYC public schools can get some of that "built in" accountability magic that allows them to avoid oversight and public scrutiny? I think we know the answer to that question. If you don't, ask Steve Barr or Randi Weingarten.
More on Green Dot, Inc.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
The Grand Old Party of David Duke
Using a questionable, unprecedented maneuver President Bush has installed a solid Republican majority on a supposedly bipartisan civil rights panel, leading it to abandon racial justice and civil rights cases in favor of arguing against school integration and affirmative action.The eight-member US Commission on Civil Rights has served for half a century as the nation's watchdog against racism and discrimination. Neither party is meant to have more than four members, but Bush effectively "installed a fifth and sixth Republican on the panel in December 2004, after two commissioners, both Republicans when appointed, reregistered as independents," Charlie Savage reported in the Boston Globe Tuesday.
"I don't believe that [the law] was meant to be evaded by conveniently switching your voter registration," Commissioner Michael Yaki, one of the two remaining Democrats, told the paper.
The administration's argument? Because the Republicans all-of-a-sudden decided to 'abandon' their party, Bush's appointment of two more Republicans to the panel didn't violate the letter of the law, which only required no more than half the panel be affiliated with one party. Alberto Gonzales, then White House counsel, received Justice Department approval of the maneuver.
Few noticed the unusual circumstances at the time, and presidents previously have been able to create majorities of like-minded commissioners, Savage reports, but Bush's commission has essentially made an about-face in its view of what civil rights cases to pursue.
Savage reports:
Before the changes, the agency had planned to evaluate a White House budget request for civil rights enforcement, the adequacy of college financial aid for minorities, and whether the US Census Bureau undercounts minorities, keeping nonwhite areas from their fair share of political apportionment and spending. After the appointments, the commission canceled the projects.
Instead, the commission has put out a series of reports concluding that there is little educational benefit to integrating elementary and secondary schools, calling for closer scrutiny of programs that help minorities gain admission to top law schools, and urging the government to look for ways to replace policies that help minority-owned businesses win contracts with race-neutral alternatives.
The conservative bloc has also pushed through retroactive term limits for several of its state advisory committees. As a result, some longtime traditional civil rights activists have had to leave the advisory panels, and the commission replaced several of them with conservative activists.
Bloomberg Can't Wait for School Failure
Bloomberg and Klein, rather, are on the fast track to privatization with Green Dot, Inc. poised to be the big recipient of taxpayer money beginning next year. With Randi Weingarten betraying the teachers of NYC with bonus pay plans for test scores and deals cut to allow Green Dot to gain a foothold in the South Bronx, Bloomberg is sitting pretty with at least 50 public schools, maybe a hundred, on the chopping block as a result of his new school "report cards."
From the NY Times:
Under a blunt new A through F rating system that judges schools not just on performance but also on progress, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg designated 50 New York City public schools as failures yesterday, saying they were so dismal that their 29,000 students would be allowed to transfer elsewhere.
A “not insignificant number” of those F schools, and even some of the 99 schools that received D’s, could be closed or have their principals removed as soon as this school year, Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference announcing the grades. He added: “Is this a wake-up call for the people who work there? You betcha.”
The grades released yesterday contained many surprises, with some schools with top-notch reputations receiving B’s, C’s, D’s — and even F’s, to the astonishment of some parents. . . .
The Worm Has Turned
When students in third- through eighth-grade classrooms in Whiteside County took state exams last school year, 84 percent hit the mark on tests in math and reading. In Lee County, it was 87 percent.The message is already registering loud and clear in Broward County, Florida with a group of teachers and parents who have organized to return learning to their schools. Test prep just became optional for some. Unfortunately, poor children who are suffering most from the non-stop testing will have to wait for testing epidemic to die out further:
However, in Whiteside, only 51 percent of the county's class of 2008 high school students met basic standards on achievement tests. In Lee County, it was 61 percent of this year's seniors.
The story is similar in all 102 Illinois counties: Students perform fairly well through eighth grade but the percentage of juniors meeting state standards in high school is much lower, an Associated Press analysis of new state data shows. . . .
Efforts to reduce the FCAT frenzy kicked into full swing Tuesday as students got the chance to opt out of pre-tests and a team of educators tried to figure out how to purge the all-FCAT, all-the-time mentality from Broward County classrooms.
Tired of letting the high-stakes test consume daily classroom lessons, the School Board more than a month ago ordered the superintendent to find an answer. His plan of attack launched Tuesday.
"As a first step in the School Board's commitment to decrease the FCAT frenzy, the Benchmark Assessment Test [BAT], our district-developed assessment, will not be administered to all students this [school] year," Superintendent James Notter said in a letter to parents that was dated Tuesday.
Students who score a level 4 or 5 out of 5 on the reading and math sections of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test can pass on the district diagnostic, which is meant to measure progress but is not mandated by the state. It is given three times before FCAT testing begins in February.
The FCAT is more than a way to assess student achievement. Student graduation, teacher bonuses, funding and school image are tied to the test, which is given to third- through 11th-graders and measures progress in reading, math, writing and science. Students who score a 3 or higher are considered to read and perform math at grade level.
Parents of students who no longer must take the test but who want their kids to continue anyway must fill out a permission slip on the back of the letter and return it to school by Nov. 14, about two weeks before the next round of BAT tests begin.
Middle and high school students take the district test from Nov. 26 to Nov. 30. Elementary school students take it from Dec. 10 to 14.
"I think it's about time they did something," said parent activist Jeanne Jusevic, whose son and daughter attend Monarch High School in Coconut Creek. Her son regularly scores 4's in reading and math on the FCAT but "Christmas trees" the district's test, she said.
"He is so sick of the test, that he just fills it out," she said. "We really have caused school to be a painful experience for student and teachers."
Jusevic was one of about 20 parents, teachers, principals, students and district administrators who met Tuesday to determine ways to prepare students for the state's high stakes test without hurting other classroom lessons.
This was the first of several meetings that will occur over the next four months, and Tuesday the group created its mission: "How does the district transition from a FCAT prep environment focus to an environment where quality teaching of the curriculum is the focus?"
Several ideas came up, such as preparing high school students for college-entrance exams, which can be used in place of the FCAT for those students who are on track to graduate but failed the state's test. Also, creating a survey to ask students and teachers what they think would work best and developing a pilot program to see how schools would fare if they focused solely on curriculum.
"It's a real indication that enough is enough," said Deputy Superintendent Earlean Smiley. "We have to find another way to put the human element back into teaching and learning."