Tag Archives: Washington DC Schools

Rouge Forum Update: French Students + Workers Take the Lead

Rouge Forum Update: French Students + Workers Take the Lead

French Students and Workers Show the Way!
French students blockaded more high schools and universities Thursday, as the third straight day of nationwide strikes over the government’s retirement reforms snarled train travel and sent a renewed challenge to President Nicolas Sarkozy.

France’s BFM TV showed groups of students toppling trash cans in southeast France, erecting barricades in the middle of a Paris avenue, and being closely watched by police in several areas.

While the protesting students won’t reach retirement age for decades, the government is keeping a close eye on their rallies because student protests have brought down major government reforms in the past.

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Video embedded in Daily Californian Reports

Little Red Schoolhouse

The Education Agenda is a War Agenda; A Class and Empire’s War Agenda: Navy Takes Over San Ysidro Schools: The Navy is teaming with the San Ysidro School District in the service’s largest initiative of its kind. Partners in Education pairs locally-based ships with schools to ensure students leave with “academic, technical, and employability skills necessary to be successful in the workplace,” Navy officials said.

Divide and Rule–California to Gut K-12 Schools, Hit State Workers, the Poor and Disabled, and Prisoners, with a Small Bribe to Colleges and Universities: California’s in-home healthcare program for the elderly, blind and disabled would shrink by 3.6%, the document says. Child-care services provided by the state would be trimmed by $48 million.Winners in the plan would be the state’s two higher-education systems, the University of California and California State University. Both would receive $200 million to compensate for cuts made last year and enough money to fully fund projected enrollment growth, according to the report.

Rhee Going Going Gone but Rotten Contract, Sellout Unions, and Racist System Hold Strong: D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee will announce Wednesday that she is resigning at the end of this month, bringing an abrupt end to a tenure that drew national acclaim but that also became a central issue in an election that sent her patron, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, to defeat.

For Those Who Thought They Could Vote In Real Social Change in DC Schools: Presumptive mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray introduced Kaya Henderson on Wednesday as the interim chancellor of D.C. public schools and vowed that reforms launched under Michelle A. Rhee would continue when he takes office in January….In Henderson, Gray inherits someone in tune with Rhee on the fundamentals of education reform, especially the belief that teacher quality is the most important determinant of student success. Rhee and Henderson worked together at the New Teacher Project, a teacher recruiting nonprofit group that Rhee founded and ran before she was appointed by Fenty in June 2007. Henderson was a vice president for the group. She was Rhee’s first appointment and was named her top deputy the day Rhee was introduced to the District. At the time, Rhee made it sound as if they had come to the District as a package. “I told Kaya, ‘I can’t do this without you,’” Rhee said at the time. “She’s everything you’d want in a leader. She has an ability to motivate people. She’s a critical thinker, and she’s an innovative thinker.”

From the Same Reporters Who Brought Us VAM (and the ACLU)–Will UTLA Dump Tenure and Seniority? “This is a shifting of the tectonic plates,” said David Gregory, a professor of labor law at St. John’s College in New York City. “If this were to move forward, every major district in the country is going to look to this as the model…. It would be the most innovative system in the country — if it comes to pass.”

You Kiddies Good and Better Do your Salutin: The Poway Unified School District clarified its Pledge of Allegiance policy after outraged parents said students shouldn’t be able to opt out of saying the pledge. Superintendent John Collins announced the change at Monday’s school board meeting, saying the district sought legal advice to make sure it was following both state and federal law. State education code says every school should have a daily patriotic exercise and the pledge fulfills that requirement. On the other hand, federal law says no one shall be compelled to say the pledge

Wall Street’s Fake Successful Charter in Harlem: The parent organization of the schools, the Harlem Children’s Zone, enjoys substantial largess, much of it from Wall Street. While its cradle-to-college approach, which seeks to break the cycle of poverty for all 10,000 children in a 97-block zone of Harlem, may be breathtaking in scope, the jury is still out on its overall impact. And the cost of its charter schools — around $16,000 per student in the classroom each year, as well as thousands of dollars in out-of-class spending — has raised questions about their utility as a nationwide model.

Ohanian And Metro Times Show Depth Of Detroit Schools’ Economic/Social Crisis: Metro Times has learned that twice in the past 10 months, the state has approved two short-term loans totaling $443 million. Department of Treasury spokesman Caleb Buhs confirms that the loans, obtained through bond sales, were approved by his department. However, no mention of the loans — $256 million in March and $187 million in August — was made on the DPS, Department of Treasury or governor’s websites. Buhs tells Metro Times the loans must be repaid by August 2011. Currently, the state is withholding $45 million per month in funding to satisfy the debt, Buhs says.

Read the full RF Update here.

Rouge Forum Update: Firings in DC–Build October 7th!

Don’t forget Rouge Forum 2010 next week! More info here.

Little Red Schoolhouse:

Michelle Rhee of DC Fires 241 Teachers After Hugging AFT’s Weingarten for Helping Out on Sellout Contract. The AFT Does–Nothing Much and More Educators are on Firing Line: D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced Friday that she has fired 241 teachers, including 165 who received poor appraisals under a new evaluation system that for the first time holds some educators accountable for student improvement in standardized test scores….Last month, union members and the D.C. Council approved a contract that raises educators’ salaries by 21.6 percent but diminishes traditional seniority protections in favor of personnel decisions based on results in the classroom. The accord also provides for a “performance pay” system with bonuses of $20,000 to $30,000 annually for teachers who meet certain benchmarks, including growth in test scores

States RaTT Each Other Out: Less than two months after the nation’s governors and state school chiefs released their final recommendations for national education standards, 27 states have adopted them and about a dozen more are expected to do so in the next two weeks.

Their support has surprised many in education circles, given states’ long tradition of insisting on retaining local control over curriculum. The quick adoption of common standards for what students should learn in English and math each year from kindergarten through high school is attributable in part to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition. States that adopt the standards by Aug. 2 win points in the competition for a share of the $3.4 billion to be awarded in September. “I’m ecstatic,” said Arne Duncan, (Obamagogue’s Boy Toy)

Stimulus Bait and Switch: The San Dieguito high school district must return $2.8 million of already-spent stimulus funds to the state. The district has to give back the money because it automatically converted to a different category of school system that is entitled to drastically less stimulus funds. The expense comes at a rough time for the district. It’s also facing a $2.78 million reduction in property-tax revenue calculated since June. To deal with the loss of funds, the San Dieguito Union High School District board Tuesday approved laying off 15 nonteaching workers and reducing several school services as steps toward adjusting future budgets.

Read the full RF Update here.

Rouge Forum Update: Chicago teachers; Puerto Rico students win!

The Rouge Forum update, with details about the Chicago Teachers CTU victory, the students’ win in Puerto Rico, and much more (see the ongoing tragedy of Detroit) is here: www. richgibson .com/blog/

The Rouge Forum Conference schedule, August 2-5, 2010, George Williams College of Aurora University, Williams Bay, WI, is here.

June 19: Juneteenth

1865 – Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, United States, are finally informed of their freedom. The anniversary is still officially celebrated in Texas and 13 other contiguous states as Juneteenth.

Little Red Schoolhouse

Kellen Blumberg, High School Essay Winner, on the Ratt: “In fact, tests have shown that the emphasis on standardized testing has actually led to a reduced amount of “teaching higher-order thinking, time spent on complex problems, and amount of high-cognitive context in the curriculum.” National standardized testing has led to a teaching style that is less innovative and more rigid. Creative teaching styles have been shackled by new standards, and the importance of high test scores has taken precedence over the value of genuine learning. Standardized testing has led teachers to “teach to the test” instead of instilling the fundamental principles of critical thinking,”

Duncan Loves Those Ed-Union Hacks and His Ratt: “Mr. Duncan used his time with the lawmakers to say that the administration does not view charter schools as the answer to closing the achievement gap between affluent students and their low-income peers. He also went out of his way to downplay what he said was the media’s misportrayal of the administration’s agenda as a battle between education reformers and teachers’ unions.”Resist those easy platitudes and narratives,” he said. “There are dozens of examples of breathtaking union leadership.”

What Actually Does Motivate People?
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CSU System Fees Hiked Again: “California State University Board of Trustees on Friday approved a 5% fee increase for undergraduate students for the fall, taking action at a special board meeting in Long Beach. The fee hike translates to a $204 increase for full-time undergraduates, bringing the total university fee to $4,230 for the 2010-2011 academic year. Including campus fees, the cost for an undergraduate to attend a Cal State campus would rise to $5,097…Last fall, undergraduate fees rose 32%, after an unprecedented reduction in state support, resulting in a deficit of $584 million.”

D.C. Teachers Ratify Merit Pay Contract: “Teachers in D.C. have voted overwhelmingly to ratify a tentative union agreement, a deal that’s been almost three years in the making. More than 1,400 union members voted in favor of the contract, while approximately 400 voted against it.”

NYTimes Letters: Big Tests Create Big Cheats: “Testing is fine as long as it has no high-stakes results; test scores along with other information help us know what reforms are working, as the editorial points out. But once these tests are linked to high-stakes consequences, like teacher pay, tenure or the closing of schools, the results are no longer dependable for diagnostic purposes, either for schools or individuals.”

Read the full update here.

Rouge Forum Update: Support Oakland’s 4/29 Strike! March on Mayday!

Open Letter to March 4th Activists: “The central issue of our time is the rapid rise of color-coded social and economic inequality coupled to the promise of perpetual war, this challenged by the potential of mass, class-conscious, resistance. If the above paragraph is wrong, completely baseless, then save time, stop reading, as most of what follows flows from it.”

Substance News Censored by Chicago School Bosses: For several days in April 2010, Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Ron Huberman, or one of his top aides, ordered and monitored the suppression of traffic on the SubstanceNews Web site by putting a “block” between teachers and others in Chicago’s schools and access to the site.

California Community College System on the Brink: “As some students are blocked from state universities, the community college system has trouble absorbing both them and the laid-off workers who are going back to school for retraining. All are trying to fit into a community college system that lost $520 million in state financing over the last academic year, about 8 percent of its overall budget.”

Duncan To Detroit: You’re On Your Own: “But these issues have to be worked out at the local level. We want to be supportive of change, we want to challenge the status quo, but again this has to be worked out at the local Detroit community.”

Kenneth Burnley of DPS Fame Moves To Alaska (avoiding prosecution): “Kenneth Burnley, the former CEO of Detroit Public Schools, has landed a new leadership post — in Alaska. The Mat-Su Borough School Board unanimously selected Burnley on April 24 to become superintendent of the district with 16,600 students and 44 schools. Burnley led Detroit Public Schools, now down to 85,000 students and 172 schools, from 2000-05 during the state’s takeover of the district. He is working at the University of Michigan under a fellowship.”

No Rhee, No Funds for DC Schools–So Say the $ Tyrants: “Private foundations pledging $64.5 million for raises and bonuses in the District’s proposed contract with the Washington Teachers’ Union have attached a series of conditions to the grants, including the right to reconsider their support if there is a change in the leadership of the D.C. school system.
The leadership condition, set by the Walton Family Foundation, the Robertson Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and the Broad Foundation, makes it clear that they could withdraw their financial support if Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee leaves or is fired through the funding agreement’s expiration in 2012.”

Detroit Public School Gangsters Busted Again: “indicted for converting more than $3 million of district funds to themselves, friends and family, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Named in the indictment are Stephen Hill, 58, of Detroit, former executive director of the risk management office and Christina Polk-Osumah, 59, former risk management finance manager. Also named are Sherry Washington, 53, and Gwendolyn Washington, 66, both of Detroit, who are partners of Associates for Learning, a vendor hired to administer a health awareness program for DPS. The eight-count indictment unsealed today alleges bribery, fraud, extortion and money laundering committed between 2005 and 2006. Such crimes are punishable for up to 10 to 20 years in prison.”

Univ. of Wisc. Cancels 4/26 Antiwar Forum Over ‘Security Concerns’

Read the full Rouge Forum Update here.