CTEN - September 2011 newsletter

Dear Colleague,

Welcome back! By now all school districts in California are in session. We know that some teachers have taken a pay cut, and many will have to yet again make do with fewer materials in their classrooms.  But it would appear that due to AB 114, no teachers have been laid off, at least for the time being. If you are not aware of AB 114, we did a complete story on it in our July newsletter - http://www.ctenhome.org/PDFdocs/CTENLTL7-11.pdf

While this is an election off-year, CTA is still very politically active. If your politics don’t happen to jibe with CTA’s, or you don’t think that a teachers’ union should be spending money on issues that have nothing to do with teaching or education, you might want to consider not giving them the 30% or so of your dues that go toward politics. If you’d like more information about your options, please go to http://www.ctenhome.org/know.htm

If you are making this move, it is a two step process. First, you resign from the union, thus becoming an agency fee payer, and then request that the political part of your dues be returned to you. Sample letters for both steps are available here - http://www.ctenhome.org/knowMembership.htm#exoptions  If you already are an agency fee payer, you must request your rebate this year (and every year!) by November 15th. If you are as much as one day late, you will not get a penny. Also, because liability insurance is important for teachers, we suggest joining the Association of American Educators http://www.aaeteachers.org/  or Christian Educators Association http://www.ceai.org/  Both AAE and CEAI are professional organizations, not unions, and are apolitical. (Also, teachers who mention CTEN when they sign up with AAE for the first time will get a $30 discount off the regular $180 first year membership.)

Speaking of resigning from your union, here is an inspiring story from an articulate teacher in Wisconsin who did just that - http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/article_8333100d-c468-52bc-8fe2-9890e857274a.html?mode=story

Laurie Rogers is an education advocate who runs a provocative blog that we think is well worth checking out. “Betrayed is a forum on public education designed to inform the public about critical education issues affecting students, teachers, community members, and the country.” It can be found here - http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com/2011/09/politics-driving-math-classes-not.html

She also posted the following on the CTEN Facebook page, “I'm seeking out education professionals who work for rigorous academics and an effective, efficient teaching approach. I think the public needs to hear about you. Perhaps others would be inspired. You can be anonymous, but I have to know who you are. There is so much in public education to be angry about, even frightened about ... But many professionals ARE aware and are working on behalf of the children. Let's celebrate the good.” She can be reached at wlroge@comcast.net

For those of you who are reform-minded, there is an excellent new education news and opinion website started by Bob (“The Cartel”) Bowdon. A one-stop shop for matters pertaining to education reform, one can find original stories, state-by-state happenings and listings of every reform conference, event, etc. in the country. Just unveiled yesterday, it’s sure to be a well trafficked site - http://ChoiceMedia.TV

One of our subscribers, Rhory Lamboy, has been a special ed teacher for over 20 years. She is of the opinion that special ed teachers are inundated with paperwork and regulations, leaving them little time to teach. She would like to know if you have similar concerns. What are you dealing with in the area of special education? Are you feeling more like a lawyer, secretary, or educator? (General education teachers – feel free to respond also.) TheSchoolWorkGuru@gmail.com

Recently a teacher in Florida posted some anti-same sex marriage comments on his Facebook page - http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/19/florida-teacher-suspended-for-anti-gay-marriage-post-on-personal-facebook/#ixzz1VUbbIys1 He was suspended from teaching, but reinstated in short order. However you feel about this story, it does bring up some important questions about social media that all educators using Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc. should be aware of and concerned about.  Here is what Missouri is doing on the subject - http://hazelwood.patch.com/articles/mo-school-social-media-bill-compromise-at-core

Whatever your feelings on value added measures, this way of measuring student achievement seems to be gaining traction. This article in the Wall Street Journal gives a good overview - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903895904576544523666669018.html

A story definitely worth watching: termed out United Teachers of Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy, long known for his virulent stance against charter schools, has signed on to be the president of a charter school outfit that promises to open one or more schools by September of 2012. Equally shocking to friends and foes alike is his stance on tenure, which is considerably tougher than the one he held during his six years as UTLA chief. For more on this story, go to http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/01/local/la-me-0901-duffy-20110901

CTEN has two Facebook pages. If you have a Facebook account, we urge you to visit ours and let us know your thoughts. Having a dialogue amongst teachers is an effective way to spread information and experiences and share ideas. Our original Facebook page can be found here http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=125866159932&ref=ts

Our second page, which deals with teacher evaluation and transparency, can be accessed here - http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=126900987357825&ref=ts

If you were away over the summer and did not read the July and August letters, we encourage you to get caught up.  Please visit http://www.ctenhome.org/newsletters.htm to do so.

Finally, we hope that everyone has gotten off to a good start and that 2011-2012, despite the ongoing fiscal turmoil, will be a great one for you and your students.  As always, sincere thanks for your continued interest and support.

Very best,

Larry Sand

CTEN President

CTEN August 2011 newsletter

Dear Colleague,

We know that many of you are back to work already, but quite a few are still enjoying your summer, so we will wait till September for our official back-to-school letter. In the meantime though, there is plenty happening.

The SOS March on Washington came and went without creating so much as a ripple from a policy standpoint. The small crowd carried signs criticizing President Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, capitalism, corporatizers, privatizers, the rich, charter schools and every education reform imaginable as you can see here - https://picasaweb.google.com/113193310602533838134/SOSMarch73011?authkey=Gv1sRgCMfyu8ab68j4sgE&feat=flashalbum#

In a just released book that has received raves from every quarter, Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools, author Steven Brill claims that former education reformer, turned union shill Diane Ravitch is “in it for the money.” It seems that Dr. Ravitch has been well paid for being the unions’ head cheerleader. In any event, Brill’s book promises to be a most interesting read.

One other book, a very brief one, is also well worth reading.  Jay Greene, education researcher and head of the Education Reform Department at the University of Arkansas, has written Why America Needs School Choice, which refutes all the usual arguments with a well reasoned and researched approach.

The American Federation of Teachers’ sleazy tactics used to successfully neuter a Parent Trigger law in Connecticut came to light because someone within AFT decided to put its strategy in the form of a PowerPoint on their website. Education writer RiShawn Biddle posted a story with an embedded link before AFT realized what happened. They pulled the PowerPoint immediately, but fortunately Mr. Biddle saved a copy. All is revealed here - http://dropoutnation.net/2011/08/02/the-afts-real-feelings-about-parent-power/

Teachers unions playing hardball is hardly new. Perhaps the most egregious example of this phenomenon is a training tape, clearly inspired by Marxist community organizer Saul Alinsky, made by the Michigan Education Association, an NEA affiliate, in the 1990s for union negotiators who collectively bargain with school boards. I urge you to listen to the audio and not just read the text. The creepiness of actually hearing the trainer pitch his uncompromising tactics adds a dimension that is missing when you just read the words - http://www.mackinac.org/9405

Also noteworthy is a new study just out from the National Center for Education Information - http://www.ncei.com/Profile_Teachers_US_2011.pdf  According to the Orange County Register, the poll reports that,

“Nearly one in five U.S. educators say they support abolishing teachers unions, and one in three support ending tenure for teachers, according to a new survey by the think-tank National Center for Education Information.
“The survey of 1,076 public school teachers nationwide indicates that educators are becoming increasingly supportive of doing away with unions and tenure, with support growing by four to five percentage points over the past 15 years, to 19 percent and 33 percent, respectively.”( http://articles.ocregister.com/2011-08-03/news/29852188_1_teacher-tenure-math-teacher-public-school-teachers  )

The National Council on Teacher Quality has come out with yet another extensive, scrupulously researched report. This time NCTQ tackles the issue of “Student Teaching.”  If your less-than-satisfactory experience was anything like mine, I think you’ll find plenty to chew on here - http://www.nctq.org/edschoolreports/studentteaching/

In another interesting story, NCTQ claims that the new IMPACT teacher evaluation system in Washington D.C. is working out quite well. For more info, go to http://www.nctq.org/p/tqb/viewStory.jsp?id=27431

And finally, I had an op-ed published in the San Jose Mercury News about the Commission on Teacher Credentialing Commission scandal which curiously got very little media coverage - http://www.ctenhome.org/PDFdocs/SJMN%20-%20CTC%20scandal%5B1%5D.pdf

As always, we at CTEN want to thank you for your ongoing support. Please visit our website – www.ctenhome.org regularly. If you any need information that you can’t find on the website, please send an email to cteninfo@ctenhome.org  or call us at 888-290-8471 and we will get back to you in short order. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Larry Sand

CTEN President

CTEN - July 2011 letter

Dear Colleague,

Since our last newsletter, two major pieces of legislation have become law. On June 30^th, Governor Brown signed AB 114 ( http://toped.svefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/StateBud-TrailerBillAB114Text063011.pdf ), which prohibits laying off any teachers. As such, school districts have been given mandates that will be difficult for many to carry out. Educated Guess writer John Fensterwald says there are three ways that AB 114 steals power away from the local district.

First, it requires that each school district “assume the same level of funding as last year and maintain staffing and program levels consistent with that. Legislators are dictating this even though they admit there’s a good chance that revenues may not bear that out.”

Secondly, AB 114 eliminates the option that “districts would have over the next 45 days to make staff adjustments if they view this as necessary. Instead, the legislature is suspending that capability under the law for the next year. As School Services noted, ‘This provision is clearly designed to protect union positions, even if the district cannot afford to pay for the services.’”

Finally, the new law will “suspend key provisions for one year of AB 1200, under which school districts must self-certify that they can balance their budgets in the current year and one and two years into the future. Those that cannot must work with their county office of education to align revenues and spending. This year 13 districts were negatively certified in the latest filing, indicating they could not balance their budgets this year and next. An additional 130 districts – nearly one in seven – acknowledged trouble balancing their budgets two years out. AB 114 would require districts to assume the same revenue as this year and prevent county offices from seeking evidence of financial stability for the next two years.”

There seems to be little doubt that CTA is behind this bill, which ultimately could spell disaster for many local school districts. The California School Boards Association is already starting to talk about counter legislation.

Regarding the other major new law, back in April, we wrote the following:

As of this writing, SB 48 very well may become law in California. According to the legislative analyst, this controversial bit of legislation “would require instruction in social sciences to also include a study of the role and contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, European Americans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, persons with disabilities, and other ethnic and cultural groups, to the development of California and the United States.” To read the exact wording of the bill, go to http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0001-0050/sb_48_bill_20110329_amended_sen_v98.pdf
 

Last week, Governor Brown signed this CTA-supported bill into law. Hence, it would appear that curriculum and textbooks will undergo some rather interesting changes and SB 48 will most certainly be the topic of many a staff development come the fall.

One other legislative note from last week: The hotly debated Parent Trigger law, which needed some clarification, was addressed by the state Board of Education. The changes put forth were accepted and it would appear that this law originally signed into being by Governor Schwarzenegger in January 2010 will now proceed pretty much in tact.

Longtime LAUSD sub Rob Schmidt, has taken on some important work. He has been documenting cases of students who abuse teachers, and has created several videos which deal with this very sad issue. Thus far, Bill O’Reilly (Fox News) and John Phillips (KABC Radio) have covered Rob’s stories. A Los Angeles Television station has green-lighted a project based on the videos and would like to hear more personal accounts from teachers. So, if any of you have recent stories related to this subject or know someone who does, Rob would love to hear from you. Feel free to contact him at rob.schmidt@earthlink.net His website is www.RobSchmidt.org

Periodically, the National Council on Teacher Quality focuses on a given school district. In June, it was Los Angeles’s turn. They reported,

Probably the most jaw-dropping finding is LAUSD's approach to teacher raises. While all American school districts give raises to teachers who head back to graduate school, LA's approach is a new one on us. In LA, there's actually little incentive to earn a honest-to-goodness master's degree, but instead teachers accumulate what are deceptively termed "credits," which teachers earn for visiting the opera or the zoo during their off-hours. No wonder that so many teachers have reached the top of the pay scale in LAUSD--decidedly unlike any other district we've seen.

Is this really very different from the way your district handles teacher raises? (Perhaps this would be a good topic to discuss on the CTEN blog - http://www.ctenteachers.blogspot.com )

In any event, to read more about the study, go to http://www.nctq.org/tr3/consulting/losangeles.jsp

Also, in an article I wrote for City Journal - http://www.city-journal.org/2011/cjc0707ls.html - I contend that class size does not have an effect on student achievement. I suspect that some of you will take issue with my position, and invite you to post any comments on the CTEN blog for all to see - http://www.ctenteachers.blogspot.com

Regarding our recent CTEN Survey Monkey poll, while many of your responses were pretty much what we had expected, one result however, was a bit of a surprise. Sixty-one percent of respondents said that they were full dues payers. Considering that almost 72 percent identified themselves as Republican or Libertarian, we would be interested in learning why those respondents would choose to stay in a union, paying for politics that don’t reflect their views.

As always, we at CTEN want to thank you for your ongoing support. Please continue to provide feedback so that we can continue to keep you informed, provoke discussion and meet your needs. Thank you very much.

Larry Sand

CTEN President

An Orgasm for the Children

NEA’s reprehensible sexual agenda goes on unabated and the MSM is MIA.

At a time when teachers’ unions are battling for their collective bargaining lives, courtesy of Governors Scott Walker, Chris Christie, John Kasich et al., it’s hard to go a day without reading a newspaper account of the latest union news. However, there is a story involving the National Education Association that has flown under the mainstream media radar.

I could not find a single MSM account of a talk given at a UN conference on March 3^rd where Diane Schneider, representing the NEA at the “Commission on the Status of Women” said:

“Oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms need to be taught in education,” Diane Schneider told the audience at a panel on combating homophobia and transphobia.  Schneider, representing the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the US, advocated for more “inclusive” sex education in US schools, with curricula based on liberal hetero and homosexual expression.  She claimed that the idea of sex education remains an oxymoron if it is abstinence-based, or if students are still able to opt-out.  

Comprehensive sex education is “the only way to combat heterosexism and gender conformity,” Schneider proclaimed, “and we must make these issues a part of every middle and high-school student’s agenda.”  “Gender identity expression and sexual orientation are a spectrum,” she explained, and said that those opposed to homosexuality “are stuck in a binary box that religion and family create.”

A woman wants to teach children as young as eleven about oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms in a public school setting and it’s not news!!??!!

A little digging finds that Ms. Schneider is a high school health educator and very active with the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in upstate NY, where she is its co-chair. She is also proud of the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) that she advises in her high school. Her presentation at the UN conference was part of her training from the NEA’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Trainer of Trainers.

The NEA’s LGBT Trainer of Trainers??

After my initial outrage, it quickly came back to me: the NEA has had a perverse agenda for many years now, taking pride in the fact that they are at the forefront of a movement to sexualize pre-pubescent children. With the MSM silent, I wrote in 2005 about GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings and his relationship with the country’s largest teachers’ union. In Outing the NEA , I wrote that 

…at its 2004 convention the National Education Association gave its prestigious Human Rights Award to Kevin Jennings, the founder of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN). This is the group that presided over the infamous “Fistgate” conference held at Tufts University in Massachusetts in March 2000, where state employees gave explicit instructions (about “fisting” and other forms of gay sexual activity) to children as young as 12. The conference was secretly recorded and can be heard here. The contents are extraordinarily vile.

Unfortunately, “Fistgate” was not an isolated incident. On April 30 of this year GLSEN held an event at Brookline High School in Massachusetts, and distributed an obscene booklet to hundreds of middle and high school students. With headings like F**kin’, S**kin’ and Spit or Swallow?, it describes various sexual practices that can only be described as perverse. 

Mr. Jennings’s career as a sleazy activist has never suffered – not even with his support of the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), an organization dedicated to the joys of pedophilia.

In fact, he was promoted. Currently, he is President Obama’s hand-picked “school safety czar.”

While it is imperative that we address collective bargaining and its attendant evils, we must not lose sight of the fact that a teachers’ union is pushing a sordid agenda and is involved with people whose values many Americans find repulsive and abhorrent. Maybe one day the MSM will take notice.

http://www.massresistance.org/docs/issues/fistgate/index.html

CTEN - June 2011 letter

Dear Colleague,

In our June 2010 newsletter, we opened with this statement:

As the 2009-2010 school year grinds to a close, it is apparent that the recession has taken a toll on education and educators – layoffs, cuts in salaries, larger class sizes, loss of music and arts programs have become part of the diminishing landscape for teachers and students at all levels. And there are many different opinions as to when the economy will turn around.

Unfortunately, the same paragraph is still relevant. However, there are twists this year. While the June 15th budget deadline is not new, the fact that legislators won’t get paid if there is no agreement is a new wrinkle. Also, by June 15th, a new bipartisan commission (created by a 2008 ballot initiative) will release California's new redistricting map.  This could radically alter the character of some lawmakers' districts. This could also have an effect on the budget. And then of course there is the off-again, on-again aspect of a ballot initiative that would extend the temporary tax cuts.

Mike Antonucci had a very interesting piece in his May 31 Communiqué which puts things into perspective regarding the number of teachers we employ. He writes, “The latest Census Bureau report provides details of the 2008-09 school year, as the nation was in the midst of the recession. That year, 48,238,962 students were enrolled in the U.S. K-12 public education system. That was a decline of 157,114 students from the previous year. They were taught by 3,231,487 teachers (full-time equivalent). That was an increase of 81,426 teachers from the previous year.” To read more of this factual piece – no grandstanding - go to http://www.eiaonline.com/archives/20110531.htm

In May, we told you about the budding Commission on Teacher Credentialing scandal. Among other things, auditors found that in August 2009 there was a three-year backlog of 12,600 arrest or prosecution reports to be entered into commission records. Finally, heads have begun to roll. Among the major players to leave their posts were CTC Executive Director Dale Janssen and General Counsel Mary C. Armstrong, but hopefully the fallout won’t end there. There seems to be too much gone wrong for just two people to leave their jobs.

Regarding the pension tsunami, the National Council on Teacher Quality has posted a chart which lists how fully funded teacher pensions are on a state-by-state basis. Not surprisingly, California is not doing well. As your teaching career rolls on, please be cognizant of possible ramifications of underfunded pensions. For more, go to

http://www.nctq.org/p/tqb/viewStory.jsp?id=26263

Several education reform issues have been in the news recently. AB 401, sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers and supported by CTA, is rolling along. Authored by Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, this bill would arbitrarily cap the number of charter schools in CA at 1450. The proposed law would sunset in January 2017 unless a subsequent law deletes or extends that date. So just when charter expansion could be beneficial, the teachers unions are trying to strong-arm state legislators into applying the brakes. The bill, passed by the Assembly on May 19th, is scheduled for a hearing by the Senate Education Committee on June 15th. For more about this bill, go to http://e-lobbyist.com/gaits/text/290957

The Parent Trigger wars continue, now replete with a CTA monkey wrench. With the latest developments in this ongoing saga, Ben Boychuk has an excellent piece on the City Journal California website - http://www.city-journal.org/2011/cjc0607bb.html

About a year ago, I was on a conference call with a group of terrific young education students at Princeton called Students for Education Reform. They were a dedicated group of teachers-to-be who were going into the profession with the idea of reforming it. We have just learned that SFER has branched out and are now on 20 campuses and hope to expand to 100 by 2012. To learn more, go to http://www.studentsforedreform.org/

The following is an email from a CTEN subscriber. If you’d like to offer input, please do so on the CTEN blog - http://www.ctenteachers.blogspot.com

As a possible issue to address with respect to the newsletter, I would like to know why California schools are essentially forced to buy new textbooks every few years when the California Content Standards have not change since, I believe, 1997? The average cost of a textbook has to be around $70; multiply this by the number of students in California public schools using textbooks. The numbers become staggering very quickly. The new textbooks are essentially reshuffled versions of the current text; the standards drive the curriculum-content of the textbooks. If every textbook since the standards were created covers all the standards, why do we need new textbooks unless they are physically worn? Could you find out what the total monetary impact of this ridiculous practice is and why it is occurring when State of California is so impacted by the lack of financial restraint of our lawmakers?

In any event, if you enjoy these letters, please pass them along to your colleagues. We know that there are many independent-minded teachers in California who are looking for alternative sources of information.

If you would like to see us address certain issues, topics, etc. in these newsletters or on our website – http://www.ctenhome.org/ - please let us know.

Some of you have asked and yes, as usual, we will be sending out the newsletter in July and August. We will certainly do our best to update you on any important educational issues. As such, even if you are traveling this summer, please try to stay in touch. Thanks -- and have a great summer!

Sincerely,

Larry Sand

CTEN President

Survey Results Are In!

Greetings,

Recently, CTEN conducted the first poll of its members. I would like to thank the 142 of you who responded. A link that will let you see all the results of the poll will follow at the end of this email.

First, I must acknowledge that there was a careless error in question # 22. Choice C read “I don’t believe teachers should awarded seniority.” It should have read, “I don’t believe teachers should be awarded tenure.”

Just a few observations on the results:

• Almost ¾ of you are between 46-65 years old.
• Only one in six live in an urban area.
• Male-female? Just about 50-50.
• Over 90% of you have been on the job for over 10 years.
• Over 3/5 are full union dues payers.
• The most one-sided results were contained in the questions about union and politicking; you feel that the unions don’t belong in politics and that one should have a choice to join a union in the first place.

Also, please note that for questions where response boxes were used, you can see all the responses that teachers entered in those boxes.

To see all the results of the survey, go to - https://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=Fo8bQGAy905_2fSULK_2fSc5fB9LL42y9F2I9yNqP5ABstA_3d

We will put a link to the results on the CTEN blog - http://www.ctenteachers.blogspot.com/ If you have questions, comments, suggestions, etc., please post them there. Thank you very much.

Larry Sand

CTEN - May 2011 letter

May 17, 2011

Dear Colleague,

Please note that in addition to the traditional emailing of the CTEN monthly newsletter, we will once again have it posted on the CTEN blog - http://www.ctenteachers.blogspot.com/  Since there are several controversial issues covered in this letter, we think it would be a good time for people to share their opinions with other teachers.

I would like to start by thanking all the teachers who participated in our Survey Monkey poll. The results will be sent out in a separate mailing in the near future.

Perhaps the biggest education story of the month in California is the ongoing funding battle being waged in Sacramento. Deep cuts to the K-12 education budget could mean widespread teacher layoffs as early as next month. Last week we got a heavy dose of union demands to raise taxes as CTA led statewide protests, proclaiming that CA is in a “state of emergency.”   The hope is that this week, Governor Brown will be able to forge a deal with the legislature. Clearly the state is in dire straits fiscally, but are increased taxes the only way to deal with it? Maybe not. I offer some different ideas in an article published by City Journal - http://www.city-journal.org/2011/cjc0510ls.html

One way to save some money would be for schools to go to a four day work week. This is a controversial idea that has worked in other states. This editorial in the Los Angeles Times seems to think that it might be worth trying here in CA -http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-week-20110508,0,1663767.story

There is a major scandal brewing in Sacramento regarding the CA Commission on Teacher Credentialing. According to the Sacramento Bee, “State Auditor Elaine Howle appeared at the hearing Tuesday to present her office's findings of flaws in how the commission launches investigations, updates files, gathers facts, tracks cases and revokes credentials. Auditors also found that in August 2009 there was a three-year backlog of 12,600 arrest or prosecution reports to be entered into commission records.” For more, go to http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/05/ricardo-lara-teacher-credentialing.html

In a very interesting story in Time Magazine a few weeks ago, Andrew Rotherham wrote an article called “Better Teachers: More Questions Than Answers” in which teacher effectiveness is examined. As you can tell by the title of the article, there are no easy answers, at least not at this time. To read the article, go to

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2066577,00.html

Speaking of teacher quality, the National Council on Teacher Quality and U.S. News and World Report are partnering to “build better teachers.”  As such, they are launching a website to learn which schools of education are “graduating teachers who are 'student ready'--and which are not.” Considering what passes for rigor in many of our ed schools, I think this is an idea whose time has most certainly come. For more info, go to http://www.nctq.org/transparency.do
 

The national standards argument goes on… and on and on. The anti-common core folks have ramped up their efforts. Recently a manifesto was issued to combat the federal government’s plan for a nationwide curriculum. To read the manifesto, go to http://www.k12innovation.com/Manifesto/_V2_Home.html

As reported by Education Next, a recent Harvard study came up with some findings that run counter to current orthodoxy. “Harvard Study Shows that Lecture-Style Presentations Lead to Higher Student Achievement” makes the claim that “8th grade students in the U.S. score higher on standardized tests in math and science when their teachers allocate greater amounts of class time to lecture-style presentations than to group problem-solving activities.” To read more about the study, go to http://educationnext.org/harvard-study-shows-that-lecture-style-presentations-lead-to-higher-student-achievement/

As I think is obvious, education will remain a very hot topic in the media in the foreseeable future, as we try to figure out what works, what doesn’t and what the cost of it all should be. One of the problems becomes how to figure out whether or not what you’re reading is true. The Media Bullpen is a new website that addresses this issue. They say, “Each day nearly 500 stories—and sometimes many more—are produced in the media about education, but they often lack the context for the public to get engaged. The Bullpen will empower the public to put in context what they see and hear. The problem is not that education is under-reported; the larger issue is that all too often, it is misreported. Balance, context, sound data, and an institutional knowledge of the many issues are often missing.” To learn more about this novel website, go to http://mediabullpen.com/

If you know anyone who doubts the vast power and influence of the National Education Association, a look at a post by Mike Antonucci will probably change their mind. In “The National Education Association and State Affiliates: A $1.5 Billion Annual Enterprise,” he lists the NEA and state affiliate revenues for 2008-2009. Eye-opening to say the least. To read the post, go to http://www.eiaonline.com/archives/20110425.htm

Talking about the power of the unions, Terry Moe has an excellent new book, “Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Schools.” The American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess very accurately describes the book when he says, “"An exquisitely researched, compellingly reasoned treatise on the role of teachers unions and their impact on America's schools. Terry Moe has read everything, collected mountains of data, and thought more deeply on this topic than anyone in America. Special Interest immediately becomes essential reading for policymakers, would-be reformers, and anyone concerned about the future of American education."

In March, CTEN cosponsored an informational event about the Parent Trigger. The panel discussion with four experts on the topic is now available on video. To see it, go to http://www.vimeo.com/22185926

If you are interested in giving CTEN brochures to colleagues, you can print them right from our home page - http://www.ctenhome.org/index.htm  Or, if you prefer, we will be happy to send you as many as you need. Also, anyone wishing to donate to CTEN can do so very simply through PayPal - http://www.ctenhome.org/donate.htm  As a non-profit, we exist only through the generosity of like-minded educators and supporters.

In any event, if you enjoy these letters and find them informative, please pass them along to your colleagues. We know that there are many independent-minded teachers in California who are looking for alternative sources of information.

If you would like to see us address certain issues, topics, etc. in these newsletters or on our website – http://www.ctenhome.org - please let us know. Thanks.

Sincerely,

Larry Sand

CTEN President