bodner079

Teach for America's 25 th  Anniversary Summit starts today in DC – if it's anything like the 20 th , it will be a blast! I'm going for the day tomorrow, taking an early train down and a late train back. If you want to get together email me here or text or call me at 646-258-0687.   If you want to attend and haven't registered, it's not too late: from the web site: If you would like to register for and attend the Summit, walk-up registration will be available in  Hall D of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center  during the Summit. Walk-Up Registration Hours Friday, February 5: 9am—8pm Saturday, February 6: 7am—4pm For more information, see:  www.teachforamerica.org/25thsummit . Here's an overview: Each day of the 25th Anniversary Summit will be distinct: ·           Friday  starts with time to meet and greet old and new friends and sessions focused on leadership development ·      ...

Things like this make me groan and hold my head in my hands.  Steve Nelson, the head of Calhoun, an elite, highly progressive Manhattan private school, in an essay he published in HuffPo (that I agree with!) decrying racism in this country, attacked me and "no excuses" charter schools, naming KIPP, Success and Democracy Prep: A prominent hedge fund manager in Manhattan is a leading advocate for "no excuses" charter schools, such as KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program), Success Academies and Democracy Prep. Well-documented reports reveal that children at KIPP have been punished by being labeled "Miscreants," students at Success Academies have wet their pants due to stress and the refusal to allow them to go to the bathroom, and children at Democracy Prep have been shunned, branded by wearing yellow shirts and literally forced into silence, with other children and adults forbidden to speak to them. This "reformer" is on the record saying that these me...

If he visited a KIPP school, maybe Nelson would meet someone like this and the scales would fall from his eyes: My name is Wydeyah Hay and I am a TEAM Academy (KIPP New Jersey) founding class member, part of the first class when TEAM opened in 2002. This fall, I returned to the classroom as a Relay Resident at KIPP's Seek Academy. Through this program I'll be on my way to earning a master's degree by apprenticing in a well-run classroom. It was because of the values that KIPP helped instill in me that I was inspired to become a teacher and support my community. While some of the things I've read have said that reform has failed in Newark, or that it was a "wash" for Newark's kids, I am living proof that this is not the case. Over the last five years, KIPP has opened four new schools in Newark and has grown to serve roughly 2,000 more kids. And politicians need only to see what I see in my school each day, that's no "wash" for the kids in thes...

Darrell Bradford with a very powerful, provocative and spot-on piece (aimed at people like Steve Nelson) entitled:  Have All Those 'White Moderates' Martin Luther King, Jr. Decried From Jail Become Today's Anti-School Choice Progressives? Again, here we see King's well-intentioned white moderates as today's white progressives. And again, the forces of what King fought against are at work. The opposition to expanded choices for families of color in residential clusters where schools don't work feels precisely like the denial of the kind of freedom white progressives have so much of they don't even notice it. In a world where education means so much, it feels like, for these kids, they care about it very little. Nothing is served by sending a child to a school that does not work, is the wrong fit, or that many white progressive parents would never choose. And no institution has a higher value than the soul of an individual child that is being wasted away by un...

Jay Mathews with a spot-on article,  Many parents hated Common Core math at first, before figuring it out : Much better information has come from Common Core parents and teachers whose help I sought in a December column. My son had complained about the tedious new ways of learning math in my grandson's first-grade class. I asked readers to email me what they thought of the new methods derived from the standards. Astonishingly, given the political controversy and my own ambivalence about Common Core, almost all of the reactions from people with children in schools have been positive, particularly when talking about math. Nearly every one of them said they disliked the program at first but changed their minds when they realized that their kids, with good teaching, were learning more with greater enjoyment than they did at that age. Montgomery County parent Marianne Sullivan said that "like many parents in the early years, we were confused by the math in particular and not very s...

Amanda Ripley with some great points in this article,  Stop Talking About Teachers As If They're Missionaries : When Lisette Partelow embarked on a new career in 2012, she had all the props of an elite Washington professional: an Ivy League degree, management responsibility, challenging work, and a paycheck that placed her—in her first year on the job—in the top 25 percent of US salaries. Yet when she told people about her work, the response was very different than the one that awaited her attorney husband. "The reaction was 'Oh, that's cute,' " she remembers. " 'You must be sweet. But kind of dull.' " Partelow, as it happens, was a teacher. And our standard narrative about teachers has long held that they're underpaid and underappreciated—selfless, perhaps, but not exactly aspiring masters of the universe. That narrative isn't true anymore, at least not in the District. Over the past decade, DC Public Schools has radically changed ho...

A smart, concise video that explains how unfair the teacher pension system is for almost all teachers:  https://youtu.be/2opCmFduXz8

Very scary and sobering: Sexual assault has become a dominant topic on the nation's college campuses in recent years, as student activists have spoken out and the Obama administration has pushed for institutional change. But it has largely remained a hidden issue in elementary, middle and high schools, where parents assume their children are supervised and safe. Now there are signs that the problem is receiving more attention, including a sharp rise in the number of federal civil rights complaints alleging that K-12 schools have mishandled reports of sexual violence. Young people have alleged rape by their classmates not only in school bathrooms, as in the Alabama case, but also in hallways and stairwells and cars parked on school property. Children have reported being assaulted during overnight field trips and at school dances and athletic events.  "We should not have blinders on about how early sexual violence can take place," said Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secreta...

From my friend and ed warrior John Kirtley:   I wanted to share news of an important event that occurred recently in our state.   A day after his father's holiday, over 10,000 people travelled to Florida's distant capitol of Tallahassee to join Martin Luther King III in a protest against the lawsuit filed by the teachers' union to shut down the Florida tax credit scholarship program.    This program empowers low income parents to choose a private school for their children if they believe it will be the right learning environment for them. Companies receive credits against state taxes due for donations to a state approved non-profit. There are currently 78,000 children on the program. This is what we know about them:   ·           Roughly 30% are African American, and over 40% are Latino ·           They come from families making roughly $25,000 per year for a household of f...

Angelica Alfaro is running for Illinois State Senate to bring a fresh voice to Springfield. She is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and has dedicated her life to advocating for high quality educational opportunities for all children because of the impact of the excellent education she received at Noble Street Charter School. She was in the first ever graduating class at Noble and after college, she began a  career as alumni coordinator there. As Noble's first alumni coordinator, Angelica worked closely with students to support their graduation from college. Now she is running for Senate, in a tight race, to fight for a better education for the all children of the 2nd Illinois Senate District and all over Illinois. To learn more about her campaign and to donate, please visit:  http://angelicaalfaro.com

The College Board's Advanced Placement program is partnering with  WE.org  to create  AP with WE.org Service , an initiative to incorporate service learning into the AP classroom. They are looking to produce videos that will feature an AP teacher and some AP students (based in New York City) who are willing to volunteer to speak on camera about the benefits of service in an AP classroom. If you are interested and available for filming February 24-26, please contact Leila by February 12 at  ljerusalem@collegeboard.org  with "NYC AP Teacher" in the subject line. As a thank you, we would provide you tickets to a future We Day. Here's a short video with background on Free the Children's We Day:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57GmOxZ8o_w