bodner079

DFER just released this statement: In response to reports of Democratic candidates being considered in President-elect Donald Trump's search for a Secretary of Education, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) President Shavar Jeffries released the following statement: "It is, generally speaking, an honor for any person of any political persuasion to be asked by the President of the United States to consider a Cabinet-level appointment, but in the case of President-elect Trump, DFER encourages no Democrat to accept an appointment to serve as Secretary of Education in this new administration. In so doing, that individual would become an agent for an agenda that both contradicts progressive values and threatens grave harm to our nation's most vulnerable kids. -- Sent from Postbox

A spot-on WaPo editorial:   Unions win and students lose in Massachusetts By Editorial Board November 10 at 7:28 PM https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/unions-win-and-students-lose-in-massachusetts/2016/11/10/553f295c-a6c0-11e6-8fc0-7be8f848c492_story.html MASSACHUSETTS HAS long enjoyed a reputation as a national leader in education. A pioneer of school reform, it boasts a record of impressive student achievement. It was sad to see that reputation tarnished with the rejection in Tuesday's election of a measure that would have allowed for an expansion of public charter schools. The state's existing charter schools have delivered strong academic results, and thousands of parents are on waiting lists in the hope of getting their children into one of these schools. Unfortunately, those facts got lost in a campaign of disinformation waged by the philosophical foes of charters, primarily the public teachers u...

I do not feel much optimism re. President Trump, either in general or in the area of education, but hope he surprises me. Here's an article about this ed plans:   http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2016/11/trump_ESSA_civil_rights_transition_education.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news2-RM Trump Set to Shift Gears on Civil Rights, ESSA, Says a K-12 Transition-Team Leader President-elect Donald Trump will work to ensure "a new way of how to deliver public education" that focuses on educational entrepreneurship and strong public and private school options, according to a leader of Trump's presidential transition team responsible for education. Gerard Robinson, a research fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute and former state chief in Florida and Virginia, also said Wednesday  that Trump will "streamline, at least" the U.S. Department of Education. And a Trump administration ...

I am still collecting my thoughts and trying to come to grips with the unexpected and grim results on Tuesday night, but in the meantime I drew some strength from what Cory Booker posted on Facebook (my prediction: Cory will be elected President four years from now):   Early Morning Thoughts on Today, November 9th. This is not a time to curl up, give up or shut up. It is time to get up; to stand up, to speak words that heal, help, and recommit to the cause of our country. We had an election defeat, but we are not defeated.  We hurt, we fear, we may even regret that we did not do more. But character is not defined, forged or built in good times. The fire of adversity forges our steel. And the searing heat of defeat reveals what we are made of. We tell our truth not in what happens to us but in how we react – how we face a setback; how we rise when knocked down; how we work through fatigue and frustration; how we bring grit to our gr...

Ryan Hill, who founded and runs KIPP in NJ, just sent me this heart-breaking appeal. I just donated $250. Please do what you can – they're still $10,000 short of what they need:   Hi Whitney,   We need your help.   One of our 8-year-olds was brutally murdered alongside her family on Saturday.  The remaining family members (grandmother and aunt) really need financial support.  Any chance you could email this out?   https://www.gofundme.com/whitehurst-family-support-fund/donate   Here's an article about it:   http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2016/11/schools_aim_to_raise_25k_for_family_of_slain_kids.html#incart_river_home   The details are worse than what's been reported. This is the worst thing I've encountered in all my years working in Newark and NYC.

This article ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2016/11/09/massachusetts-charter-schools-georgia-school-takeovers-how-voters-decided-four-key-ballot-questions/ ) summarizes the four education-related ballot initiatives that were decided on Tuesday. The key one was Prop 2 in MA, which would have allowed the expansion of charter schools, which lost by a wide margin (62%-38%). This was a big disappointment and the unions are crowing – but if anyone lost big on Tuesday, it was them.   I fear Trump will be a nightmare for the U.S. (but I hope I'm wrong and he exceeds my very low expectations), but I'm quite certain that he (and the Republican-controlled Congress, Supreme Court, etc.) will be a total nightmare for unions in general (about which I am very unhappy) and, in particular, the teachers unions (about which I have mixed feelings).   I am not anti-union – in fact, I think the precipitous decline of unioniza...

If you (like me) are feeling sorry for yourself (and our country), please take a moment and imagine the alientation, fear and terror being felt right now by immigrants (whether legal or not) and especially by their children. A friend's son is a Teach for America teacher in Dallas and sent this (photos of what four of his students wrote are below):   Subject: Wanted to share   Imagine having to get up in front of 6 classes, each comprised of 30 or so 8 th grade terrified, mostly Mexican students today to teach lessons in American civics & democracy. I'm so sickened & so so so sad.              

With the polls tightening, many folks believe Trump is going to win (or at least has a 50/50 chance). If you're one of them (or know someone who is – if so, please forward this email to them), then here's your last chance to make a friendly wager to benefit the charity of your choice if your prediction comes true tomorrow. I currently have made three bets totaling $10,510 that Hillary will win the election, and am willing to take $50,000 of action (i.e., another $39,490). The bet is simple – no odds, just straight up: if Hillary wins, you make a donation to my favorite charity (KIPP charter schools), and if Trump wins, I make a donation to your favorite charity. Just email me and name the amount you'd like to wager. Full disclosure: pretty much every poll and betting site has Hillary at least a 2:1 favorite, so I think I'm making a bet in which the odds are good that you will be making a donation to my favorit...

Never let it be said that I won't present a point of view contrary to my own. Fortune has two articles making the bull and bear case for Trump. Here's Anthony Scaramucci with the bull case: For the past 30 years, the political establishment has failed the American people. Poorly negotiated and lazily enforced trade deals have caused jobs to flee the heartland. Misguided economic and tax policies have hampered growth, allowing the rich to become richer while turning the middle class into the working poor. Trillions of dollars spent on foreign wars have done nothing to make Americans feel safer at home. Given that Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of failed establishment politics, it's no wonder her campaign has sought to make the election about personal suitability. But Americans are tired of political games and false promises from Washington. Donald Trump is not a career politician, and so that has created its own level of surprise ...

I actually think Scaramucci makes some good points: Washington is indeed broken, our economic growth isn't what it should be, our tax system does need an overhaul, etc. (He could have written this exact article four years ago on behalf of Mitt Romney, whose intelligence, moderation and character I'll admit I've only recently come to appreciate.) Scaramucci's problem is his candidate: a totally defective human being who, other than apparently loving his children, has not a single other redeeming quality – an obvious sociopath, madman and con man. Roger Lowenstein does a nice job of pointing this out: Warren Buffett says that if you've been playing poker for thirty minutes and don't know who the patsy is, the patsy is you. America, wake up: Don't be Donald Trump's patsy. In episode after tawdry episode, the people who've done deals with this guy have come out losers. His investors in casino companies? The...

STOP THE PRESSES! The NYT's newest op ed columnist, David Leonhardt, wrote a tremendous story about charter schools last week, with a focus on the Match charter school in Boston. Here's an excerpt (full story below): Charter schools — public schools that operate outside the normal system — have become a quarrelsome subject, of course, alternately hailed as saviors and criticized as an overrated fad. Away from the fights, however, social scientists have quietly spent years analyzing the outcomes of students who attend charter schools. The findings are stark. And while they occasionally pop up in media coverage and political debates about charter schools, they do not get nearly enough attention. The studies should be at the center of any discussion of educational reform, because they offer by far the clearest evidence about which parts of it are working and which are not. The briefest summary is this: Many charter schools fail to ...

An important lawsuit was filed last week challenging NJ's "last in, first out" (LIFO) quality-blind teacher layoff statute. Here's an excerpt from the press release:   Today, six parents from Newark, supported by Partnership for Educational Justice, filed HG v. Harrington , challenging the constitutionality of the state's "last in, first out" (LIFO) quality-blind teacher layoff statute. Under this law, school districts facing budget reductions are required to lay off teachers in reverse-seniority order, based only on the date when they started teaching in the district. The parents' lawsuit, filed in Mercer County Superior Court, asserts that New Jersey's LIFO law violates students' right to an education by unjustly requiring school districts to ignore teacher quality and retain ineffective teachers while laying off effective teachers, despite substantial research establishing that teacher quality is the ...