Occupy Education Reform! 22 Steps To 21st Century Education Reform

Dr. Michelle Rhee was FIRED for standing up to Teachers' Unions & her strong opinions on 21st Century Education Reform.

While I do still support Labor Unions & Teachers' Unions, I have to side with Michelle Rhee.

She was Right & should NOT have been Fired.

Bad, Ineffective Teachers should NOT be placed on pedestals or lauded as Heroes!

They should be FIRED Quickly!

Especially if they don't want to Change or Improve in their Profession.

Dr. Rhee was NOT afraid to send those Bad, Ineffective Teachers within the District of Columbia Public School System along their lazy way.

Dr. Rhee should have been lauded for her Courage & Vision instead she was Fired from her job as Chancellor, after she Terminated Bad, Ineffective, Lazy Teachers.

Big Mistake!

Since leaving DC's Public School System Dr. Rhee founded "Students First", a Non-Profit organization promoting Teacher Effectiveness & High Student Achievement.

Thus Michelle Rhee's Termination is Washington, DC's Educational Loss.

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OCCUPY EDUCATION!!!

Time is running out for REAL Education Reform in America or Europe & China will leave Our students in the dust!
EFFECTIVE EDUCATION REFORM IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT THE COOPERATION OF TEACHER UNIONS.


22 Steps to 21st Century Education Reform:


1) REPEAL No Child Left Behind! Please!

2) Enact REAL Educational Reform within the U.S. Dept of Education & the National Public School System. This includes the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Dept of Education.

3) Link the Montessori Pre-School Experience (4 year-olds) to Direct Student Achievement via Hiring Montessori Certified Teachers to teach in Pre-Schools housed on Public School & Charter School Campuses.

4) Eliminate the current Student Testing System & Focus on Subject Matter Content & Student Creativity to Enhance Critical Thinking Skills.

5) Increase Teacher Pay based on a combination of Qualifications, Job Performance, Merit & Student Achievement NOT just Student Test Scores.

6) Require Parents & Guardians to Partner with Teachers and Schools.

7) Bail Out the Federal Student Loan Program just like Congress Bailed Out Wall Street & STOP Funding For-Profit Schools & Colleges which are Nothing more than Student Loan Mills!

8) Allow More Charter Schools to Operate & Provide More Funding those Schools.

9) Ensure that EVERY Public School & Charter School is Asbestos-Free, Up to Date, has a 21st Century Technology Lab & a Community Garden. Especially Schools in Urban Communities. Offer FREE Technology lessons for Parents at School Technology Labs.

10) HIRE & Train Qualified People from Corporate America to Work as Teachers, using the "Teach For America" Business Model.

11) Focus More on Reading, Science, Math, Art and...... Music.

I completely agree with Professor Melissa Harris-Perry. Funding for Art & Music Programs in Public Schools Must remain an important part of Student Achievement because the Arts enhance Creativity which helps Children to thrive Academically.

12) Don't Allow Teachers to Teach the SAME Grade Level past 3 Years as to prevent Stagnation & Complacency.
Don't Allow Principals to remain at the SAME Schools past 5 Years.

13) Allow BAD, Poor Performing, Complacent Teachers to be FIRED!

Recruit & HIRE More Part - time & Full -time Instructional Teacher Assistants for Grades: Kindergarten - 8th.

14) Encourage Local & Global Businesses to Form Partnerships with or Adopt EACH Public & Charter School in Every City & Community. Especially those located in Urban & Rural Communities.

15) Bail Out Student Loan Debt which has now reached $1 Trillion Dollars, just like the Bail Out Wall Street received.

16) Integrate Student Appropriate Entrepreneurship & Tech Start Up Programs into Student Curriculum beginning in the Kindergarten.

17) Make Student Attendance Mandatory. Hold Parents & Legal Guardians Accountable!

18) Focus on High School Graduation for EVERY Student! Start in Pre-School & Kindergarten.

19) Offer the Federal "Breakfast in the Classroom" Program in ALL Pre-School & Elementary Classrooms. Also Open Food Banks in ALL Public & Charter Schools.

20) "It Takes A Village!" Allow NO Student to FAIL! Drill Student Achievement into Every Teacher, Student, Principal, Parent & Legal Guardian.

21) Open Student Career/ Workforce Programs in ALL High Schools.

22) Help Students who want to enter the Teaching & Medical Profession to obtain College Scholarships & REAL Financial Aid prior to High School Graduation.
OCCUPY EDUCATION!!




Condoleezza Rice on Education: American Dream on Verge of Collapse


America's national security and the upward mobility the country was built upon could collapse if the education system isn't rapidly improved, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Tuesday.

"If you look at why [Americans] are here or why their parents are here or their grandparents are here, someone believed that in the United States of America, if you worked hard, you could have a better life. That's what set us apart," she told a group at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It's fragile, and we have to make sure that's [still] true. If it ever becomes not true because the education system can't deliver it, then there's no hope of rebuilding it."

Rice and former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein co-chaired a task force that looked into the relationship between education reform and America's national security. American students have fallen into the second tier of achievement when compared to international competitors such as China, South Korea, and many European countries. That failure threatens America's economic future, its physical safety, ability to protect cyber assets, awareness of other cultures, and the country's sense of unity, the report warns.

The task force said America should throw its support behind and expand the Common Core State Standards—benchmarks in English and math that have been adopted by all but five states—to other subjects; provide more school choice to students, so they are not stuck in "dropout factories" that graduate a low percentage of students; and launch a "National Security Readiness Audit" that would determine whether students are learning national security skills such as foreign languages and computer programming.

According to the report, America's educational system is "not adequately preparing its citizens to protect America or its national interests." The Department of Defense estimates that 75 percent of young Americans are not eligible to serve in the military because they didn't graduate from high school, are obese, or have criminal records. "Among recent high school graduates who are eligible to apply, 30 percent score too low on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery to be recruited."

At the Council on Foreign Relations event, Klein said that the country's fading education system is threatening America's identity. If the education system fails, there's no Plan B, he said.

"If people don't believe they can get a fair shake with education, then I think the [national] cohesion erodes," he added.


Sources: MSNBC, NY Daily News, PBS News, TIME, US News, Washington Post, Youtube

James Pastman Arrested For Growing Pot Above A Chicago Pre-School

Weed School: Marijuana Grown Above Chicago Preschool


James Pastman was arrested this morning in Chicago's Far North Side after police found that he had been growing marijuana in his home. The legal trouble gets worse for Pastman, 50: his apartment is right above a preschool.

A dog barking out an open window in the building attracted officers' attention. Given the cold temperatures, they decided to check on the dog's owner. When they entered the building, they immediately detected an "overwhelming" odor of ganja.

They knocked on Pastman's door, who admitted that he'd been growing pot and allowed the officers to enter his home and seize his (apparently quite elaborate) irrigation, lighting and ventilation systems, as well as a number of cannabis plants.

Pastman has been charged with felony manufacturing and delivery within 1,000 feet of a school, which means his crime is automatically a Class 1 felony, according to Illinois Marijuana statutes.



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Sources: Huffington Post, Chicago Breaking News, NBC Chicago, Google Maps

Controversial Educational Trend: Tutoring Tots...More Childhood Pressure Or Academic Investment?

MSNBC----


(Ups and Downs of Modern Day Parenting. MSNBC reports.)

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For two hours a week this summer, Krissy Rubesch has been working with a tutor on reading and math. Summer schooling isn’t unusual for kids who need a jumpstart on academics for fall, but Krissy is only going into kindergarten.

Already a pro at reading phonetic words such as “cat,” she has spent seven weeks learning about the silent “e,” letter combinations such as “sh” and other more advanced reading skills. She’s been working on addition with four-digit numbers and has done some creative writing to improve her penmanship and ability to sound out words.

Krissy, who turned 5 this month, will be among the youngest kids in class, and her mother emphasizes she isn’t trying to create a superstar student. She just wants to make sure her daughter is prepared to keep up with the other children who are learning their words and numbers, too. All of them will be expected to master various academic skills in the upcoming school year, or risk retention.

“My concern is there’s so much emphasis, probably because of No Child Left Behind, on reading and math,” says Heather Rubesch, mother of two in Kansas City, Kan., referring to the controversial education law signed in 2002 that focuses on increased academic performance and standardized testing.

While more parents are keeping the youngest kids like Krissy out another year before starting them in kindergarten — often entering them into pre-K in a practice called “red-shirting” — Rubesch decided against that for Krissy, who already attended two years of private preschool.

“She is ready and I saw no reason to hold her back,” says Rubesch. “But I do want her to have the confidence academically, especially against her peers who are almost or over a year older than her.”

Long gone are the days when parents signed their kids up for kindergarten based on whether their birthdays met the school's cut-off, and youngsters simply showed up on the first day, where they played, snacked and napped. Perhaps they had attended preschool, but if they did, they almost certainly didn’t have any summer tutoring to make sure they really were ready for kindergarten.

Today, many children go to two or three years of preschool and some stay on for another year of pre-K. Like Rubesch, some parents have begun signing their kids up for summer classes or one-on-one tutoring to improve their reading, math, writing and overall "kindergarten readiness."

It’s not hard to see why parents feel the pressure to help their kids, but is all this kindergarten preparation really necessary? Is it just one more example of over-the-top helicopter parenting? Or has kindergarten become so rigorous that kids need every possible advantage to succeed?

Pressure-cooker classrooms

Critics of the state of early education say there are problems all around. The pressure, they say, largely starts at the top with efforts such as the NCLB, the federal act that pushes schools to increase performance or face penalties. That puts pressure on superintendents and principals, who put pressure on teachers, who in turn increase their focus on academics for even the youngest children.

Knowing that standards are high, parents who want the best for their kids also can pressure them in ways that aren’t productive or welcome (though Rubesch says Krissy loves her tutoring, which is given by her former preschool teacher). The pressures are trickling down into the more academic preschools, and even to new parents hoping that certain toys and music will nurture a baby genius right from birth.

“It’s like a dog chasing its tail,” says Joan Almon, executive director of the Alliance for Childhood, a nonprofit organization in College Park, Md., who formerly worked as a preschool and kindergarten teacher. “You don’t know quite where to stop this. But the kids need it to stop.”

The group released a report this spring titled “Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School,” which concludes that kindergartens have changed dramatically in the last two decades “from places where love of learning was thoughtfully nurtured into pressure-cooker classrooms where teachers are required to follow scripts, labor under unrealistic one-size-fits-all standards, and test children relentlessly on their performance. Kindergarten has ceased to be a garden of delight and has become a place of stress and distress.”

The report is based on nine studies, including three commissioned by the group that examined the state of kindergarten in New York and Los Angeles. Those three new studies showed that play materials such as blocks, sand and water tables, and props for dramatic play “have largely disappeared” from more than 250 full-day kindergarten classrooms studied. Most children had half an hour or less a day for playtime, and some got no playtime at all.

Instead, standardized testing and preparation for those tests were a daily activity in most of the classrooms, even though such tests are of “questionable validity” for kids under 8, the report says.

Today, says Almon, kindergarteners are expected to perform at the level traditionally expected of first-graders — reading, for instance, by the end of the year, despite any solid support behind the change.

“There is absolutely no research showing that children who read at age 4 or 5 do better at age 10 or 12 than children who start reading in first grade,” she says. “But there is research showing if you push 4- and 5-year-olds too hard, it backfires.”

The report points out that while there’s ongoing concern about American children catching up with their counterparts in countries such as Japan and China, specifically in areas such as science, math and technology, schooling in those countries before second grade is “playful and experiential.” And youngsters in Finland, where teens consistently score high academically, also attend play-based kindergarten and start first grade at age 7 rather than age 6.

Power of Play

Play not only is a stress-reliever from all these academic pressures, Almon says, it’s also a critical way that children develop language, express their creativity, expand their social skills, solve problems and generally learn about their world — all important abilities that will help them in kindergarten and well beyond.

“Through play children take on every aspect of life,” she says, without them worrying about being judged by adults. “In their world of play, they rule supreme.”

But as kindergarten has become more academic at the expense of play, retention rates have gone up and so have extreme behavior problems, says Almon. “We think that’s coming about because the children are so stressed about expectations that are unrealistic.” Problems are surfacing in preschool too, where expulsion rates are more than three times higher than the national average for kindergarten through 12th grade, according to a Yale survey involving 40 states.

Carleton Kendrick, a Boston-area family therapist for more than 30 years, says he sees first-hand the consequences of “fast-tracking” children.

Too much pressure to perform academically from teachers and parents can lead to a range of anxiety-related complaints and psychosomatic symptoms in youngsters that normally wouldn’t show up until the teen years or later, he says. School stress can cause young children to be worried, overwhelmed, ashamed, guilty and even clinically depressed. For some, the stress can contribute to headaches, stomach upset, stuttering and insomnia.

“The parents think something is wrong with the child — and not the parents and teachers and education system,” says Kendrick.

“As a therapist who has seen many children become mentally and emotionally overwhelmed by being placed on this out of control, educational gerbil wheel, I hope that parents will wake up and say ‘no’ to hurrying their children through preschool and kindergarten,” he says.

Jodi Allen, a kindergarten teacher in North Miami Beach, Fla., says that with today’s high academic standards, she understands where anxious parents are coming from. “It used to be you had to read in first grade and now you have to read in kindergarten or you don’t go to first grade,” says Allen, who had to hold back two girls who couldn’t read well enough to pass kindergarten.

Still, she wishes parents wouldn’t worry quite so much because, after all, it is a teacher’s job to teach, and most of her students who have attended preschool are prepared enough for kindergarten. “We tell the parents at open house that [the students] don’t have to come in reading, but they feel the pressure,” she says.

As a result, it’s not uncommon for preschool kids in her area to get tutoring or at least intensive study time with their parents to prepare them for kindergarten, she says. Allen herself has been tutoring this summer for extra income.

A little too prepared

Looking back now, Wendi Aarons of Austin, Texas, says she learned a lesson of her own after extensively preparing her first son, Sam, for kindergarten two years ago.

He’d already gone to a preschool that “concentrated on prepping him for kindergarten,” Aarons says, and she worked with him during the summer before he began school to further hone his skills. “By the time he started kinder, he was already reading at a second-grade level,” she says.

On one hand, knowing how to read boosted his self-esteem. “He was known as the best reader,” Aarons says. “In kindergarten, that’s like the equivalent of having a Camaro.”

But there was a downside, too. “I think he was actually a little too prepared, as he began to be very bored and unchallenged throughout the year,” Aarons says. “Kindergarten is seven hours a day in Texas, and he just didn't have enough to do.”

Aarons says she talked with the teacher about moving Sam up a grade, to challenge him more, but the teacher said he was not socially ready for that. Sam was challenged more in first grade, Aarons says, including getting extra projects to keep him busy. And while he still complained of being bored, he no longer said he didn’t want to go to school.

With her younger son, Jack, who will start kindergarten this month, Aarons has been taking “more of a casual approach.”

“He went to a preschool that was a lot more play-based,” she says, “and while I'm working on his reading with him, it's not to the extent that I did with my first son.”

For parents, one of their biggest tests is trying to figure out what’s best for their young school kids in today’s rigorous academic climate. The answers aren’t always so simple, and they certainly go beyond teaching tots the three R’s.

“It's really a fine line between over- and under-preparing,” says Aarons, “and I think a lot of parents don't know what to do, exactly.”



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Sources: MSNBC, Princeton Rotary, Google Maps