A nationwide debate is raging over Common Core, a set of federally supported standards for teaching English and math at the state level. But critics call them a cookie-cutter approach that overemphasizes testing, invades privacy, and can be easily manipulated.

Grassroots parental rebellions have led states like Indiana, Oklahoma, Louisiana and South Carolina to repeal their support of Common Core. Yesterday, the revolt reached Arizona. John Huppenthal, the state’s school superintendent, was ousted in the Republican primary by Diane Douglas, a former school-board member who made the repeal of Common Core her main issue. Douglas won 57 percent of the vote last night, telling the AZCentral website that “Arizona moms and dads know what’s best for their kids. They know better than Washington, D.C. They know better than a few privileged corporations.”

Huppenthal spent much of his term in office defending Common Core and described critics as “barbarians at the gate” at a public forum in May. But in recent weeks he backed off his support, taking credit for removing objectionable books from the Core’s English standards and even claiming in a debate that he “never supported the standards.”

The incumbent wound up losing 57 percent to 42 percent, and last night told reporters that his early support for the Core was his undoing. Look for the issue to heat up in several other states with races for governor and state legislature this fall.

via Supporting Common Core Cost One Arizona Pol a Primary Victory Last Night | National Review Online.

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Georgetown University sociology Professor Michael Eric Dyson not only likened President Obama to Jesus in a recent television appearance, but admitted many of the president’s supporters really look at him as a savior, and possibly thee savior:

“Now, Eric Holder is great! Let me tell you what, Eric Holder, one of, what, five most powerful black figures EVER? Obama, Holder, Clyburn, William Gray. These figures have been extraordinarily important in politics. But, you know, I’m a Christian preacher and God finally said, ‘Look, I can’t send nobody else, I got to go myself.’ And I ain’t sayin’ that Obama is Jesus, but for many of his followers he is. But I’m saying, show up dog, and show us that you are seriously committed to the interests of your people, because your presence says something louder than even your words.”

So, I guess the message here is Obama is sorta, kinda Jesus – but he’s not doing a great job for his “people.” In the words of the esteemed professor: Show up, dog!

By the way, Dyson – named by Ebony as one of the hundred most influential black Americans – is not the only professor who has compared Obama with Jesus.

There was also “The Gospel According to Apostle Barack,” the title of a book penned by a Florida A&M University professor who compares Jesus with Obama and says God told her in a dream to write it.

p.s. Eric Holder is one of the worst attorney generals in this country’s history.

via Professor Admits Obama Supporters Think He’s Jesus.

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Chicago’s Board of Education unanimously changed how it ranks its schools Wednesday, introducing minimums that will benefit the highest-performing schools and potentially lessen the number of schools at the bottom.

Schools that score in the 90th percentile on the Northwest Education Association test at the elementary level or the Explore, Plan Act test in high school, will now automatically end up in the highest of five tiers, said John Barker, who’s in charge of testing at CPS. Schools in the 70th percentile cannot rank below the second tier, or below the third tier in the 50th percentile, he said.

Schools already are rated according to a series of factors, including attendance and growth in test scores, but these thresholds should help the highest-scoring schools retain top ratings even though they have less room to increase their scores, he said. Any school below the 40th percentile must rely on those other factors to move out of the lowest tier.

via Chicago Board of Education changes how it ranks schools | Early & Often.

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The American Sociological Association, the leading professional organization for American sociologists, is now granting its members much greater leeway in how to define their gender identities.

Previously, the ASA’s membership surveys only allowed three choices of gender: “male,” “female” and “prefer not to answer.”

Now, as reported, members will have no fewer than seven options for their gender choice, with the added ability to select “all that apply.” The added options include “transgender male/transgender man,” “transgender female/transgender woman,” “genderqueer/gender non-conforming,” or another “preferred identity” of their choice not explicitly named.

“Genderqueer” is defined by the Gender Equity Resource Center at the University of California-Berkeley as “A person whose gender identity is neither man nor woman, is between or beyond genders, or is some combination of genders.”

The new gender choices are the end product of over a year of debate on how to expand the sociological community’s gender options. In the second half of 2013, the organization planned to add categories for transgender individuals as well as an “Other” option. However, some members objected that being designated as an “other” marginalized them. Some advocated for the gender category being free-form, with members filling out a blank space however they desired.

The new gender options will not immediately come into effect, but are expected to be in place by the 2016 ASA membership year.

via Academic Org Lets Members Choose Any Of Six Genders | The Daily Caller.

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by Gilda Ochoa –

Much has been made about recent Census reports highlighting the fact that White students are no longer the numeric majority in U.S. public schools. Awareness of these changes is important, but statistics on students’ racial demographics tell only part of the story. Interviews with educators at a Southern California high school where more than 80 percent of the students are Asian Americans or Latinas/os reveal that how, even when Whites are a small percentage of students, whiteness still dominates.

As is the case in schools throughout the U.S., most of the educators at the school I refer to as SCHS are White. Three-quarters of the administrators and half of the teachers are White compared to more than 90 percent of the students who are of color. While race alone does not determine perspective, this racial gap between educators and students is glaring. It is a reflection of educational barriers, historical differences and varied immigration patterns. This gap also hinders students’ access to racially diverse role models and approaches.

Despite the prevalence of White and bright educators, their racial backgrounds were basically ignored during the interviews. Many spoke openly, comfortably and with great detail about their perceptions of Asian Americans and Latinas/os, but they were suddenly silent when asked about their own racial identities. Several even confessed that they never thought about the significance of their backgrounds. This was especially the case for older White teachers and administrators raised in predominantly White communities. Some even got defensive; they turned off the tape recorder, looked confused or emphasized how they are just “American.” Some have been taught to think about race only in relationship to people of color and not in relationship to themselves.

Whiteness is the assumed norm, and at SCHS Asian Americans and Latinas/os are marked as different. Not acknowledging their racialized backgrounds makes it easier for White educators to ignore their racial privileges and the legacy of racism in the U.S.

When White educators described students, the general overlooking of their own racial backgrounds relative to the hypervisibility of groups of color was stark. With frequent generalizations such as “Asians really value education” and “Latinos seem less caring,” many of their comments reinforced uni-dimensional and homogenized characterizations of these two pan-ethnic groups. They tended to reinforce cultural deficiency views attributing students’ educational outcomes to supposed group traits. Within-group heterogeneity and class differences between the primarily middle-class Chinese-American and working-class Mexican-American students at the school were ignored.

In contrast, they described the much smaller percentage of White students at the school in complex and nuanced ways. Their identities and ways of being were perceived as flexible and undefinable in comparison to Asian Americans and Latinas/os who were pigeonholed. These unequal characterizations privilege White students and hurt students of color, since White students are more likely to be seen as individuals and not as a stereotype. The predominantly White educators appeared more attuned to within-group heterogeneity among Whites and less so for students of color.

Many educators were also silent on the school culture and course curriculum. Although many of the students at SCHS are bilingual and have recent immigrant connections, the wealth of their family histories and experiences are ignored. Nationally, the histories, experiences and perspectives of groups of color are almost absent in textbooks and classroom lessons, providing students with incomplete and inaccurate information. This invisibility further marginalizes students of color and maintains White hegemony.

Overlooking or downplaying the institutionalization of whiteness and the privileging of Whites keeps inequality intact. If unequal histories, systems and practices are ignored, they cannot be changed.

For those of us in California, it is not news that White students are not the majority in schools. Instead, such reporting comes across as alarmist. It feeds fears about the growth of students of color. Going into our schools and looking at the patterns behind the numbers is more revealing. Even when White students are not the numerical majority, if left unaddressed, White privilege and racial inequities will not fade.

Gilda L. Ochoa is author of “Academic Profiling: Latinos, Asian Americans and the Achievement Gap” and professor of sociology and Chicana/o-Latina/o studies at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. This article first appeared in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.

via The Invisible Quality of Whiteness in Our Schools – Higher Education.

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An Ann Arbor, Mich. high school math teacher charged with seating students by race and much else has taken her refusal to undergo a psychological evaluation on Fourth Amendment grounds to a federal appeals court after school officials placed her on paid leave way back in December.

The tenured teacher, Dianne Down, has been collecting paid leave ever since then, reports The Ann Arbor News. She is likely earning about $6,300 each month for not teaching.

Down, who has 32 years as a teacher altogether, has a history of getting in trouble. During the 14 years she was taught in Ann Arbor, she has received four formal reprimands.

In 2004, school officials reprimanded her for teasing a student. She called him animal names. For example, documents say, she said: “Shut up, chipmunk.”

In the fall of 2008, nine students sought transfers out of her class. According to an evaluation that year, administrators cited nearly two dozen complaints concerning her teaching performance.

Down countered the 2008 evaluation by blaming school officials for eleventh-hour schedule changes.

“I love my students. I love teaching,” she wrote. “I am looking forward to many more great years.”

During the 2009-10 school year, school officials charged that Down was grouping students in several classes by the color of their skin. “Prepare seating chart to avoid Caucasian and better students sitting on the far side of the room near the teacher’s desk while African American students, other students of color and poorer students sit near the door,” her bosses instructed.

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In 2012, a school official wrote a letter to Down advising her that her classroom behavior was unacceptable.

None of these transgressions were enough for Down to lose her job. Far from it! During a 2013 evaluation, administrators managed to award Down with ratings of “effective” in all but one category. In a category called “Student Growth Factor,” Down received a coveted “highly effective” rating.

According to later-filed court documents, Down was only removed after an unidentified parent sent reviews of Down to school officials from the website RateMyTeachers.com.

School officials said they made the decision to investigate the math teacher based on a report that she had intimidated and disparaged students.

RateMyTeachers.com currently appears to show no reviews for Down.

School district bureaucrats eventually placed Down on paid leave in December. They also asked her to undergo a psychological evaluation. She refused.

Down then sued in federal district court under the Fourth Amendment. Though a request that a teacher undergo a psychological evaluation is permissible under the current teachers union contract, Down’s attorney, Jeff Herron, is arguing that the request violates her Fourth Amendment right against an unreasonable search and seizure.

Herron also brings up the novel issue of whether anonymously written, online reviews can be used as a partial basis to require a public school teacher to be subjected to a medical exam.

After the district judge ruled against Down’s request for an injunction, finding her “defensive and not fully credible,” she appealed her case to the Sixth Circuit of Appeals.

via Teacher Accused Of Seating Students BY RACE Fights For Job | The Daily Caller.

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FOREST GROVE, Ore. – At least one parent in Forest Grove, Oregon is learning the hard way that passing out iPads to middle schoolers can create more headaches than the devices are worth.

Last year, officials at Neil Armstrong Middle School distributed iPads to all 855 students as part of a pilot project aimed at transforming classroom instruction into an all digital learning experience.

The program, which cost taxpayers $500,000 over three years, started out as a well-intentioned move toward modern learning and compliance with the national Common Core learning standards. But roughly a year later, the plan is beset by many of the same problems plaguing other districts that have attempted similar initiatives, KATU.com reports.

Forest Grove school officials fitted the devices with software to prevent unauthorized downloads, access to inappropriate websites and other non-educational uses, but students quickly circumvented the the precautionary measures, according to the news site.

“Children are natural explorers and problem solvers and they really wanted to figure out how to solve the problem of getting around the security,” Principal Brandon Hundley told KATU. “There was a single proxy server that these kids got access to in December and that was when we recognized this was a bigger problem than we anticipated.”

For parent Mandy Keilwitz and her daughter Amber, a 12-year-old at Neil Armstrong Middle School, the security issues soon turned into a nightmare. Amber gave out her Apple ID to share her music with friends at a sleepover party, and a short time later her contacts started receiving obscene messages from her personal account, KATU reports.

“I was freaking out just a little bit and I texted back on the phone ‘Who is this? What are you doing?”” Keilwitz said. “They started taunting me: ‘your daughter is a slut, your daughter is not a virgin, your daughter (expletive) my (expletive).’”

The hackers also changed Amber’s password to shut her out of her accounts, and since district officials refused to take Keilwitz’s complaints seriously, she was forced to return the device and remove her daughter from school, KATU reports.

“For those three months before anyone was listening to us and actually taking us seriously, everything was up in the air,” Keilwitz said. “I was scared to death because she was getting death threats and things like that too, because people thought she was sending those messages.”

School officials continue to ignore the problem, Keilwitz said, but Forest Grove police are now investigating the cyber bullying. District officials, meanwhile, are using a different online filter this year in hopes of cutting down on unauthorized use, the news site reports.

The problems in Forest Grove are only the most recent example of issues plaguing schools that have given away computer devices to all students. Numerous other districts – including schools in Hoboken, New Jersey, Riverside County, California, Fort Bend, Texas and Los Angeles – have had their own issues with security, licensing fees, repairs, unapproved use, and other unanticipated problems.

Many are ditching their programs as a result.

Just this week, Los Angeles schools superintendent John Deasy suspended the district’s contract with Apple Inc. to provide devices for students. Within a week of distributing iPads to students in 47 of the city’s schools last year, many learned to circumvent the district’s firewall protections to surf social media sites, play games, and download things they shouldn’t.

Some school officials attempted to control the situation by forcing students to keep the devices at school, while others set different rules, which further complicated the issue and the entire project quickly unraveled at the seams.

That program, which ballooned from an estimated $30 million to roughly $1 billion, was also beset by internet access issues and other connectivity problems.

An internal report recently presented to the district’s school board showed the bidding process for the LA initiative was also problematic, as Deasy and his top deputy have a very close relationship with executives at Apple and Pearson Education, the software provider for the tablets, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Of course, Deasy framed the decision to cut ties with Apple as a positive move, when it reality it was the only way for the district to save face over the boondoggle.

“Not only will this decision enable us to take advantage of an ever-changing marketplace and technology advances, it will also give us time to take into account concerns raised surrounding the (project),” Deasy wrote to the school board in a memo cited by the Christian Science Monitor.

via Parents see cyber bullying increasing with ‘iPads-for-all’ school initiatives – EAGnews.org powered by Education Action Group Foundation, Inc..

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There has been a sharp rise in the percentage of pupils in England’s primary schools achieving the expected level in the “Three Rs”, data shows.

Four out of five 11-year-olds (79%) achieved Level 4 in their Sats tests in reading, writing and arithmetic, up from 75% in 2013.

Results in the new grammar and spelling tests, first sat in 2013, rose three percentage points at Level 4 to 76%.

The government said thousands more pupils were secure in the basics.

‘Prepare for life’

School reform minister Nick Gibb said the results showed that teachers and pupils had responded well to the higher standards his government’s education reforms have demanded.

“Our education system is beginning to show the first fruits of our plan for education, helping to prepare young people for life in modern Britain. There is more to do but teachers and pupils deserve huge credit for such outstanding results.”

He said: “Eighty thousand more children than five years ago will start secondary school this year secure in the basics – and able to move on to more complex subjects. It means in the long term these children stand a far better chance of winning a place at university, gaining an apprenticeship and securing good jobs.

“We have set unashamedly high expectations for all children, introduced a new test in the basics of punctuation, spelling and grammar, and removed calculators from maths tests.”

In detail, the results show improvements in all subjects at Level 4.

• Reading – 89% – up five percentage points

• Spelling, punctuation and grammar 76% – up three percentage points

• Maths – 86% – up one percentage point

• Writing 85% – up two percentage points (Based on teacher assessments)

From this year, schools are deemed to be underperforming if fewer than 65% of pupils achieve Level 4 in all subjects in the last year of primary school.

via BBC News – Sharp rise in ‘Three Rs’ primary results.

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We ask university lecturers and others in the higher education sector who cares if academics stop work

University unions will hold talks with employers Wednesday about a second one-day strike planned for 3 December. When teachers go on strike, thousands of parents are inconvenienced. But when academics stop work, who notices?

Roger Siefert, professor of human resource management and industrial relations, Wolverhampton Business School

Obviously the academics care because they lose a day’s pay and proportional bit of their pension. For them it’s a big deal. Students get concerned and it’s a curiosity for most of the overseas students.

The government cares because it’s part of a series of strikes by education unions, and that gives an impression of ministers being out of touch. It also cares because it is part of a wider series of public sector strikes. Our days strikes are saying, “Look, we are hard-working public sector workers who are being harmed. We believe that by harming us you are reducing public sector service.”

We are drawing attention to a serious problem and the government is arrogantly ignoring us.

Shelly Asquith, president, University of the Arts Students’ Union

Students certainly care. These are lecturers who give an enormous amount to students, work long hours and deliver our education – and we care when they are overworked and underpaid. The funding that comes from our fees isn’t being distributed fairly. Vice-chancellors’ pay seems to be going up handsomely but the staff delivering our programmes are having their pay cut.

via Does anyone care if academics go on strike? | Education | The Guardian.

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Rebecca Hagelin –

With “free” education offered in every town in the United States, a plethora of teachers who seem to be more than willing to take a role of authority in place of parents, and the convenience of sending our children to someone else to educate them, many parents have relinquished their role as the primary director of their children’s education. Our kids spend more awake time in schoolrooms during their formative years than just about any other place. But it seems that most parents ­don’t have a clue what their children are being taught.

Even the most expensive private school can be a moral wasteland. Although a high price tag might indicate academic excellence, it can also reflect that the school may contain a level of intellectual snobbery or an air of superiority that assumes that faith in God and traditional moral values are foolishness. Conversely, many nurturing religious schools lack an emphasis on academic achievement. The bottom line is that you have to do your own homework before you can be certain that the private schools in your area are all you hope for. ­Don’t get me wrong—with the growing failures of the public schools, there has been a rise in the number of private schools across the nation that can help our children to excel both spiritually and academically. It’s just incredibly important to assume nothing, and instead to check out everything that is available to you. Even though school season is upon us, remember this: it is never too late to make a change. It might be too late to get into the private school of your choice, but there are always other options.

Of course, everyone knows—though few want to face it—that the performance level of the public school system is dismal. Study after study reveals that American public education is failing when compared to the rest of the civilized world. Add to that the rampant behavioral problems and sexually explicit “family life education” materials, and you’ve got a host of reasons not to send your children to public school.

This is not meant to bash you if your children are in a public school setting. My own children attended our local public high schools. The point is to be diligent about finding out what goes on in the classroom and whether or not your values are under attack. If you have the slightest indication that your child is susceptible to manipulation or may be influenced by the lack of morality on display in the government schools, then I strongly urge you to look for other educational options.

If you determine that your children will attend public or private schools, then vow – at this moment – to exercise your parental rights and responsibility to be involved in their education.

via Culture Challenge of the Week: Do You Know What “They” are Teaching Your Kids? – Rebecca Hagelin – Page 1.

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