Docs Directory

Director of the Office of Education Technology Michael Culatta’s letter to the Los Angeles Unified School District serves as a basic guide to implementing teaching that uses computers to benefit a wide range of students.

North Carolina has been the site of attempts by the billioniare oil barons, the Koch brothers, to end public education as we know it, and re-introduce segregation. Here’s what happened in Wake County, NC, in 2009: This Mother Jones article documents how conservative, right-wing forces like the Koch brothers’ Americans For Prosperity warped local school board races and distorted the outcomes by flooding them with money.

The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that SB 1177, if signed into law, could become the nation’s most stringent student privacy law. It regulates “operators” (vendors) and what they may do with regard to student data. It says that any student data generated belongs to the district. Does it define testing companies as “operators”? Remains to be seen. Does it enable high-stakes testing? Perhaps. It may need revisiting to actually build in provisions to slow or halt HST. It’s a good start, at least. This piece from TechWire is an excellent overview of both SB1177 and AB1584. AB1584 spells out what the responsibilities are of local education agencies (LEAs) are to families and students regarding student privacy. For example, AB1584 requires that LEAs: Do establish that the local educational agency owns and controls student records. Do describe how students can keep control of their projects and other content created for school, along with a way to transfer their content to a personal account later. Do prohibit third parties from using student information for purposes outside of those named in the contract. Do describe how parents, legal guardians or students can review and correct personally identifiable information contained in their records. Do outline actions that third parties will take to make sure that student data is secure and confidential. Do describe procedures for notifying affected parents, legal guardians or eligible students when there is an unauthorized disclosure of student records. Do certify that student records will not be retained or available to the third party once the contract is over and lay out how that will be enforced. Do describe how local educational agencies and third parties will comply with the federal FERPA legislation. Do prohibit third parties from using personally identifiable information from student records to target advertising to students. Clearly our federal hole-riddled FERPA law needs updating. Anyway, here’s a link to actual bill text for both SB1177 and AB1584: SB1177 AB1584

Washington state’s Democratic Party passed a resolution opposing Common Core State Standards on Saturday, January 24, 2015. Here’s the text of the resolution, as well as a description of the dozen or so steps various Washington state Democratic Party insiders and affiliated people took in order to pass the resolution: Resolution Opposing Common Core State Standards WHEREAS the copyrighted (and therefore unchangeable) Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a set of controversial top-down K-12 academic standards that were promulgated by wealthy private interests without research-based evidence of validity and are developmentally inappropriate in the lowest grades; and WHEREAS, as a means of avoiding the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment prohibition against federal meddling in state education policy, two unaccountable private trade associations–the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)–have received millions of dollars in funding from the Gates Foundation and others to create the CCSS; and WHEREAS the U.S. Department of Education improperly pressured state legislatures into adopting the Common Core State Standards and high-stakes standardized testing based on them as a condition of competing for federal Race to the Top (RTTT) stimulus funds that should have been based on need; and WHEREAS as a result of Washington State Senate Bill 6669, which passed the State legislature on March 11, 2010, the Office of the Superintendent of Instruction (OSPI) adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS) on July 20, 2011; and WHEREAS this adoption effectively transfers control over public school standardized testing from locally elected school boards to the unaccountable corporate interests that control the CCSS and who stand to profit substantially; and WHEREAS the Washington State Constitution also calls for public education to be controlled by the State of Washington through our elected State legislature, our elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction and our elected local school boards; and WHEREAS implementation of CCSS will cost local school districts hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for standardized computer-based tests, new technology, new curricula and teacher training at a time when Washington is already insufficiently funding K-12 Basic Education without proven benefit to students; and WHEREAS some states have already withdrawn from CCSS; THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we call upon the Washington State legislature and the Superintendent of Public Instruction to withdraw from the CCSS and keep K-12 education student-centered and accountable to the people of Washington State.

Complete video of the session plus Q&A, and bios of the panelists. Watch live streaming video from fstvnewswire at livestream.com

Vermont was known for administering its state standardized test in October, which I thought was brilliant. It truly made the test diagnostic, because teachers and parents had the information from tests to work on all year long. Now Vermont has taken another bold step: in late July, 2014, it announced the State Board of Education had approved a resolution that rejects high-stakes testing under NCLB and instead urges that “multiple and qualitative assessments” be used to evaluate student work. So why don’t more states adopt this resolution? I’ve attached below and linked to the pdf of the resolution.

Florida House and Senate Ed. Committee member email addresses:   alan.williams@myfloridahouse.gov bob.cortes@myfloridahouse.gov bruce.antone@myfloridahouse.gov charlie.stone@myfloridahouse.gov Chris.sprowls@myfloridahouse.gov colleen.burton@myfloridahouse.gov cynthia.stafford@myfloridahouse.gov dan.raulerson@myfloridahouse.gov dennis.baxley@myfloridahouse.gov dwayne.taylor@myfloridahouse.gov elizabeth.porter@myfloridahouse.gov erik.fresen@myfloridahouse.gov fred.costello@myfloridahouse.gov heather.fitzenhagen@myfloridahouse.gov irving.slosberg@myfloridahouse.gov janet.adkins@myfloridahouse.gov jose.diaz@myfloridahouse.gov joseph.geller@myfloridahouse.gov keith.perry@myfloridahouse.gov larry.ahern@myfloridahouse.gov larry.lee@myfloridahouse.gov larry.metz@myfloridahouse.gov manny.diaz@myfloridahouse.gov marlene.otoole@myfloridahouse.gov mia.jones@myfloridahouse.gov mike.miller@myfloridahouse.gov richard.stark@myfloridahouse.gov ross.spano@myfloridahouse.gov shawn.harrison@myfloridahouse.gov shevrin.jones@myfloridahouse.gov Gaetz.don@flsenate.gov Montford.bill@flsenate.gov Bullard.dwight@flsenate.gov Galvano.bill@flsenate.gov Legg.john@flsenate.gov Ring.jeremy@flsenate.gov Simmons.david@flsenate.gov Stargel.kelli@flsenate.gov Detert.nancy@flsenate.gov Benacquisto.lizbeth@flsenate.gov Brandes.jeff@flsenate.gov Clemens.jeff@flsenate.gov Garcia.rene@flsenate.gov Sobel.eleanor@flsenate.gov Compiled by Cindy Hamilton

Complete Storify notes of the panel discussion with Q&A and bios of the panelists.

In 2012, when the state of California was only just starting to emerge from the depths of the Great Recession and our millionaire’s tax ballot initiative to fund public education had not yet passed, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson issued the results of a study he conducted that identifies the ways he plans to improve the career path for teachers at public schools. The long-term study is a plan to introduce more steps on the career ladder for teachers so that they can be recognized as master teachers in the classroom and also master teachers of other teachers. It’s called Greatness By Design. Torlakson explored best practices in several high-achieving countries that have student/family demographics similar to that of California. He gathered and sifted all the information together to drive forward a new vision of the teaching profession and the ways the state of California could support and develop new and seasoned teachers. Diversity, retention, reliance on research-backed and proven best practices, peer mentoring, resources to support teaching professionals, and continuing reflection on and perfection of one’s craft are central to Greatness By Design. See below for the full report. California Department of Education: Greatness By Design

Note incorporation of “tolerance and acceptance over hate speech,” and  “allocating adequate resources necessary to support diversity, inclusion, and the values of a multicultural society.”