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On Oct. 1, 650 people attended the 4th annual Northwest Teachers for Social Justice conference in Seattle.  Rethinking Schools editor Stan Karp gave a well-received talk on "Challenging Corporate Ed Reform." He ended on an uplifting note with " 10 hopeful, tangible signs of organizing resistance and alternatives to the corporate reform agenda."    The following is an excerpt from that presentation.

The Wisconsin Senate approved a measure Tuesday that would freeze the expansion of school vouchers and grant the Legislature the power to decide which schools or districts should qualify. The bill would limit voucher participation to school districts already in the program on the day the measure takes effect. Any school districts who want to get in after that would need separate legislation. The bill's author, Senate President Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, said the proposal would give the Legislature more say and flexibility on voucher expansion than the one-size-fits-all criteria laid out in current law.

Basically, almost everything that market-based reformers think needs to happen has been the reality in DCPS for the past 2-3 years. And the staff  has been transformed too. The majority of principals, and a huge proportion of teachers, were hired during the tenure of either Michelle Rhee or her successor, Kaya Henderson. The district should be in overdrive right about now. Is it?

Charter schools are largely viewed as a major innovation in the public school landscape, as they receive more independence from state laws and regulations than do traditional public schools, and are therefore more able to experiment with alternative curricula, pedagogical methods, and different ways of hiring and training teachers. Unlike traditional public schools, charters may be shut down by their authorizers for poor performance. But how is charter school performance measured? What are the effects of charter schools on student achievement?

Emily Sirota, candidate for Denver Public School Board District 1, appeared on MSNBC's Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell to discuss the unprecedented amounts of corporate cash flowing into the school board race to try to defeat her. Emily supports reinvesting in our neighborhood schools and opposes vouchers - and that's why Huge Money is trying to defeat her.

School board elections are supposed to be quintessential America contests. Moms and Main Street small-business owners and retired teachers campaign by knocking on doors, writing letters to the editor and debating at elementary schools. Then friends and neighbors troop to the polls and make their choices. But what happens when all the pathologies of national politics-over-the-top spending by wealthy elites and corporate interests, partisan consultants jetting in to shape big-lie messaging, media outlets that cover spin rather than substance-are visited on a local school board contest? Emily Sirota is finding out.

Latino students in California - nearly 1.3 million of them English learners - are struggling to achieve academic success at the same level as their white peers. In "State has one of nation's highest gaps in Hispanic-white reading proficiency," Sarah Garland reports that only 12 percent of Hispanic fourth-graders in California tested proficient in reading in 2009. Nonprofits, government agencies and parents have all launched campaigns over the years to close the learning gap, but little progress has been made.

An Orange County High School was using a student ID colour-coding scheme to visibly rank and sort students according to their scores on standardized tests.

In a repudiation of the segregationist policies that have caused turmoil in Wake County, NC for the past two years, voters have returned a pro-diversity majority that we can only hope will vote to restore the most successful socioeconomic integration plan in the U. S.  

Elementary and high schools are receiving less state funding than last year in at least 37 states, and in at least 30 states school funding now stands below 2008 levels - often far below. These cuts are attributable, in part, to the failure of the federal government to extend emergency fiscal aid to states and school districts and the failure of most states to enact needed revenue increases and instead to balance their budgets solely through spending cuts. The cuts have significant consequences, both now and in the future: They are causing immediate public- and private-sector job loss, and in the long term are likely to reduce student achievement and economic growth.

On Monday, October 3rd, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) produced a live webcast to launch its new guide to teacher evaluation, titled Getting It Right.  As a National Board Certified Teacher and someone who has worked on producing a similar policy guide on teacher evaluation (see Publications, above), I tuned in to see what the National Board had to say.  After all, no organization has a clearer picture of what quality teaching really should look like

A national teachers union leader joined faculty at a Los Angeles middle school Friday to criticize a major school-improvement initiative within the L.A. Unified School District. Under the strategy, called Public School Choice, groups inside and outside the school system can bid for control of new and low-performing campuses. The meeting between teachers and Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, took place at Cochran Middle School in Arlington Heights, one of the campuses affected.

KIPP wants to open more charter schools in Jacksonville, but Duval County School Board is going to do something state law does not: consider KIPP's current performance before giving the OK. School Board members want KIPP Jacksonville officials to explain how they will improve their middle school's F grade and reassure the board that two new schools they wish to open won't perform as poorly.

In Washington Heights, graduates of Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science run the Science Schools Initiative, a yearlong free tutoring program held for three hours every Saturday morning. To qualify, students must show promise on a diagnostic exam and meet the city's benchmark for poverty. "The whole point of this thing is basically to get economically disadvantaged kids into these schools," said Mr. Cleary, who until recently was the program's executive director. "I'm not looking to hit a certain number; I'm looking for some equilibrium."

Urban districts are often among Ohio's lowest rated schools. So many parents who can afford to, head for the suburbs once their children reach school age. But one group of parents in Cleveland decided instead to open their own school.

In 1998, Ohio opened its first 15 charter schools. There are now more than 300, and they're enrolling more than 100,000 primary and secondary students.  Ohio is paying upwards of $500,000,000 to support those schools. But as charter schools have grown, so have divisions between them and traditional public schools.

Another hedge-funder is going to prison for insider trading. Only this time, the imprisonment of convicted Wall Street crook Raj Rajaratnam could be costly to some corporate school reforms and charter school privateers.

Some public charter schools do wonderful work. Some don't. This is what can happen when officials who allow charter schools to open don't pay enough attention to what happens after the doors open to students

Mayor Bloomberg likes to boast of the "gains" made in city schools during his tenure, but the test scores and graduation rates he cites have long been suspect. Want to know why? As Susan Edelman reported in last Sunday's Post, the folks at struggling Washington Irving HS in Manhattan apply a major, um, fudge factor.

A Bronx charter school has reached an agreement with the city's teachers union, signing a contract that would grant the teachers and staff at the school modest wage increases and expanded job protection, but unlike their counterparts in unionized city schools, no provision for tenure.