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The New York State Education Department (NYSED) is committed to providing district leaders support as they implement Student Learning Objectives (SLOs). Beginning in mid-December 2011 and running through the end of February 2012, NYSED will host a series of introductory webinars. Each webinar will introduce components of the SLO process that will help district leaders to communicate and begin the implementation process with stakeholders. The first webinar provides viewers with the following information: - the background and basics of SLOs; - the relationship between SLOs, the Common Core State Standards, Data Driven Instruction, evidence-based observations, and local measures of student achievement; and - the difference between the state/district/school/teacher's role within the SLO process.

The flow of venture capital into the K-12 education market has exploded over the past year, reaching its highest transaction values in a decade in 2011, industry observers say. They attribute that rise to such factors as a heightened interest in educational technology; the decreasing cost of electronic devices such as tablet computers, laptops, netbooks, and mobile devices; and the movement toward standardization of curriculum through the Common Core State Standards.

To critics of Michigan's public education system, the core problems are clear: Disengaged parents, unions that care more about the adults than children and a culture of mediocrity enabled by schools' geographic monopoly. The common lament is that if only we could have public schools that are free of union rules and that face competitive pressure to stay in business, who could serve families that really want to be there. Here's what's interesting: We already have that, in the form of charter schools.

This report presents data from the School District Finance Survey (F-33) of the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey system for school year (SY) 2008-09 (fiscal year [FY] 2009). The F-33 is a district-level financial survey that consists of data submitted annually to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau (Census) by state education agencies (SEAs) in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

"The idea that teachers have the summer off is something of a myth. I recently spent a few days with several thousand teachers -- not at the beach, but at TEACH, the AFT's largest gathering of educators focused on their professional practice and growth. Teachers spent long days learning from fellow educators and other experts about concrete ways to improve teaching and learning. Many teachers told me how they were spending the rest of their summer: writing curriculum aligned to the new, challenging Common Core State Standards; taking classes, because teachers are lifelong learners; and working with students -- in enrichment camps and in programs to stem summer learning loss. So much for the dog days of August. But our conferees did much more. We also committed to reclaim the promise -- the promise of public education. Not as it is today or as it was in the past, but as what public education can be to fulfill our collective obligation to help all children succeed."

"In this post, teacher Maria Baldassarre-Hopkins describes the process in which she and other educators participated, setting cut scores for the new Common Core tests in New York. She signed a confidentiality agreement, so she is discreet on many questions and issues."

"Here is the bitter truth. Standardized tests are a political weapon and can be used to tell whatever story you want. The campaign to hold schools and teachers "accountable" for test scores is a political project designed to deflect responsibility away from people who have gotten obscenely wealthy over the past few decades. The concept of "failing schools" is a bogus one. Schools are being shut down not in the interest of the children who attend them, but in order to create opportunities for new players in the education marketplace."

"New scores from standardized tests   aligned with the Common Core State Standards were released earlier this month in New York, and, as expected, the number of students who did well plummeted. This decline was predicted by New York State officials. How did they know? Here to explain in an eye-opening piece is award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York, who has for more than a year chronicled on the test-driven reform in her state"

"Katie Zahedi is principal of Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, New York, which is located in upstate Dutchess County. She is active in the association of New York Principals who bravely oppose the State Education Department's educator evaluation plan based mostly on test scores. Zahedi has been a principal and assistant principal at her school for twelve years. The views she expresses here are solely her own and not those of the district or her school. Suffice it to say that she is a woman of unusual integrity and courage, who is determined to speak truth to power. She wrote this piece for the blog in response to the release of the Common Core test results in New York, in which scores collapsed across the state."

"The rationale here is muddled at best, but the detriments are obvious. For instance, young students in New York State who are developing as they should will be placed in remedial services, forgoing enrichment in the arts because they are a "2" and thus below the new proficiency level. That is where the vast majority of students fall on the new scales - below proficiency and off the "road to college readiness."  Students, who in reality may not need support will be sorted into special education or "response to intervention" services.  Parents will worry for their children's future. The newspapers will bash the public schools and their teachers at a time when morale is already at an extreme low. The optimism teachers first felt about the Common Core State Standards is fading as the standards and their tests roll into classrooms."

"In sum, the AP article does not reflect the declared purpose of the survey as evidenced by the survey questions. The parents completing the AP survey were not instructed in the use of the term "high stakes," including the potential, serious outcomes of high stakes testing.  They were also not informed of the high-stakes-testing requirements associated with Common Core. If one considers the survey results separate from the AP article, one sees parents who believe their children are receiving a better education than they did from excellent-yet-underpaid teachers who care about their students.  I dare the Joyce-Foundation-funded AP to print that info."

"In the United States, we entrust state and local leaders to make most consequential decisions affecting schools.  It's ironic, then, that the federal government funds most of the research and evaluation work in education.  State and local leaders bear a responsibility to study the consequences of their decisions.  We will make much faster progress when they do.  At this very moment, chief academic officers around the country are choosing professional development providers to prepare teachers for the Common Core.  Districts are choosing curricula.  Why can't we provide them with better evidence to guide their choices?  Or, at the very least, why can't we compare the 2014-15 gains for those making different choices now, so that we have a clearer view of what worked going into the 2015-16 school year?  Otherwise, we will continue reinventing the wheel.  School leaders need to get out of the wheel reinvention business."

"If the mission of the education system is to serve the economy, and that means maximizing profits, then those profits will be highest if we have an overabundance of college graduates to do the technical work that must be done to keep the machinery of production running. And we have low wage service sector that is unable to raise its wages because they are unorganized and have no political clout. Those who are unemployed are informed over and over again by the school system that they are inadequate because they cannot pass the tests, and therefore to perceive their status as being the result of their own failure to make themselves useful to employers. They are unemployed not because manufacturing has been outsourced to cheap labor overseas, but because they were not "career ready," as proven by their failure to pass the new, much more "rigorous" Common Core aligned tests. Education reform becomes an exercise in rationalizing the shift of half the nation's workers into "surplus" status. It creates a new meritocracy, based on a false paradigm that defines the ability to do well on tests as merit."

"There continues to be much bluster out there in ed reformy land that money really isn't all that important - especially for traditional public school districts. That local public schools and districts already have way too much money but use it so inefficiently that any additional dollar would necessarily be wasted. An extension of this line of reasoning is that therefore differences in spending across districts are also inconsequential. It really doesn't matter - the reformy line of thinking goes - if the suburbs around Philly, Chicago or New York dramatically outspend them, as long as some a-contextual, poorly documented and often flat out wrong, blustery statement can be made about a seemingly large aggregate or per pupil spending figure that the average person on the street should simply find offensive. Much of this bluster about the irrelevance of funding is strangely juxtaposed with arguments that inequity of teacher quality and the adequacy of the quality of the teacher workforce are the major threats to our education system. But of course, these threats have little or nothing to do with money? Right? As I've explained previously - equitable distribution of quality teaching requires equitable (not necessarily equal) distribution of resources. Districts serving more needy student populations require smaller classes and more intensive supports if their students are expected to close the gap with their more advantaged peers - or strive for common outcome goals. Even recruiting similarly qualified teachers in higher need settings requires higher, not the same or lower compensation. Districts serving high need populations require a) more staff - more specialized, more diverse and even more of the same (core classroom teacher) staff, of b) at least equal qualifications. That means they need more money (than their more advantaged neighbors) to get the job done. If they so happen to have substantially less money, it's not a matter of simply tradin

"But even good ideas can be torpedoed by bad execution. In New York, officials rushed to impose tests and consequences way before students were ready. And Louisiana, New Mexico and other states are skimping on or simply bungling implementation. If officials are trying to make these standards unattainable, they're doing a great job. No wonder students, their parents and teachers are angry, anxious and demoralized."

"For several years now, would-be reformers have gotten away with claiming that there's a goopy, groupthink "reform consensus." They depict the edu-debates as a simple-minded morality play between a "reform" phalanx and "adult interests." This line has been sold most assiduously by Democrat for Ed Reform-types and NCLB enthusiasts who think conservatives are supposed to quietly, cheerfully sign on to the grand schemes crafted by their betters."

The White House has announced its plan to grant waivers of the provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to states that agree to put in place the education reforms favored by the administration. Thus states that agree, for example, to adopt the Common Core state standards for what students should learn and to evaluate teachers for tenure based on student test gains will be freed from the consequences facing schools that fail to meet adequate yearly progress goals under NCLB. The reforms the administration seeks as a condition of granting waivers are the same that it put forward in its Blueprint for reauthorizing NCLB, and that it advanced in its Race to the Top competition using the $5 billion in discretionary funds made available to it by Congress under the Stimulus Act.

In a Sunday WaPo op-ed, Jay Mathews suggests that the Common Core State Standards Initiative is doomed to failure, and isn't a good idea anyway

This message from Commissioner King looks more in-depth at the Common Core, data-driven instruction, educator practice, and network teams.