DOE “red line” erasure exercise

After Gov. Brown makes it clear that he’s not caving to Duncan’s pressure, Arnie seems to be backing off his bogus threat to fine California for its educational independence: “‘We want to be flexible, we want to be thoughtful,’ Duncan told the newspaper. ‘We don’t want to be stuck. There are lots of different things happening across the country. I don’t want to be too hard and fast on any one of these things because I have not gone through every detail, every permutation.’” He’s even got Pearson “fellows” disagreeing with him. Now what will the CORE confederates do for testing?

And speaking of the CORE waiver, here’s CTA’s summary of what’s wrong with it. Clear, well-argued, and dated August 8, 2013. I don’t understand why they don’t have an RSS feed for their news items.

Cake without the eating?

State Supt. Torlakson issued a press release this morning noting support for AB 484 from the broad coalition of Californians Together:: “Shelly Spiegel-Coleman, Executive Director of Californians Together: ‘Approval …sends a clear message to every California school about our commitment to the urgent challenge ahead.'” Nothing directly from CTA or CFT, and not a peep from the CORE confederates yet, but their Board is meeting today.

If the governor signs AB 484 as is, will it cost the CORE districts money? LAUSD’s Deasy implied as much when he “furiously” told Ed Week that he’d be forced to go to his board for money to run the usual tests. I’ve only read the Exec Summary of the CORE waiver, but it seems that both its School Quality Improvement System options for “…evaluating teacher effectiveness” require use of student performance / test results .  So if the state isn’t footing the bill for the traditional tests, and the test results are required for the waiver, how does CORE pay the testing bill?

Might be that the eight CORE districts are not going to get away with having their cake and eating it too.

Basking, however briefly, in delusion

Got to love Obama and Duncan’s respect for California’s governor, superintendent of education and teachers: 

Washington officials say the state’s position is delusional. Now that so many other states have met the administration’s demands, they say, the Education Department can’t start carving out exceptions for California. – (L.A. Times, 7/15/13)

Well, maybe D.C. is delusional? This joint letter from CTA and eight locals is the most invigorating union message I’ve seen on the topic of the CORE waiver:

 “… any effort to foster ‘whole system reform’ and promote the development of ‘professional capital’ in renewing, rebuilding and transforming the public education system in California must involve and, as you note, is the responsibility of the ‘entire school community’. This must include educators and their representatives, as well as other stakeholders, in meaningful decision-making roles throughout that process, including its design, development and ultimate execution – not as an afterthought.” 

Supposed to know in the next couple of weeks if the renegade CORE group gets its waiver.