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Showing posts with the label howard blume

Leaving Finland

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Lake Jyvasjarvi I have never lived anywhere for 5 months other than Jyvaskyla, Finland. As my Fulbright journey concludes, there is so much to still digest. It will take months, if not years, to truly assimilate all the learning. Before I left Southern California, I wrote about the what I would miss the most from home and what I  looked forward to experiencing in Finland. It is safe to say I met my goals. Top 7 Goals 1. Discussing Education Helsinki Workshop Through professional development programs, Fulbright Finland connected teachers with scholars and researchers, for the purpose of putting inquisitive minds together. The Making Democracies Resilient to Modern Threats seminar provided participants with fascinating research and presentations. 2. Nordic Model Bus station in Espoo What does an efficient and earnest country look like?  It looks like Finland. Yes, people pay higher taxes, but get so much in return. I for one appreciated the well-main...
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Propaganda

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propaganda : the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person -Merriam-Webster dictionary What is really going on with public education today? Are public schools really failing, or are they being portrayed as failures in order to set them up for corporate take-overs? The public has the right to know that they are being led down a road to the elimination of the middle class, in the corporate world's quest for massive profits via the privatization of the public sector. In other words, selling schools=more money for rich people. It is in someone's vested interest that our public schools fail. And it ain't the teachers and the students. Corporate charters are not in it to "save the children." They are in it to make money off of the children using propaganda and fake grassroots groups such as the Parent Revolution. The propaganda goes like this: "public schools are failing. The...
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What Happened to the $200,000,000? Will the School Board Be Denied Tenure Over This?

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Teachers in South Central are shocked and aghast at hearing that the school district cannot account for $200,000,000 in money spent on salaries, the Los Angeles Times reported today . "The Los Angeles school district paid $200 million more in salaries than it budgeted last year even as it laid off 2,000 teachers and hundreds of other employees, according to an internal audit" writes Howard Blume, a Times education reporter who sometimes gets things right. Two. Hundred. Million. Dollars. How many jobs could that have saved? At the average new teacher salary of about $40,000, that could have saved 5,000 jobs. At our school, it could have easily preserved our young teaching force, 23 teachers, who were fired and let go in order to "right-size" the district. Over 1,000 students have been affected by having a substitute teacher this year. This could have been avoided. Let's see where this went wrong. Someone was crunching the numbers. Theoretically, LAUSD ha...
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A Teacher's Opinion on the Governor's Proposals

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photo by Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times / January 7 , 2010 The new year ushered in even more rapid change in California education, with Governor Schwarzenegger passing new legislation that allows parents to transfer their children from low to high performing schools. It also authorizes a parent trigger at 75 schools statewide, that will begin the process for a change in administration, or possible transfer of management to outside entities, like charter management organizations. The Governor also reintroduced proposed legislation on revising the criteria to fire teachers, to make it easier to do so. All right, here goes: A TEACHER'S OPINION ON THE GOVERNOR'S PROPOSALS It seems the Governor's focus is on making it easier for families to flee the public school system. This is, basically, a vote of no-confidence in public ed. Instead of focusing efforts on how to improve the public schools that exist now, the efforts are geared to how best to convert schools to char...
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Deal Reached With LAUSD?

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Update 7/15/09 2:22 pm UTLA website states LA Times report incorrect. See http://utla.net/system/files/PrematureLATIMES.pdf According to the Los Angeles Times, in an article written by Howard Blume*, UTLA has made a deal with LAUSD that will result in the recission of the 2,000+ layoffs by canceling class-size reduction at the elementary level. The union has agreed to a pay freeze and/or a 1% reduction in wages. Its too late. Its at least too late LA Academy, where school has been in session since July 1st, and we have already lost our top new teachers who didn't sit around waiting while these two powerful organizations "negotiated" the fate of 700,000 students and 40,000 teachers. Let me tell you about who we have lost: Tracie Sanlin This creative 2nd year teacher never ceased maintaining high expectations for all of her students. She handled what many agree to be one of our most challenging 8th grade classes in year including many students who had been OT'd from...
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