March Board of Ed in sum

crossposted from MASC
The March meeting of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education opened with Commissioner Chester speaking of his recent visit to Washington with other heads of state school systems. He reviewed what Massachusetts receives in federal grant funds of the grants proposed for decrease or elimination by the Trump administration: we receive $40 million from Title IIA; $15 million in 21st century grant funds; and $6.7 million in Title IVA funds. Also the staff of DESE is 60% federally funded; 15 or 17 positions in the department are covered by the grants mentioned above. Chester further commented that with Secretary DeVos, "choice is front and center on her agenda."

Tufts and Citizens for Public Schools event on federal ed policy (updated with link to registration)

Coming up on Monday, October 6, an event sponsored by Citizens for Public Schools and the Tufts College for Citizenship and Public Service:

With Test Resistance Rising Nationwide, What's Next for Federal Education Policy?

6:30 pm,  the Granoff Music Center, 20 Talbot Ave., Medford, MA

Speaking will be Lisa Guisbond from CPS, Congressman Michael Capuano, and Senator Pat Jehlen

Online registration link here

If you have any interest on the previous

..and are free on Wednesday night, you can see much of the presentation that we did yesterday on PARCC at Lesley University:

Look Before You Leap: A CPS Forum on Ed Reform's Next Wave

November 13, 7 pm

Lesley University, 1815 Mass Ave. Cambridge.

 amphitheater – room 2-150

The forum is organized by state Sen. Pat Jehlen, with support from the
Cambridge Education Association, Mayor Henrietta Davis, Like Minded
Parents, and members of the Cambridge legislative delegation.

Citizens for Public Schools presents DIANE RAVITCH

and my iPhone hot spot is working, so we'll do some liveblogging so long as the battery holds out. Posting as we go. We're also floating #cpsravitch as a Twitter hashtag.
Introduction by Ann O'Halloran, president of Citizens for Public Schools who hopes that Governor Patrick and others on Beacon Hill "will take a page from Diane's book--or several pages--and abandon policies that have failed"

Upcoming this week

I'm heading off to the Citizens for Public Schools conference today at Bunker Hill Community College. I won't be able to liveblog (for at least part of the day, I'm a presenter), but I'll put some notes up later today.

• The Governance and Employee Issues subcommittee meets Monday at 5:30. You can find the current agenda here. The highlighted items are those being dealt with on Monday.
• The School Committee meeting is different this week. We're meeting for a "work session" for goal setting. The meeting is at 6:30 pm at the Durkin Administration Building. And yes, it will be televised and it is a public meeting.

Citizens for Public Schools!

I'm looking forward to the Citizens for Public Schools  annual conference in Charlestown next weekend. From their website:

It’s time for those who see strong public schools as a foundation for a vibrant democracy to join Citizens for Public Schools in defending our schools and teachers.

You can still sign up!

Coming soon to a theater near you....

(well, relatively, anyway: it opens in Boston on April 30)

If you're a Boston Globe reader, you may have caught Brad MacQuarrie's review of the recently-opened movie The Cartel. The Cartel (which in all of its press seems to be crying out for a voiceover by Don LaFontaine) presents teachers unions as being a greater threat to American civilization than terrorism.

No, I didn't make that up. It's in the film.

MacQuarrie says that this is a subject "familiar to countless parents, public officials, and even casual observers of the sausage-making of municipal government" or at least to regular readers of the Boston Globe, which has a pretty straight-across-the-board negative view of public education and provides plenty of positive spin to the so-called "ed reform" crowd. It may come as a bit of a shock to the rest of us.

The movie has been funded by The Moving Picture Institute, which presents itself as "promoting freedom through film." A quick perusal of past work cites "a range of feature-length films dealing with topics such as higher education's liberal bias, environmental activism's role in perpetuating Third World poverty, anti-communist humor's cultural history, and Hungary's and Estonia's revolutions against totalitarianism" (you can find the list here). The Reason Foundation has tagged them "the AV department for the vast libertarian conspiracy" and a list of those behind it is rather one sided.

You may want to read, as well, Jim Horn's analysis of the review.

Citizens for Public Schools Conference

Citizens for Public Schools is having their conference at Bunker Hill Community College this year on October 17.

You can find all the information on their website.