Key Upcoming Events: June 17 & June 19, 2013

Monday, June 17th: Educate Yourself about K-12 Education in Our State

Monday, June 17th, by K12.MI
1001 Green Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48105
(First United Methodist Church at Greenwood)
7:00 pm-9:00 pm

From the organizers: This event is a forum to discuss the current challenges of k-12 public school education in the State of Michigan. Our panelists will be Michigan State Representative Jeff Irwin, Pioneer High School teacher and Director of Bands, David Leach, and Steve Norton from Michigan Parents for Schools. Mr. Irwin, Mr. Leach, and Mr. Norton will discuss and highlight perspectives from legislators, teachers, and parents on issues and tasks that interested people should be aware of and act upon over the summer. This event is open to all. 

The Facebook invitation is here. Invite your friends!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Statewide, June 19th, at the Capitol: Save Michigan's Public Schools Rally by Rochelle Noel

Please join us on the Capitol lawn beginning at 11:30 am on Wednesday, June 19th. We're still working on lining up our speakers for the event, but we've already confirmed the following superstar advocates for public education:

* Sen. Gretchen Whitmer (Senate Minority Leader)
* Sen. Bert Johnson (D-Highland Park)
* Rep. Brandon Dillon (D-Grand Rapids)
* John Austin (President, State Board of Education)
* Thomas Pedroni (Associate Professor, Wayne State Univ)
* Superintendent Rod Rock (Clarkston Community Schools)
* Jeff Kass (Ann Arbor Public Schools Teacher & Poet)
* Sherry Gay-Dagnogo (Education Chair, National Congress of Black Women)
* Steven Norton (Michigan Parents for Schools)
* John Stewart (former member MI House of Representatives)
* Mary Valentine (former member MI House of Representatives)
* Stephanie Keiles (Plymouth-Canton Community Schools Teacher & Michigan Friends of Public Education)
* Betsy Coffia (Save Michigan's Public Schools)
* K-12 Students Representing School Districts Around Michigan

And Master of Ceremonies . . . Tony Trupiano (Progressive Talk Radio Show Host/Night Shift with Tony Trupiano)

WHO ARE WE?

Save Michigan’s Public Schools is a non-partisan grassroots network of concerned citizens. Our goal is to connect parents, students, educators and communities across Michigan and raise awareness of threats to public education.

We believe a free, quality public education is the cornerstone of a democratic society. We believe every child in Michigan deserves access to equal and excellent educational opportunities through public education. We believe public education must be locally-controlled, fully-funded, delivered by highly qualified professional teachers, and devoid of corporate involvement.

To this end, we support policymakers and public officials who reject the corporate, profit-motivated takeover of public schools, massive school closures, and meaningless high-stakes testing. We support wise policies and laws that forward sound, research-based, evidence-based solutions to support and improve our existing public school system.

Here is the facebook invitation. Invite your friends!

MEAP Results

I will have more to say about this at some point, but for now I thought you might just be interested in seeing the 2008 MEAP and MME results for the county. [These links are from the WISD, and I'm not sure why charter schools are not listed.] No surprise that the results mostly track closely to numbers that assess poverty, like free and reduced price lunch.

1. Background information on what was assessed. Note that you will also find the links to past years right there.

2. 2008 MEAP results

3. 2008 MME results

Although the results came out a few weeks ago, I couldn't find them on the AAPS web site (there is, however, a detailed analysis of 2005-2006). Nor could I find them on the Saline Schools web site. The Ypsilanti schools web site links directly to the state (and that is a good solution, I think, because the state updates the data every year and so it is immediately available). I stopped looking when it became clear a lot of school systems have not updated their web sites (yet).

Or you can go to greatschools.net, here is the Michigan MEAP link. (And at greatschools.net you can also look up information about the free lunch program, race/ethnicity, student/teacher ration, and more.)

Open Education Conference Books Great Speaker

The 26th annual Open Education Conference, "Rekindling the Vision," is scheduled for the weekend of March 20-21, 2009. The conference is loosely affiliated with Ann Arbor Open School, but it's really about the idea of Open Education. And to be perfectly clear about it, there are probably teachers in every school in Washtenaw County who teach in an "open" manner, and there are certainly parents in every school who like that style of education.

Some years the Open Education conference is better than others, but I have reason to believe that this year will be excellent. I've been to a few, not all, and always as a day-tripper (which you can do--the prices are reasonable, and the conference is at a lovely camp just outside Ann Arbor). One of my favorite memories from an Open Conference was a discussion of the MEAP, where we got to actually take part of an (old) MEAP. I think it was 5th grade social studies. I felt much more informed about the test after that--it was somewhat hard, and it seemed more like a reading comprehension test than a social studies test.

In any case--this year, the Open Conference has a speaker whom I believe will be excellent. More information and registration flyers can be found here. I want to encourage you to go hear Deborah Meier. Although I haven't heard her speak, I have read some stuff by her. She will be speaking on Saturday. You can read more about her at www.deborahmeier.com, and here is a brief synopsis:

Among Deborahʼs many accomplishments she is well known as the founder and teacher director of a network of highly successful public elementary schools in East Harlem. In 1985 she founded Central Park East Secondary School, a New York City public high school in which more than 90% of the entering students went on to college, mostly to 4-year schools. During this period she also founded a local Coalition center, which networked approximately fifty small Coalition-style K-12 schools in the city.
Her books are: The Power of Their Ideas, Lessons to America from a Small School in Harlem (1995), Will Standards Save Public Education (2000), In Schools We Trust (2002), Keeping School, with Ted and Nancy Sizer (2004) and Many Children Left Behind (2004).