Latest News and Comment from Education

Monday, September 19, 2016

Yohuru Williams: Why The NAACP Moratorium On Charters Really Matters To Our Public Schools | Huffington Post

Why The NAACP Moratorium On Charters Really Matters To Our Public Schools | Huffington Post:

Why The NAACP Moratorium On Charters Really Matters To Our Public Schools


While one might be tempted to laugh off Donald Trump’s recent efforts to craft a “Civil Rights Agenda,” his labors punctuate a long history of attempted appropriation. Politicians and others have tried to assume the mantle of the Civil Rights Movement in support of policies and programs wholly inconsistent with that movement’s core social justice principles. This has been most evident of late in conversations about public education.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples, the nation’s oldest and most highly recognized civil rights organization, called for a nationalmoratorium on charter schools this summer. Soon after, a bipartisan chorus of charter supporters cried foul attempting to present the so- called choice offered by charters, as well as other attributes of corporate education reform, as the next logical step in the Civil Rights Movement.
It is all the more curious when many of the same people, like Trump, have been mostly silent on other issues impacting communities of color. They offer no support for the contemporary Black Lives Matter Movement. But, they can hardly contain their indignation when efforts are made on behalf of communities of color to block corporate education reform measures like high stakes testing and unregulated publicly financed charters.
Rather than addressing the NAACP’s position, some critics have sought to deflect the conversation. Writing in US News and World Report, Harvard University Government Professor Paul Peterson, for instance, attempted to shift the blame back on to teachers’ unions, and their supposed preservationist interest in fighting charters. He nevertheless wondered, “Why do many civil rights groups oppose charters?” He demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the history of the movement and those who fought in it. Unions, for example, played an integral part in backing the Civil Rights Movement. While the history of the relationship iscomplex, union members were well represented among protesters and movement leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. often counted on them for critical financial support.
The relationship between the movement and unions is a given. Moreover, ending segregated schooling in the United States constituted the very essence of the most important case brought by the NAACP, Brown v. the Board of Education. Its goal was to end the doctrine of “separate but equal” in education. With the Brown decision, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the position of civil rights Why The NAACP Moratorium On Charters Really Matters To Our Public Schools | Huffington Post:

Trump Selects Two People for His Education Transition Team | deutsch29

Trump Selects Two People for His Education Transition Team | deutsch29:

Trump Selects Two People for His Education Transition Team

Image result for big education ape broad recycle

According to a September 19, 2016, article written by Andrew Ujifusa of Education Week, according to “multiple sources,” Donald Trump has two individuals in line to lead his transition team in education if Trump becomes president.
The first is Williamson “Bill” Evers:
Evers served as an assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Education from 2007 to 2009, and also was an adviser to former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings in 2007 under President George W. Bush.  …
Evers has an extensive background in academic standards. He was appointed by two former California governors, Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to serve on two separate standards commissions. And he’s been a big critic of the Common Core State Standards. In a 2015 op-ed for Education Week, for example, Evers said advocates of the common core were subverting a key aspect of the American civic system….
He’s also written about struggling schools, mathematics, and school funding, among other topics. Evers has served on a county board of education in California, where he’s also been on the board of directors for a charter school.
bill-evers  Bill Evers
It should be noted that the Republican bandwagon of Common Core as a federal takeover came years after numerous Republican governors and state education chiefs signed on to an as-of-yet non-existent Common Core in 2009 in the wake of then-US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s dangling almost $400,000 in front of those officials for a contest to create federally-funded, Common Core testing consortia. Moreover, the Common Core MOU (memorandum of understanding)clearly stated that the federal government would be all over Common Core except for directly funding it.
Moving on.
The second Ujifusa-noted Trump tap is Gerard Robinson:
Robinson served as Florida’s education commissioner from 2011 to 2012, and has also served as Virginia’s education secretary and as the president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. …
Robinson resigned as the Florida chief four years ago after a difficult year in office. He left the job not long after a controversy surrounding a precipitous drop in proficiency rates on the state writing exam—the state board responded by lowering the pass score on the test. Some also criticized the state education department’s handling of Florida’s A-F accountability system on Robinson’s watch, and how he handled English-language learners with respect to A-F school grades.
gerard-robinson  Gerard Robinson
I wrote about Robinson in this 2013 post about Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change (Jeb Bush, who tried to hold onto Common Core as long as he could):
If reality breaks through and corporate reform is really embarrassed, well, one 
Trump Selects Two People for His Education Transition Team | deutsch29:

The Bridgegate trial’s six biggest shockers |

The Bridgegate trial’s six biggest shockers |:

The Bridgegate trial’s six biggest shockers

From BlueJersey.Com

Political corruption trials—even those with high-profile defendants—rarely produce genuine surprises. But the opening  day of the Bridgegate trial generated at least a half-dozen shockers, some of which may change both the political landscape and similar trials in New Jersey for a long time to come.  Here’s my list of the big six biggest surprises unleashed in federal district court in Newark Monday:
Surprise 1 and 2:  Despite long established defense practice, both defendants—Bill Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Bridget Kelly, former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Chris Christie—will testify in their own defense.
“It’s 100 percent guaranteed, “ declared Michael Baldassare, Baroni’s lawyer. “You’ll hear her testify,” said Michael Critchley, Kelly’s defense counsel.
Of course, both lawyers—and their clients—could change their minds, right up to the moment they are called to the stand. So, for the moment, the declarations are more courtroom stage-craft than anything else.  But, right now, the announced decision that Baroni and Kelly, charged with the politically motivated creation of traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge,  will risk all to give their side of the convoluted Bridgegate story has to have had an impact on the jurors.
Surprise 3: The defense attacks on chief prosecution witness David Wildstein were not only withering but also extraordinarily vulgar, especially in a courtroom—and it’s a wonder Judge Susan Wigenton did not caution Baldassare to watch his mouth.
Sure, defense lawyers often call their clients’ chief accusers “liars” and “crooks.”  But try  on this comment from Baldassare referring to how he believed others The Bridgegate trial’s six biggest shockers |:


Audio: Court rejects California teacher evaluation lawsuit AGAIN | 89.3 KPCC

Audio: Court rejects California teacher evaluation lawsuit | 89.3 KPCC:

Audio: Court rejects California teacher evaluation lawsuit AGAIN 



On Monday Northern California Judge Barry Goode denied the claims in the Doe v. Antioch Unified lawsuit – the second legal setback in recent months to education advocates who believe ineffective teacher have too many job protections.
Lawyers who filed the suit on behalf of the parents of school children and California taxpayers claimed that the 13 districts, including seven in Southern California, blatantly violated the Stull Act by prohibiting the use of standardized test scores to evaluate teachers.
The school districts countered that argument by submitting testimony from school district officials that described how student test scores were used at the central office to the school sites, including in how to evaluate teachers.
In his 40 page ruling, Judge Goode said that the testimony was sufficient to demonstrate that districts do use test scores and that districts have flexibility over how the scores should be used.
“I think [the decision is] a victory for California school districts and local control,” said lawyer Mark Bresee, who represented five of the school districts. “It is consistent with the spirit of the education code and the teacher evaluation provisions because all of these districts have been and will continue to incorporate student test score data into their teacher evaluation processes.”
Joshua Lipshutz, one of the lawyers who filed the lawsuit for the education advocacy group Students Matter, said the ruling did not take into account if schools linked rising or dropping test scores to teacher evaluations.
“Unfortunately I think the court today got it completely wrong,” Lipshutz said.
Students Matter said it’s considering an appeal.
This is the second legal setback for the group in the last month. On August 22, California’s Supreme Court allowed a lower court ruling to stand against the group’s Vergara lawsuit.
That suit attempted to overturn job protections for California teachers, claiming they shielded grossly ineffective teachers.
While seeing Monday’s ruling as another setback for Students Matter, some education researchers underlined that the ruling shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that schools’ teacher evaluation methods are effective.
“I think that there are a number of folks who think that teacher evaluation could be strengthened in California,” said University of Southern California education researcher Morgan Polikoff. “And this ruling is one more piece of evidence that it’s probably not going to happen through the courts. If it’s going to happen, it needs to happen through the legislature.”
By and large, he said, teacher evaluations don’t happen frequently enough and the evaluations don’t adequately offer struggling teachers the help they need to succeed or to find another job.Audio: Court rejects California teacher evaluation lawsuit | 89.3 KPCC:

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 9/19/16

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 9/19/16







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School reform: What went wrong, what went right, and what we should do in the future - The Washington Post
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Ohio’s 2015 School District Report Cards Encourage Economic Segregation | janresseger
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YESTERDAY

Schools Matter: Publishing My Email Exchanges with D. Ravitch, Part 1
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Will PARCC and Smarter Balanced Become One? Details from PARCC’s Request to Help Chart Its Future | deutsch29
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