Thousands sign petitions to disinvite Betsy DeVos from speaking at historically black college - The Washington Post

Thousands sign petitions to disinvite Betsy DeVos from speaking at historically black college - The Washington Post:

Thousands sign petitions to disinvite Betsy DeVos from speaking at historically black college

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos speaks at the Council of the Great City Schools Annual Legislative/Policy Conference in Washington on  March 13. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos can’t seem to stay away from controversy. This time, tens of thousands of people have signed petitions asking that she be disinvited from giving Wednesday’s scheduled commencement address at Bethune-Cookman University in Florida because of comments she made revealing ignorance about the history of historically black colleges and universities.

DeVos was invited to speak by university President Edison O. Jackson, who defended the decision in an op-ed published in the Orlando Sentinel. In the piece, Jackson said in part:

I understand the concerns about her, and I genuinely appreciate those who voice those concerns in a constructive manner.

I am especially sensitive to balancing the notion of academic freedom with quelling potentially hateful and harmful rhetoric. The political and racial chasms in our county have deepened, and college presidents have struggled with these issues over the past few months. Some have rescinded invitations to potentially controversial speakers.

That is not my intention with DeVos. I am of the belief that it does not benefit our students to suppress voices that we disagree with, or to limit students to only those perspectives that are broadly sanctioned by a specific community.

Adora Nweze, president of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, the Thousands sign petitions to disinvite Betsy DeVos from speaking at historically black college - The Washington Post:

Words of inspiration for teachers by teachers - Lily's Blackboard

Words of inspiration for teachers by teachers - Lily's Blackboard:

Words of inspiration for teachers by teachers

It is Teacher Appreciation Week, and who better to celebrate teachers and teaching than educators themselves? Pulled from the archives of NEA Today we share words of inspiration and dedication from those working on the frontlines of education in our schools every day.

It's totally worth it!

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“It’s all totally worth it. You have a chance to positively impact so many young thinkers and dreamers. You will help young people become stronger writers, readers, or math-lovers, but if you can also deeply connect with and support students who really need help to stay in school, then you will feel an even greater sense of accomplishment.”

 Sara Ketcham, English teacher, Oakland Technical High School in Oakland, Calif.

Collaborate with other teachers

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“Half of what I know about teaching and what works with students is instinctual, and the other half is ‘stolen’ from other good teachers. I observe other teachers’ classrooms to see how their teaching style and lessons work, and I’ve been able to team teach with some of the best teachers our district has to offer; some were veteran educators, others were very early in their careers.

The common thread is the passion good teachers have for their subject and for their students.”

-- Michael Hawthorne, history teacher, Hartford School District in Hartford, Vt.

Join the union!

“I joined the union because I believe that with the power of numbers behind us we could fight for better teacher pay, bring down our class sizes, get special training in various professional development areas, and much more. ...

I joined because I also cared about my colleagues. I hated seeing first-year teachers leaving because they couldn’t make ends meet money-wise or they didn’t feel welcomed or supported. I joined to make a difference for those teachers so they will stay!”

--Joseph Daily, physical education teacher, Yuma, Az.

Believe in your students!

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CONTINUE READING: Words of inspiration for teachers by teachers - Lily's Blackboard:

Out-of-Town Billionaires & Trump Backers Attempt to Hijack Local School Board Election « Alice Walton « Hedge Clippers

Partner Paper with Public School Parents in LA: Out-of-Town Billionaires & Trump Backers Attempt to Hijack Local School Board Election « Alice Walton « Hedge Clippers:

PARTNER PAPER WITH PUBLIC SCHOOL PARENTS IN LA: OUT-OF-TOWN BILLIONAIRES & TRUMP BACKERS ATTEMPT TO HIJACK LOCAL SCHOOL BOARD ELECTION

The California Charter School Association (CCSA), directly and through its network of entities, has been the biggest spender in the 2017 election for Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) school board members to represent Districts 4 and 6, having spent over $4 million to-date.  Nearly all of CCSA’s political campaign funding comes from millionaires and billionaires.  Out-of-town billionaires make up the bulk of this funding.

Between July 2016 – December 2016, out-of-town billionaires like Doris Fisher, Co-Founder of The Gap, Alice Walton, heiress to the WalMart fortune, and Michael Bloomberg, New York financier and former Mayor, all made big political contributions to the California Charter School Association Advocates (CCSAA) Independent Expenditure Committee.

The combined net worth of these three out-of-town billionaires is $125.5 BILLION.  Doris Fisher lives in San Francisco, Alice Walton lives in Bentonville, Arkansas and Michael Bloomberg lives in New York City.

Additionally, numerous contributors to the CCSAA political fund are Trump supporters, a position that puts them out-of-sync with the majority of Los Angeles voters.

Alice Walton and the WalMart family, for example, donated to the Super PAC that worked to elect Trump, donated to Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, and to the Alliance for School Choice, an organization that Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos helped to lead. Richard Riordan, who gave $1 milion to CCSAA to then launch an independent expenditure committee working to elect Melvoin and Gonez, is a Trump supporter and donor. [i]  Many others CCSAA donors are as well.

CCSA has poured money into these school board races directly through its Independent Expenditure Committee, [ii] and has also acting as a pass through for three other independent expenditure committees that are involved in the race.

• CCSAA sponsors and funds[iii] the deceptively named Parent Teacher Alliance (PTA), also a big electoral spender.

• The PTA, CCSAA helps fund[iv] the Students for Education Reform (SFER) Action Network, which also spent money on this election.

• LA Students for Change Opposing Steve Zimmer for School Board 2017 is funded by a $1,000,000 donation[v] from former LA Mayor Richard Riordan that was received through CCSAA

According to available filings,[vi] CCSAA and the groups it funds have provided almost all the independent electoral spending on behalf of Nick Melvoin and Kelly Gonez in the hotly contested District 4 and 6 races.

• District 4: of the reported independent expenditures on behalf of Melvoin — $2,415,345 in the primary and $768,316 in the general, or $3,183,661 in total – almost all were filed by CCSAA with Eli Broad and Speak UP – Supporting Nick Melvoin for School Board 2017 contributing the rest.

• District 6: all reported independent expenditures on behalf of Gonez — $739,821 in the primary and $588,564 in the general, or $1,328,385 in total — were filed by the CCSAA and PTA.

CCSAA has acted as a conduit for millions in campaign contributions flowing into the Los Angeles school board race, and while we know the identities of donors through 2016, the people of Los Angeles won’t know the identities of the more recent donors until well after the election.

HIDDEN MONEY DONORS OPPOSING PUBLIC EDUCATION FUNDING STRIKE AGAIN

Since the Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United we’ve seen an explosion in hidden money (so-called “dark money”) pouring into political races fueled by corporate self-interest, a desire for the super wealthy to lower their taxes and/or to privatize the functions of government. These races have typically been big races for the control of the House, Senate, Governor’s mansion or the presidency. In Partner Paper with Public School Parents in LA: Out-of-Town Billionaires & Trump Backers Attempt to Hijack Local School Board Election « Alice Walton « Hedge Clippers:

Lunch shaming: USDA sets deadline for school policies - NonDoc

Lunch shaming: USDA sets deadline for school policies - NonDoc:

Lunch shaming: USDA sets deadline for school policies

(Editor’s note: This story was authored by Jennifer Palmer of Oklahoma Watch and appears here in accordance with the non-profit journalism organization’s republishing terms.)

In schools across the nation, including in Oklahoma, children whose school meal accounts aren’t paid in full sometimes face embarrassment in the cafeteria line.

Some schools take away their trays and give them an alternative meal, like a cold sandwich. Others put a stamp on their hand that reads “lunch money” as an alert to parents but also visible to peers.

Practices such as these, called “lunch shaming,” have triggered parent backlash in some districts, including at least two in Oklahoma. The practice was recently banned in New Mexico, and Texas and California are considering similar laws.

A few weeks ago, the Choctaw-Nicoma Park School District halted its practice of stamping the hands of children who owe lunch money after an outcry from parents.

Harrah Public Schools faced scrutiny recently when a substitute cafeteria worker took hot meals from children whose accounts were empty; the children received a cold sandwich to eat instead.

State lacks protocol for unpaid lunches

Oklahoma schools are allowed to take these actions because the state does not have a policy on how to treat non-paying students, letting districts decide for themselves.

Chris Bernard, executive director of nonprofit Hunger Free Oklahoma, said inferior meals, hand stamps and chores for students with meal debt unnecessarily humiliate children, which can lead to them being bullied or picked on and cause mental health issues.

“(Schools) need to be thinking about practices that are not singling out children for something they absolutely have no control over and potentially putting them in a situation where they don’t have the nourishment they need to be successful in school,” Bernard said.

The students affected by these policies typically don’t qualify for the federal free-lunch program, although there may be some whose parents decline to apply. Still, there are often family circumstances behind meal debt, such as a parent losing a job, or working intermittently, or other financial setbacks.

Unpaid lunch tabs add up

But some school officials say lunch programs are costly to run, and unpaid meal debt is a Lunch shaming: USDA sets deadline for school policies - NonDoc:

How Public School High School Choice Reinforces Segregation and Inequality in NYC | janresseger

How Public School High School Choice Reinforces Segregation and Inequality in NYC | janresseger:

How Public School High School Choice Reinforces Segregation and Inequality in NYC

Last week, Wendy Lecker, an attorney with New Jersey’s Education Law Center and a columnist for the Stamford Advocate published a commentary that defines the meaning of public services and specifically the meaning of “public” in education: “Michigan professor Marina Whitman recently noted that the essence of a public good is that it is non-excludable; i.e. all can partake, and non-rivalrous; i.e. giving one person the good does not diminish its availability to another. Some school reforms strengthen education as a public good; such as school finance reform, which seeks to ensure that all children have adequate educational resources. Unfortunately, the reforms pushed in the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations attack education as a public good.  For example, choice—charters and vouchers…. Choice operates on the excludable premise of ‘saving a few.'”

Lecker explores the exclusionary implications of school privatization—charters and vouchers.  But there is also a way to make the public schools themselves less public, and that is the introduction of school choice into public school districts themselves. This has also been a centerpiece of much of modern school “reform,” and the most basic example has been promoted as a formal policy for school districts to adopt: Portfolio School Reform.  Portfolio School Reform has been formulated into principles and promoted across our nation’s big city school districts by a think tank called the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE).  Here is how CRPE defines “portfolio school reform” and its network of “portfolio school districts“: “The portfolio strategy is a problem-solving framework through which education and civic leaders develop a citywide system of high-quality, diverse, autonomous public schools. It moves past the one-size-fits-all approach to education. It puts educators directly in charge of their schools, empowers parents to choose the right schools for their children, and focuses school system leaders on overseeing school success.”

There is a lot of rhetoric in this definition about creating autonomous public schools, moving past one-size-fits-all schools, and putting educators directly in charge.  It is hard to know what all this means, but the next clause is clearer: Portfolio School Reform “empowers parents to choose the right schools for their children.”  And CRPE’s rhetoric promises that parents will all have the right to choose “a great school for every child in every neighborhood.”  Portfolio school reform theory posits the creation of privatized alternatives but it also includes the How Public School High School Choice Reinforces Segregation and Inequality in NYC | janresseger:

The war on education as public good (By Wendy Lecker) - Wait What?

The war on education as public good (By Wendy Lecker) - Wait What?:

The war on education as public good (By Wendy Lecker)

In a recent commentary piece in the Stamford Advocates, Education advocate and columnist Wendy Lecker provided an important analysis of the unwarranted and dangerous attack on public education that is taking place in the United States.  Wendy Lecker writes;

Political theorist Benjamin Barber, who died April 24, wrote about the importance of education as a public good. “Education not only speaks to the public, it is the means by which a public is forged.”

As he noted, education transforms individuals into responsible community members, first in their classrooms and ultimately in our democracy. Local school districts are also the basic units of democratic government.

Michigan professor Marina Whitman recently noted that the essence of a public good is that it is non-excludable; i.e. all can partake, and non-rivalrous; i.e. giving one person the good does not diminish its availability to another.

Some school reforms strengthen education as a public good; such as school finance reform, which seeks to ensure that all children have adequate educational resources.

Unfortunately, the reforms pushed in the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations attack education as a public good. For example, choice — charters and vouchers — is a favorite policy of all three administrations. Choice operates on the excludable premise of “saving a few.”

In operation, choice makes education rivalrous. As a New York appellate court observed, diverting funds from public schools to charters ‘benefit a select few at the expense of the ‘common schools, wherein all the children of this State may be educated.’”

The experience in America’s major cities reveals choice’s damaging results. At a recent NAACP hearing, New Orleans residents spoke of an all-charter system rife with fraud and mismanagement. The schools are highly segregated with poor children and children of color relegated to schools with limited resources, inexperienced teachers and long commutes.

Michigan’s policy of unfettered charter expansion, together with a money-follows-the-child school funding system decimated Detroit’s public schools, along with other poor districts, and has left schools across that state intensely segregated.

Chicago’s choice policies disenfranchised mostly communities of color, shuttering neighborhood schools to open charters with a history of excluding ELL students and students with disabilities and with expulsions at 10 times the rate of Chicago’s public schools.

Recent research from Roosevelt University reveals that Chicago’s policies toward charters are a major factor causing the fiscal crisis in Chicago’s public schools. Chicago’s mayor Rahm Emmanuel claimed to close neighborhood schools, in predominately poor and African-American The war on education as public good (By Wendy Lecker) - Wait What?:

CURMUDGUCATION: Pearson May Quit US K-12

CURMUDGUCATION: Pearson May Quit US K-12:

Pearson May Quit US K-12

The world's biggest 800 pound corporate education gorilla, Pearson, has announced that they're considering the sale of their US K-12 digital and print curriculum business (the US Learning Services wing of the British-based giant).

We should have taken a virtual trip instead

The move comes at the end of yet another bad period for the previously unstoppable education-flavored mostrosity. The big feature of their latest meeting was supposed to be a showdown over a hefty raise (or "rise" as the Brits call them) in CEO John Fallon's pay, which seemed a bit out of kilter after what has been called a "disastrous" profit warning and the company's worst year on the stock market in fifty years.

How did they end up in such a mess? Last November the Wall Street Journal reported that Pearson had "bet big" on Common Core as well as failing to deliver on its digital teaching materials, despite Fallon's gushing baloney about Pearson's imminent awesomeness as recently as last May. But in January of this year, the word started going out that Pearson was a lousy investment.

The decision to cut loose the US curriculum business is not a small thing. Despite being a UK based biz, Pearson gets a reported 63% of its sales from the US.

Not that the education behemoth is backing quietly away. Last Friday they also announced "it has made a number of strides in its transition to digital products and services," with a particular emphasis on post-secondary initiatives. Their online degree initiative announced a partnership with Duquesne University on top of their ongoing work with University of Nevada-Reno, Regis College, and Maryville University. Pearson proudly touts 300,000 online course starts.

Watch next year for the "next generation" of digital courseware "in development for full commercial launch" next year, including the IBM Watson cognitive tutor, which sounds... alarming. Plus a few CURMUDGUCATION: Pearson May Quit US K-12:

The Rear-View Mirror on Personalized Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Rear-View Mirror on Personalized Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

The Rear-View Mirror on Personalized Learning

Pupils are working on their own. The second and third grade reading class of 63 pupils … is using a learning center and two adjoining rooms. Two teachers and  the school librarian act as coordinators and tutors as the pupils proceed with the various materials prepared by the school’s teachers and … developer, The Learning and Research Development Center at the U. of Pittsburgh. Each pupil sets his own pace. He is listening to records and completing workbooks. When he has completed a unit of work, he is tested, the test is corrected immediately, and if he gets a grade of 85% or better he moves on. if not, the teacher offers a series of alternative activities to correct the weakness, including individual tutoring, There are no textbooks. There is virtually no lecturing by the teacher to the class as a whole. Instead, she is busy observing the child’s progress, evaluating his tests, writing prescriptions, and instructing individually or in small groups of pupils who need help.*

The school is Oakleaf elementary near Pittsburgh (PA) and the time is 1965. Implemented across all grades, the innovative program was called Individually Prescribed Instruction or IPI (el_197203_tillman-2, p. 495).

Over a half-century ago, before there were smart phones, laptops, and tablets, university developers and school-site practitioners championed IPI as a program where students move through materials at differentiated paces until each achieved mastery of the content and skills to then continue on to the next unit of study.  Observers found students engaged in the process, pleased with the prompt feedback, and delighted that each could move at his or her pace rather than wait for the entire class to move to the next lesson. Here was the apex of student-centered learning. The algorithms of the day made it possible for students to learn independently, find out how they were doing swiftly, go from easy to difficult content on their own, ask teachers for help, and avoid the dominant teacher-centered repertoire of whole group-lecture, discussion, textbook chapters, quizzes and exams that took days to return—you get the picture.

In 2017 looking in the rear-view mirror, IPI in 1965 sounds familiar to those of us who enter schools and  see contemporary lessons where students learn content and skills independently on their tablets and laptops that machine learning The Rear-View Mirror on Personalized Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Steve Zimmer: A Last Stand Between Public Education and the Privatizers

Steve Zimmer: A Last Stand Between Public Education and the Privatizers:

Steve Zimmer: A Last Stand Between Public Education and the Privatizers

As a special education and parent advocate who has run twice in LAUSD elections under the rallying cry of “Change The LAUSD”, my first inclination is to recommend against a vote for the incumbent in the District 4 Board race. However, as the election of Trump has shown, voting with a “throw the bums out” mentality can be disastrous if the people who fill these voids are less interested in fixing what is broken than burning the whole thing down. Nick Melvoin and his supporters’ plans to push even more students into charters falls into the latter category and will only serve to bankrupt the District, taking away opportunities for those left behind.

In some ways, Melvoin represents the Status Quo for the District. After all, the LAUSD “already has the highest number of charters – more than 200 – of any school system in the country”. These privately run organizations are largely unregulated by a Charter School Division that is headed by a former employee of one of the groups pushing to elect Melvoin. While tagged as anti-charter by the CCSA, this Board has only rejected nine charter renewals during the last five years. This includes the several from Celerity charters, whose offices were raided by the FBI. This inadequate scrutiny of charters would be lessened even further by a Board with a pro-charter majority.

With financial backing by former Superintendent John Deasy, the election of Melvoin would also represent a giant step backward. Steve Zimmer: A Last Stand Between Public Education and the Privatizers: