Teachers and Gun Control Groups Paired Up to Ask Voters About Their Views on Gun Safety – Mother Jones

Teachers and Gun Control Groups Paired Up to Ask Voters About Their Views on Gun Safety – Mother Jones
Teachers and Gun Control Groups Paired Up to Ask Voters About Their Views on Gun Safety
Do they approve of Trump’s approach?

A young man holds a sign during the March for Our Lives protest in Washington, DC.Cal Sport Media/AP

The disturbing number of high-profile mass school shootings have forged an alliance between the gun safety movement and education advocates. Their partnership has been reinforced by the actions of the Trump administration in the aftermath of the February school shooting in Parkland, Florida, when it emphasized the importance of school safety measures instead of gun control.

Just weeks before the midterm elections, two prominent national organizations have come together to learn whether voters agree with the president’s approach. Today, they release a survey suggesting that in House battleground districts, they do not.

The survey, conducted by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling firm, was a joint venture between the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a national gun safety advocacy organization, and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), one of the largest teachers unions in the country. The two have worked together on matters of gun violence and school safety since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Recently, they’ve been particularly concerned about the findings of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ commission on school safety—especially in light of reports DeVos is examining whether to use federal funds to arm teachers.

“One takeaway is the public is starting to move away from thinking about gun violence as a partisan issue.”

“We were interested in learning how folks on the ground felt about the efforts the [Trump] administration were working toward as opposed to the ones we’ve proposed,” says Kris Brown, Brady’s co-president. Brady, like the March For Our Lives student activists, advocates background checks for all gun sales, laws that keep guns out of the hands of those who Continue reading: Teachers and Gun Control Groups Paired Up to Ask Voters About Their Views on Gun Safety – Mother Jones

Can the Charter Movement Be Saved? | The Merrow Report

Can the Charter Movement Be Saved? | The Merrow Report

Can the Charter Movement Be Saved?

Can we agree that the charter school ‘movement’ is in big trouble?  Scandals emerge daily, or so it seems.   “Are Charter Schools the New Enron?”, one reputable study asks, for example.  Here’s one awful scandal.   Here’s another.  This is not just smoke; it’s a raging fire that threatens all charter schools, it seems to me.

Everyone knows that charter schools are publicly funded but privately run, supposedly bound by a ‘charter’ that spells out what the school will accomplish.  These licenses, typically for three or five years, are not supposed to be renewed if the school does not deliver. That does happen occasionally, but most often charters are renewed unless and until some awful scandal–usually financial–emerges.  And most charter schools are not financially transparent, meaning that it’s probable that more skullduggery goes unnoticed than is exposed.  That means that public funds–possibly billions of dollars–have been going into private pockets. I write about this at some length in “Addicted to Reform: A 12-Step Program to Rescue Public Education” (which is available at good bookstores and on Amazon).

Charter schools were supposed to allow educators to innovate and improve student learning, and the best of them have done so.  However, academically, the overall results are mixed at best, and in some instances have led to more segregation by race and class. 

Those interested in the history of the movement should turn to Ember Reichgott Junge’s book, Zero Chance of Passage, a compelling read.  For critical analysis of the book and the charter story in Minnesota, go here.

I’ve been interested in this story since I moderated the founding meeting at the Continue reading: Can the Charter Movement Be Saved? | The Merrow Report

Google’s School & Student Data Collection | National Review

Google’s School & Student Data Collection | National Review

How Google Co-opts Our Schools to Collect Kids’ Data
Local school administrators have sold out vulnerable children to Silicon Valley.

No consent. No disclosure. No escape.

For legions of unwitting students and teachers across the country, this is the dangerous, de facto data policy Google has imposed over their school districts. An estimated 80 million students and teachers are now signed up for free “G Suite for Education” accounts (formerly known as Google Apps for Education); more than 25 million students and teachers now use Google Chromebooks. A Google logon is the key to accessing homework, quizzes, tests, group discussions, presentations, spreadsheets, and other “seamless communication.” Without it, students and teachers are locked out of their own virtual classrooms.

Local administrators, dazzled by “digital learning initiatives” and shiny tech toys, have sold out vulnerable children to Silicon Valley. Educators and parents who expose and oppose this alarmingly intrusive regime are mocked and marginalized. And Beltway politicians, who are holding Senate hearings this week on Big Tech’s consumer privacy breaches, remain clueless or complicit in the wholesale hijacking of school-age kids’ personally identifiable information for endless data mining and future profit.

Over the past several years, I’ve reported in my column and on my CRTV.com investigative program on EduTech plundering the personal data and browsing habits of millions of American schoolchildren. Remember: State and federal educational databases provide countless opportunities for private companies exploiting public-school children subjected to annual assessments, which exploded after the adoption of the tech industry–supported Common Core “standards,” tests and aligned texts and curricula. The Every Student Succeeds Act further enshrined government collection of personally identifiable information — including data collected on attitudes, values, beliefs, and dispositions — and allows release of the data to third-party contractors thanks to Obama-era loopholes carved into the federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.

The racket includes Facebook’s Digital Promise partnership with the U.S. Department of Education and the social/emotional-behavior tracking system of TS Gold (Teaching Strategies Gold) targeting preschoolers. Yes, preschoolers. The Big Business–driven Project Unicorn promotes “data interoperability” between and among a cornucopia of EduTech products vying for your kid’s clicks and data. And despite getting caught data-mining students’ emails without consent, Google Continue reading: Google’s School & Student Data Collection | National Review

Black Teachers Are Not Enough - The Philadelphia Citizen #educolor

Black Teachers Are Not Enough - The Philadelphia Citizen

BLACK TEACHERS ARE NOT ENOUGH
DO SOMETHING
Support Black Male Educators for Social Justice

There are six black male teachers in our school. They represent twelve percent of our classroom teachers. That sounds like only a few (and it is) but in a city where black men represent four percent of classroom teachers, it seems like that’s a lot.

Over the course of my career, I have been committed to supporting current and aspiring black male educators. I was one of them and I had the support of black male teachers at John P. Turner Middle School. Teachers like Dr. Blackwell and Mr. Gibbs. I also had the support of other black men when we launched the Association of Black School Administrators (ABSA), a group of black male principals. In 2014, we would launch The Fellowship – Black Male Educators for Social Justice to support current and aspiring black male educators.

Related from The Philadelphia Citizen:

• 

I Want To Be a (Black Male) Teacher

A Mastery principal and organizer sees progress—and much work to do—in his efforts to recruit effective black male teachers

I intimately know the power of having black men teach and lead me. I know what my Nidhamu Sasateachers like Baba Changa, Baba Juhudi, Baba Mjenzi, and Baba Chavis meant to my development as an impressionable elementary school student. Their influence is everlasting. I wistfully think about the role my coach and Health/PE teacher, Mr. Jones, played for me in high school. I also recognize that as a nascent teacher, teachers at John P. Turner Middle School like Mr. Rutland, Mr. Gibbs, and Dr. Blackwell, played instrumental roles in my development as a teacher and leader.

We need more black men to teach and lead classrooms, but is that all black kids need?

When all of the responsibility for social justice lenses is placed on the shoulders of a few black people, it can lead to burnout. The responsibility to approach education as a human right and to prepare students in the school-to-activism pipeline is the responsibility of all who have the honor to call themselves educators.

While I readily agree that we need far more black men teaching our students—both black and white students—I am always a little nervous that policy makers, principals, etc. will use our call for immediate diversity and inclusion of black men in schools and classrooms to slow-walk so many other pressing needs.

There is research that demonstrates that black teachers can have a tremendous impact on the trajectory of black students, particularly boys in elementary schools; there is also plenty of research that highlights the need for more robust and comprehensive school improvement planning.

DO SOMETHING

Support Black Male Educators for Social Justice

Black teachers not only enter the field in smaller numbers than their white counterparts, black teachers tend to be attracted to the schools with the highest needs. Many black people (teachers are no exception) tend to be communal and the success of the community is more important than the individual which leads these teachers to the lowest performing schools. However, this can lead to added stress and burnout.

Dr. William Hayes, one of the founding members of The Fellowship – Black Male Educators for Social Justice shares that black men (and women) can’t do it alone. When all of the responsibility for social justice lenses is placed on the shoulders of a few black people, it can lead to burnout. The responsibility to approach education as a human right and to prepare students in the school-to-activism pipelinecannot solely be the work of woke and conscientious black teachers—it is the responsibility of all who have the honor to call themselves educators.

READ MORE

About Philly's black educators

One way to prevent minority teacher burnout, Hayes says, is to make sure one or two people aren’t shouldering the social-justice load. At his school, white, black, and Latino/bilingual teachers each make up a third of the staff. The front office workers are Latino. Assistant principals are black, white, male, female. I think it’s important that staff can have a personal connection with Continue reading: Black Teachers Are Not Enough - The Philadelphia Citizen

The best teacher of the week, hands down: Christine Blasey Ford - The Washington Post

The best teacher of the week, hands down: Christine Blasey Ford - The Washington Post
The best teacher of the week, hands down: Christine Blasey Ford

There are too many candidates this week to choose the worst teacher of the week, so I’ll leave that to you. But the best teacher — that one is easy.

The person who used her time at the public pulpit with the most dignity and composure and directness and duty — important lessons all — was Christine Blasey Ford.

She is the California professor who testified Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee about what she said Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, did to her when they were teenagers more than 35 years ago.

You would have to have your head in the sand not to know the story, so there’s no need to go into details.

But whatever you think of Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the 1980s, her disposition Thursday before the committee and millions of people watching live broadcasts was so forthright that even those who support Kavanaugh didn’t believe she was lying; they just said she was confused.

The American Bar Association came out after the hearing and urged a delay in a nomination vote, calling for an FBI investigation into the allegations. The comments are striking because an association committee had unanimously given Kavanaugh its highest rating of “well qualified” for the Supreme Court. It is not a stretch to think that had Ford presented herself in a different way, the ABA may not have made this call.

What Ford did was offer a lesson in public service: first, by coming forward with her concerns about the judge before he was nominated by Trump for a seat on the Supreme Court, and then overcoming deep fears about going public and testifying because she thought it was her duty to her country. She was never belligerent during her testimony but only cooperative and direct, and never manipulative.

That makes her the best teacher of the week, hands down.

The best teacher of the week, hands down: Christine Blasey Ford - The Washington Post

Valerie StraussValerie Strauss is an education writer who authors The Answer Sheet blog. She came to The Washington Post as an assistant foreign editor for Asia in 1987 and weekend foreign desk editor after working for Reuters as national security editor and a military/foreign affairs reporter on Capitol Hill. She also previously worked at UPI and the LA Times. Follow 

Should We Teach About Consent In K-12? Brett Kavanaugh's Home State Says Yes : NPR #MeTooK12

Should We Teach About Consent In K-12? Brett Kavanaugh's Home State Says Yes : NPR

Should We Teach About Consent In K-12? Brett Kavanaugh's Home State Says Yes

When the Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump, along with sexual assault stories involving Brock Turner and Bill Cosby, hit the news back in 2016, a middle school student in Maryland named Maeve Sanford-Kelly was listening.

"I was frankly really distraught," she recalls. "I felt powerless. I assumed that this was what happened, that sexual harassment and sexual assault was a thing in our society and it wasn't going to change because it was part of the power structure."

Her mother had an idea that might help. Ariana Kelly, a Democrat, is a delegate in the Maryland state legislature, and she introduced a bill that would require the state to include consent in sex ed classes. Maeve and her friends, as well as student groups across the state, campaigned and testified for the bill.

EDUCATION

How To Talk To Young People About The Kavanaugh Story

It defines consent as "the unambiguous and voluntary agreement between all participants in each physical act within the course of interpersonal relationships."

Before they turn 18, about 8 percent of girls and 0.7 percent of boys experience rape or attempted rape, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the majority of these reported cases, the CDC says, the perpetrator is a peer: either an acquaintance or a current or former intimate partner.

And yet few schools across the country are required to teach about consent or healthy relationships in sex ed classes.

Currently, according to a report in May by the Center for American Progress, under a dozen states mention the terms "healthy relationships," "sexual assault" or "consent" in their sex education programs.

But with the #MeToo movement, that might be changing. Since the beginning of 2018, five states besides Maryland have introduced bills to require the teaching of consent in sex ed.

Amy Tiemann is a neuroscientist and educator and co-author of a new book on child safety, Doing Right By Our Kids. She works with KidPower, a child safety education group. She says the message of respect for others and your own body can be made simple and empowering even for young children.

"They can be 3 years old, they can be 15 years old, they can be in college, and we don't know who might be a potential perpetrator or who might be a potential victim  Continue reading: Should We Teach About Consent In K-12? Brett Kavanaugh's Home State Says Yes : NPR

#MeTooK12 Campaign | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools - https://wp.me/P6aIHy-Q8