'There's no paper in the classroom': why Los Angeles teachers are moving toward a strike | US news | The Guardian

'There's no paper in the classroom': why Los Angeles teachers are moving toward a strike | US news | The Guardian

'There's no paper in the classroom': why Los Angeles teachers are moving toward a strike
Following high-profile teacher walkouts across the country, LA teachers voted to strike over school funding, wages and class sizes

At the start of the 2018-19 school year, members of the Los Angeles teachers’ union overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike, granting the union board the authority to approve a walkout as the union and school district continue to negotiate a new contract. The strike authorization provides the union with a possible tactic to leverage a variety of demands over the second largestschool district in the nation.

This year, teachers have gone on strike in Arizona, West Virginia and Oklahoma with varying degrees of success. Arizona teachers received a 19% pay raise after a five-day walkout in May. West Virginia teachers ended their nine-day strike after receiving a 5% pay raise in March. Oklahoma teachers’ nine-day strike pushed their state legislature to pass an annual $6,100 pay increase and devote $500m to education funding.

The United Teachers of Los Angeles, the union of the city’s public school teachers, are demanding the school district increase education investment, hold charter schools accountable, take efforts to reduce class sizes, improve school safety and reduce the quantity of mandated standardized tests in addition to increasing wages by 6.5% for teachers.

“It seems clear talking to over 1,000 teachers in the district that the big issue for teachers in the Los Angeles unified school district is class size, easily at the top of the list. It’s gotten out of hand,” said Elgin Scott, a teacher at Los Angeles’ Taper Avenue elementary school, in an interview. According to Scott and other teachers the Guardian spoke with, it’s not uncommon for Continue reading: 'There's no paper in the classroom': why Los Angeles teachers are moving toward a strike | US news | The Guardian

Diane Ravitch’s Network for Public Education Conference: A Report and Reflections | Ed In The Apple

Diane Ravitch’s Network for Public Education Conference: A Report and Reflections | Ed In The Apple

Diane Ravitch’s Network for Public Education Conference: A Report and Reflections

I spent the weekend in Indianapolis at the fifth annual Network for Public Education Conference, both uplifting and disturbing.

Hundreds of teachers, parents, activists, elected officials, all dedicated supporters of public education sharing stories, both uplifting stories of how small groups of dedicated, caring sophisticated teams of teacher unions, parents and community activists can make a difference and begin to turn the tide, and, in other locations, how the forces of privatization, charter schools, “portfolio” models are unrelenting in their assault on public education.

The weekend alternated between speakers and workshops.

Pasi Stahlberg, a Finnish educator described the worldwide attack on public education, Pasi has dubbed the movement GERM – the Global Education Reform Movement. Watch his presentation here.

Finland should be a model for our nation, at least for states within our nation. The education system in Finland: no standardized tests, local autonomy, well-paid teachers and students at the top of the list on international lists. Yes, Finland is small, 5.5 million in a nation the size of Montana, very few immigrants, income equality, teachers selected from the top 10% of college Continue reading: Diane Ravitch’s Network for Public Education Conference: A Report and Reflections | Ed In The Apple

Will Teachers Be Accountable to Make “Happy” Students?

Will Teachers Be Accountable to Make “Happy” Students?

Will Teachers Be Accountable to Make “Happy” Students?

Here comes VAM for social-emotional learning!

Controversy erupted years ago over holding teachers accountable for academic test scores. VAM (Value Added Measurement) was supposed to have been put to rest, but it never really left. Move over VAM, now teachers will be responsible for student behavior too!

Back in June, Peter Greene, writing for Forbes noted:

Few systems have been debunked more often then VAM systems, and yet somehow this failed system is still the primary tool for evaluating teachers across the country. Why?

Now reformers are giddy about adding more assessment in the form of student noncognitive soft skills to the mix. They want teachers to create perfectly behaved children in a world that is far from perfect.

Professor C. Kirabo Jackson, a professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, authored the study. An overall point to be made is that academics and positive behavior go together. Students who feel better about themselves will likely do better academically.

But Jackson seems to be advocating for a social-emotional learning VAM, to combine academic and social-emotional learning for a fuller teacher evaluation program.

…this study provides evidence that measuring teacher effects on test scores captures Continue reading: Will Teachers Be Accountable to Make “Happy” Students?

The Days of Charter Schools and Vouchers Are Numbered - Education Law Prof Blog

Education Law Prof Blog

The Days of Charter Schools and Vouchers Are Numbered

If you were trying to make a buck on the side and were pretty sure that some new or improved technology would drastically undercut the market for cell phones within five years, would you invest in Apple stock or look for other opportunities?  Well, that is the type of information I have for the Koch Brothers and Devos families of the world.  Invest your money elsewhere.  Vacate the Secretary of Education’s office.  The days of charter and voucher growth are numbered.  And regulation is coming to those charters and vouchers already in place.

Why am I suddenly confident, rather than nervous, about charters and vouchers?  I got the chance to meet and listen to teachers from across the country at the Network for Public Education’s annual conference in Indianapolis this past weekend.  For the first time in my professional career, I had a firm sense of public education’s future.  I have litigated and participated in several civil rights and school funding cases, dealt with lots of different advocates, and watched closely as the teacher protests unfolded this spring.  In Indianapolis, I saw something special—something I had never seen before.

I saw a broad based education movement led not by elites, scholars, or politicians, but everyday people.  Those everyday people were teachers who were not just from big cities, small cities, suburbs, or the countryside, but from all of those places and as diverse as America’s fifty states and ten thousand school districts.  The teachers weren’t Continue reading: Education Law Prof Blog

Before assigning homework, ensure that students have a home

Before assigning homework, ensure that students have a home

Before assigning homework, ensure that students have a home
Fixing the achievement gap comes second to meeting kids’ basic needs

We had to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning because our school was far away. Sometimes we had to go to school late, because we had to wait for the bathroom. But since it wasn’t our house, they could use the bathroom first,” Kimberly, 12, told the child advocacy organization Children’s Defense Fund for their The State of America’s Children 2014 report. But at school, she was labeled truant. “I could not go to recess because of this.”

One out of every ten New York City public school students lived in temporary housing in 2017, according to a sobering October 15 article by The New York Times. That amounts to 114,659 students sleeping in hotels, motels, others’ couches, temporary shelters and the unsheltered streets of New York City. The article showed that the total number of homeless students was more than the entire population of Albany, the state capital. Put closing the achievement gap bombast to bed till students have one to sleep in.

Rhetoric around the need to close the achievement gap feeds into a warped notion of individualism — that students need to pick themselves up by their academic bootstraps — and misses the real needs that kids have, which should be supported through policy. Students and their families need secure, affordable homes in safe neighborhoods and a living wage, which can be addressed through policy. Student homelessness of this magnitude is not an individual failure — it’s a failure of policy to address families’ basic needs and made worse by the systemic problems of unaffordable housing and Continue reading: Before assigning homework, ensure that students have a home

A Billionaire Stops Funding Charters and TFA, Starts Funding Public Schools! | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Billionaire Stops Funding Charters and TFA, Starts Funding Public Schools! | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Billionaire Stops Funding Charters and TFA, Starts Funding Public Schools!

The richest woman in Connecticut no longer gives to charter schools and Teach for America. Barbara Dalio has shifted her giving to public schools.

She fell in love with public education.

She fell in love with the schools that take everyone, even the least of them, the children that the charters reject.

She got woke.

In the past three years alone, the foundation, which Barbara co-founded with her husband, has donated $50 million to public education programs in Connecticut.

“I never thought I would get into education because it’s not my background, so I am learning as I go along,” she said. “I love it. I don’t play golf or tennis. This is my passion.”

Connecticut Adds Two More Billionaires To The Forbes 400 List. Here’s A Look At All Nine Members.
Dalio, 70, who is universally described as humble and hands-on, said in an interview last week that her shift toward traditional public school districts came about as she learned more about education and became concerned about the achievement gap and students who are disengaged from school.

Dalio said she observed that the kids who go to public charter schools have parents who are often more involved and have the initiative to seek out an alternative for their child.

But many parents, she said, don’t have the time to do that.

“It’s not that they don’t care about the kids,” Dalio said of those parents. “It’s that they are burdened in many instances with just one parent having Continue reading: A Billionaire Stops Funding Charters and TFA, Starts Funding Public Schools! | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Moment When Grassroots Mobilization for Public Education Is Making a Difference—Part 1 | janresseger

A Moment When Grassroots Mobilization for Public Education Is Making a Difference—Part 1 | janresseger

A Moment When Grassroots Mobilization for Public Education Is Making a Difference—Part 1

I was privileged to participate in the 5th Annual Conference of the Network for Public Education (NPE) in Indianapolis this past weekend.  In the next few days, I’ll post some reflections on what I heard and learned at this important meeting.

One of the highlights of the Conference were presentations on excellent community organizing that is finally making a difference. Today’s post and tomorrow’s will describe two very different and encouraging initiatives.

What if city parents were supported in ignoring the glitzy brochures, radio ads, and even incentive gifts encouraging them to escape public schools and experiment with charter schools? What if, instead. parents were encouraged and supported to demand public schools designed to meet the needs of their families and children?  I found hope this past weekend in a workshop where the Journey4Justice Alliance (J4J) told the story of mobilizing Black and Brown parents to demand the kind of stable, quality public schools middle class children take for granted: no more experiments with state takeover, privatization, and school closure at the expense of their children. The #WeChoose Campaign is national—connecting and organizing parents across America’s big cities. For years, there has been a sense of confusion and despair as corporate reformers with big money swept in to seize governance and policy in big city school districts. Finally a moment of clarity and empowerment is being created.

At last weekend’s NPE Conference we listened as national organizers from the Journey4Justice Alliance and local leaders of their multi-city partners—Chicago’s Kenwood Oakland Community Organization; New York City’s Alliance for Quality Education and Coalition for Educational Justice; Camden Parents Union and Camden Student Union; Newark’s Parents Unified for Local School Education; Pittsburgh’s Education Rights Network and One Pennsylvania; and the Detroit L.I.F.E. Coalition—explained how their communities are proclaiming #We Choose Public Schools: “We choose educational equity in public schools, not the illusion of school choice.”

The Journey4Justice Alliance (J4J) launched its #WeChoose campaign in February, 2017 with plans in at least 25 cities for press events, policy forums, meetings with elected officials, and direct actions along with a coordinated social media campaign. Jitu Brown, executive director of  J4J describes the campaign’s message which organized parents are proclaiming to Continue reading: A Moment When Grassroots Mobilization for Public Education Is Making a Difference—Part 1 | janresseger

A Little Piece of Something - A film about a public Montessori school in Memphis says everything about who we are, who we were, & who we aspire to be – Sam Chaltain

This film about a public Montessori school in Memphis says everything about who we are, who we were, & who we aspire to be – Sam Chaltain

THIS FILM ABOUT A PUBLIC MONTESSORI SCHOOL IN MEMPHIS SAYS EVERYTHING ABOUT WHO WE ARE, WHO WE WERE, & WHO WE ASPIRE TO BE

I am so proud of our newest film for 180 Studio.

At its most literal, A Little Piece of Something is a story about a public Montessori school in Memphis that is changing the way people think — about their community, about public education, and about the best way(s) to foster a healthy identity in young children.

At its core, however, it’s a story of how we come to understand who we are and why we matter. It interweaves three different narrative threads: the inextricable relationship between the health of a community and the health of its schools; the impact of structural racism on our individual and collective sense of identity; and the mission of public Montessori programs, which offer a radically different model of healthy child development than the conventional “reform” approach (i.e., KIPP, Success Academy, etc.) to educating low-income children of color.

I hope you’ll watch and share — and if you do, we hope you’ll join me in considering some larger questions worth wrestling with:

What assumptions have we made in America about children living in poverty that this school is directly challenging?

In what ways has structural racism impacted the ways we see public education, child development, and one another?

And finally, what have we become as a country, and what do we wish to become?

This film about a public Montessori school in Memphis says everything about who we are, who we were, & who we aspire to be – Sam Chaltain

Pennsylvania’s Keystone Exam – the Monster We Refuse to Let Die | gadflyonthewallblog

Pennsylvania’s Keystone Exam – the Monster We Refuse to Let Die | gadflyonthewallblog

Pennsylvania’s Keystone Exam – the Monster We Refuse to Let Die

Let’s say there was a monster loose in Pennsylvania and you caught it.

Its days of wandering loose causing chaos and destruction were over.

But what would you do with such a beast now?

Would you kill it outright? Stop it from ever hurting anyone ever again?

Or would you simply neutralize it – place it perhaps in the center of a labyrinth, continue feeding it, and in fact create a whole religion based on worshipping it?

In the keystone state, we have just such a creature, and we’re going with the second option – the maze, nourishment and a cult.

The monster is, of course, the Keystone Exams. And like the Minotaur of ancient myth, we’re building a bureaucratic prison in which to house it.

Sure, we’ve spent billions of dollars on these unnecessary, badly written and biased graduation assessments.

And, heck, it would just make more sense to stop doing something that isn’t working, wastes money and causes legitimate problems for students.

But this is Pennsylvania! We’re not going to admit we made a mistake. Better to bury Continue reading: Pennsylvania’s Keystone Exam – the Monster We Refuse to Let Die | gadflyonthewallblog