Nellie Bowles: In America’s Schools, the Rich Get Teachers, the Poor Get Computers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Nellie Bowles: In America’s Schools, the Rich Get Teachers, the Poor Get Computers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Nellie Bowles: In America’s Schools, the Rich Get Teachers, the Poor Get Computers

This is a terrific article by Nellie Bowles in the New York Times about the “digital divide.” Amazing that the newspaper of record printed three articles on the same day by the same author, all warning us about the dangers of screen addiction. Remember when public officials worried that rich kids had more access to technology than poor kids? Now, it turns out that students in affluent schools get small classes and experienced teachers, while kids in underfunded schools get technology. Not what was expected.

The parents in Overland Park, Kan., were fed up. They wanted their children off screens, but they needed strength in numbers. First, because no one wants their kid to be the lone weird one without a phone. And second, because taking the phone away from a middle schooler is actually very, very tough.

“We start the meetings by saying, ‘This is hard, we’re in a new frontier, but who is going to help us?’” said Krista Boan, who is leading a Kansas City-based program called START, which stands for Stand Together And Rethink Technology. “We can’t call our moms about this one.”

For the last six months, at night in school libraries across Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City, Mo., about 150 parents have been meeting to talk about one thing: how to get their children off screens.

It wasn’t long ago that the worry was that rich students would have access to the internet earlier, gaining tech skills and creating Continue reading: Nellie Bowles: In America’s Schools, the Rich Get Teachers, the Poor Get Computers | Diane Ravitch's blog

IPS Community Coalition victory is proof that ordinary citizens can defeat big money - Network For Public Education

IPS Community Coalition victory is proof that ordinary citizens can defeat big money - Network For Public Education

IPS Community Coalition victory is proof that ordinary citizens can defeat big money

Sending a clear message that the community is fed up with corporate reform, voters in Indianapolis ousted two incumbents on the Indianapolis Public School (IPS) Board, replacing them with opponents of the district’s corporate reform agenda.

First-time candidates Taria Slack and Susan Collins were backed by the IPS Community Coalition (the Indianapolis AROS Chapter) and the local teachers union and ran against incumbents backed by Stand for Children and the Mind Trust, a corporate reform institute. Slack and Collins are vowing to pressure the IPS administration to improve transparency, genuine community collaboration and engagement, and hold the administration accountable.

Indianapolis schools have been under persistent attack by corporate reformers over the past decade, with increasing numbers of charters and public school closings. The district—under the tutelage of the Mind Trust—has also created so-called “Innovation Schools,” which are IPS schools that are handed over to a charter management organization. Innovation Schools have complete autonomy, a school board that is not elected by the public, and receive public funds. Additionally, this structure allows charters under the IPS umbrella to take advantage of district-provided services such as transportation and special education services at no cost.

This victory is proof that ordinary citizens can defeat big money. People power trumps money power. IPS Community Coalition is organized, prepared, and ready to reclaim our schools.

IPS Community Coalition victory is proof that ordinary citizens can defeat big money - Network For Public Education

Bruce Baker’s New Book on School Finance Develops a Scathing Critique of Charter School Expansion | janresseger

Bruce Baker’s New Book on School Finance Develops a Scathing Critique of Charter School Expansion | janresseger

Bruce Baker’s New Book on School Finance Develops a Scathing Critique of Charter School Expansion

Rutgers University school finance professor, Bruce Baker’s new book, Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America’s Students, covers the basics—how school finance formulas are supposed to work to ensure that funding for schools is adequate, equitable, and stable.

Baker also carefully refutes some persistent myths—Eric Hanushek’s claim that money doesn’t really make a difference when it comes to raising student achievement, for example, and the contention that public schools’ expenditures have skyrocketed over the decades while achievement as measured by test scores has remained flat.

Baker does an excellent job of demonstrating that far more will be needed for our society appropriately to support school districts segregated not only by race, but also by poverty. The final sections of the book are a little technical. They explain the construction of a more equitable system that would drive enough funding to come closer to what is really needed in school districts serving concentrations of children in poverty.

Baker’s book is especially important for updating a discussion of basic school finance theory to account for today’s realities.  He shows, for example, how the Great Recession undermined adequate and equitable funding of public schools despite that states had formulas in place that were supposed to have protected children and their teachers: “The sharp economic downturn following the collapse of the housing market in 2007-08, and persisting through about 2011, provided state and federal elected officials a pulpit from which to argue that our public school systems must learn how to do more with less… Meanwhile, governors on both sides of the aisle, facing tight budgets and the end of federal aid that had been distributed to temporarily plug state budget holes, ramped up their rhetoric for even deeper cuts to education spending… Notably, the attack on public school funding was driven largely by preferences for conservative tax policies at a time when state budgets experienced unprecedented drops in income and sales tax revenue.” (p. 4)

And for the first time in a school finance book, Baker explores the impact of two decades of Continue reading: Bruce Baker’s New Book on School Finance Develops a Scathing Critique of Charter School Expansion | janresseger

Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America's Students: Bruce D. Baker: 9781682532423: Amazon.com: Books - https://www.amazon.com/Educational-Inequality-School-Finance-Americas/dp/1682532429

Idaho Teachers/Staff Dressed as Border Wall and Mexicans Reinstated, Principal Remains Suspended | deutsch29

Idaho Teachers/Staff Dressed as Border Wall and Mexicans Reinstated, Principal Remains Suspended | deutsch29

Idaho Teachers/Staff Dressed as Border Wall and Mexicans Reinstated, Principal Remains Suspended

The 14 Middleton (Idaho) teachers and staff who were placed on paid leave after dressing as the border wall and Mexicans on Halloween purportedly for an after-school “team building exercise” have been released to return to their jobs.

However, the school’s principal remains under investigation.

Middleton Schools superintendent John Middleton offered the following November 07, 2018, press release.

Middleton School District Release

November 7, 2018

Dear Parents, Staff and Community,

The Middleton School District’s internal investigation with teachers and elementary aides who were on administrative leave on November 5th and 6th is complete. Our focus is now one of healing with an opportunity for all of us to grow together as a community. Today we began the re-entry process with training on cultural sensitivity and correspondence with parents, the staff and community. The entire Middleton School District staff is also receiving similar cultural sensitivity training today.

It is important to note that after the district’s review, it has been validated that there is nothing more than love and commitment in the hearts of these teachers and aides. The educators involved chose the profession to work with and educate ALL students and we are confident in their abilities to provide an effective learning environment for every student in the building. It is also noteworthy that the few threats that were made via telephone or on social media were made from out of town and out of state. Police have dealt with these swiftly and none were found to be credible.

We will welcome our teachers and aides back into their classrooms in the Continue reading: Idaho Teachers/Staff Dressed as Border Wall and Mexicans Reinstated, Principal Remains Suspended | deutsch29

CURMUDGUCATION: Anti-Test, Pro-Computer

CURMUDGUCATION: Anti-Test, Pro-Computer

Anti-Test, Pro-Computer

Chalkbeat today notes the growing trend of reformster discontent with the Big Standardized Test, a thread which apparently emerged at the latest soiree thrown by the Center for Reinventing Public Education, a group that has pushed ed reform for years.

But intentionally or not, Matt Barnum  also captured part of what is driving this shift.

Some members of the Thinky Tank set (with Jay Greene in the forefront) have been noticing that test results don't seem to really mean anything. But there's another reform group that is sour on testing:

The way we’re doing [assessment] now — that is so time-, age-, grade-based — is really constraining for those innovators that are developing models that will support all kids.

That quote comes from Susan Patrick of The International Association for K-12 Online Learning  (iNACOL), an organization whose bread and butter is tech based education, and which has thrown itself whole-heartedly behind Competency Based Education and Personalized [sic] Learning. Their opposition to the BS Test is signaled by Patrick's quote. If they are going to sell a system that lets students learn whatever whenever at whatever speed they wish, they need to remove the issue if a giant standardized test at the end f the ear.


In other words, the old approach to ed reform is cramping the style of reform 2.0. The 2.0 version is pointed firmly at the unbundling of education so that stdents can acquire their competencies and proficiencies and badges wherever and whenever and from whomever. This shift has the double advantage of a sort of ju-jitsu move-- people who are busy running away from the BS Test can be ushered straight into the Competency Based Proficiency Personalized tent. Reform 1.0 has become a marketing tool for Reform 2.0

It's worth noting that even some of the reformsters themselves haven't caught on yet. The repeated complaints about testing at the event drew this bemused quote from Sandy Kress, one of the creators of No Child Left Behind and therefor one of the fathers of the test-centered education Continue reading: CURMUDGUCATION: Anti-Test, Pro-Computer