Help save public education by giving to NPE - If You Shop at Amazon, Please Designate the Network for Public Education as Your Charity

Help save public education by giving to NPE - Network For Public Education

If You Shop at Amazon, Please Designate the Network for Public Education as Your Charity | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-leE via @dianeravitch

Help save public education by giving to NPE

Giving Tuesday is November 27. This holiday season please remember to give a gift to save public education by donating to NPE.

Right now your tax deductible gift can have twice the impact. Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor who deeply believes in the importance of public education, every donation made between today and December 15 will be matched, up to a total of $10,000.

Give your tax deductible gift here and our donor will match it.

You can also choose to make that donation in honor of a family member, friend or teacher, and they will receive an email from us, notifying them of your gift.

Your donation to the Network for Public Education supports our advocacy work. Donations fund our reports​, toolkits, investigations​, grassroots group work, email alerts​ and more. Each year we host, with NPE Action, an annual conference​ that we heavily subsidize. We provide scholarships to bring activists with financial need to the conference so that they can work and learn together to fight against privatization and for the improvement of public schools.

We have big plans for 2018 as the battle to privatize our public school system pushes forward in nearly every state house. We will create model legislation to clamp down on charter abuses, lobby with the new Congress, and expand and mobilize our Grassroots network. We are making great progress. But to continue the fight, we need your help. Give generously here and know that your donation will be generously matched. You donation is tax deductible and you will receive either an email or letter receipt. 

If you prefer to send a check, please send it to our new address:

Network for Public Education

PO Box 227

New York, NY 10156

Thank you for all you do.

Help save public education by giving to NPE - Network For Public Education

Former Louisiana schools chief Paul Pastorek gets Puerto Rico contract: report | nola.com

Former Louisiana schools chief Paul Pastorek gets Puerto Rico contract: report | nola.com

Former Louisiana schools chief Paul Pastorek gets Puerto Rico contract: report

Louisiana’s former education superintendent has accepted a six-figure contract to revitalize the school system in Puerto Rico, Education Week reports. The website’s story comes from The Metro newspaper in Puerto Rico.

The report, which cites a report from Metro in Puerto Rico, says Paul Pastorek, a New Orleans native, agreed to a contract with Puerto Rico’s Department of Education to help with various tasks, including assisting the island’s school system in getting hurricane recovery funds to implement a plan under the state’s Every Student Succeeds Act. The contract reportedly runs until June 2019 and is worth up to $155,000, at $250 an hour, Education Week reports.

Puerto Rico was devastated in September 2017 when Hurricane Maria hit the island, leaving nearly 3,000 dead and severely damaging the island’s power grid.

Betsy DeVos praises 'creative' school reforms on New Orleans visit

DeVos called New Orleans 'a really great and important example' to the nation in how to lead change.

Puerto Rico Secretary of Education Julia Keleher told Education Week that Pastorek is “particularly helpful” given his post-Hurricane Katrina experience.

Not everyone approves of the decision. The report says American Federation of Teachers' President Randi Weingarten said Pastorek only seeks to further the goals of U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, which include “closing schools, privatization and disinvestment from public schools."

Pastorek was a partner at Adams and Reese in New Orleans for 27 years and served on the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education before he was named state superintendent of schools in 2007. He is known for leading the state’s education efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and credited with helping design Louisiana’s school accountability measures and stabilizing the Recovery School District. Many of the education reforms he supported allowed New Orleans to become the majority charter school district it is today.

Pastorek resigned as Louisiana schools chief in 2011 to serve as an executive for Airbus Group Inc., a defense contractor based in CONTINUE READING: Former Louisiana schools chief Paul Pastorek gets Puerto Rico contract: report | nola.com

What’s Behind the Chan Zuckerberg (CZI) Push for “Brain Science?”

What’s Behind the Chan Zuckerberg (CZI) Push for “Brain Science?”

What’s Behind the Chan Zuckerberg (CZI) Push for “Brain Science?”

It doesn’t matter how much trouble Mark Zuckerberg might appear to be in with Facebook, he and his wife still find time to mess with education and give elitist advice to teachers.

Their latest initiative is to claim teachers need to learn brain science. They’re donating $1 million to Neuroteach Global, an online PD platform created by the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning, calling themselves a mind, brain, and education research center.

Some teachers will get financial support to learn about brain science, while others will pay for it on their own, or likely through their school districts.

It’s also about transforming education to technology.

The group is based out of St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland. The sponsors of the program include Teach for America. They’re hoping to sell this program to schools and universities across the country. How ironic that a group like TFA with minimal instruction and understanding about teaching, is a part of promoting brain science to teachers.

Real teachers from reputable university education programs have always taken child Continue reading: What’s Behind the Chan Zuckerberg (CZI) Push for “Brain Science?”

Teacher-Led Schools: The Mouse and Hippo | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teacher-Led Schools: The Mouse and Hippo | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teacher-Led Schools: The Mouse and Hippo

Groups of teachers founding charters, taking over failing schools, or simply creating different ones is a smart idea. It is worthwhile and needs much support to spread since teachers can design, implement, and administer such schools as well as if not better than policymakers hiring  principals and high-paid consultants. After all, one doesn’t have to know too much history of U.S. public schools to remember that teachers ran their own schools when rural one-room schoolhouses prevailed a century and a half ago and before principals (remember the first ones were called principal-teachers). Nonetheless, there are some facts that cannot be ignored.

First, some teacher-run schools will fly and some will crash.

Second, as these teacher-run schools get established, they will be a small (but nonetheless, important )contribution to the necessary mix of schools needed to improve urban districts. Even though :Os Angeles, Detroit, and other districts have authorized teacher-run schools there are still less than 100 across the nation (of about 100,000 public schools). This is where the mouse and hippo enters the picture.

New schools including charters come from policymakers who decide that such schools can alter what usually occurs in traditional schools. Politicians and policymakers create most schools. The hippo. And teacher-run schools, the mouse, will always be small in comparison but, as in the Mike Twohy story, can be both a friend and a guide to “good” schooling.

Such teacher-led schools will mobilize many teachers (Teach for America graduates, deeply committed novices and a chunk of mid-career professionals) and parents to form democratic cooperatives (mostly charters) and run schools Continue reading: Teacher-Led Schools: The Mouse and Hippo | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teach for America Is Looking for a Lobbyist. Interested? | deutsch29

Teach for America Is Looking for a Lobbyist. Interested? | deutsch29

Teach for America Is Looking for a Lobbyist. Interested?

On November 15, 2018, Teach for America (TFA) posted this Linkedin job listingfor a government affairs manager (in other words, a lobbyist).

Though TFA is fine with putting inexperienced college grads in classrooms as temp teachers following a five-week sneeze of *training*, if one wants this critical TFA lobbying job, one “must have” (TFA’s words) “two years of public policy and/or federal legislative experience.”

Why, TFA is even willing to help the would-be-yet-inexperienced TFA lobbyist get a foot in the Congressional door via its one-year Capitol Hill Fellows Program.

And, as one might expect, the successful TFA lobbyist applicant must have “a deep belief in Teach for America’s vision, mission, and theory of change.”

Token teaching for two years and then landing an ed policy position promoting TFA in the ears of legislators is part of that TFA theory of change. Such is the career path taken by current TFA director of government affairs (i.e., head lobbyist) Kelly Brougham. After a two-year TFA stint in Houston (make that one year, ten months), Brougham became an ed policy advisor in the US House of Representatives for four years (more than twice as long as she lasted in a Houston classroom) before becoming a TFA government affairs manager (same job as that of the job listing featured in this post) on her way to becoming a TFA head lobbyist.

It does help for one on the road to TFA lobbying to have a bachelor’s degree in political science, which Broughan does. However, if one holds a bachelors in Continue reading: Teach for America Is Looking for a Lobbyist. Interested? | deutsch29

Brooklyn students fight against the Summit online platform and the Zuckerberg-Gates corporate machine | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

Brooklyn students fight against the Summit online platform and the Zuckerberg-Gates corporate machine | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

BROOKLYN STUDENTS FIGHT AGAINST THE SUMMIT ONLINE PLATFORM AND THE ZUCKERBERG-GATES CORPORATE MACHINE

Update: this David vs. Goliath story with national implications was reported also on Fast Company, Business Insider,  EdSurge, and NY Magazine. The Washington Post also published the letter the students subsequently sent to Mark Zuckerberg.

On November 5, about 100 students at the Secondary School of Journalism in Brooklyn walked out of their schools to protest the Summit online program.  This digital instruction program, funded by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Bill Gates, forces students to spend hours staring at computers, left at sea with little human interaction or help from their teachers, all in the name of “personalized learning.”

As one of the students, Mitchel Storman, said to Sue Edelman who reported on the protest in the NY Post, “I have seen lots of students playing games instead of working….Students can easily cheat on quizzes since they can just copy and paste the question into Google.”

Senior Akila Robinson said she couldn’t even log onto Summit for nearly two months, while other classmates can’t or won’t use it. “The whole day, all we do is sit there.”  A teacher said, “It’s a lot of reading on the computer, and that’s not good for the eyes. Kids complain. Some kids refuse to do it.”

The online program, which originated in the Summit chain of charter schools in California, and was further developed and expanded with millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation, Facebook and now the Chan Zuckerberg LLC, has now been inserted in more than Continue reading: Brooklyn students fight against the Summit online platform and the Zuckerberg-Gates corporate machine | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

Group tied to charter school backers spent thousands in Va. school board election - Network For Public Education

Group tied to charter school backers spent thousands in Va. school board election - Network For Public Education

Group tied to charter school backers spent thousands in Va. school board election

By Debbie Truong

November 25 at 3:00 PM

“By stacking the board . . . they can get charter schools in,” said Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit advocacy group that opposes privately managed schools.

It’s part of a pattern, Burris said, of wealthy donors who support charter schools infusing campaign cash into school board races.

The Network for Public Education examined the phenomenon by zeroing in on nine elections. Its findings were detailed in a report titled “Hijacked by Billionaires: How the Super Rich Buy Elections to Undermine Public Schools.” It highlighted more than 15 billionaires and their families who contributed to at least three races or donated more than $1 million.

To read the entire piece, click here.

Group tied to charter school backers spent thousands in Va. school board election - Network For Public Education

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