The Real Story Behind the L.A. Teachers Strike - LA Progressive #UTLA #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

The Real Story Behind the L.A. Teachers Strike - LA Progressive

The Real Story Behind the L.A. Teachers Strike

Superintendent Austin Beutner and his allies have made it clear they do not believe that the L.A. Unified School District in its current incarnation is worth investing in – or even preserving.

Sometimes strikes are exactly what they seem to be – battles over wages and working conditions, with relatively few implications for anything or anyone else. But sometimes a strike is about something much bigger: a fundamental clash over vision and values, with repercussions that extend far beyond the warring parties. Call it a meta-strike.

If Los Angeles teachers walk off the job January 14, as widely expected, it will be a meta-strike with extremely high stakes not only for teachers, students and parents in L.A., but for public education across the U.S. The stalemated negotiations over wages, class size, staffing and other issues matter – but they are proxies for an epic fight that has been playing out in American school districts for more than a decade.

The head of the country’s second-largest school district is aggressively advancing a controversial blueprint that could make LAUSD almost unrecognizable.

On one side of this divide are those who believe that public education as an institution should be preserved more or less in its current form, with a greater infusion of money to address chronic underfunding and understaffing. On the other side is an array of forces that want to radically restructure public schools, and who have made it clear they do not believe that the L.A. Unified School District in its current incarnation is worth investing in – or even preserving.

Austin Beutner, LAUSD’s superintendent, is nothing if not a proponent of radical restructuring. He was appointed to his post not because of his experience in education – he has never held a position in that field – but because he is a fervent advocate of an approach that has its roots in the private sector, where he spent the bulk of his career. Beutner made his considerable fortune in business, starting at the powerhouse private equity firm CONTINUE READING: The Real Story Behind the L.A. Teachers Strike - LA Progressive

Trump’s school lunch program: How the administration is changing health standards - Vox

Trump’s school lunch program: How the administration is changing health standards - Vox

Federally funded school lunches are about to get a lot less healthy
By relaxing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act’s rules for school lunches, the Trump administration is doing a big favor to the dairy industry — at the expense of children’s health.

School lunches are about to be more dairy-laden — and, as a result, much less healthy.

The new school lunch rules, which roll back Obama-era nutrition standards for federally subsidized school lunches, were first announced in May 2017 by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue (who has no relation to Perdue chicken, but does have other ties to agribusiness).

Under the new rules, cafeterias no longer have to worry about reducing sodium in school lunches, nor do they have to transition to serving whole grains. Schools can once again offer 1 percent chocolate and strawberry milk — under the previous rules, flavored milks had to be non-fat. (“I wouldn’t be as big as I am today without chocolate milk,” Perdue reportedly said at the time of the announcement.) The Trump administration codified the change last December.

Perdue’s initial changes to the school lunch rules are mostly cosmetic but signal bigger shifts down the line, Vox’s Julia Belluz reported last month. Perhaps most troublingly, the changes are a big handout to the dairy industry, which makes a substantial amount of money from its contracts with public schools and was reportedly struggling under the Obama-era regulations, according to a new report by Bloomberg.

The Trump administration is gutting the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act

Perdue is essentially slowing down the implementation of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The law required the National School Lunch Program to use guidelines from the Institute of Medicine to make school lunches healthier. The regulations prioritized whole grains over more processed grains, an emphasis on whole fruits and vegetables, and a reduction in sodium, full-fat milk, and meat. Schools were given 10 years to gradually reduce the amount of sodium in school lunches, with the first phase going into effect in 2014, and the following phase CONTINUE READING: Trump’s school lunch program: How the administration is changing health standards - Vox

30,000 LA teachers 'strike ready' as district refuses to spend $1.86 billion reserve on better pay, smaller class sizes - NationofChange #UTLA #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

30,000 LA teachers 'strike ready' as district refuses to spend $1.86 billion reserve on better pay, smaller class sizes - NationofChange

30,000 LA teachers ‘strike ready’ as district refuses to spend $1.86 billion reserve on better pay, smaller class sizes

Educators and their allies in the second-largest school district in the nation are making a stand for students and education quality this week as more than 30,000 Los Angeles teachers prepare to go on strike, after the school district has refused to use its nearly $2 billion dollar reserve to provide educators with better pay, students with smaller class sizes, and much-needed funding for school programs.

After working for more than a year without a contract, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) is planning to walk out as early as Thursday if the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) does not meet their demands. The teachers voted almost unanimously last August to go on strike, and state-mandated mediation since the vote has done little to help further negotiations between the two sides.

UTLA argues that the school district has plenty of money set aside to provide educators with a 6.5 percent raise, hire more teachers to ensure smaller class sizes, and hire more nurses, school counselors, and librarians to support school communities. District nurses currently split their time between schools, leaving many buildings without a healthcare provider for much of the week.

Teachers also want the elimination of a section of their contract which states that the district can increase class sizes to save money.

“We want an agreement that works for our kids – that gets to a place where we’re CONTINUE READING:30,000 LA teachers 'strike ready' as district refuses to spend $1.86 billion reserve on better pay, smaller class sizes - NationofChange

2019: The Year of Living Emergently? – Sam Chaltain

2019: The Year of Living Emergently? – Sam Chaltain

2019: THE YEAR OF LIVING EMERGENTLY?

We’re doing it again.

2019 is barely a week old, yet everyone seems to be searching for the singular person, policy or program that can restore order and usher in the better world we seek. From the excitement over the looming presidential race (and the promise of a return to normalcy) to the anticipation of the pending Mueller report (and the vision of a president in handcuffs), we are hardwired to hope for the sweeping solution, the quick fix, the reset button.

In reality, life works differently. What if we started to work in closer accordance with life?

What if we made 2019 the year of living “emergently?”

Emergence is not a word we hear or use often, yet it is the dynamic origin of development, learning and evolution, and we see evidence of its existence in everything from our cells to our cities. Indeed, the conditions for emergence flow from the reciprocal relationship that exists between any living form and its environment. A single ant, following the chemical trail of its neighbors to carve out a vital, completely decentralized role in a teeming colony. An adaptive software system, seeking patterns in individual behavior that shape which banner ad you see. A human stem cell, self-organizing into increasingly more complicated structures based on the behavior of its neighbors. Or even a solitary Tunisian fruit vendor, whose decision to set himself ablaze eventually sets the entire Arab world on fire.

As Steven Johnson writes in his book on the subject, the capacity for emergent systems to learn and grow “derives from their adherence to low-level rules. . . Emergent behaviors are all about living within the boundaries defined by rules, but also using that space to create something greater than the sum of its parts.”

In that sense, the central features of emergent systems outline a set of rules from the natural world that are both timeless and timely:

Give and receive feedback.

Pay attention to your closest neighbors.

Seek order, not control.

Start anywhere, and follow it everywhere.

It’s the songline of life itself — the deeply resonant story that flows through all living systems, including our own. And in a world that is becoming increasingly interwoven, and at a moment in history when the promise and peril of artificial intelligence are becoming more than just a sci-fi script, our ability to shift to a more emergent way of thinking may just be the difference between survival and extinction. As Johnson puts it, “our ability to capture CONTINUE READING: 2019: The Year of Living Emergently? – Sam Chaltain

Schools Matter: Help Kristen Paulson Support Her Students Without Being Punished for It

Schools Matter: Help Kristen Paulson Support Her Students Without Being Punished for It

Help Kristen Paulson Support Her Students Without Being Punished for It

Below is a plaintive letter from first grade teacher, Kristen Paulson, to my colleague, Mark Naison. If you believe that teachers have the right and responsibility to advocate for their students, please share her letter far and wide.  Also let her principal, Bertie Alligood (615-824-3217), know that teachers should not be punished for being advocates for student learning.

Hi, Dr. Naison,

My name is Kristen Paulson and I am a first grade teacher in Tennessee.  While I am only in my fifth year of teaching, I have been working in schools and with kids my whole life in several different states throughout the country.  My kids are my passion.  

I found an article about your incredible commitment and passion towards helping teachers have a voice while I was researching teachers being mistreated.  I have been at my current school for three years, and completed part of my student teaching there as well.  It is a low income school with lots of diversity in every sense of the word.  Long story short, I am being pushed out by administration. I cannot prove it, but I feel strongly that it is because I have a very strong voice for my students and also because I am vocal about my refusal to "teach to the test."  

Every year 30-60% of my students face incredible difficulties - things that no person, never mind child, should ever have to deal with.  I advocate for them tirelessly, and I put my focus into growing them as people to help them be their best selves.  I promise them every year that I would never ask them to do something I didn't think they could do, academically or otherwise.  Unfortunately, my administration does not like that my students are not performing at a scholar level on their benchmarks and state assessments.  

My principal has put me on an indefinite "growth plan" that requires me to do outrageous amounts of work on top of the 60+ hour work week I am already working.  I have had 4s and 5s (5 is highest in TN) on all of my observations, with the exception of observations she completed over the last two years.  I was always a level 4 teacher until this past school year.

I don't know that there is necessarily anything that you could do, but I wanted to reach out and share my story with you if not for anything else, to share my voice to the community.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all that you do.

All my best,

Kristen Paulson

M.Ed Instructional Practice K-6 and ELL K-12 Lipscomb University

1st Grade Teacher Walton Ferry Elementary School, Hendersonville, TN

Schools Matter: Help Kristen Paulson Support Her Students Without Being Punished for It

Teachers in Los Angeles Delay Strike Till Next Week; District Faces Long and Catastrophic Fiscal Crisis | janresseger #UTLA #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

Teachers in Los Angeles Delay Strike Till Next Week; District Faces Long and Catastrophic Fiscal Crisis | janresseger

Teachers in Los Angeles Delay Strike Till Next Week; District Faces Long and Catastrophic Fiscal Crisis

After months of failed negotiations, the United Teachers of Los Angeles had scheduled a strike beginning today. They have now postponed the strike until Monday, January 14th. The problems in the district that have driven teachers to strike are complex; their situation is impossibly simple. Their pay has not risen adequately and the conditions in the city’s schools for children and for teachers are deplorable. For the NY Times, Jennifer Medina and Dana Goldstein report: “Some classes have as many as 45 students… and school nurses, art and music teachers must serve thousands of students by traveling to multiple schools.”

We are told that, with its huge economy, California is unlike the other states where teachers walked out last spring. They were Red states for the most part—exemplars of supply-side, tax cutting and promoters of marketplace choice through charter schools. Instead, we are told, California is a Blue state.

A long, long time ago, California had Blue-state education funding, but that was from 1959 to 1967, under Jerry Brown’s father, Governor Pat Brown. For forty years, however, California has, in reality, been the primary exemplar of Red-state school funding and school privatization.  In 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13, the state law that began the state-by-state, anti-tax slide which has undermined public school funding across the country.  In 2012, with Proposition 30, California Governor Jerry Brown pushed through new taxes for education, but they have not been enough to undo the impact of Proposition 13.

In a profound 1998 book, Paradise Lost, about what happened in California, Peter Schrag, the long-time editorial page director of the Sacramento Bee, defines the principles that have dominated California school funding since 1978: “Proposition 13 and the initiatives that followed in its wake—the tax and spending cuts, the growing constraints on both state and  CONTINUE READING: Teachers in Los Angeles Delay Strike Till Next Week; District Faces Long and Catastrophic Fiscal Crisis | janresseger

Donors Reforming Schools in the U.S. (Part 4) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Donors Reforming Schools in the U.S. (Part 4) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Donors Reforming Schools in the U.S. (Part 4)

As a teacher, superintendent, and professor I have been fortunate in receiving grants from donors over the decades. Small, middle-sized, and large grants came to support and expand my efforts in classrooms (e.g., Teacher Innovation Fund in Washington, D.C.), district (e.g., helping non-English speaking immigrants in Arlington, VA) and research I and colleagues did in schools and districts near Stanford University (e.g., Spencer Foundation, Hewlett and Packard Foundations). I enjoyed the benefits that flowed from having funds that I could use for classroom, school, and district innovations and classroom research with no strings attached.

Over the past decade, I have also been involved in researching the awards that donors have made (and continue to do so) to improve schools in the U.S. I and others have written extensively and critically about philanthropy and occasional over-reaching in prodding schools to improve (see here, here, here, and here).

I have experienced mixed feelings about these small and large grants to schools to try out different approaches to helping both teachers and students improve their performance. When, for example, the Gates Foundation stopped funding small high schools in 2008, gave large amounts to propagate Common Core Standards in 2010, and underwrote IPET (see parts 1, 2, and 3), my initial reaction was, hey, these foundation officers had not thought through carefully the complexity of schooling or the familiar perverse consequences that accrue to “innovations” that do belly-flops. Sure, foundation officials consulted with smart people before giving away money to schools and districts but they seldom consulted with people who do the daily work or experienced practitioners who know the system from the inside (see for example the history of the Annenberg Challenge in the 1990s and Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million dollar gift to Newark (NJ).

So I saw such public and private disappointments in foundations stumbling and CONTINUE READING: Donors Reforming Schools in the U.S. (Part 4) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Jersey Jazzman: Kids In Disadvantaged Schools Don't Need Tests To Tell Them They're Being Cheated

Jersey Jazzman: Kids In Disadvantaged Schools Don't Need Tests To Tell Them They're Being Cheated

Kids In Disadvantaged Schools Don't Need Tests To Tell Them They're Being Cheated

There was a very raw, very discouraging story in The Trentonian this past week that is worth your time, whether you live in Jersey or not. Here's an excerpt:

Over the past year, this newspaper spoke with high school students educated in the Trenton Public Schools (TPS) district. The interviews took place in the presence of an adult and the teens were granted anonymity to speak freely and honestly. Each interview started with vague questions, such as “What is it like to live in Trenton?” While some students also spoke about nice and community-oriented neighbors, each of the conversations began with a discussion about violence. 

[...] 

“The school smells like weed,” a highschooler said. “They smoke in the hallways and stairwells almost everyday.” 

While some students said school guards “try to stop bad behavior” and convince kids to stay out of trouble, others described guards as “too young,” with “not enough care” for what happens. 

“This guy told the security guards what was going to happen to him, but they didn't care enough to do anything about it, so he got jumped,” a teen said. “They don't take their job seriously.” 

And as for teachers: “I feel like it depends on whether they know the student wants to change,” a teen said. 

Students said some teachers will remain persistent in trying to convince a kid CONTINUE READING: 
Jersey Jazzman: Kids In Disadvantaged Schools Don't Need Tests To Tell Them They're Being Cheated

Locating Info on Newly-Formed (Ed Reform) Nonprofits | deutsch29

Locating Info on Newly-Formed (Ed Reform) Nonprofits | deutsch29

Locating Info on Newly-Formed (Ed Reform) Nonprofits

One of the marks of market-based ed reform is the issue of mushrooming nonprofits. Want an instant platform for advancing school choice? Non-career, instant teachers? Test-driven classrooms? Drumming up grass-roots-styled support for an outside, billionaire-funded, corporate ed project?

Start a nonprofit, and create a vague-yet-stylish website to promote it.

Discovering details behind newly-created nonprofits is difficult because of their newness. One might even wonder if the self-proclaimed nonprofit is actually a nonprofit in its own right.

For example: A colleague wrote to me about his search for information on two new organizations: Wayfinder Foundation and Memphis Lift. One question concerned whether these two orgs were nonprofits in their own right or simply programs operated by other nonprofits (namely, ed reform nonprofits) that were choosing to hide in the shadows.

In order to discover if these two orgs were orgs in their own right, my first though was to see if the orgs had their own EINs (employer identification numbers), which are assigned by the IRS.

So, I used the IRS’s tax exempt organization search engine to conduct a search on both Wayfinder Foundation and Memphis Lift.

The IRS search engine results indicate that the IRS has assigned both orgs EINs:

• Memphis Lift EIN: 82-2560581
• Wayfinder Foundation EIN:  82-1573252

The IRS search also included the statement that both orgs are eligible to receive CONTINUE READING: Locating Info on Newly-Formed (Ed Reform) Nonprofits | deutsch29

CURMUDGUCATION: Bill Gates Is Still Pushing Common Core

CURMUDGUCATION: Bill Gates Is Still Pushing Common Core

Bill Gates Is Still Pushing Common Core

Sigh.

You've undoubtedly heard the news over the past couple of days-- the Gates Foundation is going to throw $10 million at teachers to help promote "high-quality" curriculum.

There are several problems with this, and none of them are new.

First, despite the headlines, this money is not actually being thrown directly at teachers.

“We want to identify the content-specific professional development services, products, and models that are working really well for young people, and also study the attributes of those solutions that make them effective so we can share that learning with the field,” said Bob Hughes, the foundation’s director of K-12 education.

This guy, again, still. 

In other words, they are going to throw money at outfits that do professional development so that those PD providers can train teachers better. This is yet another variation of "It's the implementation" that translates roughly as "My grand idea would have worked if teachers understood better how to properly perform my great stuff."

This golden oldie never dies-- just this week I was embroiled in a Twitter thread in which someone explained that a particular practice would work if teachers just understood it properly. Back in 2016, the Gates Foundation was trying to explain what they had learned about their large-scale failures in education, but the CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Bill Gates Is Still Pushing Common Core


ID: IBE HP VP BS

Idaho Business for Education (IBE) is "a group of nearly 200 business leaders from across the state who are committed to transforming Idaho’s education system."

IBE works with the legislature and key Idaho stakeholders to help set our students up for success in school, work and life, and build the workforce that will lead to a vibrant economy for years to come. Our 2019 initiatives include the School Readiness Act, Career and Technical Education, and more.

They appear to work pretty closely with their elected officials for legislative goals. So, kind of like an Idaho-sized ALEC (although Idaho has had a pretty good relationship with full-sized ALEC). And like ALEC, IBE enjoys special access to legislators. That includes a "legislative academy" that traditionally takes place on the first day of the legislative session. While legislators were waiting to find out what their leadership is lining up for the year, IBE gets to brief them on business's thoughts and priorities.

This year, the bar is set high:

The world’s next industrial revolution presents a “huge opportunity” for Idaho, if the state can modify its school system to match it.

It's those teachers! They're the ones!

I love these unintentional scare quotes. Michael Schmedlen, Hewlett-Packard’s vice president for worldwide education, delivered the message of opportunity, because if we're going to reconfigure the entire education system, maybe we should talk about why.

Following the reform play book, Schmedlen started by telling scary stories.

Nearly two-thirds of today’s students will work in jobs that have not yet been created. Tomorrow’s workers will move much more from job to job. They will work in a competitive, diverse and global workplace. Students will need critical thinking skills, and they will need to learn to collaborate and innovate.CONTINUE READING: ID: IBE HP VP BS

Public School Students are Being Erased From TV, Movies and Other Media | gadflyonthewallblog

Public School Students are Being Erased From TV, Movies and Other Media | gadflyonthewallblog

Public School Students are Being Erased From TV, Movies and Other Media

Ninety percent of America’s students go to public schools.

But you wouldn’t know that if you opened a book, turned on the TV or went to a movie.

The media is engaged in a disinformation campaign erasing public schools and public school students from our entertainments.

It’s another way marketing and advertising is forced down our throats and into our leisure hours.

Not only do the multi-billion dollar corporations who fund these entertainments want to convince us we need this pill, that appliance, those technological doo-hickeys — they need to cajole and inveigle us that we need school privatization, too.

And what better way to do that than to give us heroes that  – what-do-you-know – just happen to go to charter, voucher and private schools?

No one takes Betsy DeVos, the billionaire heiress who bought her position as education secretary to tear down public schools, seriously. But we certainly do when CONTINUE READING: Public School Students are Being Erased From TV, Movies and Other Media | gadflyonthewallblog