Wednesday, February 6, 2019

#CounselorsNotCops: Black Girl at Pennsylvania high school brutalized in latest assault by a school police officer; Black Lives Matter At School rallies around the country on Feb. 6-7th.  – Black Lives Matter At School

#CounselorsNotCops: Black Girl at Pennsylvania high school brutalized in latest assault by a school police officer; Black Lives Matter At School rallies around the country on Feb. 6-7th.  – Black Lives Matter At School

#CounselorsNotCops: Black Girl at Pennsylvania high school brutalized in latest assault by a school police officer; Black Lives Matter At School rallies around the country on Feb. 6-7th. 
ack students in schools across our nation are the targets of surveillance, police violence, and abuse in perpetuity. Some of these assaults are made known to the public, while many go under the radar, further subjecting Black students to more abuse, surveillance and neglect. This cannot be tolerated any longer.
According to the Huffington Post, on January 15, 2019, at East Middle School in Binghamton in upstate New York, four 12-year old girls were strip-searched after being accused of acting too “giddy” and suspected of being under the influence of drugs. Later, no drugs were found in their system after being subjected to the humiliation and degradation of an invasive process. 
On January 25 at L.W. Higgins High School in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, a high school senior had an altercation with a Jefferson Parish Deputy that left his face bloody and swollen according to his mother. In Chicago, Illinois, on Tuesday, January 29, 2019, student Dnigma Howard, was tasered by a police officer in school. In a video captured of the assault, one can see the officer tasing Dnigma while she was on the ground. Then, on Tuesday, February 5th, a video was released of a police officer assaulting a Black girl at Hazleton Area High School in Pennsylvania.  
It is with great conviction that we believe police do not belong in schools and call for the immediate firing of these officers.  Black Lives Matter At school will be participating in the following events as part of our week of action:
  1. Members of the Black Lives Matter At School movement will be holding rallies in cities across the country on February 6 & 7 to demand funding counselors not cops, including in Philadelphia, Seattle, New York City, Baltimore, and beyond.  
  2. #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool will be joining Dignity in Schools to hold a #CounselorsNotCops Twitter chat on Thursday, February 7th at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific. Use the two hashtags to join the conversation.
Assaults like these in schools are the reason that Black Lives Matter At Schools is vitally imperative. The collective value of Black youth should not be subjected to prison tactics within their schools. Arrests, strip searches, and physical assault should never be the norm. At its core, education is a developmental process that involves academic and social risk-taking, radical love, and holistic care. This growth requires a sense of safety if students are to develop to their full potential. Too many Black youth go to school in environments that perpetually violate their humanity and this sense of safety. Each of the incidents illustrate the need to invest in counselors instead of cops, and develop humanizing approach to how we work with and care for Black students.
We at  Black Lives Matter at Schools call for the immediate removal of and regular presence of police officers in schools.
#AssaultAtMarshall #AssaultAtHiggins #AssaultAtHazelton #PoliceFreeSchools #CounselorsNotCops #BlackLivesMatterAtSchools
#CounselorsNotCops: Black Girl at Pennsylvania high school brutalized in latest assault by a school police officer; Black Lives Matter At School rallies around the country on Feb. 6-7th.  – Black Lives Matter At School



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Oakland Educators Authorize Strike | PopularResistance.Org

Oakland Educators Authorize Strike | PopularResistance.Org

OAKLAND EDUCATORS AUTHORIZE STRIKE



95% vote to strike for smaller class size, student support and living wage
Oakland educators are ready to walk off the job and onto the picket line to fight for smaller class sizes, more student support and a living wage, following a strike authorization vote that saw a whopping 95 percent of Oakland teachers vote to strike if necessary and 84 percent of members casting ballots.
The announcement came Monday afternoon after a fruitless, two-day fact-finding meeting last week, during which Oakland Education Association (OEA) called Oakland Unified School District’s (OUSD) management of Oakland public schools “educational malpractice.” The vote allows OEA leaders to call a strike, if necessary, to win smaller class sizes, living wages for educators and additional support resources that students need—including more counselors and school nurses for the district’s 37,000 students.

“This is a clear message that our members are ready to fight for the schools our students deserve,” said OEA President Keith Brown. “This powerful vote is a mandate for smaller class size, more student support and living wage. It is a mandate to keep our neighborhood schools open and not shut down our schools.”
OEA will rally Tuesday, Feb. 5, at Frank Ogawa Plaza immediately prior to the Oakland City Council meeting, where hundreds of educators will urge the city council to adopt a resolution supporting teachers and opposing school closures (click on “view report” to see the full resolution). OUSD plans to close or merge as many as 24 schools over five years.
Oakland educators will now wait for the non-binding, fact-finding report, which is expected Feb. 15, the same day as a planned #RedForEd Statewide Day of Action in support of OEA and their fight to defend Oakland schools (check out the #RedForEd digital toolkit for ways to share your support on social media). After the report is issued, the 3,000 members of OEA can legally strike.

Brown said that no strike date has been set, but without a serious proposal by the school district, OEA expects to be on strike by the end of the month.
“If the school board won’t act, we will act,” Brown said. “Instead of watching 600 teachers leave OUSD year after year, all of us are going to leave all at once and CONTINUE READING: Oakland Educators Authorize Strike | PopularResistance.Org



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Erika Christakis: Active-Shooter Drills Are Misguided - The Atlantic

Erika Christakis: Active-Shooter Drills Are Misguided - The Atlantic

Active-Shooter Drills Are Tragically Misguided
There’s scant evidence that they’re effective. They can, however, be psychologically damaging—and they reflect a dismaying view of childhood.


AT 10:21 a.m. on december 6, Lake Brantley High School, in Florida, initiated a “code red” lockdown. “This is not a drill,” a voice announced over the PA system. At the same moment, teachers received a text message warning of an active shooter on campus. Fearful students took shelter in classrooms. Many sobbed hysterically, others vomited or fainted, and some sent farewell notes to parents. A later announcement prompted a stampede in the cafeteria, as students fled the building and jumped over fences to escape. Parents flooded 911 with frantic calls.
Later it was revealed, to the fury of parents, teachers, and students, that in fact this was a drill, the most realistic in a series of drills that the students of Lake Brantley, like students across the country, have lately endured. In the year since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last February, efforts to prepare the nation’s students for gunfire have intensified. Educators and safety experts have urged students to deploy such unlikely self-defense tools as hockey pucks, rocks, flip-flops, and canned food. More commonly, preparations include lockdown drills in which students sit in darkened classrooms with the shades pulled. Sometimes a teacher or a police officer plays the role of a shooter, moving through the hallway and attempting to open doors as children practice staying silent and still.

These drills aren’t limited to the older grades. Around the country, young children are being taught to run in zigzag patterns so as to evade bullets. I’ve heard of kindergartens where words like barricade are added to the vocabulary list, as 5- and 6-year-olds are instructed to stack chairs and desks “like a fort” should they need to keep a gunman at bay. In one Massachusetts kindergarten classroom hangs a poster with lockdown instructions that can be sung to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”: Lockdown, Lockdown, Lock the door / Shut the lights off, Say no more. Beside the text are picture cues—a key locking a door; a person holding up a finger to hush the class; a switch being flipped to turn off the lights. The alarm and confusion of younger students is hardly CONTINUE READING: Erika Christakis: Active-Shooter Drills Are Misguided - The Atlantic



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ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) Scores: Part of the “Pay for Success” Plan? – Wrench in the Gears

ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) Scores: Part of the “Pay for Success” Plan? – Wrench in the Gears

ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) Scores: Part of the “Pay for Success” Plan?
A red flag for me in Gavin Newsom’s “child-friendly” proposed budget was the $45 million he allocated to screen children and adults in Medi-Cal for ACEs. I’m writing this post to express serious reservations I have about the process of developing ACE (Adverse Early Childhood Experiences) scores for people. ACEs are getting tremendous media exposure of late. While I believe this to be a crucial pubic health concern, my fear is that ACE prevention and mitigation interventions will become vehicles for “innovative” finance and will expand profiling of vulnerable populations.
I want to make it clear from the outset that I acknowledge childhood trauma does result in long-term negative health consequences for individuals. I’ve seen it in my own family. I also recognize that systems of structural racism have inflicted stress and violence on communities of color and indigenous peoples for generations, resulting in high rates of chronic illness that make them attractive targets for “social impact” schemes. People have a basic human right to treatment and care, which should not be conditioned on surveillance and having data harvested to line the pockets of social impact investors.
What concerns me about ACEs is the “scoring.”
Why should a standardized rubric developed under the auspices of one of the largest managed healthcare systems, Kaiser Permanente, label clients and structure the way a doctor, therapist, social worker, or educator can care for them? How did this tool come to have such a far reach, and whose interests will it ultimately serve?
Is a reliance on “scores” an intentionally-constructed framework that allows providers to limit their scope to “fixing” individuals and families rather than advancing a more radical approach whereby systemic causes of community trauma, trauma rooted in our country’s deep racist history, can be acknowledged, holistically assessed, and begin to be ameliorated?
And finally, will this “scoring” system be used to transform the treatment CONTINUE READING: ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) Scores: Part of the “Pay for Success” Plan? – Wrench in the Gears



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ALEC and Corporate Reformers Make It Hard for Teachers to Cement Gains from Last Year’s Strikes | janresseger

ALEC and Corporate Reformers Make It Hard for Teachers to Cement Gains from Last Year’s Strikes | janresseger

ALEC and Corporate Reformers Make It Hard for Teachers to Cement Gains from Last Year’s Strikes
How can we rid our states of all the education “reform” that has, over the past two decades become part of state education laws—or which legislatures friendly to corporate reform continue to introduce? All this state policy seems hopelessly locked in place despite that we are learning from experience and growing academic research that state takeovers devastate communities, for example, and a growing charter school sector will suck essential funds out of its host school district. The policies have been discredited—thanks especially to striking school teachers this year—but we can’t seem to get rid of them.
Last week Valerie Strauss examined what is happening today in the legislatures of three states where teachers walked out last spring to protest the under-funding of their schools and their salaries.
In Oklahoma, bills have been introduced to put a stop to future walkouts by teachers. One law would demand a fine in advance of $50,000 for any organized protest of more than 100 people at the state capitol.  Another bill would make it illegal for school employees to strike.
Arizona’s House is considering a bill requiring that teachers be ruled by a code of ethics that bans “politics” in public schools—including teachers’ strikes.  Lawmakers in Arizona are also considering a bill to ban the shutting down of school except on holidays and another prohibiting payroll deductions for union dues.
These bills are designed to get back at teachers for what lawmakers consider their unseemly aggressiveness for standing up for the needs of their schools and their own livelihoods.
In West Virginia, the punishment would affect not only teachers but also the state’s entire education system.  An omnibus education bill that just passed in the West Virginia Senate CONTINUE READING: ALEC and Corporate Reformers Make It Hard for Teachers to Cement Gains from Last Year’s Strikes | janresseger




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CURMUDGUCATION: Portfolio School Management For Dummies

CURMUDGUCATION: Portfolio School Management For Dummies

Portfolio School Management For Dummies

One of the issues that was hanging over the Los Angeles teacher strike is the idea of portfolio management; the UTLA asserts that Superintendent Austin Beutner already has a plan prepared for converting the LAUSD to a multi-portfolio model. In Denver, the model has already been rolled out,to less than stellar result. It's a challenging issue to discuss because so few people understand exactly how a portfolio model is supposed to work.

So here, with issues over-simplified and corners cut, is your dummies' guide to portfolio management.
The first thing to understand about the portfolio model is that nobody anywhere knows exactly what a portfolio model is. Back in 2010,  it took three writers at Education Week (Jeffrey R. Henig, Katrina E. Bulkley, & Henry M. Levin) to come up with this pretty good explanation:

The strategy is, rather, a loosely coupled conglomeration of ideas held together by the metaphor of a well-managed stock portfolio and its proponents’ unshakable belief that the first step for successful reform must be to dismantle the bureaucratic and political institutions that have built up around the status quo.

That's the second thing to know--that "portfolio" here is based on the idea of an investment portfolio (Austin Beutner, for what it's worth, made his bundle in investment banking). With an financial portfolio, you move your money in and out of various investments depending on how they're performing and what your goals are. With a school portfolio, you move your resources in and out of schools--all schools including public and charter--based on how those schools are performing.

The Center for Reinventing Public Education, a Washington state ed reform thinky tank, has tried to work up a portfolio model strategy guide, and they list seven characteristics of portfolio strategy: CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Portfolio School Management For Dummies

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“Hard” and “Soft” Effectiveness in Schools | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

“Hard” and “Soft” Effectiveness in Schools | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

“Hard” and “Soft” Effectiveness in Schools
The idea of students learning “hard” and “soft” skills in school has gone viral among educators and policymakers in the past decade (see here and here). “Soft” skills refers to people skills of communication, sensitivity, and social awareness that permits students to collaborate with others and work smoothly inside and outside organizations. Here is one listing of such skills:
  • Integrity
  • Dependability
  • Effective communication
  • Open-mindedness
  • Teamwork
  • Creativity
  • Problem-solving
  • Critical thinking
  • Adaptability
  • Organization
  • Willingness to learn
  • Empathy
Measuring such skills in schoolchildren and youth is tough to do but work proceeds in developing instruments and metrics to do so (see here and here).
“Hard” skills refers to the technical proficiency children and youth acquire and use in different situations such as reading, writing, math, and operating electronic devices learned in and out of school. Measuring such skills has a long history of paper-and-pencil tests and real-life demonstration of skills and are readily available.
Now here is the segue I want to make from “hard” and “soft” skills to a conceptual level of determining school effectiveness by proposing “hard” and “soft” forms. I aim to expand the constricted definition of a “good” school that is judged effective now to one that has more to it than the familiar numbers used today.
“Hard” Effectiveness
This is the easy one to define. What measures policymakers, practitioners, donors, and parents use to judge a school today as “good,” “excellent,” “high performer,” “effective” or similar terms are easy to list: CONTINUE READING: “Hard” and “Soft” Effectiveness in Schools | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice



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NYC Public School Parents: Many questions remain as to the reliability of the state’s new list of struggling schools and why some schools were taken off the list and others not

NYC Public School Parents: Many questions remain as to the reliability of the state’s new list of struggling schools and why some schools were taken off the list and others not

Many questions remain as to the reliability of the state’s new list of struggling schools and why some schools were taken off the list and others not


 On January 17, 2019, Commissioner Elia released a new list of “struggling” schools under the new accountability system created by the state to comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act, that replaced NCLB in 2016.  As an article in Chalkbeat explained,

Eighty-four of the city’s schools are on the lowest rung — known as “Comprehensive Support and Improvement Schools” — and will be required to craft improvement plans approved by the state. The remaining 40 schools are only in need of “targeted” support and will face less intense oversight.

Yet the state formula used to develop this list of struggling or CSI schools is complex, confusing, and unreliable. Moreover, the Commissioner exempted certain schools that would otherwise have been identified as CSI schools through a decision-making process that is puzzling and obscure.

Thirty-eight in NYC and 84 statewide were designated as “good standing #”, meaning according to the spreadsheet that their “Accountability status is based on a finding by the Commissioner of extenuating or extraordinary circumstances”. Why certain schools were taking off the list of struggling schools by the Commissioner due to “extenuating circumstances” and others were not is nowhere explained.

There were at least two very controversial issues that repeatedly were raised by parents, teachers and advocates during the hearings and comment period that preceded the adoption of the ESSA state plan. First was how opt out students would be counted, which is an especially critical issue since about 20% of the state’s eligible students in grades 3-8 have opted out of the state exams every year since 2015.

NYSAPE, Class Size Matters and other groups opposed the state plan to count these students as having failed on the state exams – and instead proposed a different system, called Opportunity Learn index, which would measure whether schools provided their students with the conditions for success.
If test scores had to be used, as the federal law required, then we recommended that the scores of opt out student scores should be assumed as average for that school and their subgroup.

The state rejected our proposals, however,  and instead adopted a complex formula that incorporates two variables – one called the Weighted Average Achievement Index, which counts opt out students as having failed in terms of test score proficiency, and another called the Core Subject Performance Index, which removes them from the formula entirely.  These two variables are combined to create a Composite Performance Level, in a mathematical process that is difficult to understand. [See this memo that attempts to explain how the two variables will be combined.]

Sure enough, at least two highly regarded NYC schools, Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies (BCS) and Central Park East One (CPE1) both designated by InsideSchools as CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Many questions remain as to the reliability of the state’s new list of struggling schools and why some schools were taken off the list and others not


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