'Rise' and Shine: ESP National Award Seeks Congressional Approval

'Rise' and Shine: ESP National Award Seeks Congressional Approval

‘Rise’ and Shine: ESP National Award Seeks Congressional Approval

(Update 2/25: By a vote of 387-19, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed H.R. 276. A similar bill was passed more than 10 years ago in the House before it died in the Senate. A bill honoring ESPs has not had a vote since. Known as the Recognizing Inspiring School Employees Award Program bill, it is the first significant education bill to pass the new House assembly this year.)

A bill introduced during the first week of the new Congress directs the Secretary of Education to establish an award that acknowledges the role education support professionals (ESP) play in promoting student achievement, ensuring student safety, and helping to establish a healthy school climate in grades preK-12.

Although the RISE (Recognizing Inspiring School Employees) Award Program bill(H.R. 276) arrives on Capitol Hill amid intense gridlock, strong support from the bill’s sponsor, Democrat Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada, and 21 co-sponsors gives many ESP hope they will finally receive a type of national recognition on par with teachers.

“There are almost 3 million ESP working in our nation’s public schools and colleges who make a difference every day in the lives of their students,” says Sherry Shaw, 2018 NEA ESP of the Year. “They need to be recognized for their above-and-beyond acts of heroism.”

One of every three public school employees is an ESP with more than 75 percent ensuring student and school safety. According to NEA research, almost 50 percent of ESP have an associate’s, bachelor’s, or more advanced college degree. In addition, more than 60 percent have taken college courses, while others (51 percent) have taken job-related classes, or have earned education-related certificates and licenses.

“ESPs choose public education as their career,” says Dan Kivett, a security officer at Citrus Valley High School in Redlands, Calif., and president of the Redlands Education Support Professionals Association (RESPA). “They have to train and attend school in order to maintain a high skill and knowledge level just like those in other professions.”

Above and Beyond the Call

Kivett says many ESPs are also student mentors, athletic coaches, community volunteers and organizers. According to NEA, 35 percent of ESP volunteer to read books to students while 70 percent assist children in their communities with clothing, food and other necessities.

“And all of this is done without much recognition,” says Kivett, a member of the NEA board of directors with 19 years of public education experience. “They are the gears that keep school operations moving.”

More than 65 percent of ESP donate money out of their own pockets to help students purchase classroom materials, field trip tickets, and materials for science and other class projects. The average ESP donation: $217 per year.

“The RISE award would draw some attention to the level of our professional training, mentoring, volunteerism, and how much we love our kids,” says Shaw, a special education paraeducator, coach and mentor at Tanaina Elementary School in Wasilla, Alaska. “Some parents know that ESPs go the extra mile for their kids, but not all administrators acknowledge it for some reason.”

Of NEA’s 3 million members, almost 500,000 are ESP represented in the following nine career categories:

• Child nutrition services
• Clerical services
• Custodial and maintenance services
• Health and student services
• Paraeducators
• Security services
• Skilled trades
• Technical services
• Transportation services

“We don’t necessarily need an award for the work we do, but it would be nice to be recognized for all of the extra effort we put forth on behalf of students,” says Mary Ann Rivera, a paraeducator at Lyons Township High School in Western Springs, Ill.

When Rivera goes shopping, it is a given she will buy gloves, socks, hats and other items for students in need. It is also normal operating procedure in her school district for ESP to organize dozens of care packages for students from low-income families.

“Thank goodness for discount stores,” says Rivera, an NEA board member.

“ESPs work just as hard as all educators, side by side with teachers,” she adds. “In classrooms, paraeducators are an extra set of eyes, trained to help students learn their lessons well. We are not volunteers as in decades past. This is our career.”

Overdue Recognition

In Kentucky, Lakilia Bedeau is director of the Tornado Alley Youth Services Center at Paducah Tilghman High School. She says Congress should acknowledge the essential services that ESPs provide by approving the bill.

“The award is long overdue,” says Bedeau, an executive committee member of the National Council for ESP (NCESP), which advocates for ESP from within NEA assuring that specific ESP issues and interests are integrated in NEA programs.

Like youth services staff across the nation, Bedeau helps students with everything from medical and other referrals for social, physical and mental health services to intervening during family crisis situations and providing hygiene products, school supplies and other daily necessities students would otherwise go without.

More than 65 percent of ESP donate money out of their own pockets to help students purchase classroom materials, field trip tickets, and materials for science and other class projects. The average ESP donation: $217 per year.

“Like the majority of ESP, my team is on the front-line assisting students with everyday needs,” says Bedeau, who has worked in education for 10 years.

By working one-on-one with students, Bedeau says a level of trust and confidence can develop which helps keep students interested enough in school so as not to drop-out.

“We empower students by removing non-academic barriers, encouraging them to explore career opportunities and reach their full potential,” she says. “We build critical relationships that ensure students are safe and successful regardless of their socio-economic status.”

Rivera says though it takes time to gain the trust of students, the reward is “priceless.”

“When they first meet you, they might hate you,” says Rivera, an NCESP executive committee member. “But it’s not personal. You encourage them to do well by showing and telling them that they are valued and smart, and by the end of the year they love you.”

After more than 30 years of working for public schools as a paraeducator and school bus driver, Ernest Jameel Williams is encouraged by the proposed bill despite the divisive state of national politics and past failures by Congress to pass legislation that would acknowledge ESPs same as their colleagues are with the National Teacher of the Year Award.

“People have worked hard over the years advocating for an award like this,” says Williams, the 2011 NEA ESP of the Year. “Congress should once and for all pass this bill that acknowledges the hard work, dedication, skills, and expertise of ESP.”

Williams, who is a Reach Associate at Zeb Vance Elementary School in Kittrell, N.C., says ESP not only help to teach students but “we are in the trenches when an emotional crisis occurs involving a student or their family. They depend on us.”

Different Award, Same Name

In May of 2018, Sherry Shaw and four other ESPs received a national award in a ceremony at the U.S. House of Representatives. The ESP award was created by the National Coalition of Classified Education Support Employee Unions and currently goes by the same name proposed in H.R. 276: Recognizing Inspiring School Employees (RISE). Future distinctions between the two awards will be determined.

The NCCESEU is a coalition of state and national unions that together represent a million school support employees including clerical and administrative staff, custodians, food service workers, health and student services workers, paraeducators, technology services employees, transportation workers, and security and skilled trades staff.

Along with NEA, coalition members include the California School Employees Association, Minnesota School Employees Association, SEIU 284 (Service Employees International Union), and Public School Employees of Washington/SEIU 1948.

Sign up at the NEA Legislative Action Center to support the RISE Award Program bill.

'Rise' and Shine: ESP National Award Seeks Congressional Approval

Editorial | Bay Area must show support for Oakland Teachers Strike #Unite4OaklandKids #WeAreOEA #WeAreCTA #strikeready #REDFORED

Editorial | Bay Area must show support for Oakland Teachers Strike

Show your support for Oakland teachers on strike
BAY AREA AFFAIRS: Community members should stand in solidarity with Oakland teachers’ demands to improve public education

Last Thursday, Oakland teachers went on strike to demand better conditions for both students and employees. Berkeley High School teachers joined the protest to show support for their fellow educators — and you should too.

These teachers are part of a nationwide movement of educators fighting for public education. Just like the teachers who went on strike in Los Angeles, Oakland teachers are advocating for better wages, smaller classroom sizes and funding for classroom supplies — all of which are geared toward improving the livelihood of teachers, counselors and nurses who help ensure that students receive the education they deserve. So now, after nearly two years of negotiations, it’s time for the Oakland Unified School District board to meet its teachers on these important demands.

Oakland teachers are paid a salary that’s significantly lower than that of teachers in other Bay Area school districts — a starting salary of a mere $47,000. These educators deserve to have salaries that will allow them to survive the expensive cost of living in the Bay Area.

Rapidly rising housing prices in the East Bay are an immense burden on educators, often pushing them out of the region they work in. According to Oakland Education Association President Keith Brown, one in five teachers have to leave the district each year because of low pay. Oakland teachers are asking for a 12 percent raise over the next three years, rather than the district’s proposed 7 percent raise, to help offset these costs. It’s ridiculous that teachers must fight to live in the very community they serve.

In addition to living expenses, many teachers are forced to pay out of pocket for classroom supplies. A study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education found that between 2015-16, 94 percent of teachers used their personal finances to buy classroom supplies. It’s admirable that these educators are willing to put their own salary on the line to ensure their students are getting the resources they need. But it goes without saying that this burden should never fall on teachers — it’s on the district to ensure that students have adequate access to educational materials.

It’s true that part of the blame for these poor working conditions falls not just on the district, but on the inadequate CONTINUE READING: Editorial | Bay Area must show support for Oakland Teachers Strike

Report: Every State Now Measures Student Progress in Its Own Fashion -- THE Journal

Report: Every State Now Measures Student Progress in Its Own Fashion -- THE Journal

Report: Every State Now Measures Student Progress in Its Own Fashion

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, 48 states have signed on to measure student academic progress. What's good about this approach is that it goes beyond the previously used one-time test score comparison. What's not so good is that every single participating state does it in its own way. As a result, according to a new report from the Data Quality Campaign, these student growth measures "are not created equal." While the states may use the same term — "growth" — to describe what they're doing, they're using different methods to calculate it.

As the report explained, state leaders select indicators based on the questions they want to answer, what their state goals are, their capacity, the cost, the ease of implementation and the feedback they receive from stakeholders. They also decide how to calculate growth, summarize and interpret it. As a result of these many differences, growth data can't be used to make comparisons across states, and people who want to consume that data need to be able to understand just what's being communicated.

According to the DQC, most states are working with one or more of five different kinds of measures:

• Student growth percentile, which uses individual student performance data to show how schools have served students with the same academic starting point (in use by 23 states);
• Value table, which use individual student performance data to demonstrate what impact adults in the school have on student achievement, to show how the student's school has helped him or her learn compared to other schools working with similar students (in use by 12 states);
• Growth-to-standard, which uses individual student performance data to show his or her "distance from grade-level learning goals" (in use by 10 states);
• Value-added, which uses individual student performance data to show student progress, based on the state's cut scores (in use by nine states); or
• Gain-score, which uses individual student performance data to show progress from one year to the next (in use by three states).

Three other states are using a "less common growth measure" that are unique from these five; and 10 states are using multiple measures, each combining the measures in different ways. Two states — California and Kansas — aren't measuring individual student progress at all, the DQC stated; California measures CONTINUE READING: Report: Every State Now Measures Student Progress in Its Own Fashion -- THE Journal

L.A. school board signals support for an education tax increase this year - Los Angeles Times

L.A. school board signals support for an education tax increase this year - Los Angeles Times

L.A. school board signals support for an education tax increase this year

Hoping to harness the momentum of a six-day teachers' strike that drew broad public sympathy, L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner is pushing a measure to raise local taxes for education.

If Board of Education members approve the plan — and all six have said they will — a parcel tax would go on either the June or November ballot. Getting on the June ballot would require board action before the end of next week.

District staff, pollsters and attorneys unveiled the funding plan at a board meeting on Tuesday. When board members expressed enthusiasm, Beutner said he’d come back later this week with a resolution for the ballot they could vote on.

“This will allow for the accelerated improvement in student learning, further reduction in class size and providing more support to students and educators in schools,” Beutner later said in a statement. “It is time to build on the commitment the community has expressed and move forward together.”

Still to be decided are the size of the proposed tax increase and how a new tax would be calculated. The measure would require the approval of two-thirds of voters within the boundaries of the nation’s second-largest school system.

Officials’ new sense of urgency is a contrast to last July when the board split 3 to 3 on a tax measure and Beutner called the idea premature. New to the job then, Beutner wanted to wait until 2020, to give the district time to rebuild credibility and put together a well-coordinated campaign. A teachers’ strike already threatened then, and some thought that made a tax measure’s prospects doubtful.

Those who backed it, however, thought getting additional money might forestall a strike by CONTINUE READING: L.A. school board signals support for an education tax increase this year - Los Angeles Times

GiveWell expands cost-effective giving focus to include policy interventions - Vox

GiveWell expands cost-effective giving focus to include policy interventions - Vox

Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. But if you lobby for better fishing policy…
A charity focused on cost-effective giving is shifting its sights toward influencing policy.

What’s the most cost-effective way to help people?

Lots of people have tried to answer that question. Donors care, a lot, about whether the charities they’re giving to are effective (though they often don’t know a good way to measure that). Charity evaluators like GuideStar, CharityWatch, and Charity Navigator rate charities primarily by how well they’re run.

My favorite charity evaluator, GiveWell, takes a different approach — the group focuses on identifying charities that deliver the most cost-effective interventions available. In global health and development, for example, we often have robust evidence that some health interventions are a particularly good way to save and change lives. That means that the charities delivering those interventions are places where your money goes especially far. Those interventions include distributing malaria nets, treating kids for intestinal parasites, supplementing Vitamin A to reduce child mortality from infectious disease, and, yes, just directly giving people money.

But can we do better than that? That’s a question GiveWell is asking — and it is expanding its scope in the hopes of finding even more promising opportunities.

GiveWell recently announced that it’s more than doubling the size of its research team to try to find more cost-effective programs. But its revised approach involves increased attention to something relatively new for GiveWell: policy-oriented philanthropy.

In a blog post announcing the change, the organization said it would be researching new, more complex ways to measure how to do good in areas, including:

• Public health regulations like anti-smoking laws, restrictions on lead paint, air pollution, and the fight against counterfeit medicines
• “Improving government program selection,” or assisting governments in their selection of more effective health, education, and antipoverty programs
• “Improving government implementation,” or helping with training and operations so that government policies work better
• “Increasing economic growth and redistribution” — advocating for or helping implement policies that produce healthy overall economic growth, and ones that reduce inequality
• Improved data collection
• Advocating for more aid spending to go to the most cost-effective direct-delivery programs

GiveWell is not planning to change their focus on low- and middle-income countries. But they’ll CONTINUE READING: GiveWell expands cost-effective giving focus to include policy interventions - Vox

3rd Grade Reading Guarantees: Impact Investors Build System To Terrorize Eight Year Olds – Wrench in the Gears

3rd Grade Reading Guarantees: Impact Investors Build System To Terrorize Eight Year Olds – Wrench in the Gears

3rd Grade Reading Guarantees: Impact Investors Build System To Terrorize Eight Year Olds

I know a number of activists out there are working to raise awareness around the brutality of third grade reading guarantees. These laws demand students achieve a specific score on standardized reading test. If they do not, they can’t advance to the next grade. I wrote this short introduction with the idea that it could be shared with people  who are not yet aware of the speculative financial underpinnings linked to these laws.

“Pay for success” was embedded into federal education law with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act. Public-private partnerships, in coordination with investors, are embracing this form of “innovative finance,” catalyzing new markets in human capital. Digital platforms, including ed-tech and online behavioral services, are designed to generate data for the evaluation of outcomes-based contracts. That is what is behind the push for expanded screen-time and benchmark testing in schools.

It’s known as “collective impact,” and the Strive Network based in Cincinnati is working with United Way chapters across the country to advance data-driven education and social services to meet the demands of this burgeoning investment market. Children are being turned into data so the debt associated with funds allocated to provide education and social services to them can be traded on global markets (like bundled mortgages prior to the 2008 crash).

A “cradle to career roadmap” with set achievement metrics has been created with benchmarks where impact evaluation will be imposed as a CONTINUE READING: 3rd Grade Reading Guarantees: Impact Investors Build System To Terrorize Eight Year Olds – Wrench in the Gears

The LAUSD’s Revolving Door Continues

The LAUSD’s Revolving Door Continues

The LAUSD’s Revolving Door Continues

Kids First”

– LAUSD School Board slogan

While claiming poverty, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is currently spending $2.4 million on the special election to replace admitted felon and charter school supporter Ref Rodriguez. The District’s General Counsel, David Holmquist, was asked by Board Member Scott M. Schmerelson to look into the “viability” of “bringing legal action against this enormous cost which was not [the District’s] fault.” Holmquist has yet to publicly provide an answer.

Unfortunately for the students of the LAUSD, this may not be the last time that funds meant for their education are diverted to a special election. After supporters of the charter school industry spent $622,536.89 to get Board President Monica Garcia elected to a five and a half year term that ends in 2022, she has announced that she is running for José Huizar’s seat on the Los Angeles City Council in 2020. If she is successful, another election will have to be held to fill out the remainder of her term. This also leaves the possibility that the residents of Board District 2 will be unrepresented while this special election is held.

While the loss of another charter school industry supported Board Member might seem at first glance to be a good thing for the 80% of students who attend LAUSD public schools, Garcia’s entrance into the CONTINUE READING: The LAUSD’s Revolving Door Continues

Trump Creates a Humanitarian Crisis in Venezuela While a Real One is Right Here in Our Schools | Dissident Voice #Unite4OaklandKids #WeAreOEA #WeAreCTA #strikeready #REDFORED

Trump Creates a Humanitarian Crisis in Venezuela While a Real One is Right Here in Our Schools | Dissident Voice

Trump Creates a Humanitarian Crisis in Venezuela While a Real One is Right Here in Our Schools

A created political farce played out with the frightening consequences for war against Venezuela resting in the balance on its border with Colombia this weekend, as the Trump Administration unsuccessfully tried to force the first of $20 million of unsolicited “humanitarian aid” into the country. This had nothing to do with concern for the Venezuelan people and everything to do with undermining the legitimate government of Venezuela. It should be called the food as a weapon campaign. Meanwhile teachers in Oakland California who are going into their 4th day of a strike could really use that wasted money to shore up the attack going on against education in their city and the entire U.S. for that matter.

The will to make quality education accessible in this country has long since left the station but under Trump and his Secretary of the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, champion of the for profit charter school system, the decline has become precipitous. California, the richest state in the country, has been little or no help in coming up with a plan for the crisis.

Teachers in the U.S.: Unsung Heroes

In my estimation public school teachers, entrusted to teach all our children to become critical thinkers, are the hardest working and most underappreciated group anywhere, working in a system that neglects them and sets them and their students up for failure. In the last couple of years teachers’ strikes have emerged as energizing and leading the way for all of organized labor. There have been teachers’ strikes, with varying degrees of success, in a number of states including West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Colorado, Illinois and most recently in Los Angeles.  Their demands follow a similar pattern. Most of them call for a pay increase for teachers who have notoriously been underpaid and undervalued. In the Oakland strike teachers are asking for a 12% pay raise over three years, hardly a greedy demand seeing that represents a 4% yearly raise or just about enough to keep up with inflation and cost of living. Oakland educators are the lowest paid in the Bay Area, where rents have risen 40 to 50 percent since 2012. The skyrocketing costs of housing have caused more than 18% of teachers to leave the district each year, including 600 last year.

I am not an economist but If Jeff Bezos and Amazon was ever forced to pay taxes I would think that could pay for a 15% or a more deserved 20% raise for all 3.2 million public school teachers in the United States per year. Why not?

But in all these strikes pay raises has been only one demand while most of them were about safety issues and quality of education in the class room. The CONTINUE READING: Trump Creates a Humanitarian Crisis in Venezuela While a Real One is Right Here in Our Schools | Dissident Voice

Essential Reading: Peter Greene’s Expose of Ohio’s State Takeover of the Lorain City Schools | janresseger

Essential Reading: Peter Greene’s Expose of Ohio’s State Takeover of the Lorain City Schools | janresseger

Essential Reading: Peter Greene’s Expose of Ohio’s State Takeover of the Lorain City Schools

Retired high school English teacher in Western Pennsylvania, prolific blogger—and recently a columnist on education at Forbes Magazine, Peter Greene has published the tragic story of the state takeover of the school district where he spent his very first year of teaching—in Lorain, Ohio.

His post is long and filled with details, but if you live in Ohio, you should feel guilty if you don’t sit down and read the whole thing.

And if you live in another state, you should also read OH: Lorain, HB 70, and a Reformy Attack.  Why?  Because it is very same story as what happened in Flint, Michigan (see hereand here) when a state-appointed emergency manager arrogantly and ignorantly oversaw the lead poisoning of the city’s water supply.  And it is the very same story as what happened to Newark, New Jersey’s schools under the bungled state-appointed manager, Cami Anderson, (see here) who refused to attend the meetings of the locally elected school board.

Greene’s tale of Lorain, Ohio is the story of the actions of the legislatures in lots of states where people from rural areas and little towns disdain the people who live in urban communities where poverty is concentrated—places where the poorest citizens are segregated in school districts where test scores lag. These days lots of states prefer to punish the school district instead of investing.  Ignoring decades of research that correlate lagging test scores with neighborhood and family poverty, and wooed by corporate reform ideologues preaching school governance by appointed school boards and CEOs, our society has allowed itself be snookered by politicians who think it is best to deny local control in poor school districts.

Greene’s story is about Ohio and House Bill 70, slammed through the Legislature in one day without debate in June of 2015.  The Legislature was considering a bill that would have CONTINUE READING: Essential Reading: Peter Greene’s Expose of Ohio’s State Takeover of the Lorain City Schools | janresseger

The College Board “Nonprofit”: Oh, the Money One Can Make! | deutsch29

The College Board “Nonprofit”: Oh, the Money One Can Make! | deutsch29

The College Board “Nonprofit”: Oh, the Money One Can Make!

The College Board is actually a nonprofit entity (EIN 13-1623965), but don’t let that fool you. The money is a-flowing, and for College Board’s top admin, testing is turning out to be quite the lucrative racket.

David Coleman, College Board

Let’s just consider some info from the College Board’s 2016 tax form.

Total revenue in 2016 was $916M, just shy of one billion dollars, $3.3M of which derived from government grants. The greatest revenue generator was “AP and instruction,” at $446M, followed by “assessments,” at $338M.

As for 2016 lobbying expenses: The College Board spent $2.3M (a drop in the billion-dollar bucket of its total revenue), with the following explanation:

The College Board contacts legislators and their staff to provide data and statistics on K-12 education and college admissions and to encourage them to support appropriations for education.

If your nonprofit breaks a billion in revenue, then $2M spent on lobbying becomes relatively nothing. In addition, “providing data and statistics” is probably far enough removed to be considered as not actively lobbying.

But let’s move on to the few who profit the most from nonprofit College Board.

The highest paid independent contractor by far was another testing entity, Educational Testing Services (ETS), at $359M.

Former Common Core “architect” and College Board president, David Coleman, drew $1.7M in total compensation in 2016, $512K of which is “bonus and incentive CONTINUE READING: The College Board “Nonprofit”: Oh, the Money One Can Make! | deutsch29