Big Education Ape: Apr 3, 2019

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Want More Money for a Federal Program? Get DeVos to Put It on Her Budget Elimination Wish List | deutsch29

Want More Money for a Federal Program? Get DeVos to Put It on Her Budget Elimination Wish List | deutsch29

Want More Money for a Federal Program? Get DeVos to Put It on Her Budget Elimination Wish List

On March 28, 2019, I wrote a post about US ed sec Betsy DeVos’ attempts to eliminate federal funding for Special Olympics from the past three US Department of Education (USDOE) annual proposed budgets (FY2018, FY2019, and FY2020).

One interesting finding was that instead of eliminating Special Olympics, Congress actually voted to increase money to the program.

So, I was curious to see what other programs received increased funding despite DeVos’ repeated attempts to eliminate. Sixteen programs fit this description; below is a listing of each program that received increased federal funding at least once, with its budget authority (BA) funding amount (in millions) for FY2017, FY2018, and FY2019, respectively:

21st Century Community Learning Centers: $1,164.5, $1,191.7, $1,221.7
Alaska Native Education: $32.4, $32.5, $35.5
American History and Civics Academies: $1.8, $3.5, $4.8
Arts in Education: $26.9, $27.0, $29.0
Comprehensive Literacy Development Grants: $189.6, $190.0, $190.0
Federal Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants: $731.7, $733.1, $840.0
Full Service Community Schools: $10.0, $10.0, $17.5
Impact Aid Payments for Federal Property: $66.7, $68.8, $74.3
Innovative Approaches to Literacy: $26.9, $27.0, $27.0
Int’l Educ and Foreign Lang Studies Domestic Programs: $65.0, $65.1, $65.1
Int’l Educ and Foreign Lang Studies Overseas Programs: $7.0, $7.1, $7.1
Native Hawaiian Education: $33.3, $33.4, $36.4
Ready to Learn Programming: $25.7, $25.7, $27.7
Special Olympics Education Programs: $10.1, $12.6, $17.6
Strengthening Institutions: $86.4, $86.5, $99.9
Teacher Quality Partnerships: $43.0, $43.1, $43.1

Thus, of the 22 programs listed for elimination in DeVos’ CONTINUE READING: Want More Money for a Federal Program? Get DeVos to Put It on Her Budget Elimination Wish List | deutsch29

Rep. Mark Pocan: Betsy DeVos is unfit to lead the Education Department. It's time for her to resign.

Betsy DeVos is unfit to lead the Education Department. It's time for her to resign.

Rep. Mark Pocan Betsy DeVos is unfit to lead the Education Department. It's time for her to resign.
DeVos' confirmation hearing raised many red flags. Now America's children are dealing with the consequences of her incompetence.

By Rep. Mark Pocan, U.S. Representative

Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos appeared before the House Appropriations Committee to attempt to justify the Trump administration’s 2020 budget request. During the committee hearing, members of Congress — Democrats and Republicans — had the opportunity to ask her about a number of programs and funding decisions that we found problematic to our students, educators and schools. Her answers only reinforced a truth we have known for two years: Secretary Betsy DeVos is wholly unfit to oversee this vital department and must resign before her actions wreak even more havoc than has already occurred.

We’ve long known that President Donald Trump was proposing dangerous and irresponsible cuts to many critical programs, from Medicaid and Social Security, to special education and medical research. However, during Tuesday’s hearing with DeVos, representatives pressed her on some of her agency’s most devastating cuts, including those to Special Olympics, Gallaudet University and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. DeVos could not defend cutting or eliminating these programs, instead only claiming, “We had to make some difficult decisions.”

When Trump first nominated Betsy DeVos to lead the Department of Education, there were many red flags that both Congress and the American public noticed. Most alarming was the fact that DeVos — who was never a public school student, teacher, principal, superintendent, or administrator — brings the least amount of public school experience of any secretary in our nation’s history.

During her confirmation hearing, DeVos' lack of background in public education became even more clear when she gave downright CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos is unfit to lead the Education Department. It's time for her to resign.

I say enough with the failing schools narrative. Teachers perform miracles every day for our students. - PublicSource

I say enough with the failing schools narrative. Teachers perform miracles every day for our students. - PublicSource | News for a better PittsburghPublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh

I say enough with the failing schools narrative. Teachers perform miracles every day for our students.

Editor's note: This is a first-person essay in response to recent PublicSource stories on the racial achievement gap in Allegheny County school districts. The author of the essay is a teacher in the Steel Valley School District. Our reporting showed the Steel Valley High School to have the highest racial achievement gap in the county. Steel Valley Middle School, where the author of the essay teaches, also had significant achievement gaps. The high school and middle school are on the state Department of Education's Additional Targeted Support and Improvement List, which requires the district to come up with an action plan to address low test scores from black students. You can read more about racial achievement gaps in the county here.

Compelling personal stories
told by the people living them.

“Mom, I’m going to college.”

“I love you, too.”

“It’s not real.”

I flashed these and other phrases on the screen in my eighth-grade classroom during a February class. I told my students to take notes and try to figure out what all of these phrases had in common.

As I continued showing the phrases, it became more obvious to the students.

“What are you following me for?”

“I can’t breathe.”

“Please don’t let me die.”

Eventually one of my eighth-grade students caught on.

“‘I can’t breathe?’ Wasn’t that Eric Garner?”

And then it all fell into place. These were the last words of African-American men wrongly killed by police.

As a white teacher at Steel Valley Middle School with classes of mostly students of color, I don’t mind talking about race and prejudice in school. In fact, I find it essential to doing the job properly.

The lesson I described led to some deep discussions about the role of law enforcement, rules of engagement and justice.

And it almost didn’t happen because of standardized testing.

I adapted the lesson from the Black Lives Matter at School curriculum that teachers were using across the country during a week of action Feb. 4 to Feb. 8. There were lessons on diversity, restorative justice, black families, women and villages, collective value, queer and transgender affirmation and so much more.

Teachers — especially those serving students of color — were trying to enrich and attest their students’ individuality while engaging them in culturally and developmentally appropriate CONTINUE READING: I say enough with the failing schools narrative. Teachers perform miracles every day for our students. - PublicSource | News for a better PittsburghPublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh

Jesse Hagopian to Appear on Second Season of HBO’s “Problem Areas” with Wyatt Cenac – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Jesse Hagopian to Appear on Second Season of HBO’s “Problem Areas” with Wyatt Cenac – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Jesse Hagopian to Appear on Second Season of HBO’s “Problem Areas” with Wyatt Cenac

Season 2 of Problem Areas Premieres on HBO Friday, April 5th

The great comedian and writer Wyatt Cenac, formerly a correspondent on The Daily Show, hosts the HBO show Problem Areas. The first season of the show focused on policing in America, because as he says, “the delicious rise of ramen restaurants was already taken.” The season featured several authors, organizers, and activists throughout the season that commented on different topics related to police brutality and accountability that Wyatt raised as he traveled the country. The show raised many important issues about the systemic nature of police violence that aren’t often discussed in mainstream media.

Wyatt is focusing on education for the entire second season of Problem Areas. I will join other authors, activists and educators–many who have stood up against corporate education reform and institutional racism, and fought for fully funded community schools–as a commentator on the program.

The second season of Problem Areas airs on HBO every Friday evening at 9:00pm Pacific, 11:00pm Eastern, beginning on April 5th. I don’t know what exactly will happen with the final product of the show or what the overall message will be, but I can CONTINUE READING:

Abandoning public education will be considered unthinkable 50 years from now - Vox

Abandoning public education will be considered unthinkable 50 years from now - Vox

Abandoning public education will be considered unthinkable 50 years from now
Private and charter schools, and public schools in expensive communities, fuel inequality.

Adia Harvey Wingfield is a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy.

For many parents, when it comes to their children’s educational opportunities, they want only the best. American parents are often driven by the belief that educational advantages will allow children to accomplish ambitious goals. Thus, parents’ educational decisions are deceptively simple — do whatever it takes to get children into the best school available.

But in 50 years, we’ll look back at how a declining public sector has led to a dizzying array of increasingly out-of-reach options — whether that’s private schools, charter schools, or “good” public schools in inaccessible expensive areas — and consider it unthinkable. We’ll be living in a much more demographically diverse country, likely reconsidering what choosing “the best” looks like and thinking more about how all too often, uncritical definitions of what’s best reproduce racial and economic inequality. In this light, it will be necessary to reinvest in public education so that it becomes more of a democratizing force and less a mechanism for maintaining inequality.

Prior to Brown v. Board of Education, most US students attended local public schools. Of course, these were also strictly racially segregated. It wasn’t until the Supreme Court struck down legal segregation that a demand for private (and eventually charter and religious parochial) schools really began to grow, frequently as a backlash to integrated public institutions. In 2012, for instance, a study done by the Southern Education Foundation showed that in Mississippi, white students comprised 51 percent of all school-age students but an overwhelming 87 percent of all private school students. This pattern holds across Southern states that demonstrated resistance to school integration.

Today, proponents of our current educational system of unfettered school choice argue that diverting local, state, and federal funding to these varied types of schools creates necessary options and gives parents more control over their children’s education. But this narrow, individualized focus maintains the racial and economic disparities that desegregation was supposed to eradicate. School is viewed less as a public good and more and more as something we buy access to, and thus driven by income and wealth.

Those with more money can afford to live in areas with top public schools or pay to send children to private school. Study after study has shown that all children are not exposed to the same educational opportunities, but that those in high-income families have a significantly easier time accessing high-quality education. Additionally, as intergenerational mobility has stalled, higher-income parents have become even more devoted to hoarding educational opportunities for their children. In a changing world with less social mobility, parents often believe that education will give their children elusive tools necessary to CONTINUE READING: Abandoning public education will be considered unthinkable 50 years from now - Vox

High school student activists are taking a stand against racism - Vox

High school student activists are taking a stand against racism - Vox

High school students of color are protesting racism and inequality
After racist incidents at schools in Charlottesville and the Bronx, students have taken action to make school officials address deeper inequities.

Since the civil rights movement, student protests have been a powerful driver of social change. More than 60 years later, students of color are continuing to call attention to racial injustice and inequity, fueling a growing youth movement against racism.

Alongside the Movement for Black Lives and college anti-racism movements like the 2015 University of Missouri protests, middle school and high school students in the US have become increasingly vocal about issues like police brutality, gun violence, school closings in communities of color, and racist incidents in their schools.

The latest of these protests came in March, when scandals over a racist video at a private school in New York, and online threats of violence against black and Hispanic students in Charlottesville, Virginia, drew strong reactions from students. These incidents also sparked protests that called attention to the connection between racist incidents on campus and larger patterns of racism and bias in American society.

“There cannot be any type of reconciliation without the redistribution of resources for black and brown students,” Zyahna Bryant, a community organizer, high school senior, and president of the Black Student Union at Charlottesville High School, told the Washington Post on March 25, days after a teenager had threatened an “ethnic cleansing” at the school.

The students involved in these protests, like those involved in the protests of recent years, say their demands are straightforward: They want a school environment that better responds to the needs of students of color and addresses structural inequalities. Students of color have been making these requests for decades. They say it’s time for their schools — and schools across the country — to do the work to produce lasting and systemic change.

In Charlottesville, students say they want school leaders “to back the words up with action”

On March 25, more than 100 students at Virginia’s Charlottesville High School walked out of CONTINUE READING: High school student activists are taking a stand against racism - Vox

Sac City Unified teachers union announce strike for April 11 | The Sacramento Bee

Sac City Unified teachers union announce strike for April 11 | The Sacramento Bee

Teachers union at Sacramento City Unified announces one-day strike for April 11

The teachers union at Sacramento City Unified School District announced Tuesday its intention to strike April 11. The strike will last one day, according to union leaders, and is in response to failed mediation attempts between the district and the Sacramento City Teachers Association last Thursday.

The union met Tuesday evening, and ended with their announcement to go on strike to protest unfair labor practices, according to SCTA President David Fisher.

“We want them to honor the promises they made to students by honoring our contract, meet with us and the fiscal adviser, and obey the law,” Fisher said.

“This strike is unnecessary and will only hurt students, families and employees by putting the district on the fast track to a state takeover,” said district officials. “A state takeover will result in less money for our students and do serious harm to our city’s public schools for many years to come. Our students do not deserve to be put through the hardships that will be caused by this strike.”

The union’s decision came after Thursday’s six-hour meeting with a mediator from the State Mediation and Conciliation Service concluded with no progress, according to a statement by the teachers union.

The strike will affect more than 40,000 students in the school district.

The SCTA spent three weeks collecting votes for the strike, and said the turnout was 70 percent of its 2,500 members. Of those, according to the union, 92 percent voted to approve the strike.

This decision adds to the challenges faced by the district, which is under the threat of state takeover as it attempts to close a $35 million budget gap.

In a letter to Sacramento City Superintendent Jorge Aguilar last week, the teachers union asked the district to sign a written agreement seeking a meeting to discuss the SCTA’s budget proposal, and to abide by its current collective bargaining agreement and “use any savings from health plans to lower class sizes and improve services to students.”

In a letter sent Tuesday afternoon, Aguilar responded to the union’s terms with his own. Union officials said Tuesday evening that they had met and made their strike decision before they read the letter, but that Aguilar’s proposals would not have affected their plans.

In his letter, Aguilar proposed to meet with the union next week with the state mediator to discuss CONTINUE READING: Sac City Unified teachers union announce strike for April 11 | The Sacramento Bee

New Jersey Expose, Part 5: How to Fix the State’s Broken Charter Financing Problem (NOT!) | Diane Ravitch's blog

New Jersey Expose, Part 5: How to Fix the State’s Broken Charter Financing Problem (NOT!) | Diane Ravitch's blog

New Jersey Expose, Part 5: How to Fix the State’s Broken Charter Financing Problem (NOT!)

This article is the last of a five-part series called “Cashing in on Charter Schools,” published by northjersey.com and USA Today New Jersey and written by Jean Rimbach and Abbott Koloff.

The post examines possible fixes for the problems and profiteering described in previous entries in the series.

This concluding article in a series that revealed widespread theft of public funds is deeply disappointing. Instead of recommending an end to New jersey’s Ill-fated and disastrous experiment in charter schools, turning public money over to secretive and unaccountable entrepreneurs and national corporate, chains, the authors wimp out.

“A short-sighted law, a lack of funding and inadequate oversight has left New Jersey’s charter schools to find their own way when it comes to filling a basic need: finding a home.

“The result is a system that allows charter school operators to use public money to pay for buildings that are privately owned. It can push charter schools and the support groups that own and finance real estate on their behalf into unusual and costly building deals, leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab.

“It’s a system in which financial transactions often play out behind a wall of secrecy, away from the public eye and beyond the reach of open records laws.”

The system of financing charter schools is broken.

The article interviews experts about ways to fix it.

The fix must begin with financial transparency. But the major charter chains refuse to open their books for public inspection.

“Private groups tied to charter schools — many of them created solely to hold real estate — also declined to provide records related to projects and their financing, saying they are not subject to public records laws.

“In many cases, both the schools and their support groups declined to discuss details of financial transactions related to construction projects.

”The state Education Department said that it “does not have the authority to review financing or lease agreements before they are signed” and that it “doesn’t oversee private related companies.”

“I disagree; I think they have the authority because they’re using public money,” said Joseph V. Doria Jr., a former state legislator who was an author of the state’s charter school law. “If they feel they don’t have the authority, just introduce legislation.”

But none of the parties to the transactions wants to open their books.

“The dearth of public information means, for example, that taxpayers can’t see why the Friends of TEAM Academy, which supports the Newark charter school, has earned millions of dollars in development fees or how that money is spent.

“Taxpayers won’t know why Uncommon Schools donated millions to North Star Academy but then required that the money be spent on a building owned by a related company.

“Taxpayers can’t see the agreement that the Friends of Marion P. Thomas Charter School signed with a developer that had the Friends pay out $6.4 million in fees as part of a two-building deal. The group’s attorney would not provide it and the charter school said it did not have a copy.”

In other words, the charters want to be treated as “public schools” to get money but insist they are “private” when the public wants to review their finances.

What the article never considers is whether charter schools are needed and whether the state would be wiser to invest the same hundreds of millions millions in improving the public schools that most students attend.

New Jersey Expose, Part 5: How to Fix the State’s Broken Charter Financing Problem (NOT!) | Diane Ravitch's blog

Inside Philanthropy: Charters Lose Their Luster in the Philanthropic World | Diane Ravitch's blog

Inside Philanthropy: Charters Lose Their Luster in the Philanthropic World | Diane Ravitch's blog

Inside Philanthropy: Charters Lose Their Luster in the Philanthropic World

Caitlin Reilly of “Inside Philanthropy” writes that philanthropies no longer see charter schools as the means to transform American education. Although a few have doggedly doubled down on their commitment to charters, there seems to be a broad shift underway. Reilly calls it an “inflection point,” a point where change is undeniable.

She writes:

“Though charter schools have acquired a powerful ally on the national level in the form of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, local backlash and scaling challenges have led to questions about the future of the publicly funded, privately run schools.

“Philanthropic enthusiasm for the charter movement is at a similar inflection point. For now, support for charters seems to be holding. However, the schools have had trouble reaching scale and have yet to catalyze the system-wide transformation many backers hoped for.

“Some of the field’s champions take that as a sign of the work left to do. Those foundations are doubling down on their support for the schools.

“Other funders, including former stalwart backers of charters, see the failure of this model to scale and spread as a reason to pause and consider their future investments. Those foundations tend to see charter schools as an important part of the education landscape, but not as a means to transform the system.

“Meanwhile, major new donors arriving on the education scene from the business world haven’t gravitated to charters in the same way that many such philanthropists did a decade ago. While these schools remain a growing sector within K-12, drawing political support and philanthropic dollars, the momentum around charters among funders has palpably slowed in recent years.”

The bottom line is that charters have become politically toxic, and its hard to paint them as “progressive” when Betsy DeVos is their most potent champion and striking teachers demand a moratorium on them. What’s CONTINUE READING: Inside Philanthropy: Charters Lose Their Luster in the Philanthropic World | Diane Ravitch's blog

Chicago scores a win. We don’t want nobody sent. – Fred Klonsky

Chicago scores a win. We don’t want nobody sent. – Fred Klonsky

Chicago scores a win. We don’t want nobody sent

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Lori Lightfoot on Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers. June, 2018.

Nobody could have predicted the scope of the election results in Tuesday night’s Chicago municipal election.

There was the defeat of the head of the storied Chicago Democratic Party by no less than a margin of 2-1 in every Chicago ward.

There was the victory of a an African American gay woman who announced her run against Rahm Emanuel – the sitting mayor – when few else would take on the challenge.

The final margin of victory was a whopping 74% to 26%.

Even in my own 35th ward where Alderman Carlos Rosa was one of Preckwinkle’s most aggressive supporters, Lightfoot carried the ward with 66% of the vote. It was a greater vote margin than Rosa received himself in the February primary.

There was the defeat of 40th ward alderman Patrick O’ Connor. He was Rahm’s floor leader. He was Rahm’s choice to replace the disgraced Eddie Burke to head the powerful Finance Committee. O’Connor goes back to the old Vrdolyak 29, which tried to block the reform agenda of Chicago’s first Black mayor in 1983.

O’Connor was beaten handily by a Democratic Socialist, Andre Vazquez.

Other Democratic Socialists who will sit in City Council include the incumbent Daniel Rosa in my 35th ward, Daniel La Spata in the 1st ward and Byron Sigcho-Lopez in the CONTINUE READING: Chicago scores a win. We don’t want nobody sent. – Fred Klonsky