The Death of Education in America - LA Progressive

The Death of Education in America - LA Progressive

The Death of Education in America

Trump!  Mueller!  Collusion!

I know: who cares about the education of our kids as the redacted Mueller Report dominates the airwaves on CNN, MSNBC, and similar cable “news” networks?

I care.  I spent fifteen years as a history professor, teaching mostly undergraduates at technically-oriented colleges (the Air Force Academy; the Pennsylvania College of Technology).  What I experienced was the slow death of education in America.  The decline of the ideal of fostering creative and critical thinking; the abandonment of the notion of developing and challenging young people to participate intelligently and passionately in the American democratic experiment.  Instead, education is often a form of social control, or merely a means to an end, purely instrumental rather than inspirational.  Zombie education.

Nowadays, education in America is about training for a vocation, at least for some.  It’s about learning for the sake of earning, i.e. developing so-called marketable skills that end (one hopes) in a respectable paycheck.  At Penn College, I was encouraged to meet my students “at their point of need.”  I was told they were my “customers” and I was their “provider.”  Education, in sum, was transactional rather than transformational.  Keep students in class (and paying tuition) and pray you can inspire them to see that the humanities are something more than “filler” to their schedules — and their lives.

Education is often a form of social control, or merely a means to an end, purely instrumental rather than inspirational.  Zombie education.

As a college professor, I was lucky.  I taught five classes a semester (a typical teaching load at community colleges), often in two or three subjects.  Class sizes averaged 25-30 students, so I got to know some of my students; I had the equivalent of tenure, with good pay and decent benefits, unlike the adjunct professors of today who suffer from low pay and few if any benefits.  I liked my students and tried to challenge and inspire them to the best of my ability.

All this is a preface to Belle Chesler’s stunning article at TomDispatch.com, “Making American Schools Less Great Again: A Lesson in Educational Nihilism on a Grand Scale.”  A high school visual arts teacher, Chesler writes from the heart about the chronic underfunding of education and how it is constricting CONTINUE READING: The Death of Education in America - LA Progressive

Hostile, Divisive Political Climate Ensnaring U.S. Schools - NEA Today

Hostile, Divisive Political Climate Ensnaring U.S. Schools - NEA Today

Hostile, Divisive Political Climate Ensnaring U.S. Schools

Political debate in the United States has deteriorated over the past two decades, as reasoned, well-informed dialogue has been eclipsed by hyperpartisanship, name-calling, even paranoia.  But can anyone reasonably deny that the political climate today is debased beyond a point unimaginable perhaps even five years ago?

Unfortunately, this hostility and incivility has seeped into our schools.  Rigorous classroom debate is one thing; verbal attacks designed to incite and divide is something else altogether, presenting educators with a new set of formidable challenges.

That’s the conclusion of a new survey of high school principals conducted by the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access (IDEA) at UCLA.

“The flow of the nation’s harsh political rhetoric does not stop at the school house gate, but instead, propelled by misinformation and social media, is fueling anger, fear and division that is negatively impacting students, schools and learning,” the report says.

Although the report is called “School and Society in the Age of Trump,” the intent, explains lead author John Rogers, professor of education at UCLA and the director of IDEA, is not to suggest President Trump singlehandedly took a wrecking ball to the nation’s political discourse.

Nonetheless, “the Trump administration has dramatically expanded the practice of demonizing opponents, as well as uses of invectives and violent political metaphors,” Rogers says.

A majority of the 550 principals surveyed are seeing an unmistakable increase in incivility over the past few years:

• Nine in ten principals report that incivility and contentiousness in the broader political environment has “considerably affected their school community.”
• Hostile exchanges outside of class, demeaning or hateful remarks over political viewpoints are increasing.
• Most disturbingly, 8 in 10 report that their students have made derogatory remarks about other racial or ethnic groups, including immigrants. Very often, students will echo Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, with “Build the Wall!” being a particularly popular chant.

As a high school principal in California noted, “students are more and more willing CONTINUE READING: Hostile, Divisive Political Climate Ensnaring U.S. Schools - NEA Today

Charter Schools Choose Parents and Students, Not the Other Way Around | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools Choose Parents and Students, Not the Other Way Around | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools Choose Parents and Students, Not the Other Way Around

Charter school supporters never tire of promoting the consumerist free market notion of “choice.” They have always seen society as a dog-eat-dog world in which parents and students are consumers who fend-for-themselves as they shop for a school that may or may not accept them. In this antisocial view, schools are considered commodities, just like any other commodity in the “free market.” Education is not viewed as a basic, socially-organized human responsibility and right.

Charter school advocates claim that one of the reasons charter schools are great is because parents are “free” to “choose” a charter school for their child, implying that there is some sort of voluntary action being taken by very well-informed individuals to enroll their child in a charter school. According to this narrative, charter schools play no role in determining who gets into a charter school, who stays, and who gets “pushed out.”

It is well-known, however, that nonprofit and for-profit charter schools, which are usually poorly supervised, consistently and deliberately under-enroll students with disabilities, English Language Learners, homeless students, and many other students. Charter schools routinely cherry-pick their students and practice a range of ways to remove “undesirable” students from school.

In this connection, charter schools also often require parents to sign a contract to: (1) volunteer to undertake some kind of work the school will not hire CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools Choose Parents and Students, Not the Other Way Around | Dissident Voice

Tell the Charter Task Force: We Need Big Reforms Now - Network For Public Education

Tell the Charter Task Force: We Need Big Reforms Now - Network For Public Education

Tell the Charter Task Force: We Need Big Reforms Now

That is the number of charters in California that have gone belly up.

There are 601 defunct charter schools and about 1500 active charters in California. That is not a good rate of success.  Send your email now and tell the charter task force we need reform.

To send your email to the Task Force Chair, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond, simply click here.

What do we need in charter law?  Sunshine and sensibility.

1. Only districts should be able to authorize charter schools. Multiple authorizers have caused too many operators who are ill-equipped to open charters in the state.  Even operators who are under investigation, like EPIC online schools, have been allowed to open charters “on appeal” to the county or state board.

2. No district should have the ability to open a charter in another district. This practice has allowed public school districts short of cash to use other districts as a piggy bank.

3. End storefront and online charters. Such schools profit from our most vulnerable students. If an online school is needed, it should be run as a California public school, with close monitoring of attendance and criteria for entrance.

4. We need full sunshine, accountability and transparency. Charters do not need the ability to commit fraud in order to innovate. They should follow the same rules regarding accountability and transparency as public schools.

5. Establish a moratorium on new charters until full reform is enacted. We cannot allow unchecked expansion to continue. Nor can we allow constant churn. Such churn is unfair for both taxpayers and students.

Tell the Charter Task Force: We Need Big Reforms Now - Network For Public Education

Low Salaries, High Rents, Poor Teaching Conditions Create Widespread Shortage of Qualified Teachers | janresseger

Low Salaries, High Rents, Poor Teaching Conditions Create Widespread Shortage of Qualified Teachers | janresseger

Low Salaries, High Rents, Poor Teaching Conditions Create Widespread Shortage of Qualified Teachers

You’d have to be pretty out of touch to have missed that teachers, who have been striking all year from West Virginia to Kentucky to Oklahoma to California, have been showing us their pay is inadequate and their working conditions are horrible. Schools in too many places feature huge classes (too few teachers) and an absence of counselors, social workers, librarians and nurses. All this ultimately signals a school finance problem stemming from the Great Recession a decade ago and state legislatures and governors determined to cut taxes.

All this is well documented in academic research. Emma Garcia and Elaine Weiss recently released the first in a series of studies from the Economic Policy Institute, a report they summarize in a short, policy piece: “In our report we argue that when issues such as teacher qualifications and equity across communities are taken into consideration, shortages are more concerning than we thought.  If we consider the declining share of teachers who hold the credentials associated with teacher quality and effective teaching (they are fully certified, took the standard route into teaching, have more than five years of experience, and they have an educational background in the subject they teach), the teacher shortage grows.  If we compare the share of these teachers in high-needs schools (schools with a large share of students from families living in poverty) with other schools, we see that the shortages there are even more severe in those high-needs schools.”  Garcia and Weiss are particularly concerned about the growing percentage of teachers who are not fully certified, or who began teaching with only alternative—sometimes only a few weeks long—preparation for teaching, or who are currently teaching subjects in which they have no educational background themselves, or who are inexperienced.  The number of emergency-certified teachers has grown as well qualified and experienced teachers are giving up and leaving the profession. CONTINUE READING: Low Salaries, High Rents, Poor Teaching Conditions Create Widespread Shortage of Qualified Teachers | janresseger

At a nationwide level, EPI’s new report replicates findings by Linda Darling-Hammond and the Learning Policy Institute about the chronic shortage of qualified teachers in the state of California. In a research brief last September, Darling-Hammond tracks the history of California’s teacher shortage: “Budget cuts and layoffs resulting from the recession CONTINUE READING: Low Salaries, High Rents, Poor Teaching Conditions Create Widespread Shortage of Qualified Teachers | janresseger

Louisiana Educator: Charter School Operators in Louisiana Do Not Need High School Degree

Louisiana Educator: Charter School Operators in Louisiana Do Not Need High School Degree

Charter School Operators in Louisiana Do Not Need High School Degree

Go to the last paragraph of this post to see why the pro-reform news media no longer reports Louisiana's national ranking of school performance

This article explains that according to BESE policy, charter school directors do not even need a high school diploma to operate their schools! This is how high our state education authorities have “raised the bar” for charter school operations. Thankfully our regular school principals are still required to adhere to the “status quo” which requires at least a Master’s degree along with many other qualifications. Maybe that’s why we seldom see state investigations and school closings based on ethical violations by the real public school administrators.

Here’s an interesting related matter: Betsey Dovos, the U.S. Secretary of Education, considers frequent closings of charter schools a good thing because it allows their replacement by better charters. The only problem is that there is no evidence that the new schools perform better.

This article describes legislation being considered in California that would limit the use of TFA teachers with only 5 weeks of training who end up in the schools with the most "at-risk" students. In Louisiana, routinely using uncertified teachers and unqualified operators is how we address the needs of our most at risk students.

Here's another example of Louisiana "raising the bar". I testified before the Senate education committee on Thursday, April 17 in favor of SB 128, which would have allowed local school systems, based on a vote of their citizens, to set their own standards and CONTINUE READING: Louisiana Educator: Charter School Operators in Louisiana Do Not Need High School Degree

Whatever Happened To the Self-Esteem Movement? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Whatever Happened To the Self-Esteem Movement? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Whatever Happened To the Self-Esteem Movement?

For those true believers and wanna-be school reformers enamored with the social-emotional skills that 21st century students must learn if they are to be “successful” in an information-driven economy and social-media-ridden daily life, take a brief look at the self-esteem movement launched in the 1980s.  In subsequent decades reformers stressed that students (as well as teachers) needed confident self-regard and a psychological repertoire of personal and social skills. Not only were they to have high self-esteem but they were also expected to display such attitudes and skills.

Soon enough the phrase “self-esteem” became attached to school and classroom practices of frequent praise for children and emphasis on participation in activities rather than individual academic performance. Ridicule of this reform movement in particular and the self-help industry in general came from cultural conservatives within a few years.

And cartoonists who took jabs at whether working on self-esteem would undermine academics.

This tension between boosting the student’s self-image and attaining high academic performance can be traced back to early 20th century progressives who touted the “whole child,” particularly the psychological and emotional parts. Curriculum guides and daily lessons  focused upon the psychological “needs” of individual students and their knowing how to get along with others while at the same time understanding quadratic equations and Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” While John Dewey made clear that subject matter was important in the children learning through experience–he often referred to the intellectual development of CONTINUE READING: Whatever Happened To the Self-Esteem Movement? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part Two | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part Two | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part Two

In the first episode of Startup’s seven part podcast about Success academy, they presented the case that most schools in New York City are ‘bad’ and how Success Academy’s unique approach to education levels the playing field.

Episode two, The Founder (can be found here) details Eva Moskowitz’s rise to power.  She started as a very self-assured child who had a bad experience with her music teacher.  Her father wrote the music teacher a note that said “(expletive deleted) you” and this becomes a theme throughout Eva’s career in education, according to the podcast — metaphorically writing ‘F You’ letters to various parties who have crossed her.

Moskowitz was elected to the City Council in 1999 and she visited hundreds of schools and found that some had broken toilets.  She aggressively worked to get them fixed and found that it was frustrating dealing with the large bureaucracy of the New York City school system.

When she went to a school where she felt the lunch room was understaffed, she learned that under the teacher’s union contract, teachers are exempt from certain duties, like doing lunch duty.

The narrator, Lisa Chow, then says matter of factly:  “The teachers’ union contract … a document that protects the interests of teachers in traditional public schools. She asked her staff to get a copy of the teachers contract, expecting something that was maybe 20 

CONTINUE READING: Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part Two | Gary Rubinstein's Blog