Mitchell Robinson: "Poor Betsy" doesn't like being criticized… | Eclectablog

"Poor Betsy" doesn't like being criticized… | Eclectablog

“Poor Betsy” doesn’t like being criticized…

Secretary of Education and Disney villain Betsy DeVos spoke to a group of education writers in Baltimore the other day, and it appears her feelings are hurt.

“I never imagined I’d be a focus of your coverage. I don’t enjoy the publicity that comes with my position. I don’t love being up on stage or on any kind of platform. I’m an introvert,” she told them.

Many in the media, DeVos added, “use my name as clickbait” or “try to make it all about me.”

But education is “not about Betsy DeVos nor any other individual,” she said. “It’s about students.”

Ironically enough, this bit of “poor little me” whining comes on the heels of one of Ms. DeVos’ most outrageous statements, an attempt to redefine the very meaning of “public education”:

“Let’s stop and rethink the definition of public education,” she said. “Today, it’s often defined as one type of school, funded by taxpayers, controlled by government. But if every student is part of ‘the public,’ then every way and every place a student learns is ultimately of benefit to ‘the public.’ That should be the new definition of public education.”

No, Betsy. Just no. That’s not how any of this works. You don’t get to snap your grubby little money-stained fingers and just redefine the very nature of public schooling in our country, like some Teach-for-America-Thanos.

And, Betsy, if you truly believe that most public schools are “failing” (Narrator: “They are not.”), or that “school choice” and “Education Freedom Scholarships” are going to fix the problems in the CONTINUE READING: "Poor Betsy" doesn't like being criticized… | Eclectablog

Oakland Unified offers critical view of charter schools to state task force | EdSource

Oakland Unified offers critical view of charter schools to state task force | EdSource

Oakland Unified offers critical view of charter schools to state task force

Against the backdrop of greater scrutiny of charter school operations across California, officials at the Oakland Unified School District have drawn up a sweepingly critical portrait of the impact of charters on their district.

These include the costs of having to deal with lawsuits and revocations of charters, the turmoil created by charter schools that close during the middle of the year and the negative consequences of locating charter schools on the same campuses as district schools. This practice — called “co-location” — is “harmful to students” because it allows less space for “intervention” programs for students in district schools. It can also require staggered lunch schedules, as well as combining grades in single classrooms.

The catalog of criticisms is contained in a 28-page PowerPoint presentation that district officials, including board president Aimee Eng, made last month to the Charter Task Force, an 11-member body created by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond at the request of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The panel is charged with making recommendations by July 1 on how to amend California’s charter school law. As part of its deliberations, it is hearing case studies of districts with large numbers of charter schools. So far, it has heard presentations from Oakland and San Diego Unified, with Los Angeles Unified and its charter schools still to come.

The information that districts with large numbers of charter schools like Oakland provide could have a significant impact on what the task force recommends to Newsom. The panel’s deliberations are not open to the public, but Oakland’s presentation was provided by the district at EdSource’s request. San Diego CONTINUE READING: Oakland Unified offers critical view of charter schools to state task force | EdSource

It's What They Learn, but It's Also How We Teach - Teacher Habits

It's What They Learn, but It's Also How We Teach - Teacher Habits

It’s What They Learn, but It’s Also How We Teach

The tide, it appears, may finally be starting to change. After a generation of test-centered accountability for teachers, the state of Maine has passed a law that removes a requirement that standardized test scores be used to evaluate teachers. I suspect more states will follow, if for no other reason than all educational trends eventually fall out of favor when we realize the old ways maybe weren’t so terrible after all.

No matter what other states do, the question will remain: How do we fairly evaluate the performance of teachers? There is no easy answer, and it’s largely because there are two competing beliefs about how to identify good (and bad) teaching.

I read two articles in the last couple of days that illustrate the tension at the center of teacher evaluations. The first was written by Alfie Kohn way back in 2008, but its message is often repeated today. In It’s Not What We Teach; It’s What They Learn, Kohn asserts that “what we do doesn’t matter nearly as much as how kids experience what we do.” He provides a number of examples, explaining that it doesn’t matter what an adult intends if a child interprets the adult’s words or actions differently. Kohn writes:

“We may think we’re emphasizing the importance of punctuality by issuing a detention for being late, or that we’re CONTINUE READING: It's What They Learn, but It's Also How We Teach - Teacher Habits

Challenging the Grammar of Schooling (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Challenging the Grammar of Schooling (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Challenging the Grammar of Schooling (Part 3)

The “grammar of schooling” is stubborn. It is the DNA of U.S. public schools.

Because it is taken-for-granted, as common as the air we breathe and seemingly as essential to schooling Americans as sleeping is to decent health, few reform-minded policymakers, practitioners, donors, researchers, and parents challenge it. In Part 2, four researchers described and analyzed efforts to alter substantially this quiet institutional machinery that influences both students and teachers 36 weeks a year. For the most part, these researchers described in their case studies how the “grammar of schooling’ persisted after mighty efforts to reduce or remove it in public schools and districts.

In Part 1, I described private schools that had, indeed, dispensed with the “grammar of instruction.” I ended that post with this paragraph:

The tradition of challenging the dominant structure of the age-graded school and its “grammar of schooling” continues to this day with micro-schools in Silicon Valley and elsewhere illustrating anew that such reforms to the traditional “machinery of instruction” have resided, for the most part, in private schools where tuition runs high and students bring many economic and social advantages school. In a profound way, the high cost of these private schools and the resources available to their founders in experienced teachers, aides, technologies, space, and materials show clearly the prior conditions necessary not only to operate such schools in public venues but also what is needed to contest the prevailing “grammar of schooling.”

Does that mean more money is the answer for public schools to challenge the CONTINUE READING: Challenging the Grammar of Schooling (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

‘For all the many reasons teachers should be thanked, this should not be one of them' - The Washington Post

‘For all the many reasons teachers should be thanked, this should not be one of them' - The Washington Post

‘For all the many reasons teachers should be thanked, this should not be one of them'

Who is surprised anymore when news breaks that another school has been the scene of a shooting and the lives of everybody in that community are forever changed?

It happened again Tuesday in Colorado when two students allegedly opened fire in STEM School Highlands Ranch — a charter school campus with more than 1,800 students in kindergarten through 12th grade — and killed one person while injuring eight others. A student who charged one of the shooters to help protect others lost his life.

The Colorado shooting followed by just days a shooting at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte that killed two and wounded four. A student tackled the gunman in that case, too.

We are in an era where students and teachers may find themselves in a position of dodging bullets or taking on shooters directly to save others’ lives.

The Colorado shooting occurred during Teacher Appreciation Week, which inspired one educator to write a letter honoring his colleagues and speaking to this moment in the country’s violent history.

The author of the following post is Rich Ognibene, a chemistry and physics teacher in New York who was that state’s 2008 Teacher of the Year and a 2015 National Teacher Hall of Fame inductee.

By Rich Ognibene

Today, during Teacher Appreciation Week, I’m thinking about the teachers (and paras, and secretaries, and administrators) at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado.

Like teachers at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland and myriad other schools, they will be scarred for life from the trauma they’ve faced in a school shooting. They will cry for the students who were killed. They will feel less CONTINUE READING: ‘For all the many reasons teachers should be thanked, this should not be one of them' - The Washington Post

CURMUDGUCATION: Knewton, A Big Name in Ed Tech, Bites The Dust

CURMUDGUCATION: Knewton, A Big Name in Ed Tech, Bites The Dust

Knewton, A Big Name in Ed Tech, Bites The Dust

Adaptive learning. Computer-enhanced psychometrics. Personalized learning via computer. Knewton was going to do it all. Now it's being sold for parts.

Knewton started in 2008, launched by Jose Ferreira. By 2012, Ferreira led the ed tech pack in overpromising that sounded both improbable and creepy. In a Forbes interview piece, Ferreira described Knewton as "what could become the world’s most valuable repository of the ways people learn." Knewton could make this claim because it "builds its software into online classes that watch students’ every move: scores, speed, accuracy, delays, keystrokes, click-streams and drop-offs." How does this work?

Students go at their own pace, and the software continuously adapts to challenge and cajole them to learn based on their individual learning style. As individual students are correlated to the behaviors of thousands of other students, Knewton can make between 5 million and 10 million refinements to its data model every day. 

This guy.

You will be unsurprised to learn that founder/CEO Ferreira has no real background in education. He has a BA from Carleton College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He worked for Kaplan for a few years, then went into the money biz, first as a derivatives trader for Goldman Sachs and later working venture capital for Draper Atlantic. In between he was strategist for the John Kerry campaign; that may be because he's John Kerry's nephew. From venture capital, it was a quick step to Knewton.

It raises one question that I don't have an answer for. Ferreira obviously had nothing to do with the actual creation of the software that was Knewton's heart and soul. Whose work was Knewton? A puzzle for another day.

Ferreira had a gift for the colorful claim. In the Forbes article, we find the suggestion that "it will CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Knewton, A Big Name in Ed Tech, Bites The Dust

Classroom Teachers are the Real Scholastic Experts – Not Education Journalists | gadflyonthewallblog

Classroom Teachers are the Real Scholastic Experts – Not Education Journalists | gadflyonthewallblog

Classroom Teachers are the Real Scholastic Experts – Not Education Journalists

When you want an expert on health, you go to a doctor.

When you want an expert on law, you go to a lawyer.

So why is it that when the news media wants an expert on education they go to… themselves!?

That’s right. Education journalists are talking up a storm about schools and learning.

You’ll find them writing policy briefs, editorials and news articles. You’ll find them being interviewed about topics like class size, funding and standardized tests.

But they aren’t primary sources. They are distinctly secondary.

So why don’t we go right to the source and ask those most in the know – classroom teachers!?

According to a Media Matters analysis of education coverage on weeknight cable news programs in 2014, only 9 percent of guests on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News were educators.

This data is a bit out of date, but I couldn’t find a more recent analysis. Moreover, it seems pretty much consistent with what I, myself, have seen in the media.

Take Wyatt Cenac’s “Problem Areas,” a comedy journalism program on HBO. The second season focuses entirely on education issues. Though Cynac interviews numerous people in the first episode (the only one I saw), he put together a panel of experts to talk about the issues that he would presumably return to throughout the season. Unfortunately, only two of these experts were classroom teachers.

There were more students (3), policy writers (3) and education journalists (3). There CONTINUE READING: Classroom Teachers are the Real Scholastic Experts – Not Education Journalists | gadflyonthewallblog

Betsy DeVos as Clickbait | janresseger

Betsy DeVos as Clickbait | janresseger

Betsy DeVos as Clickbait

It surprised me to hear the word “clickbait” in Betsy DeVos’s working vocabulary.  I wonder if it wasn’t put into her speech—on Monday in Baltimore at the Education Writers Association’s annual meeting—by one of her more with-it staffers.  I confess that as a retired person, I was slow several years ago to grasp the meaning of the term, but as a blogger I know I paid attention, even before I knew the word, to the number of people who click on posts about particular topics.  I realize, of course, that my purpose is to do justice, not to pay attention to the number of clicks on different subjects, but like all writers who post on-line, I notice.  And I grieve about the paucity of clicks on worthy topics.

As you have, no doubt, heard by now, Betsy DeVos went to the Education Writers Association and asked the nation’s education journalists not to use her as clickbait.  See here, here, here, and here.

DeVos also described her weird philosophy of public education. The last time I remember her channeling Margaret Thatcher was in July of 2017 at a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council—the far-right, corporate driven, bill mill that creates the anti-regulatory and pro-privatization model bills that are then broadcast across the 50 state legislatures to be introduced.

I suspect this time, at the Education Writers Association, Betsy DeVos chose a less sympathetic audience.

In her prepared remarks for Monday’s speech, DeVos, the U.S. Secretary of Education, emphasizes freedom from government as the foundation of her strategy. You’ll remember that DeVos is responsible for administering government programs like Title I and the Individuals CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos as Clickbait | janresseger

House Democrats seek cut in federal charter school funding, saying Education Department isn’t a ‘responsible steward of taxpayer dollars’ - The Washington Post

House Democrats seek cut in federal charter school funding, saying Education Department isn’t a ‘responsible steward of taxpayer dollars’ - The Washington Post

House Democrats seek cut in federal charter school funding, saying Education Department isn’t a ‘responsible steward of taxpayer dollars’

House Democrats are proposing a sweeping cut in federal funding for charter schools, saying they are “deeply concerned” that the U.S. Education Department “does not intend to be a responsible steward” of taxpayer dollars used to help the charter movement.

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday released its proposed 2020 budget for the Education Department and is seeking $75.9 billion. That is $11.9 billion more than President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos are requesting, and $4.4 billion more than what was enacted in 2019. There are big boosts for Title 1 — a program intended to help children from low-income families — and special education.

The section on charter schools is seeking $400 million for the federal Charter Schools Program, which is $40 million less than what was given last year and $100 million less than Trump’s proposed budget. Trump and DeVos have said that expanding alternatives to traditional public school systems, including charter schools, is their top priority.

Whether Congress will approve this cut is unclear. But the proposal marks a change for Democrats, who for years have largely been as enthusiastic as Republicans about expanding charters.

Charter schools are funded with taxpayer dollars but operated by nonprofit organizations or for-profit companies with varying levels of oversight. Supporters say they are every bit as public as traditional districts, while critics say these schools are part of an effort to privatize public education.

The Obama administration was instrumental in driving the growth of charters, even including it as a goal for states in its $4.3 billion Race to the Top initiative. But recently the charter movement has arrived at what CONTINUE READING: House Democrats seek cut in federal charter school funding, saying Education Department isn’t a ‘responsible steward of taxpayer dollars’ - The Washington Post