The Voters Have Spoken (Again). Is the LAUSD Listening?

The Voters Have Spoken (Again). Is the LAUSD Listening?

The Voters Have Spoken (Again). Is the LAUSD Listening?

It has been 296 days since Ref Rodriguez pleaded guilty to felony charges and was forced from the Board District 5 seat. During this time, students in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board District 5 have had no representation. Considering the fact that their former board member’s crimes were directly related to his election, these constituents have not been represented fairly since the day that Rodriguez took office.

During the time that the LAUSD Board District 5 has sat empty:

• The LAUSD was disrupted by a teachers’ strike.
• The School Board voted to eliminate rules that were meant to protect students from predators.
• The Superintendent presided over a secret plan to reorganize the district, eliminated library aides from some elementary schools, and hired a scandal-plagued former state assemblyman as a District lobbyist.
• Board Member Nick Melvoin’s Rules Committee worked behind closed to doors to craft a plan that would reduce the public’s speaking time at board meetings.
• Dozens of charters were approved.
• At least two charter schools stranded students by closing down in the middle of the school year.
• Waste and corruption by charter school operators went unpunished.

Last August, Board Member Scott Schmerelson offered a resolution that would have given these constituents representation by appointing former CONTINUE READING: The Voters Have Spoken (Again). Is the LAUSD Listening?

CURMUDGUCATION: OH: State Ed Board Joins Takeover Law Opposition

CURMUDGUCATION: OH: State Ed Board Joins Takeover Law Opposition

OH: State Ed Board Joins Takeover Law Opposition

HB 70 is an Ohio law that strips a school district and its elected school board of all their power and hands it, via an academic distress board, to one person-- a super-powered CEO. The law was rammed through the legislature in less than 12 hours under the direction of then-Governor Kasich, and so far it has been used to take over Youngstown, Lorain, and East Cleveland schools (three districts that are, coincidentally, neither very wealthy or very white).

I've been following the story in Lorain (site of my first teaching job), where things have gone poorly. The CEO job created by HB 70 is undoable-- the CEO must be expert in all aspects of running a school district, he must bring that expertise to bear in fixing the specific problems in a troubled school district, and he must do so against the backdrop of a district that has been disenfranchised in all ways.  It's hard to imagine the person who could handle that challenge, but it's also hard to imagine someone who could do a worse job of meeting that challenge than Lorain's state-imposed CEO, David Hardy, Jr., a TFA product with a striking lack of people skills who has tried to apply charter management methods to an entire district.

Taxpayers have been fighting back against HB 70 with everywhere from the courts to the legislature. This week they took their fight to the state board of education, and the state board (despite the resistance of the state superintendent) heard them loud and clear.

The state board unanimously passed a simple resolution:

The State Board of Education does not support House Bill 70 of the 131st General Assembly. 
This resolution came after hours of testimony from Lorain, East Cleveland and Youngstown. Testimony included:

From Henry Patterson, Lorain native and member of the first ADC: The economic and educational CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: OH: State Ed Board Joins Takeover Law Opposition

It’s All About Growth | Live Long and Prosper

It’s All About Growth | Live Long and Prosper

It’s All About Growth

LOSING

One of my favorite bloggers, Peter Greene, is on his second set of children…his older children are in their thirties and he is the father of twin babies. It’s normal, I think, that we look back at our lives with a certain amount of nostalgia and Greene does this in a beautiful and thoughtful way in his post, Parenting Is All About Losing.

My wife asked me the other day, “Is it always like this?” We had turned around and had one of those moments when you realize that your baby looks like a small child, an undersized person, but not an infant any more. It’s a truly mixed moment emotionally, one part pride and joy at how big your child has grown, and one part sadness and loss because there was an infant just here a moment ago and now that tiniest person is gone forever.

There are conflicting emotions accompanying our children’s growth…

Not that it’s all loss and sadness. Every stage of my older children’s lives was the best so far, the best until the next new stage revealed itself to be even better. They get stronger and wiser and more terribly beautiful each time. It would never be enough to try to hold them back, to trade the unnatural prolonging of one stage for an unrealized better stage to come. Not that some parents don’t panic and try some emotional equivalent of binding their children’s legs so they won’t learn to walk or run. It never works. Children were born to grow, and grow they will, with or without our help.

So, he acknowledges that the emotions are conflicted and there are some good aspects to those changes, yet he titles his piece Parenting Is All About Losing, perhaps unconsciously emphasizing the negative.

I’d like to, respectfully, turn that around, and focus on the positive. Parenting is all about growing…for the parent and the child.

GROWING AND THE CIRCLE

My first thoughts on reading his post brought me to Joni Mitchell’s The Circle Game.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down CONTINUE READING: It’s All About Growth | Live Long and Prosper

The Teachers' Revolt And The Fight For Social Equality | PopularResistance.Org

The Teachers' Revolt And The Fight For Social Equality | PopularResistance.Org

THE TEACHERS’ REVOLT AND THE FIGHT FOR SOCIAL EQUALITY

Like teachers across the US, educators in Detroit are angered over stagnant real income and the indifference of corporate-controlled politicians who will not provide adequate resources to address the needs of our students. Three years ago, Detroit teachers were the first to organize sickouts and protests that exposed the crisis of public education to a national and international audience. Since then, hundreds of thousands of educators, from West Virginia to Oregon and Los Angeles to Denver, have walked out of their classrooms to fight over the same issues.

This battle for our children is, in fact, an international one. Last month, 300,000 Polish teachers conducted a 17-day national strike. Over the last 16 months, educators launched strikes in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Mexico, Argentina, France, the Netherlands and many other countries.

Despite the sugary pronouncements by school superintendent Nikolai Vitti, the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) remains chronically underfunded and understaffed three years after the district’s reorganization by an emergency manager.

• Teachers continue to be paid less than they were a decade ago.

• Hundreds of teaching positions remain unfilled and only 44 of 106 district schools are considered fully staffed, according to the district’s own figures.

• DPSCD needs at least $500 million to carry out critical building repairs, like fixing leaky roofs and heating and cooling systems, but state officials refuse to provide the money.

• The lead-in-the-water crisis has still not been solved.

• Teachers spend their own money on supplies and are not given the necessary resources and support to address chronic absenteeism, behavioral problems and other issues stemming from poverty and barely surviving neighborhoods.

• The district has adopted a new test-based curriculum that runs contrary to learning needs of students and will accelerate the push for merit pay and punitive “accountability” schemes.

• Privately run but publicly funded charter schools continue to rob resources and students from the public schools.

While the city’s schools are in dire straits, limitless resources have been handed to billionaires like Dan Gilbert and the llitch family for their sports stadiums, CONTINUE READING: The Teachers' Revolt And The Fight For Social Equality | PopularResistance.Org

Jackie Goldberg returns to L.A. school board with resounding election win - Los Angeles Times

Jackie Goldberg returns to L.A. school board with resounding election win - Los Angeles Times

Jackie Goldberg returns to L.A. school board with resounding election win

Jackie Goldberg, a veteran politician and educator who served on the Los Angeles school board three decades ago, will once again have a voice in the nation’s second-largest school district after a resounding win Tuesday for a seat in a special election.

Goldberg’s victory over candidate Heather Repenning was also a win for the teachers union and will mark a shift in the board's power dynamic that had recently tilted toward pro-charter-school alliances.

She vowed to work to bring more funding to the district and its neediest students, and improve conditions that teachers fought for during a January strike.

In the last 40 years, Goldberg told supporters Tuesday night in Echo Park, “We have raised class sizes, lost nurses, lost the class size that was appropriate, lost teaching assistants, lost assistant principals, lost counselors and psychiatric social workers.”

Goldberg won with 71.6% of the votes counted after polls closed Tuesday, not including provisional and some mail-in ballots.

“I do believe in the deepest part of my heart that it was the strike of the teachers … who woke up the public to what has happened to public education since 1978,” Goldberg said.

Repenning called Goldberg around 10:30 p.m. to concede.

“I’m very proud of the campaign that I ran — that we ran,” Repenning told supporters who gathered at a Silver Lake restaurant Tuesday night. “I've never run before. I didn't have any name ID. So I was really at a disadvantage.”

The seat has been vacant since the July 2018 resignation of former board member Ref Rodriguez, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges related to campaign finance violations.

Goldberg is entering a fraught time in the district, where leaders are struggling with declining enrollment, a fight over the expansion of charter schools and questions about how to meet the district’s financial commitments.

Her win could weaken the power of pro-charter school forces in L.A. — Rodriguez was one of four on the seven-member board elected with financial backing from charter school supporters. Goldberg gained support by speaking out forcefully against the growth of charter schools and said she was running to prevent the school board from being controlled by charter interests.

Though most charter reform requires state action, Los Angeles Unified is by far California’s CONTINUE READING: Jackie Goldberg returns to L.A. school board with resounding election win - Los Angeles Times

Andrea Gabor: Will One of the Nation’s Most Innovative Districts Survive a Change in Leadership? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andrea Gabor: Will One of the Nation’s Most Innovative Districts Survive a Change in Leadership? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andrea Gabor: Will One of the Nation’s Most Innovative Districts Survive a Change in Leadership?

In her book, After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform, Andrea Gabor identified school districts and educators who exemplified a truly forward-thinking, innovative path out of our current political stalemate. One of those districts was Leander, Texas, which was applying the principles of management guru W. Edwards Deming, thanks to a waiver from repressive state mandates.

Now Leander is looking for a new superintendent, and Gabor describes the innovative ideas that made the district remarkable. 

Deming, a statistician who died in 1993, based his quality management philosophy on two seemingly disparate ideas: The use of statistical tools to measure and improve systems and the conviction that those closest to any given process are best equipped to identify problems and opportunities for improvement. What made Deming’s ideas controversial was his insistence that meaningful employee input only works if it is based on trust. Deming opposed punitive employee evaluations and individual bonus systems on the grounds that they foster fear and undermine teamwork.

Deming’s ideas about process measurement were embraced throughout industry, but his exhortations on the importance of building a culture of trust were not.

That’s what makes Leander special. The school district adopted Deming’s ideas about using statistical analysis and teamwork to improve classroom pedagogy and CONTINUE READING: Andrea Gabor: Will One of the Nation’s Most Innovative Districts Survive a Change in Leadership? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Shady Exit of Youngstown’s Appointed School CEO Exemplifies the Failure of Ohio School Takeover Law | janresseger

Shady Exit of Youngstown’s Appointed School CEO Exemplifies the Failure of Ohio School Takeover Law | janresseger

Shady Exit of Youngstown’s Appointed School CEO Exemplifies the Failure of Ohio School Takeover Law

The future of Ohio’s state takeovers of so called “failing” school districts rests with the Ohio Senate.

On May 1, 2019, by an astounding bipartisan margin of 83/12, the Ohio House passed HB 154, to repeal Ohio’s failed school district takeover law. Then, just to ensure that the leadership crisis is stopped in the school districts of  Youngstown and Lorain, the House banned state school district takeovers in its version of the state budget, passed last week.

On Monday of this week, however, the Columbus Dispatch editorialized to warn the Legislature not to rush to change HB 70.  Ohio’s state school district takeover law, HB 70, was fast-tracked and passed without hearings at the end of the session in June of 2015.  Under HB 70, Ohio brands any school district which has received three years of consecutive “F” grades on the state report card as academic distressed and subject to state takeover. The bill was designed in secret by then Governor John Kasich, his appointed state superintendent Dick Ross, and some business sector allies in Youngstown.  The law provides that the state appoints an Academic Distress Commission to take over the district, a Commission that then appoints a CEO to manage the schools. The locally elected school board continues to exist, but its sole power is to decide when to place a local school levy on the ballot. The CEO has the power to override the teachers’ contract.

In its editorial this week, the Dispatch asks the Legislature to slow down and take plenty of time to study what to do about low-scoring school districts: “Four years after Ohio lawmakers approved a sweeping school takeover law they knew almost nothing about, agreement seems widespread that it is a gigantic failure. Now, as they scramble to replace it, they should avoid making the same mistake again…  Change clearly is needed; takeovers of the Youngstown, Lorain and East Cleveland districts have yielded immense controversy and virtually no academic improvement. But the House approach seems designed to avoid any pain—and probably any gain—with more options than requirements.  It generally would leave in charge CONTINUE READING: Shady Exit of Youngstown’s Appointed School CEO Exemplifies the Failure of Ohio School Takeover Law | janresseger

In these times, trolls pushing extremist views underscore the need for critical thought | The Edvocate Blog

In these times, trolls pushing extremist views underscore the need for critical thought | The Edvocate Blog

In these times, trolls pushing extremist views underscore the need for critical thought

This is a season of extreme gaslighting where everyone from politicians to internet trolls are tripping over themselves to use psychological means to manipulate us into questioning our own sanity.

This week a person posted an article for general consumption on the Tampa Bay Times Gradebook facebook page entitled, Fix Education by Radical Decentralization by the Tenth Amendment Center. It came with a comment that read: “Interesting read. I would like to hear (I should say, read) your educated opinion on this. Cheers.” and was posted by someone with almost zero content on their FaceBook page. In other words, the poster was very likely a paid-to-post troll. Although the post generated 78 comments and 15 shares it had only 4 likes.  Gratefully, Florida’s smart public education advocates gave a solid push back.

Turns out that The Tenth Amendment Center and it’s founder, Michael Boldin is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist anti-government group. Read their conclusion:

Michael Boldin is the founder and executive director of the Tenth Amendment Center (TAC), an organization that favors “nullification” of federal laws it considers unconstitutional. Founded in 2007, the TAC is based on an expansive reading of the Tenth Amendment, which says that those “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to CONTINUE READING: In these times, trolls pushing extremist views underscore the need for critical thought | The Edvocate Blog

What’s Round On The End And “High” In The Middle? Ohio’s $20K Finder’s Fee For Each TFA Corps Member. | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

What’s Round On The End And “High” In The Middle? Ohio’s $20K Finder’s Fee For Each TFA Corps Member. | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

What’s Round On The End And “High” In The Middle? Ohio’s $20K Finder’s Fee For Each TFA Corps Member.

Yesterday I reported that Texas pays TFA $5.5 million a year for 400 new recruits.  I speculated that TFA probably has similar arrangements in other states.  Today I learned that the latest Ohio House Bill 166 budget allocates $2 million a year for TFA.  A bargain?  Not quite.  While Texas gets 400 new TFA corps members a year, Ohio only gets 103 new corps members a year.  This works out to about $20,000 per corps member.

The entire HB 166 can be found here.

On page 3166 to 3177, lines 97517 to 97525 it says:

As I mentioned yesterday, these states do not have to agree to this.  TFA is not going to close up shop just because these states refuse to subsidize them.  It is completely wasted taxpayer money.

This tip was sent to me by a reader in Ohio.  If you are in another TFA state and can find out what your state is paying per corps members, let me know.  Right now Ohio is the King Of The Hill at $20K per recruit.

What’s Round On The End And “High” In The Middle? Ohio’s $20K Finder’s Fee For Each TFA Corps Member. | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Let’s Hear it FOR Betsy DeVos! | The Merrow Report

Let’s Hear it FOR Betsy DeVos! | The Merrow Report

Let’s Hear it FOR Betsy DeVos!

Full disclosure: Although I have never met or interviewed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, I am a huge fan.  In fact, the closest I have been to her was at the Education Writers Association’s annual conference in Baltimore recently.  Sitting maybe 75 feet from her, I was dazzled as I watched her hold off some tough questions from education reporters, a notoriously aggressive bunch. That stellar performance gave the lie to those who mock her intelligence.

In Baltimore she proved that she is smart.   Sure, she made a lot of gaffes early in her tenure, but now–after just 27 or 28 months on the job–she doesn’t get flustered.  She has learned to avoid  answering direct questions; instead, she ignores whatever she is asked and pivots back to her talking point: “Students and parents need ‘freedom’ to choose.”  Ask her anything, and she will–with a smile–talk about ‘freedom.’   She couldn’t do that if she weren’t a smart cookie.

Moreover, Secretary DeVos is a gutsy defender of minority positions.  Here’s an example: A less courageous person would fold under pressure and take the popular position that public schools are vital to our future because they enroll about 90% of students.  But, showing a backbone of steel, DeVos swims against the tide.  She is not afraid to criticize public education.  And she hasn’t just shown courage once or twice; no, she’s out there regularly–every day–taking on public education, essentially saying “Damn the consequences!”

I also admire her because she is a great friend of the American teacher, something her critics never acknowledge. In Baltimore, for example, she came out strongly in favor of paying teachers about $250,000 a year!  She cleverly suggested pegging CONTINUE READING: Let’s Hear it FOR Betsy DeVos! | The Merrow Report 

Pittsburgh School Board Candidate Anna Batista Takes Big Money From Special Interests | gadflyonthewallblog

Pittsburgh School Board Candidate Anna Batista Takes Big Money From Special Interests | gadflyonthewallblog

Pittsburgh School Board Candidate Anna Batista Takes Big Money From Special Interests

“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”

-George Washington

Anna Batista, a corporate consultant at Highstreet Consulting running for Pittsburgh School Board, is taking thousands of dollars in donations from big money interests.

A quick look at campaign finance reports on Allegheny County’s Website shows Batista took beaucoup bucks from school privatization lobbyists, real estate developers, lawyers, and financial advisors.

Meanwhile, her opponent Pam Harbin, a public school watchdog, is supported almost exclusively by grassroots donations.

Both candidates are running for District 4, which serves parts of Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze, Shadyside and North Oakland. Since they’ve cross filed and will appear on both the Republican and Democratic primary ballots, the seat should be decided in the May 21 primary.

Batista and Harbin have raised similar amounts for their campaigns. Harbin has $33,412.95 while Batista has $32,414.

Batista has support from at least two troubling industries – school privatizers and corporate crusaders – which are nowhere to be seen in her opponents financials.

Particularly troubling to me are the charter school and voucher advocates.

Someone shouldn’t be running for a public school board with backing from the same vultures demanding public schools be dismantled and their assets and funding siphoned away to private industry. Charter schools cost the Pittsburgh Public district more than $85 million per year in tuition payments. While the district has no plans CONTINUE READING: Pittsburgh School Board Candidate Anna Batista Takes Big Money From Special Interests | gadflyonthewallblog

The Enduring Influence of the National Reading Panel (and the “D” Word) | radical eyes for equity

The Enduring Influence of the National Reading Panel (and the “D” Word) | radical eyes for equity

The Enduring Influence of the National Reading Panel (and the “D” Word)

What do the National Reading Panel (NRP) report (2000), A Nation at Risk (1983), and the seminal “word gap” study by Hart and Risley (1992/1995) have in common?

First, each of these has become a recurring citation in mainstream media when addressing reading (NRP), school accountability (A Nation at Risk), and literacy (“word gap”).

Next, and quite troubling to those of us in education and literacy, all of these have been debunked.

A wide array of scholars have called into question Hart and Risley’s methods, conclusions, and assumptions. Gerald Bracey and Gerald Holtonhave unmasked A Nation at Risk as a false political crisis. And NRP panelist Joanne Yatvin as well as Stephen Krashen have significantly refuted the validity of the NRP report and process.

Recently, the reading wars have been rebooted across mainstream media; concurrent with that has been a rash of new reading legislation in several states.

In both cases, a common phrase is “the science of reading,” a thin veil for renewed emphasis on systematic phonics—in part driven by advocates for children with dyslexia.

News articles across Education Week, NPR, PBS, and other outlets have praised this so-called need for the science of reading while almost uniformly referring to the NRP as the primary research base for that “science.”

One journalist, Emily Hanford, who won an EWA award for her “science of reading” article, discounted my charged the NRP had been debunked with “One member expressing a minority view does not equal ‘debunked.'”

Here, I want to note that I have discovered many people react strongly to the term “debunk,” seemingly because they interpret its meaning CONTINUE READING: The Enduring Influence of the National Reading Panel (and the “D” Word) | radical eyes for equity