Teach for America and Sister Program, Ensina!: How Recruit Thinking Changes from Before to After | deutsch29

Teach for America and Sister Program, Ensina!: How Recruit Thinking Changes from Before to After | deutsch29

Teach for America and Sister Program, Ensina!: How Recruit Thinking Changes from Before to After

Rolf Straubhaar is an assistant professor of ed leadership and school improvement at Texas State University. He is also a Teach for America (TFA) alum.

Rolf Straubhaar

Straubhaar’s research agenda includes alternative certification initiatives, like TFA and its global version, Teach for All.

On April 29, 2019, Straubhaar published a research article entitled, “Teaching for America Across Two Hemispheres: Comparing the Ideological Appeal of the Teach for All Teacher Education Model in the United States and Brazil,” in the peer-reviewed Journal of Teacher Education. He was kind enough to send me a copy of the full article for personal review and to allow me to generously quote from his work in this post.

In sum, Straubhaar examined perceptions of TFAers and their Brazilian counterparts in Ensina! both before and after the actual TFA/Ensina! experience. As he notes in his abstract, “many left their 2-year commitment questioning the underlying theories of change driving it.”

Below is the abstract, in full:

The last several decades have seen significant growth among private options in alternative teacher education and certification. In this article, I draw on two parallel ethnographic studies of the experiences of participants in variants of one particular alternative teacher education model, developed by Teach For America in the United States and spread internationally by Teach For All. Through analysis of interviews with recruits from Teach For America and its Brazilian sister organization Ensina!, I explore the thinking processes that leads young people to join  CONTINUE READING: Teach for America and Sister Program, Ensina!: How Recruit Thinking Changes from Before to After | deutsch29

Teachers' strikes a new social movement, researcher says | Penn State University

Teachers' strikes a new social movement, researcher says | Penn State University

Teachers' strikes a new social movement, researcher says

College of Education researcher immerses herself in teachers unions

Leading up to their January 2019 strike, more than 30,000 teachers and staff who are part of the United Teachers Los Angeles union began rallying support months in advance. Leaders are seen here addressing a crowd in May 2018.

 IMAGE: REBECCA TARLAU

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — With every social movement, there is a moment — an event or instance that sparks a time for change. With the recent rise of teachers striking across the United States, one Penn State researcher argues that, for the first time in decades, public education is seeing its own moment that's prompted a new movement.

"The last big strikes of teacher unions in the United States were in the late 1980s and early 1990s," said Rebecca Tarlau, an assistant professor of education and labor and employment relations at Penn State. "In 2012 there was the Chicago teachers' strike, which gave new momentum to teacher unions. Then in 2018, there was this huge mobilization of teachers in West Virginia, which took everybody by surprise, and then there were strikes and walkouts in Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina and Colorado. Why now? Why were teacher unions demobilized for so long and why are they suddenly very mobilized?"

Tarlau, an ethnographic researcher whose research is funded by a National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, knew the best way to answer her questions was to immerse herself in the culture of teacher unions and speak with the union leaders and members across the country.

"My ethnography is about teacher movements within unions, so what I've been doing is trying to participate in teacher actions when they happen," she said, adding that she spent a week in Los Angeles in January during the recent teacher strike. She also spent time this year in Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Oakland, California. 

"I was not only interviewing people but also participating in the actions of the union. I was part of a volunteer team with the Unified Teachers of Los Angeles and I was able to observe their inner workings and help out during the rallies. It gave me this unique insight into what was happening on the ground," she said.

The big finding, she said, is that unions are now focused on social justice for CONTINUE READING: Teachers' strikes a new social movement, researcher says | Penn State University

Re-imagining Migration: Immigration, Schools, and the Census | National Education Policy Center

Re-imagining Migration: Immigration, Schools, and the Census | National Education Policy Center

Re-imagining Migration: Immigration, Schools, and the Census

Gathering Census Data in a Climate of Fear
A view from school principals
 

In late April, in a tense and closely watched session, President Trump’s Solicitor General, Noel Francisco, appeared before the United States Supreme Court to argue for the inclusion of a question about citizenship status on the 2020 Census form. As the justices prepare to rule in the coming weeks, a central question before the court is whether including such a question will yield lower response rates from immigrant residents, thereby leading to less political power and diminished government resources for cities and states with large immigrant populations.

Will immigrants steer clear of census gatherers out of fear that their personal information about citizenship status will be used for immigration enforcement? A likely answer to this question comes from an unlikely source: high school principals.

In a nationally representative survey of 505 high school principals conducted last summer by UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, principals indicated that the Trump administration’s political rhetoric and policy action have created a climate of fear amongst many immigrant families.

More than half of the principals surveyed report that this climate of fear has made it more difficult for immigrant parents to support their children at home or participate in school activities. An Arizona principal attributes parents’ reluctance to attend school events to the dangers they face in taking unnecessary trips outside their homes. “Something like a taillight out could result in somebody being picked up.” When parents attended events like a college access program sponsored by the local university, they sat “in the very back of the room just because they were afraid that somebody might notice them.” Across the country in Connecticut, a Spanish-speaking principal notes that parents have grown wary of conversing with him in their native language. He finds that in public, “parents are afraid to show that they are Spanish speakers.”

Fifty-Five percent of principals in our survey also reported that immigrant parents and guardians have been reluctant to share information with the school (for example information for free and reduced lunch applications). At a California high school serving a large immigrant community, the principal told us that in the wake of what was “perceived to be a more aggressive stance from immigration agencies, you could really feel a kind of a drawing back of our Latino community.” The engagement of parents and their willingness to share information that could possibly benefit students, things as simple as information for financial aid for college, also declined. In Connecticut, a principal noticed that parents are “reluctant to give any kind of information out.” A Washington principal said that parents at his school have been “hesitant to take advantage of social services or school services for fear of putting their name down on a form.”

The climate of fear has cut off essential services for special education students at a school in northern California. Many parents of special education students did not participate in the school’s online CONTINUE READING: Re-imagining Migration: Immigration, Schools, and the Census | National Education Policy Center

Rahm Emanuel: Middle-Class Americans Are Sick of Elite Privilege - The Atlantic

Middle-Class Americans Are Sick of Elite Privilege - The Atlantic

It’s Time to Hold American Elites Accountable for Their Abuses
If Democrats want to address simmering middle-class anger, they need to deliver justice.

Normally, a scandal centered on how rich parents used bribes to win their children’s admittance into elite colleges wouldn’t play so heavily in the national news. No one much cared when Donald Trump promised large donations as his children enrolled at Penn. But the outrage over the Varsity Blues investigation perfectly illustrates what may be the most important, least understood, and underappreciated political dynamic of our era: a full-on middle-class revolt against the elites and the privileges they hoard. For all the focus on inequality and social justice, this middle-class revolt is the most important barrier standing between Democrats and the White House. They can’t afford to ignore it.

Think of what’s happened over the past decade and a half. America endured a war sold on false premises, a bailout of bankers issuing entirely toxic debt, and a massive public effort to prop up auto executives who were building cars that weren’t selling. Is it any wonder so many middle-class taxpayers resent the elites? They’ve been forced to bail them out from their own mistakes time and time again—and yet the beneficiaries of that goodwill haven’t apologized, let alone taken responsibility. America’s middle class is Cinderella, and the nation’s elites are her evil stepsisters—only now it’s the stepsisters who get to marry the prince. It’s infuriating.

Ever since the disaster of the 2016 election, Democrats have engaged in (an often pointless) debate about whether President Trump’s supporters were drawn to him on account of economic or cultural grievances. Yes, Hillary Clinton drew more votes, but she was 1,000 times as qualified, and 10,000 times as personally appealing. She should have demolished him—but something drew many voters to Trump instead.

I’m not denying that racism (against President Barack Obama) and sexism (against Secretary Clinton) played their roles. Nostalgia surely played another. But beneath all of that was the American middle class’s belief that the Lori Loughlins and Felicity Huffmans of the world, let alone the Don Rumsfelds and Dick Fulds, aren’t asked to play by the same set of rules. The elite get all the breaks and are shown all the shortcuts. In the meantime, ordinary people are forced to pay full freight. And that’s the point. No matter how noxious he was personally—and despite the irony that he was a perfect example of elite privilege—Trump embodied the country’s desire to hit back. Justice was a long time coming.

Maybe the clearest early manifestation was the Iraq War. After 9/11, the CONTINUE READING: Middle-Class Americans Are Sick of Elite Privilege - The Atlantic

Paid family leave for teachers set for vote in Assembly :: K-12 Daily :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Paid family leave for teachers set for vote in Assembly :: K-12 Daily :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Paid family leave for teachers set for vote in Assembly

(Calif.) Among the more than 1,000 bills that won passage to the Assembly floor last week was one that would require all K-12 schools and community colleges to provide at least six weeks family leave to employees.

AB 500 by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, would greatly improve the existing pregnancy leave benefit that typically requires teachers and other certified employees to shoulder the cost of hiring their own replacements.

“We are losing so many young women from the teaching profession and one of the big reasons is because of the lack of a family leave benefit,” Gonzalez said in a TV interview last week.

According to estimates from a staff analysis of the bill, providing full-pay for six weeks of pregnancy leave could cost about $20 million per year.

Currently, district employees can take six to eight weeks of leave after their child’s birth and another 12 weeks for bonding—but they don’t get full pay.

Most school employees use up existing sick time and then receive a differential pay for the remaining time off. As currently constructed, the differential pay is calculated by subtracting the cost of hiring a replacement teacher from the district employee’s salary.

Some districts participate in the State Disability Insurance program, which usually requires CONTINUE READING: Paid family leave for teachers set for vote in Assembly :: K-12 Daily :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

A Meditation on Stringing Words Together: The National’s “Roman Holiday” | radical eyes for equity

A Meditation on Stringing Words Together: The National’s “Roman Holiday” | radical eyes for equity

A Meditation on Stringing Words Together: The National’s “Roman Holiday”

I’m still standing in the same place where you left me standing

“I Am Easy to Find,” The National

For those of us who love words and fall deeply in love with authors and pop music performers, few things are as exciting as new works. I listened for the first time to The National’s I Am Easy to Find on the release day during a long drive.

The first song, “You Had Your Soul with You,” had already been released so my rush happened on the second song, “Quiet Light,” when I felt the urge to cry before the lyrics even began.

And by the seventh song, the titular “I Am Easy to Find,” I couldn’t hold back no longer, crying steadily as I drove. There is something uniquely powerful about the combination of beautiful music and beautiful words strung together in a way that make your heart ache.

As an English teacher for about two decades during the first half of my career, I was always searching for an effective way to teach poetry well. Students tended not to like poetry but also had very narrow and mistaken associations with poetry—poetry rhymes, for example, and being overly concerned with what poems mean.

It probably seems trite, but I did find that investigating poetry—asking, what makes poetry, poetry?—combined with starting with pop music song lyrics helped allay student antagonism toward what I consider a beautiful and powerful form of human expression.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, I grounded my poetry unit in the music of R.E.M. Although I now mainly teach education and writing courses, I continue to think as an English teacher—especially in terms of applying reading like a writer to text such as song lyrics to inform how we read and write well.

Especially with the rise of close reading, driven by the mostly now defunct Common Core, many formal lessons focusing on analyzing text remains trapped in false notions that meaning is restricted to the parameters of the text, words strung together on the page.

“I’m your hospital, I’m your silver cross,” opens The National’s “Roman Holiday,” preparing the listener for how to unpack these metaphors, but also confronting the arguments of close reading that meaning is a CONTINUE READING: A Meditation on Stringing Words Together: The National’s “Roman Holiday” | radical eyes for equity

Can NOLA's return to a locally run district curb charter school corruption?

Can NOLA's return to a locally run district curb charter school corruption?

New Orleans finally has control of its own schools, but will all parents really have a say?
Can a locally elected school board bring true accountability to the city’s diffuse network of charter schools, or will the corruption and favoritism that plagued the city’s school board before Katrina return, giving an upper hand to savvy, well-connected parents and communities?

NEW ORLEANS — Frank Rabalais had big plans for the school just around the corner from his house in Gentilly Terrace, a leafy neighborhood that is one the most racially and socioeconomically diverse corners of the city. In 2016, Rabalais, a well-connected, self-described charter school proponent, had learned that the Gentilly Terrace Elementary School would be closing its doors at the end of the school year — making the campus a blank canvas for a new kind of school.

The charter school that was closing was 98 percent black. Rabalais dreamed of a diverse campus that would cater to his diverse neighborhood and draw kids from across the racial and economic chasms that have long divided New Orleans.

He wanted a school in which he, a white, middle-class New Orleans native, would feel comfortable enrolling his young children.

But there was a big problem. The state-run Recovery School District, which assumed control of nearly every public school in the city during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, already had its own plans for the Gentilly Terrace campus. The state agency wanted to use the campus to expand a successful program for children with severe emotional and mental health needs.

It seemed that if Rabalais was going to get the school of his dreams, he’d have to change the minds of officials at an organization that many felt ruled by fiat, with no democratic obligation to listen to what locals wanted. For years, residents with concerns about how their schools were being run had to appeal to a statewide board on which only one of 11 members was chosen by New Orleans voters.

Rabalais remembers that his friends and family would listen intently and nod politely, but clearly didn’t think he could pull it off.

“The problem with the Recovery School District is that they are used to telling us what’s going to happen,” Rabalais explained back in CONTINUE READING: Can NOLA's return to a locally run district curb charter school corruption?

West Virginia’s Teachers Continue #RedforEd Pushback Against Charter Schools and ESA Vouchers | janresseger

West Virginia’s Teachers Continue #RedforEd Pushback Against Charter Schools and ESA Vouchers | janresseger

West Virginia’s Teachers Continue #RedforEd Pushback Against Charter Schools and ESA Vouchers

Just over a year ago, in late February 2018, school teachers across West Virginia launched the first of a nationwide wave of walkouts and strikes that became #RedforEd.  Teachers in every one of West Virginia’s 55 school districts walked out; schools were shut down across the entire state. Teachers were protesting abysmally low salaries and desperately needed services for their students. The West Virginia strike last year yielded a 5 percent raise for school teachers.

Then again on February 19, 2019, West Virginia’s teachers walked out again across 54 of the state’s 55 school districts to protest an omnibus education bill moving through the state legislature. The bill, known as Senate Bill 451, included another pay raise for teachers, but the Republican dominated West Virginia Senate had also inserted poison pills—authorization for seven charter schools and a statewide Education Savings Account (ESA) neo-voucher program for 1000 eligible students with special needs. After the debate broke down, the the West Virginia House of Delegates voted to table Senate Bill 451 indefinitely—killing the bill. Governor Jim Justice responded by calling a special session of the legislature to reconsider the omnibus bill after the end of the regular legislative session.

The special session was convened yesterday, May 20.  Its purpose is supposedly to consider the omnibus education bill, but members of the legislature have not been able to reach any sort of consensus. It now appears legislators will consider extraneous matters and delay the conversation about education for several weeks. Some people believe the delay is designed to push the discussion past the end of the school year as a strategy to prevent the possibility of another statewide teachers’ strike.

The very same issues from the earlier Senate Bill 451 remain on the table: another raise in salaries for teachers, and the launch of school privatization in the state of West Virginia, a CONTINUE READING: West Virginia’s Teachers Continue #RedforEd Pushback Against Charter Schools and ESA Vouchers | janresseger

Badass Teachers Association Blog: Bully Targets Need Upstanders!

Badass Teachers Association Blog: Bully Targets Need Upstanders!

Bully Targets Need Upstanders!

Much has been written on the subject of workplace bullying, with a lot of it intended to offer advice to those who have been targeted by an abusive colleague or supervisor. This is because many targets are not aware of what workplace bullying is, who the perpetrators might be, and how to deal with it when it happens. So, thankfully, bully targets can find information to help them understand what is happening to them.

And targets do need help.  A survey done by American Federation of Teachers and the Badass Teachers Association in 2017 found that teachers report poor mental health at twice the rate of the general workforce. They also experience workplace bullying three times more often than other workers. Yet help for these victims of out-of-control colleagues is difficult to find. Is anyone trying to put a stop to this abusive practice

In the teaching profession the most obvious places to look for help are to the teacher unions. These enormous organizations possess the resources and manpower to fight for any teacher whose rights to a secure and satisfying career are being threatened by power-hungry administrators. Yet, as the wheels of government turned and new legislation appeared, the system that is supposed to protect teacher rights somehow became the adversary. Many jurisdictions have made themselves havens for administrators by crafting legislation that created “right to work” states. Those of us who work in these areas are denied the protections normally available to workers who are free to unionize and stand up to bully employers. As a result, legal protections from bullying are limited.

The lack of protection from bully administrators results in the abuse of due process itself. Teachers are buried in letters of reprimand, they are required to produce copious highly detailed lesson plans, and they will likely be required to attend workshops for improvement, usually at their own expense. And all of this paperwork creates a trail that can ultimately lead to CONTINUE READING: Badass Teachers Association Blog: Bully Targets Need Upstanders!