Over the past two years or so, there has been a steady drip drip drip of apostastic epiphanies among some Reformsters, some of whom have stepped forward to write some version of, "Oops. I think we were probably wring about X." For X, substitute emphasis high stakes testing, treating teachers like the enemy, attempts to impose national standards, education policy dictated by wealthy self-appointed amateurs, and insisting that education could erase poverty and so no attempt to address systemic issues creating poverty were necessary. Etc.
It looked like we might have reached a peak last week when Nick Hanauer, one of the major self-appointed amateurs of the reformster movement, took to the Atlantic to admit, well...
...I embraced education as both a philanthropic cause and a civic mission. I co-founded the League of Education Voters, a nonprofit dedicated to improving public education. I joined Bill Gates, Alice Walton, and Paul Allen in giving more than $1 million each to an effort to pass a ballot measure that established Washington State’s first charter schools. All told, I have devoted countless hours and millions of dollars to the simple idea that if we improved our schools—if we modernized our curricula and our teaching methods, substantially increased school funding, CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: We Told You So, Dammit
Every Teacher Should Do Something At Which She's Terrible
Like many teachers, I have worked second jobs. Some I took on because they were fun (radio dj), but others I took on because I needed some extra money. The absolute nadir of my extra-scholastic employment was some time spent at a catalog call center.
This was not the kind of place that cold calls folks randomly; I worked at a center that took orders from customers over the phone. Taking orders was simple enough, but part of our job was to upsell. Every customer received a special opportunity to add one more item at a discount. And we were required to pitch either a company membership program or a supplemental medical insurance program; the decision of which one was made by the software that put the script up on my screen.
I was terrible. My numbers were abysmal. At one point, I was placed in the remedial cubical row.
The 30th edition of the KIDS COUNT Data Book — the most comprehensive annual report on child well-being in the United States — notes progress in helping children thrive since the first Data Book was published in 1990. But it finds the nation has failed to tear down barriers affecting children of color and underscores that America’s future will be brighter if all kids in all communities have the opportunity to thrive.
Among top-line findings: More than 13 million U.S. children live in poverty, and the nation is failing to equip many children, particularly in communities of color, with what they need to reach their full potential.
National Findings from the 2019 KIDS COUNT Data Book
This report compares past data on 16 indicators with figures from 2017, the most recent year available in most cases.
Broadly speaking, children in the United States had a better chance at thriving in 2017 than in 1990 — with improvements in 11 of the 16 KIDS COUNT index measures of child well-being — but racial and ethnic disparities persisted.
One in six American kids grew up in poverty, presenting tremendous risks to child well-being. Despite economic growth and reduced unemployment, there’s been virtually no progress on child poverty since the publication of the first Data Book in 1990.
2017 was the first year since 2010 that saw an increase in the number of uninsured kids. Four million American kids didn’t have health insurance. The 5% uninsured rate is 62% better than it was three decades ago — thanks to the Affordable Care Act, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and state-by-state Medicaid expansion.
Low birth weight, which often portends developmental challenges, had increased three years in a row, matching the four-decade high of 8.3% of all live births (2006).
State Rankings in the 2019 KIDS COUNT Data Book
Six of the top 10 states for overall child well-being are in the Northeast. New Hampshire and Massachusetts are again in first and second place, followed by Iowa (3), Minnesota (4), New Jersey (5), Vermont (6), Utah (7), Connecticut (8), Maine (9) and Virginia (10).
Mississippi (48), Louisiana (49) and New Mexico (50) are again the lowest-ranked states.
States in the South and West populate the bottom of the overall rankings. These regions contain the 18 lowest-ranked states.
Along with the annual state-by-state rankings, the 2019 Data Book explores the growth in America’s child population since 1990 — the year the first Data Book was published. Among the major developments:
The U.S. child population increased by more than 9 million from 64.2 million to 73.7 million between 1990 and 2017. Texas (2.5 million more kids), Florida (1.2 million) and California (1.1 million) accounted for half of the nation’s total growth.
All 15 of the states where growth in the child population outpaced the national average since 1990 are in the South or West. Most states that had declines in the child population are in the Northeast and Midwest.
The percentage of American children who were Latino more than doubled from 12 to 26%. The proportion of Asian and Pacific Islander children also doubled, from 3 to 6%. The percentage of white children declined from 69 to 53%.
From 1990 to 2017, 38 states and the District of Columbia saw the percentage of children from immigrant families double; 12 have seen those percentages quadruple. More than one in four U.S. children is growing up in an immigrant family.
Direct lines can be drawn between areas of tremendous improvement in well-being — including health insurance coverage, decreased rates of teen childbearing and increased rates of high school graduation — and policies that have supported these successes. Policymakers should take additional steps to help all children thrive. The Casey Foundation calls on elected officials and representatives to:
Expand the programs that make and keep kids healthy. For the sake of all children, regardless of their immigration status, states should expand access to Medicaid.
Provide the tools proven to help families lift themselves up economically. Federal and state earned income tax credits (EITC) and child tax credit programs mean working parents can devote more take-home pay to meet their children’s needs.
Tear down obstacles faced by kids of color. Every child has incredible individual potential, and communities thrive when all kids thrive. African American, Latino and Native American children remain more likely than others to encounter barriers — from living in high-poverty neighborhoods to not having health insurance — to that contribute to disparate outcomes. Our public policies must acknowledge and eliminate those obstacles.
Count all kids. Ensure the 2020 census counts all children, especially those under 5 years old and from hard-to-count areas. The 2010 census missed 2.2 million such kids, and the upcoming count may miss even more if young children are not a priority. The stakes are high: 55 major federal programs, including Head Start and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, allocate more than $880 billion each year based on census data.
The 2019 KIDS COUNT Data Book is the 30th edition of an annual study based on publicly available data for all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Follow this link to pre-order Diane’s new book, Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools.
It will be published on January 14, 2020, by Knopf, the most prestigious publisher in America. The editor is the brilliant Victoria Wilson, who is also an author, having written the definitive biography of Barbara Stanwyck.
In Slaying Goliath, you will read about the heroes of the Resistance, those who stood up to Big Money and defeated disruption in their schools, their communities, their cities, their states.
It is a book of inspiration and hope.
It shows how determined citizens—parents, students, teachers, everyone—can stand up for democracy, can stand up to the billionaires, and win.
Please consider pre-ordering your copy so you can be sure to get the first edition.
Neighborhood Public Schools Forced to Give Up Space to Charter Schools
Catskill Avenue Elementary, located about 14 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, is a “legacy school,” says 5th grade teacher Elizabeth Untalan.
“It’s been around for 71 years….Grandparents, great-grandparents, daughters son have all gone through our doors.”
But Untalan and many of her colleagues and neighborhood parents are worried. They believe Catskill’s deep standing in the community is endangered by the possibility that it may soon be sharing its building with the new Ganas Academy Charter School.
This is called “co-location,” one of the more unfamiliar practices behind the sector’s dramatic expansion in California. (As of 2017-18, charter schools serve almost 630,000 students in the state.)
In Los Angeles alone, more than 70 public schools have seen valuable learning and collaborative spaces appropriated by charter companies for their staff and students. Co-locations also exist or have been approved in San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, and the state’s Central Valley area. The same trend has been underway in Chicago and New York.
If the co-location with Ganas goes into effect, students at Catskill could lose their library, computer lab, parent center, and rooms for counseling.
“These are the resources we pour into our children, these are the resources that raise student achievement,” Untalan told. “Why should our students have to give them up just so a charter business can expand into a community that doesn’t want it?”
How bad could it get? Some of the schools special education students and their instructors will lose their classroom and be forced to move into a closet.”
United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) is mobilizing its 33,000 members and parents in opposition, but Ganas is pushing ahead, undeterred by concerns over how the co-location will impact Catskill’s 522 students. Thirty percent are English language learners and 90 percent are federally subsidized under the U.S. Department of Education’s Title I program.
How Teach for America Evolved Into an Arm of the Charter School Movement Documents obtained by ProPublica show that the Walton foundation, a staunch supporter of school choice and Teach for America’s largest private funder, was paying $4,000 for every teacher placed in a traditional public school — and $6,000 for every one placed in a charter school.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.
When the Walton Family Foundation announced in 2013 that it was donating $20 million to Teach For America to recruit and train nearly 4,000 teachers for low-income schools, its press release did not reveal the unusual terms for the grant.
Documents obtained by ProPublica show that the foundation, a staunch supporterof school choice and Teach For America’s largest private funder, was paying $4,000 for every teacher placed in a traditional public school — and $6,000 for every one placed in a charter school. The two-year grant was directed at nine cities where charter schools were sprouting up, including New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; and Los Angeles.
The gift’s purpose was far removed from Teach For America’s original mission of alleviating teacher shortages in traditional public schools. It was intended to “generate a longer-term leadership pipeline that advances the education movement, providing a source of talent for policy, advocacy and politics, as well as quality schools and new entrepreneurial ventures,” according to internal grant documents.
The incentives corresponded to a shift in Teach For America’s direction. Although only 7% of students go to charter schools, Teach For America sent almost 40% of its 6,736 teachers to them in 2018 — up from 34% in 2015 and 13% in 2008. In some large cities, charter schools employ the majority of TFA teachers: 54% in Houston, 58% in San Antonio and at least 70% in Los Angeles.
Established nearly 30 years ago to tap idealistic graduates of elite universities to teach at traditional public schools in high-poverty areas, Teach For America has evolved into an informal but vital ally of the charter school movement. Not only does it place a disproportionate number of its teachers in charter schools, but the organization and its affiliated groups also have become reliant on the support of the Walton Foundation and other school choice advocates, including a daughter of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor. As board membersof Teach For America’s offshoot leadership organization, which gives to the political campaigns of former TFA teachers, Emma Bloomberg and a Walton family member CONTINUE READING: How Teach for America Evolved Into an Arm of the Charter School Movement — ProPublica
NJ Spotlight needs to stop giving space to billionaire-backed corporate reform groups like JerseyCAN
NJ Spotlight needs to stop giving space to billionaire-backed corporate reform groups like JerseyCAN. JerseyCAN does not represent the students, parents and educators of this state and should not be given a platform when their only true constituency is their funders. You can see the full list, which includes the Waltons, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, John Arnold, etc. here).
JerseyCAN - a 'branch campaign' of 50CAN - is particularly egregious in this regard however. Three years ago 50CAN merged with Michelle Rhee's failed StudentsFirst. The Frankenstein-esque corporate reform group created by the merger continues to masquerade in a handful of states as "locally grown, locally led and locally sustained."
Nothing could be further from the truth, and here in New Jersey those of us paying attention are not fooled. We see JerseyCAN for what it is - a mouthpiece for a Connecticut billionaire responsible for the opioids crisis who should have no say in what happens to students in our state.
50CAN grew out of ConnCAN, the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, a reform group co-founded by Jonathan Sackler in 2005. Sackler is one of the heirs to the Purdue Pharma fortune - built on the back of the opioids crisis. As reported by The Guardian, the Sackler heirs "face mass litigation and criminal investigations."
The New Haven Register has a fascinating piece on Jonathan Sackler and his connections to charter schools and 50CAN. The article states that 50CAN is trying to distance itself from Sackler and hasn't taken any money from him in 2019, but that's hardly the point. 50CAN would not exist were it not for billionaires like Jonathan Sackler and the fortunes they amass at the expense of CONTINUE READING: Mother Crusader
WHEN WERE WE EVER INDIVISIBLE? [A REFLECTION ON NYC SCHOOLS CHANCELLOR CARRANZA]
A newspaper in the city recently reported that nine New York City councilmembers have called for NYC schools chancellor Richard Carranza’s firing, saying he’s more focused on “ethnicity instead of efficacy” and prefers to pound the pavement with his “rhetoric.” Since stepping into the role of chancellor, Carranza has intrigued observers of education reform with a bevy of questions, a series of managerial realignments, and a ramp-up of equity and cultural competence talk. He’s even poked the multi-headed hydra we call “gifted and talented,” shaking the rafters of our specialized high schools.
As a 14-year classroom teacher, I struggle with the moment we’re in with respect to our schools. For most – if not all – of my career, education reformers who considered themselves leftist would tout market-based solutions as the revolution necessary to assure our kids an adequate education. They too would use rhetoric that felt inflammatory, but the press coverage often kneeled because the mayor at the time was a billionaire media magnate and supporters felt comforted with shifting the blame towards communities in need of reinforcements for this centuries-long battle for a quality education. Discussing equity is in vogue in education and I perhaps played a part in this movement. Yet, I see how anyone can post the word “equity” to mean anything they want it to mean.
I believe Carranza can actually explain in depth what equity means to him, and that’s turned the usual skeptics into fans.
Jackie Goldberg Explains the Coming War to Save Public Education After winning a Los Angeles school board seat, Goldberg speaks about charter schools, money and what it means to fight the good fight.
Jackie Goldberg has spent her life fighting for students. From 1983 to 1991, she served on the Los Angeles Unified School District’s board of education, including a term as president. She later became an L.A. City Councilmember and then served three terms in the California State Assembly, where she also served as chairperson of the Assembly Education Committee. Now, nearly 30 years later, Goldberg returns to the board, having been elected to fill the District 5 seat vacated with lastyear’s resignation of Ref Rodriguez, the former board president who was convicted of campaign moneylaundering. (Goldberg will now complete a term expiring in December 2020.)
At 74, Goldberg still seems as energetic and passionate as ever. Shortly after winning the board seat, she spoke to Capital & Main about charter schools, money and what it means to fight the good fight. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Capital & Main: You’ve been an outspoken critic of charter schools. Now that you’ve won the election, are you prepared to battle school board members like Nick Melvoin, who have strongly supported their growth?
Jackie Goldberg: I’m ready to go to battle but it isn’t what I’d prefer to do. What I want to do is to pass Measure EE, and then we can fight about how to spend that money. I do want to have a more close fiscal control of charter schools in the district.
“Public education is dying. It is dying because it’s being financially killed.”
There are things that I want to do right away about charters, but most of the work is in Sacramento. I’ve already been up to Sacramento once on this issue, and have talked to a number of people. I do think that we need to get some reforms on charters, such as a back-filling of fixed costs to schools when they lose a child to a charter. We don’t get that now. Let’s say 10 or 11 kids leave a school, maybe even enough leave school to lose a teacher. That’s too bad, but that’s the way that goes. But you still have the principal. You still have the plant CONTINUE READING: Jackie Goldberg Explains the Coming War to Save Public Education | Capital & Main
Racism, White Privilege, Charter Schools, Equity, Economic Inequality: Is There a Pathway Out of Generational Poverty?
After centuries of brutal race-based slavery, a civil war, 600,000 fatalities the ‘13th Amendment ended slavery (“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, … shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”), the 14th Amendment granted equal rights to all Americans (“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, … are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. … nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”) .and 15th Amendment gave former slaves the right to vote (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”).
Sadly, with the abandonment of Reconstruction, the imposition of Jim Crow laws and Supreme Court decisions the rights and freedoms that were guaranteed by the new amendments to the constitution were stripped away, peonage replaced slavery.
Incredibly a hundred years passed before the nation began to implement the dreams of the civil war constitutional amendments.
For several years recently, my home state of South Carolina has provided ample content because of the current reading legislation, Read to Succeed, heavily drawn from Florida’s reading policy and commitment to grade retention as a punitive key element in teaching reading.
This summer, however, even with Read to Succeed firmly entrenched and resulting in grade retention for students, a new wave of controversy has invigorated this course’s topics—the media focus on the “science of reading” driven by advocates for students with dyslexia and the (tired) resurgence of calls for systematic phonics for all students.
Education Research Report: 2019 KIDS COUNT Data Book