Diane Ravitch Wants Philanthropy to Support Rebirth of Public Schools - Philanthropy Women

Diane Ravitch Wants Philanthropy to Support Rebirth of Public Schools - Philanthropy Women

Diane Ravitch Wants Philanthropy to Support Rebirth of Public Schools

Philanthropy aimed at K-12 education in the U.S. has ramped up in the past few decades and remains complex and controversial. Funders back diverse causes like delivering new learning technologies, establishing charter schools and backing professional development for public school teachers, among many others. Along with local and regional funders, major philanthropies like the Bill and Melinda Gates, Broad and Walton Family Foundations direct hundreds of millions to education annually.

Diane Ravitch says these funders should prioritize helping under-resourced American learning institutions and families by supporting traditional public schools and their teachers, and addressing income inequality. She discussed these topics as well as funding for girls and the pitfalls of charter schools with Philanthropy Women. Ravitch is an education author and historian and a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education. She is currently a research professor of Education at New York University and president of the Network for Public Education, which she founded.

Ravitch on Addressing American Inequality

“Our society is reaching a very dangerous moment because of the vast increase in income inequality and wealth inequality… The richest are getting very rich, while many in the middle class are one paycheck removed from poverty,” Ravitch says. She thinks a higher minimum wage and greater investments in public schools, teachers’ salaries and public health services are necessary.

Some of the related philanthropic causes she believes in are reducing class size, protecting student privacy, women’s reproductive health and rights, civil liberties and social justice. Ravitch has also previously upheld universal PreK as a way to “make school a stronger equalizer than it is today.” She mentions the Network for Public Education, Class Size Matters, Parents Coalition for Student Privacy, Planned Parenthood, American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, Southern Poverty Law Center and Education Law Center as organizations working in some of the fields she cares most about.

How Can Women Donors Fund Girls’ Education?

Ravitch shares some thoughts and advice specific to women donors and CONTINUE READING: Diane Ravitch Wants Philanthropy to Support Rebirth of Public Schools - Philanthropy Women

Big Education Ape: Pre-Order Diane's New Book - Slaying Goliath - Network For Public Education - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/06/pre-order-dianes-new-book-slaying.html

After the Confession: How Will They Fix the Damage Done to Public Schools?

After the Confession: How Will They Fix the Damage Done to Public Schools?

After the Confession: How Will They Fix the Damage Done to Public Schools?

Nick Hanauer is described as “founder of the public-policy incubator Civic Ventures.” His piece in The Atlantic called “Better Public Schools Won’t Fix America,” is an admission that the corporate message we’ve heard for years that schools will fix the problems of the economy and society is false. Most of us knew this.

Here is some of what Nick Hanauer says.

What I’ve realized, decades late, is that educationism is tragically misguided. American workers are struggling in large part because they are underpaid—and they are underpaid because 40 years of trickle-down policies have rigged the economy in favor of wealthy people like me. Americans are more highly educated than ever before, but despite that, and despite nearly record-low unemployment, most American workers—at all levels of educational attainment—have seen little if any wage growth since 2000.

The article became more significant when President Obama, the Race to the Top President, weighed in to say he agreed with Hanauer. Many were pleased and irritated.

The President said:

This is worth a read: a thought-provoking reminder that education reform isn’t a CONTINUE READING: After the Confession: How Will They Fix the Damage Done to Public Schools?

Meet Stephanie Grisham, Charter School Propagandist, Melania Trump’s enforcer - The Lily

Meet Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump’s enforcer - The Lily

Meet Stephanie, Charter School Propagandist, Melania Trump’s enforcer
White House staffers are learning that Grisham is not someone with whom to tangle

...before Romney, she’d created her own small public relations firm, worked for AAA Arizona, the Arizona Charter Schools Association, and Larson Public Relations, which represents education reform clients across the country.

In President Trump’s circle, Stephanie Grisham has proven her loyalty — for years.

Few in Trump’s White House have a history with him that dates as far back as Grisham’s. For nearly two years, she served as communications director for first lady Melania Trump. A few weeks ago, she received a promotion to her deputy chief of staff for communications and has become one of the more powerful figures in the ever-evolving Trump White House. In the summer of 2015, she was a lowly press wrangler on Trump’s campaign.

During the campaign she developed a good relationship with the president, and that’s carried through,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders says. “She has developed a great amount of trust from both the president and the first lady, which is a pretty high commodity here,” Sanders adds. “There aren’t a lot of people who have a lot of regular interaction with both of them.”

Protecting the president and first lady

Grisham’s role has drawn attention for her acerbic statements directed at those who have crossed Melania Trump and her husband. When Trump attacked Mika Brzezinski in the summer of 2017 and claimed falsely in a tweet that she was “bleeding badly from a facelift,” rather than shying away from the controversy, Grisham offered this statement on Melania Trump’s behalf: “When her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder.”

When Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump, cheekily called herself the “first Trump wife” and CONTINUE READING: Meet Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump’s enforcer - The Lily

Nazi death camps started out very much like the American concentration camps of today | Eclectablog

Nazi death camps started out very much like the American concentration camps of today | Eclectablog

Nazi death camps started out very much like the American concentration camps of today

In our podcast this week, we interviewed journalist Andrea Pitzer, author of the important book One Long Night – A Global History of Concentration Camps. In the interview she talks extensively about how the German concentration camps during the lead up to World War II did not start out as the death factories that they eventually became. However, over time, they became something far more evil.

In today’s guest post, my friend Danny Steinmetz of Ann Arbor talks about his family’s experience with one of those early German concentration camps in Sachsenhausen. In his essay, Danny makes this important observation: “When AOC speaks of concentration camps I don’t think of Auschwitz’s gas chambers. I think of Sachsenhausen. I think of its harsh conditions leveraged to force a man, German to the core, to give up on living there. That is exactly the intent of the Trump regime’s policies of family separations, denials of asylum, ICE raids, and harsh conditions within the camps.”

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The Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany

My Family’s “Concentration Camp” Story at Sachsenhausen and How it Lines Up with AOC’s Usage

Dachau was the original Nazi concentration camp and from 1933 to 1938 its prisoners were mostly non-Jewish political opponents of the regime. It was primarily a prison and labor camp. There were no gas chambers or any other mass murder facilities there during its early years. Dachau was in a suburb of Munich in the south of Germany. Sachsenhausen, opened in 1936, was CONTINUE READING: Nazi death camps started out very much like the American concentration camps of today | Eclectablog

Policy differences. Demeanor differences. None of it stopped Donald Trump from picking Betsy DeVos as education secretary. - The Washington Post

Policy differences. Demeanor differences. None of it stopped Donald Trump from picking Betsy DeVos as education secretary. - The Washington Post

Policy differences. Demeanor differences. None of it stopped Donald Trump from picking Betsy DeVos as education secretary.

Before Donald Trump nominated Betsy DeVos to be his education secretary, what information did Trump’s team consider about the Michigan billionaire?

The news organization Axios said it obtained nearly 100 internal vetting documents from the Trump camp about dozens of people hired in the administration. They included John F. Kelly, former national security adviser and later chief of staff; Jim Mattis, former secretary of defense; Ben Carson, secretary of Health and Human Services; and DeVos.

According to the documents, Trump’s team knew that DeVos didn’t care much for him, at least not before she became education secretary. You can read the entire DeVos vetting document here, but here are some key takeaways:

• In July 2016, DeVos refused to back Trump because of “serious policy differences.” The document said she opposed his push to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and his proposal to deport millions of illegal immigrants, and his “warming” to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
• DeVos said she had reservations about Trump “as a person,” and also “doubted his demeanor.” It quoted DeVos as saying in May 2016, “Until we have a better reason to embrace and support the top of the ticket, and see an agenda that is truly an opportunity agenda, then we have lots of other options in which to invest and spend our time helping."
• DeVos attended the July 2016 Republican presidential convention and voted not for Trump but for Ohio CONTINUE READING: Policy differences. Demeanor differences. None of it stopped Donald Trump from picking Betsy DeVos as education secretary. - The Washington Post

6 Ways to Keep Your Students Engaged in the Classroom - Teacher Habits

6 Ways to Keep Your Students Engaged in the Classroom - Teacher Habits

6 Ways to Keep Your Students Engaged in the Classroom

Guest Writer: Paisley Hansen

Keeping your students engaged in the classroom is becoming harder than ever before. With the short attention spans of kids in today’s society, you need to do whatever you can to keep your students engaged. There are many different ways that you can create engaging class material that will stimulate and bring your kids to a whole new level of excitement in your classroom. Once you start implementing these new ways of teaching, you will find that it is much easier for you to have a classroom that is enjoyable for both you and the students. 

Utilize social media 

In our modern age, it is important that you take advantage of social media. This is something that your students are going to be on quite regularly. Starting profiles for your classroom on major social media networks is a great way to keep your kids engaged. You will be able to appeal to their love of social media and have them engage on a much more regular basis. Learning the art of social media is something that may take a while to get the hang of. However, if you keep working at it, you will become a social media natural in no time. 

Use media to make your lessons more engaging 

Kids today are so used to seeing so many engaging videos and pictures. If you aren’t taking advantage of these tools, you are greatly missing out on an awesome opportunity to engage with your students. You need to make sure that you are using CONTINUE READING: 6 Ways to Keep Your Students Engaged in the Classroom - Teacher Habits 

Music students do better in school than non-musical peers -- ScienceDaily

Music students do better in school than non-musical peers -- ScienceDaily

Music students do better in school than non-musical peers

High school students who take music courses score significantly better on math, science and English exams than their non-musical peers, according to a new study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology.

School administrators needing to trim budgets often look first to music courses, because the general belief is that students who devote time to music rather than math, science and English, will underperform in those disciplines.

"Our research proved this belief wrong and found the more the students engage with music, the better they do in those subjects," said UBC education professor and the study's principal investigator, Peter Gouzouasis. "The students who learned to play a musical instrument in elementary and continued playing in high school not only score significantly higher, but were about one academic year ahead of their non-music peers with regard to their English, mathematics and science skills, as measured by their exam grades, regardless of their socioeconomic background, ethnicity, prior learning in mathematics and English, and gender."

Gouzouasis and his team examined data from all students in public schools in British Columbia who finished Grade 12 between 2012¬ and 2015. The data sample, made up of more than 112,000 students, included those who completed at least one standardized exam for math, science and English, and for whom the researchers had appropriate demographic information -- including gender, ethnicity, neighbourhood socioeconomic status, and prior learning in numeracy and literacy skills. Students who studied at least one instrumental music course in the regular curriculum counted as students taking music. Qualifying music courses are courses that require previous instrumental music experience and include concert band, conservatory piano, orchestra, jazz band, concert choir and vocal jazz.

The researchers found the predictive relationships between music education and academic achievement were more pronounced for those who took instrumental music rather than vocal music. The findings suggest skills learned in instrumental music transfer very broadly to the students' learning in school.

"Learning to play a musical instrument and playing in an ensemble is very demanding," said the study's co-investigator Martin Guhn, CONTINUE READING: Music students do better in school than non-musical peers -- ScienceDaily

DID YOU MISS DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG TODAY? NO WORRIES CATCH UP NOW | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

DID YOU MISS DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG TODAY? NO WORRIES CATCH UP NOW

 

Maurice Cunningham: When “Parent Groups” Are Funded by the Walton Billionaires

by dianeravitch / 7min

In my new book, Slaying Goliath, I focus on heroes of the Resistance. One of them is Professor Maurice Cunningham of the University of Massachusetts. He is a professor of politics and a blogger who believes in “follow the money.” His relentless pursuit of Dark Money in the Massachusetts charter referendum of 2016 (where voters overwhelmingly rejected charter expansion) led to the demise of the bi

Alfie Kohn: Why Can’t Everyone Get An A?

by dianeravitch / 1h

Alfie Kohn has written many books critical of competition and ranking in schools. This article appeared in the New York Times. For a generation now, school reform has meant top-down mandates for what students must be taught, enforced by high-stakes standardized tests and justified by macho rhetoric — “rigor,” “raising the bar,” “tougher standards.” Here’s a thought experiment. Suppose that next y

Chester E. Finn, Jr.: The Persistent Failure of Big Shiny Ideas to “Reinvent” Schools

by dianeravitch / 2h

Checker Finn and I used to be best buddies back in the days when I was on the other side (the wrong side) of big education issues. We became friends in the early 1980s. We created something called the Educational Excellence Network, which circulated a monthly newsletter on events and issues back in the pre-Internet days. I was a member of the board of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which was c

Carol Burris: Federal Charter School Program is a Slush Fund

by dianeravitch / 2h

Back in March 2019, Carol Burris and Jeff Bryant released a study of the federal Charter Schools Program on behalf of the Network for Public Education.. That study, “Asleep at the Wheel,” found that about a third of the charters that received federal grants in the $440 million program either never opened or closed soon after opening. The amount of money wasted was about $1 billion over several ye

YESTERDAY

Ohio: State Plan to Make Consultants Great Again

by dianeravitch / 21h

‌ ‌ ‌ Jan Resseger’s digest of the Senator Lehner HB 70-on-steroids plan The Lehner Plan is really a district’s worst nightmare. It would have scores of cooks in the kitchen with no one to be held accountable. It would also be a cash cow for “consulting school improvement organizations.” William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | o hioeanda@sbcglo

Beto O’Rourke Adds High-Ranking Obama ED Official to His Campaign Staff

28by dianeravitch / 22h

Beto O’Rourke has beefed up his campaign staff with the addition of Carmel Martin , who was Assistant Secretary for Budget and Policy in the Department of Education during the Obama administration. Martin is a supporter of high-stakes testing and charter schools. When my book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, was published, she joined me on a panel at the Economic Policy In

Peg Tyre: What It’s Like to Be a Teacher in Japan

by dianeravitch / 23h

Veteran journalist Peg Tyre is on a study mission to understand education in certain Asian nations. She has written several reports, some of which were posted here. She has written to tell me that she has enjoyed the feedback from readers of this blog, so keep those emails and reactions to her coming. A teacher in a primary school giving a healthy-living lesson Japanese Teachers Put In Longer Hou

Netroots Nation: Learn How Philadelphia Activists Regained Local Control of Their Schools

24by dianeravitch / 1d

Jeff Bryant, a prolific writer about the Resistance to Faux Reform, will moderate a panel at Netroots Nation about how Philadelphia activists fought back and regained democracy. fought back and regained democracy. The session is called “What Philly Taught Us: How Philadelphia Activists Brat SchoolPrivatization to Restore Local Control.” Starts: Thursday, Jul. 11 2:30 PM Ends: Thursday, Jul. 11 3:

Peter Greene: The Writer Who Could Not Answer Standardized Test Questions About Her Poems

94by dianeravitch / 1d

Peter Greene writes here about Sara Holbrook, a poet whose poems have been used on standardized tests. Back in 2017, Holbrook wrote an essay for Huffington Post entitled, “ I Can’t Answer These Texas Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems. ” The writer had discovered that two of her poems were part of the Texas STAAR state assessment tests, and she was a bit startled to discover that she

EdSource: Why California Charter Schools Have Little or No Oversight

by dianeravitch / 1d

Louis Freedberg of EdSource explains here why California charter schools are largely unsupervised, leading to a drumbeat of scandals like the recent indictment of 11 people charged with a theft of $80 million. He writes: As charter 

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