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Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Who is Choosing Who? A Charter School Places Barriers to Entry

Who is Choosing Who? A Charter School Places Barriers to Entry

Who is Choosing Who? A Charter School Places Barriers to Entry
This is a conditional admission practice contrary to the law requiring charter schools to admit all who wish to attend.
- LAUSD Charter School Division
When the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) Charter School Division recommended that the school board deny the North Valley Military Institute’s (NVMI) charter renewal in 2017, they cited the school’s requirement that “[a]ll students enrolling in NVMI must successfully complete an Entrance Camp” as one of the reasons. The district bureaucrats found that this requirement amounted to “a conditional admission practice” and, therefore, violated the provisions of “the law requiring charter schools to admit all who wish to attend.
Since 2011, Granada Hills Charter High School has included a requirement that all students attend a “Summer Transition Academy (STA) as a graduation requirement for all students.” The school’s enrollment documents state that “New students programmed into the 2019 STA session who do not report to or complete the STA will receive a grade of F”. Unlike NVMI, this requirement did not prevent the Charter School Division from recommending to the school board that they should approve the renewal of Granada’s charter when it came before them last year.
When asked why NVMI’s requirement was seen as a violation while Granada’s was not, the Charter School Division replied that Granada’s program “is not a CONTINUE READING: Who is Choosing Who? A Charter School Places Barriers to Entry



CURMUDGUCATION: Big Brother Is Listening (More Ed Tech From The Surveillance State)

CURMUDGUCATION: Big Brother Is Listening (More Ed Tech From The Surveillance State)

Big Brother Is Listening (More Ed Tech From The Surveillance State)

We have repeatedly seen examples of ed tech innovations that hinge on surveillance, and not just surveillance, but software to interpret what the surveilled data means.


This results in some huge promises. Here's software that says it will read student facial expressions and eye movements to determine if anyone is learning. Companies are lining up to tell you all about the social and emotional well-being of students. And in one of the finest examples of building mountainous conclusions out of data molehills, NWEA will now tell you how hard students are working and how well they're engaged, based on how long it takes them to bubble in a multiple-choice answer.

ProPublica and Wired decided to take a look at yet another piece of software that claims to be able to read hearts and minds both in schools and in a few other places as well. You will be shocked--shocked!-- to discover that this is yet another piece of tech that has big dreams but little to back them up with.

Sound Intelligence, a Dutch company that hopes to set up shop in Chicago, has some audio analytics it wants to sell you.

Sound Intelligence's patented sound classification solutions make security monitoring systems proactive, enabling early detection of potential incidents, swift intervention, and in many cases, prevention of further escalation.

Yes, in addition to more standard fare like gunshot detection and breaking glass detection, Sound CONTINUE READING: 
CURMUDGUCATION: Big Brother Is Listening (More Ed Tech From The Surveillance State)

NOT TO MENTION WATCHING

L.A. Charter $chool Backers Plan to ‘BUY BACK’ Mayor’s Office, Battle Teachers Union, Internal Email Shows | KTLA

L.A. Charter School Backers Plan to ‘Take Back’ Mayor’s Office, Battle Teachers Union, Internal Email Shows | KTLA

L.A. Charter School Backers Plan to ‘Take Back’ Mayor’s Office, Battle Teachers Union, Internal Email Shows


Memo to charter leaders: ‘It’s better to be feared than loved. Right now we are neither’ - Los Angeles Times - https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-edu-charter-leaders-confidential-planning-20190702-story.html via @latimes

Read the Complete memo sent to charter school leaders »
The email was originally disclosed through a public records request submitted to a charter school group by michaelkohlhaas.org, a site that seeks to “collect and publish as many documents as possible about municipal politics in Los Angeles, with somewhat of a focus on Business Improvement Districts in Los Angeles.”
Annotations from The Times are in italics:
Subject: Important background for Wednesday’s Kids First Strategy Group meeting
From: Ben Austin+
+[Austin is the executive director of Kids Coalition, which describes itself as advocating “to translate ‘kids-first’ from a political slogan into a civil right and an educational reality for all LAUSD students.”]
Date: 3/3/19, 7:52 PM
To: [email addresses removed]
Hi all, below is material for Wednesday’s Kids First Strategy Group meeting: revised and refined goals, a proposed agenda, and a list of initiatives we could collectively adopt to begin backwards planning from our short and long term goals.
I want to acknowledge a tension in the work ahead of us: I think we all agree that we need to figure out how to work better and differently together so that over time we can make the whole greater than the sum of our parts. As Katie+ said at the last meeting, in many ways the work of this group could be considered a 10-year project. And as Ana and others mentioned: Alex Caputo Pearl has been working for far more than ten years to achieve the victories that are just now bearing fruit for UTLA. But we are also managing short term threats, challenges, and opportunities we cannot ignore.
+[Katie refers to Katie Braude, co-founder of the advocacy group Speak Up, which recruits and organizes parents and also publishes an online news site.]
While it may seem contradictory to work on both tracts simultaneously, hopefully we can walk and chew gum and even forge strategic synergy. In the short term we can learn to work better together, build collective power, and win short and medium term victories; while simultaneously reflecting, learning, and evolving as a community so that 5 and 10 years from now we aren’t in this same position.
Based on feedback I’ve gotten from many of you since the first meeting, I’ve attempted to translate our agreed upon collective goals into a format which we can use to measure progress in the short and long term. As you can see, I’ve broken them into a specific long term "moon shot" goal, and short-term goals that lay the foundation to achieve our long term goal:
* By 2030: A quality public education for every student in the LAUSD, agnostic to school model, measured by child outcomes. This is the goal we agreed upon in the last meeting, adding a deadline. The 2030 date is obviously random. But it feels far enough away that it forces us to think long-term (it’s more time than it took for America to figure out how to land on the moon), but soon enough that it’s urgent, non-theoretical, and will directly impact the children in the system today.
* By November 2020: Retake board majority, change public narrative/shift Overton Window,+ defend quality charters, establish legal rights for parents and students to translate asymmetrical organizing into legal rights and political power to advocate for kids. We had agreed to each of the above goals at the last meeting but not the specific 2020 deadline.
+[The Overton window is a term for the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse. Austin is suggesting in the memo that the teachers union has effectively defined the debate over education issues and that his side needs to recapture that space.]
This is a proposed agenda:Read the Complete memo sent to charter school leaders »
Image result for L.A. Charter school Back take BACK’ Mayor’s Office, Battle Teachers Union, Internal Email Shows

In the wake of the Los Angeles teachers strike, a group of key charter school supporters, concerned about political backlash, worked on a plan to stem anti-charter sentiment and regain control of local education reforms.
Their strategy was to “take back” the Board of Education and the mayor’s office, develop a lawsuit against the school district and attack the local teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles.
These strategies are laid out in a March email from education activist Ben Austin to an inner circle of charter backers. The email attempts to summarize their joint discussions to date and their agenda going forward.
Contacted early Tuesday morning, Austin declined to comment.
Read the full story on LATimes.com.
L.A. Charter School Backers Plan to ‘Take Back’ Mayor’s Office, Battle Teachers Union, Internal Email Shows | KTLA

Agenda - 2019 NEA Representative Assembly #REDFORED #CTA #StrongPublicSchools #ra19 #nea #neara19 #houston

Agenda - 2019 NEA Annual Meeting

NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
2019 ANNUAL MEETING SUMMARY OF EVENTS

Houston, Texas

Advance Virtual Policy Hearing Schedule

NEA RA Mobile App

The official NEA RA Mobile App brings all of the myRA features directly to your iPhone, iPad, or Android phone or tablet, so you can access your personal myRA account and keep up to date with what’s happening at the RA no matter where you roam, as long as you have an active internet connection. Download the NEA RA Mobile App to your device through one of the links below:
Get the NEA RA Mobile App on the App StoreGet the NEA RA Mobile App on Google Play















Every student deserves a great public school, no matter where they live. Here are some resources to help you get those schools our students deserve:

    A Note to Readers | Diane Ravitch's blog via @dianeravitch #REDFORED #CTA #StrongPublicSchools #ra19 #nea #neara19 #houston

    A Note to Readers | Diane Ravitch's blog

    A Note to Readers


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    Big Education Ape: KEEP UP/ CATCH UP WITH DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG A site to discuss better education for all - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/06/keep-up-catch-up-with-diane-ravitchs_29.html