NANCY BAILEY: Human Interaction & Picture Books vs. Waterford Upstart’s Preschool Phonics Online Video

Human Interaction & Picture Books vs. Waterford Upstart’s Preschool Phonics Online Video

Human Interaction & Picture Books vs. Waterford Upstart’s Preschool Phonics Online Video

Last Sunday, The New York Times described Waterford’s Upstart online program for preschoolers, describing it as better than nothing, or, as “closing a gap.” They described communities that could not (or would not) raise money for preschool, so, online instruction seemed like the default choice.

Who’s reviewing these programs?

Waterford Upstart is flawed. This can be determined by viewing one of the video samples that they chose to promote in The New York Time’s report. After reviewing this video, it would seem like a child would be better off without the program!

Waterford Upstart was created by the Utah legislature and has been funded by groups intent on privatizing public schools with technology. The Audacious Project through TED is helping to fund it.

There’s increasing distrust over how school district officials try to convince their communities they can’t find money for school programs including preschools, but, with the help of the state or federal government they can fund online programs CONTINUE READING: Human Interaction & Picture Books vs. Waterford Upstart’s Preschool Phonics Online Video

CURMUDGUCATION: Whom Do We Trust

CURMUDGUCATION: Whom Do We Trust

Whom Do We Trust

One of the unending underlying challenges in education is that parents and taxpayers have to trust somebody.

Back In The Day, the default was to trust teachers and administrators. That would be back when the default was to trust authority figures as a whole-- but that pendulum has swung far in the other direction (on behalf of all the Boomers, let me just say, "You're welcome"). Heck, even within the more recent past of my own career, a shift has been visible. In my first job (1979-1980) parent-teacher-student conferences often involved a parent absolutely taking my side, even though they didn't know me from a hole in the ground.

The erosion of trust has been widespread and has resulted from a variety of causes, and many of them have been--and continue to be--legit. Some of it is not an actual erosion at all, but simply finally hearing the voices of people who have never had a reason to trust authority. And some of it is the result of baloney, the kind of thing we see when someone explains that a youtube video deserves far more trust than an actual trained medical doctor. And some of it is the result of deliberate attempts to break down trust.

Education has been hit by a trust problem that really kicked off in 1983 with A Nation At Risk, a work which had as its singular purpose to deliver the message that public education, and the people who work in it, cannot be trusted. "Those folks," it said none-too-subtly, "are no more trustworthy than a hostile foreign power."

For thirty-six years, that drumbeat continued. Teach for America launched with the premise that teachers and the programs that produce them cannot be trusted. Common Core was sold as an CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Whom Do We Trust

Governor’s team jumps into fray over contested charter school bill | EdSource

Governor’s team jumps into fray over contested charter school bill | EdSource

Governor's team jumps into fray over contested charter school bill
Amendments to AB 1505 moderate restrictions on charter school growth

After weeks of negotiation, Gov. Gavin Newsom has stepped in to scale back proposed legislation that charter school advocates feared would radically slow charter growth.

Newsom’s office submitted amendments to Assembly Bill 1505 after numerous discussions between his advisers and representatives of charters schools, organized labor and the bill’s author, Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

O’Donnell received the changes on Friday and inserted them into the bill to keep it alive. It will go before the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday in what could be a contentious hearing over the administration’s suggested compromises. Intense discussions are expected to continue, with the intention of passing  a bill this fall that all involved say has many moving parts. No one contacted for this story would comment on the record, citing the sensitivity of the negotiations.

The changes reflect Newsom’s determination to de-escalate tensions around charter school growth and find common ground on reforms. Newsom chose to intervene in a bitter fight between the California Charter Schools Association and the California Teachers Association over a bill that has gained national notice as a bellwether of the charter school movement. Earlier this year, at his urging, the Legislature expedited passage of a bill to require more transparency in charter school operations.

As originally proposed, AB 1505 would have given school districts broad authority to reject a charter school’s application and renewal after considering the financial impact CONTINUE READING: Governor’s team jumps into fray over contested charter school bill | EdSource

Where the 2020 Democrats Stand on Busing - The Atlantic

Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and the Debate Over Busing - The Atlantic

Where the 2020 Democrats Stand on Busing
Many of the presidential hopefuls agree that school segregation is a significant problem, but not all of them want the federal government to step in.

In the two weeks since Senator Kamala Harris of California delivered a pointed attack on former Vice President Joe Biden over his past criticism of federally mandated school busing, it’s become clear that the two Democratic candidates don’t differ all that much in their views: They both support voluntary busing, but seem hesitant to endorse it as a federal mandate.

But there are at least 10 2020 Democratic candidates who do support federally mandated busing as a means of desegregating America’s schools. “If localities are not taking action to desegregate schools, Elizabeth believes the federal government has a constitutional obligation to step in to deliver on the promise of Brown v. Board, including, if necessary, busing,” a spokesperson for Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told The Atlantic. A spokesperson for Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sabrina Singh, echoed the sentiment. “At a time of increasing segregation of schools, we should consider every tool at our disposal—including busing—to support desegregation and ensure equal opportunity for all kids,” she said.

Nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of busing—and 65 years after the court ordered schools desegregated—the debate over the practice, and the use of federal muscle to hasten desegregation of public schools more broadly, has again grabbed national attention. With school segregation worsening over the past several decades, presidential candidates CONTINUE READING: Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and the Debate Over Busing - The Atlantic

The Legacy Of Busing And School Desegregation - 1A

The Legacy Of Busing And School Desegregation - 1A

The Legacy Of Busing And School Desegregation

Sen. Kamala Harris told the nation a story two weeks ago.

Here is what she said.

And I will say also that — that, in this campaign, we have also heard — and I’m going to now direct this at Vice President Biden, I do not believe you are a racist, and I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground.

But I also believe, and it’s personal — and I was actually very — it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing.

And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.

So I will tell you that, on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. We have to act swiftly.

On the debate stage in Miami, Biden called Harris’ remarks a “complete mischaracterization” of his position.

But Harris’ story catalyzed a national conversation about what school integration means and how to achieve it in 2019, when “millions of black and Latino children” experience the “the consequences of racial and economic segregation,” according to The Los Angeles Times.

Could some form of busing work today? Or is the problem of school CONTINUE READING: The Legacy Of Busing And School Desegregation - 1A

Why America lost so many of its black teachers - Civil rights and wrongs

Why America lost so many of its black teachers - Civil rights and wrongs

Why America lost so many of its black teachers
Before 1964 nearly half of college-educated African-Americans in the South were teachers

JULY MARKS the 55th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin. It also enforced desegregation of the government-run school system nationwide, largely ending the practice of educational apartheid. But while desegregation transformed America's education system, the way it was implemented by discriminatory school boards in the South was harmful to black teachers. A new paper by Owen Thompson, an economist at Williams College, shows there was a dramatic decline in the employment of African-American teachers in the aftermath of desegregation. The policies behind that decline have contributed to lower employment for African-American educators in the decades since.

In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown v Board of Educationthat “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” Ten years later, less than 5% of black children in the Southern states of the former Confederacy were attending school with whites. The Civil Rights Act, which among other enforcement mechanisms tied federal education funding to school integration, dramatically changed that: by 1970, more than 90% of black children attended schools that also taught white children.

For African-American students, the impact of desegregation was overwhelmingly positive. It was one reason why the gap between test scores of black and white students born in 1954 and those born 30 years later declined by nearly 40%, according to research by Eric Hanushek and colleagues at Stanford University.

For African-American teachers, it was a different story. Before the Civil Rights Act, Southern black schools were staffed almost exclusively by black teachers. Nearly half of African-Americans with a post-secondary CONTINUE READING: Why America lost so many of its black teachers - Civil rights and wrongs

Elementary-School Curriculum Is All Wrong - The Atlantic

Elementary-School Curriculum Is All Wrong - The Atlantic

Elementary Education Has Gone Terribly Wrong
In the early grades, U.S. schools value reading-comprehension skills over knowledge. The results are devastating, especially for poor kids.

t first glance, the classroom I was visiting at a high-poverty school in Washington, D.C., seemed like a model of industriousness. The teacher sat at a desk in the corner, going over student work, while the first graders quietly filled out a worksheet intended to develop their reading skills.

As I looked around, I noticed a small girl drawing on a piece of paper. Ten minutes later, she had sketched a string of human figures, and was busy coloring them yellow.

I knelt next to her and asked, “What are you drawing?”

“Clowns,” she answered confidently.

“Why are you drawing clowns?”

“Because it says right here, ‘Draw clowns,’ ” she explained.

Running down the left side of the worksheet was a list of reading-comprehension skills: finding the main idea, making inferences, making predictions. The girl was pointing to the phrase draw conclusions. She was supposed to be making inferences and drawing conclusions about a dense article describing Brazil, which was lying facedown on her desk. But she was unaware that the text was there until I turned it over. More to the point, she had never heard of Brazil and was unable to read the word.

That girl’s assignment was merely one example, albeit an egregious one, of a standard pedagogical approach. American elementary education has been shaped by a theory that goes like this: Reading—a term used to mean not just matching letters to sounds but also comprehension—can be taught in a manner completely disconnected from content. Use simple texts to teach children how to find the main idea, make inferences, draw conclusions, and so on, and eventually they’ll be able to apply those skills to grasp the meaning of anything CONTINUE READING: Elementary-School Curriculum Is All Wrong - The Atlantic

Bernie Should Oppose Nonprofit Charter Schools, Too

Bernie Should Oppose Nonprofit Charter Schools, Too

Bernie Should Oppose Nonprofit Charter Schools, Too

MATHILDE LIND GUSTAVUSSEN

By calling for a ban on for-profit charter schools, Bernie Sanders has gone further than any other candidate to confront the privatization of our schools. But we can’t fully defend public schools if we let nonprofit charters off the hook.

As the Democratic Party gears up for the 2020 election, Bernie Sanders has pushed the primary to focus on ambitious, progressive policy proposals: universal health care, the Green New Deal, debt-free college, a millionaire’s tax, and more. Conspicuously absent from the conversation, however, has been the issue of K-12 public education. Apart from Kamala Harris’s promise to increase teacher pay and Bernie Sanders’s recent proposal to ban for-profit charter schools and pause funding of new nonprofit charters awaiting an accountability review, Democrats have shied away from formulating substantive K-12 education policies.

Sanders’s K-12 proposal is the most in line with the mood among educators. Pushback to charter schools is growing, and teacher-led protests and student walkouts are spreading across the country. A central demand of the Los Angeles teachers’ strike in January of 2019, for example, was to impose a cap on charter schools. Many of their other demands addressed the wide-ranging consequences of neoliberal education reform: collective bargaining rights, a salary increase, a cap on class sizes, less standardized testing, and improved social services at the city’s public schools. Yet the strike also revealed how Democratic candidates have avoided formulating a substantive position on charter schools. While many of the candidates expressed support for Los Angeles teachers during the week-long strike, none of them acknowledged the anti-charter stance underlying the teachers’ demands.

Until Sanders’s recent announcement, no national figure on the American left had taken a stand against education privatization, even as presidential candidates are vying to be seen as the most “progressive.”

Yet by limiting his critique to for-profit charter schools, Sanders’s policy fails to get to the root of the issue. The mere existence of publicly funded, privately administered charter schools — be they nonprofit or for-profit — is incompatible with the idea of a healthy public education system and with education equity. To remedy the sustained damage caused by decades of charter-school reform, the Left needs to CONTINUE READING: Bernie Should Oppose Nonprofit Charter Schools, Too

Education Sec. Betsy DeVos hindering Obama-era law meant to help disabled minority students - theGrio

Education Sec. Betsy DeVos hindering Obama-era law meant to help disabled minority students - theGrio

Education Sec. Betsy DeVos hindering Obama-era law meant to help disabled minority students
The Trump cabinet member wants to stall laws passed years ago to benefit nonwhite special education students, a group which Blacks have a 40 percent higher chance of being a part of

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has reportedly been trying to block the implementation of an Obama-era law designed to help disabled minority students, for well over a year now.

According to Raw Story, despite repeated efforts by supporters to force her compliance, DeVos and her team have made several attempts to stall the implementation of federal regulations created by the Obama Administration to effectively address the racial disparities that appear in special education.

READ MORE: Betsy DeVos sorry for not condemning racism when talking HBCUs

When those regulations were established under the 2016 Equity in IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Act), states were given until July 2018 to comply, which would mean having an active standardized program in place for monitoring how districts both identified and served minority students living with disabilities.

But just two days short of the deadline, at a time when states should have been gearing up to address the glaring disparities in how Black children with disabilities are treated, DeVos pulled the plug on the endeavor entirely, citing that she had concerns that the methodology could incentivize the use of racial quotas.

This comes months after the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, Inc., wrote a letter to DeVos pleading with her not to stop the process writing, “NASDSE does not believe that addressing equity should ever be put on hold.”

According to a report by Department of Education’s 2016 annual report to Congress on the CONTINUE READING: Education Sec. Betsy DeVos hindering Obama-era law meant to help disabled minority students - theGrio

Parent Teacher Associations: how they can harm democracy - Vox

Parent Teacher Associations: how they can harm democracy - Vox

How can it be wrong to give to your kid’s school?
A school district tried to share rich parents’ donations with poor schools. You will believe what happened next.

The word “philanthropy” conjures up images of big-time donors like Bill Gates or George Soros, hanging out at Davos and announcing sweeping plans to cure disease or save democracy.

But philanthropy isn’t just about the superrich. It’s also about small-dollar donors like you and me. And there’s no better place to see that than in philanthropy-funded nonprofits that most parents should be familiar with: parent-teacher associations.

PTAs are parent-run organizations at the school level organized to get parents and families more involved in their children’s education, and they’re usually funded by contributions from the parents.

Donating to support your kid’s school seems like a great thing to do — and it is! But as we explore on the season finale of the Future Perfect podcast, it’s also a political act that can profoundly affect other families, and your broader community.

Because PTAs are funded by philanthropy, not taxes, their resources can vary dramatically from district to district and school to school, with wealthy students benefiting the most. That can be disturbing when PTAs are tasked with paying the salaries of science and art teachers, and funding key infrastructure like science labs, as happens in some districts.

To think more clearly about the effect of PTAs — and specifically mega-rich PTAs in wealthy school districts — we talked to New York Times education reporter Dana Goldstein about a recent fight in the Malibu-Santa Monica school district, just outside LA. For a few years, the district tried to remedy inequalities between poor Santa Monica schools and uber-wealthy Malibu schools by pooling PTA donations and divvying them up evenly to all schools.

That system isn’t in place anymore — and in the episode, we dive into the revolt of wealthy parents that killed it.

Read more

• Dana Goldstein on the Malibu-Santa Monica PTA wars
• The harm done by parents who hoard donations
• Rob Reich on the damage to democracy done by superrich PTAs
• A Center for American Progress report on PTA donations in rich schools based on tax records
• A counterargument that private PTA donations aren’t that important compared to government spending

Parent Teacher Associations: how they can harm democracy - Vox

Federal Authorities Arrest Former Secretary of Education and Former Director of Health Insurance Administration | Politics | theweeklyjournal.com

Federal Authorities Arrest Former Secretary of Education and Former Director of Health Insurance Administration | Politics | theweeklyjournal.com

Federal Authorities Arrest Former Secretary of Education and Former Director of Health Insurance Administration

Former executive director of the Puerto Rico Health Insurance Administration (ASES, by its Spanish acronym), Angela Ávila Marrero, has been arrested today.

Also, Fernando Scherrer, CEO of BDO, an accounting firm with government contracts, has been arrested this morning along Alberto Velázquez Piñol, a BDO contractor and former Puerto Rico Secretary of Health, Rafael Rodríguez advisor.

EL VOCERO sources said also that former secretary of Education, Julia Keleher has been arrested today in Washington, DC.

The people arrested in Puerto Rico will be brought to the initial hearing before federal magistrate Bruce Magiverin. At 11:00 a.m. the federal authorities will hold a press conference.

Luis Rivera-Santana, FBI spokesperson, confirmed that U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and U.S Department of Education Office Inspector General agents deliver the arrest warrants.

Amid a string of federal investigations involving high-ranking officials, Ávila Marrero resigned from her duties on June 25.

The resignation was issued at a time when both ASES and the Department of Health are rumored to be implied in the FBI’s investigations regarding contract irregularities and probable offenses.

Ávila Marrero had been interviewed by federal authorities.

Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, who is on vacation with his family outside the island, said in a written statement this morning:

"Maintaining the trust of the people in the government institutions is a constant challenge that we all have in the public service.

That trust is lamented when public or related officials are accused of corruption offenses.

As a society we must reject all behavior outside the law, be it in the public service, in the private sector, or in any activity.

As governor, I assume the responsibility and commitment to fight that evil in all CONTINUE READING: Federal Authorities Arrest Former Secretary of Education and Former Director of Health Insurance Administration | Politics | theweeklyjournal.com

Louisiana Educator: Part II: Lessons from Primitive Childhood Education

Louisiana Educator: Part II: Lessons from Primitive Childhood Education

Part II: Lessons from Primitive Childhood Education

Anthropologists and geneticists have discovered that all children are born with a powerful love of learning and genetic instincts that prod them to learn how to live successfully in their environment. But we modern humans with our latest education reforms seem to be determined to kill the joy of learning in our children.

  Scientists studied several primitive hunter-gatherer societies where people were organized in small tribes. They found that in all cases children were eager to explore and learn about their environments. Children seemed to learn effortlessly with little fussing or organized instruction by adults. On their own, through play and imitation, children rapidly picked up the tribal language, knowledge of plants, and animals, use of tools and weapons and survival skills which are vital to success of the tribe. The harsh primitive environment of hunter-gatherers require humans to absorb huge volumes of information and skills and to apply amazing creativity and adaptability to survive. Modern humans could learn a lot from primitive peoples about how to educate children to lead happy, successful lives in our society.

According to this study report: "It would be a mistake to assume that because hunter-gatherer cultures were “simpler” than modern cultures, children had less to learn. The hunting-and-gathering way of life was highly knowledge-intensive and skill-intensive, and because of the absence of occupational specialization, each child had to acquire the whole culture, or at least that part of it appropriate to his or her gender."

If you want to get a glimpse of how difficult it is to survive in the CONTINUE READING: Louisiana Educator: Part II: Lessons from Primitive Childhood Education

With Tony Evers’ New Budget, Wisconsin Begins Long Journey to Shed Scott Walker’s Legacy | janresseger

With Tony Evers’ New Budget, Wisconsin Begins Long Journey to Shed Scott Walker’s Legacy | janresseger

With Tony Evers’ New Budget, Wisconsin Begins Long Journey to Shed Scott Walker’s Legacy

In Gordon Lafer’s 2017 book, The One Percent Solution, in the first chapter entitled  “Wisconsin and Beyond: Dismantling the Government,” Lafer makes Wisconsin the emblem of what happened in the 2010 election, as corporate lobbies, the Tea Party, and the collapse of state revenue following the Great Recession converged to fuel a Red-state wave that took over state governments:

“Critically, this new territory included a string of states, running across the upper Midwest from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, that had traditionally constituted labor strongholds… Starting in 2011, the country has witnessed an unprecedented wave of legislation aimed at eliminating public employee unions, or, where they remain, strictly limiting their right to bargain.  At the same time, the overall size of government has been significantly reduced in both union and nonunion jurisdictions. The number of public jobs eliminated in 2011 was the highest ever recorded, and budgets for essential public services were dramatically scaled back in dozens of states.  All of this—deunionization, sharp cuts in public employee compensation and the dramatic rollback of public services—was forcefully championed by the corporate lobbies, who made shrinking the public sector a top policy priority in state after state.”  (The One Percent Solution, pp. 44-45)

In his fine book, Lafer describes a wave of tax cuts that followed the 2010 election, plus anti-teachers’ union battles and efforts to expand school privatization through enabling charter schools or adding state voucher (and neo-voucher tuition tax credits or education savings accounts).  Lafer points to public schools as one of the institutions targeted by the corporate reformers from state to state:  “At first glance, it may seem odd that corporate lobbies such as the Chamber of Commerce… or Americans for Prosperity would care to get involved in an CONTINUE READING: With Tony Evers’ New Budget, Wisconsin Begins Long Journey to Shed Scott Walker’s Legacy | janresseger

LAUSD Presents A “School Performance Framework” To Parents, While Failing To Notify Any About It – redqueeninla

LAUSD Presents A “School Performance Framework” To Parents, While Failing To Notify Any About It – redqueeninla

LAUSD Presents A “School Performance Framework” To Parents, While Failing To Notify Any About It

Two Aprils ago the District resolved to “Establish A Framework For Continuous Improvement” of its diverse complex of approximately one thousand schools, including traditional, charter, special education, special programming, etc.

The idea was to ‘identify and track a uniform set of measures for each school’s overall annual performance, that would enable district and parents alike to understand and evaluate school performance’.

A little off schedule (about nine months late), two trios of Educational consultants converged from Washington, DC (“Collaborative Commnications”) and Madison, WI (“Education Analytics”) to present some trial dashboard-like screens of the new School Performance Framework (SPF) to a collection of parents assembled during four daytime sessions, still ongoing this week (click here to attend).

The trouble is that at least for Tuesday’s session, fewer than a dozen parents were present, and the preponderance of these had heard of the meeting through “word-of-mouth”, via a shallow pool of friends and acquaintances demographically similar essentially by definition; not directly by invitation or message from the District. Questioned by a parent about outreach sharply, a District official explained that only parents already engaged with elite, District-level councils were notified during this holiday period, and the meetings were not advertised or managed even on LAUSD’s website. The demographic represented directly CONTINUE READING: LAUSD Presents A “School Performance Framework” To Parents, While Failing To Notify Any About It – redqueeninla

Can Education and Social Policy Lift de Blasio to the White House? | Ed In The Apple

Can Education and Social Policy Lift de Blasio to the White House? | Ed In The Apple

Can Education and Social Policy Lift de Blasio to the White House?

When Mayor de Blasio announced his candidacy for the presidency it was greeted with derision and laughter. How could a mayor who was no longer popular in his own city even think of a run for the highest office in the land?

Michelle Goldberg, in the New York Times (“Stop Sneering at Bill de Blasio”) reminded us that de Blasio’s mayoralty has been pretty impressive.

Conventional wisdom holds that de Blasio is a joke, a sanctimonious dork held in widespread contempt by the city he governs. New York’s tabloids despise him. His presidential bid has been greeted with a combination of sneering, eye-rolling and baffled pity.

I’m as confused as everyone else about why de Blasio is running for president. But the mockery greeting his every move obscures what a successful mayor he’s been, particularly for working- and middle-class families.

De Blasio’s election in 2013 was a surprise; he won a four-way primary in which he was a long shot with 40% of the vote, way ahead of the favorite, Billy Thompson, an Afro-American candidate who served two terms as Comptroller.

Under the five years of de Blasio leadership the city continues to thrive. He CONTINUE READING:Can Education and Social Policy Lift de Blasio to the White House? | Ed In The Apple