Latest News and Comment from Education

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

A battle over California charter schools ends — for now — with a deal in Sacramento - Los Angeles Times

A battle over California charter schools ends — for now — with a deal in Sacramento - Los Angeles Times

A battle over California charter schools ends — for now — with a deal in Sacramento 


Warring factions of California’s K-12 education system have reached
an agreement on legislation that would place new restrictions on charter schools and pause a long-standing battle at the state Capitol between politically powerful teachers unions and deep-pocketed charter advocates.
The deal, announced Wednesday,
gives public school districts more authority to reject petitions for new charter campuses, phases in stricter credentialing requirements for charter school teachers and places a two-year moratorium on new virtual charter schools. The accord marks a rare compromise between groups that
have poured millions into local and statewide campaigns to gain leverage in a fight over public education dollars.
Aides to Gov. Gavin Newsom held separate meetings with each side and acted as an intermediary in intense negotiations over Assembly Bill 1505 that they said began in late spring. The governor, who was publicly optimistic about striking an agreement ahead of a looming legislative deadline, said talks continued throughout the weekend and late into the night this week.
“A lot of hard work has gone into this,
and all that matters to me is the result,” Newsom told reporters Tuesday. “If we can pull something off, it’s a significant thing and it’s not easy. A lot of people have strong opinions on both sides.”
The agreement could allow the Newsom administration to move past a complex political issue that has splintered the Capitol and threatened to dominate the education policy debate during his tenure.
Newsom’s office said the bill, the biggest revision of state charter school
law in more than 25 years, settles critical points of contention between charters and traditional public schools and lays a foundation for the groups to work together on efforts that are in the best interest of children. Some education advocates are hopeful that charter backers and teachers unions will team up on 2020 ballot measures to increase school funding, instead of fighting over reform.
Charter schools in California are publicly funded and independently operated. Originally authorized in 1992 legislation to promote educational innovation, charter schools have evolved from an experiment to a system that enrolls more than 600,000 students across the state. California ties education funding to enrollment,
and charters have often been pitted against traditional neighborhood schools in a competition for students.
Teachers unions and reform advocates have accused charter schools of draining the financial resources of local districts that might already be strapped and have
argued that the state gives districts little say when it comes to approving new schools. Critics have also called for more accountability for charter operations and performance.
State law currently requires a school district to approve any new charters that meet basic requirements. Charter school proponents can appeal denials to a county board of education and then the State Board of Education, an entity whose members are appointed by the governor and tended to side with new charters under former Gov. Jerry Brown.
The new agreement provides some notable wins to teachers unions, which
negotiated the deal with a labor coalition that included the California Teachers Assn., California Federation of Teachers, California Labor Federation and California School Employees Assn.
“After months of honest and difficult conversations, we have made significant progress on behalf of our students,” the labor coalition said in a statement. “We believe the measure California lawmakers will vote on will lead to a more equitable learning environment for students in California’s neighborhood public schools.”
Under the bill, local school boards would be allowed to reject new charter petitions based on the school’s potential fiscal effects
on the district and whether the charter seeks to offer programs that the district already provides, according to the governor’s office.
The deal would require all new charter school teachers to hold the same credentials as traditional public schools next year and phase in requirements for existing teachers over five years, the governor’s office said.
The proposal would also eliminate the state board’s role as a chartering authority, allowing it only to weigh appeals to determine whether
a school district abused its discretion in denying the petition.
Under existing law, the agency that grants a petition allowing a charter to operate is often responsible for providing oversight of that school regardless of where its campus is located — the Board of Education in Sacramento has, in some instances, overseen charter schools as far away as Los Angeles and San Diego.
Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell (D-Long Beach), a former high school teacher who introduced Assembly Bill 1505 this year, criticized the system in a July hearing. CONTINUE READING: A battle over California charter schools ends — for now — with a deal in Sacramento - Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles: Controversial Charter Leader Takes Over Low-Performing “Learn4Life” Centers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles: Controversial Charter Leader Takes Over Low-Performing “Learn4Life” Centers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles: Controversial Charter Leader Takes Over Low-Performing “Learn4Life” Centers

Caprice Young is a star of the charter industry in California. She was a member and president of the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District. She was founder of the California Charter Schools Association, the well-heeled lobbyists for the private charter sector, which fights off accountability and transparency with the help of billionaires like Reed Hastings and Eli Broad. She is a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Academy. She led an embattled chain of Gulen charter schools in Los Angeles called Magnolia.
The press release from Learn4Life says the chain enrolls 20,000 students in California, Ohio, and Michigan, but the Broad Center says it enrolls 40,000, in those states.
The Learn4Life charter schools are basically operated in malls and storefronts. Students drop in once a week to pick up their assignments. The schools collect huge sums from the state for low-quality “education,” if you can call it “education.”
Investigative reporter Will Huntsberry of the Voice of San CONTINUE READING: Los Angeles: Controversial Charter Leader Takes Over Low-Performing “Learn4Life” Centers | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Poorer Districts Worst Hit By Cyber Schools

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Poorer Districts Worst Hit By Cyber Schools

PA: Poorer Districts Worst Hit By Cyber Schools

A study released in February shows that poorer school districts are bearing the brunt of funding Pennsylvania's cyber schools. The study was published in the American Journal of Education, and you can tell it's serious because its title is painfully dull: Cyber Charter Schools and Growing Resource Inequality among Public Districts: Geospatial Patterns and Consequences of a Statewide Choice Policy in Pennsylvania, 2002–2014.

Bryan Mann (University of Alabama) is a professor of education policy and foundations, and co-author David Baker (Penn State) is a professor of sociology, education and demographics. As the title suggests, they looked at the changes in cyber enrollment and the patterns and financial costs of that enrollment from 2002 to 2014. And because it's behind an academic paywall, we'll have to depend on second-hand reporting of the results, as well as their own writing about it..

The abstract of the study, translated from heavy academese, boils down to this:



When cyberschools started, everyone said, "Cool! Computers! I bet that'll make kids damned smart!" But then it turned out that cyber schools don't actually school well at all, and as word got out in the media, upscale communities ditched it, while enrollment in poorer areas kept up. So now districts with low tax bases are losing "significant revenue" to the cybers, despite the "dubious academic benefits."

From the anecdotal perspective of someone who taught in a less-wealthy rural-ish district, that sounds about right.

There are several other takeaways from the CONTINUE READING: 
CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Poorer Districts Worst Hit By Cyber Schools


John Thompson Reviews an Important New Book About Privatization of Public Services | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson Reviews an Important New Book About Privatization of Public Services | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson Reviews an Important New Book About Privatization of Public Services

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, reviews an important new book.
Lawrence Baines’ Privatization of America’s Public Institutions: The Story of the American Sellout combines analyses of assaults on four public sectors, the military, corrections departments, public schools, and higher education, to reveal the immense scale of privatization and its dangers. Dr. Baines, the Associate Dean of Education at the University of Oklahoma, shows that “Privatization is no longer an occasional strategy to help improve efficiency of a particular public service.” It “has become an automatic response to any perceived governmental inefficiency.” Baines carefully documents the ways that “Privatization is changing the nature of America’s public institutions and consequently, the character of the country.”


The first chapter, “Privatizing the Military: Profiting from the Carnage of War,” foreshadows a frightening pattern that explains why I, for one, was slow to see the full nature of the threat. It starts in 2007 with the killing of 17 persons in Baghdad by mercenaries employed by Erik Prince’s Blackwater. The people I know were horrified by that and other behavior of contract fighters when Dick Chaney, formerly of Halliburton, was Vice President. I had no idea, however, that by 2015, private contractors in the CONTINUE READING: John Thompson Reviews an Important New Book About Privatization of Public Services | Diane Ravitch's blog

U.S. to states: School lunch changes none of your business - Reuters

U.S. to states: School lunch changes none of your business - Reuters

U.S. to states: School lunch changes none of your business


NEW YORK (Reuters) - As schools begin reopening their doors to children nationwide, the U.S. government has told a federal judge that states have no power to sue over new rules they say make school meals less healthy.


In a Monday night court filing, the government said New York, five other states and Washington, D.C., could not sue based on speculation that changes to the federally funded National School Lunch Program could cause health problems for children and require more spending on treatment.
The government also said the states lacked power to sue under a doctrine known as “parens patriae,” Latin for “parent of the nation,” because it allegedly would not protect children from harm.
“This rule recognizes that a state has no legal interest in protecting its citizens from the federal government, and that only the United States, not the states, may represent its citizens and ensure their protection under federal law in federal matters,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman in Manhattan said in a filing in the federal court there.
The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the state coalition, did not immediately respond on Tuesday to requests for comment.
New York, California, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont and the District of Columbia sued Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on April 3 over changes in the school lunch program, which feeds more than 30 million, mostly lower-income CONTINUE READING: U.S. to states: School lunch changes none of your business - Reuters

Chartered: Florida's First Private Takeover Of A Public School System

Chartered: Florida's First Private Takeover Of A Public School System

Chartered: Florida's First Private Takeover Of A Public School System

Florida’s first all-charter school district was engineered by unelected state bureaucrats at then-Gov. Rick Scott’s Department of Education, funded by the state Legislature and carried out by a charter school network based in South Florida, nearly 500 miles away.
This “experiment” in rural Jefferson County has been transformational for many students but disastrous for a few. And it’s already changing education in Florida forever.

Listen to the documentary



Parents' Concern About School Safety Remains Elevated

Parents' Concern About School Safety Remains Elevated

Parents' Concern About School Safety Remains Elevated

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • Parental fear same now as after Newtown and Parkland school shootings
  • 12% of parents say child has expressed worry about safety at school
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As summer winds down and children from kindergarten through high school head back to school, 34% of parents remain fearful for their safety. At the same time, fewer (12%) report that their school-aged children have expressed concern about feeling unsafe at school.
The current level of parental worry is similar to last August's 35% reading, which was taken about six months after 17 students and staff members were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It is also on par with the 33% of parents who were concerned about their children's safety at school in August 2013, roughly eight months after 26 students and staff members were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
The latest readings are from an Aug. 1-14 Gallup poll, with interviewing spanning two non-school-related mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, which together claimed the lives of 31 people in one weekend. Although Gallup's question about school safety does not refer specifically to gun violence, parents' fear has spiked in the past after high-profile mass shootings, indicating they do have these kinds of threats in mind when answering the question.
The highest level of parental fear, 55%, was recorded in April 1999, one day after 13 people were killed at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. By the time parents were sending their children back to school that year, fear had dipped, but only slightly, to 47%, the highest August figure in Gallup's trend. By August 2000, it had dropped to 26%.
Parental fear for their children's safety in school fluctuated over the next two decades but rose in the immediate aftermath of the school shootings at Santana High School in Santee, California, in 2001 and at an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in 2006. The lowest August reading is 15% in 2008.
This pattern of heightened levels of concern after such an event occurs, followed by a gradual decline as it fades from memory, is common in Gallup trends. Thus, it is not clear if the stability between the 2018 and 2019 readings reflects sustained concern from the CONTINUE READING: Parents' Concern About School Safety Remains Elevated

Is NCLB’s Reading First Making a Comeback?

Is NCLB’s Reading First Making a Comeback?

Is NCLB’s Reading First Making a Comeback?

Reading First was President George W. Bush’s signature reading program, the cornerstone of No Child Left Behind. With a $6 billion price tag (a billion per year for six years), it promised “scientific proof” it would have every child reading by third grade. States had to apply for federal grants. Reading First centered around phonics.
When the President spoke at a Leadership Forum in Jacksonville, Florida on September 10, 2001, a day before the worst attack on America’s soil, he said, One of the unfortunate aspects that we find in many States is that there are great teachers who have got wonderful hearts who don’t know how to teach reading, that don’t know the science of reading. He was introducing Reading First.
That was almost twenty years ago. Several reporters are once again criticizing teachers and their education schools for not teaching teachers to teach reading the “right” way, with scientific proof. Their arguments are eerily reminiscent of Reading First.
That’s not to say education schools shouldn’t reexamine their programs. But it’s disconcerting to repeatedly read criticism focusing solely on teachers and how they teach reading. There’s a teacher shortage and parents also complain that more students face screens with unproven reading programs like iReady.
Natalie Wexler, a writer who reports in Forbes and has an education book out, just CONTINUE READING: Is NCLB’s Reading First Making a Comeback?

Celebrating the first day of school with community traditions

Celebrating the first day of school with community traditions

Grooming traditions for back to school
Getting your kid's hair cut? Pay it forward
Earlier this month, New Orleans barber Brandus Mercadel, who goes by Fatt da Barber, set out to break the Guinness World Record for “Most free back-to-school haircuts.” Mercadel aimed for 200 cuts over the course of two days, starting August 3. Not surprisingly, families showed up en masse for a planned 8 a.m. start in Culture Park, in nearby Gentilly, and the cuts continued the next day at his shop, in adjacent Treme.
Thank goodness for people like Mercadel, who refuse to allow conformity, practicality and efficiency to suck away the enthusiasm for the first day of school. Because many public-school leaders have control issues, dull uniforms have proliferated in the school landscape, taking away opportunities for students to express themselves through their appearance. Parents acquiesce, saying uniforms are more affordable and it gives parents one less thing to juggle in their busy schedules. But utilitarian tennis shoes, starched khakis, clip-on ties and pleated skirts don’t represent new beginnings so much as they signify compliance. Consequently, the first day of school is becoming just another day we have to work to get through — far from the sacred day it represents to many.


Notwithstanding those restrictive schools that immorally criminalize black hairstyles, hair is one of the few remaining frontiers for personal expression.
“In New Orleans, you have to have a fresh haircut,” Mercadel told the Times-Picayune. “Even if your clothes or sneakers are bummy, people can be blinded by a fresh haircut. All they will see is the fresh cut.”
If there is ever a day that students should look fresh, it’s the first day of school. That’s not a call for clean-shaven, pull-your-pants-up respectability. It is a call for us to continue the tradition of treating CONTINUE READING: Celebrating the first day of school with community traditions

Who Should Get Priority Enrollment in Oakland Schools? OUSD Weighs Details of Policy Shift | KQED News

Who Should Get Priority Enrollment in Oakland Schools? OUSD Weighs Details of Policy Shift | KQED News

Who Should Get Priority Enrollment in Oakland Schools? OUSD Weighs Details of Policy Shift

The Oakland Unified School District's radical plan to downsize by closing and merging schools includes a key component to making sure displaced students end up in better schools. It's a policy change that could result in diversifying some of the city's most in-demand schools. But details of the so-called opportunity ticket have yet to be hammered out.
The opportunity ticket is the brainchild of The Oakland REACH, a parent group committed to getting underserved communities into high-quality schools, and was approved by the OUSD Board of Education last March.
District enrollment currently gives priority to siblings entering a school and then to children of families that live in the school's neighborhood. The opportunity ticket would change that, allowing displaced students from schools that are geographically relocated to get priority enrollment.
An advisory group, including parents, met with OUSD Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell last week to recommend a fair way to implement the policy.
"The data’s very clear. Kids do better after a closure only if they go to a better school," said Katherine Lee, parent of a first-grader at Henry J. Kaiser Jr. Elementary School and a parent in the advisory group.
"We’ve heard the district say a lot, ‘We need to start doing things differently.’ Well closures and mergers aren’t different, but this opportunity ticket is different. It’s the one different thing that they are doing when it comes to how they are implementing these."
Historically, school closures have hit schools harder that have a majority of black and brown students. That's why The Oakland REACH came up with the opportunity ticket idea, along with Dirk Tillotson of the State of Black Education Oakland, said group co-founder and executive director Lakisha Young.
"The intent behind the policy has always been clear," Young said. "It’s to provide a new chance for folks who have been disadvantaged in the system."
The new enrollment policy has the potential to integrate some of the city's top schools by race CONTINUE READING: Who Should Get Priority Enrollment in Oakland Schools? OUSD Weighs Details of Policy Shift | KQED News

Racist Image Of Doctored Rio Americano High School Website Sparks FBI, Sacramento Sheriff Investigation - capradio.org

Racist Image Of Doctored Rio Americano High School Website Sparks FBI, Sacramento Sheriff Investigation - capradio.org

Racist Image Of Doctored Rio Americano High School Website Sparks FBI, Sacramento Sheriff Investigation

The FBI and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department are investigating a fake image of a racist post on the Rio American High School website, which was sent via phone to some students last week.
A screenshot of the altered Rio Americano web page was shared last Wednesday and included a post that with the headline “District-Wide High School No Black People Policy.” It also claimed members of the Klu Klux Klan would be patrolling the school.

Levias Taylor's son is a student at Rio Americano. He brought the fake post to her attention after it was forwarded to him by a friend.
"Completely infuriating, upsetting, hurtful,” she said of the post. “A lot of emotions just kind of ran through my mind at that particular point being that I have two black students that attend the school.”
Taylor says her son has been called the N-word at the school in the past and that racism at the school needs to be addressed.
“They need to hear their students. They need to hear their stories,” she said. “Everybody is not comfortable talking about these issues. But they’re real. It’s not something we can keep sweeping under the rug.”
On Monday, students were greeted by school staff, including the principal, and were invited to CONTINUE READING: Racist Image Of Doctored Rio Americano High School Website Sparks FBI, Sacramento Sheriff Investigation - capradio.org

How Much of Your Formal Education Still Lives in You? | Teacher in a strange land

How Much of Your Formal Education Still Lives in You? | Teacher in a strange land

How Much of Your Formal Education Still Lives in You?


It was a Facebook post that started the conversation—a photo, taken at the Chicago Institute of the Arts by my good friend Kirk Taylor.  Kirk and I taught together for 25+ years, and he was my children’s 8th grade English teacher. The photograph features pointillist painter Georges-Pierre Seurat’s ‘A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,’ surrounded by viewers.
The post had been up less than a day, and already more than 30 of Taylor’s students—and a handful of parents and teaching colleagues– had commented, mostly things like: I love that painting! Sunday in the Park with George! Dot dot dot!
There were also heartfelt messages of thanks from these former students, now adults, for Mr. Taylor’s role in shaping their appreciation of art and music, opening doors to worlds they never considered, the impact he’s had on their lives and career choices. Taylor’s inspired, hand-crafted curriculum changed continuously over the years and included visits to the Detroit Institute of the Arts and the Holocaust Memorial Center as well as student publications, dramatic productions and media analysis.
Midway down the thread, Taylor wrote this: CONTINUE READING: How Much of Your Formal Education Still Lives in You? | Teacher in a strange land

Lou Dobbs' Guest Blames 'Black Culture' For Academic Achievement Gap | HuffPost

Lou Dobbs' Guest Blames 'Black Culture' For Academic Achievement Gap | HuffPost

Lou Dobbs’ Guest Blames ‘Black Culture’ For Academic Achievement Gap
Heather Mac Donald said it was up to “Black culture and the rest of culture” to close the academic achievement gap.

Conservative commentator Heather Mac Donald blames “Black culture” for the academic achievement gap, and says race and gender diversity goals are blunting the nation’s “competitive edge.”
The College Board announced on Tuesday that it was withdrawing plans to introduce an “adversity score” on test results, a measure intended to address inequality in college admissions for those from varying socioeconomic backgrounds.
“All of this tinkering with meritocratic admissions in colleges and throughout the economy, frankly, is all driven by one fact, which is the persistent academic achievement gap,” Mac Donald said during an appearance on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” Tuesday. 
“If Black culture or the rest of culture could close that gap, we would be back to a colorblind meritocratic system, but the College Board is trying to give colleges an excuse to continue to give preferences to under-prepared Black students, to catapult them into academic environments for which they are not prepared,” she added.
Watch Mac Donald’s segment on Fox Business below.
Lou Dobbs guest blames "black culture" for an academic achievement gap and says that colleges are giving preferential treatment to "underprepared black students"



Embedded video


CURMUDGUCATION: "Tired Of Being Treated Like Dirt" Teacher Morale In The 2019 PDK Poll

CURMUDGUCATION: "Tired Of Being Treated Like Dirt" Teacher Morale In The 2019 PDK Poll

"Tired Of Being Treated Like Dirt" Teacher Morale In The 2019 PDK Poll
Image result for Tired Of Being Treated Like Dirt
The title of the 2019 Phi Delta Kappa Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools of "Frustration in the Schools," and the focus in much of the coverage has been on the results about teacher morale.


75% of teachers say schools in their community are underfunded.
50% of teachers have considered leaving the profession.
48% of teachers feel less valued by the community. (10% say they are valued "a great deal.")
55% of teachers would not want their child to follow them into the profession.
The breakdown of the teachers who have seriously considered getting out cite reasons that are all inter-related.
Inadequate pay is the marquee reason, and notably regional. Public school teachers are far less likely to feel fairly paid in the South and Midwest. That reason is followed closely by stress and pressure, which is followed by a lack of respect. Lack of support. Teaching no longer enjoyable. Testing requirements. Workload.
These are tied together with the single thread of distrust and disrespect for teachers. This has been evident on the national stage with issues like installing a Secretary of Education who had previously dismissed public education as a "dead end" or a Secretary of Education who asserts that student failure is because of low teacher expectations. Education has also carried the modern burden of the thesis that poor education is the cause of poverty, or even CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: "Tired Of Being Treated Like Dirt" Teacher Morale In The 2019 PDK Poll
Image result for Tired Of Being Treated Like Dirt