Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda | Diane Ravitch's blog

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda | Diane Ravitch's blog

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda

Every year since 2014, Democrats who fervently support the privatization of public schools have gathered at a conference they pretentiously call “Camp Philos.”

https://campphilos.org/

Check the agenda of meetings present and past.

There you will see the lineup of Democrats who sneer at public schools and look on public school teachers with contempt.

These are the Democrats who support the DeVos agenda of disrupting and privatizing public schools.

They are meeting again this year, and they will slap each other on the back for supporting school closures, charter schools, high-stakes testing, evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students, and hiring inexperienced teachers.

They have the chutzpah to call themselves “stakeholders,” although none of them are teachers, parents of public school students, or have any stake in the public schools that enroll 85-90% of all American students. Exactly what do they have a “stake” in?

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda | Diane Ravitch's blog

To bring “prestige” back to education, make teachers tax-exempt, says Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman ON Kara Swisher podcast Recode Decode - Vox

Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman on Kara Swisher podcast Recode Decode - Vox

To bring “prestige” back to education, make teachers tax-exempt, says Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman
He’s an adviser to President Trump — but he also wants to see a national $15 minimum wage and an overhaul of the H-1B visa program.

Much of the world is transitioning to a knowledge economy, but far too few Americans have had enough education to prepare them for that shift, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman says.

“Most people don’t know that two-thirds of the workforce in the United States has a high school education or less,” Schwarzman said on the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. “Those people are not prepared for the modern world ... it’s not the business community that created that. There’s a political problem.”

Schwarzman, a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump whose private equity firm manages $548 billion, focuses on personal advice in his new book What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence. But on the new podcast episode, he shared a series of policy goals — including a national $15 minimum wage and public education reforms.

“Teachers are pretty poorly paid,” he said. “You see these demonstrations on television and strikes, and so I think we need to get teachers in a position where they can attract very high-quality people. One way to do that is to make teachers the only tax-exempt occupation in the United States.

“That would give them a very large boost in income just the day you did it,” Schwarzman added. “But the second benefit is that they would be marked apart as a prestige institution. When I was young, teachers were a big deal. And I wouldn’t be where I was without the education that I got.”

You can listen to the full interview on our podcast Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, which you can listen to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the new podcast, Schwarzman also talked about how he would like to see America’s CONTINUE READING:  Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman on Kara Swisher podcast Recode Decode - Vox

Federal Spending on Children Has Hit a 10-Year Low - Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

Public spending on children aims to support their healthy development and help them fulfill their human potential. As such, federal spending on children is an investment in the nation’s future. To inform policymakers, children’s advocates, and the general public about how public funds are spent on children, this 13th edition of the annual Kids’ Share report provides an updated analysis of federal expenditures on children from 1960 to 2018. It also projects federal expenditures on children through 2029 to give a sense of how budget priorities may unfold absent changes to current law.

A few highlights of the chartbook:

• In 2018, the federal government spent about $6,200 per child younger than 19, less than in 2017 after adjusting for inflation. This decline is driven by a reduction in federal spending on education and nutrition programs and a temporary reduction in child-related tax credits.
• As a share of the economy, federal investments in children fell to 1.9 percent of GDP in 2018, the lowest level in a decade.
• Medicaid is the largest source of federal support for children, followed by the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. More than three-fifths of federal expenditures on children are from health or tax provisions.
• The share of federal expenditures for children targeted to low-income families has grown over time, reaching 61 percent in 2018.
• Looking forward, children’s programs are projected to receive only 3 cents of every dollar of the projected $1.5 trillion increase in federal spending over the next decade.
• Assuming no changes to current law, the children’s share of the budget is projected to drop from 9.2 percent to 7.5 percent over the next decade, as spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest payments on the debt consume a growing share of the budget.
• By 2020, the federal government is projected to spend more on interest payments on the debt than on children.
• Over the next decade, all categories of spending on children except health are projected to decline relative to GDP. Most categories also see declines or remain at similar levels in real dollars.

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

CURMUDGUCATION: Yes, Teachers Are Spending Money On Their Own Classrooms

CURMUDGUCATION: Yes, Teachers Are Spending Money On Their Own Classrooms

Yes, Teachers Are Spending Money On Their Own Classrooms

Like the cost of a romantic date at Valentine's Day or the price of the Twelve Days of Christmas, the amount of money that teachers spend on their own classroom has become a reliable seasonal story. This year the word is that on average teachers spend, depending on your source, somewhere between $400 and $500. But that's not the whole story.

The Economic Policy Institute has crunched the numbers from the National Center for Educational Statistics, including a breakdown by states. The state averages vary (from $664 in California to $327 in North Dakota), though EPI is quick to note that the range says more about variations in state funding and school conditions than about the relative generosity of teachers in different states.

EPI uses relatively old data (2011-2012) to create its picture. The National Teacher and Principal Survey provides data from 2015-2016. A more current look comes from the sixth annual survey of teachers released today by SheerID and Agile Education Marketing. The most notable finding in their survey is not the amount teachers spent, but the sheer number of teachers who spent it--the survey shows that 99% of teachers spent their own money for school-related-purposes. And while the beginning of the school year seems to be prime time for these stories, the survey also notes that teachers do their spending throughout the year.

The SheerID/Agile Education Marketing folks want to make a practical business point--there's a huge market out there, composed of teachers looking for bargains because they are CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Yes, Teachers Are Spending Money On Their Own Classrooms

Sandy Hook Promises releases jarring back-to-school PSA

Sandy Hook Promises releases jarring back-to-school PSA

Sandy Hook Promise releases jarring back-to-school PSA depicting anxiety around school shootings

A powerful back-to-school PSA by Sandy Hook Promise (SHP) is depicting the fear and anxiety that students face as they re-enter their classrooms with supplies and essentials for the new year and discover alternate uses for them during a school shooting.

The one-minute seven-second video created by the Newton, Conn.-based nonprofit organization was released on Wednesday morning. Since its release, it’s made an impact.

“SHP and BBDO New York have produced the new PSA video that starts off as a cheery and often-familiar back-to-school ad but slowly unfolds to highlight students using everyday back-to-school items to survive a shooting, shedding light on the gruesome reality that students face,” a statement by SHP reads.

Throughout the video, viewers hear a student boasting about his new sneakers as he runs from gunshots, see another using a sock as a tourniquet on a wounded classmate and watch a boy use his new skateboard to break a classroom window to escape the building.

The video ends with a girl crying in a bathroom stall as she texts “I love you mom” before the door opens and footsteps CONTINUE READING: Sandy Hook Promises releases jarring back-to-school PSA

Symposium: The deference due state constitutional protections for public education - SCOTUSblog

Symposium: The deference due state constitutional protections for public education - SCOTUSblog

Symposium: The deference due state constitutional protections for public education

Alice O’Brien is General Counsel at the National Education Association.

The Supreme Court in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue faces the question of whether, and if so to what degree, the federal free exercise clause restricts how states provide quality K-12 education systems. The petitioners seek a sweeping ruling that would prevent states from enforcing a myriad of state constitutional provisions safeguarding their free, nonsectarian public schools. This result, they assert, naturally follows from the court’s decision in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer that a state cannot preclude religious organizations from receiving generally available playground-resurfacing grants. The respondents will argue that Trinity Lutheran, for a variety of reasons, does not prohibit states from choosing to fund only nonsectarian public schools. This post focuses on just one of the reasons: the deference due state constitutional public education provisions.

The federal constitution contains no specific education provisions, but every state constitution includes at least one provision requiring the state to establish and support some type of public education system — and most contain several provisions concerning the establishment, administration and funding of public schools. These state constitutional education provisions reflect different, deeply considered and carefully drawn commitments about how to provide educational services. At the same time, these provisions recognize that state education systems must be adequately resourced, subject to uniform standards and open to all students.

For example, almost all state constitutions include education clauses mandating that the public-school systems meet a certain qualitative standard, whether it be “high quality” (Ill.), “thorough and efficient” (Md., N.J., Ohio, W.Va., Wyo.), “suitable” (Alaska, Kan.) or “general and uniform” (Ariz., Minn., N.C., Ore., S.D., Wash.). Many state constitutions also specify how or in what priority schools shall be funded, providing, for example, that public-school funding is a paramount fiscal obligation of the state (Nev.), or may be used exclusively for public primary and secondary education (Fla.) or that certain funds may be used only for the public schools (e.g., Calif., Colo., Conn., Del., Fla., Idaho, Md., Mo., Mont., Neb., N.J., N.D., Ore., R.I.). And most state constitutions, including Montana’s, prohibit funding sectarian schools.

Although a number of these provisions precede the federal constitution’s ratification, state constitutions are typically subject to more frequent review and amendment than the federal CONTINUE READING: Symposium: The deference due state constitutional protections for public education - SCOTUSblog

Ohio Senate Education Committee Blames Educators While Underfunding Schools in the State’s Poorest Communities | janresseger

Ohio Senate Education Committee Blames Educators While Underfunding Schools in the State’s Poorest Communities | janresseger

Ohio Senate Education Committee Blames Educators While Underfunding Schools in the State’s Poorest Communities

Members of the Ohio Senate Education Committee, who have been holding hearings on a new state school district takeover plan, continue to scapegoat the teachers and educational leaders in the school districts which serve concentrations of our state’s poorest children.

Despite a large body of research correlating standardized test scores with aggregate family and neighborhood income, Bill Phillis reports that twice last week at a hearing convened by the Senate Education Committee, one senator repeatedly asked: “How much time should we give those who drove the bus into the ditch to get it out?”  The Plain Dealer‘s Patrick O’Donnell quotes Senator Bill Coley, who mused: “I think its maybe the wrong people are running the show and we need to try something different.”

I guess these guys adhere to the old idea that if we were merely to exchange the staffs of the richest and the poorest school districts in the state, the challenges for students in poor communities would magically disappear.  Instead, research shows that economic segregation—where wealthy families are moving farther and farther into the exurbs—has been rapidly accelerating.  Our senators must imagine that that public school educators can, on their own, swiftly erase the alarming and growing economic gap between children growing up in pockets of extreme privilege and children segregated in our most impoverished city neighborhoods or living in remote rural areas.

There is a lot of evidence, however, that Ohio’s state senators are mistaken when they blame schools and public school educators.  The state takeovers are based on a set of overly complex and opaque calculations that yield the  school district grades on a state report card.  This year’s state report card ratings were released just last week.  It is not surprising, given what is well known about the correlation of standardized test scores with family and community CONTINUE READING: Ohio Senate Education Committee Blames Educators While Underfunding Schools in the State’s Poorest Communities | janresseger

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Climate Strike: SPS Says No Excused Absences if Students Walk Out #ClimateStrike

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Climate Strike: SPS Says No Excused Absences if Students Walk Out

Climate Strike: SPS Says No Excused Absences if Students Walk Out

Today on KUOW's The Record, Superintendent Juneau was asked about SPS students who might want to join the Friday walkout for climate change.  She was totally supportive of young activists and noted many in Seattle Schools.

But then she mentioned the law and teaching and learning and science classes and well, it's a no to being excused to go to the rally.

The only way a student can go with an excused absence is if a parent/guardian comes and takes the student. No note will do.

I put this up on Twitter and many people were not happy with her stance.

Do it anyway.

Yeah, I’ll go get the kid.

Not with Amplify they won’t.

Wow! Well, the only time I got in trouble in school was when I staged a walk-out against the war in Iraq. I got quoted in the local paper and got called into the principal’s office on Monday AM. Got detention and when I got home, my hippie uncle gave me a hi 5! So Hi 5 students! 

Oh hi@SeaPubSchools, did you see@GovInslee’s release? He seems pretty enthusiastic about kids participating.

I note that Governor Inslee is all in as are NYC schools.

Gov. Inslee's statement reads as follows: CONTINUE READING: Seattle Schools Community Forum: Climate Strike: SPS Says No Excused Absences if Students Walk Out

Relay Graduate School: a Slick “MarketWorld” Education Fraud | tultican

Relay Graduate School: a Slick “MarketWorld” Education Fraud | tultican

Relay Graduate School: a Slick “MarketWorld” Education Fraud

By T. Ultican 9/18/2019

Relay Graduate School of Education is a private stand alone graduate school created and led by people with meager academic credentials. Founded by leaders from the charter school industry, it is lavishly financed by billionaires. Contending that traditional university based teacher education has failed; Relay prescribes deregulation and market competition. Relay does not offer “coursework in areas typical of teacher education programs—courses such as school and society, philosophy of education, and teaching in democracy ….” Rather, Relay trains students almost exclusively in strict classroom management techniques.

Ken Zeichner is one of America’s leading academics studying teacher education. In a paper on alternative teacher preparation programs he noted that Match Teacher Residency and Relay “contribute to the inequitable distribution of professionally prepared teachers and to the stratification of schools according to the social class and racial composition of the student body.” Zeichner clarified,

“These two programs prepare teachers to use highly controlling pedagogical and classroom management techniques that are primarily used in schools serving students of color whose communities are severely impacted by poverty. Meanwhile, students in more economically advantaged areas have greater access to professionally trained teachers, less punitive and controlling management practices and broader and richer curricula and teaching practices. The teaching and management practices learned by the teachers in these two independent programs are based on a restricted definition of teaching and learning and would not be acceptable in more economically advantaged communities.”

Relay is another component of the destroy-public-education infrastructure that mirrors Professor Noliwe Rooks’ definition of segrenomics; “the business of profiting specifically from high levels of racial and economic segregation.”

Founding Relay Graduate School of Education

Relay’s foundation was laid when the Dean of City University of New York’s CONTINUE READING: Relay Graduate School: a Slick “MarketWorld” Education Fraud | tultican

Manipulating Data for the Benefit of Charter Schools

Manipulating Data for the Benefit of Charter Schools

Manipulating Data for the Benefit of Charter Schools

Because there are no facts, there is no truth
Just data to be manipulated
I can get you any result you like
What’s it worth to you?
Because there is no wrong, there is no right
And I sleep very well at night
No shame, no solution, no remorse, no retribution”
– Don Henley, The Garden of Allah

After a summer filled with revelations about confidential dealings between the California Charter School Association (CCSA) and Nick Melvoin, one would think that this Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) board member would take some time to regroup. Instead, Melvoin charged ahead during the first meeting of the school year by placing an item to updated board rules on the agenda. It was his fourth attempt to pass the changes that had been formulated behind closed doors. Unlike a previous attempt, this new version did not reduce the amount of time allotted for public comment. However, he still seemed dead set on reducing transparency, as I noted in my public comment:

Again, it would be really nice if the creation of these rules had been done in the public realm and with the public able to have some input into what was happening here. If they had, perhaps the rules would state that these meetings could only take place when most parents, teachers, and students could participate. Instead, you meet during school hours.

In reviewing these proposed rules I did notice that there is a line stating that “Board Members shall maintain strict confidentiality of any confidential matters discussed in closed session consistent with the Brown Act.” Given that these rules are coming from Nick’s Secret Committee, I know where this is directed; Melvoin was not happy with another board member actually letting the public know what had CONTINUE READING: Manipulating Data for the Benefit of Charter Schools

“If I Want to Go to a Good School Why Do I Have to Go to a White School?” | Ed In The Apple

“If I Want to Go to a Good School Why Do I Have to Go to a White School?” | Ed In The Apple

“If I Want to Go to a Good School Why Do I Have to Go to a White School?”

The 2014 UCLA Civil Rights Project produced a startling report,

New York has the most segregated schools in the country: in 2009, black and Latino students in the state had the highest concentration in intensely-segregated public schools (less than 10% white enrollment), the lowest exposure to white students, and the most uneven distribution with white students across schools. Heavily impacting these state rankings is New York City, home to the largest and one of the most segregated public school systems in the nation.

 With the sound of bugles the mayor issued a tepid plan to begin school integration, encouraging school communities, with financial supports, to create integration plans.

 Since the release of the report school integration (or, the other side of the coin, school segregation), has dominated the news cycles. From the mayor to the chancellor to electeds the issue resonates across the city. New York City Alliance for School Integration and Desegregation (nycASID) is one of many organizations leading the battle to integrate schools across the city. nycASID holds month meeting (see next meeting agenda here).

 Norm Fruchter and Christina Mokhtar, NYC School Segregation Then and Now: plus ca change, is by far the most thoughtful and detailed examination of school segregation in New York City, the well-researched report provides a CONTINUE READING: “If I Want to Go to a Good School Why Do I Have to Go to a White School?” | Ed In The Apple

CURMUDGUCATION: OH: Meaningless School Grades And Money

CURMUDGUCATION: OH: Meaningless School Grades And Money

OH: Meaningless School Grades And Money

Over at Cleveland.com, Rich Exner has done yeoman's work taking Ohio's school ratings and connecting them with census information from the US Census Bureaus 2017 American Communities Survey.

Ohio is another one of those states that believes it can reduce the entire issue of a school's quality to a single letter grade. This is a dumb idea, and there is no state that has ever implemented it in which it did not prove to be a dumb idea. It has been decades since we concluded that reducing student performance to a single letter grade was a dumb idea. How could it not be a dumb idea when applied to an entire complex system that is a school? If we asked a hundred parents what a B means foir a school grade, we would get over a hundred answers because many of those parents would say, "Hmm, well, it could refer to the general academic atmosphere of the school, or maybe how involved students are, or the level of enrichment offered, or, hell, I don't know."

Because giving a school a single letter grade is a dumb idea. Can a school suck in some areas and be awesome in others? Of course it can.

So if this is such a dumb idea, why does it keep cropping up? Well, its advocates have never made a coherent case for the practice (and many reformsters are judiciously silent on the practice), but we can make some educated guesses.

For one, a letter grade makes a nice way to hide the fact that you are grading an entire school based on a single standardized test of reading and math. If you just published the school's average or aggregate score, the public would shrug and say, "Okay, that's one piece of data and I'm not even sure I much care." So we have to CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: OH: Meaningless School Grades And Money

When Natural Hair Wins, Discrimination in School Loses - NEA Today

When Natural Hair Wins, Discrimination in School Loses - NEA Today

When Natural Hair Wins, Discrimination in School Loses

Late last year, a video of a black high school wrestler in New Jersey hit a public nerve when he was given an ultimatum by the referee: cut your hair or forfeit the match. Several news outlets reported that Alan Maloney, who is white, told Andrew Johnson that the cover he had over his hair was non-compliant. Johnson’s hair raised no previous concerns during a match four days earlier, but under pressure, Johnson decided to have his hair cut by the team’s athletic trainer.

The problem here runs deep. “This is not about hair. This is about race,” tweeted the ACLU of New Jersey. “How many different ways will people try to exclude Black people from public life without having to declare their bigotry? We’re so sorry this happened to you, Andrew. This was discrimination, and it’s not okay.”

Anti-black hair sentiment in the U.S. has existed for centuries, with Eurocentric norms of beauty taking main stage. This sentiment is directly tied to institutional racism.

According to author Courtney Nunley, “school policies and microaggressions reinforce the idea that Black hair, as it naturally grows and as it has historically been styled, is ‘bad’ because it’s not white enough—and that those policies are part of a nationwide anti-Blackness problem,” she wrote in “Hair Politics: How discrimination CONTINUE READING: When Natural Hair Wins, Discrimination in School Loses - NEA Today