The California city where students with disabilities are 'segregated' | US news | The Guardian

The California city where students with disabilities are 'segregated' | US news | The Guardian

The California city where students with disabilities are 'segregated'

Stephen’s teachers started sending him to the separate room when he was in first grade.

Now 10, Stephen has been diagnosed with autism and anxiety. His mom said that when he got frustrated and behaved in ways teachers found disruptive – breaking pencils, blurting out or crumpling paper – educators swiftly removed him from the classroom, sending him to a room where he would sit the rest of the day without access to school work.

Sometimes the school simply sent him home for the day – it happened more than 80 times by the time Stephen reached fifth grade, his mom said. Eventually, school staff started urging his mom to agree to place Stephen in a separate classes exclusively for students with disabilities where they said he’d be “happier”. His mom believes Stephen’s race makes him a target. Students called him CONTINUE READING: The California city where students with disabilities are 'segregated' | US news | The Guardian

Petition · Investigate Nick Melvoin · Change.org

Petition · Investigate Nick Melvoin · Change.org

 Investigate Nick Melvoin

Sign this petition Investigate Nick Melvoin · Change.org

A California Public Records Act (CPRA) request of past emails shows that in February 2018, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD ) Board Member Nick Melvoin attended a meeting identified as 'Facilities Proposal Meeting' with the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). At that meeting, emails indicate that Nick Melvoin shared confidential legal information pertaining to the LAUSD school board with the opposing party suing the district—the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). As an elected official of our LAUSD School Board, Mr. Melvoin took an oath to represent the interests of all of the students in his district (LAUSD District 4)‚ not just the students attending charter schools.

Due to this serious breach, we the undersigned parents, teachers and members of the public demand the following actions:

1 -- a full investigation into Nick Melvoin’s communication with CCSA, which we believe is unethical and potentially illegal;

2 -- that Mr. Melvoin not act as a voting member of the board until this investigation is resolved;

3 -- that all measures put forward by Nick Melvoin be tabled until the conclusion of this investigation, to insure that he was acting in good faith;

4 -- pending investigation, the school board should not adopt any measure that Nick Melvoin has introduced unless he has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Sign this petition Investigate Nick Melvoin · Change.org

Nick Melvoin’s unprofessional and potentially unethical behavior is the sort of thing that erodes public and parent trust in our LAUSD Board. After the Deasy scandal, the secret backroom deal to hire Beutner, and the delayed resignation of indicted and convicted felon Ref Rodriguez, The LAUSD Board of Education cannot afford any more corruption. We will be reporting Mr. Melvoin to the City Attorney and the State Bar Association.

The Board must act now.

Sign this petition Investigate Nick Melvoin · Change.org

Keeping Public Education Public: New Strategies Against School Voucher Programs | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Keeping Public Education Public: New Strategies Against School Voucher Programs | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Keeping Public Education Public: New Strategies Against School Voucher Programs

Quality public education for all is a centerpiece of the American promise and an aspiration to which generations have worked to fulfill. During Reconstruction in the 1860s and 1870s, one of the very first things Black policymakers in the South did once elected was to institute universal, compulsory public education for all children, regardless of race or wealth. The subsequent campaigns of terror that undid much of Reconstruction's achievements and inaugurated Jim Crow across the South segregated those schools, creating two separate and unequal systems of education.

In many states during the 1960s, school vouchers were used as a way to get around Supreme Court decisions like Brown v. Board of Education and perpetuate that segregated system by allowing white parents to send their children to segregated private schools at taxpayer expense.

Regardless of intent, the effect of private school vouchers is the redirection of public funds to private educational uses, diverting critical resources away from public schools, depriving students of important civil rights protections, and harming communities.

This webinar introduced Public Funds Public Schools, a joint campaign of Education Law Center and Southern Poverty Law Center that seeks to ensure public funds for education are used to maintain and support public schools. We will discuss the history and varied forms of private school vouchers and the strategies we are using—including litigation, advocacy, and research—to halt and roll back voucher programs. We also shared specific examples of our work and the many ways that public education stakeholders can support efforts to keep public funds in public schools that are open to all students.

Speakers included:

• Bacardi Jackson, Senior Supervising Attorney for Children’s Rights for the State of Florida, Managing Attorney of the Miami Office for the Southern Poverty Law Center
• Jessica Levin, Senior Attorney for the Education Law Center (ELC)
• Dr. John H. Jackson (moderator), President & CEO, Schott Foundation for Public Education

CONTINUE READING: Keeping Public Education Public: New Strategies Against School Voucher Programs | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Betsy DeVos: The Musical! – Have You Heard

Betsy DeVos: The Musical! – Have You Heard

Betsy DeVos: The Musical!

Theater teacher Quinn Strassel has seen first hand the impact that Betsy DeVos has had on Michigan’s public schools. And so he decided to fight back, by writing a musical. Strassel grew up and attended schools in Ypsilanti, MI, where he was schooled in the theatrical arts by teacher Diane Hill. Ypsilanti’s acclaimed theater program no longer exists—under Michigan’s “schools of choice” policy, the subject of episode #68, school districts compete against each other for students and the funding that comes with them, and working class districts like Ypsilanti have not fared well. But enough with the bleak back story! Diane Hill, now an award-winning actress, plays the part of Betsy DeVos in Quinn’s musical. Jennifer was lucky enough to get to be in the audience when Quinn staged a reading. In the latest episode of Have You Heard, you get to listen in on Betsy DeVos!: the Musical! and hear Quinn talk about his effort to make a serious point by getting us all laughing, Note: Quinn is currently raising funds to stage a professional, fully realized production next summer leading into the 2020 election. If you want to support his efforts, click here.  

Complete transcript available here.

Betsy DeVos: The Musical! – Have You Heard

2019 Medley #19 | Live Long and Prosper

2019 Medley #19 | Live Long and Prosper

2019 Medley #19

ET TU CANADA?

Schools aren’t failing our kids, our government is.

Since 2012 Grant Frost has been writing about the GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement) infection of Canada. Sadly, the story is similar to what’s been happening here in the US. Outside factors affect school achievement, yet solutions to societal problems seem to fall to the schools.

In 2011, Texas Superintendent John Kuhn asked,

Why do we not demand that our leaders make “Adequate Yearly Progress”? We have data about poverty, health care, crime, and drug abuse in every legislative district. We know that those factors directly impact our ability to teach kids. Why have we not established annual targets for our legislators to meet?

Schools can’t do it alone…and schools can’t solve the problems caused by, in the case of the US, decades of neglect, racism, and economic inequity. State (and Provincial) governments must accept their share of responsibility…not by punishing high need schools with school takeovers and inadequate funding, but with real programs aimed at healing the problems of poverty and systemic racism.

To paraphrase Frost, “The reality of our situation in Indiana is not that our schools are failing our kids; our government is.”

What struck me so soundly as I read through the report, beyond my obvious alarm, was the way in which so many of these issues, or more particularly, the finding of solutions for them, has so often been downloaded by CONTINUE READING: 2019 Medley #19 | Live Long and Prosper

The 'Greta Effect' On Student Activism and Climate Change - NEA Today

The 'Greta Effect' On Student Activism and Climate Change - NEA Today

The ‘Greta Effect’ On Student Activism and Climate Change

Once upon a time a courageous 16-year-old girl set out to save her planet from imminent doom from powers seemingly beyond her control. With the support of millions of other young people determined to help their planet survive, the girl sailed across an ocean on a vessel powered by the sun to take on her greatest foe…

It sounds like something out of the Hunger Games or another dystopian YA novel, but It’s the true story of Greta Thunberg, the teen climate activist from Sweden who is holding world leaders accountable for their lack of action on the climate crisis.

On Friday, Thunberg will lead worldwide international climate strikes where legions of students will walk out of their classrooms across the United States, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and South America. In New York City, where Thunberg will march, and in many other areas, districts are allowing students to take part without penalizing them for missing school, but either way, educators can find ways to support their students’ interest in climate change throughout the year.

“We should work hard to ensure that we’re teaching about all the ways we can take action to mitigate the effects of climate change,” says modified language arts educator Jennifer Hall, the Earth Club advisor for West Seattle High School, who will join the student climate strike in Washington, D.C. on Friday. “Help students plant trees, start school-based compost programs and partner with your city or town to collect the food waste to make the compost and expand composting facilities.”

School gardens, Hall says, are more important than ever in mitigating climate CONTINUE READING: The 'Greta Effect' On Student Activism and Climate Change - NEA Today

Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity | Diane Ravitch's blog

Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity | Diane Ravitch's blog

Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity

The definition of insanity: funding an experimental education program, discovering that it failed, then funding it some more and expecting different results.

Another definition of insanity: funding a voucher program that depresses student achievement, then demanding more voucher funds so more students can fall behind.

Why fund failure?

Despite Poor Academic Results Groups Sue to Grow Private School Voucher Program

A few weeks ago a pro-school privatization organization, Institute for Justice, announced a lawsuit against the State of Nevada over the impact of AB 458 to private school vouchers recipients, scholarship granting organizations and businesses receiving tax incentives.

Though pro-voucher advocates are framing the suit as “saving vouchers,” in reality, the voucher program did not lose funding. The controversy over some students losing their scholarships is actually the result of a single scholarship granting organization interpreting a law passed this legislative session (AB 458) differently than all other scholarship organizations. Certain families who went through this organization for their voucher funds were the only ones whose funds were not renewed, leaving those students in limbo as the law’s purpose is clarified by the State.

To be clear, AB 458 did NOT cancel funding for the voucher program but only ended the requirement that funding for the controversial program grow by 10% each year. Given that growth in public education funding often struggles just  to keep up with inflation (approximately 2%), automatically growing a voucher program with scant accountability and poor results just doesn’t make sense.

Businesses are also suing on the claim that they would not be able to increase their contributions to vouchers because there is no increase in tax incentives. However ,they could choose to continue supporting private school tuition CONTINUE READING: Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity | Diane Ravitch's blog

Take a walk with me | Cloaking Inequity

Take a walk with me | Cloaking Inequity

Take a walk with me 

It’s a great day to take a walk with me! Watch and get to know what’s ahead for deaning in a community-engaged, community-relevant fashion.

Read more here: http://uknow.uky.edu/campus-news/campus-walk-meet-new-dean-uks-college-education

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

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Twitter: @ProfessorJVH

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Take a walk with me | Cloaking Inequity

Aaron Wright: Caught in the Middle: Whatever Happened to the Individuals With Disabilities Act? NANCY BAILEY'S EDUCATION WEBSITE

Caught in the Middle: Whatever Happened to the Individuals With Disabilities Act?

Caught in the Middle: Whatever Happened to the Individuals With Disabilities Act?

No child wants to feel like a failure. No educator wants to feel like they have failed a child. Most children in special education are identified as having a specific learning disability or language impairment. Yet nationally only 67% of children with disabilities will graduate from high school and almost one and five will drop out.

In 1975 Gerald Ford signed into law what would become the Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA). Previously there was no guarantee that a child with disabilities would be provided an education, let alone be allowed into a public school. But even as Ford signed the legislation he lamented its shortcomings, “[T]he funding levels proposed in this bill will simply not be possible…” Those ripple effects continue to this day.

In 1990, the addition of the IDEA’s central principles of a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), Appropriate Evaluation, Individualized Education Plan (IEP), Least Restrictive Environment, Parent Participation, and Procedural Safeguards granted the families of disabled children a formal and standardized means advocacy and redress.

Parents are driven to advocacy by instinct and science. A growing body of data has illuminated the dire consequences of a failed education. Up to 85 percent of youth in juvenile detention have disabilities that made them eligible for special education services, yet only 37 percent had received services while in school. Adding to CONTINUE READING: Caught in the Middle: Whatever Happened to the Individuals With Disabilities Act?

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

In education, as in most things, Philadelphia is its own little state-within-the-state. The public system has a long and messy history, including a state takeover. The district is often used as Exhibit A for pro-choice legislators ("But we must give the poor children of Philadelphia a way to escape their terrible school system even as we refuse to adequately fund that system!") and is consequently the most charter-heavy city in the commonwealth.

In Pennsylvania, the local school district has oversight of charter schools within its boundaries. But like several states, there is also a state-level review board to which charters can appeal, and that board has told Philadelphia that at least one charter is free to go on ahead and do as it pleases.

The charter in question is Franklin Towne Charter. The charter has attracted attention in the past for a variety of reasons.

There's the time a fired principal filed a whistle blower suit, charging that he's been terminated because he pointed out that some Franklin Towne practices such as non-serving ESL students, serious nepotism, and billing the Philly school district for a non-existent all-day kindergarten program. Also, that they had lied to him in his initial interview in order to cover up their high principal turnover rate (it was only later that he learned that the Chief Academic Officer who helped interview him had been removed from the principalship because of outcry over shoplifting and excessive use of force against students). After a pattern of retaliation developed against him, he took it to the board president who allegedly replied, "You know we cannot move CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

New York Post attacks Black Lives Matter at School movement, “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “The New Teacher Book” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

New York Post attacks Black Lives Matter at School movement, “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “The New Teacher Book” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

New York Post attacks Black Lives Matter at School movement, “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “The New Teacher Book”

With the new school year underway, antiracist educators around the country are back at work uplifting Black students–and the New York Post is back at work spewing racist garbage. 

For their back to school coverage, the Post decided to give column space, not to experts in closing opportunity gaps or promising new approaches to supporting Black excellence, but rather to a defender of the racist status quo of schooling. This amateurish and offensive attack was leveled against the entire Black Lives Matter at School movement, as well as two books published by Rethinking Schools, Teaching for Black Lives–a book I co-edited with Dyan Watson and Wayne Au–and The New Teacher Book.

In the attack on Teaching for Black Lives, Peter Meyer, writes:

In the introduction to “Teaching for Black Lives,” a recently published textbook meant to accompany BLM’s classroom efforts, the first sentence reads: “Black students’ minds and bodies are under attack.”

The stoking of students’ fear and anger continues with a reference to “the continuing police murders of black people,” along with this characterization of the galvanizing event for BLM’s street protests: “In August of 2014, Michael Brown was killed in the CONTINUE READING: New York Post attacks Black Lives Matter at School movement, “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “The New Teacher Book” – I AM AN EDUCATOR