No Pineapple left Behind – the Consolation of Satire and Video Games | gadflyonthewallblog

No Pineapple left Behind – the Consolation of Satire and Video Games | gadflyonthewallblog

No Pineapple left Behind – the Consolation of Satire and Video Games

Q: What’s the difference between a pineapple and a human child?

A: Pineapples are more profitable.

Let’s face it – kids have.. yuck … needs! Maslow even came up with a hierarchy of needs that must be met before you can get the little tykes to do anything. Physical well-being, safety, emotional… Argh! It’s just so much work!

Pineapples, however, are money-makers from the get go.

Chop them up, and you’ve got a tropical fruit salad.

Juice them, and you can make about a hundred different premium cocktails.

Heck! Just plop one in a hat and you’ve got an island-themed mascot!

But kids!? You can’t even get them to take a lucrative standardized test without… bleugh … educating them first.

Imagine if you could make pineapples take tests and get grades instead. Schooling would be like a gardening contest. Who has the best recipe for success? There would be no intangibles like the effects of poverty, home-life, special needs. It would all be CONTINUE READING: No Pineapple left Behind – the Consolation of Satire and Video Games | gadflyonthewallblog

Two paths diverge. Follow the red one. – Wrench in the Gears

Two paths diverge. Follow the red one. – Wrench in the Gears

Two paths diverge. Follow the red one.

Above taken from The Red Nation’s Principles of Unity, ratified August 2018.

I write this at the beginning of the Global Climate Strike in the hopes of raising questions, provoking conversation, and perhaps bringing some clarity to a fight that has life or death consequences for untold millions of people as well as our non-human kin. The path we take means everything. While I am encouraged to see the mass mobilization of people around the environmental devastation capitalism has wrought upon this planet, I also have grave concerns that misdirection is taking place.

It is a moment when so many are wrapped up in the fervor of participation that they do not recognize there are two paths in the environmental movement. The first path is one that has been maintained by Indigenous peoples throughout the colonization and industrialization of their lands. They have been waging the battle for right relations among people, the land, and their non-human kin for centuries. Theirs has been a fierce resistance, one where the magnitude of sacrifice is simply incalculable. Few have been on their side. It has been a terrible struggle, and yet they have persisted. Thank god. Thank for the youth who ignited the water protector CONTINUE READING: Two paths diverge. Follow the red one. – Wrench in the Gears

Shawgi Tell: Charter School Advocates Grow More Belligerent | Dissident Voice

Charter School Advocates Grow More Belligerent | Dissident Voice

Charter School Advocates Grow More Belligerent

Steadily mounting opposition to privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools is inevitable and becoming a bigger thorn in the side of nervous neoliberals, privatizers, and corporate school reformers.

Terrified of discussion, investigation, and analysis, and hell-bent on privatizing schools, no matter the cost to society, on September 11, 2019, “Chiefs for Change” issued a letter righteously and arrogantly demanding that everyone blindly submit to the destructive neoliberal agenda of privatizing schools to further enrich major owners of capital.

“Chiefs for Change” has been around since January 2015 and is comprised of dozens of aggressive privatizers and corporate school reformers (“educators”) masquerading as “bold nonpartisan innovators.”

While “Chiefs for Change” casually admits that there are many “school choice systems that have been largely unmonitored and often unaccountable, or that have increased the racial and economic isolation of students,” the organization desperately wants the public to suspend all critical thinking, blindly support school privatization, and automatically believe that “Chiefs for Change” simply wants what is best for students and is not concerned with financially enriching CONTINUE READING: Charter School Advocates Grow More Belligerent | Dissident Voice

Jeff Bryant: Another school leadership disaster: Private companies work an insider game to reap lucrative contracts – Alternet.org

Another school leadership disaster: Private companies work an insider game to reap lucrative contracts – Alternet.org

Another school leadership disaster: Private companies work an insider game to reap lucrative contracts

In July 2013, the education world was rocked when a breaking story by Chicago independent journalist Sarah Karp reported that district CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett had pushed through a no-bid $20 million contract to provide professional development to administrators with a private, for-profit company called SUPES Academy, which she had worked for a year before the deal transpired. Byrd-Bennett was also listed as a senior associate for PROACT Search, a superintendent search firm run by the same individuals who led SUPES.

By 2015, federal investigators looked into the deal and found reason to charge Byrd-Bennett for accepting bribes and kickbacks from the company that ran SUPES and PROACT. A year-and-a-half later, the story made national headlines when Byrd-Bennett was convicted and sentenced to prison for those charges. But anyone who thought this story was an anomaly would be mistaken. Similar conflicts of interest among private superintendent search firms, their associated consulting companies, and their handpicked school leaders have plagued multiple school districts across the country.

In an extensive examination, Our Schools has discovered an intricate web of businesses that reap lucrative school contracts funded by public tax dollars. These businesses are often able to place their handpicked candidates in school leadership positions who then help make the purchasing decision for the same businesses’ other products and services, which often include professional development, strategic planning, computer-based services, or data analytics. The deals are often brokered in secrecy or presented to local school boards in ways that make insider schemes appear legitimate.

As in the Byrd-Bennett scandal, school officials who get caught in this web risk public humiliation, criminal investigation, and potential jail time, while the businesses that perpetuate this hidden arrangement continue to flourish and grow.

The results of these scandals are often disastrous. School policies and personnel are CONTINUE READING: Another school leadership disaster: Private companies work an insider game to reap lucrative contracts – Alternet.org

Edgar Villanueva: Investing in Native Communities | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Investing in Native Communities | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Investing in Native Communities

Schott Vice President of Programs and Advocacy Edgar Villanueva is a board member of Native Americans in Philanthropy (NAP), and wrote the foreword below for the pathbreaking new report "Investing in Native Communities," produced by NAP and Candid. Read the report and explore the new website.

It’s been said that “whoever holds the data tells the story.” Our story is a difficult one, due to the history of colonization and genocide in the United States and around the world. Because of this, Indigenous peoples have historically not been authors of our own narratives. But thanks to the work of Native Americans in Philanthropy, other Native-led organizations, and Indigenous leaders inside philanthropic institutions, many donors are becoming aware of this history and the resulting trauma that continues to plague our communities.

Still, too much of our story remains invisible—to policymakers, to mainstream culture, and to philanthropy. This has resulted in historical underfunding from the philanthropic sector (Native Americans receive 0.4 percent of grant dollars, on average, although we represent 2 percent of the population) as well as instability in year-over-year funding levels. With only 20 percent of large foundations giving to Native communities and causes—many of these intermittently—long-term relationship building between Native communities and the philanthropic sector becomes incredibly challenging.

Nonetheless, our current story is also one of resilience and opportunity—and powerful Native-led work that is building community, increasing power and leadership, and preserving our cultures. The world is now looking to our communities for solutions and leadership across sectors—from environmental conservation to innovative CONTINUE READING: Investing in Native Communities | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Symposium: Stripping church-state separation to the bone? The Supreme Court considers mandatory government funding of religious education - SCOTUSblog

Symposium: Stripping church-state separation to the bone? The Supreme Court considers mandatory government funding of religious education - SCOTUSblog

Symposium: Stripping church-state separation to the bone? The Supreme Court considers mandatory government funding of religious education
Daniel Mach is Director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.

In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the Supreme Court will address a question that would have been unthinkable even to ask until quite recently: Can a state be forced to underwrite religious education with taxpayer dollars? Although the court has previously allowed the government to adopt school-voucher programs that provide indirect government aid to religious schools, it has never suggested that the U.S. Constitution somehow requires doing so ― and certainly not in the face of state constitutional rules barring taxpayer funding of religious education. Yet that is essentially what the petitioners are seeking in Espinoza, the latest in a disturbing line of cases attacking the very foundations of the separation of church and state.

At issue in Espinoza is a voucher-type program in Montana designed to divert millions in government dollars to private schools, the overwhelming majority of which are religiously affiliated. The program, enacted in 2015, allows taxpayers to receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits for donations to Student Scholarship Organizations, which then award scholarships to students attending private elementary and secondary schools. In other words, if a taxpayer owes the state, say, $100 in taxes, she can decide instead to send that money directly to an SSO, which will then spend it on private-school scholarships. In practice, the tax-credit program has served its unmistakable goal of funneling government dollars to religious education: The only SSO operating in the state supports 13 private schools, 12 of which are religiously affiliated, and over 94 percent of program scholarships have gone to finance religious education.

Such religious funding, even though indirect, violates the Montana constitution, which includes heightened protections against government-funded religion. The state constitution’s “no-aid provision,” adopted to promote the separation of church and state and to ensure continued taxpayer support for public schools in Montana, expressly prohibits the government from providing “direct or indirect” aid for religious education. In light of the no-aid provision, the Montana Department of CONTINUE READING: Symposium: Stripping church-state separation to the bone? The Supreme Court considers mandatory government funding of religious education - SCOTUSblog

Why Teachers Need to Incorporate More Physical Activity Into Their Lesson Plans - Teacher Habits

Why Teachers Need to Incorporate More Physical Activity Into Their Lesson Plans - Teacher Habits

Why Teachers Need to Incorporate More Physical Activity Into Their Lesson Plans

Finding a balance in the classroom can be difficult. Incorporating time for grammar, nutrition, mathematics, science, technology, and a plethora of other subjects is already hard all on its own. As if that wasn’t challenging enough, though, covering so many subjects without turning your class into a horde of zombie-children in the process can feel impossible. The lack of focus and increased levels of pent up energy that come with hours of trying to sit still and listen can be difficult to contain.

That’s where good old physical activity comes into play. It may be a simple concept, but the idea of incorporating exercise into the classroom is a critical ingredient for education success. 

Why Physical Activity Matters

Physical activity is a necessary part of life. The act of moving around, stretching your legs and getting your heart pumping faster should be intimately integrated into a long day in the classroom. 

We live in an era where the general lack of physical health isn’t just a concern, it’s an epidemic. Over a third of American adults are obese at CONTINUE READING: Why Teachers Need to Incorporate More Physical Activity Into Their Lesson Plans - Teacher Habits

No more waiting - Sacramento News & Review

Sacramento News & Review - No more waiting - News - Local Stories - September 19, 2019

No more waiting
More than two years after an independent audit raised alarm bells about special-ed classes, youth advocacy groups don’t see change coming without legal action

“How much data do you need to take action?” the frustrated parent of an autistic student asked in January, after the Sacramento City Unified School District had spent 19 months mulling over a damning independent report on its handling of students with disabilities, while failing to act on most of its recommendations.

Eight months later, it’s not just parents exasperated by the lack of action: A coalition of nonprofits and youth advocacy groups just filed a federal lawsuit against the district, one that seeks to force fundamental change in its special education program.

Some parents had long suspected the district has potentially illegal polices for educating disabled students, though their concerns became impossible to ignore after May 2017. That’s when the independent audit by Council of the Great City Schools determined disabled students at SCUSD had abnormally low graduation rates, weren’t getting adequate mental health services and were experiencing alarmingly high suspension rates. The audit singled out the district’s handling of African-American students, many of whom suffered from emotional disturbances and had nearly twice the suspension rate as non-disabled students. The analysis was soon bolstered by another independent study, this one by San Diego State University. It found that black male students with disabilities in the district were the group with the highest suspension rates.

A year after the audit’s release, all 11 members of the district’s Community Advisory Committee for Special Education resigned in protest, specifically because SCUSD officials had failed to implement recommendations from both them and the audit.

On Sept. 6, Disability Rights California, Equal Justice Society, Western Center on Law & Poverty, the National Center for Youth Law and the Black Parallel School Board jointly filed suit against the district and school board in federal district court.

“Sacramento City Unified School District has created and perpetuates an unlawful school system that results in modern-day segregation and mistreatment of students with disabilities, particularly Black CONTINUE READING: Sacramento News & Review - No more waiting - News - Local Stories - September 19, 2019

Sacramento teacher shortage means students taught by substitutes | The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento teacher shortage means students taught by substitutes | The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento City Unified teacher vacancies mean hundreds of students are taught by substitutes

More than three weeks into the school year, several hundred Sacramento City Unified School District students are being taught by substitutes as school officials continue to look for teachers to staff classrooms.

The district estimates that about 46 classrooms have teaching vacancies, which officials said is normal for this time of year. But the Sacramento City Teachers Association said that there are about 100 certificated vacancies, including counselors and nurses. More than 1,000 students are being affected, sometimes being taught electives and required courses by substitutes who are not experienced in subjects like Spanish and art.

Math, science and special education positions are the hardest to fill, according to the district, both in Sacramento and statewide. Sacramento City Unified vacancies include six math teachers and five science teachers. Special Education has 14 vacancies.

Some Sacramento schools are seeing a high concentration of teacher vacancies, amid a nationwide teacher shortage.

Rosa Parks Elementary School held the highest concentration of vacancies. Six positions were still open in science, social science, and English classrooms.

C.K. McClatchy High School had three vacancies in English, biology and social science classrooms.

The Sacramento City Teachers Association estimated hundreds of students at McClatchy High are affected by the teacher shortage, and will be instructed by at least one substitute during their school day.

Lori Jablonski, a government teacher at McClatchy High, surveyed one class of 32 students during the first week of school.

“I asked [students] how many subs they had for three periods a day; 16 raised their hands. I asked how many had subs for four periods a day; four raised their hands,” she said. “Because these classes did not start with permanent teachers, no one at the school site has been leaving lesson plans either, as a permanent teacher would do when calling a sub.”

Since then, the high school has filled three math positions and an art class position. Jablonski said several Spanish classes are being taught by a substitute, but the position is not posted as a vacancy.

Substitutes take positions for a maximum of 30 days, and if a teacher isn’t hired, a new substitute is CONTINUE READING: Sacramento teacher shortage means students taught by substitutes | The Sacramento Bee

CURMUDGUCATION: Why Directing Community Theater Is Like Teaching

CURMUDGUCATION: Why Directing Community Theater Is Like Teaching

Why Directing Community Theater Is Like Teaching

Readers of this blog generally get a dose of whatever is on my mind, and what's on my mind at the moment is theater. I'm coming down to the wire on one more community theater production; The Music Man opens one week from tomorrow (by all means, feel free to stop by). I've been doing this and school theater for thirty-some years, and yes, it's an awful lot like teaching. Let me count the ways.

You Work With What You Get

Big time Broadway directors have it easy. If you decide you want to cast someone who's  5'3" with blue eyes and blond hair with a cleft chin and a baritone voice, plus juggling and tap skills-- for the  chorus--  you can have your pick of twenty such guys. In the community theater world, you tend to get what you get, and your challenge is to figure out how you  make a show out of that. Not that I don't get plenty of great performers, and not that I haven't had the opportunity to pick and choose from several prospects for a part. But there's a tricky line to tread; on the one hand, you have to have a vision going into auditions, but on the other hand, you cant hold so tightly to it that you can't get the show cast at all.

It's like a classroom. You can curse your fate every day that you don't have a room full of enthusiastic readers with a good grasp of writing basics, or you can just accept that your students are who they are. You may have your favorite Ron Swanson quote, and at my house, we do, too. There's an episode  in which Ron is telling a story about a getting shot in the foot with a nail gun. Leslie's exclaims, "You only have nine toes?!" And Ron replies, "I have the toes I have." That's pretty much it.

Adaptability Is Not Only Necessary But Rewarding

Broadways shows are mostly written for lots of men. Community (and high school) theater tends to CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Why Directing Community Theater Is Like Teaching

New Reports Confirm Persistent Child Poverty While Policymakers Blame Educators and Fail to Address Core Problem | janresseger

New Reports Confirm Persistent Child Poverty While Policymakers Blame Educators and Fail to Address Core Problem | janresseger

New Reports Confirm Persistent Child Poverty While Policymakers Blame Educators and Fail to Address Core Problem

On Tuesday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer published a stunning analysis, by the newspaper’s data analyst Rich Exner, of the school district grades awarded by the state of Ohio on the state report cards released last week.  The new report cards are based on data from the 2018-2019 school year.  I encourage you to follow the link to look at Exner’s series of bar graphs, which, like this one, present a series of almost perfect downward staircases, with “A” grades for school districts in communities with high median income and “F” grades for the school districts in Ohio’s poorest communities.

The correlation of academic achievement with family income has been demonstrated now for half a century, but policymakers, like those in the Ohio legislature who are debating punitive school district takeovers, prefer to blame public school teachers and administrators instead of using the resources of government to assist struggling families who need better access to healthcare, quality childcare, better jobs, and food assistance.

Ohio’s school district grades arrived this week. At the same time, and with less fanfare, arrived a series of reports on the level of federal spending on children, reports documenting that, as Education Week‘s Andrew Uifusa explains: “The share of the federal budget that goes toward children, including education spending, dipped to just below 2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product in 2018—the lowest level in the decade.”

On Tuesday of this week, the Urban Institute released a new report detailing trends in federal CONTINUE READING: New Reports Confirm Persistent Child Poverty While Policymakers Blame Educators and Fail to Address Core Problem | janresseger

How My Thinking about School Reform Has Changed Over the Decades (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How My Thinking about School Reform Has Changed Over the Decades (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How My Thinking about School Reform Has Changed Over the Decades (Part 2)

A few years ago, Richard Elmore asked me to write a piece about how my ideas have changed over the years. Daily experience in schools as a teacher, administrator, and researcher (and the reflections and writing that I did about those experiences)  altered key ideas I had about the nature of reform and how reform worked its way into districts, schools, and classrooms. He included my piece in a book called I Used to Think… And Now I Think (Harvard Education Press, 2011).  Both posts appeared originally in 2013. There is light editing in Part 2. Part 1 appeared a few days ago.

I used to think that structural reforms (e.g., creating non-graded schools; new district and school site governance structures; novel technologies; small high schools with block schedules, advisories, and student learning communities) would lead to better classroom instruction. And now I think that, at best, such structural reforms may be necessary first steps toward improving instruction but are (and have been) seldom sufficient to alter traditional teaching practices.

In teaching nearly 15 years, I had concluded that policies creating new structures (see above examples) would alter common teaching practices which, in turn, would get students to learn more, faster, and better.

I revised that conclusion, albeit in slow motion, as I looked around at how my fellow teachers taught and began to examine my own classroom practices. I reconsidered the supposed power of structures in changing teaching practices CONTINUE READING: How My Thinking about School Reform Has Changed Over the Decades (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Louisiana’s “Education PAC”: A Bit About Nancy Landry, Eddie Rispone, and Lane Grigsby, and More. | deutsch29

Louisiana’s “Education PAC”: A Bit About Nancy Landry, Eddie Rispone, and Lane Grigsby, and More. | deutsch29

Louisiana’s “Education PAC”: A Bit About Nancy Landry, Eddie Rispone, and Lane Grigsby, and More.

n my perusal of Louisiana campaign finance reports, I discovered the PAC featured in this post.

On January 31, 2017, Louisiana lawyer and former La. House rep Nancy Landry started a Louisiana PAC called the Education PAC.

Investigating the political connections among ed-reform associates is very much spider-webby-entangling. I will purposely keep this one brief.

Landry was the House education chair who publicly demeaned Louisiana teachers in 2012; Landry proposed a motion (which passed) requiring teachers who came before the House ed committee to state what kind of leave they took to be present to speak during a school day.

Nancy Landry

The first donors to Landry’s Education PAC were Louisiana businessmen Lane Grigsby and Edward Rispone. Each donated $25,000 in 2016.

Both Grigsby and Rispone are associated with Lousiana Business and Industry (LABI), which is a major promoter of education reform in Lousiana. LABI loves Nancy Landry.

Grigsby’s own Empower Louisiana PAC was a funnel for six out-of-state billionaires from four families to contribute a combined $3M to influence the outcome of Louisiana’s 2015 Board of Elementary and Secondary Education CONTINUE READING: Louisiana’s “Education PAC”: A Bit About Nancy Landry, Eddie Rispone, and Lane Grigsby, and More. | deutsch29

Charter School’s Two Dads – How a Hatred for Public School Gave Us School Privatization | gadflyonthewallblog

Charter School’s Two Dads – How a Hatred for Public School Gave Us School Privatization | gadflyonthewallblog

Charter School’s Two Dads – How a Hatred for Public School Gave Us School Privatization

If bad ideas can be said to have fathers, then charter schools have two.

And I’m not talking about greed and racism.

No, I mean two flesh and blood men who did more than any others to give this terrible idea life – Minnesota ideologues Ted Kolderie, 89, and Joe Nathan, 71.

In my article “Charter Schools Were Never a Good Idea. They Were a Corporate Plot All Along,” I wrote about Kolderie’s role but neglected to mention Nathan’s.

And of the two men, Nathan has actually commented on this blog.

He flamed on your humble narrator when I dared to say that charter schools and voucher schools are virtually identical.

I guess he didn’t like me connecting “liberal” charters with “conservative” vouchers. CONTINUE READING: Charter School’s Two Dads – How a Hatred for Public School Gave Us School Privatization | gadflyonthewallblog