Profile in Persistence: Every Educator Deserves a Living Wage

Profile in Persistence: Every Educator Deserves a Living Wage

Profile in Persistence: Every Educator Deserves a Living Wage

Debbie Reyes gets very emotional when she recalls the day a student broke her nose. A special education paraeducator for the Pfleugerville Independent School District, in Texas, Reyes works with students on the autism spectrum, many of whom are nonverbal and have severe sensory and behavior challenges.

It was the end of the day and time to clean up, but the boy was sleeping. His mother said he regularly woke up at 3 a.m., wanting to go to school and unable to go back to sleep. The special educators often let him nap, but when Reyes woke him up that afternoon, he responded by striking out, hitting her in the face with his elbow.

“I heard a pop and a crack,” she said. Her nose was fractured in two places, requiring surgery. It took more than a year for her nose to heal.

“I don’t blame him,” Reyes says, tearing up as she tells the story. “He needs a lot of behavior support, and his parents asked us for help. I work with him in the communications unit, a section of the special education room where we help students calm down and communicate what they’re feeling, because a student can’t learn until his behavior is under control.

He just needs help and I want to be a voice for him.” Reyes is committed to being a voice for her special education students. She’s also a voice for her fellow education support professionals (ESPs) who are essential to a well-rounded education for their students but still don’t earn a living wage.

Every Job Matters

Reyes and fellow ESP members of the Pflugerville Educators Association (PfEA) in central Texas have been fighting for a $3 an hour pay raise for all hourly employees CONTINUE READING: Profile in Persistence: Every Educator Deserves a Living Wage

A Very Busy Day Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Video & Transcript Of Greta Thunberg’s speech to world leaders at UN Climate Action Summit | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

A Very Busy Day Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Classroom Instruction Resources Of The Week

by Larry Ferlazzo / 3h

Each week, I publish a post or two containing three or four particularly useful resources on classroom instruction, and you can see them all here. You might also be interested in THE BEST RESOURCES ON CLASS INSTRUCTION IN 2019 – PART ONE. Here are this week’s picks: Limiting “Teacher Talk,” Increasing Student Work! is from Achieve The Core. When Middle School Students Think Like Historians appear

A Simple Way I Differentiate TPR (Total Physical Response) Lessons – Do You Have Other Suggestions?

by Larry Ferlazzo / 4h

harishs / Pixabay Most teachers of English Language Learners are familiar with TPR (Total Physical Response) – see The Best Resources For Learning About Total Physical Response (TPR) . TPR can probably be described most simply as a teacher (or a student) modeling an action at the same time as saying that action’s verb, and then students replicate the action. I recently observed our principal mode

YESTERDAY

“Q&A Collections: Professional Collaboration”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

Q&A Collections: Professional Collaboration is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. All Classroom Q&A posts offering advice on Professional Collaboration (from the past eight years!) are described and linked to in this compilation post. Here’s an excerpt from one of them:

The Best Line Ever That Explains A Key “Advantage” Charters May Have Over Regular Public Schools

20by Larry Ferlazzo / 13h

Thanks to our former (and exceptional) principal, Ted Appel, I learned about a New York Times book review that recently appeared about Robert Pondiscio’s new book about the large charter school network in New York City called Success Academy. The review was written by Dale Russakoff , who I’ve previously talked about in this blog . I’ve also posted an interview I did a few years ago with Robert P

You Might – Or Might Not – Find This Three Minute Video Useful Of Me Talking About Student Motivation

by Larry Ferlazzo / 13h

suju / Pixabay Awhile back, a Swedish TV show on education interviewed me via Skype about student motivation. The show just came out, and they included what I think is a relatively decent three minute clip of me talking about student motivation and growth mindset. I’ve linked directly to that short clip here (they don’t allow embedding). You might, or might not, find it useful. I’m adding it to a

“Speek” Lets You Easily Record Online Messages

by Larry Ferlazzo / 14h

GraphicMama-team / Pixabay Speek is a new website that lets you record audio of a message and then share a link or embed it somewhere, like this: Of course, there are a zillion phone apps (like FlipGrid where you can record audio while showing yourself or, even better with students because of privacy concerns, images) or Vocaroo (which is not ideal these days because it requires Flash) that let y

Video & Transcript Of Greta Thunberg’s speech to world leaders at UN Climate Action Summit

by Larry Ferlazzo / 14h

geralt / Pixabay Here’s the transcript and video of Greta Thunberg’s speech today. I’m adding it to THE BEST RESOURCES ON TEENS DEMANDING AN EFFECTIVE RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE :

Video & Transcript Of Greta Thunberg’s speech to world leaders at UN Climate Action Summit | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Nick Hanauer Speaks Out Against Income Inequality in a Pair of TED Talks | Diane Ravitch's blog

Nick Hanauer Speaks Out Against Income Inequality in a Pair of TED Talks | Diane Ravitch's blog

Nick Hanauer Speaks Out Against Income Inequality in a Pair of TED Talks

Nick Hanauer, who may or may not be a billionaire, made a splash when he conspicuously dropped out of the Destroy Public Education Movement and the Billionaire Boys Club, which he had supported with donations of millions of dollars.

He loudly declared that his fellow plutocrats were wrong to blame the schools for the dysfunctions of our society, which he pinned on income inequality.

He has given some recent TED talks, which you should listen to and react to.

One is called “Beware, Fellow Plutocrats, the Pitchforks CONTINUE READING: Nick Hanauer Speaks Out Against Income Inequality in a Pair of TED Talks | Diane Ravitch's blog

Wrench in the Gears on the Corporate Takeover of Sesame Street

by dianeravitch / 1h

The blogger Wrench in the Gears worries here (in a 2018 post) about the MacArthur Foundation’s Grant of $100 Million to Sesame Street, intended to help the children of Syrian refugees. The “help” these children get will be delivered by technology, she says, not by humans. As it happens, I was one of a large number of judges in this competition, though I did not review the Sesame Street proposal.

Nancy Bailey: Betsy DeVos is a Hypocrite

by dianeravitch / 2h

Nancy Bailey calls out Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for talking about “education freedom” at the same time that she is doing everything within her power to snuff it out. Betsy DeVos’s Education Freedom: It’s Anything But

What Greta Thunberg Told the UN Today

500+by dianeravitch / 19h

Sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg spoke at the UN Climate Conference today. Trump skipped the meeting to attend a discussion of religious freedom. Last Friday, Thunberg inspired millions of students around the world to demonstrate on behalf of action to address the climate crisis. She said today: “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the ot

Jeff Bryant: How Private Search Firms Skim Millions From Public Schools | OurFuture.org by People's Action

How Private Search Firms Skim Millions From Public Schools | OurFuture.org by People's Action

How Private Search Firms Skim Millions From Public Schools

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, where 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 CONTINUE READING: How Private Search Firms Skim Millions From Public Schools | OurFuture.org by People's Action

CURMUDGUCATION: The College Board Tweaked The SAT Adversity Score. But It's Not Fixed-- Or Gone.

CURMUDGUCATION: The College Board Tweaked The SAT Adversity Score. But It's Not Fixed-- Or Gone.

The College Board Tweaked The SAT Adversity Score. But It's Not Fixed-- Or Gone.

Since David Coleman took the helm at the College Board, its flagship product--the ubiquitous SAT, one-time queen of college entrance exams--has been the victim of a series of unforced errors. The roll-out and walk-back of the "adversity score" is only the latest--and recent reports of that score's death may be greatly exaggerated.

The company ran into some glitches in its rush to get a new, Common Core-aligned test to market. Coleman expressed a desire for the test to be a great leveler, a test that would recognize and elevate intellectual prowess wherever it was found. The SAT has long been criticized as being loaded with cultural bias, and the College Board's own data seems to support that assertion. The other knock on the test was that it could be beaten with the help of test prep and coaching (a criticism bolstered by an entire SAT test prep industry). And the College Board has been confirming that these criticisms are valid.

In 2014, the College Board entered into a partnership with Khan Academy to offer free test prep to anyone who wanted it. Rather than designing a test that was immune to test prep (which may, in fact, be impossible), the College Board appeared to be conceding that SAT scores measured, at least in part, how well a student had been coached for the test.

Then came the Environmental Context Dashboard, featuring the Adversity Score. The score was supposed to capture the social and economic background of students through a combination of fifteen dimensions. But though it was supposedly CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: The College Board Tweaked The SAT Adversity Score. But It's Not Fixed-- Or Gone.

“…you are still not mature enough…” | Live Long and Prosper

“…you are still not mature enough…” | Live Long and Prosper

“…you are still not mature enough…”

Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg scolded the world’s adults today at the U.N. Climate Action Summit.

Unfortunately, the American President didn’t listen to Ms. Thunberg’s speech. He dropped by the summit…but didn’t stay. He also hasn’t read the 2015 Department of Defense report on the national security risks caused by climate change. Instead, the current occupant of the White House has spent the last two and a half years dismantling the nation’s environmental protections.

I doubt he would have understood why she was upset since he believes that “…the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese…”

MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS AGO?

In her speech, Thunberg said that it’s been more than thirty years since the science became “crystal clear.” In 1971, Isaac Asimov wrote an essay called, The End. In it, he wrote about the inevitable damage to the Earth from the use of fossil fuels.

If the present carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere were merely to double, the average temperature of the Earth would increase by 3.6° C. We might be able to stand the warmer summers and the milder winters but what of the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica?

At the higher temperatures, the ice caps would lose more ice in the summer than they would regain in the winter. They would begin to melt year by year at an accelerating pace and the sea level would inexorably rise. By the time CONTINUE READING: “…you are still not mature enough…” | Live Long and Prosper