Thursday, September 26, 2019

Valerie Strauss: Betsy DeVos Expresses Her Contempt for Public Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Valerie Strauss: Betsy DeVos Expresses Her Contempt for Public Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Valerie Strauss: Betsy DeVos Expresses Her Contempt for Public Schools

Valerie Strauss is not surprised yet disappointed that Betsy DeVos kicked off her “back to school tour” at a religious school in Milwaukee, flaunting her contempt for the vast majority of students who attend public schools. By doing so, she showed her agenda: privatization of public schools and transfer of public money to religious schools.
It is ironic that she chose Milwaukee to demonstrate the benefits of school choice. Milwaukee has had choice for three decades: charters, vouchers, and a shrinking public school sector.
All three sectors are faring poorly. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Milwaukee is one of the lowest performing cities in the nation.  Students in religious schools, charters, and public schools are doing poorly.
Competition raised no boats. Milwaukee demonstrates the failure of school choice.
Betsy DeVos either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.

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Classroom in a Bathroom? Overcrowded Building Problems Betsy DeVos Doesn’t Think About

Classroom in a Bathroom? Overcrowded Building Problems Betsy DeVos Doesn’t Think About

Classroom in a Bathroom? Overcrowded Building Problems Betsy DeVos Doesn’t Think About

Please tell Betsy DeVos that when Americans fail to invest in public school buildings, it affects how students learn. Betsy DeVos has never worked in poor building conditions. She doesn’t understand how difficult it is for students and teachers.
On September 20, DeVos stated in her Education Freedom speech to a parochial school audience, that taxpayers should invest in “students not buildings.” This is a strange disconnect. Of course, Americans should invest in students and in their public school buildings. School buildings need to be safe, clean, and provide an environment that is conducive to learning.
To illustrate, two days after DeVos’s speech, we learned that a student with autism had been placed in a bathroom to do his work. How could something so outrageous occur?
The principal apologized. The school was overcrowded and short of space. He said, This current situation is an example of staff trying to seek a solution to temporarily repurpose a room. To our knowledge, the room had been used as storage, not as an active restroom.
Parents and disability advocates claim the teacher could have sent the student to the library. Would the teacher have been able to supervise the student there? The parent should have been informed about school overcrowding. The parent, teacher, and CONTINUE READING: Classroom in a Bathroom? Overcrowded Building Problems Betsy DeVos Doesn’t Think About

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LAUSD Abruptly Cracks Down On Charter Schools That Took District Classrooms, Then Didn't Use Them All: LAist

LAUSD Abruptly Cracks Down On Charter Schools That Took District Classrooms, Then Didn't Use Them All: LAist

LAUSD Abruptly Cracks Down On Charter Schools That Took District Classrooms, Then Didn't Use Them All

In Los Angeles' tough real estate market, the operators of charter schools have to make do with whatever classroom spaces they can find: hospital daycare centers, downtown office suites, even churches and former Hebrew schools.
Or they can simply claim space on an L.A. Unified School District campus.
A state law known as Prop. 39 requires California school districts to offer classrooms at a relatively modest cost to any charter school that asks for them — and in L.A., many charters do ask. Roughly one out of every five charter schools in the city is "co-located" on an LAUSD campus.
But recently — and abruptly — LAUSD officials have decided to crack down on co-located charter schools that over-estimated the amount of space they'd need.
On Tuesday, LAUSD leaders said they're demanding payment of hefty "over-allocation fees" from 41 co-located charter schools that, in the end, didn't enroll enough students to justify the number of classrooms the district gave them. The charters' Prop. 39 demands likely forced their "host" schools to give up classrooms dedicated for art, music, science or computer classes.
"Those classrooms were left empty, not used by anybody," said L.A. Unified School Board member Jackie Goldberg. "If I rent ... a two-bedroom apartment and only sleep in one bedroom, do I get to tell the owner of the apartment, 'I'm not paying for the other bedroom?' No."
The demand appears to be a sudden shift in LAUSD policy. At the school board's direction, LAUSD officials have been "defer[ring] enforcement" of the over-allocation policy. Until this month, the district hadn't penalized a charter school under the policy since 2012.
Now, LAUSD is demanding these 41 charters pay a collective total of $6.7 million in penalties, some of which date back to the 2016-17 school year.
'WE RECEIVED THE INVOICE YESTERDAY ... FOR AN OVER-ALLOCATION THREE YEARS AGO'
The demand caught many of the charter schools off-guard — including four schools that went CONTINUE READING: LAUSD Abruptly Cracks Down On Charter Schools That Took District Classrooms, Then Didn't Use Them All: LAist

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NYC Public School Parents: Today's "Talk out of School" on the toxic levels of testing and lead in NYC schools

NYC Public School Parents: Today's "Talk out of School" on the toxic levels of testing and lead in NYC schools

Today's "Talk out of School" on the toxic levels of testing and lead in NYC schools
On today’s Talk Out of School on WBAI radio, we spoke with NYC Council Member and Chair of the Education Committee Mark Treyger, about yesterday's oversight hearing on “Breaking the test culture” in our NYC schools, the highlights of which I described on the blog. 

We discussed the success of the the 38 schools that belong to the NY Performance Standards Consortium, that use projects and performance-based assessments instead of  Regents exams that most NYC high school students are required to pass to graduate. The Council Member referred to these schools to as the “best kept secret in our education system”. Meanwhile, the overemphasis on standardized testing in our public schools encourages rote learning and memoritzation rather than develop deep knowledge and critical thinking. We also talked about DOE’s proposal to implement yet another set of standardized tests in our schools and create yet another data system called Edustat.  I followed up by asked him what the powers of the Council were to prevent the implementation of these likely damaging and/or wasteful programs might be given mayoral control.

Christopher Werth
In the second half of the show we were joined by Christoper Werth, senior editor at WNYC’s narrative unit, who explained thow his visit to his young daughter’s elementary classroom led to a groundbreaking investigation of lead contamination, followed by a new round of testing by DOE.  

We also discussed how the risks posed by lead in school water compare to lead in peeling paint and dust, and described how the model bill proposed by NRDC would mandate filtration systems on all drinking water outlets in schools and lower the action level requiring remediation. The possible correlation between the phasing out of lead paint and the national  drop in crime rates was another topic we touched on in our discussion. 

Click here to download or livestream the full episode. More information on these issues are linked to below.

 NYC Public School Parents: Today's "Talk out of School" on the toxic levels of testing and lead in NYC schools


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#RedforEd: Teachers Unions All In for Impeachment

#RedforEd: Teachers Unions All In for Impeachment

#RedforEd: Teachers Unions All In for Impeachment

The presidents of the 2 largest teachers unions within the country, the Nationwide Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Academics (AFT), are supporting the impeachment inquiry on President Trump, announced Speaker of the Home Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Tuesday.

Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, struck first with this these comments in a assertion released on Tuesday:

Donald Trump has undermined the rule of thumb of legislation, threatened our nationwide security, and held in contempt the very institutions on which our republic changed into once constructed, most notably in his disclose of presidential energy to stress a international executive to review a doable political opponent. He ought to be held to blame. No one is above the legislation.

As educators, now we occupy labored to shield democracy—in our classrooms and our communities—despite the president’s shut to-fixed assault. We’re grateful that Home management will provide the powers of congressional oversight to this fight towards presidential corruption and that they’re going to birth a corpulent and transparent inquiry into President Trump’s betrayal of American democracy and crimes towards the country he swore to guard.

There could be ample precedent and established rule for the Home to practice in pursuing the impeachment direction of. Our nation’s foundation—three coequal branches of executive that check and steadiness every different—must transcend politics. Truth and transparency are the strongest disinfectant of all.
Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the NEA, changed into once no longer far on the relieve CONTINUE READING: #RedforEd: Teachers Unions All In for Impeachment

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The Great Accountability Scam: High-Stakes Testing Edition | radical eyes for equity

The Great Accountability Scam: High-Stakes Testing Edition | radical eyes for equity

The Great Accountability Scam: High-Stakes Testing Edition
Among other teachers and education scholars, I have been making a case throughout my 36 years in education that has prompted mostly derision from edureformers, politicians, the media, and “no excuses” advocates; the position grounded in evidence includes:
  • Standardized and high-stakes tests are weak proxies for student achievement and teacher/school quality but powerful proxies for the socioeconomic status of students’ homes and communities.
  • And thus, important contributions made by teachers and schools to student learning are very difficult to measure or identify in any direct or singular way (either in a one-sitting test or linked to one teacher over one course, etc.).
  • Accountability structures do not and cannot reform in any substantive way teaching and learning; in fact, high-stakes standards and testing are likely to impact negatively complex and powerful teaching and learning in the name of democracy, human agency, and equity.
  • All in-school-only education reform, then, will appear to (and actually) “fail” as long as public policy does not first or concurrently address socioeconomic inequities such as healthcare, work quality and stability, food insecurity, safety and justice, etc.
  • Social and educational reforms are extremely complex and take far more time than political and public impatience allows; however, the CONTINUE READING: The Great Accountability Scam: High-Stakes Testing Edition | radical eyes for equity

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Cory Booker’s Long and Profitable Friendship with Betsy DeVos, and Why It Ended | Diane Ravitch's blog

Cory Booker’s Long and Profitable Friendship with Betsy DeVos, and Why It Ended | Diane Ravitch's blog

Cory Booker’s Long and Profitable Friendship with Betsy DeVos, and Why It Ended


Cory Booker was recently interviewed by the Washington Post, and he was asked about his past support for vouchers and his friendship with Betsy DeVos. 
He insisted that he turned against vouchers in 2006, and he barely remembered any connection to DeVos. When someone asked if he had flown to Michigan in 2000 at the request of Dick and Betsy DeVos to support their voucher referendum, he at first denied it, then when shown a tape, he said he didn’t remember it.
He opposed DeVos’ nomination to be Secretary of Education in 2017.
DeVos’s allies are stunned by what they call his turnabout. They view Booker’s effort to distance himself from her and her agenda as a betrayal. 
Now that it is politically inconvenient, he has distanced himself from the issue and those who helped launch his political career,” said William E. Oberndorf, who was chairman of the American Education Reform Council when DeVos and Booker were on the board. “Cory once told me that his father used to say to him, ‘Never forget the girl who brought you to the dance.’ I can only CONTINUE READING: Cory Booker’s Long and Profitable Friendship with Betsy DeVos, and Why It Ended | Diane Ravitch's blog

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Is New York City Headed Toward a Collaborative School System Eschewing Testing for Project-Based Learning or Using Tests to Batter and Punish Schools? Schizophrenia Abounds | Ed In The Apple

Is New York City Headed Toward a Collaborative School System Eschewing Testing for Project-Based Learning or Using Tests to Batter and Punish Schools? Schizophrenia Abounds | Ed In The Apple

Is New York City Headed Toward a Collaborative School System Eschewing Testing for Project-Based Learning or Using Tests to Batter and Punish Schools? Schizophrenia Abounds
As the opening of school approaches CityandState, an online website hosts an Education Summit. The guest speaker was Richard Carranza, the chancellor, I blogged about his presentation here.  and included an audio of his presentation.
The chancellor announced a new initiative, Edustats, and gave a brief discussion.
Yesterday the City Council conducted a hearing on excessive testing and I signed up to testify. The chair of the committee, Mark Treyger, is a New York City high school teacher on leave.
The council has oversight responsibility; in a mayoral control city the council has no authority over schools; except, to hold public hearings.
The purpose of Tuesday’s meeting was to give exposure to the 38 high schools that have a waiver from the New York State Education Department (NYSED) Regents Examination requirements. The waiver schools only require the English Regents; students present in-depth research papers in Social Studies, Mathematics and Science. The state has been renewing the waivers since the 90’s; the current waiver is for five years. The schools are part of the Performance-Based Standards Consortium , a not-for-profit run by the estimable Ann Cook, The Consortium functions as sort of a somewhat independent cluster within the larger school system. Numerous chancellors and commissioners have CONTINUE READING: Is New York City Headed Toward a Collaborative School System Eschewing Testing for Project-Based Learning or Using Tests to Batter and Punish Schools? Schizophrenia Abounds | Ed In The Apple

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Techno-Optimists Meet School: School Wins (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Techno-Optimists Meet School: School Wins (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Techno-Optimists Meet School: School Wins (Part 2)

CARTOON-Protesting-Against-New-Technology-the-Early-Days.jpg

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Protests then and now—even fictitious student Bart Simpson–have not stopped technological innovations. That is the power of techno-optimism. Change is good. Change means progress. Changes makes life better. Sure, even if new technologies disrupt industries, people lose jobs, and corporate mergers drive out small businesses, life will be better than what existed before. Techno-optimism reigns in America.
The belief that new technologies can improve individual and collective life–personal health, workplace productivity, home conveniences, school productivity, community engagement– has existed in Europe and the U.S. for centuries (see here and here). It is (and has been) pervasive irrespective of race, ethnicity, social class, and religious belief.
The dream that the Internet would advance democracy, for example, fueled the first generation of global users. Yet after a few years, it became obvious that the Internet, like most technologies, can be used for good or ill bent to expand popular participation in democracies or tighten the grip of dictatorships to CONTINUE READING: Techno-Optimists Meet School: School Wins (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

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NYC Educator: Co-Teaching--Making it Work

NYC Educator: Co-Teaching--Making it Work

Co-Teaching--Making it Work
There's a lot of talk about what a successful co-teaching partnership entails. A few things are indisputable. One is that if it's genuine co-teaching, there should be genuine common prep time. Any administrator who assigns three or four co-teachers to one human cannot reasonably expect cooperation, let alone anything so productive it resembles success.

My experience suggests the primary selection method entails either A. eenie-meenie-miney-mo or B. These two teachers have the same free period, so they're a team. To my mind, neither is ideal, and both are borne of fundamental laziness on the part of the administrator. When they fail, the first response is generally some list of possible co-teaching methods. This one leads, and that one works with individual students. They take turns. This one leads the big group, while that one facilitates small groups. Whatever.

The thing is, if there's no common prep time, it's absurd to think this pair will not only plan together, but also decide an arrangement for which person will do what. In fact, in these instances, it's likely one teacher will do all the planning and execution while the other takes no part whatsoever. In fact, that's probably the best plan.

Last year, I was placed in a class with a teacher who taught it two periods in a row. I was only there for the first session. It was clear to me that the teacher needed to teach both classes, and needed to cover the same material. The best thing I could do for him was stay out of his way and CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Co-Teaching--Making it Work


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Stand for Children: Using Its Oregon Money to Influence Louisiana’s 2019 BESE Election | deutsch29

Stand for Children: Using Its Oregon Money to Influence Louisiana’s 2019 BESE Election | deutsch29

Stand for Children: Using Its Oregon Money to Influence Louisiana’s 2019 BESE Election


I have been watching for out-of-state money influencing Louisiana’s October 2019 state board of ed (BESE) elections.
On its 09/10/19 filing, one PAC, Stand for Children LA IEC, reported $420K in contributions; it reported spending $168K on six BESE candidates:
  • James Garvey (Dist 1)
  • Sandy Holloway (Dist 3)
  • Ashley Ellis (Dist 5)
  • Ronnie Morris (Dist 6)
  • Holly Boffy (Dist 7)
  • Preston Castille (Dist 8)
The report includes $192K in contributions first reported on this filing. All of the money came from Stand for Children’s national office in Portland, Oregon.
Not one dollar came from a Louisiana contributor.
Some background on Stand for Children and its presence in Louisiana politics:
Oregon-based Stand for Children has three PACs on file in Louisiana:
The last on the list, Stand for Children LA IEC, is the primary PAC in usage. However, according to its 09/10/19 filing, Stand for Children LA PAC has $60K, all from Stand for Children in Oregon, and all expressly for supporting BESE incumbent Holly Boffy (Dist 7).
All three Stand for Children LA PACs are almost exclusively operated using money coming from Stand for Children’s national office in Portland, Oregon.
Stand for Children operates its state branches from its national perch in Oregon, CONTINUE READING: Stand for Children: Using Its Oregon Money to Influence Louisiana’s 2019 BESE Election | deutsch29

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Class Size Matters Testimony on high stakes testing before the NYC Council Education Committee | Class Size Matters

Class Size Matters Testimony on high stakes testing before the NYC Council Education Committee | Class Size Matters Class Size Matters 

Class Size Matters Testimony on high stakes testing before the NYC Council Education Committee
Testimony before the NYC Council Education Committee
PDF of the testimony is here.

September 24, 2019 
Thank you, Chair Treyger for holding these important hearings and for the opportunity to testify before you today.  My name is Emily Carrazana, I work at Class Size Matters and I attended public elementary and middle schools in the Bronx.  Beginning in the sixth grade, I would trek up to Bronx Science two or three days a week, and for most of my summers to participate in the Dream/Specialized High School Institute (SHSI), a program designed to help prepare low income and high achieving students for the SHSAT.
After many hours of sacrificed time out of my childhood , I did not get into any of the specialized high schools, despite my good grades and high scores on the state exams. . My parents, first generation immigrants, did not know the first thing about the bureaucratic process that is the complex high school admissions process in this city. So, when I  was rejected from the specialized high schools, they did the only thing they thought they could do.
They moved our entire family out of the state to neighboring New Jersey. I ended up graduating from my town’s public high school, successfully completing AP and International Baccalaureate courses and went on to earn my bachelor’s degrees from Rutgers  in three years. My results on the SHSAT were no indication of where my abilities stood back in the 8th grade, just as they are not a valid marker for success for any student today.
While many people argue that eliminating this exam and/or gifted programs will cause the families of high-achieving students to move out of the city, the example of my family shows how the opposite happens currently because of the use of an unfair high-stakes exam – which has been shown not only to discriminate against students of color but also high-achieving girls.
The SHSAT is an invalid and biased exam.  While nearly all of the discussion and debate has so far revolved around the way in which it leads to racial disparities, this exam has also been shown conclusively to be highly gender-biased.  Though NYC girls receive higher test scores on the state exams and better grades, they are accepted into the specialized high schools at much lower rates.  Here are last year’s results by gender, revealing a gender gap of eight percentage points. [1]

Gender#stud tested% students tested#got offer% of total offers
F14,11651%2,20646%
M13,40549%2,59254%
Total27,521100%4,798100%
The disparity at the most selective schools such as Stuyvesant is even greater.  Last year, 56% of those admitted to Stuyvesant were boys and only 44% were girls.[2]
The fact that the SHSAT is biased against girls has been conclusively proven by Jon Taylor, a research analyst at Hunter College, who has published his research findings in a peer-reviewed journal.[3] He discovered that girls who are admitted to the specialized high schools with the same test scores as boys do better on their course work and receive higher grades, including in the most advanced courses.[4] CONTINUE READING: Class Size Matters Testimony on high stakes testing before the NYC Council Education Committee | Class Size Matters Class Size Matters 



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