Facebook News chief defends decision not to fact-check political ads - Business Insider

Facebook News chief defends decision not to fact-check political ads - Business Insider

Facebook's News boss blasted journalists calling for the company to 'police' speech in political ads

• Campbell Brown, Facebook's Head of News Partnership, said she was "astonished" by the media's response to Facebook's decision to run paid political ads with misinformation and lies. 
• Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been criticized by lawmakers, the press, and members of the public for choosing not to fact-check paid political ads, though other types of ads are subject to third-party fact checking.
• Brown and other Facebook employees claim the company should not be responsible for deciding which politically ads are factually correct, comparing the stance to the broadcast standards used by TV and radio stations.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A top Facebook executive overseeing the company's news publishing efforts fired back at critics of its controversial policy to allow political ads containing lies to run on the platform.  CONTINUE READING: Facebook News chief defends decision not to fact-check political ads - Business Insider

Big Education Ape: Facebook’s Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men from Hate Speech But Not Black Children - ProPublica - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/06/facebooks-secret-censorship-rules.html

Elizabeth Warren made charter school supporters mighty angry. Now they are targeting her. - The Washington Post

Elizabeth Warren made charter school supporters mighty angry. Now they are targeting her. - The Washington Post

Elizabeth Warren made charter school supporters mighty angry. Now they are targeting her.

Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts running for her party’s presidential nomination, struck a deep nerve with charter school supporters when she released her plan for pre-K-12 education and called for a freeze on federal funds for new charters. Now they are targeting her.

Last week, Warren spelled out a detailed plan that would spend hundreds of billions of dollars to improve public schools from prekindergarten through 12th grade, saying she would pay for it by taxing America’s wealthiest people.

Elizabeth Warren calls for billions of new dollars to reform pre-K-12 schools and fight privatization. Here’s how she plans to pay for it.

She calls for, among other things, quadrupling federal Title I funding for schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, which would add $450 billion over the next 10 years — and change the way that funding is implemented so that the neediest students benefit. The plan would also fund the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act at the level the federal government originally promised — 40 percent of the total cost of educating students with disabilities.

But this is what set off supporters of charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated: She said she would end federal investment in charter school expansion, ban for-profit charter schools and ensure existing charter schools are subject to the same transparency and accountability requirements as that of traditional public school districts. Warren also said she wants to ensure that only school districts can authorize the opening of charter schools.

She wasn’t the only Democratic presidential candidate to call for an end to federal funding for new charter schools; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) did the same thing. But Warren has risen to the top of a number of polls, and she is now a prime target for critics of her proposals.

A day after Warren’s announcement, the pro-charter Center for Education Reform issued a release attacking her, saying in part: “This week is seeing Elizabeth Warren’s education stances go from CONTINUE READING: Elizabeth Warren made charter school supporters mighty angry. Now they are targeting her. - The Washington Post

 Big Education Ape: Eight Things I Love About Elizabeth Warren’s Education Plan – And One I Don’t | gadflyonthewallblog - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/10/eight-things-i-love-about-elizabeth.html

Big Education Ape: Warren's education policy proposals links housing and education - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/10/warrens-education-policy-proposals.html

Segregation Is Worse in Charter Schools: a Q&A with Julian Vasquez-Heilig - Progressive.org

Segregation Is Worse in Charter Schools: a Q&A with Julian Vasquez-Heilig - Progressive.org

Segregation Is Worse in Charter Schools: a Q & A with Julian Vasquez-Heilig

In New Jersey, where I live and work as an educator, there are eighty-eight charter schools.

Seventy-three of these charter schools are located in municipalities with poverty rates above the national rate. Of the 23,795 black students enrolled in New Jersey charter schools, 93 percent attend charter schools in municipalities whose poverty rate is above the national average—compared to only 52 percent of white students. 

Unfortunately, charter schools have exacerbated segregation like this in many other states, too. 

A new study in Education Sciences by Julian Vasquez-Heilig—the newly named dean of University of Kentucky’s College of Education and, like me, a Public School Shakedown fellow with The Progressive—found that the rate of double segregation by race and class is

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig is the newly named dean of University of Kentucky's College of Education.

substantially higher in charter schools than in traditional public schools. 

Vasquez-Heilig and his co-authors, T. Jameson Brewer of the University of North Georgia College of Education, and Yohuru Williams of the University of St. Thomas College of Arts and Sciences, analyzed publicly available data to confirm what public school advocates have said for years: Nationally, higher percentages of charter students of every race attend “intensely segregated” schools.

I had an opportunity to speak with Vasquez-Heilig about his study and the urgency to address the hard truth of his findings. 

Q: What questions were you were looking to answer with this study? 

Vasquez-Heilig: So what we really wanted to know is, are charter schools more segregated, when you look at the state-level data, the national level data, and the local level data. We wanted to determine if the one reason why charter CONTINUE READING: Segregation Is Worse in Charter Schools: a Q&A with Julian Vasquez-Heilig - Progressive.org 

CURMUDGUCATION: DeVosian NAEP Nonsense

CURMUDGUCATION: DeVosian NAEP Nonsense

DeVosian NAEP Nonsense

I wasn't going to write about NAEP for any number of reasons, but then I happened to look at Betsy DeVos's comments on this year's results and, well, this whole blood pressure thing happened. So to get my numbers back down, I'm going to talk through the nonsense she issued forth, notable for its disconnection from reality, its devotion to public education bashing, and, most of all, its bizarre display of an amnesia-fueled dismissal of responsibility for any hand in the results of the Nation's Report Card.

DeVos declares that we have a "student achievement crisis" and even if you correctly read "student achievement" as "scores on a single standardized reading and math test," getting to "crisis" is a long leap. Thousands of kids taken from their parents and stuck in cages is a crisis. California on fire is a crisis. Scores on a single standardized math and reading test not going up the way you'd hoped is not a crisis. But then we get this baloney:

For more than three decades, I—and many others—have said that America's antiquated approach to education fails too many kids.

No. For three decades you and many others have used aggressive chicken littling as lebverage to remake education in your preferred image. You said, "Let us have our way and NAEP scores will shoot up like daisies in springtime." Do not even pretend to suggest that you have somehow been hammering fruitlessly on the doors of education, wailing your warnings and being ignored. The CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: DeVosian NAEP Nonsense

A conversation with Randi Weingarten | Newsday

A conversation with Randi Weingarten | Newsday

A conversation with Randi Weingarten

An enlightening visit

On Long Island for a forum on rethinking high school graduation requirements and college-readiness, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten paid a visit to the Newsday editorial board Tuesday afternoon. The conversation spanned from teacher pay and evaluations to the civic engagement of the nation and presidential politics—fitting since Weingarten also sits on the Democratic National Committee.

Her most interesting views included:

• We are living in a moment with extraordinary economic inequality and distrust between racial, ethnic and social groups, but unlike in the 1920s, the chaos and dissension are being stoked from the White House.
• In the hurry to test, test, test in math and English over the last generation of educational policy, a deep understanding of civics and the need for civic engagement and the connections it builds was all but forgotten, contributing to our current crisis.
• Polling shows rural voters in Trump country may not agree with Democrats about immigration or guns, but the vast majority do prioritize strong local public schools.
• It’s becoming more and more clear that a school funding system based mostly on local property taxes will never provide equitable education to all New Yorkers; a change to funding based on a statewide income tax is needed.
• There needs to be multiple pathways to high school graduation, including capstone projects and deep learning.
• Some testing is always going to be needed to assure students are learning but it should go back to just the fourth and eighth grades, and not be so high stakes for individual teachers or students that it poisons the classroom.
• The AFT is going to be very involved in the 2020 election, and is working to get as many people as possible engaged in the political process, stressing sustained community engagement over simple get-out-the-vote efforts.
• There is a path to 270 Electoral College votes for Democrats to beat President Donald Trump, strengthened by the fact that both Michigan and Wisconsin now have Democratic governors and secretaries of state, and the AFT will concentrate its efforts in those two states and Pennsylvania. 
• The AFT will endorse in the primaries if there is a true consensus for one Democrat, or endorse the nominee if there is not. But teachers unions are free to endorse Democratic candidates in their states to boost activism.  CONTINUE READING: A conversation with Randi Weingarten | Newsday

How to Use Social Media in the Classroom - Teacher Habits

How to Use Social Media in the Classroom - Teacher Habits

How to Use Social Media in the Classroom

Teachers will know that using many different instructional tools in class, at all grade levels, is beneficial to students, and this is also true for using social media in the classroom. This can be especially relevant to students ranging from elementary to post-secondary classes. Incorporating social media in the curriculum will have many benefits like teaching networking, communication skills, and support for the classroom.

1. Support to students outside of school

More and more, students are searching for ways to get feedback and answers outside of the traditional classroom, and social media provides expectations of immediacy of information. Social media and other online tools make it possible for students and teachers to connect quickly and support each other outside of the classroom, not only between students and their teacher but within their community of students. 

Facebook

One great example of this would be the creation of a Facebook page or group, that’s set to private, for the whole class to use outside of school. Teachers can use the page to post assignments, provide extra guidance or explanations, and answer questions, making full use of evening and weekend hours to expand student learning. Students can also share ideas and suggestions between each other which is great for brainstorming and gaining critical thinking skills and creativity. 

YouTube

Another option available to teachers is creating a private YouTube CONTINUE READING: How to Use Social Media in the Classroom - Teacher Habits

Carol Burris: Center for American Progress Scrambles to Save Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Carol Burris: Center for American Progress Scrambles to Save Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Carol Burris: Center for American Progress Scrambles to Save Charter Schools

Carol Burris notes that charter-friendly Democrats have been put in a jam since Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have announced their intention to eliminate federal funding for charter schools, which is currently $440 million a year and used by Betsy DeVos primarily to expand big corporate chains.

She writes:

Since Elizabeth Warren joined Bernie Sanders in calling for an end to the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program (CSP), the charter school establishment has been frantically trying through editorials, postings and back channels to get Warren to change her mind.

One of the latest and more subtle attempts has been made by the Center for American Progress (CAP), that serves as the “think tank” for the least progressive arm of the Democratic Party, at least when it comes to education policy.

 Readers may remember CAP as the cheerleaders for the Common Core during the Obama years. It embraced all of the failed policies of Race to the Top, including evaluating teachers by test scores and the collection of big data on student performance to drive “data driven” reform.

 In a recent posting, no doubt in response to Warren’s call CONTINUE READING: Carol Burris: Center for American Progress Scrambles to Save Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Parents Across America told the FTC: Don’t weaken student privacy. You can too | Parents Across America

Parents Across America told the FTC: Don’t weaken student privacy. You can too | Parents Across America

Parents Across America told the FTC: Don’t weaken student privacy. You can too

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) needs to hear from parents: We want our children’s privacy protected. The FTC may bow under the pressure of Big Tech and weaken COPPA regulations. COPPA is the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, originally passed in 1998. Its purpose is to ensure online privacy protections for children under the age of 13 and it should be strengthened, not weakened. Parents Across America submitted the following comments to the FTC and we urge you to submit your own.

The deadline to submit comments to the FTC is December 9th.

Please submit your comments to the FTC here.

You can get more information on COPPA and sign on to the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood’s Letter to the FTC here.

The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy provides more information on COPPA and sample comments for you to submit to the FTC here.

To the FTC:

Student data is being collected at extraordinarily high rates and Parents Across America is calling on the FTC to strengthen, not weaken, COPPA regulations, increase enforcement of existing COPPA Rules, and better protect student privacy.

Parents are increasingly concerned about the lack of informed consent they’re given when it comes to the apps their children are using in their school work. They need the FTC to advocate for the best interests of children, not the bottom lines of EdTech companies.

Current COPPA regulations don’t do nearly enough to protect the data of children under the age of 13. Parents want COPPA to better protect their children’s school-generated data by requiring all app, software, service, platform, and device providers to publicly and prominently share how they protect student data.

The amount of student data collected by vendors is staggering and it’s worrisome to parents. COPPA regulations should require EdTech companies to only collect the data that is needed to operate their products. CONTINUE READING: Parents Across America told the FTC: Don’t weaken student privacy. You can too | Parents Across America

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy - https://www.studentprivacymatters.org/

AFT president’s opposition to Medicare for All is a threat to her own members. – Fred Klonsky

AFT president’s opposition to Medicare for All is a threat to her own members. – Fred Klonsky

AFT PRESIDENT’S OPPOSITION TO MEDICARE FOR ALL IS A THREAT TO HER OWN MEMBERS

It is rain, sleet and snow that will greet CTU members on the picket lines this morning.

I  hope that the strike ends soon.

I’m flashing back to a cold November morning a dozen years ago when our local was on strike over the cost of our health insurance.

Chicago weather is not a friend of organized labor.

If the Chicago strike lasts past Thursday, then the teachers will lose their health insurance and have to switch to COBRA if they want or need coverage.

The threat of losing health insurance should not be a factor in resolving the issues in this strike.

The fact that it is, demonstrates why the strikers’ own union president is so wrong about her opposition to a single national health care system and is doing a huge disservice to workers, including to union members.

The issues that separate the mayor from my teaching colleagues should be settled at the bargaining table. Teachers walking the picket lines this shitty morning have enough on their minds without worrying about Friday and the prospect of no health insurance.

As I wrote a while ago, Weingarten’s defense of work-based insurance with Medicare CONTINUE READING: AFT president’s opposition to Medicare for All is a threat to her own members. – Fred Klonsky

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: A Chance To Improve Teacher Evaluation

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: A Chance To Improve Teacher Evaluation

PA: A Chance To Improve Teacher Evaluation

No sooner had I written about taking back teacher evaluation, then a note crossed my desk about SB 751 and HB 1607.

Pennsylvania's teacher evaluation system is currently pretty lousy. There is nominal commitment to the Danielson model, a time-consuming pre- and post- observation process that involves a big bunch of online paperwork and Q & A answering, a cumbersome process involving Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) that-- well, it might be a stretch to say that nobody really understands SLOs, but I think it's fair to say that how SLOs play out for teachers depends an awful lot on how your local administration interprets the process.

And after you suffer through all that, your evaluation score still depends a lot on scores on the Big Standardized Test (in the Commonwealth, that's PSSAs for elementary and Keystones for secondary).  Your school gets a rating (SPP/Future Ready Index) that is about 90% test score based (the numbers are massaged a couple of different ways then added back together). If you teach a tested subject, you get another little jolt of test score magic. After everything is all factored together, you'll find that you are somewhere in the acceptable middle. All PA administrators are apparently required by law to keep repeating, "Nobody lives in distinguished. You just visit." The state doesn't want a whole bunch of awesome teachers for some reason, but the practical result is a bunch of teachers who get to have one or two peak years and thereafter look like they went back to slacking off.

Currently evaluation is about 50% observation, and and the rest a combination of processed and CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: PA: A Chance To Improve Teacher Evaluation

Betsy DeVos Held in Contempt. Department of Education fined $100,000. What’s Going On? | janresseger

Betsy DeVos Held in Contempt. Department of Education fined $100,000. What’s Going On? | janresseger

Betsy DeVos Held in Contempt. Department of Education fined $100,000. What’s Going On?

Last week should have been a bad week for Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, but one wonders if it is possible to create a really meaningful punishment for somebody like Betsy DeVos—a punishment for allowing her staff to neglect their responsibility to protect vulnerable student loan borrowers who were defrauded by Corinthian Colleges.

Although last week it was announced that Betsy DeVos was being fined $100,000 for the Corinthian Colleges loan forgiveness disaster, it turns out that the agency—the Department of Education—is really being fined.  And even if DeVos had been personally fined, she is among the wealthiest members of President Trump’s cabinet, and the fine wouldn’t have made much of a difference given the size of her family’s fortune.

But the students who were defrauded are not so lucky. DeVos is responsible for causing what has to be financial misery for at least 16,000 students and parents who were billed for loan payments which had supposedly been cancelled.  These people were hounded by loan collectors, and some of them had their tax refunds and wages seized by the contractors who handle loan collections for the Department of Education.

For the NY Times, Erica Green and Stacy Cowley report: “Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of the Federal District Court in San Francisco ordered the Education Department to pay a $100,000 fine. The money will go toward various remedies for students who are owed debt relief after President Barack Obama’s Education Department found they were defrauded by the chain, Corinthian Colleges, which collapsed in 2014. The ruling is a victory for the more than 60,000 students who have been on a financial roller coaster since Corinthian imploded, after state and federal officials found that it lured students through deceptive recruitment practices and falsified job placement rates.”

Green and Cowley further explain the legal history of the case. DeVos has tried to implement a system by which ‘borrowers defense to repayment’ claims would be paid only in cases when borrowers were found to be without a living wage: “Last year, Magistrate Judge Kim found the system illegal, ruling that the Education Department had violated borrowers’ privacy by CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos Held in Contempt. Department of Education fined $100,000. What’s Going On? | janresseger

NYC Educator: Time for Voting

NYC Educator: Time for Voting

Time for Voting

In case you live in a cave or just hadn't heard, there's a New York State law that says you can take up to three hours off from work in order to vote in your local election. There's a form that's been made available to chapter leaders. The form is below and you can copy and paste it if you wish.

There are reasons why you ought to do this, whether or not you think you actually need the time. I mean sure, you can wake up at 4 instead of 4:30 that morning, go to your local polling place, and hope that you're the only one who had that idea. Maybe you won't have to wait on line. Then you'll be able to go to work and not miss a moment of whatever PD administration is offering that day.

On the other hand, this is now your right. It's a right that wasn't handed down from Mount Olympus by Zeus. Like the right to vote, it's a relatively new development. Now here's the thing about rights--if you don't assert them, you haven't actually got them. For example, a lot of people have the right to vote, but a whole lot of people can't be bothered. Your vote really matters. Look at the recent Queens DA race that came down to the wire.

Not persuaded? Look at who's President of the United States. Admittedly, he won the election fair and square by every possible measure (except votes cast). But a lot of people who'd voted for Barack Obama didn't bother to get off their keesters to vote for Hillary. And why should they have? The polls all said Hillary was a shoo-in. I didn't love Hillary myself, but with a choice between her and Trump, I voted for her. If I hadn't, I'd feel guilty.

Look at the UFT Contract. There are schools Bloomberg started that are still full of untenured teachers. The CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Time for Voting

Chicago: A Message from Karen Lewis | Diane Ravitch's blog

Chicago: A Message from Karen Lewis | Diane Ravitch's blog

Chicago: A Message from Karen Lewis

Diane-

When Lori ran for mayor, she gave us hope that she would represent real change in City Hall. She ran on our education platform and made a commitment to reverse years of failed policy and horrible planning by her predecessors.

She inherited a system built on revolving door leadership, misplaced investments, excessive standardized testing and few wraparound services for our students. And she took office on a promise of being a progressive, pro-education mayor who gave her word for an elected school board for our district, and said she would use her power to ensure that Chicago’s students have the resources they need regardless of where they live in this city.

It’s not too late.

For far too long, the students, families and educators of Chicago have been denied the high-quality neighborhood schools they deserve. Our students should be learning in safe and thriving environments with social workers, nurses and guidance counselors. Our educators deserve to work in well-equipped classrooms with manageable and enforceable class sizes. And Chicago’s families deserve an elected leader that CONTINUE READING: Chicago: A Message from Karen Lewis | Diane Ravitch's blog

NOLA Admin’s Book-Cooking, “Fix Your Gradebook” Email: More Teacher Responses | deutsch29

NOLA Admin’s Book-Cooking, “Fix Your Gradebook” Email: More Teacher Responses | deutsch29

NOLA Admin’s Book-Cooking, “Fix Your Gradebook” Email: More Teacher Responses

On October 26, 2019, I posted a piece entitled, “NOLA School Admin’s Book-Cooking, ‘Fix Your Gradebook’ Email.”

That post concerned an email sent by New Orleans-based Abramson Sci Academy’s assistant principal, Whitney, Omosefe, telling a number of teachers that they needed to perform some last-minute adjustments in order to reshape the distribution of their grades in order to produce a distribution favorable to B’s and virtually devoid of D’s and F’s.

From Omosefe’s email, entitled, “Fix Your Gradebook” and dated October 03, 2019:

Because the quarter is almost over, I’m taking a close look at gradebook averages to ensure that teachers remember and meet their gradebook goals. The goal is that 25% of scholars in your course should have an A, 40% should have a B, 25% should have a C, and <10% should have a D/F.

In my original post, I mentioed submitting a public records request to Abramson Sci Academy for Omosefe’s email as well as teacher responses to her email. At the time of my original post, I had not received an acknowledgement of my request.

However, on October 28, 2019, I received a response to my request, which included files for the 27 “fix your gradebook” emails from Omosefe to specific teachers as well as 13 responses from 11 of those teachers (one teacher offered three brief responses).

(Note: Anyone wishing to see these emails may submit a records request to Justin Pickel at prr@collegiateacademies.org.)

In each of Omosefe’s emails to teachers, she included information about the current grade distributions for these teachers’ classes. In most cases, the percentage of students failing was at zero, and most of the students (70% to 90%) had averages of C+ or higher.

Still, these results did not represent the desired grade distribution outcome, so, Omosefe offered suggestions presumably to make students’ grades more CONTINUE READING: NOLA Admin’s Book-Cooking, “Fix Your Gradebook” Email: More Teacher Responses | deutsch29