Ruben Alonzo — Carpetbagging Galaxy-Brained Founder Of Excelencia Charter Academy In Boyle Heights — Michael Kohlhaas dot org

Ruben Alonzo — Carpetbagging Galaxy-Brained Founder Of Excelencia Charter Academy In Boyle Heights

Ruben Alonzo — Carpetbagging Galaxy-Brained Founder Of Excelencia Charter Academy In Boyle Heights 

RUBEN ALONZO — CARPETBAGGING GALAXY-BRAINED FOUNDER OF EXCELENCIA CHARTER ACADEMY IN BOYLE HEIGHTS — CO-LOCATED ON THE CAMPUS OF SUNRISE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL — SURVEILLED, STALKED, AND PHOTOGRAPHED ANTI-CHARTER PROTESTER MIMI DUNCANSON — AND TRIED — UNSUCCESSFULLY — TO GET THE COPS TO TOW HER CAR — AND PRETTY LIKELY VIOLATED THE BROWN ACT TO PREVENT HER FROM LEARNING OF IMPENDING TEACHER FIRINGS AT EXCELENCIA — AND THIS IS THE KIND OF AMORAL GRIFTER THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA ENTRUSTS WITH THE LIVES OF SMALL DEFENSELESS CHILDREN - Michael Kohlhaas dot org

 Excelencia Charter Academy is yet another creepy little charter school run by yet another shockingly unqualified creepy little galaxy-brained grifter, this one known as Ruben Alonzo, going about the place making creepy little announcements of delusionally impending disruptive excellence while lining his creepy little pockets with public money1 at the expense of the actual human children that the state legislature, for reasons they’re going to have to answer for eventually, has seen fit to place into his care.

In this regard Alonzo is much like Sakshi Jain, shockingly unqualified founder of the ill-fated GANAS Academy, whose plan to co-locate on the campus of Catskill Elementary School conjured up such a monumental hurricane of activist opposition and scorn that, it appears, she has had to put her school’s opening on hold while she slinks back to her lair to soothe her metaphorical wounds with a salve made of equal parts boorish self-pity and Walton family megabucks.

Unlike Jain, though, Alonzo did actually manage to open his school. In the Fall of 2018 as it happens and, like Jain’s fiasco, co-located, in CONTINUE READING: Ruben Alonzo — Carpetbagging Galaxy-Brained Founder Of Excelencia Charter Academy In Boyle Heights

Top Democratic Presidential Candidates Coming To Pittsburgh For Public Education Forum – CBS Pittsburgh

Top Democratic Presidential Candidates Coming To Pittsburgh For Public Education Forum – CBS Pittsburgh

Top Democratic Presidential Candidates Coming To Pittsburgh For Public Education Forum

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Seven of the leading Democratic candidates for President of the United States will be in Pittsburgh on December 14.

Sources tell KDKA, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Tom Steyer will be the candidates in attendance.

A coalition of parents, educators, school staff, and community members have invited the candidates to the city for the “Public Education Forum 2020” at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center from 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

The forum will be hosted by the American Federation of Teachers, the National Educational Association, and the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools.

Sources tell KDKA’s Jon Delano each candidate will be asked four similar questions plus additional questions from a selected audience.

Local organizations of these groups will play a role in the forum.

“I’m extremely proud of our union membership, community leaders, education activists and public schools all coming together to be a part of this forum,” said Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers President Nina Esposito-Visgitis. “In Pittsburgh, we try to solve tough education challenges with innovative solutions in a pragmatic, collaborative manner. We won’t shy away from asking tough, fair, probing questions of these candidates.”

Topics will range from class sizes, increased wraparound services for students, and resource allocation for neighborhood public schools.

“Public schools are the heart of a strong democracy. When the most vulnerable children in our country are supported and elevated into opportunity and resources through education, WE ALL WIN! The question we have to ask is, which presidential candidates are ready to take a stand to defend and expand our Public Schools?” Asked Devon Taliafarro, Newly Elected Pittsburgh School Board Member and One PA member.

Several cities were in the running for the forum and ultimately it was decided that Pittsburgh would host the event.

Top Democratic Presidential Candidates Coming To Pittsburgh For Public Education Forum – CBS Pittsburgh

NANCY BAILEY: Learning Disabilities and Inclusion: Abandoned Commitment

Learning Disabilities and Inclusion: Abandoned Commitment

Learning Disabilities and Inclusion: Abandoned Commitment

Parents around the country are angry, claiming that their children who have learning disabilities, namely dyslexia, are not being served in public schools. The question here is why aren’t public schools serving students with learning disabilities? Isn’t it the law?

Many parents expect inclusion in general education classes, although some argue for vouchers. Vouchers mean a child will likely go to a private or charter school that often does not involve inclusion and could include teachers with little preparation to teach students with learning disabilities.

But inclusion in public schools has not been without problems. It has not always meant that teachers will have preparation in learning disabilities, or that they will have support to teach students with learning disabilities in large diverse classes.

How did this come about?

Learning Disabilities and Dyslexia

Reports state that 1 in 5 children in the U.S. have learning disabilities like dyslexia or ADHD. Schools do not cause learning disabilities, but schools can go a long way to improve a student’s ability to learn.

In recent years, schools have relied on Response to Intervention, assessing students CONTINUE READING: Learning Disabilities and Inclusion: Abandoned Commitment

Chris Whittle Tries a Splashy Comeback | Diane Ravitch's blog

Chris Whittle Tries a Splashy Comeback | Diane Ravitch's blog

Chris Whittle Tries a Splashy Comeback

Chris Whittle is the Uber entrepreneur of for-profit education. Back in the 1990s, he launched the Edison Project, assuming that George H.W. Bush would be re-elected and would get a voucher plan through Congress. That didn’t happen, so Edison sought contracts to run low-performing schools. Lots of push back from districts and parents. The share price plummeted. To learn th3 story of Edison, read Samuel Abrams’ excellent book, Education and the Commercial Mindset.

After the failure of the Edison Project, Whittle raised many millions to start a for-profit private school called avenues that was to have locations around the world. He hired educators with long experience in elite private schools and had splashy openings in Manhattan and in China. tuition was over $50,000 a year. In 2015, he and the board had differences, and he moved on.

Now Whittle is opening a new international for-profit chain, and openings are planned in multiple locations, including the District of Columbia, Brooklyn, and international locations. As the roll out of the new chain proceeds, with glitz and glamour, the board of Avenues is suing Whittle for $5.8 million that he allegedly owes them.

Leslie Brody of the Wall Street Journal wrote:

As he wooed hundreds of guests with cocktails, mini lobster rolls and goat cheese bonbons at a reception in Brooklyn, entrepreneur Chris Whittle made an audacious claim: There are no world-class K-12 schools, anywhere.

And he intends to change that.

“Our mission is to actually create the first modern school,” Mr. Whittle told a crowd last week at the launch of a CONTINUE READING: Chris Whittle Tries a Splashy Comeback | Diane Ravitch's blog

Report: PTA Fundraising May Contribute to School Inequities

Report: PTA Fundraising May Contribute to School Inequities

Report: PTA Fundraising May Contribute to NYC School Inequities

Some parent teacher associations are raking in big bucks, while hundreds of others collect nothing at all.

New York City’s Education Department has for the first time compiled and released data on the financial standing of PTAs around the city. City Councilman Mark Treyger, a former teacher who wrote the legislation requiring the report, says it's confirmed his fears about inequity in the city's public schools.

"How many times have we heard the DOE and the chancellor and the mayor talk about, your zip code should not determine the opportunities your families receive,” Treyger said. “Well, look at the data."

According to the report, 46 PTAs raised more than $500 thousand in the most recent school year. Of those 46 PTAs, 24 raised at least a million dollars.”

The numbers were self-reported by the PTAs, and the city did not audit them. The report appears to contain some obvious errors. The PTA for PS 133 in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn is listed as raising $76 million, which would require a whole lot of bake sales.

In general, the numbers show that PTAs in comfortable neighborhoods, like Brownstone Brooklyn and Greenwich Village, are raising lots of money, while the 373 schools reporting no PTA income are mainly in poorer communities.

PTA funds can be used for after-school programs, field trips, and music and art teachers. Critics say that means these lopsided figures are unfair to students.

"Schools that can raise over a million dollars, they are using those resources to add art and music teachers,” said Treyger. “When you're in a school with a tight budget in an under-resourced community, you don't have the money CONTINUE READING: Report: PTA Fundraising May Contribute to School Inequities

How San Diego Unified Blew Up Its ‘Balanced’ Budget - Voice of San Diego

How San Diego Unified Blew Up Its ‘Balanced’ Budget - Voice of San Diego

How San Diego Unified Blew Up Its ‘Balanced’ Budget
It turns out those across-the-board 3.7 percent raises for San Diego Unified’s 10,500 employees created a big new structural deficit – adding $45 million in annual operating costs for next year. 

The dark cloud that loomed over San Diego Unified’s operating budget in the last few years had largely cleared.

District leaders this summer touted the passage of a “balanced” $1.4 billion budget and doled out more employee raises they said they could afford thanks to hard choices and layoffs in recent years that helped eliminate a structural deficit that topped $120 million in 2017. Extra state funding from Gov. Gavin Newsom for pensions, special education and cost-of-living increases also boosted revenues by millions this year.

But district records show not all is rosy on the financial front.

After a couple good years, the budget imbalance that left district in dire straits before has resurfaced, and the shortfall between revenues and expenses is again growing with no relief in sight.

Operating revenues are expected to come up nearly $38 million short by the end of the current fiscal year. One-time reserves will help close the gap. Soon district leaders will need to cobble together a plan to trim at least $58 million in expenses from next year’s budget, according to budget projections.

It turns out those across-the-board 3.7 percent raises for San Diego Unified’s 10,500 employees blew up the district’s balanced budget and created a big new structural deficit – adding $45 CONTINUE READING: How San Diego Unified Blew Up Its ‘Balanced’ Budget - Voice of San Diego

The wealth gap and segregation in the U.S. grows. So does the gap in PISA scores. Don’t tell me there is no correlation. – Fred Klonsky

The wealth gap and segregation in the U.S. grows. So does the gap in PISA scores. Don’t tell me there is no correlation. – Fred Klonsky

THE WEALTH GAP AND SEGREGATION IN THE U.S. GROWS. SO DOES THE GAP IN PISA SCORES. DON’T TELL ME THERE IS NO CORRELATION.

The results are in and two decades of corporate school reform gets poor growth scores.

Common Core, Race to the top, Every Student Succeeds.

Some of the reforms had national and state teacher union support. I recall being told by AFT and NEA leaders that Every Student Succeeds needed my best lobby efforts.

It is a bust.

Dana Goldstein in the New York Times today:

Although the top quarter of American students have improved their performance on the exam since 2012, the bottom 10th percentile lost ground, according to an analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics, a federal agency.

Forbes:

The top 10% of the wealth distribution hold a large and growing share of U.S. aggregate wealth, while the bottom half hold a barely visible share.

I claim there’s a correlation between these to facts.

In the face of failure some in charge argue we should do nothing.

“Some education leaders said they saw no reason to drastically change policy CONTINUE READING: The wealth gap and segregation in the U.S. grows. So does the gap in PISA scores. Don’t tell me there is no correlation. – Fred Klonsky

Addressing the Roots of Classroom Behavior Problems + Why Districts Are Reluctant To Let Even Struggling Teachers Go - Teacher Habits

Addressing the Roots of Classroom Behavior Problems - Teacher Habits

Addressing the Roots of Classroom Behavior Problems

By Frankie Wallace

In a 2019 report, based on a survey from 1,900 elementary school teachers, 25% of the teachers reported that they witness children in their classrooms throwing tantrums or having other behavioral issues a few times each week. 

Behavioral issues in the classroom are nothing new. Some kids have always struggled with their behavior more than others, and that comes across in a school setting. 

What has changed, though, is how we can learn more about the root of these behavioral issues, and what can be done about them. Things like talking back to a teacher, throwing a tantrum, or showing disrespect obviously shouldn’t be allowed in a classroom setting. Depending on the severity of the incident, it’s normal for a teacher to exert some kind of punishment, whether it’s staying after school, or bringing that student’s parents in to discuss further options. 

But instead of going straight to punishment, it’s important to understand what might be causing such behavior in the classroom. When a teacher and parents can get to the core of the problem, that’s when real, lasting changes can be made. 

So what are some potential roots of classroom behavioral problems? 

Listening to Learn 

As a teacher, your job is about more than just educating your students. It’s about listening to them. For starters, every student learns  CONTINUE READING: Addressing the Roots of Classroom Behavior Problems - Teacher Habits

Why Districts Are Reluctant To Let Even Struggling Teachers Go 

Those who want to reform public education in America have made one thing abundantly clear: they believe that teachers are the problem. They don’t often come right out and say so, but their actions are unmistakable. They weaken tenure protections because they want districts to more easily be able to dismiss veteran teachers. They end last-in-first-out policies for the same reason. They attack unions because they are the only thing standing between a teacher’s job and an administrator’s desire to give it to someone else. They push for new teacher evaluation systems as a way to identify the bad apples and to legitimize their removal, because who can argue with data? They advocate for more charter schools because charter leaders don’t usually have to deal with pesky unions who make it more difficult to fire substandard educators. They back alternative certification schemes as a way to undermine current professionals. And in perhaps their biggest tell, they pitch an absolute fit when their best-laid plans go to waste because the damn principals still won’t fire teachers!

Reformers believe that America can fire its way to better education. The so-called “5-10 percent solution,” a product of economist Eric Hanushek, is often cited by reformers. As you probably gathered, it posits that American education would improve if we consistently fired

CONTINUE READING: Why Districts Are Reluctant To Let Even Struggling Teachers Go

Dana Goldstein: ‘It Just Isn’t Working’: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Efforts - The New York Times

‘It Just Isn’t Working’: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Efforts - The New York Times

‘It Just Isn’t Working’: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Efforts
An international exam shows that American 15-year-olds are stagnant in reading and math even though the country has spent billions to close gaps with the rest of the world.

The performance of American teenagers in reading and math has been stagnant since 2000, according to the latest results of a rigorous international exam, despite a decades-long effort to raise standards and help students compete with peers across the globe.

And the achievement gap in reading between high and low performers is widening. Although the top quarter of American students have improved their performance on the exam since 2012, the bottom 10th percentile lost ground, according to an analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics, a federal agency.

The disappointing results from the exam, the Program for International Student Assessment, were announced on Tuesday and follow those from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an American test that recently showed that two-thirds of children were not proficient readers.

Over all, American 15-year-olds who took the PISA test scored slightly above students from peer nations in reading but below the middle of the pack in math.

Low-performing students have been the focus of decades of bipartisan education overhaul efforts, costing many billions of dollars, that have resulted in a string of national programs — No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, the Common Core State Standards, the Every Student Succeeds Act — but uneven results.

There is no consensus on why the performance of struggling students is declining. Education experts argue vociferously about a range of potential causes, including school segregation, limited school choice, funding inequities, family poverty, too much focus on test prep and a dearth of instruction in basic skills like phonics.

About a fifth of American 15-year-olds scored so low on the PISA test that it appeared they had not mastered reading skills expected of a 10-year-old, according to Andreas Schleicher, director of education and skills at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which administers the exam.

Those students, he said, face “pretty grim prospects” on the job market.

Daniel Koretz, an expert on testing and a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said recent test results showed that CONTINUE READING: ‘It Just Isn’t Working’: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Efforts - The New York Times

Indiana: Karen Francisco on Shady Charter Real Estate Deals | Diane Ravitch's blog

Indiana: Karen Francisco on Shady Charter Real Estate Deals | Diane Ravitch's blog

Indiana: Karen Francisco on Shady Charter Real Estate Deals

Indiana legislators have rewritten state laws to favor privatization of public assets. If a public school is considered unutilized, a charter operator can claim it for only $1. When the West Lafayette school district sued to challenge the law, a judge sided with the legislators. Give the public school away to a private operator, even though it belongs to the public who paid for it!

Karen Francisco, the brilliant editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, writes here that the state’s political leadership is conspiring against the public interest by giving away public property to entrepreneurs. More than once, the  public has been fleeced by shady charter operators in search of profit.

The “real estate racket” that the legislature endorsed on behalf of charter entrepreneurs is draining millions of dollars away from taxpayers in Indiana and other states.

It would take an accountant to disentangle the tangled web of real estate deals that allow charter operators to rip off the public.

Francisco tries to explain it here:

A decade ago, The Journal Gazette reported a local charter school, Imagine MASTer Academy, was using state tax dollars to pay a for-profit landowner nearly triple in rent what it could have paid to own its building outright.

No one – not the governor, attorney general or any CONTINUE READING: Indiana: Karen Francisco on Shady Charter Real Estate Deals | Diane Ravitch's blog

How the Other Half Learns: A Review (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How the Other Half Learns: A Review (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How the Other Half Learns: A Review (Part 3)

Robert Pondiscio’s book is about Success Academies, a highly praised and critiqued charter school network in New York City. Once connected to those urban schools called “No Excuses’–a term that founder Eva Moskowitz hates (p.52), How the Other Half Learns enters the highly-charged arena of fiery reform rhetoric over publicly-funded urban charter schools that has raged for the past two decades. *

Boosters and opponents of charter schools have argued incessantly over their effectiveness compared to regular public schools (e.g., test scores, degree of innovativeness) and broadening parental choice (e.g., give poor and minority families a choice in schools beyond the one in the neighborhood). Using public funds for charters, critics have said, drained scarce monies away from regular public schools and encouraged the privatization of a public good (see here , here, and here).

I will not take sides in that debate. Pondiscio’s book becomes fuel for one side or the other in this continuing rancorous struggle over charter schools.**

What this book is clear on is that Success Academies screen parents. Only those parents who can adhere to strict school requirements can have their children enter the lottery for kindergarten and higher grades. Success Academies do not “cream”students from public schools; they select parents who want their sons and daughters to be safe, challenged academically, follow the rules, and achieve academically. There are many parents who want exactly what Success Academies CONTINUE READING: How the Other Half Learns: A Review (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Wealthy White Elites Attacking Little Rock School District | tultican

Wealthy White Elites Attacking Little Rock School District | tultican

Wealthy White Elites Attacking Little Rock School District

By Thomas Ultican 12/2/2019

In an apparent reaction to the 2014 school board election, new Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson and the state of Arkansas assumed stewardship of Little Rock School District (LRSD). A law passed January 28, 2015 authorizing the takeover requires the state to give control back to Little Rock voters by January, 2020. New racially motivated proposals hearkening back to the days of openly racist governor, Orville Faubus, ensure minority residents lose their democratic rights. Big money from the Waltons – The world’s wealthiest family – is driving privatization and segregation within LRSD.

A leading Little Rock community activist, Reverend Anika Whitfield, said in an interview, “The Governor, the Attorney General and the state legislature are all controlled by the Walton family.” In 2016 when new Superintendent Mike Poore came to Little Rock from Bentonville, Arkansas (headquarter of the Walton family), Whitfield was suspicious and asked him about his relationship with Walmart’s owners. He replied, “I know you all are apprehensive; I don’t even know Jim Walton.”

Driving Corporate Education Reform in Little Rock

Little Sis Map Showing Leaders of the Attack on LRSD

In 2007, Arkansans for Education Reform (AFER) was established in Bentonville, Arkansas. AFER files taxes under IRS rule 501 C3 which means it is categorized as a charity. In 2013, Arkansas Learns was founded in Little Rock, Arkansas. Arkansas Learns files taxes as a 501 C6 organization which means it CONTINUE READING: Wealthy White Elites Attacking Little Rock School District | tultican

Back to the Future of Reading Instruction: 1990s Edition | radical eyes for equity

Back to the Future of Reading Instruction: 1990s Edition | radical eyes for equity

Back to the Future of Reading Instruction: 1990s Edition

The year is 1997 and the topic, of course, is improving a failing education system in the U.S. Linda Darling-Hammond explains in the Preface [1]:

This follow-up report, Doing What Matters Most: Investing in Quality Teaching, seeks to gauge the nation’s progress toward the goal of high-quality teaching in every classroom in every community. It draws on data about the conditions of teaching that have become available since the original Commission report was released, and it examines policy changes that have occurred.

This report has five recommendations that may sound familiar:

I. Standards for teachers linked to standards for students….

II. Reinvent teacher preparation and professional development….

III. Overhaul teacher recruitment and put qualified teachers in every classroom….

IV. Encourage and reward knowledge and skill….

V. Create schools that are organized for student and teacher success.

We need better standards for teachers and students, better teacher education, better recruitment of teachers focusing on high quality, better reward systems for teacher expertise and outcomes, and better teaching and learning conditions.

Yet, the report also offers some sobering information:

Over the last decade, reforms have sought to increase the amount of CONTINUE READING: 

Back to the Future of Reading Instruction: 1990s Edition | radical eyes for equity

As usual in DC … | GFBrandenburg's Blog

As usual in DC … | GFBrandenburg's Blog

As usual in DC …

… we don’t have a sane schools policy. Witness: Valerie Jablow’s post today.

Safe Passage To Nowhere

by Valerie Jablow

While I was writing this blog post, on the November 25 DC council hearing on safe passage, a DC public school student who was shot during school hours died and DCPS announced the closure of an alternative high school whose students had poor attendance, quite possibly because many had to travel across town to attend it.

Sadly, all are related events.

That hearing was ostensibly about a piece of legislation that would set up an office of safe passage that would endeavor to form a strategic plan for safe passage; award grants to organizations that can help; and set up priority areas in wards 7 and 8 that have high incidents of violent crime and then provide buses to public transit for students in areas without nearby public transit.

(In fact, Ward 7 tonight (12/2) hosts a public meeting on safe passage at 6:30 pm at Nats Academy, 3675 Ely Place SE. See more information here.)

Because concerns about safe passage go to the heart of lived experience for nearly every DC family, the council hearing featured a wide spectrum of people–and reactions to the CONTINUE READING: As usual in DC … | GFBrandenburg's Blog