The Company Behind America's Scariest School Shooter Drills | HuffPost

The Company Behind America's Scariest School Shooter Drills | HuffPost

The Company Behind America’s Scariest School Shooter Drills
The ALICE Training Institute wants teachers and students to confront gunmen. There’s little evidence its approach works.

This story was produced in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering guns in America.

In January, a group of teachers knelt against a wall at Meadowlawn Elementary School in Indiana while police posing as armed gunmen shot plastic pellets into their backs, causing angry, red welts. Waiting outside, the teachers’ colleagues could hear screaming, the Indiana State Teachers’ Association said, before they were “brought into the room four at a time and the shooting process was repeated.” 
After the incident, a group of the teachers considered a lawsuit. The sheriff whose team led the exercise told media his officers had stopped using airsoft guns in trainings after one of the participants complained.

“Active shooter” training like this has become more popular over the last decade — as the number of school shootings has increased, so too has the desire to prepare teachers and students to face intruders with lethal intentions.
Behind many of the drills is the ALICE Training Institute, the largest for-profit private provider of active-shooting training in the United States. ALICE operates through a “train the trainer” model — anyone can get ALICE certification after two days of in-person training and online testing. That means its precise influence over a specific drill can be difficult to determine. (ALICE also routinely trains police, like those involved in the Meadowlawn drill, who then go into schools to oversee drills.) The company claims to have trained staff at more than 5,500 school districts and at 900 institutions of higher education, with more clients signing up each day. ALICE — an acronym for alert, CONTINUE READING: The Company Behind America's Scariest School Shooter Drills | HuffPost

“We did not have to stress about our grade but instead we were able to just work”: Student Evaluations of Learning | radical eyes for equity

“We did not have to stress about our grade but instead we were able to just work”: Student Evaluations of Learning | radical eyes for equity

“We did not have to stress about our grade but instead we were able to just work”: Student Evaluations of Learning

The evidence on student evaluations of teaching (SET) suggests that this sort of feedback is deeply biased in the U.S. against women educators, Black educators, and international educators; in other words, using SETs for evaluation in higher education is a misguided tradition that cannot be justified by the sort of scientific inquiry and research that the academy claims to embrace.

In both my levels of teaching—about two decades each as a high school teacher and now in higher education—I have always sought student voices and feedback. Those reflections, however, prompt students’ perceptions of their learning. And the validity and reliability of that feedback, of course, is best determined by me through the lens of what learning goals we were pursuing in any course.

Each fall, I teach two sections of my first-year writing seminar, Reconsidering James Baldwin in the Era of #BlackLivesMatter, which culminates in a portfolio assessment for their final exam grounded in minimum requirements for receiving a grade in the course:

Exam/ Final Writing Portfolio

Resubmit all REFLECTIONS (1-15) on exam date noted above. You may include any other artifacts of work throughout the semester to support the grade you deserve in the course.

Submit the following through email attachments:

• Final drafts of E.1, E.2, E.3, and E.4 as email attachments; be sure to CONTINUE READING: “We did not have to stress about our grade but instead we were able to just work”: Student Evaluations of Learning | radical eyes for equity

2020 is almost here… and so is the election of a lifetime. - Lily's Blackboard

2020 is almost here… and so is the election of a lifetime. - Lily's Blackboard

2020 is almost here… and so is the election of a lifetime.

The end of the year can be a bittersweet time to reflect and celebrate. But I’m feeling a surge of adrenaline, because I cannot wait for 2020 to arrive.

Why? Because in 2020 we have a chance to elect a president who’s with us—one who believes in the transformative power of public schools, who will support the real needs of our students, and who honors educators as professionals.

I spent all day Saturday at a convention center in Pittsburgh with more than 1,000 other educators, parents, students, and grassroots activists listening to eight top presidential candidates answer our questions about their plans for education.

It was exhilarating to spend a day examining big ideas and looking forward.

NEA worked with MSNBC and 10 other education and social justice groups to bring together the “Public Education Forum 2020: Equity and Opportunity for All.” Sen. Michael Bennet, Vice Pres. Joe Biden, Sen. Cory Booker, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren each had equal time to present their ideas on what our public school system should be and how best to get there. Then they answered our questions, many of which focused on the persistent—in some cases, intentional—gaps in education equity found nationwide.

You can hear everything they had to say by streaming the entire event or catch a few of the highlights on EdVotes.

Educators are making it clear we want a president who’s ready to take on the tough questions: Why don’t all of our public schools look like our best public schools? Why does so much in our students’ lives—including the resources invested in their neighborhood school—still depend on what zip code they live in?

We’re looking for a leader who will listen to educators, understand our vision for schools, and work with us to advance CONTINUE READING: 2020 is almost here… and so is the election of a lifetime. - Lily's Blackboard

The Paper Rocket: Thoughts on Improving ‘Hands-On’ Learning (Doug Lemov) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Paper Rocket: Thoughts on Improving ‘Hands-On’ Learning (Doug Lemov) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Paper Rocket: Thoughts on Improving ‘Hands-On’ Learning (Doug Lemov)

This piece comes from “Doug Lemov’s Field Notes,” a blog that he writes about current issues and practices in schools. Author of Teach Like a Champion, he is a managing director of Uncommon Schools, a network of over 50 charter schools serving 20,000 students in various cities on the East coast. This post appeared November 13, 2019.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked my littlest what was going on in Science. It’s her favorite class so it doesn’t take much to get some chatter going. She announced with no small amount of excitement that they were going to be building and flying rockets later that week. “Oh, cool,” I said, “Are you studying air resistance? Or aerodynamics?” That sounded super-geeky, so I re-phrased: “You know, what sorts of things might make a rocket fly better.”

“I’m not really sure,” she said, “We haven’t yet,” which was interesting because the rocket flying was just three or fours days away. If it was to demonstrate some ideas they had learned it was getting late to learn them.

If there’s one thing that most parents seem to want for their kids in school it’s hands-on learning. If there’s one thing many teachers believe will make them be the right sort of teacher it’s hands-on learning. At meet-the-teachers night, if a teacher says, “We’ll be doing lots of hands-on projects in my class this year,” everyone is happy. Parents imagine their kids up to their elbows in learning. Teachers imagine them building rockets and suspension bridges in the future, CONTINUE READING: The Paper Rocket: Thoughts on Improving ‘Hands-On’ Learning (Doug Lemov) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

NYC Educator: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Pittsburgh

NYC Educator: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Pittsburgh

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Pittsburgh

Let's get this out of the way first--it's remarkable that a bunch of presidential candidates came to talk education. It's extraordinary that they came to see us this year. There was no doubt that they all though our votes worth pursuing, and came out in hopes of showing us how much they love and respect teachers. Most of them spoke of having teachers in their families. This, they suppose, will make us love them. Yet if they almost all have teachers in their families, they need to differentiate on that theme.

This is a huge improvement over the last few campaigns, where we endorsed without getting anything in return. I don't know what Hillary would've done about education, but I will never forget being in Minnesota and having her tell us we can "learn from public charter schools." Once you call them that, you've drunk the Kool-Aid, Furthermore, I've seen no evidence they do anything better than we do, beyond picking and choosing kids and dumping those they don't like. Neither of those things impress me.

My grandfather was an electrician. He was very clever. He could work out things for people that they were happy with. However, you wouldn't want me to poking around wires in your home any time soon. Now I loved my grandfather, but I inherited absolutely none of his electrical skills. I'm not at all sure having a teacher in your family makes you palatable to teachers. It certainly doesn't mean you understand the job.

It's not a bad thing that they want our votes. What are they willing to give for them, though? Even though a few dozen pro-charter folks stood outside and protested, none of the candidates spoke substantively against charters. I believe Warren said they ought to be subject to the same regulations public schools are, and I know that's not bringing holiday cheer to the Moskowitz family. Last I looked, Bernie's not a fan at all. Too bad for them.

My biggest surprise was Amy Klobuchar. Though she isn't a top-tier candidate, and thus gets little media coverage, she was surprisingly persuasive. She doesn't seem to share my desire for a national health program, or for free community colleges, but she seems quite sincere. She was the only candidate who spoke of having a teacher in her family who also made it seem like it was of genuine importance to her.

It was pretty disgusting that Michael Bennet could get up in front of all those people and say that he didn't support privatization. Most people, when they use that word, are CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Pittsburgh

SHOCKER: Indiana Refuses to Give Three Indianapolis Schools to For-Profit Charter Chain | Diane Ravitch's blog

SHOCKER: Indiana Refuses to Give Three Indianapolis Schools to For-Profit Charter Chain | Diane Ravitch's blog

SHOCKER: Indiana Refuses to Give Three Indianapolis Schools to For-Profit Charter Chain

Indiana is a swamp of school choice corruption.

If you read this post, your hair might catch on fire if  you are sensitive to things like ethics, honesty, and responsible stewardship of public money.

Seven years ago, the state superintendent of Indiana was a school choice firebrand named Tony Bennett. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to transfer public money from public schools to charter operators or religious schools. He was briefly riding high–the Thomas B. Fordham Institute named him the “reformiest of all reformers.” But then he came a cropper. An AP reporter unearthed the fact that he raised the grade of a charter school owned by one of his campaign donors. That was too much, even for the corrupt swamp overseen by Indiana Republicans. Bennett was defeated when he ran for re-election.  Bennett promptly became State Commissioner of Florida. That gig lasted only weeks, and he had to resign because of the ethics problem he left behind in Indiana.

One of his decisions during his tenure in Indiana was to hand over three low-performing schools in Indianapolis to the for-profit chain called Charter Schools USA, which is CONTINUE READING: SHOCKER: Indiana Refuses to Give Three Indianapolis Schools to For-Profit Charter Chain | Diane Ravitch's blog

NYC Educator: Panorama Survey 2019

NYC Educator: Panorama Survey 2019

Panorama Survey 2019

1. How depressed are you about going to this teacher's class?

a. very   b. extremely  c. very extremely  d. 100%  e. This will be another ER visit for sure.

2. How often does this teacher ignore your needs?

a. usually   b. frequently   c. constantly   d. always  e. both in and out of the classroom 24/7

3. In this class, how stifled does the teacher make you feel?

a. very   b. extremely  c. very extremely  d. 100%  e. I don't remember what it is to feel

4. How threatening does the teacher make this classroom?

a. very   b. extremely  c. very extremely  d. 100%  e. NOOO! I WON'T GO BACK THERE!!!!

5. How often does this teacher waste your time making you explain stuff?

a. always  b. siempre  c. sempre  d. constantly  e. constantamente

6. How unfair are this teacher's stupid rules?

a. very   b. extremely  c. very extremely  d. 100%  e. the worst in the frigging universe

7. How much does this teacher humiliate you in front of all your friends? CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Panorama Survey 2019

NYC Public School Parents: Mayoral control hearings - and the consensus that the current system doesn't work

NYC Public School Parents: Mayoral control hearings - and the consensus that the current system doesn't work

Mayoral control hearings - and the consensus that the current system doesn't work

The NY Assembly Education chair Michael Benedetto and other members of the Education committee held hearings today on Mayoral control which the Legislature renewed with minor changes last spring until June 2022.

Benedetto announced this was to be only the first of many hearings and roundtables they plan to hold to engage other advocates, academics, educators, etc.  Assemblymembers Mike Reilly of Staten Island and Alicia Hyndman of Queens, both former CEC Presidents, along with AMs Joanne Simon of Brooklyn and Harvey Epstein of Manhattan were there and asked lots of good questions.

Many CEC members and others spoke decried the lack of transparency, accountability, checks and balances, and real parent and community input into DOE decision-making.  No one testified strongly in favor of the current system except for Chancellor Carranza, who insisted it was the best system he had ever worked under because it allowed him to coordinate with other city agencies and make fast policy changes with little interference.

Council Member Mark Treyger testified that the Council should have a stronger role in making policy, perhaps by putting an appointed member on the Panel for Educational CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Mayoral control hearings - and the consensus that the current system doesn't work

Special Education Program at Fairfax High School Is Safe For Now

Special Education Program at Fairfax High School Is Safe For Now

Special Education Program at Fairfax High School Is Safe For Now

I don’t want him to stay in the house,I want him to be happy and independent.”– Mother of CTC Student facing displacement

When the stakeholders at CTC West were first told about Nick Melvoin’s plan to displace their special education school so that an elite middle school could be co-located on the campus of Fairfax High School, it was less than three weeks before the LAUSD school board was set to vote on the project. That period included the Thanksgiving holiday, further decreasing the likelihood that the stakeholders would be able to save their school. However, with the support of their allies on the Fairfax campus, they were able to draw enough attention to their plight, forcing Melvoin to pull the item from the agenda of the December 3rd board meeting. The Fairfax High community was told about the delay in the vote on December 3rd and the stakeholders of the CTC were not directly told until a robocall on December 9th. Once again, Melvoin CONTINUE READING: Special Education Program at Fairfax High School Is Safe For Now

Whatever happened to edTPA? It’s still here and still messed up. – Fred Klonsky

Whatever happened to edTPA? It’s still here and still messed up. – Fred Klonsky

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO EDTPA? IT’S STILL HERE AND STILL MESSED UP

A few years ago I posted tons of stuff on the pre-teaching certification program called edTPA.

Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and you can you can use my blog search feature to find more.

edTPA is back, still messed up and in the news.

Sort of.

From a new article on edTPA in Education Week’s Teacher:

The test results are not always reliable or precise, and in fact, can be “misleading.”

And the researchers argue that until these issues are further analyzed and resolved, there should be a moratorium on using edTPA scores for high-stakes decisions for individual teachers. 

The assessment, which teacher-preparation programs must use in 18 states, requires teacher-candidates to submit a CONTINUE READING: Whatever happened to edTPA? It’s still here and still messed up. – Fred Klonsky