CURMUDGUCATION: How Will The Free Market Save The Most Challenging Students

CURMUDGUCATION: How Will The Free Market Save The Most Challenging Students

How Will The Free Market Save The Most Challenging Students

Yesterday, Debbie Meyer put up a post at Project Forever Free that, unfortunately, does not strain the limits of credulity. It's about her journey as a parent and advocate, about the struggle to get her child the educational services that he's entitled to, and her subsequent work in helping other parents learn how to do the same.

Struggles between parents of students with special needs and the public school system are all too common. And yes, sometimes the parents want things that are simply not realistic and yes, the published versions of these battles are often missing critical information because the school cannot defend its position by opening up confidential student records. Even so, there can be no doubt that sometimes it takes a good-sized legal firestorm to get public school administrators off their butts and busy getting those students the educational services to which they are absolutely entitled.

I am not going to argue for a single second about the rightness of Meyer's story or suggest that there's something wrong in the advocacy work she does.

But it brings up a question that nags at me about charters, vouchers, ESAs and the whole spectrum of free market choice-centered ed reform ideas. Aside from my philosophical objections to such systems, I want to ask-- what happens to a child like this in a free market education system?

Early on in the article, Meyer says this:

I successfully advocated for my illiterate, suicidal fourth-grader to get a free and appropriate education at a school specializing in proper instruction for dyslexic kids and struggling readers.

"Free and appropriate education" is only a thing in public schools. If you tell me that parents like CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: How Will The Free Market Save The Most Challenging Students

‘Coronavirus Capitalism’ Is Coming for Public Schools – Seattle Education

‘Coronavirus Capitalism’ Is Coming for Public Schools – Seattle Education

‘Coronavirus Capitalism’ Is Coming for Public Schools

Watch out Seattle

Amid the pandemic, superintendents are gaining the power to sell out public education for private gain.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, public schools in Seattle have closed for the remainder of the school year. But before that decision was made, the local school board gave away one of the public’s most critical needs in a crisis—democratic oversight of the district leader’s contract agreements and other expenditures.

“During moments of cataclysmic change, the previously unthinkable suddenly becomes reality.”

Relinquishing the public’s right to scrutinize how its money is being spent has become common in school districts across the country, as democratically elected officials facing an emergency have loosened, to varying degrees, the reins controlling how school leaders conduct business.

In a time of crisis and chaos, either real or manufactured, some consider it an opportunity to take greater control and change policies in a significant manner. As Naomi Klein said about the coronavirus and its effects on the United States:

“I’ve spent two decades studying the transformations that take place under the cover of disaster. I’ve learned that one thing we can count on is this: During moments of cataclysmic change, the previously unthinkable suddenly becomes reality.”

In Detroit, when Robert Bobb was made an emergency CONTINUE READING: ‘Coronavirus Capitalism’ Is Coming for Public Schools – Seattle Education

New efforts to close America’s deep digital divide - The Washington Post

New efforts to close America’s deep digital divide - The Washington Post

Coronavirus pandemic shines light on deep digital divide in U.S. amid efforts to narrow it

When schools around the country began to close this spring because of the spread of the coronavirus, millions of students had the resources to transition to online learning — but not in Detroit.

Some 90 percent of the 51,000 students in the high-poverty Detroit Public Schools Community District did not have access to Internet services or the technology at home required for online learning. Teachers sent home packets of lessons on paper instead.

A coalition of businesses and philanthropic organizations in the city is working to provide every student, kindergarten through 12th grade, with a tablet computer and high-speed Internet access. The program — called Connected Futures and led by DTE Energy, Skillman Foundation, Quicken Loans, the city of Detroit and the school district — is spending $23 million in what Superintendent Nikolai Vitti hailed as “an unprecedented investment to immediately address an unprecedented crisis.”

The Detroit project is only one of many around the country aimed at trying to close the digital divide, which puts millions of students who are already marginalized at even further disadvantage. It is estimated that up to 12 million students — and some of their teachers — don’t have Internet access at home, and many of the 13,000 U.S. school districts don’t have the resources to provide what is needed without outside help.

Rural areas are especially hard-hit, as are high-poverty areas, while schools and families struggle to keep up learning programs with school buildings closed and students at home. The digital divide is not new, but the crisis facing the country has laid bare just how deep and damaging it is.

School districts around the country, such as Miami-Dade in Florida, have been working with local Internet service providers to obtain free or reduced-price Internet connections, and there are efforts on Capitol Hill to provide billions of dollars in new funding to provide access to virtual education to CONTINUE READING: New efforts to close America’s deep digital divide - The Washington Post

School Districts Are Preparing To Lay Off Thousands Amid Coronavirus-Related Budget Shortfalls | HuffPost

School Districts Are Preparing To Lay Off Thousands Amid Coronavirus-Related Budget Shortfalls | HuffPost

School Districts Are Preparing To Lay Off Thousands Amid Coronavirus-Related Budget Shortfalls
Big city districts have warned that they may have to cut as many as 275,000 staff members combined as tax revenue plummets due to economic shutdowns.

Robert Runcie, superintendent of Broward County Public Schools in Florida, is currently preparing for a disaster.

It’s not related to the multitude of logistics required in transitioning hundreds of thousands of students to distance learning after the coronavirus pandemic closed all of the district’s hundreds of schools. It’s the school budget cuts that could come next, a result of sharp state and local revenue shortfalls after the crisis stopped the American economy in its tracks. 

“It’s going to be really dramatic,” Runcie, whose district is the sixth largest in the country and serves more than 260,000 students, said of the potential cuts.

On Tuesday, Runcie was one of more than 60 superintendents to sign a letter to congressional leaders warning that big urban school districts could be forced to lay off as many as 275,000 teachers unless the federal government intervenes. The schools are in desperate need of funds because they’re facing an estimated 20% loss in local and state revenues, according to the letter, sent under the banner of the Council of the Great City Schools. 

School districts were already anticipating a difficult year. Their students have endured months of academic interruption, potentially losing months of learning. Schools are scrambling to find ways to pay for unexpected coronavirus-related expenditures as their buildings have turned into community feeding hubs around the country. Millions of parents have lost their jobs, leading to home-life upheaval for kids. The sudden loss of staff could turn a bad situation into a disaster. 

“The ramifications are not only profound for the students involved, but for the nation,” says the letter, which includes the signatures of the superintendents of New York City’s and Los Angeles’ schools. “This educational catastrophe could weaken the country’s economic foundation for years.”

Individual school districts are primarily funded through a combination of state and local CONTINUE READING: School Districts Are Preparing To Lay Off Thousands Amid Coronavirus-Related Budget Shortfalls | HuffPost

Gary B. v. Snyder: For children a chance at literacy is a constitutional right

Gary B. v. Snyder: For children a chance at literacy is a constitutional right

In Gary B. v. Snyder, a federal court rules giving children a chance at literacy is a constitutional right
A federal court says underfunded schools in Detroit violated students’ right to a basic education. Advocates hope the case is the beginning of a trend.

At his Detroit high school, Jamarria Hall loved the classes where students could share textbooks, passing six torn and outdated hardcovers among 35 students to take turns reading.

Hall loved those, he said, because in most classes at Osborn High School he had no books. Instead, students copied down whatever the teacher wrote on the board. Or maybe they had a printout from the school’s copy machine.

“How can you learn in that type of environment?” asked Hall, who’s trying to finish his freshman credits at Tallahassee (Fla.) Community College, three years after graduating from Osborn. “It’s setting you up to fail.”

A federal appellate court last week agreed and in a historic ruling determined that the students’ constitutional rights were violated by that level of deprivation.

In a 2-1 decision last week in the case, Gary B. v. Snyder, judges from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that students have a right to “a basic minimum education,” which the court defined as giving students the opportunity to learn to read.

The ruling doesn’t address the vast inequities between rich schools and poor schools, but it does set a minimum standard that states must meet in public education: providing kids with “a chance at foundational literacy.”

It’s the first time that a federal court has asserted that right. Advocates say the ruling could match Brown v. Board of Educationin importance and hope it triggers a broader crusade against unequal education.

The ruling applies to the four states in the Sixth Circuit — Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee — and it could guide similar federal lawsuits in CONTINUE READING: Gary B. v. Snyder: For children a chance at literacy is a constitutional right

Do We Need a National Gap Year? | Teacher in a strange land

Do We Need a National Gap Year? | Teacher in a strange land

Do We Need a National Gap Year?

It was the worst of times, and then…it got even worse. The age of foolishness, incredulity and the winter of our darkness and despair. But now, it’s spring, and even in Michigan, the snow patches in the woods have receded and everyone’s talking about what comes next. Because, clearly, Plans Must Be Made.

We have to get back to normal. Even though normal wasn’t working all that well for us, six months ago.

I have a friend who lives in California. His high school senior son, after a lengthy college decision-making process, chose Purdue, in Indiana. Right now, the focus is on the missing final exams and graduation ceremony. But soon, my friend may be sending his child 2000 miles across the country to start college during a pandemic. Because Mitch Daniels, former Republican governor of Indiana, says it’s OK.

There are upwards of three million high school seniors in the United States, right now. That’s a lot of young people being dumped into a dangerous society, college- and career-unready, to borrow a phrase. What do they need most right now? What do students already enrolled or just leaving college need?

Perhaps we ought to ask first what the nation needs, at this moment.

There have been hundreds of op-ed and think pieces published, about the transformative nature of a pandemic, as applied to education. And I love reading this stuff—the idea of re-making education from the ground up, fashioning an equitable system that’s based on genuine human and social needs, is just so CONTINUE READING: Do We Need a National Gap Year? | Teacher in a strange land

Social Media and the Marketplace of Ideas – radical eyes for equity

Social Media and the Marketplace of Ideas – radical eyes for equity

Social Media and the Marketplace of Ideas

When I was first married, we lived in the room of my parents’ house that had been converted from a garage. My sister and her husband also lived with my parents, them in her old bedroom inside the main house.

One night, we were awakened by my sister pulling the screened door to the room free of the flimsy latch, yelling that my father needed help.

That was a terrible and important night for me as a young man. My mother had found my father collapsed in the bathroom, blood everywhere. He had been hiding a bleeding ulcer from everyone, waking that night in pain and passing out while vomiting blood.

My mother was running around frantically as my sister tried to calm her. While they called the ambulance, I cleaned up my father as best I could and helped rouse him.

They sent me with my father in the ambulance; the first hour or so at the hospital was terrifying as I watched the doctors try to stabilize my father.

He survived this, but in my early 20s I had to face a fact that I had been CONTINUE READING: Social Media and the Marketplace of Ideas – radical eyes for equity

Andy Hargreaves: What We Have Learned So Far from the Coronavirus Pandemic | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andy Hargreaves: What We Have Learned So Far from the Coronavirus Pandemic | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andy Hargreaves: What We Have Learned So Far from the Coronavirus Pandemic

Andy Hargreaves consults with eight education ministries about education strategy, after a long career as professor and researcher at Boston College. He is currently working with Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Iceland, Finland, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Uruguay. This article in The Conversation summarizes what schools have learned thus far in responding to the pandemic. What will schools look like when we someday emerge from the crisis?

One of my university projects connects and supports the education leaders of six countries and two Canadian provinces to advance humanitarian values, including in their responses to COVID-19.

From communication with these leaders, and drawing on my project team’s expertise in educational leadership and large-scale change, here are five big and lasting issues and opportunities that we anticipate will surface once school starts again.

Extra student support needed

Support will be needed for our weakest learners and most vulnerable children to settle down and catch up. (Shutterstock)
After weeks or months at home, students will have lost their teachers’ face-to-face support. Many young people will have experienced poverty and stress. They may have seen family members become ill, or worse. They might have had little chance to play outside.

Rates of domestic abuse and fights over custody arrangements have been on the rise during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many children will have lost the habits that schools teach them — sitting in a circle, waiting your turn, knowing how to listen and co-operate. More than a few will exhibit the signs of post-traumatic stress.

A lot will have spent hours looking at smartphones or playing video games.

And the learning gaps will undoubtedly widen between children from poorer and better-off homes.

Although governments may be anticipating upcoming CONTINUE READING: Andy Hargreaves: What We Have Learned So Far from the Coronavirus Pandemic | Diane Ravitch's blog

NYC Educator: With Safety a Priority, What Will Teaching Look Like?

NYC Educator: With Safety a Priority, What Will Teaching Look Like?

With Safety a Priority, What Will Teaching Look Like?

Mulgrew has a piece in the Daily News that discusses safeguards for returning to work. He's spoken about pretty much all these things at various meetings I've attended.

Of course testing for corona virus is little more than a cruel joke these days. I know someone whose partner, a nurse, suffered for two weeks with fever, and was denied pay for the days she was out. She tried to take vacation days and they denied her. She tested positive but her partner, who was no longer symptomatic, couldn't get tested at all. (I'm now hearing 1199 will get her paid somehow.)

We now know well we should've closed the schools sooner, and de Blasio's failure to do so will be his enduring legacy. And of course there will be obstacles, including the ridiculous class sizes we've been unable to shake for the last half century. Mulgrew suggests possible workarounds, like end to end scheduling, or every other day attendance. These might work, but in severely overcrowded schools (like mine) additional steps may be necessary.

Elsewhere, national teacher unions are saying it must be safe or forget it, there will be strikes and job actions. There should be. I went until the bitter end last time, and I think there were two factors that went into that--I tend to be unreasonably stubborn sometimes, and I honestly did not understand just how risky that was. After weeks of news that focuses on almost nothing but the virus, I see things differently. I'm not gonna be a hero anymore.

But let's say we work it out satisfactorily and go back. Let's say we have fewer students in classrooms and manage adequate social distancing by hook or crook (or more likely by miracle). One of the things that's really frustrated me with remote learning is my absolute inability to see what the hell it is my students are doing. I'm accustomed to walking around the classroom and checking on them individually. I'm accustomed to giving tips as to how to do things better, or compliments on great work.

Well guess what? If we're social distancing, that will still not be possible. Perhaps in some computer rooms in which there are cameras teachers can check desk to desk and send CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: With Safety a Priority, What Will Teaching Look Like?

Russ on Reading: Why Johnny Cant Read, Part 2: Income Inequity

Russ on Reading: Why Johnny Cant Read, Part 2: Income Inequity

Why Johnny Cant Read, Part 2: Income Inequity

In an earlier post, here, I laid out what I believe to be the multiple reasons for reading failure in this country: income inequity, racism and segregation, brain-based reading disorders, environmental factors, and quality of instruction. Without addressing all of these issues, some societal, some child-based, and some school-based, we will never adequately address some children's failure to thrive as readers. In this post I will take on one of those issues: income inequity.

That poverty plays some role in creating vulnerable readers is incontrovertible. Four factors are consistently pointed to in the literature.

1. Poverty impacts the health and well-being of children. Poor nutrition, inadequate medical care, sub-standard housing, pre-mature births, low birth weights are all products of poverty that impact on a child's physical and mental development.
2. Children of poverty are exposed to far fewer words, far fewer complex sentences, and are engaged in far fewer conversation eliciting CONTINUE READING: Russ on Reading: Why Johnny Cant Read, Part 2: Income Inequity

New Benefit Program to Help Food Insecure Students + CALI ED NEWS UPDATE - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

New Benefit Program to Help Food Insecure Students - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Announces New Statewide Benefit Program to Help Food Insecure Students During Coronavirus Pandemic

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond today announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved a new food assistance program for children throughout the state who are living in households struggling with food insecurity. The Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program provides electronic food benefits to families equal to the value of meals children eligible for free or reduced-priced meals would have received at school.

“The COVID-19 crisis has placed additional economic strain on some of our families that were already struggling to put food on the table,” said Thurmond. “This program provides critical food assistance so that our students who are in economically challenged households can get the nutritious meals at home they need to thrive.”

For the 2019–2020 school year, California had approximately 3.9 million children eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch, which equates to about 63 percent of children in participating schools.

Each eligible child in the household will receive $5.70 per day for each day of the month in which school was cancelled due to COVID-19, for a total of up to $365 per eligible child. The program will provide an estimated $1.4 billion toward the feeding of school children throughout the state during this public health emergency.

Eligible students will be identified through the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS). Through an executive order approved by Governor Gavin Newsom, the California Department of Education was able to share CALPADS data with the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) to expedite the benefit distribution process.

The CDSS will automatically issue P-EBT benefits to children who were directly certified for free or reduced-price meals without an application and appear in the CALPADS data. P-EBT cards will arrive in the mail for these households beginning in early May. Children who are eligible for free or reduced-price school meals through the meal application process must apply for P-EBT benefits online in late May. Online applications will be accepted through June 30, 2020, and eligible families will receive benefits retroactively as long as they apply before June 30, 2020. More information about the online application will be available soon.

Students who receive P-EBT benefits are still eligible to receive meals at COVID-19 emergency sites and may continue to receive CalFresh food benefits if eligible.

For more information about P-EBT, visit the CDSS P-EBT informational web page. For updated information about COVID-19 emergency feeding, please visit the CDE COVID-19 School and Child and Adult Day Care Meals web page.

# # # #

Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

SPI Creates New Committee on Loss of Learning

15h

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Creates New Committee with State Leaders Focused on Achievement Gap and Loss of Learning

SPI Working with Leaders on Schools Reopening

200+ 17h

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Working with State and National Leaders to Study Possibility of Schools Reopening Earlier

SPI Issues Statement on Earlier School Year

52 20h

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Issues Statement in Response to Governor's Remarks for Potential Earlier School Year

CURMUDGUCATION: This Is Not What School Will Look Like

CURMUDGUCATION: This Is Not What School Will Look Like

This Is Not What School Will Look Like

Good lord-- the advice/guidance/clever thoughts about how to re-open schools, particularly if any state decides to follow Trump's latest unfiltered brain fart, seem to have been generated, once again, by people who have not been inside a school since they became adults. In some cases, the advice appears to come from people who have never met tiny humans at all.

The CDC joins many folks advising that school desks should be six feet apart. This raises several issues.

First, many classrooms have zero desks. Primary grades often have few or minimal desks. High school labs or shops have benches, not desks.

Second, let's do some math. Imagining that each properly buffered student is in the center of a 6' x 6' square. That's 36 square feet of space, meaning that a class of twenty students would need 720 square feet of classroom-- so 20 feet by 36 feet, just for students. Increase the space if you want furniture like a teacher's desk or bookshelves or cupboards. The 36 square feet is not a new idea; apparently 35 square feet has been a long-standing standard for child center designs, though this article argues that 54 square feet is a better figure for the littles. For the older students, guidelines seem to fall around 30 square feet--but that decreases as the number of "stations" increases.

There are apparently "classic works" about the size of school rooms, and without putting further research into school construction, I can say that classrooms mostly probably have enough room to CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: This Is Not What School Will Look Like

NYC Public School Parents: "Talk out of School" with Naomi Peña and Matt Gonzales

NYC Public School Parents: "Talk out of School" with Naomi Peña and Matt Gonzales

"Talk out of School" with Naomi Peña and Matt Gonzales

Check out our latest "Talk out of School" podcast with advocate Matt Gonzales and parent leader Naomi Peña, President of Community Education Council District 1.  We discussed many of the challenges confronting families facing with remote learning, the pandemic and the just-announced DOE announced grading policy.

NYC Public School Parents: "Talk out of School" with Naomi Peña and Matt Gonzales

Teacher Tom: We Could Not Pick a Better Time

Teacher Tom: We Could Not Pick a Better Time

We Could Not Pick a Better Time

Yesterday, I read that the President wants state governors to "seriously consider and maybe get going on opening schools." It wasn't a surprise, of course, given that he's been advocating for a rapid end to our nationwide quarantine. As anyone who has been reading here knows, I'm more concerned about the social-emotional toll this is taking on us, than I am either the disease itself or the economy, so I'm keen to resume at least some of our normal activities sooner rather than later. But this hit me square between the eyes.

They want the schools to re-open, not because they're concerned about education, not because they're concerned about children, and certainly not because they give a damn about teachers, but because without child care, the economy cannot restart. That's right, the entire economy is built on our backs. I'm not necessarily saying that preschool teachers and child care workers across the nation should come together, draw up a list of demands, then refuse to return to work until they are met, but if we did, we could not pick a better time. The moment we go back to "normal," society can go back to taking us for granted, but right now, as a profession, we've never had more leverage.

We all know our profession is broken. A full one half of Americans live in what are called "child care deserts," areas CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: We Could Not Pick a Better Time

My new book, Teacher Tom's Second Book, is at the printers! We're offering a pre-publication discount through May 18. I'm incredibly proud of it. And while you're on the site, you can also find my first book, Teacher Tom's First Book, at a discount as well.

And finally, this is uncomfortable for me, but I earn most of my income by speaking at education conferences and running in-person workshops. I've had 95 percent of my income wiped out for the next 9 months due to everything being cancelled. I'm hustling to become a new and improved Teacher Tom. I know I'm not the only one living with economic insecurity, but if you like what you read here, please consider hitting the yellow donate button below.

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