Angie Sullivan Tells Every Nevada Legislator to Read SLAYING GOLIATH | Diane Ravitch's blog

Angie Sullivan Tells Every Nevada Legislator to Read SLAYING GOLIATH | Diane Ravitch's blog

Angie Sullivan Tells Every Nevada Legislator to Read SLAYING GOLIATH

Angie Sullivan teaches in a Title 1 elementary school in Carson County, Nevada. She teaches the children who were left behind.

She sent this post to every legislator in Nevada:

A small group of vocal teachers, parents, and activists have been publicly concerned about national public school privatization for two decades.  

Diane Ravitch is the leader of that pack.  

Her new book is coming out soon.  

Her last books included characters who are national culprits in destroying American Public Schools.  Some have come from my state of Nevada.  

Reform was meant to change a system of education that needed to change.  Still needs change. Admittedly we need to improve.  No one argues against that.  Teachers have always been willing to improve.  

This reform was not ever meant to improve.  

Change came.   The wrong kind.  

Big bad horrific and public school destroying change came.   

It was bad change bought by corporations who do not love children, will not love CONTINUE READING: Angie Sullivan Tells Every Nevada Legislator to Read SLAYING GOLIATH | Diane Ravitch's blog

Choosing Democracy: SCUSD and Black Parallel School Board Seek Settlement

Choosing Democracy: SCUSD and Black Parallel School Board Seek Settlement

SCUSD and Black Parallel School Board Seek Settlement

SACRAMENTO, CA - The Sacramento City Unified School District (District) and plaintiffs suing the District for alleged discrimination against students based on race and disability asked the federal court to pause litigation so the parties may seek potential resolution through settlement.   

The lawsuit, alleged as a class-action, was filed by a coalition of nonprofit advocacy groups on behalf of the Black Parallel School Board (BPSB) and three students in the District. The suit alleges that the District’s policies and practices in the areas of special education and student discipline harm students with disabilities, and in particular, Black students with disabilities. 

While the District does not agree with the allegations in the lawsuit, “we appreciate plaintiffs’ willingness to work with us,” said District Superintendent Jorge A. Aguilar. “The District believes that we should work cooperatively with the plaintiffs to identify potential policies and practices that may not serve the best interests of the District’s students with disabilities, and to jointly find solutions to those issues, which would include addressing factors which limit service options or strategies for serving District students,” said Superintendent Aguilar. 

The parties have asked the Court to grant a seven-month stay of the litigation. During the stay, and by early February, the District has offered and agreed to implement several measures intended to benefit students with disabilities, including Black students with disabilities. These measures include:

• Halting all District suspensions based on “willful defiance” not only for students in kindergarten through third grade, but up and through eighth grade;
• Offering students a special education assessment plan within 15 days of a request for such assessment; and
• Directing school administrators and staff not to ask or require students to leave school as an informal response to concerns with student behavior.
•  

“These measures are significant to students with disabilities and their parents and guardians whom we and other advocates in our community fight for and support,” said BPSB Chairperson Darryl White. “The District’s willingness to implement these interim measures has encouraged BPSB to engage in cooperative discussions with the District about potential broader and more permanent reforms and protections for our students.” 

Also, during the stay, an agreed-upon set of experts will review the District’s data and practices in the areas of special education, student discipline, and implicit bias.  That review will include expert interviews of students, parents, District staff, and other stakeholders. After the assessment and study of the information gathered, the experts will issue recommendations that the parties will consider as part of a possible settlement to create positive, lasting change for students and their families. 

The Court granted the requested stay of litigation today, December 20, 2019. 

Media Contacts

Melody Pomraning, Communications Director, Disability Rights California
916-504-5938, Melody.Pomraning@disabilityrightsca.org
For more information regarding Disability Rights California, visit: disabilityrightsca.org

Communications Department, Sacramento City Unified School District
916-643-9042

Darryl White, Black Parallel School Board
916-529-3587, darrywh1@aol.com

Keith Kamisugi, Director of Communications, Equal Justice Society
415-288-8710,  Kkamisugi@equaljusticesociety.org
For more information regarding Equal Justice Society, visit: equaljusticesociety.org

Patty Guinto, Director of Communications, National Center for Youth Law
626-512-4974, pguinto@youthlaw.org
For more information regarding the National Youth Law Center, visit: youthlaw.org

Choosing Democracy: SCUSD and Black Parallel School Board Seek Settlement

John Thompson: OKCPS teacher complaints should be taken seriously

OKCPS teacher complaints should be taken seriously

OKCPS teacher complaints should be taken seriously

I’ve read school climate surveys and listened to teachers for decades. In my experience, most educators hold their frustration in — until they can’t take it anymore. I thought morale bottomed out in Oklahoma City Public Schools under former Superintendent Aurora Lora, before the recent statewide teacher pay raises, when the American Federation of Teachers’ OKCPS teacher survey prompted 291 comments in 2017. However, I’ve never read anything like the AFT’s November 2019 survey.

Among survey respondents, the only thing which prompted more scathing criticism than this year’s Pathway to Greatness (P2G) district realignment was the increase in disorder and violence. Only 11 percent of respondents said that “Student welfare and school climate has improved.” Twenty-five percent said their site has received “trade ups,” but 38 percent said their class size increased after P2G closed schools and realigned feeder patterns.

Eighty-eight percent reported disruptions of the learning environment, with 50 percent reporting distractions due to wireless devices, 43 percent reporting bullying, and 19 percent reporting “assault and battery against school personnel.” Moreover, 47 percent added comments.

My reading of about 373 teacher comments this year was that fewer than 2 percent were positive about P2G CONTINUE READING: OKCPS teacher complaints should be taken seriously

Mailer encourages Washington state teachers to stop paying their union dues and ‘save up to $1,200’ | The Seattle Times

Mailer encourages Washington state teachers to stop paying their union dues and ‘save up to $1,200’ | The Seattle Times
Mailer encourages Washington state teachers to stop paying their union dues and ‘save up to $1,200’

Get the Facts about the 'Freedom' Foundation - http://freedomfoundationfacts.com/

When Seattle teacher Alice Lippitt checked the mail last week, she was puzzled by a flyer she found.

“What the heck?” she said she remembers thinking. “How did they find my address?”

At first glance, the flyer, sent to thousands of Washington teachers over the holidays, looks like a last-chance sale advertisement from a department store.

It was actually an invitation from a conservative think tank to “save up to $1,200” by opting out of paying membership dues to the Washington Education Association (WEA), the statewide teacher’s union.

“Give yourself a raise this Christmas and every Christmas to come!” it reads.

The mailers are part of a wider and litigious political battle between the state’s labor unions and the Freedom Foundation, an Olympia-based conservative think tank, whose website says the group is “working to reverse the stranglehold government unions have” on state and local policy. Using information gleaned from public records requests, the Foundation has also knocked on doors and sent emails to public employees notifying them of their right to opt out of paying dues under a 2018 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME.

Reached by phone last week, Jami Lund, the Foundation’s senior policy analyst, said the communications are intended to place a check on the power of unions, keep them accountable and prevent them from “overcharging” their members. He added that some public employees, including those who are conservative, don’t want to fund union activities they don’t agree with and feel pressured to be “in lockstep.”

WEA, a formidable lobbying force with close to 100,000 members, has been aware of the group’s efforts for years. A post on the union’s blog advises members to ignore the Foundation’s “annoying tactics.”

“We see it as nothing but an attempt to harass and intimidate school employees,” said Rich Wood, a WEA spokesman. 

Jesse Hagopian@JessedHagopian

Anyone get this anti-union, Scrooge, mailer for Christmas?

They r trying to get educators to drop out of @OurVoiceWEA—giving up the collective bargaining rights that won us the raises & rights we have received.

They should have donated the $$ spent on the mailer to schools!

43

5:33 PM - Dec 26, 2019

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The Foundation is a nonprofit and member of the State Policy Network, an alliance of conservative think tanks, some of which are engaged in similar anti-union marketing campaigns, The Guardian and The Intercept reported.

One mailer from the Foundation obtained by The Guardian said, “The consequences of a favorable ruling [in the Janus case] are huge. Imagine tens, even hundreds, of millions of dollars currently used to push damaging CONTINUE READING: Mailer encourages Washington state teachers to stop paying their union dues and ‘save up to $1,200’ | The Seattle Times

The Most Important School Case Before the U.S. Supreme Court This Session | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Most Important School Case Before the U.S. Supreme Court This Session | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Most Important School Case Before the U.S. Supreme Court This Session

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case called Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that will determine whether the United States–or any state–may still respect a separation of church and state.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s choice of two far-right Justices to the Supreme Court, this case might well be decided in a way that removes all prohibitions on the use of public funds for religious schools.

The facts of the case are these: Like many states, Montana’s state constitution forbids the funding of religious schools. The Montana legislature passed a tax credit program that funds vouchers for religious schools. The Montana Supreme Court ruled that the law violated the state constitution. Now, the case is before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Many states have such prohibitions (and in some of them, like Indiana and Florida, the state courts decided to ignore the explicit language of the state constitution and allow vouchers for religious schools on the claim that the money goes to the family not the religious school that actually gets the public money). The typical attack on state bans on funding religious schools is that such prohibitions are “Blaine amendments,” adopted in the late 19th century at the height of anti-Catholic bigotry; because they were passed in a spirit of bigotry, the argument goes, they should be struck down.

In Montana, the prohibition on funding religious schools is CONTINUE READING: The Most Important School Case Before the U.S. Supreme Court This Session | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andre Perry: Where do the 2020 candidates stand on education issues?

Where do the 2020 candidates stand on education issues?

Here’s the information you need to help you make the better choice in 2020
The education columns from 2019 you don’t want to miss

We’re less than a year away from the 2020 presidential election; last week we saw seven Democratic presidential candidates participate in a forum dedicated to education issues held in Pittsburgh. If you follow my column, you were well-prepped on the issues they discussed. If you didn’t tune in, here’s a primer on the educational issues at stake in this election, the policy actions of the current administration, and what I think of candidates’ proposals.

These columns provoked strong, favorable reactions — from charter advocates, parent advocates and policy analysts — suggesting that people want the federal government to take an active approach to elementary, secondary and higher education.

This year I’ve enjoyed engaging in the debates we should be having around the upcoming election, and, through various media, helping to shape the narrative on issues that are key to families. Engagement, examination and critique of the government are part of our responsibility as citizens, and central to our advancement in society. That’s why a free press is protected by the U.S. Constitution. I look forward to continuing to write for a better democracy in 2020.

Bold, progressive ideas aren’t unrealistic

Alabama’s investments in quality pre-K are a result of conservatives embracing what was once considered a liberal issue. Democrats, meanwhile, are chasing white working-class voters and abandoning their liberal principles.

Support for charters in 2020 election comes with a price

For the 2020 election, black people cannot afford to be human shields for the charter school lobby, which doesn’t have the CONTINUE READING: Where do the 2020 candidates stand on education issues?

Inside a Training Course Where School Workers Learn How to Physically Restrain Students — ProPublica

Inside a Training Course Where School Workers Learn How to Physically Restrain Students — ProPublica

Inside a Training Course Where School Workers Learn How to Physically Restrain Students
While reporting on the use of physical restraint in schools, I wanted to understand if school workers properly used their training in the classroom. They often did not.

This week’s ProPublica Illinois newsletter is written by Jennifer Smith Richards, a Chicago Tribune reporter who has been working with ProPublica Illinois reporters Jodi S. Cohen and Lakeidra Chavis to investigate the use of seclusion and restraint in Illinois public schools.

In the year that we’ve reported on restraint and seclusion, we have worked hard to become experts on the topic.

We’re not educators, but we are dedicated learners. We read books and studies about how to work with children who have behavior disorders, and we talked to academic experts and researchers across the country about seclusion, or confining students in a place they can’t leave, and physical restraint. We learned by observing, too. ProPublica Illinois reporting fellow Lakeidra Chavis and I spent two days watching a Crisis Prevention Institute, or CPI, training for educators in the Chicago suburbs.

We saw school workers learn about verbal de-escalation and how to safely break free if a student grabs their hair or bites them. We saw how a CPI trainer walked them through standing and seated restraints and how to decide what type to use.

But we wanted to learn by doing, too. So I asked my editors at the Chicago Tribune to send me to a five-day training in Peoria last March. They agreed that this would help me better understand what school employees are supposed to do during a crisis. The state currently requires school workers who use physical restraint to be trained at least once every two years and to be taught alternatives to restraint, including de-escalation techniques.

Therapeutic Crisis Intervention, a Cornell University-based program, did not want an observer in the small session but agreed to allow one of us to participate.

So I signed up.

I learned about how children cycle through a crisis and how to help them calm CONTINUE READING: Inside a Training Course Where School Workers Learn How to Physically Restrain Students — ProPublica

Jennifer Berkshire: The Democratic Candidates and Their School Choice Problem | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jennifer Berkshire: The Democratic Candidates and Their School Choice Problem | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jennifer Berkshire: The Democratic Candidates and Their School Choice Problem

Jennifer Berkshire writes in The Nation about the quandary of Democratic candidates. For years, charter schools had bipartisan support. Clinton and Obama both supported charter schools, and joined with Republicans to expand the federal Charter Schools Program, which is now the single biggest source of funding for charter schools at $440 million annually (the second biggest source is the Walton Family Foundation).

Then came the Trump administration and Betsy DeVos, with their full-throated advocacy for school choice, including vouchers. In red states like Ohio, voucher programs are exploding, and Democrats are pushing back against school choice. They are also pushing back against charter schools, as we saw in Kentucky and Virginia, where pro-public education governors were elected.

Meanwhile, the current crop of Democratic candidates are weaving and bobbing. Sanders and Warren have come out against charter schools and privatization. Other candidates are trying to thread the needle, not fully rejecting charter schools, but opposing “for-profit” charter schools (which are legal only in Arizona, but are found in CONTINUE READING: Jennifer Berkshire: The Democratic Candidates and Their School Choice Problem | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: New Report: Charter Fraud And Waste Worse Than We Thought

CURMUDGUCATION: New Report: Charter Fraud And Waste Worse Than We Thought

New Report: Charter Fraud And Waste Worse Than We Thought

Last March, the Network for Public Education released a report showing that the federal government has lost a billion dollars to charter school waste and fraud. But the organization had not stopped sifting through the data. Their follow-up report, “Still Asleep At The Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Results in as Pileup of Fraud ands Waste,” reveals that the situation is even worse than shown in the first report, while laying out more state by state details. Particularly striking—the vast amount of money that has been wasted on ghost schools that never served.

NPE is a group co-founded by Diane Ravitch, the Bush-era Assistant Secretary of Education who has since become an outspoken critic of education reform, and by Anthony Cody, activist and author of The Educator and the Oligarch. The organization's executive director is Carol Burris, a former award-winning New York principal. Burris was the primary author of this report. (NPE gets no money from Bill Gates of the Waltons.)

The reports examine what happened to money disbursed by the Federal Charter Fund, a charter grant source created in 1994 as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Since 1995, it has handed out almost $4 billion.

Some new findings in this follow-up report:

The original report underestimated the number of charters that had taken federal grant funds and then either closed or never opened at all. That report found 1,000 such charters; the number now appears to be closer to 1,800. That means the failure rate is close to 37% nationally. Michigan gave grants of at least $100,000 to 72 schools that never opened at all; California gave grants to 61 unopened schools. Those two states alone account for over $16 million dollars spent without CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: New Report: Charter Fraud And Waste Worse Than We Thought

Yong Zhao: More and Different: The Impact of AI on Future Jobs and Education - Education in the Age of Globalization

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » More and Different: The Impact of AI on Future Jobs and Education

More and Different: The Impact of AI on Future Jobs and Education 

“Better-paid, better-educated workers face the most exposure” to AI, concludes a  recent report about the impact of Artificial Intelligence on jobs in the future. This conclusion should make us question the widely held belief that our children should get more education. More education is never a bad idea and has long been believed to lead to better lives, more income, for example, as illustrated in the diagram below.

https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education-earnings.html

Historical data suggest that the premium of education has increased over the years. The payoff of more education has grown significantly from the 1960s to the 2010s as shown below.

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/07/ourworldindata_changes-in-real-wage-levels-of-workers-by-education-autor.jpg

The strong link between more education and better earnings is universal, true in almost every society.

https://ourworldindata.org/returns-to-education

But will this be true in the future? A recent Brookings Institution report suggests that the link between education and income may be weakened because of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Using a new approach toEducation in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » More and Different: The Impact of AI on Future Jobs and Education