CATCH UP WITH PETER GREENE ON FORBES

Peter Greene

CATCH UP WITH PETER GREENE ON FORBES 

What We Can Learn From Florida’s Voucher School Discrimination Flap - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2020/01/31/what-we-can-learn-from-floridas-voucher-school-discrimination-flap/#671e4d2b78c7 by @petergreene on @forbes


Common Core Is Dead. Long Live Common Core. - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2020/01/30/common-core-is-dead-long-live-common-core/#3dee591c5e65 by @petergreene on @forbes


Why Do We Only Have One Flavor Of Charter School? - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2020/01/29/why-do-we-only-have-one-flavor-of-charter-school/#365e68c346a5 by @petergreene on @forbes


How To Improve The Quality Of Teaching With Tools Districts Already Have At Hand (And How To Mess It Up) - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2020/01/25/how-to-improve-the-quality-of-teaching-with-tools-districts-already-have-at-hand-and-how-to-mess-it-up/#3d9e70eafc95 by @petergreene on @forbes


Suitts: Overturning Brown And The Segregationist Legacy Of The Modern School Choice Movement - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2020/01/20/suitts-overturning-brown-and-the-segregationist-legacy-of-the-modern-school-choice-movement/#f6e9f2122fa8 by @petergreene on @forbes


Diane Ravitch: Why Education Disruption Is Losing - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2020/01/17/diane-ravitch-why-education-disruption-is-losing/#24ceb6882be5 by @petergreene on @forbes


Did The Florida DOE Threaten To Fire Teachers For Taking A Personal Day? - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2020/01/11/did-the-florida-doe-threaten-to-fire-teachers-for-taking-a-personal-day/#7f2ec64f6ef9 by @petergreene on @forbes


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Oakland school district sued over violent meeting

Oakland school district sued over violent meeting

Parents, teachers sue Oakland school district over violent board meeting
They seek damages in complaint from Oct. 23 meeting; drive to oust school board president progresses.

OAKLAND — With Oakland Technical High School as the backdrop, a group of parents and teachers announced Thursday they are suing the Oakland Unified School District for injuries they say they suffered by police officers at an Oct. 23 school board meeting.

The complaint is “for violation of our clients’ Constitutional rights, specifically their Constitutional right to engage in free speech and to engage in public activity without being beat up or injured,” said the group’s attorney, Dan Siegel, at the press conference which began with a loud chant of “No more closures. Oakland is not for sale.”

Big Education Ape: OUSD meeting Violence - Oakland Not For Sale – No More School Closures! #Oaklandnotforsale - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/10/ousd-meeting-violence-oakland-not-for.html

The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and names as defendants the Oakland Unified School District, district police Chief Jeff Godown and Sgt. Donald Perrier, among others. It was filed after the school district rejected the group’s excessive force claim, which was filed  in November.

The legal action by the eight plaintiffs stems from an Oct. 23 meeting in which parents and teachers protested against the large number of charter schools and the district’s plan to close schools, including an earlier decision to shut Kaiser Elementary in the Oakland hills.

The complaint seeks unspecified monetary and punitive damages and asks for a jury trial.

At the meeting, protesters clashed with police inside the meeting room, which was separated by a barricade from the school board.

“We were there protesting peacefully with guitars,” said Amy Haruyama, a first-grade teacher with the OUSD. “We had no idea what was about to happen …. I didn’t even see them coming. I fell. I thought I was trapped or something.”

According to the complaint, Haruyama was standing on the auditorium side of the barrier when Sgt. Perrier used his baton to shove her, knocking her to the ground. Haruyama was “bruised and suffered from whiplash from falling,” the complaint stated.

The most visibly injured individual at the Thursday press conference was parent Saru Jayaraman, who was on crutches. According to the complaint, three or four officers “jumped CONTINUE READING: Oakland school district sued over violent meeting

Grassroots Education Network- New Year (2020) Newsletter - Network For Public Education

Grassroots Education Network- New Year (2020) Newsletter - Network For Public Education

Grassroots Education Network- New Year (2020) Newsletter

The NPE Grassroots Education Network is a network of over 135 grassroots organizations nationwide who have joined together to preserve, promote, improve, and strengthen our public schools. If you know of a group that would like to join this powerful network, please go here to sign on. 

If you have any questions about the NPE Grassroots Education Network please contact Marla Kilfoyle, NPE Grassroots Education Network Liaison at marlakilfoyle@networkforpubliceducation.org

Notes from Marla

The most exciting thing about the beginning of 2020 is that Slaying Goliath, the new book by NPE President Diane Ravitch, was released. The reviews speak to the eloquent way that Diane tells the story of everyday people who, without money or power, have successfully brought down the rich and entitled. Please support this amazing book that celebrates all the work we do everyday. Here is a link to order the book, or encourage everyone to visit their closest book store to buy a copy. Diane is also on tour!  She is a fantastic speaker. Here is a link to her tour dates and locations.

I hope to see you all at the NPE Action National Conference in Philadelphia where grassroots groups will be honored. 

At our March 28-29 conference, we will be celebrating the work of Grassroots Groups across the nation. Leaders of Grassroots Groups will be called to the stage to be honored and given an autographed copy of Diane’s new book.

Let’s start 2020 off by connecting and recharging.  Registration is still open but please remember that seats are limited this year to 500, so DO NOT delay your registration. Go here to register and book your hotel. There are few discounted hotel rooms left on Friday and Saturday nights. 

Finally, this newsletter will be the New Year Edition and will highlight a sample of what the network has going on in 2020. 

Public Schools Week will be held from February 24th-28th. Start planning NOW by doing the following:

• Begin to ask your Governor, state and federal lawmakers, Mayor, City Council, or Board of Education to adopt a resolution in support of Public Education. Begin to do this now. You can adopt, edit, or modify this resolution from The School Superintendents Association. If you get a resolution please send it to Marla Kilfoyle at marlakilfoyle@networkforpubliceducation.org and we will forward it along.
  
• National organizations please cut a three-minute video that encourages your members to participate in Public Schools Week. Here are the instructions for the video. To see sample videos please go here.  
  
• Please share and ask your members to take the pledge in support of Public Schools week. You can do that here.
  
• Please consider hosting an event. Starting planning NOW and register your event here  
• To learn more about Public Schools Week, messaging for 2020 and the #PublicSchoolProud campaign please go here and the toolkit has all kinds of amazing things you can do to support the week on social media.

On the National Front here is what the following groups will be doing in 2020:Grassroots Education Network- New Year (2020) Newsletter - Network For Public Education

Carol Burris: What Michael Bloomberg Really Wants to Do in Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Carol Burris: What Michael Bloomberg Really Wants to Do in Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Carol Burris: What Michael Bloomberg Really Wants to Do in Schools

Carol Burris wrote about Michael Bloomberg’s education ideas several years ago when she was a high school principal on Long Island in New York.

You have to love New York City’s mayor. Michael Bloomberg speaks his mind, never holding back. While most self-proclaimed school reformers do the Dance of the Seven Veils, slowly revealing their agenda, the mayor jumps up on stage and gives you the ‘full monty.’ He’s sure he has the solution for all that ails New York’s schools, and he is not shy about sharing.

Last Thursday, he told an MIT conference audience how to quickly improve public schools. “I would, if I had the ability – which nobody does really – to just design a system and say, ‘ex cathedra, this is what we’re going to do,’ you would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them and you would weed out all the bad ones and just have good teachers. And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.”

Now that’s an interesting proposal to promote college readiness: lecture halls for third graders.

The mayor never cites any research to support his claims about what’s a good deal for students. Nor does he explain a sensible way to determine the bottom half of teachers — the ones who would be sent packing. But he CONTINUE READING: Carol Burris: What Michael Bloomberg Really Wants to Do in Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Weingarten: Right wants states to use public dollars for religious schools – People's World

Weingarten: Right wants states to use public dollars for religious schools – People's World

Weingarten: Right wants states to use public dollars for religious schools

WASHINGTON – The religious right wants the U.S. Supreme Court to force states to use public dollars for religious schools, Teachers President Randi Weingarten warns.

In a message to her union’s 1.6 million members late last month, the AFT leader, a civics and government teacher from New York City, adds the religious rightists are counting on the High Court’s five-man GOP-named majority to uphold their demand.

Weingarten commented just days before the court heard oral arguments on the case, Espinoza vs Montana Department of Revenue, on Jan. 22.

In the case, three families who had received taxpayer-paid $150 yearly vouchers to send their kids to any private school will lose them at the end of this school year, because using the vouchers to send kids to religious school violates the federal constitution’s ban and a state constitutional ban on government “establishment” – promotion of — religion.

Other states have similar bans in their constitutions. If the court sides with the right, all those prohibitions, called “Blaine Amendments,” would get tossed.

The GOP Trump administration, for whom the religious right is a major political constituency, joined in the CONTINUE READING: Weingarten: Right wants states to use public dollars for religious schools – People's World

Shawgi Tell: Charter Schools Are Part of Private Law, Not Public Law | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools Are Part of Private Law, Not Public Law | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools Are Part of Private Law, Not Public Law

Public law and private law are separate spheres of law that operate according to different standards and relationships.¹

Private law governs relations between private citizens, whereas public law governs relations between individuals and the state. This distinction is critical. Private law does not concern society as a whole; public law does.

Private law includes tort law, contract law, commercial law, and property law. Public law encompasses constitutional law, administrative law, criminal law, tax law, and municipal law.

Public schools fall under public law and are considered to be government enterprises, i.e., agencies of the state, also known as political subdivisions of the state. Public schools serve a public purpose, have elected school boards, accept all students, do not charge tuition, and have taxing powers. Charter schools, on the other hand, are contract schools that fall under private law. They are not public schools in the proper sense of the word; they are private non-profit or for-profit organizations that do not accept all students and cannot levy taxes. Charter schools are not governmental entities or political subdivisions of the state. To call them public schools is incorrect.

A contract is a legally binding voluntary agreement — not just a promise — between two or more parties to do or not do something during a specified period of time, with associated rewards and punishments. Contracts are CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools Are Part of Private Law, Not Public Law | Dissident Voice

"What We Believe": A Black Lives Matter at School Activity book. A free and downloadable classroom resource! – Black Lives Matter At School #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool #TBATS #BLM

"What We Believe": A Black Lives Matter at School Activity book. A free and downloadable classroom resource! – Black Lives Matter At School

"What We Believe": A Black Lives Matter at School Activity book. A free and downloadable classroom resource!

Calling all educators:

Thanks to stunning art and design by New York City educator Caryn Davidson, we now have an indispensable #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Activity book, “What We Believe.” This resource is free and downloadable from the “lesson plan” tab under the “2020 Curriculum Resource Guide” link on the BlackLivesMatterAtSchool.com website.

This beautiful workbook guides students through the Black Lives Matter Global Network’s 13 principles with powerful quotes and images from Black thought leaders, artists, activist, and organizers. What an incredible resource to engage students in deep conversations about the rich diversity of the Black experience for the national Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, February 3-7, 2020!

Here, then, is the introductory page from the book to explain what it’s all about and how to use it: CONTINUE READING: "What We Believe": A Black Lives Matter at School Activity book. A free and downloadable classroom resource! – Black Lives Matter At School

Education Week: Philanthropists Are Losing Interest in K-12 “Reform” Due to Lack of Results | Diane Ravitch's blog

Education Week: Philanthropists Are Losing Interest in K-12 “Reform” Due to Lack of Results | Diane Ravitch's blog

Education Week: Philanthropists Are Losing Interest in K-12 “Reform” Due to Lack of Results

Christina Samuels of Education Week reports that philanthropists continue to pour a large percentage of their donations into education, but are losing interest in K-12 due to the poor record of their efforts to “reform” the schools. 

ironically, this is good news because the philanthropic money was used to impose “reforms” that disrupted schools, ranked students based on their test scores, and demoralized teachers.

Schools that serve the neediest children definitely need more money but not the kind that is tied to test scores, stigmatizing students and teachers, or the kind that funds charter schools to drain resources from public schools, leaving them with less money to educate the neediest children.

Samuels reports that a growing number of grant makers to early childhood education are looking to help children before they start school, and giving money to issues such as “education and mental health, education and criminal justice, education and the arts.”

In 2010, I visited Denver and met with about 60 of the city’s civic leaders. I was supposed to debate State CONTINUE READING: Education Week: Philanthropists Are Losing Interest in K-12 “Reform” Due to Lack of Results | Diane Ravitch's blog

In States with Oldest School Vouchers, School Choice Week Is Filled with Contention | janresseger

In States with Oldest School Vouchers, School Choice Week Is Filled with Contention | janresseger

In States with Oldest School Vouchers, School Choice Week Is Filled with Contention

Wisconsin and Ohio have the oldest school choice programs in the United States.  Milwaukee’s voucher program is 30 years old and the Cleveland Voucher Program is 24 years old.  Both states have expanded vouchers statewide beyond the two cities where they began. It ought to be a red flag that in these two states with the oldest programs, National School Choice Week may have been more contentious than anywhere else in the country.

National School Choice Week in Wisconsin

Last week Vice President Mike Pence and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos went to Madison, Wisconsin’s capital city, to honor National School Choice Week, a celebration of vouchers and charter schools that was established and is promoted every year by groups like the American Federation for Children—the group DeVos herself helped found and to which she has regularly donated generously—and Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd.

Pence and DeVos were not welcomed by Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers, who skipped the event altogether. Before he was elected governor, Evers was the state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, and before that he was a public school educator. Evers has devoted his career to leading and promoting the state’s public schools.

Neither Pence nor DeVos was welcomed by the Capital Times in Madison, which editorialized: “Pence parrots the talking points of the wealthy campaign donors he has always served…. That’s what Pence did Tuesday in Madison… Pence was promoting ongoing efforts to undermine public education with the usual cabal of billionaire-funded advocates for the agenda of the Trump-Pence administration’s ‘school choice’ agenda… Out-of-state billionaires like DeVos and politicians like Pence have for years targeted Wisconsin in their efforts to CONTINUE READING: In States with Oldest School Vouchers, School Choice Week Is Filled with Contention | janresseger

NYC Educator: Targeted--NY ESL Teachers (and Students)

NYC Educator: Targeted--NY ESL Teachers (and Students)

Targeted--NY ESL Teachers (and Students)

I should've known the first time I heard Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa speak at George Washington Campus. There is a plan. Rosa said they'd changed Part 154 so that students could have more content instruction. At the time I didn't really grasp the implications.

It's now clear to me that neither Rosa nor and of the other geniuses in Albany see English as content. It's just something you magically acquire by virtue of being here. To an extent, that's true, but to a much larger extent, it is ridiculous and hurtful.

Imagine yourself shipped to China tomorrow and placed in a Chinese history class taught entirely in Chinese. If you didn't know the language, you'd be lost. Now imagine how my kids feel when they're dumped into an American history class. Will it matter if there's an ESL teacher sitting in the room two days a week? It's entirely likely that teacher has no time to make contact with the content teacher. How that person is supposed to catch you up on language, culture and background knowledge concurrently with instruction I have no idea.

What if you have a social studies teacher who has taken the magical 12 credits and is provisionally certified in ESL? Will that person be able to teach not only the content, but also all the vocabulary and background in the same 40 minutes her colleagues teach the content only? Perhaps she's a miracle worker, but four classes do not a miracle worker make. It's highly unlikely the students will develop a love for social studies or civics under these conditions.

The fact is that the geniuses in Albany have based all of their brilliant programs on studies of younger children. While it is indeed counter-productive and myopic to have reduced support for younger ELLs, they may do better with Albany's new CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Targeted--NY ESL Teachers (and Students)

Response to “WHY I SUPPORT KEEPING NEW YORK STATE REGENTS EXAMINATIONS.” | Ed In The Apple

Response to “WHY I SUPPORT KEEPING NEW YORK STATE REGENTS EXAMINATIONS.” | Ed In The Apple

Response to “WHY I SUPPORT KEEPING NEW YORK STATE REGENTS EXAMINATIONS.”

RESPONSE TO “WHY I SUPPORT KEEPING NEW YORK STATE REGENTS EXAMINATIONS.”

      Marc Korashan

This is an important starting point for a discussion of the broader question, what does a high school diploma mean? What do we expect high school students to be able to do after they graduate; use algebra to solve problems, write a research paper on a topic of their choosing; read and analyze texts from a variety of literary forms; speak or read a foreign language; be able to participate knowledgeably in the political process, or some other skills related to the expectations of a twenty-first century workplace heavily dependent of computer skills.

The basic curriculum has not changed over the many years since I graduated from high school in 1968. The specific content, the range of historical events, the required readings in English, and the depth of scientific knowledge have changed, of course, but the overall shape of the curriculum hasn’t.

Do we spend time teaching students facts (that they are not terribly interested in) and how to answer multiple choice questions, or do we teach them to challenge their thinking, to research in depth to understand what history teaches us about the present and how to use mathematics to solve meaningful problems in their daily lives (not two trains colliding but the kind of math we encounter in the real world al “Freakonomics”?

I am a product (as is Ed) of a Regents oriented high school curriculum. In fact, I was told that anything less than a ninety on the Geometry regents would result in my failing the course regardless of the grades earned on tests and homework CONTINUE READING: Response to “WHY I SUPPORT KEEPING NEW YORK STATE REGENTS EXAMINATIONS.” | Ed In The Apple

On Showing Up As Our (In)Authentic Selves | The Jose Vilson

On Showing Up As Our (In)Authentic Selves | The Jose Vilson

ON SHOWING UP AS OUR (IN)AUTHENTIC SELVES

This weekend, I had the pleasure of attending my sixth straight EduCon conference in Philadelphia, PA, a gathering that usually lands on or around my birthday. Unlike previous years, I decided to come on my own at the behest of folks I consider friends like Chris Lehmann, Diana Laufenberg, and the good folks at the Science Leadership Academy. For those unaware, Philadelphia public schools have been in turmoil as exemplified by asbestos discoveries in several schools across the system. So you can imagine the energy as I walked into EduCon – a conference normally hosted at SLA school – hosted at the Philadelphia School District offices. The Friday panel was on authenticity.

I’m glad I made it. I’m sure they’re glad it happened, too.

The panelists and moderator had a spirited and insightful conversation about schools, students, and what it means to show up as one’s fullest self. At one point, the moderator turned to the panelists and asked them if they had questions of each other. Crystal Cubbage of the Philadelphia Learning Collaborative turned to her co-panelists and asked: “What is your greatest challenge to being your authentic self?” The question pushed my attention away from the panel for a bit. It’s a question that seemed ripe for reflection after a year that felt like a decade.

If I’m truthful, I’ve only given 70-80% max to anyone outside of my immediate family since August. I’m still shaking off the absurdities of school years past. I’m still drawing hard boundaries for people CONTINUE READING: On Showing Up As Our (In)Authentic Selves | The Jose Vilson