Community Care During COV19 – Parenting for Liberation

Community Care During COV19 – Parenting for Liberation

Community Care During COV19

Dear Community,

Parenting for Liberation is holding you, your children,  your families, and your communities in our thoughts and prayers. These are scary times right now—with lots of uncertainty and rapidly evolving updates about COVID-19, from school closures, remote working, to social isolation. On top of information from the government and public health officials, there are many resources being made available via the interwebs to help parents from homeschool activities to color coded daily schedules, and while it’s really great to have so many resources, at times it all just feels overwhelming. Rather than feeling like recommendations, some of it leads to some of us having negative self talk and self critique about our parenting —

“Am I doing enough? Am I doing it right?” 

Parenting for Liberation held space virtually with a dozen Black parents to discuss this and more. Continue below for a PDF filled with slides & coloring sheets filled with affirmations and positive self talk.

p4l-community-care-sessionDOWNLOAD

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CONTINUE READING: Community Care During COV19 – Parenting for Liberation

Misreading the Main Idea about Reading – radical eyes for equity

Misreading the Main Idea about Reading – radical eyes for equity

Misreading the Main Idea about Reading

About a decade ago, I accepted an invitation from the ACT to review a set of new test questions for their reading section. As a career-long anti-standardized test advocate, after talking with several colleagues, I accepted that an inside view of the process would help me better confront the problems with tests such as the ACT and the SAT.

The process included receiving the test section, taking the test myself (and taking notes), and then being flown to Iowa City to attend a workshop where we walked through each question to help the test designers revise and edit so this section could be added to the implementation of the test.

Some important take aways included discovering that the test designers were almost exclusively experts in test design (not reading or literacy) and confirming that “good test questions” were mostly about if the question creates “spread” (a range of correct and incorrect) in the data and not if the question is a valid assessment of reading ability (whatever that is).

This experience came to mind when I ran across this on Twitter: CONTINUE READING: Misreading the Main Idea about Reading – radical eyes for equity

Washington State: Gov. Inslee Signs Bill Aiding Gates’ Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Washington State: Gov. Inslee Signs Bill Aiding Gates’ Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Washington State: Gov. Inslee Signs Bill Aiding Gates’ Charter Schools

Washington State has experienced a long history of turmoil over charter schools.

It has held four state referenda over whether they should be allowed in the state. They are opposed by school boards, teachers’ unions, PTAs, and civil rights groups.

Bill Gates and his billionaire clique really wanted the state to have charter schools. So in 2012, they amassed a war chest and outspent the parents, teacher’s, and civil rights groups by a ratio of 17-1. The referendum passed by 1%.

Then the state’s highest court declared that charter schools are not public schools and can’t draw from the public school fund, because they don’t have elected school boards.

Next step, Gates and his friends spend big money to defeat the state court judges that opposed charter schools, but the justices won anyway.

So Gates’ surrogates go to the legislature and seek to get lottery money to support the charters that Bill wants so badly. Eager to please one of the state’s richest people CONTINUE READING: Washington State: Gov. Inslee Signs Bill Aiding Gates’ Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Virtual Learning Through Quarantine Will Leave Poor and Disabled Students Behind | gadflyonthewallblog

Virtual Learning Through Quarantine Will Leave Poor and Disabled Students Behind | gadflyonthewallblog

Virtual Learning Through Quarantine Will Leave Poor and Disabled Students Behind

In the wake of the coronavirus crisis with most people self quarantined at home, schools across the country are shut down.

Some offer (or are considering offering) distance learning over the Internet.

However, this poses problems.

Not all student services can be provided via computer.

And not all students even have a computer, online compatible device or Internet access.

Should our nation’s public schools soldier on anyway and provide some kind of learning experience for those not thus encumbered at the expense of those who will be left behind?

 
The U.S. Senate’s proposed coronavirus aid package includes a provision to waive existing federal law that requires all schools to provide services to special education students. Removing this specification would allow districts to move forward with CONTINUE READING: Virtual Learning Through Quarantine Will Leave Poor and Disabled Students Behind | gadflyonthewallblog

So, You Have to Move Your Classes Online. Now What? - NEA Today

So, You Have to Move Your Classes Online. Now What? - NEA Today

So, You Have to Move Your Classes Online. Now What?

“Cynthia, I can’t run my toaster oven. How am I going to run an online class? I don’t want to be an online professor. You have to help me.”

Teaching in the time of COVID-19, many of my faculty colleagues feel this way. It’s not so much that we’re being asked to suddenly become online professors. It’s more like we’re being asked to build a lifeboat—even as we’re clambering into it—to steer our students through the end of the semester.

In early March, my administration notified faculty to start preparing to move our classes online. For many of my colleagues, this is a new challenge, and one that can be a little overwhelming to consider. But I’ve taught at least one class online every semester since 1998. I’ve also been a union officer for 13 years and, for nearly a decade, ran our college’s Teaching and Learning Center.

I raised my hand to help.

Since then, I’ve been teaching dozens of my colleagues the basics of Blackboard, our college’s online course management system (CMS). Listening to their concerns, here is some advice for others who are building a lifeboat.

Stick to the basics.

No matter your discipline, in any course a professor has to do three primary things:

1. Deliver content, information, materials, experiences to students;
2. Receive assignments, information, ideas from students;
3. Communicate with students.

Use this framework to help you focus on what you need to accomplish in an online CONTINUE READING: So, You Have to Move Your Classes Online. Now What? - NEA Today

Betsy DeVos Derides Our System of Public Schools but Today’s School Closures Show Why the System Matters | janresseger

Betsy DeVos Derides Our System of Public Schools but Today’s School Closures Show Why the System Matters | janresseger

Betsy DeVos Derides Our System of Public Schools but Today’s School Closures Show Why the System Matters

The coronavirus pandemic has shown us the flaws in the thinking of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.  As you may remember, back in July, 2017, in a speech at the annual meeting of the right-wing, American Legislative Exchange Council, DeVos declared:

“Choice in education is good politics because it’s good policy. It’s good policy because it comes from good parents who want better for their children. Families are on the front lines of this fight; let’s stand with them… Just the other week, the American Federation of Teachers tweeted at me…  ‘Betsy DeVos says (the) public should invest in individual students. NO. We should invest in a system of great public schools for all kids.’…  I couldn’t believe it when I read it, but you have to admire their candor. They have made clear that they care more about a system—one that was created in the 1800s—than about individual students.  They are saying education is not an investment in individual students.”  Betsy DeVos continued, remembering Margaret Thatcher: “Lady Thatcher regretted that too many seem to blame all their problems on ‘society.’ But, ‘Who is society?’ she asked. ‘There is no such thing!  There are individual men and women and there are families’—families, she said—‘and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.’”  Finally, DeVos summed up what she has learned from Margaret Thatcher: “This isn’t about school ‘systems.’ This is about individual students, parents, and families. Schools are at the service of students. Not the other way around.”

Well, right now we are watching DeVos’s theory play out. For legitimate public health reasons, public schools have been closed—whether for a few weeks or through the end of the school year—and we are relying on families. Right now, in DeVos’s words, “Families are on the front lines of this fight.”

One of the things we are discovering during our pandemic emergency is the significance—the meaning really—of the public education system we have created over the generations. We are being forced to recognize that our society’s systemic provision of public education—publicly funded, universally available, and accountable to the public—while imperfect, is essential for CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos Derides Our System of Public Schools but Today’s School Closures Show Why the System Matters | janresseger

NYC Educator: Online Teaching and Offline Infections

NYC Educator: Online Teaching and Offline Infections

Online Teaching and Offline Infections

I have a lot of questions about doing this online. Who's paying attention, for one? Most of my students have pictures up where their faces should be. Sometimes I call on them and they show their faces. Sometimes they don't. How do I know that the kid isn't on the other side of the room playing a game on his phone?

One kid yesterday wasn't responding when I called on him. When he finally did, it was in the chat. How do I know it was him? Another student who was not that great orally did fabulously when answering in the chat. However, I also notice when she logged in there were two names. Perhaps the person she was with was the one typing the answers. Who knows?

I honestly cannot imagine giving a graded assessment of any sort. How will I know the students themselves answered? I see that the DOE doesn't want to grant tenure while the schools are closed. That point may be moot because most tenure occurs in September, and I really, really hope we're back by then. Of course the DOE is infested with Bloomberg leftovers who want to do everything "for the kids." That means, essentially, "Screw the grownups." It's pretty short-sighted because those kids we're doing for are headed toward being grownups. But I digress.

If teachers are not getting tenure because we aren't really in school somehow, how are we supposed to grade students who somehow aren't there either? We are either working or we are not, students are either learning or they are not, and we have to show flexibility in this time of emergency. It's awful that the DOE wants to extend the tenure of people who've been chasing it for four years. Principals who need the extra few months to decide simply haven't been paying attention.

As for my students, I'm not really inclined to ask them to show their faces right now. I'd like them to be comfortable above all else. That said, it's impossible to gauge their interest without seeing them. Not only that, it's very tough to measure the quality of their work in any way under these circumstances. If I were in a classroom, I'd be walking around all the time to find out exactly what was going on. I can't do that.

I'm going to encourage them to show their faces, but I have no idea whether or not I can require it. Ultimately I won't. I know teachers who are terrified of showing their faces on CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Online Teaching and Offline Infections

Jessica Baghian and Paul Vallas Among 7 Candidates for La. State Superintendent | deutsch29

Jessica Baghian and Paul Vallas Among 7 Candidates for La. State Superintendent | deutsch29

Jessica Baghian and Paul Vallas Among 7 Candidates for La. State Superintendent

On March 19, 2020, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) superintendent search work group, headed by Kira Orange-Jones, petitioned BESE to narrow the search for Louisiana’s next state education superintendent to the following seven candidates:

• Jessica Baghian
• Cade Brumley
• Debbra Lindo
• Lonnie Luce
• Heather Poole
• Joe Siedlecki
• Paul Vallas

In the course of researching the seven individuals remaining in Louisiana’s superintendent search, I found this March 2020 board doc of resumes for 20 applicants.

I had already written most of the post based on other sources, which is better because I have information here that would not make it past resume gloss. Of course, feel free to also read candidate resumes from BESE’s board docs and compare to info in this post.

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Jessica Baghian

I previously wrote about Jessica Baghian‘s wanting to be superintendent as no surprise since she is curently an assistant superintendent. What may surprise many is that she exited the classroom with only two years of teaching experience and zero experience as a school-level adminstrator. In true ed-reform fashion, CONTINUE READING: Jessica Baghian and Paul Vallas Among 7 Candidates for La. State Superintendent | deutsch29

Parents ask, is our children’s privacy safe when they use Google classroom? | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

Montgomery MD parents ask, is our children’s privacy safe when they use Google classroom? | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

MONTGOMERY MD PARENTS ASK, IS OUR CHILDREN’S PRIVACY SAFE WHEN THEY USE GOOGLE CLASSROOM?

Many districts are now using Google classroom and Chromebooks for remote instruction while schools are closed.  Below is a sample letter for Montgomery County (MD) Safe Tech Subcommittee of MCCPTA’s Health and Safety Committee, that they are encouraging parents  to send to their district to ensure their children’s privacy while using this program.

As MCPS diligently works on distribution of Chromebooks for remote learning should school be closed longer than two weeks, I, along with the MCCPTA Safe Technology subcommittee, urge MCPS to take important precautions to protect our children’s personally identifying information as part of the roll-out. Here’s why:

As you know, we’ve been trying for over half a year to secure verification from Google that our student’s data has been deleted in accordance with the Data Deletion Day policy we worked with MCPS to develop. Without any visibility into the contracts between MCPS and Google, we have no idea what Google’s obligations are with regard to our student’s data: whether, how, and when they share and use this data.

Further, the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit against Google for deceptive trade practices in terms of how it collects, shares and uses student’s personal data. The suit alleges that “children are being monitored by one of the largest data mining companies in the world [Google], at school, at home, on mobile devices, without their knowledge and without the permission of CONTINUE READING: Montgomery MD parents ask, is our children’s privacy safe when they use Google classroom? | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

Julian Vasquez Heilig | Connections | KET teaser | Cloaking Inequity

Julian Vasquez Heilig | Connections | KET teaser | Cloaking Inequity

JULIAN VASQUEZ HEILIG | CONNECTIONS | KET TEASER

KET PBS Host Renee Shaw welcomes Julian Vasquez Heilig, Dean of the University of Kentucky’s College of Education. He came to UK in 2019 from California State University where he was a Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. Dean Vasquez Heilig has been an author or co-author on nearly 50 peer-reviewed journals and written extensively on a range of topics including racial equity and teacher preparation.  @ReneeKET speaks with Julian Vasquez Heilig about teacher shortages, how colleges are preparing future teachers, and charter schools.

See the full interview here:

https://www.ket.org/embedded/connections/uk-college-of-education-dean-julian-vasquez-heilig/

My thoughts and prayer to all those impacted by COVID-19. Also wishing a speedy recovery to Michael Bane, a friend from elementary school, who is currently fighting the virus valiantly in Chicago.

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

Check out and follow my YouTube channel here.

Twitter: @ProfessorJVH

Click here for Vitae.

Julian Vasquez Heilig | Connections | KET teaser | Cloaking Inequity

Update on COVID-19 and the Suspension of Statewide Testing - Assessment Spotlight, Issue 85 - Smarter Balanced Assessment System (CA Dept of Education)

Assessment Spotlight, Issue 85 - Smarter Balanced Assessment System (CA Dept of Education)

Update on COVID-19 and the Suspension of Statewide Testing 

Assessment Spotlight, Issue 85

California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) email update, March 18, 2020.

Focusing on the CAASPP System and English Language Proficiency Assessments of California (ELPAC)—and including, when timely, updates on California’s other statewide assessments.

Update on COVID-19 and the Suspension of Statewide Testing 

If your school is closed due to the unprecedented circumstances surrounding coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), you should not worry about any statewide testing this school year. The California Department of Education (CDE) is doing the following: 

• Suspending all CAASPP testing
• Suspending Summative ELPAC testing

• Placing the Physical Fitness Test on hold until students return to school
• Canceling the California High School Proficiency Examination test administration for the weekend of March 21st. All March test takers have been reregistered for June or provided information on how to request a refund. Additional locations and space within current locations will be increased to accommodate this change.

• Placing high school equivalency testing on hold until testing centers are reopened

In addition, if a school is back in session, the expectation is that the Initial ELPAC will be administered to students for initial identification, as required by California Education Code Section 313(a). However, Senate Bill 117 extended the timeline to conduct the Initial ELPAC by 45 days. Local educational agencies should continue to assess newly enrolled students whose primary language is not English when they return to school. This will ensure that new students who are English learners can receive the appropriate instruction and services. The CDE will continue to make available the following resources to support teaching and learning:

• Practice tests, training tests, interim assessments, and Digital Library formative assessment tools and resources for CAASPP
• Practice tests and training tests for ELPAC

The CDE is working with the California State Board of Education to seek waiver authority afforded by the US Department of Education to waive federal testing requirements. We will keep you updated as we have more information.

High School Equivalency Summer Convenings in August

Registration is now open for the August 2020 High School Equivalency Summer Convenings. These meetings, presented by the CDE, are designed for high school equivalency chief examiners and test site administrators and will be held at six locations throughout the state. Updated information will be presented by the GED® Testing Service, High School Equivalency Test—Educational Testing Service, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and the CDE. Be sure to register today to reserve your spot!

All About Accessibility

Expandable items and expandable passages are on-screen presentation universal tools for both CAASPP and ELPAC:

• Expandable items. For this universal tool, each stimulus in the left pane and the question(s) in the right pane can be expanded to take up a larger portion of the screen when the student selects one of the two horizontal arrows between the passage and the question(s).
• Expandable passages. For this universal tool, each passage or stimulus can be expanded to take up a larger portion of the screen when the student selects one of the two arrows in the passage pane.

More information on these universal tools can be found in Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium: Usability, Accessibility, and Accommodations Guidelines, available on the Smarter Balanced website. In addition, short video tutorials are available on the CAASPP website, Embedded Universal Tools, Designated Supports, and Accommodations Video Tutorial web page.

Please share this email with any educators in your LEA who would be interested in or benefit from this information. To join the email list, send a blank email message to subscribe-caaspp@mlist.cde.ca.gov. Are you a new subscriber? Visit the California Department of Education Assessment Spotlight web page to find previous issues.

Questions:   California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress Office | caaspp@cde.ca.gov | 916-445-8765

Assessment Spotlight, Issue 85 - Smarter Balanced Assessment System (CA Dept of Education)

NYC Public School Parents: "Talk out of School" - what's happening with testing?

NYC Public School Parents: Tomorrow on "Talk out of School" - what's happening with testing?

 "Talk out of School" - what's happening with testing?

Please join us tomorrow Wed. March 25 at 10 AM for "Talk out of School" with Akil Bello of FairTest  on WBAI-FM 99.5 when we'll talk about what's happening with standardized testing during the period of schools being shut down and remote learning -- both here in NYC and nationally -- and what should happen with high-stakes testing in general.

And please call in with your questions and concerns!

A Virtual Book Discussion with Diane Ravitch - Network For Public Education

A Virtual Book Discussion with Diane Ravitch - Network For Public Education

A Virtual Book Discussion with Diane Ravitch

Start: Tuesday, March 31, 2020 • 7:30 PM • Eastern Time (US & Canada) (GMT-05:00)

End: Tuesday, March 31, 2020 • 9:00 PM • Eastern Time (US & Canada) (GMT-05:00)

The Network for Public Education invites you to join us for a video conference with Diane Ravitch as she discusses her new book, Slaying Goliath. Participants will not only have a chance to listen to Diane but to also ask her questions. Registration for this virtual discussion is limited to 100. Make your reservation by filling out this form.

A Virtual Book Discussion with Diane Ravitch - Network For Public Education