Latest News and Comment from Education

Thursday, May 14, 2020

JOE MATHEWS: I Deserve an “A” For Flunking My Kids’ COVID-19 Distance Learning

I Deserve an “A” For Flunking My Kids’ COVID-19 Distance Learning

I DESERVE AN ‘A’ FOR FLUNKING MY KIDS’ DISTANCE LEARNING
Yes, I’m Doing a Poor Job—But Parents Have Become the Scapegoats for a Failing System


I’m proudly doing my duty as a California parent. I’m flunking distance learning.
Distance learning is the term for our new COVID 19-era educational regime, which forces teachers and students to conduct classes and handle schoolwork at a distance, using the Internet. Under this system, we California parents must bridge this distance, valiantly instructing our own children at home to make sure that actual learning takes place.
Millions of California parents, including yours truly, have found this a frustrating, even impossible task. But after seven long weeks of distance learning, I’ve made my peace with flunking this particular exam.
Because failure isn’t merely an option when your job is to transform into a teacher in the midst of the worst pandemic in a century. Failure is the point of the exercise.
If parents were to turn into awesome teachers under this hastily organized set-up for internet home schooling, imagine the fallout for our educational system! If parents could surpass some teachers in instruction, how could teachers’ unions still defend their weaker members? If I could administer my home classroom effectively, what justification would California school districts have for employing expensive administrators? And if students performed just as well at my kitchen table as they do in a classroom, why would construction firms ever again make campaign donations to school board members who approve new buildings?
Educational success, in these circumstances, would be nothing less than an attack on public education. So if you’re one of those parents who is still following every instruction on Google Classroom, and trying to give your kid a leg up, I must ask: What the hell is wrong with you?
For the sake of California and social cohesion, those of us with school-age children must accept CONTINUE READING: I Deserve an “A” For Flunking My Kids’ COVID-19 Distance Learning

Trump downplays danger of reopening schools - The Washington Post

Trump downplays danger of reopening schools - The Washington Post

Trump on kids getting covid-19 in school: ‘You can be driving to school and some bad things can happen, too’



President Trump met Wednesday with two governors in the White House to talk about the reopening of the country during the covid-19 pandemic and took the opportunity to contradict the country’s most esteemed public health official, Anthony S. Fauci, who has warned against moving too fast to send kids back into school buildings.
On Tuesday, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a Senate committee during a virtual hearing that policymakers should be cautious about opening up schools, which closed across the country this spring to try to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.
During the hearing, Fauci was challenged by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who said it was “ridiculous” for schools not to open because children don’t really get sick from covid-19 — despite rising concerns among health experts about how children are affected and without noting that they can be silent carriers who infect adults also in a school building.
Fauci responded: “I think we better be careful that we’re not cavalier, in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects.”
Fauci also said, “We don’t know everything about this virus, and we really better be very careful particularly when it comes to children, because the more and more we learn, we’re seeing things about what this virus can do that we didn’t see from the studies in China or in Europe.”
And he said that it was “a bridge too far” to believe that medicine and a vaccine effective against covid-19 would be available by the time schools usually open for the fall semester.
On Wednesday, Trump continued Paul’s attack on Fauci during his meeting with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R). Trump said that Fauci’s comments were “not acceptable" and that schools should reopen soon. He repeated Paul’s statement that children are CONTINUE READING: Trump downplays danger of reopening schools - The Washington Post

‘Education Reimagined’ not a hit with schools - News - The Evening Tribune - Hornell, NY

‘Education Reimagined’ not a hit with schools - News - The Evening Tribune - Hornell, NY

‘Education Reimagined’ not a hit with schools


Union officials and school district administrators are pushing back against Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s announcement of a partnership between the state and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to restructure New York’s education system in the wake of COVID-19.
NYSUT President Andy Pallotta stated that remote learning “will never replace the important personal connection” built in the classroom between teachers and students. He said federal funding and state revenues from “taxes on the ultrawealthy” could address the needs of the state’s education system, along with adding teachers to the conversation.
“The Governors ‘Education Reimagined’ causes some concern,” says Penn Yan School Superintendent Howard Dennis. “Any time that changes to education are coming from people who do not work in education on a regular basis it is concerning. I hope that there will be plenty of opportunity for input from educators who have been living this experience for the last few weeks. I also hope that it will not be mandated because not all systems are ready or at the same point for change. The districts in this area, including Penn Yan, have been working on the appropriate implementation of technology as a learning resource in a very purposeful way for the last four or five years. Technology is not a substitute for the interaction of the classroom and the guidance of a highly qualified teacher. We have learned many lessons from the last few weeks of at home learning and those prove that this works for some and not for others. You also know the challenges of reliable high speed internet connection in our area. The Governor’s comment that kids just sit in rows and the teacher sits in the front of the room and teaches proves to me that he is not in touch with present day classrooms, at least in Penn Yan and all of Yates County for that matter. I have great concerns and I hope that decisions are made in an appropriate and purposeful way.”
Maura Benincasa Wolverton, Co-President of the Dundee Teacher’s Association replied, “When all of the COVID-19 crisis began, educators were thrust overnight into all or mostly online or remote teaching/learning for their students. They rose to the occasion and jumped in with both feet.
“Technology has become a larger part of education these last years and is a great tool,” she adds. “However, CONTINUE READING: ‘Education Reimagined’ not a hit with schools - News - The Evening Tribune - Hornell, NY

Betsy DeVos' Department of Education Admits 54,000 Student Loan Borrowers Are Still Having Their Wages Garnished

Betsy DeVos' Department of Education Admits 54,000 Student Loan Borrowers Are Still Having Their Wages Garnished

Who Would Allow Wages to Be Garnished During a Pandemic? Certainly Not Betsy DeVos


In case you were wondering what Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is up to these days, let me give you the short of it: she’s still playing with people’s money.

She’s been up to it for years, of course—multiple outlets have reported on her dubious connections with loan servicing giants. In late 2019, the Department of Education admitted it “erroneously” forced nearly 46,000 students scammed by for-profit colleges to repay their loans.

But if you thought a global pandemic would slow the DOE’s roll, I want to personally shake your hand for preserving such innocence and hope (Where did you get it? Is it on sale?). Because, as Forbes reports, the Department of Education admitted that 54,000 student loan borrowers were still having their wages garnished—this despite the fact that the CARES Act, passed in late March, specifically prohibits that practice.

The DOE owned up to the astonishing numbers in a court filing Monday. The filing is in response to a lawsuit filed in April by a home health aide, Elizabeth Barber, against DeVos and the DOE (according to the complaint, Barber, who is on the frontline of the nation’s public health crisis, makes just under $13 an hour). According to Forbes, one out of every eight student loan borrowers who had their wages garnished before the coronavirus pandemic are still having their CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos' Department of Education Admits 54,000 Student Loan Borrowers Are Still Having Their Wages Garnished

CREDO’s New Study Biased against Public Schools | tultican

CREDO’s New Study Biased against Public Schools | tultican

CREDO’s New Study Biased against Public Schools



By Thomas Ultican 5/14/2020
The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) started releasing the results of its new Cities Study Project in mid-2019. It is not a coincidence that the cities chosen for the study have long been targeted for public school privatization. The ten cities selected are: Indianapolis; Baton Rouge; Camden; Kansas City; Memphis; New Orleans; Oakland; St. Louis; San Antonio; and Washington DC. This CREDO study is even more opaque and biased than its previous efforts.

Who is CREDO?

Hanushek and Raymond
The Husband and Wife Team Who Founded of CREDO
In the early 1980s, Margaret (Macke) Raymond was completing a lengthy graduate school agenda at the University of Rochester, a relatively small private university in Rochester, New York. She garnered an MS of public policy in 1980, a community medicine MS in 1982, an MA of political science in 1983 and finished with a PhD in political science in 1985. From 1985 to 2000 she ran Raymond Consulting and worked a few years in the telecommunications industry.
At that same time, Eric Hanushek was Professor of Economics and Political Science at Rochester University. The former Air Force cadet had earned a CONTINUE READING: CREDO’s New Study Biased against Public Schools | tultican

NYC Public School Parents: Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy found guilty of violating NY State student privacy Law

NYC Public School Parents: Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy found guilty of violating NY State student privacy Law

Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy found guilty of violating NY State student privacy Law



For immediate release: May 14, 2020
More information: Fatima Geidi, fatimageidi@gmail.com; (646) 281-0449
Leonie Haimson, leoniehaimson@gmail.com; 917-435-9329

Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy found guilty of violating
NY State student privacy Law
The Chief Privacy Officer of the NY State Education Department issued a ruling on Tuesday May 12 that Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy had violated Education Law 2d, the state student privacy law, that prohibits the disclosure of personal student information without parental consent except under specific conditions required to provide a student’s education. 

In 2015 and thereafter, Success Academy officials published exaggerated details from the education records of Fatima Geidi’s son when he was attending Upper West Success Academy, and shared them with reporters nationwide.  They did this under Eva Moskowitz’ direction to retaliate against Ms. Geidi and her son, when they were interviewed on the PBS News Hour in 2015, about his repeated suspensions and the abusive treatment he suffered at the hands of school staff from first through third grade.

Ms. Geidi filed a student privacy complaint to the State Education Department in June of last year.  In response to her complaint, Success Academy attorneys made a number of claims, including that the statute of limitations had lapsed, that charter schools were not subject to Education Law 2D,  and that school officials have a First Amendment right to speak out about her child’s behavior.  All those claims were dismissed in the decision released yesterday by the NYSED Chief Privacy Officer, Temitope Akinyemi. 

The State Education Department has now ordered Success Academy to take a number of affirmative steps, including that administrators, staff and teachers must receive annual training in data privacy, security and the federal and state laws on student privacy, that they must develop a data privacy and security policy to be submitted to the State Education Department no later than July 1, 2020, and that after that policy is approved, it must be posted on the charter school’s website and notice be provided to all officers and employees.

As Fatima Geidi said, “ I am happy that my son’s rights to privacy and hopefully all students at Success Academy from now on will be protected, and that Eva Moskowitz will be forced to stop using threats of disclosure as a weapon against any parent who dares speak out about the ways in which their children have been abused by her schools.  However, I am disappointed that the Chief Privacy Officer did not order Ms. Moskowitz to take out the section of her memoirs, The Education of Eva Moskowitz, that allegedly describes the behavior of my son.  I plan to ask my attorney to send a letter to Harper Collins, the book’s publishers, demanding that they delete that section of the book both because it contains lies and has now been found to violate both state and federal privacy law.  If they refuse, we will then go to the Attorney General’s office for relief.”

Last year, the US Department of Education also found Ms. Moskowitz and Success Academy guilty of violating FERPA, the federal student privacy law.  The official FERPA findings letter to Ms. Moskowitz is here.  Yet Ms. Moskowitz launched an appeal of that ruling on similar First Amendment grounds, with the help of Jay Lefkowitz of Kirkland and Ellis to represent her in the appeal.  Lefkowitz is the same attorney who negotiated a reduced sentence for Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious child sex abuser, in a controversial plea deal in Palm Beach County in 2007. Though Ms. Geidi has repeatedly asked the U.S. Department of Education about the outcome of this appeal, she has heard nothing in response.

As Leonie Haimson, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, pointed out: “Fatima’s son is not the only child whose privacy has been violated by Success Academy.  Last year, Success shared details from the private education files of Lisa Vasquez’ daughter with reporters from  Chalkbeat without her consent, after Ms. Vasquez spoke about how her daughter had been unfairly treated at Success Academy Prospect Heights.  The SUNY Charter Institute also noted unspecified violations of FERPA by SAC Cobble HillSAC Crown HeightsSAC Fort GreeneSAC Harlem 2, and SAC Harlem 5 during site visits, noted in their Renewal reports.  The time for Eva Moskowitz to comply with the law and stop violating the privacy of innocent children whose parents dare to reveal her schools’ cruel policies has long passed.”

NYC Public School Parents: Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy found guilty of violating NY State student privacy Law

Audio: With School Buildings Closed, Children's Mental Health Is Suffering | 89.3 KPCC

Audio: With School Buildings Closed, Children's Mental Health Is Suffering | 89.3 KPCC

With School Buildings Closed, Children's Mental Health Is Suffering


Nightmares. Tantrums. Regressions. Grief. Violent outbursts. Exaggerated fear of strangers. Even suicidal thoughts. In response to a call on social media, parents across the country shared with NPR that the mental health of their young children appears to be suffering as the weeks of lockdown drag on.
Most U.S. states have canceled in-person classes for the rest of the academic year. This week in Senate testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, sounded a cautionary note on the prospect of reopening school buildings nationwide, even in the fall.
He pointed to the emergence of serious inflammatory illness in a handful of children. "We don't know everything about this virus, and we really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children," Fauci said. He was responding to this comment by Sen. Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky: "I think it's a huge mistake not sending our kids back to school."
Dr. Dimitri Christakis, one of the nation's most prominent pediatricians, agrees with Paul, who is a physician by training. Christakis, who directs the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Hospital, is the editor-in-chief of the journal JAMA Pediatrics. And in a new piece published in the journal, he argues that the risks to children's learning, social-emotional development and CONTINUE READING: Audio: With School Buildings Closed, Children's Mental Health Is Suffering | 89.3 KPCC

Reform as Conserving What Is Good in Schooling (David Tyack) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Reform as Conserving What Is Good in Schooling (David Tyack) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Reform as Conserving What Is Good in Schooling (David Tyack)


David Tyack was professor of education and history in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University between 1969-2000. He died in 2016. Author of scores of books and articles, his One Best System (1974) has become a classic history of urban schooling. He and Larry Cuban wrote Tinkering toward Utopia (1995). This commentary appeared in Education Week June 23, 1999.
David Tyack, 06/1995
At a time when a pandemic has upended daily life including the closing of nearly all schools since mid-March 2020, school reform talk has accelerated to hyper-drive for altering existing practices and upending traditional ways of schooling well beyond health and safety measures. I thought that Tyack’s points in this commentary made over two decades ago, might be useful to consider during this momentous crisis.
The word “conservationist” has an honorable ring when citizens struggle to preserve wild nature or fine old buildings. When people work to preserve what is good in education, however, they are often dismissed as traditionalists or stand-patters. When real estate developers propose paving over wetlands, environmental activists protest. But when educational innovators want to transform educational practice, few ask what might be lost in the process. Government requires environmental-impact statements for construction projects, but not student- and teacher-impact reports for educational reforms. Who will be there to defend endangered species of good schools, or good educational programs, from the relentless, if zig-zag, march of educational progress?
Believers in progress through educational reform often want to reinvent schooling. The dead hand of the past has created problems for rational planners to solve in the future. Inspired by the progress syndrome, innovators often exaggerate defects to motivate by alarm, try to wipe the educational slate clean, and then propose a short time frame for their favorite projects, hoping to see CONTINUE READING: Reform as Conserving What Is Good in Schooling (David Tyack) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Mike Klonsky's Blog: We're all in this together. Aren't we?

Mike Klonsky's Blog: We're all in this together. Aren't we?

We're all in this together. Aren't we?



Between 40-60 million pushed into poverty in the Corona era.
"We are all in this together. We must put politics aside, stop the partisanship, and unify together as one nation and one family." -- Donald Trump, Address to the Nation, 3/11/20
This old saw may turn out to be the biggest lie ever told. Whether or not you believe it may well depend on which side of the poverty/race line you fall on. Whether you're one of the 40-60 million pushed into a life of poverty or one of the half of one percent cashing in on the sickness and misery of others; whether you're one of the 4,500 Tyson workers who've caught COVID-19 or one of the company's owners threatening to fire employees who fear to return to work. It could even depend on whether you're a state or local official having to go it alone with little or no help from the feds while the president boasts about how he's won the adoration of the governors and how he already defeated the pandemic. You get the picture.

CEO Randall Stephenson is out at AT&T. I know this is a hell of a time to lose your job, but don't worry about Randall. He won't be standing on line at the unemployment office like the 20,000 or so AT&T workers who've lost their jobs mainly due to offshoring and the corona crisis. Many of those remaining are working under unsafe conditions, here in the U.S. and in places like Jamaica and Costa Rica.

But not Randall. While AT&T lines up for its share of the multitrillion-dollar corporate bailout --mainly used for stock buybacks -- a bailout that will be paid for by taxpayers, their children, and grandchildren, he's leaving with a golden parachute retirement package. His pension is CONTINUE READING: 
Mike Klonsky's Blog: We're all in this together. Aren't we?

Please help us protect our students rather than the bank accounts of billionaires! | Class Size Matters

Please help us protect our students rather than the bank accounts of billionaires! | Class Size Matters  | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes

Please help us protect our students rather than the bank accounts of billionaires!


Dear Friends–
1.       I had a piece in the Gotham Gazette yesterday that explains how schools should not reopen next fall without a plan to reduce class size, to provide both the social distancing necessary for health and safety and the academic and emotional support that students will need to make up for the losses next year. I also point out how budget savings and the redeployment of existing staff could also help make this possible in NYC. Please check it out and let me know what you think.
2.       Last week Governor Cuomo announced he would work with the Gates Foundation and Eric Schmidt of Google to “reimagine” and “redesign” education, to expand the use of online learning and “deploy classroom technology, like immersive cloud virtual classrooms … to recreate larger class or lecture hall environments in different locations.”
At his press conference, he added: ““The old model of everybody goes and sits in a classroom, and the teacher is in front of that classroom and teaches that class, and you do that all across the city, all across the state; all these buildings, all these physical classrooms; why, with all the technology you have?”
Yet if there’s one thing we’ve learned through this Covid crisis is that online remote learning is a profoundly inadequate means of education, and any attempt to establish this as a primary means of schooling for kids would be profoundly destructive.
The Gates Foundation also has a terrible record of promoting and funding charter schools, the Common Core standards and high-stakes testing linked to teacher evaluation, all of which have proven to be damaging here in NY state and throughout the country.
Another serious concern is the dismal reputations of Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt when it comes to privacy. Gates funded the $100M student data-grabbing inBloom Inc. and Eric Schmidt has claimed no one should worry about privacy unless they had something to hide.
At the same time, Cuomo has also threatened to cut our school budgets by another 10 percent. Instead of letting billionaires run our schools, he should raise their taxes to make up for any budget shortfalls this year or next. Currently, the wealthiest one percent of New Yorkers pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than the poorest twenty percent, and our tax structure is less progressive than many other states.
Please send a letter to the Governor and State Legislature today, urging them to protect our schools from the damaging and self-serving agendas of ed tech billionaires, and instead, raise taxes on the ultra- wealthy and fund our schools fairly.
Thanks, Leonie
Please help us protect our students rather than the bank accounts of billionaires! | Class Size Matters  | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes

The Enigmatic Governor of New York State: Presidential Pretender or a Model Governor for the Nation? | Ed In The Apple

The Enigmatic Governor of New York State: Presidential Pretender or a Model Governor for the Nation? | Ed In The Apple

The Enigmatic Governor of New York State: Presidential Pretender or a Model Governor for the Nation?




In San Francisco, in the summer of 1984 at the Democratic National Convention, Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York State delivered an iconic speech, a revival of the progressive spirit of the FDR New Deal years,
 A shining city is perhaps all the President [Reagan] sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there’s another city, another part to the shining city—the part where some people can’t pay their mortgages and most young people can’t afford one. Where students can’t afford the education they need and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate. In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can’t find it.
 Even worse, there are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city’s streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn’t show. There are ghettoes where thousands of young people without a job, or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers ever day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces you don’t see, in the places you don’t visit, in your shining city.
Watch the speech here.
 The speech thrust Cuomo pere into the front ranks of contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination; in 1992 he seemed to be on the verge of CONTINUE READING: The Enigmatic Governor of New York State: Presidential Pretender or a Model Governor for the Nation? | Ed In The Apple

SPECIAL CORONAVIRUS UPDATE Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007



SPECIAL CORONAVIRUS UPDATE
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... 
The latest news and resources in education since 2007






Ed Tech Digest
Eight years ago, in another somewhat futile attempt to reduce the backlog of resources I want to share, I began this occasional “” post where I share three or four links I think are particularly useful and related to…ed tech, including some Web 2.0 apps. You might also be interested in THE BEST ED TECH RESOURCES OF 2019 – PART TWO , as well as checking out all my edtech resources . Here are this
Schools Are Going To Have A BIG Problem Getting Substitute Teachers Next Year
qimono / Pixabay Schools are obviously going to have lots of challenges during the next school year (see A teacher predicts what his classroom (and others) will look like in the fall) . An additional issue is going to be getting substitute teachers. One challenge is going to be that – if we are teaching in a physical school – there will be far more teacher absences than there have been in the pas

YESTERDAY

Here’s A Voluntary Assignment I’m Giving To My Junior Students That Seems To Have Them Engaged
Free-Photos / Pixabay Based on a survey done in Ed Week , the journal suggests that student engagement in distance learning is “plummeting.” My classes seem to holding fairly steady (especially in my live daily ELL Newcomers class), though a few in my IB Theory of Knowledge class who have been on the periphery from the start have pretty much disconnected. In an effort to “hold on” to what I have,
Video: “3 Ways You Can Join the Citizen Scientists Fighting COVID-19”
DavidRockDesign / Pixabay I’m adding this new video to 3 Ways You Can Join the Citizen Scientists Fighting COVID-19 :
Interesting Short Associated Press Video: “Trump on schools”
Alexey_Hulsov / Pixabay Nothing new here, but it’s short and gives an accurate picture of what’s going on:
My New Op-Ed In Ed Week: “We Might Have Gotten Remote Learning Wrong. We Can Still Fix This School Year”
Tumisu / Pixabay We Might Have Gotten Remote Learning Wrong. We Can Still Fix This School Year is the headline of a new op-ed piece I’ve written for Education Week. It’s an expanded version of my previous post, ARE WE GOING ABOUT THIS WHOLE “DISTANCE LEARNING” THING ALL WRONG?
Statistic Of The Day: This Is Why We Shouldn’t Pressure Students About Assignments Right Now
This is just the latest press attention to a huge issue they most of us teachers already know about… Imagine the stress and pressure going on in so many of our students’ homes right now. I’m adding this info to The Best Places To Learn What Impact A Teacher (& Outside Factors) Have On Student Achievement .
Listen To Me (If You Want) & Others In Our District’s Podcast On SEL In The Classroom
BedexpStock / Pixabay Ma Xi Lee, our district’s extraordinary Director of Social Emotional Learning, invited me to participate in this podcast . Here’s how she describes it: This week’s episode features important voices in our Sac City community- those of teachers. Teachers are critically important for students’ academic growth as well as their social and emotional well-being. Particularly during
“Teach Current Events as ‘History in the Making’”
Teach Current Events as ‘History in the Making’ is the headline of a new excerpt from The Social Studies Teacher’s Toolbox . It was published at Middleweb, and is authored by Elisabeth Johnson and Evelyn Ramos. The Social Studies Teacher’s Toolbox is one of three books Katie Hull and I hav
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007