CURMUDGUCATION: To Those Of You Worried About The Covid Slide

CURMUDGUCATION: To Those Of You Worried About The Covid Slide

To Those Of You Worried About The Covid Slide

Dear concerned policy makers, bureaucrats, and edu-wonks:

Ever since NWEA, the testing manufacturer that promised it can read minds by measuring how long it takes students to pick a multiple choice answer, issued their report on the Covid-19 Slide, you have been freaking out a little because they hear you say that distance learning has been disastrous and if we do it again in the fall, we'll produce a generation of students too dumb to come in out of the rain.  Everyone from the Wall Street Journal to members of Congress has been experiencing bovine birth events in response to the report. I just want to make two quick points for you.

First, you don't need to freak out over the study. Because it's not so much a "study" as a rough best guess about how students might do on a single not-great standardized test of math and reading. On the other hand, you can freak out a little bit, because while the report is ludicrous, if you actually talk to teachers and students and families, you'll hear that distance disaster school is not great. But you really don't need to base any of your argument on NWEA's totally made up numbers.

Second. Let's pretend that the numbers aren't made up. Let's pretend that it's true that, due to the CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: To Those Of You Worried About The Covid Slide

Inside the case for defunding police in schools - Los Angeles Times

Inside the case for defunding police in schools - Los Angeles Times

Inside the decade-long movement to defund police in schools 

In the midst of the 1980s war on drugs and in the wake of devastating mass school shootings throughout the country, bolstering school police in Los Angeles was seen as a safety imperative by many educators and parents.

But for the last decade, a number of student advocacy groups have pushed the school board to reduce police presence in their schools, saying Black and Latino children are targeted for discipline more than others.

The Los Angeles School Police Department now employs about 470 officers and civilians, including placement of an armed and uniformed officer at every high school. In a highly publicized turn last week, the leadership of the Los Angeles teachers union voted to support the elimination of the $70-million school police budget.

The union’s public announcement on the steps of City Hall — compelled by two weeks of protests and outrage over police brutality against Black people and the killing of George Floyd — has increased the urgency of the debate within the nation’s second-largest school district. The union leadership joins a number of community-based organizations who say the $70-million school police budget should be used to hire more counselors and build restorative justice programs.

 “This moment is different because if you all remember a couple weeks ago, people acted like ... the call to defund police was a radical call,” said Black Lives Matter Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah, a Cal State Los Angeles professor of Pan-African Studies and an L.A. Unified parent. “We’re at a moment when all of a sudden, our most radical imaginings are possible. We can end the system of policing as we know it. We can defund the police. And we have to begin with our children.”

The Los Angeles schools movement comes as school districts and universities throughout the country have joined city debates over defunding or reorganizing police departments.

Ultimately it’s up to the school board, which authorizes police spending, to decide whether to take action — two of seven school board members said they did not support the move, one said the issue should be discussed during budget deliberations CONTINUE READING: Inside the case for defunding police in schools - Los Angeles Times 

New research evidence for summer school programs

New research evidence for summer school programs

Research evidence for summer learning
Disappointing results for in-person summer school programs hint that short virtual programs may not be successful

On June 10, 2020, as the U.S. Capitol remained partially shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a virtual hearing on what schools ought to do. Speaking over a video feed from his home in Silver Spring, Maryland, former Obama administration Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. called for “summer distance learning” as one way to mitigate the months of lost learning from school closures.  

Summer school is on many policymakers’ minds. King, who is now the president of Education Trust, a nonprofit that advocates for low-income students, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a national teacher’s union, jointly argued for additional funding for summer schooling in an April editorial in the Hill newspaper.  In June 2020, the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a think tank based at the University of Washington, posted a survey of summer school plans around the country. Only slightly more than half of the 100 U.S. districts the organization is tracking were planning to offer summer school for elementary and middle school students in 2020, as of the latest update, on June 9. (Summer school is more prevalent for high schools students to retake failed classes.) For the schools that are holding summer school, instruction in most cases will be exclusively virtual — over the internet. But the type of instruction, hours and curriculum vary wildly, depending upon which city or town you happen to live in. 

I was curious what lessons we could take from previous research on summer school to guide us during this unprecedented summer. I could find only one large, well-designed study, published in 2016, that tested how much kids actually learn in voluntary summer school programs. It was targeted at 3,000 low-income children in five cities in 2013. Most of the CONTINUE READING: New research evidence for summer school programs

Confronting White Responses to Racism: De-centering Whiteness and White Fragility – radical eyes for equity

Confronting White Responses to Racism: De-centering Whiteness and White Fragility – radical eyes for equity

Confronting White Responses to Racism: De-centering Whiteness and White Fragility

I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s with daily contact with what Ta-Nehisi Coates labels as “oafish” racists. These white men of my childhood and teen years were brazen and arrogant in their racial slurs and embarrassingly ignorant philosophies about race.

One oafish racist calmly explained to me that Black people were the result of Cain mating with apes after being cast out of the Garden of Eden. His “it’s in the Bible” racism was common in my South Carolina life.

But this is not about some racism in the past. Oafish racists remain throughout the U.S., not some vestige of the Old South. Social media and the Trump presidency have allowed and even welcomed overt racists into the American “both sides” approach to the free press and free speech.

However, the specter of oafish racists allows white people to keep whiteness and white fragility centered while refusing to acknowledge the greater danger posed by whiteness throughout the twentieth century and in 2020; as Martin Luther King Jr. confronted:

A leading voice in the chorus of social transition belongs to the white liberal…. Over the last few years many Negroes have felt that their most troublesome adversary was not the obvious bigot of the Ku Klux CONTINUE READING: Confronting White Responses to Racism: De-centering Whiteness and White Fragility – radical eyes for equity

 

 

John Thompson on Trump’s Big Rally in Tulsa | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson on Trump’s Big Rally in Tulsa | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson on Trump’s Big Rally in Tulsa

John Thompson is a retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma. He writes here about the resumption of Trump’s big political rallies, beginning in Tulsa. The attendees will have to sign a waiver releasing the campaign of any liability if they fall sick with COVID.

Will Trump promote the disease amongst his enthusiastic base? He won’t wear a mask. To show their macho, his followers will copy him, in defiance of CDC guidelines. Why would Trump want to sicken and/or kill his own base? Will he tell them that the coronavirus is a hoax? Or will he spend his hour ridiculing Biden, Romney, Democrats, and his other enemies?

The headline which should have drawn Oklahomans’ attention was “OMRF: Virus Likely to Remain in Circulation for Decades.” The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation President Stephen Prescott expressed skepticism that a COVID-19 vaccine will “wipe out the virus,” because many Americans “don’t vaccinate because they don’t believe in it or don’t trust a new vaccine.” The news article cited a recent survey of Oklahomans which found that only 55% of those polled would get a coronavirus vaccine. It then cited Washington Post which “found that only 7 in 10 Americans were interested in getting vaccinated.”

The top headlines, however, were about President CONTINUE READING: John Thompson on Trump’s Big Rally in Tulsa | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ed Notes Online: Keeping Order in the Classroom is highest priority - Teachers Are Police Without Guns - But Not Always

Ed Notes Online: Keeping Order in the Classroom is highest priority - Teachers Are Police Without Guns - But Not Always

Keeping Order in the Classroom is highest priority - Teachers Are Police Without Guns - But Not Always

I've been thinking about the role police and teachers play - and there are some similarities. But I'm also thinking of how differently teachers and police are expected to react to disorder. Teaching required being a creative policeman. Which sometimes bothers teachers who hear stories of cops losing control in the face of recalcitrance and provocation. Cops are given a pass on reacting while teachers are put in the rubber room.

One of the first things I was told as a new teacher was that I must keep order in the classroom to survive. (They weren't wrong). That teaching and learning can't take place in disorder. And that the administration doesn't care what you do - teach effectively or not as long as you keep the kids under control - and don't bother the admin.

But that led some to view - and even enjoy the policing actions more than teaching. One of my colleagues hated the classroom but had perfect control through fear and manipulation - and when a full time dean disciplinarian position came up he grabbed it - and never went back to the class - be became a lawyer. I got his final class the year after and had a lot of ground to make up.

Good teachers were viewed as those who kept kids under control. Order in the classroom. After all, that was the external thing everyone in an elementary school saw -- teachers had to march their kids through the halls and staircases multiple times a day and it was embarrassing if they weren't orderly. When I was a kid in the 50s, our teachers in the upper grades weren't required to lead us around and we came up and down on our own - but by the late 60s things had tightened up quite a bit and the shifting racial balance in NYC schools probably had something to do with that - poorer kids with greater needs and not enough increases in services to handle those needs but that certainly led to some schools being a semi police state. In one JHS where we fed our students into they had an ex-cop running a discipline room where he would show the kids his gun as a threat. And kids being smacked was not unheard of.

Most children have their first experience with policing with their first teachers in crowded classrooms, more often in inner cities but not so much in suburban schools with smaller class sizes. Does race play a factor? And does the fact that the teachers ares more likely to be white also play some role? We hear a lot of the school to prison pipeline and the often harsher discipline in schools in inner cities gets kids used to more severe restriction.

Today's racial discussions bring this to mind. It is not only some cops who have racial attitudes. I heard a number of racial insensitivities if not outright racism CONTINUE READING: Ed Notes Online: Keeping Order in the Classroom is highest priority - Teachers Are Police Without Guns - But Not Always

As pandemic tests public schools, Betsy DeVos pushes school choice - The Washington Post

As pandemic tests public schools, Betsy DeVos pushes school choice - The Washington Post

As pandemic tests public schools, Betsy DeVos pushes school choice

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has long believed that the federal government should have little to do with education.

This spring, with schools facing their most significant crisis in decades, DeVos has stuck to that core conviction. She hasn’t weighed in on how schools might teach remotely. She’s said little about what they should consider when reopening, beyond the need to consult health authorities.

And through it all, she has pressed her central agenda: that students and families should have choices beyond their traditional public schools, and that tax dollars should follow those choices. She calls it “education freedom.”

The coronavirus, she has said, offers a “silver lining,” showing Americans that traditional schooling is not the only way. “This really is a moment for transformation,” she told conservative talk show host Glenn Beck in April.

“Education freedom” is also part of the solution to issues raised by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, President Trump and DeVos said last week. Trump — at the urging of his education secretary, according to a DeVos aide — called on Congress to pass a school choice program, citing it as an example of how he is “leading efforts to revitalize America’s underserved communities.”

“School choice is a big deal because access to education is the civil rights issue of our time,” he said in Dallas.

Teachers unions and many Democrats oppose school choice plans because they divert money from public schools to private and religious schools, some of which discriminate on the basis of religion or sexual orientation.

DeVos, though, was thrilled with Trump’s shout-out to her $5 billion tax credit proposal, which would CONTINUE READING: As pandemic tests public schools, Betsy DeVos pushes school choice - The Washington Post

Little Rock: Peaceful Protestors Shut Down Four Walmarts | Diane Ravitch's blog

Little Rock: Peaceful Protestors Shut Down Four Walmarts | Diane Ravitch's blog

Little Rock: Peaceful Protestors Shut Down Four Walmarts

For many years, the Walton family has owned the state of Arkansas. Their collective wealth exceeds $150 billion, yet Arkansas is one of the poorest states in the nation. All that money, and very little has trickled down. Perhaps you have seen the ads on national television about how much Walmart cares about its neighbors. The people of Little Rock know better.

Veteran journalist Cathy Frye reports on a dramatic series of events that occurred yesterday. Peaceful protestors closed down four Walmart stores in Little Rock.

Frye writes:

But why? Why close Walmarts?

To these anguished pleas, I offer this by way of explanation.

Because the Waltons need to understand that it’s time to relinquish their iron-clad grip on the state of Arkansas, on its economy, and on its public schools.

I worked for three years for a Walton-funded “nonprofit” organization called the Arkansas “Public” School Resource Center. If you scroll down this blog, you will find numerous posts about how APSRC operates. Its mission CONTINUE READING: Little Rock: Peaceful Protestors Shut Down Four Walmarts | Diane Ravitch's blog

RIP, Mr. Harold Scipio – radical eyes for equity

RIP, Mr. Harold Scipio – radical eyes for equity

RIP, Mr. Harold Scipio

I am 59 and am deeply saddened by his passing because he remains a powerful influence on my teaching, many decades after I sat in his classroom and then later taught with him at the same high school I attended.

In an open letter to my students in 2014, I wrote about Mr. Scipio:

Harold Scipio taught me high school chemistry and physics. He was a tall black man, very measured and formal. It is because of Mr. Scipio, I think ultimately along with Lynn Harrill, that I found my way to teaching after thinking I was going to major in physics (that was because of Mr. Scipio, but it was also because I was young and mostly misreading myself and the world).

Mr. Scipio practiced two behaviors that were totally unlike any other teacher I ever had. First, he referred to all of us as Mr. or Miss and our last names, and he explained to us that since we had to call him Mr. Scipio, he should certainly return the courtesy.

In the last days of my senior year at the National Honor Society banquet (Mr. Scipio was a faculty sponsor), as we were cleaning up afterward, he called me Paul, smiled widely, and told me to call him Harold because I was graduating and an adult.

And throughout my junior and seniors years, each time Mr. Scipio CONTINUE READING: RIP, Mr. Harold Scipio – radical eyes for equity

Charter Schools, Some With Billionaire Benefactors, Tap Coronavirus Relief - The New York Times

Charter Schools, Some With Billionaire Benefactors, Tap Coronavirus Relief - The New York Times

Charter Schools, Some With Billionaire Benefactors, Tap Coronavirus Relief
Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, are securing coronavirus relief meant for businesses even as they also benefit from public school aid.

WASHINGTON — Charter schools, including some with healthy cash balances and billionaire backers like Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates, have quietly accepted millions of dollars in emergency coronavirus relief from a fund created to help struggling small businesses stay afloat.

Since their inception, charter schools have straddled the line between public schools and private entities. The coronavirus has forced them to choose.

And dozens of them — potentially more because the Treasury Department has not disclosed a list — have decided for the purpose of coronavirus relief that they are businesses, applying for aid even as they continue to enjoy funding from school budgets, tax-free status and, in some cases, healthy cash balances and the support of billionaire backers.

That has let them tap the Paycheck Protection Program, which Congress intended to keep businesses and nonprofits from shedding jobs and closing their doors. Parents, activists and researchers have identified at least $50 million in forgivable loans flowing to the schools, which, like all schools, are facing steep budget cuts next year as tax revenue, tuition payments and donations dry up.

“To me, either you’re a fish or a fowl — you can’t say you’re a public school one day, but now because it’s advantageous, say you’re a business,” said Carol Burris, the executive director of the Network for Public Education, a group that scrutinizes charter school management, and whose early donors included a teachers’ union.

The group identified at least $48 million in funds from the Paycheck Protection Program going to 27 charter schools across the country by watching virtual school board meetings and poring over meeting minutes and news reports, which were also reviewed by The New York Times. CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools, Some With Billionaire Benefactors, Tap Coronavirus Relief - The New York Times

Randi Weingarten Calls State Budget Crisis a Five Alarm Fire. Why Can’t Most of Us See It? | janresseger

Randi Weingarten Calls State Budget Crisis a Five Alarm Fire. Why Can’t Most of Us See It? | janresseger

Randi Weingarten Calls State Budget Crisis a Five Alarm Fire. Why Can’t Most of Us See It?

Last week I was out walking to get some exercise when I saw an old friend who is a retired school superintendent.  Standing a careful six feet away, he greeted me this way: “So, where’s the money going to come from?”  We talked for a minute or two, and as we parted, he asked again: “So where’s the money going to come from?”

If you read NY Times‘ reporter, Erica Green’s article about last Wednesday’s meeting of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, you will see that the topic of money and budgets threads quietly underneath the Senators’ conversation, but you’ll mostly read about a discussion of the logistics of opening school: “Across the country, school leaders are beginning to roll out plans to welcome more than 50 million students back, which include procuring 50 million masks; flooding schools with nurses, aides and counselors; and staggering schedules to minimize class size.  But the high-dollar demands to meet public health guidelines and make up for setbacks that have disproportionately affected low-income students, students of color and those with disabilities could cripple their budgets.”

Green continues, citing data provided by the American Association of School Administrators: “The School Superintendents Association has estimated that districts would incur nearly $1.8 million in costs to meet federal health guidelines, from $640 for no-touch thermometers (one per school) to $448,000 for additional custodial staff; that is just for an average school district CONTINUE READING: Randi Weingarten Calls State Budget Crisis a Five Alarm Fire. Why Can’t Most of Us See It? | janresseger

Russ on Reading: Instruction for Vulnerable Readers: Independent Reading

Russ on Reading: Instruction for Vulnerable Readers: Independent Reading

Instruction for Vulnerable Readers: Independent Reading

The best predictor of how well children will read is the amount of time they spend reading. This time spent reading must be engaged reading, that is students must not just be looking at the book, but actively engaged in parsing the words on the page and making meaning from those combinations of words. Reading volume is defined as the amount of time children spend reading and the number of words they encounter during that time. As children encounter more words, they apply their problem solving skills to the novel words they encounter, reinforce the skills they already have, build vocabulary, build knowledge, and build stamina for further reading.

It makes sense then, that the best reinforcement a teacher can provide for all the good instruction they are doing in class, is to give students time for independent reading. We would also hope, of course, that children would be motivated by our instruction to do lots of reading outside of school, but in school independent reading, guided and reinforced by the watchful teacher, CONTINUE READING: Russ on Reading: Instruction for Vulnerable Readers: Independent Reading

Did the DoE really tell principals they are on their own? Yes | JD2718

Did the DoE really tell principals they are on their own? Yes | JD2718

Did the DoE really tell principals they are on their own? Yes

How should principals schedule for the fall? After a powerpoint, a letter, and a list of “guiding questions” the best the DoE has is “As we develop guidance on how to create your school’s schedule for the fall, updated resources will be posted”

Keep reading.

This is the letter that the principals received. I’ve un-linked all links. Sorry.

The attached capacity estimates were often wrong. In some cases, every room was wrong. In most cases the number of usable administrative rooms was wrong; their capacities were pretty universally wrong. Many of the registers were wrong.

But what’s worst, there is no guidance. There was no workable guidance in the DOE Planning Overview for Principal Meetings (the powerpoint).

There is a list of Guiding Questions for Principals. I’ve posted it at the end. They provide no guidance. In fact, they look like some idiots around a table batted around ideas, and every time they hit something way too hard for them to answer, they said, “That’s too hard for us. Let’s ask the principals.”

There are promises that the “guidance” will be updated. I do not believe that they will update, or if they CONTINUE READING: Did the DoE really tell principals they are on their own? Yes | JD2718