Police Reform and School Reform (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Police Reform and School Reform (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Police Reform and School Reform (Part 1)

Amid widespread protests against police violence against African Americans, calls for reform from ending neck restraints to “defunding” police departments have monopolized TV newscasts and newspaper headlines. Social media traffic prompted by smartphone videos of incidents between police officers and blacks have gone viral. State and city officials across the nation are generating to-do lists of reforms aimed at solving the problem of police officers using lethal force to arrest minority suspects (see here and here).

White people over the age of 18 might be surprised that such cries for police reform have occurred before. But their grandparents wouldn’t.

The decade between 1965-1975 when urban “riots” (or “rebellions,” depending upon your political stance) occurred in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Newark, and other cities killing both blacks and whites including police officers. President Lyndon Johnson appointed the governor of Illinois, Otto Kerner, to chair a commission to investigate the racial violence. The Kerner Commission’s report (1968) condemned white racism in housing, employment, and criminal justice while offering many recommendations for police reform (see here and here).

Subsequent calls for reforming police departments to reduce excessive force against people of color have occurred after killings of black men such as Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson (MO) in 2014. Then consider Minneapolis police officers have shot dead Jamar Clark (2015) and CONTINUE READING: Police Reform and School Reform (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teachers’ Unions Are Demanding Police-Free Schools

Teachers’ Unions Are Demanding Police-Free Schools

Teachers’ Unions Are Demanding Police-Free Schools

A major lesson from the recent teachers’ strike wave was the necessity for unions to bargain for the common good of the entire working class. By joining the nationwide protests against police brutality and demanding police-free schools, teachers’ unions have taken that lesson to heart.

It’s been three weeks since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Protests continue in cities, suburbs, and even small towns all over the United States.

The sheer volume of political activity makes it hard to focus on any particular development. But there’s something important happening right under our noses that has received far too little attention outside of disconnected local media stories. Across the country, teachers’ unions are stepping up to demand police-free schools.

The union-led police-free schools movement represents a welcome development in the labor movement more broadly. For decades, many unionists have argued that it’s critical to connect the bread-and-butter demands of union members to issues affecting other members of the working class. The Red for Ed teachers’ strike wave was the best sign yet that this orientation was gaining renewed popularity in the labor movement.

Now, emboldened by the strike wave and feeling their power, teachers’ unions are broadening their horizons further than at any time in recent history as they take advantage of this moment to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.

Bargaining for the Common Good

In February of 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) released a forty-six-page white paper called “The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve.” In it, they proposed a new vision for Chicago public education: better staffing, smaller class sizes, better facilities, a less testing-oriented curriculum, and more nurses and counselors. The paper proposed these reforms be funded through progressive taxation. The first sentence of the paper read: “Every student in CPS deserves to have the same quality education as the children of the wealthy.”

The report provided the backdrop for the 2012 CTU strike, which took place later that year. And it also represented a major development in the politics of teachers’ unions: by negotiating for many of the CONTINUE READING: Teachers’ Unions Are Demanding Police-Free Schools

Police-Free Schools: Lessons on Racial Justice from Minneapolis and the Nation | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Police-Free Schools: Lessons on Racial Justice from Minneapolis and the Nation | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Police-Free Schools: Lessons on Racial Justice from Minneapolis and the Nation

Realizing racial justice in public education is impossible when Black and Brown students are criminalized in their own schools. Students, parents and education justice groups have long known this, and while we've seen some inspiring reforms in school discipline thanks to tireless grassroots organizing efforts, the present moment offers the chance for serious leaps forward. Minneapolis is no different, with education justice organizers calling for structural changes long before the most recent uprising.

In the wake of the police murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville and the popular resistance that has erupted, Minneapolis’ school district has ended its contract with the police. School districts across the country are now making similar decisions, often forced by organized residents who are fed up with unjust, racist systems.

Join us for a wide-ranging conversation and call to action. Hear from local and national grassroots leaders in the education justice movement. How and why were police placed in our schools? What new possibilities can we create when we can imagine police-free schools? How do we move funding from police to provide the academic, social, and healing-centered supports that our children require? How does this struggle connect with wider movements for racial and social justice? How can elected officials, advocates, allies, and funders be accountable to Black and Brown communities who are on the front lines of this fight?

Speakers include:

    Edgar Villanueva, Schott Foundation for Public Education
    Jonathan Stith, Alliance for Educational Justice
    Marika Pfefferkorn, Twin Cities Innovation Alliance
    Kim Ellison, Minneapolis Board of Education Chair

Co-moderators:

    Leah Austin, Schott Foundation for Public Education
    Marianna Islam, Schott Foundation for Public Education

Police-Free Schools: Lessons on Racial Justice from Minneapolis and the Nation | Schott Foundation for Public Education

American Federation Of Teachers Launches Ad Campaign To Support The HEROES Act

American Federation Of Teachers Launches Ad Campaign To Support The HEROES Act

American Federation Of Teachers Launches Ad Campaign To Support The HEROES Act

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has launched an ad campaign telling people to urge their Senators to pass the HEROES Act. The influential teachers’ union is spending $1 million to support the legislation passed by House Democrats.

“We must fund our public schools and community services,” the ad’s narrator says. “We can’t afford to forfeit our future.”

Entitled “Essential,” the ad shows teachers and a food service worker while asking who is considered essential workers in this time. It asks viewers how states can safely reopen without teachers.

The ad will be airing in 30-second and 15-second versions for two weeks on Facebook, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. AFT is targeting 10 states—Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia—and Washington, DC.

“If the HEROES Act fails to pass, and states and schools don’t get the support they need to reopen safely, then they’ll stay shut and the economy will stall—it’s that simple,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement. CONTINUE READING: American Federation Of Teachers Launches Ad Campaign To Support The HEROES Act

The Paradoxes of Dismantling Racism and White Privilege – radical eyes for equity

The Paradoxes of Dismantling Racism and White Privilege – radical eyes for equity

The Paradoxes of Dismantling Racism and White Privilege

If you just clicked on a link and are reading this, you are experiencing one of the paradoxes of dismantling racism and white privilege because by writing this and making it available across the Internet, I have centered my whiteness and the voice of (yet another) man.

As a white man, I simultaneously have an ethical obligation to dismantle racism and white privilege (and gender inequity) that sits in contrast to another ethical obligation that I (to cite a group of white men) need to STFU and not occupy the spaces where Black and women’s voices must be centered and embraced.

My scholarship and public work have for many years now been focused on class, gender, and race inequity, especially as they intersect with formal education.

Any credibility in addressing racism and white privilege that I have earned comes from my critical unpacking of my own whiteness and of my racist heritage in my home and community of birth, but I also have manufactured a greater level of racial awareness by reading and listening to Black voices—notably Black artists/writers and Black scholars.

My teaching seeks always to center Black voices and the voices of women, CONTINUE READING: The Paradoxes of Dismantling Racism and White Privilege – radical eyes for equity

June 2020 Information Memoranda - State Board of Education (CA Dept of Education)

June 2020 Information Memoranda - State Board of Education (CA Dept of Education)

June 2020 Information Memoranda

Background information and updates on issues of interest to the State Board Members.

Periodically, the State Board Members may receive information memoranda from State Board staff and the California Department of Education. The information memoranda may include background information, updates on issues of interest to the State Board Members, and reports on a variety of educational topics.

• 2019 Annual Report of Waiver Activity(DOCX; Posted 12-Jun-2020)
  • Summary of Actions Taken on Waivers by the State Board of Education(XLSX; Posted 12-Jun-2020)
• 2018–19 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress English Language Arts/Literacy: Update on Grade Six Scoring and Reporting(DOCX; Posted 12-Jun-2020)
• Update on the Implementation of the Integrated Local, State, and Federal Accountability and Continuous Improvement System: Chronicle Review of the Work Completed on the Student-Growth Model and a Progress Report on Ongoing Work(DOCX; Posted 12-Jun-2020)

Questions: State Board of Education | sbe@cde.ca.gov | 916-319-0827 

June 2020 Information Memoranda - State Board of Education (CA Dept of Education)

Teacher Ponders Risk Of Return To Work While Being Paid Less Than Unemployment : NPR

Teacher Ponders Risk Of Return To Work While Being Paid Less Than Unemployment : NPR

A Teacher Ponders Risk Of Returning To Work While Being Paid Less Than Unemployment

Lainy Morse is an essential worker who has been out of work since the middle of March.

She teaches preschool and ordinarily provides a vital service for working parents.

"Without us, moms [mostly] can't go back to work," Morse says.

Lainy Morse shows students Wesley Schmidt and Celeste Abraldes a bearded dragon in a photo taken when school was open.

Lainy Morse

The Portland, Ore., school where she works is temporarily closed but may reopen as an emergency child care center. Morse dreads the idea of going back to a classroom filled with 2-year-olds who don't understand hand-washing, let alone social distancing.

"They always have snotty faces," Morse says kindly, noting that many of her students also spend time with elderly grandparents. "It just feels like an epicenter for spreading disease. And it feels really scary to go back to that."

Morse has considered working temporarily as a nanny, where at least she could limit her exposure to a single family.

FACES OF THE CORONAVIRUS RECESSION

Jobs lost. Businesses in peril. Meetings gone virtual. Faces of the Coronavirus Recession offers snapshots of working lives upended by the pandemic.

For now, she's staying home, grateful for the extra $600 a week in unemployment insurance that the federal government is offering during the pandemic.

"Without that, our family would not be making it right now," she says.

Because preschool teachers are "chronically underpaid," Morse says, unemployment benefits add up to about $500 a month more than she made when she was working.

"That's two weeks of groceries," she says. And that complicates the idea of going back CONTINUE READING: Teacher Ponders Risk Of Return To Work While Being Paid Less Than Unemployment : NPR

For teachers retiring during the COVID-19 pandemic, a bittersweet end: ‘There’s no closure without being able to say goodbye to my students’ – Raw Story

For teachers retiring during the COVID-19 pandemic, a bittersweet end: ‘There’s no closure without being able to say goodbye to my students’ – Raw Story

For teachers retiring during the COVID-19 pandemic, a bittersweet end: ‘There’s no closure without being able to say goodbye to my students’

For the roughly 1,600 Illinois public school teachers who are retiring this month, stepping away from the classroom in the midst of a global pandemic that shuttered schools is proving especially heartrending.

With scuttled in-person goodbyes. and their final days as educators unfolding on computer screens in their home offices instead of in classrooms, teachers retiring at the end of this tumultuous school year leave their schools under conditions they never could have imagined when they began their careers decades ago.

Here are the stories of four retiring Chicago-area teachers, whose combined service adds up to more than 120 years in the classroom, and who despite facing a twist to the final chapter of their careers, are united by their resolve to reflect back with pride, and look ahead with hope.

Darcia Scafidi, fourth grade teacher at Nerge Elementary School in Roselle

After spending 35 years as an elementary school teacher, Darcia Scafidi says she never grew tired of her profession, but as a woman of faith, she decided to retire in order to answer a call to civil rights work.

“Well, it didn’t take long for my new calling to start … exactly one day,” said Scafidi, 60, whose childhood memories include marching with her parents alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. when he visited Chicago.

“I feel like I’m being called, and my skills can be used elsewhere,” Scafidi said. “I love children, but it’s time.”

During her years at Nerge, Scafidi was known for keeping a special notebook each school year, inscribed with observations of her students. Those detailed CONTINUE READING: For teachers retiring during the COVID-19 pandemic, a bittersweet end: ‘There’s no closure without being able to say goodbye to my students’ – Raw Story

Shanker Blog: Teaching During School Shutdowns Should be a Team Sport | National Education Policy Center

Shanker Blog: Teaching During School Shutdowns Should be a Team Sport | National Education Policy Center

Shanker Blog: Teaching During School Shutdowns Should be a Team Sport

This post is part of our series entitled Teaching and Learning During a Pandemic, in which we invite guest authors to reflect on the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic for teaching and learning. Our guest today is Susan Moore Johnson, the Jerome T. Murphy Research Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Other posts in the series are compiled here.

When schools suddenly closed in March and moved to online instruction, I wondered how I would have responded if I'd still been a high school English teacher. I imagined having to prepare a series of engaging Ted Talks with follow-up Q&As. But having talked with many administrators and teachers, I’ve realized that good online schooling during the pandemic is a team sport not a solo performance. It calls for careful preparation and coordination among many players. Just as Covid-19 has revealed hidden shortcomings in our society, it has exposed the limitations of compartmentalized schools that continue to rise or fall on the skills, autonomy and self-reliance of individual teachers.

As teachers faced the sudden reality of online teaching, they had many pressing questions: Are my students safe and confident or are they at risk, hungry, and fearful? Am I responsible for finding students who don’t show up online? What kind of schedule provides meaningful routines with necessary flexibility? How can I create social learning experiences for students who are isolated at home? What can I do to help students who fall behind? How can we meet the special learning needs of students who rely on one-to-one support? How can I fairly grade students’ progress when I can’t provide extra help to those who need it?  

In many schools, teachers struggled with such questions alone. Without a reliable forum where they could explore and resolve urgent problems with others, individuals did their best. Some convened their classes occasionally for live meetings, so students to could see one another and talk about how things were going for them. Many prepared weekly work packets for parents to pick up at the school or they CONTINUE READING: Shanker Blog: Teaching During School Shutdowns Should be a Team Sport | National Education Policy Center

FairTest: More Than Half of Nation’s Universities Drop Entry Tests for 2021 | Diane Ravitch's blog

FairTest: More Than Half of Nation’s Universities Drop Entry Tests for 2021 | Diane Ravitch's blog

FairTest: More Than Half of Nation’s Universities Drop Entry Tests for 2021

FairTest has been battling the abuse, misuse, and overuse of standardized testing since the early 1970s. It took a global pandemic to demonstrate that students applying to college need not take a standardized test for admission. How will colleges decide whom to admit? They will figure it out. Just watch. Many colleges and universities went test-optional years ago and managed to choose their first-year class.

MORE THAN HALF OF ALL U.S. FOUR-YEARS COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES WILL BE TEST-OPTIONAL FOR FALL 2021 ADMISSION;

SHARP INCREASE IN SCHOOLS DROPPING ACT/SAT DRIVES TOTAL TO 1,240

A new tally of higher education testing policies shows that more than half of all 4-year colleges and universities will not require applicants to submit ACT or SAT scores for fall 2021 admission. The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), which maintains a master list, reports that 1,240 institutions are now test-optional. The National Center for Educational Statistics counted 2,330 U.S. bachelor-degree granting schools during the 2018-2019 academic year.

Fully 85% of the U.S. News “Top 100” national liberal arts colleges now have ACT/SAT-optional policies in place, according to a FairTest data table. So do 60 of the “Top CONTINUE READING: FairTest: More Than Half of Nation’s Universities Drop Entry Tests for 2021 | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teacher Tom: Circles of Women

Teacher Tom: Circles of Women

Circles of Women

On Thursday, I walked up to Capitol Hill where the Black Lives Matter protests have taken an expected turn. When the Seattle police abandoned the East Precinct, the protesters turned a six block area of this densely populated neighborhood into a peaceful, educational, police-free zone that is being called the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP). 

As I entered the area, a man asked me to cross the street because "there's someone here having a mental health crisis." Sadly, it's not a rare thing in our city. More often than not, when someone is yelling and behaving erratically, the police are called in, but CHOP has become a kind of radical experiment in self-organized community, one that is also self-policing. So instead of police there was a circle of women standing around the ranting man, listening, and gently responding to him. He was pacing about inside the circle, not apparently seeking to break through, but waving his arms wildly and shouting invective.

I was making my way to the intersection in front of the boarded up and graffiti-cover, but otherwise intact, police station where organizational meetings, teach-ins, speeches, and performances take place, but wanted to first check on the progress of the block long street mural that spells out B-L-A-C-K L-I-V-E-S M-A-T-T-E-R. The artificial turf sports fields were dotted with people taking breaks and beyond them was the growing tent encampment and impromptu community gardens. The No Cop Co-op was incredibly well stocked with CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Circles of Women

LDOE Shakeup: Brumley Arrives; TFA Leadership Hits the Exits | deutsch29

LDOE Shakeup: Brumley Arrives; TFA Leadership Hits the Exits | deutsch29

LDOE Shakeup: Brumley Arrives; TFA Leadership Hits the Exits

On June 08, 2020, Louisiana’s new state education superintendent, Cade Brumley, officially began his tenure.

Brumley was not the choice of ed-reformers favoring former state superintendent, John White.

Thus, it comes as a pleasant non-surprise that top hires from White’s administration are leaving the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE). In his June 15, 2020, article, Advocate reporter Will Sentell discusses their exit:

The leadership of the state Department of Education is undergoing a major shakeup with the arrival of Cade Brumley as state superintendent of education.

Five key aides to former state Superintendent of Education John White are out or on their way out, including one who announced her plans Monday.

The list so far includes Jessica Baghian, one of White’s top lieutenants who served as assistant superintendent and chief academic policy officer. …

Other insiders leaving the department include Catherine Pozniak, assistant superintendent for fiscal operations and federal support. …

Hannah Dietsch, assistant superintendent and chief strategy officer, CONTINUE READING: LDOE Shakeup: Brumley Arrives; TFA Leadership Hits the Exits | deutsch29

 

This Week’s Headlines: School’s Out for Summer, How Should It Reopen?, and #DefundTheLASPD – Los Angeles Education Examiner

This Week’s Headlines: School’s Out for Summer, How Should It Reopen?, and #DefundTheLASPD – Los Angeles Education Examiner

This Week’s Headlines: School’s Out for Summer, How Should It Reopen?, and #DefundTheLASPD

If we thought the 2018-2019 school year was a weird one, we had no idea what this past school year would have in store. It started out normal, and then the virus hit, and two months later people were in the streets asking for the school police to be disbanded.

But the school year is finally over, with classes not scheduled to start again until August 18. In the meantime, Summer school will start next week, The Grab & Go program will continue through the summer, and parents are being asked to take this survey with their opinions on when and how schools should re-open.

Meanwhile, the American Federation of Teachers estimates it will cost $116 billion to open schools safely across the county before a return can be thought about.

Tomorrow, the School Board will meet to discuss, amongst other things, what should be done about the controversy surrounding the school police. Eight days ago, the UTLA Board of Directors voted to call for the board to end its contract with the Los Angeles School Police Department (LASPD). The movement to #DefundTheLASPD has many allies, and in the era where Black Lives Matter is now a mainstream movement in most cities, the CONTINUE READING: This Week’s Headlines: School’s Out for Summer, How Should It Reopen?, and #DefundTheLASPD – Los Angeles Education Examiner

NANCY BAILEY: Art at Home, Then Put it Back In Public Schools!

Art at Home, Then Put it Back In Public Schools!

Art at Home, Then Put it Back In Public Schools!

Teachers teach remotely, and parents are helping students at home. Hopefully, children and teens are doing art. Self-expression is important, and art calms and leads to self-discovery. When public schools reopen, when it’s safe to do so, parents and teachers must demand a return of art education with qualified art teachers! Music and drama are critical too, but this post focuses on art classes.

Due to high stakes testing and the no excuses agenda, teaching art became obsolete especially in poor schools. Underfunded school districts removed art classes from the curriculum years ago. They pushed more reading and test preparation.

Nina Rees is President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Rees was once a senior education policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation and helped develop NCLB. Once asked “Do you consider art and music ‘frills,’ or would you say they are necessary to good elementary education?” she answered:

It depends. If a student is attending an affluent school that has the budget to invest in such things, then I see many benefits to adding art and music courses. What I object to is focusing the attention of poor school systems on these activities. Schools should be in CONTINUE READING: Art at Home, Then Put it Back In Public Schools!

NYC Educator: UFT Executive Board June 15, 2020--UFT Supports Black Lives Matter, HEROES Act, and a Not Insane September

NYC Educator: UFT Executive Board June 15, 2020--UFT Supports Black Lives Matter, HEROES Act, and a Not Insane September

UFT Executive Board June 15, 2020--UFT Supports Black Lives Matter, HEROES Act, and a Not Insane September

5:50 Roll Call

UFT Secretary LeRoy Barr--All resolutions and minutes have been passed via email.

Reports from Districts

Janella HInds--Sterling R. and she just hosted HS committee meeting, over 500 members, discussed September other things, 90 minutes.

Rashad Brown--Pride Committee met, will have drag queen story hour to celebrate diversity and pride month, will be drag queen bingo.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew--Second week in row--No new Covid deaths in membership. Moving forward, we have some resolutions, but we're very focused on September. People seem to think there's an imperative to open school. Oddly, it might be safe here, but in the rest of the country things are moving backward. Will be around until there's a vaccine.

Our budget is in peril. We need the HEROES act. Senate constantly on break. We want the package before July 4 break. If not, city budget will have significant cuts. How can we open schools with all these cuts? That won't work. City budget has to be balanced by July 1.

DOE sent out info on square footage. Most useless, from Blue Book, flawed for years. That's why we want walkthroughs. You can enter buildings with request. You should coordinate with principal. Even if we just do in person teaching, there isn't enough staff to split in half. Looks like each school will need at least three cohorts. Some may go to four. So walkthrough is necessary, and soon.

I don't know if we will open, or if we will be able to work with DOE. Either we have a vaccine, we go remote, or we social distance, which is most complicated. Without HEROES Act, I don't know what will happen. We're still pushing safety, livelihood and profession.

Injustices keep piling up, but majority of Americans are saying enough is enough. We have a resolution, NY State is passing good legislation. If they move school safety to DOE it' CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: UFT Executive Board June 15, 2020--UFT Supports Black Lives Matter, HEROES Act, and a Not Insane September

Charter Schools, Some With Billionaire Benefactors, Tap Coronavirus Relief - Network For Public Education

Charter Schools, Some With Billionaire Benefactors, Tap Coronavirus Relief - Network For Public Education

Charter Schools, Some With Billionaire Benefactors, Tap Coronavirus Relief

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.

You can read the rest of what Carol had to say in The New York Times here.

Charter Schools, Some With Billionaire Benefactors, Tap Coronavirus Relief - Network For Public Education