Our nation’s children deserve the very best we have to offer them. Their best interests should be at the forefront of every decision made by our nation’s leaders at the federal, state, and local levels of government.
To achieve that goal, we have launched with other child advocates a campaign to urge our nation’s leaders to #Commit2Kids. Between now and the November 3 election in less than 100 days, we are challenging candidates and elected officials nationwide to tell us exactly what they will do for our country’s children.
Unfortunately, some politicians pay lip service to the needs of children because, after all, they are cute and polls consistently show that the American people are wildly supportive of improving the lives of children.
However, at key moments when children need politicians to step up or speak out to promote or protect their needs or best interest, kids are far too often treated as an afterthought, used as a bargaining chip in political negotiations, or shockingly, intentionally harmed.
In a preview of the forthcoming release of Children’s Budget 2020, First Focus on Children’s analysis finds that the domestic share of the federal budget dropped from 8.19 percent in President Obama’s last year in office in 2016 to just 7.48 percent in 2020 — a 9 percent reduction.
Furthermore, if President Trump’s proposed FY 2021 budget had been enacted, federal investments in children would have declined by another $21 billion on an inflation-adjusted basis.
Source: First Focus on Children, “Children’s Budget 2020” (to be released in September).
Source: First Focus on Children, “Children’s Budget 2020” (to be released in September).
If you really want to “make America great again,” you would invest in our children — our future.
Sylvia Ashton-Warner's book, Teacher, first published in 1963, is a chronicle of her experience teaching Maori children in her native New Zealand in the 1940s and 50s. A major insight that Warner discusses in the book is the concept of "key vocabulary." She approached the literacy instruction of her children through the words that had special resonance for them, through their own experience, much of it fraught with poverty and violence. Warner had each child come to her each day with a word they wanted to learn and led the children though various activities to make sure they learned them. These words, drawn from the "inner life" of the child, were powerful to that child and, therefore, more easily learned.
We have all had similar experiences, I'm sure, with children who can read a word like "dinosaur" before they can read the word "they", simply because "dinosaur" is a powerful word for that child, a "key vocabulary" word, if you will. As Invernizzi and Buckrup (2018) put it, "The effects of experience are personal and profound" (p 92).
Over the years, research has demonstrated the efficacy of Warner's ideas. Perhaps none more so than the research of Treiman and Broderick (1998) who demonstrated that the identity and characteristics of the first letter of a child's name has a significant effect on the child's knowledge of letter names. If we think about it, this makes perfect sense. What vocabulary is more key to the child than that child's own name. Children's strong attachment to their own names may help them in understanding how letters work in CONTINUE READING: Russ on Reading: What's In a Name Chart?
An Open Letter to Teachers as the Fall of Covid Approaches
Dear Teachers,
As your school districts’ “return to school” plans are being released, remember that you are going to hear mostly from the folks in your communities who are angry–angry that classes are being offered online, angry at the lack of child care availability, angry at teachers for not putting themselves in danger.
In fact, many of these persons may be angry about things that have nothing to do with schools. They might be angry about the poor condition of the roads in their community, or erratic trash pickup in their neighborhood. Or they could be angry about things happening nationally–stressing about job security, worried the possibility of being infected with the Covid virus, or anxious about the racial unrest in our society.
In short, they are angry about things they can’t control.
And for many of us, one of the only places we feel we can exert any modicum of control is over our public schools…
We can’t get the pothole at the end of our driveway filled, but we can signup for a 3 minute slot at the local school board meeting to vent our anger.
This is personal. You may want to move on. But I need to write this out because one of the people I would ordinarily talk it out with is not here.
Merrill and I taught together for just under thirty years. We were the same age, but she had gotten a late start on her career, having first worked in the world of newspaper advertising, just one of the many parts of her biography that hinted at the toughness that backed up her magnolia-sweet proper belle exterior.
A love story (that is not mine to tell, but which has inspired me at many points in my own life) brought her here, far from South Carolina, with a young daughter from an earlier marriage. We were looking for someone to fill a new gap. Merrill came with impeccable credentials, an impressive background of knowledge, and a recommendation from a local giant in teaching English.
Over the years, we settled into regular spots-- I taught the juniors, and she taught the seniors, and so we often worked as a team. In a district that didn't always provide a lot of curricular direction, we had to make sure we were hitting the right bases with our students.
And she knew all of the bases. Her knowledge and love of literature was huge, and it just kept getting huger over the years she taught. The great headline-making showpiece of her classroom was the annual end-of-year unit for the 12th grade honors (later AP, after Merrill made the extra effort to get the official upgrade for the course) for which she first taught Paradise Lost, and then had the class split into two groups to put John Milton on trial for either whether or not he successfully made CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Don't Waste Time
Is the Demand to Reopen Schools Really a Plot to Dismantle Them?
Floridians, and everyone else, want to know the answer to this question. Some believe that keeping schools open during a pandemic will destroy them; some fear that opening them during a pandemic will destroy them. Take your pick.
Thanks to Peter Greene, I discovered a Florida blog called Accountabaloney, written by two savvy Floridians who are fed-up with their state’s absurd education policies. Sue and Suzette, welcome!
They write here about a podcast by Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider, questioning whether Betsy DeVos’s newfound enthusiasm for opening real public schools is another front in her war to destroy them.
Listening to the “In the Weeds” podcast, they realized that another con was happening:
Some will read the title and dismiss it as a conspiracy theory. That is exactly what we used to hear if we equated “ed reform” with privatization five or so years ago, when the education reformers were still hiding their desire to privatize public education. In Florida, they now make few attempts to conceal their mission. We hope you will read this summary, subscribe at Patreon, listen to the entire “In the Weeds” segment, and draw your own CONTINUE READING: Is the Demand to Reopen Schools Really a Plot to Dismantle Them? | Diane Ravitch's blog
With coronavirus cases reported at some reopened schools, protesters take to the streets with fake coffins
With some public schools reopened and coronavirus cases already being reported, protesters in at least three dozen school districts across the country took to the streets Monday to demand that science and health concerns rule decisions about when and how to resume in-person learning.
Late Monday, in what could have been a response, President Trump repeated his call for schools to open by tweeting: “OPEN THE SCHOOLS.”
Trump’s demands that schools reopen while coronavirus infection rates are increasing in most states have politicized reopening decisions being made at the local and state levels. Many district leaders, including in Republican-led states, have said they are starting the school year virtually because it is too dangerous to reopen school buildings and risk the spread of the coronavirus.
Still, some districts have already begun the 2020-2021 academic year by reopening school buildings, and already coronavirus cases have been reported in some of them.
In Georgia’s Gwinnett County, some 260 employees tested positive or had possibly been exposed to the coronavirus a day after teachers returned to work last week and were told to stay home. Alcoa City Schools in Tennessee recently opened, but a few days later a student tested positive for the virus. At Corinth High School in Mississippi, in-person classes started last week and within days three students tested positive for the coronavirus and others went into quarantine as a result of contact tracing, according to a statement by the school district.
NEW UK COLLEGE OF EDUCATION FACULTY BRIDGE DIVIDES FOR VULNERABLE AND UNDERSERVED POPULATIONS
A diverse group of new faculty recruits to the University of Kentucky College of Education are making an impact in areas where needs are among the greatest and resources are often lacking. They will join distinguished researchers and educators who are addressing some of the most pressing issues facing the nation.
“We worked to recruit individuals who bring to the table a breadth of expertise and energy. Not only are they adding to the diverse representation of our college, but they are people who have dedicated their careers to developing knowledge that will uplift vulnerable populations,” said UK College of Education Dean Julian Vasquez Heilig, who is also a professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation.
“Their passions will be evident to students in their classrooms and expose students to critical theories on anti-racism, health disparities, and educational equity. They each represent an important voice among our growing body of experts using teaching, research, and service efforts to lift our nation from the many divides we are facing,” Vasquez Heilig said.
Cheryl E. Matias’ research focuses on race and ethnic studies in education with a theoretical focus on critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, critical pedagogy and feminism of color. Specifically, she uses a feminist of color approach to deconstruct the emotionality of whiteness in urban teacher education and how it impacts urban education. Her other research interest is on motherscholarship and supporting woman of color and motherscholars in the academy. She is a former K-12 teacher in both South Central, Los Angeles Unified School District and Bed-Stuyvesant, New York City Department of Education. Matias was the 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Institute for the Study of (In)Equality Visiting Professor at the University of Denver and was recently awarded the 2020 American Educational Research Association Mid-Career Award for her work on racial justice in teacher education. She was also an associate professor in the School of Education & Human Development at the University of Colorado Denver.
Gregory Vincent is an acclaimed civil rights attorney and university professor and administrator. He previously served as vice president for diversity and community engagement at The University of Texas at Austin where he also was a professor in the School of Law and in the Department of Higher Education Administration, where he held the W. K. Kellogg Professorship in Community College Leadership. Vincent was named the 2016 Educator of the Year by the University of Pennsylvania and received the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Distinguished Service Award in 2012. Vincent serves as the 48th Grand Sire Archon for the Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, the Boulé. He previously served as the 16th President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, his alma mater. He will oversee research, teaching, and service efforts in the areas of educational equity, civil rights, and social justice.
Philip Rumrill’s research interests include aging and disability, issues facing students with disabilities in higher education, assistive technology and reasonable accommodations, chronic illness, the career development implications of disability, workplace discrimination, program evaluation, research design and methodology, and self-advocacy strategies for people with disabilities. A nationally Certified Rehabilitation Counselor, Rumrill joined the Department of Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education at UK on July 1. He also serves as director of research and training in the UK Human Development Institute. Rumrill comes from Kent State University where he was a professor and coordinator of the Rehabilitation Counseling Program and founding director of the Center for Disability Studies.
Sahar Alameh taught high school science, including chemistry and physics, for seven years before completing her Ph.D. Having witnessed firsthand the difficulties teachers face when teaching science for understanding, her research focuses on improving students’ explanations and understanding of scientific phenomena. She develops philosophically-supported models of scientific explanation, which allow the meaningful assessment of student explanations, and the provision of specific feedback to enable students to reflect on and improve these explanations. Originally from Beirut, Lebanon, she is actively involved in research and outreach activities. She has been an editorial associate at the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, reviewing manuscripts on science teaching strategies, theoretical and empirical studies of effective pedagogies in science, and theories related to science learning and teaching. Through overseeing the journal’s Doctoral Student Mentored Review Initiative, Alameh has supervised over 18 doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows in science education from universities around the world.
Travis S. Andrews’ research interests include rehabilitation education related to recruitment and retention of minority students and rehabilitation counselors, distance education and technology in counseling, and minorities with disabilities with a focus on mental health and school to work transition. His educational background includes degrees in sociology (B.A.), rehabilitation counseling (M.S.), and rehabilitation counseling and counselor education (Ph.D.). Andrews has 10 years of experience as a clinical rehabilitation counselor and owned and operated Andrews Counseling and Consulting, PLLC, in North Carolina. He is a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor (CRC), Board Certified TeleMental Health Provider (BC-TMH), and Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor Supervisor (LCMHCS) in North Carolina.
Kayla Johnson uses student voice, community-engaged, and visual participatory methods to explore issues relating to learning and social justice in international education settings. Her most recent projects explored how postsecondary institutions in Peru can better support first-generation Indigenous students from rural communities, as well as how international service learning programs can be designed to better meet the needs of host community members. Since 2016, she has co-operated a non-governmental organization in the Peruvian Andes that facilitates access to culturally-grounded education for Indigenous children and adults.
Sarah E. LaCour’s current work includes an investigation of the equity in access to educational opportunity under a state-wide school choice initiative. She relies on her years of experience both as a classroom teacher and as a practicing litigator to inform her research. Her research interests lie in policy evaluations using both legal and quasi-experimental analysis. Her recent publications include quasi-experimental analyses of Denver’s professional compensation program and of a detracking initiative in upstate New York. She is also published in both legal handbooks and practitioner periodicals.
Sharim Hannegan-Martinez’s teaching-informed research examines the relationship between loving pedagogies, literacy, and student wellness, particularly as it relates to students of color. Her most recent study explores the pedagogy of loving relationships— cultivated in part by the literacy practices employed by teachers — as an intervention to traumatic stressors within the context of urban classrooms. This research has been recognized by both the Ford Foundation’s Predoctoral and Dissertation Year fellowships. Before pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles, she was a high school English teacher in East Oakland and worked with pre-service teachers in the University of San Francisco’s Urban Education and Social Justice (UESJ) program. She is a founding member of the People’s Education Movement Bay Area and has collaborated with other grassroots education organizations such as the Education for Liberation Network.
Zitsi Mirakhur’s research focuses on understanding ways to generate more equitable school experiences and outcomes for all students, particularly students of color and those from economically disadvantaged families. Her most recent work focuses on examining the factors that contribute to inequality for historically underserved New York City students. Trained as a demographer, Mirakhur has experience working closely with qualitative researchers, on program evaluations, and in research-practice partnerships with a variety of stakeholders including teachers, program developers, and school district staff. Most recently, Mirakhur was a research associate at New York University’s Research Alliance for New York City Schools, where she continues to serve as an affiliated researcher.
Justin Nichols’ areas of interest are associated with coaching contract development and sport as an agent of change in social mobility/social justice. He is committed to leadership through promoting diversity, equity, and inclusiveness in positions of centrality in sport/athletics. Other areas of interest include course, curriculum, and program design/development. He serves on UK committees/boards at the college and university levels. He also serves as a committee member for Partnerships for Youth Grassroots Grant Campaign, helping local organizations promote activities for under-served youth in the Lexington area. Prior to his time at UK, he was a coach at a variety of levels ranging from elementary to collegiate; assistant athletic director at the high school level; and program/fitness director in the YMCA system. Nichols teaches courses in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Promotion’s Sport Leadership emphasis, specifically in the areas of supervision, theory, and research methods at the graduate level as well as sport management and tests & measurements for the undergraduate level. He currently serves as the director of Life Fitness in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Promotion and director of the graduate certificate in Sport, Fitness, and Recreation Management. He serves as chair of the College of Education Undergraduate Recruitment, Retention, and Student Success Committee.
Karen Perry previously served as the director of Personalized Learning and Innovative Design for Henry County Schools, a large suburban district with 50 schools and 43,000 students, located just south of Atlanta. She led personalized learning work, including strategic planning and district-level work to support the implementation shift to student-centered learning. Perry’s more than 20 years in education include teaching secondary social studies and serving as a graduation coach to support at-risk students in graduating on time.
Shemeka Thorpe’s research focuses on the sexual well-being of Black women from adolescence to early adulthood as well as the sexual health and substance use of college students. She is a Lyman T. Johnson postdoctoral fellow under the co-mentorship of Candice Nicole Hargons and Danelle Stevens-Watkins, both faculty members in the Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology. Thorpe earned her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro in Community Health Education.
I finally understand the DOE plan to conduct remote learning. I'm hearing details, and now it makes total sense to me. There will be no more Miserable Mondays and Torture Tuesdays, so all schools will be six hours and fifty minutes.
This way, you'll be able to spend the first thirty minutes of each day meeting with your remote or in-person counterpart. You'll also get a thirty minute prep and the end of the day and you won't even need to be in the building for that.
There are other details I've heard, but I'm going to focus on just a few here. One, of course, is that if you happen to be in a building like mine, with multiple sessions, your day starts at 8 and ends at 2:50 already. I guess if you have a first period class, you spend the first thirty minutes of it coordinating with your co-teacher. Your students will just have to sit and wait, I guess.
Who is your co-teacher? Well, if you are teaching remotely, your co-teacher is the person who teaches the other ten students in the building. And if you are in the building, your co-teacher is the person who teaches the ten students who aren't online that day. Let's examine this concept just a little bit.
First of all, the person in the classroom will have several disadvantages. One is the state regulation that says all desks must face in the same direction so as to preclude droplets being orbited in the direction of students or the teacher. I mean, it's good that the people in that room will have less chance of contracting and spreading a deadly disease, but nonetheless it's gonna be tough to communicate when everyone is social distanced, no one can approach anyone, no one can see the teacher's face, and the teacher can't come to any student to check work or answer questions that require knowledge of anything that is not apparent. Students won't be writing on boards, or even in a chat window.
So there's that. There's the fact that teachers have different voices and styles and may cover different material without actually planning to. There's the fact that students may like your style better than mine, end up hating me, and may CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Magical Co-Teachers
The New York City Department of Education has scheduling guidance. But nothing to get excited about.
A new DoE document is floating around – I’ll get my hands on a copy tomorrow. It is called “Instructional Principals and Programming Guidance.”
People are focusing on the model schedules. Since I only have screen shots, that’s what I will start with.
In the Programmer’s Group, first comment? “I love how non-programmers program” So, no, not good. Not usable for most of us.
Preparation Tiime
The worst part? Teacher prep is 30 minutes per day, moved to the end of the day, with the expectation that teachers can prep at home.
We know we never get enough time for preparation. It would have been nice, you know, pandemic, remote learning, that sort of stuff, if they had actually given us a tiny bit more prep time, since it takes CONTINUE READING: Teachers need real prep time, not release time | JD2718
This post marks my 11th anniversary as a blogger. I want to thank those readers who regularly read my twice-weekly posts, those who have dipped into them occasionally, those who have subscribed to the post, and finally those who have taken the time to write thoughtful comments. Also to the growing number of international readers, I am grateful for your attention to one American’s viewpoint on school reform and classroom practice.
As with all things, there is a history to writing this blog. My daughter Janice who is a writer in marketing communication urged me to begin a blog in 2009. She guided me through the fits-and-starts of working on this platform. After 11 years, I thank her for getting me started on this writing adventure.
For the nearly 1400 posts I have written since 2009, I have followed three rules:
1. Write about 800 words.
2. Write clearly on school reform and classroom practice.
How deadly is COVID-19? We have just begun to scratch the surface
I like horror movies and this is how they all begin.
Kids can be killers, Infected children younger than age 5 may carry up to 100 times as much of the coronavirus in their noses and throats as adults — while older children carry at least as much as grown-ups, according to new research.
Now that SCOTUS has poked another huge hole in the wall between church and state, and now that the Catholic Church and the Trump administration have been forging closer ties over support for school choice (aka getting tax dollars to Catholic schools), and now that Betsy DeVos is insisting that financial aid intended for public schools should go to private schools-- now that all that is going on, it should come as no surprise that the Catholic Church is now arguing publicly to be given more taxpayer dollars.
It surfaced here in the National Catholic Register last Thursday. The op-ed is penned by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Cardinal Seán O’Malley and Archbishop José H. Gómez, from New York, Boston and Los Angeles, and it leads with the Espinoza decision, saying it "corrected an historic injustice." Also, the Covid-19 pandemic is sad and affecting everyone. And then they move quickly from there to demanding their cut of taxpayer funding. Their talking points include the following:
* Catholic schools have been around for two centuries. They would like you to focus on the part of the Catholic system that serves the upwardly mobile poor, and not the part that serves exclusive wealthy folks.
IN THE WORDS OF DOLLY PARTON, HERE YOU COME AGAIN…
“What exactly was the difference? He wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?” ― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
“Besides all those whaling details, Moby Dick is about someone who’s looking for something so huge, something they’ve wanted all their life, yet they know when they find it, it will kill them. ” ― Laurie Anderson
Here we sit on the eve of a new school year. It arrives in a manner few envisioned. It comes in a manner that is nearly unrecognizable to us. It comes with hopes as in the past, but also with new fears and trepidation. Yet still, it comes.
Across Tennessee, kids will resume their daily trek to their classrooms. For some will mean simply padding across their bedroom floor to their desks and logging in. For others, it will be a more traditional journey – one that will require buses and car lines, albeit with new entry procedures.
Whichever form schooling takes, it will be filled with unanswered questions and second-guessing. Is it really possible to emulate schooling through a digital platform? How long will this last? Will classes be engaging enough? And probably the most important – am I doing enough to keep my child safe while protecting their future.
Throughout the summer, I’ve been fairly critical of Metro Nashville’s Public School’s effort to prepare for the upcoming school year. In my opinion, back in May and June, there wasn’t CONTINUE READING: IN THE WORDS OF DOLLY PARTON, HERE YOU COME AGAIN… – Dad Gone Wild
