Big Education Ape: Aug 10, 2020

Monday, August 10, 2020

Parental Choice Won’t Save Us From Unsafe School Reopening Plans | gadflyonthewallblog

Parental Choice Won’t Save Us From Unsafe School Reopening Plans

I am the parent of a public school student.

And I have a choice.

I get to decide whether my daughter will go back to school in-person or online.

That’s the only thing that should matter to me.

At least, that’s what the superintendent of my home district told me when I went before school directors last week asking them to reconsider administration’s unsafe reopening plan.

At McKeesport Area School District (MASD), Dr. Mark Holtzman and administration propose unlocking the doors for half day in-person classes Mondays through Fridays.

Kids would be split into two groups – one attending in the mornings, the other in the afternoons. That way, with buildings at half capacity, there would be enough physical space for social distancing. The remainder of the time, kids would be CONTINUE READING: Parental Choice Won’t Save Us From Unsafe School Reopening Plans | gadflyonthewallblog

Incoming NEA head Becky Pringle says it’s time ‘to turn up that heat’ - Chalkbeat

Incoming head of nation’s largest teachers union says it’s time ‘to turn up that heat’

Shortly after it became official that Becky Pringle would be the next head of the nation’s largest teachers union, she set the tone for her presidency with a tweet that ended like this: “We are ready to turn up that heat.”

In an interview Friday, the National Education Association’s incoming president said that means supporting local strikes or protests over teacher safety in the era of the coronavirus, filing lawsuits to block reopening plans that teachers see as unsafe, and other efforts to put teachers at the center of the national conversation.

“You saw that as our teachers came together in the Red for Ed movement,” Pringle said, referring to the wave of teacher activism in recent years calling for higher teacher pay and more school funding. Some educators went on strike, some didn’t, she noted. “But they were willing to come together as this powerful force and demand the resources their students and their schools needed. That is the kind of energy and power that I want to unleash.”

Pringle’s election comes as the U.S. continues to struggle to figure out how to reopen its schools. Nationally, COVID-19 case numbers have continued rising, and most of the CONTINUE READING: Incoming NEA head Becky Pringle says it’s time ‘to turn up that heat’ - Chalkbeat

CURMUDGUCATION: To Teachers Contemplating Retirement

CURMUDGUCATION: To Teachers Contemplating Retirement

This fall marks the beginning of my third go round of starting the school year as a retiree. Thanks to the pandemic, it's in some ways the hardest year so far. I get that the pandemic is also giving many teachers pause to consider whether or not to go back. Here (expanded from a twitter thread) are my thoughts.

One of the hard parts of retirement is managing the guilt. You're leaving your friends and colleagues to continue the work. And it's important work, work you value. And they're going to keep doing it while you walk away.

This is unavoidable, because the work in schools is never done, ever. Every year some stories end, and some other stories begin, and most of the stories continue somewhere in the middle. There will never be a moment when you can brush your hands together and declare, "Okay, everything's wrapped up, so this is the perfect moment for me to peace out." Never going to happen.

So to retire, you have to shake the notion that you should really stick around and help (it took me months to shake the notion that I should run for school board). You know, intellectually, that you are not indispensable or irreplaceable. You moved into someone's spot, and someone will move into yours. In the meantime, your actual legacy is out in the world. You taught a bunch of CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: To Teachers Contemplating Retirement

UTLA's Arlene Inouye Fights On - LA Progressive

UTLA’s Arlene Inouye Fights On

I wrote the message below to family and friends on Facebook after my 70th birthday. I added some additional context to the basic message for the LA Progressive.

I want to thank family and friends for the birthday wishes and support as I enter the next decade. I am thankful that through zoom I could be surrounded by close family- with song, pictures and expressions of love. It is always a treat to see my beautiful 13 and 11 year old granddaughters, as we have struggled through the quarantine together. And an unexpected call from my Mother’s nursing home, where my 98-year-old Mom was holding a happy birthday balloon. When I asked her how old I am, she said “I don’t want to tell”. It was wonderful to see her alert and spunky. I am grateful for my husband, Michael, who did his best to cook throughout the day, and be supportive, as it was another working day for me at UTLA.

Upon reflection I more fully realize that my life has been in three stages, and it has taken me longer than most to bloom. The first stage was from the age of 5 years old, when I decided to try to be the good little girl I was supposed to be. Not realizing the intergenerational trauma of the incarceration during WWII, I took on the model minority myth, white supremacy culture and internalized oppression. When growing up in Los Angeles I was constantly asked “where are you from?”. Saying that I was born in LA wasn’t good enough. I was encouraged to go into home economics, and felt the societal pressure to get married at a young age. This led to my vulnerability in being in a marriage and situation where I was further devalued and felt that I was never good enough. I closed off my heart to survive for 26 years.

But at the age of 47 years old, I left that situation and started the second phase of my life. I made a CONTINUE READING: UTLA's Arlene Inouye Fights On - LA Progressive

Emerging consensus about kids and school transmission of covid

Emerging consensus about kids and school transmission of covid

PROOF POINTS: The evolving science of how kids contract and spread coronavirus
Emerging consensus that kids are getting and spreading it has implications for schools

In March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic erupted in the United States, epidemiological reports circulated that children weren’t getting the virus very often and, when they did, their cases were mild. Four months later, in late July, three important public health studies documented that kids do get sick and are transmitting the virus.

What this shift in the scientific literature means for opening up schools is still unclear. Parents and educators are confused because they have to deal with scientific progress in real time. This is still a new virus and scientists are just beginning to understand it.

As an education reporter who covers quantitative research, I began to devour public health studies and try to make sense of them. The first study that caught my attention was on March 16, a day after New York City shut down public schools. The decision in New York was a controversial one. In the second week of March, the city had only a small number of cases and the mayor wanted to keep the schools open. But his public health officials warned about exponential spread. The mayor belatedly acceded to the demands of his health officials and agreed to lockdown the city.

Yet a March 16 study out of South Korea had me wondering if New York had overreacted. South Korea was initially hard hit by the virus, but early on, fewer than 2 percent of its Covid-19 cases were children. A study published in the Journal of Korean Medical Science about the first pediatric case in that country determined that a 10-year-old girl probably got it from her mother and uncle at home, not from schoolmates. She had had a mild pneumonia in February and recovered on her own without special treatment. Nonetheless, the medical scientists who wrote the study argued that Korea’s school closures were “justified.”

By the end of March, school systems around the world had shut down. UNESCO calculated that children were out of school in 193 countries. That’s roughly nine out of 10 students worldwide. CONTINUE READING: Emerging consensus about kids and school transmission of covid

How to Show Kids the Joy of Reading - The Atlantic

How to Show Kids the Joy of Reading - The Atlantic

How to Show Kids the Joy of Reading
Deloris Fowler had seen educational reforms come and go. Then one of them surprised her.

Editor’s Note: In the next five years, most of America’s most experienced teachers will retire. The Baby Boomers are leaving behind a nation of more novice educators. In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. Less than three decades later, that number had fallen to just three years leading a classroom. The Atlantic’s “On Teaching” project is crisscrossing the country to talk to veteran educators. This story is the 20th in our series.

"Look at this cloud,” Deloris Fowler coaxed her third graders during a science lesson about different types of clouds last year. “What shape do you think it is?”

A student I’ll call Abby raised her hand. “That cloud is shaped like an anvil,” she volunteered.

Fowler was impressed. Anvil isn’t a word most 21st-century third graders would know. Abby came from a family with little formal education and was particularly unlikely to have picked up vocabulary like that at home.

In fact, Abby remembered the word from a story Fowler had read to the class weeks before, about a Viking boy whose father was a blacksmith—a story all the kids had followed with rapt attention. Abby had a reading disability, but Fowler had seen her confidence grow over the course of the school year. She often contributed some of the most insightful comments during class discussions. While she still had some trouble sounding out words, her score on a reading-comprehension test had zoomed from the 10th percentile at the beginning of the school year to just below average by mid-December.

Things weren’t always like this in Fowler’s classroom. In her 28 years of teaching, she’s seen educational reforms come and go. That’s not unusual; in a 2017 survey of a nationally representative sample of teachers, 84 percent said that as soon as they “get a handle on a new reform,” it changes. To Fowler, some of the changes only seemed to make it harder for her students to learn—like a directive to discontinue an effective phonics program, or the emergence of a joyless and stressful regime of test prep. So when the district unveiled yet another new initiative a few years ago, Fowler was skeptical. But, to her surprise, it turned out to be the one that did the best job of CONTINUE READING: How to Show Kids the Joy of Reading - The Atlantic

The Blue Cereal Podcast For New (Or Reviving) Teachers | Blue Cereal Education

The Blue Cereal Podcast For New (Or Reviving) Teachers

Well, my #11FF, I decided to record a few podcasts for new (or reviving) educators. This seems like a wonderful idea because I lack the proper equipment, there are dozens of excellent education podcasts out there already, I have nothing to sell, and this year is so weird it's hard to know how to prepare for it anyway.

In other words, why not?

If you're looking for polished rhetoric or witty repartee, book recommendations or big education words, you're a tiny bit out of luck this time around. If your'e looking for the truth about teaching and how to survive it, on the other hand... welcome to the Eleven Faithful Followers. You are home.

Episode #1: Everything Is Weird (Roll With It)

BCE Podcast Ep1.mp3

Episode #2: Of Grades & Grading (You're Doing It Wrong)

BCE Podcast Ep2.mp3

The Blue Cereal Podcast For New (Or Reviving) Teachers | Blue Cereal Education

Big Time Football: “angry white man society” – radical eyes for equity

Big Time Football: “angry white man society”

While Trevor Lawrence—probably the highest profile white Division I college football player in 2020—has become the face for the #WeWantToPlay campaign calling for a start to college football amidst a pandemic, the Colorado State University football program has been forced to reckon with a racially toxic culture, implicating their former coach and current assistant coach at the University of South Carolina (Mike Bobo).

The #WeWantToPlay campaign appears to be garnering greater media and public coverage, but the CSU controversy should not be ignored, and should not be examined as a culture problem somehow centered only at CSU or in the individual coaches named in that coverage.

Charges by Black players at CSU are powerful and damning:

However, again, this is not about CSU solely or a few high-profile coaches; this is about “closed systems” and a normalized culture of abuse “hidden in plain sight”: CONTINUE READING: Big Time Football: “angry white man society” – radical eyes for equity

Russ on Reading: Reading Instruction at a Distance: Read Aloud, Read Along, Read Alone, Read Again

Reading Instruction at a Distance: Read Aloud, Read Along, Read Alone, Read Again

Whether teaching at a safe distance in school, or online, or some combination of the two, teachers and students face a unique challenge this year. While reading instruction for our most vulnerable readers will necessarily look much different from normal practice, many best practices can still be used effectively. An instructional design I would recommend is Read Aloud, Read Along, Read Alone, Read Again. Let's take a look at these four elements and see how we can use them in this brave new teaching world.

Read Aloud

This well-documented and effective reading strategy can and should remain central to our distanced instruction. Read aloud is not only a pleasurable activity for most, but it also builds student vocabulary and background knowledge, provides a model of fluent reading for children, and provides the teacher with opportunities to model reading comprehension strategies like predicting, summarizing, rereading, adjusting reading rate, and questioning.

During this pandemic, while I haven't been able to visit my grandchildren, I have been recording video read alouds and sending them off to be shared at bedtime. Teachers can choose to do recorded read alouds or real time read alouds with their students this fall. For more on Read Aloud you can look here.

Read Along

As I wrote in a recent post you can find here, the read along is an assisted CONTINUE READING: Russ on Reading: Reading Instruction at a Distance: Read Aloud, Read Along, Read Alone, Read Again

Teacher: The Hidden Scandal in U.S. Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teacher: The Hidden Scandal in U.S. Education

A teacher in the District of Columbia wrote about the hidden scandal in public education: crumbling buildings.

She writes:

For all the debate about why schools should not open … the most obvious elephant in the room is invisible or just a footnote in most discussions. Yes… schools are crowded, yes… the government is not giving timely funding for the necessary PPE and such… and there are SO MANY reasons I could provide as to the dangers at this current time from early childhood issues to teen issues. But the glaring one involves a problem that has existed LONG before the pandemic, but would now be impossible “to fix” in order to make schools safe to open this fall.

US public school buildings are falling apart and have been for years. My school has a rampant mold problem. Two years ago we had a terrible rainy summer and came back to see that the mold was no longer hidden and just “peeking through, but rather was everywhere. I had a giant black clump of black mold on my ceiling in one spot where there is always moisture under normal circumstances. Mold was everywhere – hallways, CONTINUE READING: Teacher: The Hidden Scandal in U.S. Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Network for Public Education Releases New Report on Charter School Closure, Churn, and Instability | janresseger

Network for Public Education Releases New Report on Charter School Closure, Churn, and Instability

Last week the Network for Public Education (NPE) released a fine new report tracking school closures over time in the charter school sector. The comprehensive new study, Broken Promises: An Analysis of Charter School Closures from 1999-2017, tracks built-in instability in this education sector which sucks money out of the public schools.

Charter schools are paid for with public tax dollars and surely ought to operate for the benefit of their students and the communities where they are located. But the charter school sector has been troubled from the beginning. For years we have learned about problems in charter schools, one school at at time, one scandal at a time: academic failure, graft and corruption, sudden school closures, selection of students in a sector that is supposed to be open to all, the violation of students’ rights through punitive discipline and pushout schemes, and other problems. It has been hard to get a handle on overall trends, as a succession of breaches of the public good were reported one-at-a-time, city-by-city in the press. The Broken Promises report instead documents a long trend.

NPE’s new report begins by defining the marketplace philosophy underneath the idea of charter schools: “Charter schools began in the 1990s as an experimental alternative to public schools. Today charter schools are a multi-billion dollar sector composed of both nonprofit and for-profit corporations that embrace the philosophy of the marketplace. The survival of charter schools, much like the survival of small businesses, depends on their ability to out-compete other schools and to attract new customers. Unlike businesses, however, public tax dollars are used to pay charter operators who personally assume little financial risk. The public places bets on schools in a marketplace model. Too often, it is a losing gamble. Supporters of charters see school failure as a natural feature of the model.” The overly simplistic assumption is that the schools which don’t serve children well will cease to attract CONTINUE READING: Network for Public Education Releases New Report on Charter School Closure, Churn, and Instability | janresseger

CURMUDGUCATION: Why Isn't AI More Widely Used?

Why Isn't AI More Widely Used?

That's the question that Wired asked last month, and it's important to consider because even as a truckload of ed tech folks are "predicting" (aka "marketing") a future in which ed tech is awash in shiny Artificial Intelligence features that read students minds and develop instantaneous perfectly personalized instructional materials. Why is it, do you supposed, that AI is being thrust at education even as private industry is slow to embrace it?

The article looks at a study of data from a 2018 US Census survey. What they found was that only 2.8% of companies had adopted any form of "machine learning," the magical AI process by which computers are supposed to be able to teach themselves. The big advanced tech winner was touchscreens, which are considerably more friendly than AI, and even those only clocked in at 5.9%, so I suspect that schools are ahead of the game on that one. Total share of companies using any kind of AI (which included voice recognition and self-driving vehicles) was a mere 8.9%.

Adoption was heavily tilted toward big companies, aka companies that can afford to buy shiny things that may or may not actually work, aka companies where the distance between those who buy the stuff and those who use the stuff is the greatest.

Another finding of the study is that, shockingly, that many previous "estimates" of AI use were seriously overstated. For instance, consulting giant McKinsey (a company that has steamy dreams CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Why Isn't AI More Widely Used?

Charter Schools And Their Enemies — My Review | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Charter Schools And Their Enemies — My Review

Thomas Sowell is an economist and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His lengthy career has spanned six decades and he is a well respected conservative scholar.

He has recently published a thin volume called ‘Charter Schools And Their Enemies’ (Basic Books 2020)

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Though charter schools have been around for about 30 years, they started getting a lot of attention with the release of the documentary ‘Waiting For Superman’ in 2010. The premise of that movie was that American schools are failing and producing mainly illiterate students and that the blame falls on teacher’s unions. The remedy, according to the movie, is non-unionized charter schools. Charter schools, it claims, prove that in-school factors can overcome out-of-school factors as long as teachers are not protected by their unions.

Waiting For Superman coincided with the rise of education celebrities like Michelle Rhee who was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 2008. The pro-charter / teacher union bashing movement helped fuel the Obama-Duncan Race To The Top agenda which continues to be influential today.
But Waiting For Superman is not taken seriously anymore. The premises in that movie CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools And Their Enemies — My Review | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

It Depends On Who You Listen To (Yes, About School Reopening) | The Jose Vilson

It Depends On Who You Listen To (Yes, About School Reopening)

It was my first time in months riding the bus with my son since school shut down. Normally, when I’ve run an errand during the pandemic, I’ll do it on my own, mask on, huffing and puffing to make it back inside. On this errand, my son and I saw a crosstown bus sitting there, so we hopped in the back. Pre-COVID, we rode the bus home from his after-school program, so we were excited to have this sliver of normalcy.

As soon as we got to the next stop, we got a quick education on what happens outside our bubble.

Every stop told a new story. At the first stop, an elderly woman hops on, grumbling underneath her mask about having to wear one and surveying the rest of the passengers to make sure they had one, too. At the second, a man meekly walks in to the front while onlookers wondered why those without canes had to get in the back. At the fifth, a mother with two teenaged children hopped on. The daughter had on her pink plastic covering, the rest of her family members came in uncovered and sneering at the rest of us.

The bus driver yells through his loudspeaker: “NO MASK, NO SERVICE! I WILL STOP THIS BUS IF I SEE ONE PASSENGER WITH NO MASK!” The elderly woman frowns at the mother and the teenage CONTINUE READING: It Depends On Who You Listen To (Yes, About School Reopening) | The Jose Vilson

Mr. G for District 3: Chris Guerrieri's Education Matters: Teachers from heroes to zeroes, by design (draft)

Teachers from heroes to zeroes, by design

Never waste a crisis. Last spring, after a solid year and a half of teacher action, when they pushed back against the conditions that were strangling the profession, teachers were lauded as heroes as they switched to distance learning in a couple of days. The memes and accolades were everywhere. Fast forward to today when many teachers are protesting going back to unsafe conditions, and suddenly they are the villains of the story, lazy and unprofessional, and no offense to the clerk at Walmart, but if he can do it, so should teachers. You have to think this new narrative is a little by design.

By now I think we have all heard if the clerk at Walmart can do it, why can't teachers as if they are the same. On the other end of the spectrum, if nurses and doctors can do it, so can teachers. You know, because teaching is the same as both jobs.

It is probably a surprise to all the nasty commentators on news stories, but teachers are neither. Service workers deal with a customer or two at a time for a few minutes, often in places where social distancing can occur. Not crammed into classrooms and schools, which are already as close as you can get to Petri dishes.

Then nurses and doctors, the true heroes of the pandemic, signed up for this, that's the job they chose. Their bravery and dedication are truly admirable, and their PPE is truly impressive as well. I CONTINUE READING: Mr. G for District 3: Chris Guerrieri's Education Matters: Teachers from heroes to zeroes, by design (draft)

Six thousand school doors | JD2718

Six thousand school doors | JD2718 -

Six thousand school doors

That might be the number of public school doors in New York City. There are over 1800 schools, but some are in leased buildings, and some are “campuses” which in New York means one building shared by several schools. In the rest of the country a campus is one school spread into several buildings. The New York City Department of Education claims 1557 buildings. That’s from a survey from last year, the number is probably pretty close to reality.

My first school had eight doors. Or was it six? My current is a leased building, but has two doors. I’m guessing four might be near the average, which is how I get 6000. If you told me I was wrong, that it was actually 5000, or 9000, I would not be shocked. But we get the idea. The NYCDOE has in the neighborhood of 6000 doors to the streets.

It’s a good thing that we do not need a separate hybrid plan for every door. That would be a lot of plans. But we do need a separate hybrid plan for each school. And at nearly 2000, that’s still a lot of plans.

You know what every plan needs? Every plan needs to include doors. Let’s talk about that for a moment. Let’s talk about morning entry.

Friday July 31 New York City had an outline, not a plan, as one of Cuomo’s aides accurately pointed out. Then Friday they submitted a new plan. Last Friday they turned in 32 pages. Small towns were turning in over 50. Yonkers was over 100. This Friday the NYCDoE turned in 109 pages.

Are there any English teachers reading this? Let me know if you’ve heard this story before. This one is CONTINUE READING: Six thousand school doors | JD2718 -

A VERY BUSY DAY 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

A VERY BUSY DAY

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

The latest news and resources in education since 2007

August 23rd Is “International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition” – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

The United Nations has declared August 23rd to be International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition. You can find many related resources at their website . Check out USEFUL RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY OF BRINGING ENSLAVED AFRICANS TO AMERICA . You might also want to explore The Best Resources For Learning About Human Trafficking Today .

Monday’s Four “Must-Read” & “Must-Watch” Articles & Videos About School Reopening This Fall

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

kaboompics / Pixabay Here are new additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING WHAT SCHOOLS WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE FALL : Chaos coast to coast as a school year like no other launches is from The Washington Post. Why Black families are choosing to keep their kids remote when schools reopen is from The Hechinger Report.

SEL Weekly Update

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

I’ve recently begun this weekly post where I’ll be sharing resources I’m adding to The Best Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Resources or other related “Best” lists. You might also be interested in THE BEST SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING RESOURCES OF 2020 – PART ONE. Finally, check out “Best” Lists Of The Week: Social Emotional Learning Resources . Here are this week’s picks: Motivate Your High Perform

“Q&A Collections: Advice for New Teachers”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

Q&A Collections: Advice for New Teachers is the headline of my latest Education Week column. All Classroom Q&A posts on Advice for New Teachers (from the past nine years!) are described and linked to in this compilation post. Here’s an excerpt from one of them:

Ed Tech Digest

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

Nine 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 2020 – PART ONE , as well as checking out all my edtech resources . Here are this w

Federal Eviction Ban Has Just Expired & One-Third Of U.S. Renters Can’t Make August Rent – What Does This Mean For Students?

by Larry Ferlazzo / 15h

I have previously posted about the coming eviction crisis and how it could impact our students and schools (see Federal Eviction Ban Expires Today; California’s Expires In September – How Will Schools Cope With Big Increase Of Homeless Students? ). It’s looking even worse today. Are schools ready in September and October for huge increases in homeless students? Read more about it two articles fro

Around The Web In ESL/EFL/ELL

20by Larry Ferlazzo / 1d

BiljaST / Pixabay Six years ago I began this regular feature where I share a few posts and resources from around the Web related to ESL/EFL or to language in general that have caught my attention. You might also be interested in THE BEST RESOURCES, ARTICLES & BLOG POSTS FOR TEACHERS OF ELLS IN 2019 – PART ONE and THE BEST RESOURCES, ARTICLES & BLOG POSTS FOR TEACHERS OF ELLS IN 2019 – PART TWO. A

Video (& Lesson Plan): “Should Cops Be In Schools?”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 1d

Utility_Inc / Pixabay San Francisco public television has produced this video and lesson plan . I’m adding it to TEACHING RESOURCES ABOUT IF POLICE SHOULD BE IN SCHOOLS .