Setting America’s Schools Up To Fail - PopularResistance Org

Setting America’s Schools Up To Fail - PopularResistance.Org

SETTING AMERICA’S SCHOOLS UP TO FAIL

Seventeen years ago, against the advice of my parents, I decided to become a public school teacher. Once I did, both my mother and father, educators themselves, warned me that choosing to teach was to invite attacks from those who viewed the profession with derision and contempt. They advised me to stay strong and push through when budgets were cut, my intellect questioned, or my dedication to my students exploited. Nobody, however, warned me that someday I might have to defend myself against those who asked me to step back into my classroom and risk my own life, the lives of my students and their families, of my friends, my husband, and my child in the middle of a global pandemic. And nobody told me that I’d be worrying about whether or not our nation’s public schools, already under siege, would survive the chaos of Covid-19.

Pushing students back into school buildings right now simply telegraphs an even larger desire in this society to return to business as usual. We want our schools to open because we want a sense of normalcy in a time of the deepest uncertainty. We want to pretend that schools (like bars) will deliver us from the stresses created by a massive public health crisis. We want to believe that if we simply put our children back in their classrooms, the economy will recover and life as we used to know it will resume.

In reality, the coronavirus is — or at least should be — teaching us that there can be no going back to that past. As the first students and teachers start to return to school buildings, images of crowded hallways, unmasked kids, and reports of school-induced Covid-19 outbreaks have already revealed the depths to which we seem willing to plunge when it comes to the safety and well-being of our children.

So let’s just call the situation what it is: a misguided attempt to prop up an economy failing at near Great Depression levels because federal, state, and local governments have been remarkably unwilling to make public policy grounded in evidence-based science. In other words, we’re living in a nation CONTINUE READING: Setting America’s Schools Up To Fail - PopularResistance.Org

Gene V Glass: Education in Two Worlds: Why Bother Testing in 2021?

Gene V Glass: Education in Two Worlds: Why Bother Testing in 2021?

Why Bother Testing in 2021?

At a recent Education Writers Association seminar, Jim Blew, an assistant to Betsy DeVos at the Department of Education, opined that the Department is inclined not to grant waivers to states seeking exemptions from the federally mandated annual standardized achievement testing. States like Michigan, Georgia, and South Carolina were seeking a one year moratorium. Blew insisted that “even during a pandemic [tests] serve as an important tool in our education system.” He said that the Department’s “instinct” was to grant no waivers. What system he was referring to and important to whom are two questions we seek to unravel here.

​Without question, the “system” of the U.S. Department of Education has a huge stake in enforcing annual achievement testing. It’s not just that the Department’s relationship is at stake with Pearson Education, the U.K. corporation that is the major contractor for state testing, with annual revenues of nearly $5 billion. The Department’s image as a “get tough” defender of high standards is also at stake. Pandemic be damned! We can’t let those weak kneed blue states get away with covering up the incompetence of those teacher unions.​

To whom are the results of these annual testings important? Governors? District superintendents? Teachers?​

How the governors feel about the test results depends entirely on where they stand on the political spectrum. Blue state governors praise the findings when they are above the national average, and they call for increased funding when they are below. Red state governors, whose state’s scores are generally below average, insist that the results are a clear call for vouchers and more charter CONTINUE READING: Gene V Glass: Education in Two Worlds: Why Bother Testing in 2021?

Special Ed Students at Risk - LA Progressive

Special Ed Students at Risk - LA Progressive

Special Ed Students at Risk

Pieces in a ParentsTogether’s art installation in August at the U.S. Capitol, which showed the anxieties and hopes of children during the pandemic. The picture on the right was created by Ellery, 7, from Cincinnati, while the other was drawn by 6-year-old Coredae Schmidt of Kansas. Images courtesy of ParentsTogether

Special Education Students Still Waiting for Help as New School Year Starts

Like many parents, Lynn Gabriel of Los Angeles has found keeping her 6-year-old son on track with school to be a grueling endeavor during the pandemic. Last spring, between the two half-hour classes a week and worksheets exchanged on Google Classroom, Gabriel struggled to keep Benjamin engaged.

He missed his friends and basketball games at the park, but there were even more challenges. Unlike most kids, Benjamin struggles with recall, and one of his eyes has trouble focusing. That has made learning how to read frustrating for him as well as for his mother.

“I’ll tell him to sound it out,” Gabriel said. “I say, ‘Look at the word.’ But I don’t know what he sees. He learns differently, and I have no tools to figure it out.”

But over the past five months the single mom has been unable to get help from her local school district.

Many districts up and down California have not assessed students with disabilities in months, preventing them from obtaining services they need during the destabilizing times of the pandemic.

Prompted by stay-at-home orders and a hastily passed state law in March, many districts up and down California have not assessed students with disabilities in months, preventing them from obtaining services they need during the destabilizing times of the pandemic. Benjamin, a Los Angeles boy who will start first grade on Tuesday, is facing another year of distance learning.

As a result, although students like Benjamin and thousands like him start school remotely in Los Angeles County on Tuesday, educational CONTINUE READING: Special Ed Students at Risk - LA Progressive

Where Is the Bailout for Parents? - The Atlantic

Where Is the Bailout for Parents? - The Atlantic

Bail Out Parents
A child allowance is the Easy button for pandemic solutions.

If parenting were an industry, America’s moms and dads would all be filing for bankruptcy. First came the closures of schools and child-care programs in the spring, followed by many summer camps and pools never opening, and now a fall during which huge swaths of the country will have all-virtual schooling. Many parents are completely depleted—mentally and financially. Typically, politicians of both parties revel in rhetoric about families being the bedrock of society. Well, if businesses get a Paycheck Protection Program, families deserve a Parent Protection Program. That starts with the United States adopting a long-overdue child allowance.

Bailouts are a recognition that certain sectors are so vital to the American economy that the government has a compelling interest in keeping them afloat. This is why, in the CARES Act, airlines got $50 billion and hospitals $150 billion. The centerpiece of that bill, of course, was the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program, which offered largely forgivable loans to businesses. This had the effect of keeping many workers—including parents—on payroll, although the nation still suffers from brutal unemployment and the economic recovery appears to be flagging.

Parents, taken collectively, are an underrecognized yet vital economic interest. According to the Brookings Institution, 41.2 million workers, a third of the entire workforce, have a child under age 18. Nearly 34 million have a child under age 14 who is likely to require some kind of supervision during virtual schooling, a task that disproportionately falls on mothers’ shoulders. COVID-19, unsurprisingly and infuriatingly, is already driving women out of the workforce. According to a recent Census Bureau report, “Around one in five (18.2%) of working-age adults said the reason they were not working was because COVID-19 disrupted their childcare arrangements,” with women three times as likely as men to report this barrier.

Of course, parents’ benefits to society go far beyond their external labor, and stay-at-home parents are also vital. Families with children are the elemental unit of a society, the reproductive cell; without healthy families, the entire enterprise unravels. And that is happening now, on a mass scale: Parents are suffering, and no relief is in sight. Researchers at the University of Oregon have warned that with the expiration of enhanced unemployment benefits, “vast numbers” of families with young children—who bear the highest child-rearing costs—may “end up having power and water turned off, running out of funds to purchase food, diapers, and other necessities, and struggling to pay for childcare or health care.”

On top of this, many parents of older children are now being forced to pay for care and learning support. According to the Urban Institute, parents who cannot work remotely CONTINUE READING: Where Is the Bailout for Parents? - The Atlantic

Adrienne LaFrance: ‘This push to open schools is guaranteed to fail’

Contract Talk: New Research on Teachers Unions – Have You Heard

Contract Talk: New Research on Teachers Unions – Have You Heard

Contract Talk: New Research on Teachers Unions

Teachers unions are the biggest impediments to fixing schools and improving student achievement. That mantra has been at the heart of school reform efforts for more than a decade – but is it true? Education researchers Adam Kirk Edgerton and Mimi Lyon both started their teaching careers at a time of peak hostility to unions (remember Waiting for Superman?). When they left the classroom to go back to school, both were intent on researching unionization in order to better understand its impact—on teachers, students, and on progressive policies in states where unionization has been hindered. Oh, and did we mention that Adam and Mimi are the runners up in the 2020 Have You Heard Graduate Student Research Contest? 

Complete transcript of the episode is here. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon or donate on PayPal.

Have You Heard · #94 Contract Talk: New Research on Teachers Unions

Contract Talk: New Research on Teachers Unions – Have You Heard

Audrey Watters: Hack Education: Building Anti-Surveillance Ed-Tech | National Education Policy Center

Hack Education: Building Anti-Surveillance Ed-Tech | National Education Policy Center

Hack Education: Building Anti-Surveillance Ed-Tech

These are the slides and transcript from my conversation this morning with Paul Prinsloo — a webinar sponsored by Contact North

Pardon me if I just rant a little. Pardon my language. Pardon my anger and my grief. Or don’t. Let us sit with our anger and our grief a little.

We are living in terrible, terrible times — a global pandemic, economic inequality exacerbated by economic depression, dramatic and worsening climate change, rampant police violence, and creeping fascism and ethno-nationalism. And in the midst of all this danger and uncertainty, we have to navigate both old institutions and practices — may of which are faltering under a regime of austerity and anti-expertise — and new(ish) technology corporations — many of which are more than happy to work with authoritarians and libertarians.

Education technology — as a field, an ideology — sits right at that overlap but appears to be mostly unwilling to recognize its role in the devastation. It prefers to be heralded as a savior. Too many of its advocates refuse to truly examine the ways in which ed-tech makes things worse or admit that the utopia they've long peddled has become a hellscape of exploitation and control for a great deal of the people laboring in, with, under its systems. 

Ed-tech may not be the solution; in fact, ed-tech may be the problem — or at the very least, a symptom of such.

Back in February — phew, remember February? — Jeffrey Moro, a PhD candidate in English at the University of Maryland, wrote a very astute blog post "Against Cop Shit" in the classroom.

"For the purposes of this post," Moro wrote, "I define 'cop shit' as 'any pedagogical technique or technology that presumes an adversarial relationship between students and teachers.' Here are some examples:

• ed-tech that tracks our students' every move
• plagiarism detection software
• militant tardy or absence policies, particularly ones that involve embarrassing our students, e.g. locking them out of the classroom after class has begun
• assignments that require copying out honor code statements
• 'rigor,' 'grit,' and 'discipline'
• any interface with actual cops, such as reporting students' immigration status to ICE and calling cops on students sitting in classrooms.

The title of this webinar is "Building Anti-Surveillance Ed-Tech," but that's a bit of a misnomer as I'm less interested in either "building" or in "ed-tech." Before we build, we need to dismantle the surveillance ed-tech that already permeates our schools. And we need to dismantle the CONTINUE READING: Hack Education: Building Anti-Surveillance Ed-Tech | National Education Policy Center

NYC Educator: Tweed Says Safety First--for Tweedies Anyway

NYC Educator: Tweed Says Safety First--for Tweedies Anyway

Tweed Says Safety First--for Tweedies Anyway

 That's the Deputy Chancellor. He has three air conditioners and an exhaust system in his office. After all, it's Tweed and they do Very Important Stuff in there. I look at this photo and I think about the VIP pigs in Animal Farm who needed to eat the apples because they had to do brain work. They needed to fill in ledgers very, very carefully so they could be burned in the furnace. That's about my impression of the Chancellor's team right now.



Like everyone else in this meeting, the Deputy Chancellor was all by himself. You see, while you are supposed to sit with a dozen students in a classroom built over a hundred years ago, barely improved since then,  the VIPs need their own space. Perish forbid they should set an example by setting up a classroom, sitting socially distanced, and all facing in the same direction so no one would face anyone else. Instead, they set an example of what people do when they are actually concerned with their own safety.

In fairness, the chancellor and his peeps repeatedly said they were concerned with our safety. Safety first, safety second, and safety third. However, we would not be working under the conditions that they did. It's curious, because a group of adults can behave in a room a lot easier than a group of children or teenagers. Believe it or not, teachers often have to CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Tweed Says Safety First--for Tweedies Anyway

My New Video Series — Essential Math For Kids (And Parents) | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

My New Video Series — Essential Math For Kids (And Parents) | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

My New Video Series — Essential Math For Kids (And Parents)

Even though most people who read this blog know me as a critic of ed reform, the thing that I spend most of my time thinking about, actually, is how students learn math and what the best ways to teach it is.

Depending on how you count it, I’ve been teaching math for at least 23 years.  My first year as a professional teacher was in 1991, and that was 29 years ago, but I took a few years off after my fifth year of teaching.  But I was tutoring math when I was a high school student which was back about 35 years ago.  And even before that, one early memory of mine was helping my older sister with counting when I was about 4.  What I’m getting at is that I have been teaching math for a long time.

I teach high school now, but I’ve taught in middle school too, and as far as elementary school goes, I have two children, one is 9 and the other is 12, and I’ve helped them with their math and studied the skills that they have learned in their schools.

In this pandemic, parents find themselves in the position of trying to help their children with their math more than ever.  So something that I’ve thought I might do is create a series of videos that go over what I consider to be the essential skills I think kids should know as they progress through the grade levels.

Depending on whether anyone is watching these, I could see myself making about 50 of these 40 minute videos, starting with lower elementary and going though Algebra II and Trigonometry.  Anyway, here is the very first one in the series and it covers what I think the essential math skills I want my own children to master by 3rd grade.

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My New Video Series — Essential Math For Kids (And Parents) | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

CHANGE IS AFOOT WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT – Dad Gone Wild

CHANGE IS AFOOT WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT – Dad Gone Wild

CHANGE IS AFOOT WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT

“We have more to fear from the opinions of our friends than the bayonets of our enemies.” Politician turned Union General Nathaniel Banks, in plea he couldn’t abandon an untenable position.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
― James Baldwin

It’s a few minutes before 9 AM. The wife is heading towards the bedroom, which has now become a classroom, to begin teaching her first class of the day. The kids are sequestered in their room, beginning the log in process for another school day. Myself, I fill another cup of coffee and settle in to begin my workday. Ours is not a unique scene, as similar routines transpire all across Nashville.

Three weeks ago Metro Nashville Public Schools kicked off school via distance learning. To say it’s been a painful process is been an understatement. It’s required long hours by teachers to try and fill gaps left open in a skeletal plan designed by district administrators who haven’t taught in a classroom in years. Parents have had to adjust work schedules and child care options, often with limited resources. All of this playing out in front of the backdrop of a global pandemic.

Success has been very slow in coming, frustrations continue bubbling forth, but victories are being won. More than once around our house I’ve heard cries of “I can’t do this”, “I hate this stuff”, “What CONTINUE READING: CHANGE IS AFOOT WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT – Dad Gone Wild

Teacher Tom: How Viral Learning Works

Teacher Tom: How Viral Learning Works

How Viral Learning Works

A parent asked me if we could use medical feeding bags, the kind used in hospitals for patients who can't feed themselves. I knew what she was talking about, but had never given them much thought, let alone wanted one for the preschool. My rule of thumb, however, is that if anyone wants to contribute 20 or more of anything we'll take them. She had 30 so I had no choice but to say "Yes."

They came in two large boxes, one of which I put on the workbench along with a couple of old tempera paint jugs full of water and for the rest of the afternoon we roamed the playground experimenting with them.

The kids who play at Woodland Park are already experts on water and gravity, so it wasn't long before one of them figured out that the water only ran through the hose when the nozzle was lower than the bag of water. This knowledge went viral the way knowledge does in a play-based curriculum, where the children mostly teach one another.

As I watched the play unfold, I began to think of the virality of knowledge. Even before the pandemic, in this age of the internet, we all know about videos and articles that "go viral" through the democratic process of sharing, but this, what the children were doing with the feeding bags, has always been CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: How Viral Learning Works

NewBlackMan (in Exile) TODAY

 NewBlackMan (in Exile)

NewBlackMan (in Exile) TODAY

People of Color Have Been Systemically Excluded from National Parks

by Mark Anthony Neal / 13h

'Segregation and other forms of systemic racism have had a lasting effect on who visits these national parks today. According to a 2018 study, less than two percent of National park visitors were Black. James Edward Mills , a freelance journalist and the author of The Adventure Gap, Changing the Face of The Outdoors , and Nicole Jackson , a next-generation advisory council member at the National

Protect the Vote: David Zucchino on 'Wilmington's Lie'

by Mark Anthony Neal / 14h

'Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Zucchino joins All Of It to discuss his book, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy , as part of our series “Protect the Vote”.'

Howard University Shaped Kamala Harris' Path To Political Heights

by Mark Anthony Neal / 14h

'Sen. Kamala Harris accepts the Democratic vice presidential nomination. Her education at Howard University , a historically Black university seen as the center of Black intellectual life, helped pave the way.' -- Morning Edition

Activism and The Fight for Black Trans Lives

by Mark Anthony Neal / 15h

'On this episode of Making Contact , we will look at transgender activism and the call for inclusion and intersectionality in the movement for Black lives. We'll also meet Trans activists in Louisiana who have been organizing against a state law that has been used to unfairly target trans women for decades.' Making Contact ·

N. K. Jemisin on H. P. Lovecraft

by Mark Anthony Neal / 15h

' N. K. Jemisin is one of the most celebrated authors in science fiction’s history; the novels of her “Broken Earth” trilogy won the Hugo Award for three consecutive years, a unique achievement. Yet her work has also engendered an ugly backlash from a faction of readers who feel that the recognition of women and authors of color within the industry has been undeserving. Racism in science fiction

What the Story of Soul City, N.C., Can Teach Us About Fixing Systemic Economic Racism

by Mark Anthony Neal / 15h

'Civil rights leader Floyd McKissick left the Congress of Racial Equality in 1968 to found a new city in North Carolina. McKissick, who had served in the Army during World War II, saw the success of the U.S. Marshall Plan in rebuilding Europe and had the idea that government dollars could be used to fix the problems poor Black people were facing in the American South. His project, named Soul City

#ImagineBlackFreedom Dominique Sindayiganza & Ekere Tallie: "Barefoot Stroll"

by Mark Anthony Neal / 2d

"Barefoot Stroll" – a short film from Dominique Sindayiganza & Ekere Tallie.

FUC 013 | Donna Murch — The Power of the Public University

by Mark Anthony Neal / 2d

' Donna Murc h, Associate Professor of History at Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, author of Living for the City and the forthcoming collection of essays, Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Mass Incarceration, and the 

NewBlackMan (in Exile)