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Friday, August 28, 2020

The Post Office, the Election and Social Media—Four Lessons | Teacher in a strange land

The Post Office, the Election and Social Media—Four Lessons | Teacher in a strange land

The Post Office, the Election and Social Media—Four Lessons



This isn’t a blog about Our Beloved Post Office, or DeJoy the Impaler or even How to Vote. At its core, my ultimate point here is that Americans are terrible—godawful—media critics. And, consequently, our students–whom we frequently, jokingly label our on-site tech support–are floating in a sea of toxic TikTok spin and political sludge with no paddles and no anchor.
While young people are often fearlessly intuitive about using social media tools and platforms, the wisdom that comes from analysis, evaluation, fact-checking–and simply being mature—is not necessarily in place. True, I have, in 30+ years of teaching, met 7th graders I would trust with my life. But one look at 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse’s social media presence ought to give anyone pause.
On the other hand—well, here’s a story about a viral FB post and adults who ought to know better.
This narrative is just one illustration of how misinformation is spread. I have my own theories about how this particular blot on the truth may have happened, but no proof.
It’s kind of like what’s happened to the Post Office this summer—moving from citizens’ early observations about the mail being slow, to a loose accumulation of facts and accusations, with people becoming more informed (or misinformed).
This week, we moved into Congressional hearings that have convinced many people that a critical, constitutionally mandated service is being deliberately destroyed by a guy who knows bupkis about delivering the mail and has an economic stake in shutting it all down.
Many people–but not all people, of course. Because others have read memes and posts and seen tweets that say the USPS has always been second-rate, and it’s time to CONTINUE READING: The Post Office, the Election and Social Media—Four Lessons | Teacher in a strange land

Leadership committed to excellence and social justice | Cloaking Inequity

Leadership committed to excellence and social justice | Cloaking Inequity

LEADERSHIP COMMITTED TO EXCELLENCE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE



The semester has started! In the midst of twin pandemics of racism and Covid-19, we must lead and be committed to excellence and social justice. We must demand that is of our educational leaders and our policymakers! I recently gave an opening address to the faculty and staff at the UK College of Education. Here are the thoughts I shared:
I have been honored to serve the faculty, staff, students and alumni of the College of Education for nearly 14 months.
Dickens once said, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity”
On the one hand, according to US News, we are ranked the #1 College of Education in Kentucky. We are top 30 among Publics— our highest ranking in the history of the college. We are also ranked top 20 Online Education Masters Degrees and UK College of Education Department of Early Childhood, Special Education and Counselor Education leads the way with a top 10 departmental ranking.
Despite the best of times in term of recognition by our peers and the education community, we are dealing with the twin pandemics of Covid and racism.
To address twin pandemics of Covid and racism that rose to the fore that past several months, our courage, our tenacity, our intellectual curiosity, and our compassion has come to the fore.
Back in 2011, I remember buying and watching the movie Contagion. We are living in a real life plot that is eerily similar to a movie. It’s an unprecedented time not only for our political leaders, but also our academic leaders.
We spent the entire summer in design with remodeling our buildings, modifying our courses and physically reconfiguring classrooms.
Your college leaders spent many, many hours seeking to safely and responsibly open this week based on university guidelines. We are doing our best to follow their guidelines to ensure physical and emotional safety for our community.
Our values demand that we keep our community safe and we have sought to innovate out of the problems that Covid has presented us.
We are learning to work and teach in entirely different ways. We have all had to change our work and work differently.
We aspire to be the most innovative and nimble leadership team not only on campus, but in our state and nation. During times of crisis, we often see what people are made of. I heard in a political speech recently that commitment resides in every heart — and ours is fierce and clear.
The aforementioned staff and faculty attributes were also highly visible this summer, during the many months of racial unrest in our country. Many in the college galvanized to brainstorm what we can do toward more racial harmony, here on campus and in our communities.
But your college was preparing for the moment before it arrived. For a year, we had been working behind the scenes to create a first of its kind Education and Civil Rights Initiative with the national NAACP, the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization. When it was announced in the Washington Post, the UK College of Education officially became the center of the national discourse via this groundbreaking collaboration. We are incredibly grateful to have Greg Vincent and Sarah Lacour leading the work. We are also having discussion with other nationally renowned scholars who have reached out and would like to join the work.
We have taken a variety of other steps to address the pandemic of racism. We held a symposium series, named the College’s first Associate Dean of Diversity and Student Success, create a social justice student advisory committee, and have sought to integrate the Inclusiveness Committee in new ways. Furthermore, last fall I published a law review article that examined faculty diversity across higher education. We found that higher education has failed to move the needle appreciably. But not at UK. This summer we announced the diverse, dignified, dynamic dozen— 2/3 of our hires are people of color and 1/3 of our hires are African American— 100% are game changers for their field.
I submit to you that the College of Education is leading in UK’s efforts to address the racism pandemic. Candace Hargons is conducting anti-racism training for the leadership of the University. Dr Steven Watkins is leading the new $10 million UNITE initiative focused on research for historically marginalized communities. The administration and other deans have looked to us to lead in this moment… we will.
The twin pandemics are wearing on us. We are fortunate that most of the faculty hiring work was completed before the COVID hiring freeze. However, that didn’t save us from the loss of staff from two departments and shortages in two others. So we spent 6 weeks brainstorming and listening to our community on how to address the dire staffing needs created by the pandemic. At the end of that process, a taskforce of 4 staff and 3 faculty created a team model with a fiscal team, academic team and Department Support Specialists to prototype this year.
We understand that the world is rapidly evolving and coming at us from all angles. Let’s have each other back.
I also want to say that I learned the news this week about one of our own. As a community we need to step up and support Justin Bathon and his family in this challenging time. We are family and family cares for each other.
We continue to be grateful for you, our alumni and friends. Your commitment, tenacity, and generosity has made it possible for us to continue our important mission— impact for the children and families in our Commonwealth, nation and beyond. We WILL leave a legacy.
Leadership committed to excellence and social justice | Cloaking Inequity

CURMUDGUCATION: Information Sources: Don't Quit Your Day Job

CURMUDGUCATION: Information Sources: Don't Quit Your Day Job

Information Sources: Don't Quit Your Day Job



The New York Times just announced another "project" to be embedded within the paper and funded by philanthropic types. It's not a new model; the Gates Foundation has been funding journalism "projects" for a while. This piece by Tim Schwab at the Columbia Journalism Review lays out in depressing detail just how large the Bill Gates Underwritten Journalism Industry actually is (freakin' huge). This kind of funding model reflects how hard times for "journalism" has affected the tilt of what you and I get to read.

Blame the internet, at least in part, because of its prodigious grasping hunger for content. If you want to keep your site in the game, you've got to be rolling out new content several times daily. And that content has to come from somewhere, and there has to be a lot of it, and it has to be cheap.

The old Huffington Post model was a prime example of what can happen next. You may recall that I used to write for HuffPost. So did a lot of other people. It paid exactly $0.00; more accurately, it paid in eyeballs. Sometimes it paid handsomely; this piece may be the most-viewed thing I've ever written.

What we've got is an information ecosystem in which people can't afford to be writers. Nobody who does journalism for a living is making a particularly great living

And what that means, in turn, is that we have an information ecosystem in which many of the CONTINUE READING: 
CURMUDGUCATION: Information Sources: Don't Quit Your Day Job



DeVos out of sight even as her signature school issue gets top billing at RNC - POLITICO

DeVos out of sight even as her signature school issue gets top billing at RNC - POLITICO

DeVos out of sight even as her signature school issue gets top billing at RNC
The Education secretary didn’t even get a role in a convention video montage about the role of female leaders in the Trump administration.



School choice is finally getting prime-time attention as President Donald Trump makes the issue a focal point of his reelection bid, appealing to parents clamoring for an alternative to neighborhood public schools during the pandemic.
But the policy issue’s biggest cheerleader, his Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has been kept out of that spotlight.
DeVos isn’t so much as getting a cameo during the Republican National Convention this week, even as the president builds his second-term ambitions around the cause DeVos has championed for the past 30 years. The billionaire's public image is synonymous with “education freedom” or “school choice,” political shorthand for using government money or tax credits to help pay for kids to attend private schools, home instruction or other programs instead of their regular public school. It also encompasses charter schools, public schools that are independently run.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to questions about why DeVos was excluded from the lineup. From the secretary's own team, Education Department spokesperson Angela Morabito said DeVos "has never sought the spotlight" and is instead "focused on doing what’s best for students, and making sure they have a voice in the debate."
Among the core fan club for school choice, DeVos is still a star. In the eyes of Democratic political strategists, she has long been seen as the perfect villain to help drum up dissent against the president. So the polarizing secretary is not CONTINUE READING: DeVos out of sight even as her signature school issue gets top billing at RNC - POLITICO

The Politics of Teaching: #BlackLivesMatter Edition – radical eyes for equity

The Politics of Teaching: #BlackLivesMatter Edition – radical eyes for equity

The Politics of Teaching: #BlackLivesMatter Edition



On a social media group for educators, a teacher asked for clarification about the legal grounds for an administrator requesting that the teacher remove #BlackLivesMatter and LGBTQ+ support posters from their room.
The responses were illuminating since they tended to drift toward larger and different concerns about ideology and of course the standard claim that teachers should “not be political.”
This was a discussion among teachers in South Carolina, where I taught public high school English throughout the 1980s and 1990s; I also attended SC public schools from 1967 until 1979.
Not to be simplistic, but my experience teaching in SC, and my subsequent two decades working with public schools and teachers, has shown that what is technically legal isn’t as important and how administration—supported by community standards—views what is “allowed” or “banned.”
Therefore, at the root of this teacher’s dilemma is the fundamental problem with the term “political” and how teaching and education are framed as “not political” (or more clearly, how teaching and education should not be “political”).
Public schools tend to reflect and perpetuate community, state, and national CONTINUE READING: The Politics of Teaching: #BlackLivesMatter Edition – radical eyes for equity

As Schools Reopen, A New Tool Tracks Coronavirus Cases As They Emerge : Shots - Health News : NPR

As Schools Reopen, A New Tool Tracks Coronavirus Cases As They Emerge : Shots - Health News : NPR

How Many Coronavirus Cases Are Happening In Schools? This Tracker Keeps Count


Teacher Alisha Morris created an interactive tracker of coronavirus in schools, current through Aug. 23, including this map, created by another volunteer. The National Education Association will now take on updates to the database.
US schools tracker/Screenshot by NPR
Looking for a snapshot of coronavirus outbreaks in U.S. schools? The National Education Association has just launched a tracker of cases in public K-12 schools.
The tracker is broken down by state and shows schools and counties with known cases and suspected cases and deaths, as well as whether those infected were students or staff. It also includes links to the local news reports so users know where the virus data comes from.
The NEA tracker builds on the volunteer efforts of a Kansas theater teacher Alisha Morris. In early August, just ahead of the new school year, Morris was looking for data about coronavirus cases in U.S. schools. She could find local news reports about positive cases at individual schools across the country but nothing that gave her a cohesive picture of how the virus was spreading in schools.
So Morris built it herself.
She started with a simple Internet search.
"I put in the words 'school, positive' " she tells NPR's Morning Edition. "I clicked on the news tab and would search the articles from the past week or the past 24 hours and then I would input those articles into my spreadsheet."


Kansas high school theater teacher Alisha Morris created a database of coronavirus outbreaks in U.S. schools.
Alisha Morris
Morris started building a database on Aug. 6. She looked for news reports going back to July 1, since some schools had begun holding practices for fall sports or opening for administrative activities early in the summer.
Even with schools in only a few states back in session by early August, she had no trouble finding reports of coronavirus cases. Morris quickly logged cases at over 700 schools.
"I started feeling sort of shocked by what I was seeing and how many cases were already popping up in opening schools," she says. "That's when I decided that I should share it with some personal colleagues in Kansas and my district board of education. And their reactions are what really prompted me to share it on a wider scale with other CONTINUE READING: As Schools Reopen, A New Tool Tracks Coronavirus Cases As They Emerge : Shots - Health News : NPR

Teacher Tom: "Just In Time" Education

Teacher Tom: "Just In Time" Education

"Just In Time" Education




Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same

                   ~Malvina Reynolds


One of the theories underpinning "normal" education is that children need a "foundation" upon which to build future learning. Indeed, that's pretty much what the first 18 years is all about for most kids: memorizing the stuff they're going to need to have memorized in order to memorize the stuff they're going to need to memorize for next year, and so on, until they are released into the world, their foundations finally ready to support their "little boxes." Of course, it's not entirely like that. Some more progressive teachers might allow the children to write their papers on "any topic you chose" or "read any book you want (unless it's a comic book)," but they are largely constrained by the blueprint curriculum that they've been issued for constructing foundations so that those little boxes will turn out "all the same." 


It's a theory that starts with the idea that the adults, in their wisdom and superior soothsaying about the future, can predict what every child will need, as if there is a common body of knowledge that all children, no matter their interests, aptitudes, background, culture, or developmental stage, must know in order to move forward in life. We argued that they must be "well rounded." We say we are preparing them for the "jobs of tomorrow." We warn they are "falling behind" when the foundation for their little box is not the same as all the others. We tell them they are wrong when they, say, CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: "Just In Time" Education

CURMUDGUCATION: The Zero Sum Game

CURMUDGUCATION: The Zero Sum Game

The Zero Sum Game



I'm feeling a little dumb at the moment, because a light bulb just went on that should have gone on a while ago.

I was having the same conversation I've had many times. "Charters and vouchers and public schools could absolutely coexist. There's no reason it has to be a zero sum game," said someone.

And I agree, sort of. There are some things that can't help being zero sum, like having enough students to run certain programs. But financially, it's absolutely true that we don't have to make it a zero sum game. We don't have to be forced into the ridiculous attempt to finance multiple school systems with the money that isn't sufficient to fully fund just one. That's a choice that politicians make.

There are a couple of reasons we get stuck with a zero sum financial game. One is simple-- there is no politician with the cojones to stand up and say, "We want to set up multiple school systems and we want to raise your taxes to pay for it." The old claim of "my money should follow my child" line is a lie (it's your money--and your neighbors' money, too), but it sounds good and kind of fair. I even think there are people who honestly believe that you should just be able to move some money CONTINUE READING: 
CURMUDGUCATION: The Zero Sum Game

Second Judge Blocks Flow of CARES Act Dollars to Private Schools. Will Public Schools Ever See the Money Congress Intended for Them? | janresseger

Second Judge Blocks Flow of CARES Act Dollars to Private Schools. Will Public Schools Ever See the Money Congress Intended for Them? | janresseger

Second Judge Blocks Flow of CARES Act Dollars to Private Schools. Will Public Schools Ever See the Money Congress Intended for Them?



While the Republican Party announced the themes of the Republican Convention—“Monday is ‘Land of Promise,’ Tuesday is ‘Land of Opportunity,’ Wednesday is ‘Land of Heroes’ and Thursday is ‘Land of Greatness.'”—the Convention instead dramatized a very old theme: the difference between appearance and reality.  Producers, including people from The Apprentice, put together a spectacular show draped in flags. Their purpose: to distract, distort, and dissemble.
The Convention hardly touched on education policy. But last night in his acceptance speech, the President claimed he will “expand charter schools and provide school choice for every family in America.” Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. Tim Scott, (R-SC) also extolled school choice as the future of education, even as, ironically, President Trump himself and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos are demanding that the nation’s 90,000 public schools reopen as the only path to getting America’s parents back to work. Trump and DeVos certainly haven’t been counting on their favorite patchwork of charter schools and private schools to accomplish their systemic goal. The convention’s primary education speaker, Rebecca Friedrichs, the lead plaintiff in an anti-teachers union case called Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, not surprisingly, attacked teachers unions. Although she claimed that the unions “are subverting our republic, so they undermine educational excellence, morality, law and order,” you will remember that instead a wave of #Red4Ed strikes during 2018-2019 pushed states like West Virginia and Oklahoma to increase school funding at least a little bit and forced Los Angeles, Oakland, and Chicago to address unreasonable conditions including class sizes of 40 students and a dearth of school counselors in public schools serving concentrations of our nation’s poorest students.
While the Republicans held their convention, Betsy DeVos herself wasn’t having such a good week. She was left off the Convention agenda, and on Tuesday, the Savannah Morning News reported that she visited a reopened public school in Forsyth County, Georgia, where she made CONTINUE READING: Second Judge Blocks Flow of CARES Act Dollars to Private Schools. Will Public Schools Ever See the Money Congress Intended for Them? | janresseger

NYC Educator: Mayor de Blasio Uses 1.1 Million Children as Guinea Pigs

NYC Educator: Mayor de Blasio Uses 1.1 Million Children as Guinea Pigs

Mayor de Blasio Uses 1.1 Million Children as Guinea Pigs




Sometimes you see something so unbelievable that you have to check it twice to make sure you saw it right. When I saw a headline declaring indoor dining would depend on how school reopening goes, I had to look twice. This is remarkable from a mayor whose watchwords have been "equity and excellence."
But in Bill de Blasio's New York, some people get more equity than others. Who are those people exactly? Well, those would be the people who patronize Broadway, for example. I mean, you can't just have some couple that paid 1600 bucks to see Hamilton come down with COVID. That would be unthinkable.
“As more and more people come back to work, as schools begin, you know, we’ll get to see a lot about what our long-term health picture looks like, and that’s going to help inform our decisions going forward,” said de Blasio referring to the administration’s wait and watch approach on making a decision on indoor dining.
And it very much appears Bill de Blasio doesn't think it's safe for well-heeled New Yorkers to venture into restaurants and spend their money. Odd, then, that he has no issue whatsoever with having schoolchildren sit in classrooms and eat lunch. Oh, and just in case the risk of COVID isn't enough, de Blasio wants them to do tedious busy work while fretting over whether the students six feet away from them are contagious.
There are a lot of conclusions you could draw about a leader who distinguishes between public school children and people who can afford to eat in restaurants. Maybe he feels public schools are less risky than restaurants. After all, schools aren't cleaned as often or as throroughly as restaurants, particularly since de Blasio, for years, has failed to replace departing custodial employees. Hmmm...that doesn't really make things better at all. In fact, it's probably less risky in a restaurant, since a restaurant has to really make sure paying customers are comfortable enough to return.
Students and school staff, on the other hand, are more or less captive customers. It's not like CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Mayor de Blasio Uses 1.1 Million Children as Guinea Pigs

Confessions of a School Reformer (Part 6) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Confessions of a School Reformer (Part 6) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Confessions of a School Reformer (Part 6)



This is the last post of a series drawn from “Confessions of a School Reformer,” a book I am now writing. Parts 123, 4, and describe my entry into classroom teaching beginning in 1955 and ending in 1972.
In August 1968, no longer teaching at Roosevelt High School, I resigned from the full-time job I had at federal Commission on Civil Rights (CCR). No job did I have for 1968-1969.
Treading water
For the next few months, I was at home. With no more salary checks from either the DC schools or CCR, Barbara found a job as an administrative aide to a Rabbi at a nearby congregation. I stayed home with Sondra and Janice, walking them to school in the mornings, writing, doing household chores and making occasional dinners. I thought that with my name as an urban educator, an expert on multiethnic instructional materials, and author I could drum up sufficient business as a consultant to provide enough cash to cover monthly mortgage payments and expenses. I was wrong.
After sending out many letters advertising my talents and experiences, few requests dribbled in. Of those that came in, most asked me to speak or consult for free. My work on Scott Foresman textbooks brought in a few advances from the publisher. Between my paltry earnings and Barbara’s job we were just barely covering monthly expenses. Apart from worrying about money, I was thoroughly enjoying the time I spent with Barbara and my daughters.
Then in December, I heard from Associate Superintendent of Instruction, Norman Nickens of the DC schools that he wanted to see me. I had gotten to know Nickens when I directed the Cardozo Project and he headed the Model CONTINUE READING: Confessions of a School Reformer (Part 6) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Open Letter: Prioritize Instruction AND Safety | JD2718

Open Letter: Prioritize Instruction AND Safety | JD2718

Open Letter: Prioritize Instruction AND Safety



This petition gets it right. Read it here (or read it below, but the numbering is a little weird.) And then sign here.
August 25, 2020

TO: Mayor Bill De Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza,
We are two weeks away from the beginning of the school year and the DOE has yet to provide clear actionable support for instructional planning and programming for the hybrid and remote classroom models. Instruction, the engine of the classroom, has been overlooked, and overshadowed by the daunting task of creating protocols for physically returning to school buildings. What has been promised to families and paraded before the media is not possible to enact. I am a high school teacher with 20 years of classroom experience. I want to go back to my building and teach. But we are not prepared. Opening the school year now, using the Chancellor’s plan, means going back with inadequate staffing for both models, which will result in fragmented lessons, teacher burnout and diminished learning for all students. We urge the Mayor and the Chancellor to open schools remotely for the first semester. Allow teachers the time to focus on developing quality online instruction first. Then when it is safe, and we have developed a tenable plan, we can go back to our buildings for in-person instruction. 
    1. Schools have not received the guidance or programming support needed to create a coherent plan for day-to-day instruction.
      1. Principals had to choose one of the city’s proposed instructional models before they knew the CONTINUE READING: Open Letter: Prioritize Instruction AND Safety | JD2718

Betsy DeVos & the Death of the GOP | The Merrow Report

Betsy DeVos & the Death of the GOP | The Merrow Report

Betsy DeVos & the Death of the GOP


If you weren’t already convinced that the Republican Party was Donald Trump’s personal property, the 2020 Republican National Convention demonstrated that–lock, stock & barrel–the party of Dwight Eisenhower, John McCain, the two Bush presidents, Ronald Reagan, and Abraham Lincoln no longer exists.
How did this happen?  Will historians be able to point to a moment in time when Trump, a classic bully, might have been stopped if the GOP had stood up to him, instead of appeasing him? 
Historians generally agree that, when Western powers failed to stand up to Hitler after his annexation of Czechoslovakia, the die was cast.  “Peace for Our Time” was promised by Chamberlain in his and Hitler’s Munich Agreement of September, 1938, but as we know World War II soon followed.   While there were earlier events (such as The Night of the Long Knives in 1934) where strong responses to Hitler’s bullying and posturing might have forced him to back down, most see the Munich appeasement as the point of no return.
The House and Senate are a co-equal branch of government with the Constitutional responsibility for ‘advice and consent‘ on Presidential appointments and foreign treaties.  Under Republican control, they had numerous opportunities to assert their prerogatives after Trump’s election in November, 2016, but I believe the Senate’s CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos & the Death of the GOP | The Merrow Report



EDUCATION MALPRACTICE? – Dad Gone Wild

EDUCATION MALPRACTICE? – Dad Gone Wild

EDUCATION MALPRACTICE?




50, there is a new warmth and mellowing. Friends become more important than ever, but so does privacy. Since it is so often proclaimed by people past midlife, the motto of this stage might be “No more bullshit. Gail Sheehy,  Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life
“Status seekers, I never cared
Once I found out they never dared
To seize the world and shake it upside down
And every stinking bum should wear a crown”
― Iggy Pop
I must admit to having a fascination with the story of Tennessee’s Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn. Who wouldn’t be enthralled by the tale of the daughter raised by a single parent school teacher? She starts her journey in 2001 as an intern with Senator Feinstein and rises to the top as the handpicked Commissioner of Education of Tennessee under Bill Lee. Along the way she stacks the wins up at every stop, building a resume that ranks with the best in the country, all the while serving as a champion of the downtrodden and the marginalized. At least that’s what the book jacket says. 
But is it a resume that holds up under scrutiny? For this episode of as the Schwinn turns, we are going to take a deeper look at the events and circumstances around the founding and subsequent years of Capitol Collegiate Charter School in Sacramento. I think that we will find that not all that glitters is gold…well at least not for everybody. But I’m spoiling the plot. 
Capital Collegiate Academy was founded back in 2011 by one Penny Schwinn. In the past, I’ve talked about Schwinn’s tenure with the St. Hope Foundation, the charter network founded by Michelle Rhee’s husband and former Mayor of Sacramento Kevin Johnson. I think it’s a safe assumption that in opening her own school, Schwinn benefited from her relationship with Johnson. It worth noting that Penny’s husband Paul, also worked for the St. Hope Foundation. Stick around, CONTINUE READING: EDUCATION MALPRACTICE? – Dad Gone Wild

Current news from the California Department of Education (CDE)

 California Department of Education


Current news  from the California Department of Education (CDE) 




School Year 2020–21 Annual Update—Fourth Notice
The California Department of Education (CDE) has opened the School Nutrition Programs (SNP) Annual Update in the Child Nutrition Information and Payment System (CNIPS) for School Year (SY) 2020–21 (July 1, 2020, through June 30, 2021).
CDE CACFP Web Page for Program Operators
The California Department of Education (CDE) Nutrition Services Division (NSD) is pleased to announce the new Child and Adult Care Meal Program (CACFP) web page—an easy-to-use program hub for new and current California CACFP Operators!
CARES Reimbursement Tool for March 2020
The March 2020 CARES Reimbursement Information Tool is available for program operators to submit their March meal counts in order to receive the additional CARES rate for meals served during statewide school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
FBG Calculator Resources for CNP Operators
The California Department of Education Nutrition Services Division is pleased to announce two new Child Nutrition Programs (CNP) resources—the Food Buying Guide (FBG) Calculator web page and the Navigating the FBG Calculator online training course.
Support for Schools Amid Wildfires and Emergencies
Letter to County and District Superintendents and Charter School Administrators regarding support for schools impacted by wildfires and emergencies.
SBE August 2020 Information Memoranda
Background information and updates on issues of interest to the State Board Members.
RFA-20: Culturally Linguistically Teaching
Request for Applications for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 Migrant Education Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching Professional Development
SSPI Affirms Support for Schools Amid Wildfires
State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Affects Support for Schools Impacted by Wildfires and Offer Guidance on Distance Learning
COVID-19 Food Safety: Three-Part Webinar Series
The Office of Food Safety and Institute of Child Nutrition (ICN) recently completed a three-part webinar series on COVID-19 Food Safety.
FFVP Operations SY 2020-21: Questions and Answers
On August 21, 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released Policy Memorandum SP 23-2020 Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP) Operations for School Year (SY) 2020–21 during Novel Coronavirus (COVID-

 California Department of Education