Latest News and Comment from Education

Monday, August 31, 2020

To “Be” or Not To “Be”: Moving Beyond Correctness and Stigmatized Language – radical eyes for equity

To “Be” or Not To “Be”: Moving Beyond Correctness and Stigmatized Language – radical eyes for equity

To “Be” or Not To “Be”: Moving Beyond Correctness and Stigmatized Language



ESPN radio has recently shaken up their on-air personalities across the daily schedule, notably replacing the morning slot held for many years by Mike & Mike (and a recent fractured version after Mike Greenberg left) with a clear signal toward diversity— as reported by Andrew Marchand:
And now, look who is moving into the predominantly white sports-radio neighborhood beginning Monday. It’s Keyshawn, Jay Williams & Zubin Mehenti….
How will it be different?
“First of all, we are three minorities,” Keyshawn said. “That is No. 1. There haven’t been three minorities that I know of on a morning national sports show.”
One of the traditional areas where radio and television in the U.S. has had a strict lack of diversity is the use of language; talking heads—even late-night talk show hosts—practice something of a radio voice (lacking distinct regional pronunciations) and so-called “standard English.”
While listening to the new and more diverse morning radio show on ESPN, I heard Keyshawn Johnson say about a river they were discussing that people “be jet-skiing” in it. The trio’s reactions made it clear this waterway was not safe for recreation.
Since it is early in my first-year writing seminars, I am still helping students re-orient their attitudes and assumptions about reading, writing, and language. A foundational re-orientation for my courses is moving away from seeing language use as “correct” or “incorrect” (as well as rejecting terms such as “standard English” and “non-standard dialect”) and cautioning students not to stigmatize language use as some distinct flag for intelligence or moral/ethical character.
Johnson’s use of “be” to capture a continuous “presentism” of an action along with the omission of “to be” verbs (“Keyshawn home all day”) are often markers for what some call “Black English” (I was taught about Black English through the work of Dillard in the 1970s, but “Ebonics” and “AAVE” have also been used to designate this language usage pattern).
Few people are likely to recognize that ESPN’s new line up is more than racial or cultural diversity; Johnson embodies the importance of language use CONTINUE READING: To “Be” or Not To “Be”: Moving Beyond Correctness and Stigmatized Language – radical eyes for equity

Join the #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool “Year of Purpose”–Reflection and action for educators, parents, students, and organizers, every month of the year! – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Join the Black Lives Matter At School “Year of Purpose”–Reflection and action for educators, parents, students, and organizers, every month of the year! – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Join the Black Lives Matter At School “Year of Purpose”–Reflection and action for educators, parents, students, and organizers, every month of the year!




Calling all educators, parents, students, and antiracist community organizers:  We call on you to join the Black Lives Matter at School new initiative, the “Year of Purpose”—a national program that calls on educators (and parents educating their kids at home) to answer reflection questions about developing their antiracist pedagogy and join in a day of action every month of the school year.

Since the 2016-2017 when Seattle educators and Philly educators launched the BLM at School movement, we have had a day of action and then a week of action for Black lives in the schools.  Those actions were important to raising awareness around the 13 principles of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and the four demands of our movement:
  1. End “zero tolerance” discipline, and implement restorative justice
  2. Hire more black teachers
  3. Mandate Black history and ethnic studies in K-12 curriculum
  4. Fund counselors not cops
But the BLM at School Week of Action was never meant to contain teaching for Black lives to a single week.  It was always meant as a catalyst for educators to take the work into their entire year.  Now BLM at School has developed a framework and a plan of action for how to join thousands of others around the country to make Black Lives Matter at school all year long. 
Here are some ways that educators, parents, students and antiracist organizers can support the Year of Purpose:
  1. Sign the petition pledging to support the Year of Purpose.
  2. Answer the year of purpose reflection questions and talk about them with colleges (see questions below).
  3. Participate in the monthly days of action.
  4. Ask your local educator’s union to endorse BLM at School’s Year of Purpose.
The first day of action in the year of purpose is on whatever your first day of school is.  Here is the call:
1) FIRST DAY: Black to School (Whatever date that is for you)

Students at Risk During Pandemic - LA Progressive

Students at Risk During Pandemic - LA Progressive

Students at Risk During Pandemic
Focus on At-Risk Students’ Basic Needs, or Lose Them, UCLA Expert Advises



“We are at risk of losing an entire generation of young people.”
UCLA education professor Tyrone Howard made this bleak prediction at a virtual public meeting Wednesday while discussing Los Angeles County youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems who are heading back to upended schools during the disruptive storm of the coronavirus.
Howard warned members of the County Office of Child Protection’s Education Coordinating Council that COVID-19 threatens to widen the learning gap between these students and their peers, leaving them in danger of dropping out of school, entering the criminal justice system and developing even deeper mental health problems.
Support for these students will have to focus on their families’ basic needs, like rental assistance and child care, as well as equity issues, said Howard, who directs the Black Male Institute at the UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families.
With public schools throughout the county offering classes online, a July report by the Los Angeles Unified School District found that children of color and foster youth are participating in distance learning significantly less than other groups of students.

Los Angeles Unified School District found that children of color and foster youth are participating in distance learning significantly less than other groups of students.

To effect change, Howard said education and child welfare professionals must discuss taboo topics such as race, racism and mental health. If they are unwilling to have these “hard conversations,” he added, children will suffer.
Students with special needs are of particular concern to members of the education council – which includes representatives of community-based organizations, former foster and probation youth as well as officials from the county’s school districts, juvenile courts and child welfare agencies.
Well before the pandemic, special education students inside and outside the child welfare system struggled for equal education. During the pandemic, the barriers they face have increased, said Helen Berberian, a deputy director for the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. Berberian told council members that 31%, or 8,300, of the 27,000 K-12 students in foster care in L.A. County schools have individualized education CONTINUE READING: Students at Risk During Pandemic - LA Progressive

Health experts on how Texas school reopenings could affect COVID-19 spread | The Texas Tribune

Health experts on how Texas school reopenings could affect COVID-19 spread | The Texas Tribune

"We're all holding our breath": Health experts on school reopenings in Texas
The Texas Tribune spoke to experts about what the state can expect as schools and universities start school remotely or in person.

The Texas Tribune spoke to epidemiologists and health experts about what the state can expect with schools and universities resuming online or in-person instruction. The Tribune also talked to the same experts about the state's coronavirus data backlog.
Question: As hospitalizations decline, schools and universities are reopening — and already seeing outbreaks — and Labor Day is coming up. What do you think the state can expect in the weeks ahead?
Dr. Ron Cook, professor at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and the city of Lubbock’s public health authority: I think we’re all holding our breath on … what opening schools and opening colleges and universities is going to do. ... So I think we're going to see a surge, I think we'll see a surge of positive cases in the next 10 days to two weeks. That [student] population more than likely will do pretty well. But another 10 days after that we may see those that they come in contact with ... may not do so well.
Catherine Troisi, infectious disease epidemiologist at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston: It is great news of course the hospitalizations have been declining, probably due to better treatment … we've learned a lot about the infection, and the fact that it's younger people being infected and they are less likely to have more severe outcomes and need to be hospitalized. It may also be that people are getting tested earlier so the disease is caught earlier and supportive measures can be given.
However, there is concern that the fact that hospitalizations are going down will be taken as a sign that, ‘Oh we can go back to normal,’ because we're all tired of this. We were tired of it four months ago and now we're really tired of it ...
We've got a holiday weekend coming up [Labor Day weekend], and we saw what CONTINUE READING: Health experts on how Texas school reopenings could affect COVID-19 spread | The Texas Tribune

Education is a Public Obligation and Individual Right | Dissident Voice

Education is a Public Obligation and Individual Right | Dissident Voice

Education is a Public Obligation and Individual Right
Part X: A Manifesto for the United States of America



The system of education in the US is failing at every level except for private, heavily endowed or extremely costly institutions for the wealthy and privileged. Students of all ages are increasingly viewed as “profit centers” for private enterprise to exploit. Private charter schools now operate many public schools for the benefit of their investors, not their students.
Public state-run universities that were founded on the principle of free education to all are no longer fully supported by public resources, and have become unaffordable to many. Students must take loans, which are profitable to the banks but chain the students to debts that often last nearly a lifetime. The federally guaranteed student loan programs that began in the early 1960s were a response to the gradual disappearance of free public universities. It was a way of passing on the cost to the students while assuring a nice profit to financial institutions. It follows the trend of helping the wealthy elite put their greedy hands in the till until there are no public trusts that are not contracted out to for-profit institutions.
This is a disgrace that must end. Many countries in the world provide better quality and more complete public education supported by taxes and thus by the entire community. Education is necessary and must be free and accessible in order to assure that all individuals are able to participate to the fullest in CONTINUE READING: Education is a Public Obligation and Individual Right | Dissident Voice

Newsweek: Teachers Resigning to Avoid COVID | Diane Ravitch's blog

Newsweek: Teachers Resigning to Avoid COVID | Diane Ravitch's blog

Newsweek: Teachers Resigning to Avoid COVID



The most important concern about reopening schools is the health and safety of students and staff. The Trump administration has adamantly refused to provide funding to states and cities to enable them to make schools as safe as they should be.
As a result, Newsweek reports, significant numbers of teachers are quitting. This is a blow to students and schools across the nation.
It was hard to recruit teachers before the pandemic. How will these teachers be replaced?
Veteran K-12 teachers in states across the U.S. are resigning and retiring at higher rates as schools begin reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic this fall, with educators citing the stress tied to remote learning, technical difficulties and COVID-19 health concerns.
Several teachers who recently resigned, retired or opted out of their jobs ahead of pandemic reopening efforts say leaving their kids has been hard, but remote learning has CONTINUE READING: Newsweek: Teachers Resigning to Avoid COVID | Diane Ravitch's blog

Biden and Democrats Turn Away from Two Decades of Test-Based Public School Accountability and Privatization | janresseger

Biden and Democrats Turn Away from Two Decades of Test-Based Public School Accountability and Privatization | janresseger

Biden and Democrats Turn Away from Two Decades of Test-Based Public School Accountability and Privatization



Joe Biden’s education plan and the Democratic Platform on education this year should be recognized as a significant development. Biden’s plan embodies something new for Democrats—a turn away from two decades when Democrats bought into neoliberal experimentation in education. Biden supports expanding opportunity for children through better federal funding of public schools and at the same time curtailing abuses in charter schools.
This blog will take a short end of summer break.  Look for a new post Wednesday, September 9.
Donald Trump’s stance on education has not changed. For four years, the President has been endorsing marketplace school choice—code language for the expansion of school privatization at public expense. As a candidate for reelection, Trump merely says he will go on trying to expand marketplace school choice if he wins a second term. He and Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos endorse the continuation of the federal Charter Schools Program. Trump and DeVos are also pushing a $5 billion federal tuition tax credit program they got got someone to introduce into both the House and Senate as “The School Choice Now Act.” This is the same  Education Freedom Scholarship Program DeVos has inserted year after year into  the President’s proposed federal budget. Every year Congress has made sure that it didn’t make it into the final appropriations bill as passed. While the President says he will push school choice—more charters and an expansion of tuition tax credit school vouchers to pay for private school tuition—he never mentions the public schools except for demanding that they reopen as the vehicle for getting parents back to work.
But for Democrats, the direction of education policy seems finally to have shifted.  Shifted in a very positive direction.
Some History: Two Decades of Education “Reform”
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was enacted by Congress with bipartisan support in 2001 and CONTINUE READING: Biden and Democrats Turn Away from Two Decades of Test-Based Public School Accountability and Privatization | janresseger

Call in and let’s talk | Cloaking Inequity

Call in and let’s talk | Cloaking Inequity

CALL IN AND LET’S TALK




Join us Monday August 31, 2020 at 11 am EST to learn more about @ukcollegeofed new civil rights and education collaboration with @naacp Listen live and call in at https://www.facebook.com/wnhhradio/





Call in and let’s talk | Cloaking Inequity

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
 
 

Big Education Ape: THIS WEEK IN EDUCATION Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007 - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/08/this-week-in-education-larry-ferlazzos_29.html


Colleges & Universities Are Having To Deal With “Classroom Management” Issues For One Of The First Times, & They Are Clueless
University and college administrators are acting like first-year K-12 teachers in dealing with the pandemic. As many articles document, they are leading with threats and punishments. The University of California campus in Davis, California, where I live, is even hiring student “advisors” to report on students violating social distancing rules. An NPR story today highlights how, as any experienced
“Q&A Collections: Professional Development”
Q&A Collections: Professional Development is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. All Classroom Q&A posts on Professional Development (from the past nine years!) are described and linked to in this compilation post. Here’s an excerpt from one of them:
New Resources For Teaching About The Presidential Election
mohamed_hassan / Pixabay election headquarters is from iCivics. Letters to the Next President: Guidelines for Promoting Civic Writing is from the WRITE Center. Teach and Learn With the 2020 Election is from The NY Time Learning Network. You will find more infographics at Statista
New Resources On Race & Racism
Events this week have – once again – highlighted why we (and I mean us white educators) need to emphasize anti-racist education. I’m adding these new resources to various “Best” lists. You can find links to all of those many lists that relate to race and racism at “Best” Lists Of The Week: Resources For Teaching & Learning About Race & Racism: Six questions about slavery reparations, answered is
Hispanic Heritage Month Is Coming Up – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources
Hispanic Heritage Month begins on September 15th. You might be interested in The Best Resources For Hispanic Heritage Month .
This Week’s Resources To Support Teachers Coping With School Closures
Wokandapix / Pixabay I have a number of regular weekly features (see HERE IS A LIST (WITH LINKS) OF ALL MY REGULAR WEEKLY FEATURES ). This is a relatively new addition to that list. Some of these resources will be added to The Best Advice On Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have To Because Of The Coronavirus) – Please Make More Suggestions ! and the best will go to The “Best Of The Best” Resources To
Do You Want To Write In Ed Week About Your Teaching Experience This Year?
As you may know, my Education Week column is set up so readers send in questions to me, and then I invite guests to contribution 400- or 500-word responses, as well as printing shorter reader comments. I know a lot of 

 Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007