Miami-Dade Schools Sever Ties with K12 Online Corp. The Miami-Dade school board voted to sever ties with the notoriously awful for-profit K12 online corporation. K12 has long been known as a huge money-maker that produces bad education and high attrition rates. The Miami-Dade County School Board has voted unanimously to stop using My School Online, the district’s controversial new online learnin
Greene gets what she wants, more people in schools More people in schools mean more danger for children and staff. This, however, is what Greene wants, and let that sink in. Over the next few weeks, the hybrid model which allowed middle and high school students to do some of their learning from home comes to an end. From First Coast News, More students are about to be in Duval County Public Scho
Join Steve Suitts and Me on Zoom to Talk about the Origins of “School Choice” Please sign up and join the discussion between Steve Suitts and me on Zoom on Wednesday September 16. We will be talking about Steve’s new book Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement. You will be amazed to learn of the true history of school choice. It is definitely not the “c
Remember to Look Beyond the Crisis of the Day New York City public schools have been open for staff for two, three, now four days. And we have been busy dealing with problems. Our immediate focus was drawn to personal protective equipment (PPE) and associated cleaning supplies (disinfectant spray, wipes, sanitizer). That seems to be solved? Maybe. Took some schools (Hi there!) two days to get de
SOMEBODY NEEDS TO CREATE A TEACHER WELL-BEING INIATIVE – Dad Gone Wild SOMEBODY NEEDS TO CREATE A TEACHER WELL-BEING INITIATIVE “Besides, to like something, to really like it and come out and say so, is taking a terrible risk. I mean, what if I’m wrong? What if it’s really no good?” ― T.C. Boyle, If The River Was Whiskey “I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because
Full of Meaning Rather Than Absence I couldn't find my wallet, which was particularly worrisome because I always keep it in one of three places: my pocket, a narrow counter in the bathroom, or on the table beside where I sit and write blog posts. After looking in all of those places, I looked in those places again. Only then could I consider the possibility that I had slipped up and placed my wa
California Department of Education SEP 10 New Seal of Civic Engagement 1d California State Board of Education approves State Seal of Civic Engagement Award. SEP 09 Webinar on Public Health Guidance 2d State Superintendent Tony Thurmond convenes California school leaders to review public health guidance for safe learning. LivingWorks Virtual Youth Summit 2d shines a light on mental wellness and s
NewBlackMan (in Exile) Author Yaa Gyasi Says Writing Can Be 'An Act Of Love And Justice' by Mark Anthony Neal / 12h ' Yaa Gyasi 's debut novel, Homegoing , won a PEN/Hemingway Award. Her follow-up, Transcendent Kingdom , draws on Gyasi's life as the daughter of immigrants from Ghana.' Jacqueline Woodson Wants Kids To Know The Beauty — And The Danger — Of Football by Mark Anthony Neal / 12h 'Many
Education Research Report THIS WEEK Education Research Report SEP 09 Relationships between Schoolwide Instructional Observation Scores and Student Achievement and Growth in Low-Performing Schools by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d Complete report The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) recognizes that a key lever to turning around low-performing schools is the quality o
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007 THIS WEEK IN EDUCATION Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007 Video: “What Pizza Is Like Around the World” by Larry Ferlazzo / 3h igorovsyannykov / Pixabay This new fun video could inspire class projects to examine international varieties of other
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all KEEP UP/ CATCH UP WITH DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG A site to discuss better education for all David Gamberg: A New Vision is Needed Now for Education! by dianeravitch / now David Gamberg recently retired as superintendent of schools in two adjoining towns on New York’s Long Island—Southold and Greenport—where he was beloved for his child-
44 Square Feet: A School-Reopening Detective Story Schools—but not public health officials—across the US are making it a rule: Every student needs to have 44 sq. ft. of space. I tried to find out why. WHEN MY CHILDREN’S school district finally released its reopening plan at the end of July, it left me both distraught and baffled. My son, aged 9, and my daughter, aged 11, would be going back to c
Arkansas: Public School Advocates Demand End to Failed Voucher Program PUBLIC SCHOOL ADVOCATES URGE ARKANSAS LEGISLATURE TO END BROKEN VOUCHER PROGRAM In a letter sent to Arkansas legislative leaders last week, Public Funds Public Schools, along with other state and national organizations, urged the Arkansas General Assembly to end the state’s harmful and inequitable private school voucher progr
AN OPEN LETTER TO WHITE TEACHERS OF BLACK CHILDREN … If America is going to become a nation, she must find a way—and this [Black] child must help her to find a way—to use the tremendous potential and tremendous energy which this child represents. If this country does not find a way to use that energy, it will be destroyed by that energy. James Baldwin, A Talk to Teachers In the spirit of James B
New York City’s Teachers Union Doesn’t Remember How to Strike New York City’s Teachers Union Doesn’t Remember How to Strike The United Federation of Teachers, New York City’s teachers union, is a massive local that could wield enormous power through striking. But the union hasn’t struck in nearly half a century — even in the face of a deadly pandemic and unsafe schools reopening. Why does the UFT
Institute for Policy Studies: Reimagining School Safety This valuable report analyzes how money could be better spent to protect students at school. It’s findings are stunning. We as a nation are spending vast sums on police in schools but insignificant amounts on mental health services and counselors who interact directly with students. KEY FINDINGS & OBSERVATIONS *Since 2018, states have alloc
POLITICO Article on Charter Schools Entirely Misses the Point Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, the ethicist, tells us that “justice is the community’s guarantee of the conditions necessary for everybody to be a participant in the common life of society… It is just to structure institutions and laws in such a way that communal life is enhanced and individuals are provided full opportunity for participatio
De Blasio Suggests Our Lives Don't Matter. In a summer full of spectacular incompetence and total lack of planning, it's harder and harder for things to stand out, but this suggestion is really rather startling: Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that there is no real plan to disclose positive tests because students are not back in school yet. Wow. We have 16 positive cases we know of, and there
California State Board of Education Approves State Seal of Civic Engagement Award Honor is hoped to encourage students to become active participants in democracy SACRAMENTO—The California State Board of Education today approved criteria for California students to earn a new Seal of Civic Engagement, an incentive aimed at encouraging active and ongoing citizenship. To earn the seal, students must
The Biden Education Red Flags Before I get started here, let me be clear about one thing--it is almost impossible to imagine a candidate worse for public education than Donald Trump. His "polan" for education has only two items-- school choice (via vouchers) for everyone, and make every school teach American exceptionalism, which, given his recent assaults on the 1619 project and diversity train
VIDEO–“Expel The Police”: TBS’ “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” hosts Monique Morris, Jesse Hagopian, Dream Cannon, & Nathaniel Genene to talk about #PoliceFreeSchools! The popular late night comedy news show, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee , just ran a powerful expose on the brutality of police against students in school. As they wrote of the program, Correspondent Mike Brown gets an education
When Should Journalists Speak Up? By now everyone must know that President Trump has been lying about the coronavirus for months, telling us it would magically disappear when he knew all along that it was a killer threat. Trump admitted this in phone conversations with Bob Woodward recorded in February and March, but only now–in September–have some of the tapes been released. That Trump is unfit
COVID-19 and Mass Protests: Lessons Learned and Future Directions On August 20, 2020, The People’s Think Tank (PTT), an intersectional movement space for reimagining a radically democratic future for education justice, held a virtual convening: COVID-19 and Mass Protests: Lessons Learned and Future Directions. The online gathering brought together more than thirty of PTT’s fifty-plus members, wh
In crackdown on race-related content, Education Department targets internal book clubs, meetings The guidance largely echoes OMB’s memo in describing the type of content that is now disfavored in government training sessions. The Education Department plans to scrutinize a wide range of employee activities — including internal book clubs — in search of “Anti-American propaganda” and discussions a
Do Our Children Deserve the Truth? Knowing our history, the good and the bad, is the first step, I want my children to love the country they live in, but I also want them to be clear-eyed about what that country is. - America Ferrara , Actor In 1970, when I was a wet-behind-the-ears, 22 year-old social studies teacher at Bristol Junior-Senior High School, I was teaching a ninth grade Civics cour
Webinar on Public Health Guidance - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education) State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Convenes California School Leaders to Review Public Health Guidance for Safe Learning LivingWorks Virtual Youth Summit - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education) - https://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr20/yr20rel74.asp SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond hosted a special webina
Why Can't They Just Get Along ? Union Teachers v SCUSD Administration Many in Sacramento are frustrated and angry about the continuing conflict between the Sacramento City Teachers Assoc, and the SCUSD Superintendent and Board of Education. Families are being disrupted and children are having their school schedules scrambled. So, what is going on ? To find the District view, read the Sacramento
A Robot Wrote An Article. I'm Not Concerned Yet. The tech world continues its attempts to build a computer that can do language. It's not easy, as witnessed by the fact that they still haven't succeeded. But then, we don't really know how the human brain does language, either. The current leading construct for computer-generated English is GPT-3. It can do 175 billion parameters (its predecessor
A DISCOMFORT WITH THE TRUTH “A man will seek to express his relation to the stars; but when a man’s consciousness has been riveted upon obtaining a loaf of bread, that loaf of bread is as important as the stars.” ― Richard Wright, Black Boy “Your whole house smells of dog, says someone who comes to visit. I say I’ll take care of it. Which I do by never inviting that person to visit again.” ― Sig
Reopening schools amid funding cuts & how to minimize the harm of remote learning On this week's "Talk out of School" I interviewed Jasmine Gripper, Executive Director of the Alliance for Quality Education, about Governor Cuomo’s damaging and inequitable budget cuts to public schools. Then Josh Golin, Executive Director of Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood, explained why schools need to min
Perhaps, Parents, That Future is Closer Than We Think Parents should know that what is happening right now via Zoom meetings is being called "school," but please don't judge your children's teachers by what is happening right now. Or rather, please remember that just as this is an all new world for you and your children, it is likewise an all new world for the teachers who are tasked with invent
USA: How Betsy DeVos makes millions of dollars as education secretary USA/September 07, 2020/By: By Melissa Nann Burke and Craig Mauger, The Detroit News/Source: https://www.hollandsentinel.com/ U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has reported at least $170 million in outside income during her first three years in Washington, benefiting from her family’s business empire that includes stakes in
Morning in America: Civil Rights Front and Center Julian Vasquez Heilig and Greg Vincent discuss the brand new civil rights and education collaboration between the University of Kentucky College of Education and the NAACP on The Tom Ficklin Show. Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others. Check out and follow my YouTube channel here . Twitter: @Pro
Report: Are Charter Schools A Big Risk For Families? In a new report, the Network for Public Education shows how big a gamble it can be to enroll your child in a charter school. And the odds are not in parents’ favor. “ Broken Promises: An Analysis of Charter School Closures From 1999-2017 ” is a deep dive into the data surrounding patterns of charter closure and the number of students affected
Trump’s Denial of 1619 Project: Unworthy of a Democracy In our democracy, the federal government has been the entity that the people looked to take steps to ensure educational equity. President Trump is dangerously intent on reversing the role of the federal government on equity and public education. Last week, Trump threatened to withdraw federal funding from California public schools that use
State of Our Schools: Randi Weingarten State of Our Schools: Randi Weingarten American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten discusses safety measures being taken as part of the Department of Education’s reopening plan to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the upcoming school year. State of Our Schools: Randi Weingarten
Chicano/a Studies: 50 Years in the Making Fear-mongering, racist, inflammatory messaging is something the Latino community has heard many times before. This political year there is something different. There is a direct attack by this president and his entire administration upon the Latino Community. The upcoming 2020 elections are one of the most important elections in our lifetime. This is not
Code Acts in Education: The Social Life of Artificial Intelligence in Education Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become the subject of both hype and horror in education. During the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, AI in education (AIed) attracted serious investor interest, market speculation, and enthusiastic technofuturist predictions . At the same time, algorithms and statistical models were implicated
California Department of Education Big Education Ape: September 6, 2020 Statewide Emergency: Fires - Nutrition (CA Dept of Education) - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/09/september-6-2020-statewide-emergency.html Public Safety Power Shutoff Event September 2020 4h Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE) have announced that public safety power shutoffs are i
Former IDEA Leader Wants to Turn San Antonio into Charter Mecca Tom Torkelson, former leader of the free-spending IDEA Network, has landed in San Antonio, where he hopes to flood the city and its surrounding districts with charter schools and obliterate public schools that belong to the community. Torkelson hopes to place 150,000 students in charters, draining funding from public schools. Not lo
A Hybrid that Works I was speaking with someone from a Long Island district who described to me what they're doing in his town. Things are easier there, evidently, since they're fairly well to do and they haven't overcrowded the schools to some obscene level. I'm pretty familiar with overcrowding. Our school is at 220% capacity, and the most we can have most students report is once a week. In th
How Covid-19 Froze School Reform (Part 3) Covid-19 has not only frozen prior reforms–BC (Before Covid)–see Parts 1 and 2 –but the spread of software and devices throughout schools prior to the coronavirus pandemic has led to a total embrace of online instruction or DC, During Covid-19. Districts are providing families with laptops and tablets like popcorn. I take up particularly the work of entr
September 6, 2020 Statewide Emergency: Fires Coronavirus (COVID-19) Main Web Page In response to an emergency proclamation issued on September 6, 2020, by Governor Gavin Newsom regarding the fires burning in several counties, the California Department of Education (CDE) Nutrition Services Division is sending this notice to all statewide participants in the Child Nutrition Programs. On September
If the superintendent is going isn't going to be honest about subs what else will she not be honest about. Superintendent Greene has not been honest with us and that may be as uncomfortable for you to read as it was for me to write, but it's the truth, and if the superintendent is going to deceive to us about job openings and sub positions, where is her limit? On Facebook, I posed this question:
Racial and Class Bias In New Jersey's School Reopening Plans Most New Jersey school districts are starting the 2020-21 school year this week -- although the way they are starting varies quite a bit. This year, some districts are fully remote, while others are offering a limited form of in-person instruction known as a "hybrid" model. Many of the districts offering the hybrid are rotating student
Going “Black to School” With Counselors Not Cops!: An interview on the victory for #PoliceFreeSchools with Minneapolis student leader Nathaniel Genene Minneapolis students demonstrate the day before Superbowl 2018 for cops out of the schools. (Photo: Unicorn Riot) An interview with Minneapolis student leader Nathaniel Genene about the uprising for Black lives, the victory of removing police from
Pretty Good Parenting When you hear someone use the term "adulting," it's usually used as the punchline to a sarcastic joke about having tackled a responsibility that is associated with being a grown-up, like changing a tire, folding laundry, or paying the monthly bills. It's sometimes used to refer to the day-to-day grind, such as having conscientiously undertaken irritating, but necessary task
DeVos Privatization Schemes Are Blocked by Courts and Likely to Be Further Blocked by Congress Betsy DeVos, a lifelong supporter of private and religious schools and the expansion of tax-funded tuition vouchers for private schools, has pursued the privatization of public education throughout her tenure as U.S. Secretary of Education. In recent months DeVos devised a way to divert to private scho
DeVos Says We're All In This Together. Ha! So this just popped up on my feed: So much to unpack. First, who's this "we"? Because Betsy DeVos has made it clear that in her universe, the failed public "government" schools are not "in it" with her. She has not invited public school teachers, the unions, public school students--all the things that are part of what she derides as "the system"--to be
Awakening to Racist Child Abuse of Charter Chains Fabiola St Hilaire is among a growing number of teachers from the "no excuses" cultural sterilization charter schools who are calling out the racist child abuse by charter chains like Success Academy. Working for this organization has truly showed me that as long as I stand with the inaction and blatant disregard for child morality and healthy de
Antiracist Reading Shortly after George Floyd was murdered, openly, in front of the nation’s eyes, Tre Johnson said this, in the Washington Post: ‘when things get real — really murderous, really tragic, really violent or aggressive — my white, liberal, educated friends already know what to do. What they do is read . And talk about their reading. What they do is listen. And talk about how they li
2020 Medley #20 | Live Long and Prosper WHAT’S ‘BROKEN’? THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OR AMERICA ITSELF? Trump exploits Biden’s charter school silence Margaret Fortune of the Freedom Coalition for Charter Schools calls out the President for lying about former Vice President Biden’s plan for charter schools. The comment by the current occupant of the White House that Biden wants to close all charter school
Who Should Be the Next Education Secretary at This Critical Juncture in History? Bloggers have been speculating about a Biden/Harris education secretary. During this critical time in American history, that individual should be a black or brown woman, who has been a teacher of young children, and who understands child development. She should hold an education degree and have an additional leaders
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Racism by the Numbers – radical eyes for equity Measuring the Unmeasurable: Racism by the Numbers Several years ago, women faculty at my university raised concerns about gender inequity across hiring, retention, and pay. The data suggested those concerns were valid so the university brought in an outside team to examine if gender inequity, in fact, existed at the unive
Join #ScholarStrike in Solidarity Protest Against Racial Injustice | Diane Ravitch's blog CHECK IT OUT: DIANE ON A ROLL TODAY Join #ScholarStrike in Solidarity Protest Against Racial Injustice | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-rKH via @dianeravitch NYC: Parents at Success Academy Worry about Stress of All-Remote “No Excuses” Discipline | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-rKZ
NYC School Workers - Share your school safety reports online - #TeachersofNYC - Ten School Buildings Closed for Tuesday in NYC Ten Schools Closed for Tuesday in NYC- see list below As school safety reports come in there has been an overwhelming reaction to some of the follies of how they have been gathered with visits of DOE and UFT officials, leaving out the chapter leaders who wanted to be the
Ventilation? Ventilation! I need to vent. So do our schools. But how do we know if the ventilation in our schools is adequate? Bad ventilation is always an issue. During “good” times people claim bad air in buildings affects their health. But this is about COVID-19. What defects in ventilation put our students, and ourselves, at risk of the virus being spread? If we were just talking about stude
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all DID YOU MISS DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG TODAY? A site to discuss better education for all Big Education Ape: KEEP UP/ CATCH UP WITH DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG A site to discuss better education for all - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/09/keep-up-catch-up-with-diane-ravitchs.html Join #ScholarStrike in Solidarity Protest Against Racia
'Children Are Going Hungry': Why Schools Are Struggling To Feed Students Six months into schools' pandemic-driven experiment in distance learning, much has been said (and debated) about whether children are learning. But the more urgent question, for the more than 30 million kids who depend on U.S. schools for free or reduced-price meals, is this: Are they eating ? The answer, based on recent da
They Did Not Keep Us Safe in March; Do Not Trust Them Today! Andy Cuomo took way too long in March to start shutting things down. Remember him overruling de Blasio’s “shelter in place”? But the Mayor wasn’t better. In March Bill de Blasio kept the schools open when they needed to be closed. Chancellor Carranza heard reports of COVID-19 in buildings, and he and his cronies hushed them up, and did
School Choice is a Harmful Fraud By Thomas Ultican 9/7/2020 Birthed in the bowels of the 1950’s segregationist south, school choice has never been about improving education. It is about white supremacy, profiting off taxpayers, cutting taxes, selling market based solutions and financing religion. School choice ideology has a long dark history of dealing significant harm to public education. Mark
Bulletins From The Trailing Edge Of The Pandemic If it can work anywhere, it can work here. I live in a county in NW PA, with relatively small population (50K or so). And our schools are all open. We have been subject to the same rules as the rest of the state, and like pretty much everything in PA, the folks in charge have made their rules based on Pittsburgh, Philly and Harrisburg. This is Tru
TOP 10 BACK-TO-SCHOOL STUDENT PRIVACY TIPS AND RESOURCES FOR PARENTS It’s back-to-school time for many K-12 students, which will mean for many students remote online learning, or some type of hybrid, combining in-person with screen-based instruction. We’ve gotten lots of questions from parents and educators concerned about the opportunity for expanded student data collection and disclosure in th
Trump, the Snowflakeyest of All Snowflakes, Threatens to Defund California Schools for Implementing 1619 Project Curriculum Despite all of their lamenting of how “overly sensitive” this new generation is, white conservatives are and have always been the most fragile people to walk this here Earth—and Donald Trump is their president. Oh, Trump may not be as smart as some of these ivy league Repub
The Silent Suffering of Cafeteria Workers As schools navigate reopening for the fall, most coverage has focused on the safety of students and teachers. But another group on campus has been silently suffering Shannon Spear’s family had just finished dinner when the phone rang. It was a Friday night in March, and Spear’s school district was calling to announce that her daughter’s high school was m
Educators support Joe Biden’s stance on workers’ rights and unions When unions are strong, our communities are strong. This is a long-held belief of former Vice President Joe Biden, who supports “laws that allow labor unions to flourish and fight for basic worker protections.” He knows that it was labor unions that led the fight for working families, winning protections such as the 8-hour day an
I Am a Proud Anti-Fascist Trump and Barr have warned about the dangers of a group called “Antifa.” I had never heard of them and don’t know anyone who belongs to this group. I did a small amount of digging and learned that Antifa means “anti-fascist.” That confused me. How can it be wrong to be anti-fascism? Hitler and Mussolini were fascists. We fought a world war from 1941-1945 to save the wor
Why Does Trump Hate COVID Testing But Love Standardized Testing? When it comes to COVID-19, Donald Trump sure hates testing. But when it comes to public schools, his administration simply adores standardized testing. Why the discrepancy? Why is testing for a virus during a global pandemic bad, but giving students a multiple choice test during the chaos caused by that pandemic somehow good? When
Sacramento City Unified to begin distance learning Tuesday The plan will move forward without an agreement with the Sacramento City Teachers Association, the district said in an announcement Big Education Ape: Choosing Democracy: SCUSD Imposes a Plan for Distance Learning - Lets see what teachers do ! - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/09/choosing-democracy-scusd-imposes-plan.html Teache
I'm Waving My Flag on Labor Day It's odd celebrating Labor Day in this country given the war being waged against labor by many of the most powerful members of our society, and the outright vitriol coming from elected representatives who malign working men and women as nothing more than selfish, lazy, union thugs. Even now, in the midst of a pandemic. At the beginning of summer, on Memorial Day,
Union 101 It's Labor Day, and we are labor. Yet there's no labor section in the newspaper, online or off. We don't study labor history in school. Worse, a whole lot of members see it as a pair of glasses every other year, and the odd chance to ask the chapter leader why there's no toilet paper. When we were contemplating a strike, a chapter leader told me, "We’re sending draftees onto the coast
Work to the contract and not a minute more. Up till recently, the entire education system depended on teachers giving millions of unpaid hours, sacrificing their time with friends and family, and what little money they have to make sure things keep moving. Now it still requires all that, but now it also wants teachers to risk their and their families' health, and it is way past time teachers sai
CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Labor Day Weekend Edition (9/6) Labor Day Weekend Edition While you're enjoying your socially distant cookouts and celebrations this weekend, take a moment to thank the labor movement that made things like weekends possible. In the meantime, here's some reading from the week. This Teacher Turned Remote Learning Into A Road Trip There are many cool parts to this story (inclu
Remote learning is turning classrooms into police states Virtual classrooms make punishment easier to dole out than connection. It doesn’t have to be this way Think of your favorite teacher. Whenever I ask people to do this, they usually tell me about a teacher who saw them: the one who took them aside and encouraged them to pursue art or computer science, who helped counsel them through a perso
John Thompson: Politics and the Coronavirus in Oklahoma John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, contributes frequently here. He writes: If you want to get really depressed about today’s politics, look at the New York Times’ Upshot, which asked: Should Children Go Back to School? Sadly, the answer has been, “It depends in part on your politics.” One source the Times cited was a
No PPE in School? Here’s What We Do The UFT has a good protocol in place for missing PPE – it came in an email over Mulgrew’s signature Friday evening: Your school must have personal protective equipment in place when staff return on Tuesday, Sept. 8. If PPE is not available, immediately discuss the situation with your principal, the custodian or the leader of your school’s COVID-19 building res
Like, DUDE, the chancellor can't stop, like, WRITING to us Dear School-Based Staff, Like, Blaz and I were out last night, and he’s all like, DUDE, your emails are KILLING it, and I’m all like, yeah man but what am I gonna say NOW? And he’s all, “I hope you found time to rest and recharge and spend time with family and friends this summer,” and I’m all like DUDE if they did that they probably hav
Capital & Main: Why Aren’t Democrats Supporting the Rollback of Proposition 13? Back in the late 1970s, a conservative California businessman named Howard Jarvis put a proposition on the state ballot to cap property taxes. It was called Proposition 13. It passed. It has caused massive defunding of public services, especially public education. Prop 13 “rolled back both residential and commercial
91 Examples of Americans At Odds About Covid-19 as Students Start School When it comes to Covid-19 and reopening schools, we are a nation divided. Opposing ideas float around on social media. Teachers will ultimately be responsible for the safety and well-being of children, but poor leadership has put them and their jobs in jeopardy. For example, here’s what Education Betsy DeVos recently said.
Teacher: Let’s All Pull Together Melanie Sirof is a teacher in the Bellmore-Merrick School District on Long Island innNew York. “Let’s start rowing in the same direction”. “Posting this now, before I walk into the first day of meetings that signal the start of school. I’m sure by three o’clock I will feel overwhelmed & frustrated, so I write this now, while I am still clear-eyed: Know this, pare
How Covid-19 Froze School Reform (Part 2) What was school reform like before Covid-19 ( BC)? Since the mid-1980s, U.S. public schools had been enthralled with and institutionalized a series of reforms that are now called the “standards, testing, and accountability movement.” It is nearly three decades long. Recall that the Progressive movement began in the 1890s and, depending upon the historian
Standardized Testing: Indispensable to Those Who Are Not Subjected to It. This is what standardized testing has been in public schools across America ever since No Child Left Behind ( NCLB ): It’s like some president-backed, bipartisan Congress decided that we need to measure student physical health based on student weight. Of course, student physical health is by far too complex a concept to be
SCUSD Imposes a Plan for Distance Learning - Lets see what teachers do ! The Sacramento City Unified School District adopted a distance learning plan Saturday after starting the school year two days before without one. The teachers union says its teachers will not follow the plan. The two groups have been working for weeks to determine how much time teachers will spend in direct instruction via
Will The Pandemic Give DeVos Her $5 Billion Voucher Scheme Betsy DeVos has been pitching "Education Freedom" as long as she's been in office. It's a tax credit scholarship scheme, which is to say, a voucher program that would blow a $5 billion hole in the federal budget, but would be a real treat for rich folks who A) like private schools better than public ones and B) would rather not pay taxes
Will Teachers Determine the Next President? Ballots for the November 3 rd presidential election are in the mail in North Carolina, we are in the countdown phase heading towards selecting a president. Teachers live and work in every hamlet, town and city, in every one of the over 13,000 school districts. There are 3.2 million public school teachers in the nation, if you add in guidance counselors
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/2020/09/this-week-in-education-larry-ferlazzos.html Here Is How I’m Assessing ELLs At The Beginning Of The School Year – What Ar
Big Education Ape TOP POSTS THIS WEEK 9/5/20 ‘Slaying Goliath’: Diane Ravitch argues in new book that public education advocates have beat back efforts to privatize schools - The Washington Post The real story of New
