Latest News and Comment from Education

Monday, September 14, 2020

Diane Ravitch in Conversation with Derek Black - Network For Public Education

Diane Ravitch in Conversation with Derek Black - Network For Public Education

Diane Ravitch in Conversation with Derek Black


Start: Wednesday, September 23, 2020  7:00 PM  Eastern Daylight Time (US & Canada) (GMT-04:00)

End: Wednesday, September 23, 2020  8:30 PM  Eastern Daylight Time (US & Canada) (GMT-04:00)

Diane_and_derek.001

The Network for Public Education invites you to join us for a video conference with NPE President Diane Ravitch. Diane's guest will be author and University of South Carolina professor, Derek Black. Join Diane and Derek in conversation about Derek's new book, Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy.
Diane Ravitch in Conversation with Derek Black - Network For Public Education

NYC Public School Parents: Bobson Wong, HS teacher, on why before reopening schools, NYC needs time and resources to get it right.

NYC Public School Parents: Bobson Wong, HS teacher, on why before reopening schools, NYC needs time and resources to get it right.

Bobson Wong, HS teacher, on why before reopening schools, NYC needs time and resources to get it right.



Bobson Wong is a math teacher at a NYC public high school and author of "The Math Teacher's Toolbox."   Here is what he wrote after I asked him how he would design a school reopening plan for NYC.  If others would like to offer their school reopening ideas to this blog, please send them to info@classsizematters.org. - LH

"I would focus on improving remote learning for everyone. School buildings should be thought of as places where students can come to do their work if they're unable or unwilling to work from home. They'd receive a place to work, technology and Internet access if necessary, and help in using it. If necessary, they could receive in-person help with content from teachers (think of it as tutoring). 
Teachers could rotate providing support. Most students and staff could then stay home, where we could focus on improving the remote learning experience for everyone. Thinking of school buildings as support centers would also enable schools to occasionally bring small groups of students into the building for specific reasons (e.g. invite seniors in so guidance counselors could help them with college applications, or inviting students in crisis to receive emotional support). 
Thinking of school buildings as support centers is also compatible with other ideas, such as organizing outdoor learning experiences. They are not mutually exclusive. Focusing on providing support for remote learning is the simplest plan right now, given the limited resources that schools have available. Most of the hybrid schedules I've seen have left everyone - students, parents, and school staff - confused and exhausted. 
Some people argue that children, especially younger ones, don't transmit the virus and can return to schools safely. That may be true. We could have spent the last six months CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Bobson Wong, HS teacher, on why before reopening schools, NYC needs time and resources to get it right.

Teacher Deaths Raise Alarms at Start of New School Year

Teacher Deaths Raise Alarms at Start of New School Year

Teacher Deaths Raise Alarms at Start of New School Year




Teachers in at least three American states have died since the start of the new school year after getting the coronavirus.
AshLee DeMarinis was just 34 years old when she died this month after three weeks in a Missouri hospital. A third-grade teacher died Monday in South Carolina, and two other educators died recently in Mississippi.
It is unclear how many teachers in the U.S. have become ill with COVID-19 since the new school year began. But the state of Mississippi alone has reported 604 cases among school teachers and workers.
Randi Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers. She said schools need guidelines such as required face coverings and strict social distancing rules to reopen safely.
“If community spread is too high, as it is in Missouri and Mississippi, if you don’t have the infrastructure of testing, and if you don’t have the safeguards that prevent the spread of viruses in the school, we believe that you cannot reopen in person,” Weingarten said.
Johnny Dunlap is a 39-year-old teacher at Dodge City High School in Kansas. He said he considered resigning before the district made face coverings required for teachers and students. Still, his history of cancer and high blood pressure make him worried about being around so many people. Existing health conditions can put people at higher risk for severe illness and death from the virus.
“I’m at a high school with close to 2,000 students so it kind of runs against the advice we have been given for half a year now,” Dunlap said.
The early part of the health crisis claimed the lives of many teachers. The New York CONTINUE READING: Teacher Deaths Raise Alarms at Start of New School Year

Audrey Watters: Hack Education: 'Luddite Sensibilities' and the Future of Education | National Education Policy Center

Hack Education: 'Luddite Sensibilities' and the Future of Education | National Education Policy Center

Hack Education: 'Luddite Sensibilities' and the Future of Education



This is the transcript of my keynote at the Digital Pedagogy Lab this morning. Except not really. It was a "flipped" keynote, so this is more like the pre-reading for what I actually talked about. Sort of.
I have really struggled to prepare a keynote for you all. This isn't the first talk I've done since my son died. Hell, it's not even the second or third. But this one has been the hardest to write, in part because I am so close with so many of you in the DigPed community, and what I want right now is to be with you, in person, to cry with you and laugh with you and rage with you and scheme with you. 
I know that we're all struggling to muddle through this crisis — or these crises, I should say: the pandemic, economic precarity, school re-opening, police violence, creeping authoritarianism. So much loss. So much death. And I know that it's probably for the best that we use digital technologies in lieu of gathering face-to-face — for school or for work or for professional development or for socializing. Plenty of folks insist that these digital tools can be used well for teaching and learning, that online education doesn't have to be inferior to offline, that offline can be pretty wretched already. (Indeed, that's likely why you all are here: to work on bettering your digital pedagogical practices with an eye to equity and justice.) 
But I remain steadfast in my criticism of education technologies in almost all their forms and functions. Indeed, the problems that we've long identified with ed-tech — privacy violations, security concerns, racist algorithms, accessibility and access issues, all-male leadership teams, outsourcing, disruptive bullshittery, and so on — are still here. And I fear we are at a particularly dangerous crossroads for education because of ed-tech. The danger is not simply because of the entrepreneurial and the venture capitalist sharks circling our institutions, but also because the narratives, long foisted upon us, about the necessity of ed-tech are becoming more and more entrenched, more and more pervasive. These narratives have always tended to repress the trauma and anxiety associated with the adoption of new technologies and more broadly with the conditions, the precarity, of everyday life. These narratives want us to forget that ed-tech is, first and foremost, beholden to the ideologies of machines, efficiencies, and capitalism. 
But this is ed-tech's big moment, or so we're told. And all those folks who predicted a decade or so ago that schools would all be online by 2020, that universities would all be bankrupt may CONTINUE READING: Hack Education: 'Luddite Sensibilities' and the Future of Education | National Education Policy Center

LAUSD to offer online coronavirus school infection information - Los Angeles Times

LAUSD to offer online coronavirus school infection information - Los Angeles Times

L.A. school parents will be able to learn if anyone has coronavirus in their child’s class

Los Angeles Unified Launches COVID-19 Testing and Tracing Program At Schools To Include Research on Impact and Effect of Reopening - https://achieve.lausd.net/covidtesting

Although students and parents will not be returning to their Los Angeles public school anytime soon, when campuses do reopen, L.A. Unified plans to operate a website that will provide detailed information about coronavirus outbreaks at an individual campus and even each classroom.
Under the plan — part of the district’s ambitious testing and contact tracing plan for all students, staff and their families — anyone could learn the number of positive cases to date and the number of active cases broken down by school, grade and by the small “cohorts” of students who will spend the day together once campuses are able to reopen.
Students or staff would not be identified. But parents could learn, for example, about a new case among the 12 first-graders in a particular cohort. In that example, the public web page would note: “All families of students in Cohort 1A are notified to stay home and students in 1A will participate in online learning until health guidelines allow their return.”
The online information also would allow parents to learn about what’s going on at L.A. Unified schools around them, such as how many schools nearby are open or closed and test results in the school community by age. The age range starts at newborn to 5 and goes up to 71-plus, because the goal is to include information about infections among all family members. Families would not be identified.
If the district’s testing, tracing and website plan unfolds as described, it could be one of the most detailed to date for a U.S. school district, involving nearly 500,000 students and 75,000 staff members. Last month, schools Supt. Austin Beutner said the district effort is part of a partnership that includes UCLA, Stanford and Johns Hopkins University, Microsoft, Anthem Blue Cross and HealthNet, among others — with a price tag of roughly $300 per student over a year, for close to $150 million.
The district has received hundreds of millions of dollars in coronavirus-related aid but has given few details of exactly how the testing would be paid for.
The website information could help schools to open and operate as safely as possible, when the time comes, Beutner said. No campus in Los Angeles County will be allowed to reopen to all K-12 students until at least November, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said late last week.
“Don’t expect to see a decision about a return to school classrooms by students until the case rate in the area is significantly lower and remains there,” Beutner said in remarks scheduled for broadcast Monday morning. “Los Angeles is purple on the state dashboard, the highest risk category, defined as widespread COVID-19 transmission in the area. That means it’s not appropriate for students to be back in classrooms.”
As of Monday, schools in Los Angeles County are permitted to open to serve small groups of students with special needs, such as students with disabilities and students CONTINUE READING: LAUSD to offer online coronavirus school infection information - Los Angeles Times

China Crushes Freedom to Teach in Hong Kong | Diane Ravitch's blog

China Crushes Freedom to Teach in Hong Kong | Diane Ravitch's blog

China Crushes Freedom to Teach in Hong Kong 



Hong Kong was a British colony for a century and a half. Under British rule, the people of Hong Kong enjoyed democratic freedoms. On July 1, 1997, the British relinquished control and Hong Kong became part of China as a special administrative region. The Chinese government promised to maintain “one country, two systems.” Over the years the Chinese government has asserted tighter control, inspiring rebellions among the people of Hong Kong, who resisted absorption into the government of the Mainland. Twenty-three years after the removal of British rule, mainland China is clamping down, hard, to stamp out freedom of speech, freedom of thought, even freedom to teach.
This article in the Los Angeles Times describes the government’s tightening of control over teachers and textbooks. Teachers who dare to speak out have been purged.
One of the greatest threats to freedom in Hong Kong is China’s intensifying pressure on schools over what to put in the minds of students. Textbooks are being rewritten, teachers are being purged and history is being erased under a new national security law to bring this once freewheeling city more firmly into China’s grip…
With China’s tightening control over Hong Kong, including CONTINUE READING: China Crushes Freedom to Teach in Hong Kong | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio: Charters and Vouchers Sucked Half a Billion from Public Schools Last Year | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio: Charters and Vouchers Sucked Half a Billion from Public Schools Last Year | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio: Charters and Vouchers Sucked Half a Billion from Public Schools Last Year



Bill Phillis, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Adequacy and Equity, reports on the cost of school choice, relying on the data compiled by former legislator Steve Dyer. This is interesting because polls regularly show that the public is fine with choice if the money does not get subtracted from local public schools. It does. It always comes right out of the budget of local public schools. School choice always means budget cuts for public schools. There is no separate pot of money for charters and vouchers.
Bill Phillis writes:
Charters and vouchers took away over one-half billion in local revenue from school districts in school year 2019-2020
$525,187,286* in local revenue was deducted from school districts for privately-operated alternatives to the public common system. Columbus property taxpayers subsidized charter and voucher students to the tune of $76, 548,933* during the 2019-2020 school year.
Article VI §2 of the Ohio Constitution requires the state to CONTINUE READING: Ohio: Charters and Vouchers Sucked Half a Billion from Public Schools Last Year | Diane Ravitch's blog

Wrangling Kids' Distance Learning While Working From Home Is A Hellscape | HuffPost

Wrangling Kids' Distance Learning While Working From Home Is A Hellscape | HuffPost

Wrangling Kids’ Distance Learning While Working From Home Is A Hellscape
“I am screaming in my car, sobbing in my shower, staring into the darkness when it’s time to sleep. And I know that you are too.”



It’s 6:08 a.m. and my 7-year-old is in my bed. “Mom!” he whisper-screams. “MOM! Can I play Roblox?”
It’s 6:12 a.m. and my 7-year-old is playing Roblox, and he’s hungry. He stands next to the bed breathing directly into my face. “MOM! Can I have some goldfish? Doritos? But I don’t want eggs!” 
The sun is coming up on another distance-learning day, and it’s like the camp song that we used to sing on the bus: “Second verse! Same as the first!” We’re living in an endless camp song.
Last March, I walked my children home from what would turn out to be their last day of in-person school. Six months and 40 billion hours ago, we didn’t know that school could be anything other than in-person.
We prepared ourselves for the world’s longest two-week pause. “We can do this!” we rallied, and posted pictures of our pajama days and chalk-sketched obstacle courses in filtered Instagram squares.
Until the world started to disappear. We lost jobs and loved ones, lost patience and routines. The pandemic choked our economy and raised the collective anxiety of parents everywhere.
Cities flooded as the rain came down; others burned when the forests exploded. CONTINUE READING: Wrangling Kids' Distance Learning While Working From Home Is A Hellscape | HuffPost

A Love Letter to Black Parents in American Schools - Philly's 7th Ward

A Love Letter to Black Parents in American Schools - Philly's 7th Ward

A LOVE LETTER TO BLACK PARENTS IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS




Shortly after I proposed to my wife, our parents threw us an engagement party. There were a few standout moments from that day; my wife in her beautiful yellow sundress, it was the hottest day of the year, and a conversation my wife and I had with a family friend, who happened to be a school business administrator.
When asked if we were purchasing a home or renting, I told him that owning a home was an option but renting was more likely. He said to us, “Well, when you’re in the market to purchase make sure that you look into how good the school district is. You will more than likely have children so you want to make sure wherever you move is a place with a good school district. That’s what matters.”
When we were in the market for a house, a good school district mattered a lot; we had one child and another on the way. At the time, I was a teacher and I was well aware of the fact that sadly, your zip code played a role in the education children received. Shopping for a home was as much about shopping for a school district.
When selecting our home, we overlooked one key factor in our calculus; our CONTINUE READING: A Love Letter to Black Parents in American Schools - Philly's 7th Ward

The Fourteenth: We all do better when we all do better. | Live Long and Prosper

The Fourteenth: We all do better when we all do better. | Live Long and Prosper

The Fourteenth: We all do better when we all do better.



Today marks the fourteenth blogoversary of this blog. When I began it on September 14, 2006, I was in my late 50s and teaching Reading Recovery in a small public school in northeast Indiana (which has since closed), the US was at war in Iraq, there had just been a mass shooting at Dawson College in Montreal, and George W. Bush was the US President.
In September of 2006, Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake released their second albums and Elton John released his 29th; naturalist Steve Irwin and former Texas governor Ann Richards died; the Cubs finished last in the National League Central (a year later they would finish first); and Star Trek celebrated 40 years of television and movies (premier Sept 8, 1966).
Public education in the US was deep into the mess of No Child Left BehindTesting defined (and still defines) everything taught in America’s public schools. In Indiana, we weren’t yet spending huge amounts of tax money on vouchers and charter schools, and Hoosier teachers still had seniority rights, the right to due process before getting fired, and collective bargaining for things like prep time and class size.
My blog’s focus was on 1) the overuse and misuse of standardized testing, 2) the overwhelming intrusion of politics and politicians into public education, and 3) my students. I was reading education authors like Richard Allington, Gerald CONTINUE READING: The Fourteenth: We all do better when we all do better. | Live Long and Prosper



American Plutocracy and The So-Called Objective Media | janresseger

American Plutocracy and The So-Called Objective Media | janresseger

American Plutocracy and The So-Called Objective Media


For ten years Jacob Hacker, the Yale political scientist, and Paul Pierson, the Berkeley political scientist, have been tracking exploding economic inequality in the United States. In this summer’s book, Let Them Eat Tweets, Hacker and Pierson explicitly identify our government as a plutocracy.  And they track how politicians (with the help of right-wing media) shape a populist, racist, gun-toting, religious fundamentalist story line to distract the public from a government that exclusively serves the wealthy.  In a new article published in the Columbia Journalism ReviewJournalism’s Gates Keepers, Tim Schwab examines our plutocracy from a different point of view: How is the mainstream media, the institution most of us look to for objective news, shaped increasingly by philanthropists stepping in to fill the funding gaps as newspapers go broke and news organizations consolidate?
In their 2010 classic, Winner-Take-All Politics, Hacker and Pierson present “three big clues” pointing to the tilt of our economy to winner-take-all: “(1) Hyperconcentration of Income… The first clue is that the gains of the winner-take-all economy, befitting its name, have been extraordinarily concentrated. Though economic gaps have grown across the board, the big action is at the top, especially the very top… (2) Sustained Hyperconcentration… The shift of income toward the top has been sustained increasingly steadily (and, by historical standards, extremely rapidly) since 1980… (3) Limited Benefits for the Nonrich… In an era in which those at the top reaped massive gains, the economy stopped working for middle-and working-class Americans.”  Winner-Take-All Politics, pp. 15-19) (emphasis in the original)
Hacker and Pierson’s second book in the recent decade, the 2016 American Amnesia explores CONTINUE READING: American Plutocracy and The So-Called Objective Media | janresseger



The Everyday Exhaustion of Teaching During a Global Pandemic | gadflyonthewallblog

 The Everyday Exhaustion of Teaching During a Global Pandemic | gadflyonthewallblog

The Everyday Exhaustion of Teaching During a Global Pandemic 




Teaching is one of the few things in life that is not concerned with now.

It is essentially about the future.

We put all this time and energy into helping kids learn. Why?

Not so that they’ll be able to do anything today. But so that they’ll be able to do things tomorrow.

Sure they may be able to read better or solve math problems, but the reason we want them to know that isn’t so much about what they’ll do with it as adolescents. It’s how those skills will shape the people they grow up to be.

It’s an investment in their future and ours.

We take a bit of today and invest it in tomorrow.

And during a global pandemic that can be especially hard.

The west is on fire. Storms are threatening our southern coasts. Police brutality is out of control and bands of neofascist thugs are given free rein to beat and murder protesters. We’ve separated immigrant families and put their kids in cages. The President has lied to us, disparaged our troops, bragged about breaking countless laws and the government is powerless to stop him. Our political system and social fabric is coming apart at the seams. And everyone from the average Joe to the CONTINUE READING:  The Everyday Exhaustion of Teaching During a Global Pandemic | gadflyonthewallblog

No Way To Treat A Scholar | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

 No Way To Treat A Scholar | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

No Way To Treat A Scholar



Success Academy is the largest and most controversial charter network in New York City. With over 15,000 students, Success Academy is known for their high state test scores.

Though Success Academy has been in existence for about 14 years already, it has only been the last few years that people have begun to question whether the strategies that Success Academy uses to achieve these test results are immoral if not illegal.

Public data shows that very few students who begin at Success Academy actually graduate from Success Academy. The class of 2018 started with 72 students and only 16 graduated. The class of 2019 started with 80 students and only 27 graduated. The class of 2020 started with 350 students and only 98 graduated. Success Academy argues that this is normal attrition over 12 years, but one of the most jarring statistics I have ever seen about Success Academy is the attrition rate from students who are in the school at the beginning of their senior year but who do not graduate with their class 10 months later.

For the recent class of 2020 there were 114 seniors in the school in November 2019. But by graduation time in June there were only 98 graduating seniors.

In June I blogged about an interview I saw with Eva Moskowitz where she explained that some students need five years to graduate high school for various reasons. Success CONTINUE READING:  No Way To Treat A Scholar | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Teachers are Cautious, Fearful and Anxious to Teach in a Safe Environment: Will NYC Schools Open on September 21st? | Ed In The Apple

 Teachers are Cautious, Fearful and Anxious to Teach in a Safe Environment: Will NYC Schools Open on September 21st? | Ed In The Apple

Teachers are Cautious, Fearful and Anxious to Teach in a Safe Environment: Will NYC Schools Open on September 21st?



You toss and turn, can’t fall asleep, why is the clock moving so slowly, tomorrow is the first day of school.

No matter whether you’re a first year, a fifth year, tenth year or a seasoned veteran that first day brings apprehension.

You go over classroom procedures, be welcoming, get those routines in place, make lists, say something nice to the principal, and on and on.

This year is one like no other.  In a flash you moved from an ordinary day to remote instruction. From checking Facebook every few days, to texting friends to mastering Google Classroom and Zoom, from preparing for the State Standardized Tests to figuring out how the engage kids from afar, how to make sure they log on each and every day, online grade meetings; Town Halls with parents, and worrying, really worrying about yourself and your family.

Members of your church have lost parents and friends, you see too many people without masks, you miss the kids, and you worry about returning to school.

Will my school be “safe?”   Will my kids come to school “healthy?” Can I catch COVID from my kids? from other adults in the school? Do I qualify for a medical accommodation? 

I love my kids; I watched them fall further and further behind as the year CONTINUE READING:  Teachers are Cautious, Fearful and Anxious to Teach in a Safe Environment: Will NYC Schools Open on September 21st? | Ed In The Apple