The Skinny on Prop 15 his November, Californians will vote about whether to close a property tax loophole that favors older commercial properties. Residential property tax is based on the property’s last sale price, not current market value, but that is not true for commercial property. Even if the market value of commercial property increases, and a sale price reflects that, the property’s tax
The week in coveducation: Federal grants, canceled events and an Epic audit Support Journalism Part one of an audit of Epic Charter Schools was released by State Auditor & Inspector Cindy Byrd this week claiming that the charter schools owe Oklahoma $8.9 million for violation of a statute limiting administrative costs at such schools. Meanwhile, a group of parents at Stillwater Public Schools ha
HIRING? USE AN ANTI-RACIST LENS! As a principal of three neighborhood schools serving majority Black students, I was always in talent acquisition mode. More on point, I was always in talent acquisition and cultivation mode, since the best recruitment strategy is a great retention strategy. You can’t fire your way to building a great institution of learning. You have to hire and coach extremely w
New Jersey spent 35 years and $100B trying to fix school inequity. It still has problems. - POLITICO New Jersey spent 35 years and $100B trying to fix school inequity. It still has problems. New research suggests the state’s failure to fully fund its approach to education spending has left a significant gap between white and Latinx students. TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey spent more than three decade
Arthur Camins: To Renew Our Society, Teach Empathy, Ethics, and Evidence Arthur Camins, lifelong educators, knows that teachers can’t change what happens in the next few months, other than by casting their votes. But they can rebuild the foundation of our society by teaching these three things: empathy, ethics, and evidence. He writes: My driving force has always been a core assumption: What hap
How To Prevent Suicide Among Tweens Suicide is the second leading cause of death for children ages 10 to 14, who are online more than ever before. A center in New Mexico is working to change that. SANTA FE, N.M. ― As with most after-school clubs, the meeting inside Ortiz Middle School begins with kids bumping and jostling into a classroom. A boy with green hair grabs a bag of chips off a table,
Some children thrive in remote learning. - The Washington Post Remote learning has been a disaster for many students. But some kids have thrived. John was having some trouble in class. The seventh-grader had been diagnosed with ADHD and a language disorder that makes processing verbal and nonverbal cues a challenge. Despite extra support he received through his Individualized Education Plan for s
Rebekah Ray: Florida Is the Worst Place to Be a Teacher Rebekah Ray responded to another Florida teacher who complained the changes by the State Legislature has destroyed the promises made to him when he became a teacher. It’s method of evaluating teachers is one of the worst in the nation. If they don’t teach reading or math in grades 3-8, they are assigned ratings for students they never taugh
Effective Remote Teaching Part 1: Tools of the trade Like many teachers around the country, I am currently teaching my students in a room by myself. Remote teaching is very taxing. It takes me about five to ten times as long as it used to to prepare my lessons each day. At the end of the day my head is spinning from all the screen time and the lack of walking around. And the feedback that I’m us
HARD PLUS INCONVENIENT DOES NOT EQUAL INEFFECTIVE “That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.” ― William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace Am I the only one that sees the irony in us planning to send kids back to school the same week as the President is diagnosed w
Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney Back in April, NWEA (the MAP test folks) issued a "report" about what we've taken to calling the Covid Slide , which is sadly not a cool new line dance, but is instead an important tool for people in education-flavored businesses who want to try to panic school districts and bureaucrats. Now Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO
Dad Gone Wild – Nobody reads it, everybody quotes it. THIS WEEK'S WILDNESS Dad Gone Wild Nobody reads it, everybody quotes it. HARD PLUS INCONVENIENT DOES NOT EQUAL INEFFECTIVE by TC Weber / 21h “That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.” ― William Kent Kruege
California Department of Education Second Round of Ethnic Studies Virtual Series 21h State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Announces and Creation of Online Resources for Teachers in Distance Learning SEP 30 Thousands of Devices Available for Schools 2d SSPI Tony Thurmond announces more than 500,000 additional computing devices made available to California schools amid worldwide technology shortage.
NewBlackMan (in Exile) Compton Native Serves Up Healthy Options in a City Filled with Fast Food by Mark Anthony Neal / 14h 'Compton is a community whose portrayal in music and movies eclipses the lives of real people who live there. It's also a city where healthy food can be hard to come by and life expectancy is five years below the Los Angeles County average. Jamie Yuccas talks with Lemel Durr
Education Research Report THIS WEEK Education Research Report A social-belonging intervention improves STEM outcomes for ESL students by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 13h CAPTION A social-belonging intervention improves STEM outcomes for students who speak English as a second language. CREDIT Provided by Indiana University A study conducted at 19 universities by IU researchers and their colleagues in the
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 Around The Web In ESL/EFL/ELL by Larry Ferlazzo / 52min BiljaST / Pixabay Six years ago I began this regular feature where I share a few posts and resources from around the Web related t
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 Rebekah Ray: Florida Is the Worst Place to Be a Teacher by dianeravitch / 37min Rebekah Ray responded to another Florida teacher who complained the changes by the State Legislature has destroyed the promises made to him when he became a teacher.
Teachers union launches nationwide get-out-the-vote bus tour The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation's second-largest teachers' union, announced Wednesday the launch of a nationwide get-out-the-vote (GOTV) tour targeting more than a dozen states in support of former Vice President Joe Biden (D). In a video message announcing the campaign, AFT president Randi Weingarten said the Bid
Billionaires Love Charter Schools From the very beginning, more than 35 years ago, the idea and practice of charter schools was conceived and gradually executed by those with abundant cultural, social, political, and economic capital. Charter schools are not the product of grass-roots forces, as the public has often been led to believe. They never have been. Charter schools did not arise as a re
Bill Addresses Cultural Genocide Caused by Indian Boarding Schools For about 100 years, the U.S. government supported a system of boarding schools where more than 100,000 American Indian and Alaska Native children were stripped of their culture, their languages, and their religions and forced to assimilate to white customs. That policy, which continued until the 1960s, has continued affects on n
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_26.html Oct. 11th Is International Day Of The Girl Child – Here Are Teaching & Le
The State of Online Safety for Kids There’s no doubt that the resources of our digital age are valuable. They provide us with new development opportunities and help us to build meaningful connections with a diverse range of global communities. The past couple of decades have seen our adoption of tech grow, and as such we are seeing the first generations of digital natives. Kids are surrounded by
Public Schools and School Libraries: The “Hub” of Democracy During a Crisis, Is Facing Its Own Crisis Public Schools and School Libraries: The “Hub” of Democracy During a Crisis, Is Facing Its Own Crisis A public school is the hub of the American community, and school libraries provide students the knowledge to better understand their world. But public schools and school libraries face a crisis a
Uncontrolled Infections, Political Manipulation of Science, Lack of Funding, and Complexity of Operating Schools Make It Hard to Start School Year Reporting on the complexities of attempting to reopen the public schools in New York City this week, the Washington Post’ s Moriah Balingit quotes Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools: “Frankly, I don’t kno
More campaign chaos as COVID rocks the WH Trump at the debate: "I don’t wear masks like [Biden]. Every time you see him, he's got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from me, and he shows up with the biggest mask I've ever seen." Just when you thought there could be no real October surprises ... I mean what new sordid tale could possibly be left to tell about the Trump White House, that s
Reimagining the Public High School in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Part 1) Since 2016, the XQ Institute has awarded almost $140 million to 19 schools across the country to “reimagine” the American high school. They have had five years to do so. Backed by philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, these high schools are in the midst of putting into practice the major changes they proposed for their scho
NYC Hybrid Model Designed to Fail So says City Council member Mark Treyger in a great piece in New York Intelligence r. Why is it designed to fail? Treyger came to the same conclusions I did when I first saw this. Where are the magical co-teachers coming from? How can we send subs and Tweedies out to teach subjects they may or may not be familiar with? How will schools find the bodies to do this
Latest "Talk out of school" podcast with cybersecurity expert Doug Levin and NYS Senate Brad Hoylman Check out the latest "Talk out of School" podcast, starting with my update on NYC education news, including Sunday's vote of no confidence in the Mayor by the CSA, the school administrator’s union, the restart of in-person learning for elementary school students on Tuesday, and the fact that the
GUTCHECK “[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.” ― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir You would think that if a politician stood in front of a room full of microphones and made a pronouncement about pending dire outcomes, that the easiest question to answer after the announcement would be, where is the data to support your announcement? After all
No More Debates. For the Good of the Country. It’s been another tough week in Teacher Land. My music teacher buddies in Michigan are writing about coming inside from the cold, after a few weeks of humming softly in a circle on the grass, playing ukuleles or meeting under a canvas canopy with tubas and flutes. How to make music safely, indoors: a challenge I never had to meet, but creative teache
The Radical Imagination of Black Educators: Past and Future Directions for the Education Justice Movement This fall we find ourselves in a confluence of crises: the economic crisis hurting households across the country, the dangers of re-opening during COVID-19, police brutality on the streets and in schools, massive dislocation of families due to climate wildfires, and now Trump’s White House i
No participation in online learning could be detrimental Districts are scrambling to locate the ‘lost’ kids of Covid and reengage them in school this fall Monica Williams remembers the late May day she and first grade teacher Lizette Gutierrez reconnected with the four young siblings from Cable Elementary. No teachers from the San Antonio elementary had heard from the children since schools clos
What Would Mister Rogers Do? Based on the feedback I've been receiving and the general online chatter, most of us don't feel that doing school online is working. Children are bored, frustrated, and learning very little. Spending hours a day, seated, indoors, and muted while staring at a screen is the set up for a science fiction dystopia, yet it's happening right now. My advice to the parents of
No, The Next Debate Moderator Should Not Be A Teacher Within ten minutes, the comments started, and they haven’t stopped since. This is why kindergarten teachers should be paid a million dollars. Next time, pick a middle school teacher—they know how to handle this. It was like watching squabbling children. Referring to Trump as “President Manbaby.” The comparisons are unfair to teachers and chil
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_26.html “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning To Breathe F
2020 Medley #21 – If wrong, to be set right. If wrong, to be set right . To hear the current occupant of the White House talk , public education has been teaching anti-American propaganda for years. I suppose he thinks that there are no longer any lessons on how the Founding Fathers fought against the English or wrote of the rights to free speech or religious liberty. He apparently thinks there
Bully TV shows and movies throughout the 1970s and 1980s, if my memory serves me well, tended to fall back on a predictable and likely lazy portrayal of bullies; beneath their abusive and violent exteriors hid a deeply insecure but ultimately redeemable human. In the real world, however, the United States has elected a bully and conman president. The first presidential debate of 2020, in fact, p
The Rich and the Rest Have You Heard episode #98: The Rich and the Rest There is a vast gulf between the public education priorities of most voters and the favored policies of the very wealthy. Nowhere is that gap more visible than in Arizona, where support for public education has emerged as a central issue in 2020. Complete transcript of the episode is here . The financial support of listeners
State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Announces More Than 500,000 Additional Computing Devices Made Available to California Schools Amid Worldwide Technology Shortage SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced Wednesday that the California Department of Education (CDE) has worked closely with technology companies to make available more than 500,000 more computing
Education Improvement Thwarted by “Reform” By Thomas Ultican 10/1/2020 For more than two decades, bureaucratic style top down education “reform” has undermined improvement efforts by professional educators. For budding teachers, beginning in college with the study of education and their own personal experience as students, an innate need to better education develops. However, in the modern era,
Trump and Christie: Everything Teachers Stand Against Most of what needs to be said about Donald Trump’s appalling performance last night has been said. But I want to quickly add two thoughts. First, as an educator, I want to make sure we acknowledge that the massive damage Trump has done to our country includes his corrupting influence on American children. Every day, teachers go into our schoo
DeVos and the Problem of the "Right Fit" Betsy DeVos has been talking about the “right fit” for a while now. In 2017 : “It shouldn’t matter what type of school a student attends, so long as the school is the right fit for that student.” During Charter Schools Week this year : “... to celebrate the millions of students who have found the right fit for their education...” In her recent letter to p
Hack Education: Selling the Future of Ed-Tech (& Shaping Our Imaginations) | National Education Policy Center Hack Education: Selling the Future of Ed-Tech (& Shaping Our Imaginations) I have volunteered to be a guest speaker in classes this Fall. It's really the least I can do to help teachers and students through another tough term. I spoke briefly tonight in Anna Smith's class on critical appr
What If We Raised A Generation That Could Recapture Childhood at Will? Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will. ~Charles Baudelaire According to the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking , 98 percent of kindergarteners qualify as "creative geniuses." By age 25, only three percent can make that claim. To me, that 98 percent seems a bit low. I have never met a preschool aged child who is
Co-Teaching For Emerging Bilingual Learners: Theory And Practice by Lauren Schneider -- September 30, 2020 Co-teaching is an education buzzword frequently used in the context of instruction for students with special needs or English Language Learners (ELLs). When implemented thoughtfully and intentionally, co-teaching can be highly effective at meeting the unique needs of all learners. In this p
North Carolina: Segregation and Charter Schools The National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, recently released a major study of segregation and charter schools by Dr. Helen Ladd and Muvzana Turaeva of Duke University. Dr. Samuel Abrams introduced it here. The issue of school choice and segregation has been central to education policy d
WHEN BLACKFACE IS WORN IN SCHOOLS I know a few Black male teachers, however I know more Black male principals and vice principals. It’s not that more Black educators choose to be administrators over teachers per se. Rather it’s because Black male teachers are often streamlined from the classroom to the principal’s office. That’s because district officials often recognize the positive impact Blac
Juggling Financial Stress And Caregiving, Parents Are 'Very Not OK' In The Pandemic Back in early spring, Khristan Yates worked as a quality assurance analyst at a marketing company and loved her job. "I had one of the best jobs of my career," recalls Yates, 31, a resident of Chicago. Yates, who's a mother of two children, had moved into a bigger apartment just before the pandemic hit because sh
Grassroots Education Network- September 2020 Newsletter The NPE Grassroots Education Network is a network of 155 grassroots organizations nationwide who have joined together to preserve, promote, improve, and strengthen our public schools. If you know of a group that would like to join this powerful network, please go here to sign on. If you have any questions about the NPE Grassroots Education
Speculation on Weingarten and Mulgrew futures - Part 1 Norm here - Sept. 30, 2020 The next UFT election is looming in spring 2002 and Mulgrew is reaching new levels of unpopularity due to the often tepid UFT response on opening schools. especially with the CSA coming off as more militant than the UFT. The standard opposition voices have been very active. And in addition there is growing skeptici
NewBlackMan (in Exile) The Tight Rope: Rakim – The Humility of Hip Hop's Greatest M.C. by Mark Anthony Neal / 3h 'Legendary M.C. Rakim goes deep with The Tight Rope hosts Tricia Rose and Cornel West about the state of hip hop, the origins of his rhymes, and the roots of his pure imagination. Plus, the professors weigh a whistleblower's allegations about nonconsenting hysterectomies in a private
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_26.html Wednesday’s Must-Read Articles On School Reopening by Larry Ferlazzo / 11
Derek Black’s Fine New Book Explores the History of America’s Idea of Public Education — Part 2 On Monday, this blog examined Derek Black’s important new book, Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy . Black, a professor of constitutional law at the University of South Carolina, threads together the history of an idea first articulated in the Northwest Ordinan
Dear Joe Biden: If someone has a pipeline to the campaign, please feel to send this along. Dear VP Biden: I know that this evening, you have your hands full with the Great Orange Loon in Cleveland. But you've got an education flavored fundraiser tomorrow night, and we really need to talk. Here's the event: It might have been of interest to educators, except, of course, the price of admission is,
LET’S SEE WHAT CREDO HAS TO SAY “Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new.” ― Galileo Galilei One o
Learning Management Software: Necessary Tool, or Wasteful Cash Cow in the Time of Covid-19? Learning Management Software: Necessary Tool, or Wasteful Cash Cow in the Time of Covid-19? By Darren Victory One thing is clear: Teaching in the age of COVID is no picnic. Teachers, students, and caregivers are struggling to navigate the ongoing crisis in ways that preserve their emotional and physical he
When Best Practice Meets Questionable Methods in Literacy Instruction All of us try to provide best practice instruction to our students. Sometimes, though, in our enthusiasm to provide the children the instruction they need, we end up using some instructional methods that work against our goals. Here are a few things we know work in literacy instruction, some ways we can turn those good practic
State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Issues Statement on California State Auditor's Report on Youth Suicide Prevention SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond issued the following statement in response to the California State Auditor’s (CSA) Report on Youth Suicide Prevention on Tuesday: “More and more of our youth are in crisis, and we must do all we can to help them w
White House Pressured CDC to Change Guidelines for Students The first set of guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control warned that schools needed to take safety precautions to protect students and staff before reopening. Then in July, Trump and DeVos insisted that schools should reopen in full, even as Trump and his allies blocked passage of appropriations that provided the resources neede
School Vouchers – An Enduring Racist Practice By Amanda Menas When listening to the rhetoric from the Trump administration, a single vision for our schools is presented: privatization. For the past four years, Trump and his Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos have touted ineffective and harmful voucher schemes, and attacked educators and educator unions, only putting more strain on our students.
What Parents Need to Know About School Coronavirus Case Data Some reported cases come from districts that are operating fully remotely, or districts in which the cases occurred before school was open. It is the start of a school year unlike any other. Many schools, especially in large urban districts, are fully remote. In New York, school opening was announced and then delayed. Some schools have
DEAR STUDENTS, NOW THAT THE 2020 SCHOOL YEAR KICKED OFF, PLEASE HELP US FIND OUR WAY To the Tremendous Energy at the Start of an Unprecedented School Year Growing up, I attended a small Catholic grade school in East Camden. We were a small community, but a community nonetheless. At the start of every school year, I could depend on seeing the same familiar faces; whether I cared for some of those
Join Katherine Stewart and Me to Discuss the Assault on Public Schools [intro] The rise of the Religious Right has coincided with the privatization movement in public schools. While some may feel that this is coincidental, there is reason to believe there is a directly causal relationship between these two factors. Two scholars, from different disciplines, will discuss how their work comes toget
Meet Sacramento’s ‘Squad’: Four Women Fighting For Progressive Issues And Police Reform This Election You may have heard of “The Squad” on Capitol Hill — four progressive, elected women of color standing up against the status quo on both sides of the aisle — but Sacramento now has its own local “Squad,” too. The city’s version is made up of Katie Valenzuela, Tamika L’Ecluse, Mai Vang and Zima Cr
Where They are the World's Leading Experts A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece about what is popularly referred to as "loose parts," or what I prefer to call "junk and debris." One reader referring to a body of research that consistently finds that children engaged in loose parts play use more math language and more elaborate vocabulary than children playing with traditional toys or during struct
Billionaire Reed Hastings Gives $925,000 to Charter Candidate for LAUSD Once again, control of the Los Angeles Unified School District school board is up for grabs, and once again the billionaires hope to buy control so they can expand the number of charter schools. The latest financial disclosures show that Reed Hastings of Netflix has contributed $925,000 to try to defeat veteran educator Scot
Another Look at “Tinkering Toward Utopia” 2020 marks a quarter-century since Tinkering was published. Still in print, the short book on the history of school reform that David Tyack* and I wrote has been praised and panned. Over the years, David and I have spoken and written about the ideas we expressed in the book about history of U.S. school reform and subsequent shifts that we have seen in re
Please be careful, NYC elementary school teachers This is not your fault. This was not your decision. Odds are, no one asked you, the person who knows the job best, what you thought. What you think. The planning for today, Tuesday September 29, the first day of elementary school in NYC, that planning has been dumped on principals. Some principals are smart and clever. But no principal has been t
Many Arkansas Teachers Refuse In-Person Classes Amid COVID-19 Concerns In Little Rock, Arkansas, more than a hundred teachers didn't show up for class on Monday. Instead, at least 166 instructors represented by Little Rock Education Association say they are concerned about COVID-19 and only willing to teach remotely. Until the district allows for remote-only instruction or increases school safet
AI: Still Not Ready for Prime Time You may recall that Betsy DeVos sued to say, often, that education should be like hailing a Uber (by which she presumably didn't intend to say "available to only a small portion of the population at large). You may also recall that when the awesomeness of Artificial Intelligence is brought up, sometimes in conjunction with how great an AI computer would be at e
A FIRING OFFENSE “No matter what happens in the world, however brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking themselves to document it. Little sparks cause fires, too.” ― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark The field of student assessments is a complex one. Its a field heavily reliant on high level math, complex algorythm, and a deep understanding of subje
1619 When I was a junior in HS, my American History teacher was in a serious car accident in the fall, and did not return to teaching. This was 1967, and Social Studies teachers weren’t thick on the ground. The situation was personally worrisome: I had somehow persuaded this history teacher to let me take his required class as an ‘Independent Study’ so I could take both band and choir (which wer
How can teachers help students grapple with the chaos surrounding us? Too many aspiring teachers lack sufficient knowledge and preparation to guide students through these tough times No matter whether elementary teachers return to physical or virtual classrooms, this will be a year for the history books. Even kindergartners have plenty of questions about the presidential election, the pandemic a
Sound Advice for Parents of Young Children Denisha Jones, an expert in early childhood education and a lawyer (and a member of the board of the Betwork for Public Education) has prepared an excellent report for Defending the Early Years. DEY advocates for sound educational practices for young children, and their advice in this report is balanced and humane. Be sure to read the recommendations at
The Students Left Behind by Remote Learning Has a desire to keep the coronavirus out of schools put children’s long-term well-being at stake? This story was co-published with The New Yorker and is not subject to our Creative Commons license. Shemar, a 12-year-old from East Baltimore, is good at math, and Karen Ngosso, his fourth grade math teacher at Abbottston Elementary School, is one reason w
"If I Could Take on All of Their Pain, I Would" Parents, if they love their children at all, at least sometimes worry about what their offspring might say about them in some future therapy session. We strive to love them in a way that guides them to grow up to be strong, confident, thoughtful, and caring, even as we know that the degree to which they fall short of the ideal will inevitably be bl
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007 This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Useful Posts & Articles On Ed Policy Issues by Larry Ferlazzo / 13h Here are some recent useful posts and articles on educational policy issues (You might also be interested in THE BEST ARTICLES, VIDEOS & POSTS ON EDUCATION POLICY IN 2019 – PART TWO ): A Pivotal Moment for U.
Capital & Main: Which Plutocrats Are Funding Fight Against Tax Reform California has been underfunding its public schools for years. The state has vast wealth but low taxes for commercial real estate, due to Prop 13, which was enacted in 1978 as part of a taxpayer revolt. It froze taxes on commercial real estate at 1975 levels. Who are the plutocrats funding the fight against Prop 15? Investigat
Derek Black’s Fine New Book Explores the History of America’s Idea of Public Education — Part I Derek Black’s stunning new book, School House Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy , threads together a history that has rarely been collected in one volume. Black, a professor of constitutional law at the University of South Carolina, presents the history of an idea first a
Whatever Happened to Authentic assessment? No Child Left Behind drove a stake into its heart. OK, that is a bit dramatic but the standards, tests, and accountability movement that began in the early 1980s, picking up speed in the 1990s, then accelerating to warp drive with the passage of NCLB brushed aside this Progressive instructional reform called “authentic assessment.”* Pick your metaphor b
Stupid Zoom Trick 1 Teaching this way is not like real teaching. Maybe a pale facsimile. And that’s not a real classroom. But I still need to find ways to have fun. This story needs some context. You may know that I stopped giving tests. But I live in a world, and teach in a world, with tests. One of my ‘classes’ this term is one term advanced – scheduled to take a Regents Exam in January – a Re
The Awful Inhumanity of Life at NY’s Success Academy Eva Moskowitz is a former NYC council woman who was chosen by hedge funders to operate a charter school chain in New York, Success Academy (SA). Her authoritatian leadership produces high test scores (from “little test-taking machines” )– and high student and teacher attrition. SA’s ever-percolating dysfunction has found expression on the Inst
Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Week 3 in Distance Learning 2020 Week 3 in Distance Learning 2020 I’m still tired. This week, it’s mostly due to poor planning on my part, and things in my family life. Class, that’s settling into a routine. I’m making adjustments as I get feedback from my parents. Mostly it’s about giving kids “breaks” but also transition signals and check-ins to get them
Principals vote "no confidence" in Mayor; ability of DOE to provide an adequate education to NYC kids more in doubt than ever Mark Cannizzaro, President of the CSA, the administrator's union, just announced that they had unanimously approved a resolution this morning, saying they had lost trust in the Mayor, and calling him to cede control over NYC schools and let the NY State Education Departme
Stumbling Towards School Re-Opening: Can NYC Successfully Bring a Million Kids Back to Hybrid Schools? UPDATE: Council of Supervisors and Administrators (CSA) union executive board unanimously passed a “no confidence” resolution condemning the mayor and the chancellor – see here At the core of the revival of New York City is slowly and safely returning to normalcy, stores and restaurants reopeni
CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Hanging In There Edition (9/27) Hanging In There Edition (9/27) Well, that was another week. Just keep trying to avoid being crushed by what feels like a physical increase in the air pressure over the entire country. Here's the list. And I'll remind you-- share the stuff that speaks to you. Everyone is an amplifier. Give Teachers Status and Stacks of Money Lee Childs, the a
My Conversation with Steve Suitts about the Segregationist Origins of School Choice In case you missed our Zoom conversation, this is the link to my discussion with Steve Suitts about his new book about the segregationist origins of “school choice.” His book is Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement . My Conversation with Steve Suitts about the Segregat
School Meals Programs Struggle to Feed Our Children eachers and education administrators sounded the alarms. The spouses and partners of 18 state governors issued pleas. Leadership on both sides of the political aisle brought pressure, some of it decidedly unsubtle. In the end, they combined to strong-arm the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) into extending programs that help get food to the
EdAction in Congress September 27, 2020 GOP refuses to let the people decide Justice Ginsburg’s successor The day after Ruth Bader Ginsburg lay in state in the U.S. Capitol—the first woman and first Jewish American ever to be accorded that honor—President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill her seat on the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made it clear
Parents have a right to be involved in their children’s education, especially during distance learning. While we all know school and family partnerships have big impacts on student achievement, many of us, including educators, don’t know that parental involvement isn’t just a “best-practice” it is a right guaranteed by CA State Law . Rights guaranteed by the California Department of Education su
Jack Hassard: Raking Leaves in the Forest Won’t Stop California’s Mega-Fires Jack Hassard, a professor of science education, scoffs at Trump’s claim that California could avoid forest fires by raking leaves on the forest floor. The cause of the raging fires, he writes, is climate change. Trump has declared that climate change is a hoax so he can’t admit what scientists agree is a growing environ
Florida education commissioner orders Miami to open schools earlier than planned Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran has ordered Miami-Dade County Public Schools to fully open its buildings five days a week by Oct. 5. That’s more than two weeks earlier than the system, the fourth largest in the country, had decided to do after a marathon 29-hour meeting last week. In a letter sent to
Big Education Ape TOP POSTS THIS WEEK 9/26/20 ‘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 Orleans and its charter schools - The Washington Post It's Time for A
