Andrea Gabor: The Flaws in California’s Ethnic Studies Mandate | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andrea Gabor: The Flaws in California’s Ethnic Studies Mandate | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andrea Gabor: The Flaws in California’s Ethnic Studies Mandate

Andrea Gabor, a former editor at Business Week and U.S. News & World Report, is the Bloomberg chair of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York and the author of “After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform.” It appeared behind a paywall at Bloomberg News. After she wrote this article, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the proposal to mandate a course in ethnic studies as a requirement for high school graduation. The original proposal would have included the experiences of African Americans,Latino Americans, Native Americans and Indigenous peoples, and Asian Americans. The governor received complaints from other ethnic groups complaining that they should have been included. First Jewish groups complained, then Arab Americans, then Iranian Americans, then Kurdish Americans, and on and on.

In his veto message, Newsom said he values the role of ethnic studies in helping students understand the experiences of marginalized communities and that he supports schools and districts offering such courses. But, he said, there was too much uncertainty about the content of the model curriculum and he wanted to be sure it “achieves balance, fairness and is inclusive of all communities.”

This contretemps reminded me of my exposure to California culture wars in the mid-1980s when I was CONTINUE READING: Andrea Gabor: The Flaws in California’s Ethnic Studies Mandate | Diane Ravitch's blog

“Ultimatum”: A searing challenge to institutional racism by Gerald Lenoir from his new book of poetry, “United States of Struggle: Police Murder in America” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

“Ultimatum”: A searing challenge to institutional racism by Gerald Lenoir from his new book of poetry, “United States of Struggle: Police Murder in America” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

“Ultimatum”: A searing challenge to institutional racism by Gerald Lenoir from his new book of poetry, “United States of Struggle: Police Murder in America”

ast week, my dad, Gerald Lenoir, released his brand new book of poetry, United States of Struggle: Police Murder in America. Gerald also released a video of one of the poems, “Ultimatum,” that will knock you off your feet (be aware that the evocative imagery and strong language can be triggering especially for victims of state violence).

After attending the book launch event where my dad read many of his poems aloud, I can tell you with conviction that if you love justice and Black people you need this book.

Gerald’s poetry is animated by his lifetime of dedication to building movements for racial and social justice. In the 1960s, he was part of the student uprisings at the University of Madison, WI, that won the Black Studies program. In the 1960s and 70s he was part of the movement against the war in Vietnam. In the 1980s–1990s he was a leader in the international campaign to end apartheid in South Africa. He helped lead campaigns against police brutality, racist violence, gentrification and for affirmative action in the 1970s and 1980s; the Rainbow Coalition and the Jesse Jackson for President campaigns in the 1980s; the HIV/AIDS response in the 1980s and 1990s; and the immigrant rights, Palestine solidarity, peace and Black Lives Matter movements in the 2000s and CONTINUE READING: “Ultimatum”: A searing challenge to institutional racism by Gerald Lenoir from his new book of poetry, “United States of Struggle: Police Murder in America” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Andy Hargreaves: Imagine a World Without Teachers! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andy Hargreaves: Imagine a World Without Teachers! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andy Hargreaves: Imagine a World Without Teachers!

Today is World Teachers Day. It’s a day we honor teachers around the world and thank them for their dedication and hard work, building our future.

Andy Hargreaves poses a thought experiment: Imagine a world without teachers!

He begins:

Never has there been a more important time than this moment, right now, to think about and appreciate what great teachers have done for our children and also for us. We have seen what the world looks like when its teachers are taken away from our children. We have witnessed online how teachers have struggled mightily to master complex digital platforms and to try and make virtual class interactions with children as enriching as possible. Plunged into virtual learning at very short notice, our own grandchild’s teacher has posted materials as early as 4am. We have also learned about all the teachers who delivered curriculum materials, workbooks, pens and paper to poor working class homes when many children were unable to access online learning. We’ve been CONTINUE READING: Andy Hargreaves: Imagine a World Without Teachers! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Russ on Reading: Word Recognition: To what extent is it "self-taught?"

Russ on Reading: Word Recognition: To what extent is it "self-taught?"

Word Recognition: To what extent is it "self-taught?"

I taught myself how to decode. No, I was not some precocious early reader who intuited how words work at three and was reading before entering school. And, yes, my first grade teacher. Ms. Rickles, did a very creditable job in teaching me the alphabetic principal and the phonological awareness I needed to get myself started on the road to being a reader. Most of what I learned about the ways words work, however, I learned by reading and I can distinctly remember that happening to me. 

Early in the second grade, my mother enrolled me in the Weekly Reader Book Club. I was thrilled when the package with my first book arrived with my name on it. The book was a Whitman/Golden Book adaptation of  a Disney True Life Adventure documentary series called The Living Desert. The book contained lots to interest a seven-year-old boy and I read it with a vengeance. It was probably a bit above my reading level, but with the help of my understanding of  sound/symbol relationships learned in school, a bit of my own background knowledge, the copious pictures in the book, and some determination, I was able to decode words like iguana, rattlesnake, prairie dog, desolate, tortoise, habitat, evaporation and so forth. Along the way, although I was not aware of it at the time, of course, I was teaching myself the orthographic system of our language. The more I read, the stronger, richer, ad deeper this understanding became.

It has been estimated that there are about 88,500 distinct word families in CONTINUE READING: Russ on Reading: Word Recognition: To what extent is it "self-taught?"

Teachers, Regardless of What Your President Says, Don't Whitewash History - Philly's 7th Ward

Teachers, Regardless of What Your President Says, Don't Whitewash History - Philly's 7th Ward

TEACHERS, REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOUR PRESIDENT SAYS, DON’T WHITEWASH HISTORY

When I was first assigned to teach U.S. history nearly a decade ago during my second year as a social studies teacher, my first stop was to a Black-owned bookstore around the corner from where I taught. A month before the school year began, I had decided that I couldn’t use the old course textbook.

It was the same sort of Eurocentric textbook from which I was taught U.S. history as a student, focusing on the accomplishments of the English-speaking Western world while offering little to no acknowledgment of those oppressed by that same population. That textbook hadn’t reflected my history and heritage as a Black man, nor that of the predominately Black and Latinx students I was preparing to teach.

So at LaUnique African American Books and Culture Center, I purchased Africa’s Gift to America, a text written by historian Joel Augustus Rogers.

It was because of that text that my students learned about Crispus Attucks, the African American man who was the first colonist killed by British forces in the massacre that sparked the American Revolution. It was from this book CONTINUE READING: Teachers, Regardless of What Your President Says, Don't Whitewash History - Philly's 7th Ward

Trump official pressured CDC to change report on Covid and kids - POLITICO

Trump official pressured CDC to change report on Covid and kids - POLITICO

Trump official pressured CDC to change report on Covid and kids

Amid Trump’s push to reopen schools, Michael Caputo’s science adviser asked that the health agency alter its warning about a study of pediatric coronavirus.

In early September, as many school districts were still deciding whether to hold in-person classes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention altered the title of a scientific report on the coronavirus and removed words like "pediatric" from its text, days after a Trump administration appointee requested similar changes, according to emails obtained by POLITICO.

That request — issued by then-public affairs official Paul Alexander — came amid President Donald Trump's broader push to reopen schools, with the president issuing demands on Twitter the prior day that "Democrats, OPEN THE SCHOOLS ( SAFELY)," and holding a press conference that touted data on the relatively low risk of Covid-19 for children.

"On schools, as part of our science-based approach, we want schools to safely open and stay open," Trump told reporters on Sept. 10. "Children are at extremely low risk of complications from the virus."

The Sept. 11 email exchange between Alexander and other officials centered on an embargoed CDC bulletin set to publish the following week and which Alexander — an unpaid assistant professor at Canada’s McMaster University who was recruited by longtime Trump operative Michael Caputo — said contained faulty science. For instance, defining teenagers aged 18 and older as "pediatric" patients was "misleading," Alexander wrote to Charlotte Kent, the editor-in-chief of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports. Alexander also said that the document wrongly conflated the risks of the coronavirus to young children and older adolescents, urging Kent to make multiple changes to the document.

Alexander's requests — the latest in a series of demands — set off new concerns inside CDC, which was already reeling from Alexander's efforts to retroactively alter several reports or halt the MMWR process altogether. The reports are sent to researchers, physicians and hospitals to update them on the latest medical guidance and findings. The study in question addressed the death rates of Covid-19 among the pediatric population; CDC has frequently used the CONTINUE READING: Trump official pressured CDC to change report on Covid and kids - POLITICO

Teacher Tom: Where Our Focus Ought to Be Right Now . . . And Always

Teacher Tom: Where Our Focus Ought to Be Right Now . . . And Always

Where Our Focus Ought to Be Right Now . . . And Always

Most of us take it for granted that human beings are smarter than other animals. After all, we have by far the largest brains compared to our body size of any other species, comprising, on average, two percent of our body weight. But when scientists in Germany used a series of thirty-eight tests designed to compare our innate intelligence with animals we assume are pretty smart, such as orangutans and chimpanzees, on things like spatial awareness, calculation, and causality, we performed about the same. This doesn't surprise me, actually. Having lived with a series of dogs over the course of the past three decades, I'm convinced there are times that they've pitied me as a sweet little puddin' head, lovable, but not that bright, especially when it comes to things like being aware of a rabbit hiding in the shrubbery or understanding what they want or need when they could not be communicating more clearly. 

The only area of intelligence in which the researchers found that humans surpass our ape cousins is when it comes to social learning: the ability to learn from others. As Rutger Bregman writes in his book Humankind:

Human beings, it turns out, are ultra social learning machines. We're born to learn, to bond and to play. Maybe it's not so strange, then, that blushing is the only human expression that's uniquely human. blushing, after all, is quintessentially social -- it's people showing they care what others think, which fosters trust and enables cooperation. 

That we need one another in order to take advantage of our great big brains, shouldn't surprise any early childhood educators. 

Other research, and most significantly, the Perry School Project, the longest running study of the impact of high CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Where Our Focus Ought to Be Right Now . . . And Always

Texas: Public Schools Have Better Outcomes Than Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Texas: Public Schools Have Better Outcomes Than Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Texas: Public Schools Have Better Outcomes Than Charter Schools

William J. Gumbert has studied the performance of charter schools in Texas and has consistently documented that they are inferior to public schools. Their promoters have sold the Legislature a Bill of goods, meaning that their results are nowhere as impressive as their promises. In this post, he shows that charter graduates are poorly prepared for higher education.

Privately Managed, College Preparatory Charter Schools:
A Common Approach and a Common Result – Graduates Underperform in College

By: William J. Gumbert

Without any notices or disclosures, the Texas Legislature has been experimenting with students in public education for 25 years. The experiment allows a separate system of taxpayer funded, privately managed charter schools (“State Charters”) to recruit students from locally governed school districts. In this regard, the State provides approximately $10,000 for each student that a State Charter recruits from local school districts. In total, the State has diverted over $25 billion of taxpayer funding from local school districts to fund its separate system of privately managed State Charters.

With State Charters receiving taxpayer funding for CONTINUE READING: Texas: Public Schools Have Better Outcomes Than Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

With A Brooklyn Accent: No Innocence Here: How Irish, Jewish and Italian New Yorkers Benefited From Their Whiteness in Post World War 2 NYC

With A Brooklyn Accent: No Innocence Here: How Irish, Jewish and Italian New Yorkers Benefited From Their Whiteness in Post World War 2 NYC

No Innocence Here: How Irish, Jewish and Italian New Yorkers Benefited From Their Whiteness in Post World War 2 NYC

Whenever I engage in conversations about race with Irish, Jewish or Italian New Yorkers of my generation- or those slightly younger- I am likely to confront some variety of the following argument " I am sick of all this talk about white privilege. Not only did my immigrant ancestors have nothing to do with slavery and segregation, but they faced terrible discrimination when they came here. Moreover, they climbed out of poverty- and finally won acceptance- through generations of hard work, not by asking for handouts or special help from the government. Frankly, I am tired of Black people holding us hostage as though they are the only ones who suffered. If they have problems, it is their own fault." I would be lying if I told you that I have developed a successful response to such comments. People who express such sentiments are deeply invested in the aura of injured innocence they convey. Talking about how the wealth accumulated by slavery made the immigration of their ancestors possible is too abstract to make headway with peope who pride themselves on their practicality and common sense. Plus this all happened almost two hundred years ago. However, the more CONTINUE READING: With A Brooklyn Accent: No Innocence Here: How Irish, Jewish and Italian New Yorkers Benefited From Their Whiteness in Post World War 2 NYC

Attacks on Teachers Have Been Central to Republicans’ Agenda to Reduce Government Spending | janresseger

Attacks on Teachers Have Been Central to Republicans’ Agenda to Reduce Government Spending | janresseger

Attacks on Teachers Have Been Central to Republicans’ Agenda to Reduce Government Spending

Among the lingering effects of state budget reductions during the 2008 Great Recession have been widespread drops in teachers’ overall compensation. Although some states and local school districts do their part to pay their teachers fairly, and some provide the fringe benefits such professionals should expect, overall according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, “teachers are paid less (in wages and compensation) than other college-educated workers with similar experience.”  And, “(T)his financial penalty discourages college students from entering the teaching profession.”

Our economy has now entered another recession due to layoffs and business closures during COVID-19, and without further federal relief to states, teachers are likely once again to be the victims.

All summer and through September, U.S. Senate Republicans have refused to negotiate with House Democrats, who passed their bid for a second coronavirus relief bill, the HEROES Act, on May 15.  Until this past weekend, it looked as though Congress would recess until after the election without the Senate’s agreeing even to take up the bill for consideration.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and White House negotiator Steve Mnuchin returned to discussions last week, but until the President became ill with COVID-19 over the weekend, it looked as though progress had broken down. The President’s infection by COVID-19 and indications that the economy will continue to lag have, apparently, brought Pelosi and CONTINUE READING: Attacks on Teachers Have Been Central to Republicans’ Agenda to Reduce Government Spending | janresseger

NYC Public School Parents: Millions in DOE contracts awarded for buses even if they're not running & scoring guides for tests that may never be given

NYC Public School Parents: Millions in DOE contracts awarded for buses even if they're not running & scoring guides for tests that may never be given

Millions in DOE contracts awarded for buses even if they're not running & scoring guides for tests that may never be given

As Sue Edelman reports in today's NY Post, last week the PEP approved the extension of contracts with busing companies through 2025 that will guarantee them 43% of the full amount -- amounting to more than $500 million per year ---whether buses are running or not.  

The  DOE also agreed to pay 40% of the regular cost of busing for May and June when buses were idling because schools were closed, which is less than the 85% they originally planned to pay before we sounded the alarm last April, but is still far more than they had to hand over.  

These contracts, like most others, contained a force majeure clause, which would allow all payments to be stopped in case of a pandemic, as a letter from the NYC Comptroller pointed out. The NY Post article doesn't reveal what the DOE paid for the six weeks in March and April when the schools were closed and buses weren't running, but one can assume DOE paid these companies the full contracted amount of nearly $200 million per month during this period.

As I am quoted in today's article, the decision of the DOE to guarantee these payments, starting this year through 2025, is irresponsible, given the fiscal crisis the city is facing which may lead to additional and grievous budget cuts to schools and school staffing.  

Already today, the Mayor announced that in nine zip codes in Brooklyn and Queens, 100 public schools and 200 non-public schools (for which we also pay for busing) will be CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Millions in DOE contracts awarded for buses even if they're not running & scoring guides for tests that may never be given

OMG! Is Mayoral Control a Disaster? Is it Time to Elect School Boards in New York City? | Ed In The Apple

OMG! Is Mayoral Control a Disaster? Is it Time to Elect School Boards in New York City? | Ed In The Apple

OMG! Is Mayoral Control a Disaster? Is it Time to Elect School Boards in New York City?

On October 1, after two delays, threats of a “safety” strike, seemingly endless criticisms from the teachers and supervisor unions, schools opened.

Half the students opted for fully online instruction and the other half for two/three days a week in-person. The Department, somehow, did not see the complexity, one cohort of teachers in school, teaching different cohorts two/three days a week, another cohort of teachers teaching fully remote students and other teachers doing both in 1600 public schools in 1200 buildings. (See 8/27/20 Memorandum of Agreement here)

A few days before school reopening the teacher union (UFT) and the Department announced another agreement (See Memorandum of Agreement on Remote Teaching here) Teachers who were teaching a remote cohort of students from school could teach from at home, principals having, for the umpteenth time, to re-program the teacher cohort schedules at the last minute.

The Council of Supervisors and Administrators (CSA) executive board voted unanimously   to ask the state to take over the Department of Education.

In a stunning statement, leaders of the union representing New York City CONTINUE READING: OMG! Is Mayoral Control a Disaster? Is it Time to Elect School Boards in New York City? | Ed In The Apple