CURMUDGUCATION: CCSS Flunks Complexity Test

CURMUDGUCATION: CCSS Flunks Complexity Test:

CCSS Flunks Complexity Test

 The Winter 2016 issue of the AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice includes an important piece of research by Dario Sforza, Eunyoung Kim, and Christopher Tienken, showing that when it comes to demanding complex thinking, the Common Core Standards are neither all that nor the bag of chips.


You may recognize Tienken's name-- the Seton Hall professor previously produced research showing that demographic data was sufficient to predict results on the Big Standardized Test. He's also featured in this video from 2014 that does a pretty good job of debunking the whole magical testing biz.

The researchers in this set out to test the oft-repeated claim that The Core replaces old lower order flat-brained standards with new requirements for lots of higher-order thinking. They did this by doing a content analysis of the standards themselves and doing the same analysis of New Jersey's pre-Core standards. They focused on 9-12 standards because they're more closely associated with the end result of education; I reckon it also allowed them to sidestep questions about developmental appropriateness.

The researchers used Webb's Depth of Knowledge framework to analyze standards, and to be honest CURMUDGUCATION: CCSS Flunks Complexity Test:

CA schools freed from costly after-school tutoring mandate | 89.3 KPCC

CA schools freed from costly after-school tutoring mandate | 89.3 KPCC:

CA schools freed from costly after-school tutoring mandate

California's schools are no longer required to send students to pricey for-profit and nonprofit tutoring providers, state education officials announced Monday afternoon.

California joined more than 40 states granted a waiver by the US Department of Education from sanctions established under No Child Left Behind, which mandated schools that failed to post higher test scores for low-income students pay for outside, after-school tutoring. 

Nearly 700 California districts spent $142 million on tutoring last school year, despite studies showing the providers returned small or insignificant improvement in student achievement.

"We wanted the flexibility," Tom Torlakson, state superintendent, told KPCC. "The money will be more effectively invested."

Federal officials are working with all states to begin early implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which passed in December and overhauls NCLB over next couple years. 

Federal funds remain earmarked for academic intervention for struggling students from low-income families, but starting next year, districts will be able to decide how to spend it – whether on after-school tutoring with their own teachers, summer school or high school credit recovery. 

The policy change is expected to cripple the private and nonprofit tutoring industry, which garnered more than $500 million in California public school funds over three years. 

"The idea I think coming from Washington at the time was the schools couldn’t do it," Art Revueltas, Deputy Superintendent from Montebello Unified, said of the old CA schools freed from costly after-school tutoring mandate | 89.3 KPCC:

Big Education Ape: SES IS A MESS: State’s ESEA waiver request related to tutoring requirement denied | EdSource http://bit.ly/1L714f6

FirstLine close, but not quite ready to return campuses to School Board control | The Lens

FirstLine close, but not quite ready to return campuses to School Board control | The Lens:

FirstLine close, but not quite ready to return campuses to School Board control

Because the Orleans Parish School Board’s hasn’t addressed key issues in its governance, the directors of FirstLine Schools voted unanimously Friday to remain under the supervision of the Recovery School District.

The board does, however, hope to make the switch next year, said board Chairman Gregory St. Etienne.  Three of the organization’s five schools could have made the move this year.

The same decision faces several other charter school boards this year. It’s part of the structure of the state-run Recovery School District, which took over most schools in New Orleans in 2005, and created other charters since. If schools perform at an acceptable level on in the state accountability program for two consecutive years, they’re eligible to move back to the Orleans Parish School Board. But the first move is up to the charter board.

Nearly three dozen charters are eligible to make the switch, and many have been eligible for a few years. Only Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School has done so, making the move for this academic year.

Over the past two years, the elected Orleans Parish School Board has been working on many charter boards’ concerns about rejoining, including school autonomy, equitable funding for special-needs students and the framework for reintroducing the charter schools.

“We have had schools in our group eligible for return for a number of years now,” St. Etienne said. “And in each case we have considered what the day after would be like. We want to make sure that we identify those key areas that we think the OPSB should have addressed before we return – such as the equity issues.”

FirstLine’s board meeting on Friday was short and undivided. Chief Executive Officer Jay Altman said FirstLine does have plans to FirstLine close, but not quite ready to return campuses to School Board control | The Lens:

Jersey Jazzman: Charter School Realities: East Brunswick, NJ

Jersey Jazzman: Charter School Realities: East Brunswick, NJ:

Charter School Realities: East Brunswick, NJ

This year, I'm doing an occasional series about the many unknown charter schools that aren't affiliated with the big, non-profit charter management organizations like KIPP or Uncommon or Success Academies. Last time, I showed how a small charter in Red Bank, NJ, was likely impeding any chance of the community being able to integrate their schools. Let's stay in the Jersey 'burbs and discuss another small charter, and how it's affecting the local public district schools.

  * * *

Nearly two years ago, the NJDOE denied an expansion request for Hatikvah Academy Charter School in East Brunswick. But if there's one thing to know about charter operators, it's that they can be a persistent bunch: a year later, Hatikvah got permission to enroll its current students, who were in grades K through 5, to stay until Grade 8. But even that wasn't enough...

According to this letter from the East Brunswick Public Schools -- the "hosting" public

- See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2016/02/charter-school-realities-east-brunswick.html#sthash.ibNxuPJv.dpuf

How Ohio Gov. John Kasich took over the schools in Youngstown - The Washington Post

How Ohio Gov. John Kasich took over the schools in Youngstown - The Washington Post:

How Ohio Gov. John Kasich took over the schools in Youngstown

It was late on a Tuesday in June when Ohio State Sen. Joe Schiavoni got the call from a staffer for Gov. John Kasich (R). It was a courtesy call to let the Democratic minority leader know that Republicans would introduce legislation the next morning to dramatically alter the Youngstown public schools, in Schiavoni’s district.

They would offer a 66-page amendment to a pending education bill, and it would be brought before a legislative committee in the morning, and then both houses would vote on it later in the day, the staffer said.

Schiavoni protested, saying that he and his colleagues needed to read the proposal. Kasich wanted a vote on Wednesday, the staffer said.

The lawmaker jumped in his car outside his home in northeast Ohio and drove 177 miles to the State House in Columbus, arriving at about 9 p.m. to get a copy of the proposal from Sen. Peggy Lehner (R), the chair of the How Ohio Gov. John Kasich took over the schools in Youngstown - The Washington Post:

Yet another warning about taking the state “mandated” NEW SAT on March 2, 2016 - Wait What?

Yet another warning about taking the state “mandated” NEW SAT on March 2, 2016 - Wait What?:

Yet another warning about taking the state “mandated” NEW SAT on March 2, 2016

Following up on my recent Wait, What? blog post entitled;

“My daughter will not be taking the “state mandated” NEW SAT on March 2nd 2016.”

Here is a SPECIAL WARNING for high school juniors who are thinking about applying to a college or university that requires applicants to submit all of their SAT scores, rather than just their best score.

Last spring, without understanding the ramifications of their action, Governor Dannel Malloy and the Connecticut General Assembly “mandated” that all high school students take the NEW SAT on March 2, 2016, despite the fact that the NEW SAT hasn’t even been released, let alone validated as an accurate measure of mastery.

There is so little known about the NEW SAT that Governor Malloy’s Commissioner of Education and his political appointees on the State Board of Education won’t even identify what constitutes a passing score on the NEW SAT until after Connecticut’s high school juniors have taken the test and the State Department of Education has been given and analyzed the results

What is known about the NEW SAT is that the College Board, the corporation that Yet another warning about taking the state “mandated” NEW SAT on March 2, 2016 - Wait What?:

Detroit: Crumbling Walls, Millions for Marzano – Save Maine Schools

Detroit: Crumbling Walls, Millions for Marzano – Save Maine Schools:

Detroit: Crumbling Walls, Millions for Marzano

On Saturday, I wrote about Dr. Marzano – the consultant who was never a teacher, but makes millions telling those in the classroom how to teach.

Since then, teachers from around the country have told me how wasteful and insulting they find his latest professional development scheme.

Teachers with many years of experience are told to take down their classroom rules and replace them with “Codes of Conduct” and “Standard Operating Procedures.”  During workshops, teachers are asked to self-assess their understanding of material by placing stickers beside their names on a wall chart. Those in the Reinventing Schools program are told to come up with a “shared vision” for their school – but the shared vision must “align” with that established by the district administrators.

Meanwhile, teachers in the iObservation program are under the grip Detroit: Crumbling Walls, Millions for Marzano – Save Maine Schools:

Department of Education pulls federal aid to trade schools - The Washington Post

Department of Education pulls federal aid to trade schools - The Washington Post:

Department of Education pulls federal aid to trade schools

 The Department of Education cut off federal loans and grants Monday to dozens of beauty schools and three technical trade schools for falsifying a wide range of records.

“Our students depend on higher education institutions to prepare them for careers through a quality education. Unfortunately, some schools violate their trust through deceptive marketing practices and defraud taxpayers by giving out student aid inappropriately,” said Under Secretary Ted Mitchell  in a statement. “These unscrupulous institutions use questionable business practices or outright lie to both students and the federal government.”

Marinello Schools of Beauty, a for-profit chain owned by B&H Education, is accused of illegally requesting federal financial aid for students with invalid high school diplomas, charging students for excessive overtime and withholding a portion of students’ federal aid. As a result, the government is withholding aid from 23 of the chain’s 56 campuses in Nevada and California that enroll about 2,100 students.

In the 2014-2015 academic year, students enrolled in Marinello received more than $87 million in Pell grants and federalDepartment of Education pulls federal aid to trade schools - The Washington Post:

CURMUDGUCATION: How High Are the Standards?

CURMUDGUCATION: How High Are the Standards?:

How High Are the Standards?

 Raise standards. High standards. Deciding whether Core standards are higher or lower than the old standards, or the newer standards.


And nobody has any idea what any of it means.

I mean, I'm not an idiot. I understand what it means to say that I hold my students to a high standard or that my classroom is based on having high standards or hold the donuts I eat to a high standards. As a general principle, we all know what high standards are.

But as a matter of policy, "high standards" is really meaningless. In fact, it's worse than meaningless because it's a metaphor that obscures an important truth.

"High standards" suggests a two-dimensional model of education. It suggests a model in which all students are trying to climb exactly the same ladder in exactly the same direction.It's a single one-directional arrow, with all students progressing steadily, dutifully along the single path toward the single point.

It's a model that doesn't correspond to anything in human experience or behavior. Instead of the blind men and the elephant, we can tell the modern fable of thousand blind administrators and the feds.

The blind administrators were called before the Department of Education. Looking down at them from his throne made of 95% excellent mahogany, the Secretary said, "Have you all led your schoolCURMUDGUCATION: How High Are the Standards?:

The Credibility Gap Between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton | gadflyonthewallblog

The Credibility Gap Between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton | gadflyonthewallblog:

The Credibility Gap Between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton

I Believe Bernie Sanders. I Don’t Believe Hillary Clinton.

Really. It’s that simple.

These two candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency both have things going for them. But at the end of the day one of them is much more credible than the other.

They’re both career politicians.

Sanders has been a Vermont Senator for nine years, a U.S. Representative for 16 years, and Mayor of Burlington for eight years.

Clinton was Secretary of State for four years, a New York Senator for eight years, and – most famously – First Lady of the United States for eight years and of Arkansas for 11 years.

But when they speak, only Sanders seems genuine.

I know that’s a personal value judgement. Maybe it doesn’t hit you the same way.

I just don’t know how it could hit you differently.

For instance, both candidates say they’re going to keep the banking industry in check and stop the risky practices that crashed the economy under President George W. Bush. However, that same industry is Clinton’s main financial supporter while The Credibility Gap Between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton | gadflyonthewallblog:

Choosing Democracy: The Latino Teacher Shortage in the Area Was Created by the Sac State College of Education

Choosing Democracy: The Latino Teacher Shortage in the Area Was Created by the Sac State College of Education:

The Latino Teacher Shortage in the Area Was Created by the Sac State College of Education

 Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil.

by Duane Campbell. Prof. Emeritus.  Bilingual/Multicultural Education. CSU-S. 

In 2015 after the Great Recession  a new state budgets sent large amounts of funds to k-12 schools and the funds of the Local Control and  Accountability Plan  were targeted to low income schools.  This increased funding will lead to a dramatic need for new teachers.  Sacramento City Unified plans to hire 100 new teachers, and many other local urban districts will do the same.  This faculty growth will continue for from 3-5 years.

But credentialed teachers from the Latino community and several Asian communities will not be available to hire because the Sac State pipeline for minority teachers  has been broken.  A new generation of mostly Anglo teachers will be hired which will continue the past failure to integrate the teaching profession in this region. Ending the pipeline will shape the nature of the local teaching profession for decades. Latino students make up 37 % of Sac City Unified students, Asians 17.4 %, African Americans 17.7 %, and White students 18.8 %. Latino families now make up over 37 % of California residents and Latino descent children now make up over 50% of public school students.

   The Bilingual Multicultural Education Department at Sac State was  set up as  a structure so that the university, CSU-Sacramento, could  serve the community by preparing and advancing hundreds of Chicano and Asian teachers each year.  Unfortunately, others shut down this vehicle. Between 1994 -2006, Latino descent students were about 35% of the total teacher preparation students each year ( 60 -90 students per semester).  After the termination of the department in 2010, Latino descent students were less than 10% of the total students in teacher preparation at Sac State (about 7 students).  This decline was a direct consequence of eliminating the department. 

The Pipeline

 The Bilingual Multicultural Education Department  program at Sac State, like the earlier Mexican American Education Project, was a product of the  Chicano movement, the influence of the United Farm Workers, and the social justice movement in public education.  A goal was to penetrate the institutions ( universities) to create an alternative democratic social justice educational vehicle as a strategy for social change.

            A significant organizing vehicle at Sac State  was a small changing core group of faculty focused on a series of common goals.  Specific organizational and change strategies changed over time.

            A major  strategy for change  was to create a program with majority status for Chicano/Mexicano students and students of color.  The experience of being in the majority ( majority status) changed the lives of many, focused the students and faculty on empowerment, and  introduced, renewed and continued the positive aspects of the Chicano/social justice movements to students from later generations who were born, reared, and educated after the movement decline.  The program kept the dream of educational justice alive for over two decades.

            Over the decades of the 1980’s and 90’s,  fewer and fewer faculty had themselves participated in the social movements. As a consequence   the commitment to educational efforts based upon  social movements, empowerment, and participatory democracy declined.   By 2006 the political culture of the College of Education regressed to its mean- away from multicultural education goals and toward an increase in the normal, traditional, College of Education culture of  faculty seeking individual  advancement.

            In each generation of students after the 1980’s  we had fewer and fewer students who had participated in movements, particularly the Chicano Civil Rights movement.  However until 2006 the BMED center was a place where the  few students who had experienced movements and had been educated by movements  were re-enforced, encouraged, and where they became opinion leaders.

          Our programs presented  multicultural and bilingual teacher preparation as  a vocation ,as a change agent as much as a career.  When the student population of conscious students Choosing Democracy: The Latino Teacher Shortage in the Area Was Created by the Sac State College of Education:

Factory Model Education “Reforms” Were Designed for Product Testing, Not Children | Creative by Nature

Factory Model Education “Reforms” Were Designed for Product Testing, Not Children | Creative by Nature:

Factory Model Education “Reforms” Were Designed for Product Testing, Not Children

“The factory model was developed to ensure quality control and produce identical “consumer” products cheaply. It is NOT an approach that should be used with children. Modern researchers and professional educators have come to understand that the human brain is wired for learning, and that the most effective methods of education are aligned with how children naturally learn.”

Education reforms that attempt to enforce fixed standards, continuous data collection and high-stakes testing are applying an industrial model of factory production developed in the early part of the last century. It’s a manufacturing approach that should not be applied to children. 

The factory model was developed over a hundred years ago, to ensure quality control and produce identical “consumer” products cheaply. It is NOT appropriate to use these methods with children, because their bodies and brains are designed to learn in self-directed ways that can be sabotaged by adult attempts to manipulate, measure and control them.

Learning is a creative self-directed process. Modern researchers and professional educators have come to understand that the human brain is wired for learning, and that the most effective methods of education must are aligned with how children naturally learn.

In the business world the early 20th century industrial organization models of Scientific Management (aka, Taylorism) &  Max Weber’s Bureaucratic Model have been updated and re-branded, but can still be recognized by authoritarian social hierarchies that emphasize top-down controls, strict standards, chains of command, rules enforcement, and data collection.

This system provides a highly effective way of making products cheaply and generating profits (turning everything the organization touches into a commodity to be bought, sold and traded), but is completely inappropriate in educational settings, and with children, Factory Model Education “Reforms” Were Designed for Product Testing, Not Children | Creative by Nature:

Non-Profit Industrial Complexes Role In Corporatized Education | PopularResistance.Org

Non-Profit Industrial Complexes Role In Corporatized Education | PopularResistance.Org:

Non-Profit Industrial Complexes Role In Corporatized Education

Above Photo: A Zapatista mural in the town of San Pedro Polhó illustrates ideas about education. Photo by Dario Ribelo on Flickr.

“In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not to the people they work among. They’re what botanists would call an indicator species. It’s almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neoliberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs” (Roy, 2004)

Those ruling society have long utilized non-profits and similar outfits as a means to further their interests, ameliorate their public image, and disseminate their ideologies. Whether we call them Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), or Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC), the era of neoliberalism has seen the role of these private organizations further entrench itself in spaces that used to be that of the public commons. Perhaps the most egregious example of this is in the realm of education policy, where the activities of huge foundations, coupled with the actions of NPIC funded by those foundations, have insidiously begun to displace, replace, and even set the stage for the possible elimination of public education altogether.

Education historian Diane Ravitch opens the chapter entitled “The Billionaire Boys’ Club” in her seminal book (Ravitch 195) with a discussion of the Ford Foundation’s intervention in the so-called “community control” movement as early as 1967. Considered one of the more socially liberal foundations, Ford’s ostensibly good intentioned social engineering ended up exacerbating the problems that undergirded the struggles at the time. Whatever one makes of Ford’s intentions, the fact that they have a long history of being instrumental to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in terms of surveilling social movements is revealing (Incite! Women of Color Against Violence 88). Compared to Ford, modern foundations are far more overt in their political goals – especially their neoliberal agenda, and far more powerful in terms of their influence.

Taking neoliberalism as the modern term describing the “Washington Consensus” policies of deregulation, austerity, and privatization, we can best describe the current assault on public education as “neoliberal corporate education reform.” While a number of arch-reactionary foundations like The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, The Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Milken Family Foundation fund neoliberal aims in education, the most influential foundations in terms of advancing school privatization are those that author Joanne Barkan (Barkan, 2011) came to call the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate. An exhaustive survey of what these three mega-foundations have done to undermine public education nationwide (e.g. The Gates Foundation’s machinations behind the malignant Common Core State Standards) exceeds the scope of this essay. Instead, we will focus on a single city. Perhaps because of its size, or its proximity to The Broad Foundation’s headquarters, Los Angeles has been one of the central fronts on which the neoliberal ideologues have waged their war on public education. Evidenced by the staggering amounts the ruling class spends on school board and related elections, the number of well funded NPICs working as a neoliberal axis, and the collusion of the corporate media, those in power see Los Angeles as a high value target. In a word, it is a microcosm of what is happening to education everywhere.

The Neoliberal Emperor of Los Angeles

In the aforementioned Ravitch chapter, she outlines the “venture philanthropists” most Non-Profit Industrial Complexes Role In Corporatized Education | PopularResistance.Org:

Much of white America is ‘perfectly happy’ with segregated schools, says one Teacher of the Year - The Hechinger Report

Much of white America is ‘perfectly happy’ with segregated schools, says one Teacher of the Year - The Hechinger Report:
Much of white America is ‘perfectly happy’ with segregated schools, says one Teacher of the Year
The education conversation people aren’t having

I want to tell you a secret: America really doesn’t care what happens to poor people and most black people. There I said it.

In my position as a Teacher of the Year and a teacher leader (an ambiguous term at best), I am supposed to be a voice and hold positions on a host of ed policy issues: teaching evaluations, charter schools, test refusal, and (fights over) Common Core come to mind. I am so sick of reading about McCleary (Washington’s ongoing intragovernmental battle for equitable funding for K-12) I don’t know what to do with myself. But, increasingly I find myself tuning out of these conversations. As a nation, we’re nibbling around the edges with accountability measures and other reforms, but we’re ignoring the immutable core issue: much of white and wealthy America is perfectly happy with segregated schools and inequity in funding. We have the schools we have, because people who can afford better get better. And sadly, people who can’t afford better just get less — less experienced teachers, inadequate funding and inferior facilities.

There is simple lack of political will. The situation in education is analogous to the status of gun control. Last June, @DPJHodges tweeted that “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the U.S. gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.” Unless dozens of members of Congress are themselves directly impacted by gun violence, there is no major gun legislation coming anytime soon. We have retreated to our camps; there is no turning back. It is the same with school funding and school segregation.

Related: Child care crisis: Weak oversight puts children in harm’s way in Mississippi

If you are reading this, you’ve probably seen the images coming out of Detroit Public Schools: buckled floors, toilets without seats, roaches, mold and even mushrooms growing in damp, disgusting, mildewy classrooms. Like the images of American torture and abuse Much of white America is ‘perfectly happy’ with segregated schools, says one Teacher of the Year - The Hechinger Report:

California schools rolling in dough, but 'scary' clouds appear on horizon - San Jose Mercury News

California schools rolling in dough, but 'scary' clouds appear on horizon - San Jose Mercury News:

California schools rolling in dough, but 'scary' clouds appear on horizon

VALLEJO -- Vallejo High School teacher Lewis Brown starts his morning government class with a question of the day that takes advantage of newly assigned iPads.

"Today is the one year anniversary of the French magazine terrorist assassination," Brown says. "What was the name of the magazine?" In seconds, 17-year-old SioFilisi Anitoni answers from the back row, "Mr. Brown, Charlie Hebdo."

Vallejo City Unified School District is hoping to improve classroom learning by using increased state funds to raise teacher salaries, open new computer labs and assign iPads to each of its roughly 1,000 high school students.

Lewis Brown, a teacher at Vallejo High School, after class, Vallejo, Calif., January 7, 2016. (Robert Durell/CALMatters) ( Robert Durell )

California Lawmakers Beat Budget Deadline, Funnels Money To Education

CBS San Francisco

And the district is hardly alone. Up and down California, school districts that handed out tens of thousands of pink slips in the recession are now buying equipment and scrambling to find qualified teachers, a problem driven in part by low recruitment and high turnover. With the state's recent economic gains and a temporary tax approved by voters in 2012, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed a $71.6 billion education budget for the next fiscal year, up more than 50 percent since 2011.

But California still ranked 41st in the nation for per-pupil spending in 2013, the most recent year available. And looking ahead, educators see financial challenges that are significant enough that they hope to qualify a ballot measure this year to extend some temporary taxes.

Voters approved temporary taxes under Proposition 30 in 2012 to generate about $8 billion per year for schools. Those taxes will phase out at the end of 2018. At the same time, an agreement to pay down more than $67 billion in unfunded debt for teacher pensions is expected to consume about 38 percent of the projected growth in the school budget through 2019.

If there is a recession, as Brown has warned, budget forecasters say schools could be forced once again to lay off teachers and cut costs. "We're really cautioning districts about the outyears because it's starting to look a little scary," said longtime school lobbyist Kevin Gordon of Capitol Advisors.

The pension agreement reached by Brown and state lawmakers in 2014 is intended to eliminate the debt within 30 years. According to projections by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, the Legislature's nonpartisan budget analyst, school districts will pay $3.1 billion more to the pension system in the 2019-20 fiscal year than they do today while the minimum school budget guaranteed by Proposition 98 is projected to be about $8.3 billion higher in that same year.

If California slips back into recession, the analyst's office warned that the pension obligations could grow faster than school budgets, likely forcing districts to cut elsewhere.

The concern about funding comes as California is implementing a set of new policies to improve academic outcomes.

The lagging performance of low-income, Latino and African-American students is stark. In the state's most recent batch of standardized tests, less than one in four low-income or Latino children and less than one in five African-American children scored high enough to be considered proficient in math. About half of white students and more than two-thirds of Asian students measured as proficient on the same test.

"How it will play out is the biggest question," said Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, a former school board member who is chairwoman of the Assembly BudgetCalifornia schools rolling in dough, but 'scary' clouds appear on horizon - San Jose Mercury News: 

Teacher: ‘If Donald Trump gets elected, will me and my family be deported?’ — and other questions from 9-year-olds - The Washington Post

Teacher: ‘If Donald Trump gets elected, will me and my family be deported?’ — and other questions from 9-year-olds - The Washington Post:
Teacher: ‘If Donald Trump gets elected, will me and my family be deported?’ — and other questions from 9-year-olds

 Political discussions can be sensitive for teachers to lead —  especially when young students ask direct and personal questions. How much should teachers reveal about their personal political views? How heated should political discussions be allowed to get in a classroom?

A teacher at one independent school in California e-mailed me recently saying that she and her colleagues were told by administrators to show respect to all views, including those of Donald Trump, who has become known in the campaign for his strong views on building a wall to keep illegal immigrants coming from Mexico and for not allowing Muslims into the United States for an unspecified period of time. This teacher — who requested anonymity because she feared for her job — said she wanted to distinguish Trump’s views from those held by some of the other candidates but felt that she couldn’t.

Here is a post about one such classroom political discussion by Mary Sypek, a student teacher at a Boston elementary school, who makes clear to her students her negative opinions of Trump.  This appeared on the Edushyster website of Jennifer Berkshire, freelance journalist and public education advocate who worked for six years editing a newspaper for the American Federation of Teachers in Massachusetts. She gave me permission to run this post.

Do you think teachers should express their political views in the classroom, as this teacher does? Do you have examples of similar conversations about any of the current candidates for president? Share them with me:Valerie.strauss@washpost.com

By Mary Sypek

 “Ms. Sypek, what do you think of Donald Trump?” a male student asks. I  try to think of an answer that’s both diplomatic and clear. “I don’t really like Donald Trump,” is what I decided to say, to which he promptly responds, “I don’t like Donald Trump either.” I exhale, hoping I have managed to escape the topic of Trump without too much of a hassle. I am wrong.

It’s literacy time in a fourth-grade teacher’s classroom. Students are working with partners and in small groups to read Teacher: ‘If Donald Trump gets elected, will me and my family be deported?’ — and other questions from 9-year-olds - The Washington Post: