Important ESSA Discussion February 16: Online Streaming Available & Tweet Senator Alexander Your Feelings on ESSA – Missouri Education Watchdog

Important ESSA Discussion February 16: Online Streaming Available & Tweet Senator Alexander Your Feelings on ESSA – Missouri Education Watchdog:

Important ESSA Discussion February 16: Online Streaming Available & Tweet Senator Alexander Your Feelings on ESSA

Above is a screen shot from CATO’s announcement for the discussion on Tuesday, February 16 @ noon EST, 11 AM CST, 10 AM Mountain, 9 AM Pacific.  You also have a chance to tweet Senator Alexander your feelings about his fast tracking a 1,000 plus bill through the Senate with no allowance of public input, let alone sufficient time for the senators to read it before voting for/against it.

 Important ESSA Discussion February 16: Online Streaming Available & Tweet Senator Alexander Your Feelings on ESSA – Missouri Education Watchdog:

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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEDNESDAY'S 'WALK-INS' MEDIA ADVISORY

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEDNESDAY'S 'WALK-INS' MEDIA ADVISORY:



THE ALLIANCE TO RECLAIM OUR SCHOOLS
ADVISORY FOR                                             CONTACT: Ira Arlook
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2016         202-258-5437, ira@fenton.com

Parents, Students and Teachers Plan “Walk-Ins” 
at 800 Public Schools in 30 Cities to Demand the Kind of  Education that All Children Deserve

Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools

Call for Adequate Funding Too Long Denied to Public Schools Serving African American & Latino Communities 

Decry Role of Wall St. & Corporate Billionaires
in Attacks on Public Education

Thousands of parents, teachers and students will stage “Walk-Ins” at over 800 public elementary and high schools in 30 cities on the morning of Wednesday, February 17, as classes begin. They will gather, placards in hand, thirty minutes before the start of the school day, then walk into their public school buildings to show support for an adequately funded approach to public education that they call “community schools,” now implemented in systems serving five million students. The largely African American and Latino parents and students want the benefits afforded by community schools for their children. In some cities, Walk-In participants will focus on efforts to secure tax revenues for their public schools, to stop over-testing, to end school takeovers, and other local issues.

The Walk-Ins are the opening salvo in a major battle--a national campaign--to ensure that the country that invented public education as an essential feature of a democratic society continues to offer it. Here are the basic demands in the words of the campaign’s participants:

• We demand a world class public education for all children—the kind of education that all children deserve and the very kind that has often been denied to black, brown and poor children. Our country has the resources to fully fund our schools and the obligation to our children to do so.

• We demand accountability and transparency for Charter Schools and operators. Every school that receives public funds is held to the same high standards of transparency and student success, including schools serving students of color, students with special needs and low-income students. And we want to stop the growing involvement of billionaires, like the Walton Family, in public education.

• We demand revenue to fully fund our schools. We want those Wall Street and corporate titans who claim to be education reformers to contribute their fair share of the tax dollars needed to ensure adequate public school funding for the low-income African American and Latino communities that need it most.

Public schools and public education are under attack and most aggressively by Wall Street and hedge fund billionaires—many of whom nearly brought down the entire U.S. economy in 2008—and companies like Walmart, infamous for the mistreatment of its employees and low wages that harm communities that need the most help. Wall Street and Walmart lobbyists continue to press for unaccountable charter schools and other dubious approaches that promise much but so often fall short in practice, while siphoning off taxpayer dollars that our public schools need to succeed. These are the people who have received the lion’s share of the nation’s wealth over the past several decades but who continue to resist paying their fair share of the taxes needed to fund our public schools adequately. 
                            
We know that our public schools can provide tools, time and support that students need whatever their zip code to inspire their natural curiosity, imagination and desire to learn. But only if they are funded to offer relevant and challenging curriculums, emphasize high quality teaching rather than constant high-stakes testing, more one-on-one instruction time, positive discipline, needed support services like vision testing and food banks as well as parent involvement in planning and decision-making.

Schools that incorporate these features produce better results than other approaches and do so without closing schools – a problem that now plagues so many neighborhoods where insufficient or misallocated resources have failed our students. This effective approach to educating our children, embodied in community schools, is much needed in low-income African American and Latino communities.

It is a bitter irony that so many of those Wall Street billionaires and corporate CEOs who have acquired almost all of the new wealth created over the past several decades continue to deny and deflect attention from what African American and Latino communities know only too well, that their public schools have been sabotaged by consistent, long-term underfunding. These moguls foist upon us failed, undemocratic alternatives including school takeovers and for-profit control of our schools rather than pay their fair share of the tax revenues needed to provide the education that all our children deserve. Over the coming months, and however long it takes, we will fight to reverse this state of affairs and ensure that public schools in low-income communities of color survive and flourish.Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEDNESDAY'S 'WALK-INS' MEDIA ADVISORY:

 Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools

NYC Public School Parents: Send an Email Now to Mayor and Speaker to Address School Overcrowding

NYC Public School Parents: Send an Email Now to Mayor and Speaker to Address School Overcrowding:

Send an Email Now to Mayor and Speaker to Address School Overcrowding

Please send an email to the Mayor and the City Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito, urging them to expand the plan and create a Commission to speed the accuracy and efficiency of school planning and siting.

The DOE released its updated capital plan at the end of January. They have now identified an overall need of approximately 83,000 seats citywide – closer to our estimate of more than 100,000 seats and far more than their previous estimate of 49,000 in May.

They also plan to build an additional 44,348 K12 seats compared to 32,629 previously, at an additional cost of nearly $1 billion. All of this is good news.

However, the DOE is planning to fund only about 59% of their own estimate for necessary seats, compared to 66% previously. The number of school seats with sites identified and in in the process of design are only 15% of their estimate of need, compared to 22.7% previously. (Click on charts to enlarge.)

The need for seats will grow even larger as will school overcrowding if the City Council approves the Mayor’s new rezoning proposals to allow for thousands of new housing units to NYC Public School Parents: Send an Email Now to Mayor and Speaker to Address School Overcrowding:

Gates Foundation Coordinates Efforts to Defy Washington Supreme Court - Living in Dialogue

Gates Foundation Coordinates Efforts to Defy Washington Supreme Court - Living in Dialogue:

Gates Foundation Coordinates Efforts to Defy Washington Supreme Court

As the corporate reform project begins to fray around the edges, one of the main sponsors is resorting to more overtly political tactics.

The Gates Foundation is ostensibly a charitable enterprise, and enjoys significant tax benefits as a result of this status. Bill Gates himself described the organization’s work a year ago as “R & D,” and asserted that they stay out of the political process. But two cases from opposite sides of the country show the Gates Foundation playing a growing role in the political process, especially when their most prized strategies are in danger.

The first case is in the Gates Foundation’s home state of Washington. Full credit for the investigation that reveals the facts that follow goes to Dora Taylor, and intrepid parent activist and blogger in Seattle.

Expanding the reach of charter schools has been a central focus of Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation for years. The Gates Foundation has provided millions of dollars to districts willing to sign onto something called the “Gates Compact.” With this agreement, the school districts agree to embrace the expansion of charter schools within their domain, and in exchange get millions from the Gates Foundation.

In spite of this support, charter schools have been a contentious issue in Washington state. Voters rejected Gates Foundation Coordinates Efforts to Defy Washington Supreme Court - Living in Dialogue:

Scalia’s death likely to alter outcome in Friedrichs lawsuit | EdSource

Scalia’s death likely to alter outcome in Friedrichs lawsuit | EdSource:

Scalia's death likely to alter outcome in Friedrichs lawsuit

With the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the California Teachers Association will likely gain an unexpected victory, at least for now, in its legal battle to continue the right require all teachers to pay the costs of collective bargaining.

That was the issue raised in Friedrichs v. the State of California and the CTA, which the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on by June. Court observers had predicted that Scalia would join the four other conservative justices to make a 5-4 decision overturning Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, a four-decades old Supreme Court decision that said that states could require all public employees to split the expenses of bargaining, known as “agency” or “fair share” fees.

A majority decision agreeing with the plaintiffs – Rebecca Friedrichs, an elementary school teacher in the Savanna School District in Anaheim and nine other non-union teachers – could severely weaken the financial health and political clout of the CTA and other public employee unions. The suing teachers contend that mandatory fees coerce them to support bargaining positions they disagree with, violating their constitutional right to free speech.

With a possible 4-4 tie, the court would defer to the ruling of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on the side of the union. If that were to happen, the Court of Appeals decision would uphold only California’s law permitting mandatory fair-share fees and not affect the other two dozen states that also have passed similar statutes.

In its pro-forma ruling in 2014, the Appeals Court didn’t consider the merits of the case, nor was it asked to. The Washington, D.C.-based Center for Individual Rights, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiff teachers, had asked the lower courts to expedite a decision without a full trial so that the Supreme Court could directly reconsider the Abood decision.

The center’s lawyers had reason to believe the majority on the court would agree with them. In a ruling in 2014 in a related case, Harris v. Quinn, Scalia and other conservatives called the Abood decision “troubling.” Although the court didn’t overturn Abood then on technical grounds, Scalia and other conservatives in a concurring opinion invited a lawsuit directly challenging it. The Scalia’s death likely to alter outcome in Friedrichs lawsuit | EdSource:

Landry-Walker principal, other administrators, suspended with pay amid cheating probe | The Lens

Landry-Walker principal, other administrators, suspended with pay amid cheating probe | The Lens:
Landry-Walker principal, other administrators, suspended with pay amid cheating probe

Longtime Landry-Walker High School principal Mary Laurie is among the school administrators  placed on paid administrative leave amid a cheating investigation, the Algiers Charter Schools Association announced Monday.

The six-school network conducted an internal investigation after allegations of testing impropriety at the high school in the 2013-14 school year. The investigation revealed inconsistencies in students’ class grades compared to state test scroes, and the school’s performance plummeted the following year after more testing monitors were placed at the high school, Nola.com reported last week.

Along with Laurie, Assistant Principal Taisha Williams-Payne, Assistant Principal Brian Gibson, and teacher and former test coordinator Trayvonia Duhe have all been placed on paid administrative leave. Laurie is the longtime principal of O. Perry Walker High School and kept her leadership role when Walker merged with L. B. Landry High School. In 2012-13, the year before the schools merged, Landry got an F on the state’s report card and Walker had a B.

The administrative moves come just weeks after a less-than-clear shakeup at the network level, when the board fired its CEO Adrian Morgan days after publicly tapping network elementary principal Rene Lewis-Carter as interim CEO.

The network released a statement Monday:

“ACSA takes allegations of testing impropriety seriously. After allegations arose, trustees of ACSA launched a self-imposed, internal investigation. Preventative measures were put in place in order to preserve the integrity of Landry-Walker’s testing and educational environment. These measures continue today and are integral to ACSA’s standard operating procedures network-wide. Currently, in concert with the Louisiana Inspector General and Department of Education, ACSA is continuing its investigation and remains committed to the best testing practices.”

Lewis-Carter said the decision was difficult from both a professional and personal standpoint. She and Laurie had served as network principals together for years.

“Because the alleged testing improprieties occurred under their leadership, this decision underscores the serious nature of testing,” Lewis-Carter said. “Such behavior directly affects the stability of our education system and the welfare of our students.”

The network plans to announce an interim principal for the high school soon.

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The Lens' donors and partners may be mentioned or have a stake in the stories we cover.Landry-Walker principal, other administrators, suspended with pay amid cheating probe | The Lens:

Marie Corfield: My Response to the NJ Pension Study Commission

Marie Corfield: My Response to the NJ Pension Study Commission:

My Response to the NJ Pension Study Commission

In a big PR move to sell the state on their recommendations, last week two members of the NJ Pension Study Commission, Tom Byrne and Tom Healey took to the media. Here is my response:

My response to the Pension Study Commission's Report can be summed up in one word: No.

No, you will not take one more dime from the hard working, middle class people who keep this state running 24/7/365 through rain, snow, sleet, hail, super storms, blizzards, floods, bone chilling cold, tornados and blazing heat while you and your families stay warm and cozy in your homes. 

No, you will not take one more dime from the hard working, middle class people who would willingly put themselves in harm's way to protect you and your family, because it's their job.

No, you will not take one more dime from the hard working, middle class people who would willingly run into a burning building to save your spouse, your child or your pet because it's their job.

No, you will not take one more dime from the hard working, middle class people who educate the majority of our state's children, sometimes in conditions so deplorable they rival third world countries. Who already spend far too much of their own money to purchase basic supplies for their classrooms and to feed and clothe their neediest students. Who, more often than not, work 10-, 12-, 14-hour days just to keep up with Marie Corfield: My Response to the NJ Pension Study Commission:

Some CT superintendents continue to violate parent’s civil rights and their own Code of Responsibility - Wait What?

Some CT superintendents continue to violate parent’s civil rights and their own Code of Responsibility - Wait What?:
Some CT superintendents continue to violate parent’s civil rights and their own Code of Responsibility

 Parents of public school students in a number of Connecticut school districts continue to report that there are superintendents and principals who are not only misleading parents about their fundamental and inalienable right to refuse to have their child participate in the unfair, inappropriate and discriminatory Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and/or the NEW SAT, but are actually telling parents that it is “illegal” for them to opt their child or children out of the tests.

Such a statement is a lie, a violation of the parent’s civil rights and violates the Connecticut Code of Professional Responsibility that school administrators MUST follow in order to maintain their state certification.

ONCE AGAIN – There is NO federal or state law, regulation or legal policy that prevents a parent from refusing (opting their child out) of Connecticut’s Common Core SBAC tests or the recently “mandated” NEW SAT.

If Governor Malloy, Lt. Governor Wyman, Commissioner of Education Dianna Wentzell or any public school superintendent or principal has a legal opinion that they believe gives them the authority to override constitutionally guaranteed parental rights then they need to immediately make such a document public so that those of us who are parents can take appropriate legal action to protect Connecticut’s parents and children.

If they do not have a legal opinion that can withstand a challenge then superintendents need to stop implementing the Malloy administration’s strategy of abuse and treat their Some CT superintendents continue to violate parent’s civil rights and their own Code of Responsibility - Wait What?:

John Thompson: Opt Out is Frightening the Politicians | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: Opt Out is Frightening the Politicians  | Diane Ravitch's blog:

John Thompson: Opt Out is Frightening the Politicians 

 John Thompson, historian and teacher, writes that parents have shaken up the education landscape:

“February has always been a time when blizzards keep blowing across the nation but, too often, it now marks the end of meaningful learning in our classrooms. Long before Spring arrives, the test prep season begins, followed by the annual testing ordeal. During the last few years, however, the grassroots Opt Out movement has risen to the occasion, and fought to restore authentic teaching and meaningful learning to public schools.

The refusal of parents and students to participate in the test, sort, reward, and punish season has knocked the corporate reform movement back on its heels. It has undermined the imposition of Common Core and value-added evaluations, which were top-down mandates enforced by High Stakes Testing. The assertion of families’ democratic rights to choose engaging and respectful instruction, and reject soul-killing teach-to-the-test, has predictably prompted some reformers to retreat, while it has angered others. The second response by blood-in-their-eyes reformers may prove to be one of their most consequential mistakes. They are inviting an even more effective counter-attack by the Opt Out movement.

In 2009 and 2010, the RttT, the SIG, and an alphabet soup of other social engineering initiatives essentially imposed the full test-driven, competition-driven reform agenda on the entire nation. The non-educators who dreamed up Common Core, value-added evaluations, mass charterization, the mass “exiting” of teachers, and the resulting focus on nonstop remediation of students’ weakness, while ignoring their strengths, often were oblivious to the inherent contradictions in their dictates. Regardless of what they didn’t know, and when they didn’t know it, their mandates were so divorced from reality that they exposed accountability-driven, market-driven reform to an overwhelming political backlash. Those few reformers who are grounded in classroom realities must now know that their school improvement hypotheses are doomed.

The more interesting – and probably the more important – reaction by corporate reformers has been a consequence of their angry (and ego-driven?) response to defeat. Apparently blaming educators for failing to recognize what they believed was the beauty of their incentives and disincentives, and resenting patrons who fought against the testing toxicity that flowed down on their children, many elite reformers have thrown a huge temper tantrum. In doing so, they unintentionally revealed the true nature of their desire to micromanage schools. By their angry outbursts, elites show how oblivious they are to the feelings and interests of regular people.
Rather than go to school on the failure (or at best the modest benefits of hugely expensive experiments) of attempts to transform Newark, Memphis, New Orleans, and other systems, “astroturf” reform think tanks doubled down on discrediting objective scholars and journalists who documented results that were underwhelming at best. Next Steps in Newark: Superintendent Chris Cerf Responds to Dale Russakoff’s ‘The Prize’ – Education Post Then, the Broad Foundation, apparently seeking revenge on Los Angeles educators and elected officials, proclaimed its intention to charterize half of the LAUSD.

Most inexplicably, the post-Duncan USDOE has sought to intimidate the Opt Out movement. The attempt by the outgoing Arne Duncan and John King to bully opponents is likely to be the greatest political mistake of a reform movement that is frenetically striking out against stakeholders who disagree with them.
Apparently forgetting the myriad of ways that data-driven policies have failed to improve schools, the USDOE threatens to turn its numbers-driven club on states that do not squelch the Opt Out Movement. The federal government sent intimidating letters to 13 states, warning that John Thompson: Opt Out is Frightening the Politicians  | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Judging the Judge: What Antonin Scalia’s Death Means to the People I Love | gadflyonthewallblog

Judging the Judge: What Antonin Scalia’s Death Means to the People I Love | gadflyonthewallblog:

Judging the Judge: What Antonin Scalia’s Death Means to the People I Love

I’m not sad Antonin Scalia is dead.

Wow! It feels so good to say that aloud!

Come on. Admit it. You feel exactly the same way.

I know. I know. Everywhere you turn, people are going out of their way to talk about the ramifications of the 79-year-old Supreme Court Justice’s death without passing judgement on him.

“Let’s keep it classy,” they say.

Oh. Stop it.

In his 30 years on the bench, Scalia hurt an awful lot of people. And I mean real, live people – not ideological constructs, not hypotheticals – but moms, dads, husbands, wives, daughters, and sons.

The aggregate amount of misery in the world was drastically increased by his being in it. And now that he’s gone, much of that misery may be relieved.

So spare me any shock at my thesis. Spare me the false praise of a truly reprehensible human being.

He was against women controlling their own bodies, efforts to desegregate our Judging the Judge: What Antonin Scalia’s Death Means to the People I Love | gadflyonthewallblog:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: On This Presidents' Day - #ArresttheLegislature

Seattle Schools Community Forum: On This Presidents' Day - #ArresttheLegislature:

On This Presidents' Day - #ArresttheLegislature

 Press Release (bold mine):


#ArrestTheLegislature Press Conference
on School Funding and Black Lives Matter

Who: All City Black Student Union (BSU) and Black Law Student Association, Garfield High School BSU members, University of Washington BSU members, Chief Sealth High School BSU members, Rainier Beach High School BSU members, Seattle University Black Law Students Assocation Members, BlackOut Washington, and Black Lives Matter organizers

What: Press conference providing testimony about school funding, the opportunity gap, the McCleary decision & the legislature remaining in contempt of court, and Black Lives Matter

When: Monday, February 15, 2016 at 2:00 p.m.


Where: The Capitol Building Steps
---
In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed... It means facing a system that does not lend its self to [our] needs and devising means by which [we] change that system.
- Ella Baker

For the first time in Washington State history the Legislature was held in contempt of court for failing to obey the orders of the Washington State Supreme Court. Since the contempt finding the Legislature has continued to ignore the ruling of the Court. As a result, the Legislature is being fined $100,000 per a day for willful failure to comply due to the Legislatures neglect to put forth a plan to fully fund K-12 education in the State.

When an average citizen is found to be in contempt of court and Seattle Schools Community Forum: On This Presidents' Day - #ArresttheLegislature:

The Wister Community Schools Plan – An Alternative To Charter Takeover | WeArePCAPS

The Wister Community Schools Plan – An Alternative To Charter Takeover | WeArePCAPS:

The Wister Community Schools Plan – An Alternative To Charter Takeover

Everyone recognizes Wister needs to improve in order to better serve our students and families. Not everyone agrees the only alternative is turning it over to a charter operator.

Experience shows schools improve when the commitment, energies and skills of teachers, parents and the entire community are brought together. Working together a group of parents and teachers have helped develop a plan to do just that.

The heart of this plan is the creation of a planning committee of parents, teachers and community members who would work with the administration over a year’s time to figure out what the school needs and identify the partnerships, policies and supports necessary to get it there. You can read the whole plan on the community schools task force page athttp://www.wearePCAPS.

WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT A COMMUNITY SCHOOL? Community schools provide services and supports to help children and their families like health clinics, GED programs, and after school activities based on the needs of the community. Community schools emphasize community involvement and a voice for members in the governing of the school. Community schools recognize that children that are hungry, sick or traumatized will have problems learning.

WHO COMES UP WITH THE PLAN? Parents and teachers select representatives to serve on the planning committee. Parents and community members will be the majority. The committee will have a budget to do the necessary research. A full time coordinator is hired to carry out the plan.

WHO PAYS FOR COMMUNITY SCHOOLS? Other than the costs of the coordinator position there are no new costs to the school. There is new federal funding available for community schools. The costs of services are paid for by public and private partners that locate in the school.

WHAT ABOUT BETTER STAFFING AND MORE RESOURCES? Community schools are not a substitute for fully funded neighborhood schools with full time nurses, counselors, librarians, and enough teachers to lower class size. The fight to gain the funding from the state, city and federal government must continue.

This plan, along with similar ones for Cooke and Huey, have been submitted to the SRC by Wister parents. If you support this alternative please sign our open letter to the SRCThe Wister Community Schools Plan – An Alternative To Charter Takeover | WeArePCAPS:

Jersey Jazzman: Only You Can Stop Data Abuse: Red Bank, NJ Edition

Jersey Jazzman: Only You Can Stop Data Abuse: Red Bank, NJ Edition:

Only You Can Stop Data Abuse: Red Bank, NJ Edition

Data abuse in eduction policy has got to stop.

I freely admit that there can be different, equally valid ways of interpreting data. I am the last person to say a data analysis is always "proof" of a particular point someone wants to make. I am leery of the use of overly complicated statistical methods when simpler descriptive methods may be better.

But there is no excuse when a school "leader" misuses data to justify his or her practices and policies -- particularly when they do so at the expense of others. 

I'm cynical enough to know politicians and media pundits can and will do this all the time; however, when someone in a position of authority at a school or a district or a state agency or even the USDOE abuses data to make themselves look better and others look worse, it's completely unacceptable.

We are told over and over again by those in positions of influence that we have entered an era of "data-driven instruction." Well, if that's true, a leader is just as derelict in his duty when he misuses data as he is when he misapplies educational practices within the bounds of his authority.

This particularly irks me because we are seeing more "alternative" programs like Relay Graduate School of Education or the Broad Superintendent's Academy or SUPES that appear, to me, to have little interest in developing future educational leaders as good consumers of research and data. I'm not saying university-based programs don't often - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2016/02/only-you-can-stop-data-abuse-red-bank.html#sthash.6Nha84Vy.dpuf

Teacher: What I didn’t expect to learn about people from standardized testing - The Washington Post

Teacher: What I didn’t expect to learn about people from standardized testing - The Washington Post:

Teacher: What I didn’t expect to learn about people from standardized testing

 Amy Roberts has been teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages in New York City since 2002. She currently teaches eleventh-grade English at International High School at Union Square, where the entire student body is composed of recently arrived immigrants. She is a native of Alexandria, Virginia, and a graduate of T.C. Williams High School. Roberts recently wrote what turned out to a popular post on Facebook about things she has learned from what she says is a dehumanizing standardized testing process,  and she has given me permission to publish it. It is a slice of life that in a high-poverty school that is not often seen.

This is Amy Roberts’ Facebook post:

Standardized tests are the worst. No doubt about it. Excruciating. Torturous. Bad. Not good at all. But I do have to say that there are a couple of aspects of the system that you might not know.

First, you’re getting the students ready, and you ask them to stay after school to prepare, and a die-hard crew actually does. They stay and practice with you, even if they didn’t eat all day because they hate the school lunch. And you say, “You guys done, or do you want to keep going for another half hour?” And they say, “Keep going!” So you do. And, a whole bunch of those kids that stayed after school with you, actually pass the test the first time they try it. And a whole bunch of others don’t pass, not even close, really, but they stayed and tried to do it in a language they have only known for two years, for up to six hours. And, of all the kids that tried it, never gave up, no matter the result, you’re proud. Beyond proud.

Second, you get sent to another school to grade the tests, and you’re in a building full of English teachers, nobody but English

Teacher: What I didn’t expect to learn about people from standardized testing - The Washington Post:

CURMUDGUCATION: NJ: Red Bank and the New White Flight

CURMUDGUCATION: NJ: Red Bank and the New White Flight:

NJ: Red Bank and the New White Flight

The Red Bank, NJ, school system is actually a tiny little thing. Three boroughs (Red Bank, Little Silver and Shrewsbury) run their own K-8 schools which then feed into a regional high school.

There's one other school in Red Bank-- Red Bank Charter School. Red Bank Charter School is back in the news because its operators have asked to double the schools size, from 195 seats to 400, in a move that represents a direct assault on the public schools of the city. RBCS has served not just as a drain on the public system, but a powerful engine for resegregation. Red Bank Charter School is not just an example of how charters gut public school resources, but how charters can be the new white flight.

Red Bank Charter is no Success Academy-- when they announced the expansion, they left their own parents and supporters flatfooted. In January, charter leaders held a meeting for parents who wanted some sort of response for when their neighbors cornered them in the grocery store. One characterized the proposal as a PR disaster. At that meeting, they learned that part of the reason for the initiative was Chris Christie's full-on support for charters in his State of the State speech.

Flanked by Trenton lobbyists and a pair of ex-superintendents-turned-consultants, charter Principal Meredith Pennotti said one key reason the school is seeking to expand is “the political climate” — specifically, Governor Chris Christie’s unabashed support of school choice.

Best to expand the operation while the business climate supports it and before Christie leaves office. But there are more arguments-- none of them good.

RBCS likes to make the argument that they actually spend less per pupil than the public school system. They don't like to point out that the lower per-pupil cost is because they serve fewer CURMUDGUCATION: NJ: Red Bank and the New White Flight:

Jeopardy Question: Where Did Teachers Take to the Streets to Protest Educational Centralization & Authoritarianism?

Jeopardy Question: Where Did Teachers Take to the Streets to Protest Educational Centralization & Authoritarianism? (It’s Not in America) – Missouri Education Watchdog:

Jeopardy Question: Where Did Teachers Take to the Streets to Protest Educational Centralization & Authoritarianism? (It’s Not in America)

From http://hungarianfreepress.com/2016/02/13/twenty-thousand-protest-orbans-education-policies-in-budapest/rom

 Hungarian teachers are protesting centralized public education and current one size fits all educational reforms.  From Twenty thousand protest Orbán’s education policies in Budapest:

“The government’s great reform brought about a system that stripped students of the joy of learning and stripped teachers of the joy of teaching. The regime is consciously throwing into poverty an entire new generation. Our patience has run dry. We are here, so as to declare together, that enough is enough. We won’t stand idly by,” declared Mrs. István Galló, chief of the PSZ union.

The protest also included speeches from students and school administrators. The principal of the Teleki Blanka High School in Budapest, István Pukli, noted that the regime is “not accustomed to people saying ‘no’” and added that the government had now entered into its most stubborn phase. Mr. Pukli demanded that the regime spend 6% of Hungary’s GDP on education, in order to address the damage that they have done over the past six years.

The most radical group involved in the protests is called the Network of the Uninvited. Activists affiliated with this group distributed thousands of flyers on Saturday declaring that there “is no longer any reason to engage in dialogue with government on any issue.” The Network calls upon Hungarians, in all fields and in all regions, to reject all dialogue with the government and its officials, and instead engage in systematic forms of civil disobedience across the country. The Network described Mr. Orbán, his ministers and leading civil servants as “barbarians.”

Many American moms and dads could consider themselves to be in a Network of the Uninvited and would agree that there is no lonJeopardy Question: Where Did Teachers Take to the Streets to Protest Educational Centralization & Authoritarianism? (It’s Not in America) – Missouri Education Watchdog:

NYC Educator: Whatever Eva Wants, Eva Gets

NYC Educator: Whatever Eva Wants, Eva Gets:

Whatever Eva Wants, Eva Gets

The big story in reformy Chalkbeat NY's Rise and Shine, of course, is Eva Moskowitz. Moskowitz is under fire for the documented cruelty of one of her teachers. Alan Singer points out that this teacher is not actually certified but a Moskowitz mentor teacher nonetheless. Moskowitz, who refuses to sign the standard agreement for her pre-K program, can apparently certify anyone she wants however she pleases.

Chalkbeat links to a number of stories stating that this sort of behavior would not be acceptable in wealthier schools. Doubtless that's true. I certainly would not want my child in this teacher's class, and it's hard to imagine parents who feel otherwise. In fact, the NY Times report suggesting students regularly pee their pants rather than asking for a moment less test prep leads me to believe this behavior is not, as Moskowitz claimed, an anomaly.

The fact is Chancellor's Regulation A-421, against verbal abuse, would have landed this teacher in a ton of hot water. In NYC public schools, you simply are not permitted to address children in an abusive or hostile manner. In fact, the wording is such that pretty much anything that makes a kid feel uneasy can be construed as abuse. If you say, "hello," and it makes the kid feel bad somehow, a crazy principal could bring you up on charges.

Nonetheless, I do not condone what this teacher did to this first grader. A teacher ought to be supportive rather than abusive, and anyone NYC Educator: Whatever Eva Wants, Eva Gets:

The Horace Mann League: Asymmetric Information, Parental Choice, Vouchers, Charter Schools and Stiglitz

The Horace Mann League: Asymmetric Information, Parental Choice, Vouchers, Charter Schools and Stiglitz:

Asymmetric Information, Parental Choice, Vouchers, Charter Schools and Stiglitz

 From the Journal of Education Finance,  Fall 2012

by Kern Alexander
The story goes that tuition voucher schools and charter schools are creatures of the spirit of capitalism1 and that public funding of them will increase competition, making all schools more efficient and academically better, especially public schools. For that theory to work it is hypothesized that parents as “rational people will make choices as to the education of their children in perfect markets.” In the realm of economics, this reasoning is called the “rational expectations hypothesis” or the “efficient markets hypothesis.”2 

The “efficient markets” notion applied to schools via parental choice means that parents will, in their wisdom, utilize public money to send their children to private schools and that ipso factothe education level of the nation rises commensurate with the level and intensity of competition among parents in choosing private, clerical and/or corporate charter schools. For the education level to rise requires, of course, that parents will make rational decisions relative to quality education. Essential to the concept is that parents have the knowledge necessary to make informed educational choices. In a perfect market, information is presumed to “flow like water–faster than water,”3 and it is necessary that those things irrelevant to quality education, or even detrimental to it, are not present in parental decision making. If parental choice is not based on quality education and instead the school choices are rooted in race, religion, wealth, ethnicity, etc., then you will have “imperfect competition.” Imperfect competition would result in the overall decline in the quality of education. 

In the economic marketplace, “rational expectations,” serve as the engine to improve the economy. At bottom, these expectations of individuals and corporations foster efficiency, production costs fall and profits increase. Improvement of educational quality via a scheme of parental choice, however, is much more complex. If the state seeks to drive its economic progress by means of the wisdom of parental choice, it must be sure that the parental choices add to some worthwhile store of knowledge for the next generation. That education in which public money is invested must be calibrated to the end of producing productive knowledge, the “training of intellect” is designed to “stimulate the mind of the individual The Horace Mann League: Asymmetric Information, Parental Choice, Vouchers, Charter Schools and Stiglitz: