Lack of Oversight of Federal Charter Schools Program Cheats Taxpayers, Students, Families, and Local Public Schools | janresseger

Lack of Oversight of Federal Charter Schools Program Cheats Taxpayers, Students, Families, and Local Public Schools | janresseger

Lack of Oversight of Federal Charter Schools Program Cheats Taxpayers, Students, Families, and Local Public Schools

The impact of federal investment in the Charter Schools Program has been in the news this month thanks to the Network for Public Education’s stunning new report, Asleep at the Wheel, which exposes the number of schools across the states that received millions of dollars from the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program but never opened or, after opening, subsequently shut down.  The Network for Public Education (NPE) documents the waste of hundreds of millions of dollars out of the total $4 billion that has been spent on the Charter Schools Program (CSP), which has been operated with an outrageous absence of oversight. A third of the schools whose startup or expansion was seeded by the CSP are currently not in operation.

Last week the Network for Public Education expanded its coverage of abuses in the Charter Schools Program by breaking down the numbers to show how much money was wasted in five of the states. (NPE says it will continue to break down the numbers in upcoming weeks for the rest of the 44 states and the District of Columbia which have charter schools.)  Jeff Bryant follows up this week by summarizing the percentage of failure in CSP-funded schools in the five target states. In Michigan, 42 percent of the federal dollars granted by CSP were wasted on schools that never opened or subsequently closed. The percentage of failure was similar in Ohio (40 percent), Louisiana (46 percent), California (38 percent), and Florida (36 percent).

Responding to the Network for Public Education’s report, charter school promoter Nina Rees justifies the federal Charter Schools Program as a crucial source of venture capital to jump start and expand a privately operated but publicly funded education sector.  Chalkbeat’s Matt CONTINUE READING: Lack of Oversight of Federal Charter Schools Program Cheats Taxpayers, Students, Families, and Local Public Schools | janresseger

Smoking gun: FL can’t insure armed teachers from liability | The Edvocate Blog

Smoking gun: FL can’t insure armed teachers from liability | The Edvocate Blog

Smoking gun: FL can’t insure armed teachers from liability

With SB 7030/Arming Teachers passing in the Florida Senate as was predicted, the question raised by this blog about whether or not this is insurable remains.

Did knowledgeable political insiders deliberately plunge an entire state into a horrific Sophie’s Choice debate over forcing public school classroom teachers to live every day knowing that they or their colleagues must pivot from teaching the students they love to possibly shooting one of them?

Was this just a cruel distraction to allow the greatest threat to Florida Public Education, universal vouchers/Education Savings Accounts and a slew of other deeply hostile bills to pass into law with considerably less opposition from exhausted public education advocates?

Not to put to fine a point on it, but here’s the smoking gun as to whether arming classroom teachers can be insured. Fellow blogger Mercedes Schneider addresses the question and points out that:

The Florida Department of Education (FDOE) uses AIX Specialty Insurance Company to provide its educators professional liability policy. According to that policy, armed  CONTINUE READING: Smoking gun: FL can’t insure armed teachers from liability | The Edvocate Blog

Badass Teachers Association Blog: Understanding the Need for and the Current Protections of Upstanders

Badass Teachers Association Blog: Understanding the Need for and the Current Protections of Upstanders

Understanding the Need for and the Current Protections of Upstanders

If we are ever truly going to achieve the goal of eliminating workplace harassment and bullying from the American workplace, including the bullying of teachers and other K12 employees, there are a number of things that must be done. First and foremost, we will need a strong federal law, with strong enforcement. The current legal protections against workplace harassment have failed to even protect all targets of status-based harassment, much less the broader phenomena of workplace bullying. Second, even if a strong law is passed, we also need the help of bystanders. We need bystanders to become upstanders to defend and protect targets of bullying and to call out the bullies in their workplaces. Even in the absence of strong laws, upstanders can help to eliminate a great deal of the bullying in our workplaces. The focus of this blog will be on this former part of the solution to workplace bullying. 

In 2015 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency that enforces Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), convened a task force to explore the reasons why harassment continued to be such a huge issue in the American workplace nearly 30 years after harassment was ruled to be a form of discrimination by the Supreme Court. After months of testimony from experts from human resource departments, labor unions, law firms, worker organizations, employer organizations and numerous meetings of the 17 members of the task force, the EEOC Commissioners came up with a list of recommendations. One such recommendation was that we all needed to play a role to end harassment. 

Harassment in the workplace will not stop on its own. The ideas noted above (earlier in the report) are helpful, but ultimately, may not be sufficient. It is on all of us to be part of the fight to stop workplace harassment. We cannot be complacent bystanders and expect our workplace CONTINUE READING: Badass Teachers Association Blog: Understanding the Need for and the Current Protections of Upstanders

Virginia's Rodney Robinson Named 2019 National Teacher of the Year

Virginia's Rodney Robinson Named 2019 National Teacher of the Year

Rodney Robinson Named 2019 National Teacher of the Year

Rodney Robinson, a social studies teacher in Richmond, Virginia, was named the 2019 National Teacher of the Year on Wednesday by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

Robinson, a 19-year veteran of Richmond Public Schools, teaches at Virgie Binford Education Center, a school inside the Richmond Juvenile Justice Center. CCSSO commended Robinson for creating “a positive school culture by empowering his students – many of whom have experienced trauma – to become civically-minded social advocates who use their skills and voices to affect physical and policy changes at their school and in their communities.”

Robinson says he looking forward to helping lead a conversation about the students he calls “the most vulnerable in society” and how the nation can address the school-to-prison-pipeline that has pushed too many kids out of school.

“This year I hope to be the voice for my students and all students who feel unseen, unheard, unappreciated and undervalued in America,” Robinson said.

At the Virgie Binford Education Center, which serves youth ages 10-18, Robinson uses a social studies curriculum that centers on juvenile justice and the prison system. Robinson collaborated with Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Forman Jr at Yale University in developing the unit. The curriculum allows “students to step outside of themselves and examine the system and the circumstances that have led to their incarceration and a better understanding of how to avoid future incarceration,” Robinson wrote in the introduction.

Lily Eskelsen García

✔@Lily_NEA

Congratulations to the 2019 National Teacher of the Year @RodRobinsonRVA an amazing educator and proud member of @VEA4Kids We are so inspired by your passion, dedication and commitment to our students!

CCSSO@CCSSO

CONGRATULATIONS to Rodney Robinson (@RodRobinsonRVA), the 2019 National Teacher of the Year!! Learn more about Rodney here: https://ccsso.org/teachers/rodney-robinson …@VDOE_News #NTOY19

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Robinson, who previously taught at Armstrong High, Wythe High, and Brown Middle School, earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Virginia State University and a master’s degree in administration and supervision from Virginia Commonwealth University. In addition to being published three times by Yale, Robinson has received numerous awards for his accomplishments in and out of the classroom, most notably the R.E.B. Award for Teaching Excellence.

A proud member of the Richmond Education Association, the Virginia Education Association, and the National Education Association, Robinson is a vocal and dedicated union activist, and was a featured speaker at the VEA Fund our Future rally in Richmond.

Robinson is standing up for students who “feel unseen, unheard, unappreciated, and undervalued in America,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia.  “He is not only a beacon of light but also a mentor, a leader and a role model in the fight for racial and social justice in education….Every student in every public school in this country deserves a teacher like Mr. Robinson no matter their ZIP code or their circumstances.”

Robinson has focused great deal of his efforts on the need for mental health services in schools and singles out the stigma surrounding treatment. As teacher of the year, Robinson will have a heightened platform to advocate for the students who are being left behind by budget cuts and a system that emphasizes punitive discipline over preventative and rehabilitative measures.

“I want school counselors, I want conflict mediators, I want restorative justice, I want people to come in and actually work with the kids and not just put a kid in handcuffs whenever there is a minor disagreement,” Robinson told WCVE Radio in Richmond.

Robinson says the positive influence black educators can have on the lives of vulnerable students cannot be overstated. When he was a student at King William County High School in the 1990s, Robinson admits he struggled “to find his place” and looked up to his band director Mr. Calvin Sorrell, who at that time was the only male, black teacher in the district. Today, only 15 percent of licensed teachers in Virginia are people of color.

“It’s important to have role models of all races and ethnicity — especially for students of color,” says Robinson.

After graduating high school, Robinson set his sights on becoming the kind of educator many students who have made mistakes desperately need.

“Most are in survival mode 24 hours a day, seven days a week… but they still persevere and strive for success. They are my inspiration, and I will fight to my last heartbeat for them,” Robinson says

Virginia's Rodney Robinson Named 2019 National Teacher of the Year

CURMUDGUCATION: Using Cultural Competency To Sell Personalized [sic] Learning

CURMUDGUCATION: Using Cultural Competency To Sell Personalized [sic] Learning

Using Cultural Competency To Sell Personalized [sic] Learning

Over at EdTechTimes, a site that for a consulting group that clearly is interested in pushingpersonalized [sic] learning, I found a podcast by Mariel Cariker entitled "Cultural Competency: Finding Ways To Bring Equity Through Personalized Learning." (It is accompanied by a transcript.) The podcast is sponsored by TeachPlus.

Like many of the arguments being used to push PL, it's an odd little mishmash.

A real killer app.

The piece opens by chatting with Nick Donahue, CEO of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. She describes Nellie Mae as "focused on community leadership and engagement," but in the context of this podcast, it might be more appropriate to note that Nellie Mae is hugely invested in pushing personalized [sic} learning via mass standardized algorithm-managed computer delivery systems. Donahue is not a disinterested expert in the field; he's a guy with a product to sell that just happens to be the product that this podcast is "examining."

Donahue offers plenty of the usual rhetoric, including the old suggestion that education hasn't changed in 100 years. He does manage to avoid the word "disrupt," but he still advises "challenging some of the traditional structures and approaches and mindsets that have ruled education for 100 years." He suggests that school leaders approach this as a means of providing freedom for teachers, specifically the freedom and flexibility to "teach" a large group. And then he drops this line:

Flipped learning is headed in the right direction, that would mean when the kids are together with  CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Using Cultural Competency To Sell Personalized [sic] Learning

Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part IV | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part IV | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part IV

Part four of Startup’s seven part podcast about Success Academy (found here) is centered on the ‘Got To Go’ incident where a principal was found to have created a list of students he wanted to oust from his school.  This episode explores whether or not the ‘Got To Go’ list was an isolated infraction by a rogue principal or if it is something that is part of the culture of the school.

Episode 1 was about the state of public schools in NYC that would make it ripe for a network like Success Academy to emerge.  Episode 2 was the story of Eva Moskowitz and how she rose to power.  Episode 3 was about the emphasis the network puts on standardized tests and questions whether the high test scores come at some greater cost.

Episode 4 — Growth — is the most critical so far.  The ‘Go To Go’ list was a major story in the New York Times and it corroborated what many families said about Success Academy, that they push out students which, as a side benefit for them, raises the test scores of the school.

The narrator, Lisa Chow, though, got some talking points from Success Academy about how to spin this story.

Candido Brown was a new principal, put in charge of a Success Academy elementary school in Fort Greene, a neighborhood in Brooklyn. The school had already gone through two other principals in a year. The place did not represent the Success ideal of quiet classrooms and well behaved kids. It CONTINUE READING: Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part IV | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

UN recommends no screen time for babies, only 1 hour for kids under 5 | PBS NewsHour

UN recommends no screen time for babies, only 1 hour for kids under 5 | PBS NewsHour

UN recommends no screen time for babies, only 1 hour for kids under 5

LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization has issued its first-ever guidance for how much screen time children under 5 should get: not very much, and none at all for those under 1.

The U.N. health agency said Wednesday that kids under 5 should not spend more than one hour watching screens every day — and that less is better.

The guidelines are somewhat similar to advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics. That group recommends children younger than 18 months should avoid screens other than video chats. It says parents of young children under two should choose “high-quality programming” with educational value and that can be watched with a parent to help kids understand what they’re seeing.

Some groups said WHO’s screen time guidelines failed to consider the potential benefits of digital media.

WHO’s screen time advice “overly focuses on quantity of screen time and fails to consider the content and context of use,” said Andrew Przybylski, director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. “Not all screen time is created equal.”

Britain’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said the data available were too weak to allow its experts to set any thresholds for the appropriate level of screen time.

“Our research has shown that currently there is not strong enough evidence to support the setting of screen time limits,” said Dr. Max Davie, the college’s CONTINUE READING: UN recommends no screen time for babies, only 1 hour for kids under 5 | PBS NewsHour

Editor's note: Don't get schooled • SN&R Extra

Editor's note: Don't get schooled • SN&R Extra
Editor’s note: Don’t get schooled

In the buzz about the Sacramento railyards as the next game-changing development, it’s all about the state-of-the-art medical center, the new county courthouse and, especially, a sparkling soccer stadium.

What isn’t talked about as much may also turn out to be crucial to its success—a school.

Bill Mueller, executive director of Valley Vision, says good schools are essential to more housing downtown, as well as a key component of “20-minute neighborhoods,” the urban design principle that everything you need for daily life is within walking or bicycling distance.

The Sacramento City Unified School District says it has an agreement with the railyards developer for a K-6 or K-8 school, once there are enough students. But for parents to be confident enough to send their kids to that school, the district needs to fix its finances and make peace with the teachers’ union, which held a one-day strike on April 11.

The railyards plan approved by the City Council in 2016 calls for 6,000 to 10,000 housing units, predicts a potential need for new schools and says that developers would be expected to pay impact fees to help pay for them. The plan also points out that because it’s an urban infill site, a typical suburban school won’t work. Instead, a school would have to be multi-story with small playgrounds, perhaps even on the roof.

The 244-acre site on the edge of downtown is the former home of Union Pacific Railroad’s railyards, the largest west of the CONTINUE READING: Editor's note: Don't get schooled • SN&R Extra

Why The Big Standardized Test Is Useless For Teachers

Why The Big Standardized Test Is Useless For Teachers

Why The Big Standardized Test Is Useless For Teachers

In schools throughout the country, it is testing season--time for students to take the Big Standardized Test (the PARCC, SBA, or your state's alternative). This ritual first bloomed way back in the days of No Child Left Behind, but after all these years, teachers are mostly unexcited about it. There are many problems with the testing regimen, but a big issue for classroom teachers is that the tests do not help the teacher do her job.

Folks outside of schools often imagine that one of the benefits of the test is to check to see how students are doing and adjust instruction accordingly. Unfortunately, the tests provide no such benefit.

First, the timing does not serve that purpose. Tests are being given now, close to the end of the year.  By the time test score come back, these students will be in a different teacher’s classroom. There will be zero opportunity for a teacher to say, “Okay, these students are having trouble with fractions, so I’d better review that unit and add some extra instruction on the subject.” Those students are gone. New students arrive with their own test scores, but their new teachers have no first-hand knowledge of how instruction went last year.

But that’s not the worst of it. Even if the tests were great (that's a discussion for another day) and the results came back CONTINUE READING: Why The Big Standardized Test Is Useless For Teachers

The Benefits and Necessity of Interdisciplinary Education - Teacher Habits

The Benefits and Necessity of Interdisciplinary Education - Teacher Habits

The Benefits and Necessity of Interdisciplinary Education

By Dennis Wesley

Why is interdisciplinary training important? Is it all relevant, let alone necessary, in the context of contemporary education, which is dominated by engineering, the applied sciences, and other disciplines typically associated with good job prospects? Moreover, if one deems it a necessity, what disciplines should one include to make education truly interdisciplinary? These are just some questions advocates of interdisciplinarity encounter rather routinely from both parents and educators. On the other hand, some parents even consider interdisciplinary training a tedious, altogether avoidable complication.

While it is clear that interdisciplinary training includes an introduction to the humanities, it must also be conceded that the sheer breadth of the humanities makes it difficult for educators to zero in on the best, most relevant disciplines. At the same time, the popularity of the humanities has been decreasing rather steadily. See, for instance, Benjamin Schmidt’s August 2018 article on the alarming decline in the number of humanities majors in the US since the 2008 financial crisis. Well-planned interdisciplinary programs, therefore, are also highly likely to inject new life into the humanities.

Addressing Technological Developments from the Interdisciplinary Perspective

As some have argued, the very salience of engineering and the applied sciences, coupled with the technological developments these fields have enabled, has necessitated interdisciplinary training. For instance, as innovations continue to flood the automation and artificial intelligence industry—and indeed other industries—ethics is becoming  CONTINUE READING: The Benefits and Necessity of Interdisciplinary Education - Teacher Habits

Ending Public Funds For Privately-Operated Charter Schools Verses Improving Persistently Deplorable Charter School Transparency and Accountability | Dissident Voice

Ending Public Funds For Privately-Operated Charter Schools Verses Improving Persistently Deplorable Charter School Transparency and Accountability | Dissident Voice

Ending Public Funds For Privately-Operated Charter Schools Verses Improving Persistently Deplorable Charter School Transparency and Accountability

One of the ways that even those who skillfully expose and critique endless charter school problems still miss the mark and (un)wittingly support the destruction of public education through more school privatization schemes is by obsessing over how to improve disturbingly low levels of transparency and accountability in the charter school sector, instead of demanding that no public funds or assets be funneled to charter schools in the first place. This shows that the world outlook guiding such writers and investigators is not free of the grip of capital-centered thinking and categories, which is hindering progress.

The notion that thousands of charter schools engaged in all sorts of fraud, corruption, waste, and other serious problems can be fixed by implementing “smarter” policies, laws, or regulations that somehow “rein them in” ignores the fact that charter schools are deregulated and have loopholes by conscious design. The “Wild West” feature of charter schools is deliberate, inherent, and directly related to their “free market” underpinnings. This is not some aberration, oversight, or the result of poor thinking and planning. Far more importantly though, such a notion ignores the fact that charter schools have no legitimate claim to public funds or assets because they are not public entities in any way, shape, or form. Charter schools are not public schools; they never have been. Public funds belong only to public schools, no one else. To funnel public wealth to private competing interests under the banner of high ideals is irrational, destructive, and unethical.

A school cannot be public in the proper sense of the word if its structures, functions, aims, practices, policies, owners, and results differ significantly from public schools that have been around for generations. Furthermore, something does not become public just because it is blindly called public over CONTINUE READING: Ending Public Funds For Privately-Operated Charter Schools Verses Improving Persistently Deplorable Charter School Transparency and Accountability | Dissident Voice

Capitalism Is in Crisis, and Billionaires Know It | Diane Ravitch's blog

Capitalism Is in Crisis, and Billionaires Know It | Diane Ravitch's blog

Capitalism Is in Crisis, and Billionaires Know It

This article in the Washington Post examines the alarming increase in inequality as a small number of billionaires take control of the economy and the future. The article does not mention the billionaires’ political efforts to gain control of state and local school boards so as to destroy the public schools by replacing them with privately managed charter schools.

The article mentions the deep concern of Seth Klarman, a hedge funder in Boston, but fails to note that he was a Dark Money contributor to the 2016 referendum in Massachusetts that was intended to add 12 charter schools every year wherever they wanted to open. Teachers,  parents, unions, and civil rights groups combined to defeat the billionaires—not only Klarman, but Bloomberg, the Waltons, and others.

My comments are in BOLD.

”PALO ALTO, Calif. —A perfect California day. The sun was shining, a gentle breeze was blowing and, at a Silicon Valley coffee shop, Rep. Ro Khanna was sitting across from one of his many billionaire constituents discussing an uncomfortable subject: the growing unpopularity of billionaires and their giant tech companies.

“There’s some more humility out here,” Khanna (D-Calif.) said.

The billionaire on the other side of the table let out a nervous laugh. Chris Larsen was on his third start-up and well on his way to being one of the wealthiest people in the valley, if not the world.

“Realizing people hate your guts has some value,” he joked.

“For decades, Democrats and Republicans have hailed America’s business elite, especially in Silicon Valley, as the country’s salvation. The government might be gridlocked, the electorate angry and divided, but America’s innovators seemed to promise a relatively pain-free way out of the mess. Their companies produced an endless series of products that kept the U.S. economy churning and its gross domestic product climbing. Their philanthropic efforts were aimed at fixing some of the country’s most vexing problems. Government’s role was to stay out of the way.

“Now that consensus is shattering. For the first time in decades, capitalism’s future is a subject of debate among presidential hopefuls and a source of growing angst for America’s business elite. In places such as Silicon Valley, the slopes of Davos, Switzerland, and the halls of Harvard Business School, there is a sense that the kind of capitalism that once made America an economic envy is responsible for the growing inequality and anger that is tearing the country apart.”

Something is terribly wrong, and even the billionaires know it. Some might want change, but they want to control the change. 

“The 2008 financial crisis may have revealed the CONTINUE READING: Capitalism Is in Crisis, and Billionaires Know It | Diane Ravitch's blog