Arkansas: Cathy Frye Offers a Who’s Who of the Walton Privatization Movement | Diane Ravitch's blog

Arkansas: Cathy Frye Offers a Who’s Who of the Walton Privatization Movement | Diane Ravitch's blog

Arkansas: Cathy Frye Offers a Who’s Who of the Walton Privatization Movement

Cathy Frye is a veteran journalist who joined the staff of the Arkansas Public Schools Resource Center as communications director for three years. She learned that APSRC was a shell organization funded by the billionaire Waltons to trick rural schools into joining the Walton crusade to eliminate public schools.

In this post, Frye names names.

She begins:

Tonight, I am sharing a Who’s Who in the Arkansas education “reform” movement.

First – a reminder: The end game is not charterization. It is privatization. Charter schools are merely a bridge. Look at them as place-holders.

The Arkansas Public School Resource Center, where I worked for three years as the communications director, purports to support both open-enrollment charter schools and rural traditional school districts. In actuality, APSRC is one of many Arkansas-based and Walton-funded lobbying entities.  Some of these organizations specialize in charters. Others exist to promote private schools and vouchers. One seeks to convince teachers that they don’t need to belong to unions. A couple others promote the alleged glories of school “choice.”

Here’s a list of such organizations:

• Arkansas Public School Resource Center
• Arkansas Learns
• The Reform Alliance
• Arkansas State Teachers Association
• RootEd NWA

Remember, Arkansas is not the only state being targeted by American billionaires who seek to do away with public education and those pesky teachers’ unions. The Waltons are among those leading the charge. Curious, isn’t it, that the Waltons and other billionaires who are supposedly concerned about education haven’t donated a dime to public schools. Instead, they’re focused on supporting charters and private schools. 

 Arkansas: Cathy Frye Offers a Who’s Who of the Walton Privatization Movement | Diane Ravitch's blog

Chicago Reaches Tentative Deal With School Support Staff, But Not With Teachers Union | HuffPost

Chicago Reaches Tentative Deal With School Support Staff, But Not With Teachers Union | HuffPost

Chicago Reaches Tentative Deal With School Support Staff, But Not With Teachers Union
The standoff between Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Teachers Union has resulted in an eighth day of striking, the city’s longest in over 30 years.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Sunday night that the city has reached a tentative deal with striking public school support staff, but that there is no agreement with the teachers union.
The lack of a deal between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union led to the cancellation of classes on Monday, making this walkout Chicago’s longest teachers strike in more than 30 years. More than 300,000 students will have missed eight days of school on Monday due to the strike, which is now entering its third week.
Lightfoot and schools CEO Janice Jackson said at a news conference Sunday that the city had reached a tentative agreement with SEIU Local 73, the union representing 7,500 school support staff who had been striking alongside CTU members. School support staff include bus aides, special education aides, custodial workers and security officers.The tentative agreement with SEIU reportedly includes a 16% pay increase; more dollars an hour extra for bus aides, security and custodians after a certain number of years; more input from bus aides on routes; and better working conditions for special education aides, according to Chalkbeat Chicago.

LIVE FROM PRESS BRIEFING ROOM: Mayor Lightfoot and Dr. Janice Jackson join with members of the press to provide updates on contract negotiations with Chicago Teachers Union.https://t.co/NJhNd81ho9

— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) October 28, 2019

“This is a victory for working people in Chicago and shows what is possible when we unite and take action,” SEIU Local 73 President Dian Palmer said in a statement. “The lowest paid support workers who are the backbone of our schools are going to see CONTINUE READING: Chicago Reaches Tentative Deal With School Support Staff, But Not With Teachers Union | HuffPost

Importance of teaching black culture to black male students

Importance of teaching black culture to black male students

Some evidence for the importance of teaching black culture to black students
A separate class for black boys led to improvements in dropout rates, study finds

Since former President Barack Obama launched his My Brother’s Keeper initiative in 2014 to support black and Latino boys and young men, nearly 250 communities across 50 states have launched programs under its umbrella. But although these programs have increased in popularity and spent an estimated $1.6 billion in donations and loans, little is known about how well these support programs accomplish their objectives of raising academic achievement, keeping boys of color in school and helping more go to college.

The first rigorous evaluation of one of the larger programs came out in October 2019 and found some promising results. Stanford University researchers studied a special class expressly for black teenage boys in Oakland, California, called the Manhood Development Program. They found that black boys were less likely to drop out of high school if the class was offered at their school compared to black boys at schools where it wasn’t offered. In a high school with 60 black boys in ninth grade, only three students dropped out, on average, instead of five students in schools that didn’t offer the course.

Most of students in the class were ninth and 10th graders. For black boys who were offered the class in both grades, those annual improvements in dropout rates translate into a 3 percentage point increase in their high school graduation rate, according to Thomas Dee, the lead researcher and a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education.

“This is one of the few evaluations,” said Gloria Ladson-Billings, president of the National Academy of Education and an educational theorist who originally developed the ideas for “culturally relevant” instruction that guide these black-only programs. “It shows that it CONTINUE READING: Importance of teaching black culture to black male students

The Strained Relationship Between Black Mothers And Their Daughters | MadameNoire – Parenting for Liberation

The Strained Relationship Between Black Mothers And Their Daughters | MadameNoire – Parenting for Liberation

The Strained Relationship Between Black Mothers And Their Daughters | MadameNoire

“I went through it and I made it out alright” is no longer a rhetoric I will accept from Black mothers regarding the abuse of Black girls.”

Young Black girls don’t need to be beaten into submission. They are intelligent beings capable of reason and logic. Young Black girls don’t need to be told how horrible other Black girls are. The western world has perfected that narrative so well that the last thing it needs is help from you and I. Finally, young Black girls are not the sum of their body parts. As women who know firsthand what it’s like to be reduced to our reproductive properties, the last thing we should be doing is punishing our girls for theirs. Young Black girls should both be seen and heard — yes by their mothers too — and they are equally deserving of our love, patience, and support. “I went through it and I made it out alright” is no longer a rhetoric I will accept from Black women regarding the abuse of Black girls. Contrary to widespread belief, we are not better for having endured and childhood trauma is not a rite of passage. If we value the lives of Black women, then we have no excuse to continue failing Black girls. This isn’t an issue we created but it’s one we must take responsibility to resolve. After all, isn’t that what Black Girl Magic is all about?

— Read on madamenoire.com/1026019/the-strained-relationship-between-black-mothers-and-their-daughters/

READ MORE: Parenting for Liberation - https://wp.me/P7fXox-1 on @wordpressdotcom

Enough Basic Staffing and More Community Schools: Two Important but Different Issues | janresseger

Enough Basic Staffing and More Community Schools: Two Important but Different Issues | janresseger

Enough Basic Staffing and More Community Schools: Two Important but Different Issues

The NY Times‘ Dana Goldstein published a story last week about the Chicago teachers’ strike. While Goldstein should be commended for supporting the efforts of the teachers in the nation’s third largest school district to bargain around their students’ needs for smaller classes, more counselors, school psychologists, nurses, and librarians, her article is misleading.

Goldstein conflates two important but separate issues when she writes: “These demands have risen as activists promote a broader mission for educators: a vision of schools as community centers that offer an array of health and social services to children, especially those from low income families. In Chicago, it has become clear that teacher pay is not the primary sticking point in the negotiations; after all, the city has already agreed to a raise. The Chicago Teachers Union is asking that the district enshrine in its contract a promise to hire more counselors, health workers and librarians, and to free them from tasks outside of their core duties.”

Yes, the Chicago Teachers Union has demanded that the union contract cover students’ learning conditions.  But the teachers’ primary goal in Chicago has been to rectify years of neglect for their students’ basic needs.  The union’s central focus was not for a newer—and also very important—idea for wraparound Community Schools.

Here are the two issues Goldstein conflates:

• First, in many underfunded public school districts today—especially in urban school districts with extreme concentrations of student poverty and in isolated rural school CONTINUE READING: Enough Basic Staffing and More Community Schools: Two Important but Different Issues | janresseger

With A Brooklyn Accent: Why Hip Hop Began in the Bronx- My Lecture for C-Span

With A Brooklyn Accent: Why Hip Hop Began in the Bronx- My Lecture for C-Span

Why Hip Hop Began in the Bronx- My Lecture for C-Span

What I am about to describe to you is one of the most improbable and inspiring stories you will ever hear. It is about how young people in a section of New York widely regarded as a site of unspeakable violence and tragedy created an art form that would sweep the world.  It is a story filled with ironies, unexplored connections and lessons for today. And I am proud to share it not only with my wonderful Rock and Roll to Hip Hop class but with C-Span’s global audience through its lectures in American history series.

Before going into the substance of my lecture, which explores some features of Bronx history which many people might not be familiar with, I want to explain what definition of Hip Hop that I will be using in this talk.

Some people think of Hip Hop exclusively as “rap music,” an art form taken to it’s highest form by people like Tupac Shakur, Missy Elliot, JZ, Nas, Kendrick Lamar, Wu Tang Clan and other masters of that verbal and musical art, but I am thinking of it as a multilayered arts movement of which rapping is only one component.  What evolved in the Bronx in the early and mid 70’s, and which spread to disfranchised communities around the world in the 80’s, consisted of four connected components: DJ’ing and beat making, the original art form which set the Hip Hop Revolution in motion;  B-Boying or Break Dancing, a form of acrobatic group dancing that bore more than a few commonalities with martial arts; Graffiti art, a form of illegal public art and self-expression which found its way into flyers announcing hip hop events as well as on buildings and transportation systems, and finally, Mc’ing or rapping, rhyming over beats in a style that could vary from the boastful, to the reflective to the assertively political.

   ALL of these art forms, which emerged in CONTINUE READING: With A Brooklyn Accent: Why Hip Hop Began in the Bronx- My Lecture for C-Span

Design Tech High School (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Design Tech High School (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Design Tech High School (Part 1)

It is 8:30 AM. I am standing with 30 faculty and staff meeting in a circle in a large room called the Design Realization Garage (more about this space below). This is a daily faculty meeting. Everyone is standing and as Melissa Mizel, Director of the school, holding an open laptop in one hand, makes announcements, describes activities that will be occur during the day, and then asks assembled group if individuals have anything to add. A few teachers speak up: one needs a projector in 205, another announces a special activity in a class, and the counselor tells the group which colleges will be on campus today. Just a few minutes shy of 8:45, Melissa asks for any more announcements. There are none and she says “we are adjourned.” every person in the circle turns to the next person and gives a high five. The stand-up faculty meeting is over.

Design Tech High School, hereafter d.tech, is a charter high school in the San Mateo Union High School District. Students are admitted by lottery. Authorized as a charter in 2014, the school has moved quarters three times, the last occurring in 2018 when they moved into a new building located on the campus of Oracle, a for-profit technology company.  The high school cost $43 million to build and Oracle agreed to lease the building to the charter school for one dollar a year. While d.tech has its own school board and is independently operated, this is the first public high school located on a corporate site.*

Students participated in the design of the building. You enter the school into a well-lit, expansive atrium that is the centerpiece and assembly hall for student CONTINUE READING: Design Tech High School (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

LOIS WEINER: It’s Chicago Educators Versus the Ruling Class

It’s Chicago Educators Versus the Ruling Class

It’s Chicago Educators Versus the Ruling Class
Striking educators in Chicago are showing the country how union power can confront and turn back the abhorrent conditions of the neoliberal era.

Though the media is casting the strike of education workers in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) as (just) another episode in the wave of teachers’ strikes, and the press in Chicago is doing its best to defeat the union, this contract campaign has already set a new bar for resistance to policies on education and the economy in place for decades.Two unions whose members are mostly women, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the union representing CPS support workers, SEIU Local 73, are directly challenging not only the billionaires who control the GOP and want policies that benefit their profits and strengthen their hold on government, but also the Democratic Party’s shell game of claiming to be friends of labor and education while continuing the disastrous bipartisan policies that have fostered inequality and degraded public education, especially in low-income communities of color.

Since the publication of “A Nation at Risk” in 1983, which launched what in hindsight we know was the US iteration of the global neoliberal project in education, schools and teaching throughout the country have been transformed — supported by liberals, labor, and the education establishment, which bought the rationale that schools and teachers could save the economy by adopting “excellence” reforms and later, privatization. Though groups of activist teachers and parents have been struggling to make schools something more than joyless sorting machines based on standardized tests, austerity has intensified the pain and unfairness of a narrowed curriculum tied to testing. Cutbacks in social services in the schools and in communities have made conditions in classrooms even worse.

Damage is most intense in the low-income Hispanic and African American communities that most depend on schools to be a refuge and help some students climb out of poverty. Chicago is no exception. Its schools are dirty, cleaned less often and less well, often by janitors working for private companies with CONTINUE READING: It’s Chicago Educators Versus the Ruling Class

Obama White House Photographer Suggests Trump Situation Room Photo of Unfolding al-Baghdadi Raid Was Staged

Obama White House Photographer Suggests Trump Situation Room Photo of Unfolding al-Baghdadi Raid Was Staged

OBAMA WHITE HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER SUGGESTS TRUMP SITUATION ROOM PHOTO OF UNFOLDING AL-BAGHDADI RAID WAS STAGED

The chief official White House photographer for former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama suggested the Trump administration was posing for Saturday's stern-faced Situation Room picture in the wake of a U.S. military raid that resulted in the death of a major ISIS figurehead.

Pete Souza, the former director of the White House Photography Office, called the timestamp of the Situation Room picture into question Sunday morning. Souza inferred that it's very unlikely President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and several top administration officials and generals were actively monitoring the raid on ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's compound when the photograph was taken Saturday in Washington.

Souza took the famous photograph of Obama and a shocked then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intently watching the Seal Team 6 raid on the Abbottabad compound that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Pete Souza

✔@PeteSouza

The raid, as reported, took place at 3:30PM Washington time. The photo, as shown in the camera IPTC data, was taken at "17:05:24". https://twitter.com/Scavino45/status/1188451497421561856 …

Dan Scavino Jr.

✔@Scavino45

38.4K

8:05 AM - Oct 27, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

18.2K people are talking about this

"The raid, as reported, took place at 3:30PM Washington time. The photo, as shown in the CONTINUE READING: Obama White House Photographer Suggests Trump Situation Room Photo of Unfolding al-Baghdadi Raid Was Staged

The Charter-to-Prison Pipeline - Progressive.org

The Charter-to-Prison Pipeline - Progressive.org

The Charter-to-Prison Pipeline
The charter system that often paints itself as a better option for black parents does not acknowledge the harm rigid disciplinary policies can impose on black students.

In late September, headlines flickered across my Twitter timeline about a six-year-old black girl who was arrested at school for a temper tantrum. In outrage and confusion, I opened up the articles to understand how such a thing could happen. 

It turns out that, actually, two six-year-olds were arrested. Their mugshots were taken. Both were charged with misdemeanors. 

Meralyn Kirkland came forward to the media to identify her granddaughter, Kaia, as one of the two children arrested. Kaia has sleep apnea and didn’t get enough rest the night prior, the grandmother explained. When she was taken to the office for being disruptive, she was grabbed by the wrist by a school staffer and began to kick. She was then arrested and charged.

Following public outcry, the charges against the children were dropped and the school resource officer who arrested them was fired. Despite these developments, the fact remains: six-year-olds were arrested.

It takes some digging through all the media headlines to find out, all this happened at a charter school.  CONTINUE READING: The Charter-to-Prison Pipeline - Progressive.org

Amazon.com: Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys Through "No Excuses" Teaching eBook: Jim Horn: Kindle Store - https://www.amazon.com/Work-Hard-Be-Journeys-Teaching-ebook/dp/B01CWGUDTC

More Eyes Needed To Keep Watch On The Charter School Industry

More Eyes Needed To Keep Watch On The Charter School Industry

More Eyes Needed To Keep Watch On The Charter School Industry

Our oversight is “proactive and responsive.”- José Cole-Gutiérrez, LAUSD Charter School Division

The number of charter schools is growing rapidly. Just three years ago the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) reported that it was “the largest district charter school authorizer in the nation, with about 250 independent and affiliated charter schools serving over 130,000 students.” Today, there are about 320 charter schools being overseen by the district. With the state ignoring the request for a temporary moratorium and the board unwilling to enforce their own, the number of these publicly funded private schools will only increase.

As much as the Charter School Division (CSD) aspires to being “proactive” in its oversight, the fact is that they are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of schools that operate under its jurisdiction. Since the money provided by the state does not cover the full cost of providing proper supervision, the district cannot provide the appropriate staffing to ensure that charters are operating within the bounds of the law. As a result, even a school like Granada Hills Charter High School, which is larger than 86% of all school districts nationwide, does not have one person from the CSD who is CONTINUE READING: More Eyes Needed To Keep Watch On The Charter School Industry

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Nearly Spooky Edition (10/26)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Nearly Spooky Edition (10/26)

 ICYMI:  Nearly Spooky Edition (10/26)

Here's the reading for the week. Remember to pass it on.

School Choice Has Not Cured Philadelphia's Ailing System  

The Inquirer takes a look at choice in Philly and the various problems it hasn't fixed.

The History of Privatization

Talking Points Memo takes a look a privatization across a series of articles, including public education.

Teach For America Will Not Save Us 

Larry Lee blogs about one of the "solutions" that will not help with Alabama's teacher shortage.

How To Reduce the Toxicity of Teen Girl Social Media Use 

Some good ideas for blunting the impact of social media on teens. Pretty sure this would work for boys, too.

Could Betsy DeVos Cost Trump the Election

Jennifer  Berkshire has made a few trips to Michigan, and this time she brought back an interesting angle on 2020 elections for the New Republic. To know DeVos is....well, not to love her, exactly, and that could well be cutting into the GOP base.

College Board Under Fire for Selling Student Data

No this isn't an old article from one of the other six zillion times the College Board has caught grief for monetizing young humans. This time it's Non Profit Quarterly noting their well-earned troubles.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn Pushes for USED To Move To Tennessee 

Okay, it's not going to happen, but it's an intriguing little proposal.

DeVos Held In Contempt By Court

Yes, you've already heard about this. But don't you want to read about it one more time?

City Fund Looking To Buy Elections 

Chalkbeat reports that one of the newer reformster groups is throwing large piles of money at local school board elections. Because democracy is just so damned inconvenient.

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Nearly Spooky Edition (10/26)

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION

AND DON'T FORGET PETER GREENE ON FORBES CLICK HERE 

Taking Back Teacher Evaluations

100+by Peter Greene / 20h

There's a slowly-rising tide of writing out there focusing on principals and evaluations, quietly returning focus to the idea of making evaluations meaningful. It's a welcome change, because the status quo for the past over-a-decade has been the junk that disruptors stuck us with, in which teacher "evaluation" meant "slap some Big Standardized Test scores together and call that the teacher evaluat

OCT 25

Betsy DeVos Enlists Help Of Kellyanne Conway And American Enterprise Institute To Sell $5 Billion School Choice Program

200+by Peter Greene / 2d

At the beginning of this month, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway sat down with Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute to make one more pitch for DeVos’s Education Freedom Scholarships. The program seems unlikely to succeed on the federal level. What Is She Selling? The EFS are what’s known as a tax credit scholarship. Several states have them, a

OCT 24

NC: When Charters Become Orphans

33by Peter Greene / 3d

The TeamCFA website promises that the foundation exists "to promote the academic growth and success of each student in each TeamCFA school as well as the growth of the entire network. Each school in the TeamCFA network receives long term, meaningful partnership and oversight from the TeamCFA Foundation, with specific regard to academics, business, and governance through the Affiliate Agreement." B

OCT 23

NYC: Testing Is Still Not Teaching

30by Peter Greene / 3d

People say dumb things when they're trying to defend bad policy decisions. Alex Zimmerman at Chalkbeat reports that New York City schools are going to hit third and sixth graders at 76 schools labeled "low performing" by the state with three more tests per year. This is part of a plan to start testing the crap out of students doing formative assessments four times a year. Chancellor Richard Carran

CT: Another Way To Privatize Education

60by Peter Greene / 4d

To read press accounts, one must conclude that Ray and Barbara Dalio are not exactly like other billionaire dabblers in education. He is a successful hedge fund manager and the richest guy in Connecticut. She immigrated from Spain fifty-ish years ago and worked at the Whitney before settling into the mom-and-kids track. He has announced that capitalism is not working, and that income gap is a huge

OCT 22

Vouchers And Federally-Supported Discrimination

38by Peter Greene / 5d

School voucher programs are becoming one of the major fronts in a federal battle to safeguard discrimination by religious organizations. Some flaps created by private religious schools seem minor, like the pastor at a Catholic school who banned Harry Potter books because he believes the books contain “actual curses and spells.” But earlier this year, the Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis touch

OCT 20

ICYMI: Why I Write Day Edition (10/20)

by Peter Greene / 7d

I have an easier time understanding why some people write than I do understanding why so many people don't. Doesn't everybody need to? But then-- there are many things I don't fully understand, like why some people hate candy corn. While I'm pondering, here are some pieces of writing from the week for you to read and share. Murdoch-Funded Anti-Gerrymandering Group Raises Questions Not about educat

Shame

100+by Peter Greene / 7d

The most shocking and disturbing thing that I saw on line this week had nothing to do with politics. It was a post by a teacher explaining her school's disciplinary system. As with many systems, students have a color-coded behavior level monitored and adjusted throughout the day. Unlike any school I'd ever heard of before, students at this school receive a colored card for their behavior level tha

OCT 18

What Ever Happened To Rebecca Friedrichs?

66by Peter Greene / 8d

You remember Rebecca Friedrichs. She was the face of the union-busting lawsuit of 2014 . Supreme Court Justice Alito signaled that he was ready and willing to hear a case that would revisit the issue of union free-riders, and the 

CURMUDGUCATION