Network for Public Education: The Work of Our Grassroots Education Network | Diane Ravitch's blog

Network for Public Education: The Work of Our Grassroots Education Network | Diane Ravitch's blog

Network for Public Education: The Work of Our Grassroots Education Network

Marla Kilfoyle, who used to be executive director of the BadAss Teachers Association, is now the Grassroots Coordinator for the Network for Public Education. She stays in touch with grassroots organizations of parents and teachers and other supporters of public schools across the nation.

Here is her report for the month of September.

The NPE Grassroots Education Network is a network of 150 grassroots organizations nationwide who have joined together to preserve, promote, improve, and strengthen our public schools. If you know of a group that would like to join this powerful network, please go here to sign on.

If you have any questions about the NPE Grassroots Education Network please contact Marla Kilfoyle, NPE Grassroots Education Network Liaison at marlakilfoyle@networkforpubliceducation.org

Notes from Marla CONTINUE READING: Network for Public Education: The Work of Our Grassroots Education Network | Diane Ravitch's blog

Mr. G for District 3: Chris Guerrieri's Education Matters: Just what we need during a pandemic, a Jeb Bush siting

Mr. G for District 3: Chris Guerrieri's Education Matters: Just what we need during a pandemic, a Jeb Bush siting

Just what we need during a pandemic, a Jeb Bush siting

Mr. G for District 3: Chris Guerrieri's Education Matters: Superintendent Greene, the pandemic won't last but you losing the confidence of your staff probably will - https://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/2020/08/superintendent-greene-pandemic-wont.html

Jeb Bush pushes vouchers for unregulated private schools. These schools don't take any of the high stakes tests that public school is required to and in fact, have so little accountability you might as well say they have none.  Jeb Bush also pushes the high stakes accountability tests that have been beating public schools up. Both of these are facts and both of them are incongruent which makes me think Bush either doesn't know hat he is talking about, just wants to punish public schools or both.

There is a pandemic going on, whether we are in school or not things are going to be considerably different for at least a while. Those in charge should be looking to lighten the load, but instead Bush wants to double down. 

From WLRN,

Florida education officials canceled state exams this spring as public schools shifted abruptly online at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.CONTINUE READING: Mr. G for District 3: Chris Guerrieri's Education Matters: Just what we need during a pandemic, a Jeb Bush siting

Magical Thinking Threatens American Children - LA Progressive

Magical Thinking Threatens American Children - LA Progressive

Magical Thinking Threatens American Children
Trump’s Sociopathic Magical Thinking Will Ignite a Horrific Catastrophe if Schools Reopen In-Person

On July 16, according to The Washington Post, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made the dangerously ignorant claim that,

“More and more studies show that kids are actually stoppers of the disease and they don’t get it and transmit it themselves, so we should be in a posture of — the default should be getting back to school kids in person, in the classroom.”

Her tag-team partner for bullying the reopening of schools based on magical thinking that threatens the health and safety of children, teenagers, their teachers and families is the Merchant of Death-in-Chief Donald Trump. He offered an equally perilously uninformed argument for reopening schools on July 23, claiming incredulously that “a permanent shutdown was never the strategy, which would ultimately lead to greater mortality and irreversible harm.”

If we once again are bullied into Trump’s magical thinking and DeVos’s ignorance, a cataclysm awaits us, compounded by the runaway infection caused by “reopening” the economy.

BuzzFlash warned that Trump’s blustering, threatening calls to “reopen the economy” would lead to a Coronavirus surge. Then on July 13, we urged the media to acknowledge Trump’s sociopathology in order to prevent a compounding catastrophe from reopening the schools, given the daily evidence that children of all ages (including infants) can get and transmit the disease and can become ill and even die from it. The health impact and transmission varies based on age, but no age is immune from the Coronavirus, including infants.

All one needs to do is to read the statistics from the Red States that are going along with the Trump’s magical thinking to reopen schools that are the very states that are in the midst of record-setting COVID-19 spikes, hospitalizations and deaths. It appears the more adamant the pro-Trump governor is to spreading the virus in a mistaken notion that it is worth it to “reopen” the economy (when the surges are actually setting back a safe restart of the economy based on CONTINUE READING: Magical Thinking Threatens American Children - LA Progressive

NYC Public School Parents: DOE plans for the reopening of schools and critiques from CM Treyger, Public Advocate Williams & former Superintendent Matt Bromme

NYC Public School Parents: DOE plans for the reopening of schools and critiques from CM Treyger, Public Advocate Williams & former Superintendent Matt Bromme

DOE plans for the reopening of schools and critiques from CM Treyger, Public Advocate Williams & former Superintendent Matt Bromme

Announcements and developments are now coming fast and furious about the plans and conditions for the reopening of NYC public schools in the fall. 

Rather than the DOE's current plan for "blended" learning for all students whose parents want them to attend school, Council Education Chair Mark Treyger released a proposal about how the DOE should focus in-person instruction on elementary school students and those with special needs, English Language Learners and living in temporary housing.  This makes sense as especially as children under ten are believed to transmit Covid  less effectively and these students generally do worst with remote learning. As he pointed out, if most middle schools and high school buildings are to be closed with their students engaging in full-time remote learning, then younger students could be provided with more classroom space in those buildings.

Public Advocate Jumanne Williams came up with a similar plan, but with more emphasis on funding and outside learning.  Both Treyger and Williams also advised delaying any reopening to later in the fall to allow for more planning time.  I was quoted in El Diario generally in agreement with these ideas, but concerned that if we delay further, infection rates may rise later in the year.

Then the city came out with a  complex rubric and protocol for individual school closures if Covid emerge among students or staff, and the Mayor just announced that if the positivity rate citywide increases to 3 percent by early Sept. he will not open schools at all, while the Governor's metric for school closing is 5 percent.  To make things even more complex, NYC's current COVID positivity rate is 1.1 percent according to the state and 2 percent according to the city, with their figures differing for unexplained reasons. 

Michael Mulgrew, President of the UFT, said that none of these precautions are sufficient as far as he's concerned:

"We need randomized testing of school communities throughout the year and a vigorous contact tracing system that gives schools test results and a course of action with a 24 CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: DOE plans for the reopening of schools and critiques from CM Treyger, Public Advocate Williams & former Superintendent Matt Bromme

Peter Greene: Don’t Believe the D in DFER | Diane Ravitch's blog

Peter Greene: Don’t Believe the D in DFER | Diane Ravitch's blog

Peter Greene: Don’t Believe the D in DFER

Democrats for Education Reform is a group of Wall Street hedge fund executives that decided that schools would improve if they were privatized and adhered to business principles, like pay for performance, no unions, testing, accountability, and private management. DFER likes mayoral control and state takeovers, not elected school boards. Above all, it is mad for charter schools, which honor the principles of business management. DFER has not been dissuaded by the failure of charters to produce better results than public schools. It has not been moved by the charters’ practices of skimming, exclusion, and attrition. It ignores the cascade of charter scandals.

Peter Greene explains the origins of DFER here. The billionaires who founded DFER knew it did not have to win converts within the Republican Party, which embraced privatization. Its target was the Democratic Party, which had a long history of support for public schools.

Peter wrote:

DFER is no more Democratic than my dog. There’s not enough space between their positions and the positions of the conservative Fordham Institute (though I think, on balance, Fordham is generally more respectful of teachers). But for the privatizers to be effective, they need to work both sides of the aisle. Also, RFER would sound too much like a pot advocacy group.

So they’re not really Democrats. And they don’t want to reform education– they just want to privatize it and reduce teachers to easily replaced widgets. And they aren’t particularly interested in education other than as a sector of the economy. I suppose I have no beef with their use of the word “for,” as long as they put it with the things that they are really for– privatization and profit. So, CONTINUE READING: Peter Greene: Don’t Believe the D in DFER | Diane Ravitch's blog

3 Lessons From How Schools Responded to the 1918 Pandemic Worth Heeding Today (Mary Battenfeld) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

3 Lessons From How Schools Responded to the 1918 Pandemic Worth Heeding Today (Mary Battenfeld) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

3 Lessons From How Schools Responded to the 1918 Pandemic Worth Heeding Today (Mary Battenfeld)

Mary Battenfeld is a Clinical Professor of American and New England Studies at Boston University. This appeared in Pocket. Thanks to Hank Levin for sending it to me.

Much like what has happened in 2020, most U.S. schools closed during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Their doors were shut for up to four months, with some exceptions, to curb the spread of the disease.

As a professor who teaches and writes about children’s history, I have studied how schools responded to the 1918 influenza pandemic. Though wary of painting the past with the present’s favorite colors, I see three main lessons today’s educators and policymakers can draw from how schools and communities responded to the last century’s pandemic.

1. Invest in School Nurses

School nurses were transformative when they were first introduced in 1902.

Rather than simply send sick students home, where they would miss school while receiving no treatment, nurses cared for children’s illnesses and provided health information to their families.

After a study showed that nurses cut student absences in half, more and more CONTINUE READING: 3 Lessons From How Schools Responded to the 1918 Pandemic Worth Heeding Today (Mary Battenfeld) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

New York City won’t reopen schools unless daily infection rate is below 3 percent

New York City won’t reopen schools unless daily infection rate is below 3 percent

New York City won’t reopen schools unless daily infection rate is below 3 percent

New York City officials said Friday the nation’s largest school system won’t reopen for in-person instruction unless the city’s coronavirus infection rate remains below 3 percent on a seven-day rolling average.

Key Context: Mayor Bill de Blasio and schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced test-and-trace protocols for public schools Thursday night. Decisions to quarantine classrooms or close schools will be based on the facts of each investigation, officials said.

New York City‘s Covid-19 infection rate has been less than 3 percent since June 10, the mayor said.

"We are going to hold New York City to a very high standard, our schools to a very high standard,” de Blasio said during a Friday morning press conference. "We will not reopen our schools unless the city infection rate is below 3 percent."

Impact: If the infection rate goes above 3 percent, the city will close schools and transition to remote learning. De Blasio said child care will remain the same regardless of the scenario, noting that officials are working to develop that plan. But, the mayor cautioned, the city has to prepare itself "for a very non-linear experience."

The city is also planning to make laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases public. In the spring, the Department of Education faced criticism when it stopped publicly confirming positive cases in schools. The DOE attributed it to the large volume of cases.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said schools can reopen if their region is in phase four of reopening and has a daily infection rate of 5 percent or less over a 14-day average, consistent with CDC guidance. The city said it chose the 3 percent threshold as it is the epicenter of cases in the state and one of the most densely populated places CONTINUE READING: New York City won’t reopen schools unless daily infection rate is below 3 percent

Coronavirus: The debate over reopening America’s schools - Vox

Coronavirus: The debate over reopening America’s schools - Vox

Coronavirus: The debate over reopening America’s schools
All of Vox’s coverage on the complicated reopening of schools during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As back-to-school season approaches and the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage on, the debate surrounding whether or not to reopen US schools in the fall is heating up. Some are arguing that reopening schools is essential for economic recovery, for working parents, and for children’s learning, while others are worried about the safety risks when it comes to coronavirus transmission.

States and cities across the United States are handling the complicated decision in different ways. Some K-12 schools are not reopening at all in the fall, citing the surging coronavirus cases across the country, and sticking with virtual learning in order to mitigate the spread of Covid-19. Students and faculty at many American universities have also shared concerns about the dangers of returning to college campuses in the fall; some colleges have elected to stick with virtual learning for the fall semester while others are attempting to open up for in-person classes. And many school districts are exploring hybrid options that offer a combination of in-person and virtual learning.

Here you’ll find all of Vox’s coverage on how America’s schools are approaching reopening this fall amid the coronavirus pandemic.

• July 28

  Pandemic learning “pods” don’t have to be just for the rich

  By Anna North

  How to make education more equitable during the Covid-19 crisis.
• July 18

  Many schools aren’t reopening in the fall. Now what?

  By Anna North

  How to help parents and kids when schools are closed, according to experts.
• July 16

  America’s child care problem is an economic problem

  By Anna North

  "Families are not okay," one expert says. It’s making the economic crisis way worse.
• July 15

  The key lesson from school openings abroad: Contain the virus

  By Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.com

  If schools in America do reopen, other countries have some best practices worth adopting.
• July 10

  The debate over reopening America’s K-12 schools, explained

  By Anna North

  Solving the school problem is crucial for parents and kids. Here’s what experts say would help.
• July 9

  I’m an epidemiologist and a dad. Here’s why I think schools should reopen.

  By Benjamin P. Linas

  Six questions about the safety of kids, teachers, and families, answered.
• July 8

  Reopening schools safely is going to take much more federal leadership

  By Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com

  Getting schools open again can be done, but it’ll take a lot of money and a real plan.
• July 1

  Close the bars. Reopen the schools.

  By German Lopez@germanrlopezgerman.lopez@vox.com

  States are doing reopening wrong. Here’s how to fix it.
• June 26

  Colleges say campuses can reopen safely. Students and faculty aren’t convinced.

  By Terry Nguyen

  Campuses plan to open with widespread testing, socially distanced classrooms, and mandated masks, but will that be enough to curb an outbreak?
• May 28

  The US should prioritize reopening schools, not salons and restaurants

  By Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com

  America can (and should) save small businesses with money, but schools are what teach kids to read.

Coronavirus: The debate over reopening America’s schools - Vox