NANCY BAILEY: Kindergarten Reading Push: Still Problematic During the Pandemic

Kindergarten Reading Push: Still Problematic During the Pandemic

Kindergarten Reading Push: Still Problematic During the Pandemic

Parents and educators, convinced that kindergartners must learn to read, might purchase unproven commercial online reading programs during the pandemic. The best solution for kindergartners currently is for school librarians and teachers to get interesting picture books and reading material into the hands of young children.

Standardized testing made pushing children to read in kindergarten part of the curriculum. No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Common Core State Standards contributed to remaking kindergarten. Now this harmful practice is interwoven into the kindergarten curriculum.

During a pandemic, it would seem like these harsh kindergarten requirements could be dropped. Instead, mandatory reading goals still highlight kindergarten.

A report by Christina A. Samuels in Education Week “Will Kindergartens Be Empty this Fall?” illustrates the problem. The report describes difficulties school CONTINUE READING: Kindergarten Reading Push: Still Problematic During the Pandemic

Texas schools are being compelled to reopen classrooms on the state's timetable, like it or not | Salon.com

Texas schools are being compelled to reopen classrooms on the state's timetable, like it or not | Salon.com

Texas schools are being compelled to reopen classrooms on the state's timetable, like it or not
Districts are compelled to have students back in classrooms after eight weeks of the school year's start.

After weeks of confusion and conflicting signals, Texas has settled into policies that effectively compel schools to reopen their classrooms this fall no later than eight weeks after the academic year begins, whether they want to or not.

Teachers, parents, school administrators and public health officials have been seeking clarity for weeks on how the state will approach reopening schools safely as coronavirus infections and deaths rise across Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott has not responded directly to questions from reporters about who has the authority to order schools closed in areas hard hit by the virus, and the Texas Education Agency has sent mixed messages on reopening guidelines.

But despite the lack of any formal announcement from the governor, the die was cast in in a rapid two-step process Tuesday. First, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released nonbinding legal guidance saying local public health officials do not have the power to preemptively require all schools in their jurisdictions to remain closed, even as COVID-19 cases continue to climb in many Texas hot spots.

Then, state education officials reversed an earlier decision by announcing they will not fund school districts that keep classrooms closed for longer than the state allows even if ordered to do so by a local health mandate. Taken together, the actions put school districts in the position of reopening classrooms on the state's timetable or losing funds and risking potential litigation.

Educators and families must once again rethink their back-to-school plans this fall. The education agency has given school districts up to eight weeks to limit the number of students permitted on their campuses, after which they must open classrooms to all students who want to attend.

That ninth week is looming large for superintendents who are not sure what the public health landscape will look like at that point. Now, they can't depend on their local health officials to give them more time, without losing money.

"Starting in the ninth week of our respective school years, regardless of the status of the virus in our CONTINUE READING: Texas schools are being compelled to reopen classrooms on the state's timetable, like it or not | Salon.com

New Georgia coronavirus outbreak among school staff doesn’t speak well for reopening – Raw Story

New Georgia coronavirus outbreak among school staff doesn’t speak well for reopening – Raw Story

New Georgia coronavirus outbreak among school staff doesn’t speak well for reopening

It took just a day for 260 members of the faculty and staff of Georgia’s largest school district to be called out for the coronavirus after in-person meetings this week.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 260 employees tested positive or were out due to contact with an infected person, Gwinnett County Public School announced.

“Through tracing, we know that the majority of these cases are the result of community spread, meaning we have people who have called in to report who have not been at school or work,” said Gwinnett spokeswoman Sloan Roach.

The school district is in a city with the largest rate of COVID-19 in Georgia, at 17,781 positive cases.

It was one of the reasons that teacher Ashley Newman said that she was forced to resign from her beloved job at a Gwinnett elementary school. Her young daughter’s daycare has so many children that it’s impossible to keep them distanced. So, she decided to stay home with her daughter. CONTINUE READING: New Georgia coronavirus outbreak among school staff doesn’t speak well for reopening – Raw Story

There Can Be No Safe and Just Re-opening Without Communities and Educators Working Together | Schott Foundation for Public Education

There Can Be No Safe and Just Re-opening Without Communities and Educators Working Together | Schott Foundation for Public Education

There Can Be No Safe and Just Re-opening Without Communities and Educators Working Together

Today, August 3, is the National Day of Resistance by the Demand Safe Schools Coalition. This coalition, a nationwide partnership between community advocacy groups and educator unions, has "come together to unite students, educators, parents and community to advance a racial justice agenda in public education, in particular by organizing for police-free schools. We’re working to galvanize a strong and growing student/educator/parent/community voice; a voice that says the government must go much further to provide the resources to ensure a safe and equitable school reopening and must provide for our communities and working families through transformational Common Good demands."

At Schott we've long held up the importance of cross-sector organizing and collaboration as the key to winning large-scale systemic change to improve public schools. In April 2018, in what would become the opening phases of more than a year of teacher strikes, Schott released Keeping Students First: Building Community Labor Partnerships for Strong Schools. In partnership with Building Movement Project we looked at three cities — Chicago, St. Paul, and Austin — to examine lessons learned from the successful community-labor coordination. The report also provides concrete ways advocates can start building these partnerships in their own cities.

Coalition members released 8 demands for today's Day of Resistance, the result of extensive discussion and deliberation among stakeholders:

• No reopening until the scientific data supports it
•  Police-free schools
• All schools must be supported to function as community schools with adequate numbers of counselors and nurses and community/parent outreach workers
• Safe conditions including lower class sizes, PPE, cleaning, testing, and other key protocols Equitable access to online learning
• Support for our communities and families, including canceling rents and mortgages, a moratorium on evictions/foreclosures, providing direct cash assistance to those not able to work or who are unemployed, and other critical social needs
• Moratorium on new charter or voucher programs and standardized testing
• Massive infusion of federal money to support the reopening funded by taxing billionaires and Wall Street
• Equitable access to online learning

This is a pivotal moment for communities and the public schools that serve them. Only by working together can we both tackle the present COVID-19 crisis and the long-standing problems of overpolicing, inequity and racism affecting our public education system.

Actions today are taking place at three dozen locations across the country: find one near you and join up!

There Can Be No Safe and Just Re-opening Without Communities and Educators Working Together | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Congressional Failure to Provide Relief for State Budgets and Public Schools Will Launch Spiraling Educational Inequality | janresseger

Congressional Failure to Provide Relief for State Budgets and Public Schools Will Launch Spiraling Educational Inequality | janresseger

Congressional Failure to Provide Relief for State Budgets and Public Schools Will Launch Spiraling Educational Inequality

As school districts move closer to the date when they had expected to open, more and more  districts are falling back on distance learning for all or part of the first semester. Public education is the primary American social institution which supports children and their families: Why are our political leaders so oblivious?  Why does the President refuse to take sufficient steps to control the transmission of COVID-19? And how, in early August, can the U.S. Senate fail to make safely reopening public schools a top priority?

On Saturday, the NY Times reported: “(H)undreds of districts across the country that were once planning to reopen their classrooms, many on a part-time basis, have reversed course in recent weeks as infections have spiked in many states… Of the nation’s 25 largest school districts, all but six have announced they will start remotely….”  Two essential conditions for starting in-person school are missing. The pandemic is raging out of control; no school district can reopen in locations with uncontrolled infection rates.  And even in places where the coronavirus has been contained, schools must be able to take steps to protect students, teachers, bus drivers, and other staff.

We are now seeing reports that expose the complexity of school reopening—something perhaps the President and Mitch McConnell have never really thought about.  In a NY Times column last week, three doctors set out to clarify the risks and challenges. The article features a table with colored boxes categorizing the risk of various ways to cope with the essentials that must be present in every school district. The first set of boxes considers the risks involved in just getting kids to and from school. In the box marked “low risk,” the doctors suggest walking or riding a bicycle or riding in a car with household members only.  The second category is “medium risk,” and in this box the doctors suggest carpooling including non-household members. The third category is “high risk.” Here the doctors warn about CONTINUE READING: Congressional Failure to Provide Relief for State Budgets and Public Schools Will Launch Spiraling Educational Inequality | janresseger

The COVID Classroom: Anything But Normal | deutsch29

The COVID Classroom: Anything But Normal | deutsch29

The COVID Classroom: Anything But Normal

Last week, I went to my classroom to begin preparing it for teaching COVID-style.

I was fortunate enough to be able to pack up my classroom once our governor declared in April 2020 that students would not be returning in person to school for the remainder of the 2020-21 school year. So, in some respects, preparing my room for pandemic teaching was rather easy since my personal possessions will remain packed away.

My desk is bare except for my roll book, my plexiglass clipboard (which may prove useful as a barrier) and my hand sanitizer.

No Kleenex on the desk since an open box of tissue could become contaminated by COVID-19.

No classroom set of books, either, so I dissembled the bookshelf to make room for socially-distanced student desks.

No need for my podium for student presentations, so I moved that further back and put my reading stool behind it. (To leave my stool in its usual place at the front of the room would have me too close to my students, who will also not be allowed to move to front of room to take turns leading the class. Too much movement; not enough space.)

The podium and stool are crowded at front of room near my projector cart and CONTINUE READING: The COVID Classroom: Anything But Normal | deutsch29

re: My Nomination for US Secretary of Education | The Jose Vilson

re: My Nomination for US Secretary of Education | The Jose Vilson

RE: MY NOMINATION FOR US SECRETARY OF EDUCATION

There’s a meme out there suggesting that I become the next Secretary of Education for this country. I use the word “meme” in the original sense where something gets repeated often. Some of it might have started from my pictures with then-presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro, but the more recent uptick ostensibly comes from Peter Greene’s Forbes article. In it, he takes on Liat Olenick’s original proposal – which then turned into a core tenet of Warren’s educational plan – and builds on it.

Greene has a few criteria that such a person should meet:

• A traditional public school teacher
• A venerated veteran teacher, at that
• A teacher who hasn’t been dubbed an edu-celebrity (an educational figure who amassed tens of thousands of social media influence in seemingly inauthentic ways)
• A person who has more years as a school-based educator than one who hasn’t been school-based
• A person who can delve into the big picture issues, the minutiae, and everything in between

And the first name he cites is mine.

On a personal level, I think my face fluctuated from mouth agape to eyes squinted. I laughed because Greene’s writing can tow the line between satire and factual without losing his audience, so I didn’t know whether to appreciate the sentiment or just laugh at the prospect.

But let me take him seriously for a few minutes.

First, I’d like to see presumptive Democratic nominee Joseph Biden displace current president CONTINUE READING: re: My Nomination for US Secretary of Education | The Jose Vilson

The DOE’s plan fails NYC students and teachers – a Teacher’s Letter to Anyone Listening | JD2718

The DOE’s plan fails NYC students and teachers – a Teacher’s Letter to Anyone Listening | JD2718

The DOE’s plan fails NYC students and teachers – a Teacher’s Letter to Anyone Listening

I was trying to write something like this, when I stumbled across this letter. The author is a teacher in the Bronx – I got permission to repost but forgot to ask for permission to use their name (I’ll update if they give it) – jd

I read the DOE’s 32 page “plan” this morning. It is abysmal and puts NYC students and staff at risk. A few points which really must be addressed:

1. Does Mr. Carranza know that middle school and high school students can’t remain in single cohort classrooms because they don’t all take the same classes? There is no way for cohorts not to mix.

2. Given #1, there is no way for a teacher and cohort to isolate if someone is suspected or confirmed to have COVID—that teacher would be needed to teach multiple other classes to other cohorts who are in the building. There aren’t enough adults to monitor students in class if the teacher is awaiting test results or becomes ill.

3. Given that teachers will be exposed to multiple cohorts, any exposure for that teacher means that multiple cohorts will need to isolate and be tested; it’s impossible to close one classroom.

4. How is the teacher or staff member in the room supposed to remain safe when students take masks off to eat?

5. Has Mr. Carranza ever met students? They WILL put fingers under their masks; they WILL take CONTINUE READING: The DOE’s plan fails NYC students and teachers – a Teacher’s Letter to Anyone Listening | JD2718

Reopening Schools Unsafely Will Not Solve Anything | gadflyonthewallblog

Reopening Schools Unsafely Will Not Solve Anything | gadflyonthewallblog

Reopening Schools Unsafely Will Not Solve Anything

Opening schools unsafely will not solve any of our problems.

In every case, it will make them worse.

Students don’t learn a lot when their teachers are in quarantine.

Children generally receive less socialization when their parents are hospitalized.

Kids with special needs will receive few accommodations on a respirator.

Childcare is the least of your worries when planning a funeral for a family member.

No matter what need schools usually meet, Coronavirus makes the situation worse.

Every. Time. CONTINUE READING: Reopening Schools Unsafely Will Not Solve Anything | gadflyonthewallblog

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION + ICYMI: August Already Edition (8/2)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: August Already Edition (8/2)

August Already Edition (8/2)

So, here are some things to read.

Is the push to reopen schools really a plot to dismantle them?
Accountabaloney listens to some bonus content from Have You Heard that lays out how DeVos has set up a pandemic win-win for herself.

Worst Year Ever  
Nancy Flanagan reflects on the year and wonders if it couldn't actually mark a good change for education?

How the child care crisis will distort the economy for a generation.
Politico takes a look at the ripples that are going to spread from the pandemic crisis in child care (which is just a more severe version of the child care crisis we were already having) 

Trump paints teachers as villains; how that hurts students.
I saw this piece when Anna Lutz Fernandez posted this on her own, but then NBC picked it up, and here it is. Well worth the read.

Note from the principal: This fall your classroom will be equipped with a lion.
From Mary, a blog that specializes in satire. A reminder that satire doesn't always make you laugh.

Infamous John Deasy Resigns, Again 
Thomas Ultican with a well-researched look at how reformsters manage to fail upward, with a case study of one of the great serial failures of ed reform.

The Post-Espinoza End Game  
Bruce Baker and Preston Green take a look at what comes next, now that SCOTUS has busted another hole in the wall between church and state.

How To Stop Magical Thinking in School Reopening Plans 
Share this with an administrator. Jersey Jazzman lays out how to do a reality check on a district's plan for the fall.

Biden Opens Door for Vouchers
Not on purpose, mind you. But here's Max Eden to explain the opportunity that reformsters think Biden just handed them.

Does Covid-19 spell the end for public schooling?
Finally, this scary read from USA Today, conjecturing about just how bad this could be for education in the long run.

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: August Already Edition (8/2)

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION

AND DON'T FORGET PETER GREENE ON FORBES CLICK HERE 

SCOTUS Gives Private Religious Schools The Okay To Discriminate Freely - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2020/07/16/scotus-gives-private-religious-schools-the-okay-to-discriminate-freely/#6585b9e16366 by @palan57 on @forbes


For Teachers, This Is All Unfortunately Familiar - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2020/07/25/for-teachers-this-is-all-unfortunately-familiar/#3685b1d73c9a by @palan57 on @forbes

Report: PA Charters Game The Special Education System.

21by Peter Greene / 1d

In a new report, Education Voters of Pennsylvania looks at “how an outdated law wastes public money, encourages gaming the system, and limits school choice.” Fixing the Flaws looks at how Pennsylvania’s two separate funding systems have made students with special needs a tool for charter gaming of the system, even as some of them are shut out of the system entirely. The two-headed system looks li

Pence, DeVos, And More Private School Choice Baloney

200+by Peter Greene / 2d

My thanks to Bill Ferriter, who raised some of this on Twitter, thereby allowing me to boost my blood pressure before I even got all the way home from vacation. Mike Pence, Betsy DeVos and a few other notables took a trip yesterday to North Carolina, to plug an assortment of their favorites issues while visiting a private school that, unsurprisingly, underlined everything wrong with their favorit

Diary of a Socialist Indoctrinator

67by Peter Greene / 3d

This ran over a year ago at Forbes.com in response to a comment by Trump Jr. and for some reason I never shared it over here. Correcting that now, since teachers are once again teaching students to hate America. Monday We started the week here at Karl Marx Middle School with the usual reminders about monitoring the hall between classes and limiting bathroom passes during class periods. Principal

Archives: Personalization and Outliers

by Peter Greene / 4d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. Personalization and the Outliers Henry Ford was an early proponent of personalization. "Any customer can have a car pained any color that he wants," said Ford in 1909, "so long as it is black." There have always been limits to personalization. I like to wear hats, bu

Archives: Myth of the Hero Teacher

by Peter Greene / 4d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. Oh, that damn hero teacher. She does it for the kids, and not because she likes to eat and have a place of shelter. And now we need her to answer the call again. I've bitched about this myth a few times, but here's an early take on this damaging trope: The Myth of th

Archives: What Does The Free Market Really Foster?

by Peter Greene / 5d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. If I ever get a "theory" named after me, let it be this one-- The free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing. And here are some of the many times I've talked about it. What Choice Won't Do Netflix and the Myth of Personal

Archives: Test Prep

by Peter Greene / 5d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. As we argue about whether or not the Big Standardized Test should be given this year (spoiler alert-- no, it shouldn't), let's take a look at some of the reasons it sucks up so much time during the year. And no, test prep is not about memorizing a list of facts. It's

Archives: Nobody Really Wants Choice

by Peter Greene / 6d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. Despite the constant focus on school choice, I remain unconvinced that choice is what people really want. Nobody Really Wants Choice Families need a choice. Parents want a choice. Poor students deserve a choice. We hear the rhetoric over and over again, but I remain

Archives: Whitney Tilson and DFER

by Peter Greene / 7d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. This profile of Whitney Tilson, a gabillionaire hedge funder and a founding father of DFER and a guy who got in on the ground floor of reformsterism, looks at many of the talking points that are still driving the discussions about education. You can team this piece u

Archive: Support Public Schools

by Peter Greene / 7d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. As various privatizers and profiteers try to use the coronavirus as a mean to Katrina public ed into oblivion, here's a listicle of reasons to support one of the US's oldest institutions. 10 Reasons To Support Public Schools Public education has become a political or

Archives: Slow Schools

by Peter Greene / 7d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. That time that Daniel Katz argued in favor of the educational equivalent of a slow foods movement, and I chimed in with a "Yeah, what he said, because this..." Slow Schools In a recent blog post, Daniel Katz made a plea for a slow schools movement (like the slow food

Archive: Forever Schools

by Peter Greene / 9d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. From 2014, and spun from a Buzzfeed article that incorrectly predicted the beginning of the end for charters. But I still like the idea, take from those cute puppy posters about adopting a pet "forever." Forever Schools Public schools are forever schools, not until s

Archive: TNTP and The Opportunity Myth

by Peter Greene / 9d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. TNTP first crammed the discussion of education with the Widget Effect, one of those faux white papers that thinky tanks pop out. Their new attempt to "inform" everyone's conversation is Th Opportunity Myth which, sadly, I see quoted far too often. Here's what I hd to

Archives: Teacher Time

by Peter Greene / 10d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. Teacher Time Every profession measures time differently. Doctors and lawyers measure time in hours or vague lumps. Teachers measure time in minutes, even seconds. If a doctor (or his office) tell you that something is going to happen "at nine o'clock," that means som

Archives: Not Loving Personalized [sic] Learning

by Peter Greene / 10d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. Of course it's being pitched heavily, again, as a solution to Covid woes. But... 8 Reasons Not To Love Personalized [sic] Learning As we roll into 2019, it becomes increasingly clear that much of the education debate is going to center on Personalized [sic] Learning.

Archives: The Hard Part

by Peter Greene / 11d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. The most-read thing I've ever published, with close to a million hits on HuffPost. As noted, I would have been a little more careful if I'd known this was going to be so widely read. The Hard Part They never tell you in teacher school, and it's rarely discussed elsew

Archives: Teacher Merit Pay

by Peter Greene / 12d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. Again from seven years ago, and again, still completely applicable today. Why Teacher Merit Pay Is Stupid Sometimes we forget the obvious, so let me spell it out. Here's why teacher merit pay will never make sense.

Archives: Defending Music Education

by Peter Greene / 12d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. An important idea to bring up, now that districts are looking for things to cut. Stop "Defending" Music Today I ran across one more xeroxed handout touting the test-taking benefits of music education, defending music as a great tool for raising test scores and making

Archive: Schools Don't Serve Businesses

by Peter Greene / 13d

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives. Hard to believe it's been seven years since the Gates Foundation mouthpiece set me off. But this still applies (and he wasn't the last to suggest this. The Wrongest Sentence Ever In The CCSS Debate At Impatient Optimists, a Gates Foundation website, Allan Golston rec

ICYMI: Vacation Edition (7/19)

by Peter Greene / 14d

The Institute staff and board of directors are headed for a corporate retreat in a place where the internet doesn't really reach, so things will be quiet here for a bit. But before I go, here's some reading for you to do. Sorry for all the paywalls today. There have been several recurriing themes in this week's coverage. For instance, lots of folks have noticed that Betsy DeVos's current 

CURMUDGUCATION - http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/