Jersey Jazzman: COVID and "Learning Loss": Test Scores Should Not Be Our Immediate Concern

Jersey Jazzman: COVID and "Learning Loss": Test Scores Should Not Be Our Immediate Concern

COVID and "Learning Loss": Test Scores Should Not Be Our Immediate Concern

I'll get back to Lakewood in a bit, but I want to take a minute and talk about a new report out yesterday from JerseyCAN and others about learning loss and COVID-19.

Regular readers know I've had my issues with JerseyCAN over the years: too many times, their analyses have missed the mark, often because of a lack of understanding about things like what test scores actually represent and how they should be used to direct K-12 education policy. 

I might make similar complaints about this latest report. Using a convenience sample's outcomes on one test to extrapolate outcomes on another for an entire population is inherently problematic. Further, changes in proficiency rates on the same test are often artifacts of the process of setting those rates, and not indications of any changes in actual student learning. There's also a whole problem of equating "proficiency" across grade levels that tends to get pushed aside in these discussions. Plus the easy way we accept "grade level" as some sort of absolute when it's really a social construct...

But in the end, none of that really matters, because what the report is showing is almost certainly correct: student learning has suffered during the pandemic, and the losses are almost certainly greater for students of color and those in economic disadvantage. 

How could this be otherwise? There is a clear digital divide along racial and ethnic lines in CONTINUE READING: Jersey Jazzman: COVID and "Learning Loss": Test Scores Should Not Be Our Immediate Concern

Angie Sullivan: Nevada Gives Tax Breaks for Business, Shortchanges Kids | Diane Ravitch's blog

Angie Sullivan: Nevada Gives Tax Breaks for Business, Shortchanges Kids | Diane Ravitch's blog

Angie Sullivan: Nevada Gives Tax Breaks for Business, Shortchanges Kids

Angie Sullivan is a teacher in a Title 1 elementary school in Las Vegas, a city with free-flowing funds for casinos and entertainment but underfunded schools. She frequently writes members of the legislature about their distorted priorities.

Angie writes:

Remember when the world mocked us because Nevada gave away the family farm to TESLA and RAIDERS?  
Raise your hand if you rushed to Carson City in a Special Session to create those deals?  Regressive on STEROIDS! 

Now the world can mock us for innovation zones.  
Nevada Democrats called the Teacher’s Union petitions regressive?   A few cents a week is nothing compared to large cash subsidies Nevada gives to attract businesses.   Billions given away for a few jobs.  

Tax Credits cashed in at the whim of TESLA/Casinos directly rob Nevadans and their children of hundreds of million of dollars.  The South gets ZERO TESLA benefit.  
There is a reason the accounting practice examined during #SB543 found CCSD was short $10 Billion dollars.  
https://tinyurl.com/aa4af7ja

We have various business tax credit scams sucking the CONTINUE READING: Angie Sullivan: Nevada Gives Tax Breaks for Business, Shortchanges Kids | Diane Ravitch's blog

In the wake of man bringing live bombs, zip gun to Sac elementary school, major leap announced in campus protection tech • Sacramento News & Review

In the wake of man bringing live bombs, zip gun to Sac elementary school, major leap announced in campus protection tech • Sacramento News & Review

In the wake of man bringing live bombs, zip gun to Sac elementary school, major leap announced in campus protection tech

Authorities are being tight-lipped about what might have motivated Gustavo Aguilar, the 57-year-old man arrested last week for allegedly bringing two improvised, working bombs and a loaded homemade gun to Ethel Baker Elementary School in South Sacramento. Meanwhile, on the global front, a Canadian company confirmed that it’s racing ahead with a novel technology designed to stop such threats to school campuses.   

The investigation into Aguilar began shortly after 8 a.m. on March 2, after a program manager working at Ethel Baker noticed two suspicious devices resting on a sidewalk near one of the entrances.

Children were due to arrive at the school that morning. Even with COVID-19 restrictions, Ethel Baker has been one of the Sacramento City Unified School District’s learning hubs, a place where community groups partner with school staff to offer distance-learning support to students. This generally involves providing computer access to roughly 40 kids at a time, with an adult supervising as they log-in for classes.  

According to SCUSD Chief Communications Officer Tara Gallegos, the students hadn’t arrived on campus when the first menacing devices were uncovered.

“Our principal was able to get ahold of the students quickly, and made sure they knew to stay home,” Gallegos told SN&R. “Because this happened so early, most of the staff hadn’t arrived yet, either.”

Sacramento Sheriff’s personnel converged on Laurine Way. An Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team soon approached the devices. Sheriff’s Sergeant Rod Grassmann said that one was a 2.5-inch diameter steel pipe, sealed at both ends, with an improvised fuse on it. It was packed with metal shrapnel, clay putty, firecrackers and gasoline.

The other device was a “zip gun” made from a steel pipe. It had a spring-loaded cap that could fire a 12-gauge shotgun round. The zip gun was loaded.

No one was harmed as the Sheriff’s team neutralized both devices.

Another live pipe bomb was found on the campus on March 19.

Five days later, Sheriff’s detectives arrested Aguilar.  He was booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail on CONTINUE READING: In the wake of man bringing live bombs, zip gun to Sac elementary school, major leap announced in campus protection tech • Sacramento News & Review

Please Complete This Survey on Opting Out of Standardized Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog

Please Complete This Survey on Opting Out of Standardized Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog

Please Complete This Survey on Opting Out of Standardized Testing

Researchers at Teachers College, Columbia University, are conducting a survey on opting out of standardized tests. You can help them by completing their survey.

I am writing to ask for your help in promoting the 2021 National Survey on Opting Out. Thanks again for all your feedback and help with our research project.

Over the past five years, our research team at Teachers College, Columbia University has conducted a series of studies of the Opt Out movement. Our studies are not associated with any grant or other funding from either public or private sources. Therefore, our analysis is completely independent.

Our main project is the National Survey on Opting Out, which we conducted twice in 2016 and 2018. The purpose of the Survey is to understand who is involved in the Opt Out movement and why. We define involvement in broad terms to include parents who opt their children out of standardized testing and others who sympathize with the Opt Out movement. The survey is informed by interviews and conversations we had with activists around the country (e.g., Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Texas, and Washington). For New York, we relied on extensive interviews conducted by David Hursh and Bob Lingard; among others they interviewed Jeanette Deutermann and Lisa Rudley.

We would appreciate your help in promoting the 2021 National Survey on Opting Out. Feel free to share the link with your contacts and on social media. We are active on social media, with updates about the study:  
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OptOutNtlSurvey
Twitter: @OptOutNtlSurvey

The survey is anonymous and responses are confidential. The survey is shorter than last time and should take you approximately 15 minutes to complete.

Link: https://tccolumbia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6i2cmIQ2O3L9ggu

Thank you in advance for your support!

Oren Pizmony-Levy & Nancy Green Saraisky

—-
Oren Pizmony-Levy, PhD
Associate Professor & Program Director 
International & Comparative Education Program
Department of International and Transcultural Studies
Teachers College, Columbia University
525 West 120th Street
370 Grace Dodge Hall
Box 55
New York, NY 10027

Tel (office): 212-678-3180

Email: pizmony-levy@tc.columbia.edu
Website: http://orenpizmonylevy.com/

Please Complete This Survey on Opting Out of Standardized Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teacher Tom: Human Thought is More Magnificent Than That

Teacher Tom: Human Thought is More Magnificent Than That

Human Thought is More Magnificent Than That

If learning is, as Eleanor Duckworth defines it, "the having of wonderful ideas," one can legitimately wonder what a child is thinking about when they are not having ideas. 

Certainly, some of their mental energy is expended upon thinking about the questions and problems, that will ultimately lead to those wonderful ideas. But I was once a child (and while that assertion is rarely the lead-in to a sentence that demonstrates any understanding at all about childhood), I nevertheless feel fairly confident that I spend more time stewing on things as an adult than I did as a kid. The endless pondering and fretting has come with age and experience: as a thoughtful boy I was more inclined to tuck my questions and problems away while engaged with the world in front of me where they would remain at the back of my mind until something happened in the real world to bring them back to the fore.

This phenomenon of things suddenly clicking at unexpected, unrelated moments -- while say in the shower or the stairwell -- is one we've all experienced. Often you have to walk away from your questions or problems, to turn your senses in another direction. The natural state of consciousness is freedom so it's only reasonable that it would often work best when set free from the confines a question or problem creates. I find that long walks help with this. An active CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Human Thought is More Magnificent Than That

OKLAHOMA: 'It's a damn mess': Fiscal impact, future of charter school funding resolution unclear - NONDOC

'It's a damn mess': Fiscal impact, future of charter school funding resolution unclear

‘It’s a damn mess’: Fiscal impact, future of charter school funding resolution unclear

Uncertainty surrounding the State Board of Education’s 4-3 vote last week on a resolution stating that public charter schools should receive the same funding as traditional public schools can be summed up by Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister’s answers to a series of questions Tuesday afternoon.

Asked if she had signed the board’s resolution — which she voted against and that would become the basis for the Oklahoma Public Charter School Association dismissing a 2017 lawsuit — Hofmeister said she had not. When asked if she plans on signing the document, she said she did not know. When asked what the results would be if she does or does not sign the settlement, she was also unsure.

“That is something that, since it just came in and I voted ‘No,’ we’ll fully examine,” Hofmeister said moments after meeting with more than a dozen House Republicans about the situation Tuesday.

The controversial decision has pushed conversation about how charter schools should be funded to the forefront of the Oklahoma political landscape. The fiscal impact of the board’s resolution also remains undetermined as stakeholders weigh potential legal action and the Oklahoma Legislature crafts next year’s state budget ahead of the policy CONTINUE READING: 'It's a damn mess': Fiscal impact, future of charter school funding resolution unclear

CURMUDGUCATION: AZ: What Teacher Layoffs Look Like In An Anti-Teacher State

CURMUDGUCATION: AZ: What Teacher Layoffs Look Like In An Anti-Teacher State

AZ: What Teacher Layoffs Look Like In An Anti-Teacher State

Carie Caruso conferenced with her supervisor and was told she was a highly effective teacher. The next day, in an online meeting, she was told that she was out of a job. 47 other teachers were part of that meeting.

Angela Philpot had 23 years of experience, but this week she was one of the 150 teachers laid off by Gilbert Public Schools in a surprise meeting with a principal who read a scripted statement from the district. No comments or questions were allowed. Philpot is an Arizona Education Association officer.

Arizona public schools have seen a big drop in enrollment this year. The Arizona School Boards Association says that 40,000 children became "ghost students"-- they just didn't show up,. and nobody knows where they were. About half of the drop in enrollment are kindergarten and first grade students. Charter schools have seen a slight growth (about 18,000), but not enough to account for all the public school losses.

And so, in an attempt to "right-size" budgets, school districts are chopping staff.

A decade or so ago, Arizona's legislature decreed that these sorts of layoffs could not consider seniority or tenure. So how are these decisions made? With evaluation rubrics like this one: CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: AZ: What Teacher Layoffs Look Like In An Anti-Teacher State

How Students Pay for Corporate Tax Abatements | Diane Ravitch's blog

How Students Pay for Corporate Tax Abatements | Diane Ravitch's blog

How Students Pay for Corporate Tax Abatements

Good Jobs First entered the national scene when it produced documentation that the CARES Act was being used to funnel billions of dollars to private schools and charter schools. The charter schools were double-dipping, first taking money allotted to public schools, then getting millions more from the Paycheck Protection Program, which excluded public schools.

Now, Good Jobs First has released a new report, showing that students are paying for corporate tax breaks.

Abating Our Future:

How Students Pay for Corporate Tax Breaks
Executive Summary

Public school students in the U.S. suffered poorer schools—and local and state taxpayers paid higher taxes—in 2019 due to corporate tax breaks. Thanks to a new government accounting rule, we are able to prove that economic development tax abatements given to corporations cost public school districts at least $2.37 billion in forgone revenue in 2019. That is $273 million — or 13 percent— higher than two years before.

Across the country, 97 school districts lost more than $5 million each; 149 districts lost more than $1,000 per CONTINUE READING: How Students Pay for Corporate Tax Abatements | Diane Ravitch's blog

We Need a Massive National Campaign to Protest School Privatization | janresseger

We Need a Massive National Campaign to Protest School Privatization | janresseger

We Need a Massive National Campaign to Protest School Privatization

Fighting the privatization of public education feels like an overwhelming challenge. Partly, because all kinds of vouchers (plain old vouchers, tuition tax credits, and education savings accounts) are set up and funded by state legislatures, and charter schools are also set up and controlled (and too frequently poorly regulated) by state law,  the battle is fragmented from place to place.  Except for the money allocated every year out of the federal Charter Schools Program, begun in 1994 during the Clinton administration, school privatization is not driven by federal policy that affects all of us across the United States.  What happens in California and Arizona doesn’t have any effect on the public schools of Ohio where I live.  So why should I care about what happens in another state?

Then there is the question of why the problem of school privatization matters so much. While much of the research and advocacy materials about the impact of school privatization inspects the quality of the privatized school alternatives, I  believe that what ought to concern us most is the amount of money being driven out of the public schools that serve the mass of our children. The evidence shows that school funding in many states has fallen very significantly since the Great Recession in 2008 and that school privatization has contributed to that problem.

In his new book, Schoolhouse Burning, Derek Black,traces, for example, how funding charter schools depleted public school funding in Ohio during and after the Great Recession in 2008: “While states were reducing their financial commitment to public schools, they were pumping enormous new resources into charters and vouchers—and making the policy environment for these alternatives more favorable. Charter schools, unlike traditional public schools, did not struggle during the recession. Their state and federal funding skyrocketed. Too often, financial shortfalls in public school districts were the direct result of pro-charter school policies… Ohio CONTINUE READING: We Need a Massive National Campaign to Protest School Privatization | janresseger

How would you recommend spending the billions of American Rescue Act dollars? Everyone seems to have ideas(s). | Ed In The Apple

How would you recommend spending the billions of American Rescue Act dollars? Everyone seems to have ideas(s). | Ed In The Apple

How would you recommend spending the billions of American Rescue Act dollars? Everyone seems to have ideas(s).

New York City will be deciding how to spend billions of education dollars within the next few months, and, everybody has ideas.

The interim chancellor (the term used for superintendent in New York City) immediately suggested summer school, as did many others (including the new law). The law also says the dollars must be spent on “evidence-based” interventions: a challenge.

The evidence that summer school is effective is slim and discouraging.
. 

Research studies done before the pandemic show that summer school usually don’t accomplish its purpose of raising reading or math achievement. 

 “Generally, summer programs are not effective because they don’t really engage young people and they’re not run well,”

Even if the evidence is discouraging we’re going to have summer school: will it be the same old review and remediate (“boring”) or an interesting program that excites kids?   I would suggest summer school is project-based. Spend the last two weeks in June selecting a project and the summer working on a standards- CONTINUE READING: How would you recommend spending the billions of American Rescue Act dollars? Everyone seems to have ideas(s). | Ed In The Apple

The Adequacy of School District Spending in the U.S. – School Finance 101

The Adequacy of School District Spending in the U.S. – School Finance 101

The Adequacy of School District Spending in the U.S.

New Project at School Finance Indicators Database

With Matt Di Carlo & Mark Weber

Full research brief

Press release

Dataset

Data visualization

It’s fairly common knowledge that U.S. school districts vary widely in terms of funding. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, in an ideal school funding system, we would expect to see differences between districts in their spending levels, even big differences, for the simple reason that the cost of educating students varies a great deal across districts. 

For instance, some districts serve larger shares of high-need students than others, and the former require more resources to achieve a given level of student performance. Similarly, like any employer, districts have to pay competitive wages, and labor costs also vary substantially by location. Teachers in areas with high costs of living, for example, have to be paid more than their colleagues in small rural towns where living is less expensive. 

In short, unequal spending is acceptable and even desirable if it is aligned with unequal costs. The key question is whether districts have the resources to meet their students’ needs. In other words, is school district spending adequate?

This research brief presents key findings from a new public database of funding adequacy for over 12,000 U.S. public school districts. The database (the District Cost Database) allows one to compare each district’s actual per-pupil spending with estimates of adequate per-pupil spending levels—that is, spending levels that would be required to achieve the goal of U.S. average test scores (a common “benchmark” with which the models assess adequacy). The data are for the 2017-18 school year.

The brief reports some good news. Thousands of districts enjoy funding levels above and beyond estimated adequate levels. You can find these districts in every single U.S. state. In some cases, funding is two or three times higher than the targets. Even in states such as Arizona and New Mexico, where large majorities of students attend schools in underfunded districts, there are numerous districts in which spending exceeds estimated requirements.

Yet these districts co-exist with thousands of other school systems, some located within driving distance or even in the next town over, where investment is so poorly aligned with need that funding levels are a fraction of estimated costs. Districts with negative funding gaps are CONTINUE READING: The Adequacy of School District Spending in the U.S. – School Finance 101

John Thompson: Public Education Under Fire In Oklahoma - Network For Public Education

John Thompson: Public Education Under Fire In Oklahoma - Network For Public Education

John Thompson: Public Education Under Fire In Oklahoma

The moves against public education in Oklahoma have come thick and fast, but John Thompson is here to break down this week’s worth of assaults, from an unprecedented (and probably illegal) money grab, to public officials mocking public schools on line.

In the last week, alone, Diane Ravitch and the Network for Public Education reported on efforts to advance the corporate reform agenda in Iowa,  Kentucky, Texas,  Arizona, Montana,  Florida, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Indiana. Even as public education and America as a whole is threatened by COVID-19, privatizers are doubling down on their politics of destruction.

This is an overview, with some background information, on last week’s assaults on public schools in Oklahoma.

Just before the Oklahoma State Department of Education Board (SDE) meeting, Oklahoma Watch’s Jennifer Palmer tweeted, “Pretty standard agenda but I will be listening and watching the executive session items in particular.”

However, the executive session generated a “Resolution” on “the interpretation and implementation of laws regarding funding of charter schools” so charters will now receive funding from the “General Fund, the Building Fund, [and] all other Local Revenue” in CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: Public Education Under Fire In Oklahoma - Network For Public Education

Today's Education Research Report - Kumon or Montessori? - 50-State Comparison: Private School Choice - Cardiorespiratory fitness improves grades

Education Research Report

Today's Education Research Report

Cardiorespiratory fitness improves grades at school

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 15h

Research News Recent studies indicate a link between children's cardiorespiratory fitness and their school performance: the more athletic they are, the better their marks in the main subjects - French and mathematics. Similarly, cardiorespiratory fitness is known to benefit cognitive abilities, such as memory and attention. But what is the real influence of such fitness on school results? To answ

Kumon or Montessori? It may depend on your politics, according to new study

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 15h

Research News Whether parents prefer a conformance-oriented or independence-oriented supplemental education program for their children depends on political ideology, according to a study of more than 8,500 American parents by a research team from Rice University and the University of Texas at San Antonio. "Conservative parents have a higher need for structure, which drives their preference for co

Pre-COVID Ability Grouping in U.S. Public School Classrooms

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 22h

The National Center for Education Statistics released a new Data Point report today , entitled . This report examines whether ability grouping was used to organize classes or students in public schools, by selected school characteristics. Findings include: During school year 2017–18, 32 percent of public schools reported that they assigned students based on their ability. Nearly half of middle sc

50-State Comparison: Private School Choice

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

A newly updated captures state policies that govern education savings accounts , vouchers and scholarship tax credits . See how all states approach a specific issue by selecting one of the comparisons, or view how one state approaches all of the issues by selecting a state profile.

School closures disproportionately hit disadvantaged students in the US

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 4d

A study analyzing the distribution of school closures due to COVID concludes that racial minorities, students in need and with already poor academic performance have been more likely engaged in remote schooling since September 2020 BOCCONI UNIVERSITY Research News SHARE PRINT E-MAIL The uneven distribution of school closures in the US since September 2020 threatens to exacerbate regional, racial

Early Child Care in Single-Parent and Two-Parent Families

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 4d

In 2019, a higher percentage of children in single-parent families than in two-parent families were in weekly childcare (65 versus 58 percent). A new Data Point from the National Center for Education Statistics, : 2019 , compares childcare arrangements for children from birth through age 5, in single-parent

Education Research Report