Reduce Poverty and Ensure Equity: The Key to Education Reform Is Not the Common Core | janresseger

Reduce Poverty and Ensure Equity: The Key to Education Reform Is Not the Common Core | janresseger:

Reduce Poverty and Ensure Equity: The Key to Education Reform Is Not the Common Core

Last week three prominent education and civil rights leaders confronted what has appeared to be a civil rights establishment defense of annual standardized testing as the necessary centerpiece of a reauthorized No Child Left Behind Act.  John Jackson, president and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, Pedro Noguera of New York University, and Judith Browne Dianis, director of Advancement Project—a national racial justice organization, published an op-ed in The Hill in which they declared: “In recent weeks, a few national civil rights organizations including the National Council of La Raza, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the League of United Latin American Citizens and National Urban League have vocally opposed efforts to highlight the dangers of high stakes testing by students and parents opting out of annual assessments.  United under the banner of the Washington, D.C.-based Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, these groups are urging parents to comply with annual testing requirements.  We strongly disagree with their position.”

Jackson, Noguera, and Browne Dianis call Congress to focus the reauthorization of the federal education law on eliminating the opportunity gaps that federal policy in education was originally designed to address: “We now know students cannot be tested out of poverty….”  “We should all remember that NCLB (No Child Left Behind) was originally enacted in 1965 as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty.  The measure was designed to compensate for disadvantages in learning opportunities between low-income and middle-class children.  While it was never adequately funded, ESEA was envisioned as an ‘anti-poverty’ bill.”  “Schools serving poor children and children of color remain under-funded and have been labeled ‘failing’ while little has been done at the local, state or federal level to effectively intervene and provide support.  In the face of clear evidence that children of color are more likely to be subjected to over-testing and a narrowing of curriculum in the name of test preparation, it is perplexing that D.C. based civil rights groups are promoting annual tests.”

In his commentary for the Education Opportunity Network last week, Jeff Bryant proclaims the same theme in, Dumb Arguments About the Common Core Distract from What Matters Most.  Bryant writes: “While it’s refreshing to see K-12 education become a prominent issue in the very early stages of the 2016 election campaigns, it’s unfortunate to see support for the Common Core—the contentious new standards adopted by most states—become the focus of the debate… For sure, inequity is a problem—if not the problem—in American schools.  Inequities related to students’ race, ability levels, English language proficiency, and income characterize nearly every aspect of the outputs and inputs of the system.  The achievement gap between white students and their black and brown peers has been at the center of Reduce Poverty and Ensure Equity: The Key to Education Reform Is Not the Common Core | janresseger:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Graduation Rate

CURMUDGUCATION: The Graduation Rate:

The Graduation Rate

If you want a quick, clear look at the story behind the awesometastic grad rate miracle rate of 81%,this NPR piece from Anya Kanenetz is a good place to start (it's also pretty).

Kamanetz boils down the possible explanations to three:

1) Intervention
2) Making it easier
3) Cheating

The intervention option is clearly the best one. But it is also expensive and time-consuming. So it's no wonder that many districts resort to 2 and 3. We don't have them in these parts, but I keep hearing about recovery credits, which sound suspiciously like cheap extra credit/makeup work projects that allow schools to say a student passed a course. Beyond the official institutional ways to lower the bar, most teachers have also encountered the unofficial approach-- the one where a guidance counselor or a principal or a special ed department head calls you in to explain why you need to offer some extra credit or make-up work or just plain re-compute your final grades in order to achieve the desired result for Chris McSadstudent.

The article also notes that Texas has miraculous improvements in graduation rate, which we can just add to the list of Texas miracles that aren't (like miraculous economic growth or their earlier education miracles). But many states have figured out how to make students disappear before they can hurt the numbers.

I don't dispute the value of graduation rate as a measure of How Well We're Doing. Well, I don't dispute it as long as we change one simple thing.

Four years.

Why, exactly, is the four year part important?

I have taught so many students sooooooo many students who struggled and finally got a handle on things or broke through to understanding or just plain grew up enough that after a tough start in high school, they finally graduated-- proudly and honestly. But they did it in four years. So they don't count.

Here's Pat, who was a hellion in ninth grade and couldn't focus and was defiant and tried to Teach The School a Lesson by flunking everything on purpose. And then sometime around birthday #16, Pat just settled down and figured it out. But by then Pat was a year behind. Pat graduates in five years. 

Here's Chris, who was basically homeless until age fifteen. Chris spent two years in ninth grade because there was nobody at home to get Chris to school more than two days a week. But Chris's mom finally got a job and a car and a stable relationship, and Chris did great work in 10th, 11th and 12th grade, graduating in the middle of the class. But Chris did it in five years.

Here's Sam, who decided that cyber school sounded pretty cool. Sam left for cyberia three months into tenth grade, and the entire rest of the year was a wash, and Sam was soon back in public school, where a repeat of tenth grade was necessary to get back to speed. Sam, now convinced CURMUDGUCATION: The Graduation Rate:

PA: The Big Bucks

Can you guess who the highest-paid educator in Pennsylvania is?

It's Abington School Superintendent Amy Sichel, who on July 1 will see her salary rise to a healthy $319,714. 

Sichel may or may not be worth it. Okay, no-- nobody's worth that kind of money. But Sichel is also not the standard issue shiny bump-and-run superintendent that we see in so many districts. She has spent her entire career in the Abington School District (north of Philly), and she has held the superintendent job for fifteen years (which is roughly 143 in superintendent years).

A profile from 2012, when Sichel was tapped to lead the AASA (the school superintendents association), included praise from the teachers' union and from the school board:

“Amy is a tough cookie and a strong personality. When she comes into the room, you know she’s there,” Debra Lee, president of the Abington Education Association, says. “She’s a no-nonsense person. She expects the most of everyone, but she also gives us the most. She is a wonderful leader, someone you want to follow.”

“She doesn’t beat around the bush with good news or bad news,” [Board President Raymond] McGarry adds. “She has no hidden agendas. She tells you what she expects in terms of behavior and achievement. I appreciate that. There is nothing worse than a leader with unclear goals.”

She has made some gutsy choices, like eliminating all but college-bound tracks. But I give her points for making her changes and then sticking around to see them through. This puts her in a different 

PA: The Big Bucks

Under Attack Teachers Can Be Bullied Too | Teaching Tolerance

Under Attack | Teaching Tolerance:

Under Attack

On November 1, 2013, Teaching Tolerance (TT) posted a blog by an anonymous contributor titled “Teachers Can Be Bullied Too.” The author describes being screamed at by her department head in front of colleagues and kids and having her employment repeatedly threatened. She also tells of the depression and anxiety that plagued her following each incident.

To be honest, we debated posting it. “Was this really a TT issue?” we asked ourselves. Would our readers care about the misfortune of one teacher? How common was this experience anyway? 

The answer became apparent the next day when the comments section exploded. A popular TT blog might elicit a dozen or so total comments; readers of this blog left dozens upon dozens of long, personal comments every day—and they continued to do so. “It happened to me,” “It’s happening to me,” “It’s happening in my department. I don’t know how to stop it.” 

This outpouring was a surprise, but it shouldn’t have been. A quick Web search revealed that educators report being bullied at higher rates than professionals in almost any other field. (Nursing is also at the top.) A second search put us in touch with the Workplace Bullying  Institute (WBI) and its cofounder, Gary Namie, who for years has worked with teachers seeking support and relief from bullying. Namie and WBI offer a theory for the high concentration of bullying in education and nursing.

“The professionals who get into these fields [have] a pro-social orientation,” he says. “They’re helpers, right? For teachers, they’re really development specialists. … They’re not political animals. They have their back turned to the politics, which of course, then opens them up to this attack. Because of their goodness in a way, because of their motivation. This is why they get targeted.”

Namie’s description of who gets targeted matches up with the identity of our anonymous blogger and with many of the commenters: veteran or high-achieving teachers who cultivate strong relationships with students and families. So why these teachers, we asked? Wouldn’t they be the ones colleagues and administrators would want to keep around?

Motives

“Bully targets are threatening to a perpetrator. They pose a threat in some way, usually because of teaching excellence or focus on children, or adherence to the mission or their principles,” Namie explains. “This just agitates the crap out of somebody who is unscrupulous and sadistic. They can’t stand it.”

Karen Horwitz was an award-winning English teacher who experienced a stress-related health crisis and left education after suffering alleged bullying by her principal. After fighting an extended court battle (her case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was dismissed), Horwitz founded an organization called the National Association for the Prevention of Teacher Abuse (NAPTA). Based on over a decade of work supporting bullied teachers, she asserts that the motives behind teacher abuse fall into two camps.

“[Some people] are doing it because they’re power hungry and they like the feeling that they can come in there … and torment a bunch of people. It makes them feel good,” she says. “Some of them are doing it because they’re making a lot of money.”

Horwitz believes that a significant percentage of teacher bullying is related to school reform or privatization agendas (forcing out teachers who “won’t play ball”) and to attempts to cover up financial impropriety, a phenomenon she calls “white chalk crime” (also the title of her book). Low-income communities and communities of color, she says, are particularly vulnerable.

“That offends me more than anything,” Horwitz says. “That they would take these really good, solid … teachers and abuse them out of teaching when those kids need them more than anything.”

While experts may debate the motives, one thing is clear: The hierarchical structure of many schools and districts combined with the isolation many teachers experience due to the nature of the job can create an environment where bullying behavior can easily go unchecked—with devastating consequences for the target of the behavior and for the kids they teach. 

Tactics and Effects

According to the numerous experts we spoke with and many of the commenters on our blog, the experiences of targeted teachers are, to use Namie’s words, “almost prototypical.” The Under Attack | Teaching Tolerance:

Traditional teaching faces a cyberthreat from school model - LA Times

Traditional teaching faces a cyberthreat from school model - LA Times:

Op-Ed Traditional teaching faces a cyberthreat from school model

There's a new network of K-8 private schools called AltSchool, based in San Francisco and soon expanding to Brooklyn, N.Y., and Palo Alto. From that tiny amount of information — the name, the locations — you can probably guess that AltSchool is trying to modernize education for the digital age. At AltSchool, according to NPR, every student “has a laptop or a tablet, and they spend about 30% of their day on their devices, completing what are called playlists.”

AltSchool, which announced recently that it was hiring executives from Google, Uber and Zynga, is also a software developer. While AltSchool expands its network into what one investor hopes will become “the world's biggest private school system,” it is simultaneously planning to license technology to other academic institutions. Silicon Valley has taken notice: In May, AltSchool announced $100 million in funding from various investors, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. It would seem the company has tapped into the zeitgeist.

As a high school teacher, I've followed these developments with trepidation. Whether or not AltSchool meets lofty expectations, it epitomizes the increasingly popular belief that human instructors must cede to computers as the font of knowledge. That's a profound shift that educators have barely begun to contemplate.

AltSchool's pitch to parents — as opposed to investors — is familiar. It offers small class sizes, highly qualified teachers and instant feedback. Public schools have explicitly prioritized these qualities for decades. Somewhat less familiar is AltSchool's description of what those highly qualified teachers actually do. According to AltSchool's website, “The sheer amount of information available today calls for us ... to reimagine the educational experience” as one in which teachers “curate” the curriculum in partnership with students and parents and “co-learn with the students.”

Although he comes from a family of teachers, AltSchool's founder and chief executive, Max Ventilla, told me he “definitely agrees” that whereas teachers were once considered the Traditional teaching faces a cyberthreat from school model - LA Times:

Surging school meal prices puts strain on families - CBS News

Surging school meal prices puts strain on families - CBS News:

Surging school meal prices puts strain on families

School meals are designed to be both nutritious for students and easy on their families' pocketbooks. Yet while some school lunches might get an "A" on providing essential nutrients, they appear to be receiving a flunking grade for affordability.

Play VIDEO

Was lunch lady fired for giving free lunch to students?

The issue of school meal prices came to the forefront last week when a school kitchen manager in a Denver suburb said she lost her job after giving lunches to students who didn't have the money to pay. While the school district later said the employee was let go for other reasons, the incident raised questions about how children from families earning at least $31,000 per year -- the threshold for a family of four to receive free lunches -- could fail to afford the seemingly modest cost of school breakfasts and lunches. Reduced-price lunches are available for families earning 185 percent above the poverty rate, or about $44,000 for a family of four.

At the heart of the issue is a tough economic squeeze for families considered the "working poor," or those who are scraping by just above the poverty threshold. The average price of an elementary school lunch has surged 52 percent in just 11 years, according to a study from the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit that focuses on anti-hunger initiatives. During the same period, the median income of U.S. households has declined 5.4 percent.

"For families with income over 185 percent of the poverty level, that's sometimes a tough lift, if kids are eating two meals at school," Jim Weill, the president of the Food Research and Action Center, told CBS MoneyWatch. "As schools have gotten more squeezed, they are trying to be more aggressive about cost control and trying to get more income from the cafeteria."

The other cause of higher school meal costs is the Paid Lunch Equity provision, which was enacted by Congress as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, Weill noted. The provision requires school districts to increase the prices of "paid lunches," or those meals purchased by children who don't qualify for free or reduced-price meals, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that full-price meals were sold for 13 percent less than the cost to produce the meal.

While the cost of school meals had been rising for years, that provision was a key driver in the escalating costs of school breakfasts and lunches. Elementary school lunches have seen the sharpest increase in prices (52 percent), followed by middle school and high school lunches, at 47 percent and 46 percent, respectively, according to data from the Food Research and Action Center. The average price of an elementary school lunch was $2.18 per day in the 2013-2014 school year, while middle-school and high-school lunches cost an average of $2.37 and $2.42, respectively.

A family with two children in elementary school and an annual income of $45,000 would be required to pay $784 for lunches during the typical 180-day school year. Add in breakfast, and fees for school meals can easily top $1,200 annually. For families struggling in cities with high costs of living, such as San Francisco and New York, that additional $1,200 can be hard to come by, Weill noted.

"That's a lot of money when salaries for the bottom half of the population have been declining or flat, while housing and medical costs have been going up," he noted.

In the recent Colorado case, Della Curry said she gave school lunches to children who didn't have the money to pay for a regular lunch. In her school system, kids who failed to qualify for free or reduced lunch were given one slice of cheese on a hamburger bun and a small milk.

Although providing a child with a cheese sandwich might seem like a kindness rather than letting them go hungry, the strategy ends up stigmatizing the children of the working poor, who, Weill notes, aren't responsible for whether their parents can afford school lunches. In a recent case in Maryland, one mother said her children ended up humiliated after she fell behind by $12 and her children's school gave them cheese sandwiches rather than the regular hot entree.

"It sets them up for ridicule and bullying," the mother told CBS affiliate WUSA.

While the free and reduced-price lunch program is designed to provide Surging school meal prices puts strain on families - CBS News:

This Is Where School Funding Is The Least 'Fair,' According To New Reports

This Is Where School Funding Is The Least 'Fair,' According To New Reports:

This Is Where School Funding Is The Least 'Fair,' According To New Reports

In Mississippi's Carroll County school district, there are no advanced placement courses, no foreign language classes and not enough textbooks for children to take home at night. Until last year, students on the high school football team had to change clothes in a makeshift room that previously functioned as a chicken coop. Two years ago, the district's superintendent, Billy Joe Ferguson, cut his own salary from $87,000 to $18,000 in order to free up funds for the schools.

Schools in Mississippi are provided with some of the lowest levels of state and local funding in the nation, according to two reports released simultaneously Monday detailing disparities in school resources around the country. For most of the past 10 years, the state has failed to live up to its own law requiring certain funding levels for schools.

Unfortunate circumstances like the ones in Carroll County can be seen across the country, say the reports from the Leadership Conference Education Fund and the Education Law Center, a New Jersey legal and advocacy group. The first report, from both groups, takes a qualitative approach, using anecdotes to show how inequities in school funding shortchange the nation's most vulnerable children. The other report,from the Education Law Center only, evaluates the level of school funding "fairness" in each state, focusing on four measures using 2012 data: funding level (the average state and local revenue spent per pupil), funding distribution (how funds are distributed between high and low-income areas), effort (how much a state spends on education relative to its gross domestic product) and coverage (the proportion of a state's children in public schools versus private schools).

The idea, according to the report, is to see if states "support equal educational opportunity for all students and, in particular, for low-income students in school districts with concentrated poverty."

Indeed, at a time when an increasing number of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch nationwide, the disparities in school resources across zip codes are deep.

"In too many places -- urban, suburban, and rural -- our schools are struggling to find the resources they need to serve all children well. This is especially true in communities that serve students most at-risk, including children from low-income families and children of color," says the groups' report.

The chart below details how states did on two of the four funding fairness measures: funding distribution and effort, according to the Education Law Center. On measures of funding distribution, states like South Dakota, Delaware, Minnesota and New Jersey scored near the top. On measures of effort, states like Vermont, West Virginia and New Jersey scored highly. But the context surrounding this data demands further interrogation. For example, North Carolina improved on measures of funding distribution in 2012, but only because the state slashed funding for wealthy districts while maintaining its levels of funding for poor districts.This Is Where School Funding Is The Least 'Fair,' According To New Reports:

No Child Left Behind Act Inadvertently Impacts State Governments’ Finances, says Rutgers–Camden Researcher | Media Relations

No Child Left Behind Act Inadvertently Impacts State Governments’ Finances, says Rutgers–Camden Researcher | Media Relations:

No Child Left Behind Act Inadvertently Impacts State Governments’ Finances, says Rutgers–Camden Researcher

In 2001, the U.S. Congress passed the bipartisan No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, reaffirming the federal government’s commitment to student achievement, particularly for disadvantaged students. Touted as a triumph for education reform, the act requires each state to develop and implement its own student-assessment standards in order to receive federal funding.

However, the act had an unintended fiscal impact on state governments’ finances as a result of the interaction between binding school district tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) and the underfunded mandates of NCLB, explains Michael Hayes, an assistant professor of public policy and administration at Rutgers University–Camden.

Hayes examines this differential effect of NCLB on states’ contributions to education funding in states with TELs, in the spring 2015 issue of Public Budgeting and Finance.

Using state-level data, Hayes found that, from 1992 to 2009, states which imposed TELs contributed 4.3 percent more towards education funding than states without binding school district TELs after the passage of NCLB.

“This suggests the financial burden of NCLB was placed on state governments, especially in states with TELs,” says Hayes, a Philadelphia resident.

According to the Rutgers–Camden researcher, while it is evident that states gain an expanded responsibility and role in financing public education, in this case it remains to be seen whether this expansion has a positive or negative outcome.

“Some policymakers would argue that centralizing education finance at the state level increased equity in public education across school districts,” says Hayes. “This argument assumes that states provide a disproportionally higher amount of education assistance to low-performing school districts. This may not have been the case, however, and it should be a topic for future research.”

Hayes posits that several steps could be taken on the federal and state levels to correct this “fiscal shock” to state governments’ finances. On the federal level, he says, the government could redesign underfunded mandates and grants so that local governments are exempt from binding TELs if they need to increase additional funding in order to meet federal requirements. If local governments can raise additional own-source revenues, he notes, this reduces the burden on state government. 

Furthermore, explains Hayes, state governments may want to assess whether or not their specific TELs policies are meeting their intended fiscal goals, as well as examine the potential unintended consequences of TELs.

“To put it succinctly, if the social costs of TELs outweigh the social benefits, states may want to consider changing their TEL policies,” says Hayes.

Tom McLaughlin
Rutgers University–Camden
Editorial/Media Specialist
(856) 225-6545
thomas.mclaughlin@camden.rutgers.edu

No Child Left Behind Act Inadvertently Impacts State Governments’ Finances, says Rutgers–Camden Researcher | Media Relations:

ACCJC Targeting City College of San Francisco while allowing violations by the for-profit Heald College to go unchecked

Assemblyman Ting, Education Advocates Demand Accreditation Process Reforms:

Assemblyman Ting, Education Advocates Demand Accreditation Process Reforms

Legislators and education advocates today called for curbs on the powers of college accreditors, who they accused of targeting City College of San Francisco while allowing violations by the for-profit Heald College to go unchecked.

State Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) joined advocates of statewide accreditation process reforms outside the ACCJC’s biannual meeting in Oakland today and called for reforms to reign in the commission’s powers before more students, faculty and staff at other colleges across the state are impacted.

Ting has authored two bills that aim to reform the accreditation process.

The proposed legislation and today’s protests outside the commission meeting came after California’s State Superior Court ruled in January that the commission broke the law when it tried to close City College of San Francisco.

The commission also received criticism from the U.S. Department of Education for its treatment of California community colleges in 2014.

Fred Glass, a spokesman for the California Federation of Teachers, said the issues with the ACCJC go back even further.

According to the California Attorney General, back in 2007 the for-profit vocational operator, Corinthian Schools Inc., was ordered to pay $6.5 million, including $5.8 million in consumer restitution, to settle a lawsuit that alleged the company used false advertising and unlawful business practices by presenting inaccurate salary and employment information to students.

When Corinthian bought Heald College in 2010, the ACCJC became the lead accreditor for the school. From 2010 to 2012, the ACCJC didn’t find any violations at Heald College.

In 2012, when Heald College wanted to become accredited as a four-year college, the ACCJC handed over the school’s accreditation process to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and recommended Heald for full accreditation, according to Glass.

Corinthian was fined another $30 million for similar violations in April and abruptly closed 28 campuses, impacting roughly 16,000 students.

Glass said that the ACCJC oversaw both Heald College and CCSF, yet unfairly pursued the non-profit school and “turned a blind eye” to the continued violations at the for-profit school.

Ting’s bill, AB 1397, would create comprehensive reforms to the accreditation process, Glass said. If passed, it would provide due process, greater objectivity and transparency, including public access to commission meetings.

Currently, commission meetings allow for only 15 minutes of comments from 20 Assemblyman Ting, Education Advocates Demand Accreditation Process Reforms:

A big change in the S.F. teachers union | SocialistWorker.org

A big change in the S.F. teachers union | SocialistWorker.org:

A big change in the S.F. teachers union

Matt Bello, a high school teacher and activist in United Educators of San Francisco, analyzes the unexpected outcome of elections for the union's top offices.

June 8, 2015

From left to right: Claudia Haas, Lita Blanc and Rose Curreri celebrate the EDU victory

A NEW era is coming to United Educators of San Francisco (UESF), the teachers union in the San Francisco public schools.

In a surprise upset, Dennis Kelly, the longtime president of the union and leader of the Progressive Leadership Caucus (PLC), was narrowly defeated by Lita Blanc of the reform caucus Educators for a Democratic Union (EDU). The popular incumbent Vice President Susan Solomon of PLC kept her position.

In all, 14 of 16 EDU candidates won the positions they were running for. But EDU didn't field enough candidates to win a majority of the 40 seats on the executive board. This outcome will force the two caucuses of the union that have often been at odds to share power. 


Kelly, a San Francisco teacher and labor activist since the 1960s, had been president of the union since 2003. While some were impressed by his decades of advocacy and the moderate gains for teachers in an age of austerity, many others have been turned off by his aloof, backroom leadership style and lack of vision for a district and city in midst of extreme gentrification.

Most recently, he was criticized for accepting a gag order imposed by a mediator duringcontract negotiations in late 2014--which kept members in the dark about what was happening and crippled attempts to build a campaign for a better contract.


Kelly is also a leader in the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and their state affiliates in California. He is currently a vice president of the AFT and a member of AFT President Randi Weingarten's Progressive Caucus--a formation that has led the union in a direction that many teacher activists are critical of, including collaboration with corporate school "reform."

Kelly has come under fire for other issues, as well. Prominent Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah recently criticized him, Weingarten and other AFT leaders for strengthening the union's ties with apartheid Israel--including traveling to Israel earlier this year on a junket arranged by the liberal Zionist lobbying organization J Street--and undermining the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

KELLY AND the Progressive Leadership Caucus barely ran a campaign for the internal election, confident that they would be re-elected after the last contract achieved one of the largest raises for teachers in the state. The 12 percent raise over three years in San Francisco seems to stand out compared to pay increases for teachers elsewhere. But it falls far short of the extreme cost-of-living increases in the city, and overall wages remain below many neighboring suburban districts.

The union of approximately 6,200 members has seen 4,000 members leave the San Francisco Unified School District in the last 12 years. This hemorrhaging of membership is clearly tied to the extreme gentrification of San Francisco, but also to burdensome dependent health care costs, lack of secondary class size caps and an expanding program of standardized testing and top-down directives. None of these were addressed in the contract struggle.

In response to the enormous pressures on San Francisco educators and to the union leadership's inability to address the situation, the EDU caucus organized a small grassroots campaign during the pre-election period, by organizing small events at many schools, distributing leaflets to dozens of district schools and facilities, and developing a large base on Facebook. EDU also had the public support of the prominent and well-respected San Francisco-based grassroots professional development organizationTeachers 4 Social Justice.

All of these factors, along with EDU's reputation as opponents of the recent contract settlement and critics of standardized testing, raised its candidates' popularity.

Low voter turnout, which traditionally benefits incumbents, may have helped EDU this time. An archaic and confusing voting process not based at worksites, along with general membership apathy, resulted in only 13 percent of union members voting in the election--though the turnout was still approximately 100 votes higher than in the last election three years ago. The offer by EDU members to collect ballots from teachers and drive them A big change in the S.F. teachers union | SocialistWorker.org:

CA State Superintendent's Blueprint for a Second Term - On California - Education Week

CA State Superintendent's Blueprint for a Second Term - On California - Education Week:

CA State Superintendent's Blueprint for a Second Term

 Back in December, I wrote about a marvelous, campy country and western video that State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson sang (kinda) under the title "California: We do things different," adding the grammatically correct ly at the end.  The movement of the state from "test and judge" to "support and improve" now extends to Torlakson's official vocabulary as he talks about the "The California Way" in a series of proposals he's called Blueprint 2.0, which is in draft form.

Blueprint 2.0 begins by parting ways with the past.  "The days of California's reliance on a single standardized test for accountability purposes are over," the draft document says. "While well intentioned, we now recognize that we were using the wrong drivers for positive educational change."  Local control funding and the new state standards are creating "a new accountability system that differs from the previous [one] in almost every respect."

Torlakson recently talked with me about what Blueprint 2.0 calls the "unique opportunity" that schools have to reconfigure themselves as learning organizations.  Here, edited for length and clarity, is our conversation.

When you talk to your colleagues from other states, what do they think about California's difference?

They wondered about us four-and-a-half years ago when we were not jumping on board the train that was hauling all the federal money, if you obeyed the new rules.  Many of them got on that train and found that it wasn't going anywhere worthwhile.  Or they got the money, and now their waivers are in trouble.  I think we're viewed as progressive, and other superintendents marvel at the fact we passed an $8-billion tax measure and coupled it with finance system reform attuned to serving lower income kids and English learners.

Let's talk about the Blueprint specifically.  One of its elements is raising revenue. How are you going to build a coalition around finance?

There's a short term and a long term.  The short term is that we have to have a new measure for revenue to replace the loss of Prop 30 [the tax increase voters approved in 2011. Next year the sales tax portion expires, and the income tax portion expires at the end of 2018].  It's tricky enough to figure out what will sell to the voters and what would be acceptable to the governor or get his endorsement.  The longer-range issue is the whole definition of adequacy and how you fund that.  California used to be in the top five or six states in per pupil funding, and now we're 46th [adjusted for cost of living]. The promise of the Local Control Funding formula is in jeopardy if the funding isn't there.

The momentum from my re-election campaign helps. We're going to go around the state and put a spotlight on all the good things going on.  People support my push for career-tech education, technology in our schools, more parent involvement, more help for English learners. Many of those things are going on because Prop 30 is providing the revenue stream.

Are you anticipating a road show?

Of sorts.  We've done it before.  We've got lots of good news. We are changing the way schools are funded, providing more money to schools and students who need it most, implementing more CA State Superintendent's Blueprint for a Second Term - On California - Education Week:

D.C Public Schools Academic Performance Improves, But Achievement Gap Persists : Columns : ISchoolGuide

D.C Public Schools Academic Performance Improves, But Achievement Gap Persists : Columns : ISchoolGuide:

D.C Public Schools Academic Performance Improves, But Achievement Gap Persists

A National Research Council report showed promising improvements in D.C’s public schools after seven years of aggressive reforms. However, the report also revealed persisting disparities in the academic performance and resources between the poor and wealthy students.

D.C public schools seemed to be showing improvements after seven years of aggressive education reforms, according to a report from the National Research Council. While the findings looked promising, the report released Wednesday revealed a persisting gap between the wealthy and poor students when it comes to academic performance and resources.

The council provides an independent assessment of the education reform measures implemented in 2007 when former Mayor Adrian Fenty handled the city's schools and assigned Michelle Rhee as public schools chancellor. Michael Alison Chandler of The Washington Postsaid the council found the District's minority and poor students to be less likely to perform at grade level, have a quality teacher in class, and graduate from high school on time.

While test scores have improved for all student groups, the report stated that the city's achievement gap has not been addressed.

Rhee attracted national attention when she had a dispute with union leaders and promised to overturn the status quo in an effort to change the schools. Many urban school systems have positively viewed these changes, including new academic standards and teacher evaluations. However, researchers told the council's Education Committee on Wednesday that there are no quick solutions.

"Patience is of great importance in all these endeavors," said Diana Pullin, a professor of higher education and educational leadership at Boston College who contributed to the report.

The report suggested addressing the gap as the city's primary objective. It also highlighted the need for a more centralized collection of data district-wide, including charter schools. The data would be overseen by a single agency with the ultimate responsibility of tracking the quality of public education, The Washington Post reported.

Deputy Mayor for Education Jennifer Niles said she agreed with many of the findings, and said the city is working on clarifying and improving authority lines. The city also plans to unveil a new "cross-sector task force" that would focus on improving coherence in all public schools.

D.C Public Charter School Board Executive Director Scott Pearson said they have joined in collaborative efforts like LearnDC that collects data on college and career preparedness.D.C Public Schools Academic Performance Improves, But Achievement Gap Persists : Columns : ISchoolGuide:

The Unguarded Hen House - Change The LAUSD

The Unguarded Hen House - Change The LAUSD:

The Unguarded Hen House 

“A district may not require students to purchase a cap and gown as a condition of participating in the graduation ceremony.”

-California Department of Education, 2013

“All students who participate in the ceremony must wear a cap and gown. After January 31,2015, caps and gowns are $60.00 (CASH ONLY) and are only available at Senior Clearance on June 3, 2015.”

-Granada Hills Charter High School

California taxpayers send more than $3 billion to privately operated charter schools every year. This money is supposed to be used to educate our children in a way that is consistent with the law, but there is little assurance that the money diverted from public schools is benefiting the students. Charter schools were supposed to bring more accountability to education, but local, county and state agencies lack either the tools or the will to provide the necessary oversight. This creates a situation where these schools are permitted to operate outside the boundaries of the law.

Like their public school counterparts, charter schools in California are prohibited from charging their students “a pupil fee...for participation in an educational activity.” When I realized that Granada Hills Charter High School’s cap and gown fee was a violation of this law, I notified them of the problem. While they did agree to refund the fee that I had paid, they refused to change their policies so that all parents would be made aware that caps and gowns would be provided without charge. To make matters worse, they announced that contrary to the law, they would charge students $30 for tickets over their allotment of four. Clearly, it was going to take an outside force to ensure their compliance with the law.

I first contacted the LAUSD about these issues on May 8. While the district had just increased the budget so that their schools could comply with this law, the The Unguarded Hen House - Change The LAUSD: