Why the Running Start argument should be a non-starter for reconsideration of Supreme Court’s charter school decision | Seattle Education

Why the Running Start argument should be a non-starter for reconsideration of Supreme Court’s charter school decision | Seattle Education:

Why the Running Start argument should be a non-starter for reconsideration of Supreme Court’s charter school decision

After the Washington State Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Plaintiffs in deciding charter schools are not Common Schools due to a lack of public oversight and therefore cannot receive public funding, the well financed proponents of charter schools decided to try another route by having the State Attorney General submit an argument to the State Supreme Court. His argument is as follows:

“The decision not only invalidates Initiative 1240, but also unnecessarily calls into question the constitutionality of a wide range of other state educational programs,” the statement said. “These important programs range from Running Start to Washington State Skills Centers that provide career and technical education to high school students.”

In regards to Running Start, this is not the case.

Running Start dollars go to school districts, under the supervision of an elected school board, and then the district transfers at least 93% of the funds to community colleges to pay for the district’s students who enroll there. What’s more, the school board has to approve an agreement with the community or technical college about the level of reimbursement for each student receiving Running Start services from that public institutions.

State Representative Gerry Pollet lays it out in his statement below.

Why Running Start argument should be a Non-Starter for reconsideration of Supreme Court’s Charter School Decision

Rep. Gerry Pollet, J.D.; 46th District (N and NE Seattle, Lake Forest Park and Kenmore)

The Washington Supreme Court decision striking down the charter school initiative as unconstitutional because it sends public school funding directly to unaccountable private charter schools does not jeopardize our state’s Running start program, under which high school students enroll for dual credit in local community and technical college courses.

Charter school advocates are urging reconsideration of the Washington Supreme Court Why the Running Start argument should be a non-starter for reconsideration of Supreme Court’s charter school decision | Seattle Education:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Latest Update from SPS on Teacher Contract Negotiations - NO SCHOOL ON TUESDAY

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Latest Update from SPS on Teacher Contract Negotiations - NO SCHOOL ON TUESDAY:

Latest Update from SPS on Teacher Contract Negotiations - NO SCHOOL ON TUESDAY

Update:  From SPS' Negotiation page, a long chart of the timeline of events and issues put forth.  Interesting reading.

end of update

West Seattle Blog Tweet:

District is studying new SEA offer, but NO SCHOOL TOMORROW, per district @ 3 pm briefing.

More from the West Seattle Blog: 

Because of the strike’s length, spokesperson Stacy Howard says, there’ll be some turnaround time whenever the strike finally ends. 

She is discussing a few other points such as special education – the topic of a demonstration here earlier in the day. 

As for “the strike impacts on the calendar” – the three snow days on the calendar will be used, for starters, one midyear, two at the end of the school year – “all additional makeup days” will be determined once the strike is over. Possible ideas: Saturdays, and/or part of the mid-winter break (which was scheduled for five days this year – alternating years have shorter breaks). 

Re: graduation days – Seniors are required to be in school 175 days before graduation, so graduation dates might have to change. 

As reported here yesterday, middle-school athletic events are postponed. High-school practices and games “continue to go on as usual – a lot of those employees are in different unions or not in unions at all,” says Howard. 

She says that by the time this news conference is over, the district expects to have a “timeline” posted online from negotiations to date.Seattle Schools Community Forum: Latest Update from SPS on Teacher Contract Negotiations - NO SCHOOL ON TUESDAY:

Free Food for Striking Teachers

Via the Slog:

Teachers are no doubt building up an appetite marching on the picket line. In support of all the Seattle Public School teachers currently on strike, Li’l Woody’s is offering a free burger to teachers for each the day the strike continues. Burgers are available at both of Li'l Woody's locations on Capitol Hill and in Ballard. 
"Li’l Woody’s is glad to be able to help in some way by giving free burgers to those out there doing the hard work of educating kids in Seattle," says ownerMarcus Lalario. 

Here are the details: For each day the strike goes on, SPS teachers are eligible for one free burger. Each teacher must show SPS identification and be present to order (so, no "group" orders). Add-ons, substitutions—and fries—are extra. 

And Seattleites, if you'd like to throw a little love back at Lalario for this move, his latest restaurant, Fat's Chicken and Waffles, is now open in the Central District.

Free Food for Striking Teachers

Jeb Bush’s Florida Education Plan Created Corruption and Chaos

Jeb Bush’s Florida Education Plan Created Corruption and Chaos:

Jeb Bush’s Florida Education Plan Created Corruption and Chaos

“We’re making decisions just based on the money.”

That’s Rosemarie Jensen talking, a tone of exasperation creeping into her voice as she describes the influence of money on education policy in South Florida. “Some things should be run like a business,” she tells me in a coffee shop near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “Education isn’t one of those things.”

Jensen lives in Broward County, just to the north of Miami-Dade. Broward is home to a diverse population of students, drawn from the state’s most exclusive gated communities as well as neighborhoods wracked by generational poverty. A former K-12 school teacher and current public school parent, Jensen is part of a growing movement of parents who believe they are being shut out of important decisions about public school governance, while those making the decisions too often have something monetary to gain.

As a leader of United Opt Out, an organization that advocates boycotting standardized tests in public schools, Jensen has opted her own son, a special education student in high school, out of the Florida state exam now known as the Florida Standards Assessments. But standardized testing isn’t the only thing that’s got her steamed.

Jensen recounts stories of her father, a first-generation immigrant and high school dropout, who cleaned out tankers so he could raise his daughter in a neighborhood with good public schools and eventually send her to college. Today, she sees that idealistic view of the American dream being undone in her community by an invasion of moneyed interests promoting charter schools.

In her view, charter schools — the privately managed, publicly funded entities that operate outside the oversight of democratically governed school systems — are not now what they originally claimed to be: centers of innovation created by teachers and parents. Jensen has taken note of the amount of money these schools spend on advertising and marketing. She complains that the middle school her children attended can’t get money to construct a safer point of entry, while the state steers funds to charters for new construction. She believes that making public schools compete with charter schools for money dilutes funding that should be paying for better education for all children. While she used to be open-minded about these Jeb Bush’s Florida Education Plan Created Corruption and Chaos:

“Efficiency” as a Constitutional Mandate for Texas’s Educational System | VAMboozled!

“Efficiency” as a Constitutional Mandate for Texas’s Educational System | VAMboozled!:

“Efficiency” as a Constitutional Mandate for Texas’s Educational System

The Texas Constitution requires that the state “establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools,” as the “general diffusion of knowledge [is]…essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people.” Following this notion, The George W. Bush Institute’s Education Reform Initiative  recently released its first set of reports as part of its The Productivity for Results Series: “A Legal Lever for Enhancing Productivity.” The report was authored by an affiliate of The New Teacher Project (TNTP) – the non-profit organization founded by the controversial former Chancellor of Washington DC’s public schools Michelle Rhee; an unknown and apparently unaffiliated “education researcher” named Krishanu Sengupta; and Sandy Kress, the “key architect of No Child Left Behind [under the presidential leadership of George W. Bush] who later became a lobbyist for Pearson, the testing company” (see, for example, here).

Authors of this paper review the economic and education research (although if you look through the references the strong majority of pieces come from economics research, which makes sense as this is an economically driven venture) to identify characteristics that typify enterprises that are efficient. More specifically, the authors use the principles of x-efficiency set out in the work of the highly respected Henry Levin that require efficient organizations, in this case as (perhaps inappropriately) applied to schools, to have: 1) Clear objective outcomes with measurable outcomes; 2) Incentives that are linked to success on the objective function; 3) Efficient access to useful information for decisions; 4) Adaptability to meet changing conditions; and 5) Use of the most productive technology consistent with cost constraints.

The authors also advance another series of premises, as related to this view of x-efficiency and its application to education/schools in Texas: (1) that “if Texas is committed to diffusing knowledge efficiently, as mandated by the state constitution, it should ensure that the system for putting effective teachers in classrooms and effective materials in the hands of teachers and students is characterized by the principles that undergird an efficient enterprise, such as those of x-efficiency;” (2) this system must include value-added measurement systems (i.e., VAMs), as deemed throughout this paper as not only constitutional but also rational and in support of x-efficiency; (3) given “rational policies for teacher training, certification, evaluation, compensation, and dismissal are key to an “Efficiency” as a Constitutional Mandate for Texas’s Educational System | VAMboozled!:

Teachers advocates for poor in Seattle fight with politicians | Cloaking Inequity

Teachers advocates for poor in Seattle fight with politicians | Cloaking Inequity:

Teachers advocates for poor in Seattle fight with politicians

The Seattle teachers are on strike. Before you get all huffy puffy about unions because it’s the popular thing to do. Don’t forget the 36 Reasons Why You Should Thank a Union.

• Weekends
• All Breaks at Work, including your Lunch Breaks
• Paid Vacation
• FMLA
• Sick Leave
• Social Security
• Minimum Wage
• Civil Rights Act/Title VII (Prohibits Employer Discrimination)
• 8-Hour Work Day
• Overtime Pay
• Child Labor Laws
• Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
• 40 Hour Work Week
• Worker’s Compensation (Worker’s Comp)
• Unemployment Insurance
• Pensions
• Workplace Safety Standards and Regulations
• Employer Health Care Insurance
• Collective Bargaining Rights for Employees
• Wrongful Termination Laws
• Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
• Whistleblower Protection Laws
• Employee Polygraph Protect Act (Prohibits Employer from using a lie detector test on an employee)
• Veteran’s Employment and Training Services (VETS)
• Compensation increases and Evaluations (Raises)
• Sexual Harassment Laws
• Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)
• Holiday Pay
• Employer Dental, Life, and Vision Insurance
• Privacy Rights
• Pregnancy and Parental Leave
• Military Leave
• The Right to Strike
• Public Education for Children
• Equal Pay Acts of 1963 & 2011 (Requires employers pay men and women equally for the same amount of work)
• Laws Ending Sweatshops in the United States

A quick personal perspective on unions: I didn’t realize it at the time, but the University of Texas at Austin was a worse deal for my budget because I wasn’t unionized. I didn’t know any better until I moved to California State and my health insurance went from costing me about $400 a month to free. You can do the math on the yearly savings. Also, everyone received a raise during my first year at California State, that hadn’t happened in about six years at UT Austin. Do I think unions are perfect? I discussed this at Edweek in Teacher Unions and the Future. 

In Seattle, the teachers are striking. (This is the same state where the Supreme Court recently outlawed public money going to charter schools. Wow.) The strike is really about resources for schools in Seattle. The South Seattle Emerald writes,

Seattle Public Schools teachers haven’t had a cost of living adjustment in six years — and in that time, rents in Seattle have gone up about 40% in some places, meaning our educators are actively making less money than they were a few years ago, to do the same important job.

However, the strike is mostly about poverty,

So yes, they are asking for a raise. But they’re also asking for a lot more, and on behalf of a lot of other people. And it’s those additional demands that could have a huge impact on the cycle of poverty in some of Seattle’s lowest-income schools…

They’re the trusted adults that kids turn to when their homes are chaotic. They’re the professionals who can identify and address Teachers advocates for poor in Seattle fight with politicians | Cloaking Inequity:

Failing Students

Failing Students:

How We Fail Our Students

could just scream when I read about downward trends in California, let alone nationwide, when it comes to student-readiness for post-high school life. Not to be too simplistic, it seems to me that these latest dire predictions should be relatively easy to rebut and reverse.

Perhaps, first and foremost, let’s throw out altogether a majority of the “new-fangled” programs and strategies (with all their bells and whistles) and get back to the basics from which most of us benefitted a generation ago. I think a lot of the coursework today has been created only to justify the existence of a program or a person’s position in it and not, in the long run, for the common good of our children (the unfortunate results which we witness every day as our young people emerge from our currently imperfect, unevenly applied, dismally inadequate, and somewhat myopic educational system).

I consider myself a successful product of the broad foundation I acquired during the early days of my education, the basis from which I have ever since benefitted.   However, I have also been a teacher for nearly four decades and understand how the contrast between former and current strategies produces vastly and dramatically different results–outcomes that do not generally fulfill our reasonable hopes and expectations.

To be honest, as a teacher I did my best to skirt many State and District mandates which essentially wanted educators to teach to the tests—something which occurred so frequently that those incessant (and rather useless) exams often interrupted and, thus, prevented the natural flow of the curricular process. Consequentially, those testing regimens generally created constant setbacks to achieving, in a timely manner, the benchmarks that had been set.

What I tried to do was to review curricula from the previous grades and to create a foundation early in the school year in an attempt to get all my students up to speed. Thus, from day one of each new school year, I would begin (regardless of class level or academic ability—remedial to advanced) with a review of the basics [almost as if the students knew nothing—like the blank slates (tabula rasa) that they are, waiting to be imprinted with the skills that can and will inevitably lead to success].

Following those chiefly productive efforts, I would proceed in a systematic way. My methods would not only incorporate the skills that were necessary to be acquired in a sequential way but, in so doing, would also wind up addressing the subject matter covered on the many standardized tests that faced us.

Too many educators today are reticent about teaching the fundamentals that the natural progression of education-acquisition requires—in large part, because they avoided taking the classes which would teach those necessary skills.

Too many educators today are reticent about teaching the fundamentals that the natural progression of education-acquisition requires—in large part, because (for somewhat specious reasons) they avoided taking the classes which would teach those necessary skills. And, often, if they did select such classes to complete their degree requirements, many professors (inscrutably) were negligent by not teaching those skills.

In today’s search to find answers to all our current educational problems, too many have forgotten about what worked in the past. Yes, we are faced with many problems that overall were not an issue before, but such reality does not preclude us from working through those challenges.

Yes, we do have a large immigrant population whose needs must be addressed (but recall that only two generations ago, America witnessed a large influx of people from around the world who were able to assimilate more easily because that was the expectation held by both educators and parents–for themselves and for the children being schooled). Considering this circumstance, there Failing Students:

From Zero Tolerance to Restorative Justice: How School Districts Such as Los Angeles and New York Are Reforming Student Discipline - The Atlantic

From Zero Tolerance to Restorative Justice: How School Districts Such as Los Angeles and New York Are Reforming Student Discipline - The Atlantic:

Will School-Discipline Reform Actually Change Anything

Districts from Los Angeles to New York City are experimenting with new policies designed to eliminate zero-tolerance discipline. But the reality is often a lot different than the idea.

Damian Dovarganes / AP

Christine Rodriguez vividly recalls her early school years. A native of Brooklyn’sBushwick neighborhood, a working-class predominantly black and Latino section of New York City, her most vivid memories of elementary school consist of crammed classrooms with inadequate books, insufficient chairs, and the constant presence of the school-safety agent. (School Safety Agents, or SSAs, are New York Police Department officers assigned to K-12 campuses and charged with protecting students, campus staff, and visitors.) Now a college freshman at The New School studying education, Rodriguez rattles off with ease how school discipline shaped her K-12 education. 

“We go to schools where there are more SSAs than guidance counselors. For us, it makes us feel that they expect us to end up in jail rather than in college,” said Rodriguez, 17. “I’ve been to public school my whole life. I’ve experienced the school-to-prison pipeline”—a term commonly used to describe the trend in which largely disadvantaged students are funneled into the criminal-justice system—“and criminalization (of students). And I’ve questioned why all of these things happen to our communities.”

“I’ve been to public school my whole life. I’ve experienced the school-to-prison pipeline and criminalization (of students). And I’ve questioned why all of these things happen to our communities.”

Policymakers and educators, among others, are beginning to question the harsh discipline policies and practices that have in recent decades became popular in certain districts, too. Research shows that the reliance on punitive school discipline like suspensions, expulsions, and school arrests—“school pushout”—deprives students of learning time and takes the greatest toll on nonwhite students, students with disabilities, LGBT youth and other vulnerable student groups. Suspensions can even harm the education of non-misbehaving students, according to some research.

The data on the shortcomings of zero-tolerance discipline is clear and overwhelming, and with increasing regularity and in increasing numbers school districts and states are responding to calls for reform. A wide range of approaches to address discipline concerns with new policies and laws are being tested across the country—including in New York City—with varying degrees of success and enthusiasm. Many of these efforts are spurred by grassroots activists, as well as a growing research base suggesting that suspensions—particularly for minor infractions—are a flawed discipline strategy. A 2011 analysis by the advocacy group and think tank Child Trends found that majority of school suspensions are for nonviolent offenses. The analysis cites a study on one large, unnamed urban school district in Florida showing that attendance violations and disrespect were the most common reason for suspensions in the jurisdiction, while another study, this one included in a DOE report, found 95 percent of out-of-school suspensionswere for slight infractions and misbehavior. 

The impetus for the emphasis on suspensions—which is still used in many districts and charter-school networks such as KIPP—didn’t have a strong research basis, explained Dan Losen, the director of the Center for Civil Rights Remediesat UCLA’s Civil Rights Project. Instead, schools took a cue from the 1970s War From Zero Tolerance to Restorative Justice: How School Districts Such as Los Angeles and New York Are Reforming Student Discipline - The Atlantic:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Want to Know More About SPS Teacher Pay?

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Want to Know More About SPS Teacher Pay?:

Want to Know More About SPS Teacher Pay?

A former teacher has compiled so much data, she created a blog for called:

SPS Salary Info for Contract Negotiations 

Unfortunately, I don't know who this person is (see bio at end) but the material (and tone) is such that I believe this is another Meg Diaz-type person who likes being in the weeds. 

I present it for public information purposes but ask that if you see flaws/enhancements, etc. that you add them.  The first sentence below is indicative of the issue before us in how BOTH the district and the SEA have not clearly stated their salary issues. 

ALL of this is publicly available information, but it's not presented in an understandable form anywhere.

There are some additional minor "quirks" of calculating the salary tables, but I do not currently have the information to add those (TRI actually breaks down further into time (per diem) and responsibility). Based on the accuracy of the results I got from using these formulas to re-calculate the 2014-2015 Seattle Schools Community Forum: Want to Know More About SPS Teacher Pay?:

What’s up with Illinois’ opt-out bill. | Fred Klonsky

What’s up with Illinois’ opt-out bill. | Fred Klonsky:

What’s up with Illinois’ opt-out bill.

State Representatives Will Guzzardi (left) and Laura Fine (right).

We invited State Representatives Will Guzzardi and Laura Fine to our Skokie Organization of Retired Educators luncheon at Zhivago’s restaurant last Wednesday.

Laura represents a north suburban district where many of our retirees live.

Will represents me and those who live in Logan Square and the north side of Chicago.

State reps run every two years and so Will is collecting signatures to run again.

Nobody has announced that they will run against him. But those opposed to the progressive electoral movement in the city have spent thousands of dollars on glossy mailers in the last few weeks targeting Will

When Will beat the Democratic Machine two years ago it gave a major shot in the arm to the progressive electoral movement in the City. 35th Ward Alderman Carlos Rosa built on the electoral base that supported Will to beat the pro-Rahm incumbent, even as the Mayor himself defeated progressive Chuy Garcia.

Rosa is now collecting signatures to run for Democratic Ward Committeeman.

Guzzardi impressed many when among his first acts in Springfield was to introduce and sponsor HB 306, a bill that strengthened the rights of parents to have their children opt out of PARCC and other state standardized tests.

The Bill passed the House but is now stalled in the Senate. Pretty much What’s up with Illinois’ opt-out bill. | Fred Klonsky:

When “school choice” leads families to trade one bad school for another - The Hechinger Report

When “school choice” leads families to trade one bad school for another - The Hechinger Report:

When “school choice” leads families to trade one bad school for another

Chicago study documents that fewer than 5 percent of students who transfer move to a high performing school

 In a perfect world, school choice is supposed work by allowing families to leave bad schools and enroll their children in better ones. The failing schools either close, or improve to attract students again.

But for such a system to operate smoothly, parents need information to figure out which schools are good and which are bad.

In Chicago, researchers had an unusual opportunity to study, over several years, how publicizing information about school quality influenced where families enrolled their children.  And they found that many families did pull their children out of failing schools. But they usually ended up in ones that were just as bad, or only slightly better. Astonishingly, more than 25 percent of the transfer students moved to another school that was also on the city’s probation list of failing schools.

“The reason is geography,” said Peter M. Rich, one of the study’s coauthors and a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at New York University. “The low-performing schools are clustered in high-poverty neighborhoods in the South and West Side of Chicago. They have fewer nearby options to choose from.”

Given the choice of commuting a long way to a high-performing school on the other side of town and transferring to a school in the neighborhood, low-income parents tend to choose the latter. Time-consuming travel is impractical for students with working parents. And no one wants to send elementary school children on public transportation by themselves through crime-ridden neighborhoods. But the choices closer to home are often little, if at all, better than poor students’ current schools.

While certain aspects of public transportation infrastructure, geographic segregation and neighborhood safety are unique to Chicago, Rich believes the lessons from his study, “Choice, Information, Constrained Options: School Transfers in a Stratified Education System,” published online in the American Sociological Review on Sept. 9, 2015, and slated to be printed in its October 2015 journal, are widely applicable.

“The overall lesson is that school choice policies that don’t provide transportation or, perhaps, housing subsidies for families to move to higher-income neighborhoods aren’t going to equalize educational opportunities,” Rich concluded.

Rich found that the low-performing schools were overwhelmingly When “school choice” leads families to trade one bad school for another - The Hechinger Report:

Washington State Court Rejects Charters, Affirms Democratically Governed Public Schools | janresseger

Washington State Court Rejects Charters, Affirms Democratically Governed Public Schools | janresseger:

Washington State Court Rejects Charters, Affirms Democratically Governed Public Schools

For many years now, there have been serious questions about whether charter schools are operating in the public interest.  The state laws that establish charter schools are designed to reduce what proponents of privatization call the straitjacket of bureaucracy.  Charters are free from many of the requirements, rules, and regulations that are said by proponents of privatization to constrain innovation in the public schools.

As the charter sector expands, however, serious questions continue to arise about exactly whose interests charter schools serve. Should tax dollars be spent on schools that are permitted to set enrollment caps when the schools’ operators decide when they are full and then turn children away?  Should we be spending tax dollars on schools that fail to provide services for blind or autistic children or children with severe behavior problems, despite that federal law prescribes that well-designed services for all children will be provided by qualified experts? (Such policies too often turn the surrounding public school districts into school districts of last resort for the children who remain in traditional public schools because charters choose not to provide the very expensive services.) Should tax dollars be flowing to schools that forward over 90 percent of revenues to for-profit, nationwide parent Charter Management Organizations, CMOs that, through real estate affiliates, charge the schools themselves outrageous rent—producing added profits for the owners?  If a particular charter school is shut down, should the big for-profit Charter Management Organization get to keep all the books and equipment purchased originally with tax dollars?  And what about the Charter Management Organizations that essentially select their students by locating their schools in particular neighborhoods or by neglecting to offer transportation or federally subsidized lunch?

School choice through charters is also pretty much limited to the children whose parents are equipped to fill out the applications.  Traditional public schools, by contrast, are required by law to serve every child—wherever that child lives and whoever the child’s parents.  A democratically elected local school board has traditionally been seen as most able to ensure that each child’s needs are served and rights are protected, but charter schools are Washington State Court Rejects Charters, Affirms Democratically Governed Public Schools | janresseger:

Discrimination begins early and immigrant preschoolers notice, report says | 89.3 KPCC

Discrimination begins early and immigrant preschoolers notice, report says | 89.3 KPCC:

Discrimination begins early and immigrant preschoolers notice, report says

Preschoolers from immigrant families can face discrimination from teachers, administrators, even other children who are not immigrants, according to a new report from the Migration Policy Institute. 

"Personal discrimination may be direct like racist comments or drawing attention to a child’s personal appearance," said report author, Jennifer Adair, a professor at the University of Texas.

Indirect discrimination also occurs, she said, "like questions about why their parents don’t speak English or being asked to be the janitor or cleaner in a game instead of the princess or policeman."

Adair has been studying issues in preschool, kindergarten and first-grade classrooms in Texas and California. She has researched discriminatory attitudes toward young children from immigrant families in classrooms.

"Young children often have to deal with hurtful comments singling out certain aspects of their identities on their own," Adair said. They are not yet able to articulate or describe subtle forms of discrimination that have hurt them, she said.

"How young children are treated in early schooling affects later behavior and academic performance," Adair said. "If young children hear negative messages from school, they may be less able to achieve academic success and economic mobility."

Witnesses to discrimination

It's not just what children themselves experience, the report points out. Many children can also witness discriminatory treatment of their parents by teachers or school administrators, according to the study.

She said teachers may make derogatory comments or act in ways that are patronizing to immigrant parents. Examples that Adair gives include teachers commenting about a parent's accent or home-language. A child may watch as their parent is repeatedly ignored by a teacher or in the school office, she said.

"Unfortunately, some teachers and administrators mistakenly believe that when parents are not fluent in English or do not understand the U.S. school system, then they have nothing to offer their child in terms of education or schooling," Adair said.

The consequence of such experiences in the school system can lead to parents who are less involved in their child's learning.

"This is particularly unfortunate for immigrant parents of young children because it is precisely in the early grades of school that parents are usually the most involved and thought of as a partner with the teacher," Adair said.

Culture of Low Expectations

The report also highlights another form of discrimination that Adair said she has witnessed in California classrooms: a culture of low expectations.  She said this Discrimination begins early and immigrant preschoolers notice, report says | 89.3 KPCC:

What We Lose When A Neighborhood School Goes Away : Code Switch : NPR

What We Lose When A Neighborhood School Goes Away : Code Switch : NPR:

What We Lose When A Neighborhood School Goes Away

It's no accident that neighborhood schools are battlegrounds for so many of the pitched battles over race and place in America.

LA Johnson/NPR

A few years ago, a good friend and I were walking near downtown Philadelphia, not far from my old elementary school, Thomas C. Durham, on 16th and Lombard. The school was built on the edge of a black neighborhood in South Philly in the early 1900s, and its design earned it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places when I was in the third grade. I nudged my friend to take a quick detour with me.

Standing before the old, brown brick building, I had that vaguely bewildering feeling of considering one's elementary school through adult eyes. This place that loomed large in my memory, where I learned to love reading in Ms. Curtis's class and where I sent my first email in computer lab on a white Apple IIGS with a blue screen, seemed really damn small.

But memory was the only place that Durham — my Durham — still existed. The school had closed its doors in the late 1990s because of the city's crushing budget problems, and was later swept up in a wave of charter-ization that took over Philly after I graduated. The old Durham building now housed something called the Independence Charter School. My middle school, George C. Thomas in deeper South Philly, has undergone a similar conversion. They were part of a larger trend: In the last three years alone, Philadelphia has shuttered over 30 of its public schools. And because of the makeup of Philly's public school system, most of the students affected by all this upheaval have been less-resourced children of color.

So what happens to these places? Some became charters like Durham and Thomas; others were abandoned altogether. And then there are cases like Edward W. Bok High School in South Philly, a once well-known vocational-technical school that closed two years ago, found new life as the digs of a trendy hipster bar, and has become an inevitable flashpoint in the fight between the neighborhood's gentrifiers and the folks with older roots.

It's no accident that local schools are battlegrounds for so many of our most heated, pitched battles over race and place in America; schools are the reasons many of our cities and suburbs (and the neighborhoods therein) have the borders they do. There are big structural and pedagogical questions embedded in how we decide to educate (or not educate), how we prioritize and allocate our public resources. Who gets to go to the best of them? Where are they located? Do we have to share?

But as I realized when I visited the ghost of Durham, local schools also fulfill a smaller, human-scale function: they orient us to our own histories, anchors of continuity in the What We Lose When A Neighborhood School Goes Away : Code Switch : NPR:

Charter schools: Prefer building booms to classrooms?

Charter schools: Prefer building booms to classrooms?:

Charter schools: Prefer building booms to classrooms?

THREE FRANKLIN Plaza, a bow-shaped eight-story building at 16th and Vine streets, once hummed with 1,700 GlaxoSmithKline white-collar workers.

Today, it is empty more than three months out of the year, a lone security guard watching over the corporate art still hanging in the lobby.

From September to June, a charter school called String Theory occupies half the floors. The school acquired and began renovating this premier office tower in 2013 as part of a $55 million tax-exempt bond deal, arranged with help from the city's biggest economic-development agency. It was the largest bond deal of its kind in city history.

It is also the most conspicuous example yet of a risky, expensive and fast-growing financial scheme underpinning the rapid expansion of Philadelphia charters - a bond market now worth nearly $500 million. But the bond financing behind the mountain of money gets little scrutiny as to whether the debt is a smart use of Pennsylvania's limited education dollars.

The lack of transparency can translate into deals that may be unsustainable. Shortly after moving into its flashy high-rise, String Theory posted its first operating deficit. After revealing it was $500,000 in the red from paying out millions annually to bondholders, administrators told parents that they were cutting certain classes and suspending bus service as cost-saving measures.

On the plus side, if the String Theory board members who indirectly own the Center City high-rise sell it, there could be a big profit. But is this the way charters should operate?

String Theory, whose officials did not return calls for comment, is hardly alone. As the number of privately administered public schools has grown from 55 to 83 over the past decade, more schools have pursued high-stakes bond deals.

Charter schools used to inhabit repurposed supermarkets or old storefronts, but a Philly.com analysis of bond documents showed that an increasing number - one out of three charters today - have bought or constructed newer and larger school buildings with tax-exempt bonds, paying millions in debt and fees to consultants along the way.

Bonds - school debt sold to investors who are gradually paid back with interest - have become popular among charters because they allow lower borrowing costs than standard commercial loans. Bonds are commonly floated by governments and school districts to get up-front money for infrastructure projects, but charters were long considered too risky an investment because they can be abruptly shut down.

As charter schools became more established, investment prospects improved. But the bonds that charter schools have tapped are still riskier and come with "junk" ratings, carrying high interest rates.

"They're getting bond ratings that have an 8 or 8 1/2 percent interest rate, whereas a school district getting [government] bonds to finance a project can get much lower interest rates," said Bruce Baker, a Rutgers education professor.

This leaves charters spending more education dollars on interest payments - $78 million over 30 years on top of String Theory's $55 million bond, for instance - at rates that are double or triple what the district pays.

The financing process and real-estate transactions themselves also entail millions in consulting and legal fees. Schools like String Theory can become enmeshed in complex and costly deals for marquee buildings that are difficult to sustain.

"There's no real scrutiny of these deals, and charters end up saddled with big fixed costs," said Michael Masch, former chief financial officer for the School District of Philadelphia.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150914_Charter_schools__Prefer_building_booms_to_classrooms_.html#pTOmiUzzTDGSUBpA.99

Web of Secrecy Surrounding Federal Half-a-Billion Handout to Charter Schools | Alternet

Web of Secrecy Surrounding Federal Half-a-Billion Handout to Charter Schools | Alternet:

Web of Secrecy Surrounding Federal Half-a-Billion Handout to Charter Schools

More than $200 million in fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the charter school industry have been documented.

The U.S. Department of Education is poised to spend half a billion dollars to help create new charter schools, while the public is being kept in the dark about which states have applied for the lucrative grants, and what their actual track records are when it comes to preventing fraud and misuse.

Already the federal government has spent $3.3 billion in American tax dollars under the Charter Schools Program (CSP), as tallied by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

But the government has done so without requiring any accountability from the states and schools that receive the money, as CMD revealed earlier this year.

Throwing good money after bad, Education Secretary Arne Duncan called for a 48 percent increase in federal charter funding earlier this year, and the House and Senate budget proposals also call for an increase—albeit a more modest one—while at the same time slashing education programs for immigrants and language learners.

The clamor for charter expansion comes despite the fact that there are federal probes underway into suspected waste and mismanagement within the program, not to mention ongoing and recently completed state audits of fraud perpetrated by charter school operators.

Earlier this year, the Center for Popular Democracy documented more than$200 million in fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the charter school industry in 15 states alone, a number that is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Is now really the right time to plow more tax money into charters?

Insiders Deliberate Far from the Public Eye

The Department of Education is currently deciding what states to award $116 million this year, and more than half a billion during the five-year grant cycle.

So who is in the running and what are their track records?

Which states have applied for a grant designed to eviscerate the public school system in the name of “flexibility?” (CMD's review of state applications and Web of Secrecy Surrounding Federal Half-a-Billion Handout to Charter Schools | Alternet: