Ohio Punishes Poor School Districts with Low Rankings without Providing Needed Funds | janresseger

Ohio Punishes Poor School Districts with Low Rankings without Providing Needed Funds | janresseger:

Ohio Punishes Poor School Districts with Low Rankings without Providing Needed Funds

Last week the Ohio Education Policy Institute, in research funded by the Ohio School Boards Association, the Buckeye Association of School Administrators and the Ohio Association of School Business Officials, once again documented that school districts serving a large number and high concentration of children in poverty scored lowest on the state’s standardized achievement tests and ranked poorly on other statistics being used by Ohio to measure academic success.  Although the state’s ratings remain primarily symbolic this year and will not affect most state policy, it is true that schools and school districts are being branded with low marks and that the state’s ranking of school districts affects the desirability of communities in the housing marketplace. The ultimate result is that the state’s ratings of schools are driving racial and economic segregation across Ohio’s metropolitan areas.

The Plain Dealer posted the data, whose implications reporter Patrick O’Donnell explains:  “Districts with less than 10 percent of students considered ‘economically disadvantaged’ graduate 97.4 percent of students while the poorest districts graduate 73.9 percent.  That’s a 23.5 percent difference—almost one out of every four students… Districts with the least poverty send nearly twice as many students to college as districts with the highest poverty—82.5 percent to 44.4 percent.”

Jim Siegel, reporter for the Columbus Dispatch, quotes Senator Peggy Lehner, chair of the Ohio Senate Education Committee: “If there’s one thing we ought to be pretty well convinced of at this point is that parents’ income makes a big difference on school performance.  But what to do about it is the big question.”

Howard Fleeter, an expert on public finance who conducted the analysis for the Ohio Ohio Punishes Poor School Districts with Low Rankings without Providing Needed Funds | janresseger:

How Deportation Takes an Emotional and Educational Toll on Undocumented Immigrants' Kids - The Atlantic

How Deportation Takes an Emotional and Educational Toll on Undocumented Immigrants' Kids - The Atlantic:

How Fears of Deportation Harm Kids’ Education

The threat of raids could be preventing some undocumented immigrants from sending their children to school.

Alexa Narvaez, 9, along with other protesters, during a rally for deportees in downtown San Diego, California in 2014

For many, the New Year represents new beginnings, a chance to start fresh with a clean slate. But this was not the case for hundreds of undocumented adults and children swept up in deportation raids in the first days of 2016. Federal authorities, stepping up immigration enforcement, fanned out primarily into Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas to take unauthorized immigrants with deportation orders into custody. Immigration officers are focusing their efforts on some 100,000 families that flowed across the U.S. border in 2014, reportedly in an attempt to escape violence in their home countries like El Salvador, thecurrent murder capital of the world.

To casual observers, this might appear to be just another flare-up in the firestorm over national immigration policy. Yet a primary focus of the Obama administration’s latest action is on the most vulnerable of immigrant groups—mothers and children—at a time when Latinos, who make up the largest percentage of undocumented immigrants, represent the fastest-growing segmentof the U.S. public-school population. With raids and deportations aimed largely at Central American children, the debate is extending beyond the divisive issue of undocumented immigrants. Educators, advocates, and community and elected leaders are questioning the untold hardship on schoolchildren as America limps along with seemingly complex, confusing immigration laws and regulations.

As immigration policy separates families and leaves children parentless, the educational and emotional impact on students can be staggering.

About 50 million students were enrolled in U.S. public elementary and secondary schools in 2012. Of those, 7 percent (3.5 million children) had at least one undocumented parent, according to data from the Pew Research Center for Hispanic Trends. While most of the children with unauthorized immigrant parents were born in the U.S., the remainder, about 49,000, are undocumented themselves. This kind of data underscores the striking fact that immigration How Deportation Takes an Emotional and Educational Toll on Undocumented Immigrants' Kids - The Atlantic:

Kansas City teacher – where’s the “merit pay” for love? | The Edvocate Blog

Kansas City teacher – where’s the “merit pay” for love? | The Edvocate Blog:

Kansas City teacher – where’s the “merit pay” for love?

The ruthless politics of “education reform” takes no prisoners. Lawmakers and lobbyists have joined hands with vendors and ROI philanthropists to dismantle public schools and discredit teaching.  Their millions of victims range from hopeful kindergartners to wise veterans who still feel the spiritual calling to teach.

Teachers think nothing of spending their own money to help feed students or devote extra hours to inspire struggling kids to try reading one more time. Education “reform” stupidly squanders the importance of this rich human interaction, in favor of tying teacher pay to standardized test scores. In doing so, they’ve missed the whole mission of teaching.

In this poignant post, Kansas City teacher Sarah Starforth reminds us that the most precious commodity teachers bring to the classroom is love.

Merit pay?

Today in my 2nd grade class I had 1 student crying because her father is in jail and she is confused and scared, 2 students ask for food for their families for the weekend, 1 student sent to the office for a belt because their multi-generational hand-me down pants are too big, 1 student say they are moving because their landlord is raising the rent without warning, and this doesn’t count the students that are put into my class because I am a former special education teacher that doesn’t care if they are multiple grade levels behind.

Where’s my merit pay for the food I buy to keep in my class for hungry students? Where’s my merit pay for the clothes and chap stick I buy? Where’s my merit pay for getting a student to read that hasn’t read until the age of 8? Where’s my merit pay for the blood, snot and tears I wipe on a daily basis?

I am a teacher. I chose to be a teacher. I LOVE being a teacher. But don’t base my salary on how a 7 or 8 year old does one day on one biased test. No salary will ever be able to take the place of the love and care teachers provide for their students.Kansas City teacher – where’s the “merit pay” for love? | The Edvocate Blog:

This dangerous official state poster encouraged Flint residents to bathe babies in poisoned water

This dangerous official state poster encouraged Flint residents to bathe babies in poisoned water:

This dangerous official state poster encouraged Flint residents to bathe babies in poisoned water

int, Michigan continues to grapple with the poisoning of its water supply system. For months the city government of Flint and the state government of Michigan— led by Governor Rick Snyder— ignored scientists, researchers and the citizens of economically depressed Flint who rang alarm bells about the toxic water supply. Instead, they encouraged the people of Flint to drink the water, bathe in the water, and, generally, that the water was safe. Of course the government was terribly wrong.

The debacle of neoliberal policies (Michigan’s government prioritized saving money over safe water) didn’t stop state officials from circulating an online flyer that read, “Hey Flint! It’s Safe to Wash.”

The incredulous poster showed two smiling babies and contained admonishments such as high levels of lead in bath water won’t “soak into your skin fast”. Another line said, “Just don’t let kids drink the bath water when they play in the tub…YUCK!” That last admonishment is what the government of Mexico tells its poorest citizens.

The Detroit Free Press reported that a “spokesman for Gov. Rick Snyder would not say when the poster was removed.”

The flyer, produced by state’s Department of Health and Human Services, fits perfectly into the cavalier, dismissive way in which the state has handled the Flint water crisis. Indeed, a commission warned the Snyder administration against using the Flint River for Flint’s water supply. But Snyder overruled the commission’s suggestion and thousands of residents have suffered because of it.

From the beginning, state officials dismissed concerns about the city’s contaminated water supply—which has actually burned off the eyebrows of Flint residents, according to Michigan Public Radio.

Despite it all, Michigan officials are still encouraging residents to use the dirty water. “Although the poster was taken down from michigan.gov/flintwater,” the Detroit Free This dangerous official state poster encouraged Flint residents to bathe babies in poisoned water:

Nonprofits: Beware The Hand That Feeds | PopularResistance.Org

Nonprofits: Beware The Hand That Feeds | PopularResistance.Org:

Nonprofits: Beware The Hand That Feeds

Can we really depend on big money to fund change?

Above Photo: Money comes with strings that can undermine a revolutionary’s mission. | Reuters

Injustice is not happenstance. It’s systemic. Police shoot more unarmed black men than white because the slave system put a target on their backs centuries ago that has never been erased. Racism is in America’s DNA. It is a systemic problem built into the American culture ever since black people were counted as chattel and fed from a pig’s trough. Every American institution from prisons to politics, from Yale to Mizzou is laced with the inextricable venom of the slave system. The American system is so infected with racial injustice that even programs funded to mitigate systemic social and economic problems become fruit of the poisonous tree. The Nonprofit Quarterly said it best: The Nonprofit Industry has a Ferguson problem.

People are familiar with the Military Industrial Complex, war for profit, a term coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Michelle Alexander in her groundbreaking book, “The New Jim Crow,” gave voice to the Prison Industrial Complex: prison for profit and the incarceration of more black people than were enslaved. Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle CEO Adam Jackson in a recent interview had this to say about the Nonprofit Industrial Complex as outlined in the book, “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.” It is a compilation of essays from activists around the world:

“In the United States there is a structured system set up for white people to profiteer off of the oppression of black folks,” he said. “We call it the Nonprofit Industrial Complex. White corporations make sure that their profits are not taxed because they put profits into nonprofits and foundations and typically they are just extensions of that corporation’s social and political agenda… it’s about systemic inequality and oppression because it insures that you can’t institution build.”

Adam Jackson is native to West Baltimore and leads an independent, community-based organization that accepts no funding from political entities, nonprofits or foundation. They target legislative policy to bring about change. According to Jackson, black people have to build their own institutions so that they can map an agenda accountable to the community they serve. Although the racism in the Prison Industrial Complex is a familiar target for change, the NPIC gets little attention.

The U.S. nonprofit sector of 501c(3) tax-exempt organizations is a 1.3 trillion dollar industry. It is the world’s seventh largest economy funding 1.5 million organizations that range from art museums to think tanks and social justice groups on the right and the left side of the fence.

At least 60 percent of non-profits serve people of color, however 30% of board members are without a single minority representative although minorities are 36 percent of the US population. Eight percent of boards have minority representatives. Chief executives are only seven percent minority and 9.5 of 10 philanthropic agencies are dominated by whites.

According to a Boardsource survey, “63 percent of organizations say that diversity is a coreNonprofits: Beware The Hand That Feeds | PopularResistance.Org: 

The share of the General Fund dedicated to Connecticut’s children shrank from 32.4 percent to 30.6 percent - Jonathan Kantrowitz

The share of the General Fund dedicated to Connecticut’s children shrank from 32.4 percent to 30.6 percent - Jonathan Kantrowitz:

The share of the General Fund dedicated to Connecticut’s children shrank from 32.4 percent to 30.6 percent

 Despite an economic recovery: child poverty is at an all-time high, statewide wage and poverty gaps by race are wider than they were pre-recession and economic segregation has left many cities grappling with high poverty, high unemployment and incomes that do not support a family’s most basic needs. Connecticut Voices for Children hosted its 15th Annual Budget Forum to call for strategic investments in the health and education of children that are essential to the state’s long-term economic well-being.

New analysis by Connecticut Voices for Children presented at the Budget Forum finds that, despite increased investment during the recovery, the share of the General Fund dedicated to Connecticut’s children shrank from 32.4 percent to 30.6 percent. The declining share is largely a result of the increased share of the budget dedicated to debt service and employee benefits. Even though there was an increase in funding in education and health care since 2010, these investments were insufficient to keep pace with the needs of children and families[1]

As a way to address enormous disparities, new interactive ‘Mapping Disparities by Race and Place’ maps were revealed, finding that, in Hartford, for example, nearly 1/2 of the city’s children live in poverty. That is three times the state child poverty rate of 14.8 percent and 25 times more than some of the state’s wealthiest towns.[2] As a way to address these disparities, Voices also calls on policymakers to support property tax reforms, such as a statewide property tax and low-The share of the General Fund dedicated to Connecticut’s children shrank from 32.4 percent to 30.6 percent - Jonathan Kantrowitz:

Is Cullerton serious about education funding? | Fred Klonsky

Is Cullerton serious about education funding? | Fred Klonsky:

Is Cullerton serious about education funding?

Democratic Party Senate President John Cullerton at the City Club yesterday.



John Cullerton spoke at the City Club yesterday. It was the first time he spoke publicly since last week’s blundering pronouncement by Governor Rauner about a deal over public employee pensions.

Several hours after the Governor spoke, Cullerton issued a statement saying there was no deal.

Yesterday he said there was a deal. It was just not the deal as Rauner described it.

Cullerton has always believed that a choice option between lower salary or lower benefits would satisfy the consideration requirement of changing the pension contract.

It doesn’t, as I wrote about yesterday.

The main topic of Cullerton’s speech at the City Club yesterday was the state education funding formula. He described it as the real turnaround agenda, distinguishing it from Rauner’s anti-union turnaround agenda.

Beware when any politician uses the word turnaround.

Was this just politics or is Cullerton serious about addressing the scandal of Is Cullerton serious about education funding? | Fred Klonsky:

The lies in the new SAT (by Wendy Lecker) - Wait What?

The lies in the new SAT (by Wendy Lecker) - Wait What?:

The lies in the new SAT (by Wendy Lecker)

Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy and his State Department of Education are engaged in an unethical effort to spin their new “mandate” that every Connecticut High School Junior (11^th grader) MUST take the NEW SAT test on March 2, 2016.

Driven by their support for the Common Core, the Common Core testing scheme and their desire to use the test scores to rate students and evaluate teachers, the state is on a mission.

However, parents, students, teachers and the public should be aware that their effort is a disgrace and that their lies will not go unchallenged.

To repeat a common refrain here at Wait, What? – There is no federal or state law, regulation or legal policy that prohibits parents from opting their children out of the unfair, discriminatory and inappropriate Common Core testing program – and that includes the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) tests for grades 3-8 and the new SAT for grade 11.

Even Lt. Governor Nancy Wyman has admitted to parents that they have the right to opt their children out of the test, although she remains silent in public about this fundamental issue.

Local school superintendents and school administrators also know the truth.  If they are telling students and parents that children must take the SBAC or SAT in order to graduate or move on to the next grade they are lying!

The SBAC test is designed to fail students, in part because it includes content that the majority of students have not be taught.  Proponents of the NEW SAT claim that it too is aligned to the Common Core, but it isn’t even being released until March 2016 so those Connecticut students who do take it on March 2, 2016 are nothing short of guinea pigs for The lies in the new SAT (by Wendy Lecker) - Wait What?:

 

Q&A: A look at the Detroit Public Schools teacher sick-outs - Yahoo News

Q&A: A look at the Detroit Public Schools teacher sick-outs - Yahoo News:

Q&A: A look at the Detroit Public Schools teacher sick-outs

DETROIT (AP) — Detroit Public Schools teachers have complained for several years about poor pay, overcrowded classrooms, a lack of supplies, unsafe building conditions and uncertainty about their futures as the district struggles under a mountain of debt. Rolling teacher sick-outs have — so far in January — forced the district to close dozens of schools on some days. A preliminary hearing will be held next month on the district's lawsuit seeking to end the sick-outs.

Related Stories

1. Detroit mayor: Dead mouse, cold kids, bad floor in schools Associated Press
2. Dozens of Detroit schools close due to teacher protest Associated Press
3. Latest: Detroit schools say 45,000 students missed classes Associated Press
4. Nearly all Detroit schools closed due to teachers' sickout Reuters
5. Judge denies request to force end to teacher sick-outs Associated Press

Questions and answers about how the district got to this point:

JUST HOW BAD ARE DETROIT SCHOOLS' FINANCES?

An audit filed Nov. 2 with the state put Detroit Schools' annual budget deficit at $46.5 million. Gov. Rick Snyder has said that the district's debt will reach about $515 million by this summer.

District revenues are tied to per-pupil funding from the state, and Detroit receives about $7,400 for each student. The problem is that the district's enrollment has decreased by more than 100,000 over the past dozen years.

In 2003-2004, the Detroit Public Schools had 150,415 students. Enrollment now stands at about 46,000. The drop reflects the city's population loss — more than 950,000 people lived in Detroit in 2000, compared to the current population of about 690,000.

Competition from charter schools inside Detroit and from neighboring districts also has cut into Detroit Public Schools' enrollment numbers.

Detroit's schools have been under state oversight since 2009. Darnell Earley is the district's fourth emergency manager over that time. His predecessors have closed aging buildings and academically underperforming schools, but many others are in poor physical condition and the school district is too short of money for major fixes.

___

View gallery

Protesters stand outside Cadillac Place, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016 in Detroit, where a judge is hearing  …

HOW MANY TEACHERS ARE IN THE DISTRICT?

Detroit Public Schools has about 2,500 teachers, according to the emergency manager's office. The Detroit Federation of Teachers represents about 3,700 teachers, counselors and other staff.

___

WHAT ARE THE TEACHERS' PRIMARY COMPLAINTS?

Some activists say Detroit teachers earn less than their counterparts in other areas of Michigan and work in more difficult conditions. Former Detroit teachers' union president Steve Conn said Q&A: A look at the Detroit Public Schools teacher sick-outs - Yahoo News:

Meet the heroic professor who helped uncover the Flint lead water crisis​ - The Washington Post

Meet the heroic professor who helped uncover the Flint lead water crisis​ - The Washington Post:

Meet the heroic professor who helped uncover the Flint lead water crisis​

Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards shows the difference in water quality between Detroit and Flint after testing, giving evidence after more than 270 samples were sent in from Flint that show high levels of lead during a news conference on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015 outside of City Hall in downtown Flint, Mich. (Jake May/The Flint Journal via AP)

In Flint, Mich. there is a famous block of concrete that for decades has served as a community message board. Like an old-school Facebook feed, residents use it to post personal news, images, upcoming events and commentary in sprawling graffiti.

This week, several residents went to “The Block” (or “The Rock,” depending on who you ask) with a message. In big, black capital letters they painted: “YOU WANT OUR TRUST?? WE WANT VA Tech!!!” Underneath they wrote “PSI” and circled it in red with a line through it. It stands for Professional Service Industries Inc., the independent business the city hired to test its water for contamination, and which the residents don’t trust.

They want Marc Edwards, Virginia Tech’s environmental engineering professor who once led, almost entirely on his own, a crusade against the federal government’s failure to protect residents of Washington, D.C. from lead in the city’s water. And he won.

It was Edwards, 51, who more than a decade earlier discovered corrosion in the nation’s capital’s pipes that caused lead to seep into the water supply and pass through kitchen faucets and shower heads. After exposing that water crisis in 2004, he spent six years challenging the Centers for Disease Control to admit they weren’t being honest about the extent of the damage the lead had on children.

He burned through thousands of dollars of his own money, as well as $500,000 from a MacArthur Foundation genius grant he won in 2008, to take on the federal government. He was harassed, lampooned, and threatened. He lost friends.

Then, in 2010, he was vindicated when it was proven that the CDC had lied to the public in a misleading report, which falsely claimed lead levels in the water had not posed a health risk to D.C. residents.

“I’m obsessed with what happened in Washington, D.C.,” Edwards said in an interview last week. “Since 2005 through the present day, I’ve been trying to Meet the heroic professor who helped uncover the Flint lead water crisis​ - The Washington Post:

Former dean questions costs of ‘no excuses’ charter schools on students of color - The Washington Post

Former dean questions costs of ‘no excuses’ charter schools on students of color - The Washington Post:

Former dean questions costs of ‘no excuses’ charter schools on students of color

“No excuses” charter schools have become a prominent feature of modern school reform. What exactly are they? This is how Joan Goodman, a professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the school’s Teach For America program, defined them in this post:

These schools start with the belief that there’s no reason for the large academic gaps that exist between poor minority students and more privileged children. They argue that if we just used better methods, demanded more, had higher expectations, enforced these higher expectations through very rigorous and uniform teaching methods and a very uniform and scripted curriculum geared to being successful on high-stakes tests, we can minimize or even eradicate these large gaps, high rates of drop outs and the academic failures of these children. To reach these objectives, these schools have developed very elaborate behavioral regimes that they insist all children follow, starting in kindergarten. Submission, obedience, and self-control are very large values. They want kids to submit. You can’t really do this kind of instruction if you don’t have very submissive children who are capable of high levels of inhibition and do whatever they’re told.

Here is an open letter from Ramon Griffin, the former dean of students at a New Orleans “no excuses” charter school, who urges teachers and staff at such schools to question the model’s social and emotional costs on young people. Griffin was also a charter school teacher and a juvenile probation and detention officer. He is currently working on his doctorate in Former dean questions costs of ‘no excuses’ charter schools on students of color - The Washington Post:

 

Charter School Allegedly Forces Out Students With Disabilities | ThinkProgress

Charter School Allegedly Forces Out Students With Disabilities | ThinkProgress:

Charter School Allegedly Forces Out Students With Disabilities

Eva Moskowitz of Success Academy Charter Schools during a charter school rally outside the state Capitol on Wednesday, March 4, 2015, in Albany, N.Y.

Success Academy Charter Schools, a well-known charter school network in New York City, is being accused of discriminating against students with disabilities, according to a complaint filed with the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education.

The group of parents who filed the complaint say that the school’s strict rules pushed some of them to withdraw their children, and cite 13 students with disabilities whom they claim were over-disciplined there. A few other organizations — including MFY Legal Services, the Partnership for Children’s Rights, the Legal Aid Society, and the New York Legal Assistance Group — also joined the parents’ complaint.

Success Academy Charter Schools, which operates 34 schools in New York City, has been around for a decade. But for years, the charter schools network has been dogged with accusations that its success is owed in part to its ability to force out students who struggle to work in a controlled, zero-tolerance environment.

According to a recent New York Times investigation, one mother said her daughter’s name was on a list of 16 names shared by administrators with the heading “Got to Go,” and nine of those children were later withdrawn from the school after a slew of suspensions and meetings with school officials. The story also reports that former staff say they did not automatically send annual re-enrollment forms to certain students because the school did not want them back.

In response to the Times, a spokesperson for the school said that Success Academy staff were reprimanded for the list and added that “some on the list required special education settings that Success could not offer them.”

Eva Moskowitz, the founder of Success Academy charter schools, says the network’s student discipline policies are meant to keep students safe and that parents are simply making excuses for their children’s bad behavior. This is typically Moskowitz’s response against these types of allegations. After PBS NewsHour released a segment on student discipline that focused on suspension of kindergarteners at the charter school network, Moskowitz made the discipline records of the only named student in the PBS piece available to the public.

PBS NewsHour reporter John Merrow told Slate that at one of the Success Academy schools, as many as 44 kindergarteners and first-graders out of 203 received out-of-school suspensions in one year. Merrow has also reported that Success Academy Charter schools have suspension rates that are almost three times higher than in traditional public K-12 schools in the city.

According to the charter school’s website, 76 percent of students are from low-income households, Charter School Allegedly Forces Out Students With Disabilities | ThinkProgress:

School Reform Commission is rigged against Philadelphia schoolchildren

School Reform Commission is rigged against Philadelphia schoolchildren:
School Reform Commission is rigged against Philadelphia schoolchildren

"I have pent-up emotions about the way the district has allowed many of our schools in low-income neighborhoods to fail our students and their families," Sylvia Simms said.

THE PHILADELPHIA School District, a $3 billion enterprise whose job is to educate mostly poor and black children, is a system steeped in racism.

It doesn't matter whether those at the head of the system are black. The game is fixed, the outcome is predetermined, and the children are commodities whose value is measured not in test scores or grades, but in dollars and cents.

To put it bluntly, Philadelphia's education system is an auction block where children of color are sold to the highest bidder. It is a system that Judge Doris Smith Ribner once said was "failing or refusing to provide . . . a quality education to children attending racially isolated minority schools."

I wish I could say Smith-Ribner's statement - made in a 1992 ruling on Philadelphia's segregated schools - was no longer accurate. But I'm convinced that the system is rigged.

Want proof? Look no further than the School Reform Commission, the unelected body that allocates the billions flowing through the district each year. Created in 2001 when the city, under former Mayor John Street, went to the state for money, the SRC was part of a state takeover. From the beginning, the politically run SRC - with two members appointed by the mayor and three by the governor - had a mandate to fund privately run school organizations with public money.

Under the deal brokered by Republican Gov. Mark Schweiker, the mainly black and Latino parents whose children attended Philadelphia's public schools would have absolutely no say over the SRC's decisions. For that matter, no one else would, either.

In the SRC, the district, with its long history of segregated schools, found a new way to underserve black children. By 2009, when the SRC finally voted to end 40 years of desegregation litigation, the white children were mostly gone. The SRC was supposed to fix what was left.

The whole thing was couched in the language of creating alternatives to low-performing schools. Where low performance didn't already exist, the state created Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20160126_School_Reform_Commission_is_rigged_against_Philadelphia_schoolchildren.html#uwEpZZM1gML0szDV.99

A Bold Shift to Make Public Schools Serve Poor Students by Abigail Savitch-Lew — YES! Magazine

A Bold Shift to Make Public Schools Serve Poor Students by Abigail Savitch-Lew — YES! Magazine:

A Bold Shift to Make Public Schools Serve Poor Students

Last year, New York City began turning schools in poor neighborhoods into community schools—combining rigorous instruction and extracurricular enrichment with a broad social support system.

A dance class at Renaissance School of the Arts (Jhanel McWhite in front). All photos by Abigail Savitch-Lew.

It’s 11:45 a.m. in East Harlem, and Samir Zaimi starts his lesson on life in Colonial America. A social-studies teacher at a public middle school called Renaissance School of the Arts, Zaimi urges the seventh-graders to imagine themselves as colonial settlers, and to complete the writing prompt on the board: “How can I convince people to come to my colony?” Then he notices a student who has been absent for weeks and crosses the room to welcome her.

“Been out a while.”

“Yeah, 27 days,” she says.

“We’ll catch you up.”

For the rest of the period, Zaimi barely takes a breath as he darts around the room, addressing questions. There’s Nunova Williams, who is usually first to raise her hand and wonders what good can be said about 18th-century New Hampshire, which had slaves and high income-inequality. But there are also students who come to class late after meeting with social workers, and others struggling to take an interest in school. Last year, only 13 percent of Renaissance’s students demonstrated proficiency in language arts and only 7 percent did so in math.

Last year, the city began providing extra funds and support to these institutions to transform them into “community schools.”

The conservative New York Post blames the problem at schools like Renaissance on “ineffective teachers and staff.” But the city’s Department of Education, while recognizing that some teachers should skill up, points to students’ difficult circumstances and social problems such as poverty as the root source.

The department isn’t just pointing fingers. It’s actively working to address those problems at Renaissance and 127 other struggling schools. Last year, the city began providing extra funds and support to these institutions to A Bold Shift to Make Public Schools Serve Poor Students by Abigail Savitch-Lew — YES! Magazine:

The Chilling Rise of Islamophobia in Our Schools | Mother Jones

The Chilling Rise of Islamophobia in Our Schools | Mother Jones:

The Chilling Rise of Islamophobia in Our Schools

Accusations, beatings, even death threats—that's life for Muslim kids in America.

Four million Syrians like Nour have fled the brutal civil war. Now she's trying to help other Muslim kids feel safer at school. Photo: Mark Murrmann

"WHAT DO YOU MISS about Syria the most?" I ask Nour on a rainy December afternoon in 2015, as we board a train after school. The soft-spoken 17-year old has invited me to join her at "I Stand with Arabs and Muslims," a rally in San Francisco organized in the wake of the biggest spike in anti-Muslim violence in a decade, following deadly attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.

"Everything," Nour answers. Dressed in a black "Youth Power" T-shirt, black jeans, and white sneakers, she hesitates to find her next words. "I miss the sense of community, family togetherness." She begins to list off details from the life she used to live in the rural town of As-Suwayda, about an hour south of Damascus: the sound of the fire in the small, propane stove in their living room; the smell of hot mate tea; the cracking of sunflower seeds; her aunts' chatter. She misses the big fig tree in her grandmother's backyard and all the books they had in their house. They were mostly novels. Nour's mother and father taught Arabic literature in local public schools. Nour was a carefree, bookish teenager in Syria—one of the top students in her school, stressed out about exams and grades.

"It's strange for me to think of myself as an activist now," says Nour. "But there is a growing tension I feel at school, after Paris, especially toward two girls from Yemen who wear headscarves over long, black dresses. Students often ask them, 'Why do you wear this? Can you take it off? I want to see your hair!' I want to help them feel safer and more included at school."

Students ask girls with headscarves, 'Why do you wear this? Can you take it off? I want to see your hair!'

In recent months, anti-immigrant rhetoric has spiked across the country—and in local and national politics. After the Paris attacks, more than two-dozen Republican governors said they don't want Syrian refugees in their states. And Donald Trump said that if he were president he would kick all Syrian refugees out of the country; Ted Cruz said Muslims should be sent to "majority-Muslim countries," but that Christians should be provided with a safe haven in the United States. Cruz made his comments about Christians while speaking at a middle school.

During that same month, harassment and violence against Muslims—and Sikhs who wear turbans or Indian women who wear headscarves and are mistaken for being The Chilling Rise of Islamophobia in Our Schools | Mother Jones:

He brokered deals for an empire of California charter schools -- and now faces a felony charge - LA Times

He brokered deals for an empire of California charter schools -- and now faces a felony charge - LA Times:

He brokered deals for an empire of California charter schools -- and now faces a felony charge

By  the time Steve Van Zant left the Mountain Empire Unified School District in 2013, he had overseen the authorization of more than a dozen charter schools to operate in other districts throughout San Diego County — with several going on to hire his education consulting firm.

All the while, Van Zant coached at least one other district on how to approve out-of-town charters, according to emails obtained by the San Diego Union-Tribune. As more districts approved far-flung charters, Van Zant’s EdHive consultant business took on some of the schools as clients.

The San Diego district attorney’s office arraigned Van Zant on Jan. 15 on a felony conflict-of-interest charge from an undisclosed incident in May 2010 while he was superintendent of Mountain Empire.

The district attorney’s office declined to disclose details of its investigation, and it is unclear whether the charge relates to his work with charter schools. According to the criminal complaint, Van Zant violated laws that prohibited him “from being financially interested in contracts made by him in his official capacity.”

The Union-Tribune has tracked a charter empire built by Van Zant by taking advantage of what some call a shortcoming in state law that gives districts a financial incentive to place charters in other school districts. By placing charters outside its boundaries, a district can raise new funds — up to 3 percent of a charter’s revenue — without any threat to enrollment or state attendance funds.

More than 80 out-of-district charters have been approved in San Diego County, the vast majority of which were authorized by small East County districts — several with help from Van Zant, who includes a list of charter clients on his LinkedIn professional network profile.

Van Zant, 53, declined to comment on the criminal charges and the EdHive business model through his attorney Garland Peed.

When Van Zant accepted the job in 2013 as superintendent of the Sausalito Marin City School District, he was positioned to devote even more time growing his consulting business. He would commute from his Mission Bay home for the three-day-a-week position in Northern California with a starting salary of $165,000 and still run EdHive, He brokered deals for an empire of California charter schools -- and now faces a felony charge - LA Times:

Deal or no Deal contract violated state competitive bidding and conflict-of-interest laws | Comstock's magazine

Deal or no Deal | Comstock's magazine:

Deal or no Deal

After critical court decision, future California lease-leaseback contracts stand on shaky ground.

For the past four years, Star Academy in Natomas didn’t look like a regular school. Due to overcrowding,  elementary kids went to class in a commercial building that faced a major street and had warehouse space in the back. The district wanted a new facility, but in 2008 the city enforced a building moratorium on Natomas pending levee improvements. Last year, when the moratorium was lifted, the district considered building the new charter school through a lease-leaseback deal. But the method, once a popular way for struggling districts to acquire new facilities, has come under legal fire in recent years.

In this state-approved method, school districts lease property they own to a contractor for a minimum of $1 per year through a site lease. The contractor builds a school on the land, then leases the building (which they own) to the district through a facilities lease. The district then occupies the facility while paying off the lease. After repaying, the contract ends and the district officially owns the school. This method was created in the 1950s to avoid the traditional competitive bidding process, offering cash-strapped institutions longer financing terms and overcrowded districts the chance to build facilities faster.

But the law is short on specifics for lease-leaseback contracts, which gave districts tons of leeway, says Dave Walrath, president and legislative advocate for the Coalition for Adequate School Housing. In some cases, districts didn’t pay contractors based on a construction schedule. Some districts moved into the new building without any financing in place. Others had the financing piece worked out but no lease terms.

“It was unclear,” Walrath says. “There was no specificity in the law. Different districts did different things. In many cases, those were validated. In many cases, they didn’t go through the validation Deal or no Deal | Comstock's magazine:

Do vouchers work? Real data needed, not spin | Editorials | www.journalgazette.net

Do vouchers work? Real data needed, not spin | Editorials | www.journalgazette.net:

Do vouchers work? Real data needed, not spin

Indiana’s school voucher supporters are bringing in the star power to mark National School Choice Week this week.

TV personality Campbell Brown is the keynote speaker for the Quality Education Celebration at the Statehouse on Monday, an annual event to rally expansion of the nation’s most expansive private-school voucher program. No doubt, Brown and others will proclaim the Indiana program a tremendous success.

But no research or data exist to back the claim. Though the number of voucher recipients grew by 13 percent this school year, there is no evidence tax dollars are being spent effectively.

Instead of approving two voucher expansion bills, lawmakers should instead call for a comprehensive and independent study of Indiana’s five-year-old entitlement program. Do they truly believe support of private schools is an effective use of tax dollars, or do they fear that data on Indiana’s program will reveal the same results as voucher evaluations elsewhere?

“No voucher study anywhere has ever shown academic gains; not in Milwaukee, not in D.C., not in Cleveland,” said education historian Diane Ravitch in an email.

Nor does the newest study, she notes, an evaluation by the National Bureau of Economic Research of first-year evidence from Louisiana’s voucher program. Comparing academic outcomes of students who won a seat in the state’s voucher lottery with those of students who did not, the Harvard-based researchers found that “(voucher) participation substantially reduces academic achievement.”

“The negative impacts of vouchers are consistent across income groups, geographic areas and private school characteristics, and are larger for younger children,” according to the study from the respected and nonpartisan research group.

With no evidence of improved academic performance, look for the Friedman Foundation, the muscle behind Indiana’s voucher program, to instead push results of its own poll at Monday’s rally. It claims that Hoosiers show widespread support for school choice and believe Indiana is on “the wrong track” for education under Glenda Ritz, the Democratic superintendent of public instruction.

Brown, a former NBC anchor and CNN host, is co-founder of The Seventy Four. By its own description, the organization is a “nonpartisan news site covering education in America.” Its financial supporters are primarily groups working to stunt the influence of teacher unions.

Ravitch, a former official with the George H.W. Bush administration, questions Brown’s role in the so-called education reform movement, and notes that the news coverage created by her media outlet supports education privatization.

“She is an ideologue who knows nothing about research and evidence,” Ravitch wrote, “She has no knowledge or respect for the role of public education in a democracy and zero understanding of the danger of privatizing basic public services.”

Preliminary figures from Ritz’s Department of Education show 32,955 Indiana students using a voucher this year. The final cost is undetermined until the enrollment number is final, but it’s likely to show Indiana taxpayers spending about $130 million on private schooling this year.

Is the cost justified? To know, Hoosiers need an independent study.Do vouchers work? Real data needed, not spin | Editorials | www.journalgazette.net:

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