Big Education Ape

Friday, June 3, 2016

Third Way or the Highway – EduShyster

Third Way or the Highway – EduShyster:

Third Way or the Highway

The future of education reform in Massachusetts requires mis-remembering its past…

Since 1635, Massachusetts has been known for its district public schools—the *first way.* Since 1993, Massachusetts’ charter schools have led the nation in pioneering a *second way.* It is time to recognize a Third Way – an emerging set of strategies that combine school-level autonomies and energetic innovation with a commitment to universal service and local voice…

Quick: what’s absent from this rather, um, selective account of the past 381 years of Bay State history? If you answered *that bit about 1993 seems to be a bit fact challenged,* you would be correct. As providence would have it, I happened to be acquainting myself with the history of Massachusetts’ bold experiment with school reform, circa 1993, at the very moment that the Third Way, brought to you by these guys, blazed into the Hub to blaze an optimistic path ahead in K-12 education. Which is how I happen to be in possession of such facts as that charter schools were a virtual after thought in Massachusetts’ actual second way success story. And that the Third Way, which is already well underway, appears to veer off markedly from the course set by its bold predecessor all those 23 years ago. Strap yourself in, reader: it’s time machine time.

Out with the old
The year was 1993, reader, and my adopted home state found itself with a sticky wicket on its collective hands. How to ensure that the Commonwealth provided all of its children with an adequate education, not just those who lived in leafy suburbs with horses? The resulting process was messy. It was deliberative. It was astonishingly democratic, not to mention weirdly thrilling to read about. (Shout out to my friend, journalist Third Way or the Highway – EduShyster:

Mike Klonsky...: My webinar with Jonathan Kozol

Mike Klonsky...: My webinar with Jonathan Kozol:

Mike Klonsky...: My webinar with Jonathan Kozol

Mr. Kozol has not lost his passion for progressive education in America, On our June 1st SOS Webinar, Mr. Kozol will discuss topics he has devoted his life to, including the damage done to children by testing mania, the damage done to teachers by a regiment of punitive accountability built on test scores, and the shameful inequality between rich schools and poor, the latter resulting in the near total segregation within our schools. For Black and Hispanic children, separate and unequal education is an everyday phenomenon.

A portion of the virtual fundraiser tied to Mr. Kozol's SOS Webinar will go to scholarships for the students he's been working for all his life: those in need, and those who want to be part of the solution....to change an education system that fosters segregation and inequality while actively ignoring if not crushing creativity, curiosity and originality, as critical capacities of children.

Please click here to make a generous donation to the SOS Convention fund.

We suggest a $25 contribution, but any and all amounts will be gratefully appreciated!

Join Us on June 1

Save Our Schools Coalition Webinar and Fundraiser

Moderated by Mike Klonsky

Wednesday, June 1st, 8 PM [EDT]

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7245044229553562114

Mike Klonsky...: My webinar with Jonathan Kozol:

Failing the Test: A New Series Examines Charter Schools- CAPITAL & MAIN

Education Archives - CAPITAL & MAIN:

Failing the Test: School Solutions and Turnarounds

Elana Goldbaum was happy working at Burbank Junior High School, a public school located in Los Angeles’ Highland Park neighborhood, until she was let go during the recession in 2008. ...

JUNE 3, 2016|JULIAN VASQUEZ HEILIG

Failing the Test: Nine Solution Takeaways

Despite the trendy popularity of charter schools in some circles, their wholesale replacement of traditional public schools is unnecessary. Not only do decades of data and research show this, but ...

JUNE 2, 2016|MARCO AMADOR

Failing the Test: UCLA’s John Rogers on the Positives & Negatives of Charter School Autonomy

...

JUNE 2, 2016|CAPITAL & MAIN STAFF

Failing the Test: Charter School Powerbrokers

The Billion Dollar Investment Charter proponents, most notably the Walton Family Foundation, contribute large amounts of money to expand charter schools in select cities around the nation. The foundation says ...

JUNE 2, 2016|BOBBI MURRAY

Failing the Test: Searching for Accountability in Charter Schools

The original concept of charter schools emerged nationally more than two decades ago and was intended to support community efforts to open up education. Albert Shanker, then president of the ...

JUNE 1, 2016|MARCO AMADOR

Failing the Test: UCLA’s John Rogers on Charter Schools and Exclusion of Special Needs Students

...

JUNE 1, 2016|MARCO AMADOR

Failing the Test: How a Major California Charter School Gave Up on a Special Needs Student

...

JUNE 1, 2016|CAPITAL & MAIN STAFF

Failing the Test: Charter Schools’ Winners and Losers

At first, Rosalba Naranjo was thrilled that her two daughters were attending Richard Merkin Middle School, a charter school located near downtown Los Angeles. After all, the Pico Union neighborhood ...

JUNE 1, 2016|JULIAN VASQUEZ HEILIG

Failing the Test: Measuring Charter School Performance

Charter schools, their lobbyists and choice proponents often discuss the underperformance of traditional public schools in the public discourse. But what data should be trusted by parents and policymakers alike ...

MAY 31, 2016|BILL RADEN

Failing the Test: A New Series Examines Charter Schools

When the Great Public Schools Now Initiative, the $490 million blueprint to turn half of Los Angeles’ public school system into charter schools, was first leaked to Los Angeles Times ...

MAY 31, 2016|BILL RADEN

Failing the Test: Oakland’s Charter School Tipping Point

Last September’s sensational leak of the Great Public Schools Now Initiative, a half-billion-dollar plan to double the number of charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), sparked ...

MAY 9, 2016|DONALD COHEN

Cyber Bunk: How Online Charter Schools Fail Students

You get what you pay for, right? When it comes to online charter schools, apparently not. Despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from California’s taxpayers, California Virtual Academies (CAVA), ...

Education Archives - CAPITAL & MAIN:

Title I funding often still doesn’t make it to our poorest schools, half a century later.

Title I funding often still doesn’t make it to our poorest schools, half a century later.:

Title I Is Supposed to Fund Our Poorest Schools

Somehow $2.6 billion of it still ends up in the hands of wealthier-than-average districts.

n Wednesday, U.S. News & World Report released a comprehensiveanalysis showing that Title I, the federal program created as part of civil rights–era legislation to meet the needs of low-income students, is still flawed. A significant portion of the $14.5 billion spent via Title I each year is funneled to students in wealthier districts: Nearly 20 percent, or $2.6 billion, goes to wealthier-than-average districts, while many districts with high concentrations of poverty are shortchanged.

The mission of Title I, created in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on poverty,” was to provide federal funding to help meet the educational needs of low-income students. It’s been reauthorized regularly since then, and it’s a key part of the most recent federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed into law in December by President Barack Obama to replace 2001’s No Child Left Behind Act. The funding is meant to provide supplemental resources for low-income, struggling students, such as instructional coaches, reading and math intervention programs, professional development, and additional guidance counselors. But it is notoriously difficult to correctly allocate these funds—how do you know how to fairly disperse money so it benefits just the poor students in more than 13,000 school districts?

Over the years, Title I has been modified in attempts to address misuse. One of the most significant amendments, passed in 1970, requires districts to use Title I funds to supplement, not supplant, state and local funding. In other words, it prohibits local districts from intentionally underfunding schools serving poor students because they assume they can backfill the shortfall using federal money. A more recent modification helped curb blatant misuses of funds, such as using it to build twoOlympic-sized swimming pools in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana, which at the time had a child poverty rate of 36 percent.

Despite the overall intent that Title I funding help poor students, it doesn’t always work out that way in practice. That’s because of the inherent difficulty in pinpointing exactly which schools should get funding and how much. If a school in a wealthy district enrolls students who live below the poverty line, should it still get a piece of the cake, and if so, how much? Is it the number of poor students that matters or the percentage of students who are poor? (The current formulas take both into account, although more weight is given to the number of poor students.) Title I also incentivizes states to provide higher levels of financial support by offering additional funds when they do.

There are other considerations, too; for example, there’s the fact that states with small populations, which are presumed to be rural, receive additional funding. While this makes sense for a state such as New Mexico, it also means that states such as Delaware, whose small population is due to its small size, not its ruralness, also receive this Title I bump—in fact, they end up receiving more Title I funds per student than other states with higher rates of child poverty.

Another quirk of the law: In schools where at least 40 percent of students come from low-income families, Title I funds can be used on schoolwide programs that benefit all of the students.

The net result is that the distribution of funds is uneven and often counterintuitive. SoTitle I funding often still doesn’t make it to our poorest schools, half a century later.:

Charter schools and allies pour it on in California legislative races | The Sacramento Bee

Charter schools and allies pour it on in California legislative races | The Sacramento Bee:

Charter schools and allies pour it on in California legislative races

Charter school advocates and their allies, largely bankrolled by a handful of wealthy donors, are dominating the state’s political landscape this primary season, pouring nearly $9 million into legislative races around the state.

Saying they are tired of current conditions in California schools, they are spending in 12 different districts, seeking to elect lawmakers they believe will be more sympathetic to their cause on such issues as teacher performance, tenure and the way schools are governed.

The California California Charter Schools Association, EdVoice and the charter-school funded Parent Teacher Alliance are spending significantly more than those groups committed during the last three legislative primary seasons, through Wednesday spending a third of all outside money seeking to influence legislative elections.

EdVoice, which has spent nearly $5 million in six districts since April 1, is supporting candidates it believes will be receptive to changing the education system, either through charter schools or changes in public schools, said Bill Lucia, the organization’s president and CEO.

12Number of legislative districts where charter schools or EdVoice have spent money.

“It’s about eliminating inequities and providing opportunities to all kids. The Legislature has an important role in that,” Lucia said. “But there are too many who are perfectly fine being defenders of the status quo.”

As they grow in popularity, charter schools have cut into public school enrollment and funding, particularly in larger urban districts like Los Angeles. Their advocates regularly clash with teachers unions in the California Legislature, the state education board and courtrooms.

But any semblance of a campaign fight with teachers unions in legislative races on next Tuesday’s ballot is decidedly lopsided.

Until last week, the 330,000-member California Teachers Association was all but a non-player in primary races around the state, two years after putting more than $5 million outside spending efforts leading up to the June 2014 primary. The group could be saving its money: a top goal for the teachers union this year is to help pass a proposed November measure to extend higher income taxes for the wealthy to support schools and other programs, a campaign that would cost millions.

This spring’s spending disparity increases the likelihood that the November ballot will include multiple candidates, all Democrats in safely Democratic districts, who advance to the fall runoff with the strong backing of self-described education reform groups. Results in the fall election could give the interests a significantly stronger voice in the union-friendly Legislature.

“Right now, we’re involved in just a handful of races in the primary,” said Becky Zoglman, a spokeswoman for the teachers union. “We’ll reassess for the November election,” she said. So far, the union has contributed almost $4 million to efforts to extend a version of the temporary income tax increases in Proposition 30 of 2012.

“It’s definitely a top priority for CTA this cycle,” Zoglman said.

Outside spending by Ed Voice and charter schools
District	Committee	Amount	Support	Oppose
AD43	Parent Teacher Alliance	$1,261,785	Laura Friedman	Ardy Kassakhian
1 of 1

The charter schools association is the sole source of money for the Parent-Teacher Alliance, which has spent $3.5 million in four Assembly districts. The charter schools association itself is spending another $264,000 in two Assembly districts.

More than 80 percent of the association’s donations since last July have come from five people: GAP co-founder Doris Fisher, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, developer Eli Broad, Texas billionaire and former hedge fund manager John D. Arnold and Carrie Walton Penner, the granddaughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. The association’s own committee hasCharter schools and allies pour it on in California legislative races | The Sacramento Bee:

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article81488362.html#storylink=cpy

Big Education Ape: Analysis: EdVoice with an IE for Dodd; Educational Reform Group Has Ties to Vergara Suit and Wa... http://bit.ly/1SJq26U

Big Education Ape: News Analysis: Education fight ‘over shades of Democrat’ | CALmatters http://bit.ly/25csc6L

Big Education Ape: Local legislative races become battleground in statewide fight over educationhttp://bit.ly/1WMlJKA

Big Education Ape: Edvoice pumps cash into Assembly campaign | News | Palo Alto Online | http://bit.ly/1s8OhSi

Big Education Ape: Charter school groups spending big in California legislative races | 89.3 KPCChttp://bit.ly/1TYIvJj

Nguyen Mailer Highlights Major Endorsements, Education Heavyweights; Davis Tries Maternal Appeal - Elk Grove News.net

Nguyen Mailer Highlights Major Endorsements, Education Heavyweights; Davis Tries Maternal Appeal -

Nguyen Mailer Highlights Major Endorsements, Education Heavyweights; Davis Tries Maternal Appeal

With the June 7 primary just five days away, the two most visible candidates for the Area 6 Sacramento County Board of Education hit Elk Grove mailboxes with mailers today. Those candidates are Heather Davis and Stephanie Nguyen (pictured above) and each employed a distinct strategy.

Davis, whose mailer was paid for by the state's leading charter school advocate and employer of her husband, Elk Grove Gary Davis, the California Charter School Association seems to be aimed at women voters. This mailer, titled "Teachers Say: "Put a Mom on the School Board"" features four female teachers from the Elk Grove Unified School District and seems to be targeting maternal instincts suggesting that a mother needs to serve on the board.

Among the four educators endorsing Davis is Cua Lo-Ly, the wife of Elk Grove Vice Mayor Steve Ly. Vice Mayor is the political protege of Mayor Davis.

Countering those four endorsements, Nguyen, a mother herself, highlights educational and political heavyweight endorsements. Among the educational heavyweights endorsing her candidacy are former legendary Elk Grove Unified School District school principal Marielle Tsukamoto and Los Rios Community College Board Member Kay Albiani.

In addition to Tsukamoto and Albiani, Nguyen's major endorsements include local Democratic heavyweights Assembly Members Jim Cooper and Kevin McCarthy, Former California State Senate Leader and current Sacramento Mayoral Candidate Darrell Steinberg, and Sacramento County Supervisor Patrick Kennedy.

Nguyen, a Democrat, is also endorsed by the California Schools Employee Association, California Teachers Association, and the Sacramento Central Labor Council. Although not registered as a Democrat, Davis, a charter school advocate, has tried appealing to Area Six voters by appearing on a slate mailer targeted to Democratic voters.

Closer to Elk Grove, Planning Commissioners Frank Maita and Kevin Spease and Maggie Ellis, former President of the Elk Grove Education Association are among others on the lengthy list of endorsements.

On the flip side of Nguyen's mailer, which by our count her third and was paid for my her own campaign committee, is perhaps the more significant endorsement, and that is from the Sacramento Bee. The pull quote from the Bee's editorial board endorsement says "She wants to improve collaboration between the county and community-based non-profits to close the achievement gap ... Her rivals ... lack the understanding of the board." ,

In addition to Davis and Nguyen, the other two candidates for the Area 6 seat are Orlando Fuentes and Jrmar Jefferson. Although neither of these candidates has sent mailers, Fuentes won the endorsement of the Elk Grove-South County Democratic Club.

- See more at: http://www.elkgrovenews.net/2016/06/nguyen-highlights-major-endorsements.html#sthash.ScX3QLvn.dpuf

Standardized testing put to the test - The Boston Globe

Standardized testing put to the test - The Boston Globe:

Standardized testing put to the test

Every new year, I ink all nine SAT test dates on our calendar. Why? Because my husband, John, is a high school tutor, with SAT prep a big wedge of his business. Those last weeks before each test (June 4 is the finale for this school year) bring down a mighty squall for him, full of long hours, revved students, and fretful parents.

So I have a stake in testing — but I’m ambivalent about it too. You’d think roughly half of the education books would be in favor of standardized testing, half against. No way. They’re almost all inimical to the acronym-ical, and not just the SAT. Each state, after all, has its own assessment, from our MCAS, to the TAKS (Texas), to Utah’s yearningly named U-PASS, some of them created years ago and the rest after a nudge from the federal No Child Left Behind Act (2001).

With such an alphabet soup, I needed to get the FYI ASAP. One cover blurb grabbed me: The New York Times declares “the [anti-testing] movement now has a guidebook,” which is the lure for “The Test: Why Our Schools Are Obsessed with Standardized Testing — But You Don’t Have to Be” (PublicAffairs, 2015). The guidebook’s guide is Anya Kamenetz, NPR reporter and former Fast Company senior writer.

She offers ten arguments, like: “1. We’re testing the wrong things. 2. Tests waste time and money. 3. They are making students hate school and turning parents into preppers.” Other points explore how the tests penalize diversity and the states game the system to get federal funds. To sum up the problem, Kamenetz cites an economist’s koan from 1975, known as Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

There is a long tail here. Her short history of standardized tests goes from a psychologist measuring “the more elementary powers” on visitors to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, to the Binet-Scale I.Q. tests introduced in 1905 in France, to a series of chilling mental acuity tests that were grounded in eugenics. In World War I, the military took over, giving Army Alpha tests (for the literate recruits) and Army Beta (for the not). One of the Alpha test creators helped develop the SAT.

“The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999) fills in even more ovals, and it’s a fascinating if unwieldy read (the afterword acts as a good SparkNotes). Author Nicholas Lemann, then a staff writer at The New Yorker and now dean emeritus of Columbia Journalism School, had full access to the archives of the Educational Testing Service. And so he colors in the major players: Henry Chauncey, head of the ETS, and Harvard president James Bryant Conant, who hammer out a test to select bright public school students for Harvard, thus breaking the stranglehold of the private-school elite.

These democratic origins seem ironic now, since questions have been raised about how race, class, and ethnicity play into aptitude tests results. Thus to the front lines with “More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing” (Haymarket, 2014). It’s an anthology edited Standardized testing put to the test - The Boston Globe:

Chicago Kids Dodge Gunfire, Now Face Closed Schools? Union Rips Rauner, CPS - The Loop - DNAinfo Chicago

Chicago Kids Dodge Gunfire, Now Face Closed Schools? Union Rips Rauner, CPS - The Loop - DNAinfo Chicago:

Chicago Kids Dodge Gunfire, Now Face Closed Schools? Union Rips Rauner, CPS

The Chicago Teachers Union blasted CPS CEO Forrest Claypool for suggesting schools will not open without a state budget deal.

THE LOOP — Angry at the prospects of city schools not opening in the fall, the Chicago Teachers Union on Thursday slammed Gov. Bruce Rauner and Chicago Public Schools chief Forrest Claypool over their use of schoolchildren as pawns in the state's budget battle.

Claypool, the district's chief executive officer, lashed back that he was "shocked" the union was "surrendering to Gov. Rauner and letting him off the hook." Claypool charged that it was the governor who was holding students hostage across the state and "he should let the children go."

The union's comments came in response to Claypool insisting that CPS won't open in the fall without a state budget, or at least an education spending plan. The state has been without a budget for over a year, and legislators failed to ink a deal this spring.

A day after Claypool called on legislators to stay in session in the General Assembly to reach an education funding deal with Rauner, he told media outlets Wednesday that Chicago schools and many districts statewide would not be able to begin the fall term without it.

"Now we need the governor to end his strategy of pitting one region against another and fix the funding for all the districts suffering under Illinois’ worst-in-the nation approach," Claypool said.

Claypool's comments are an "admission of failure" on behalf of the city and CPS to find stable funding for the school system, said Jesse Sharkey, vice president of the teacher union. The union has long suggested that the city could stabilize CPS's budgets through shifting priorities and levying new, progressive taxes.

"Claypool has a lack of a vision for Chicago Public Schools," Sharkey said Thursday at a press conference at the union's River North offices in the Merchandise Mart. "This is the impact failed leadership has had on our children.

"Children can't play outside out of fear of being shot. Now they can't go to school," Sharkey said.

The union is planning a June 22 rally Downtown to put pressure on the state and city to find new revenue for schools.

Sharkey acknowledged that Claypool's comments about next school year might be a negotiating tactic with Springfield, but said the possibility of schools being closed to students in September is a possibility.

What's more likely, Sharkey said, is that the district would have enough cash to open Chicago Kids Dodge Gunfire, Now Face Closed Schools? Union Rips Rauner, CPS - The Loop - DNAinfo Chicago:

Thursday, June 2, 2016

The latest on the School to Prison Pipeline – Cloaking Inequity

The latest on the School to Prison Pipeline – Cloaking Inequity:

The latest on the School to Prison Pipeline

The school-to-prison pipeline refers to the policies and practices that push school children, particularly low-socioeconomic and racial/ethnic minority youth, out of classrooms into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Critically, school failure for these youth appears to be driven by inadequate and persistently low-performing schools, disproportionate disciplinary and school suspension practices, and the combination of zero-tolerance discipline policies and the increased prioritization of test scores as the measure of success in educational contexts.

This Society for Prevention Research symposium held in San Francisco on June 1, 2016 highlighted policy, practice, and programmatic efforts aimed at dismantling the link between schools and justice systems. Specifically, Nayna Gupta (ACLU, Northern California), Daniel Losen (UCLA Civil Rights Project) and Julian Vasquez Heilig (California State University Sacramento) outlined 1) the extent to which disproportionate school discipline policies have initiatives have led to exclusionary practices thus affecting youth of color in terms of denying access to an equitable education; 2) the impact of state and federal policy initiatives addressing this issue, 3) the extent to which police presence in urban schools (e.g., Oakland, Richmond) affect the school-to-prison pipeline, given the community context, and how the community has responded to this phenomenon; and 4) a discussion about a set of community-based solutions to address the school to prison pipeline.

I discussed a about a set of community-based solutions including School-based Youth Courts, better data and restorative justice practices in The latest on the School to Prison Pipeline – Cloaking Inequity:

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