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Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Teaching Spanish at Mountain View High School: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teaching Spanish at Mountain View High School: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Teaching Spanish at Mountain View High School: Technology Integration



The 50-minute Spanish 2 Honors class began September 27, 2016 with a “bell ringer” exercise. The teacher has a slide on the screen with 10 sentences. The task is for students to put the verb into the past tense (Pon la forma del verbo en el preterito Pon la forma del verbo en el preterito).The class had worked on conjugating verbs and the past tense during the previous class. The 29 students have their laptops and tablets out and are working at their desks for the first 10 minutes.*
Desks in the room are arranged in a horseshoe with two rows on each side and in the middle leaving a large open space where the teacher stands. The teacher’s desk is in the front of the room where whiteboards and screen are located. Walls have posters of artist Diego Rivera, a toreador, and other art objects. On the ledge above the front whiteboards are paper mache figures of dogs, parrots, and a crocodile.
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campbell-mvhs








David Campbell has taught 16 years, the last eight at Mountain View** High School. Tall and confident in demeanor, he is wearing dressy dark jeans and a light blue shirt with a multi-colored bow tie (he tells me that “it’s bow tie day at the school). The class, except for a few instances, is conducted entirely in Spanish.

Campbell signals the 10th and 11th grade students that the opening exercise is over. He asks students to lower the lids of their devices. They do. Then he goes over each sentence with the class—using a laser pointer to hit each sentence on the screen—focusing on the correct past tense of each verb. The teacher asks Teaching Spanish at Mountain View High School: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:
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CURMUDGUCATION: Why Are Teachers So Stressed?

CURMUDGUCATION: Why Are Teachers So Stressed?:

Why Are Teachers So Stressed?

Image result for big education ape war on teachers

Last week at the Atlantic, teacher-author Timothy Walker took a broad look at the reports of teacher stress (a good follow-up to his earlier piece on teacher burnout). Walker did a good job of gathering up the current data on teacher stress, but he stopped short of one huge question. On twitter he opened the door to that question, so I'm going to go ahead and step through it.




Walker's compendium of current reports is a good one. Here's the Gallup report from 2014. The research brief out of Penn Statethis year. The admittedly unscientific survey by AFT and the BATs. He cites a representative sampling of the ubiquitous "Why I'm Quitting Teaching" letters that are now as common as empty political promises to elevate the teaching profession. And he traces the connections between teacher stress and students issues, as well as bringing in the Learning Policy Institute's recent report tying teacher stress to the huge loss of veteran teachers, in turn tied to the teacher "shortage." (He might also have folded in LPI's work showing that veteran teachers are hugely beneficial, and therefor worth holding onto.) And he wraps it up with some anecdotal data from Mike Anderson (The Well-Balanced Teacher), a traveling ed consultant. 

Walker's piece makes one point exceedingly well-- there's reason to believe that teaching has become a hugely stressful line of work. His piece and the pieces that he links to suggest some causes for that (as does somebody at the Atlantic, who made the tab title of the piece "Testing, Common Core Place Additional Stress on Teachers"). Walker lumps much of it together as "an abundance of CURMUDGUCATION: Why Are Teachers So Stressed?:



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Stop the Ed Tech Juggernaut: A Parents Across America Webinar | Seattle Education

Stop the Ed Tech Juggernaut: A Parents Across America Webinar | Seattle Education:

Stop the Ed Tech Juggernaut: A Parents Across America Webinar

parents across america
Members of Parents Across America (PAA) have spent extensive time looking into quantities of writing and research that raise red flags about the impact of the EdTech explosion on our children. This high-pressure movement has brought a mishmash of digital devices and online and other pre-packaged programs into our schools, where they are promoted as “personalized,” “competency-based,” “student-centered,” or “self-directed” learning, terms which we refer to together as EdTech.
What we have found out about the EdTech push alarms us and should alarm any parent.
First of all, there is actually very little research addressing the many news ways that EdTech is being used in our schools — our children are truly being used as guinea pigs.
What we do know about children and screen time is based in part on new studies and in part on previous research into children’s use of television, video games and computers, which can help us anticipate some of EdTech’s health effects. And EdTech’s teaching and learning track record is not positive. Yet corporate reformers and the new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) are investing heavily in EdTech and putting enormous pressure on districts and schools to increase its use.
Join PAA activists and national experts to learn more about the negative effects of EdTech and what parents can do to slow down the digital learning juggernaut in your children’s schools:
Stop the Ed Tech Juggernaut 
Sunday,  October 16, 2016
7:00 PM EDT
Panelists:
How to join the meeting:
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://zoom.us/j/529296692
Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll): +14086380968,529296692# or +16465588656,529296692#
Or Telephone:
Dial: +1 408 638 0968 (US Toll) or +1 646 558 8656 (US Toll)
Meeting ID: 529 296 692
International numbers available: https://zoom.us/zoomconference?m=fy2WVdkruZncsYj3KuoWyXUZ8OTi9LqS
All are invited!
For more on Ed Tech, see:
EdTech Summary Brief – summary points that reflect what we have discovered about the proven and potential problematic effects of EdTech.
EdTech Overview – The latest push from corporate “school reform” undermines parental control, student privacy, and the quality of teaching and learning
EdTech: mental and emotional effects – How EdTech may be harming our children’s mental and emotional health
Buzz words images (EdTech: Let’s call it what it really is)
EdTech: Who Benefits? – Not our children!
Ed Tech: Questions to ask — What to ask at your child’s school:http://parentsacrossamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/questionstoask.pdf


 Stop the Ed Tech Juggernaut: A Parents Across America Webinar | Seattle Education:
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WikiLeaks - The Podesta Emails: Randi WTF Joel Klein?

WikiLeaks - The Podesta Emails:

The Podesta Emails: Randi WTF Joel Klein?
Image result for WikiLeaks


Re: Joel Klein






 WikiLeaks - The Podesta Emails:


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Schools Matter: ESSA and the Selling of CBE

Schools Matter: ESSA and the Selling of CBE:

ESSA and the Selling of CBE

Horn & Wilburn (2013)

During the stitching together in 2015 of the federal Frankenstein known as ESSA, the corporate unions, along with their support groups (NPE and FairTest) and activist arms (BATs and SOS), were working to get annual testing in all grades reduced to one time each in elementary, middle, and high school.  The corporate foundations said no, and that was that.   

In order for testing accountability to continue its stranglehold on schools in terms of the taught content and teaching methods used, and in order for comparative testing among schools can continue as the effective battering ram for public school charter conversion for the ever-present bottom five percent of schools, testing had to remain a permanent fixture of school.

Having just witnessed the testing opt by parents and students that spread like wildfire in many states, the corporate foundations scurrying in 2015 for another testing accountability system that might be opt-out proof.  CorpEd didn't have to look far for a tried and failed system to present itself in the form of competency-based learning (self-paced) via individual computer screens (personalized). 

You may remember that Microsoft and Apple had been trying for years to get computers imposed in every classroom.  With another opportunity looming with ESSA, if Common Core textbooks could be moved into digital format and if testing could be made into a daily exercise, several birds could be killed with the same virtual stone: 1) the opt out movement would fall, for how can you opt out of tests if tests are given every day, 2) the resistance to computerization would fall, for computers would necessary for content and assessment, 3) teacher influence could be made even more negligible, as the pacing of instruction and even the lessons offered could be determined by digital analytics, 4) the compiling of longitudinal data on individuals and groups could finally become a valuable resource for corporations of all kinds, whether selling sneakers or degrees or jobs.  

Research for the past fifty years has never demonstrated superiority of online methods for simple or complex learning tasks, Schools Matter: ESSA and the Selling of CBE:



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Four-year deal and revamped pensions prevent Chicago teachers strike - MarketWatch

Four-year deal and revamped pensions prevent Chicago teachers strike - MarketWatch:

Four-year deal and revamped pensions prevent Chicago teachers strike

New teachers will be required to contribute 9.4% of their salaries to their retirement account

Striking Chicago public school teachers march down Michigan Avenue in 2012 in Chicago, the last time the union representing the nation’s third-largest district approved a work stoppage. Another strike was averted with a contract agreement this week.

Sleepy children and parents returned to their morning school routine Tuesday after a last-minute deal just before midnight averted the second Chicago teachers strike in four years.
Chicago Public Schools officials and leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union reached a tentative agreement on a new contract to keep open the nation’s third-largest school district, serving nearly 380,000 students.
The four-year deal — retroactive to the 2015-16 school year when teachers worked without a contract — phases out the “pension pickup,” for newly hired teachers, according to the tentative agreement. New teachers will be required to contribute 9.4% of their salaries to their retirement account. In return, teachers hired after Jan. 1 will get two raises of 3.5% — one effective in January and the other effective in July.
With the new contract, the district will continue to pay approximately 7% toward the pensions of existing employees, who will continue contributing 2% to their own retirement accounts, union officials said.
0:00 / 0:00
Colleges ramp up outreach for mental health cases
College counseling centers are struggling to respond as more students seek help for anxiety, depression as well as typical college adjustment issues like break-ups and stress over grades. Ashley Miley (via Skype) joins Lunch Break’s Tanya Rivero discuss how colleges are adding online therapy programs, peer support groups and quick phone sessions.
“This is not a perfect agreement,” said CTU president Karen Lewis, who previously mulled a run for mayor of Chicago. “But it is good for the kids. And good for the clinicians. And good for the teachers, and the paraprofessionals.” The deal must be ratified by the union’s House of Delegates; they represent the 22,000 teachers who are union members.
The deal offered by CPS negotiators late Monday was “significantly better” than what the district offered teachers in January, Lewis said.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the agreement ensured that “teachers’ hard work would be respected in this contract and appropriately rewarded.” In addition, the deal would put the school district’s finances “on firmer ground,” he said, according to DNAInfo.
The deal also maintains the teacher-loved “steps and lanes,” automatic bumps in pay that track seniority and experience.
On average, CPS teachers make less than those in New York and L.A. The average teacher salary in Chicago just tops $74,000, according to CPS data (the CTU has said that number overstates salaries). By comparison, Los Angeles teachers collect an average just above $75,000 and New York, just above $80,000. A CPS teacher with a doctorate and 19 years’ experience will have reached the cap at $113,000, under the step-and-lane rules, Crains Chicago Business notes. Teachers also routinely fund supplies and equipment in their rooms due to what have become perennial budget reductions in Chicago.
Contract issues of course aren’t exclusive to Chicago. Philadelphia’s school district iscurrently in a budget stalemate and losing some fleeing teachers.
Emanuel has been challenged with broader pension challenges and budget issues. CPS faced a $1.1 billion budget deficit for the fiscal year that started July 1. Contentious issues, such as the funding of charter schools as the district loses enrollment, continue. CPS bonds, as well as some of Chicago’s city’s bonds, carry a “junk” rating at some credit rating agencies and the state of Illinois bonds are the lowest-rated in the nation outside of Puerto Rico. CPS faced criticism earlier this year when it sold bonds at high interest rates essentially to keep the lights on.
A mayor’s office spokesman told public radio station WBEZ that the teachers’ union deal was being financed by $175 million surplus from the city’s Tax Increment Financing district funds, with $88 million going to CPS. Education advocate groups had lobbied city hall to free up these funds, coveted by local officials, as a short-term fix. These groups maintain that the funding formulas underlining Chicago and Illinois, which funds education based on property taxes, needs reworking.
The union had said earlier Monday that it was holding out for a $500 increase in funding per student. That would cost an additional $200 million and would require the city to dip into TIF funds.
Teachers had maintained that their threat of strike extended beyond their own contract to include fairer funding for children, which by itself is not grounds for withholding labor.
In 2012, teachers walked the picket line for seven days before coming to an agreement. Prior to that, there had been 10 strikes between 1969 and 1987.Four-year deal and revamped pensions prevent Chicago teachers strike - MarketWatch:


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Tim Kaine's wife, Ann Holton, talks education policy

Tim Kaine's wife, Ann Holton, talks education policy:

Tim Kaine's wife, Ann Holton, talks education policy

She was Virginia's education secretary, and as a student she helped desegregate Richmond, Va., schools

ann holton

Ann Holton, a former Virginia education secretary and the wife of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine, campaigned in Philadelphia on Saturday to talk up Hillary Clinton’s agenda for improving the nation’s schools.
Holton, 58, an attorney and onetime juvenile court judge, was Virginia’s education secretary from 2014 until July, when she resigned to help the campaign after her husband joined the ticket. In addition to her professional background in education, she and her family have been on the front lines of a defining issue in American education today – the persistence of a separate and unequal school system segregated largely by race and class. As a child, Holton helped desegregate Richmond, Va. schools, when her father was governor. 
In her swing through the area, Holton spoke to a few dozen members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers at a Mount Airy church Saturday morning.
Education policy has certainly not gotten much attention in this election season. Although inequality was a big theme in the Democratic primary between Clinton and Bernie Sanders, educational inequity got scant mention.
Holton was making her rounds in the area as the race was rocked by the revelation of a tape of lewd and predatory comments about women by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
In an interview, Holton said that Hillary Clinton has a robust education agenda that includes working toward ensuring that all schools have adequate resources – although that is largely determined by state and local policy. Federal money makes up less than 10 percent of total school spending, much of that directed to low-income areas.
But federal policy can be leveraged to promote equity, she said.
“We don’t just need equal funding, we need more funding for the schools that are serving kids with more needs,” she said. “Equitable is not equal.”
In most states, including Pennsylvania, the opposite is true; wealthier districts have more to spend than poorer ones. Pennsylvania has the largest gap of any state.
“It is such a fundamental part of democracy that education is the path out of poverty,” she said. “When we don’t have successful pathways for children in every zip code, that undermines the democratic system.”
The federal government can point out inequities, do good research on issues such as discipline policies and their effect on different ethnic groups, “and help raise [the issue] up with the bully pulpit,” she said.
“At the very least, the solution has to be partnership with all three” levels of government.
The new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), should change the dynamics around federal pressure to improve low-performing schools, she said. Its predecessor, No Child Left Behind, enacted during the Bush administration, drew attention to persistent achievement gaps but was sharply criticized as counterproductive by punishing low-performing schools without giving them more help and resources.
Among other things, ESSA will put more emphasis on recognizing the progress that schools are making, instead of simply judging them on whether they reached certain benchmarks, Holton said.
“The accountability world has done a good job of pointing out the weak schools,” but not such a good job in helping them get better, she said. For one thing, current policies often “make it so miserable for teachers to be in those schools, it forces them away.”
Holton also said that Clinton wants to “modernize and elevate” the teaching profession and work on improving teacher preparation in colleges and universities “by making sure teachers are equipped to handle children with lots and lots of needs.”
Clinton, she said, also wants to fundamentally alter the approach to school discipline, which now generally banishes students for misbehavior and has a disproportionate effect on students of color. Approaches like positive behavior supports help students deal with conflict and make amends for misbehavior without suspending or expelling them, which often would launch them on a trajectory to prison.
“Hillary has a concrete proposal to increase federal funding for programs that work and provide alternatives so that students can be in the classroom.  I call it classrooms, not courtrooms,” she said.
She also spoke in favor of dealing with “whole child” needs through a community-based approach, which Philadelphia is attempting through its community schools initiative.  She'd like to see "collaboration across sectors so housing authorities, social services, parents' organizations can all work together. You can’t have children learning if not actually in school."


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Monday, October 10, 2016

THERE WAS NO SECOND DEBATE. (Did you hear two separate public education policies?) | Reclaim Reform

THERE WAS NO SECOND DEBATE. (Did you hear two separate public education policies?) | Reclaim Reform:


THERE WAS NO SECOND DEBATE. (Did you hear two separate public education policies?)

by 

Did you hear two separate public education policies?
Neither did I.
The event has been hyped as a spectacle. The world cannot believe what a spectacle we are making of ourselves.
TUSCALOOSA, AL - OCTOBER 01: Two fans are seen wearing masks of 2016 presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during the game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Kentucky Wildcats at Bryant-Denny Stadium on October 1, 2016 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
TUSCALOOSA, AL – OCTOBER 01: Two fans are seen wearing masks of 2016 presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during the game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Kentucky Wildcats at Bryant-Denny Stadium on October 1, 2016 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Please stop calling the TV money-making Theater of the Absurd a debate.
What IS an actual debate?
Every public school in America teaches debate at one level or another. Many high schools and colleges have superb debate teams. The candidates and their handlers know this.
Here are the Rules of Debate.
“Each person has two or three constructive speeches, and two to three rebuttal speeches. The affirmative gives the first constructive speech, and the rebuttals alternate: negative, affirmative, negative, affirmative. The affirmative has both the first and last speeches of the debate.
When worded as a proposition of policy, the topic requires the affirmative to support some specified action by some particular individual or group. The affirmative has the right to make any reasonable definition of each of the terms of the proposition. If the negative challenges the reasonableness of a definition by the affirmative, the judge must accept the definition of the team that shows better grounds for its interpretation of the term.”
See more complete Rules of Debate on this site.
THERE WAS NO SECOND DEBATE. (Did you hear two separate public education policies?) | Reclaim Reform:



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