Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/12/17

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/12/17

Featured Post

Jessica Tang quietly makes history with Boston Teachers Union election - The Boston Globe

CURMUDGUCATION: NEA Whiffs Again

by mike simpson / 7min

CURMUDGUCATION: NEA Whiffs Again : NEA Whiffs Again Back in the day, NEA leadership should have picked up a clue that they'd backed the wrong horse when they published this article in 2013 . " 10 Things You Should Know About the Common Core " included such notable observations as "Most NEA Members Support the Common Core," and while you might get a chuckle out of the rest of the list, the real ha

Where do Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidates stand on school choice and other education issues? - The Washington Post

by mike simpson / 2min

Where do Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidates stand on school choice and other education issues? - The Washington Post : Where do Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidates stand on school choice and other education issues? Governors have a great deal to say about public education in the states they run, but voters don’t often cast their ballots with education as a prime issue. In V

Nothing abstract about the lessons of play By Wendy Lecker - Wait What?

by mike simpson / 30min

Nothing abstract about the lessons of play By Wendy Lecker - Wait What? : Nothing abstract about the lessons of play By Wendy Lecker Last week, The New York Times unwittingly provided an example of how bad education policy is made. A front-page article trumpeted “Free play or flashcards? A new study nods to more rigorous preschools.” The study the article featured purportedly proved that frequent

Seattle Schools Community Forum: On "Red-shirting" Kindergarteners

by mike simpson / 37min

Seattle Schools Community Forum: On "Red-shirting" Kindergarteners : On "Red-shirting" Kindergarteners Several readers had some thoughts on this practice of holding back a child to enter kindergarten much later than at age five. I came across a couple of good articles on this topic I wanted to pass along. From the Bright blog, Everything You Need to Know about "Redshirting" Kindergarten’s role as

Nonprofit sues Education Dept. for release of information on campus sex-assault investigations - The Washington Post

by mike simpson / 4h

Nonprofit sues Education Dept. for release of information on campus sex-assault investigations - The Washington Post : Nonprofit sues Education Dept. for release of information on campus sex-assault investigations The National Women’s Law Center filed suit Monday against the Education Department in an effort to force the release of information about federal enforcement of Title IX, a law that gov

Success Academy, Known for Harsh Discipline and Skimming Students, Wins Broad Prize | Diane Ravitch's blog

by mike simpson / 5h

Success Academy, Known for Harsh Discipline and Skimming Students, Wins Broad Prize | Diane Ravitch's blog : Success Academy, Known for Harsh Discipline and Skimming Students, Wins Broad Prize Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain, known for its harsh discipline and cherrypicking students, won the Broad Prize for Charter Schools. http://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http%3A%2F

Why giving grades destroys education--Aleteia

by mike simpson / 5h

Standardized testing and education--Aleteia : Why giving grades destroys education Kids deserve better than to have their education turned into a contest. chool’s out for summer, which means I can finally be honest about something that’s been bugging me all year long: grades. Grades are terrible for children. They’re terrible for all children, whether they struggle in math like my oldest or they

Key facts about race and marriage in the U.S. | Pew Research Center

by mike simpson / 6h

Key facts about race and marriage in the U.S. | Pew Research Center : Key facts about race and marriage, 50 years after Loving v. Virginia Richard and Mildred #Loving paved the way for generations of American families. pic.twitter.com/WjDGTezPOX — SPLC (@splcenter) June 12, 2017 In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Loving v. Virginia case that marriage across racial lines was legal throug

Black Girls Matter: Pushed-Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected | Schott Foundation for Public Education

by mike simpson / 6h

Black Girls Matter: Pushed-Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected | Schott Foundation for Public Education : Black Girls Matter: Pushed-Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected An important new report from the African American Policy Forum is a must-read for anyone committed to understanding how both race and gender impact educational opportunity in our country. Black Girls Matter: Pushed-Out, Overpolice

Lily Eskelsen García: He wanted to interview me, but then I learned about him.

by mike simpson / 6h

He wanted to interview me, but then I learned about him. : He wanted to interview me, but then I learned about him… I get many inquiries from reporters who want my take on an issue. Recently, I received an unusual query. It was from a student at Orange County Community College (OCCC) in Newburgh, NY who writes for the campus paper. The student, Samir Thomas, sent me some of his articles from the

Confederate Statues Down In New Orleans, But Structural Racism Still Stands Tall In Our Schools | PopularResistance.Org

by mike simpson / 7h

Confederate Statues Down In New Orleans, But Structural Racism Still Stands Tall In Our Schools | PopularResistance.Org : Confederate Statues Down In New Orleans, But Structural Racism Still Stands Tall In Our Schools Above Photo: Ashana Bigard. Two students embrace outside a New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts graduation ceremony that many protested because of the high numbers of fellow stu

K–12 Cyber Incidents Have Been Increasing in 2017 -- THE Journal

by mike simpson / 7h

K–12 Cyber Incidents Have Been Increasing in 2017 -- THE Journal : K–12 Cyber Incidents Have Been Increasing in 2017 The creator of a national K–12 Cyber Incident Map warns that schools should act now, not later, to bolster their security. Ed Tech Strategies' K–12 Cyber Incident Map. Courtesy of Doug Levin. The founder and operator of a K–12 Cyber Incident Map is sharing some lessons he has learn

Chicago’s public teacher union and charter teacher union merge. Hear about it on this coming Hitting Left with the Klonsky brothers minus one brother. | Fred Klonsky

by mike simpson / 8h

Chicago’s public teacher union and charter teacher union merge. Hear about it on this coming Hitting Left with the Klonsky brothers minus one brother. | Fred Klonsky : Chicago’s public teacher union and charter teacher union merge. Hear about it on this coming Hitting Left with the Klonsky brothers minus one brother. The Chicago Teachers Union legislative director Stacy Davis Gates and Chris Baeh

The big problem with what Trump just said about religion in schools - The Washington Post

by mike simpson / 8h

The big problem with what Trump just said about religion in schools - The Washington Post : The big problem with what Trump just said about religion in schools On the day that Washington was riveted by the testimony on Capitol Hill of former FBI director James Comey, President Trump made a speech to a group of religious conservatives during which raised the issue of religion and schools. Here is

DeVos is Questioned About Campaign to Influence Climate Change Education | FRONTLINE | PBS

by mike simpson / 8h

DeVos is Questioned About Campaign to Influence Climate Change Education | FRONTLINE | PBS : DeVos is Questioned About Campaign to Influence Climate Change Education Four Democratic senators are sharply criticizing a conservative think tank’s efforts to bring climate change skepticism into the nation’s public schools as “industry funded” and “possibly fraudulent” and demanding to know whether fed

Jessica Tang quietly makes history with Boston Teachers Union election - The Boston Globe

by mike simpson / 8h

Jessica Tang quietly makes history with Boston Teachers Union election - The Boston Globe : Jessica Tang quietly makes history with Boston Teachers Union election Jessica Tang has been elected the Boston Teachers Union’s new president. The most remarkable thing about Jessica Tang’s ascension as head of the Boston Teachers Union might be just how unremarkable it feels. Tang’s election last week as

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Tomorrow's City Council Vote on Two-Tier Transportation

by mike simpson / 9h

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Tomorrow's City Council Vote on Two-Tier Transportation : Tomorrow's City Council Vote on Two-Tier Transportation The full City Council will hear the legislation tomorrow about the City paying for a two-tier bus system for school year 2017-2018 from Families and Education levy funds. Here is the agenda and here is the Summary and Fiscal Note. According to the agen

Selling Back to the Public What It Already Owned: “Public-Private Partnership” Shark Bait | deutsch29

by mike simpson / 9h

Selling Back to the Public What It Already Owned: “Public-Private Partnership” Shark | deutsch29 : Selling Back to the Public What It Already Owned: “Public-Private Partnership” Shark Bait I find myself increasingly encountering the term, “public-private partnership.” Today, I read two articles centered on this idea, both of which concerned Vice President Mike Pence– and one that concerned Pence’

Case Challenging Segregation as Violation of State Constitutional Right to Education Gains Support of National Scholars and Advocates - Education Law Prof Blog

by mike simpson / 9h

Education Law Prof Blog : Case Challenging Segregation as Violation of State Constitutional Right to Education Gains Support of National Scholars and Advocates For two decades, advocates and scholars have been calling for an expansion of school quality and finance precedent to incorporate claims challenging school segregation. The Connecticut Supreme Court issued the most significant victory in S

Higher order thinking about HOTS – Missouri Education Watchdog

by mike simpson / 9h

Higher order thinking about HOTS – Missouri Education Watchdog : Higher order thinking about HOTS All hail Higher Order Thinking Skills! HOTS (gotta love the acronym) conjures up images of Einstein, Hawking and Holmes. Who wouldn’t want to be them? Who wouldn’t want to have a company full of them? If our schools could teach more kids to have good HOTS, think of how far our country could go. Or so

Diversity Is A Good Thing – redqueeninla

by mike simpson / 10h

Diversity Is A Good Thing – redqueeninla : Diversity Is A Good Thing But what is it? Like pornography, it seems to be something folks “know” when they see, but aren’t very comfortable defining. For one thing, there’s the question of what kind of diversity we’re talking about. It’s used commonly as a proper noun, without explanation as to what particular sort of diversity is alluded to. Not nailin

YESTERDAY

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/11/17

by mike simpson / 1d

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/11/17 Featured Post Corporate-Elite Totalitarianism: Are we Creeping or Leaping? Impact Investing and Venture Philanthropy's Role in Sowing the Seeds of Financial Opportunity by mike 

Top Posts This Week

• 

  Read James Comey's prepared testimony for Senate Intel
• 

  DeVos says school spending and student outcomes aren’t related, but recent research suggests otherwise | Chalkbeat
• 

  TEACHER VOICE: Trump wants to axe the program that allowed me to serve my country and its highest-need children - The Hechinger Report
• 

  Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/6/17
• 

  Are Trump and DeVos Waging a War on Teachers? - Center for American Progress
• 

  Proof Your Teacher Evaluation is Meaningless - Teacher Habits
• 

  Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/7/17
• 

  Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/10/17
• 

  Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/9/17
• 

  To Understand Betsy DeVos’s Educational Views, View Her Education - The New York Times

CURMUDGUCATION: NEA Whiffs Again

CURMUDGUCATION: NEA Whiffs Again:

NEA Whiffs Again

Back in the day, NEA leadership should have picked up a clue that they'd backed the wrong horse when they published this article in 2013. "10 Things You Should Know About the Common Core" included such notable observations as "Most NEA Members Support the Common Core," and while you might get a chuckle out of the rest of the list, the real harbinger is in the long, blistering comments section. The average NEA Today article does not exactly draw large or lively response, but this piece drew 325 rather angry comments asking what, exactly, that author was smoking. NEA was either ignorant of or deliberately trying to rope in the large number of anti-Core members.

The author was Tim Walker, and last week he offered a look at personalized learning, and once again NEA either doesn't get it or is trying to stick it to members.

As with NEA support for the Core, Walker starts the article by implicitly accepting that current schools (you know-- the ones where NEA members work) pretty much suck. Too many students sitting in regimented rows memorizing things and listening to teacher lecture. It's a simplistic and reality-impaired view of what's actually going on in classrooms, and it raises more questions than it addresses (e.g. If the classrooms are too full, why aren't we calling for smaller classrooms? Also, if Common Core was going to fix exactly these problems, why aren't they fixed?) He visits a happy personalizing school at East Pennsboro Area Middle School in Enola, PA. 

Best of all, the lifeless classroom setups are gone, and learning spaces have been reconfigured with moveable furniture and walls so that when classroom subjects overlap, teachers can combine CURMUDGUCATION: NEA Whiffs Again:

Where do Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidates stand on school choice and other education issues? - The Washington Post

Where do Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidates stand on school choice and other education issues? - The Washington Post:

Where do Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidates stand on school choice and other education issues?

Governors have a great deal to say about public education in the states they run, but voters don’t often cast their ballots with education as a prime issue. In Virginia, however, there are plenty of people interested in the education views of the two candidates in Virginia’s Democratic primary for governor — Ralph Northam, the lieutenant governor of the state, and Tom Perriello, a former one-term congressman and diplomat in President Barack Obama’s administration.

On a number of issues, the two have similar if not identical views. Both say they want to:

— focus their education policy efforts on improving traditional local school districts.

— implement state-funded universal prekindergarten programs.

— raise teacher salaries in a state where educators on average make less than the national average.

— improve the Standards of Learning, the state’s standards and series of standardized tests used for accountability purposes. Virginia is one of the handful of states that did not adopt the Common Core State Standards even when the Obama administration was dangling federal funds to persuade state authorities to do so.

— break the “school to prison” pipeline, given that one 2015 report showed Virginia leading Where do Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidates stand on school choice and other education issues? - The Washington Post:

 

Nothing abstract about the lessons of play By Wendy Lecker - Wait What?

Nothing abstract about the lessons of play By Wendy Lecker - Wait What?:

Nothing abstract about the lessons of play By Wendy Lecker

Last week, The New York Times unwittingly provided an example of how bad education policy is made. A front-page article trumpeted “Free play or flashcards? A new study nods to more rigorous preschools.”

The study the article featured purportedly proved that frequent, direct instruction of “academic” content in preschool yielded more “cognitive gains” than play-based preschool. The study even contended that preschools that do not engage in enough direct academic instruction “may be doing their young charges a disservice.” The study’s author, Bruce Fuller, denigrated play, declaring that “(s)imply dressing up like a firefighter or building an exquisite Lego edifice may not be enough.”

However, Fuller’s study did not prove that “academically oriented” preschools help children learn better.

The study showed simply that children who were exposed to instruction regarding phonics, simple writing and counting manipulatives frequently in preschool, and then were tested on these discrete skills near the beginning of kindergarten, did better on those tests than children who were not exposed at all or as frequently to this instruction.

Of course if one instructs a child on something and tests her on it soon Nothing abstract about the lessons of play By Wendy Lecker - Wait What?:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: On "Red-shirting" Kindergarteners

Seattle Schools Community Forum: On "Red-shirting" Kindergarteners:

On "Red-shirting" Kindergarteners

Several readers had some thoughts on this practice of holding back a child to enter kindergarten much later than at age five. 

I came across a couple of good articles on this topic I wanted to pass along.

From the Bright blog, Everything You Need to Know about "Redshirting"

Kindergarten’s role as “the new first grade” was further cemented when — beginning in the mid-1970s — many states began to raise their cutoff dates, resulting in a consistently older pool of students, and consequently raising teachers’ expectations for behavior and learning skills.

Is redshirting effective?

Researchers have found varied results. While some studies assert that younger students are more likely to underperform on standardized tests, and that older students may fare better academically or take on more leadership roles, a number of other studies have demonstrated the opposite. In 2006, one comprehensive study noted that adult students who had been 

Seattle Schools Community Forum: On "Red-shirting" Kindergarteners:

Nonprofit sues Education Dept. for release of information on campus sex-assault investigations - The Washington Post

Nonprofit sues Education Dept. for release of information on campus sex-assault investigations - The Washington Post:

Nonprofit sues Education Dept. for release of information on campus sex-assault investigations

The National Women’s Law Center filed suit Monday against the Education Department in an effort to force the release of information about federal enforcement of Title IX, a law that governs how schools handle campus sexual harassment and assault.

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the D.C.-based nonprofit group alleges the department has wrongfully failed to release public records that should have been released by now under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The Law Center argues that the information is important for understanding how the Trump administration is approaching Title IX enforcement — especially given that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has declined to say whether she intends to uphold or withdraw controversial guidance to schools and colleges on sexual harassment and sexual violence issued during the administration of President Barack Obama.

[Under DeVos, Education Dept. likely to make significant shift on sex assault]

“Without the release of these documents, students, families, and advocates are kept in the dark about whether the department is enforcing legal protections for student survivors of Nonprofit sues Education Dept. for release of information on campus sex-assault investigations - The Washington Post: