Advocates Tell FTC: Facebook is violating children’s privacy law | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

Advocates Tell FTC: Facebook is violating children’s privacy law Complaint says controversial Messenger Kids app doesn’t comply with COPPA | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

ADVOCATES TELL FTC: FACEBOOK IS VIOLATING CHILDREN’S PRIVACY LAW COMPLAINT SAYS CONTROVERSIAL MESSENGER KIDS APP DOESN’T COMPLY WITH COPPA

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy signed onto this complaint to the FCC about Facebook’s violation of children’s privacy and the federal law known as COPPA via its Messenger for Kids app.
Contact: David Monahan, CCFC: david@commercialfreechildhood.org; 617-896-9397

BOSTON – Wednesday, October 3, 2018 – Today, a coalition of 17 public health advocacy groups called on the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) to investigate and take action against Facebook for violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”). The groups filed a complaint asserting that Messenger Kids, a controversial messaging application for children as young as five, collects kids’ personal information without obtaining verifiable parental consent or providing parents with clear and complete disclosures of Facebook’s data practices.

Messenger Kids is the first major social platform designed specifically for young children. The FTC complaint says that Facebook’s parental consent mechanism does not meet the requirements of COPPA because it’s not reasonably calculated to ensure that the person providing consent is actually the child’s parent. Any adult user can approve any Messenger Kids account, and testing confirmed that even a fictional “parent” holding a brand-new Facebook account could immediately approve a child’s account without proof of identity. The complaint also asserts that Facebook Messenger Kids’ privacy policy is incomplete and vague. The policy allows Facebook to disclose data to unnamed third parties and the “Facebook Family of Companies” for broad, undefined business purposes. The policy does not specify what companies are in the “Facebook Family.” COPPA requires that privacy policies list the name and contact information of any third parties who have access to children’s data.

The complaint was organized by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) and drafted by the Communications & Technology Law Clinic in the Institute for Public Representation (“IPR”) at Georgetown University Law Center. “Despite Facebook’s promises to the contrary, Messenger Kids blatantly violates Continue reading: Advocates Tell FTC: Facebook is violating children’s privacy law Complaint says controversial Messenger Kids app doesn’t comply with COPPA | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

Is the Co-Location of Charters inside Neighborhood Schools a Problem? | Cloaking Inequity

Is the Co-Location of Charters inside Neighborhood Schools a Problem? | Cloaking Inequity

IS THE CO-LOCATION OF CHARTERS INSIDE NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS A PROBLEM?

This past summer I had opportunity to visit the Hawkins community schools in Los Angeles. What I haven’t talked about publicly is that I also was also invited to visit Magnolia Science Academy 3 (MSA3)   which is co-located at Curtiss Middle School in Carson California during the same trip. The Magnolia charters are affiliated with the Gulen schools, the second largest network of charters in the United States (Read more about what that means in the post Breaking News: California NAACP calls for investigation of ALL Gülen charters)

A few months after the visit, there are a few things that really stick out in my mind about the visit to MSA3.

First, the faculty at the school talked about the small class sizes at MSA3. I only saw about 5 classes, but I counted and the class sizes in the rooms that I saw were 30+, which didn’t jive with the small class sizes that they told me about.

The second experience that really stuck out to me was that we walked into a science class and the teacher was showing a film that featured an adult (or maybe a teen) prancing around on a stage in a diaper. My science classes never featured curriculum this exciting (well maybe, in chemistry we blew things up), the teacher explained that she was showing a movie to “prepare the students for high school.” What?!

Third, faculty at MSA3 complained that they couldn’t use the gym and other facilities when they wanted them because they were co-located on the same campus with Curtiss Middle School (more on this in a moment). I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sympathetic.

Was there anything that I liked about MSA3 during the visit? I am a hip hop fan. In one of the classes the teacher showed how he was helping students program their own hip hop tracks. Now that was cool! But relevant?

The MSA3 staff also told me an interesting story. Apparently, there is a trash can in an alley that faces the Continue reading: Is the Co-Location of Charters inside Neighborhood Schools a Problem? | Cloaking Inequity

Teachers at 8 of 10 schools Tuck oversaw rejected his leadership - SFChronicle.com

Teachers at 8 of 10 schools Tuck oversaw rejected his leadership - SFChronicle.com

Teachers at 8 of 10 schools Tuck oversaw rejected his leadership

When choosing between Marshall Tuck and Tony Thurmond for California’s next schools chief, it’s worth remembering, “when the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.” Someone whose supporters are Donald Trump advisers is no friend of public school students and teachers.

Tuck and Thurmond are candidates for California superintendent of public instruction in the November election. Tuck’s biggest backers are deeply tied to Trump’s education privatization agenda. Trump’s education adviser Bill Evers, who loudly praised Trump’s cuts to federal education spending, has come out strongly in support of Tuck.

Thurmond, a Democratic Assemblyman from Richmond, is backed by the California Teachers Association, which has spent $3.2 million through independent expenditures to support his campaign.

Billionaire Arthur Rock, whose charter school chain is supported by the Trump administration and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, already has contributed $3 million of the $13.8 million raised by charter school advocates to elect Tuck. The California Charter School Association, which celebrated DeVos’ nomination, is Tuck’s biggest organizational endorser.

Tuck’s career as a schools executive is defined by the same cutting of corners and programs and deep animosity toward teachers that DeVos’ initiatives in education are known for.

Tuck was a Wall Street banker before taking over as the chief operating Continue Reading: Teachers at 8 of 10 schools Tuck oversaw rejected his leadership - SFChronicle.com

A Plan to Improve California's Public Schools

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Florida voucher schools fail, stiff teachers — and get more money to try again - Orlando Sentinel

Florida voucher schools fail, stiff teachers — and get more money to try again - Orlando Sentinel

Florida voucher schools fail, stiff teachers — and get more money to try again

Two years ago, the Beta Preparatory school in Orlando was being run — with your tax dollars — inside a commercial complex on South Orange Blossom Trail, alongside eight bail-bonds businesses and a drug-testing company.

With no outdoor space for recess — and fellow tenants such as “Drug Tests R Us” — it wasn’t most parents’ vision of an ideal learning environment.

Apparently Beta wasn’t an ideal tenant either. The private school that takes state vouchers was evicted for not paying its rent.

Yes, the entire taxpayer-subsidized school. (Class, the words of the day are: “Final notice.”)

So last year, Beta moved to a new locale — a church campus in Orlando, where it continued to take more of your tax dollars … until things went south there, too.

Teachers filed formal complaints about a “lack of basic school supplies,” academic “irregularities,” student safety, inadequate staffing and a “lack of professionalism.” Multiple teachers said the school stiffed them on salary. The church said the school stiffed it on rent.

Ultimately, the school shut down for good.

You might think that would be the final chapter in this sorry story.

But not in Florida.

Watch the Video

As Sentinel reporter Annie Martin reported last weekend, the owner of the Beta school simply opened another school a few weeks ago with a new name; this time in Volusia County … once again with your tax dollars.

Court records show the school’s owner filed the application for the new school the same Continue reading: Florida voucher schools fail, stiff teachers — and get more money to try again - Orlando Sentinel

The Easiest Money Bill Ackman Has Made Lately Is In A Bunch Of Charter Schools

The Easiest Money Bill Ackman Has Made Lately Is In A Bunch Of Charter Schools

The Easiest Money Bill Ackman Has Made Lately Is In A Bunch Of Charter Schools

It turns out that Bill Ackman is making good money in the most unexpected of places: financing charter schools for low-income kids.

Since 2011, the billionaire hedge fund manager has invested $20 million of his own money in the Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund, which was started by former tennis star Andre Agassi and has built 79 new charter schools in poor neighborhoods around the country. The impact investment, which Ackman made via his charitable foundation, has netted annual returns north of 10%.

Meanwhile, performance at his hedge fund has been languishing. Ackman has lost money for the past three years running, largely because of disastrous bets on two companies: Valeant and Herbalife. During that time, his net worth has dropped by more than half, to an estimated $1.1 billion. Recently he’s managed to turn things in the right direction, with his Pershing Square Holdings posting gains of 15.8% through September 30, according to the firm.

Ackman's foray into impact investing began in 2011 when Agassi, a tennis champ with eight Grand Slams under his belt, pitched him on his new fund, the Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund. Agassi, who had teamed up with professional impact investor Bobby Turner, promised Ackman that his capital would go toward the construction of 100 new charter schools for low-income children by 2020 in areas like the Bronx and Southwest Detroit—and that he would see double-digit returns, to boot. Ackman put in $10 million and agreed to take Continue reading: The Easiest Money Bill Ackman Has Made Lately Is In A Bunch Of Charter Schools

A One Issue State Election? You Better Believe That Issue is Public Education | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch

A One Issue State Election? | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch

A One Issue State Election?

This is the year to vote education.

It's been the number one issue in the state for years. It's on everyone's minds and most candidates' lips. The decision voters make, whether to continue with the Republican-majority status quo or shift more power to Democrats, will be a major factor in deciding our children's present and future.

If you have patience enough and time, by all means look beyond education when you choose who to vote for. The more you know when you cast your ballot, the better. But after you take a deep dive into the candidates' positions, you're likely to find their approach to education is a reliable a indicator of where they stand on other important issues. Vote their positions on education, and you won't go far wrong.

Candidates who support a robust, fully funded system of public education are making a statement of principle which goes beyond schooling. "Public" is the key word. They want to provide a quality education for all the state's children, the whole K-through-college public, and probably pre-K as well, to give them the best shot at a bright future.

"Public" is also the key word when it comes to the same candidates' approach to the rest of government. They want state government to contribute to the well being of the general public, in the present and into the future. That means, among other things, supporting a well funded social services system, building and maintaining infrastructure and tending to the environment.

Candidates who are OK with education funding at levels low enough that the courts say they're unconstitutional aren't so keen on public education. Lots of them like to use the term "government schools" (FYI, that's supposed to be a bad thing) along with "failing schools" and "failing teachers" to describe our public education system. They heap praise on charter and private schools which educate 20 percent of the school-aged population and treat the schools educating 80 percent of children as an afterthought.

Candidates who disparage "government schools" think of the rest of government the same way, as a public irritant, not a public good. They want government to get out of the way so the free market can do what as it pleases. The less taxes, the less spending, the less meddling by the Continue reading: A One Issue State Election? | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch

Hundreds of US teacher candidates shake up midterm elections

Hundreds of US teacher candidates shake up midterm elections

Hundreds of US teacher candidates shake up midterm elections

Last September, school speech therapist Kathy Hoffman was settling into the new academic year, working with youngsters in her small classroom behind a playground at Sahuaro Ranch Elementary School in a blue-collar neighborhood outside Phoenix.

This year, the political novice is gone from her classroom and on the campaign trail across Arizona full-time as the Democrats’ choice in the race to become superintendent of public education, overseeing the state’s schools. It’s a post typically held by career politicians or political insiders.

“My tipping point was realizing we need more teachers running for office, people who understand what it’s like in the classroom, who have seen the effect of having the lack of resources from our lawmakers,” Hoffman said.

Hundreds of current and former educators, most of them Democrats like Hoffman, are on general election ballots from school board to governor — far exceeding educator candidacies prior to this year’s #RedForEd protests.

In her first campaign during the Democratic primary, the 32-year-old Hoffman beat a former state senate minority leader, illustrating how much a surge in teacher activism centering on higher teacher pay and increased educational funding have shaken up November midterm elections around the U.S.

She and the other teacher candidates represent a wild-card political movement following the teacher-driven #RedForEd effort that drew support from parents and school children in Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Oklahoma and West Virginia and also focused on outdated textbooks, crowded classrooms and teacher shortages. Across the country, some educators have already won primary races against the incumbent state legislators they blamed for public school spending cutbacks.

“It’s about standing up for what’s right and bringing that teacher’s voice to that position,” Hoffman said. “I felt it should come straight from the classroom.”

After years of dense education debates over teacher evaluations and the Common Core learning standards, the new teacher candidates’ simplified message for higher pay and more funding for schools represent “talking points (that) are resonating,” said Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute public policy think tank.

“What we might be seeing is the emergence of a number of individuals who will be an elected mainstream set of advocates for Continue reading: Hundreds of US teacher candidates shake up midterm elections

CURMUDGUCATION: The Opportunity Myth Myth

CURMUDGUCATION: The Opportunity Myth Myth

The Opportunity Myth Myth

When it comes to slick, pretty education "research," the folks at TNTP know their stuff. Reformsters have been milking the slick-but-hollow "Widget Effect" for years, and now TNTP has whipped up another sure-to-be-referenced-way-too-much "report" entitled "The Opportunity Myth."

Who are these folks? TNTP used to stand for The New Teacher Project; She Who Will Not Be Named created it as a spin-off of TFA, designed to put older career-changers into the classroom. At some point it changed into an advocacy group pushing a redesign of teaching (current slogan: reimagine teaching). TNTP is led by Daniel Weisberg, who started out as a lawyer and then served as a labor specialist under Joel Klein in NYC. The board is packed with entrepreneurs, PR specialists, and reform CEOs. You can hunt through the whole list of TNTP leaders and find that this organization devoted to teaching has no teachers in leadership positions (just a few TFA temps and other alternative paths to one or two resume-building years in the classroom).

So this report comes straight from the heart of reformdom.

The report is a slick piece of graphic-soaked digitized niftiness (Look! This part scrolls sideways! And here are more graphics!!) but it features the TNTP sleight of hand. The subheading is the first piece Continue reading: CURMUDGUCATION: The Opportunity Myth Myth

Congratulations to re-elected PAA Board members! | Parents Across America

Congratulations to re-elected PAA Board members! | Parents Across America

Congratulations to re-elected PAA Board members!

We are especially happy to have four of our strong, accomplished, dedicated board of directors members back for another term on the PAA Board of Directors! Dora Taylor, Nathan Harris, Steven Norton, and Deb Mayer were recently re-elected to serve two-year terms on our seven member Board. We look forward to another year of PAA growth under their leadership. You can read all about these exceptional people here.

From left, Nate and Carrie Lynn Harris, Julie Woestehoff, Dora Taylor, Deb Mayer, and Steve Norton.

Congratulations to re-elected PAA Board members! | Parents Across America

PAA interim executive director to retire

by Julie Woestehoff / 15h

Julie Woestehoff, PAA co-founder and interim executive director, and the executive director of PURE for 20 plus years, is taking a well-deserved retirement at the end of this year. Julie helped established PURE as a powerhouse parent voice in Chicago, which earned her recognition as one of the 100 most powerful women in the city, along with a Ford Foundation team leadership award and regular appea

This is how we roll! PAAers share insider tips on school superintendent searches

by Julie Woestehoff / 15h

UPDATE: Boston Globe article on continuing concerns of parents and others about superintendent search here. Excellent letter from QUEST and other groups regarding needed process and participation for search here. A while ago we 

Peter Greene: The Promises Charter Schools Don't Make

The Promises Charter Schools Don't Make

The Promises Charter Schools Don't Make

Because the term "charter schools" often comes with the word "public" attached, parents can be surprised by some of the ways in which charters do not operate like actual public schools. Here are just a few factors that emptors should caveat when considering a charter school.

A Stable School

Just this week, word that two separate charters will be closing their doors immediately. In Delaware, the Delaware Academy of Public Safety and Security closed its doors on Tuesday. It announced that closure on Tuesday in a letter to families. Wednesday, Detroit Delta Preparatory Academy for Social Justice announced that its last day of classes would be Friday.

Sudden closure of charter schools is not unusual. The Center for Media and Democracy found that about 2,500 charter schools closed between 2000 and 2013. Some of them closed at the end of the school year, some never opened in the first place, and some closed abruptly in the middle of the year. Charters can close for a variety reasons; this week's closings appear to be due to financial problems because of low enrollment.

Charter schools are businesses, and they close for business reasons. That doesn't make them evil, but it does make them different from the public system, which is built, however imperfectly, on the Continue reading: The Promises Charter Schools Don't Make

Why Electing Tony Thurmond as Superintendent of Public Instruction Is the Most Important Race in California

Why Electing Tony Thurmond as Superintendent of Public Instruction Is the Most Important Race in California

Why Electing Tony Thurmond as Superintendent of Public Instruction Is the Most Important Race in California

Last week in my column on Andrea Gabor’s After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform, I outlined how her superb study thoroughly exposes the fact that over the last twenty years or so, “the billionaire boys club has favored a punitive, hierarchical, undemocratic, one-size fits all approach that has hurt students more than it has helped them.” These corporate education reformers come to the table with an endless supply of money and a set of prejudices that favor:

Ideas and expertise forged in corporate boardrooms over knowledge and experience gleaned in the messy trenches of inner-city classrooms. They came with distrust of an education culture that values social justice over more practical considerations like wealth and position. They came with the arrogance that elevated polished, but often mediocre (or worse), technocrats over scruffy but knowledgeable educators. And most of all, they came with their suspicion—even their hatred—of organized labor and their contempt for ordinary public school teachers.

Tuck is THE Republican choice who is endorsed on statewide Republican mailers

Here in California, we have seen that the Bloombergs, Waltons, Broads, and other self-proclaimed rich saviors of the world have not been satisfied just to meddle in the classroom through various forms of philanthrocapitalism, they have sought to impose their will by trying to buy elections. Just last June an all-star crew of billionaires lost in their effort to turn California’s gubernatorial election into a proxy war over corporate education reform when Antonio Villaraigosa’s anti-union crusade for Governor fell flat with voters despite his donors’ considerable largesse.

Unfortunately, while their millions were vanquished in that round, the bottomless wallet crowd Continue reading: Why Electing Tony Thurmond as Superintendent of Public Instruction Is the Most Important Race in California

A Plan to Improve California's Public Schools

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New AQE Report Shows NY's Record of Underfunding Schools in Black & Latino Communities | Schott Foundation for Public Education

New AQE Report Shows NY's Record of Underfunding Schools in Black & Latino Communities | Schott Foundation for Public Education

New AQE Report Shows NY's Record of Underfunding Schools in Black & Latino Communities

A new report released by the Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) reveals that the inexcusable underfunding of New York's public schools hits districts with Black and Latinx students the hardest.

Thanks to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity's 13-year lawsuit against the State of New York, a struggle supported by the Schott Foundation from our earliest days, a "Foundation Aid" formula was mandated by the courts and finally passed into law by the state legislature in 2007. However that promise to New York's children was never fully kept: some $4.2 billion in total, by the state's own numbers, is still owed to districts.

AQE's "Educational Racism" report highlights that this underfunding hits some districts harder than others. From the executive summary:

• Two thirds of the districts in New York State are still owed Foundation Aid. By contrast, 100 percent of high needs school districts with majority Black and Latino students are owed Foundation Aid.
• There 25 school districts that are both high need and majority Black and Latino.
• The students in these 25 districts represent 80 percent of the Black and Latino (Latinx) students in the state and 69 percent of the economically disadvantaged students in the state
• These 25 school districts are owed 62 percent ($2.6 billion) of all Foundation Aid. The failure to fully fund Foundation Aid results in the failure to adequately fund schools that are majority Black and Latino.

This is, sadly, a story we see in communities all across the country: the quality of one's public education is largely on our position within the very structural problems that schools are told to solve. Our time in school, as in the workplace and Continue reading: New AQE Report Shows NY's Record of Underfunding Schools in Black & Latino Communities | Schott Foundation for Public Education

The Reading Wars? Who’s Talking About Reading and Class Size?

The Reading Wars? Who’s Talking About Reading and Class Size?

The Reading Wars? Who’s Talking About Reading and Class Size?

…extensive research in the reading difficulties of children show that large classes are the basic cause of failure in reading as well as in other subjects.

~Professor Arthur I. Gates, nationally known authority in the field of reading instruction. Elementary School Journal; February 1937.

When parents and teachers debate phonics and whole language, they might be ignoring a real problem facing their children in the classroom—the difficulty that steals a teacher’s ability to address the individualized reading needs a student brings to school.

That problem is huge class sizes! If you note the date of the quote above, it’s 1937!

In 2018, few still discuss class size in relationship to reading instruction along with reading disabilities and dyslexia. Many policymakers and corporate reformers like to push the class size issue under the rug.

The reading wars, on the other hand, often create opposition between teachers and parents. This rift can hurt public schools, and more importantly students. There are many who believe this conflict is designed to do just that!

Some researchers proclaim that class size doesn’t matter, that it is simply not cost efficient. So there’s no point in addressing it. But class size research disputing the Continue reading: The Reading Wars? Who’s Talking About Reading and Class Size?