Badass Teachers Association: BAT Eye on the Elections!

Badass Teachers Association: BAT Eye on the Elections!

BAT Eye on the Elections!

Well, it's finally here, election day 2018. We have seen an unrivaled amount of educators running for office across the nation in response to the #RedforEd wave.

BATs have a few of our own long-time members that have sacrificed their own lives to put their name on the ballot.

In Tennessee we have Larry Proffitt. A long time BAT member, former admin and Tennessee power-house, Larry is running for  Tennessee House District 66. He was officially endorsed by NPE Action and this is his second attempt as a candidate.

Janet Garrett, a long-time Ohio BAT and a veteran teacher of 35 years is running for Congress in the 4th district.

Amy Perruso, from the great state of Hawaii, has her sights set on the statehouse.

From Michigan, we have Dayna Polehanki, 2018 Teacher of the Year that is running for State Senate in Michigan's 7th district.

We asked our BAT State Admins (A quick thank you to all of the work that they do!) what races they will be following closely this year. Here are some of their replies:

Utah’s
“Question 1”... we want it...our only education funding through a gas tax

Florida

Governor Gillum vs. DeSantis
Senate Nelson vs. Scott
Amendments especially 4 ~ restoring voting rights:
If Amendment 4 is approved by more than 60 percent of voters on Tuesday, most felons will automatically be able to register to vote after completing all terms of their sentences. An estimated 1.2 million people who currently can't vote would be affected by the change. Those who committed murder or sex crimes are not eligible.

Senator Annette Taddeo

Donna Shalala for Congress

Illinois
Governor .... Rauner (funder of Janus) vs Pritzker.
Sara Dady, (US Rep.) Jake Castanza, Angie Bodine (IL State Rep)

West Virginia
The West Virginia teachers' strike was a staring contest with the West Virginia State Senate. 34 members, 22 Republicans led by State Senator Mitch Carmichael. Half the members (17) are up for election; ten seats either have Republican incumbents or were held by Republicans who lost their primaries. If the Dems don't pick up seven seats, Carmichael will revisit the issues from the strike and will pretend he now has a mandate of some kind.

There's Joe Manchin's race against WV Attorney General and former drug company lobbyist Patrick Morrisey (who treated to put teachers in jail during our strike). Manchin may not be every liberal's dream Senator, but he's an easy pick in that race.

We are also closely watching State Senator Richard Ojeda's bid for the vacant 03 District Congressional seat.


Michigan
In Michigan, the whole ticket is exciting. But the key ones are Gretchen Whitmer for Gov., - Dana Nessel for Atty Gen. - Haley Stevens & Ellisa Slotkin for US Congress. Dayna Polehanki for State Senate (She's a Teacher of the Year and a BAT). Plus Sam Bagenstos & Megan Cavanagh the Dems for Mich Supreme Ct. If they both win the court flips from Republican to Democrat. Yes on Proposal 2 will eliminate gerrymandering so that's huge too. The boots on the ground for the Dems have been more than I've ever seen here in Michigan.

Georgia
The Governor's race!!

Wisconsin 
The Govenor's race and Tammy Baldwin

Ohio
All of our 23 endorsed candidates in OH and Senator Sherrod Brown's re-election, hopefully handily.


Indiana
J.D. Ford vs Mike Delph for State Senator for Indiana District 29. J.D. has a master's degree in education from Purdue University and has been working as a substitute teacher while campaigning. He's liberal, 36 and If he wins, he'll be the state's first openly gay lawmaker.


Pennsylvania
PA Governor Race-Tom Wolf (D) vs Scott Wagner (R)
PA Senate Race-Bob Casey (D) vs Lou Barletta (R)

Texas
Beto!!!

California
Tony Thurmond
Duncan Hunter (R), Mimi Waters (R), Dana Rohrbacher (R).

Arizona
Governor race
Prop 305

New York
The State Senate - we need to flip it!

North Dakota
Senator Heidi Heitkamp

Montana
Senatorial... Incumbent Jon Tester (D) vs. Matt Rosendale.


New Jersey
Andy Kim for Congress District 3

 As I sat here typing this out, I received a personal call from our brother, Larry Proffitt. Much love to you and you will be in our hearts!!!  ~Melissa Tomlinson, Assistant Executive Director

Badass Teachers Association: BAT Eye on the Elections!

School chief's plan would divide L.A. school district into 32 networks - Los Angeles Times #VoteTuesday #LAUSD #UTLA

School chief's plan would divide L.A. school district into 32 networks - Los Angeles Times
School chief's plan would divide L.A. school district into 32 networks

Los Angeles schools chief Austin Beutner is working out a plan to radically reshape the nation’s second-largest school district by greatly shrinking the central bureaucracy and moving decision-making closer to schools.

The aim is to boost student success and also to save money at a time when district officials insist that grave financial problems threaten the Los Angeles Unified School District with insolvency.

Under a proposal being developed confidentially, Beutner, who spent much of his career in business, would divide the school system into 32 “networks,” bringing authority and resources out of the central office and into neighborhoods.

In the downtown headquarters, managers and other employees recently have been asked to explain their duties — and to justify why their particular jobs should continue to exist in a leaner, more efficient, more localized school system.

The network strategy is not a plan to break up or end L.A. Unified, but it could transform the way the school system functions.

“The superintendent is trying to move toward a decentralized system that puts the student first,” said one person close to the process, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak. “He’s trying to generate better educational outcomes. That’s the No. 1 goal.”

“Savings from the central bureaucracy could be plowed back into education at the school level as well as to deal with the fiscal crisis the district faces,” he added.

Beutner declined to comment, saying it would be premature to talk about a work in progress.

The Times learned details of Beutner’s developing strategy through documents and interviews. The broad outlines of the plan were confirmed by numerous people involved in the work at various levels. No one was willing to be quoted on the record.

The record of similar attempts is not necessarily on Beutner’s side. Some past L.A. Unified reorganizations have been short-lived or fell far short of expectations. Sometimes what’s meant to save money turns out to be costly.

“If the underlying services are not different or better, then the structure doesn’t matter Continue reading: School chief's plan would divide L.A. school district into 32 networks - Los Angeles Times

Go vote. The best civics lesson requires you to leave the classroom #VoteTuesday

Go vote. The best civics lesson requires you to leave the classroom

Go vote. The best civics lesson requires you to leave the classroom
Election Day isn’t just for those 18 and older; younger teens can celebrate it too

Election Day is one time you shouldn’t scold your teenagers for cutting class. After all, walking out of school to vote or to support your friends’ constitutional right to do so is evidence they learned something in civics class, their grades notwithstanding. As the philosopher John Dewey wrote in his classic book Democracy and Education in 1903, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”

On November 6 at 10 a.m., thousands of students under voting age from coast to coast will walk out of school and march with their voting-eligible peers to the polls to make a statement that their voices and votes matter. Election Day is the most sacred of holidays for a democracy, a time when citizens 18 years and older can select representatives charged with shaping our laws and running our governments. In the U.S., elections give meaning to the lofty opening words of the preamble to our Constitution: “We the people…”

The right to vote is paramount, because without it one’s very right to exist can be subject to the whims of others. Immigrants currently recognize the importance of Election Day in ways that women and blacks, who have historically been denied that right, know too well. And our children should understand it too, based on a similar rationale.

By law, youth under the age of 18 can’t vote in an election and are subject to the rulemaking of others on issues such as gun control, net neutrality, climate change and immigration, which affect them perhaps most of all. It’s like being required to attend a school without having a say in how it’s run, which is the prime reason that students must march. Youth should refuse to sit at their desks while others vote on more than 150 ballot measures across the country, dozens of which directly or indirectly impact education, according to the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress.

Related: Youth will determine the outcome of the 2018 midterms

The Future Coalition — a national network of youth-led groups — helped organize more than 500 school walkouts on Election Day Continue reading: Go vote. The best civics lesson requires you to leave the classroom

Idaho’s Border-Wall-Costume School Cited in 2016 for Segregating Classrooms by Sex | deutsch29 #VoteTuesday

Idaho’s Border-Wall-Costume School Cited in 2016 for Segregating Classrooms by Sex | deutsch29

Idaho’s Border-Wall-Costume School Cited in 2016 for Segregating Classrooms by Sex

Fourteen Middleton School District (Idaho) teachers and staff have been suspended with pay pending results of an investigation into actions related to the employees’ choosing to dress up as a border wall and Mexicans on Halloween, for what district superintendent Josh Middleton identified as a “week-long team building activity,” according to CBS 2:

“We have talked to the principal and our assistant superintendent human resources director now is conducting interviews up at the elementary school and just to be safe we have beefed up security at our schools,” Middleton says.

He tells CBS 2 that the costumes came from a week-long team building activity, which he says was meant to focus on acts of respect and kindness.

“There were six countries, two of those countries decided to get with the theme and chose to dress in those outfits,” Middleton says.

In efforts to address the situation, Middleton and the school board have posted the following message to the community on the school web page:

Important Message

November 3, 2018

Middleton School District Parents and Community:

I want to bring you up to date on events within the district during this difficult time for our Middleton School District students, staff, and community.

Our school board held a special Board meeting this morning at 10 am.  The Continue reading:  Idaho’s Border-Wall-Costume School Cited in 2016 for Segregating Classrooms by Sex | deutsch29

Why it matters who governs America’s public schools - The Washington Post #VoteTuesday

Why it matters who governs America’s public schools - The Washington Post

Why it matters who governs America’s public schools

Does it matter who operates America’s public schools?

That’s a central question in the national debate about education and the movement to find alternatives to school districts that are publicly funded and operated. While charter schools are publicly funded, they are privately operated and are not required in most places to be as transparent as publicly operated schools. The public also has no say in the operations of private and public schools that accept publicly funded vouchers.

This post, written by Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch, looks at the issue of governance and why it matters who is in charge.

Burris is a former New York high school principal who now serves as executive director of the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit advocacy group. She was named the 2010 Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York State, and in 2013, the National Association of Secondary School Principals named her the New York State High School Principal of the Year. Burris has been chronicling problems with modern school reform and school choice for years on this blog. She has previously written about problems with charter schools in California and a number of other states.

Ravitch, an education historian, became the titular leader of the movement against corporate school reform in 2010, when her book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” was published and became a best-seller. An assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush, she explains in the book that she dropped her support for No Child Left Behind, the chief education initiative of President George W. Bush and standardized-test-based school restructuring, after looking at evidence about how it was harming public schools.

By Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch

At a meeting of the California Charter Schools Association during the spring of 2014, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings told the audience that the problem with public schools is that they are run by elected school boards. He contrasted this style of school governance with that of charter schools, governed by private boards, which operate beyond the reach of the people. Hastings justified the movement of school governance from public to private hands by claiming that the private boards of charter schools are more stable. This is an odd claim considering that 33 percent of all charter schools that opened in 2000 were closed 10 years later later. By year 13, 40 percent were Continue reading: Why it matters who governs America’s public schools - The Washington Post

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Scott Wagner Financed by DeVos Ed Reformsters #VoteTuesday

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Scott Wagner Financed by DeVos Ed Reformsters

PA: Scott Wagner Financed by DeVos Ed Reformsters

At PennLive.com they did some quick record checks and found these fun facts about the money behind this year's governor's race in PA. You'll never guess who's bankrolling Scott Wagner. (Incidentally, you don't have to guess-- you can play along at home by digging the finance reports out at the PA campaign finance records website).

This frickin' guy.

One interesting factoid is the numbers-- Governor Tom Wolf has almost 27,000 separate contributors to his race. GOP's Scott Wagner has 5,900 contributors.

Wolf's contributors ran from $1 to $500,000. Wagner's run from (weirdly) $2 up to $1,000,000. Wolf totaled up $29.8 million, while Wagner collected a mere $14.4 million. Wagner has kicked in $5 million of his own money and borrowed another $6 million.

But here's one more thing to take note of. Wagner's biggest donor not named Wagner is Students First PAC, which kicked in $1,000,000.

The name "Student First" might ring a bell; that group was founded almost a decade ago by Michele Rhee (former chancellor of DC schools and builder of the foundation of years of scandals in that district).  That group has long been busy in PA, trying to do away with all employment protectionsfor teachers, pushing the Common Core, and trying yet again to Continue reading: CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Scott Wagner Financed by DeVos Ed Reformsters

NYC: No Charter Waiting Lists! Charters Hire Firm to Market Their Brands | Diane Ravitch's blog

NYC: No Charter Waiting Lists! Charters Hire Firm to Market Their Brands | Diane Ravitch's blog

NYC: No Charter Waiting Lists! Charters Hire Firm to Market Their Brands

Susan Edelman of the New York Post reports that the NYC DOE is under investigation by federal and state officials for giving personal information about students to a marketing firm hired by charter schools.

https://nypost.com/2018/11/04/department-of-education-probed-for-pitching-charters-to-public-school-kids/

Wait! What about the long waiting lists?!

She writes:

“The city Department of Education reduces its enrollment by giving student names and addresses to a private vendor that produces mass mailings to help charter schools woo families.

“The longtime marketing practice has now come under investigation by state and federal officials after a Manhattan mom complained it violates student privacy rights.

“Each year my family receives a large number of pamphlets and flyers from charter schools, promoting and marketing their schools and urging me to apply, ” Johanna Garcia wrote to state and US officials.

“While Garcia has three kids in public schools, flyers have targeted her daughter who qualified for a gifted and talented program, she wrote, but not two other children with special needs.

“The DOE says it gives only student names, grade levels and addresses to Vanguard Direct, a bulk-mailing company, and forbids the company to share the data with anyone else.

“Charter schools — which are privately run but get taxpayer funds based Continue reading: NYC: No Charter Waiting Lists! Charters Hire Firm to Market Their Brands | Diane Ravitch's blog

Arizona: #RedforEd Is So Popular that Even Its Opponents are Hitching Their Wagon to It | Diane Ravitch's blog #VoteTuesday

Arizona: #RedforEd Is So Popular that Even Its Opponents are Hitching Their Wagon to It | Diane Ravitch's blog
Arizona: #RedforEd Is So Popular that Even Its Opponents are Hitching Their Wagon to It

This story in the New York Times by veteran education writer Dana Goldstein describes the peculiar situation in Arizona, where everyone claims to support public education even if they don’t.

Even Governor Doug Ducey, the nemesis of public schools, is boasting about his thin education record.

PHOENIX — Campaign signs are clustered on street corners and highway ramps across this low-slung, sun-baked city, proclaiming “#YesforEd” and “Protect Public Education.” In TV commercials, the Republican governor promises to “put more money in the classroom, not bureaucracy.” “Our schools are falling apart,” his Democratic challenger counters.

Six months after tens of thousands of red-clad teachers swarmed the Arizona Capitol in a weeklong walkout, demanding higher pay and more funding for schools, education is a dominant issue in the state’s elections next month.

The teachers’ protest movement, which calls itself #RedforEd, has transformed the political battleground. The movement remains so popular in Arizona that candidates and causes across the ideological spectrum are competing to identify with it — including conservatives who, in years past, might have been more likely to criticize teachers or unions than associate with activist educators.

That has left some Democrats — teachers’ traditional allies — scrambling Continue reading: Arizona: #RedforEd Is So Popular that Even Its Opponents are Hitching Their Wagon to It | Diane Ravitch's blog

Are Charter Schools An “Innovation”? | Dissident Voice

Are Charter Schools An “Innovation”? | Dissident Voice

Are Charter Schools An “Innovation”?

Charter school supporters and promoters never tire of repeating the banality that “charter schools are an innovation.”

“Innovation” has become one of many hackneyed buzzwords in the neoliberal lexicon. Everyone is under intense pressure to blindly embrace “innovation” at full velocity, no matter how irresponsible.

Other closely-related and worn-out neoliberal catchwords include: “data-driven,” “results-oriented,” “performance-based,” “competition,” “choice,” “efficiency,” and “accountability.” Ludicrous phrases like “systems leader” are also appearing on the neoliberal scene.

Not surprisingly, the neoliberal world has become a comi-tragedy, a joke, a cynical dystopia saturated with dysfunction and irrationalism of all sorts; everything is upside down and incoherent, causing many to experience mental, emotional, and physical problems.

Neoliberalism offers only a bleak scenario for society, something no amount of voting in an outmoded and discredited political system can change. The only thing the two-party system of the rich has achieved effectively over the years is preventing progress that favors the people. Progress will again be a casualty in the November 2018 elections.

While they are constantly cast as an “innovation,” charter schools are nothing more than pay-the-rich schemes that are multiplying with each passing year. They are “innovative” only in the sense that they reject evidence more than others and have invented new forms of fraud, corruption, and racketeering that go beyond what any other sector has seen. Not a day goes by without an arrest or scandal in one or more of the nation’s 7,000 charter schools, which Continue reading: Are Charter Schools An “Innovation”? | Dissident Voice

Articles about “Reading Wars” Meant to Divide Teachers and Parents!

Articles about “Reading Wars” Meant to Divide Teachers and Parents!

Articles about “Reading Wars” Meant to Divide Teachers and Parents!

A wave of recent articles about reading trick parents and educators into thinking teachers are not teaching reading and are not being trained to teach reading correctly. The opinion pieces are written by journalist Emily Hanford.

Warning! Corporate reform fingerprints are all over these articles. Could it be about transforming classrooms to technology, where students look at screens instead of getting help from teachers?

Here is a quote from one.

Scientific research has shown how children learn to read and how they should be taught. But many educators don’t know the science and, in some cases, actively resist it. As a result, millions of kids are being set up to fail.

These accusations, teachers “don’t know” and teachers “actively resist it” anger parents who are critical of how their students learned or are learning to read in school.

The three Hanford articles have anti-teacher titles, and a title to run down their COEs (Colleges of Education) all meant to undermine teachers and how they teach reading.

• “Why Are We Still Teaching Reading the Wrong Way?”
• “Teachers Criticize Their Colleges of Education for Not Preparing Them to Teach Reading”
• “Why Aren’t Kids Being Taught to Read?”

Each one of these articles has set off a firestorm of comments on social media. Teachers Continue reading: Articles about “Reading Wars” Meant to Divide Teachers and Parents!

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: The Campaign Home Stretch Edition (11/4)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: The Campaign Home Stretch Edition (11/4)
ICYMI: The Campaign Home Stretch Edition (11/4)

I could have called this the Moved My Son And His Family Into Their New Place Edition, which is the long way around to saying that I wasn't quite up to my usual level of collecting this week. And I'm not going to tell you to vote; I'm going to tell you to vote Democrat, even if your local Democrat sucks, because the GOP controlled government needs some sand in its gears. So vote Democrat.

Stop Pretending and Make School Relevant

I may or may not entirely agree with some of what Michael Soskil says here (I have my own ideas about the R word), but this piece is definitely worth a read.

Teachers versus the Koch Brothers in Arizona  

Arizona has one of the worst and most destructive voucher programs around. Jeff Bryant looks at the campaign to beat it back.

Snake Oil, Charter Schools and Disingenuous Debate

From Tennessee, a newspaper op-ed repudiates the charter movement.

Values That Express Our Ideas of Public Schools   

Jan Resseger with some writings to help focus your thinking as you head for the polls.

Halloween and the Value of Make-Believe   

Oh, yeah. Halloween happened this week. Nancy Bailey has some thoughts on the value of the holiday.

Ipads Are Not The Future of Education    

Just in case there was any doubt in your mind.

Billionaires Are Spending Their Fortunes Reshaping America's Schools. It Isn't Working.

From Vox. Add to the "ed reform is losing" file.

Who Gets Access To Your Kids' Information?  

Project Unicorn's promises are vague and unconvincing. Did your school sign up?

DeVos Meets With Far More GOP than Dems

I don't know if this is news, exactly. But it's an interesting look at yet one more aspect of Betsy "My Mind's Made Up So I Don't Need To Listen TO Anyone" DeVos and her approach to leading the USED>

What a Difference a Decade Makes   

Nancy Flanagan is dead on with this piece about election outcomes, and the key quote (which comes from Sabrina Joy Stevens) is so important I'm going to put it here, just in case you don't follow the link.

I am very worried about people tying their emotional well-being and sense of empowerment to the outcomes of elections.

NPE Action - Political Endorsements - http://npeaction.org/ on @NPEaction

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: The Campaign Home Stretch Edition (11/4)

Why Principals Differ: Joe, Ralph, and Edna | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Why Principals Differ: Joe, Ralph, and Edna | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Why Principals Differ: Joe, Ralph, and Edna

The film Lean on Me portrays high school principal Joe Clark in Paterson, New Jersey in the early 1980s rescuing a school mired in violence and poor academic performance. In one dramatic scene, over two hundred troublemakers are on the auditorium stage. The rest of the student body sitting in the auditorium watch as Clark at the microphone–played by a young Morgan Freeman– quiets everyone including those students standing behind him. Clark tells the students that those on stage have caused all the trouble and to turn around this school, they must be removed.

Facing the two-hundred mischief-makers milling around on stage, Clark points his finger at them and says: “You are expurgated! You are no longer welcome in this school.” The school security staff in blue blazers shoves them out of the doors.

Joe Clark’s kicking out troublesome students pleased movie crowds 30 years ago as it did the country when they learned about this baseball bat-toting principal. In real life, Joe Clark got in trouble with the school board over expelling the students yet he had his 15 minutes of fame and continued as an educator until he retired.

But he was a sprinter principal, not a marathoner.

Lean on Me lays out the fantasy Americans have about their principals. We want fearless school leaders but get managers with keys dangling on their belts. This expectation of principal-as-Superman (or Wonder Woman) is fairly common but few principals are Clark Kents in mufti. Most principals want to be leaders but cannot because they are caught in the middle between their district bosses wanting them to follow policy, parents wanting their requests fulfilled, teachers wanting to be left alone, and students wanting teachers who teach. Principals learn to navigate among potential conflicts by being managers and politicians juggling competing expectations and constituencies. The DNA of the job is Continue reading: Why Principals Differ: Joe, Ralph, and Edna | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Idaho School Employees Who Dressed as MAGA Wall and Mexicans on Halloween Put on Paid Leave Pending Further Investigation | deutsch29

Idaho School Employees Who Dressed as MAGA Wall and Mexicans on Halloween Put on Paid Leave Pending Further Investigation | deutsch29

Idaho School Employees Who Dressed as MAGA Wall and Mexicans on Halloween Put on Paid Leave Pending Further Investigation

Fourteen teachers/staff at a Middleton, Idaho, school have been placed on paid leave for collectively dressing on Halloween as a wall with “Make America Great Again” written on it and a group of Mexicans. Investigation into the situation continues.

According to the November 3, 2018, Idaho Statesman, the staff members dressed “as part of a team building activity after school hours.”

What amazes me is that none of the 14 individuals exercised enough foresight to nix the idea. Nothing doing. Not only did the crew dress as the border wall and Mexicans; they posted pictures to the district Facebook page on Thursday, November 01, 2018.

Though the pictures have been deleted and the FB page apparently shut down, that did not stop the pics from going viral:

Middleton Schools superintendent, Dr. Josh Middleton, also posted this response on the district website, on Friday, November 02, 2018:

Dear MSD Parents,

I want to bring you up to date on events within the district.

We are getting lots of inquiries regarding Halloween day costumes and a photo posting from one of our schools. Local patrons and people across the country are calling in expressing their displeasure with the costume choices. This matter was brought to me last night and district admin are currently reviewing and investigating the chain of events. I have released a statement to the media and spoken to our local TV stations. The district as a whole is receiving publicity that is judging our schools and community on the events of that afternoon into a negative, broad generalization. I know we are better than that literal snapshot, but in the meantime we need to continue our investigation.

I hope we can wrap up our review by Monday. Despite this disruption, our Continue reading:Idaho School Employees Who Dressed as MAGA Wall and Mexicans on Halloween Put on Paid Leave Pending Further Investigation | deutsch29