Jeff Bryant: Voters Reject the Rightwing Push for School Privatization | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jeff Bryant: Voters Reject the Rightwing Push for School Privatization | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jeff Bryant: Voters Reject the Rightwing Push for School Privatization

Jeff Bryant reviews the victories for public education in the last elections.

The big victories were the overwhelming defeat of voucher legislation in Arizona and the Tony Thurmond’s election over the charter lobby’s candidate Marshall Tuck in the Califotnia race for state school superintendent, despite Tuck’s more than 2-1 funding advantage.

And there were many more victories, especially in governors’ races.

In gubernatorial races across the Midwest, Democrats ran and won with strong oppositional messages against school privatization.

In Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer won a governor’s seat formerly occupied by Rick Snyder after campaigning to “end the [Betsy] DeVos agenda in Michigan,” close for-profit charter schools in the state, and propose additional oversights for charters.

In Minnesota, Democratic challenger for an open governor’s seat Tim Walz, a former public high school geography teacher and football coach, pledged to block any proposed voucher programs. He won decisively.

In Illinois, Democratic challenger J.B. Pritzker defeated incumbent Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, while pledging to end the state’s education tax credit voucher program, which already diverts public tax dollars to pay for private school tuition for 5,600 students….

In what is perhaps the most startling of charter school turnarounds, Continue reading: Jeff Bryant: Voters Reject the Rightwing Push for School Privatization | Diane Ravitch's blog

Technological Monitoring of Student Work in a Classroom | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Technological Monitoring of Student Work in a Classroom | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Technological Monitoring of Student Work in a Classroom

I was [in] a classroom yesterday and all of the kids had Chrome Books. They opened them midway through the class to read a few excerpts the teacher had selected. After the class, the teacher told me that he has a monitor at his desk that allows him to see what each of the kids is looking at on their computer. I don’t spend a lot of time in classrooms – I was in this one for something unrelated – but I thought this monitoring system was interesting. I’ve since found out that it is fairly common in some school districts. I wondered if you’ve encountered this and, if so, what your thoughts are about teachers having this ability to peer in on their students? It seems useful in the sense that you want to be sure students are following along. But it also feels like one more thing a teacher has to worry about. Another teacher told me he doesn’t use the system because he feels like it’s an invasion of privacy.

I received this note from a reporter working for a national newspaper. The reporter wanted to ask me what I thought about this all-too-common issue in classrooms where each student has a device–or what used to be called 1:1 computers. The reporter raises the issue directly as a clash between two values teachers highly prize: insuring students are doing what teachers directed them to do with their devices and respecting the privacy of individual students.

I answered the reporter’s email with a hastily constructed paragraph:

Yes, what you describe is common in districts where school provides devices to each student. The rationale is for the teacher to be aware of the level of student understanding of the lesson (often students send in their homework and assignments to Dropbox or a similar storage software so teachers can identify if students are on right track or not. Teachers having this software are able to give individual attention when needed. Such monitoring does not occur in those schools where devices are available to each student when they bring their own device to school—called BYOD. Does it invade privacy? To some it appears so but schools are tax supported institutions charged to achieve educational goals. Prior to the ubiquity of these devices, first-rate teachers would walk around the Continue reading; Technological Monitoring of Student Work in a Classroom | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

CURMUDGUCATION: The Seven Most Powerful Words In Education

CURMUDGUCATION: The Seven Most Powerful Words In Education

The Seven Most Powerful Words In Education

What can I do to help you?

These words are hugely powerful and tragically underused at every level of the education world.
In the classroom, teachers have been taught since the dawn of time that they should be clear about their expectations. This is excellent practice; let the student know exactly what you want from her. If she has trouble meeting that expectation, be certain that you are explaining the expectation clearly. And then ask the student, "What can I do to help you?"

It may well be that the student won't be able to tell you. That's okay. Just asking the question signals a shift in your classroom dynamic; instead of a setting in which the teacher demands performance from a student, who is on her own to produce the required signs of learning, the Seven Words reframe the classroom as a place where the teacher and student are teamed up to conquer learning obstacles together. Students benefit from knowing they aren't alone in the struggle, and teachers are reminded that students are their partners, not their obstacles (a view promoted from teacher accountability systems that say, "You have to get good scores out of your kids, or else.") It's worth noting that computerized personalized [sic] learning systems cannot ask this question in any meaningful way.

The Seven Words are also powerful for building administration. Sadly, may teachers have never, ever had a building principal ask the question. Instead they hear "Make your test numbers" or "Follow the proper procedures" or "Here's one more program I expect you to use in your class." There are plenty of expectations, but far too few building principals consider their job top include helping teachers meet those expectations. Some administrators pride themselves on an Open Door Policy ("Any teacher can come talk to me any time she wants") and some principals roam the building, popping into classrooms to see what's going on. But I'll bet there are few teachers in this country who have ever had a principal walk into their classroom, sit down, and say, "I just wanted to ask what I can do to help you with your work." Without something that explicit, some teachers will never believe it's okay for them to ask their boss for help with anything, ever.

The Seven Words would help at the policy level, too. We've been subjected to decades of school "reform," ongoing attempts to make schools better. And yet, as policy makers discuss various fixes and programs and policies, they rarely take the step of going to actual classroom teachers and asking, "What can we do to help you?" When teachers are allowed in the room at all, they are usually carefully handpicked teachers who will be friendly and agreeable.

Of course, the Seven Words are rarely used with teachers at the policy level because so many players at that level are there to sell something. They have decided on their own that No Child Left Behind or Common Core or Race to the Top or Competency Based Education or Any Amount of Ed Tech Whizbangery will fix things before they so much as look at an actual classroom teacher. But even after such policies are adopted, policy makers could say, "Okay, we've decided you're going to Continue reading: CURMUDGUCATION: The Seven Most Powerful Words In Education

Opioid Crisis: Sackler Family Members Are Targets of Mass Litigation and Criminal Investigations | Diane Ravitch's blog

Opioid Crisis: Sackler Family Members Are Targets of Mass Litigation and Criminal Investigations | Diane Ravitch's blog

Opioid Crisis: Sackler Family Members Are Targets of Mass Litigation and Criminal Investigations

The Sacklers of Connecticut are one of the richest families in America. Forbes recently put their collective wealth at $14 billion. That money was created by Purdue Pharma, which created and marketed OxyContin. That drug has been responsible for thousands and thousands of deaths. The Sackler Family name is emblazoned on major museums and universities. Jonathan Sackler is a major funder ipof the Charter School Movement. He founded ConnCAN and 50CAN. His daughter Madeline Sackler made a movie about the miraculous Eva Moskowitz.

But now legal authorities are targeting the Sacklers for their role in the opioid crisis.

The Guardian has the story here.

Members of the multibillionaire philanthropic Sackler family that owns the maker of prescription painkiller OxyContin are facing mass litigation and likely criminal investigation over the opioids crisis still ravaging America.

Some of the Sacklers wholly own Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma, the company that created and sells the legal narcotic OxyContin, a drug at the center of the opioid epidemic that now kills almost 200 people a day across the US.

Suffolk county on Long Island, New York, recently sued several family members personally over the overdose deaths and painkiller addiction blighting local communities. Now lawyers warn that action will be a Continue reading: Opioid Crisis: Sackler Family Members Are Targets of Mass Litigation and Criminal Investigations | Diane Ravitch's blog

Rescuing Our Schools from the Corporate Goliaths: Lessons from Indianapolis - Living in Dialogue

Rescuing Our Schools from the Corporate Goliaths: Lessons from Indianapolis - Living in Dialogue

Rescuing Our Schools from the Corporate Goliaths: Lessons from Indianapolis

The theme of my previous post on the 2018 Network for Public Education conference was: How Was I Wrong? Let Me Count Some Ways. As I explained, the 2014 NPE conference in Austin hit a nice balance in terms of messaging and research that allowed us Davids to defeat the corporate reform Goliath. I was slow in facing hard facts about privatizers and mostly focused on civil ways to confront opponents in the search for truth.

Previously, I overestimated how much of Goliath’s failure was due to the arrogance of power. Today’s Silicon Valley Robber Barons’ hubris can match that of their 19th century counterparts, but their control of data makes them uniquely dangerous. As the latest NPE presentations enlightened me on what is working for us Davids as we successfully resist Goliath, I was mostly struck by the evidence that he only continues to exist for the purposes of privatization, profits, and the monetization of data.

Fortunately, the 2018 NPE conference was extremely positive, so I can move beyond my errors to a post which provides an overview of a) what I learned and b) some ideas on future messaging.

When kicking off the conference, Diane Ravitch recalled the height of Goliath’s political assault, and the 2008 and 2010 Time magazine covers featuring Michelle Rhee’s broomstick and “Rotten Apples,” or teachers who need to be swept from the profession. She said the NPE should create an annual “Rotten Apple” award, and how she would have nominated Arizona legislator Eddie Farnsworth for it. Farnsworth sold his charter schools for up to $30 million to a board which he named.

My Rotten Apple vote would go to the entrepreneurs who sell online learning for pre-k students.

My runner-up would be the mandate which contributed to the West Virginia walkout. Teachers were penalized $500 per year if they didn’t download an app that would count the steps they took each day.

I learned the most from Ravitch’s explanation of how school reform would collapse without the continued infusion of corporate money. She followed up with the question: Why do they keep infusing money into charters?

The answer, it is now clear, is that they are monetizing data. Pearson testing company thinks it knows more about the children they test than their parents do. As Leonie Haimson has shown, Goliath has bought 400  Continue reading: Rescuing Our Schools from the Corporate Goliaths: Lessons from Indianapolis - Living in Dialogue

Big Education Ape: John Thompson: Goliath, King of the Zombies | Diane Ravitch's blog - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/11/john-thompson-goliath-king-of-zombies.html

Opposing Charter Schools Without Really Opposing Them | Dissident Voice

Opposing Charter Schools Without Really Opposing Them | Dissident Voice

Opposing Charter Schools Without Really Opposing Them

Many individuals, groups, newspapers, and organizations claim that they oppose charter schools. But, revealing ongoing confusion, they also say, often in the same breath, that “there are some good charter schools out there,” that “not all charter schools are rotten,” that “charter schools are not a ‘panacea’ but can be part of the solution,” that “charter schools may provide a good alternative for at least some students,” or that “charter schools should be given a chance” (even though they have been around for more than 25 years). Such contradictory statements are not uncommon, keep many intellectually disoriented, and undermine social progress.

Typically, such forces effectively describe several damning and indicting problems inherent to charter schools, usually enough for the average rational person to rapidly conclude that charter schools should be eliminated immediately, but then instantly equivocate and insert some statement directly or indirectly supporting charter schools. This normalized indecisiveness has been haunting people for years because the analysis, outlook, and consciousness behind it are limited and outmoded.

Even though there is no justification for the existence, let alone expansion, of nonprofit and for-profit charter schools in America, it is nearly impossible to find forces who resolutely answer the call of history to oppose the entireneoliberal concept and practice of charter schools from beginning to end. Instead of defending public schools unequivocally and rejecting all attempts to loot them, we get hedging and ambivalence; lots of fence-riding, often cast as a “balanced view” or “reasonable position.”

Objectively speaking, pay-the-rich neoliberal schemes like charter schools will continue to harm thousands of public schools in many ways, especially as they continue to multiply freely. They will continue to damage society and the economy as well, mainly due to widespread crimes, scandals, waste, fraud, corruption, and racketeering. Charter schools will also continue to under- Continue reading: Opposing Charter Schools Without Really Opposing Them | Dissident Voice

Dear Lawmakers, Please Hire Teachers as Education Aides – Not TFA Alumni | gadflyonthewallblog

Dear Lawmakers, Please Hire Teachers as Education Aides – Not TFA Alumni | gadflyonthewallblog

Dear Lawmakers, Please Hire Teachers as Education Aides – Not TFA Alumni

Dear freshmen lawmakers,

We did it!

After a fiercely contested election, we have finally begun to turn the tide back toward progressive politics.

Midterms usually are sparsely attended, but this year we had an unprecedented turnout.  A total of 23 states had double-digit percentage-point increases compared with their 1982-2014 midterm election averages.

And the result is one of the largest and most diverse groups of freshman Congresspeople ever!

We got rid of a ton of incumbents – 104 lawmakers won’t be returning to Washington, DC, in January, making this the third-highest turnover since 1974.

And those taking their place will be largely female. Out of 256 women who ran for U.S. House or Senate seats, 114 have won so far (Some races are still too close to call), according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. That makes the 116th Congress the largest class of female lawmakers ever.

Moreover, this incoming group will be incredibly diverse.

We have Jahana Hayes, a nationally-recognized teacher, who will be the first Black Congresswoman from Connecticut. Ayanna Presley, the first black Congresswoman from Massachusetts.

Angie Craig will be the first out LGBTQ Congresswoman from Minnesota. Chris Pappas, the first openly gay Congressman from New Hampshire.

Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland from Kansas and New Mexico will be the first Native Continue reading: Dear Lawmakers, Please Hire Teachers as Education Aides – Not TFA Alumni | gadflyonthewallblog

Happy Thanksgiving! I Am Thankful for Great Public Education Bloggers! #HappyThanksgiving #thankful #Thanksgiving2018 #gratitude #grateful

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-lbM via @dianeravitch

Happy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy your day.

If you are not making dinner, go to a church or homeless shelter to volunteer to serve others. It will remind you of your blessings and good fortune. Former President Obama helped prepare food bags for those in need in Chicago (imagine Trump doing that, I can’t).

The spirit of giving is contagious.

When I think of those to whom I am thankful, I Think first of family and loved ones.

I think of you, who take time from your day to read what I write.

I think of the teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Colorado, North Carolina, and Arizona who taught the nation a lesson.

I think of all those who work tirelessly for others to make our communities better places to live.

Despite our woes, we have much to be thankful for.

Diane

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Happy (Grateful) Thanksgiving - http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2018/11/happy-grateful-thanksgiving.html

NYC Educator: Happy Thanksgiving - http://nyceducator.com/2018/11/happy-thanksgiving.html

Thanksgiving: Family, Friends, Teachers, HOPE, and Public Schools - https://nancyebailey.com/2018/11/22/thanksgiving-family-friends-teachers-hope-and-public-schools/ on @NancyEBailey1

glen brown: Thanksgiving: Celebrating the Day Americans Fed Undocumented Aliens from Europe - https://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2018/11/thanksgiving-celebrating-day-americans.html

Teacher Tom: I'm The Luckiest Man Alive - http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2018/11/im-luckiest-man-alive.html

Decolonize Thanksgiving! – Parenting for Liberation - https://wp.me/p7fXox-Ne via @Parenting4Lib

New PBS NewsHour Video Segment: “How teachers are debunking some of the myths of Thanksgiving” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/?p=92805 on @Larryferlazzo

A Thanksgiving Present for You: Laughter! | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-lcR via @dianeravitch

I Am Thankful for the Resilient Educators Teaching Children After the Fire in California | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-lch via @dianeravitch

I Am Thankful for Freedom of the Press | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-lcw via @dianeravitch

I Am Thankful for Those Who Defend an Independent Judiciary | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-lcp via @dianeravitch

We're thankful for these Twitter superstars | Schott Foundation for Public Education

We're thankful for these Twitter superstars | Schott Foundation for Public Education

We're thankful for these Twitter superstars 

For those of you who tweet entirely too much (which applies to many of us at Schott!) we've assembled our first annual Twitter list of Education Justice Superstars, individuals who are helping to expand the education conversation online. They’re leading the way, pushing racial and gender equity, fair funding, community schools, grassroots organizing and other crucial issues to the fore.

So while you're sitting back after a plate full of turkey tomorrow, don't forget to add these superstars to your feed:

	Jitu Brown @brothajitu Jitu is a veteran community organizer and the National Director of Journey for Justice Alliance. His feed is filled with updates on J4J’s work and the movement for equity in public education!
	Zakiyah Ansari @Zansari8 Advocacy Director of the Alliance for Quality Education and relentless advocate for equity in public education, Zakiyah’s feed is a great place to go for all things civil rights, racial equity and NYC progressive politics!
	Diane Ravitch @DianeRavitch Diane is the Founder of the Network for Public Education and longtime advocate for quality education. She tweets about all things public education; attempted charter schools takeovers to the damaging effects of overtesting. Diane also blogs at dianeravitch.net.
	Maisie Chin @itzmemaisie Maisie is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Community Asset Development Re-defining Education (CADRE) in Los Angeles and serves on the board of directors at the Schott Foundation. Her Twitter feed is all about public education and education justice organizing!
	Jose Luis Vilson @theJLV “The Math teacher Gotham deserves.” Jose is a career public educator and author of This is Not a Test. Jose tweets about teaching, public education equity, and provides plenty of everyday inspiration! He writes at thejosevilson.com.
	Jesse Hagopian @JessedHagopian Jesse Hagopian is an educator and a lifelong promoter of public education funding and is the co-editor of the new book Teaching for Black Lives, and the Editor of the book More Than a Score. Jesse also posts on his blog iamaneducator.com.
	Judith Browne Dianis @jbrownedianis A civil rights lawyer, racial justice advocate, and executive director of the Advancement Project, Judith’s feed is awesome for updates on AP’s work, racial justice and immigrant rights!
	Dmitri Holtzman @DmitriHoltzman Dmitri is the Director of Education Justice Campaigns for Center for Popular Democracy in Brooklyn, NY. His twitter feed is full of everything having to do with education, Civil Rights and New York politics.
	Jeff Bryant @jeffbcdm Jeff has written about education for the Washington Post, Salon, Alternet, and the Progressive. He heads the Education Opportunity Network and tweets on public education, charter schools, and has been a lifelong champion of equity and equality in education!
	Geoffrey Winder @GeoffreyWinder Geoffrey is the Co-Executive Director of the Gay Straight Alliance Network and an LGBT youth organizer. He tweets about LGBT rights, civil rights, philanthropy and education!

We're thankful for these Twitter superstars | Schott Foundation for Public Education

John Thompson: Goliath, King of the Zombies | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: Goliath, King of the Zombies | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: Goliath, King of the Zombies

John Thompson here writes about his reaction to the annual conference of the Network for Public Education, where the implicit theme was that David is beating Goliath, but Goliath just keeps stumbling forward, crushing public schools and advancing privatization, with no evidence of success. I argued, in the opening address of the conference, that the Reformers are akin to Goliath, and that Goliath has failed and failed again but is so powerful that he continues to wreak destruction on communities. He is among the Walking Dead. He is, in fact, a zombie.

Thompson was a teacher in Oklahoma; he recently retired. He lives in the belly of the beast, a state where Goliathians control the legislature and the governorship. At least they don’t pretend to be “progressives.” They are DeVos-Trump extremists, with links to ALEC and the Koch brothers.

Thompson admits that he was slow in realizing that the Reformers are intent on undermining public schools and that they were acting in concert. But he is convinced now, not only that they are doing so, but that their promises have not been kept and that, in fact, they have failed wherever they set their sights.

He ends with this:

Knowing that Indianapolis is at the heart of the dying, but still dangerous corporate reform movement, I expected that Chalkbeat would choose its words carefully and make sure that its reporting didn’t threaten its donations from Goliath. Chalkbeat Indianapolis didn’t cover the NPE conference but Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat New York has been covering Indiana’s Mind Trust and its successor, the City Fund. (Chalkbeat Indiana has since linked to WFYI Indianapolis’s report on one of the city’s 20 “innovation schools” which is receiving $1.3 million in management fees.)

This leads to the biggest question that I brought to the NPE. We Oklahomans have failed to communicate with our state’s edu-philanthropists on how their science-based, holistic early education and trauma-informed instruction programs and the Indianapolis Goliath are Continue reading: John Thompson: Goliath, King of the Zombies | Diane Ravitch's blog

Toward a Consensus Approach to Evaluating State School Finance Systems! (and dumping the others!) – School Finance 101

Toward a Consensus Approach to Evaluating State School Finance Systems! (and dumping the others!) – School Finance 101

Toward a Consensus Approach to Evaluating State School Finance Systems! (and dumping the others!)

Over the past decade, there has been an emerging consensus regarding state school finance systems, money and schools. That consensus is supported by a growing body of high-quality empirical research regarding the importance of equitable and adequate financing for providing quality schooling to all children. As guideposts for this new and improved annual report on state school finance systems, we offer the following five core principles:

1. The level and distribution of school funding matters;
2. Achieve higher outcomes and a broader array of outcomes often requires additional resources and may require substantial additional resources;
3. Achieving competitive student outcomes depends on adequate school resources, including a competitively compensated teacher workforce;
4. Closing achievement gaps between children from rich and poor neighborhoods requires progressive distribution of resources targeted toward children with greater educational needs;
5. Both the adequacy of students’ outcomes and improving the equity of those outcomes are in our national interest.

But US public schooling remains primarily in the hands of states. On average, about 90 percent of funding for local public school systems and charter schools comes from state and local tax sources. How state and local revenue is raised and distributed is a function of seemingly complicated calculations usually adopted as legislation and often with the goal of achieving more equitable and adequate public schooling for the state’s children.

Core Principles of Funding Fairness

Beginning in 2010, in collaboration with the Education Law Center of New Jersey, we laid out a methodology and series of indicators for comparing state school finance systems using available national data sets. With support from the William T. Grant Foundation, we dramatically expanded our analyses and developed publicly accessible district and state level databases – The School Funding Fairness Data System. More recently, we have combined our data with those of the Stanford Education Data Archive to estimate a National Education Cost Model. Concurrently, we have begun to expand our state funding equity analyses to include public two- Continue reading: Toward a Consensus Approach to Evaluating State School Finance Systems! (and dumping the others!) – School Finance 101

The New Stupid Replaces the Old Stupid (Rick Hess) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The New Stupid Replaces the Old Stupid (Rick Hess) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The New Stupid Replaces the Old Stupid (Rick Hess)

From an interview conducted in 2009 with Rick Hess, then Resident Scholar at The American Enterprise Institute. I have lightly abridged the interview. The original article upon which this interview is based is here.

Q: Rick, you recently published an article in Educational Leadership
arguing that the ways in which we rely on data to drive decisions in
schools has changed over time. Yet, you note that we have unfortunately only
succeeded in moving from the “old stupid” to the “new stupid.” What do you do
you mean by this?

A: A decade ago, it was only too easy to find education leaders who dismissed
student achievement data and systematic research as having only limited utility
when it came to improving schools. Today, we’ve come full circle. You can’t
spend a day at an education gathering without hearing excited claims about
“data-based decision making” and “research-based practice.” Yet these phrases
can too readily serve as convenient buzzwords that obscure more than they
clarify and that stand in for careful thought. There is too often an unfortunate
tendency to simply embrace glib solutions if they’re packaged as “data-driven.”
Today’s enthusiastic embrace of data has waltzed us directly from a petulant
resistance to performance measures to a reflexive reliance on a few simple
metrics–namely, graduation rates, expenditures, and grade three through eight
reading and math scores. The result has been a race from one troubling mindset
to another–from the “old stupid” to the “new stupid.”

Q: Can you give us an example of the “new stupid”?

A: Sure, here’s one. I was giving a presentation to a group of aspiring
superintendents. They were eager to make data-driven decisions and employ
research to serve kids. There wasn’t a shred of the old stupid in sight. I
started to grow concerned, however, when our conversation turned to value-added
assessment and teacher assignments. The group had recently read a research brief
highlighting the effect of teachers on achievement and the inequitable
distribution of teachers within districts. They were fired up and ready to put
this knowledge to use. One declared to me, to widespread agreement, “Day one,
we’re going to start identifying those high value-added teachers and moving them
to the schools that aren’t making AYP.” [AYP is the acronym from No Child Left Behind law (2002-20015); it means “Adequate Yearly Progress” in test scores for different groups of students.]

Now, I sympathize with the premise, but the certainty Continue reading: The New Stupid Replaces the Old Stupid (Rick Hess) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Truly Public Schools Must Form Engaged Citizens and Then Engage Those Citizens in Shaping School Policy | janresseger

Truly Public Schools Must Form Engaged Citizens and Then Engage Those Citizens in Shaping School Policy | janresseger

Truly Public Schools Must Form Engaged Citizens and Then Engage Those Citizens in Shaping School Policy

This blog will take a week long Thanksgiving break.  Look for a new post on November 29.  Good wishes for Thanksgiving!

In its October 2018 issue, Phi Delta Kappan magazine features a pair of articles that, from two entirely different perspectives, trace declining civic engagement around public education to the philosophy at the heart of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.

In Preparation for Capable Citizenship: The Schools’ Primary Responsibility, Michael Rebell worries that schools driven by a pinched, test-and-punish agenda—schools designed to force all students to demonstrate basic proficiency in language arts and math—have narrowed the curriculum and dangerously reduced what has been understood historically a primary purpose of public schools: the formation of engaged citizens.  Rebell is the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University.  He is an attorney and one of the founders of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc.  He was executive director when the Campaign for Fiscal Equity successfully sued the state for more adequate and equitably distributed school funding.

Rebell argues that high-stakes, test-based school accountability—the system which rates and ranks schools and school districts on standardized tests of language arts and math and punishes the lowest scoring schools and teachers—has squeezed out much that is important: “Over the past half century, the scope of American democracy has expanded to include a more diverse population and a greater understanding of the need to respect and embrace the needs and aspirations of all our citizens, yet the schools’ civic focus has eroded, leaving our democratic institutions substantially at risk. Interestingly, a series of recent cases regarding the adequacy of funding for public schools has led state courts to examine the meaning of state constitutional clauses—most of which were written in the 18th and 19th centuries…. The courts have consistently emphasized the continuing importance of educating students to be effective citizens.  For example, the New York Court of Appeals held that the purpose of public education today is to provide students the skills they need to ‘function productively as civic participants capable of voting and serving on a jury’ (Campaign for Fiscal Equity,Inc. v. New York State, 2003).”

Rebell defines the skills he believes are needed for citizenship: “(1) basic civic knowledge of government, history, law and democracy; (2) verbal and critical reasoning skills; (3) social and participatory experiences, and (4) responsible character traits and acceptance of democratic Continue reading: Truly Public Schools Must Form Engaged Citizens and Then Engage Those Citizens in Shaping School Policy | janresseger