CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION + ICYMI: Soup Party Day Edition (11/17)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Soup Party Day Edition (11/17)

Soup Party Day Edition 

My nephew and his wife are hosting a big soup party today, which I'm pretty sure is a first for me. Kids these days. In the meantime, here an assortment of reading material from the week. Remember-- share the stuff that really speaks to you. That's how bloggers become rich and famous- okay, well, not actually. But it is how media outlets find out they should do education coverage, and it's how people hear about the things that you hear about.

LA Schools Graded F for 4+ Years Mostly Serve Low-Income Students

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider unravels how the Louisiana school grading system tells us what we already knew-- the measuring system favors schools with white, well-off students.

Betsy DeVos Might Outlast Them All

She's not beloved, but she's probably not going anywhere, either. Rebecca Klein at HuffPost explains why.

Khan Academy: A World Class Education For No One 

Alex Lochoff bends over backwards to start by saying that he's not saying that Khan Academy is terrible. Then he does a pretty good job of explaining why Khan Academy is terrible.

What's Wrong With Teacher Raises  

Adam Laats takes a look at what's wrong with taking Hanushek's Grand Bargain of greater pay for tighter accountability.

Why I Won't Be Voting For Bloomberg 

Jan Resseger has a great rundown of Bloomberg's NYC education history, and why it disqualifies him.

Ohio Catholic School Announces Mandatory Random Drug Testing For All Students

Attendance at the school, says the letter sent to parents, is a privilege, not a right.

The Wrong "Scientific" For Education

Paul Thomas looks at some of the recent uses of the S word and explains why they fail to impress.

Should A Cooperating Teacher Be A Big Fat Jerk?

Okay, I rewrote Nancy Flanagan's headline, but the idea is the same. On the topic of making life harder for student teachers.



CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Soup Party Day Edition (11/17)

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION

AND DON'T FORGET PETER GREENE ON FORBES CLICK HERE 

FL: Yet Another Bad Plan To Not Increase Teacher Pay

28by Peter Greene / 20h

So previously there was the Best and the Brightest program, which awarded teacher bonuses based on student test scores and the teacher's own SAT scores. From high school. It had a variety of problems (above and beyond the basic boneheadedness of the idea) and the new governor, Ron DeSantis found it "confusing." Yes, you can still buy swampland in Florida This newer, betterer plan comes along with

Betsy DeVos Accuses FBI Of Ignorance, Blames Public Education (And More)

500+by Peter Greene / 1d

Never let it be said that Betsy DeVos won't go out of her way to blame US public education for all the ills of the country, real or imagined. In retrospect, it seems like an oversight that she hadn't had a "Kids These Days" moment, but now that omission has been corrected. The young FBI agents are ignorant, and public education is to blame. That's been the headline from this speech , but there's s

NOV 15

OH: Outlawing Facts

100+by Peter Greene / 1d

The Ohio House of Representatives is ready to help students take a bold step forward into the post-fact world. Wednesday they passed (and when I say "they," I mean the s olid vote-as-a-bloc GOP ) HB 164 . It's called the "Ohio Student Religious Liberties Act of 2019" and it sets out to accomplish a few things: It removes the limits on exercising expression of student religious beliefs. The old, st

NOV 13

NAEP Board Gets DeVosian Additions

21by Peter Greene / 3d

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos just announced six new appointees (and one returnee) to the National Assessment Governing Board. These are the folks that oversee the National Assessment of Educational Progress aka NAEP aka the nation's report card aka that big standardized test that everyone tries to use to prove a point every year . So who did we get? Returnee Alberto Carvalho, plus Frank Edelblu

Pearson In Your Pants

by Peter Greene / 3d

Pearson, the edu-product giant that hopes to eat the world, just announced a new product. It's part of the overall Pearson vision-- and nobody does large-scale vision like Pearson. They see everything happening in a "digital ocean. " They have ideas about an "assessment renaissance" so huge that it took me five posts to write about it ( here's the shorter version ). And just this summer, they ann

FTC Cracks Down On Edu-Influencers

by Peter Greene / 4d

One of the small tricks that education marketers have developed is to enlist teachers as brand ambassadors. Teachers are, after all, the voices most often trusted by other teachers, so it's got to be a real boost if you can get Mrs. Teachwell to tout your product on Twitter or Instagram or Pinterest. And the beauty of it is that Mrs. Teachwell may come cheap-- some free product, box of pens, maybe

NOV 10

ICYMI: Happy Birthday, Mom Edition (11/10)

by Peter Greene / 6d

Today is my mother's birthday, so there will be cake involved later. She's a pretty swell lady, so it's a day worthy of cake. Also, if you look to the right, you'll see that I've revamped the blog list and added a section of websites of interest that aren't necessarily blogs. So you can poke through that if you like. In the meantime, here's some reading from last week. What Betsy DeVos Got Wrong A

NOV 09

Digital Curriculum And Lesson Management Is A Crock

100+by Peter Greene / 7d

Ed Tech overpromises in so many areas, but one the great lies is that implementing This Year's Great New Program is going to save teachers just oodles of time. It never does. It particularly never does when it comes to the kind of software leviathan's used to manage curriculum and lesson plans. The sheer volume of data entry for these programs (enter the curriculum, unit plans, lesson plans, all c

NOV 08

FL: Even The State Thinks Florida Virtual School Needs To Shape Up

by Peter Greene / 9d

Virtual charter schools have a lousy track record, so bad that even bricks-and-mortar charter advocates have called for them to shape the hell up. Meanwhile, Florida has implemented every reformy method of undercutting public schools that could be imagined. So it's entirely predictable that Florida would have its own cyberschool, and that it would be a mess. But a lucrative one, as under previous

NOV 07

Hanushek Offers Teachers A Grand Bargain

44by Peter Greene / 10d

If there is anything we don't lack in the education sphere, it's economists who know all about how to make education work real betterer. Two faves are Raj Chetty and Eric Hanushek, who have both pushed some super-great ideas. You probably remember the one about how the right first grade teacher can mean you'll make umpty-zillion more dollars in your lifetime , a piece of foolery that might be call

NOV 06

FL: How The State Supports Discrimination By Charters

47by Peter Greene / 11d

A Florida news station has heard from the state's department of education exactly how charter schools can discriminate against students with special needs. Part of the charter sales pitch has always been a claim that charters 

CURMUDGUCATION - http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/

Pittsburgh Mayor’s Tantrum About School Finances Proves He Doesn’t Understand Education or Equity | gadflyonthewallblog

Pittsburgh Mayor’s Tantrum About School Finances Proves He Doesn’t Understand Education or Equity | gadflyonthewallblog

Pittsburgh Mayor’s Tantrum About School Finances Proves He Doesn’t Understand Education or Equity

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto is steaming mad and he doesn’t care who knows it.

On Tuesday he raved that Pittsburgh Public Schools’ finances should be taken over by the state – the same fate the city had suffered during its own economic troubles from 2004-18.

The reason Peduto thinks the school should submit to a financial recovery plan overseen by a state appointed board? School Superintendent Dr. Anthony Hamlet is proposing a 2.3% tax increase in 2020 for a reserve fund while Peduto’s municipal government allegedly is managing with a surplus.

If the city can manage its finances without a tax increase, wonders Peduto, why can’t the school district?

However, the Mayor’s narrative conveniently leaves out a few pertinent facts.

Most importantly – during the city’s economic trouble 14 years ago, Pittsburgh Public Schools gave a portion of their tax revenue to the municipal government to help it pay the bills.

Now that the city is doing better, school officials are suggesting Peduto should give CONTINUE READING: Pittsburgh Mayor’s Tantrum About School Finances Proves He Doesn’t Understand Education or Equity | gadflyonthewallblog

Education Through Friendship: One Man’s Story (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Education Through Friendship: One Man’s Story (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Education Through Friendship: One Man’s Story (Part 2)

This is a five-part story of a long friendship in which I learned a lot about life outside of the schooling I received. See Part 1 for why I connect my friendships with an education that goes beyond schooling.

How We Began

Our origins are familiar, if not common. A group of urban teenagers, first and second generation Americans from homes of working men, small businessmen, and stay-at-home mothers, joined a local chapter of Pittsburgh’s B’nai Brith youth called Victory in the late 1940s. Passions for sports, girls, driving cars, and being accepted by the “guys” filled our lives. For some, practicing Judaism was part of the mix; for others, less so. Getting through high school and graduating was important but no more than a blip on radar screens dominated by our club.

High school and Victory were intertwined in our daily lives.  While we spent far more time in classrooms and corridors of our nearby high school, few of us were members of the popular in-groups. Much of our social and athletic life revolved around club activities. We played each sport in its season, attended weekly meetings, and double-dated while gnawing nails over how to carry off a goodnight kiss. In the four years each of us were members of Victory, what we probably did most was talk.

And did we talk! Over hot dogs at the local deli after club meetings or at one of our homes after a football game that we had played or in cars late at night after dropping off dates, we would talk about everything. For some of us, this club served as family; for others it was another prized activity in an already busy life; and even for others it eased the stormy passage through difficult years. No matter which purpose Victory served in our lives, the club glued us together. Here is where some of us learned the basic requirement for an intimate CONTINUE READING: Education Through Friendship: One Man’s Story (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Yet Another Bad Plan To Not Increase Teacher Pay

CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Yet Another Bad Plan To Not Increase Teacher Pay

FL: Yet Another Bad Plan To Not Increase Teacher Pay 

So previously there was the Best and the Brightest program, which awarded teacher bonuses based on student test scores and the teacher's own SAT scores. From high school. It had a variety of problems (above and beyond the basic boneheadedness of the idea) and the new governor, Ron DeSantis found it "confusing."

Yes, you can still buy swampland in Florida

This newer, betterer plan comes along with the DeSantis First Year bump-- $600 million intended to increase the minimum salary for teachers to $47,500. Average starting pay in Florida is a hair under $38,000, which raises a whole bunch of questions about how, exactly, this is going to play out. Will some Florida teachers start at $47,500 and then stay there for the next ten years of their careers? Does the state and district pay for these increases by cutting from the top of the pay scale? And as with all of these minimum pay proposals, I look forward to negotiations between the state and local school boards over just how much everyone is going to kick in. After all, a local board member can logically conclude that they might as well lowball salaries and let the state pick up the slack. And what happens down the road when the state decides it doesn't want to fund the bonuses any more, and teachers suddenly get a big pay cut? And what kind of dope thinks that offering a big bump for the bottom of the scale will somehow make teachers want to come and stay for years-- oh. Never mind. This is one of those reformster burn and churn we-don't-0want-them-staying-long-enough-to-cause-trouble ideas, isn't it.

But on to the bonus plan.

The short form analysis is, it sucks.

First, it's a bonus. Teachers don't need bonuses. You can't CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Yet Another Bad Plan To Not Increase Teacher Pay

EdAction in Congress November 17, 2019 - Education Votes

EdAction in Congress November 17, 2019 - Education Votes

EdAction in Congress November 17, 2019

NEA members urge Supreme Court to preserve DACA

NEA members Vicente Rodriguez and Karina Alvarez addressed the crowd gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court as the justices heard oral arguments on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) on Nov 12. “We love this country. It’s the only country we’ve known,” Rodriguez said. “We’re asking the court to see us as the Americans we are.” Created by an executive order from President Obama in 2012, DACA protects nearly 700,000 Dreamers from deportation, including an estimated 20,000 educators and aspiring educators. NEA urged the Court to uphold DACA in a legal brief filed earlier this year. The Court will issue its ruling during the current term, which ends June 30.

House to take up Voting Rights Advancement Act

The House plans to vote before the end of the year on the Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4), which would once again require states and localities with histories of voter discrimination to seek approval from the U.S. Department of Justice before making any changes in their election laws. The measure is a direct response to the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby v. Holder, which invalidated key provisions of the Voting Rights Act first passed in 1965 to address persistent and purposeful discrimination—through literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, threats, and violence—that curtailed political participation for millions of Americans. In the absence of critical federal oversight, many states implemented laws that restricted voting in the 2016 and 2018 elections. Tell your representatives to support the Voting Rights Advancement Act. TAKE ACTION

Senate clears the way for DeVos ally to join appellate court

Photo: Associated Press/J. Scott Applewhite

In a near party-line 51-41 vote, the Senate approved the nomination of Steven Menashi, an ally of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and presidential advisor Steven Miller, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine joined every Democrat present in opposing Menashi, described by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) as “a textbook example of someone who does not deserve to sit on the federal bench,” the Washington Post reported. NEA President Lily Eskelsen García tweeted, “[This is] a man who said that public education is bad because it promotes ‘egalitarianism.’” Though the outcome is not what we sought, your engagement played an important role that will inform future efforts. Our thanks to everyone involved!

EdAction in Congress November 17, 2019 - Education Votes

Open enrollment leads to segregation at Sacramento CA school | The Sacramento Bee

Open enrollment leads to segregation at Sacramento CA school | The Sacramento Bee

A Nobel Prize winner graduated from this Sacramento school. Why it’s now being left behind

The neighborhood where Jon and Jen Schwedler are raising a family, nestled between Fair Oaks Boulevard and the American River, is a suburban oasis. Large ranch-style homes, some with palm trees in the yards, line the quiet side streets. Parts of the neighborhood are a short walk from riverfront trails and high-end restaurants.

The area is also zoned for Encina Preparatory High School, a public school rich in history. And like many of their neighbors, the Schwedlers chose not to enroll their oldest son at Encina – the lowest-performing large school in the Sacramento region.

“Basically what I looked for was performance, programs and proximity,” Jen Schwedler, a former public school teacher, said.

Encina is between very wealthy and very poor neighborhoods, but its student body is overwhelmingly disadvantaged. Meanwhile, families in the more upscale neighborhoods send their kids to other nearby public high schools, contributing to the steady decline of a school that has produced a Nobel Prize winner, local business leaders and the bass player for the Eagles.

The result is a campus confronting socioeconomic segregation and, despite what students describe as a nurturing environment and supportive teaching staff, struggling to serve a student body of refugees and children living in poverty.

Neighborhoods zoned for Encina have a stark economic divide.

To the south are wealthy neighborhoods such as Sierra Oaks Vista, with majestic trees and multi-million dollar estates. Just 5 percent of middle and high school students live in poverty and most families earn at least $100,000 a year, according to the latest census estimates.

Farther north – closer to the Encina campus – poverty reigns.

Roughly half the middle and high school students in those neighborhoods live in poverty, and just 13 percent of the families make at least $100,000 a year – less than half the Sacramento County rate. Large apartment complexes line Howe Avenue and home lots are far smaller than those less than a mile away.

Most of Encina’s attendance zone covers the high-poverty areas. And 96 percent of the school’s students are eligible for free or reduced lunch, which is available to families earning up to 185 percent of the poverty line, state data show. That suggests an overwhelming majority of wealthy families living in the school’s attendance zone choose to send their kids elsewhere.

Two and a half miles away sits Sierra Oaks Elementary, a K-8 school, where the Schwelders’ son currently attends eighth grade. About 57 percent of students tested met English standards and about 44 percent met math standards, both above the overall San Juan Unified School District results.

He’s headed to Rio Americano High School, along with the majority of his classmates. While CONTINUE READING: Open enrollment leads to segregation at Sacramento CA school | The Sacramento Bee