Indianapolis: The Resistance Is Fighting the Well-Funded Disruptors | Diane Ravitch's blog

Indianapolis: The Resistance Is Fighting the Well-Funded Disruptors | Diane Ravitch's blog

Indianapolis: The Resistance Is Fighting the Well-Funded Disruptors

Professor Jim Scheurich read a recent article in the rightwing, anti-public school journal “Education Next” about Indianapolis, which he thought was fundamentally flawed.

He sent the following analysis of what’s really happening in Indianapolis:

 A RECENT ARTICLE IN EDUCATION NEXTCOMPLETELY MISREPRESENTSTHE RECENT HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS K12 EDUCATION 

Dr. Jim ScheurichUrban Education Studies Doctoral ProgramIndiana University – Indianapolis (IUPUI) ProfessorPresident, IPS Community Coalition

Unfortunately, a recent article in the pro-charter, pro-neoliberal “magazine,” called Education Next, is a thorough misrepresentation of the recent history of Indianapolis K12 education (see https://www.educationnext.org/hoosier-way-good-choices-for-all-indianapolis/).  I know because, as a university professor and a community activist, I have spent the last seven years working against the pro-charter, pro-neoliberal efforts in Indianapolis, mainly through the IPS Community Coalition, a citywide CONTINUE READING: Indianapolis: The Resistance Is Fighting the Well-Funded Disruptors | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: USED Pitches Privatization To Wyoming

CURMUDGUCATION: USED Pitches Privatization To Wyoming

USED Pitches Privatization To Wyoming

Mitchell Zais, Deputy Secretary of Education, last week visited Wyoming to stump for school choice. He wrote for the Wyoming Parent his version of the department's sales pitch for Betsy DeVos's Education Freedom vouchery program. Wyoming parents (and taxpayers), this is a bit of a snow job. Let me explain.

He opens by recognizing that humans are individuals, so that he can say this:

So why does American education group students by age, and expect them to learn the same material, on the same schedule, pretty much in the same way?

This guy

The answer is: they don't. In fact, they so much don't that about a decade ago some folks launched an audacious plan to make everyone learn the same stuff (you know-- kind of a common core) on the same schedule and the education establishment hasn't stopped kicking back about it since. Zais knows this-- he opposed the Common Core when he was head education honcho in South Carolina, and if he already thought that everyone in education was operating in lockstep, why would he bother? No, walk into any school and even in the Core era, you'll see differentiation and tracking and a host of ways to accommodate the individual nature of students. Perfect? No-- but then the private schools that he's touting here aren't known for broad ranges of tolerance, either.

Then he launches into that old favorite-- US schools are failing and costs too much. And test scores.

"Costs too much" is an interesting critique from a guy who's background is military. But the rest is CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: USED Pitches Privatization To Wyoming

NYC Educator: Green Eggs and Billionaires

NYC Educator: Green Eggs and Billionaires

NYC Educator: Green Eggs and Billionaires

I do not like this Bloomberg guy,
I do not like to hear him lie.
I heard him say he fixed the schools,
I think he takes us all for fools.

I heard he bought the DNC.
So that in the debates he'd be,
I read that so he'd get his way,
He paid them just 300K.

From city teachers he'll get jeers,
That bastard tortured us for years,
He moved the kids and closed the schools,
A shell game, taking us for fools.

Term limits, said the voters, hey,
They said it twice, he said no way,
With cash he bought an extra term,
When will the voters ever learn?

On TV he'll shout and cry, 
Until the White House he can buy,
Will two terms even be enough?
They weren't last time. He plays rough.

He knows best what you should wear,
How you should eat and comb your hear,
Do you want to take the risk
That you're the one he'll stop and frisk?

He hates union, teachers too,
If he's elected, guess who's screwed?
His attitudes, CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Green Eggs and Billionaires

Choosing Democracy: LCFF is not currently serving Sacramento City Unified students well.

Choosing Democracy: CA's Fair Funding Formula Makes More Possible for Schools

CA's Fair Funding Formula Makes More Possible for Schools

Note; LCFF is not currently serving Sacramento City Unified students well.

Here is the LULAC (Sacramento)  demand.

Legal Services Department,

Sacramento City Unified School District                        Jan. 29, 2020

We are submitting this request pursuant to the California Public Records Act (Govt. Code§§ 6250 et seq.) for copies of certain records in the possession, custody, or control of SCUSD. Our request encompasses the documents falling within the specific categories set forth below.

Specifically, we request copies of the following documents:

1.     Documents showing the actual amount of funds received by SCUSD from LCFF funds, including supplemental and concentration funds designated for support of English Learners for 2016, 2017, 2018. Please disaggregate the indicated funding between LCFF support for base activities and LCFF funding for supplemental and concentration efforts.

2.    A list of the SCUSD budget categories (i.e. teacher salaries, teacher assistants, consultants, teaching materials and other services) that reveal the amount of dollars from the LCFF funds, including supplemental and concentration funds allocated and spent for services to English Language learners in the district. Include a document showing how the district decides on expenditures from supplemental and concentration funds. How does the district distribute the funds between designated target groups (i.e. English learners, Foster Children, Special education, low income students)?

3.    A listing of budget allocations and expenditures for each of the categories listed above (teachers, teacher assistants, administrators. consultants, as well as copies of the pages of documents where these allocations and expenditures are described.


More information to follow.

Choosing Democracy: CA's Fair Funding Formula Makes More Possible for Schools

Would You Trust LAUSD Candidate Marilyn Koziatek To Hold On To Your Wallet?

Would You Trust LAUSD Candidate Marilyn Koziatek To Hold On To Your Wallet?

Would You Trust LAUSD Candidate Marilyn Koziatek To Hold On To Your Wallet?

Also, the fiscal transparency of the district is vital”– Marilyn Koziatek

Even before starting its expansion into TK through 8th grade, Granada Hills Charter High School had more students than 86% of all school districts nationwide. However, unlike most school districts, the community that finances the school does not get to vote for its governing board. Instead of using the democratic process to appoint parent representatives to this board, they are handpicked by the administration. The result is a private school that spends money without any public accountability.

As an employee of Granada, LAUSD School Board District 3 candidate Marilyn Koziatek has been able to take advantage of the charter schools’ lax fiscal policies for her own personal benefit. On June 21, 2019, she signed a one year contract to serve as the charter school’s Director of Development and Communications. This was a $5,000 increase from the contract she signed the year before. Less than three months later, Koziatek decided to run for the school board. Granada found that because of this “her work for the School in outreach, engagement, and communication may be compromised and questioned, and, therefore, [needed] to be changed.”

Instead of requiring Koziatek to take a leave of absence during her CONTINUE READING: Would You Trust LAUSD Candidate Marilyn Koziatek To Hold On To Your Wallet?

Understanding the “Science of Reading”: A Reader – radical eyes for equity

Understanding the “Science of Reading”: A Reader – radical eyes for equity

Big Education Ape: David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: Pluck vs. Luck

In one way, ground zero for the “science of reading” movement can be traced to Emily Hanford in 2018, but cognitive scientists (Daniel Willingham and Mark Seidenberg, for example) focusing on reading and advocacy for students with dyslexia (or struggling to read in ways that some label as dyslexia) have also played key roles in the movement.

The “science of reading movement” has not been simply a media event, however. That advocacy has resulted in state education/reading legislation that has included third-grade retention of students based on reading test scores, mandating systematic intensive phonics (phonics first) for all students, and new mandates for teachers of reading and teacher education programs.

What is absent in most of the media and political endorsement of the “science of reading” is a critical lens for the claims as well as historical context.

The “science of reading” narrative, at best, is incomplete, and at worst, is deeply misleading.

Below are the key elements and links to help anyone better understand the issues:

Historical Perspective

What Shall We Do About Reading Today?: Looking Back to See Now More Clearly CONTINUE READING: Understanding the “Science of Reading”: A Reader – radical eyes for equity

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: Pluck vs. Luck | National Education Policy Center

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: Pluck vs. Luck | National Education Policy Center

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: Pluck vs. Luck

This post is a piece I recently published in Aeon.  Here’s the link to the original.  I wrote this after years of futile efforts to get Stanford students to think critically about how they got to their current location at the top of the meritocracy.  It was nearly impossible to get students to consider that their path to Palo Alto might have been the result of anything but smarts and hard work.  Luck of birth never seemed to be a major factor in the stories they told about how they got here.  I can understand this, since I’ve spent a lifetime patting myself on the back for my own academic accomplishments, feeling sorry for the poor bastards who didn’t have what it took to climb the academic ladder.

But in recent years, I have come to spend a lot of time thinking critically about the nature of the American meritocracy.  I’ve published a few pieces here on the subject, in which I explore the way in which this process of allocating status through academic achievement constitutes a nearly perfect system for reproducing social inequality — protected by a solid cover of legitimacy.  The story it tells to everyone in society, winners and losers alike, is that you got what you deserved.

So I started telling students my own story about how I got to Stanford — in two contrasting versions.  One is a traditional account of climbing the ladder through skill and grit, a story of merit rewarded.  The other is a more realistic account of getting ahead by leveraging family advantage, a story of having the right parents.

See what you think.

 

Pluck vs. Luck

Occupants of the American meritocracy are accustomed to telling stirring stories about their lives. The standard one is a comforting tale about grit in the face of adversity – overcoming obstacles, honing skills, working hard – which then inevitably affords entry to the Promised Land. Once you have established yourself in the upper reaches of the occupational pyramid, this story of virtue rewarded rolls easily off the tongue. It makes you feel good (I got what I deserved) and it reassures others (the system really works).

But you can also tell a different story, which is more about luck than pluck, and whose driving forces are less your own skill and motivation, and more the happy circumstances you emerged from and the CONTINUE READING: David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: Pluck vs. Luck | National Education Policy Center

For Your Browsing Pleasure: Who Got Walton Money for Education Disruption in 2018? | Diane Ravitch's blog

For Your Browsing Pleasure: Who Got Walton Money for Education Disruption in 2018? | Diane Ravitch's blog

For Your Browsing Pleasure: Who Got Walton Money for Education Disruption in 2018?

The Walton Family Foundation is the fruit of the Walmart chain. It was created by the Waltons, one of the richest families in the world. The three senior members of the Walton family–Alice Walton, Jim Walton, and Rob Walton–have a collective net worth in excess of $150 billion. There is a younger generation of Waltons whose wealth is not included in that total. The Walton family increases its wealth by $4 million an hour, every hour of every day.

The Walton Foundation has a few causes in which it concentrates its giving. Reforming K-12 education is one of the major areas for giving.

The Walton Foundation is the biggest single private funder of charters schools and vouchers in the United States.

In 2018, it gave $210 million to a long list of grantees to promote its K-12 goals, especially privatization of public schools via charters and vouchers.

In the same year, it increased that giving by another $238.6 million, in a section of its website called “Special Projects,” many of which went to the same K-12 charters and vouchers, or advocacy for charters and vouchers.

I am leaving it to you to review the list of grants. What do you see that is interesting or surprising? Some years I read the entire list. Now I am asking you to do it and report back.

The only other source of funding at this scale is the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program, which gave $440 million in 2018 to launch new charter schools, most of which went to large corporate charter chains like KIPP, IDEA, and Success Academy in New York City. The original federal program, created in 1994, was intended to launch start-up charters that needed a financial boost, not to build financial behemoths to replace public schools. Under DeVos, the CSP has become a juggernaut to disrupt communities and states, whether or not they want charters. New Hampshire, for example, got the largest single state grant of $46 million, and its Democratic-controlled legislature has thus far refused to accept the money, which would double the number of charters in the state and knock a huge hole in the financing of public schools.

For Your Browsing Pleasure: Who Got Walton Money for Education Disruption in 2018? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles: Defeat the Charter Combine! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles: Defeat the Charter Combine! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles: Defeat the Charter Combine!

Jackie Goldberg, the dynamic progressive on the Los Angeles school board, send this request for help:


FROM THE DESK OF JACKIE GOLDBERG


Dear Friends and Family,

First, I cannot thank each and every one of you enough for all you’ve done to support me over so many years.  And I have another personal request for each of you because you are all important in the struggles for full funding for public education and for progressive goals in civil rights, human rights, immigration rights and addressing the global climate crisis.

This request is not for my candidacy.

It is a request for the immediate future of the LAUSD school board.  In the March 2020 primary election, there are two school board candidates for the LAUSD School Board that I am asking you to support.  They are current Board Member Scott Schmerelson and Board District #7 candidate Patricia Castellanos.

Unless BOTH are elected either in the March primary in the November general election, my ability to bring progressive change will be severely restricted.  Right now there is a 4 to 3 pro-public education majority on the school board.  But all four are up for election in 2020 and we don’t have a vote to spare.

Luckily, Board Member Dr. McKenna has no opponent.  I have a fairly weak opponent, but charter proponents have already spent $250,000 in attack ads against me.

So the only chance the conservatives have of retaking the majority is to defeat Mr. Schmerelson, or by electing someone other than Ms. Castellanos in Board District 7.

PLEASE HELP ONE OR BOTH OF THESE EXCELLENT CANDIDATES WIN THEIR ELECTIONS.  HERE IS HOW:

SEND MONEY (up to $1200) to each of these two as follows:
Scott Schmerelson for School Board 2020
Contribute online at www.Scott4lausd.com

Patricia Castellanos for School Board 2020
Contribute online at www.Patriciacastellanos.com

VOLUNTEER TO PHONE OR WALK PRECINCTS as follows:
Scott Schmerelson- Contact Brent Smiley
Email: Campaign@scott4lausd.com
Phone: 818.324.8327

Patricia Castellanos- Contact Albert Ramirez
Email: info@patriciacastellanos.com
Phone: 310.864.3383

I’ll be calling soon to see if you can help me keep a progressive majority on the LAUSD Board of Education.

With warm regards,

Jackie

Los Angeles: Defeat the Charter Combine! | Diane Ravitch's blog

This election is off-limits to voters. But the results will matter a lot to L.A. school families - Los Angeles Times

This election is off-limits to voters. But the results will matter a lot to L.A. school families - Los Angeles Times

This election is off-limits to voters. But the results will matter a lot to L.A. school families

One ballot this season is off-limits to the public but carries far-reaching ramifications for hundreds of thousands of youths and their families — the election of a new president and other officers for the Los Angeles teachers union.

United Teachers Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl, who led 30,000 teachers in a strike that gripped Los Angeles last year, is barred by term limits from running for a third three-year term. His replacement will instantly become a major voice in the nation’s second-largest school system and the leader of a union that has long influenced education policy in Los Angeles. The winner also will confront internal challenges, including the mobilization of anti-union groups that seek to persuade members to abandon UTLA entirely.

“The UTLA elections always matter,” said Tyrone Howard, professor of education at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. “They are an important player in the educational landscape in Los Angeles. They shape board elections, influence policies and have a critical voice in the current and future makeup of Los Angeles.”

Just a year ago, the union’s leadership led members in a momentous six-day strike — and won broad sympathy for teachers who rallied public attention to difficult working conditions and their crucial mission to educate Los Angeles’ most underserved youth. The union election represents an internal referendum on how all that worked out, whether the gains of the strike justified losing six days of instruction and 3% of last year’s salary.

“Many members are questioning what they gained,” said Howard, and the election will determine how the union wields its influence going forward and the extent to which it remains “a critical voice in school reform.”

“The right leader can hurt or hinder that process,” he added.

UTLA often has changed the classroom or political equation. In the 1990s, when the union couldn’t win raises, it pushed for greater control over schools and classrooms, winning the right for teachers — not principals — to in many cases choose which grade levels or courses they taught.

The union also won the ability for members to earn lifetime health insurance. The cost has created financial strains for the Los Angeles Unified School District, but supporters see that benefit as a valuable recruitment tool.

More recently, UTLA was among the first unions to push back successfully against a nationwide trend to rate teachers based on student standardized test scores.

Teachers unions remain among the most powerful interest groups in California — they played a key role in last year’s legislation that could limit the growth of new CONTINUE READING: 

Dallas: Charter Operator Sentenced to 7 Years, Then Claims Bonus | Diane Ravitch's blog

Dallas: Charter Operator Sentenced to 7 Years, Then Claims Bonus | Diane Ravitch's blog

Dallas: Charter Operator Sentenced to 7 Years, Then Claims Bonus

The charter industry is overrun with scandals because charter laws do not require accountability and transparency. Theft, conflicts of interest, nepotism, and fraud are a feature, not a bug.

A charter operator in Dallas was sentenced to seven years in jail for taking a kickback, but then convinced the board to give her a bonus of $20,000.

Donna Houston-Woods was convicted of defrauding her own Dallas charter school, but she wasn’t done taking its money for her own benefit, a federal prosecutor said Thursday.

She returned to Nova Academy after her October trial and pocketed a $20,000 bonus. Houston-Woods, the school’s longtime CEO, then asked for another $300,000 in severance, but the school board denied it.

Her actions, the prosecutor said, showed zero remorse and a lack of respect for the law.

A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Houston-Woods to seven years and three months in prison for accepting $50,000 in kickbacks in exchange for steering a school CONTINUE READING: Dallas: Charter Operator Sentenced to 7 Years, Then Claims Bonus | Diane Ravitch's blog

Fracking has led to a "bust" for Pennsylvania school district finances | Salon.com

Fracking has led to a "bust" for Pennsylvania school district finances | Salon.com

Fracking has led to a "bust" for Pennsylvania school district finances
Fracking in Pennsylvania has led to disadvantages in state school districts.

Unconventional natural gas development has transformed American energy over the past decade.

Hydraulic fracturing, often popularly referred to as "fracking," is a process used in extracting oil or gas resources from underground formations such as shale or sandstone. In Pennsylvania and elsewhere, this has been an industrially intensive method, and wells are often drilled a mile or more beneath the ground and a mile or more horizontally along the shale or sandstone.

Several Democratic presidential candidates have called for new limitations on the practice because of environmental and other concerns. Two of the leading candidates, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have promised to ban fracking if elected.

Opponents of these restrictions insist these bans would devastate the economies of states like Pennsylvania. These debates have also raised serious questions about swing state support for democratic candidates in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.

As educational researchers in the Keystone state, we recently conducted a study on the impact of unconventional gas development on the financial resources of the Pennsylvania's school districts.

We found that fracking had largely negative impacts on affected school districts.

Fracking history

In the mid-2000s fracking's largely unanticipated gas development dramatically changed much of Pennsylvania.

Fracking has made gas extraction technologically and economically possible from energy deposits that CONTINUE READING: Fracking has led to a "bust" for Pennsylvania school district finances | Salon.com

Florida: 2 Big Banks Abandon Florida’s Voucher Program Due to Anti-LGBT Policies | Diane Ravitch's blog

Florida: 2 Big Banks Abandon Florida’s Voucher Program Due to Anti-LGBT Policies | Diane Ravitch's blog

Florida: 2 Big Banks Abandon Florida’s Voucher Program Due to Anti-LGBT Policies

A free press makes a difference. Here is proof.

On January 23, Leslie Postal and Annie Martin of the Orlando Sentinel wrote that nearly 160 religious schools receiving vouchers from the state of Florida openly discriminate against students, families, and staff who are gay. Voucher schools drain $1 billion away from public education every year in Florida, and state legislators want to expand vouchers until they are available to every student in the state.

The next day, opinion writer Scott Maxwell of the same newspaper wrote more about public-funded religious  schools rejecting students and families. He wrote:

One school told a mother — a firefighter married to U.S. Air Force veteran — that her children were unfit to be educated there simply because the couple was two women.

The two women served their country and community. But the school — which received $371,000 in state scholarship money last year — told the family to get an education elsewhere.

On January 28, the Orlando Sentinel wrote an editorial criticizing the major corporations that declare their CONTINUE READING: Florida: 2 Big Banks Abandon Florida’s Voucher Program Due to Anti-LGBT Policies | Diane Ravitch's blog

EdChoice Voucher Negotiations Break Down in Ohio: Four Questions Must Be Addressed in 60-Day Delay | janresseger

EdChoice Voucher Negotiations Break Down in Ohio: Four Questions Must Be Addressed in 60-Day Delay | janresseger

EdChoice Voucher Negotiations Break Down in Ohio: Four Questions Must Be Addressed in 60-Day Delay

Rancor and confusion over the issue of EdChoice private school tuition vouchers filled the chambers of the Ohio Legislature all last week. In anticipation of the February 1st date when families were supposed to start signing up for vouchers for next school year, the Legislature set out to address problems with Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program, problems created when changes were surreptitiously inserted into the state budget last summer during last minute hearings by the conference committee.

Last week’s negotiations about the voucher program broke down entirely on Thursday night and Friday, however.  The Legislature has now delayed the EdChoice voucher sign-up process; it has given itself two months to address big problems in the program. Here is how the Plain Dealer‘s Patrick O’Donnell describes the chaos in Ohio:

“Ohio’s controversy over tuition vouchers sparked anger, political posturing and suspense in Columbus this week, with no clarity for anyone. That won’t come for two months.  Parents won’t know until April if their children are eligible to receive a tax-funded voucher toward private school tuition.  Vouchers applications that were supposed to start Saturday won’t. Private schools won’t know if they will receive any state tuition help. And about 1,200 public schools across Ohio don’t know if they will remain on a state list of underperforming schools which lets students use vouchers that are then billed to the district. Even state legislators can’t say what form Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program will take for the fall. After the Ohio House and Senate proposed drastic changes this week to rework which students would be eligible for vouchers and who would pay for them, negotiations fizzled. By Friday, with Saturday’s start of the voucher application looming, both houses voted to delay any applications until April 1, while they search for a compromise.”

One interesting detail about the huge fight in Columbus about school choice right now is that CONTINUE READING: EdChoice Voucher Negotiations Break Down in Ohio: Four Questions Must Be Addressed in 60-Day Delay | janresseger