CORONAVIRUS EDITION: DID YOU MISS DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG CATCH UP NOW Diane Ravitch's blog A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

CORONAVIRUS EDITION

DID YOU MISS DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG

CATCH UP NOW 

Diane Ravitch's blog A site to discuss better education for all

Happy Birthday, Wilfred Owen

by dianeravitch / now

If you have never read the poetry of Wilfred Owen, do it now. Today is his birthday. This bio comes from Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac.” “It’s the birthday of poet Wilfred Owen (books by this author), born in Shropshire, England (1893). When he was young, his family was well-off, living in a house owned by his grandfather, a prominent citizen. But then his grandpa died, and it turned out t

Russia Will Change Constitution for Putin

by dianeravitch / 1h

We live in a new age of authoritarianism. Russian sycophants have cleared the way for Putin to remain in power for at least 16 more years. This from CNN: Vladimir Putin’s path to an extended presidency is almost clear after lawmakers voted to change term limit rules in the Russian constitution. Under current Russian law, Putin would have to step down as president in 2024, but the proposed amendme

Randy Rainbow on the Coronavirus Crisis

by dianeravitch / 2h

Randy Rainbow sings and acts “The Coronavirus Lament.” Timely and, as always, funny.

Arizona: SOS Arizona Needs Your Help to Stop Growth of Vouchers Forever!

by dianeravitch / 3h

The parents and educators who created SOS Arizona blocked the last expansion plan for vouchers by getting a referendum on the state ballot in 2018. They had to fight the governor, the legislature, the Republican party, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, and other monied interests, who wanted to keep expanding vouchers until every student in the state was eligible for a voucher. The all-voluntee

Nancy Bailey: Online Learning Can Never Replace Human Teachers

100+by dianeravitch / 4h

Nancy Bailey wisely explains the lesson of the current emergency and boils it down to this fact: Online learning can never replace human teachers and support staff. Parents who are staying home with their children have taken to Twitter to express their admiration for teachers. “How do teachers do this all day with 30 children,” they wonder. Be sure to open her post and check out the links as well

YESTERDAY

New York: State Suspends 3-8 ELA Tests

2Kby dianeravitch / 14h

A principal shared with me a letter he received, with the following information: New York State Education Department is canceling the English language arts tests, grades 3-8. No word yet on math tests, but they seem sure to be suspended too. The virus is spreading, not contained.

Kansas Update: School Buildings Will Close, Not School

by dianeravitch / 14h

In the fog of the pandemic, it’s hard to keep track of school closings and cancellation of state testing. In Kansas, Governor Laura Kelly ordered closure of school buildings but schooling will continue. CLARIFICATION: Governor Kelly didn’t cancel school for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year. She closed school buildings. Schools will be working to implement Continuous Learning plans for a

California: Governor Says Schools Likely to Close for Rest of Year

64by dianeravitch / 15h

Governor Gavin Newsom said that schools in California are likely to close for what remains of the school year. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-17/schools-closures-mobilize-meals “California public schools are likely to be closed for the remainder of the school year in response to the escalating spread of coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday afternoon. “I don’t want to mis

Kansas: Governor Closes Schools for Rest of Year

100+by dianeravitch / 16h

Governor Laura Kelly of Kansas announced that all schools are closed for the rest of the school year. Governor closes Kansas schools, puts most state employees on administrative leave Be prepared to hear about more states doing the same. No one knows how long the global pandemic will continue, but there’s no end in sight.

Colorado Cancels State Testing

28by dianeravitch / 17h

Chalkbeat reports that Colorado has canceled state academic tests for 2020. Colorado will cancel state tests in light of coronavirus school closures, officials say Any state that insists on giving the federally-mandated tests should be prepared to answer how they expect to test children who have been out of school for several weeks without instruction. Under the best of circumstances, the scores

Happy, St. Patrick’s Day, Sort Of

by dianeravitch / 23h

Garrison Keillor writes in The Daily Writers’s Almanac about St. Patrick: “Today is St. Patrick’s Day, the annual feast day celebrating a patron saint of Ireland. “St. Patrick was born around the year 385, in a village in Wales. When he was 16, a group of Irish pirates raided his village and took many of the young men back to Ireland to work as slaves. Patrick worked for six years as a herdsman i

Note to Ohio: Lincoln Did Not Cancel 1864 Election

by dianeravitch / 1d

James Hohmann writes today in Washington Post that Ohio Governor DeWine should pay attention to history: Abraham Lincoln did not cancel the elections of 1864. https://s2.washingtonpost.com/23f6e3b/5e70db23fe1ff6038cdcb2ae/Z2FyZGVuZHJAZ21haWwuY29t/10/114/2160de31454b787c80a706dd1b1faf11 ”Abraham Lincoln rejected calls to postpone the 1864 election amid the Civil War, even though his reelection rem

Providence: New State Takeover Superintendent Rolls Out Initial Plans

34by dianeravitch / 1d

Angelica Infante-Green, the Commissioner of Education in Rhode Island, selected Harrison Peters as the takeover superintendent of Providence. Peters announced his initial plans, which sound sensible, like implementing restorative justice in schools and assessing which schools need emergency repairs. However, the article suggests that the big reform plan will be rolled out in April. Keep an eye on

Fareed Zakaria: Why Is the U.S. Response to the Crisis Inept?

49by dianeravitch / 1d

Fareed Zakaria is a regular commentator on world affairs for CNN. This article appeared in the Washington Post on March 12: The outbreak of an epidemic is something like a natural disaster — a spontaneous, accidental eruption that is no one’s fault. But that does not mean we can do little about it and just wait for it to run its deadly course. The evidence is now clear: The spread of the virus ca

Peter Greene: This is What Administrators Are Supposed to Do

76by dianeravitch / 1d

Peter Greene writes here about the forgotten role of the principal and superintendent . It is not to promote misguided and harmful policies such as those that were central to No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, but to fight against them and to protect their staff as best they can against misguided mandates. For most of the past two decades, however, the folks at the top blew with the wind a

William Mathis: An Absurd Argument for Expanding Vouchers in Wisconsin

by dianeravitch / 1d

This review from the National Education Policy Center by William Mathis demolishes an absurd claim about the hypothetical economic benefits of expanding Wisconsin’s voucher program. The review is actually hilarious. 

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Arizona: SOS Arizona Needs Your Help to Stop Growth of Vouchers Forever! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Arizona: SOS Arizona Needs Your Help to Stop Growth of Vouchers Forever! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Arizona: SOS Arizona Needs Your Help to Stop Growth of Vouchers Forever!

The parents and educators who created SOS Arizona blocked the last expansion plan for vouchers by getting a referendum on the state ballot in 2018. They had to fight the governor, the legislature, the Republican party, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, and other monied interests, who wanted to keep expanding vouchers until every student in the state was eligible for a voucher.

The all-volunteer SOS Arizona group gathered over 100,000 signatures to put a referendum on the ballot, fought the efforts of the Koch brothers to kick them off the ballot, and the referendum went to the public, where voucher expansion was overwhelmingly defeated by a margin of 65-35%.

Now SOS Arizona needs your help to put another referendum on the state ballot, to end voucher expansion. Volunteers must collect 350,000 signatures to initiate this referendum. They need YOUR help!

Save Our Schools Arizona (SOSAZ), the grassroots group responsible for stopping universal voucher expansion in Arizona in 2018, has gone on offense. In spite of their overwhelming 2-to-1 defeat of Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) voucher expansion, the Arizona state legislature attempted to pass 6 different voucher bills in 2019–all killed by SOSAZ and in 2020 is working to allow ESA vouchers to expand vouchers across state lines. Save Our Schools, once again, said “Enough!”

On February 26, 2020, Save Our Schools Arizona filed a statewide citizens’ initiative (read it here). A critical next step in fighting the privatization movement, CONTINUE READING: Arizona: SOS Arizona Needs Your Help to Stop Growth of Vouchers Forever! | Diane Ravitch's blog

With A Brooklyn Accent: Lessons of the Churchill War Rooms

With A Brooklyn Accent: Lessons of the Churchill War Rooms

Lessons of the Churchill War Rooms

A little less than four years ago, my children, to celebrate my 70th Birthday, took me on a one week trip to London. Of all the many memorable things about the trip, the one thing that stood out the most, and has remained etched in my memory, was our 4 hour visit to the Churchill War Rooms.

For those who have never visited, or heard of this site, during the entire duration of WW 2. the British government had to function in an underground bunker because of the relentless bombing London was subject to by the Nazis. The British Prime Minister and key military officials basically lived underground for five years, while the rest of the citizens of London and other British cities had to survive constant aerial attacks that made normal life impossible

In this setting, heroism became a way of life. There was no escape from the danger. But people had to try to go to work and raise their families amidst the constant threat that an explosion could hit their homes, their schools, their factories, their stores, their houses of worship In these circumstances, if the vast majority of Britons were not willing to make incredible sacrifices, the society would have collapsed and the government would have been forced to surrender to the Nazis

We face a similar scenario with the Corona Virus. During the next 18 months to two years, we will be a society at war, not with a foreign enemy, but a deadly virus. No one will be exempt. Not our top government officials, not our business leaders, not our CONTINUE READING: With A Brooklyn Accent: Lessons of the Churchill War Rooms

Coronavirus Forces Us to Notice the Essential Role of Public Schools | janresseger

Coronavirus Forces Us to Notice the Essential Role of Public Schools | janresseger

Coronavirus Forces Us to Notice the Essential Role of Public Schools

Maybe someday we’ll all come to agree that we were crazy—for two decades after No Child Left Behind— to accept school closure as a “turnaround strategy” for so-called “failing” (low-scoring) public schools. Certainly the coronavirus pandemic, when public schools are being shut down to protect the public health, ought to be a wake-up call.  While we cannot question the public health experts who are prescribing such a radical step, the widespread closure of public schools provides an occasion to examine the meaning of public education across today’s America.

Eve Ewing, the University of Chicago sociologist, recently examined the widespread, permanent, closure of public schools in Bronzeville, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. At the end of the 2013 school year, Chicago Public Schools shut down 50 so-called “failing” schools, many of them on the South and West Sides. Ewing’s focus is broader than this week’s lesson, but she does examine the essential role of public schools as core social institutions that anchor neighborhoods: “Judith Butler argues that when a community faces the loss of a place, that loss can become so insurmountable that it becomes part of the community’s own self-definition… The people of Bronzeville understand that a school is more than a school.  A school is the site of a history and a pillar of black pride in a racist city.  A school is a safe place to be.  A school is a place where you find family.  A school is a home.” (Ghosts in the Schoolyard, pp. 155-156)

This week’s school closures—universal across many states—are only temporary, though parents and teachers cannot anticipate how long the shutdown will last.  But although schools are closed only temporarily, the closures are disruptive and disorienting.  Valerie Strauss presents tweets, some of them funny, from teachers trying to create online lessons and from CONTINUE READING: Coronavirus Forces Us to Notice the Essential Role of Public Schools | janresseger

UPDATE: New COVID-19 Guidance for K-12 Schools + Free Educational Resources for Distance Learning - (CA Dept of Education)

New COVID-19 Guidance for K-12 Schools - Health Services & School Nursing (CA Dept of Education)

New COVID-19 Guidance for K-12 Schools
Part of the COVID-19 Guidance for K-12 Schools published on March 17, 2020.

California Department of Education (CDE) and California Health and Human Services Agency (HHS)

March 17, 2020 Cover Letter(DOCX)

Distance Learning (CDE)

• Distance Learning
• Appendix 1: Resources that Support Distance Learning
• Appendix 2: Lessons from the Field: Remote Learning Guidance
• Appendix 3: Designing a High-Quality Online Course(DOCX)

School Meals (CDE)

• School Meals

Child Care and Student Supervision (HHS)

• Child Care and Student Supervision(DOCX)

New COVID-19 Guidance for K-12 Schools - Health Services & School Nursing (CA Dept of Education)


Free Educational Resources for Distance Learning - Curriculum Frameworks & Instructional Materials (CA Dept of Education) - https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/distancelearnresources.asp

Curriculum Frameworks & Instructional Materials - Curriculum Resources (CA Dept of Education) - https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/index.asp