PAA Position Paper: Parents stand up against test stress | Parents Across America

PAA Position Paper: Parents stand up against test stress | Parents Across America:

PAA Position Paper

Parents Stand Up against Test Stress

July 2015

Across our nation, children of all ages are showing an alarming increase in test anxiety. Larger percentages of students are reporting test stress, more are seeking test-stress counseling, and more are experiencing severe psychological and physiological symptoms tied to testing. The rate of ADHD diagnosis has increased significantly since the No Child Left Behind testing regime began.

Please see our fact sheet, Test Stress and our Children, and our documentation paper.

Parents, teachers, administrators, and mental health professionals report student nausea, dizziness, crying, vomiting, panic attacks, asthma attacks, tantrums, headaches, sleeplessness, refusal to go to school, “freaking out,” meltdowns, depression, suicide threats and suicide attempts

Recent research has demonstrated that prolonged stress can profoundly undermine learning , mental health and brain development in young people. As a result, while testing is promoted as improving education, test stress is in fact sabotaging learning for many students.

The misuse and overuse of standardized tests is doing particular harm to our most vulnerable children. Students with special needs, low-income students, children of color and those whose first language is not English are most likely to do poorly on norm-referenced standardized tests, and to suffer the high-stakes consequences of retention, inappropriate labeling and tracking, push-out or drop-out. One study has found that as many as 41 percent of African American elementary school children have experienced high test anxiety.

Much of the literature on test anxiety focuses on how to help children cope with the stress. In contrast, PAA believes the cause of the stress must be addressed. No child should be exposed to prolonged, intense stress which can inhibit brain function and take a toll on mental health.

Instead of more coping strategies, PAA recommends the following policy changes:

PAA recommendations to stop abusive testing

End high-stakes standardized testing: A switch from high-stakes testing to a systematic review of actual student work would

• lessen excessive test stress that undermines learning,
• provide superior evidence of academic progress, and
• enrich classroom experiences.

Use report cards as the primary record of student progress because they are

•  the only evaluations that look at the students’ work over time and across all areas of learning and growth.

• prepared by experienced, qualified adults who personally observe and assess each student’s progress.
• easily understood by parents, unlike secretive standardized test scores.

De-emphasize The Tests: JUST SAY NO to test pep rallies, test prep worksheets that replace meaningful class- and homework, constant messages about consequences of test “failure,” prizes for test-takers, etc.

Recognize opt-out rights: Parents are opting their children out of testing in record numbers, in part to protect them from the stress caused by misuse and overuse of standardized tests. Federal and state law must support this decision by parents.

Advocate for local and state assessment policies that align with professional standards for assessment.

Download a pdf version of this statement.

- See more at: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/paa-position-paper-parents-stand-test-stress/#sthash.Os1exgQ4.dpuf

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Svigos buys another closed Chicago school

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Svigos buys another closed Chicago school:

Svigos buys another closed Chicago school

Svigos Assets bought Peabody. Put a charter in it. 

After they sat as empty blights on the community for nearly three years, the sell-off of closed CPS neighborhood schools has begun in earnest. Board members on Wednesday approved the sale of three vacant schools that were shuttered in 2013,providing "a small windfall of cash for its struggling budget".

Liza Balistreri is in charge of real estate at Chicago Public Schools and is running the sales of Near North Elementary in Noble Square, Overton Elementary in Bronzeville, and Von Humboldt Elementary in Humboldt Park.

Among the developers looking to make a profit on CPS real estate is Svigos Asset Management Corp. based in suburban Buffalo Grove. Svigos specializes in developing and managing commercial and residential properties, and owns apartment buildings in Lakeview, Logan Square and Albany Park.

Svigos is buying Near North for $5.1 million and plans to turn the school into "residential and commercial development". His company previously purchased the old Peabody Elementary for $3.5 million in 2014 only to turn around and sell space back to Rowe Charter School. Previously, district officials had said no closed school would be used as a charter school. The former Peabody was also developed as market-rate housing.

Paul Svigos has been a regular campaign contributor to Rahm Emanuel. The well-connected Svigos family has also made big contributions to the Daley's and other Democratic Party candidates.

Svigos was a former top Merrill Lynch stockbroker who the firm fired in October Schooling in the Ownership Society: Svigos buys another closed Chicago school:

There are Many Roads and Destinations for Children with Disabilities

There are Many Roads and Destinations for Children with Disabilities:

There are Many Roads and Destinations for Children with Disabilities

 Every child doesn’t have to arrive at the same destination. There are many endpoints and lots of highways. So why are parents and students directed to one score and one test to say who will be successful?

The Atlantic is asking whether No Child Left Behind (NCLB) should be considered an achievement when it comes to students with disabilities. Some believe that with the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, schools will no longer be strict enough when it comes to testing students with disabilities. Others think the tests will still be too strict and used inappropriately.

Here is a quote in the article: The problem that students with disabilities face in schools is that people have such low expectation for what they can achieve.

When Education Secretary Arne Duncan says Every child, regardless of income, race, background, or disability can succeed if provided the opportunity to learn, it is, in fact, a hopeful statement. The trouble is his idea of success is only based on a high score on a test.

Many parents and some civil rights groups have bought into this.

Instead of focusing solely on test scores why don’t they focus on the real keys to helping children with disabilities? Why don’t they look at a broader more encompassing picture There are Many Roads and Destinations for Children with Disabilities:

California public schools plan calls for immediate steps to address teacher shortage | 89.3 KPCC

California public schools plan calls for immediate steps to address teacher shortage | 89.3 KPCC:

California public schools plan calls for immediate steps to address teacher shortage

A four-year plan to improve the state's public schools calls for fast action to address a shortage of teachers and principals already impacting Southern California school districts.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson issued his "A Blueprint for Great Schools" that builds on an earlier plan on improving state schools and that will guide him in his current four-year term in office.

Torlakson discussed the report at a press conference Friday at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

“This is about our kids and their future but it's also about California's economy,” Torlakson said. “We'll get back to the top ranked in the nation where we deserve to be, where our kids deserve to have us to be for them.”

Torlakson also touted the state’s transition to the new learning standards known as the Common Core. During an interview with KPCC, he discussed both the standards and the new statewide, computerized tests based on the new standards.

The tests are a major departure from the old assessments. Called Smarter Balanced exams, they emphasize such skills as critical thinking and problem-solving instead of rote memorization.

Results will be sent to parents and guardians in late August. Torlakson cautioned that the new test results may not be stellar.

"I think we’ll do well,” he said. “There’s a low, lower performance until everybody gets in line – the curriculum, the teaching and the testing and getting used to computers themselves as a way of measuring your learning and your proficiency.” 

The blueprint, developed by a task force of educators, notes the state's graduation rate reached 80.8 percent in 2014, up from 74.7 percent four years earlier. 

“Unfortunately, California’s school funding continues to lag. The latest annual state ranking by Education Week placed California 46th in the nation in school spending, but it was based on data from 2011–12,” according to the blueprint.

"California’s expanding state budget for 2015–16 has certainly increased our ranking, though California is still likely to remain in the bottom half of the nation,” the plan states.

Among other recommendations, the plan calls for research into why the teacher shortage is occurring, especially in bilingual and special education teachers; working with schools of education to coordinate teacher recruitment and preparation programs; and encouraging diverse undergraduates to pursue teaching as a career.California public schools plan calls for immediate steps to address teacher shortage | 89.3 KPCC:

How school district boundaries are gerrymandered to keep poor kids segregated - Vox

How school district boundaries are gerrymandered to keep poor kids segregated - Vox:

How school district boundaries are gerrymandered to keep poor kids segregated

There's nothing natural about school district boundaries. They're drawn by human beings — often in ways that keep poorer students separate from their wealthier peers.

RelatedAmerica spends more than $600 billion on schools. Here's where it goes and why it matters.

This is partly a reflection of neighborhood segregation by race and class. But school districts themselves often have arbitrary, gerrymandered boundaries. EdBuild, a startup advocating for changes to school finance, makes this clear by mapping school districts' poverty rates.

The national map looks like a map of poverty by county in the US. But school districts don't always follow county lines — they carve counties and sometimes cities and towns into poorer and richer sections, keeping poor students separate from everyone else.

Wyandotte County, Kansas, is an example. About 35 percent of kids in the county were in poverty in 2012. But the county is divided into four school districts (including two within Kansas City, Kansas, itself) with varying poverty levels, ranging from 40 percent of students in the Kansas City Unified School District to 11 percent in neighboring Piper:

(EdBuild)

Wyandotte County, Kansas, includes four school districts with varying poverty levels. (Neighboring Johnson County is even less poor.)

Camden, New Jersey, has one very poor district — 45 percent of kids living in poverty — surrounded by many districts with much lower poverty:

(EdBuild)

Camden, New Jersey, has a peninsula of poverty surrounded by well-off districts.

Arguably the most egregious example — or at least the worst that EdBuild found — comes from Ohio, where the Toledo School District is split in half:

(EdBuild)

Toledo City Schools are split in two.

This dates from the late 1950s, when a plan to merge school districts went wrong because one district had more black and low-income students. The wealthier district voted to reject them:

Spencer students were left in a smaller, poorer Spencer-Sharples school district. By 1968, the district was under-enrolled and underfunded, with no neighboring school district willing to join with it. At the request of the Ohio state government, Toledo Public Schools, which lay on the other side of Springfield, agreed to annex Spencer-Sharples. But by 1980, district leadership decided it had become too costly and difficult to operate schools located in Spencer, isolated as they were from the rest of Toledo’s school system. Over the strong objections of many in the affected community, Toledo closed all schools formerly located in Spencer-Sharples and began to bus students through Springfield into western Toledo.

The children in the former Spencer-Sharples district are now part of Toledo's school district, which has a 38 percent poverty rate. They all have to take a bus all the way through a district with 21 percent poverty, and much closer schools, just to get an education.How school district boundaries are gerrymandered to keep poor kids segregated - Vox:

Teacher blasts popular classroom training program: It is turning us into robots. - The Washington Post

Teacher blasts popular classroom training program: It is turning us into robots. - The Washington Post:

Teacher blasts popular classroom training program: It is turning us into robots.

Have you ever heard of of a classroom management method called the No-Nonsense Nurturer® Program created by The Center for Transformative Teacher Training? Educator Amy Berard was trained in it at Guilmette Middle School in Lawrence, Massachusetts, when she was teaching English Language Arts there last year, and she became a fierce critic for reasons she explains in the following tough critique.

Berard was among dozens of teachers who were let go in Lawrence at the end of the school year. A Boston Globe story about the dismissals quoted Superintendent and district receiver Jeffrey Riley as saying that nontenured teachers can be let go if they are deemed to be a bad fit for the district, while union President Frank McLaughlin called them “a punch in the gut.”

I asked Kristyn Klei Borrero, chief executive officer and co-founder of the Center for Transformative Teacher Training, if she had seen the piece, and, in an e-mail, she responded that she had. She also said that “we  honor every teacher’s right to disagree with our approach and use feedback like this to reflect on our practices to ensure we are constantly improving as an organization and enhancing the body of work.” You can read her full response following the Berard post, which first appeared on the EduShyster blog of Jennifer Berkshire, a freelance journalist and public education advocate.

Here is a video explaining the No-Nonsense Nurturer® Program:

And here is the critique of the program:

By Amy Berard

“Give him a warning,” said the voice through the earpiece I was wearing. I did as instructed, speaking in the emotionless monotone I’d been coached to use. But the student, a sixth grader with some impulsivity issues and whose trust I’d spent months working to gain, was excited and spoke out of turn again. “Tell him he has a detention,” my earpiece commanded. At which point the boy stood up and pointed to the back of the room, where the three classroom “coaches” huddled around a walkie talkie. “Miss: don’t listen to them! You be you. Talk to me! I’m a person! Be a person,  Miss. Be you!”

Meet C3PO

Last year, my school contracted with the Center for Transformational Training. or CT3, to train teachers using an approach called “No Nonsense Nurturing™.” It was supposed to make us more effective instructors by providing “immediate, non-distracting feedback to teachers using wireless technology.” In other words, earpieces and walkie talkies. I wore a bug in my Teacher blasts popular classroom training program: It is turning us into robots. - The Washington Post:

The attack of the Walmartians: Part I: The Wild, Wild, World of Charter Schools – Let’s get Something Straight! | Public Schools Central

The attack of the Walmartians: Part I: The Wild, Wild, World of Charter Schools – Let’s get Something Straight! | Public Schools Central:

The attack of the Walmartians: Part I: The Wild, Wild, World of Charter Schools – Let’s get Something Straight!

By Thomas J. Fiala

The unregulated world of charter schools is about to get another boost if the current ECAA is put into law.  We already know how most of our senators and congressional leaders feel about the ECAA, and in this case, charter school expansion and increased funding.   Many of us have had to engage supporters of charter schools who are always ready to point out that “not all charters are the same,” and of course, their claim that the charter schools they do endorse are taking the right approach to helping students who are being harmed by those nasty public schools.

Now I want to get this straight from the outset, before you read any farther.  I unabashedly support America’s democratic system of public education, regardless of whether a public school is governed by a locally elected school board or a school board appointed by a mayor.   Understand, however, that I do not support the process per se for any mayor appointing a school board.  This is a bad idea that is being shown again and again to be the wrong approach to meeting the educational needs of communities, large and small.  For example, if Chicago is not the poster child for using Rahm Emanuel’s  power to destroy public schools, while he sends his children to an elite private school, then I am certainly open to other contenders for the poster.   I like a city or any other type community having to elect their public school governing board.  This fact alone is going to be foundational in understanding my concerns about the charter onslaught that is increasingly pillaging our public schools across the nation.

First and foremost, charter schools are a scam for those individuals, wittingly or not, who support the neoliberal Friedmanomic educational notions of voucher and choice that circumvent the public school educational process, which has historically been a positive part of our democratic fabric and still needed today.   But let’s get down to the nitty gritty as to why charters are problematic in the very least, while an overwhelming number are simply despicable.  But first and foremost, I am not going to buy the corporate pro-charter line used by many charter start up supporters that goes like this:

Sure I support public schools, but until public schools solve all their problems, then I am going to proceed with creating my idea of what a charter school is supposed to look like!   I know charters have problems but so do public schools!

Now for those pro-charter folks using this line, I am going to school you a little – or maybe a lot!  First and foremost, the wonderful and courageous part about our public schools is that they nobly take on the challenges facing the United States.  These schools reflect the larger society, and all the wonderful aspects of that society – and all the ills of that society.  Our public schools DO NOT require a student and parent to sign a contract that has requirements and rules that if violated means that the student can rather easily be removed and then – of course – be sent back to the good old public school!  So, let me be straight with anyone reading this.  If your charter school requires a contract signed by a parent and child, and if that contract states The attack of the Walmartians: Part I: The Wild, Wild, World of Charter Schools – Let’s get Something Straight! | Public Schools Central:

STATE TAKEOVER: An Achievement School District Primer - Mitchell Robinson: Reforming Reform

An Achievement School District Primer - Mitchell Robinson: Reforming Reform:

An Achievement School District Primer

"Achievement School Districts" are a recent phenomenon in the corporate education reform movement. These "school districts" are designed to guarantee "rapid improvement in the state’s low performing schools", although specific methods, techniques and strategies to accomplish this goal are rarely mentioned. ASDs have sprung up all across the nation, under various names and guises, from the "Education Achievement Authority" in Detroit, to the "Recovery School District" in New Orleans, to "Achievement School Districts" in Tennessee and Nevada--and Georgia and North Carolina have recently announced plans to form their own ASDs. These experimental school systems usually target the "bottom 5%" of low-performing schools in a state or region for governmental takeover, with the promise of quickly improving student learning.



The one thing all of these experiments have in common is that they've been crashing failures. In spite of incredible amounts of publicity, spin and hoopla, not one of these educational petri dishes has resulted in any appreciable improvement in student learning, accountability, or curricular reform.

• In Tennessee, audits of the ASD uncovered problems in the way that federal dollars were handled and the way payments were being processed. In a perhaps related story, Chris Barbic, the founding superintendent of the TNASD, recently announced his resignation.
• In a disturbingly similar development, Detroit's EAA manager, John Covington, resigned from his position after less than 2 years of service amidst heated criticism"for high rates of student and teacher turnover, questionable spending on travel and expenses, problems with special education services and the use of a computer-based curriculum rather than traditional textbooks."
• And in New Orleans, despite Gov. Bobby Jindal's claims of miraculous improvements since the inception of the city's Recovery School District, recent research tells a very different story, with only "6 percent of high school seniors in the Recovery School District (scoring) high enough in English and Math to qualify for admission into a Louisiana four-year college or university straight out of high school. Five of the district’s 16 high schools produced not a single student who met these requirements."

An Achievement School District Primer



How do you know if your state is considering creating an Achievement School District? Well, Achievement School Districts are characterized by several traits, none of which makes even the tiniest amount of sense in terms of helping to improve student learning or teaching quality:



School Funding

• Individual ASD schools are often required to pay a "kickback" or "tax" to the state ASD authority for the "privilege" of being identified as a "low performing school". In Nevada,"ASD schools receive the same state and local per-pupil resources that they would have received as part of their original home district. This includes local, state, and federal funding. As with other charter school sponsors, the ASD will receive a small administrative fee from each school it authorizes." (bold added)  

In other words, in spite of the probability that an ASD school has been chronically underfunded for years, perhaps decades, the state will now take its own cut from whatever local, state and federal funding the school may be receiving for administrative overhead, further decreasing the actual number of dollars that are going to classrooms, teachers and children.

 

Local Control

• Local control, long recognized as a hallmark of public education, is a dinosaur in ASDs. In Detroit, the locally-elected school board still meets, but has essentially been stripped of all power and authority. The members of the elected school board refer to themselves as being "exiled," and the newly elected state superintendent of schools has called on the governor and state legislators to return control of the Detroit Public Schools to the local school board, saying, "I believe we ought to have a Detroit school district for the Detroit community." Instead, Gov. Rick Snyder has proposed a radical plan to split the city's schools into two districts: one to educate children, and the other devoted to addressing the district's debt problem. 

Transparency

• Even though it is often trumpeted as an integral aspect of effective school governance, very few ASDs follow their own propaganda when it comes to transparency in reporting. Detroit's EAA is an especially notorious offender in this respect, making claims that do not stand even the faintest amounts of scrutiny. According to Wayne State professor of education Thomas Pedroni, the EAA's "internal data directly contradicts their MEAP data. Even Scantron, the maker of the internal assessment, would not stand behind the EAA's growth claims. And Veronica Conforme, the current EAA Chancellor, removed all the dishonest growth claims from their advertising and their website, and told me personally she doesn't give them credence for the purpose the EAA used them for." For more from Dr. Pedroni on the EAA's specious relationship with transparency, see this, and this.

Punitive vs. Educative Methods

• Many ASD charters include language regarding the possible consequences if schools do not meet "adequate yearly progress" goals, such as: "Operators of ASD schools that do not demonstrate meaningful improvement will be held accountable pursuant to policies set by the ASD." Indeed, school closings have become a prominent tool in the school reform playbook: 
• • Washington, D.C. closed 23 buildings in 2008. Officials are currently considering another 15 closures.
  • New York City closed more than 140 schools since 2002; leaders recently announced plans to shutter 17 more, beginning in 2013-14.
  • Chicago closed 40-plus buildings in the early 2000s. The district recently released a list of 129 schools to be considered for closure.

This approach follows guidelines first established in the No Child Left Behind legislation, which stipulate draconian changes for any school that fails to meet yearly progress within five years:

These school districts must implement plans to restructure the school. Options for restructuring include:

• Reopening the school as a charter school;
• Replacing all or most of school staff;
• Turning over the school operations to the state or to a private company with a demonstrated record of effectiveness; or
• Other major governance restructuring.

This thinking represents a sea change in terms of strategy with respect to schooling and education policy. Never in our nation's history have we taken apunitive approach rather than an educative approach when schools or children have struggled with demonstrating expected levels of progress.

 

When students experience difficulties in learning we respond by providing remediation, extra tutoring, or alternative teaching strategies--we don't kick them out of school. By the same token, when under-funded and under-resourced public schools do not show "adequate yearly progress," our response should be to find out why these schools are struggling, and provide them with the materials and support they need to improve--not for the charter management companies that run these schools to walk away before the end of the school year, forcing families to scramble to get their kids placed into public schools with little notice and no assistance.

 

Public education is far too important to treat it like a science experiment, with fuzzy methodology and uncertain results. Our children deserve schools that are adequately funded, controlled by locally elected school boards made up of persons with ties to the community and a vested interest in the success of their schools, transparency in reporting of school finances and learning outcomes, and that are founded and administrated with educative goals in mind, not punitive ones.



It's time to demand the return of our schools and our children from Achievement School Districts and the forces of school privatization. Education is not a business, and our children aren't widgets.

ASD_One_Pager_Updated.pdfAdobe Acrobat Document [314.0 KB]

An Achievement School District Primer - Mitchell Robinson: Reforming Reform:

Mitchell Robinson, Ph.D.

Welcome to my web page! Use the links to the left to find resources on graduate study and advising at Michigan State University and information on our doctoral students and graduates in music education.



There is also a link to a page devoted to the distribution of clinic and workshop materials, handouts, research presentations, and other music education resources. All materials are offered free of charge and may be duplicated as needed, with proper citations and acknowledgements. http://www.mitchellrobinson.net/welcome/

Friedrichs v. CTA: Justice Samuel Alito invited union opponents to bring a challenge to Abood before the court.

Is the Supreme Court headed for Bush v. Gore? - Central Connecticut Communications: Opinion:

Friedrichs v. CTA: Justice Samuel Alito invited union opponents to bring a challenge to Abood before the court.

By Harold Meyerson

About a month ago, the Supreme Court closed out its term in a blaze of nonpartisan glory. Or nonpartisan obloquy, depending on one’s reaction to the court’s legalization of same-sex marriage and its upholding of Obamacare — but nonpartisan either way. A court with a Republican-appointed majority upheld a Democratic president’s health insurance program and a marital policy that most Republican officeholders felt obliged to oppose (even if most Republican political consultants felt relieved to see gay marriage rendered a fait accompli).

But that was then. In the term that will begin this fall, the court has a splendid opportunity to deliver the most partisan decision it has rendered since Bush v. Gore. When the court rules in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which will be argued in the coming months, the Republican-appointed justices will be able, if they so choose, to create a long-term advantage for their party over the Democrats.

Friedrichs is a case brought by a California teacher who objects to paying dues to the union that has bargained the contract that secures her pay and benefits. The union does not collect any money from her to support its political activities, but, by virtue of the court’s 1977 Abood decision, and hundreds of later decisions based on Abood, she is obliged to pay that portion of her dues that goes to bargaining and administering her contract. That obligation, the court ruled in Abood, is essential if public employees are to have an effective right to collective bargaining. If employees can benefit from union representation without funding the union, the court reasoned, the union could be weakened to the point that it couldn’t represent those employees adequately, if, indeed, at all.

Last year, however, in an opinion breathtaking for its chutzpah, Justice Samuel Alito invited union opponents to bring a challenge to Abood before the court. The case in which he ruled — Harris v. Quinn — concerned whether home-care workers, employed jointly by individuals and the state of Illinois and covered by a union contract, were required to pay dues. While the majority confined its ruling to home-care workers, Alito devoted most of his opinion to arguing that no public employee covered by a collective bargaining agreement should be required to pay dues. As Justice Elena Kagan noted in her response, Alito was arguing a case that wasn’t even before the court, soliciting a challenge to the very idea of public-sector collective bargaining.

On the final day of its term last month, the court accepted that challenge by announcing it would hear Friedrichs. Friedrichs’s proponents argue that the case is about the free-speech rights of public employees who don’t want to support the union that represents them. The reason the union represents them at all, of course, is that a majority of the employees in their unit have voted to give the union that power -- and they can vote to strip it of that power if they so choose. Absent effective union representation — a real possibility should the court reverse Abood and the union’s resources diminish — they lose the one kind of speech that most matters to workers: the collective voice that workers gain through unions and that enables them to bargain with their managers.

As private-sector unions have dwindled in the face of four decades of employer opposition, public-sector unions have become the nation’s largest and most powerful labor organizations, its leading advocates for a fairer economy and, come election time, a significant source of the legwork for get-out-the-vote operations for progressive Democratic candidates. Their concerns extend well beyond their members’ immediate welfare. The Service Employees International Union, for instance, is the main funder and organizer of campaigns to raise the minimum wage for low-paid (almost entirely non-union) workers and has played a central role in the battle to legalize undocumented immigrants. All the large public-sector unions have devoted significant resources to opposing Republican-backed state laws that suppress minority voter turnout. For decades, they’ve financed and mounted voter registration and turnout campaigns among their own members and in minority communities.

Before it took on its nonpartisan patina at the end of its last term, the court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, had already tilted the political playing field toward Republicans by striking down key portions of the Voting Rights Act and extending a string of rulings that are drowning our elections in billionaire dollars, thereby creating policies (for instance, our tax code) that only a billionaire could love. Ruling for the plaintiff in Friedrichs would whack not only labor — for all its weaknesses, the nation’s only real anti-plutocratic force — but the Democrats as well. Bush v. Gore decided a single election. Should the GOP-appointed justices go partisan again, Friedrichs could decide elections for years to come.

Meyerson is editor-at-large of The American ProspectIs the Supreme Court headed for Bush v. Gore? - Central Connecticut Communications: Opinion:

OKC school district leaders may delay enacting new code of conduct, union leader says | News OK

OKC school district leaders may delay enacting new code of conduct, union leader says | News OK:

OKC school district leaders may delay enacting new code of conduct, union leader says

Union leader Ed Allen, in an email to 2,700 Oklahoma City teachers, said Oklahoma City Public Schools Superintendent Rob Neu is reconsidering a proposal to have teachers create intervention plans for disruptive students and will delay using a new code of conduct.

Oklahoma City Public Schools Superintendent Rob Neu is rethinking the role teachers would play in proposed interventions for disruptive students and will delay implementing a new code of conduct, district teachers were told Friday.

Union leader Ed Allen, in an email to 2,700 teachers, said the delay is "a result of our intense opposition."

"Superintendent (Rob) Neu has agreed that much work remains to be done in order to address our concerns, particularly in regards to the proposal creating 'student support team interventions,' " Allen wrote. "The superintendent has stated to me that these types of interventions cannot be (a) teacher responsibility.

"This is a huge acknowledgement that developing and implementing services for disruptive students will require a tremendous amount of time, time that classroom teachers do not have."

District spokesman Mark Myers declined comment and Neu could not be reached.

Allen and Neu have been at odds over what to do with disruptive students since Neu said he wanted to revise the code to reduce the number and length of suspensions, particularly among minorities.

District officials have said the proposed interventions would result in less behavior issues, an improved school environment and fewer out-of-school suspensions while not "putting any more on (teachers) than what they are currently exposed to."

Allen has been critical of a second level of proposed interventions in which teachers would be asked to work with student support teams to help identify problems students face outside the classroom, provide counseling or recommend other services, according to a draft of the proposed discipline plan obtained by The Oklahoman.

Teachers would end up "bearing the burden of chronic misbehavior," he told school board members July 1.

Allen, who met twice with Neu in recent days, said the superintendent has assured him that teachers "won't have to implement all the work, won't have to sit down and do peer mediation, develop intervention and after-school suspension plans."

"That's for the district or the support team to take care of," Allen said. "Every one of OKC school district leaders may delay enacting new code of conduct, union leader says | News OK:

Academic results produced by charters so bad that even the GOP state legislature is debating serious reforms

Charter schools seek allowances based on students’ poverty | The Columbus Dispatch:

Academic results produced by charters so bad that even the GOP state legislature is debating serious reforms

The charter-school movement flourished in the late 1990s, in part because of its no-more-excuses mantra maintaining that it wasn’t low-income, urban students who had failed, but the traditional school districts that they attended.

“I believe all children can learn,” President Bill Clinton told a campaign crowd at Ohio State University in 1996, announcing his support for 3,000 new charter schools.

Charters would do better, supporters said, because they would be free of bureaucracy.

“If you turn people loose with their creativity, they do better and they will provide a better education,” then-state Rep. Michael A. Fox, R-Cincinnati, said.

Almost two decades later, the academic results produced by charters have been so disappointing that the GOP-controlled state legislature is debating serious reforms.

A charter-advocacy group has begun to quietly lobby officials this summer to lower the bar for the schools, arguing that high poverty and low English proficiency mean charters shouldn’t be compared to the rest of Ohio’s schools.

“The current Ohio report card does a far better job of reflecting student poverty than measuring how well the school performs,” according to the report that the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education privately gave lawmakers in June.

“Located primarily in urban areas, Ohio’s charter school (sic) serve a population that is far more at risk than the average student in Ohio’s traditional public schools. ... A new solution is needed that takes into account student demographics and identifies poor performing schools for turnaround or closure.”

The presentation, which The Plain Dealer reported on Thursday, had been given to state lawmakers as they worked on their now-stalled charter-reform bill. It begins by noting “Ohio’s challenge”:

• The Department of Education projects the majority of charters will fail the new report card.

• Charter-proficiency results could drop another 20 percent from “already failing grades.”

• “Public opinion and media coverage are demanding raised charter accountability.”

• And the state’s report card measures are “greatly impacted by student demographics having an inequitable impact on charter schools.”

The solution, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Dispatch, is to make the charter report-card grades higher by taking into account differences in student demographics when rating schools.

Schools with high concentrations of poor students or students who are highly mobile, have limited English or have special needs should be compared not against all schools in Ohio, as they are now, but against the average performance of schools with similar student makeup, the group said.

Individual charters would be measured not by how they perform overall, but by how they perform against that average, just as a similar model “helped California charter schools make progress to outperform their state’s (district schools).”

“This comparison of actual results to predicted values determines Charter schools seek allowances based on students’ poverty | The Columbus Dispatch:

Standards Are Expectations of Learning | WagTheDog

Standards Are Expectations of Learning | WagTheDog:

Standards Are Expectations of Learning

Many ed reformers who are not experienced educators don’t understand that The Common Core State Standards are cognitive goals and expectations of student learning or “growth”.

The Standards demand a fixed set of cognitive skills that must be learned and levels of performance that must be achieved by every student each school year regardless of individual circumstance and cognitive ability or disability.

Many reformers don’t understand that standards identify the “college ready” skills that must be acquired by learners and they are not simply bestowed or imparted by teachers.

Our students are not standardized, they possess a wide range of cognitive capabilities and disabilities. These abilities and skills do not emerge and “blossom” at the same rate and in the same way.

Unfortunately, the extra academic assistance and support services that our schools and teachers provide for struggling students, may not be enough to compensate for the absence of learning after school hours.

Many students living in poverty begin their schooling lagging far behind in basic skills and vocabulary development. Many do not participate in after school enrichment activities and informal learning experiences during the summer and other breaks that help to support and advance student achievement in school.

Too often, at-risk students who begin their schooling lagging behind their classmates will actually fall even farther behind and the “gap” will increase as they progress through grade levels because their academic growth is delayed and restrained by numerous barriers to learning.

In effect, our disadvantaged students who are “Racing To The Top” have a much greater academic “distance” to travel to reach graduation performance standards and in many Standards Are Expectations of Learning | WagTheDog: