Teachers Talk Depression, Training, Facilities, Bullying; The Atlantic Talks “Poop”

Teachers Talk Depression, Training, Facilities, Bullying; The Atlantic Talks “Poop” | Education Town Hall Forum: Archives, Announcements, & Extended Discussion on Weekly Broadcasts...:

Teachers Talk Depression, Training, Facilities, Bullying; The Atlantic Talks “Poop”

 Inside Philanthropy published an article in May exploring the intersection of journalism and private, agenda-specific money. In particular, the article looked at a $550,000 grant to the Atlantic from the Walton Family Foundation – with its stated goal of catalyzing a “national movement demanding choice and accountability” in education – asking: “So how, exactly, does the Atlantic help the foundation advance its game plan?”

The article – “What’s Up With That Big Grant to the Atlantic Monthly from the Walton Family Foundation?” – states that authors had seen no “overt bias toward a Walton worldview in Atlantic’s pieces” while also noting lack of disclaimers in the magazine’s education coverage.

But an article published this week has many readers declaring that the Atlantic is now evidencing anti-teacher and union-bashing attitudes – often associated with the Waltons, as well as with the Gates foundation, which also funds the publication.

All About Poop?

The July 27 article cites a recent national teacher survey sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers and the BadAss Teachers Association. But author Alia Wong fails to interview anyone associated with the Quality of Work-Life Survey, dismisses most its findings, and calls for skepticism toward results because the AFT “clearly has a vested interest in advocating for better work conditions for educators, as does the Badass Teachers Association.”

Wong ignores findings about bullying, poor school facilities, and lack of decision-making. Instead, she zeroes in on only one of four “health and well-being” summary points, declaring: “perhaps the biggest takeaway is somewhat buried in the summary report: Of the various everyday workplace stressors educators could check off, one of the most popular was ‘Lack of opportunity to use restroom.’”

HEALTH AND WELL-BEING:

• 45% do not get adequate bathroom breaks;
• 44% are not able to use the breaks they do get.
• Only half say their school district encourages them to take sick leave when they are ill.
• 26% of respondents say that in the last 30 days, their mental health (stress, depression,
  emotional challenges) was not good for 9 or more days.
• 51% work in facilities that are only fair/poo

— from “Quality of Worklife Survey” Summary (full summary here and more from the AFT on the survey)

Nine percent of respondents said they’d suffered assault at school, and 30% said they’d been bullied. Wong talks about Teachers Talk Depression, Training, Facilities, Bullying; The Atlantic Talks “Poop” | Education Town Hall Forum: Archives, Announcements, & Extended Discussion on Weekly Broadcasts...:

CURMUDGUCATION: NC Education of Tomorrow

CURMUDGUCATION: NC Education of Tomorrow:

NC Education of Tomorrow

Raleigh, North Carolina, April 2019



Political leaders gathered to celebrate today as Department of Education bulldozers upgraded the last NC public school, replacing it with a picturesque park.



"It has been a long road," said State Education Biggifier Harlen McDimbulb., overseeing the work as the dozer knocked down the last chart-encrusted data wall. "But our big breakthrough came with the court ruling that certified our voucher system back there a few years. That finally allowed us to get money and support to outstanding schools like God Loves White Guys High and Aryan Academy. Great private schools were being denied public tax dollars just because they wouldn't teach state-approved so-called 'fact' and 'science.'"



"Vouchers opened the door," said Assistant Secretary of Money Laundering Chauncey Gotbux. "But with the court's blessing, we were finally able to use public education tax dollars as they were meant to be used-- as a source e of profit for people who deserve it."



Asked about the looseness of oversight and accountability for the tax dollars, Gotbux replied, "When you give the money to the right people, you can trust that they do the right thing with it."



"There were some serious problems," admitted Golly Mugbungle of the Greater North Carolina School Choice Initiative Authority. "We quickly streamlined the process so that non-public schools could get their money just by asking for it and completing a simple yet rigorous form. But since the form only asked 'Are you a school' and we had no follow-up investigation to look at those claims, we discovered that we were mistakenly sending tax dollars to public schools." He chuckled nostalgically. "Yeah, we had to shut that down pretty quickly."



"The upgrade of public education in NC required several different initiatives," said McDimbulb. "It helped to set up a clear choice for parents-- would you rather have your child trapped in third grade forever while he tries to pass the state's reading exam, or in a fun private school where reading is only occasionally taught at all? Do you want your child stuck in a school where she has to sit in rooms with the children of Those People, or do you want her to be able to relax with children of the right kind of folks?"



"Initially the exodus was a little too slow," added Mugbungle. "We helped that along with the Furniture and Accessories Initiative of 2017. Under that law public schools, in addition to the CURMUDGUCATION: NC Education of Tomorrow:

Georgia is Segregating Troublesome Kids in Schools Used During Jim Crow - ProPublica

Georgia is Segregating Troublesome Kids in Schools Used During Jim Crow - ProPublica:

Georgia is Segregating Troublesome Kids in Schools Used During Jim Crow

A Department of Justice investigation found that Georgia is giving thousands of kids with behavioral issues a subpar education and putting them in the same run-down buildings that served black children decades ago.

Georgia has been illegally and unnecessarily segregating thousands of students with behavioral issues and disabilities, isolating them in run-down facilities and providing them with subpar education, according to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Some of the students in the program were schooled in the same inferior buildings that served black children in the days of Jim Crow. The investigation found that many of the buildings lack gyms, cafeterias, libraries, labs, playgrounds and other amenities.

"It's a warehouse for kids the school system doesn't want or know how to deal with," a parent told the Justice Department of the program. The Justice Department detailed its findings in a letter earlier this month to Georgia's governor and attorney general.

Federal law mandates that schools educate students with disabilities in the "least restrictive environment" in which they can learn and thrive. More broadly, public entities must serve people with disabilities in the "most integrated setting."

But what the Justice Department found in Georgia is something that persists across the country: Schools continue to inappropriately segregate students with a range of behavioral needs and disabilities.

Children are often placed in more restrictive settings because traditional public schools show little flexibility in working with students who may need more support.

In Georgia, schools were quick to move children out of mainstream classrooms, the Justice Department noted. In some cases, students were recommended for placement after a single incident or a string of minor incidents, such as using inappropriate language with a teacher. Parents reported feeling pressured into agreeing to the placements.

In fact, many students who were placed in what's called the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS, didn't actually need to be there, the Justice Department said. Most could have stayed in their neighborhood schools if they'd been given more behavioral or mental-health support. "Nearly all students in the GNETS Program could receive services in more integrated settings, but do not have the opportunity to do so," the letter said.

What's more, because the state has set up a system that tilts toward providing services in segregated settings, the letter said, Georgia "undermines the availability of these services in more integrated settings."

A spokeswoman for Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal referred questions to the Georgia Department of Education, whose spokesman referred questions to the Attorney General's Office. Daryl Robinson, counsel to the Georgia Attorney General, told ProPublica, "We don't have any comment at this time."

This isn't the first time that the GNETS has drawn scrutiny. In 2010, a state audit found that the programs "are not held accountable for student performance" and questioned Georgia is Segregating Troublesome Kids in Schools Used During Jim Crow - ProPublica:

We Won’t Get Great Teachers By Treating Them Badly

7/30/2015 – We Won’t Get Great Teachers By Treating Them Badly:

We Won’t Get Great Teachers By Treating Them Badly

We Won’t Get Great Teachers By Treating Them Badly

By Jeff Bryant

“The bigger, unaddressed issues affecting teachers’ work environments are the current love affair with economic efficiency and the cognitive dissonance among believers in the education “reform” movement that although teachers are the ‘single most significant’ determiner of student academic outcomes, we need to make their jobs harder and less secure.”
Read more …

NEWS AND VIEWS

Poverty Disturbs Children’s Brain Development And Academic Performance

Scientific American

“For children, growing up poor hinders brain development and leads to poorer performance in schools … Up to 20% of the achievement gap between high- and low-income children may be explained by differences in brain development … Children who grew up in families below the federal poverty line had gray matter volumes 8 to 10% below normal development. [The researchers] did not find differences between children from middle class and affluent families but those only 50% above the poverty line showed gray matter volumes 3 to 4% below the norm … More money does not necessary mean better outcomes but at a certain point a ‘drop-off’ effect of income occurs where a lack of financial resources is detrimental to development.”
Read more …

‘These Kids Are Just Pawns’: The Rising Toll of Inequitable School Funding

NEA Today

“Reading, Pennsylvania is one of the nation’s poorest cities … Tour Reading’s 19 schools and you’ll see mostly aging buildings with broken floor tiles, leaky ceilings sprouting patches of mold, students crammed into too-small classrooms, and feral cats squatting under classroom trailers … Just a mile and a bridge away, Wyomissing Area School District – where 77% of students are White – spends a whopping $4,000 more per pupil each year. Students attend bright and modern schools, have a rich curriculum, and smaller class sizes … Research shows that students in districts with concentrated poverty benefit greatly from high-quality early childhood education, tutoring, ELL programs, dropout prevention measures, and other services … Those are the very programs that have been scaled back or cut altogether due to lack of funding in Reading schools.”
Read more …

What Ohio Gov. John Kasich Is Doing To Public Education In His State

The Washington Post

“With two-term Ohio Gov. John Kasich joining the crowd of candidates for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, it’s a good time to look at the public education mess that has developed in his state … Under his watch, funding for traditional public schools … declined by some half a billion dollars, while funding for charter schools has increased at least 27% … despite the fact that many charters are rated lower than traditional public schools … Ohio charters … misspend tax dollars more than any other public sector.”
Read more …

Using The Restroom: A Privilege – If You’re A Teacher

The Atlantic

“A recent survey conducted jointly by the American Federation of Teachers and Badass Teachers Association asked educators about the quality of their worklife … 3 in 4 respondents said they ‘often’ feel stressed by their jobs… Of the various everyday workplace stressors educators could check off, one of the most popular was ‘lack of opportunity to use restroom’ … putting it in third place only after time pressure and disciplinary issues … One of the most pervasive strains on teachers’ lives at work has little to do (at least directly) with the problems that get the most attention in policy circles and the media.”
Read more …

Teachers Are Spending Thousands to Stock Classrooms With Basic Supplies

Alternet

Classroom teacher Bronwyn Harris writes, “During my last year of teaching, I spent over $5,000 of my own money on my classroom during the year, and I know I wasn’t alone. On an annual salary of $42,000, that was hardly pocket change … Many public schools, even districts located in wealthy areas, do not give their teachers any money for supplies … Even the more generous PTA grants of $500 or higher don’t provide for much past the initial setting up of a classroom … Relying on private donations only works in middle- and upper-class areas … You often find teachers purchasing food for children who don’t eat enough at home. I’ve had friends buy clothing for children, especially socks and underwear, and I even know one teacher who bought a bed for a student who didn’t have one.”
Read more …

7/30/2015 – We Won’t Get Great Teachers By Treating Them Badly:

Arne Duncan on Accountability in ESEA Reauthorization - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Arne Duncan on Accountability in ESEA Reauthorization - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Arne Duncan on Accountability in ESEA Reauthorization 

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan may only have eighteen months left in office—but they're critical months when it comes to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The House and Senate each passed bills that take aim at the Obama administration's K-12 priorities when it comes to teacher evaluation, standards, and more. While the Republican-backed House bill was somewhat of a lost cause, the administration couldn't secure much of its ask-list in the Senate bill—particularly when it came to beefing up accountability—before it passed with big bipartisan support.

So what will be the administration be pushing for in conference? How far would the bills need to go on accountability to be acceptable to Duncan and the White House? I chatted briefly with Duncan on the phone for some answers. (The basic gist: If you thought Duncan was going to tip his hand on just how much of a rollback of the federal role in K-12 would be acceptable in a conference report, think again.)

Here's an edited transcript of our conversation:

I know accountability has been really important to you as you head into conference. How far are you willing to compromise on that? Is it the Murphy amendment or nothing? (Quick refresher: Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., introduced an amendment during Senate consideration of the ESEA reauthorization bill that would have increased accountability provisions in the legislation. It failed, 43 to 54, but garnered support from most Democrats in the Senate, and even one Republican, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio.)

We don't draw lines in the sand like that. I just think, again, this is really a civil rights law and the focus on equity has been part and parcel of what this thing has been about and we absolutely need to maintain that. As we go into conference we're expecting and hoping that people will take this seriously. As you know, the House and the Senate are working very hard. I made a number of calls to senators today actually. And I think people understand that you can't leave those roots or abdicate that responsibility. And to be clear, I think, because words mean different things to different people, accountability to me is not simply transparency, it's not simply labeling an issue. While the transparency and the data is important, it's actually doing something about it. So ... when students are struggling, intervene, when you have the lowest performing schools, take action. So it's the action part here that I think that is important.

So there's no piece of that amendment you would be willing to put aside? 

We're just not to that level of detail yet. ... Again we want and need a strong bill that supports students, that protects students, and that holds all of us accountable for student outcomes and making sure that children who are the most vulnerable, who are the most disadvantaged, who historically have had the least educational options get what they need and deserve.

You've been a champion of accountability during this debate. But many civil rights groups would argue your administration weakened accountability through waivers by letting states pause school ratings, giving California a double-testing waiver, and letting the 85 percent of schools that aren't focus or priority schools off the hook. So what is your response to those criticisms? Did waivers open the door for weakening accountability?

I think we've all tried to work together really hard on this and what you've seen through the waiver process is a number of states—and I'll give the example of Minnesota—that have set the very important and ambitious goal of cutting the achievement gap by half. In a perfect world we'd love to see those achievement gaps disappear tomorrow, but historically you couldn't have that kind of goal under No Child Left Behind. So it creates some room for folks to innovate, to do the right thing by children, to be focused in this work, and we want to continue to build upon that as we move forward.

Under both bills the Secretary of Education would be prohibited from interfering with standards, evaluations, and more. How might that hamstring you or your successor? What do you expect would happen to the federal role?

This really isn't about me. What you want is you want whoever the next person ... the next 20 secretaries, you want them to be able to administer and implement the law. So I think there's some common sense middle ground that we can get to.

How important is it to keep the early childhood education program that's authorized under the Senate bill, but not the House?

It's hugely important. Obviously we pushed very hard for that. I actually called Senator Isakson today ... to thank him for working on that. We absolutely need to keep early childhood education in there because learning starts at birth, not at age 5.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan speaks at Seaton Elementary School on Jan. 12 in Washington. --Swikar Patel/Education WeekArne Duncan on Accountability in ESEA Reauthorization - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

A Few Lessons That AP U.S. History Can Teach the Common Core - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week

A Few Lessons That AP U.S. History Can Teach the Common Core - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week:

A Few Lessons That AP U.S. History Can Teach the Common Core 

This morning, the College Board released its newly revised version of the AP U.S. History framework. As readers may recall, last year marked the first time that the College Board put out an extensive framework for AP U.S. History. The resulting framework had real problems. The College Board initially went into a defensive crouch and dismissed critics as uninformed know-nothings. However, the College Board then shifted gears. It talked to critics, acknowledged the problems, and went back to the drawing board. The result was the revised framework released this morning. As one who was quite critical of the initial version, I'll just say that the result has fully answered my concerns.

If you're interested in the particulars, check out this analysis that Max Eden and I published this morning over at National Review. Meanwhile, as I've been noodling on this outcome, it struck me that there are some intriguing parallels to the Common Core kerfuffle. The most obvious is that the president of the College Board who so deftly managed the AP U.S. History imbroglio is David Coleman . . . the same guy who was point on the Common Core state standards (the management of which has not been nearly as deft). At a glance, you might think the history situation would've been tougher to handle. After all, history is more politically fraught than reading and math. AP U.S. History is the work of one none-too-beloved private vendor, whereas the Common Core enjoyed the sponsorship of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Yet the College Board seems to have learned from, benefited from, and largely defused the blowback . . . while the Common Core's path looks quite different.

I think that there are at least four insights worth noting here.

First, someone was actually in charge of AP U.S. History. The College Board had the clear authority to make revisions and could be called to account for doing so. One of the challenges with the Common Core enterprise has been that it has never been quite clear who would make any adjustments or is manning the complaint desk. This posed a design challenge that advocates still haven't really sorted out.

Second, the context of the AP U.S. History rollout meant that the blowback could be addressed. The new framework was rolled out gradually and for just one school subject. This helped make it possible for the College Board to hit the pause button and address concerns. Meanwhile, the Common Core blowback didn't really start in earnest until 2012, when people first started to encounter or hear about the standards that their states had signed onto two or three years earlier. That early, widespread, Race to the Top-fueled adoption of the Common Core meant that the machinery was up and running, making any kind of course correction much tougher to contemplate. And the grand scope and ambition of the Common Core—reshaping instruction and instructional materials for grades K-12 and across the nation in one fell swoop—made that kind of response tougher still.

Third, after some initial missteps, the College Board didn't disdain its skeptics. Instead, it purposefully reached out to them. For instance, I was much harsher with regard to the AP U.S. History framework than I have ever been with regard to the Common Core (about which I've always been fairly ambivalent), and yet the College Board took time to understand my concerns. My own experience is that the panoply of Common Core advocates (outside of CCSSO chief Chris Minnich) have shown remarkably little interest in reaching out to hear or discuss concerns. Instead, figures as prominent as the U.S. Secretary of Education have dismissed Common Core skeptics as an uninformed, conspiratorial "fringe." Of course, this has fueled skeptics' frustrations and concerns.

Fourth, when confronted with blowback, the College Board acknowledged that its process may have been unintentionally insular and initiated a process for incorporating feedback and addressing concerns. The College Board could have protested that it had already done all of this (which it had)—but it instead took its lumps, recognized its process had been a lot less inclusive than intended, and did something about it. The Common Core coalition responded very differently. Common Core advocates insisted that the design process had already been exhaustive, that all legitimate A Few Lessons That AP U.S. History Can Teach the Common Core - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week:

Mayor Johnson’s attorney releases list of ‘private’ emails | The Sacramento Bee

Mayor Johnson’s attorney releases list of ‘private’ emails | The Sacramento Bee:

Mayor Johnson’s attorney releases list of ‘private’ emails

As part of an ongoing legal battle, private attorneys for Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson have compiled a list of 158 emails and associated documents that they believe should be considered privileged and withheld from public view.

The log, released Wednesday by the city, lists communications between Johnson, his aides, associates and attorneys in 2013 when Johnson was waging a battle for leadership of the National Conference of Black Mayors, an Atlanta-based group in which the mayor was a key player and, at one point, the head. The list does not contain the emails or documents themselves.

The Sacramento News & Review and The Sacramento Bee submitted separate Public Records Act requests for documents and correspondence that might offer insight into that fight.

More than 6,100 pages of emails and 16 documents were released earlier this month and not in dispute. They showed Johnson’s takeover of the black mayors group depended heavily on the backs of city staff and volunteers, who used official city titles, letterhead and the city seal in their correspondence and presentations.

One of the mayor’s attorneys, Peter Haviland of Ballard Spahr LLP, could not be reached Wednesday about why he believes the 158 emails and associated documents are privileged. The mayor’s attorneys throughout the log said the messages and documents involved advice and opinion from Johnson’s counsel, as well as discussions of legal strategy during a court battle over control of the group.

Many of the emails were transmitted only between Sacramento City Hall employees and volunteers, based on a list of the senders and recipients.

Ballard Spahr reviewed about 475 emails that the City Attorney’s Office pulled from the public record as potentially privileged. Hundreds of documents Ballard Spahr did not flag as privileged are expected to be released Thursday by the city.

Attorneys for the News & Review, a named defendant in the mayor’s suit along with the city of Sacramento, will review the list to determine which of the emails and documents, if any, they agree are legally privileged, and where they disagree with the mayor’s attorneys, said Nick Miller, co-editor of the publication.

“We’ll be looking at this and consulting with our attorney,” Miller said. “This is a priority for us. We want to resolve this as soon as possible.”

Although The Bee submitted a request for the documents, the newspaper was not listed as a defendant in the mayor’s lawsuit after agreeing to allow the city attorney to independently determine whether correspondence was subject to attorney-client privilege. Michael Benner, senior deputy city attorney for Sacramento, has indicated that the city has no authority to protect documents under that privilege if a private attorney is involved.

City officials have said it will be up to the News & Review and the mayor’s attorneys to try to come to an agreement. Otherwise, the court likely will make a determination on what is releasable.

The Bee can ask the court to review records on the log for release if it believes any additional documents should not be subject to attorney-client privilege.

Johnson spokesman Ben Sosenko said Wednesday night that the mayor’s attorneys are willing to release what they legally should.

“From the beginning, our attorneys only wanted the chance to review emails to see if they fall under attorney-client privilege, the same privilege granted to everyone,” Sosenko wrote in an email. “After reviewing the emails, our lawyers determined that the majority do not fall under attorney-client privilege and there will now be hundreds of more emails added to the thousands already made available under the California Public Records Act.”Mayor Johnson’s attorney releases list of ‘private’ emails | The Sacramento Bee:

NCBM Privileged Document Log

Mayor Johnson's staff

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article29510275.html#storylink=cpyMayor Johnson’s attorney releases list of ‘private’ emails | The Sacramento Bee:

Construction still king of big-money vendors for K12 schools | The Watchdog blog

Construction still king of big-money vendors for K12 schools | The Watchdog blog:

Construction still king of big-money vendors for K12 schools

 90 of the state’s biggest vendors had contributed about $1.8 million to Gov. Nathan Deal’s campaigns 

We reported last week that health care had overtaken road-builders and other construction companies as the state’s biggest vendors in recent years. But there is one place construction remains king: K12 schools.

The state allocates more than $10 billion a year in state and federal funding for schools, and a vast majority of it goes to teacher pay and benefits.

There are also a few vendors for food services and educational materials who do big business with the state’s school systems, according to the Open Georgia web site.

But 14 of the 25 biggest payments to vendors last year went to construction companies, who keep plenty busy in a growing state that always seems to be building or renovating schools.

Some of the top school construction companies – like their road-building counterparts – have been big donors to state politicians over the years, and with good reason. The governor and lawmakers must approve spending plans each year. The state this year will send districts about $230 million for construction. Districts raise tens of millions more through local taxes.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last week that 90 of the state’s biggest vendors had contributed about $1.8 million to Gov. Nathan Deal’s campaigns and his political action committee. Many of them are also frequent donors to the campaigns of top lawmakers.

The AJC’s investigation examined how common it is for the campaigns of politicians to hit up the people who do work for the government. The issue was raised anew by the recent conviction of former DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis, who was accused of strong-arming contractors for campaign contributions.

While companies like C.W. Matthews and E.R. Snell in Metro Atlanta have long been dominate road-builders for the state, Parrish Construction of Perry has led the way in school construction, according to the Open Georgia site. Districts reported paying about $241 million to Parrish for school construction from fiscal 2010 through fiscal 2014, the last year for which figures are available.

The company and its executives have contributed about $30,000 to state candidates since 2009, including about Construction still king of big-money vendors for K12 schools | The Watchdog blog:

Why Is Jeb Bush So Cozy With A Discredited Charter School Mill? | Observer

Why Is Jeb Bush So Cozy With A Discredited Charter School Mill? | Observer:

The Company You Keep: Why Is Jeb Bush Cozy With a Discredited Charter School Mill? 

Jeb Bush, who often touts his education policy expertise as a job qualification, has long backed a charter school company with an appalling record

At the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Jeb Bush posed the following question: Everywhere in our lives, we get the chance to choose. Go down any supermarket aisle – you’ll find an incredible selection of milk. You can get whole milk, 2% milk, low-fat milk or skim milk. Organic milk, and milk with extra Vitamin D. There’s flavored mil—chocolate, strawberry or vanilla—and it doesn’t even taste like milk. They even make milk for people who can’t drink milk. Shouldn’t parents have that kind of choice in schools? In his time since leaving the Florida Governor mansion, Mr. Bush’s nonprofit, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, pushed public policies that offer the educational equivalent of spoiled milk. These policies also happened to benefit one of his foundation’s donors, Herndon, Virginia based K12 Inc., a pedagogically controversial virtual charter school management company. Founded in 2000, the for-profit company on the New York Stock Exchange operates virtual public charter schools that enroll more than 130,000 students around the United States. The company has contributed between $85,000-$175,000 to Mr. Bush’s foundation since 2011. For Jeb Bush, expanding virtual learning has been a core part of his education philosophy. In 2010, along with former Democratic West Virginia Governor Bob Wise, he chaired a “Digital Learning Council,” which ultimately released “10 Elements of High-Quality Digital Learning, a comprehensive framework of state-level policies and actions designed to advance the meaningful and thoughtful integration of technology into K12 public education.” The document proclaims, “states must advance bold reforms to make systemic changes in education to extend this option to all students.” Prominent education historian Diane Ravitch told the Observer, “Part of it is [Bush] likes any alternative to public schools. And he has promoted charters and vouchers and virtual charters.” The debate surrounding education reform aside, K12 Incorporated has a sketchy record. The company has been entrusted with hundreds of millions in public education dollars, but it has left in its wake a litany of scandals, lawsuits, and pedagogical failures. “K12 has a record of spending a lot of public money on marketing and recruitment, but they have terrible results,” said Ms. Ravitch. Whitney Tilson, managing partner of Kase Capital Management, a hedge fund, echoed this view. Unlike Ms. Ravitch, Mr. Tilson is an advocate of charter schools. He sits on the board of groups, including Democrats for Education Reform and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. At the 2013 Value Investing Congress he laid out his case against K12 in a 133-page presentation in Read more at http://observer.com/2015/07/the-company-you-keep-jeb-bushs-ties-to-a-dubious-charter-school-mill/#ixzz3hO78abdm 

Follow us: @observer on Twitter | Observer on Facebook Read more at: http://tr.im/gzWLZ

NY EDUCATION POLICY IS FOR SALE TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER: A Tale of How Money Talks

NY EDUCATION POLICY IS FOR SALE TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER: A Tale of How Money Talks. | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

NY EDUCATION POLICY IS FOR SALE TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER: A Tale of How Money Talks.

Although the NYT article leads with this headline, “Bloomberg Is NO Longer Mayor, but His School Agenda Thrives in Albany”, Kate Taylor of the NYT has really highlighted how 2 major reformer lobby groups have bought Governor Cuomo and enough of the State Legislature to ensure their brand of privatization of schools wins the political battles in Albany.

These two groups, StudentsFirstNY and Families for Excellent Schools, have basically written Governor Cuomo’s policies, specifically tying teacher evaluations to standardized test scores, creating new hurdles to achieving tenure, and increasing the number of charter schools in the state. Although they would make it seem that these are “for the children” in fact they are right up Cuomo’s vengeance alley to get back at the unions who have not supported him and his election.

It is not surprising also that the same people who back StudentsFirstNY are major donors to the Cuomo campaign. Also not surprising is the huge amount of contact between StudentsFirstNY staff and leadership and the governor’s office since his reelection.

A little background.

StudentsFirstNY was founded in 2012 by Joel I. Klein, who had been the schools chancellor for more than eight years under Mayor Mike Bloomberg; Michelle Rhee, a former Washington schools chancellor; and the billionaire hedge fund managers Daniel S. Loeb and Paul Tudor Jones. It receives some support from StudentsFirstNY, the national organization Ms. Rhee founded in 2010, but has its own board of directors and functions independently.

To quote Emily Litella of Saturday Night Live fame, “ That’s so funny I forgot NY EDUCATION POLICY IS FOR SALE TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER: A Tale of How Money Talks. | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

The PARCC Race to the Top Contract and Its 26 State MOUs | deutsch29

The PARCC Race to the Top Contract and Its 26 State MOUs | deutsch29:

The PARCC Race to the Top Contract and Its 26 State MOUs

When the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) applied for Race to the Top (RTTT) funding on June 30, 2010, it submitted this 1,609-page application.

The Executive Summary (pages 7 and 8) is an enlightening read. Apparently, PARCC planned to be the indispensable vehicle for translating the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into well-measured reality in classrooms nationwide.

Here is an excerpt from the PARCC-centric fairy tale:

Leverage technology for innovation, cost efficiency and speed. The Partnership will administer a streamlined computer-based assessment with innovative item types near the end of the school year, enabling annual combined results from the through-course and end-of-year components to be reported back quickly enough to include information about progress toward college and career readiness on every student’s report card. …

The common assessment system will help make accountability policies better drivers of improvement. States that consider the results from common assessments for school accountability determinations and for teacher and principal evaluations will signal the kinds of good instructional practices that will meet the CCR (college and career ready) standards.

And, my personal favorite:

Teachers will have an assessment system that provides as much for them as it asks from them. Teachers will be able to focus their instruction on clear targets rather than guessing which standards the tests might cover, and those targets will represent meaningful progress toward an evidence-based standard of college and career readiness. The Partnership will also provide teachers with an array of training tools to use the assessment results to inform instructional planning and better understand what CCR student performance looks like.

The remainder of pages 7 and 8 are worth reading if only for the humor they provide in The PARCC Race to the Top Contract and Its 26 State MOUs | deutsch29:

Sacramento News & Review - Ain’t no sunshine: the final Bites column - Bites - Opinions - July 30, 2015

Sacramento News & Review - Ain’t no sunshine: the final Bites column - Bites - Opinions - July 30, 2015:

Ain’t no sunshine: the final Bites column

On good government—and a goodbye

This is the last Bites column.

Mayor Kevin Johnson’s “ad hoc committee on good governance” is wrapping up its work. And, would you believe it, the committee has concluded that Sacramento city governance is pretty much fine as it is.

The committee—made up of Johnson’s staunch supporters on the city council, Angelique Ashby, Jay Schenirer and Allen Warren—has met privately for nine months. It held three poorly attended public meetings—the last of them in the lobby of City Hall last Thursday. And the committee has come up with or more or less nothing to improve ethics and transparency in city government.

Schenirer told the dozen people assembled—double the turnout at previous public forums, he explained—that the ad hoc favors the idea of creating an independent election redistricting commission, but that, “We have not spent a lot of time really talking about it.” In any case, the committee recommendstaking no action on redistricting until after the next election (after 2016).

Similarly, Schenirer told the group that the city’s current rules on ethics and transparency are “pretty strong” as they are. And the ad hoc committee does not favor the creation of an independent ethics commission with enforcement power—something most other large California cities have.

The discussion inevitably turned to Sacramento’s policies on city emails and public records. Schenirer and City Clerk Shirley Concolino spent time defending the city’s decision to begin destroying emails it deems “unimportant.”

This was not in any way a discussion about what sort of public-records policy citizens want to have. It was city officials telling people what the policy is going to be. No pretense of public input.

Last Friday, a superior court judge agreed to block destruction of about 15 million city emails. City Attorney James Sanchez complained that citizens are “trying to dictate” the city’s email policies. Sanchez has got it exactly backward. He doesn’t get to decide what kind of public-records policy is good enough. Neither does the city clerk. That decision belongs to the public.

Schenirer said that the ad hoc committee is willing to meet in August with outside groups like Eye on Sacramento, the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, who have been pushing for a package of ethics and transparency reforms as part of a bigger “Sacramento Integrity Project.”

“We’re listening,” Schenirer told representatives of the group.

They’re not really listening. The ad hoc committee’s efforts have been half-hearted at best. By contrast, the Sacramento Integrity Project has held 10 community meetings, some very well-attended, and is moving forward withSacramento News & Review - Ain’t no sunshine: the final Bites column - Bites - Opinions - July 30, 2015:

K.J. attorneys admit vast majority of 'privileged' emails in SN&R lawsuit not privileged after all - Sacramento News & Review

K.J. attorneys admit vast majority of 'privileged' emails in SN&R lawsuit not privileged after all - Page Burner - July 29, 2015 - Blogs - Sacramento News & Review:

K.J. attorneys admit vast majority of 'privileged' emails in SN&R lawsuit not privileged after all

Let’s do a quick recap:

SN&R requested emails from the city of Sacramento pertaining to Mayor Kevin Johnson and the National Conference of Black Mayors.

The city of Sacramento was prepared to release these emails in June.

K.J.'s attorney’s threatened to sue our writer Cosmo Garvin for requesting the emails.

We ignored the threats.

K.J. actually sued us.

We went to court.

The judge said that K.J.'s attorneys and the city attorneys needed to create a “privilege log” of the emails. This log includes who sent them, who received them, the subject, etc.

Weeks passed.

Today, we received the privilege log.

Turns out, K.J.s attorneys only consider 87 of the 475 emails withheld from SN&R as protected under attorney-client privilege.

What’s next?

Well, we’re going to look through the privilege log to see what’s in there: K.J. attorneys admit vast majority of 'privileged' emails in SN&R lawsuit not privileged after all - Page Burner - July 29, 2015 - Blogs - Sacramento News & Review: