Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 8/1/15

SPECIAL NITE CAP 

CORPORATE ED REFORM

Schools Matter: National Journal's Rose Colored Reporting on Texas CREDO Study

Schools Matter: National Journal's Rose Colored Reporting on Texas CREDO Study: National Journal's Rose Colored Reporting on Texas CREDO StudyWhen the mainstream Washington media finds news on low test scores among public schools, they love to accentuate the negative and to ignore the positive.  On the other hand, when new research about charter schools that can't be ignored comes to the corporate

by mike simpson / 6h 

(What’s So Special ‘Bout) Rigor, Grit and Standardized Testing? | WagTheDog

(What’s So Special ‘Bout) Rigor, Grit and Standardized Testing? | WagTheDog: (What’s So Special ‘Bout) Rigor, Grit and Standardized Testing?In his 1979 song, “(What’s So Funny “Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” Elvis Costello wonders;So where are the strong And who are the trusted? And where is the harmony? Sweet harmony.‘Cause each time I feel it slippin’ away, just makes me wanna cry. What’s

by mike simpson / 8h 

Sixth Anniversary of This Blog | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Sixth Anniversary of This Blog | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Sixth Anniversary of This BlogDear Readers,This post marks my sixth anniversary as a blogger. I want to thank those readers who regularly read my twice-weekly posts, those who have dipped into them occasionally, those who have subscribed to the post, and finally those who have taken the time to write thoughtful c

by mike simpson / 8h 

New guidelines for AP history: Are they still 'unpatriotic'? - Yahoo News

New guidelines for AP history: Are they still 'unpatriotic'? - Yahoo News: New guidelines for AP history: Are they still 'unpatriotic'?Some conservatives argued that last year's guidelines for AP US history courses in high school were unpatriotic. The new guidelines make an effort to be 'unpolitical.'In the wake of a partisan uproar last year, the 2015 guidelines for the Advanced Placement United

by mike simpson / 8h 

Georgia schools investigation: Too many kids are getting sent to special schools.

Georgia schools investigation: Too many kids are getting sent to special schools.: Georgia Sends Kids With Disabilities and Behavior Problems to Special Schools. That’s Segregation.After a psychiatric evaluation and years of reported issues, Clarence, the lovable problem child in Tracy Kidder’s Among Schoolchildren, gets shipped off to finish fifth grade in the mysterious and ominously named “alph

by mike simpson / 8h 

YESTERDAY

Ed Next: If Feds Allow Opt Out, “One Cannot Assess School Performance” | deutsch29

Ed Next: If Feds Allow Opt Out, “One Cannot Assess School Performance” | deutsch29: Ed Next: If Feds Allow Opt Out, “One Cannot Assess School Performance”On July 28, 2015, Education Next editor-in-chief Paul Peterson and executive editor Martin West published an article entitled, “Public Supports Testing, Opposes Opt Out, Opposes Federal Intervention.”In their article, Peterson and West discuss th

by mike simpson / 19h hide  //  save

for the love of learning: Outcome vs. Process: Different Incarnations of Personalization

for the love of learning: Outcome vs. Process: Different Incarnations of Personalization: Outcome vs. Process: Different Incarnations of PersonalizationThis was written by Yong Zhao who is the author writes and speaks about education reform. He blogs here and tweets here. This post was found here.by Yong ZhaoThere are different views of personalized learning. My advocacy for personalization has be

by mike simpson / 22h 

The Argument For Adding Consent To The Sex-Ed Curriculum

The Argument For Adding Consent To The Sex-Ed Curriculum: The Argument For Adding Consent To The Sex-Ed CurriculumAmerican Federation Of Teachers president says consent is "as important as anything else" in conversations about sex.In an age when young people remain divided over what really constitutes consent, one in four college women will report a rape or attempted rape in their lifeti

by mike simpson / 22h 

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 7/31/15

SPECIAL NITE CAP CORPORATE ED REFORM4LAKids - ELI’S COMIN’ …better hide your heart girl4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: ELI’S COMIN’ …better hide your heart girl:ELI’S COMIN’ …better hide your heart girlMESSAGE DATED JULY 8 RECEIVED BY  CORTINES VAPA HIGH SCHOOL/CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL #9 PARENTS ON JULY 31ST…and where’s Dr. Vladovic on the letterhead?Eli’s Comin’ meanings: from Urban Dict

by mike simpson / 23h 

Schools Matter: National Journal's Rose Colored Reporting on Texas CREDO Study

Schools Matter: National Journal's Rose Colored Reporting on Texas CREDO Study:

National Journal's Rose Colored Reporting on Texas CREDO Study

When the mainstream Washington media finds news on low test scores among public schools, they love to accentuate the negative and to ignore the positive.  On the other hand, when new research about charter schools that can't be ignored comes to the corporate editorial offices, the spinners go to work to do just the opposite.  As in the latest coverage by National Journal of the recent CREDO study on Texas charter schools. The study's press release begins with this: "The results of CREDO's Texas report shows that on average, charter schools in Texas show less progress in both reading and mathematics compared to their district school peers."

Below are the study's main findings released July 22, 2015: 

Now there is a star beside the second bullet point because this is the only possible good news in the CREDO report, and it is exactly the one that National Journal (NJ) embellishes to promote the kind of lockdown paternalist charters embraced by corporate and political elites.  NJ's headline reads, "Charter Schools Are Especially Good for ELL Students."

Not surprisingly, NJ's main source to spin their story to benefit segregated charter schools is Steve Mancini, the mouthpiece for KIPP, Inc.  Steve can always be counted on to offer an Orwellian response to any bad news about any of the chain gangs in the No Excuses charter system. Loss is victory, weakness is power, ignorance is knowledge, etc.

The problem with NJ's story about the "good news" for ELLs is that their turd polishing brings attention to Schools Matter: National Journal's Rose Colored Reporting on Texas CREDO Study:

(What’s So Special ‘Bout) Rigor, Grit and Standardized Testing? | WagTheDog

(What’s So Special ‘Bout) Rigor, Grit and Standardized Testing? | WagTheDog:

(What’s So Special ‘Bout) Rigor, Grit and Standardized Testing?

In his 1979 song, “(What’s So Funny “Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” Elvis Costello wonders;

So where are the strong 
And who are the trusted? 
And where is the harmony? 
Sweet harmony.

‘Cause each time I feel it slippin’ away, just makes me wanna cry. 
What’s so funny ’bout peace love & understanding?

Imagine how different education reform and the Common Core State Standards would be if Elvis Costello had been their chief architect and lead writer rather than David Coleman, who infamously declared in April, 2011 at a NY State Department of Education Presentation;

As you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.

Rigor vs. Vigor

The Common Core’s exclusive focus on rigorous math and ELA standards may be well intended, but these standards fail to prepare students for the diverse expectations and vigorous challenges of post-secondary learning and working.

According to the Common Core web site;

The standards are: Based on rigorous content and application 

(What’s So Special ‘Bout) Rigor, Grit and Standardized Testing? | WagTheDog:

Sixth Anniversary of This Blog | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Sixth Anniversary of This Blog | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Sixth Anniversary of This Blog

Dear Readers,

This post marks my sixth anniversary as a blogger. I want to thank those readers who regularly read my twice-weekly posts, those who have dipped into them occasionally, those who have subscribed to the post, and finally those who have taken the time to write thoughtful comments. Over one million viewers from around the world have clicked on to the blog since August 2009. Not exactly viral but, for me, most gratifying.

For the 720 posts I have written since 2009, I have followed three rules:

1. Write about 800 words.
2. Write clearly on school reform and classroom practice.
3. Take a position and back it up with evidence.

For anyone who blogs or writes often knows that sticking to these rules has been no easy task. Yet after six years, it has been very satisfying. I remain highly motivated to write about policymakers, administrators, teachers, parents, and students–all who inhabit the policy-to-practice continuum–and all who in different ways, with varied ideas, seek to improve schooling.

To me, writing is a form of teaching and learning. The learning part comes from figuring out what I want to say on a topic, researching it, drafting a post, and then revising it more times than I would ever admit so that the post says what I want it to say. Learning also has come from the surprises and mistakes I have found in the suggestions and comments readers post—“Did I really say that?” “Oops!, Sorry, “Wow! that is an unexpected view on what I said,” or “I had never considered that point.”

The teaching part comes from putting my ideas out there in a clearly expressed logical argument, buttressed by evidence, for others who may agree or disagree about an issue I am deeply interested in. As in all teaching, planning enters the picture in how I frame the central question I want readers to consider and how I put the argument and evidence together in a clear, coherent, and crisp blog of about 800 words.

Because of my background as a high school teacher, administrator, policymaker, and historian of education I often give a question or issue its historical context. I Sixth Anniversary of This Blog | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

New guidelines for AP history: Are they still 'unpatriotic'? - Yahoo News

New guidelines for AP history: Are they still 'unpatriotic'? - Yahoo News:

New guidelines for AP history: Are they still 'unpatriotic'?

Some conservatives argued that last year's guidelines for AP US history courses in high school were unpatriotic. The new guidelines make an effort to be 'unpolitical.'

In the wake of a partisan uproar last year, the 2015 guidelines for the Advanced Placement United States history curriculum released Thursday feature a more-balanced look at the country, academics say. The guidelines go into effect immediately. 

The AP program, which allows high school students to take college-level courses for credit, is administered by The College Board, a private nonprofit corporation. Political conservatives argued that the 2014 guidelines for US history had an anti-American slant that highlighted wrongdoing and downplayed the achievements of the American people.

The most visible clash came last fall in Colorado's Jefferson County, where the school board proposed to review the course framework in order to ensure that it gave a sufficiently positive view of American achievements. Thousands of students and teachers walked out of classrooms and lined the streets in protest.

Recommended: Are you as well-read as a 12th grader?

The protests in the Rocky Mountain State weren’t an isolated occurrence, with pundits, lawmakers, and even the Republican National Committee weighing in.

In Texas, lawmakers threatened to veto AP US history courses, and Ben Carson, a 2016 Republican presidential hopeful, said that students who completed the class with the new guidelines would be “ready to sign up for ISIS,” a common acronym for the Islamic State.

Liberals might see the new guidelines as The College Board caving in to pressure, but the intent was to move the course away from partisanship, says Jeremy Stern, an independent historian who was consulted for the revision.

He saw the right-wing attacks as “overblown.” In Jefferson County, action by the students and teachers stopped the proposal from going forward, and now the three school board members who supported the measure face a recall vote.

History needs to deal with unpleasant topics as much as high achievements, Mr. Stern says. “You can’t just ignore past injustices because you don’t like them.”

But the 2014 guidelines weren't balanced, he suggests. There were “serious problems” with the old version of the framework, which in some cases didn't put American injustices into a broader framework.

For example, presenting British colonialism without a larger discussion about the abuses of European colonialism in general. 

For some teachers, the 2014 guidelines were successful precisely because they did add at least some level of context. For years, teachers have complained that the AP US history course guidelines lacked detail. That made it difficult to know what they should focus on.

While critics of the 2014 framework focused on the exclusion of specific historical figures, Davis Burton, a teacher at Southmoore High School in Oklahoma who has taught AP US history for 13 years, said the 2014 guidelines were a “triple-jump forward.”

“As a teacher, I never felt like the old framework was particularly helpful,” Mr. Burton says. “It might have Ben Franklin in it, but there wouldn't be anything about what Ben Franklin means in the larger context of American history.”

The new 2015 guidelines now reflect more the idea of the unique characteristics of the United States, including the fact that the majority of the country is made up of immigrants, says Jon Butler, an emeritus professor of American Studies at Yale University. Most of the changes he saw were tightening up language and removing elements that might be confusing.

The guidelines are not a set curriculum. They are meant to guide teachers in general subject matter. Stern sees the new guidelines as an improvement.

“This is a major success for an unpolitical look at American history,” Stern says.

Related stories

• Are you as well-read as a 12th grader?
• Colorado students plan more protests, after board sets up curriculum review
• First Look UVA grads suing Rolling Stone say they suffered 'vicious, hurtful attacks' (+video)
• Studying abroad in conflict zones: Reckless or rewarding?
• Four-day week for Georgia public school district: Does it work?
• UNH offers 'bias-free' language guide: Is 'American' a biased term? (+video)

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Georgia schools investigation: Too many kids are getting sent to special schools.

Georgia schools investigation: Too many kids are getting sent to special schools.:

Georgia Sends Kids With Disabilities and Behavior Problems to Special Schools. That’s Segregation.

After a psychiatric evaluation and years of reported issues, Clarence, the lovable problem child in Tracy Kidder’s Among Schoolchildren, gets shipped off to finish fifth grade in the mysterious and ominously named “alpha class.” The prisonlike alpha class is populated with other problem children and located in another building that Clarence’s current teacher—who doesn’t want him to leave—is not even allowed to visit.

Kidder’s nonfiction book was published in 1989. A year later—25 years ago this week, in fact—the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed, which promised, among other things, full access to public schools for disabled students, in tandem with the 1975 Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, which more explicitly protected special-needs students in schools.

Clarence wasn’t disabled, just extremely disruptive. And in the years since Kidder's book—thanks in part to the passage of these two laws—the practice of simply getting rid of students who take up too much of their teachers’ time has fallen out of official favor. But as a recent Department of Justice investigation of Georgia schools revealed, shunting kids off into separate and unequal schools is still happening all over the country. According to a ProPublica report of the investigation:

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. … [W]hat 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.

The Justice Department found that Georgia schools, rather than trying to work with students in a mainstream setting, were quick to place them in shoddy second-rate ones with inadequate facilities, many of which had been used for black students during Jim Crow. These practices fly in the face both of the IDEA, which mandates that students be educated in the “least restrictive environment,” and of the ADA, which requires that all public facilities serve disabled people in the “most integrated setting.”

And because students often received these placements after even minor behavioral infractions, like using inappropriate language with a teacher, many of the kids who ended up in the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support should have stayed in their neighborhood schools but been given more mental healthGeorgia schools investigation: Too many kids are getting sent to special schools.:

Ed Next: If Feds Allow Opt Out, “One Cannot Assess School Performance” | deutsch29

Ed Next: If Feds Allow Opt Out, “One Cannot Assess School Performance” | deutsch29:

Ed Next: If Feds Allow Opt Out, “One Cannot Assess School Performance”

On July 28, 2015, Education Next editor-in-chief Paul Peterson and executive editor Martin West published an article entitled, “Public Supports Testing, Opposes Opt Out, Opposes Federal Intervention.”

In their article, Peterson and West discuss the current Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) reauthorization that will be heading into House and Senate conference committee in September so that the versions of the ESEA reauthorization that passed the House (the Student Success Act–SSA) and the Senate (the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015–ECAA) might be negotiated to become a single bill.

In SSA, the House includes a blanket opt-out provision. In ECAA, there is also the possibility of opt-out, but states must decide individually on their opt-out policies.

Peterson and West want the resulting ESEA compromise bill to ditch the federal opt-out provision. Here is their reasoning:

One cannot assess school performance accurately unless nearly all (or a representative sample of) students participate in the testing process.

In “nearly all,” Peterson and West are referring to the 95 percent of students that the federal government requires states to test under the current, defunct No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

However, 95 percent of students need not test in order for a state to “assess school performance accurately.”

Consider the research of Peterson and West.

In their post, Peterson and West report results of a survey that they plan to release in full sometime in the near future, and they base their survey results for what all of Ed Next: If Feds Allow Opt Out, “One Cannot Assess School Performance” | deutsch29:

for the love of learning: Outcome vs. Process: Different Incarnations of Personalization

for the love of learning: Outcome vs. Process: Different Incarnations of Personalization:

Outcome vs. Process: Different Incarnations of Personalization

This was written by Yong Zhao who is the author writes and speaks about education reform. He blogs here and tweets here. This post was found here.


by Yong Zhao

There are different views of personalized learning. My advocacy for personalization has been occasionally misunderstood as supporting the narrow view of personalized learning driven by big data and learning analytics with technology or online learning in general. Below is an excerpt of a chapter from a book I coauthored with a group of teachers and school leaders: World Class Learners Bundle to be published by Corwin. Hope it helps clarify my take on personalized learning.–Yong

To personalize is to design or produce something to meet individual requirements. In education, personalization is often used in the forms of “personalized learning,” “personalized education,” or “personalized instruction.” The term personalization is often used interchangeably with individualization, and sometimes with customization. The general idea is to enable individual students to have an educational experience that meets their individual needs.

Although it is has long been recognized that individual students have different needs and high-quality education cannot be “one size fits all,” personalization in education has different meanings and realizations in practice because education has many components that can be personalized, individualized, or customized. For example, personalization can happen at the pace of learning by allowing students to learn at their own speed. Personalization can also be employed to enable students to choose when and where they learn. It can also be used in ways that allow students to have a choice of work assignments in the classroom. Furthermore, personalization is a strategy that enables students to demonstrate their learning by creating a product of their own choosing.

Generally speaking, personalization can be put into two categories: process personalization and outcome personalization. Process personalization enables students to enjoy choice in the learning process, whereas outcome personalization allows students to define the end results of their learning. Process personalization is by far the most prominent version in education today because the current education paradigm has a predetermined outcome for all students. That is, no matter how one gets there, we want everyone to get to the same place: mastery of the knowledge and skills prescribed in the authoritative curriculum or standards.

Personalization of the Learning Process

Although the outcome remains the same, the journey to the destination can be personalized to accommodate different needs, abilities, learning styles, and interests of students. Some of the most common aspects of individualization or personalization that have taken place (or should take place) include pace, content, product, learning environments, and assessment.

Personalization of pace: For all sorts of reasons, students come to school with different abilities and thus will acquire the same content at different speeds. To accommodate different abilities in students, schools have been encouraged to allow students to progress at their individual pace. One of the earliest experiments for self-paced learning is programmed instruction advocated by behaviorist psychologists such as B. F. Skinner in the 1960s for the love of learning: Outcome vs. Process: Different Incarnations of Personalization:

The Argument For Adding Consent To The Sex-Ed Curriculum

The Argument For Adding Consent To The Sex-Ed Curriculum:

The Argument For Adding Consent To The Sex-Ed Curriculum

American Federation Of Teachers president says consent is "as important as anything else" in conversations about sex.

In an age when young people remain divided over what really constitutes consent, one in four college women will report a rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten told HuffPost Live on Thursday how she would tackle the problem: require high school students to learn about consent in sex-ed courses before college.

"What we need to do is bake into [sex-ed] the whole issue about date violence, about consent, and not just put it on the person who could be assaulted," Weingarten told HuffPost Live's Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani. "But this kind of education needs to be directed to young men as well as young women. So we should put this into sex-ed courses -- again, age appropriate, whether they are in middle school or high school."

Weingarten pointed to a Senate bill that would require sexual assault education for high-schoolers as one way to "make sure that kids know the issue about consent is as important [as] anything else when you talk about reproductive rights, and when you talk about biology and all sorts of other things."

Watch experts discuss the need for consent to be incorporated into sex-ed in the video above, and click here for the full conversation questioning if sex-ed can end campus rape.

Sign up here for Live Today, HuffPost Live's new morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!

Also on HuffPost:  The Argument For Adding Consent To The Sex-Ed Curriculum: