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HispanEduca-PUNTOS de VISTA: periodismo educativo que cubrirá La Florida y Puerto Rico

Jul 02, 2015No Commentsby HispanEduca

Por más detres años he estado encubando la idea. Todo comenzó cuando llegué a la Florida en el año 2012. Fue entonces que, en conjunto y con el incondicional apoyo de mi esposo, fundamos una organización sin fines de lucro para abogar por los derechos de los padres hispanos/latinos/boricuas a reclamar una educación que haga […]

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ACT and Mickey Mouse-style education tactic

Jun 18, 2015No Comments

Who should we trust, the testing mogul (ACT) or Disney? By Lourdes Pérez Ramírez, HispanEduca ACT just informed that they are dropping their Compass (http://www.act.org/compass/student/) placement test, given that their own study supposedly showed “only one in five colleges use high school grades, class rank or any other criteria besides high-stakes standardized tests to decide […]

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Keep looking at Chile to avoid becoming one

Jun 01, 2015No Comments

“Two dead in student protests in Chile; 50 arrested in Chile education protest, and Teen shot in Chile protest dies.” These are the latest news about education in Chile. Latest as in May 29, 2015! Just three days ago, Chilean students were beaten and one is in a death bed, as a result of student […]

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Florida needs a ” Second Foreign Language for ALL” education policy, PRONTO!

May 27, 2015No Comments

By Lourdes Pérez Ramírez HispanEduca In reaction to the Miami Herald’s newspaper article , “The uncertain future of español in Miami-Dade classrooms” ( http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article22190205.html), HispanEduca cannot possibly stay in the margins. There is no doubt that most US citizens understand and value the importance of learning a foreign language. I have no doubt that any parent would […]

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Senador Eduardo Bhatia, el Pinochet de Puerto Rico

May 25, 20153 Comments

  ¡Qué ironía! El   Senador por el Partido Popular Democrático de Puerto Rico, Eduardo Bhatia, emulando al otrora Dictador chileno, Augusto Pinochet,  ha “atentado” contra la democracia al querer  asesinar la única institución que un país tiene para crear y mantener  la verdadera democracia: el sistema de educación pública de la Isla. HispanEduca le recomienda […]

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LULAC, servant of corporate cash, no longer represents the Latino community

May 06, 2015No Comments

I find it so ironic (I really want to say “immoral”) that LULAC National Executive Director is not a Latino/Hispanic/Puerto Rican. It seems that LULAC agrees with a Valencia College (FL) president (who said at a Hispanic Education Summit here in Central Florida), that ” there are no QUALIFIED Latino/Hispanic/Puerto Ricans professors? LULAC Exec. Dir., Brent […]

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Los estudiantes de escuela pública usados como armas de destrucción masiva

Apr 26, 20153 Comments

Por Lourdes Pérez Ramírez (HispanEduca) Orlando, FL. –La práctica neoliberal de usar a los estudiantes de escuelas públicas como las armas mortales para destruir a los estudiantes, a los maestros de escuelas públicas, e incluso al sistema de educación pública, ha llegado a Puerto Rico. Afortunadamente, los maestros y los padres boricuas que abogan por […]

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Crece movimiento contra pruebas estandarizadas

Apr 21, 2015No Comments

La propuesta de Cuomo de usar los datos de las pruebas “common core” para evaluar a los profesores encendió la polémica Por: Juan Garnham de El Diario New York PUBLICADO: APR, 20, 2015 9:30 AM EST Cuando Diana Zavala decidió en 2012 que su hijo no tomara las pruebas estandarizadas, estaba prácticamente sola. “Éramos un […]

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Estudiantes boicotearán exámenes en NY

Apr 15, 2015No Comments

ASSOCIATED PRESS 04/13/2015 NUEVA YORK Los padres que encabezan el movimiento para boicotear los exámenes normalizados en Nueva York afirman que oponerse a que sus hijos los presenten podría ser más útil para la educación de los menores que las pruebas mismas. Mientras más de un millón de estudiantes del tercer al octavo grados se […]

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Pre-inscripción para los talleres ¡Padres con PODER!

Mar 26, 20152 Comments

¿Tiene problemas con la escuela de su hijo? ¿No sabe qué hacer con respecto a los exámenes estandarizados? ¿La escuela no escucha sus preocupaciones sobre su hijo? ¿No sabe cómo comunicarse con los maestros o los consejeros para saber cómo va su hijo en la escuela? ¿Entiende que a la escuela o a los maestros […]

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Chris Christie vows to punch the national teachers union ‘in the face’ because they ‘deserve’ it

Chris Christie vows to punch the national teachers union ‘in the face’ because they ‘deserve’ it:

Chris Christie vows to punch the national teachers union ‘in the face’ because they ‘deserve’ it

Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie said over the weekend that the national teachers union deserved a “punch in the face” because it had become the most destructive force in America’s education system.

In an interview that aired on Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper reminded the New Jersey governor that he had advised people to punch bullies “in the face” during his first term as governor.

“At the national level, who deserves a punch in the face?” Tapper wondered.

“Oh, the national teachers union,” Christie replied without hesitation. “They’re not for education for our children, they’re for greater membership, greater benefits, greater pay for their members.”

“And they are the single most destructive force in public education in America,” he added. “I’ve been saying that since 2009. I’ve got the scars to show it, but I’m never going to stop saying it because they never change their stripes.”

Watch the video below from CNN’s State of the Union, broadcast Aug. 2, 2015.

Reforming schools, again and again

Reforming schools, again and again:

Reforming schools, again and again

For the last 20 years, we’ve pushed and pulled the K-12 education system so much that it’s nearly unrecognizable — especially if you grew up in the falsely idyllic world that existed before we knew about the achievement gap, learning disabilities or the damage caused by inequities in school funding.

It’s hard to argue that reform wasn’t, and isn’t, necessary. A high school diploma that leaves its recipient unprepared for career or college isn’t worth much, and an educational system that works for middle-class white kids and fails everyone else isn’t public education, not by any reasonable definition of the words.

And so much of education reform has aimed, with varying degrees of competence, to address that deficiency. There have been efforts to more evenly fund school districts, regardless of community wealth, and to install consistent standards and expectations that don’t accept a student’s race or economic status as an excuse for inadequate education.

The state created the Educational Achievement Authority, a state reform district, to manage and improve the lowest-performing schools. There have been reforms — and this is where things get tricky — to offer alternatives to traditional public schools, such as charters or online education, that aren’t doing the job.

That’s “school choice,” in reform parlance.

Here in Michigan, the push for school choice has encompassed the creation of charter schools, schools of choice that accept students from other districts, the elimination of the cap on charters and repeated attempts to legalize vouchers, a mechanism that allows parents to use taxpayer dollars to pay for private school. These are all components of a broad national agenda premised on the idea that free-market principles can improve education.

Reformers intent on school choice promised that the marketplace would reward good schools and force bad ones to close.

But that’s not how it’s worked.

Proponents of school choice say it offers parents real alternatives to failing schools. Critics say it beggars traditional schools, leaving less money to educate nearly the same number of kids in schools burdened by the same fixed costs.

They’re both right.

The state allocates per-pupil funding on the basis of enrollment, so when a student leaves a traditional public school for a charter or a schools-of-choice district, the traditional school’s revenue declines. Because kids who leave are scattered across a district, it’s almost impossible to make cuts that correspond to the funds that were lost — it’s not as simple as eliminating an entire class, or shuttering a school building.

But there are no guarantees that a charter school will outperform a traditional school — in fact, a Free Press report last year found that in too many instances, charter outcomes are the same or worse as the schools they were meant to replace.

So, here we are: We’ve found a cure, but it may be worse than the sickness.

Gov. Rick Snyder is preparing to propose legislation intended to fix Detroit Public Schools, which remain in both academic and economic crisis. It’s not the only troubled district in Michigan, so no matter which remedy Snyder develops for DPS, it will likely be applied elsewhere. Snyder’s proposing, among other remedies, a central commission to oversee both traditional public and charter schools in Detroit, with a common enrollment system and consistent educational standards.

The Legislature is advancing bills that will emphasize third-grade reading skills, an indicator of future academic success, and reform teacher evaluations, although not based on the recommendations of a commission created to revise the system.

We’re still waffling over how best to test whether students are meeting the Common Core educational standards, an attempt to create voluntary national guidelines for educational attainment. Because our governor is a Republican, and the GOP dominates both chambers of the Legislature, it’s unlikely we’ll deviate far from the GOP playbook.

On the choice front, vouchers are verboten in Michigan, but Great Lakes Education Project Executive Director Gary Naeyaert says he expects a legal challenge to that prohibition.

So where do we go from here?

Well, there’s Minnesota, which has invested heavily in pre-K, and has raised taxes to support schools. And Massachusetts, where per-pupil funding is allocated according to student needs, and teacher training and development is state-supported.

Or there’s Nevada, where vouchers, rebranded as “education savings accounts,” have gotten traction. Nebraska’s version of vouchers allows parents to apply state and local funds to private school tuition, online education or homeschools.

Or Wisconsin, where a newly created Milwaukee education commission can privatize public schools.

Education at present is a chaotic landscape, with no quality controls, says John Austin, president of the state Board of Education. Austin wants to see more substantive control of charter schools, a greater effort to shut down those that don’t meet state standards.

Naeyaert says the opposite: Low-performing public schools must go. If DPS disappears, he says, replaced by charters and schools of choice, he won’t have much heartburn.

Oddly enough, Richard McLellan, the architect of Michigan’s charter school law and the state reform district, seems to side with Austin. Charters have become part of the establishment, he says, so they’re now part of the problem. And at least in Detroit, he says, the school-choice people haven’t done a very good job.

But disruption, McLellan says, leads to change, even if it’s difficult.

It’s safe to say that Michigan’s schools are changing. Again. But into what, no one can say.

Contact Nancy Kaffer at nkaffer@freepress.com. Reforming schools, again and again:

The Arts: One More Victim of Common Core Testing - Part 1 - Work in Progress - Education Week Teacher

The Arts: One More Victim of Common Core Testing - Part 1 - Work in Progress - Education Week Teacher:

The Arts: One More Victim of Common Core Testing - Part 1

Everywhere you look there are the arts, and their huge capacity to add value to our lives is something schools need to better understand. Like many, I am convinced that the standardized testing that resulted from the NCLB legislation and Obama's Race To The Top has done significant harm to our educational system and the students it serves.

Here I take a look not only at its impact on the arts, but also some practices that schools commonly use and how I think they can be changed for the better. By the arts, I'm referring to music, art, drama, and dance as they are taught in schools.

Since standardized testing began, there has been pressure to spend more of the school day on the subjects being tested. From what I have seen, just about every district has increased lessons dealing with math and English language arts. In most schools the cost of extending the school day for such lessons is prohibitive so the extra math and ELA time has had to come from somewhere.

Certainly the arts have taken some of these cuts along with subjects like science, social studies, and physical education. In my school music was cut from twice a week to once every six days, which is a 60% cut. Art was only cut by 20% but it still took a significant hit. I haven't seen a national study that details the average cutbacks for schools, but it is easy to find articles that focus on specific schools like mine.

Since much of the music program in a school falls into the extra curricular arena, it also tends to be a much bigger target for budget cuts in general. In New York State, for example, districts are generally limited to a 2% increase in their local tax levy each year unless they get permission of 60% of the voters to go higher. The drama and dance programs are also hit for the same reason.

How Music Education Should Change

As an amateur musician, I have a fairly good idea about this. I earned a varsity chorus letter in high school (please don't laugh too hard), earned tuition money in college playing in a rock band, and have been a member of a number of church and community choirs since. As principal I played and sang for assemblies and for smaller groups. I still preform for school groups and do guest appearances in churches. My father played piano for a dance band in the 1920s and 30s so I guess I got my music gene from him.

In 1952 I began my music career thanks to a kindergarten activity called rhythm band. I don't recall how often we did this during our half-day session, but it was far and away my favorite. The teacher passed out a rhythm instrument of some sort to each student and lead the band by singing and or playing the piano. In the last twenty years I have visited kindergartens in many schools and I have yet to see one with rhythm band in the curriculum. I think it's time to bring it back. The instruments would be inexpensive but the teachers would need some musical skill. Perhaps the most musical kindergarten teacher in the school could do this activity with all kindergarten classes.

Over the years I have seen the work of many wonderful music teachers. I've seen schools with class sets of pianos and guitars and even one school with a class set of steel drums. Not only are the concerts great entertainment, but they also do a great job of pulling parents and other community members into the school. The lesson for all schools is if you want to get parents into your school, put their kids on stage. If there is a downside to what music teachers do, it can be traced to the fact that when they lead a group they are referred to as directors. What they essentially do is tell all students what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. This leaves little or no room for innovation or creativity on the part of the students. This is true to a lesser extent in sports where students have to do a lot of their own thinking once the game starts.

Some music teachers do, however, allow for creativity on behalf of the students. At just about any level you can challenge students to make up lyrics to a given melody. This can support the ELA effort as can reading lyrics while singing. After they learn a bit about musical notation, you can ask them to create their own melodies. At some point you can expect them to add harmonies. I suspect that students with better musical aptitude will go beyond class expectations and write more original music. I've even seen some music directors use student created work as performance pieces for school groups. Another place where students commonly improvise is the student jazz band. If your school has one or more of these groups be sure that the students create their own solo parts.

The Poverty Problem

Another problem the music program faces is growing participation with children who lack parental support and resources. Many performing groups have rehearsals in the evening. This almost always requires parents to get their children to school and pick them up. In my district many poor parents didn't have cars and lived too far from the school to walk. While voices are free, instrumental groups often require the rental or purchase of instruments. Wealthier parents also routinely pay for private lessons to supplement what the school music teacher can do. Even though most band directors can play every instrument, there will be some instruments where they have little skill. This was the case for my daughter who played French horn. Without private lessons there was no chance that she would make the select band or the regional orchestra.

This problem became obvious to me the first time I attended a middle school concert that my daughter played in. At that time I was principal of a high poverty elementary school and my students feed into the same middle school as the elementary school my daughter attended. My The Arts: One More Victim of Common Core Testing - Part 1 - Work in Progress - Education Week Teacher:

Shortage puts uncertified teachers in Arizona classrooms

Shortage puts uncertified teachers in Arizona classrooms:

Shortage puts uncertified teachers in Arizona classrooms

When Cesar Aguirre learned his daughter’s first-grade teacher had resigned in the middle of the school year, he was alarmed.

That turned to dismay as weeks passed and Jasmine — whose speech delay affected her reading ability — started falling behind.

Now a third-grader, Jasmine emerged from the experience relatively unscathed. But Aguirre remains concerned that Arizona has such a tough time fulfilling his modest expectations for his daughter’s classroom: a certified teacher who would stick around all year and could meet her educational needs.

That’s more than many Arizona children can expect. Public schools statewide are struggling to fill vacancies as they attract fewer new teachers and more experienced ones retire or leave the profession for more lucrative careers. Teacher say low pay, long workdays, a lack of professional respect and opportunities elsewhere are luring them away from a field they love.

As a result, thousands of kids may find themselves in classrooms without a certified teacher this fall.

“When you put all of these things together, it’s sort of a perfect storm,” said Cecilia Johnson, a state Education Department executive whose official title is associate superintendent of highly effective teachers and leaders. “We do believe we are in a crisis.”

HELP WANTED

Tucson-area school districts had 217 vacant teaching positions as of July 17, an Arizona Daily Star investigation found.

Elementary schools accounted for over a third of the vacancies. Teacher jobs in math, science, English, special education, physical education and media arts also went unfilled.

Statewide, districts and charter schools needed special education teachers the most. Thirty-seven percent of respondents in a 2014 Arizona School Administrators survey said they needed special ed teachers. Second on the list was high school math teachers, at 18 percent.

The Tucson Unified School District, the area’s largest, had more than 100 vacancies before the 2015-2016 school year began. The district is trying to find certified teachers for those posts, but for now it is partnering with long-term substitute teachers to provide a semblance of consistency.

Long-term subs, however, can work only 120 days at one site — 60 days short of a 180-day school year. Exceptions can be made if a substitute is highly qualified.

The ideal is to place someone familiar with the subject matter, but if that’s not possible, certified teachers often share or write lesson plans to help. Principals also work to ensure instruction is up to par.

“Having quality adults in front of children is really the core of our business,” said Steve Holmes, superintendent of the Sunnyside Unified School District. “Being fully staffed is mission-critical.”

The district, which had 40 vacant teaching positions as of July 17, works with teaching students earning certification through programs such as the New Teacher Project and through Pima Community College and University of Arizona South, he said.

FLEEING THE PROFESSION

Nearly 4,500 teachers left Tucson-area districts in the last five years, Star research shows.

A key reason is the size of teachers’ paychecks. State Education Department data show that teacher salaries in Arizona and in the Tucson area have not changed much in the past five years. Several local districts froze pay in the face of increasing budget cuts.

That’s part of what has driven away teachers like Lissa Keegan, who taught special education in the Vail Unified School District. She left teaching in May after 15 years and moved to Oregon to take a job as a technology consultant for a school district in Portland County.

The new job comes with a hefty salary jump, she said, not to mention all the resources the district has for students with special needs — something she said she did not have in Vail.

“If you’re a first-year teacher, Hobby Lobby pays more now,” she said. “If you work at Hobby Lobby, you don’t have grading to do after.”

Starting teacher salaries in Tucson average about $32,000 a year, which is higher than it was five years ago for all Tucson-area districts but Tanque Verde, where starting teachers are earning about $200 less than they were.

While the pay has not increased, the workload has. Stacy Haines, who taught English and journalism in the Sunnyside Unified School District, said teachers were increasingly expected to Shortage puts uncertified teachers in Arizona classrooms:

Top 5 reasons for teachers leaving jobs in AZ

1. To pursue a position in another district or charter

2. Pay scale

3. To pursue another career outside of education

4. To pursue a position in another state

5. Working conditions

Data source: 2014 Arizona School Administrators Association Survey

Top 5 obstacles in recruiting out-of-state teachers

1. Salary

2. Arizona state certification

3. Location of state

4. Cost of moving/Arizona education funding rank

5. Arizona politics

Data source: 2014 Arizona School Administrators Association Survey

Related Links

• Interactive: Teacher shortage in Tucson and Arizona by the numbers