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Monday, August 3, 2015

Chris Christie wants to punch the teachers union in the face. But he isn’t the only candidate attacking educators. - The Washington Post

Chris Christie wants to punch the teachers union in the face. But he isn’t the only candidate attacking educators. - The Washington Post:

Chris Christie wants to punch the teachers union in the face. But he isn’t the only candidate attacking educators.



Leave it to Chris Christie to come up with a new way to court voters in his sagging quest to win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination: directly suggest violence against teachers, or, to be specific, a teachers union that endorsed Hillary Clinton. (One wonders what he might have said if the union had endorsed him.)
In any case, while he is getting a lot of attention for his bellicose rhetoric, a look at the Republican field shows that he is hardly the only candidate antagonistic toward teachers and their unions — and others have been more damaging to the teaching profession, at least so far.
The New Jersey governor was on CNN on Sunday, where host Jake Tapper asked, “At the national level, who deserves a punch in the face?” (Why would Christie get that question? Because he has made it known he likes to deal with bullies by punching them in the face, an approach that would work well in the Oval Office, no?) According to this story by my Post colleague Lyndsey Layton, Christie did not hesitate with a response: “Oh the national teachers union, who has already endorsed Hillary Clinton 16, 17 months before the election.”
Christie meant the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second largest teachers union, which announced in July its endorsement of Clinton. AFT president Randi Weingarten has long been close with Clinton, and though some AFT members are unhappy with the early endorsement, the move could hardly have been a surprise. She was, naturally, not pleased with Christie, tweeting:

She followed up on Monday with this statement:
“Chris Christie has issues—from reneging on his promise to fix pensions to his state’s fiscal standing facing near junk bond status. But the biggest issue is he’s a bully and has anger management problems. That he would threaten to punch teachers in the face—mostly women seeking to help children meet their potential and achieve their dreams—promotes a culture of violence and underscores why he lacks the temperament and emotional skills to be president, or serve in any leadership capacity. It’s a sad day in the life of our nation to see a candidate threaten violence to gain political favor.”
Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, the largest union in the country, wasn’t pleased either:
And some other reaction:
 
Christie’s antagonism toward teachers is legendary. Back in 2013, when a teacher named Melissa Tomlinson asked him at a rally, “Why do you continue to spread the myth that our schools and teachers are failing?” he yelled at her.
“Because they are!”
He also said:
“I am tired of you people. What do you want?”

(Twitter picture above used with permission)

To be fair to Christie, New Jersey unions haven’t always pulled their punches about him. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat him at Chris Christie wants to punch the teachers union in the face. But he isn’t the only candidate attacking educators. - The Washington Post:




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Teach For America Counter-narratives: Two Alumni Books Reframe the Discourse - Living in Dialogue

Teach For America Counter-narratives: Two Alumni Books Reframe the Discourse - Living in Dialogue:

Teach For America Counter-narratives: Two Alumni Books Reframe the Discourse - Living in Dialogue





By Jameson Brewer and Sarah Matsui.
What are counter-narratives? And why are they significant in the conversation?     Counter-narratives are essentially “little stories” of individuals and groups of people whose knowledge and histories have been excluded from the telling of official narratives (Giroux, 1996, p.2). These localized “little stories” have the power to interrupt the grandiosity of the metanarrative, advocate for a fuller, more truthful representation of reality, and encourage new practices to emerge. Because “narratives, storytelling, and counter-narratives can be transformative and empowering for educators, students, and community members (Fernández, 2002, p. 60),” it is vitally important that TFA’s oversimplified, whitewashed version of corps member narratives be offset by what may be more honest descriptions of what it means to be a teacher – specifically a TFA teacher. If for nothing else, the existence and accessibility of counter-narratives provides a much-needed balance to the decades old single-sided rhetoric of education reform.
Two approaches
Both books – while centering on providing counter-narratives to TFA’s dominant narrative – approach the work in different ways. Brewer and deMarrais’ text, “Teach For America Counter-Narratives: Alumnis Speak Up and Speak Out,”  provides a broad collection of voices from diverse alumni. Matsui’s text, “Learning from Counter Narratives in TFA: Moving from Idealism to Hope,” focuses specifically on Corps members (CMs) from TFA Greater Philadelphia’s 2011 and 2012 cohorts to explore patterns within a particular region, the impacts of TFA’s narrative on its own CMs, and the implications of the gap between TFA’s dominant narrative and these omitted counter-narratives.
*********************
            Teaching has long been an embattled profession (Goldstein, 2014), and perhaps, has never really asserted itself as an actual profession (Harness, 2012). Not too disjointed from that, the discourse of schooling in the U.S. has largely been that of failure – a reality heightened since the Regan administration’s A Nation at Risk in the 80s. Then, and now, our society has largely bought into the idea of the failed school and has fit teachers squarely in the crosshairs of blame for that failure. As a result, and partnered with the growing narrative of the neoliberal imaginary that seeks to replace government-run entities with market-based reforms, many have called for the deregulation of teacher education, de-unionization of teaching, and harsher accountability measures to weed out so-called ‘bad’ teachers. And while TFA is certainty not credited with the genesis of pushing for the deregulation of teacher education or other accountancy measures, the organization has clearly capitalized on the idea. And therein lies TFA’s Teach For America Counter-narratives: Two Alumni Books Reframe the Discourse - Living in Dialogue:
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Stop starving public education - journalreview.com: Opinion

Stop starving public education - journalreview.com: Opinion:

Stop starving public education



I had not intended to rebut my friend Michael Gleeson’s column on school vouchers. But I have received several requests from public school educator friends who, for reasons of their own, do not wish to appear in print.
No one disputes that there is a place for the private school as an educational choice. What is in dispute is whether public tax money should be allowed to flow into private pockets, and whether that money should be allowed to inculcate religion by way of the public purse. It is no secret that the greatest beneficiaries of the state voucher program are the parochial private schools run by the Roman Catholic Church.
Before taking up this issue, let me say that no one is happier than I that Mike’s son is doing well in his studies. But while the University of Rochester is a private school, the University of Connecticut is a public land grant school. What is relevant however is that the success of any one student is dependent on many factors: genetics, social position, parental encouragement and others, as well as prior education. There is no evidence that private schools do any better job of educating all students than do the public schools. One might want to look up the article in the Indianapolis Star on “The Case for Eliminating Charter Schools.” And Thomas Jefferson did mean what he said about the mixing of religion and secular government.
The idea that Jefferson was in any way an orthodox Christian is laughable. For example he wrote: “Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on Man.” Jefferson was certainly for the right to the free exercise of every person’s religious convictions, but he did want a solid “wall of separation between church and state.”
Also, “In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.” And again, “The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.” But the most telling use of Jefferson’s concept comes in a letter to the Virginia Baptists in 1808. “Because religious belief, or non belief, is such an important part of every person’s life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power and force their views on persons of other faiths, or no faith, undermines our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state,’ (Jefferson is quoting himself in an earlier letter) therefore is absolutely essential in a free society.
“We have solved by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquires.”
The above statement has been used by the Supreme Court on several occasions to bolster their opinions on this subject. In addition Jefferson edited out all the miracles and references to Jesus being the son of God. He then published a book, “The life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.” The book survives along with two of the Bibles that Jefferson cut up, and it may be read. Please let us be clear. Jefferson was “anti-Christian and pro Jesus. He was anti-religion and pro God” (Waldman). So to assume that Jefferson of all people would approve of any tax money going to religious sponsored schools is ludicrous.
The simple facts are these. Charter schools and especially the voucher system contribute to the Balkanization of elementary and secondary education. The power to tax is a use of government power that is benefiting schools that inculcate religion by means of the voucher system. The public schools are charged with educating each and every child up to the age of 16. That charge includes every bright child, those of average intelligence and those of the most limited ability. They need the resources to do so. Every tax dollar that is used for these “Choice Systems” further starves the public schools of the necessary resources to give the finest education to all students. If one wants to enroll children in a private school, by all means do so. But no public money should flow into any school that is not required to educate all students and certainly not to any school that promotes any one faith over another.
Lastly, the current climate is hostile to teachers in particular. Again, according to the Indianapolis Star, teacher applications are beginning to fall precipitously. We have a climate where state funding constraints, testing pressures and “blame the teacher” mentality are causing students to stay away from teaching as a career. Enrollment at Ball State teacher education has fallen 45 percent. According to state teacher licensing authorities, applications for first time teacher licenses has fallen 63 percent. Many school leaders say the teacher shortage will only get worse (The Indianapolis Star July 13, 2015). We will face a crisis in teacher shortages. We must be careful and much more far thinking in our approach to education than assuming vouchers and charters are a panacea for all our educational problems.


Dan Booher of Crawfordsville contributed this guest column.Stop starving public education - journalreview.com: Opinion:
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Malloy and the Democratic State Central Committee - In plain English it’s called obstructing Justice - Wait What?

Malloy and the Democratic State Central Committee - In plain English it’s called obstructing Justice - Wait What?:

Malloy and the Democratic State Central Committee – In plain English it’s called obstructing Justice






Connecticut’s MUST READ news article of the weekend, in case you missed it, was Jon Lender’s “Delay In Enforcing Subpoena Of Democratic Party Records Raises Questions.”
As Wait, What? readers will recall, in the fall of 2013, it became increasingly apparent that Governor Dannel Malloy and his political operatives were intent on undermining Connecticut’s campaign finance law.  The issues began to surface in an October 31, 2013 post entitled, “Malloy/Democrats make mockery of Connecticut’s once prominent role in campaign finance reform.”
That article was followed by many more…. (See partial list below)
The inappropriate tactics engaged by Malloy and Connecticut’s Democratic State Central Committee generated multiple campaign finance complaints and a major investigation by the State Election Enforcement Commission.
In a virtually unprecedented step the Connecticut’s State Elections Enforcement Commission issued a subpoena for records and documents related to Malloy’s campaign.
As Jon Lender explained,
The SEEC’s May 29 (2015) subpoena sought records that might shed light on the GOP’s claim that Democrats illegally circumvented the state’s ban on contractor contributions last year by collecting state contractors’ money in a “federal account” and using it to pay for mass mailings on behalf of Malloy.
However, instead of complying with the subpoena, the lawyer representing Malloy’s political refused to hand over the required documents and they have done everything they could to delay, derail and prevent a fair, open and thorough investigation.
The Governor who will become the head of the Democratic Governors Association in January 2015 is engaged in a blatant effort to obstruct justice.
Jon Lender writes
“The State Elections Enforcement Commission voted June 25 to go to court to enforce a subpoena that the state Democratic Party has defied rather than hand over the party’s records of communications between Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and top aides about allegedly illegal spending in his 2014 re-election campaign.
The SEEC’s extraordinary action generated a flurry of news reports. But now, more than a month later, all the noise has died down and no such action has been filed in state Superior Court.
What’s going on?
Government Watch addressed that question a few days ago to the office of state Attorney General George Jepsen, which has the responsibility of filing any court action in behalf of the SEEC. A Jepsen spokeswoman responded 
Malloy and the Democratic State Central Committee - In plain English it’s called obstructing Justice - Wait What?:
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It's time to reconsider the parent trigger - LA Times

It's time to reconsider the parent trigger - LA Times:

It's time to reconsider the parent trigger




Five years after California's parent-trigger law was passed, it has not had the dramatic effect on public schools that its proponents hoped it would. Yet it is already at a crossroads in its young life.

The law, passed in haste in 2010 in an effort to empower parents at lower-performing schools, lets them force dramatic change if half or more of them sign a petition. They might demand the replacement of some or most of the staff or vote to turn their school over to a charter operator. They might even close the school altogether. Under the law, the parent trigger is an option only at schools whose scores on the state Academic Performance Index fell below the proficiency mark of 800 and that failed to meet their federal improvement requirements, called Adequate Yearly Progress, for several years in a row. The law limited the trigger option to 75 schools on a first-come-first-served basis to see how it played out; at the time, officials expected the number to be quickly met and expanded.

But that hasn't happened. There have been only four schools in which parents filed petitions that succeeded in forcing a change. Parents at five more schools used the petition process as leverage to negotiate changes, a much less disruptive process, without ever filing an actual petition.



It is hard to know whether these changes have resulted in improved academic performance because the state has for the moment stopped reporting test scores during the switch to new standardized exams. Yet it's encouraging to see that parents have some clout, especially low-income parents who felt their children were stuck at problematic schools. That was the original idea: to give deeply frustrated families a chance to take action when educators ignored them.

That's why this page supported a limited rollout of the parent trigger, despite concerns about the sloppily written law on which it was based — and why we continue to support it in principle despite misgivings both conceptual and pragmatic.

The trigger law raises questions as basic as: Who owns the schools? Do they belong to the parents whose children attend them or to the district voters and taxpayers who fund them and elect the school board? If taxpayers and voters are adamantly opposed to a change that parents support, who ought to get their way? Should a bare majority of parents — not all of whom are citizens, by the way — have enough power to close a taxpayer-funded school, forcing the minority of parents to send their children farther from home? This option has never been exercised, but it remains a possibility.



There are also concerns about whether petition drives are being held in an open, transparent manner, so that all parents have the information they need to participate, and whether the law allows too many fairly good and improving schools to be targeted.

The law remains the subject of dispute. In July, a judge ruled in favor of parents at Palm Lane Elementary School in Anaheim who were trying to use it. The Anaheim City School District had fought back, claiming that because California has suspended the reporting of its tests to the federal government, and isn't publishing its API scores, there were no grounds under the law for a trigger petition. The judge was right. Parents should be able to use the most recent data available for petitions.

But there are permanent changes afoot that could require a rewrite of the law. Not only will the API soon be replaced by something that looks far different, but, at the same time, legislation to reauthorize the federal No Child Left Behind Act would, as currently worded, do away with the federal AYP measurement completely. The parent trigger law is specifically tied to those two measurements.

A new trigger law should create stricter guidelines to target truly low-performing schools, and should prohibit school closures through petition. Trigger petitions must be made public, with all parents informed, and the larger community given a chance to be involved. When a petition prevails and parents are considering proposals for changing management of the school, all parents should have a voice and a vote in the decision, not just those who signed the petition.

The parent trigger remains an intriguing if so-far-unproven idea, but the time has come to start imagining a more thoughtful version.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
 It's time to reconsider the parent trigger - LA Times:


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Global Privatization of Schools IS the Goal | The Economist

The $1-a-week school | The Economist:

The $1-a-week school

Private schools are booming in poor countries. Governments should either help them or get out of their way






ACROSS the highway from the lawns of Nairobi’s Muthaiga Country Club is Mathare, a slum that stretches as far as the eye can see. Although Mathare has virtually no services like paved streets or sanitation, it has a sizeable and growing number of classrooms. Not because of the state—the slum’s half-million people have just four public schools—but because the private sector has moved in. Mathare boasts 120 private schools.
This pattern is repeated across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. The failure of the state to provide children with a decent education is leading to a burgeoning of private places, which can cost as little as $1 a week (see article).
The parents who send their children to these schools in their millions welcome this. But governments, teachers’ unions and NGOs tend to take the view that private education should be discouraged or heavily regulated. That must change.
Chalk and fees
Education in most of the developing world is shocking. Half of children in South Asia and a third of those in Africa who complete four years of schooling cannot read properly. In India 60% of six- to 14-year-olds cannot read at the level of a child who has finished two years of schooling.
Most governments have promised to provide universal primary education and to promote secondary education. But even when public schools exist, they often fail. In a survey of rural Indian schools, a quarter of teachers were absent. In Africa the World Bank found teacher-absenteeism rates of 15-25%. Pakistan recently discovered that it had over 8,000 non-existent state schools, 17% of the total. Sierra Leone spotted 6,000 “ghost” teachers, nearly a fifth the number on the state payroll.
Powerful teachers’ unions are part of the problem. They often see jobs as hereditary sinecures, the state education budget as a revenue stream to be milked and any attempt to monitor the quality of education as an intrusion. The unions can be fearsome enemies, so governments leave them to run schools in the interests of teachers rather than pupils.
The failure of state education, combined with the shift in emerging economies from farming to jobs that need at least a modicum of education, has caused a private-school boom. According to the World Bank, across the developing world a fifth of primary-school pupils are enrolled in private schools, twice as many as 20 years ago. So many private schools are unregistered that the real figure is likely to be much higher. A census in Lagos found 12,000 private schools, four times as many as on government records. Across Nigeria 26% of primary-age children were in private schools in 2010, up from 18% in 2004. In India in 2013, 29% were, up from 19% in 2006. In Liberia and Sierra Leone around 60% and 50% respectively of secondary-school enrolments are private.
By and large, politicians and educationalists are unenthusiastic. Governments see education as the state’s job. Teachers’ unions dislike private schools because they pay less and are harder to organise in. NGOs tend to be ideologically opposed to the private sector. The UN special rapporteur on education, Kishore Singh, has said that “for-profit education should not be allowed in order to safeguard the noble cause of education”.
This attitude harms those whom educationalists claim to serve: children. The boom in private education is excellent news for them and their countries, for three reasons.
First, it is bringing in money—not just from parents, but also from investors, some in search of a profit. Most private schools in the developing world are single operators that charge a few dollars a month, but chains are now emerging. Bridge International Academies, for instance, has 400 nursery and primary schools in Kenya and Uganda which teach in standardised classrooms that look rather like stacked shipping containers. It plans to expand into Nigeria and India. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, Bill Gates and the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private-sector arm, are among its investors. Chains are a healthy development, because they have reputations to guard.
Second, private schools are often better value for money than state ones. Measuring this is hard, since the children who go to private schools tend to be better off, and therefore likely to perform better. But a rigorous four-year study of 6,000 pupils in Andhra Pradesh, in southern India, suggested that private pupils performed better in English and Hindi than public-school pupils, and at a similar level in maths and Telugu, the local language. The private schools achieved these results at a third of the cost of the public schools.
Lastly, private schools are innovative. Since technology has great (though as yet mostly unrealised) potential in education, this could be important. Bridge gives teachers tablets linked to a central system that provides teaching materials and monitors their work. Such robo-teaching may not be ideal, but it is better than lessons without either materials or monitoring.
Critics of the private sector are right that it has problems. Quality ranges from top-notch international standard to not much more than cheap child care. But the alternative is often a public school that is worse—or no school at all.
Those who can
Governments should therefore be asking not how to discourage private education, but how to boost it. Ideally, they would subsidise private schools, preferably through a voucher which parents could spend at the school of their choice and top up; they would regulate schools to ensure quality; they would run public exams to help parents make informed choices. But governments that cannot run decent public schools may not be able to do these things well; and doing them badly may be worse than not doing them at all. Such governments would do better to hand parents cash and leave schools alone. Where public exams are corrupt, donors and NGOs should consider offering reliable tests that will help parents make well-informed choices and thus drive up standards.
The growth of private schools is a manifestation of the healthiest of instincts: parents’ desire to do the best for their children. Governments that are too disorganised or corrupt to foster this trend should get out of the way.The $1-a-week school | The Economist:
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State budget protects districts from low-performing virtual schools

State budget protects districts from low-performing virtual schools:

State budget protects districts from low-performing virtual schools






A little-known provision slipped into the budget signed by Gov. Scott Walker would keep low-performing virtual charter schools from dragging down the report cards of districts that host them.
The new law excludes the achievement scores of virtual charter schools from districts' annual state report cards if more than half the students enrolled in the virtual school reside outside the district.
The provision was sought by the leaders of the only two virtual schools in the state to receive failing grades on their most recent school report cards: eAchieve Academy, hosted by the Waukesha School District, andiForward Academy, hosted by the Grantsburg School District. Both districts still met or exceeded the state's expectations on their annual report cards.
But State Superintendent Tony Evers is critical of the change, saying it's inconsistent with the idea of bringing all publicly funded schools into the same school accountability system. He sought unsuccessfully for Walker to veto the item.
Proponents say virtual charters should be treated differently because they're serving many children not living in the district, who often have not been successful in other school settings and are coming to a virtual charter as a last resort — often bringing low achievement scores with them.
Rick Nettesheim, principal of Waukesha's eAchieve Academy, said district report cards are meant to track the progress of students from elementary school through high school, and virtual school students often come from outside their resident district, which wouldn't accurately reflect the achievement of the district.
"The truth is that virtual schools draw in by their very nature a fairly diverse population of students," Nettesheim said. "Some of that diversity is a large group who are not successful in their resident school, and they look to virtual school as a last hope."
Because they are online programs that allow teachers and students to work from home, virtual schools can enroll children all over the state through the state's open enrollment program.
The Department of Public Instruction lists 32 virtual charter schools for the 2014-'15 school year, with three more proposed for the upcoming school year.
In 2013-'14, the most recent year report cards were issued, 27 of the 31 virtual schools that received state report cards "met expectations." Two "exceeded expectations," and two "failed to meet expectations."
No schools or districts will receive report cards for the 2014-'15 school year. Separate legislation signed by Walker in May paused the system for a year while a new state test was implemented.

Report cards assess performance

In recent years, Wisconsin created a new system to judge public school and district performance. Annual report cards distributed to the public now rank schools and districts in one of five categories, from "significantly exceeds expectations" to "fails to meet expectations."
The new state budget calls for those descriptions to be replaced with a five-star rating system.
The report card scores are based on measures such as achievement on the state test and academic growth over time, as well as school attendance and achievement gaps. Schools started receiving report cards in 2011-'12; districts started receiving them a year later.
The whole system went into place as part of a federally approved waiver from increasingly strict mandates of the No Child Left Behind law. Congress is in the process of rewriting that law.
Nettesheim said the report cards treat students as if they have been enrolled in the school year after year, which is often not the case for virtual schools, where kids from around the state may enroll and drop out more frequently.
He added that virtual schools are still being held accountable because each virtual charter school still will receive an individual school report card. Their scores would simply be excluded from the districtwide report card.
But many brick-and-mortar schools also see high student turnover, and their school scores still contribute to the districtwide report card.
For example, many Milwaukee city schools that serve vulnerable populations see up to a third of students turn over during the school year. Yet their scores still contribute to the Milwaukee Public Schools districtwide report card.

Request drove change

State Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon) added the provision to the budget at the behest of Nettesheim and Joni Burgin, superintendent of the Grantsburg school district. Olsen said the provision will help encourage school districts to continue supporting virtual programs.
"The district is doing mission work (taking on virtual schools)," Olsen said. "I don't think the system is reflected badly on the district; we don't want these districts to not do this anymore because it's bringing down the grade for the district."
Olsen said the provision encourages more districts to host virtual schools because of the reduced risk.State budget protects districts from low-performing virtual schools:
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Is the Friedrichs case an “existential threat” to the teachers' unions? | The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Is the Friedrichs case an “existential threat” to the teachers' unions? | The Thomas B. Fordham Institute:

Is the Friedrichs case an “existential threat” to the teachers' unions?






As you’ve probably heard by now, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Friedrichs vs. California case next year, giving it a chance to strike down union “agency fees” as unconstitutional abridgements of teachers’ First Amendment rights. (Read up on the case with some great posts from Joshua Dunn, Mike Antonucci, Stephen Sawchuk, and Andy Rotherham.)
In a nutshell, teachers already have the right not to join their local unions, even in non-“right-to-work” states like California and New York. But in such states, even if teachers are not union members (and therefore do not pay union dues), the local union can automatically deduct “agency fees” from their paychecks. The fees, which are often substantial, are supposed to support non-political activities, including the costs of collective bargaining. The unions levy these fees to avoid the free-rider problem; without them, teachers could get all sorts of benefits from the unions without paying for them.
 
Legally, agency fees from public employee unions cannot be used to financially support “matters of public concern” (a.k.a. political activities) because non-members can’t be coerced to support political speech with which they disagree. The fees can only be used for “representational activities” such as collective bargaining, arbitration of labor disputes, professional development, overhead costs, and the salaries of union administrators. Rebecca Friedrichs, a twenty-seven-year teacher, and the other plaintiffs argue that in the public sector, even representational activities are inherently political. Bargaining with elected officials (including elected school boards) is tantamount to lobbying them, they claim. Many commentators think the court’s five conservative justices will agree.
 
So if the court strikes down agency fees for public sector unions—effectively making every state a right-to-work state—will that spell the end of the unions and their political influence? We can make an educated guess by examining union strength in the twenty-five right-to-work states that already forbid agency fees. Thankfully, Fordham published a massive study in 2012 on union strength across the country that allows us to do exactly that.
 
To gauge union strength at the state level, we gathered and synthesized data for thirty-seven different variables across five broad areas:
  • Resources and membership, which examined internal union resources (members and revenue) and K–12 education spending in the state, including the portion of such spending devoted to teacher salaries and benefits
  • Involvement in politics, which considered unions’ share of financial contributions to state candidates and political parties, as well as their representation at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions
  • Scope of bargaining, which looked at collective bargaining status (mandatory, permitted, or prohibited), scope of bargaining, and legality of teacher strikes
  • State policies, which considered the degree of alignment between teacher employment rules and charter school policies with traditional union interests
  • Perceived influence, which scored the results of an original survey of key stakeholders within each state, including how influential the unions are in comparison to other entities in the state, whether the positions of policymakers are aligned with those of teachers’ unions, and how effective the unions have been in stopping policies with which they disagree
Using these data, we ranked the relative strength of state-level teachers’ unions in the fifty states and Washington, D.C.
When we published the study, our measure of union strength included whether agency fees were legal or not as a part of the “scope-of-bargaining” area. We remove that variable from the calculation of strength below. Comparing strength to “right to work” status shows that union strength is clearly correlated with whether unions can collect agency fees. (All data are as of 2012.) Eighteen of the twenty strongest-union states allow the collection of agency fees; most of the twenty states where unions are weakest prohibit the practice, though there are a handful of exceptions (Washington, D.C., New Mexico, and Missouri, for example).
* Michigan and Wisconsin passed right-to-work laws in 2013 and 2015, respectively. These rankings were calculated in 2012.
Note: States in yellow prohibit the collection of agency fees.
It’s not hard to understand why agency fees are important; they allow unions to collect revenue from all teachers, not just union members, which can be used in turn to fund a variety of activities. However, it’s clear that unions in right-to-work states are still able to amass resources and exert authority using other channels of influence.
Alabama, for example, prohibits agency fees and is firmly in the anti-labor, socially conservative South, yet its union (as of 2012, at least) was the most politically active in the nation. Alabama had a high unionization rate, and therefore generated a significant amount of revenue per teacher through dues alone. Teachers’ unions in other right-to-work states, such as North Dakota, Nevada, Nebraska, and Iowa, have also managed to hold on to a significant degree of power.
So will a defeat in the Friedrichs case weaken teachers’ unions, especially in blue states like California, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Illinois? No doubt. But don’t consign them to the ash heap of history quite yet. Expect unions nationwide to spend the next twelve months studying up on Alabama and similar states to learn how they too can hold on to power in a post-Friedrichs world. Is the Friedrichs case an “existential threat” to the teachers' unions? | The Thomas B. Fordham Institute:

Big Education Ape: Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association: Justice Alito’s Invitation Accepted | ACS http://bit.ly/1KMjFdm
Big Education Ape: Friedrichs v. CTA: Justice Samuel Alito invited union opponents to bring a challenge to Abood be... http://bit.ly/1KMjJK9
Big Education Ape: Friedrichs v. CTA: The Road to Abood: Where Did the Supreme Court Go Wrong? - Online Library of ... http://bit.ly/1KMjOh9
Big Education Ape: Suit against teachers unions isn't about free speech but silencing members - LA Times http://bit.ly/1GVAaj1
Big Education Ape: Anti-union groups target California teachers » peoplesworld http://bit.ly/1L34V93
Big Education Ape: The End of Public-Employee Unions?- The Atlantic http://bit.ly/1MI5UQn

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Does cursive writing still have cred?

Does cursive writing still have cred?:

Does cursive writing still have cred?


My mother, now in her 70s, has beautiful handwriting. As a young girl, I admired and emulated her expressive script, ultimately winning a couple of penmanship awards for my efforts. My mom was proud and so was I.
But with cursive writing instruction in decline since the 1970s in many elementary schools, widespread pride in the almost artistic form of penmanship seems to be waning.
Some say it’s another casualty of technology and an outmoded form of communication. The increased pressure on public school educators to adopt the Common Core State Standards — which don’t require handwriting instruction — is another reason it’s been dropped from curriculums across the country.
Its very survival may depend on the educators, legislators and parents who believe in the ongoing value of cursive writing in a digital age.
The benefits of pen and paper
Beyond signing birthday cards, endorsing checks and addressing wedding invitations, does cursive writing still have any practical use?
“We feel cursive is essential instruction,” says David S. Lourie, head of St. Anne’s-Belfield School, a pre-school -12 private school in Charlottesville, Va., which introduces preschoolers to cursive and continues its practice through fourth grade. “Penmanship is a step along a continuum, from kids playing with blocks and clay. Keyboarding doesn’t replace handwriting.”
Lourie’s belief is bolstered by studies that show early childhood learners benefit from the fine motor skills and cognitive development it encourages.
Virginia Berninger, professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, is a vocal champion of cursive. Her research shows that printing, cursive and keyboarding are each associated with distinct brain patterns.
Berninger followed children in grades two through five and found a connection between cursive writing and increased neural activity associated with creativity, particularly idea generation.
This year, The Walker School, a private school in Marietta, Ga., introduced “Fine Motor Fridays” after receiving teacher feedback that kids in kindergarten through fifth grade were struggling to open water bottles and snacks. Activities include cursive writing, working with magnets and beading.
“With the rise of swiping and touch screening, kids’ muscles are undeveloped and their hands are more easily fatigued,” says Megan Nellen, Walker’s Lower School principal. “The more children write, draw and apply pressure to paper with crayons or colored pencils, the more they strengthen their fine motor muscles.”
Nellen says kids must be able to sustain their writing muscle through the school day, comparing it to the ability to run distances.
Not all students are getting that type of exercise, however.
Suzi Figueroa, a teacher for 36 years, most recently as a third-grade teacher at Monte Vista Elementary in Phoenix, says her students only receive classroom instruction during the last week of school, once state and district testing has been completed. There’s just enough time to teach kids to sign their names, Figueroa said.
“Back in the day, cursive was an actual course with the expectation that you would achieve a certain level of finesse,” she says. “It was well-valued and the skill was Does cursive writing still have cred?:





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William Lager, Charter Czar, Makes the Drop to Ensure Lack of Regulation of Ohio Charters | janresseger

William Lager, Charter Czar, Makes the Drop to Ensure Lack of Regulation of Ohio Charters | janresseger:

William Lager, Charter Czar, Makes the Drop to Ensure Lack of Regulation of Ohio Charters






It is no longer acceptable to deprecate women as Mike Royko does in his 1978 column “Bucking Hard for the Equal Rights Amendment,” but just for today I am going let Mike Royko’s references to “do gooder ladies” go.  Royko was the very savvy and funny longtime Chicago newspaper columnist. We will focus on his intended topic: the role of money in politics:
“I was talking to an ERA lady recently.  She was fretting that the (Equal Rights) amendment might again fail in Illinois, after all of her hard work… I said, ‘Make the drop.’  She looked puzzled and asked: ‘Make the what?’  ‘The drop. Give them some money.’ She still didn’t understand. ‘Money? For what?’  ‘Bribes.’…  That’s the trouble with the ERA crowd and most do-gooders.  They are earnest, diligent, and energetic.  But they don’t have much sense.  Throughout the history of this state, sly people have been getting what they want out of Springfield.  They haven’t done it by being honest, earnest, diligent, and energetic… They have done it by throwing a shoebox full of money through the transom of a Springfield hotel room.”  (The essay appears on pages 109-111 of One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko.)
What we used to think was the way things were done in Chicago has come to dominate politics everywhere in America.  The result is that the powerful are regularly buying the policies that affect the rest of us, and nowhere is that clearer than in the policies that shape our public schools, the quintessential institution of the 99 Percent.
As with Royko’s column, the subject today is state government, not in Illinois but in my state, Ohio, whose legislature, after a year of crafting some relatively weak oversight of charter schools, went home at the end of June without passing even a weak bill.  Late last month, Patrick O’Donnell of the Plain Dealer reported, “The Ohio House will head off on summer break without voting on the new accountability and financial reporting rules for Ohio’s $1 billion charter school industry that have been in the works for months.  House leaders skipped a vote on the package late last week and have left it off the schedule for Tuesday, the last session before leaving for recess.” “Republican leaders say the delay is to clear up some issues with the just-revised bill.  Others call it an attempt to buy time to water down the bill to please charter school operators who donate to Republican candidates.”  Rep. Teresa Fedor, a Democrat, interpreted the move: “They never will call a vote, which means the tax dollars will continue on the ripoff train.”
As the legislature adjourned for its summer break without doing anything about charters,Doug Livingston clarified the meaning of all this in the Akron Beacon-Journal: “Though there are only 24 online schools among the more than 380 charter schools in Ohio, they receive nearly one in three state dollars set aside (each year) for charter schools or $267 million… The two largest—the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) and Ohio Virtual Academy—received $185 million in state funding.  Two are run by influential for-profit companies.  White Hat Management, which operates Ohio Distance and Electronic Learning academy founded by Akron industrialist David Brennan, and Altair Learning, which operates ECOT and is owned by Bill Lager.  Brennan and Lager have given more than $1.4 million in political William Lager, Charter Czar, Makes the Drop to Ensure Lack of Regulation of Ohio Charters | janresseger:

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