Monday, January 25, 2016

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Karen Lewis

"It's just that simple, it's not rocket science, it's negotiations. Nobody's going to be happy, completely happy, with the outcome," she said. "They're going to have to give a little, we have to give a little. That's what contract negotiations are, but we're doing fairly well." --Chicago Tribune

Forrest Claypool on stalled negotiations with CTU

"Our priority is not saving money by a week or two paying teachers. Our priority is to allow the current union negotiation process to come to a positive conclusion, and so buying time is the prudent thing to do in that regard." -- Tribune

Lobbyist on Rauner's failed Chicago takeover attempt

"It's like taking kids away from the junkie mother and giving them to the alcoholic father." -- POLITICO

Sheriff Tom Dart

“Lutheran provides essential services to the very people government is supposed to care for in times of distress. For the Governor to allow these programs to wither way is simply deplorable. Without Lutheran’s diversion programs, my Cook County Jail population will rise, costing taxpayers significantly more in both the short-term and long-term.” -- CBS

Kent Redfield

“Frankly, as much of a public presence as [Diana Rauner] had in the Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

An Open Letter to Teachers and Staff at No Excuses Charter Schools | EduShyster

An Open Letter to Teachers and Staff at No Excuses Charter Schools | EduShyster:

An Open Letter to Teachers and Staff at No Excuses Charter Schools

The former dean of students at a New Orleans charter school urges teachers and staff at No Excuses schools to ask some hard questions about the model’s social and emotional costs…

By Ramon Griffin

Dear You:

You were selected to teach at your school because of your intelligence, spunk, tenacity, vigor and, most of all, your passion for public education. You are a risk-taker. You have a can-do attitude with swag to match. You believe that every child has the capacity to achieve academically and are committing your life to ensuring that you affect change in every student you encounter. Your dedication to ensuring that traditionally marginalized students receive a first class education is commendable. But do you know how much power you hold? Do you truly understand the *No Excuses* school culture that you are part of? Do you know the psychological and emotional costs that the No Excuses model has on students of color? Furthermore, do you care to know?

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post entitled *Colonizing the Black Natives: Reflections from a former New Orleans Charter School Dean of Students.* I started the piece by asking if some charters’ practices were new forms of colonial hegemony. It is vital to add that while I was employed at the school, this

thought never crossed my mind. My writings were taken by some charter management administrators and staff as an *attack* instead of an opportunity critically engage and refine, deconstruct and reconstruct practices that are doing more harm than good. This time around, I’m hoping to encourage teachers and staff at No Excuses charter schools to acknowledge what is transpiring in their schools so that we can begin to push back against these practices and transform our schools.

I’ll start by offering a few examples of my own. When I chased young Black ladies to see if their nails were polished, or if they had added a different color streak to their hair, or when I followed young men to make sure that their hair wasn’t styled An Open Letter to Teachers and Staff at No Excuses Charter Schools | EduShyster:

NY Charter School Diva Defends Harsh Discipline; Parents File Civil Rights Complaint | janresseger

NY Charter School Diva Defends Harsh Discipline; Parents File Civil Rights Complaint | janresseger:
NY Charter School Diva Defends Harsh Discipline; Parents File Civil Rights Complaint

Last Wednesday, 13 New York City parents filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The parents claim that New York’s Success Academy Charter Schools have persistently violated the rights of students with special needs. Success Academy Charters, as charter schools receiving public funding, are required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to protect the rights of children who need special learning accommodations.

Here are the allegations from the complaint as filed: “Complainants allege that Success Academy engages in policies and practices throughout their network which violate students’ rights under Section 504 and the IDEA, including but not limited to:

Success Academy discriminates against students with disabilities by failing to identify them or provide them with reasonable accommodations;
Success Academy discriminates and retaliates against students with disabilities by taking measures to coerce them to leave Success Academy when they require or may require services related to a disability;
Success Academy fails to comply with the disciplinary due process rights of students;
Success Academy fails to refer students who have or may have a disability for appropriate evaluations at public expense; and
Success Academy fails to provide parents with meaningful notice regarding their rights,inter alia, to programs, supports and accommodations.”

Joining the parents in filing the formal complaint are The Public Advocate for the City of New NY Charter School Diva Defends Harsh Discipline; Parents File Civil Rights Complaint | janresseger:

EXCLUSIVE: ESSA and Charter Schools: Part 7 | Diane Ravitch's blog

EXCLUSIVE: ESSA and Charter Schools: Part 7 | Diane Ravitch's blog:

EXCLUSIVE: ESSA and Charter Schools: Part 7

EXCLUSIVE: Lamar Alexander’s Staff Explains ESSA: PART 1 | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/1QlmO8K

EXCLUSIVE: Senator Alexander’s Staff: ESSA and Teacher Evaluation, Part 2 | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/1RzT9Kj

EXCLUSIVE: What Does ESSA Say About Bottom 5% of Schools: Part 3 | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/1SzGMOp

Big Education Ape: EXCLUSIVE: How Does ESSA Affect Opt Outs? Part 4 | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/23jA1V1

Big Education Ape: EXCLUSIVE: ESSA and Special Education: Part 5 | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/1RFlWwU

Big Education Ape: EXCLUSIVE: How Does ESSA Affect Teacher Education? Part 6 | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/1RH715n

This is the seventh in a series of exchanges about the new federal law, the Every Student Succeeds Act. I asked the questions, and David P. Cleary, chief of staff to Senator Lamar Alexander, answered them.

Does the law impose any requirements on charter schools regarding funding, selection of students, financial transparency, or accountability?

Short Answer:

Sen. Alexander has been a long-time advocate of charter schools. In his last act as Secretary of Education in 1993, he wrote a letter to all of the nation’s superintendents encouraging them to look at the idea of creating charter schools like those started in Minnesota.

The Every Student Succeeds Act makes several updates to the federal public charter school program to modernize the program and ensure public charter schools are held to the same standards as other public schools. The charter school program provides federal grants to support the creation of new charter schools, and the new law is updated to also allow such grants to support the replication and expansion of high-quality charter schools. The bill also includes important changes to eliminate barriers to enrollment for some students, increase charter school financial transparency, and include charter schools in the state accountability system in the same way that traditional schools are included.

Long Answer:

Funding: The law continues support for the competitive grant program for grants to states and other state entities for the purposes of opening new, or replicating or expanding high-quality charter schools, and to provide technical assistance to improve the quality of authorized public chartering agencies (including developing capacity for and conducting fiscal oversight and auditing of charter schools). The new law also continues support for the facilities grants programs to enhance the availability of loans or bond financing for charter schools since so many charter schools are denied access to the capital budget of state or local school construction and financing. We also focus efforts at the federal level to make competitive grants to replicate and expand high-quality charter schools to try to build on their success.

Funding in the latest appropriations bill for all of these activities was $333 million.

Selection of students: The new law requires grantees to “work with EXCLUSIVE: ESSA and Charter Schools: Part 7 | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Jeb Bush praises Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder for ‘stepping up’ response to Flint poisoned-water crisis

Jeb Bush praises Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder for ‘stepping up’ response to Flint poisoned-water crisis:
Jeb Bush praises Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder for ‘stepping up’ response to Flint poisoned-water crisis

Jeb Bush on Sunday praised Rick Snyder, the beleaguered governor of Michigan, for “stepping up” in response to the crisis over lead-poisoned drinking water in the city of Flint.

Emails show that Snyder, a Republican, ignored and dismissed the problem more than a year ago, even as children began showing signs of irreparable lead poisoning. A federal state of emergency has been declared.

Calls for Snyder’s impeachment or resignation have come from many quarters, including the Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union , former Florida governor Bush, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, said big government was most likely to blame for the crisis, which occurred after state emergency managers switched the city’s water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint river in a cost-cutting measure.

“I admire Rick Snyder for stepping up right now,” Bush said. “He’s going through the challenge. And he’s fired people and accepted responsibility to fix this. This is going to be a long-term challenge.”

Bush said he had criticized Snyder on the issue, but now applauded the governor for his actions. This week, Snyder apologized.

In an interview with MSNBC on Friday, Snyder said: “I’ve made a focused effort since before I started in office to say we need to work hard to help people that have the greatest need. This was a terrible tragedy. These people work for me. And that’s why it was important to accept responsibility, and my focus is on fixing this problem.”

On Sunday, Bush said: “Instead of saying ‘the dog ate my homework’ and ‘it’s someone else’s fault’, once it became clear, [Snyder has] taken the lead … and that’s exactly what I think leaders have to do.”

In a visit to Michigan this week, Barack Obama said : “If I was a parent up there, I would be beside myself that my kids’ health could be at risk. And that’s why … I declared a federal emergency in Flint to send more resources on top of what we’ve already put on the ground.”

Bush said city, state and federal officials should be talking more about the crisis, which he blamed on “a 20th-century regulatory system in a 21st-century world.

The former governor said he wanted “more accountability and more transparency, so that when reports are done they’re thoroughly vetted”.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2016Jeb Bush praises Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder for ‘stepping up’ response to Flint poisoned-water crisis:

Cartoons on Digital Life | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Cartoons on Digital Life | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Cartoons on Digital Life

For this month, I have selected an array of cartoons that slice-and-dice the influence of digital technologies on our daily lives. Enjoy!

Cartoons on Digital Life | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Hostile Charter Takeovers Sideline Communities – Cloaking Inequity

Hostile Charter Takeovers Sideline Communities – Cloaking Inequity:

Hostile Charter Takeovers Sideline Communities

What the education reformers’ policies (charters, vouchers, high-stakes testing, Common Core, VAM etc.) have in common is that they are top-down and focus on private control and privatization. I discussed these common denominators during the Cambridge Forum that was syndicated nationally on NPR last year.

Cambridge Forum Lecture on Privatizing Education (NPR radio version) https://t.co/eLnboo3kle
— JulianVasquezHeilig (@ProfessorJVH) April 30, 2015

One of the top-down, private control education reformers most prominent tenants are hostile takeovers of neighborhood schools and turning them over to charter corporations. They have undertaken the approach writ large in New Orleans and in piecemeal fashion in Detroit and Tennessee. I discussed the research on these takeover recently in DC at a US House briefing entitled Closed for Learning: The Impact of School Closures. (Check out the post Ghastly Impact of Closing Schools on Students and Communities)

This week I believe that the Center for Popular Democracy will be releasing a new report entitled State Takeovers of Low Performing Schools: A Record of Academic Failure, Financial Mismanagement and Student Harm that is an excellent aggregation of information across these communities. I wrote the introduction to the report and found it comprehensive and informative. Keep a look out— I’ll blog about the report when it comes out.

The top-down, private control education “reformers” like to frame their takeover policies as empowering “parental” and “community” choice. Are they really? Ezra Howard, a doctoral student at the University of Lisbon’s Institute of Education, and a former Memphis, TN teacher emailed me these comments detailing how the hostile charter takeovers empower by the politician’s Achievement School District have sidelined communities instead of empowering them.

In Tennessee, education reformers are conducting hostile takeovers. In 2010, the state legislature created the Achievement School District (ASD) with the charge to rapidly turn around student achievement in schools located on the “priority list,” those in the bottom 5% of the state. In 2011, with list in hand, the ASD began operation with a mix of direct-run schools and those operated by charter management organizations (CMOs). Four year later, the results have been generally poor. While some schools are off the priority list, a recent Vanderbilt study found the results of the ASDHostile Charter Takeovers Sideline Communities – Cloaking Inequity:

Teacher-Recruitment Challenges: A Special Report - Education Week

Teacher-Recruitment Challenges: A Special Report - Education Week:

TEACHER-RECRUITMENT CHALLENGES: A SPECIAL REPORT

This special report explores the factors behind the recent teacher shortages in many areas and highlights initiatives designed to improve district hiring processes and tap new pools of prospective educators. Intended to give education leaders actionable intelligence on the teacher-recruitment landscape today, the stories examine both larger policy issues and more discrete school human resource practices.

Faced With Deep Teacher Shortages, Clark County, Nev., District Looks for Answers

The Las Vegas-area district, along with state officials and stakeholders, has had to experiment with a number of increasingly urgent initiatives designed to tap new pools of potential teachers.