The Struggle to Unionize Within LA’s Biggest Charter Chain | The Nation

The Struggle to Unionize Within LA’s Biggest Charter Chain | The Nation:
The Struggle to Unionize Within LA’s Biggest Charter Chain
And the lengths that Alliance College-Ready Public Schools will go to stop it.

 Last spring, seventy teachers announced their plans to form a union at Los Angeles’s largest charter school chain, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools.The news could not have come at a worse time for the city’s business community, led by the Broad Foundation, whose unprecedented plan to make the district 50 percent charter was leaked a few months later. Alliance College-Ready, led by the Broad Foundation’s former managing director, was to be at the center of these plans.

A union breakthrough into the city’s largest charter operator, just as this 260 charter school expansion was supposed to begin, however, would fundamentally undermine the Los Angeles boosters’ union-free vision for the nation’s largest ever charter school district.

Almost immediately after the announcement, Alliance’s private management organization began crafting plans to counter the campaign. Only a month after the drive launched last spring, an internal memo was leaked, advising administrators on how to discourage staff from unionization, noting candidly, “the goal is no unionization”. 

Documents, obtained by The Nation, show that Alliance’s leadership has not only made efforts to discourage pro-union teachers, but also to pit parentsagainst these teachers. Emails from last May, for example, show that Alliance coached paid alumni students, hired through the California Charter Schools Association, to phonebank parents with an anti-union script and collect parent signatures against the union. The documents also show that Alliance has been working with top political consultants to mobilize “parent captains and parent supporters” against the union campaign.

According to one version of the anti-union script as of May 2015, former Alliance students were paid to call parents and read the following: “Having a teachers’ union would be a big change for the Alliance.  It would end the independence that the Alliance has to make decisions on behalf of kids. And – I don’t know about your kids – but I chose to go to the Alliance because of the small class sizes, great teachers, and personalized attention. [Add any other reasons you chose to attend the Alliance.]” (emphasis original)

Script for Parent Calls 5-19-15 by TheNationMagazine

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And though many teachers have cited large class size and over testing as their reasons for supporting the union drive, the script continues, “If UTLA unionized at the Alliance, UTLA would get involved in decisions about those things – like how to evaluate teachers and how much learning time kids get. Even class sizes – and a lot more – would need to be approved by UTLA.”After finishing the script and asking parents to sign an anti-union petition, the The Struggle to Unionize Within LA’s Biggest Charter Chain | The Nation:

Teachers union endorses testing opt-out movement - Houston Chronicle

Teachers union endorses testing opt-out movement - Houston Chronicle:

Teachers union endorses testing opt-out movement

The Houston Federation of Teachers has endorsed parents' right to opt their children out of standardized exams, joining a national movement against high-stakes testing.

The union, in a resolution released Monday, called the Houston Independent School District "ground zero for the over reliance on and inappropriate use of standardized tests." The nation's seventh-largest district uses students' exam results to evaluate teachers and to decide who receives performance pay. The bonus program, however, may come to an end in early 2017 amid a looming budget shortfall.

Texas law does not recognize opting out as an option for students. The Texas Education Code states, "A parent is not entitled to remove the parent's child from a class or other school activity to avoid a test or to prevent the child from taking a subject for an entire semester."

Several dozen parents in the Houston area opted their children out of state testing last year, according to advocates.

The Houston teachers' union, which has about 6,100 members, said in the resolution that it recognizes the right of parents to opt their children out of "high-stakes testing, test prep and test related activities."

In addition, the union vowed to "directly support" parents who keep their children from testing if union members at the school sanction the movement. Zeph Capo, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said the union wants to be sure school staff and communities are on board given the potential consequences. For example, if too many students stay home, it could affect a teacher's job evaluation, particularly if the children are high-performing.

Union officials may support parents by helping them organize, Capo said, perhaps lobbying lawmakers to pass a bill allowing for an opt-out option.

The Houston school board passed a policy in late 2015 that made clear the district did not endorse opting out, but said students who do not take the tests "will not be subject to negative consequences or disciplinary action."

Texas public school students must pass state exams to graduate from high school, though lawmakers recently allowed for Teachers union endorses testing opt-out movement - Houston Chronicle:

Standardized Tests Are a New Glass Ceiling | The Nation

Standardized Tests Are a New Glass Ceiling | The Nation:

Standardized Tests Are a New Glass Ceiling

Women do better in class and worse on tests—and there are consequences.

(by Annie Zhang)

Hardly a week goes by without a panel, conference, or
 symposium on luring women into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers. Even the president has joined in: “We’ve got half the population that is way underrepresented in those fields.” He has his numbers right. Women currently receive less than a fifth of all bachelor’s degrees in physics, computer science, and engineering. In the last national count, only 8,851 women had majored in mathematics and statistics.

We’ve heard most of the reasons, not least hostility in laboratories. But a more central cause became apparent as I began researching the teaching and testing of mathematics. Standardized testing in math, where women do significantly worse than men, is setting women back before they even begin college. Since mathematics is the first hurdle for STEM fields, women are unlikely to sign on if they’ve already been told that they don’t measure up. We know that the problem is the test. It’s not the students, because girls and women are getting better grades than boys and men in high-school and college mathematics courses. Without changing our methods for measuring ability, we stand little chance of changing the gender imbalance among our scientists and engineers.

The importance we assign to standardized tests is eclipsing that of assessments by sentient teachers. Each year, more weight is given to scores disgorged by the ACT and the SAT, backstopped by the GRE, MCAT, and LSAT, not to mention standardized Common Core tests, which are given over to firms like Pearson and McGraw-Hill. Computer-awarded scores are touted as objective, whereas grades bestowed by teachers are seen as subjective, if not tainted by biases. (An ACT study intimated that the principal victims of prejudice were Standardized Tests Are a New Glass Ceiling | The Nation:

Thank You, Melissa Harris-Perry | The Nation

Thank You, Melissa Harris-Perry | The Nation:

Thank You, Melissa Harris-Perry

The most diverse, intellectually bracing show on network news was treated as expendable, and its host would not have it. She and her show will be sorely missed.

This weekend, a show that mattered to its audience as few programs on the vanilla ice-milk buffet that passes for news do, The Melissa Harris-Perry Show on MSNBC, was canceled, and it’s a tragic as well as angering turn of events. “Ties were severed,” as an MSNBC executive put it, after Melissa, who I am proud to count as a colleague, sent an email to her staff explaining why she would not be hosting her show this past weekend after several weeks of having the program pre-empted for election coverage. The “scorching” email, now public, is being cherry-picked in articles, particularly the part where Melissa wrote, “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head.”

I want to encourage people to read it in its entirety, because that one section does not do justice to what she is trying to communicate. The part that stands out to me is when she writes,

MSNBC would like me to appear for four inconsequential hours to read news that they deem relevant without returning to our team any of the editorial control and authority that makes MHP Show distinctive. While MSNBC may believe that I am worthless, I know better. I know who I am. I know why MHP Show is unique and valuable. I will not sell short myself or this show. I am not hungry for empty airtime. I care only about substantive, meaningful, and autonomous work. When we can do that, I will return—not a moment earlier. I am deeply sorry for the ways that this decision makes life harder for all of you. You mean more to me than you can imagine.

Instead of responding to these concerns, network executives chose to simply kill the show, citing the email as “destructive to our relationship.” A nameless exec, speaking to The Washington Post, called her a “challenging and unpredictable personality.” It is certainly true that Melissa fought for her vision of what she wanted the show to be, but it is difficult to imagine that a white, male host would be attacked so personally and called “challenging and unpredictable” for exhibiting similar behavior. It also speaks volumes that such adjectives—“challenging,” “unpredictable”—would be seen as insults in the modern news media world, instead of high praise.

I suppose “challenging and unpredictable” mean decisions like the one she made for what we now know was her final show: a show based around the treatment of homeless people in San Francisco during Super Bowl week and the impact of Beyoncé’s “Formation” video, instead of ever more election Thank You, Melissa Harris-Perry | The Nation:

Dolores Huerta Forces Anti-Teacher Lawsuit Backers to Remove Her Name From "Vergara" Website - CAPITAL & MAIN

Dolores Huerta Forces Anti-Teacher Lawsuit Backers to Remove Her Name From "Vergara" Website - CAPITAL & MAIN:

Dolores Huerta Forces Anti-Teacher Lawsuit Backers to Remove Her Name From “Vergara” Website

Three weeks ago Students Matter, the nonprofit group behind the Vergara v. California lawsuit, began prominently touting United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta’s support for that suit on its website. The subhead of the group’s press release boldly claimed the labor icon was one of the “Voices of Vergara,” a collection of pro-lawsuit testimonials that appear on Students Matter’s website and on YouTube.  The release stated that “the longtime California labor leader and civil rights activist” endorses the lawsuit and quotes her as saying, “I think it’s awesome that the Vergara lawsuit was filed. There is no excuse why we can’t have equality in education. I think we have the resources to do it, we’ve just got to have the will.”

There was only one problem: The press release’s statement wasn’t true.

On February 3 Huerta sent a strongly worded “cease and desist” letter to Students Matter’s public relations firm, RALLY, demanding that the group “cease the use of my name and image” on the nonprofit’s website. By the end of last week the websites for RALLY and Students Matter had removed references to Huerta’s supposed support for the lawsuit, which would effectively end tenure and other employment rights currently enjoyed by California’s public school teachers. (In June, 2014 a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled in Students Matter’s favor, a decision that immediately drew a legal appeal from the defendants.)

Students Matter has removed website references to Huerta’s supposed support for “Vergara.”

CLICK TO TWEET

Huerta expressed shock when she was told there was a Students Matter press release on its website claiming she had endorsed the lawsuit.

“I never said that,” she said regarding the quote in the release. Capital & Main reached out to both RALLY and Students Matter, an organization founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch, but did not receive responses.

“This just goes to show you the extremes that the backers of this case will go to push their agenda,” said Claudia Briggs, a spokesperson for the California Teachers Association (CTA), one of Vergara‘s defendants. Last Thursday, a three-judge panel in California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles began hearing arguments to overturn the 2014 ruling. Filing the appeal are the state’s two largest teacher unions, CTA and the California Federation of Teachers, Governor Jerry Brown and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson. (Disclosure: The two unions are financial supporters of Capital & Main.)

Huerta joined educators and community members for a news conference that Thursday morning and spoke of her opposition to the lawsuit, which she says is not focused on improving the educational system in the state. The only way to do that, she said, is to provide more support for teachers, adding that they deserve better salaries, fewer students in their classrooms and the support of their principals.

The founder of the Dolores Huerta Foundation also talked about the importance of teachers having a strong voice for students and described how Students Matter misrepresented details of the case in an attempt to get her support.

In a CTA press release, she said: “I strongly believe in providing all children with equal access to a quality public education, and that starts with having educators who have the professional rights to stand up and speak out for the students in their classrooms. Students Matter is attempting to deceive the courts and public opinion in the same way they attempted to deceive me and it’s time to tell the truth.” Huerta’s cease-and-desist letter Dolores Huerta Forces Anti-Teacher Lawsuit Backers to Remove Her Name From "Vergara" Website - CAPITAL & MAIN:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Charter Struggle Update

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Charter Struggle Update:
Charter Struggle Update

I had wanted to post the plethora (no exaggeration) of stories about charters from around the country that have been stockpiling on my computer.

But I will update you about what is happening in Washington State.  The Legislature is slated to end this short session a week from Thursday, March 10th.  Tomorrow is March 1st and we can all do the math.

I observe that there are several newspapers calling for the Legislature to "fix" this "mess made by the Court."  I have no idea why - from Congress to our own state -  so many elected officials do not want to read and obey the constitution that they have sworn to uphold.  The Court did its job.  We all dislike some court decisions but we have chosen - as a country - to have the system of government and its three branches of government.

What's interesting is that there seems to be this thought that it's just about money.  If only the Legislature could find the money.  Wait, they did.  Oh right, it wasn't just about the money.  It's about local oversight and that's seemingly the tougher nut to crack.

On the one hand, there WAS a bill that would make only school districts authorizers and therefore, there's your local oversight.  Problem is, that charter supporters know - that for several reasons - many districts would choose not to Seattle Schools Community Forum: Charter Struggle Update:

Ed Notes Online: Public Support For Reigning in Charter Schools -

Ed Notes Online: Public Support For Reigning in Charter Schools -:
Public Support For Reigning in Charter Schools 

• “School choice” ranks last in a list of the biggest concerns voters have for K-12 education, with only 8% listing it as a concern.
• Far more popular than “school choice” or unaccountable charter schools is the concept of community schools, which serve as community hubs, ensuring that every student and their family gets the opportunity to succeed no matter what zip code they live in.

The school choice bullshit which means undermining neighborhood schools and bringing in charter carpetbaggers is wearing thin.

This is progress, though I am waiting for the poll that shows the public supports putting a dagger to the heart of these charter scam-a-lots.

National Poll Shows Overwhelming Support for Reigning in Charter Schools

New National Polling Shows Large Majorities of Voters Support Reforms to Address Fraud, Mismanagement, and Poor Academic Performance in Charter Schools

Washington, D.C.—As the number of charter schools continues to rise, few states are paying adequate attention to how to hold these schools accountable to parents, communities, and taxpayers. Now, new poll results released today by In the Public Interest and the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) show that Americans embrace proposals to reform the way charter schools are authorized and managed.

The poll shows overwhelming national support for initiatives to strengthen charter school accountability and transparency, improve teacher training and qualifications, prevent fraud, serve high-need students, and ensure that neighborhood public schools are not adversely affected.

“A severe lack of public oversight and real accountability has created what are essentially two separate school districts in many places, each competing for students and funding,” said Donald Cohen, Executive Director of In the Public Interest. “This is increasing inequality in public education, and these results confirm that parents and communities want to fix that.”

The poll’s key findings include:

•  Overwhelming majorities, as high as 92%, back proposals to strengthen transparency and accountability, Ed Notes Online: Public Support For Reigning in Charter Schools -:

HERMAN DAVIS: Why We Must End Emergency Management

Why We Must End Emergency Management:

Why We Must End Emergency Management

HERMAN DAVIS

President, Detroit Board of Education at Detroit Public Schools

Let’s get a few facts straight here. Most rational Americans realize that Governor Snyder has torn a hole in democracy. However, I realize that some people, not living under this draconian and Jim Crowe law, are have been confused by the PR spin. So lets deal with a few myths.

Myth #1 The Emergency Manager is here to help.
This is wrong on so many levels. The culture of Emergency Management is about circumventing Democracy, accountability, regulations, competitive bidding, transparency, to award fat contracts to donors and friends. Emergency Management is like a mother eating her babies. The Governor uses the people’s tax dollars to make his friends wealthy. Under Emergency Management $424 million in tax payer dollars, intended for schools went to help a billionaire build a hockey stadium, even as Detroit Public Schools face bankruptcy.

Myth #2 The Emergency Manager only handles the finances.
Ha! The Emergency Manager controls the police department, fire department, and every employee, including the Mayor and City Council, or in the case of a school, the School Board. He has control to cancel contracts, enter into no bid contracts, and tell the Mayor to go home. The EM’s hand down edicts over the city or schools. Here are some of Earley’s edicts:

1. In Flint, Earley made it against the law for Council Member Eric Mays to speak.
2. In DPS, Earley made it the law for teachers to report other teachers emails, Facebook posts, as well as conversations between each other, including union conversations.
3. In DPS, Earley made it against the law for School Board members, like myself, to hold any meeting to discuss any issue without his written prior approval. We defied this rule, and we met anyway, but it did not come without threats, and sanctions.

Myth #3 “Local Control” is Democracy
“Local control” is a “PR term”, which is neither local, nor gives tax payers any control. Local control means the State gets to appoint, not one EM, but 5 people and the Mayor gets to appoint 4 people to a Board that controls the opening and closing of schools. This Board would circumvent the powers of the elected State Board of Education, which can close under-performing charters. The DEC is being pushed by a group of charters that want to close their competition. The DEC, in a circumstance of strange bedfellows, is also fought by Republicans for the simple reason that they want no regulation on charters at all. The DEC is also fought by Democrats, or anyone who wants democracy back. Once in place, this conglomerate of charter brands pushing the DEC, who also most recently pushed the EAA, will eat the remaining Detroit Public Schools. It’s not local, because Board members can live anywhere. When they want “local control”, they mean they will keep control of your community for another ten years.

Myth #4 Flint has democracy now
Today, Flint’s City Council requested the Governor restore their power. Until the new Mayor took office, all decisions were being made by Natasha Henderson, who was appointed by Darnell Earley. Who is she? She is only the City Administrator for Muskegon Heights (which also has a water system) who negotiated with Norton Shores and Fruitville in such a heavy handed way, that MH lost those customers, which represented 70% of their revenue. Now Muskegon Heights is in dire straights. Sound familiar? Mayor Weaver has informed Natasha Henderson her services are no longer needed.

Myth #5 Flint’s Council Voted 7-1 to Switch from Detroit to the Flint River
Oh, the tales we weave when we practice to deceive. First, let’s keep in mind the amazing coincidence that one of the Council Members did sit on the Board of the KWA and moved his family out of town, while he stayed in the same home and on the Council. Let’s be clear, the Governor and his cronies want to put “let’s make a deal” friendly people in position to game the system. We know this because they changed the law to prevent Eric Mays from becoming Governor. However, the myth is still wrong.

The proposal was that when the KWA was built, "Flint would get 16 million gallons per day of raw water from Lake Huron, pipe it to Flint for treatment and then sell it to customers throughout the city. Another 2 million gallons per day would come from the Flint River and will be treated in Flint. Mayor Dayne Walling said the Department of Environmental Quality must approve Flint’s getting 2 million gallons per day from the Flint River." The KWA is not built yet. The experts at MDEQ would have to approve the use of any Flint River water before it could be sourced. Moreover, Lake Huron to Flint water would be sourced at a ratio of 8 to 1. And that would be happening 2 years down the road. In the interim, they still could get Detroit water. It was Darnell Earley who wrote to Sue McCormick and informed her Flint didn’t need Detroit’s water.

MDEQ had to approve the use of the Flint River, right? MDEQ approved the immediate use of 18 million gallons per day from the Flint River. The Treasury Department and MDEQ also chose to overrule the water scientist who said he wasn't ready. MDEQ also chose not to treat the water. Andy Dillon chose to over rule the water engineers who said it wasn't a good idea. And MDEQ chose to ignore Miguel Del Toral. MDEQ chose to humiliate Lee Ann Walters at a public meeting when she brought her water jugs. MDEQ chose to discount Dr. Mona Hanna Attisha. MDEQ chose to ignore or lose the FOIA request from the Genesee County Health Official, Jim Henry. The Governor’s office chose to wait to prepare the press conference before telling people about Legionnaires’. The Governor’s office stalled telling parents that school children should not drink the water at schools with high lead levels in the tap.

This is a real mess, all the way around because the Governor, his appointed cronies and his staff are in a culture where they could do what they wanted to do and they did do what they wanted to do and to hell with anybody else. They failed to wait for the pipe, they took 100% of the water from the Flint River, they failed to add the phosphates, they failed to listen to the EPA, they used faulty testing methods to flush the water ahead to skew the readings when they tested, they altered documents when the readings were too high, they discredited anyone who said anything different, they stalled giving information for a Press Conference, HOW MANY WAYS CAN YOU SPELL NEGLIGENCE & FRAUD?

Meanwhile, Snyder gave Millions in tax breaks to the super rich!

It’s time to end Emergency Management!

Cynthia A. Johnson Geoffrey R. White Yolanda Y. Peoples Maiyoua Vang Lewis M. Dickens III Evelyn Pringle Clarence Ducker Jason L. Patton Chanrae Douglas Elena Herrada Tawanna Simpson Reverend David Murray LaMar Lemmons Tom Barrow Thomas C. Pedroni , Karen D. Twomey, Jo Lieb, Sarah Jardine, Isaac Robinson, Phil Phelps, Adam F Zemke, Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, Jeffrey L Salisbury, Jeffrey Lewis,

Why We Must End Emergency Management:



 HERMAN DAVIS

Testing for Joy and Grit? Schools Nationwide Push to Measure Students’ Emotional Skills. - The New York Times

Testing for Joy and Grit? Schools Nationwide Push to Measure Students’ Emotional Skills. - The New York Times:

Testing for Joy and Grit? Schools Nationwide Push to Measure Students’ Emotional Skills.

SAN FRANCISCO — The fifth graders in Jade Cooney’s classroom compete against a kitchen timer during lessons to see how long they can sustain good behavior — raising hands, disagreeing respectfully and looking one another in the eye — without losing time to insults or side conversations.

As reward for minutes without misconduct, they win prizes like 20 seconds to kick their feet up on their desks or to play rock-paper-scissors. And starting this year, their school and schools in eight other California districtswill test students on how well they have learned the kind of skills like self-control and conscientiousness that the games aim to cultivate — ones that might be described as everything you should have learned in kindergarten but are still reading self-help books to master in middle age.

A recent update to federal education law requires states to include at least one nonacademic measure in judging school performance. So other states are watching these districts as a potential model. But the race to test for so-called social-emotional skills has raised alarms even among the biggest proponents of teaching them, who warn that the definitions are unclear and the tests faulty.

Continue reading the main story

INTERACTIVE FEATURE

Quiz: How Much Grit Do You Have?

Here is a sample of the Grit Scale, developed by Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

 OPEN INTERACTIVE FEATURE

“I do not think we should be doing this; it is a bad idea,” said Angela Duckworth, the MacArthur fellow who has done more than anyone to popularize social-emotional learning, making “grit” — the title of her book to be released in May — a buzzword in schools.

She resigned from the board of the group overseeing the California project, saying she could not support using the tests to evaluate school performance. Last spring, after attending a White House meeting on Testing for Joy and Grit? Schools Nationwide Push to Measure Students’ Emotional Skills. - The New York Times:

College and Career Whatever Have You | The Jose Vilson

College and Career Whatever Have You | The Jose Vilson:

College and Career Whatever Have You

A couple of years ago, I had a heavy-set, lighter-skinned student who spaced out for about half my class every day. He twiddled his pencil, shaved it down til the disposable paint cluttered the desk along with his extra-large binder. He did most of his multiplication on his head, which was unfortunate because I asked for it on looseleaf to turn in by the end of the period. He applied for one high school, four back-ups. He turned to me one day after school during one of my “You better be here so you can get your grades up” sessions and said, “Mr. Vilson, I want to fix cars.” His father used to roll to parent-teacher conferences with a phone as big as his face and a 4-wheeler as big as an NYC studio. I’d give him and his father warm and cold feedback. I’s still think he was smarter than the sub par quizzes and performance tasks that he handed in.

He got a letter sometime in spring that told him where he was going to high school. He looked up at me and said, “Oh my god, YES, I’m so happy!”

It was an odd thing to hear coming from his mouth because I still have a bit of conservatism in me. The idea of assuring that my students have the opportunity to go to a good high school and then to a good college lights a fire in my belly. I already had former students attend MIT, John Jay, and Syracuse University (wink, wink), but a silent and large part of me wanted students to College and Career Whatever Have You | The Jose Vilson:

Raising Taxes Norquist-style and the Republican National Backfire | deutsch29

Raising Taxes Norquist-style and the Republican National Backfire | deutsch29:

Raising Taxes Norquist-style and the Republican National Backfire

In Louisiana’s 2015 legislative session, Grover Norquist of Washington, DC-based Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) was in charge of the Louisiana budget. Then-Governor Bobby Jindal had apparently signed an agreement to not raise taxes under any circumstances, and he was requiring the Louisiana legislature to advance a 2015-16 budget that would garner Norquist’s approval.

  Grover Norquist

Keep in mind that no Louisiana taxpayer voted to put the Louisiana budget under the auspices of Norquist. But then, Jindal had been running for president for years by then, and he wanted to present himself to the nation as *not having raised taxes*.

In truth, Jindal only cornered the state legislature into disguising the taxes— $350 million worth– and to appease Jindal (who wanted to appease Norquist), the 2015 Louisiana legislature played a game by concocting a fake tax credit to go along with a nonexistent higher ed fee such that the fake fee-credit combo would “offset” the $350 million in new taxes– all so that obvious-presidential-hopeful Jindal could stand before America and declare that he had not raised taxes. The 2015 fake fee-credit legislation is called Louisiana’s SAVE Act. Here is how the Advocate’s Stephanie Grace described the SAVE Act in June 2015:

Senate Bill 284 by Senate Finance Chairman Jack Donahue, would impose a $1,500 fee on students enrolled in Louisiana’s public colleges. But rather than pay it, they would receive an equivalent tax credit.

Then what’s the point, you might ask?

To stay on the right side of Jindal’s no-new-taxes line in the sand, the product 

Raising Taxes Norquist-style and the Republican National Backfire | deutsch29:

Sacramento judge proposes tighter security for student data | The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento judge proposes tighter security for student data | The Sacramento Bee:

Sacramento judge proposes tighter security for student data

A Sacramento-based federal judge proposed a compromise Monday that would keep the most sensitive information of 10 million current and former students in the hands of the California Department of Education, potentially addressing privacy concerns raised by parents across the state.

District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller previously ordered the Department of Education to provide extensive student records to attorneys representing the families of special-needs students who have alleged the state is failing in its oversight role and allowing districts to provide inadequate instruction. As part of the suit, special education nonprofits want to analyze state data to prove their claims.

But the case, Morgan Hill Concerned Parents Association v. the California Department of Education, has generated a large number of “strong objections” to the court over the public disclosure of individual students’ names and records, Mueller said.

As a consequence, Mueller said she wanted to look for ways to reinforce existing protections to ensure that information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. The judge already has required a special monitor with cybersecurity expertise to maintain tight control over the data and use encryption techniques.

“I had thought we were ready for discovery without this court having to micromanage all aspects,” Mueller said. She said she wanted to “tell what the court’s plan is and give the parties a chance to respond.”

Mueller proposed allowing the most sensitive database, known as the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System, to remain under Department of Education’s control. For that database, Mueller said, plaintiffs could submit their computer queries to the state.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Rony Sagy of San Francisco said that could be difficult. “We have not seen any of these databases,” Sagy said. “We don’t know what they look like.”

“The Department of Education has said in the past they don’t know that they have the manpower to come up with what we are looking for,” Sagy added.

The Department of Education also has vowed to fight the release of the data.

CALPADS includes student demographics, course data, discipline, assessments, staff assignments, and other information collected for state and federal reporting, according to the Department of Education website.

Plaintiffs have said they hope by looking at the data to measure, among other things, how many students are improperly denied access to special education and how many are not being provided the education to which they are entitled by law. About 10 percent of studentsSacramento judge proposes tighter security for student data | The Sacramento Bee:

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article63253872.html#storylink=cpy

CURMUDGUCATION: Why Teach?

CURMUDGUCATION: Why Teach?:

Why Teach?

It's hard to read about the history of education and then in the same mindset say, "yay, I want to be a teacher!" Figuring this all out.

— Mel Katz (@mel_katzz) September 6, 2015

 Man, it just sucks to be a young person contemplating teaching these days. It's not just that so much of the news about the profession, or that states are crying about shortages while districts say they're not hiring, or that so much security is being stripped, or that so many layers of crap have been dropped on the classroom, or that poverty has become so widespread in the nation, or that looking closely at our institutions reveals embedded layers of racism and classism, or that education has so few attackers and so few supporters, or even that so many old farts will tell you, "For the love of God, young'uns-- don't go into teaching! It's a terrible idea!"

First, I want to apologize on behalf of Old Farts everywhere. We should really knock it off with delivering Discouraging Words, which are at best annoying and at worst disrespectful, as if Kids These Days are incapable of making their own career choices.

Second, I want to be clear that I teach in a rural, small town setting where we are not very wealthy, but don't have the heartbreaking level of poverty found in some parts of the country. There are CURMUDGUCATION: Why Teach?:

The Rick Smith Show » Blog Archive » OptOut 2016: Peggy Robertson talks OPT OUT and the Future of Public Education

The Rick Smith Show » Blog Archive » OptOut 2016: Peggy Robertson talks OPT OUT and the Future of Public Education:

The Rick Smith Show » Blog Archive » OptOut 2016: Peggy Robertson talks OPT OUT and the Future of Public Education:

OptOut 2016: Peggy Robertson talks OPT OUT and the Future of Public Education

February 29, 2016

Peggy Robertson,President of United Opt Out National joins Rick to discuss the United Opt Out conference. It’s hopes. It’s goals. And what the future holds for students,parents, and educators as money in politics is dominating the privatization of education.  The Rick Smith Show » Blog Archive » OptOut 2016: Peggy Robertson talks OPT OUT and the Future of Public Education: