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Wednesday, August 3, 2016

FIRED CTC ATTORNEY KATHLEEN CARROLL FINALLY GETS HER DAY IN COURT - Perdaily.com

FIRED CTC ATTORNEY KATHLEEN CARROLL FINALLY GETS HER DAY IN COURT - Perdaily.com:

FIRED CTC ATTORNEY KATHLEEN CARROLL FINALLY GETS HER DAY IN COURT


Fired California Teacher Credentialing (CTC) Whistleblower Kathleen Carroll's Lawyer Dan Siegel On Retaliation Witnesses-CTC Whistleblower Accused of Being Sexual Harasser And "Stalker" By AG Kamala Harris and Governor Brown
https://youtu.be/dLz13AlBQhk

Kathleen Carroll was a former lawyer at the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing who blew the whistle on the backlog of thousands of credentials that were being improperly withheld from teachers. She went to Senator Darrell Steinberg for a state audit and was fired by the Commission management in retaliation. The trial is now taking place in Sacramento Superior Court and her lawyer Dan Siegel was interviewed on August 1, 2016 about the witnesses, retaliation including workplace bullying and what happens to whistleblowers who try to protect the public and teachers. One of the CTC defense witnesses was Barbara Kilponen who was the vice chair of CTC and a board member from the Fullerton Joint Union High School District. She claimed that Kathleen Carroll had sexually harassed her and was asked by a CTC hired "independent" investigator about the backlog whether Carroll was the "stalker".
California Attorney General Kamala Harris and her lawyers are conducting the case against Kathleen Carroll and Governor Brown is in charge of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing CTC.
Interview was done by Steve Zeltzer of KPFA Pacifica WorkWeek Radio.
Additional media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ux7F71oUo0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLa6YCVB-8A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56SWb4z5-l4
http://www.upwa.info/documents/Carroll-v.-CTC.pdf
http://www.dailycensored.com/ca-state-whistleblowers-lawsuit-exposes-web-of-corruption-and-deceit-at-the-commission-on-teacher-credentialing-ctc/
http://www.ctc.ca.gov/audit/2010-119-BSA-report.pdf
Production of Labor Video Project
www.laborvideo.org
Preview YouTube video Fired CA CTC Whistleblower Kathleen Carroll's Lawyer Dan Siegel On Retaliation Witnesses & "Stalker"Preview YouTube video Fired CA Staff Attorney Kathy Carroll Exposes Corruption, Nepotism & Bullying At CTCPreview YouTube video Fired CTC Attorney Kathleen Carroll On Corruption & Privatization At CA Education AgencyPreview YouTube video Privatization & The War Against California Teachers-Fired CTC Attorney Carroll Speaks Out
If you or someone you know has been targeted and are in the process of being dismissed and need legal defense, get in touch:
Lenny@perdaily.com
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 FIRED CTC ATTORNEY KATHLEEN CARROLL FINALLY GETS HER DAY IN COURT - Perdaily.com:
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What if we gave all American kids the type of education that was given to the Clinton, Obama and Trump children? | GFBrandenburg's Blog

What if we gave all American kids the type of education that was given to the Clinton, Obama and Trump children? | GFBrandenburg's Blog:

What if we gave all American kids the type of education that was given to the Clinton, Obama and Trump children?



 This is an excellent question, one that begs being asked every time I pass by places like Sidwell Friends, The Bullis School, or Saint Albans School in and around DC, and mentally compare those wonderful facilities with the DC public schools that I and my children attended, and in which I taught and continue to volunteer.

Bottom line: tuition and fees at those tony private schools is about three or four times what we as citizens spend on kids attending DC public or charter schools. For example, the middle school nearest my house (Brookland MS) has no playground…
I took this article from Education Week. It’s behind a paywall.
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What if America Spent Per Student What Clinton, Trump Paid for Private Schools?

By Andrew Ujifusa on July 27, 2016 7:22 AM
Philadelphia
In his speech last week at the Republican National Convention, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. noted that he and his siblings were fortunate to have options for their schooling: “We want all Americans to have those same opportunities.”
Fair enough. But Donald Trump Jr., along with his siblings and Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea, went to private schools that weren’t cheap. And so have several other presidential hopefuls’ children, for that matter.
So we thought about the educational opportunity in monetary terms: How much would it cost to spend the same amount per public school student what it costs to send children to the same private schools attended by the offspring of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic counterpart Hillary Clinton? And what if we tried to match the basic outlines of their children’s private school experience when it comes to teachers?
Fortunately, Michael Griffith, an independent school finance consultant, did his own analysis to try to answer those questions.
Outliers Out of Reach
First, Griffith compared the candidates’ private school tuition costs for the schools from which their children graduated to average per-student expenditures in public schools in the children’s home state: New York in three of the four Trump children’s case; California, in Tiffany Trump’s case; and the District of Columbia, in Chelsea Clinton’s case.
Average per-student spending at those schools attended by the five presidential candidates’ kids is $38,464. Nationwide, public school funding is $12,251 per student.
For the purposes of Griffith’s calculations, he used tuition costs at the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., for Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.; Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Conn. for Ivanka Trump; Viewpoint School for Tiffany Trump; and the What if we gave all American kids the type of education that was given to the Clinton, Obama and Trump children? | GFBrandenburg's Blog:
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A VISION FOR BLACK LIVES POLICY DEMANDS FOR BLACK POWER, FREEDOM & JUSTICE

The Movement for Black Lives:
A VISION FOR BLACK LIVES
POLICY DEMANDS FOR BLACK POWER, FREEDOM & JUSTICE





JOIN US

Will you endorse our platform and ask your friends to support these demands?


About Us - The Movement for Black Lives - https://policy.m4bl.org/about/ 
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Resignation, Red Tape, Renewal | BustED Pencils

Resignation, Red Tape, Renewal | BustED Pencils:

Resignation, Red Tape, Renewal


And so there you have it. I submitted my resignation this summer. If you are unfamiliar with my story check out my blog at www.pegwithpen.com. All future postings by me will be funneled through BustED Pencils – together we are stronger.
I’ve been MIA this summer via social media and pretty much any methods of contact. And I feel I owe quite a few folks in explanation – so here it goes.  On May 1st I received a phone call that my mother had fallen and broken both wrists. A social worker at the hospital proceeded to tell me that my mother would undergo surgery the following day and then be placed in rehab. My father would be placed in assisted living. My oldest sister (52) with special needs would be placed in a group home. I said  – no way in hell.
I got on a plane to Missouri and remained there all of May taking care of my family. One day I was completing what I believed would be my last year of teaching (actually testing) in the public schools and the next day I was officially done, prematurely, with my teaching career. There were no goodbyes. Just a void.
In June I returned to Colorado with my family and cared for them in my home with the help of my husband and my boys until early July. I know a lot about home health care now. I also know a lot about systems – systems to support my special needs sister, systems to help the elderly, the injured, and those with dementia.
Let me give you one example of  my new learning. I attempted to enroll my sister in a day program here in Denver because she is accustomed to working full-time in Missouri. We had done our  best to fill out the appropriate paperwork. Upon trying to enroll her they told my mother she had not done all the paperwork. Many of the items she needed to complete the process sat 12 hours away in a lock box in Missouri. As a result, we would have to pay a hefty daily fee if my sister was to attend. We decided to try one half day because she desperately needed the socialization. I dropped her off, and an hour later had a phone call from one of the staff members stating that my sister had flipped off the staff and tried to run away. Remember the kindergartner on the first day of school? Sometimes they throw a fit? This was the scenario in a sense. She was not invited back. If we had the paperwork done, they would have been required to adjust and evaluate how to help her transition into the program. Instead, with a very cold tone, I was politely told by the director not to come back.
There is red tape everywhere you go. Much of this red tape is harmful.
In rehab if my mom did not work hard enough, they said she would have to leave early. If she worked too hard, they would then release her early. It was a dance via insurance to keep her in as long as necessary to allow her to recover.
Red tape, connected to money, connected to systems, speak to a much more powerful entity, called capitalism, a system that many of us truly do not understand – specifically in re: to its methods of madness during a crisis. Trying to muddle through the red tape Resignation, Red Tape, Renewal | BustED Pencils:
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Cursive writing: Alabama law mandates handwriting in school - TODAY.com

Cursive writing: Alabama law mandates handwriting in school - TODAY.com:

Should kids still learn cursive? New laws mandate handwriting in school
Many schools now limit handwriting instruction, noting children are better off preparing for the real world, where nimble texting thumbs and quick typing fingers create most written communication.
But many kids are finding cursive firmly back on their lesson plan.
In Alabama, Lexi's Law — which requires public school students to be able to "write legibly in cursive" by the end of third grade — went into effect this week. State Rep. Dickie Drake sponsored the bill after he was struck by something his oldest granddaughter Lexi said.





Lexi Drake, an Alabama child, inspired a cursive writing bill
Courtesy Dickie Drake
A desire to learn "real writing" by Lexi Drake led her grandfather, state Rep. Dickie Drake, to sponsor a bill requiring public schools in Alabama to show they're teaching cursive.
"She was in the first grade and wanted to learn 'real writing,'" Drake told TODAY Parents. "After much research of schools in the state of Alabama, I found that it was not being taught all over the state — hit and miss. … This bill is for all my grandchildren and others just like them."
Cursive writing has always been a requirement in the state, but the new law calls for schools to certify they are meeting proficiency standards, said Erica Pippins Franklin, a spokeswoman for the Alabama State Department of Education. The goal is for kids to not only be able to write in script, but also to read historical letters and documents, she added.
There was a similar sentiment in Louisiana, where Gov. John Bel Edwards in June signed a bill requiring cursive to be taught in public schools starting in the 2017/2018 school year. Instruction must start by Cursive writing: Alabama law mandates handwriting in school - TODAY.com:

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School closures hit black, poor students the hardest - Houston Chronicle

School closures hit black, poor students the hardest - Houston Chronicle:

School closures hit black, poor students the hardest


By the time Ryan Middle School in the Houston Independent School District was at risk of being closed down the by the district, enrollment had dropped from more than 800 students to roughly 300 in a decade, according to numbers from the Texas Education Agency. The historic school that had long anchored the Third Ward community around it was still deemed academically acceptable by the state in 2012, but inside the brick walls, it was a different story, according to Arva Howard.
Staff turnover was high, teachers were often absent and the building that had housed one of the first schools for black children in the city now languished, according to Howard, a longtime member of the school's shared decision making committee that acts as an advisory group to the principal. Howard's son attended Ryan not long before the district first proposed closing it in 2012.
A painful fight ensued. Community members argued closing the school would only further what they saw as a pattern of under-investment in black schools and neighborhoods. At first, the school board decided not to close the school, but a year later, in 2013 with enrollment now around 270 — as still more parents chose to enroll their children at other schools and performance slipping lower — the board approved a plan that would transform the school from a traditional, neighborhood campus to a special magnet program.
That fall, the new school opened as the Baylor College of Medicine Academy at Ryan. By many accounts, the school is thriving. It earned every distinction possible by the state in its most recent accountability ratings. Students from all over the district are eager to attend the campus that once struggled to attract students. Hundreds of students are on a wait-list.
But outcomes are less clear for the students who once attended Ryan. Instead of Ryan, they're now zoned to Cullen, a middle school roughly four miles away that had only slightly higher test scores in the 2010-2011 school year. Between 2004 and 2011, Ryan had been ranked "academically unacceptable" by the state three times. Cullen: once. Neither was ever ranked anything above "acceptable," the lowest passing ranking the state offered. Shortly after Ryan closed, under a new set of state standards, Cullen was rated "improvement required" in state accountability ratings for the 2014-2015 school year.
The federal grant that helped fund the creation of the medical academy is meant to help districts desegregate their schools and reduce "minority group isolation." Indeed, the academy boasts diverse numbers; its student body is 11 percent Asian, 36 percent African-American, 45 percent Hispanic and 7 percent white. Cullen, where Ryan's overwhelmingly black student population was re-zoned to, is 84 percent African-American and 14 percent Hispanic, according to the district's numbers.
Most of the kids now zoned to Cullen, go to Cullen. Only 85 attend the magnet School closures hit black, poor students the hardest - Houston Chronicle:

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How Media Coverage of Charter Schools Changed in the Past Decade - AEI

How Media Coverage of Charter Schools Changed in the Past Decade - AEI:

How Media Coverage of Charter Schools Changed in the Past Decade



Key Points

  • In this analysis, we compare the tone of press coverage of charter schooling in 2005 with that in 2015.
  • Charter coverage became more opinionated and more negative between 2005 and 2015.
  • In 2005, 73 percent of articles were neutral and 12 percent were negative, whereas by 2015, 53 percent were neutral, and 28 percent were negative. This occurred despite public opinion of charter schools becoming dramatically more positive during that time.
  • Opinion pieces made up a much larger share of charter school coverage in 2015 than in 2005. In addition, race became much more prominent in charter school coverage over time, with the share of articles that mentioned race rising from 7 percent in 2005 to 16 percent in 2015.
Read the PDF.

Introduction

In a recent brief, we explored the question of how the press covers charter schooling. We found that the tenor of 2015 coverage was broadly mixed, but more negative than positive. On the whole, the analysis suggested little support for oft-heard claims that the media are strongly biased for or against charter schools.

One question raised by that analysis is whether the tenor of charter school coverage has shifted over time. After all, public opinion of charter schooling has become much more favorable over the past decade. In 2005, Gallup reported that the public supported charter schools by a relatively narrow margin of 49 to 41 percent. By 2015, support for charter schooling had ballooned to 64 to 25. In other words, the margin of support grew from 8 points in 2005 to 39 points a decade later.1 Did the media coverage reflect this shift? In the following analysis, we examine that question, comparing the tone of coverage in 2005 with that in 2015.

Charter coverage became more opinionated and more negative between 2005 and 2015. This occurred despite public opinion of charter schools becoming dramatically more positive during that time. Credit: Twenty20
Charter coverage became more opinionated and more negative between 2005 and 2015. This occurred despite public opinion of charter schools becoming dramatically more positive during that time. Credit: Twenty20
Coverage in 2005 and 2015

We previously analyzed articles from 2015 in national, mainstream newspapers (the New York Timesand Washington Post); education outlets (Education Week and Chalkbeat New York); online magazines (Slate and Salon); and various smaller, regional newspapers (taken from the LexisNexis database).2 In 2005, however, Chalkbeat New York did not exist, and the Slate and Salon archives for
that year were not searchable. Therefore, those three outlets are not included in the following analyses, which offer an “apples-to-apples” comparison of how the same outlets covered charter schooling in 2005 and 2015.3

For the following analysis, “coverage” was defined as news stories or opinion pieces that included the phrase “charter school” in the body or title. Stories were coded as opinion if they used first-person pronouns, made opinionated statements without quotations from interviewed sources, or had a separate author byline at the beginning or end of the article. Between 1 and 5 percent of the coverage from each outlet was sampled, depending on how many articles were written in a given year. Articles were coded on a scale of 1 to 5, with a 1 indicating the story was highly unfavorable toward charter schools (a strong, persistently negative characterization), a 3 reflecting a neutral or generally balanced tone, and a 5 being highly favorable toward charters (a strong, persistently positive depiction).4Stories were coded only if charter schools were the main focus of the article in question.

Altogether, 132 articles were coded from 2005 and 154 articles from 2015. Figure 1 shows the results.

In 2005, more than 70 percent of the articles were neutral in tone. Of the remainder, just over half were positive in their depiction of charters. In 2015, on the other hand, barely half of the articles had a neutral tone, and the remainder were more negative than positive by a margin of 28 to 19. In other words, the results suggest that coverage of charter schooling became more opinionated and more negative over time.

Was this pattern true for all the outlets examined, or was there significant variation in how the tenor of coverage changed from 2005 to 2015 in different outlets? Figure 2 reports the average score for articles from each outlet, coded on a scale of 1 to 5.

In 2005, the New York Times was the most positive of the outlets examined. The Washington Post and the sample of coverage drawn from LexisNexis sources were fairly neutral, while Education Week was mildly negative. In 2015, the general interest media (the New York Times, Washington Post, and outlets in LexisNexis) were all more negative. The outlier was the K-12 education newspaper of record,Education Week, which became noticeably more positive.

Was the generally negative trend evident in both news and opinion coverage, or was it driven
more by one or the other? Figure 3 focuses solely on the news coverage, excluding op-eds and editorials.

The share of charter school stories that were opinion pieces nearly tripled between 2005 and 2015 (from 7 percent to 19 percent). In 2005, news stories were more likely to be neutral and, when they did lean one way or the other, were as likely to be positive as negative. By 2015, news stories were substantially less likely to be neutral, and when they were not, they were more likely to be negative than positive.

Read the full report.
How Media Coverage of Charter Schools Changed in the Past Decade - AEI:




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Report says state too lenient on charter schools | Albuquerque Journal

Report says state too lenient on charter schools | Albuquerque Journal:

Report says state too lenient on charter schools


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A new report raises questions about whether the New Mexico Public Education Commission is allowing some poor-performing charter schools to continue operations when they are not reaching their targets.

The National Association of Charter School Authorizers’ review, released Friday, ranked PEC “minimally developed” on holding schools accountable for academic performance.
PEC recently renewed six schools’ charters, though none met their charter goals or received an A or B state grade, “the loosely defined ‘standard’ for renewal,” the report states, adding that PEC gave conditional renewals based on promises of improvement.
Legally, charter schools must make “substantial progress,” but PEC has not outlined what that means. As a result, charters face few repercussions for poor performance, according to the report.
Currently, 32 percent of the commission’s 57 charter schools have D or F grades from the Public Education Department.
NACSA recommended that PEC formalize requirements for renewal and only grant it to schools that meet the standard.
“Because the PEC has not defined the standards for renewal, the PEC has not attempted to close a school for poor academic performance,” the report states.
PEC Chairwoman Patricia Gipson countered that PEC is serious about educational quality and accountability.
“We are not supporting the continuation of schools that are under-serving or under-performing,” she said.
The problem, Gipson said, is a lack of complete data on some schools. NACSA agreed that the commission could not fully evaluate multiple schools that did not submit all their data.
Gipson said PEC and PED have discussed the issue and gotten on the right track.
According to the report, the two entities have a contentious relationship, which undermines their “capacity to make good decisions about charter schools.”
“The schools feel like the children of a bitter custody battle,” it states.
PEC and PED work together closely. The 10 elected commissioners are responsible for voting on whether to grant new charters or to shutter low-performing institutions, but they have no budget.
PED’s charter school division staff provide the commission with support and recommendations – though the commissioners sometimes disagree with their conclusions.
In one instance, PEC sued after PED asked it to reverse a school closure decision.
Gipson said she feels relations have improved since NACSA’s visit in March. She backed the organization’s recommendation that PED and PEC discuss their respective responsibilities, roles and authority.
In a prepared statement, PED spokesman Robert McEntyre said NACSA “generally outlines a path that could help make charter schools in New Mexico stronger.”
The report will be presented at the Aug. 17 meeting of the Legislative Education Study Committee.Report says state too lenient on charter schools | Albuquerque Journal:


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Some California charter schools discriminate in admissions, ACLU report says - LA Times

Some California charter schools discriminate in admissions, ACLU report says - LA Times:

Some California charter schools discriminate in admissions, ACLU report says


m Brown was scrolling through his news feed on Monday afternoon when he found the school he runs on a list that made him gasp.
Ceiba College Preparatory Academy in Watsonville, south of Santa Cruz, wasone of 253 California charter schools flagged for discriminatory admissions practices in anew report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and Public Advocates. The school was one of just 22 the report singled out for discriminating based on “academic performance.”
The report, released Monday, was the latest in the ongoing research back-and-forth over charter schools, which are publicly funded but can be privately run. 
State law requires charter schools to take in all students. ACLU and Public Advocates started investigating the schools’ admissions policies after hearing from parents that they might not be doing so. 
Researchers used a rubric to grade the schools’ policies, as expressed on their websites. They looked for different types of discrimination: bias against English language learners; requirements for essays, interviews, auditions or academic performance; mandates for parents; and practices that could drive away students who are in the U.S. illegally. 
“We thought it was pretty concerning,” said Victor Leung, an ACLU of Southern California attorney who worked on the project. “There’s no central authority for charter schools so we wanted to shine a light on it.”
Many of the schools on the report’s list asked for essays or required parents to pitch in or used language that might discourage some immigrant students.
Coding the violations can be complex, Leung said, so researchers did not include schools they deemed close calls on the list. 
When Brown saw his school was flagged, he immediately scanned Ceiba Prep’s website to try to figure out what was wrong. He noticed a reference to “sibling preference for students in good academic standing,” which he said didn’t gel with his school’s policy.
He removed the language, then wrote to the ACLU, asking if anything else was wrong.
Leung said he was encouraged to see a school changing its policy based on the report’s findings.
In a written response to the report, the California Charter Schools Assn. urged its member schools to revise their policies, saying, “charter schools must be open to any student interested in attending.” 
“We’ve heard from members who are definitely interested in getting more information … about the specific language they found problematic,” said Ricardo Soto, the charter group’s attorney. 
L.A. Unified has the largest number of charter schools in the country, but relatively few of them — 24 — were flagged, Leung said, because the school system “has a pretty good understanding of the law.”
The nation’s second-largest school system is in the middle of a battle over its future, with energy flowing into a campaign to create more charter schools. 
The district recently held a meeting aimed at making it easier for charter and district educators to coexist.
Though California has more than 1,200 charter schools, the study measured only 1,000 of Some California charter schools discriminate in admissions, ACLU report says - LA Times:


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Union Chief to Dems: You Have Our Votes, We Need You to Fix Schools | TakePart

Union Chief to Dems: You Have Our Votes, We Need You to Fix Schools | TakePart:
Union Chief to Dems: You Have Our Votes, We Need You to Fix Schools
Randi Weingarten, the president of American Federation of Teachers, says national education policy has to start with listening to teachers.


In national politics, teachers unions and the Democratic Party usually go together like blackboard erasers and chalk dust: It’s nearly impossible to have one without the other. It’s no surprise, then, that both major teachers unions have endorsed Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ presidential nominee.
Yet union president Randi Weingarten acknowledges she wanted to make President Barack Obama, a two-term Democrat, stay after school and clap the erasers for his early support of education reform through testing and teacher accountability, dovetailing Bush-era education reform policies she says did more harm than good.
“That has been the education policy for the last decade. And as much as I love President Obama, he participated in it to some extent,” Weingarten, president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of Teachers, said in a wide-ranging, one-on-one interview with TakePart last week at the Democratic National Convention.
“[But] he’s changed. He’s given us a mea culpa because he’s seen how it demoralized educators. It has given people an excuse not to invest in education, and our kids, by over-testing and under-teaching, when half of our kids are in poverty,” Weingarten said.
Now, education advocates on both sides of the political aisle—perhaps inspired by grassroots protests, scandal, and local pushback—have broken their “fixation” with timed, fill-in-the-bubble tests in public schools, she said.
Policy makers “understand you need to focus on the whole child instead of a testing fixation. We need to actually invest in strategies that we know will work. Starting from pre-K, we need to engage in kids [in the classroom] and adjust in their well-being,” Weingarten said. “We have to nurture, sustain, and support a teaching course building their capacity. So there’s much more of a consensus, policy-wise, in terms of what we have to do.”
Still, there’s a long way to go to turn around the nation’s public schools, she said.
“The damage has been done, between austerity and demoralization and demonization and de-professionalization” of the teaching profession, Weingarten said. “And we’ve actually kind of opened up the doors to privatization and destabilizing schools, throughout the community and throughout the country” through the promotion of taxpayer-funded charter schools.
Weingarten spoke to TakePart the day after she delivered a full-throated endorsement of Clinton during the DNC in Philadelphia last week. She touted the former secretary of state’s long history of child advocacy work, pointed to Clinton’s plan for early-childhood education and her desire to “reset” national education policy to focus less on testing and more on critical thinking skills.
In the interview, however, Weingarten identified the biggest long-term challenges for the public education system: school resegregation, teacher burnout, unequal school funding, and poor kids struggling with needs that teachers alone can’t fill.
On the campaign trail during the last year, “college has gotten most of the play,” with proposals on the left and right to help bring student debt under control, Weingarten said. But the education agenda has to include things like “multiple pathways to high school graduation, ensuring that STEAM—science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math—is baked into it, really nurturing teachers, supporting them, honoring them, making sure we don’t misuse testing, focusing on how we turn around segregation again. So I think a lot of things are on the table,” she said.
Because her organization leans to the left, it’s not surprising that Weingarten isn’t happy with the Republicans’ education agenda. “They don’t have anything to say, because [starting with No Child Left Behind] every one of their ideas has been on display in the last 10 years or so, and they’ve failed miserably,” she said. She prefers Democrats’ plans Union Chief to Dems: You Have Our Votes, We Need You to Fix Schools | TakePart:
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'New Economy,' Old Injustices - And School Reform

'New Economy,' Old Injustices - And School Reform:

‘New Economy,’ Old Injustices - And School Reform


Toni Wagner sees an economy in shambles and calls for innovators. Yong Zhao sees a nation at risk and calls for entrepreneurs. Tom Van der Ark sees competition and complexity and calls for project based learning.
I nod my head. I endorse the pedagogy.
School reformers often champion progressive teaching practice as the path for student to success in the “new economy” - which is also called the “innovation economy,” the “knowledge economy,” the “information economy,” the “idea-based economy,” the “21st century economy.”
The reformers tell us that the world is globalized, fast and competitive; information is at our fingertips; robots and foreign labor do what Americans once did - and if we’re going to compete to win, our schools must prepare children for the expanding high-skill sectors of the new economy.
But this “new economy” is troubled by very old injustices. Why is there so little acknowledgement of this? We don’t just need graduates who will succeed in today’s economy. We need graduates who will make it more fair.
Last year I met with a student, David, and his mom. David’s a tough guy, but this morning his eyes were glassy - because even a tough guy can tear-up when his mom cries. She says it is difficult to find time to spend with him. Working afternoons and evenings now in a low pay service sector of the healthcare industry, her schedule also makes it hard to arrange time to meet with us at school. Week to week, her manager keeps her guessing about her shifts.
This working-poor family is part of the “new economy.” And so are the homeless kids and their moms. This is an economy, says Richard Kirsch, “where even workers with a good education are barely making it and most Americans don’t have a prayer of living the American Dream.”
That our economy crushes so many people is a reality too often left out of the school reform conversation. Rather, it’s not left out, it’s acknowledged complacently, taken for granted: the low-wage fate and unfair odds that you try to help a few kids beat.
It’s certainly exciting to envision our graduates joining the ranks of the high-skill labor force. But it’s sobering to be told that if a student like David doesn’t get to college and persist he just won’t make it. He’ll struggle to find work, or he’ll ending up in low-pay job like his mom. As Tony Wagner puts it in The Global Achievement Gap, “In order to earn a decent wage in today’s economy, most students will need at least some postsecondary education.”

Yes, we want our graduates to earn a decent wage, to live with decency. The reformers call for a paradigm shift in schools. We must graduate critical-thinking entrepreneurs - and masses of them. The reformers believe that if schools can 'New Economy,' Old Injustices - And School Reform:


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