Obama administration releases long-delayed regulations for teacher-preparation programs - The Washington Post

Obama administration releases long-delayed regulations for teacher-preparation programs - The Washington Post:

Obama administration releases long-delayed regulations for teacher-preparation programs

The U.S. Education Department published regulations Wednesday governing programs that prepare new K-12 teachers, a long-delayed effort meant to ensure that graduates emerge ready for the nation’s classrooms.

The new regulations, at least five years in the making, require each state to issue annual ratings for teacher-prep programs within their borders. The ratings aim to serve as a snapshot of how novice teachers perform after graduation, offering prospective teachers and school district recruiters a more accurate picture of which programs are successful at producing strong educators and which are not.

Obama administration officials also hope the ratings prod training programs — long criticized as cash cows for universities that produce ill-prepared candidates — to improve.

“The system we have for training teachers lacks rigor, is out of step with the times, and is given to extreme grade inflation that leaves teachers unprepared and their future students at risk,” former Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote this month in an open letter to America’s college presidents. Duncan stepped down in 2015, four years after starting the Obama administration’s effort to overhaul teacher-prep regulations.

The effort proceeded more slowly than the administration anticipated, in part because of deep divisions about the role of standardized test scores in gauging the effectiveness of a new teacher — and thus the effectiveness of the training program that teacher attended.

The Education Department previously pushed for a “significant part” of ratings to come from the performance of recent graduates’ students, as measured by those students’ standardized tests and other measures of achievement. In theory, the agency argued, a strong teacher training program should produce new teachers whose students demonstrate progress on standardized tests.

[Education Department moves to regulate teacher preparation programs]

But that proposal generated a storm of criticism. It was released in 2014 amid a growing backlash against overtesting in the nation’s public schools. Teachers unions argued that test scores are often arbitrary and are an unfair metric for judging effectiveness. The American Council on Education, an association of colleges and universities, and others argued that the Obama administration releases long-delayed regulations for teacher-preparation programs - The Washington Post:

Three L.A. Gulen charter schools could be shut down, largely because of their practice of bringing in teachers from Turkey - LA Times

Three L.A. charter schools could be shut down, largely because of their practice of bringing in teachers from Turkey - LA Times:

Three L.A. charter schools could be shut down, largely because of their practice of bringing in teachers from Turkey

 Three Los Angeles charter schools could be shut down, largely because of their practice of bringing in teachers from Turkey, The Times has learned. 

The schools are part of a group of 10 campuses operated by locally based Magnolia Public Schools, which has relied heavily on using temporary work visas to import Turkish teachers.

The three charters now under review have five-year operating agreements that are expiring, and the L.A. Unified School District must either approve or deny their renewal applications. The official word, with no accompanying explanation, reached their campuses by email Tuesday afternoon: School district staff will recommend denial.

The Board of Education is expected to vote next Tuesday on the recommendations for Magnolia Science Academy 1 in Reseda, Magnolia Science Academy 2 in Van Nuys and Magnolia Science Academy 3 in Carson.

Magnolia’s schools have attracted increased attention in the wake of a failed coup in Turkey in July. The government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Turkish cleric Muhammed Fethullah Gulen of masterminding the revolt. Erdogan claims American charter schools with Turkish ties supported — and even helped fund — Gulen’s alleged activities.

L.A. Unified backs down and agrees to provide lifetime benefits to charter school teachers

L.A. Unified has not yet released its rationale for recommending that the schools’ renewal requests be denied. But sources inside and outside the district make it clear that one major issue is Magnolia’s foreign workers, most of whom came in to teach. 

The school group applied to bring in 138 teachers from abroad, almost all from Turkey, and 97 eventually worked for Magnolia. Thirty-seven still do. As required by law, Magnolia covered the visa-related costs, which it estimated at about $3,000 per employee, and chose to pay for the visas of spouses and children.

L.A. Unified estimated the total cost of that effort at about $929,000, according to Magnolia Chief Executive Caprice Young, the former L.A. school board president who took over Magnolia in 2015.

Young said she ended the practice, though she has brought in a Chinese citizen to teach Chinese.

L.A. school board president Steve Zimmer, however, says Magnolia’s past actions remain a problem. Magnolia never indicated it intended to import teachers en masse, Zimmer said, when before the Board of Education for approval. 

“The role of an authorizer includes making sure that a charter follows the instructional and business practices outlined in its petition,” said Zimmer, who declined to discuss the district’s internal report. 

The significance of any alleged ties to Gulen is a matter of intense debate. The cleric, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, has denied involvement in the coup. And Turkish-associated charter groups, including Magnolia, have denied financial or management ties with each other or with him.

Magnolia’s Turkish employees agreed to be interviewed only on condition of anonymity, out of fear that family members back home could be targeted in a wide-ranging crackdown on dissidents and suspected Gulen followers. Magnolia governing board member Umit Yapanel recently stepped forward as an admirer of Gulen, he said, to emphasize the Three L.A. charter schools could be shut down, largely because of their practice of bringing in teachers from Turkey - LA Times:

How America's Past Shapes Native Americans’ Present - The Atlantic

How America's Past Shapes Native Americans’ Present - The Atlantic:

How America's Past Shapes Native Americans’ Present

A Minneapolis community seeks to counteract centuries of federal policies that have put its people at a disadvantage.

A mural outside of Minneapolis's Little Earth of the United Tribes, the only federally-subsidized housing project for Native Americans

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.—Native American poverty doesn’t fit the image many may have of life on secluded, depleted reservations. Most Native Americans now live in cities, where many are still trying to adjust to urban life; as a group, Native Americans face a 27 percent poverty rate and are still trying to reverse some of the lasting effects of federal policies that have put them at a disadvantage for hundreds of years.

The Indian Relocation Act of 1956 was the impetus for the relocation of the large number of Native Americans now living in urban areas. Though the act didn’t force people to leave their reservations, it made it hard for families to stay by dissolving federal recognition of most tribes, and ending federal funding for reservations’ schools, hospitals, and basic services—along with the jobs they created. Though the federal government paid for relocation expenses to the cities, and provided some vocational training, urban Native Americans faced high levels of job discrimination, and few opportunities for job advancement.

Minneapolis was one of the first cities chosen for the federal relocation program. Here, the Native American community has taken some bold steps to aid integration, such as opening public schools tailored to Native American students’ needs and maintaining the country’s only federally subsidized housing project for Native Americans. In the 1970s, Minneapolis became the headquarters of the national American Indian Movement, a civil-rights group. Among other achievements, it pressured the federal government to restore tribal recognition and sovereignty.

The group was working to undo hundreds of years of federal policy that has played a role in producing modern-day Native American poverty. Two early such policies were the forced relocation of Native Americans to reservations and the creation, in 1824, of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Later that century, there was a movement to “civilize,” or assimilate, Native Americans, and the Bureau created federal boarding schools, where Native American children were separated from their parents and only allowed to speak English and play sports that had European origins. According to Carolyn J. Marr, an anthropologist and a librarian at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry, the schools sought to “eradicate all vestiges of their tribal cultures.”

In the 1930s, these boarding schools began closing after an independent evaluation revealed that students were malnourished and living in poor, overcrowded conditions. Eventually, Congress decided that assimilation would work better, and encouraged Native Americans to leave reservations and move to cities—hence the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, which ended federal recognition of most tribes. Though civil-rights movements in the 1960s would eventually pressure the government to restore the recognition of dozens of tribes, the impact of earlier policies remained; the Bureau of Indian Affairs remains the legal steward of most tribal lands, making it extremely difficult for Native Americans to own property and build wealth in the way other Americans can.

As a result of the Indian Relocation Act, Minneapolis also became home to a tight-knit Native American community, with a majority from Minnesota’s large Ojibwe and Lakota tribes. Native Americans now make up 7 percent of residents in the Phillips neighborhood in the southern part of Minneapolis, which is also the city’s poorest neighborhood—about 48 percent of people there live in poverty. It’s home to the Minneapolis American Indian Center, the Native American How America's Past Shapes Native Americans’ Present - The Atlantic:

Schools Matter: FairTest Fumes and Obfuscates

Schools Matter: FairTest Fumes and Obfuscates:

FairTest Fumes and Obfuscates

There was much disgust expressed when Diane Ravitch promoted FairTest's NEA-supported report,Assessment Matters: Constructing Model State Systems to Replace Testing Overkill.  In the report, FairTest managed to do some major league pimping for the New Hampshire competency-based child plug-in learning model and competency-based assessment pilot.  

Here is heart of Monty Neill's response, with my comments interspersed in italics.

First, there is no doubt that corporations backed by some foundations and politicians are promoting a version of schooling that is built around computerized packaged programs that combine curriculum, curricular materials, instruction and testing. The tests are in most cases multiple-choice and short-answer with occasional write-to-a-prompt items, to be machine graded. They seriously narrow and diminish education and should be exposed and stopped.

. . . . not one of the examples in FairTest’s report rely on these kinds of computerized packages. Each one is teacher controlled and very much teacher controlled. We clearly support and praise those that allow significant student voice and control over the learning and assessment processes. New Hampshire fought for a deal that has opened doors that have been nailed shut since the start of NCLB and thus deserve serious credit. As we point out, we can learn from and improve on what they have thus far done, and that ESSA makes it easier for that to happen.. . .

The New Hampshire example that FairTest studies is Rollinsford Grade School, which DOES NOT participate Schools Matter: FairTest Fumes and Obfuscates:

Homelessness in NYC Poses Problems for Families, Children, and Schools: We Blame the Schools | janresseger

Homelessness in NYC Poses Problems for Families, Children, and Schools: We Blame the Schools | janresseger:

Homelessness in NYC Poses Problems for Families, Children, and Schools: We Blame the Schools

It is so easy to attack the public schools for failing to solve society’s intractable problems. For twenty years, that has been the strategy of test-and-punish school accountability. As an incentive to get everybody to work harder and smarter, punishments have been prescribed—fire the principal, fire the teachers, close the school, charterize the school.  Another assumption has been that governance changes—privatizing schools, opening charters, expanding school choice—would address the needs of children and families.  The ideology has said that lack of the freedom to choose is the problem.

Elizabeth Harris reports this week for the NY Times that a serious underlying problem for children in the New York City Schools is unrelated to teachers-not-trying.  And this problem cannot be addressed by a school choice system where high schools in NYC no longer have zoned attendance catchment areas and where vulnerable parents now have to play a complicated game to apply for places in the city’s middle and high schools. The problems are much deeper and among them has been rapidly growing homelessness. In a school district that serves over a million students, the enormous scale of family homelessness, the challenges for families in the homeless shelters, and the difficulty of coordinating services at school for homeless students have become overwhelming.

Harris covers a new report, written for the Independent Budget Office of New York City by Liza Pappas, Not Reaching the Door: Homeless Students Face Many Hurdles on the Way to School.  Pappas describes a rapidly growing problem: “There was a 25 percent increase in the number of temporarily housed youth attending schools run by the city’s education department from school year 2010-2011 through 2013-2014, when the number totaled roughly 83,000.”  “Thirty-four percent of city students in temporary housing identified as living in homeless shelters, while 58 percent said they are doubled up… An additional 8 percent Homelessness in NYC Poses Problems for Families, Children, and Schools: We Blame the Schools | janresseger:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: A life changer

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: A life changer:

A life changer

Arely Morales photo

The trip to Standing Rock was a "life changing experience" for these Chicago students.

Our group of 11 young people and 3 “old heads” from Chicago got back on the afternoon of “Indigenous People’s Day.” We are not the same people who left last Thursday. The stories and the people we met, the way were welcomed by elders, participating in traditional dances, the drums and prayers, the smoke rising in air, the incredible spirit of community and vision for a future that respects all people and all of life–all of it changed us. 

Lili Diaz Sanchez 

October 9 at 4:30pm · Instagram ·
LSNA in North Dakota! Chicago solidarity #nodapl. This trip was so amazing for us in various ways. We were welcomed with a ceremony, danced in inner circle, were called and treated like brothers and sisters. So much learning from this. Thank you to all who donated money and supplies. Capitalism kills, water is life! 💙
#indigenousresistance 

Arely Barrera

18 hrs · Instagram ·
Staying with the Lower Brule tribe at the camp in North Dakota was a life changing experience. The stories shared and the lessons learned will be Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: A life changer:

About That Write-In-Vote Option for President… | deutsch29

About That Write-In-Vote Option for President… | deutsch29:

About That Write-In-Vote Option for President…

In response to the October 08, 2016, Washington Post release of the 2005 “lewd comments” tape, many leaders in Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s own party are publicly stating their plans to not vote for Trump and instead opt to “write in” a name on the November 08th, 2016, presidential ballot.

However, as NBC News journalist Zachary Roth points out, the rules for write-in candidates vary by state. In short, only 7 states allow write-in candidates without any previous filing requirements:

• Iowa
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• Vermont

Nine states do not allow write-in votes, period:

• Arkansas
• Hawaii
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Nevada
• New Mexico
• Oklahoma
• South Carolina
• South Dakota

The remaining 34 states allow for write-in votes during the presidential election; however, the prospective write-in candidates must register as candidates prior to the election– and they must do so in each state and in accordance with the deadlines in each state.

Below are the write-in candidate deadlines for 7 states. Note that only one is within 30 days of the November 08, 2016, election:

• California: May 17, 2016
• Florida: September 20, 2016 (49th day prior to the election)
• Indiana: July 03, 2016
• Michigan: October 28, 2016 (2nd Friday immediately preceding election)
• North Carolina: August 10, 2016 (90 days prior to election)
• Ohio: August 29, 2016
• Texas: August 22, 2016

Surely those Republican politicians publicly declaring their intention to write in a vote for president know that in most states, write-in voting will not count. However, publicly stating the intent to write in the name of a Republican who is not Donald Trump as About That Write-In-Vote Option for President… | deutsch29:

Support the NAACP's Moratorium on Charters - Network For Public Education

Support the NAACP's Moratorium on Charters - Network For Public Education:

Support the NAACP’s Moratorium on Charters

 This week the NAACP Board of Directors will vote on the charter school moratorium passed by its delegates earlier this year. We are hearing the vote will be this weekend.

The charter lobby is on fire contacting them.

Call these two numbers and express your support for a moratorium on charter schools. Then send an email.

Hollywood Bureau
Los Angeles, CA
Phone: (323) 938-5268

Washington Bureau
1156 15th Street, NW Suite 915
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 463-2940

Email: washingtonbureau@naacpnet.org

Please share this information on social media today.

Thanks for all you do,

Carol Burris
Executive Director
Network for Public Education

CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Oh, Come On Now! + Community

CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Oh, Come On Now!:

FL: Oh, Come On Now!

I don't even want to be still writing about this story, but apparently Florida's flock of school administrators include some of the most terrible people ever. So here we are.

You will recall that several Florida parents sued their district, the state, and anyone else connected to the baloney-faced rule about refusing to pass third graders who hadn't scored on the third grade reading Big Standardized Test. Along the way, the state offered the defense that teacher-made report cards are meaningless, which makes one wonder if Florida doesn't intend to save money by completely defunding schools and just sending students to test centers to take their uber-important BS Tests.

Nobody in power in Florida was asking if the flunk-third-grade policy was even a valid or viable one (spoiler alert-- it isn't). They were just going to hold the line so that students would be forced to bow at the altar of the Holy Test.

Hey! Who gave that bird permission to fly without taking a flight test!

The ultimate result of this case was that children in particular and common sense in general won. A student who, for instance, was an honor student with straight A's in reading should not have to take the BS Test in order to be passed to fourth grade. The judge gave a pretty clear reading of the law, and that really should have been it, right?



Not right. Which is exactly how we will now start describing certain Florida administrators. The court said, "Put these kids in fourth grade." Some districts said, "Oopsies-- we just don't seem to have a seat for them in the school they used to attend."

Now several school districts have, predictably, appealed the ruling, and reportedly hiring a busload of lawyers to do it while the parents scrape together what they can to hire a couple of pros. Because really-- if we start letting students advance grades based purely on academic skills, teacher CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Oh, Come On Now!:



Community

13by Peter Greene / 16h

I am just emerging from the final sprint of my seasonal fall marathon. I've been directing a community theater production of Disney's Little Mermaid, a show which may not have a great deal of intellectual heft, but which does include a great number of moving parts. The show ran for two weekends in our 

Corporate think tank sensationalizes teacher absences - NonDoc

Corporate think tank sensationalizes teacher absences - NonDoc:

Corporate think tank sensationalizes teacher absences

By John Thompson 

The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) recently found teacher absences in Oklahoma City averaged 11 days in 2013, and 18 percent of teachers missed more than 18 days, as reported earlier this month in The Oklahoman.

The NCTQ is one of many astroturf think tanks that publishes paper after paper designed to make teachers look bad. It keeps up the drumbeat denying the existence of a teacher shortage. I suspect that is why the NCTQ database included days lost to professional development in its study. That dubious methodological decision gave them an opportunity to overstate the national teacher absenteeism rate by up to 29 percent (by including professional leave and “other” in the total teacher absences due to sick and personal leave). By the way, the number of teachers included in the NCTQ database is around 10 percent smaller than the number of teachers in the OKCPS database.

Assuming that the national average applies at least roughly to the OKCPS — if the NCTQ published the data in a fair manner — The Oklahoman’s lede would have been that the average OKCPS teacher misses about eight days per year due to illness or personal and family circumstances and is pulled out of the classroom three days a year by the system. Combine the two metrics and OKCPS teachers still have a 94 percent attendance rate. Those statistics would be average for the nation. They would seem unremarkable, and the story on teacher absences wouldn’t make the front page.

I suspect that Ben Felder’s balanced report disappointed the corporate-funded NCTQ. He is objective in addressing the complexity of the problems that cause chronic teacher absenteeism. He understands that teacher absences are both a cause and effect of a Corporate think tank sensationalizes teacher absences - NonDoc:

Have charter schools fulfilled promise as innovators? Debate persists - The Boston Globe

Have charter schools fulfilled promise as innovators? Debate persists - The Boston Globe:

Are charter schools truly innovative? The answer can depend on your definition

For decades, charter schools have been billed as “laboratories of innovation,” conjuring up images of teachers and administrators brainstorming and testing cutting-edge instruction that — if proven successful — could deliver salvation to urban education.

But the track record of Massachusetts charter schools on innovation is mixed. While some charters are innovative, others simply strive to build high-quality schools using existing methods and do not necessarily invent new practices.

In the end, charter school practices have been adopted only sporadically in other schools, and many educators in traditional districts say the innovations touted by charters are not really very innovative. Consequently, opponents argue that voters should reject Question 2 on the November ballot, which would authorize up to 12 new charter schools or enrollment expansions in existing charter schools.

But charter school operators, who support passage of the measure, argue that charters have been innovative and are influencing the course of public education for the better.

Match Charter School in Boston has come up with an intensive tutoring program that has gained national attention and has been replicated in such school systems as Lawrence. Phoenix Academy in Chelsea has created a college preparatory program for a most unlikely student population — those at risk of quitting high school — and has since partnered with Lawrence on a high school initiative.Have charter schools fulfilled promise as innovators? Debate persists - The Boston Globe:

N.Y. Congressional Race Highlights Testing, Charters, Common Core - Politics K-12 - Education Week

N.Y. Congressional Race Highlights Testing, Charters, Common Core - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

N.Y. Congressional Race Highlights Testing, Charters, Common Core

Zephyr Teachout, who ran against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo two years ago in the Democratic primary by attacking his policies about testing and the Common Core State Standards, is now campaigning on a similar platform as she seeks a seat in Congress as a Democrat. Her GOP opponent, John Faso, is a big fan of charter schools and used to work on budget issues for the Buffalo, N.Y., school district. 

Teachout is an associate professor at Fordham University law school, while Faso is a former member of the state assembly who also ran unsuccessfully for Empire State governor in 2006. Both are seeking the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives being vacated by current U.S. Rep. Chris Gibson, a Republican, who represents the state's 19th congressional district. The district consists of several upstate counties around Albany in upsate. According to recent polling, they're running neck and neck. And the National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., acknowledged that it's a tight race between the two.

A victory for Teachout would mean that those critical of high-stakes tests and the common core would get a big-time champion in Washington, maybe their most outspoken one. She would also represent a state where backlash to those policies has been particularly strong, as expressed through the testing opt-out movement. Yet in a few respects, her view of education policy isn't wholly different from Faso's—more on that below. 

As we wrote in 2014, Teachout became something of a hero for progressives and others who expressed disgust at education policy in New York state under Cuomo, former state school board chief Merryl H. Tisch, and then-Commissioner of Education John B. King Jr.—who's now U.S. education secretary. She said she was taking a stand for public education and said that Cuomo was responsible for various policies that undermined schools, including underfunding of K-12 and teacher evaluations that were tied to test scores. 

Teachout lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary to Cuomo by a significant margin, but garnered a bigger share of the vote (33 percent) than many expected—Cuomo got 60 percent of the vote. Teachout can count on Diane Ravitch, an education historian and high-profile critic of policies associated with Cuomo and President Barack Obama, as one of her fans.

We weren't able to speak with Teachout directly for this post. A spokesperson for her campaign, Alexis Grenell, said this week that Teachout had been marching with the Alliance for Quality Education to demand that New York state fully fund education, 10 years after a landmark court ruling about Empire State education spending. The group says black, Latino, and other students do not get the share of resources they deserve in K-12 in many districts. The march took place Oct. 2 to Oct. 11, and went from New York City to Albany.

Meanwhile, as the state assembly minority leader, Faso wrote legislation to expand charter schools in New York state. And a decade ago, when he ran for governor, Faso criticized then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, for not being a bigger fan of charters. The New York Post reported thatGibson has endorsed Faso to replace him. In an interview, he told us that the federal goverrnment has injected itself too much into state and local K-12 decisions over the last dozen years.

And he was particularly critical of the No Child Left Behind Act—which he said he would have voted against had he been in Congress— and the Race to the Top grant New York state received for work on curriculum, standards, and accountability.

"The federal government could have just dropped [money] out of airplanes and it would have had the same impact," Faso told us.

'Government Overreach'

Teachout repeatedly stresses that she is in favor of "public education." On her website, Teachout notes that she used to work as an aide to a special education teacher in a rural school, and remembers that when she was a child, her teachers were "demanding" but also "attentive."

"A top-down, highly regimented testing regime like Common Core, would not have worked for all N.Y. Congressional Race Highlights Testing, Charters, Common Core - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Republicans have lost the education debate - Your Voice - News-Sentinel.com

Republicans have lost the education debate - Your Voice - News-Sentinel.com:

Republicans have lost the education debate

Education? This is the missing issue in the current Election Cycle. Why? Answer: There has been progress in the fight for public education. Meaning what? Republicans are losing this battle because the results are coming in from their “reforms.”

Probably one of the surest signs of what side is winning — the Diane Ravitch side or the Michelle Rhee side — is when the losing side concedes. That confession recently appeared in an op-ed for USA Today, a concession written by “reformists” Richard Whitmire, the author and reform propagandist who has defended Rhee in his biography that critics called “worshipful,” and David Osborne, a senior fellow with the Programs Policy Institute, a politically centrist think tank.

The list of failed school reforms launched by Republicans is “embarrassingly long,” Whitmire and Osborne declared, listing Common Core and test-based teacher evaluations among several other “sputtering reforms.” The one exception the duo pointed to is the rare high-performing charter school. Originally, both conservatives and liberals believed that charters gave thousands of poor and minority kids a shot at the American dream.

Probably the biggest obstacle to a bipartisan embrace of charters is the risk of having Donald Trump embracing them as a “rightwing cause” and Hillary Clinton allowing charters to disappear from the Democratic agenda.

Both Whitmore and Osborne and the Gates Foundation as well as the Walton Foundation are today assuming that their “reforms” have something wrong about the policies per se, not just the rhetoric. That is, the top down strategy. They have shifted to a bottom-up plan securing community buy-in, but not a focus on changing anything local communities don’t like.

Walton will not ask the people what they want in their communities, but to build a local base of support for what has already been decided by the Bush/Obama/Gates “reforms,” which do not work.

Then, there’s the opposition by the NAACP. This powerful group is calling for a nationwide moratorium on the proliferation of privately managed charter schools. Why? They increase segregation, impose punitive and exclusionary discipline policies on students,and foster financial corruption and conflicts or interest. And that’s not the end of this opposition. The Movement for Black Lives is also calling for a moratorium on charter schools per se, not just the private issue. This group, based upon a coalition of 50-plus groups, has stuck a dagger in charters, causing a falling out of favor as one of several groups cumulatively. But that’s not the end of my story. Big Money, rather than better policy, continues to be the “reformists’ ” ace in the hole. The well-financed organizations are connected to billionaires and the hedge-fund industry; that is, Democrats for Education Reform and the Black Alliance for Educational Options.

Big Media has drawn a false equivalence between any reform effort funded by the uber rich and an opposition consisting of teachers, parents, communities of color and grassroots organizations. Clinton’s charter school remarks have deeply upset charter advocates.

Then, Bernie Sanders’ progressive Democrats rewrote the education section of the party’s platform so today the party officially opposes high-stakes testing and evaluating teachers using student test scores,while factoring democratically controlled public school charters over the private sector, a for profit model.

Finally, so who’s losing? Wealthy individuals pushing their interests and the corporate media. That is, the marked-driven orthodoxy, not to mention the fact that the for-profit schools at all levels are on the outs. Education, huh?

B. J. Paschal is a retired Ball State University professor.Republicans have lost the education debate - Your Voice - News-Sentinel.com:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Black Lives Matter Day of Solidarity in SPS

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Black Lives Matter Day of Solidarity in SPS:

Black Lives Matter Day of Solidarity in SPS

The Seattle Teachers Association has been planning a Day of Solidarity on October 19th for African-American students in Seattle schools.  As well, the teacher group, Social Equality Educators, is part of the planning for this day.

I support this day and I support the district's efforts to close the opportunity gap for all high-risk student groups.  

However, this is may be a charged conversation but I am going to attempt to be clear about my concerns, not for the purpose of the day, but how it will play out.


 Background for October 19th

The impetus for the actual day seems to have come from Hamilton International Middle School teacher, Sarah Avery, who after seeing the John Muir celebration marred by threats to the school, decided to act.  She went to an SEA meeting and presented a resolution that was unanimously passed.

I talked to Ms. Avery about the day and she said it was for two things: solidarity with John Muir Elementary and  in support of Black Lives Matter in order to support black SPS students.  She said teachers wanted to model for students about standing up for beliefs and especially fighting fear tactics.

Ms Avery said that many teachers were planning lessons around this effort for Seattle Schools Community Forum: Black Lives Matter Day of Solidarity in SPS:

Comment Moderation On

Due to the sensitive nature about the upcoming Day of Solidarity thread, I have term comment moderation on for the the next several days.I know it's a drag but I don't have the ability to turn it on for just one thread.I'll be trying to keep up with your comments because they are important.

Posted by Melissa Westbrook