Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION: Nobel-Winning Evaluation Advice + PA: Bad Charter Bill Still Not Dead

CURMUDGUCATION:

Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION: Nobel-Winning Evaluation Advice  + PA: Bad Charter Bill Still Not Dead

Nobel-Winning Evaluation Advice

13by Peter Greene / 2h

Sometimes it takes a Nobel Prize-winning economist to confirm what many of us in education have been saying for years-- reformsters are doing teacher and school evaluation all wrong. The writer pointing this out if Derek Neal (University of Chicago), over at Education Next of all places , The prize-winner he's talking about is Bengt Holmstrom , a Finnish economist at MIT. Holmstrom has done pretty

YESTERDAY

Breaking News: PA Professsors Announce Strike's End

10by Peter Greene / 1d

Per the union website . No comments from me yet, just news. Oct. 21, 2016 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For more information, contact: Kathryn Morton, kmorton@apscuf.org or 717-236-7486 The strike is over. Faculty negotiators have reached a tentative agreement with Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education. The three-year deal, ending in June 30, 2018, concludes a strike that began 5 a.m. Wednesday

PA: Bad Charter Bill Still Not Dead

9by Peter Greene / 1d

Like that bad enchilada that you just can't keep down, Pennsylvania's HB 530 just keeps coming back. In fact, it appears it will be back this Monday. I wrote about this damn thing last summer , and it has ben kicking around since early 2015. The bill was floated by Mike Reese , who was actually trained to be a history teacher before landing in admissions offices on the college level. Nevertheless,

PA: Professor strike update

10by Peter Greene / 1d

As is typical in the early stages of these things, the main news being reported from the third day of the Pennsylvania strike by college and university faculty is that this is the third day of the strike by college and university faculty. I have heard numerous reports of students joining faculty on the picket line and attempts by schools to keep students going to classes-- even if nobody is teachi

OCT 20

My Visit To Preschool

51by Peter Greene / 1d

I'm in Seattle for almost a week, visiting my daughter, her husband, their newborn son, and their almost two-year-old son. This provides all manner of entertainment (you'll notice blogging has run a little slow), but today it provided an opportunity for me to be a visiting grampa (actually, my grandparental name is "Gump") at my grandson's pre-school class. Like many education observers, I have an

John King's Civics Lesson

14by Peter Greene / 2d

The e-mail from the charter-shilling group Center for Education Reform announced breathlessly that John King "joined the chorus of education leaders, elected officials and respected members of the African-American community in criticizing by the NAACP‘s decision to demand moratoriums on charter schools." He didn't. He spoke in front of the National Press Club at a luncheon this week, said many thi

OCT 19

PA: About the Professor Strike

15by Peter Greene / 3d

As just about everyone has heard today, the professors at fourteen of Pennsylvania's state colleges and universities are on strike (due to a quirk in our system, Pitt, Penn State and Temple are in a different state university system). This is the first such strike in ever. It is hard to know exactly what's going on in the first days of a strike. I was president of my own local union over a decade

PA: Court Decides in Favor of Privacy

19by Peter Greene / 3d

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court this week issued a long-overdue ruling with far-reaching consequences for school privacy issues. The case dates back to 2009, when some folks asserted that Right-To-Know laws meant they could demand home addresses and phone numbers for teachers. The state teachers union fought the issue, but the lower court ruled that teachers should have the right to argue why speci

OCT 18

Dear Hillary. Re: Education

100+by Peter Greene / 4d

We already know that there is no public education candidate running in this Presidential election. But we find ourselves in the unenviable position of having to choose between someone would subject public education to bad, disruptive, destructive, dismantling policies and someone who would just drop a nuke on public education. Not that anyone really wants to talk about public education, mind you.

OCT 16

The NAACP: Ignorant Dupes?

99by Peter Greene / 6d

They probably had their press releases ready. Despite the full-court lobbying, the charter fans had to have an idea which way the wind was blowing. And so when the NAACP announced the official, full-throated adoption of the call for a charter moratorium, charter fans were ready to explain why it should be ignored. As always, nobody leapt in with less nuance or modulation than Jeanne Allen at the C

ICYMI: Goodies for the week (10/16)

12by Peter Greene / 6d

Here's some reading for the day. remember to share the stuff you like; only you can prevent good writing from vanishing into the white noise of the interwebs. Before We Create Opportunity School Districts.. A Georgia teacher talks about what Opportunity District threats look like on the ground, and what would be a 

CURMUDGUCATION:

Jersey Jazzman: More About Attrition Rates in Boston Charter Schools

Jersey Jazzman: More About Attrition Rates in Boston Charter Schools:

More About Attrition Rates in Boston Charter Schools

The debate over Massachusetts's Question 2 -- a referendum on lifting the cap on the number of charter schools in the commonwealth -- rages on. When I last weighed in, I pointed out that the "successes" of Boston's charter sector could not fairly be compared to the "failures" of the public schools because the two sectors were educating fundamentally different students.

One indicator of this is the cohort attrition rate: the shrinkage in the size of a cohort that occurs because students leave a school, but are not replaced with new students entering.

Here's a school that "backfills"; in other words, as students leave because their families move, or they drop out, or they transfer, or whatever, they are replaced by new students entering the system.

This school doesn't backfill. What happens to the size of their cohorts (another way of Jersey Jazzman: More About Attrition Rates in Boston Charter Schools:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Teaching Compassion from One Teacher's Story

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Teaching Compassion from One Teacher's Story:

Teaching Compassion from One Teacher's Story

You may recall the story earlier this year about a Tacoma kindergarten teacher who was removed from her classroom because she was drunk.  I think most of us were aghast at hearing that.

But one person, reporter Matt Driscolll at the The News&Observer, wanted to know more.  He wrote this piece that appeared this week, 

This kindergarten teacher was fired for being drunk. Three months later, she was dead. 

It's a beautiful story, written with compassion.  It's about how every single person has a story especially beyond their death.

Klara’s story, on the other hand, is one with trauma and addiction at its center. Like roughly 17 million people in the United States, she battled alcoholism. Unlike most, however, Klara’s struggle was very public.

It’s a struggle that ended in early June, when she took her own Seattle Schools Community Forum: Teaching Compassion from One Teacher's Story:

Who Will Carry This Torch? | Poetic Justice

Who Will Carry This Torch? | Poetic Justice:

Who Will Carry This Torch?

I wrote this poem eleven years ago. I return to it today and just want to weep. What are we doing to our children? Who will save them? Who will carry the torch of knowledge for the next generation and for the generation behind us?

No one to close the windows
when the rain storm pellets their beds.
No one to lock the doors at night
and keep intruders from walking in.
No one to warm up dinner and
feed their craving little bodies.
No one to scare away the dragons
who star in their dreams

Read the rest: Who Will Carry This Torch? | Poetic Justice:

Laws Of Exclusion – STOP SCHOOL REFORM: THOUGHTS FROM the LIFE OF A"BAD" TEACHER

Laws Of Exclusion – STOP SCHOOL REFORM: THOUGHTS FROM the LIFE OF A"BAD" TEACHER:

Laws of Exclusion 

In years before the mandates of NCLB pushed assertively into our school to commandeer
curriculum expectations at Central High; in years before the innovation-ordered, outsidercontrolled
programs began to outlaw the non-standardized inclusion of “ethnic” studies (totally
missing the fact that a forced study into an overwhelming surfeit of White males was,
unmistakably, ethnic) – I had enjoyed teaching an old-school non-scripted, fully inclusive
American Literature class.*†

Hoping to capture a broad student interest while waking less motivated imaginations, I
had asked my students to take a time-ordered look into the various cultural settlements particular
to the United States. Following events sequentially, we had studied the work produced by a
variety of disparate authors writing from dissimilar backgrounds; intentionally, we had read and
analyzed the work of the many culturally diverse writers who had most directly helped to fashion
our country’s best recognized and most iconic social movements.

Due to the fact that Central High served as a home largely to children who knew firsthand
how it felt to live with the less-than-comfortable stigma of being not only low-income, but
culturally different, it wasn’t long before I discovered that my students’ interest focused most
keenly upon, and repeatedly brought our conversations back to, the particulars which had
surrounded our country’s most exclusionary legislations. Recurrently my students asked to learn
about, read about and better understand the legalized actions behind our nation’s most openly
mandated separations:

• The governmentally supported caste divisions inside a Latino southwest. 
• The relocation of, and bounded reservations built around, Native populations. 
• The laws meant to regulate slavery, indentured servants and inter-racial marriage. 
• The immigration rulings written to keep Asian cultures from attaining citizenship. 
• The decades of Jim Crow legislation designed to enforce racial separations. 
• The legal promotion of women and children as voicelessly owned property. 
• The ruthless internment of unwanted citizens during years of war. 
• The emergence, and subsequent suppression, of an intentionally inclusive Civil Rights’
  legislation. 

What most accurately honed my students’ attention; what my students most wanted to
read about? Was not, specifically, the long years of a legally ordered exclusion. More exactly,
they wanted to hear about, read about, talk and write about, real people. Those most visibly
intrepid trailblazers who had seen the rules of exclusion, looked directly into the face of
intolerance, understood the legal lay of the land – and yet, still?
Resisted.
Those most notably recognized frontrunners who, through their long-term dedication toLaws Of Exclusion – STOP SCHOOL REFORM: THOUGHTS FROM the LIFE OF A"BAD" TEACHER:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Trump plans to do away with public school systems

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Trump plans to do away with public school systems:

Trump plans to do away with public school systems

Trump surrogate, Paladino calls educators, "pot-smokers from Vietnam era". Ouch!

If there was any doubt, Trump surrogate Carl Paladino made it perfectly clear that if his boss is elected his goal will be nothing less than the elimination of public education and complete liquidation of the nation's teacher unions.

Paladino, Trump's N.Y State co-chairman told a group of urban school superintendentsyesterday, that Trump would seek to do away with “corrupted, incompetent” public school systems in America’s cities, replacing them with charter schools and vouchers for private schools.

Such an approach would “encourage competition in the marketplace and eventually dismantle the corrupted, incompetent urban school districts that we have in America today,” said Paladino, Trump’s New York State co-chairman, drawing audible boos from an audience composed largely of people who run the school districts Paladino criticized.

Paladino was unfazed: “A monopoly will not continue to work, it will not solve the problem,” he said, decrying what he described as school districts’ dysfunction and their “incestuous relationships with teachers unions.”  

I had to laugh when Paladino went on to attack higher education, referring to academics on college campuses as former “pot-smoking hippies back during the Vietnam era.” Was heMike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Trump plans to do away with public school systems: 

 

Pushing the Privatized “Maker Movement” Into Public Schools

Pushing the Privatized “Maker Movement” Into Public Schools:

Pushing the Privatized “Maker Movement” Into Public Schools

The 3D printing market is projected to be worth $8 billion by 2020.

—Paul Hill, “Ten statistics that reveal the size and scope of the Maker Movement.” November 3, 2015

Why be skeptical of the Maker Movement and its affect on public schools?

The speed to which the Maker Movement is being pushed into schools with little research about its effectiveness is worrisome. Over 1,400 schools representing one million students in all 50 states are involved.

School districts must take an oath.

Here is the list of schools that have signed the promise to implement the Maker Movement.

We are told it will make children into tinkerers, craftsmen, and inventors—bringing out a future Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford or other person of fame and Pushing the Privatized “Maker Movement” Into Public Schools:

John Thompson: How a Great Oklahoma Teacher Made the National News for Teaching about Racism

How a Great Oklahoma Teacher Made the National News for Teaching about Racism | Huffington Post:

How a Great Oklahoma Teacher Made the National News for Teaching about Racism

The Washington Post report about Norman, Oklahoma teacher, James Coursey, is currently the paper’s second mostly widely read story. The Post’s Cleve Wootson reports that Coursey was caught up in a controversy when teaching about “implicit bias — the belief that we all have unconscious opinions about race, gender and ethnicity that subtly affect our actions.” He further explains, “The incident illustrates the tightrope teachers walk between engaging students in the important issues of the day and staying neutral in a room filled with impressionable youths.”

An unidentified student further explains:

What has been reported in the news doesn’t accurately portray what happened in our philosophy class, nor does it reflect what we believe in at our school. ... The information was taken out of context and we believe it is important to have serious and thoughtful discussions about institutional racism in order to change history and promote inclusivity.

Paul Ketchum, a University of Oklahoma professor with extensive experience in teaching about race in this state and who taught in the Los Angeles inner city, supports Coursey and explains, “This teacher’s going to face a lot of blowback, because most of the students at Norman North are white and come from white families. That’s why they might view this as an attack on them.”

I know from firsthand experience that Ketchum has excellent judgment in terms of addressing sensitive racial issues. While teaching in Watts, he would have had seen the same brutal legacies of personal and institutional racism as Coursey encountered when teaching in the inner city of the Oklahoma City Public School System. But I don’t know if I agree with Ketchum that Jim could have made a “rookie error in teaching about race,” by making the mistake where, “You go for the big term when a less loaded term would be better to make it a teachable moment.” (emphasis mine)

I say this because Coursey isn’t just a great, veteran teacher. He’s an incredible teacher. Jim taught next door to me when our often blood-soaked high school How a Great Oklahoma Teacher Made the National News for Teaching about Racism | Huffington Post:

BACKPACK FULL OF CASH: a new film, narrated by Matt Damon

BACKPACK FULL OF CASH: a new film, narrated by Matt Damon by Sarah Mondale — Kickstarter:

BACKPACK FULL OF CASH: a new film, narrated by Matt Damon

THE STORY

BACKPACK FULL OF CASH is a new 90-minute documentary, narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Matt Damon, that examines the growth of market-based education reforms such as privately-run charter schools, student testing and vouchers—and their impact on America's most vulnerable children.

In America today, privately-run school options are growing, backed by a powerful movement that includes some of the country's wealthiest billionaires. This coalition of free-market devotees believe that every child should take their "backpack full of cash"—their share of public education dollars—to the school of their choice: charter, religious, online, or public. 

As students leave America's public schools for these "alternatives," the public system's resources diminish, which compromises its ability to deliver quality education to all students. Education in America was founded on the idea that quality education would be open to the rich and poor alike, yet now with the advent of these “alternatives," this idea is in danger. At the same time, funding for public education in many places across the country is shrinking.

What we learned in the course of making this film is that the movement for free-market “reform” has largely ignored the larger challenges that need to be addressed—child poverty, racial segregation and unequal funding. 

BACKPACK takes viewers to Philadelphia, where in 2013-14, the charismatic principal of South Philadelphia High worries about the upcoming school year—his school has no music teacher, no librarian, and just two counselors for over 1,000 students. Across town, the C.O.O. of a brand new charter school welcomes students to gleaming, high tech classrooms.

In North Philly, a 10th-grader performs a virtual frog dissection on her computer, in her bedroom. Her cyber charter school is run by the biggest for-profit online education company in the world.

In Nashville, TN, a teacher is giving standardized tests to her eight-year-old students.  This is their 30th Test Day of the year. Testing companies reap huge dividends.

And in Louisiana, a Bible school headmaster teaches creationism to students who pay tuition with tax-funded vouchers.

Our team filmed in Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Nashville—cities at the chaotic center of the battle over school privatization. We interviewed education specialists of every kind—and with a wide range of viewpoints—from public school principals to policy analysts, funding activists, students and teachers. We tried to understand the impact of these education reforms on the most vulnerable students, including ESL learners, and marginalized youth.

We focused on controversial reforms like:

• Charter schools that screen out the neediest students
• Religious schools that accept vouchers paid for with taxpayer dollars
• Standardized tests used to rank students, teachers, and schools
• "Cyber schools," where children learn at home on their computers while entrepreneurs reap huge profits.

One of our central questions, after four years of work on this film is: Why dismantle the public school system?  Why not make it work well for every child instead?

THE GOAL

Our team of award-winning documentarians has spent four years making BACKPACK. We have shot it. We have edited a fine cut. We are so, so close to the finish line. And we need your help.

We are deeply grateful for the incredible support we've received so far from The  Ford Foundation, the Schott Foundation for Public Education, the Open Society Foundations, and Atlantic Philanthropies, among others.. Thanks to them, we've been able to shoot top-quality footage across the country and bring the film very close to completion.

But before BACKPACK can be distributed, there are still a lot of costs to cover. Our carefully-considered Kickstarter goal is $31,600. This amount will pay for licensing fees for important pieces of archival footage from NBC, ABC and Learning Matters. This archival footage is crucial to our film. It's very expensive, and clearing these rights is absolutely key to our being able to share the film with the public.

Your pledge, large or small, brings us closer to finishing the film. Any amount you can give—whether $10, $100, or $1,000—will make a difference in bringing this critical story to the public eye.

And in addition, YOUR CONTRIBUTION IS TAX-DEDUCTIBLE!

Our production company is a nonprofit 501(c)3, so all your donations are deductible to the full extent of the law. Check out our gold star rewards!

If we manage to raise more than $31,600, don't worry, we have BIG plans! 

$50,000 over our goal will allow us to pay for final technical costs, including color correction and a mix of the archival materials, plus administrative and insurance costs, and fees for our hardworking collaborators who will help us complete this work.

In addition, if we raise more than our goal we will pay for promotion and distribution costs—the trailer, poster, website and staff to help us get the word out.  Promoting BACKPACK will also help to fuel the nationwide impact campaign developed by Active Voice Lab's Ellen Schneider.  This campaign is poised to advance discourse and action around education equity through the lens of social justice. 

Obviously, donations are crucial—but equally important is sharing awareness about BACKPACK across the country and beyond. Like and share us on Facebook and Twitter and help spread the word!

WHO WE ARE:

Matt Damon (Narrator) is an Academy-Award winning actor—and son of Nancy Carlsson-Paige, nationally known writer and expert on early childhood education. Thanks to a longstanding commitment to public education, Matt has generously taken the time out of his busy schedule to narrate BACKPACK.

Stone Lantern Films, Inc., and Turnstone Productions (producers): Stone Lantern Films has produced, among other films, the award-winning PBS series SCHOOL: The Story of American Public Education, narrated by Meryl Streep. Turnstone Productions was founded by Vera Aronow and BACKPACK cinematographer, Roger Grange, both longtime collaborators with Stone Lantern Films.

Sarah Mondale (Director/Producer) is president and co-director of Stone Lantern Films, as well as a public teacher in New York. She directed and co-produced the four-part series SCHOOL (2001), narrated by Meryl Streep. Sarah won an Emmy nomination for directing ASYLUM: A History of the Mental Institutions in America.

Vera Aronow (Producer/Editor) is an accomplished producer and director in her own right. Recent works include co-directing & producing the feature-length documentary, MEGAMALL(2010) about suburban development in the age of sprawl, produced with Stone Lantern and now available on Vimeo On Demand. 

Our Kickstarter team: Sarah Patton (Executive Producer), Patty Romeu (Consulting Producer) Nadia DeLane (Social Media) and Dana Kalmey (Kickstarter Consulting)

Risks and challenges

1.) Our estimation of costs is as accurate as we can make it-- and obviously it’s not a small amount. If we’re fully funded, we anticipate finishing the film by the end of 2016! But if a delay comes up, we promise to keep our supporters fully informed. If that happens, our reward fulfilment dates related to the completed film will be adjusted accordingly.

2.) The content of BACKPACK may also bring some controversy our way. We set out to make a film that brought genuine curiosity to a complicated issue. There are many good, committed people on both sides of the debate, and we believe that raising key questions helps people make more informed choices.

3.) But people-- rightfully!-- have very strong opinions about education in America, and it’s possible that we’ll get some pushback from groups that support free-market education reforms. We’ll see!

Learn about accountability on Kickstarter

BACKPACK FULL OF CASH: a new film, narrated by Matt Damon by Sarah Mondale — Kickstarter: