It's Saturday What is on Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

DFER Launches Phony Phone Campaign in DC to Promote Common Core and High-Stakes Testing

The hedge-fund manager group called Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) is conducting an aggressive telephone campaign in D.C. to promote the Common Core and high-stakes standardized testing. The rhetoric is deceptive, as usual.

Jeffrey Anderson writes in the Washington City Paper:

“In a one-party city with a civic focus on education, an advocacy group like Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) sounds as wholesome as Mom and apple pie. Everyone in D.C. is a Democrat, right? Who isn’t in favor of education reform?

“Aided by such safe assumptions, the New York-based PAC recently injected itself into a complicated school debate when it employed phone banking that connected D.C. residents with their respective school board members.

“Residents around the city received calls on behalf of DFER to tell them that the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) is proposing to “hold schools accountable not only for the academic achievement of students but also for the growth that students make on their achievement at whatever level they start out.”

“Sounds like a winner, right?

“The callers then offered to direct residents to their representative on the D.C. State Board of Education to “let them know you support this proposal.” They then asked, “May I put you through?”

“What the campaign does not tell citizens is that the proposal presents the school board with complex decisions in an ongoing policy debate that is central to a virtual culture war over public education reform in America.

“Nor does it disclose that Democrats for Education Reform is a PAC that raises money from corporations, foundations, and influential Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

Portland, Oregon: Leader from KIPP-TFA Runs for Portland Public School Board

5by dianeravitch / 25min

In a hotly contested race, a former principal of a KIPP charter school is running for a seat on the Portland, Oregon, school board. The website of the candidate, Jamila Singleton Munson, does not mention her role in the KIPP corporate chain or the fact that she was chief of staff for Teach for America. Apparently she is still employed by TFA. TFA has a branch–Leaders for Educational Equity–that e

Susan Ochshorn: When Angie Sullivan Took On an Alt-Right Critic of Early Childhood Education

10by dianeravitch / 1h

Susan Ochshorn writes frequently about early childhood education: policy and practice. In this post, she reports on an epic battle in Nevada between teacher Angie Sullivan and an alt-right critic of early childhood education. I have often cited Angie’s work in Nevada. She teaches little kids in Clark County, and her students are poor and include many who don’t speak English. She fights for them l

Teacher: What Mike Pence Did to Schools and Teachers in Indiana

100+by dianeravitch / 2h

A retired teacher shared the story of Mike a Pence’s role in transforming the schools of Indiana: Our former governor, Mike Pence, absolutely loves vouchers.Under his “leadership” Indiana became a national leader in giving vouchers to students and families. In fact, we have the dubious reputation of being one of the fastest-growing voucher states. We have a ridiculous merit pay system where highl

Steven Singer: The Way to Win Trump’s Support for Public Education

10by dianeravitch / 3h

Steven Singer has dreamed up a way to win Trump’s support for education: Declare a war on ignorance! https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/how-to-get-trump-to-support-public-education-a-military-proposal/ If Trump can be persuaded that education is part of national defense, he reasons, it will be amply funded. “Here’s the plan: Trump wants to increase military spending by $54 billi

YESTERDAY

David Cole: Trump Is Violating the Constitution

19by dianeravitch / 16h

David Cole writes in the New York Review of Books that Trump is “almost certainly” violating the United States Constitution every day that he refuses to divest from his international business empire. He writes (this is an excerpt): President Trump almost certainly began violating the Constitution the moment he took the oath of office. It’s true that conflict-of-interest statutes don’t cover the p

Merriam-Webster Corrects Kellyanne on the Definition of Feminism

17by dianeravitch / 21h

Kellyanne Conway told the CPAC meeting of uber-conservatives that she was not a feminist because feminists are anti-male and support abortion. Merrimam-Webster took the unusual step of tweeting out the correct definition of feminism. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/merriam-webster-trolls-kellyanne-conway-with-definition-of-feminism_us_58b0426fe4b0780bac2879b2

Most Expensive Test Prep Rally in History?

55by dianeravitch / 22h

Eva Moskowitz has rented the Rockefeller Center Radio City Music Hall for her charter chain’s annual test-prep rally. The charter network’s dance team will perform, school officials will present awards to students for academic excellence and Moskowitz will deliver a keynote speech. Eva Moskowitz photo angers protesters outside her home Moskowitz and Success Academy grabbed headlines in 2016 when

Peter Dreier: Who Are the Plutocrats Trying to Oust Steve Zimmer?

23by dianeravitch / 23h

Peter Dreier describes the full assault on Steve Zimmer by the plutocrats. They want control of the Los Angeles school district, and he is in their way. What is their goal? Privatization and profit. Some of America’s most powerful corporate plutocrats want to take over the Los Angeles school system and Steve Zimmer, a former teacher and feisty school board member, is in their way. So they’ve hire

The Los Angeles School Board Race Next Tuesday

16by dianeravitch / 1d

It seems every school board race in Los Angeles is a struggle for the existence of public education. That is because Eli Broad and his billionaire friends pour millions of dollars into local school board races (and Eli is one of the few billionaires who actually lives in Los Angeles) to try to control it. Why do they want to control it? None of them has a child in the system. They despise public

Oklahoma: School Vouchers Dead for This Legislative Session

26by dianeravitch / 1d

Vouchers died in the Oklahoma legislature, for now. The sponsor of voucher legislation pulled the bill , saying he didn’t want it to squeak through. Probably, he didn’t have the votes. No reference was made, apparently, to the research showing that vouchers don’t improve academic performance and often depress it. “A divisive school-choice proposal that would create state-funded education savings

Kansas Supreme Court Rules that School Spending Is Unconstitutionally Low

26by dianeravitch / 1d

For the second time in the past year, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state is not spending enough on public schools. Governor Sam Brownback has tried to prove that he could be the nation’s leading tax-cutter, but his tax cuts have generated large budget deficits. Now that he is under court order to raise education spending, his response is not to come up with new money but to offer schoo

Vicki Cobb: I Attended the Great Debate About Charter Schools at Intelligence Squared

15by dianeravitch / 1d

On March 1, there was a heated debate around the proposition “Charter Schools Are Overrated,” hosted by Intelligence Squared. The room in New York City was packed. Two academics–Gary Miron of Western Michigan University and Julian 

David Berliner on The Purported Failure of America’s Schools | VAMboozled!

David Berliner on The Purported Failure of America’s Schools | VAMboozled!:

David Berliner on The Purported Failure of America’s Schools

My primary mentor, David Berliner (Regents Professor at Arizona State University (ASU)) wrote, yesterday, a blog post for the Equity Alliance Blog (also at ASU) on “The Purported Failure of America’s Schools, and Ways to Make Them Better” (click here to access the original blog post). See other posts about David’s scholarship on this blog here, here, and here. See also one of our best blog posts that David also wrote here, about “Why Standardized Tests Should Not Be Used to Evaluate Teachers (and Teacher Education Programs).”

In sum, for many years David has been writing “about the lies told about the poor performance of our students and the failure of our schools and teachers.” For example, he wrote one of the education profession’s all time classics and best sellers: The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, And The Attack On America’s Public Schools (1995). If you have not read it, you should! All educators should read this book, on that note and in my opinion, but also in the opinion of many other iconic educational scholars throughout the U.S. (Paufler, Amrein-Beardsley, Hobson, under revision for publication).

While the title of this book accurately captures its contents, more specifically it “debunks the myths that test scores in America’s schools are falling, that illiteracy is rising, and that better funding has no benefit. It shares the good news about public education.” I’ve found the contents of this book to still be my best defense when others with whom I interact attack America’s public schools, as often misinformed and perpetuated by many American politicians and journalists.

In this blog post David, once again, debunks many of these myths surrounding America’s public schools using more up-to-date data from international tests, our country’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), state-level SAT and ACT scores, and the like. He reminds us of how student characteristics “strongly influence the [test] scores obtained by the students” at any school and, accordingly, “strongly influence” or bias these scores when used in any aggregate form (e.g., to hold teachers, schools, districts, and states accountable for their students’ performance).

He reminds us that “in the US, wealthy children attending public schools that serve the David Berliner on The Purported Failure of America’s Schools | VAMboozled!:

Why Teachers Should Almost Always Be Calm - Teacher Habits

Why Teachers Should Almost Always Be Calm - Teacher Habits:

Why Teachers Should Almost Always Be Calm

Like most Americans, I associate success with passion and intensity. The Detroit Pistons of my youth would have never won back-to-back championships without the intensity of Isiah Thomas and Bill Laimbeer. Indiana basketball would have never been Indiana basketball without the passion of coach Bobby Knight. Fiery speeches never cease to motivate me, whether delivered in person or on the silver screen. I admire outward displays of passion.

This belief shaped my early years of teaching. I enthusiastically presented a lesson one moment, snapped angrily at misbehaving students the next, and passionately motivated my students to do their best on even mundane tasks. To be any good, I reasoned, I had to be intense. I had to bring it every day! Every lesson! I needed to be, as Anton Chekhov said, “an actor, an artist, passionately in love” with my work.

I have since come to believe that I was wrong. I now believe it is far better to spend nearly all of my teaching day in a consistent state of CALM. In fact, I try to be calm 90% of the time.

Here’s why:

In my article Why Teachers Are So Tired, I talked about four things that exhaust us: making too many decisions, using willpower, experiencing high-intensity emotions, and worrying.

High-intensity emotions wear you out because they activate your body’s fight-or-flight response system. Your heart rate rises, your sweat glands activate, you startle easier. This happens regardless of whether your high-intensity emotions are positive or negative. So getting angry at Billy for sticking a straw up his nose for the third time is just as draining as passionately introducing a lesson on fractions.

There are many teachers (and non-teachers like Chekhov) who believe that the only way to be a good teacher is to be intensely passionate, to put on a show! If I suggested to Dave Burgess that it’s better to be calm than intense, he’d likely throw his book, Teach Like a Pirate, at me.  Certainly, there are some teachers who can maintain a high amount of energy class after class, day after day. The rest of us are tired just thinking about it.

A calm teacher benefits herself and her students in many ways. First, students tend to reflect their teachers. Calm teachers lead to calm classes, and calm classes allow for more focused work. When was the last time you tried to concentrate while feeling intense emotion? It’s not easy. In fact, brain-imaging research shows that when we are feeling intense emotions, our amygdalas activate. We need to then use other parts of our brain to calm ourselves enough to get our work done.  Think of the last time you learned something new. Did you pump yourself up with some AC/DC? Did you do fifty jumping jacks to Why Teachers Should Almost Always Be Calm - Teacher Habits:

'Scared straight' response: Teachers don't use fear in drug, alcohol lessons (Opinion) | OregonLive

'Scared straight' response: Teachers don't use fear in drug, alcohol lessons (Opinion) | OregonLive.com:

'Scared straight' response: Teachers don't use fear in drug, alcohol lessons

Gaye Chapman

I am a health educator at Cleveland High School, where Griffin Jourda goes to school ("'Scared straight' teaching approach doesn't help students in real-life drug, alcohol situations," Feb. 24).

I want to share some of the many resources we use, as well as the discussions we have, within our drugs and addiction unit. Our department takes our responsibility as health educators very seriously.

We approach all of our health units as an opportunity to empower, inform and help our students think critically about health.

We approach all of our health units as an opportunity to empower, inform and help our students think critically about health. We also guide students to access reliable, valuable information and resources. We purposely strive against sensationalizing or "scaring" students in our approach and find that using fear as a motivational factor can in fact have the opposite effect.

Here is a list of resources and topics we cover to prompt discussions and learning in our drugs and addiction unit at Cleveland:

• We use the University of Utah's interactive website, "Science of Addiction: Genetics and the Brain" to help introduce our students to the complexities of brain research and the influence genetics and setting can have on drug use and abuse.
• We analyze different variables (risk factors vs. protective factors) that could make a person more vulnerable to addiction.
• We look at the development of the adolescent brain and the effect that drug use can have on the reward pathways.
• We use the The New York Times' Learning Network program "Redefining Addiction" to assist us in understanding how addiction can have both physiological and behavioral effects.
• We question and discuss the toll many of the most prevalent drugs in our culture have on a personal level and the impact they have on our local 'Scared straight' response: Teachers don't use fear in drug, alcohol lessons (Opinion) | OregonLive.com:

Keeping retirement weird. Crossed wires. | Fred Klonsky

Keeping retirement weird. Crossed wires. | Fred Klonsky:

Keeping retirement weird. Crossed wires.

Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

3:35 AM - 4 Mar 2017

 
•  31,65231,652 Retweets
 
•  77,54377,543 likes

The question remains.

Is he crazy? Or crazy like a fox?

The President of the United States claims he’s a victim of McCarthyism?

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last,” said attorney Joseph Welch to Senator Joe McCarthy in June of 1954.

A good question for the Donald.

Of course, it has only been two months. Our long national nightmare (or sick joke) is just a few weeks in.

I mentioned yesterday on our radio show, Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers, how ironic it was that we had to watch our language per FCC regulations, but that the level of political language has now been so debased that politicians can use words we aren’t allowed to use on the air.

And historical revisionism is in full flower.

Frederick Douglass is alive.

Historically Black Colleges were founded to ensure school choice.

Trump is a victim of McCarthyism.

Let me just say that as someone who comes from a family victimized by actual McCarthyism, it was and never will be the rich and powerful who get to have that honor.

Perhaps it included some Hollywood writers and actors.

Mostly it was working class radicals who were jailed or lost their jobs in the Red Scare Keeping retirement weird. Crossed wires. | Fred Klonsky:

Keeping retirement weird, part duex. The retirement investment rip-off.

by Fred Klonsky / 51min

The New York Times has been running a very informative series of articles on teacher retirement investments and 403(b)s. The thrust of the stories is that 403(b)s suck. They have higher fees and have smaller returns than even 401(k)s. 

Campus Backlash After Leaders of Black Colleges Meet With Trump - The New York Times

Campus Backlash After Leaders of Black Colleges Meet With Trump - The New York Times:

Campus Backlash After Leaders of Black Colleges Meet With Trump

WASHINGTON — It was a scalding message, painted on a university campus sidewalk this week: “Welcome to the Trump plantation. Overseer: Wayne A. I. Frederick.”

What made the message more jarring still was that Dr. Frederick is the black president of one of the country’s most respected historically black institutions, Howard University, founded here 150 years ago as a bulwark of social justice. Other graffiti on campus buildings said, “Wayne Frederick doesn’t care about black people,” and “Make Howard black again.”

And on Thursday, students disrupted a university convocation to protest what they saw as Howard University’s catering to the Trump administration. One student confronted Dr. Frederick, shouting: “Someone might have convinced you that money is more important than people. But we are asking you, in this moment, to choose us, to take a stand for us, and to do right by us.”

The student backlash came after Dr. Frederick and more than 60 other leaders of historically black colleges and universities gathered for a meeting on Monday with top officials of the Trump administration, including the new education secretary, Betsy DeVos. As the meeting was getting underway, participants said, it was interrupted to invite them to an impromptu visit with President Trump in the Oval Office.A photograph of the black leaders smiling and chatting with Mr. Trump around his desk was widely circulated and instantly became a flash point for students who believe the administration has been insensitive to the needs of black Americans.

“Is it a photo op, is it an opportunity for Trump to put himself next to black people and smile?” Llewellyn Robinson, a Howard sophomore, said, after the graffiti had been wiped clean. “Is that the situation we’re dealing with? Or is it truly a seat at the table?”

Howard protesters said they had heard echoes of support — in the form of tweets, student organizations reaching out and the exchange of information on group messaging apps — from students at other prominent black institutions like Spelman, Morehouse, Hampton and North Carolina A&T. An aide to one college president said that concerns about how to deal with the protesters had been a topic of intense phone conversations among the leaders.

Many of the black leaders who met with Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and other members of the administration said that they had no apologies for what they called institution building, a chance to make a personal connection with Mr. Trump in the hope that his administration Campus Backlash After Leaders of Black Colleges Meet With Trump - The New York Times:

In today's episode of Howard University Shenanigans pic.twitter.com/W6aEMrc98H

— Lauryn Kai (@1april_fools) February 28, 2017