Donald Trump Be Afraid Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

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

Donald Trump Be Afraid Diane Ravitch's blog 

A site to discuss better education for all

Hillary Clinton Gives the Commencement Address at Wellesley College, Class of 2017

1by dianeravitch / 32min

I’m posting Hillary Clinton’s Commencement Address t o the Class of 2017 at Wellesley College for a few reasons. First, I wanted to hear what she had to say and after I did, wanted to share it with you. Second, she is a graduate of 

Annie Waldman: Betsy DeVos on Creationism and Intelligent Design

2by dianeravitch / 8min

Annie Waldman wrote this article for ProPublica in January, after DeVos’s confirmation hearing and before she was confirmed. I’m sorry I missed it. Waldman tried to pin down DeVos’s views on creationism. As we have learned, 

Oakland Charter School in Trouble Again

1by dianeravitch / 14min

The American Indian Model School in Oakland has a checkered history. It began as a school for American Indians. It was taken over by a swaggering, authoritarian leader named Ben Chavis. Chavis quietly got rid of the American 

Gene V. Glass: An Ugly Look Inside a Charter School in Arizona

3by dianeravitch / 32min

Gene V. Glass, one of the nation’s most distinguished education researchers, posted a blog about the experience of parents applying to a charter school in Arizona. Arizona is unusual in that it has no laws against nepotism or conflicts of interest. The Challenger Charter School is unusual in that it is owned by the former president of the State Board of Education and run by his wife and daughter.

Mercedes Schneider on 50CAN

6by dianeravitch / 1h

Mercedes Schneider wrote a post about 50CAN, which exists to spread the gospel of charter schools, state-run “Achievement school districts,” and high-stakes grading systems (unclear whether the high-stakes are only for public schools, as most states haven’t done much to identify or close failing charter schools). Their agenda is a match with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Be

Laura Chapman on 50CAN

11by dianeravitch / 2h

50CAN is a corporate reform organization that originated in Connecticut as ConnCAN. It was led by the billionaire Jonathan Sackler. Sackler owns Purdue Pharmaceuticals, which created the drug OxyContin, which is a highly addictive painkiller. The drug financing the expansion of charter schools made the Sackler family very wealthy (at last count, a net worth of $14 billion), but it is also implica

YESTERDAY

Betsy DeVos Would Not Deny Federal Funding to a School That Refuses to Admit Child of LGBT Family

17by dianeravitch / 20h

At her Congressional hearing, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was asked directly if she would deny federal funding to the Lighthouse Christian zacademy in Bloomington, Indiana, which explicitly bans the enrollment ipof students who are homosexual or who live in a family where homosexual activity is practiced. “Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, cited Lighthouse Christian Academy’s enrollme

New Orleans: Charter School Principal Filmed in Nazi Regalia

28by dianeravitch / 21h

The principal of the Crescent Leadership Academy, a charter school in New Orleans, was fired after he was filmed wearing Nazi rings and participating in a “white genocide” tape. The students in the school are almost all African-American. It is a second-chance school for students who have been expelled. Nicholas Dean, the principal of Crescent Leadership Academy, a charter school in New Orleans th

Saddest Statistic of the Year: Minority Students Clustered in High-Poverty Schools

20by dianeravitch / 22h

Politico Morning Education reports that the U.S. Department of Education f inds that an extraordinary proportion of black and Hispanic students are enrolled in high-poverty schools. The combination of racial segregation and poverty is a clear indicator of high risk for students. They will not have the benefits of peer effects which comes from economically and racially diverse schools. Nor are the

Jeff Bryant: DeVos’s “Transformation”=Public Theft

17by dianeravitch / 23h

Jeff Bryant has read Betsy DeVos’s speeches slamming public schools and extolling the virtues of public subsidy for private and religious schools. She carefully selects an anecdote to make her case. But she is late to the party. There is now persuasive evidence that students in voucher schools get worse results than their peers in public schools. In addition, many of those who use vouchers are st

D.C. Teacher: “We Are Graduating Students We Have Failed to Educate”

9by dianeravitch / 1d

Rob Barnett teaches mathematics in a D.C. public high school. He is faced every year with a dilemma. Does he pass or fail the student who is not ready, who has not mastered the course? He notes that D.C.’s graduation rate has soared, yet its NAEP scores are virtually unchanged since 2005. Its PARCC scores are even worse. NCLB and Race to the Top pressured teachers like him to get the graduation r

Slate: Online Credit Recovery Is Scamming Graduation Rates

26by dianeravitch / 1d

Arne Duncan used to boast about the rising high school graduation rate, but he never talked about one cause of the increase: online credit recovery. Slate has run a multi-part series on the online credit recovery racket. Imagine a student failing a one-year course, then earning full credit in less than one week. It has its benefits: superintendents get praised for the steady increase in the gradu

John Kuhn: The Hypocrisy of the Texas State Senate, Protector of Inequity Towards Neediest Children and Schools

100+by dianeravitch / 1d

John Kuhn is superintendent of a school district in Texas. He is one of the nation’s most eloquent spokesmen for children and public schools. He first came to national attention when he spoke at the Save Our Schools March in Washington, D.C. In 2011. He describes the recent legislative session, where an effort was made to improve school funding, but the Semate leaders knowingly sabotaged it. He w

Jack Covey: The Return of Jim Crow?

100+by dianeravitch / 1d

Reader Jack Covey watched Betsy DeVos testify at a Congressional hearing and was startled by what he saw and heard: “What’s scary is Secretary Devos’ tacit claim that, when it comes to schools that receive government funding — charter 

Marie Corfield: Public Education: Death By A Thousand Retirements

Marie Corfield: Public Education: Death By A Thousand Retirements:

Public Education: Death By A Thousand Retirements

Retirement dinners are bittersweet. We say goodbye to those who have worked for decades, but we also lose those decades of experience. Last week I hosted my county education association's annual retirement dinner. These were my opening remarks:

Tonite we are celebrating almost 800 years of educational excellence. Whether bus driver, maintenance, custodian, classroom teacher, instructional aide, administrative assistant or cafeteria aide, you are part of a learning community and you contributed to the education and advancement of students. And for that, we thank you. 

Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds who ever lived— student and eventually teacher himself—once said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” 

In an era where educational success is measured more by what can be counted than what counts, your decades of experience can be counted, but they can never be replaced. 

So, while you all are enjoying your well-deserved retirement, your colleagues will—I’m quite sure—carry on the traditions, wisdom and experience that you passed on to them with their students. That’s what masters at their craft do. That’s what those at the highest levels of their professions do. We pass on our gifts, so they can be given to others, so that excellence can continue. 

I’m not talking about the best ways to prep students for PARCC or how to effectively collect data; I’m talking about what you learned about dealing with students of every make and model over the years. How, through all the chaos of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, testing, budget cuts, the overall attack on our profession and our professional association, you preserved your dignity as well as that of your students. I'm talking about how you took in all the changes and insanity forced on you in your long careers, synthesized it all, and gave it to your students in ways that respected them as individual learners while maintaining your dignity as highly qualified education professionals.

As I was creating tonite’s program, I was looking at your numbers. Five of youMarie Corfield: Public Education: Death By A Thousand Retirements: 

10 Serious Issues Facing Public School Students: Where’s Betsy?

10 Serious Issues Facing Public School Students: Where’s Betsy?:

10 Serious Issues Facing Public School Students: Where’s Betsy?

Betsy DeVos wastes precious time on her choice initiative, ignoring the most serious problems facing our young people in public schools. At a hearing the other day, she pushed many of these problems onto the states.

But I would argue that these difficulties still require thoughtful attention and research from an education secretary who should be engaged.

Instead of working to find solutions to such problems, she’s too busy planning how to destroy public education with her unproven choice ideology.

Children in crisis need help now! They can’t wait. States and Americans look to her, if not for funding, for ideas and even solutions.

Here are 10 pressing issues.

Mental Health

One out of five children in public schools today has mental health difficulties that could be helped with support and early intervention. Schools should be on the frontline when it comes to mental health problems.

Every school should be staffed with enough counselors, school psychologists, and special education teachers who can intervene and assist families and students when mental health issues arise.

But for many, overcrowded schools and classes, and overtaxed teachers who lack 10 Serious Issues Facing Public School Students: Where’s Betsy?:

Stability and Change in Our Environment, Organizations, and Individual Lives (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Stability and Change in Our Environment, Organizations, and Individual Lives (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Stability and Change in Our Environment, Organizations, and Individual Lives (Part 1)

Over the past few months I have posted drafts of different sections of the book on technology integration in Silicon Valley schools that I have been working on since the beginning of this year. These two posts comes from my final chapter on stability and change in our lives and schools.

Over the past millions of years (not a typo, millions) Earth’s polar ice caps extended into equatorial South America, Africa, and Asia. Over time, these ice-bound regions receded and moderate to tropical climate in non-polar regions returned. Using the time scale of millions of years, there has been much continuity and change in climate on Earth.

Human organizations do not have that enormous time span but one in particular, the Roman Catholic Church, has existed for almost two thousand years. Within the Church, sects have arisen and broken away (e.g., the Protestant Reformation). Other groups protesting Church rules have formed and, over time, have become incorporated into the Church. Over the last millennium, Popes banished heretics, sponsored Crusades, survived the break away of German and English Catholics to form Lutheran and Anglican churches in the 16th century, and continue to oversee the lives of over a billion Catholics across the globe. In almost two thousand years, the Church has had long periods of stability punctuated by both swift and slow-motion years of change.

And in a single lifetime of 70-plus years for individual human beings, constancy and change mark one’s personality and character as a person moves from infancy to childhood, adolescence, becoming an adult, and then into old age.

Using different time scales, continuity and change characterize the environment we live in, the organizations that influence our lives, and what individuals experience in their life span of eight to nine decades. From millions of years to millennia to decades, stability and change are abiding partners.

Climate change. While there are nay-sayers that global climate has not changed significantly beyond the usual cyclical trends that have characterized weather Stability and Change in Our Environment, Organizations, and Individual Lives (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Report: Charter School Vampires Drain Traditional PA Districts Dry | gadflyonthewallblog

Report: Charter School Vampires Drain Traditional PA Districts Dry | gadflyonthewallblog:

Report: Charter School Vampires Drain Traditional PA Districts Dry

If you ever needed proof that charter schools harm traditional public school districts, look no further.

A new report by Pennsylvania’s Legislative Budget and Finance Committee concludes that these privately run but publicly financed schools often drain traditional public districts of funding.

The report conducted at the behest of the state House and Senate found that charter schools have attached themselves in some way to almost every district in the Commonwealth, but not equally. Half of the state’s traditional public schools suffer from 80% of the state’s charter parasites.

Moreover, 40% of traditional districts with “significant” charter enrollment are struggling to make ends meet. The reason: unfair state mandates about how traditional districts must pay their charter school hangers-on.

The report is based on interviews with 36 superintendents. A total of 29 of these leaders said charter schools hurt their districts. Only four superintendents mentioned any positive impacts at all.

Much of the damage comes from Pennsylvania’s insistence on funding charter schools out of traditional public school budgets. Instead of charter school money Report: Charter School Vampires Drain Traditional PA Districts Dry | gadflyonthewallblog:

Personalized Learning Pathways & the Gig Economy | Seattle Education

Personalized Learning Pathways & the Gig Economy | Seattle Education:

Personalized Learning Pathways & the Gig Economy

Individual learning pathways,

21st century skills,

Embracing the whole child;

These empowering phrases are being used to sell the public on a technology-centric, radical redesign of public education. Why? So our students will be able to keep pace in the highly competitive global economy.

David Coleman, father of the common core standards, let slip a rare insight into the real role individual students are to play in the new personalized education landscape of college and career readiness. Coleman’s statement was in response to the common core writing standards’ emphasis of analysis over opinion writing.

“As you grow up in this world, you realize people really don’t give a s— about what you feel or what you think,” he said. “It is rare in a working environment that someone says, ‘Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday, but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.’”

Forgive me, but workers bowing their heads and biting their tongues before the boss, who doesn’t give a shit about what they think or feel, sounds more like a 18th century skill to me – going back to the industrial revolution and persisting today in almost every workplace in the United States.

Personalized Pathways: Empowering or a Re-Branded Subjugation?

Katherine Prince of KnowledgeWorks, had this to say about the radical personalization of education:

Not only will schools take many forms but teachers will be those in the classroom and beyond. Prince calls these “learning agents” and they include developers and technology experts who will help create technologies that can measure learning and help teachers know when students understand what is being taught and when more instruction is needed. A blend of online learning and classroom instruction could be part of the redesign as it now being put in place in a growing number of universities.

Students also need to be prepared for the reality that full-time employment Personalized Learning Pathways & the Gig Economy | Seattle Education:

Russ on Reading: What Will We Do Without You, Jean Fritz?

Russ on Reading: What Will We Do Without You, Jean Fritz?:

What Will We Do Without You, Jean Fritz?

Only when a book is written out of passion is there much hope of its being read with passion. - Jean Fritz

I read of the passing of children's author, Jean Fritz, in the New York Times this past week. Ms. Fritz was 101 years-old, yet she died too soon because her voice is needed now more than ever. As a history teacher and as a reading specialist, I had a particularly affinity for the works of Jean Fritz. Her books were all meticulously researched and highly entertaining. I could be confident that in recommending a Jean Fritz book to children that they would get accurate information and would likely find the books informative and engaging. Most importantly, though, Jean Fritz was a pioneer in the field of history for children because she was not afraid to tell the truth about our national heroes. Her portraits of famous Americans like Ben Franklin, John Hancock, Benedict Arnold, Paul Revere and others were famously warts and all accounts.

When Jean Fritz started writing for kids in the 1960s, history for children was notably homogenized and inclined toward what her New York Times obituary called "unalloyed veneration." George Washington "never told a lie"; Thomas Jefferson was a champion of  "equality" with no mention of his slave holding or rape of slave women; Andrew Jackson was the hero of the Battle of New Orleans with no mention of the "Trail of Tears." Jean Fritz would have none of that and for that, I, for one, am eternally grateful to her. I think we all should be. Her book titles signal to us that she is taking a look at American history with something of a sideways, critical stance. Can't you make them behave, King George?; Will you sign here, John Hancock?; Shh! We're writing the Constitution; Where do you think you're going, Christopher Columbus?

Here is an example of the Jean Fritz touch from her book, What's the big Russ on Reading: What Will We Do Without You, Jean Fritz?:

Badass Teachers Association: Governance by the Perpetually Clueless, Politics as a Comedy of Classes by Cheryl Binkley

Badass Teachers Association: Governance by the Perpetually Clueless, Politics as a Comedy of Classes by Cheryl Binkley:

Governance by the Perpetually Clueless, Politics as a Comedy of Classes 

by Cheryl Binkley

Originally posted at: http://3rdmillenniumteacher.blogspot.com/2017/05/governance-by-perpetually-clueless.html

Most people are familiar with Jane Austen’s Emma, even if they don’t realize it. The often remade and modernized story shows up all the time either in new movie versions or thinly disguised TV shows, from a 2009 BBC series and the Miramax movie with Gwyneth Paltrow to the 80’s vehicle Clueless with Alicia Silverstone.  Most recently, Emma showed up for me in, of all places, a Today show Obama political ad.  

Yesterday morning I was watching the Today show waiting for the weather report as I have every morning for years when an Obama ad for Tom Perriello came on; a series of ads that can be credited with closing the numbers on the Virginia primary race for governor.

For those who don’t follow Virginia politics, Perriello is currently the younger and trendier candidate in a Democratic primary race for governor against Ralph Northam, the more staid but stable current lieutenant governor, in what has turned into a race between the the National party (Perriello is backed by Obama, Sanders and Warren) and the Virginia state party (Northam is endorsed by ranking Democratic Senator Dick Saslaw, and most Virginia based progressive organizations.)

On the Today ad Obama is smiling arm in arm with Tom telling us what a wonderful progressive Tom is, and how Obama hired him to head the progressive think tank Center for American Progress; but back to how that made me think of Jane Austen.

For those who don’t remember, Emma is a lovely, privileged and in many ways bright and capable young woman, who is constantly dabbling in the lives of her neighbors and friends. However, her narrow world and resulting lack of awareness of class differences blinds her to the destructive effects of her constant meddling.

You see, Emma’s friends, unlike her, live in the ordinary but wider world, dealing with daily survival and sometimes struggling to maintain the Badass Teachers Association: Governance by the Perpetually Clueless, Politics as a Comedy of Classes by Cheryl Binkley: