Some Reasons I Object to Vouchers for Religious and Private Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Some Reasons I Object to Vouchers for Religious and Private Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Some Reasons I Object to Vouchers for Religious and Private Schools

There are many reasons to object to diverting public dollars to religious and private schools. One reason is that every dollar that goes to a nonpublic school is subtracted from a public school. A vote for vouchers is a vote to defund public schools and impose budget cuts on them.

One of our readers is an avid supporter of school choice. When he asked why anyone objects to school choice, this was my reply:

“I object to paying for religious indoctrination in any faith including my own.

“I object to my tax dollars paying for schools that discriminate against children based on their race, their sexual orientation, or their disabilities.

“If the Supreme Court eliminates the state Blaine amendments and allows tax dollars to subsidize religious schools, expect that lawsuits will challenge their discriminatory admission policies, and states will begin demanding that their students take the same tests and meet the same standards as all publicly funded schools. Expect states to require the hiring of certified teachers in schools that take public money.

“The religious and private schools that want to protect their autonomy will not accept state money. Only the very marginal schools, those that can’t fill their seats, will take the money.”

What are your reasons for supporting or opposing tax dollars for private school choice?Some Reasons I Object to Vouchers for Religious and Private Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog:

 

What charter school supporters say they hope to change after school board victories - LA Times

What charter school supporters say they hope to change after school board victories - LA Times:

What charter school supporters say they hope to change after school board victories

Charter school backers put a lot of money behind candidates in this month’s Los Angeles school board elections.

They spent at least $9.7 million pushing for Nick Melvoin and Kelly Gonez in the nation’s most expensive local school board races.

In District 4, Melvoin upended school board President Steve Zimmer, a two-term incumbent backed by unions. In District 6, with no incumbent, Gonez beat out union-supported Imelda Padilla.

Now the seven-member board is about to have its first pro-charter majority.

Charter schools are publicly funded, privately run schools that are exempt from some of the rules that govern traditional public schools. In Los Angeles, they are mostly run by nonprofits, with a staff that is not unionized.

Los Angeles already has more charters than any other school district in the nation. We asked charter supporters to tell us why they pushed so hard for a school board power shift and what they hope will come of it.

A spirit of collaboration — but also growth

Charter school advocates have been careful to frame the election more as a win for families than charters.

“Charter schools made incremental progress [in the elections] last week,” said Jed Wallace, president of the California Charter Schools Assn. “We’re pleased about that. We don’t want to overstate its significance.”

His organization’s political action committee gave at least $2.84 million to school board candidates.

Former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan, who donated more than $2 million to the pro-charter candidates and the PACs that backed them, took a similarly nonpartisan tone. “What can happen is the charter schools and the public schools could pretty much unite,” he said.

In 2015, Eli Broad's foundation spearheaded a push to get half of L.A. Unified’s students into charters, an effort that backers now say is focused on finding ways to replicate great schools of any kind.

"This election was about the need to improve all our city’s public schools,” the What charter school supporters say they hope to change after school board victories - LA Times:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: NO to the Seattle Times Education Reporting

Seattle Schools Community Forum: NO to the Seattle Times Education Reporting:

NO to the Seattle Times Education Reporting

At the very least, you should take all of the Seattle Times' education reporting on policies and solutions to education issues with a grain of salt.  Some of it is supported by the Gates Foundation and the rest of it is suspect.  

You should be unhappy that the newspaper of record in our city is being decidedly disingenuous with readers and attempting to manipulate the conversation about public education in our state via back-room decisions with ed reformers around the state.

Over the last seven years or so, I have repeatedly told various Times' education reporters that I thought their editors (via Editorial) had to be leading their reporting and every time I am told that there is a "wall" between Editorial and reporting.  

Recently, I had given the Times credit for pushing and pushing on the Legislature to get McCleary done.  They didn't acknowledge their push was for the GOP plan and they would be using every trick in the book to undercut the Dems plan.  The Times Editorial Board sounded so earnest and yet demanding for the Legislature to get this done.  And I fell for it.

I say to you today that the Times' wall between Editorial and reporting is about as believable as the Trump wall.   

I got to this unfortunate way of thinking because of two recent findings - oneSeattle Schools Community Forum: NO to the Seattle Times Education Reporting:

 

Cox, Gray TV: These cuts are going to affect entire communities - Lily's Blackboard

Cox, Gray TV: These cuts are going to affect entire communities - Lily's Blackboard:

Cox, Gray TV: These cuts are going to affect entire communities

Lily sat down with the DC bureaus of Cox Media Group and Gray TV to explain how the proposed cuts to federal funding of public education has a very real impact on local communities. The news story featuring Lily’s interview was picked up by local NBC, CBS and FOX affiliated television stations from Anchorage, Alaska to Tulsa, Oklahoma and beyond.

 Cox, Gray TV: These cuts are going to affect entire communities - Lily's Blackboard:

Two more days of Springfield will keep your head spinning. Will Democrats vote to cut dedicated funding for special education teachers and cut pension benefits? | Fred Klonsky

Two more days of Springfield will keep your head spinning. Will Democrats vote to cut dedicated funding for special education teachers and cut pension benefits? | Fred Klonsky:

Two more days of Springfield will keep your head spinning. Will Democrats vote to cut dedicated funding for special education teachers and cut pension benefits?

I have been reporting the last few days about HB 2808. It was to be the House version of SB 1, an education de-funding bill that would cut dedicated and direct funding to Illinois special education teachers.

It was sponsored in the House by Rep. William Davis, Robert W. Pritchard , Linda Chapa LaVia, Al Riley, Emanuel Chris Welch, Sue Scherer, Camille Y. Lilly and Will Guzzardi.

It now seems that with the legislature adjourning tomorrow there is no time to vote on the House measure and reconcile it with the Senate’s SB1, which does essentially the same thing – end dedicated and direct funding for special education teachers.

So, the House will vote on the Senate’s SB1, with an amendment.

Amendment 1 to Senate Bill 1 now bluntly states that direct and dedicated funding for special education teachers and for all others providing direct services to students with disabilities including one special ed director for each school district will be eliminated.

“No funding shall be provided to school districts under this Section after fiscal year 2017.”

Meanwhile public employee pensions remain under attack.

The Illinois Education Association has a good summary of HB 4027, HB 4045, and Senate Bill SB 16 here.

While the pensions of current retirees are protected by the decision of the Illinois Supreme Court, these bills – or any version of them that may emerge – target current and future employees and their pensions.

They are attempts by legislative Democrats primarily to skirt the pension protection clause of the Illinois Constitution.

It is two more days folks.

You know what to do. 888 412 6570.

Two more days of Springfield will keep your head spinning. Will Democrats vote to cut dedicated funding for special education teachers and cut pension benefits? | Fred Klonsky:

Nation's Most Integrated Schools Now Seeing a Reversal; Charters School Making It Worse - Education Law Prof Blog

Education Law Prof Blog:

Nation's Most Integrated Schools Now Seeing a Reversal; Charters School Making It Worse

The UCLA Civil Rights Project has released a new report on segregation in southern schools.  The press release is below:

Black and Latino students in the South are increasingly isolated in intensely segregated schools and are doubly segregated in schools serving low-income students, according to new research released today by the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA and the Center for Education and Civil Rights at Penn State.

“While significant gains in integration were made during the Civil Rights era, we are unfortunately seeing a troubling reversal of those trends,” says Gary Orfield, Co- Director of the Civil Rights Project.

Building on the gains of the Civil Rights era, from 1968 to 1980, the percentage of Black students in intensely segregated schools (Schools where 90 percent or more are students of color) fell from almost 80 percent to a low of about 23 percent. But since then, the percentage of Black students in intensely segregated schools has risen to more than one in three (35.8%).

Meanwhile, enrollment in Southern schools by Latino students, who make up 27 percent of students in the South, surpasses that of Black students who make up about one quarter of all students. But Latino students are even more likely to be segregated with more than 40 percent of Latino students in the South attending Education Law Prof Blog:

 

Bill Mathis Reflects on Trump’s Education Budget: A Paradise Lost? | janresseger

Bill Mathis Reflects on Trump’s Education Budget: A Paradise Lost? | janresseger:

Bill Mathis Reflects on Trump’s Education Budget: A Paradise Lost?

Bill Mathis understands public education from his experience as an award winning local school superintendent, a member of a state board of education and an academic expert on education policy. Bill is the Managing Director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder and the former superintendent of schools for the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union in Brandon, Vermont. He was a National Superintendent of the Year finalist and a Vermont Superintendent of the Year. He currently serves on the Vermont State Board of Education and chairs the legislative committee.

Mathis condemns President Donald Trump’s miserly 2018 federal education budget that undermines our nation’s principles: “In 1965, the federal government, driven by the obligation to provide equal opportunities to the least fortunate of our citizens, passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  It was intended to lift the nation by strengthening our poorest children and schools, improving the quality of teaching, opening the doors of higher education, and providing skills to adults…  And the emphasis was on building the common good.  By widely investing in our citizens, we invest in the health of our society. Those principles have found no refuge in the work of President Trump and Education Secretary DeVos; all that remains of these great purposes is a confusion of empty words….”

Mathis has given me permission to print his reflection on the meaning of the President’s federal budget proposal, released last week.

Bill Mathis

Trump’s Education Budget: A Paradise Lost?

“But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropp’d manna and could make the worse appear the better reason.     — John Milton, Paradise Lost, II.I.112

We had a vision of a more perfect nation where democracy and equality were more than aspirations. We believed we could make this piece of paradise real with the unity of the people and the purposefulness of our governments. But this has been reduced to an endless series of false and hollow incantations whose life-span is as transient as its denial in the next morning’s news cycle.

In 1965, the federal government, driven by the obligation to provide equal opportunities to the least fortunate of our citizens, passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It was intended to lift the nation by strengthening our poorest children and schools, improving the quality of teaching, opening the doors of higher education, and providing skills to adults. It embraced the ideal voiced by the late President Kennedy that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” And the emphasis was on building the common good. By widely investing in our citizens, we invest in the health of our society and economy.

Those principles have found no refuge in the work of President Trump and Education Secretary DeVos; all that remains of these great purposes is a confusion of empty words made to appear as if the worst were the better. Larded with phrases like “commitment to improving Bill Mathis Reflects on Trump’s Education Budget: A Paradise Lost? | janresseger:

Change and Stability in Classrooms, Schools, and Districts (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Change and Stability in Classrooms, Schools, and Districts (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Change and Stability in Classrooms, Schools, and Districts (Part 2)

Organizations are dynamically conservative, that is to say, they fight like mad to remain the same.

Donald Schon, 1970[i]

If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change

Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard [ii]

Based upon my research into exemplars of technology integration in 41 classrooms, 12 schools, and six districts in Silicon Valley in 2016, I concluded that the teachers and administrators I have seen and interviewed have, indeed, implemented software and hardware fully into their daily routines. In these settings, technology use shifted from the foreground to the background. Using devices has become as ordinary as once using pencils and paper. And in many instances, the integration was seamless, no stitches showed. So what?

Putting a reform into classroom practice is no stroll in the park.  Policymakers and researchers must answer four basic questions about any policy aimed at improving how teachers teach and how students learn.

1. Did policies aimed at improving student performance get fully, moderately, or partially implemented?
2. When implemented fully, did they change the content and practice of teaching?
3. Did changed classroom practices account for what students learned?
4. Did what students learn meet the intended policy goals?

Too often those who make consequential school decisions and those who research such efforts ignore these questions. And that is a mistake.

In answer to the first question, my data show clearly that in the 41 Silicon Valley classrooms I observed–spread across nine schools and five districts—the local Change and Stability in Classrooms, Schools, and Districts (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Superpower [A Tough Love] | The Jose Vilson

Superpower [A Tough Love] | The Jose Vilson:

Superpower [A Tough Love]

I’m not here to convince you I’m perfect. I’m here to convince you I’m not.

There’s a school in my old neighborhood that took the time to set up a book study, read my book, and invite me to one of their meetings. It was odd sitting there as a colleague in this work being asked to speak like an expert. It was uncanny sitting there as an introvert who spends a few hours turning into a temporary extrovert because the work matters. A few hours prior to the meeting, I had to quit beating myself up for the mistakes I made in the classroom. A few hours before that, I got messages and e-mails that made me question whether this system and I were compatible. A few hours before that, I was worried whether the students in front of me would pass this quiz I prepared for them with care. I woke up with my brain screaming my agenda to me. My brain found quiet in the crunch of my cereal and the misery others suffered on the news that day.

Doubt can enter my work like nimbostratus clouds do, and I rarely pack an umbrella.

No more is doubt more powerful than when the last days of the school year approach. From a financial standpoint, quitting sounds awful and awful risky. We lose our benefits, our pensions, our rights, and our steady salaries. From a human perspective, it messes us up to hear of well-meaning, hard-working adults leaving the kids in the care in the middle of the year, so we wait. From a personal perspective, the truth is Superpower [A Tough Love] | The Jose Vilson:

Book Review: Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President | deutsch29

Book Review: Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President | deutsch29:

Book Review: Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President

In May 2017, I purchased Kranish and Fisher’s book, Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President, because it provided detailed background on Trump’s experience as an elementary school student, a topic about which I wrote this May 07, 2017, post.

I did not plan on reading the book. However, in searching for the pages on Trump’s elementary school years, I also read about his family history, which Kranish and Fisher offer in remarkable detail.

I was both impressed and intrigued, and I ended up reading the whole book.

In fact, the entire biography is written in consistently-amazing detail, which I find astounding given that most of the book was written over a three-month period in mid-2016.

The authors, Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, both work for the Washington Post (WP), and WP dispatched scores of its professionals across the US and around the world in order to complete the Trump biography in record time.

The book was originally published in August 2016 under the title, Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power; the title was altered and an afterword added following Trump’s being elected president in November 2016.

It is impossible to read Trump Revealed without gaining an impeccably-documented sense of the man himself.

One of my favorite parts of the book concerns Trump suing both author (Timothy O’Brien) and publishers of another Trump biography, TrumpNation, to the tune of $5 billion for allegedly misrepresenting Trump’s net worth.

Trump agreed to be interviewed for O’Brien’s book, but the information Trump offered concerning his net worth ranged from $1.7 billion to $9.5 billion depending upon the Book Review: Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President | deutsch29:

THE BATs QUALITY OF WORKLIFE TEAM NEEDS TO HEAR YOUR VOICE!!! Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association:

ATTENTION ALL BATS

What are the Working Conditions in your school or university?

THE BATs  QUALITY OF WORKLIFE TEAM NEEDS TO HEAR YOUR VOICE!!!

This survey is an anonymous survey created by BATs in partnership with the AFT. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/EQWLBATS

Some History

In October 2014 NY BAT Jamy Brice Hyde brought it to the attention of AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten that teachers were suffering.  Randi and Jamy worked together to form the BAT/AFT partnership to address teacher workplace stress and working conditions.  Out of that partnership came the BATs/AFT Quality of Work Life Survey.  The Survey launched in May of 2015 exposed that America’s teachers were suffering. https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/worklifesurveyresults2015.pdf

Taking the results of the May 2015 survey the BATs Quality of Work Life team and AFT worked to create an survey that would allow this work to be scientific and therefore become a powerful tool to expose teacher workplace conditions.  That survey is now live and ready for your input.

Speak up and Speak out.

10-15 minutes of your time to show the nation what our classrooms look like and how our working conditions impact student learning is the most important 10-15 minutes you can use to make a difference!  Take this survey and report your workplace conditions.  Make a difference!   https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/EQWLBATS

Our Future

BATs  believe “ A teacher's work environment is a student's learning environment.” It is the mission of the Quality of Work Life team to use the data gathered from this survey  to  propose National Healthy Workplace Legislation. We will be completing a comprehensive scientific study as well as identify areas in a teacher's work life that have the most negative and positive impacts.  We will use this to help to create contract language to positively impact teachers. We intend to impact policy making for public education across the country! THANK YOU FOR BEING A PART OF OUR HISTORY!

Don't forget to JOIN US FOR OUR MONTHLY TWITTER CHATS ON IMPROVING YOUR  WORK LIFE follow #QWLBATs on Twitter!!

Badass Teachers Association: