Here's Looking at You, Kid Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

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

Here's Looking at You, Kid Diane Ravitch's blog

A site to discuss better education for all

Florida: State Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Challenge to Third Grade Reading Test: Kids Lose, Stupidity Wins

1by dianeravitch / 1h

Peter Greene writes here about the latest setback to Florida parents challenging the state’s law requiring that students take and pass the third grade test or be flunked. Peter explains why this law is useless, although it does have the result 

Why Are These People Allowed to Tell Schools What to Do?

4by dianeravitch / 1h

Politico discusses the state plans to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act and raises the question: Why are these uninformed, distant, unqualified people allowed to tell schools what to do? Betsy DeVos and everyone she has appointed 

Do You Want to Host a Community Screening of “Backpack Full of Cash”?

5by dianeravitch / 24min

Sarah Mondale, Vera Aronow, and Stone Lantern Films have created an excellent professional documentary about the fight to save our public schools from corporate reformers. It is called “Backpack Full of Cash.” They have been 

Arizona: Advocates for Public Schools Collecting Signatures to Block Voucher Expansion

4by dianeravitch / 35min

Good news from Arizona. Supporters of the state’s underfunded public schools say they are on track to collect enough signatures to block the expansion of vouchers and force a referendum. “Save Our Schools spokeswoman Dawn 

Mississippi: The Only Majority-Black District That Earned an A

2by dianeravitch / 24min

A reader who grew up in Clinton, Mississippi, shared this story, which appeared in the Hechinger Report. She was in third grade when the district integrated its schools and made the fateful decision to pursue equity for all students. In 2016, half of all black students in Mississippi attended school in a district rated D or F; 86 percent of the students in those districts were black. In districts

Jan Resseger: The Sordid Story of ECOT and Its Ripoff of Taxpayers in Ohio

4by dianeravitch / 1h

Jan Resseger writes in The Progressive about the biggest charter scam in Ohio . When a charter operator gets a lot of money from the state, and selfsame charter operator gives generously to legislators, how can said charter operator ever be held accountable? In Ohio, the press got fed up with ECOT and started paying attention to charter frauds. Politicians cannot tolerate constant negative press.

Florida Editorial: Will the Fight to Save Public Education Spread?

6by dianeravitch / 2h

Congratulations to the editorial board Of the the Sun-Sentinel in Broward County, Florida, which published a strong editorial lambasting the Legislature for passing HB 7069. Several school districts are planning a lawsuit to stop the law from being implemented. The law will do massive harm to the state’s public schools while diverting millions to the charter industry. Several key legislators have

Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris: A Critical Review of the PBS Special “Schools, Inc.”

32by dianeravitch / 3h

Between April and June of this year, PBS distributed a three-hour documentary called “Schools Inc.” to its member stations. I was invited to comment on the program by WNET, the PBS station in New York City. It was a 10-minute interview , and not nearly enough time to respond to all the issues covered in a three-hour narrative. I was certainly grateful to WNET for inviting my response but thought

YESTERDAY

Texas: Special Session of Legislature Opens Tomorrow, to Restart Voucher Debate

7by dianeravitch / 22h

Governor Greg Abbott has called a special session of the Texas legislature, beginning tomorrow, which will consider a school finance reform bill and vouchers, among other things. The public schools of Texas are underfunded. In 2011, the legislature cut the public school budget by more than $5 billion. Despite a growth in enrollment, that money has never been restored. Sensible leaders recognize t

Betsy DeVos and ALEC in Denver This Week

23by dianeravitch / 23h

Betsy DeVos will be the keynote speaker at the ALEC annual meeting in Denver this week. Protestors will be there to greet her, although the U.S. Department of Education is keeping silent about which day she will appear. ALEC has been promoting deregulation and privatization since the early 1970s. It is funded by major corporations and has nearly 2,000 members who are state legislators. It writes

Trump and the Russian Mafia: A Cautionary Story

3by dianeravitch / 1d

Craig Unger, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, published an article about Donald Trump’s relations with the Russia mafia. It is called “Trump’s Russian Laundromat.” Remember when Trump said he had no connections to Russia? That’s not accurate. His connections go all the way back to 1987, when he first flew to Russia to discuss building a luxury hotel in Moscow. All expenses paid. The hotel wa

Betsy DeVos Tells Senators She Will “Return” Office for Civil Rights to a “Neutral” Role

62by dianeravitch / 1d

A group of Democratic Senators wrote a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to express their concern that she was abandoning civil rights enforcement. DeVos wrote back to say that she was “ returning” the Office for Civil Rights to its role as a “neutral” investigative agency. It is at a time like this that DeVos’s ignorance of education policy and history becomes embarrassing. OCR is the

Gary Rubinstein: Does KIPP Deserve to Expand in Philadelphia?

4by dianeravitch / 1d

Gary Rubinstein learned that KIPP plans to add more schools in Philadelphia and nearly triple its enrollment. So Gary did what he always did: he checked the public data for KIPP in Philadelphia. He found that KIPP has one high school in the city. “ That school got the lowest possible rating, essentially an F. Not only were their test scores low, but they also got the lowest possible rating in ‘gr

Philadelphia: KIPP Gets Whatever It Wants, Despite Poor Performance

30by dianeravitch / 1d

Despite lackluster results at some of its Philadelphia schools, KIPP plans to increase the number of itsschools in the city and more than double its enrollment, from 1,770 to 4,400 students. Current plans call the growth of K-12 networks of KIPP schools. Apparently, the KIPP Network will accept students in the early grades but not in middle school or high school. KIPP wants to create its “culture

New Jersey: Linda Weber, Candidate for Congress, Thanks You for Your Help!

4by dianeravitch / 1d

Linda Weber is running against a Republican incumbent in New Jersey. Hers is one of the districts that Democrats hope to flip, so as to gain control of the House in 2018 and stop ztrump’s plans to defund public schools, environmental 

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

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Infomercial for Personalized Learning Implementation and Effects | RAND

Informing Progress: Insights on Personalized Learning Implementation and Effects | RAND:

Informing Progress
Insights on Personalized Learning Implementation and Effects

The basic concept of personalized learning (PL) — instruction that is focused on meeting students' individual learning needs while incorporating their interests and preferences — has been a longstanding practice in U.S. K–12 education. Options for personalization have increased as personal computing devices have become increasingly affordable and available in schools and developers created software to support individual student learning. In recent years, it has become more common for schools to embrace schoolwide models of PL.

We collected data from schools in the Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC)'s Breakthrough School Models program. Our study seeks to describe the practices and strategies these schools used to implement PL, understand some of the challenges and facilitators, and consider these alongside achievement findings to discern patterns that may be informative.

Teachers and students reported higher levels of many aspects of personalization than their counterparts in a national sample. These included time for one-on-one tailored support for learning; using up-to-date information on student progress to personalize instruction and group students; students tracking their own progress; competency-based practices; and flexible use of staff, space, and time. However, some more-difficult-to-implement aspects did not appear to differ from practices in schools nationally, such as student discussions with teachers on progress and goals; keeping up-to-date documentation of student strengths, weaknesses, and goals; and student choice of topics and materials.

We estimate study students gained about 3 percentile points in mathematics relative to a comparison group of similar students. In reading, there was a similar trend, though it was not statistically significant. Low-performing and high-performing students appeared to benefit.

Please note: An addendum to Informing Progress: Insights on Personalized Learning Implementation and Effects that documents the survey results is forthcoming.

Key Findings

Lessons from the Implementation of Personalized Learning

• Schools in the NGLC sample were pursuing a wide variety of practices to focus on the learning needs of each individual student in a supportive and flexible way.
• Schools were implementing specific PL approaches to varying degrees, with none of the schools looking as radically different from traditional schools as theory might predict.
• There is suggestive evidence that greater implementation of PL practices may be related to more-positive effects on achievement; however, this finding requires confirmation through further research.

Recommendations

For State and District Policymakers:

• Incorporate flexibility into policies related to course progressions.
• Allow school staff to have some autonomy to design school schedules that support PL.
• Enable schools to hire staffs that are the best fit for the school.
• Ensure that accountability policies value growth and other metrics of student success.
• Revise grading policies to incorporate competency-based approaches, and clearly communicate these approaches to students, families, employers, and postsecondary education institutions.
• Look to early adopters of PL for examples of large-scale policy change.

For Implementers at the District and School Levels:

• Provide teachers with the resources and time to pilot new instructional approaches and gather evidence of how well they work.
• Provide teachers with time and resources to collaborate on developing curriculum and on reviewing and scoring student work.
• Identify a school staff member (or two) who is comfortable with technology and has curriculum expertise to serve as a just-in-time resource for teachers.
• Provide resources and support for school staff to help them choose the most-appropriate digital or nondigital curriculum materials.
• Provide resources and support for school staff to integrate multiple data systems.

For Funders:

• Direct funding to technology developers who will work with teachers and curriculum experts to design technology-based curriculum materials and data systems that will support PL practices.
• Allocate funding for research that includes stronger experimental designs and that systematically tests specific PL strategies.

Informing Progress: Insights on Personalized Learning Implementation and Effects | RAND:

State board, advocacy groups fundamentally disagree over plan for complying with federal education law | EdSource

State board, advocacy groups fundamentally disagree over plan for complying with federal education law | EdSource:

State board, advocacy groups fundamentally disagree over plan for complying with federal education law

After much talk and testimony at a nine-hour meeting, the State Board of Education made modest changes last week to its draft of the state plan for complying with the Every Student Succeeds Act. Board members are confident the plan will soon be ready to pass along to the federal government for approval. Members of a coalition of two dozen civil rights and student advocacy organizations said the changes will do little to improve a plan that’s still vague and weak.

“After months of feedback and engagement, the current plan still doesn’t address the core issues that we know are absolutely essential to support high-need students,” Samantha Tran, senior director of education programming for the nonprofit Children Now, wrote in an email. “The state seems to be abdicating an essential civil rights role, and it’s disheartening.”

The comment reflects a core disagreement over how most board members and advocacy groups view the purpose and value of the plan. In it, California must spell out for the U.S. Department of Education how it will spend about $2.5 billion in federal funding to improve achievement for low-income children, English learners and migrant children and to train teachers and school leaders. The plan must also explain how the state will identify and help transform the lowest-performing 5 State board, advocacy groups fundamentally disagree over plan for complying with federal education law | EdSource:

Asking too much of high school graduates but not enough of businesses that employ them - The Hechinger Report

Asking too much of high school graduates but not enough of businesses that employ them - The Hechinger Report:

Asking too much of high school graduates but not enough of businesses that employ them
The Chicago mayor’s new preparedness initiative is good, but doesn’t go far enough

The adage, “To whom much is given, much is expected,” can’t just apply to high school graduates.

Beginning with the class of 2020, all Chicago Public School students who meet traditional academic requirements necessary to graduate must also present a post-graduation plan before they can cross the stage to receive their diploma. Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, and the city’s Chief Education Officer Janice Jackson hope to raise a million dollars for the “Learn. Plan. Succeed” initiative to add eight additional counselors to 172 high schools that teach almost 110,000 students. Chicago Public Schools have reported to the mayor’s office since 1995. But critics rightly point out that underfunded mandates like this one will only add to, not alleviate, the problems already plaguing Chicago schools.

Given the natural indecisiveness of teens, I think it’s good to ask students for a concrete plan. Graduation should offer more tangible signs of preparedness than a mere certificate. The policy calls for students to present an acceptance letter from a college, a branch of the armed services, an employer, a trade school or a “gap-year” program. Students are supposed to graduate to something.

There are real ways to bolster this initiative, including expanding the city’s After School Matters program, which employs approximately 16,000 Chicago teens in various jobs in the summer. As the school year winds down, why not employ collegians, typically already back from summer break, to enhance a counseling corps to deliver the new effort?

Join the conversation later on Andre Perry’s radio show, “Free College,” hosted Tuesdays on WBOK1230 in New Orleans at 3pm Central/4pm Eastern 504.260.9265.

The youth unemployment rate is roughly twice the overall national rate, when youth is defined as anyone under the age of 24, according to a 2016 study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. The Institute also found that most young workers don’t have a degree and recent college graduates face a tough job market. Even though the unemployment rate has improved in the last decade, the class of 2016 joined “a sizable backlog of unemployed college graduates” dating back to 2009, the Asking too much of high school graduates but not enough of businesses that employ them - The Hechinger Report:

If an elected official tells you the school funding problem in Illinois is a formula, they are telling a lie – Fred Klonsky

If an elected official tells you the school funding problem in Illinois is a formula, they are telling a lie. The school funding problem in Illinois is adequate revenue. – Fred Klonsky:

If an elected official tells you the school funding problem in Illinois is a formula, they are telling a lie.

The school funding problem in Illinois is adequate revenue.

By Bev Johns

Is ANY politician telling the truth about Senate Bill 1?

All sides say some schools will NOT OPEN next month (although no one has yet identified even one school that will not open in August). What is true is that many

schools could not remain open all school year without State funding.

State Sen. Andy Manar, who sponsored Senate Bill 1 to change the method of funding for schools, told The Associated Press a veto by Rauner would effectively KILL SB 1.

Manar needs to stop saying we have the “worst school funding formula in the country”.

No, we do not. The lack of funding of our current formula, the failure to increase the Foundation level for 9 years, since 2008, means we rely far too much on the property tax, which results in disparate and inequitable funding.

No matter how many times Manar (and others) say it, the problem is not the formula but the lack of funding. (Comment from Capitol Fax, 7/17/17)

Rauner states that his revised SB1 “for the first time, ensures all school districts in Illinois are equitably and adequately funded.”

His revised plan does NO SUCH THING. 

SB 1 (revised or not) is just about funding FORMULAS, not funding. 

“But as there are many facets to the school funding equation, the one that is most important — and that often is the first component to fall away from the discussion — is funding it.

“In truth, our current funding formula would likely be meeting most needs if it was properly funded.

“It does attempt to funnel more funding to those districts with less If an elected official tells you the school funding problem in Illinois is a formula, they are telling a lie. The school funding problem in Illinois is adequate revenue. – Fred Klonsky:

Sac City recruits Filipino teachers to fill unmet special education needs | ABC10.com

Sac City recruits Filipino teachers to fill unmet special education needs | ABC10.com:

Sac City recruits Filipino teachers to fill unmet special education needs

Sacramento City Unified School District has begun filling special education teacher positions with Filipino teachers because it can’t find enough qualified teachers to take on the demanding job.

“We’ve exhausted all options of recruiting teachers locally,” said district spokesman Alex Barrios. “We’ve tried to recruit special-ed teachers here in Sacramento as well as throughout the state and nation. Unfortunately we still came up with some vacancies, so these are some very hard to fill positions in special ed.”

Working with a recruiter, the district settled on the Philippines as "a perfect fit" for its schools, as English is widely spoken there and school curriculum is similar to that of American schools, Barrios said.

The Sacramento City Teachers Association, which represents district employees, criticized the decision to import teachers, saying the problem is "a crisis of its own making."

“I’ve never heard of other districts going halfway across the globe to recruit teachers,” said David Fisher, teacher association president. He said Sac City district’s need to do so demonstrates its failure to offer adequate pay, benefits and working conditions.

The association maintains that the district is in the best financial condition of its history, with $98 million in reserve from not filling open positions and not spending all funds budgeted for things like books and supplies.

“The district is perpetuating this crisis by underpaying and undervaluing current teachers and not improving the working conditions and the learning conditions of our students,” Fisher said, adding that the district has more than 120 open positions, and expects there will be more than 200 by the start of the school year.

Barrios said there are now 118 open positions, and he doesn't know how the teachers association arrived at the 200 figure. He also noted that other cities, including Las Vegas, Nevada, have hired teachers from the Philippines.

Barrios said the association’s criticism are unfounded, citing teacher compensation packages worth an average of $91,000 in pay and benefits. He blamed the association in part for failing to work with the district on recruitment efforts. Addressing the teachers association claims of the district's excess reserve, Barrios said pension benefits for retired employees are a big drain on the district's resources.

While the Filipino teachers recruited so far have been successful, the plan is only a short term solution, Barrios added.

The district has begun working with California State University Sacramento on a program to find interested students to become qualified special education teachers.

“We want to identify before they even graduate who might be interested in this specific career path,” Barrios said. “We want them to know there’s a job waiting for them here. We have a great district they can come and work in with great benefits."

Barrios said it will take several years before qualified applicants begin graduating from the Sac State program.Sac City recruits Filipino teachers to fill unmet special education needs | ABC10.com:

What Nicholas Kristof Left Out in Column Promoting Bridge International Academies | janresseger

What Nicholas Kristof Left Out in Column Promoting Bridge International Academies | janresseger:

What Nicholas Kristof Left Out in Column Promoting Bridge International Academies

Over the weekend, the NY Times published Nicholas Kristof’s puff piece about Bridge International Academies (BIA), the private, for-profit education start-up trying to get a foothold in Africa and India. Kristof has definitely read the material provided by Bridge’s communications arm, and he was impressed when he visited some schools.

He also has such a dim view of children’s education in the developing world that any tech-savvy “solution” would be an improvement: “Imagine an elementary school where students show up, but teachers don’t. Where 100 students squeeze into a classroom but don’t get any books. Where teachers are sometimes illiterate and periodically abuse students. Where families pay under the table to get a ‘free’ education, yet students don’t learn to read.”

Fortunately, two in-depth pieces have been published recently to answer some questions about Bridge International Academies—who started it, what it is, where it operates, how its doing.  Diane Ravitch references both articles in her recent response to Nicholas Kristof’s piece.

Ravitch, an education historian, also raises the most basic question about Bridge International Academies, so we’ll start there.  Is it in the best interest of any society to turn over the education of its children to a for-profit company whose investors include the World Bank, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg? “I think Kristof is wrong because BIA is a short-term fix, not a solution.  It cannot possibly educate the hundreds of millions of children whose parents can’t afford to pay. By providing this ‘fix,’ the governments are relieved of their obligation to establish a universal, free public school system with qualified teachers. If teachers are sleeping in their classrooms, who should take responsibility? Who should supervise them and What Nicholas Kristof Left Out in Column Promoting Bridge International Academies | janresseger:

Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers. Episode #24. The show must go on. – Fred Klonsky

Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers. Episode #24. The show must go on. – Fred Klonsky:

Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers. Episode #24. The show must go on.

As my brother correctly pointed out, I am letting him do the heavy lifting this week, along with Susan Klonsky.

I am 3,000 miles away in the middle of the Atlantic on the Azores, an autonomous region of Portugal.

Created by volcanos, the islands sits on two different oceanic shelfs: the North American shelf and the Azorean shelf. They are a bounty of beautiful views, plants and birds.

Meanwhile back home, Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers aired live on Monday with guests Jose Cha Cha Jimenez of the Young Lords Party, Stan Mckinney formerly of the Black Panther Party and Amy Bennington.

Mike, Susan, Cha Cha and Stan were all in Chicago back in the day, fifty years ago at a different time in the Movement.

Mike and Susan recall arriving in Chicago in 1968, just married and with their first child, the streets on fire and meeting the Chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton.

Chairman Fred was assassinated by the government in 1969. Both Cha Cha and Stan share their memories of Fred Hampton and stories from their activism.

The show will be rebroadcast on Friday on Lumpen Radio, 105.5fm at our regular time, 11AM and is available now for download here.

I’m back from my travels and will join brother Mike on July 28th with our second gubernatorial candidate Bob Diaber and Radio Free Bridgeport’s John Daly.

Then on August 4th our third show with a candidate in the Democratic Primary will be Senator Dan Biss.

On August 11th we will be talking public employee pensions and the recent actions of the Illinois state legislature with Jay Rehak of the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund and some of my blogger retirees cohorts. They are currently fighting over who gets to join us on the show. Best of three rounds.Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers. Episode #24. The show must go on. – Fred Klonsky:

NYC Educator: In a Shocker, Campbell Brown's Website Attacks ATRs

NYC Educator: In a Shocker, Campbell Brown's Website Attacks ATRs:

In a Shocker, Campbell Brown's Website Attacks ATRs

Over at Campbell Brown's blog, to which I will not link, there's a hit piece on ATR teachers. Evidently it's a disgrace to pay teachers who don't teach, but it's also terrible if they're allowed to teach. It's written by a lawyer who has never taught, and who boasts of helping to write the 2005 Contract that enabled the ATR, the one he's ironically so worked up over.

The lawyer then musters the gall to call the forced placement of ATR teachers as "the dance of the lemons," which is how he interprets placement based on seniority. This was a favorite phrase of the reformy stinker Waiting for Superman, and I'm pretty sure I've seen it since. You see, every teacher who wants placement is terrible. 

In fact, I'm a case in point. In 1993, before the horrible practice was finally ended, I used the UFT Transfer Plan to go from John Adams High School to Francis Lewis. I did this because my supervisor gave me an ultimatum--I was going to teach all Spanish or she was going to put me on a late schedule, precluding the second job I needed to pay my new mortgage. This was not, in fact, because I was the terrible teacher Campbell Brown's article proves I am, but rather because she was tired of the actual Spanish teacher sending kids to her office. Because I never sent kids to her office, this was my punishment.

I did not bother to call Francis Lewis to ask about the position. A favorite motto of mine is, "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission." I thought it would be awkward if they told me there was, in fact, no position, and I got it anyway. I thought the possibility was high that they would protect the position rather than bring me, an unknown quantity, on board.

Of course, Campbell Brown's lawyer friend knows I am terrible, because every teacher who wants to make a move is terrible. (Not to be outdone, the Wall St. Journal calls us "perverts, drunkards, and ofther classroom miscreants.") Naturally, only the principal can judge whether or not teachers are good because they are Mary Poppins Perfect in Every Way and teacher judgment is always unreliable. Never mind that the recently dismissed principal of Townsend Harris was reviled by students and staff, or that she had a horrendous history at Bronx Science. Never mind that CPE 1 Principal Monica Garg placed the UFT chapter leader and delegate up on charges that were not remotely substantiated. And never mind the other NYC Educator: In a Shocker, Campbell Brown's Website Attacks ATRs:

About La. Supt. John White’s Father, Peter A. White (And More) | deutsch29

About La. Supt. John White’s Father, Peter A. White (And More) | deutsch29:

About La. Supt. John White’s Father, Peter A. White (And More)

In June 2017, FutureEd, “an independent think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy,” published this interview with Louisiana state superintendent John White.

In the interview, White pitched school vouchers by implying that he attended school via a particular kind of “voucher” as he hinted that since his father was a lawyer and could afford private school tuition:

 …I think conservatives undermine what is a very legitimate moral case, a moral case that I happen to agree with, when they are averse to clear controls that allow serving every child, and that allow for a statistical base of evidence as to whether or not a school is a good school or not.

On the left, I think that you have a greater moral hypocrisy. If you have a good school, they’re willing to serve all kids, they’re showing that they’re effective on the same tests as every other school is taking. What is your problem, at that point, with letting that family make the choice? That’s a particular brand of hypocrisy, given how many leaders on the left who advocate this position, have themselves or have had family members who are the beneficiaries of a private education. I got a private school voucher when I was a kid. It’s called the My Dad’s A Lawyer private school voucher. So it’s hard for me to understand how social liberals can square that fact with people of lesser means not being able to exercise the same liberties.

One of the big “ifs,” of course, involves the right of the private schools to make the first choice of not participating. And if the best private schools did participate, the cost alone would quickly break the public-tax-funded bank.

White attended St. Albans School (Washington, DC); the 2015-16 tuition without board was $41,000 (not including the one-time $1,850 registration fee). The school does offer need-based financial aid, with the average 2015-16 grant covering 68 percent of the tuition cost.

Furthermore, it isn’t as though private schools of the caliber of St. Albans are seeking to become part of the Louisiana voucher program, which, according to a 2017 report,has voucher students, after three years, at best breaking even with public school students on those ever-watched standardized tests.

But what particularly caught my attention in White’s “my dad’s a lawyer” voucher pitch is that he leveraged ever so small a tidbit about his own background in order to campaign for his desired reforms even as he actively conceals his family background from any published bio.

It’s as though John Charles White just dropped out of the sky, unparented and with only the sketchiest hints at his personal connections.

Thus, it was White’s “my dad’s a lawyer voucher” comment in that Georgetown University think tank interview that prompted me to begin researching his family background, a quest that resulted posts about his omitting his then-wife from years 

Marie Corfield: #TrumpWorld & #USWomensOpen: This Is Not Normal

Marie Corfield: #TrumpWorld & #USWomensOpen: This Is Not Normal:

#TrumpWorld & #USWomensOpen: This Is Not Normal

Members of SOMA stage a peaceful, silent protest at the LPGA Women's Open at Trump National Golf Club, Bedminster, NJ, July 16, 2017

First, congratulations to all the women who participated in the LPGA Women's Open July 14-16. Golf is their job, their passion, their life. This post is not about them.

However, this post is about women--and men--standing up for women everywhere. It's about exercising our Constitutional right to stand up to the Misogynist in Chief, the liar, the cheater, the narcissist who pretends to want to 'Make America Great Again', but only if it starts and ends with his bottom line; who sees the presidency merely as a career move; who is an embarrassment to all this great nation stands for.

SNAFU

Every weekend that Trump stays at his golf course in Bedminster, protest motorcades, led by this guy, drive past the entrance, and culminate with a rally at the corner of Rt. 206 and Lamington Rd. 

Somerset and Hunterdon Counties (Trump National Golf Club is in Somerset but borders Hunterdon) are smack dab in the middle of what I like to call the 'healthy, wealthy and white' NJ suburbs. Once mostly horse and agriculture farms (Jackie O rode here), they survived the McMansion invasion of the 80s-00s, and are now, thanks to a great deal of farmland preservation, still mostly green. However, their political bent is far more red. Lamington Rd. is a combination of one long driveway after another snaking toward houses that can't be seen (and the owners like it that way, thank you very much), bucolic horse farms, and quaint, old farmsteads that managed to survive the suburban explosion. Once a year we have a hot air balloon festival, and that's about as much crazy traffic as we want in this part of the most densely populated state in the country. But since January 20th, it's been Situation Normal: All F'd Up. 

I participated in the July 4th weekend motorcade. Lamington Rd. is a popular cycling route, and on that day, some cyclists gave us a thumbs up, most had no reaction, but one in particular flipped us the bird and shouted, "F--k you! Freedom!" Whose freedom? His? Ours? Our country's? Funny thing about some Trump supporters: they think they have the market cornered on patriotism. They so quickly forget that this country was founded on patriotic protests and civil disobedience. And in one of the reddest parts of a traditionally blue state, the Marie Corfield: #TrumpWorld & #USWomensOpen: This Is Not Normal:

Wall Street Zombies: Coming Soon to a Pre-K Near You – Save Maine Schools

Wall Street Zombies: Coming Soon to a Pre-K Near You – Save Maine Schools:

Wall Street Zombies: Coming Soon to a Pre-K Near You

In July of 2013, beneath the veneer of Dr. Seuss, some of the nation’s wealthiest and most influential power players met to discuss one of Wall Street’s latest profit-making schemes: reaping big financial rewards off early childhood education programs.

The event – titled, ever so quaintly, “Oh the Places We’ll Go! The Benefits of Investing in Early Childhood Education” – was hosted by the Center for American Progress and America’s Promise Alliancespin-off, ReadyNation, each of whom are among the country’s leading proponents of social impact bonds (SIB’s) and eyeing pre-K expansion as an opportunity to prove just how profitable the financing model can be.

“The goal is to facilitate creation of “invest-in-kid bonds,” explains a report prepared by ReadyNation and The Kauffman Foundation, “that can be underwritten individually or aggregated into asset-backed securities, which can be invested in by individuals and institutions worldwide.”

And it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing that can be tough to spot.

In the lead-up to the 2016 election, investors hoping for their piece of the pie pushed politicians to make early childhood education a key part of their platforms, knowing the value that many parents and educators see in these programs.

Groups like Save the Children – run by one of the nation’s biggest Wall Street Zombies: Coming Soon to a Pre-K Near You – Save Maine Schools:

This Week in Education Organizing - July 14, 2017 | Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools

This Week in Education Organizing - July 14, 2017 | Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools:

This Week in Education Organizing - July 14, 2017

Welcome to the Fight-Back!

In this week’s Welcome to the Fight-Back dispatch, we focus on activities planned next week in Denver, where the annual conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is taking place.  ALEC, of course, is the right-wing policy shop that cranks out model legislation on a wide range of issues, and encourages conservative legislators to introduce and co-sponsor it.  This year, education is one of their key issues—in fact Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is their keynote speaker.

As part of their education agenda, ALEC is promoting federally funded “education savings accounts”—a form of vouchers—and encouraging state legislatures to pass a model resolution (created by ALEC) calling on Congress to create such a “neo-voucher” program at the federal level. Currently five states (AZ, FL, MS, NV, TN), allow public funds—state dollars in the amount of existing per pupil expenditures for a student—to be deposited into a savings account designated for a specific child.  The family must apply those funds towards private or religious school tuition or other education expenses.

Activists in Denver are expected to stage protests against ALEC, and specifically against Betsy DeVos’s appearance at the ALEC convention next week.

Democrats Express Concern about Civil Rights Enforcement

Sixty-four Democrats in Congress sent a letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos last week, expressing concern over the Trump/DeVos administration’s enforcement of civil rights laws at the Education Department. The lawmakers said that proposed budget and staffing cuts at the Office for Civil Rights and the repeal of guidance regarding transgender students "signals, at best, a troubling hands off approach to protecting the civil rights of students across the country and, at worse, a complete undermining of the equal protections guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution." The letter was led by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and others, and signed by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.  Read the full letter here.

 Arizona group fights voucher expansion

A group called Save Our Schools is fighting new legislation in Arizona that would dramatically expand the state’s voucher program.  Save Our Schools is collecting signatures to refer the law to voters as a ballot referendum in November 2018.  The group is arguing that the voucher program strips public funds away from school districts, and that the vouchers will benefit only more moderate income families.  Save Our Schools announced that they are on track to collect the necessary signatures by the August 8th deadline for stopping the new law from going in to effect.

Nashville School Board Member Writes about the Charter Industry

Amy Frogge, a member of the Metro Nashville School Board, wrote a powerful post about Nashville’s experience with charter schools and their backers.  The piece is well-worth reading.  In it, Frogge writes about the toxic political debate over charters and the way that the charter industry has doggedly pursued its agenda despite evidence that charters divert funds from public schools, invite fraud, waste and abuse, fail to improve student outcomes. Frogge believes that the tide has turned in Nashville, that the industry is losing ground and many players are leaving for greener pastures. But other cities and states now need to be on the lookout for these shysters, she notes.

Learn More about Restorative Justice:  July 18 Webinar Sponsored by #WECHOOSE Campaign

Restorative Justice (RJ) is a philosophy that emphasizes repairing the harm caused by conflict and wrongdoing. It provides an opportunity for everyone impacted by an incident to come together in a safe space to address their feelings and needs, and reach a resolution that repairs the harm and restores relationships. RJ is more than just an approach to discipline; it's a way of changing the culture in a school. Join the #WECHOOSE Campaign webinar to learn more about restorative justice, the philosophy behind it, and best practices for implementation. Click here to register.

 Job Opportunity at Urban Youth Collaborative

The Urban Youth Collaborative (UYC) is looking for a dynamic organizer to join our team as the Coalition Coordinator. For 13 years, UYC has brought together young people from youth-led organizations across New York City to build campaigns designed to transform our public schools and struggle for racial, gender, economic, and LGBTQ justice, and keep young people at the forefront of movements for human rights. UYC has accomplished tremendous victories over the years including, saving Student MetroCards, passing the Student Safety Act, winning Student Success Centers, and securing over $5 million for Restorative Justice in public schools.  Find out more about this job opportunity here.

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UPCOMING EVENTS

July 18th:  #WECHOOSE webinar on the philosophy behind, and track record of restorative justice in transforming school culture.  Click here to register.

July 19th:  Activists in Denver take on Betsy DeVos during her speech to the ALEC Convention.  Join the protest by using the hashtags #reclaimourschools, #dumpDeVos and#ALECinDenver.

This Week in Education Organizing - July 14, 2017 | Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools: