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

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

Trumped Diane Ravitch's blog

A site to discuss better education for all

NYC Public School Parent Translates Nicholas Kristof on Bridge International Academies

3by dianeravitch / 1h

Nicholas Kristof wrote an article defending Bridge International Academies’ for-profit schools in Africa. I disagreed with him here. He responded on Twitter by saying, if you want to judge, go visit a government school. His article asserted 

Steven Singer: Learn about Education by Reading Teacher-Written Blogs, Not Corporate Media

1by dianeravitch / 19min

Steven Singer says that anyone in search of understanding education today should turn to teacher-written blogs, not the corporate media. The teachers know what they are talking about. The corporate media, with a few exceptions, recycles the talking points of their corporate owners. He begins by explaining that everyone has a perspective, even though they seem to be objective: “Let’s get one thing

A Letter to Secretary DeVos from a Special Normal Public School Student

12by dianeravitch / 54min

Stuart Egan teaches high school in North Carolina. His son Malcolm was born with Down Syndrome. He is in third grade in public school and is thriving. Stuart helped Malcolm compose this letter to Secretary Betsy DeVos. Malcolm wonders 

Charter Allies Pouring Money into Cuomo Re-Election Campaign

6by dianeravitch / 11min

It’s no secret that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo would like to be the 2020 Democratic nominee for president. But first he must be re-elected in New York in 2018. He has already stockpiled more than $25 million, which will intimidate potential challengers. The 1% are on board with Cuomo. Read about his fundraising cocktail party in the Hamptons at a home that cost $147 million. Among his biggest

Jim Hightower: The Plutocrats’ Scheme to Eliminate Public Education

16by dianeravitch / 1h

Jim Hightower pulls no punches as he eviscerates the Koch brothers, Betsy DeVos, and other plutocrats who want to privatize public education. He writes in Salon: “While the Koch brothers have stayed out of the national limelight since the White House was acquired by Trump and Company, that doesn’t mean the two right-wing billionaire brats are any less active in trying to supplant American democra

Betsy DeVos and ALEC: Perfect Together

4by dianeravitch / 3h

Education Week reports that Betsy DeVos and ALEC are natural partners. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos—an ardent school choice supporter who has turned out to be among the Trump administration’s most polarizing cabinet picks—will deliver a speech this week to members of a controversial organization that some argue is her best shot at advancing an aggressive school choice agenda. The Ameri

How to Help Arizona Ward Off Voucher Expansion

11by dianeravitch / 6h

Go to SOS Arizona to learn how to volunteer to gather signatures to stop vouchers. http://sosarizona.org/volunteer Join the campaign here: http://sosarizona.org/pages/110 SOS Arizona has a Facebook page: https://m.facebook.com/SaveOurSchoolsArizona/ If enough signatures are collected, vouchers will go onto the ballot. Vouchers have NEVER been approved by popular vote. Take action!

YESTERDAY

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

14by dianeravitch / 17h

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 of inflating fourth grade scores. We’ve been following this story for a while. Florida has a third grade reading test requirement– Florida’s third graders

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

12by dianeravitch / 19h

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 hates public schools. Why should they be trusted to give them instructions? Left to her own devices, DeVos would cripple public schools with regulations and manda

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

12by dianeravitch / 20h

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 showing it at local film festivals. You can host a screening in your community. When PBS aired the slick privatization propaganda called “School Inc.,” the Network for Public

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

8by dianeravitch / 21h

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 Penich-Thacker says the group isn’t releasing an exact count of the number of signatures it has collected so far. But she said the all-volunteer effort should have well above th

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

12by dianeravitch / 22h

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

8by dianeravitch / 23h

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?

30by dianeravitch / 1d

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.”

53by dianeravitch / 1d

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 

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

Another jolt for L.A. schools as civic group seeks a role in fixing school district - LA Times

Another jolt for L.A. schools as civic group seeks a role in fixing school district - LA Times:

Another jolt for L.A. schools as civic group seeks a role in fixing school district

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which just two months ago saw a pro-charter school majority elected to the Board of Education for the first time, is about to get another jolt.

Philanthropist and former investment banker Austin Beutner has assembled an advisory panel to work with Los Angeles schools Supt. Michelle King. The group, which includes business, philanthropic and community leaders, will start with the nuts-and-bolts issue of improving student attendance but intends to conduct a broad review of district operations.

King has gotten mixed marks on her first 18 months as schools chief and faces new challenges from a board majority whose backers want to expand charter schools across Los Angeles. Her partnership with Beutner and other L.A. leaders could give her much-needed backing, although it also reflects continued concerns about her leadership.

The task force has no official standing at the school district and no legal authority to set education policy. King still serves at the pleasure of the school board, which could either embrace or reject her efforts with Beutner’s group.

It remains far from clear how the task force will work with the new board, whether all sides will work in harmony or end up fighting for turf.

With King’s endorsement, Beutner quietly began to put the panel together in the latter part of 2016; the full 11-member body has met twice so far, once in May and once in June.

This group is called the L.A. Unified Advisory Task Force. While some members have expressed support for charters or charter-backed candidates, organizers say the fundamental goal is to improve district-operated schools.

“The superintendent has asked us to be honest,” said Beutner, who served as a deputy mayor under Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and was later publisher of the Los Angeles Times. “I don’t think there’s a single person in our city who doesn’t think we can do better, that our public schools can do better.”

Panel members said they will avoid the controversial issue of charters, which are privately operated and have sapped district enrollment and the funding that comes with it, Another jolt for L.A. schools as civic group seeks a role in fixing school district - LA Times:

Why a California District Is Recruiting Teachers From the Philippines

Why a California District Is Recruiting Teachers From the Philippines:

Why a California District Is Recruiting Teachers From the Philippines

Officials at the Sacramento City Unified School District took an international field trip to the Philippines this year -- to hire teachers.

The district says it has no choice but to look abroad to fill vacancies, as schools around California and the nation face a shortage of employable teachers.

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Sacramento City Unified is the only district in the greater Sacramento region hiring from the Philippines through a program that began last year.

In the Philippines, English is widely taught in schools and is an official language, along with Tagalog. The country, which was governed by the United States before World War II, retains a similar school system, which is why teachers can easily transfer their credentials to the U.S., according to Ligaya Avenida, CEO of AIC Inc., the consulting firm that brings teachers over.

"The teachers from the Philippines, they have a strong desire to do the best they can," Avenida said. "They have a high level of commitment."

Avenida, who charges the teachers $2,500 for a placement in the U.S., completes all of the paperwork, including transcript verifications and visa applications. The process can take a couple of months. There is no cost to the district, except for hotel rooms in the Philippines for its staff.

Jake Hansen, personnel specialist for Sacramento City Unified, flew to the Philippines last year for the first time to hire 12 special education teachers. After three days of interviews, he flew back to Sacramento.

"We couldn't fill our needs locally," Hansen said. "We always have a need for special education teachers."

The teachers are able to work in the U.S. through the J-1 non-immigrant visa program, which promotes cultural and educational exchanges. Legally, they can stay for an initial three-year period and then apply for a two-year Why a California District Is Recruiting Teachers From the Philippines:

After Six Months, What Has Trump-DeVos Department of Education Accomplished? | janresseger

After Six Months, What Has Trump-DeVos Department of Education Accomplished? | janresseger:

After Six Months, What Has Trump-DeVos Department of Education Accomplished?

Six months into the Trump Administration, it is time to consider what’s happened in public education policy under the leadership of Betsy DeVos at the U.S. Department of Education. Here are brief updates.

Office of Civil Rights (OCR)—Just this week, Betsy DeVos announced that she is “returning” the OCR “to its role as a neutral, impartial, investigative agency.”  Caitlin Emma explains at POLITICO, “In a July 11 letter to Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, DeVos asserted that the department’s civil rights arm under the Obama administration ‘had descended into a pattern of overreach, of setting out to punish and embarrass institutions rather than work with them to correct civil rights violations and of ignoring public input prior to issuing new rules.”  When a complaint is filed, DeVos has established new procedures to look at individual violations without an in-depth exploration of whether the specific alleged violation is an indication of systemic problems during the prior three years.  DeVos has also stopped pushing hard to protect the rights of transgender students, and seems to be weakening Title IX enforcement around sexual abuse.  This week, DeVos has run into huge pushback from Senator Patty Murray, who has demanded the resignation of Candace Jackson, the acting OCR chief, who recently commented that 90 percent of sexual assualts on campus “fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk,’ ‘we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not right.'”  Senator Murray and many others are concerned about two issues here. First, the Office of Civil Rights is not intended to be a neutral investigative agency. It is charged with investigating civil rights complaints and ensuring that the law is enforced to protect students whose rights violated. Second, the head of the Office of Civil Rights is not supposed to be expressing her own bias in advance about complaints that are likely to be brought to the agency.

Higher Education—DeVos is delaying two Obama-era rules that were designed to protect students from unscrupulous recruitment by for-profit colleges, particularly trade schools that depend for nearly 90 percent of their operating funds on federal grants and loans. Default rates are alarming, which means that the Obama-era rules were also designed to protect taxpayers. DeVos’s Department of Education is delaying enforcement of these rules as a prelude to rewriting them.

• Gainful Employment Rule—Writing for Inside Higher Education, Andrew Kreighbaum explains: “The rule was crafted to put a spotlight on programs producing graduates with After Six Months, What Has Trump-DeVos Department of Education Accomplished? | janresseger:

ALEC Chooses to Omit US Ed Sec Betsy DeVos from Its 2017 Conference Speaker Listing | deutsch29

ALEC Chooses to Omit US Ed Sec Betsy DeVos from Its 2017 Conference Speaker Listing | deutsch29:

ALEC Chooses to Omit US Ed Sec Betsy DeVos from Its 2017 Conference Speaker Listing

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is holding its 44th Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, from July 19-21, 2017.

US ed sec Betsy DeVos is supposed to speak at ALEC on Thursday. However, ALEC has chosen to exclude her from its listing of conference speaker profiles.

Perhaps this is one means of ALEC’s trying to hide DeVos from expected protestsfor her presence there and involvement with ALEC. Nevertheless, her presence as a lunchtime speaker on July 20, 2017, has been confirmed by an ALEC spokesperson.

Even as ALEC tries to downplay DeVos’ presence at its conference, ALEC continues to obviously promote its views regarding American education— including five “key points” for the legislators it commands:

An excellent education has long been recognized as key to the American Dream. Unfortunately, the current monopolistic and expensive K-12 education system is failing our students, leaving them unprepared for college, careers, or life. Similarly, our higher education system is leaving students with higher debt burdens and fewer career guarantees than ever before.

While the left argues that our ailing public education system can be fixed with ever-greater quantities of taxpayer dollars, the more than $600 billion we currently spend nationwide reflects a large increase in funds over the last 30 years, in exchange for total stagnation – or worse, declines – in achievement. On the college level, subsidies meant to help college students struggling to pay tuition have instead caused prices to skyrocket well above inflation.

Instead of throwing more money at the problem, it’s time to let parents take back control over their children’s educations by allowing them to apply competitive pressure to schools and educational providers. Innovative, parent-empowering choices such as charter schools, voucher programs, tax credit scholarships, homeschool, and education savings accounts allow each child the opportunity to reach his or her potential. In higher education, greater transparency is needed to ensure that students and parents know what they are paying for, and with what prospects they are likely to graduate.

Instead of endless top-down mandates, these revolutionary inroads into the education system are coming from the states. Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have laws on the books allowing charter schools to operate, while 

ALEC Chooses to Omit US Ed Sec Betsy DeVos from Its 2017 Conference Speaker Listing | deutsch29:

Badass Teachers Association: 7 Ways Public Education Is Like Church by Laura D. Brown

Badass Teachers Association: 7 Ways Public Education Is Like Church by Laura D. Brown:

7 Ways Public Education Is Like Church 

by Laura D. Brown

Originally published at: https://medium.com/march-for-public-education/7-ways-public-education-is-like-church-64823cffd4fa

I was raised Roman Catholic. Yup. Baptized, communion, confirmation, marriage — I have received many sacraments. As an adult, however, I am a bad Catholic. I don’t attend mass, and my children are heathens. However, when asked about my religious affiliation, I will always proclaim that I am Catholic.

My relationship with the Roman Catholic Church is similar to many Americans relationship with public education. I know this post will offend some people, but that is not my intent. Please allow me to explain my analogy.

1. You must have faith.

Like Christianity, one must see the end goal in mind when thinking about the mission of public education. Christianity’s mission is to live a life based on Jesus’ teachings in order to find salvation. Public education’s mission is to provide education to every resident in the United States of America. That education is supposed to be appropriate, rigorous, and standardized. Americans must have faith in the mission of public education, or they will abandon their community schools and search for alternatives. Many Americans have lost their faith in their local public education system and Badass Teachers Association: 7 Ways Public Education Is Like Church by Laura D. Brown:

99 Years of Progress Erased – unless we fight back | Reclaim Reform

99 Years of Progress Erased – unless we fight back | Reclaim Reform:

99 Years of Progress Erased – unless we fight back

Public healthcare for all? Public education for all? What is being done to our monetized children regarding their potential healthcare and their existing education, with its state mandated high stakes testing preparation that is accompanied by data mining, is immoral.

The unscrupulous political endorsement of these practices brought to mind a public comment made 99 years ago by Eugene Debs as he stood in court awaiting ten years of imprisonment for violating the infamous Sedition Act which was later repealed by Congress.

Eugene Debs on September 18, 1918 declared the following in open court.

“I am thinking… of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon… I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is God today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.”

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos publicly invokes God’s intentions – according to 99 Years of Progress Erased – unless we fight back | Reclaim Reform: