Defiant national union presidents gathered in Pittsburgh speak of unity following Janus ruling | #AFT2018 #RedForEd #IamAFT @aft @AFSCME @NEAToday @SEIU

Defiant national union presidents gathered in Pittsburgh speak of unity following Janus ruling | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Defiant national union presidents gathered in Pittsburgh speak of unity following Janus ruling

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

One of them delivered a rousing, sermon-like call to action. Another cracked a series of jokes and performed an acoustic rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “Union Maid,” with the familiar line “I’m sticking to the union.” Another put the current hardships into the context of labor history and promised to organize more workers.

The three national union presidents took the stage together Saturday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown, to address the American Federation of Teachers convention — and to show 3,000 educators, nurses and health professionals that organized labor stands prepared to stick together following an historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month that could dramatically undercut union budgets. 

“It is so important that you see us all four standing together as one,” said Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. 

“Our four great unions enjoy indestructible bonds of solidarity,” Mr. Saunders said, his voice rising to a crescendo. “There is no daylight between us, not even an inch. And that’s never been more important than it is now.” Continue reading: Defiant national union presidents gathered in Pittsburgh speak of unity following Janus ruling | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Big Education Ape: AFT Convention 2018 live stream | American Federation of Teachers #AFT2018 #RedForEd #IamAFT @aft @AFSCME @NEAToday @SEIU - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/07/aft-convention-2018-live-stream.html

Hillary Clinton to teachers union conference: Keep up fight | National News | citizentribune.com - https://www.citizentribune.com/news/national/hillary-clinton-to-teachers-union-conference-keep-up-fight/image_b994abcb-9faa-5d5e-b1c0-75f877cba36f.html on @CitizenTribune

Thousands March Through Pittsburgh To Call For Public School Funding « CBS Pittsburgh - https://cbsloc.al/2KZr5nz on /KDKA

'Nevertheless, we persist.' Elizabeth Warren backs unions during Pittsburgh stop at teachers' convention | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2018/07/14/Elizabeth-Warren-Pittsburgh-teachers-convention-janus-unions/stories/201807140070 via @PittsburghPG

Big Education Ape: AFT Convention 2018 live stream | American Federation of Teachers #AFT2018 #RedForEd #IamAFT @aft @AFSCME @NEAToday @SEIU - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/07/aft-convention-2018-live-stream.html

The Carolina Coup and the Fight for Public Education - Progressive.org #AFT2018 #RedForEd

The Carolina Coup and the Fight for Public Education - Progressive.org

The Carolina Coup and the Fight for Public Education

The nation's eyes are on my home state of North Carolina, where what many are calling a coup has shown the lengths to which Republicans will go to protect and expand their political power.

The naked power grab by Republicans has shocked the nation. But few people really understand that a struggle over public education is at the center of the fight against an authoritarian government in the era of Donald Trump.

What did Republicans do? In a nutshell, according to a review of the carnage by David Graham for The Atlantic, "Having lost the governor’s seat in November’s election, the GOP legislature opted to simply reduce the governor’s power drastically. The two most prominent bills involve the elections system and the governor’s right to make appointments."

Specifically, on the elections front, Republicans robbed incoming Democratic Governor Roy Cooper of his ability to change the composition of state and county boards of elections, diluted the governor's appointment authority, and rigged the timing of county board leadership to favor Republicans.

Republican lawmakers took away the incoming governor’s ability to make appointments to the State Board of Education and the boards of trustees of University of North Carolina system, made cabinet appointees subject to approval by the senate, and cut the number of appointments the governor can make for government jobs from 1,500 to 425.

The attack on the incoming governor's power over education appointments is especially radical, as it transfers power from the state board to the new state superintendent of public instruction, Republican Mark Johnson, who defeated the Democratic incumbent, June Atkinson, in November.

Why go after education offices?

In North Carolina, public education has always been an issue inextricably intertwined with voting rights and democracy. To learn more about this I talked with historian Timothy Tyson at one of his favorite haunts in downtown Durham, a combination coffee shop, casual eatery, and general store with Continue reading: The Carolina Coup and the Fight for Public Education - Progressive.org

‘We’re Not Gonna Take It!’: Can Trump Country Withstand the Grassroots Teachers Movement Sweeping the Nation?

‘We’re Not Gonna Take It!’: Can Trump Country Withstand the Grassroots Teachers Movement Sweeping the Nation?

‘We’re Not Gonna Take It!’: Can Trump Country Withstand the Grassroots Teachers Movement Sweeping the Nation?

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

On the evening of February 1, Tina Adams peered out the window of her hotel room in Charleston, West Virginia. It had been snowing for hours, and the roads were freezing over. Earlier in the day, she had driven two hours north from coal country to set the stage for a protest at the state Capitol.

Adams, a middle school teacher and mother of six, was furious. After 15 years at Baileysville Elementary and Middle School, in Brenton, she made about $47,000 a year—$12,000 less than the national average. Like many of her fellow teachers, she sometimes worked nights and weekends to boost her income; for extra pay, she offered private tutoring for students who had discipline problems or developmental disabilities.

It wasn’t always enough, and Adams had begun thinking about selling her beloved Harley-­Davidson Sportster to help her daughter buy a car. It was not the kind of life she envisioned when she launched her teaching career. And now, the state’s governor, Jim Justice, was reneging on a long-promised pay raise and hiking health insurance premiums. Officials even wanted teachers to download a smartphone app to track their daily steps or face a financial penalty. As the president of her local union, Adams pushed for a walkout. “It’s like all of us teachers had been pushed to the side and forgotten about,” she tells me. “We finally reached a point where we were fed up.”

And yet, as the snow fell in Charleston that night, Adams worried. She had organized her school’s field trips and class dances—nothing like this. What if no one showed up? Her home in the southern part of the state had been an old union stronghold, yet West Virginia was now Trump country. Teachers hadn’t taken any Continue reading: ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It!’: Can Trump Country Withstand the Grassroots Teachers Movement Sweeping the Nation?

AFT Convention 2018 live stream | American Federation of Teachers #AFT2018 #RedForEd #IamAFT @aft @AFSCME @NEAToday @SEIU

AFT Convention 2018 live stream | American Federation of Teachers

AFT Convention 2018 live stream

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

Monday AM Session

Sunday PM Session

Sunday AM Session

Saturday PM Session

Saturday AM Session Part 2

Saturday AM Session Part 1

Hillary Rodham Clinton Receives AFT Women's Rights Award

AFT Convention 2018 Friday AM Session

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

AFT Convention 2018 live stream | American Federation of Teachers

AFT Convention 2018 - https://eventmobi.com/aftconvention2018/

School funding: Do charter schools or district schools get more money?

School funding: Do charter schools or district schools get more money?

School funding: Do charter schools or district schools get more money?

Privatization Report Card - Network For Public Education - https://wp.me/P3bR9v-2IA via @Network4pubEd

School funding: Do charter schools or district schools get more money?

NAACP president tackles charter school question - POLITICO

NAACP president tackles charter school question - POLITICO

NAACP president tackles charter school question
Charter schools have been embraced not just by Republicans but by some Democrats as well.

Derrick Johnson’s comments stemmed from the NAACP's passage of a resolution in 2016 at its national convention that called for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools until there was more accountability and transparency in their operations. | Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

NAACP President Derrick Johnson says that his organization does not oppose charter schools — even though one of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights groups continues to find many of the schools' practices troubling.

With charter schools, “people only want to highlight successes and never want to talk about the failures. With the NAACP, we want to eradicate the failures because our future is at stake, particularly African-American children and especially African-American males," said Johnson, in an interview with POLITICO.

His comments stemmed from the NAACP's passage of a resolution in 2016 at its national convention that called for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools until there was more accountability and transparency in their operations. The vote showcased the divide among Democrats and the civil rights community over whether the schools are a viable alternative to traditional public schools.

The move was also surprising, in part, because charter schools are popular among many African-American families — more than 800,000 black students attended charter schools in the 2016-2017 school year.

Charters have been embraced not just by Republicans like President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, but by many Democrats as well as a choice option for families who want out of failing schools. Charters use public funds, but are run outside the confines of many of the rules that apply to traditional public schools.

Johnson said the convention delegates brought forward the issue because they were seeing problems in their communities, particularly among for-profit operators. Continue reading: NAACP president tackles charter school question - POLITICO

YouTube Searches Favor Videos That Attack Public Education, Scholar Finds | EdSurge News

YouTube Searches Favor Videos That Attack Public Education, Scholar Finds | EdSurge News

YouTube Searches Favor Videos That Attack Public Education, Scholar Finds

When a scholar did a YouTube search for the term “public education” recently, the results painted a bleak picture of the nation’s schools and state colleges.

Among the top results: a slick animated video called “Problems in Public Education,” a rant arguing that all public education “kills creativity,” and a video essay titled “public ‘education’ has become indoctrination and distraction.” And that was just on the first page.

The researcher in question, Burhanettin Keskin, happens to be an education professor at the University of Mississippi, and so he decided to do an analysis of how public education is portrayed on YouTube.

His study, published in the peer-reviewed journal SAGE Open earlier this year, formalized what he had found in that initial search: that the majority of videos on the first few pages of searches for “public education” painted a negative view of the subject. “A substantial amount of these videos contained blunt attacks on public education,” Keskin writes in the paper.

The professor believes that YouTube’s search algorithm is favoring extreme views against education. And that, he worries, could be influencing internet users around the globe. As he concludes in the paper: “The severe negativity of such videos continues to pose barriers for teachers and public education overall.”

Keskin himself is a proponent, and a product, of public education. To avoid bias in his research, he had an independent coder rate the videos. And he made sure the YouTube searches were done without logging into a specific YouTube account and with a web browser whose history had been cleared.

The researcher notes that the exact nature of how YouTube’s algorithm works is a mystery, since Google, which owns YouTube, considers its workings a trade secret. It is also constantly changing, and results will likely vary for each user once they are logged in. But many of the videos that emerged in the professor’s research are clearly popular, with many of them attracting hundreds of thousands of views.

In an interview this week, Keskin notes that one of his goals is to call attention to how tech giants may be skewing the debate about all kinds of public-policy issues, including education.

“These big companies like Google—whether they know it or not—they shape and have an impact on the social construction of reality,” he says. “People say ‘it’s coding’ or ‘the algorithm does it,’ but it’s a not a neutral act.”

Others have raised similar questions about search algorithms. In a 2017 TED talk, “technosociologist” Zeynep Tufekci described her experience on YouTube, which she noticed was recommending increasingly extreme videos to her as she did her political-science research. As she watched videos of Trump rallies to write about them, for instance, suggestions on Continue reading: YouTube Searches Favor Videos That Attack Public Education, Scholar Finds | EdSurge News

Arne Duncan's Unlearned Lessons: Review of "How Schools Work" by Arne Duncan - As reviewed by Frederick M. Hess

Arne Duncan's Unlearned Lessons: Review of "How Schools Work" by Arne Duncan - Education Next : Education Next
Arne Duncan’s Unlearned Lessons
A window into why the left-right school-reform coalition unraveled

How Schools Work:
An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation’s Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education
by Arne Duncan
Simon & Schuster, 2018, $26.99; 256 pages.

As reviewed by Frederick M. Hess

When Arne Duncan was named the ninth U.S. secretary of education in early 2009, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) had shown a decade of substantial growth, efforts to launch the Common Core and reform teacher evaluation were getting under way with ample support and little opposition, and education seemed a bipartisan bright spot in an increasingly polarized political climate.

Seven years later, when Duncan stepped down, NAEP scores had stagnated, the Common Core was a poisoned brand, research on new teacher-evaluation systems painted a picture of failure, and it was hard to find anyone who would still argue that education reform was a bipartisan cause. It would be ludicrous to say any of this was Duncan’s “fault,” but it’s fair to say that his self-certitude, expansive view of his office’s role, and impatience with his critics helped bring the great school-reform crackup to pass.

Now, Duncan has written a book about his years in education. It could have been a meditation on why things went awry, what he’s learned, and how all this should inform school improvement in the years ahead. That would have been a book well worth reading. Or Duncan might have really taken on the skeptics, answering their strongest criticisms and explaining why the path he chose was the best way forward. Instead, Duncan has opted to pen a breezy exercise in straw men and self-congratulation, while taking credit for “chang[ing] the education landscape in America.” The narrative follows Duncan from his time as a Chicago schools central-office staffer, to his tenure as superintendent in Chicago, to his service in Washington during the early years of President Barack Obama’s first term (skipping the second half of Duncan’s time in Washington), before closing with his thoughts on gun violence and an eight-point education agenda.

Throughout, Duncan comes across as a nice, extraordinarily confident guy who really likes basketball and has no doubts about how to fix schools or second thoughts about his time in Washington. And readers will be enamored with his mother and role model, Sue Duncan, who is omnipresent in Duncan’s tale. Indeed, the book exudes an earnest Leave It to Beaver charm, including Duncan’s repeated insistence that employees should just “call me Arne.” He shares touching profiles of schools and educators and moving accounts of his experiences with the families of students killed by gun violence. He shows admirable verve in describing his success working with a Chicago school system lawyer to find a contractual workaround to make an afterschool program logistically feasible, and his later willingness, as superintendent, to give “Freakonomics” researcher Steven Levitt access to the city’s test data in order to flag teacher cheating.

For all that, much of the volume reads more like campaign literature than the exercise in straight talk that he promises. Duncan calls for doubling or tripling the amount America spends on education, avers that “the vast majority of teachers are heroes who are defying the odds,” and courageously insists that—no what matter what others say—“[w]e must believe in free, high-quality public education.”

When it comes to more substantive questions, Duncan suffers from the tendency to divide the world into those who are “for the kids” and those who are not. He writes that, as a young Chicago Public Schools official, “I didn’t feel beholden to the office I worked for but instead to kids first.” When he agreed to serve as secretary of education, he reports, President-elect Obama told him, “Just do what you think is right for kids and let me worry about the politics.” Duncan relates a personal call with new Ohio governor John Kasich, during which Duncan tells Kasich, “I’m here for you, to help your kids. . . . [B]elieve me when I say that I have zero interest in politics.”

In Duncan’s telling, he has spent a career facing off against those who didn’t share his commitment to the kids, battling the “vested interests that are resistant to change and absolutely beholden to the status quo.” While he Continue reading: Arne Duncan's Unlearned Lessons: Review of "How Schools Work" by Arne Duncan - Education Next : Education Next

Another Ugly Charter School: American Leadership Academy founder nets millions on deals with school

American Leadership Academy founder nets millions on deals with school

Arizona charter school founder makes millions building his own schools

When Glenn Way moved to the East Valley at the end of the Great Recession, he might have been looking for a fresh start.

The charter school operator was deep in debt to the IRS, had sought bankruptcy protection, and recently resigned from the Utah Legislature after his wife filed a protective order against him, public records show.

Arizona offered other opportunities for someone in his line of work:A more lightly regulated charter school industry that's well-funded. 

At his American Leadership Academy, which he launched in June 2009, he promised students would find"the best educational experience ... in a moral and wholesome environment."

Thanks partly to Arizona's favorable charter school laws and lucrative no-bid contracts with ALA, Way would find new wealth.

The schools, which have made patriotism central to their brand, including white, or blue student apparel, have been a hit in the conservative East Valley. American Leadership — which bears the same name as a charter school Way and his wife, Shelina, operated in Spanish Fork, Utah — has over nine years grown to a dozen campuses with 8,354 students in Florence, Gilbert, Mesa, Queen Creek and San Tan Valley.

Way's own development and finance companies bought the land and then built most of the school buildings. Then, they sold or leased them to American Leadership Academy, where Way, until last year, was board chairman.

An Arizona Republic review of property records shows that during ALA's nine-year expansion, businesses owned by or tied to Way made about $37 million on real estate deals associated with the schools— funded largely by the Arizona tax dollars allocated Continue reading: American Leadership Academy founder nets millions on deals with school

DeLauro, Weingarten vow ongoing fight for unions - New Haven Register

DeLauro, Weingarten vow ongoing fight for unions - New Haven Register

DeLauro, Weingarten vow ongoing fight for unions

NEW HAVEN — U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, said Tuesday that the country’s labor movement must emerge stronger after last month’s Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, which allows public sector employees not to pay fees to the unions that serve them.

DeLauro was joined by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and local and state union officials at the AFT Local 933 headquarters on Chapel Street to announce a need for stronger legislation to protect unions, taking the health of unions out of the hands of the courts.

The Janus decision “tips the balance against state and municipal workers,” DeLauro said. “It’s not just union workers or public sector workers who suffer. Every working person suffers.”

Supporters of the ruling, however, have said it’s a positive one for workers.

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, for instance, the endorsed Republican candidate for governor, told Hearst Connecticut Media last week the ruling is a victory for people across Connecticut.

But Weingarten pointed to President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court Monday as evidence that the judiciary is and will remain hostile toward working class people.

“This is the day after President Trump nominated a judge for justice who actually does not believe the president’s executive powers should be checked,” she said. “The rule of law is really at risk and the judge who is soon to be retired (Justice Anthony Kennedy) put us on that path.”

Weingarten said the Janus ruling overturns 41 years of precedent and attempts to strip working people of their voice. She said the First Amendment was “weaponized” against the rights granted to states in the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.

Several of the speakers at the press conference said the court case decision was backed by million-dollar campaigns from Continue reading, watch video: DeLauro, Weingarten vow ongoing fight for unions - New Haven Register

Does A Justice Kavanaugh Mean That Blaine Amendments Are History?

Does A Justice Kavanaugh Mean That Blaine Amendments Are History?
Does A Justice Kavanaugh Mean That Blaine Amendments Are History?

Last night, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. I’ll leave it to the legal scholars to assess the broad implications of a potential Justice Kavanaugh, but I do want to look at a narrow issue that may come before the court during his tenure: Blaine Amendments.

Blaine Amendments are provisions in 38 state constitutions that bar public aid to religious organizations. They get their name from James G. Blaine, a congressman and later senator and presidential nominee from Maine who unsuccessfully attempted to amend the U.S. constitution in 1875 to include “anti-aid” language onto the end of the first amendment. Where he failed at the federal level, he and his ideological fellow travelers were successful at the state level. As a result, Blaine Amendments frequently act as state-level barriers against school choice.

It is important to note that while their language might look harmless in today’s light, at their inception, Blaine Amendments were designed to try and stamp out Catholic schools. Their use of the word “sect” or “sectarian” is the tell. Public schools at that time were nominally Protestant, with students singing hymns and reading the King James Bible in class. That was “nonsectarian” instruction. “Sectarian” meant Catholic. Interestingly, in the court’s recent 7-2 decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop, the court ruled that states have a duty “not to base laws or regulations on hostility to a religion or religious viewpoint.” I'm no lawyer, but to me, Blaine Amendments do just that.

Historians debate as to whether Blaine himself was an anti-Catholic bigot or if he was simply trying to ride a wave of anti-Catholic bigotry to get himself into the White House. Either way, Blaine Amendments have a clear origin in Know-Nothingism, Nativism, anti-immigrant, and anti-Catholic ideology. It is a cruel irony that many of those who decry nativism and anti- Continue reading: Does A Justice Kavanaugh Mean That Blaine Amendments Are History?

More On The Blaine Amendments

Big Education Ape: The Public Should Pay Only for Public Schools, not Religious Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-public-should-pay-only-for-public.html

Big Education Ape: Blaine Amendments Protect Religious Liberty, Prohibit Establishing Religion via School Vouchers | janresseger - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/04/blaine-amendments-protect-religious.html

Big Education Ape: The Testing of States’ Blaine Amendments– No Public Funding of Religious Schools | deutsch29 - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-testing-of-states-blaine-amendments.html

Big Education Ape: Blaine Amendment Challenge in Limbo at the US Supreme Court | deutsch29 - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/03/blaine-amendment-challenge-in-limbo-at.html

Big Education Ape: Ravitch: Why the Supreme Court should not force the public to pay for religious schools - The Washington Post - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/04/ravitch-why-supreme-court-should-not.html

Big Education Ape: The Blaine Game | Blue Cereal Education - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-blaine-game-blue-cereal-education.html

Big Education Ape: How a Supreme Court Ruling on Playground Covering May Open the Door to School Vouchers - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/03/how-supreme-court-ruling-on-playground.html

Big Education Ape: The Beginning of the End for Blaine? | Jay P. Greene's Blog - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-beginning-of-end-for-blaine-jay-p.html

A dig through Kavanaugh’s record on education finds plenty of material - POLITICO

A dig through Kavanaugh’s record on education finds plenty of material - POLITICO

A dig through Kavanaugh’s record on education finds plenty of material

WHAT KAVANAUGH MEANS FOR EDUCATION: D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, has considered some of the most contentious issues in education throughout his lengthy legal career. He’s written on school prayer, the separation of church and state, and affirmative action.

— Kavanaugh highlighted his connection to education during his speech Monday night, describing himself as a teacher’s son who tutors area children. He talked about his mother. "In the 1960s and ‘70s, she taught history at two largely African-American public high schools in Washington, D.C., McKinley Tech and H.D. Woodson," he said. "Her example taught me the importance of equality for all Americans."

— Kavanaugh has tutored at Washington Jesuit Academy, where he sits on the board of directors, and at J.O. Wilson Elementary School, according to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals website. He went to high school at Georgetown Prep — which Justice Neil Gorsuch also attended — and is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.

— Here’s a breakdown of Kavanaugh's education record, dug up by Pro’s Michael Stratford:

— School prayer and religious freedom: Kavanaugh wrote an amicus brief in December 1999 in favor of a Texas high school’s policy allowing the use of a public address system for student-led and student-initiated prayers at school football games. The amicus brief, on behalf of Oklahoma Republican Reps. Steve Largent and J.C. Watts, argued that the policy passed constitutional muster — an argument the Supreme Court rejected. In a 6-3 ruling, the court declared the school policy allowing prayer unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

— Affirmative action: Kavanaugh in 1999 co-wrote an amicus brief on behalf of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a group that opposes race-based affirmative action in college admissions. The brief argued that a Hawaii law allowing only Native Hawaiians to vote in elections for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was unconstitutional in prohibiting people from voting because of their race. (The Supreme Court agreed with that argument in a 7-2 decision.) When asked about the brief and its implications for affirmative action in 2004 as part of his confirmation for the D.C. Circuit Court, Kavanaugh said: “The Supreme Court has decided many cases on affirmative action programs and, if confirmed, I would faithfully follow those precedents.”

— School choice: Kavanaugh said during his 2004 Senate confirmation hearing that he had previously served as the co-chairman of the Federalist Society’s “School Choice Practice Group.” Kavanaugh also said, in response to written questions, that he had “worked on school choice litigation in Florida for a reduced fee.” He didn’t provide additional details about that matter. On private school Continue reading: A dig through Kavanaugh’s record on education finds plenty of material - POLITICO