Elementary-School Curriculum Is All Wrong - The Atlantic

Elementary-School Curriculum Is All Wrong - The Atlantic

Elementary Education Has Gone Terribly Wrong
In the early grades, U.S. schools value reading-comprehension skills over knowledge. The results are devastating, especially for poor kids.

t first glance, the classroom I was visiting at a high-poverty school in Washington, D.C., seemed like a model of industriousness. The teacher sat at a desk in the corner, going over student work, while the first graders quietly filled out a worksheet intended to develop their reading skills.

As I looked around, I noticed a small girl drawing on a piece of paper. Ten minutes later, she had sketched a string of human figures, and was busy coloring them yellow.

I knelt next to her and asked, “What are you drawing?”

“Clowns,” she answered confidently.

“Why are you drawing clowns?”

“Because it says right here, ‘Draw clowns,’ ” she explained.

Running down the left side of the worksheet was a list of reading-comprehension skills: finding the main idea, making inferences, making predictions. The girl was pointing to the phrase draw conclusions. She was supposed to be making inferences and drawing conclusions about a dense article describing Brazil, which was lying facedown on her desk. But she was unaware that the text was there until I turned it over. More to the point, she had never heard of Brazil and was unable to read the word.

That girl’s assignment was merely one example, albeit an egregious one, of a standard pedagogical approach. American elementary education has been shaped by a theory that goes like this: Reading—a term used to mean not just matching letters to sounds but also comprehension—can be taught in a manner completely disconnected from content. Use simple texts to teach children how to find the main idea, make inferences, draw conclusions, and so on, and eventually they’ll be able to apply those skills to grasp the meaning of anything CONTINUE READING: Elementary-School Curriculum Is All Wrong - The Atlantic

Bernie Should Oppose Nonprofit Charter Schools, Too

Bernie Should Oppose Nonprofit Charter Schools, Too

Bernie Should Oppose Nonprofit Charter Schools, Too

MATHILDE LIND GUSTAVUSSEN

By calling for a ban on for-profit charter schools, Bernie Sanders has gone further than any other candidate to confront the privatization of our schools. But we can’t fully defend public schools if we let nonprofit charters off the hook.

As the Democratic Party gears up for the 2020 election, Bernie Sanders has pushed the primary to focus on ambitious, progressive policy proposals: universal health care, the Green New Deal, debt-free college, a millionaire’s tax, and more. Conspicuously absent from the conversation, however, has been the issue of K-12 public education. Apart from Kamala Harris’s promise to increase teacher pay and Bernie Sanders’s recent proposal to ban for-profit charter schools and pause funding of new nonprofit charters awaiting an accountability review, Democrats have shied away from formulating substantive K-12 education policies.

Sanders’s K-12 proposal is the most in line with the mood among educators. Pushback to charter schools is growing, and teacher-led protests and student walkouts are spreading across the country. A central demand of the Los Angeles teachers’ strike in January of 2019, for example, was to impose a cap on charter schools. Many of their other demands addressed the wide-ranging consequences of neoliberal education reform: collective bargaining rights, a salary increase, a cap on class sizes, less standardized testing, and improved social services at the city’s public schools. Yet the strike also revealed how Democratic candidates have avoided formulating a substantive position on charter schools. While many of the candidates expressed support for Los Angeles teachers during the week-long strike, none of them acknowledged the anti-charter stance underlying the teachers’ demands.

Until Sanders’s recent announcement, no national figure on the American left had taken a stand against education privatization, even as presidential candidates are vying to be seen as the most “progressive.”

Yet by limiting his critique to for-profit charter schools, Sanders’s policy fails to get to the root of the issue. The mere existence of publicly funded, privately administered charter schools — be they nonprofit or for-profit — is incompatible with the idea of a healthy public education system and with education equity. To remedy the sustained damage caused by decades of charter-school reform, the Left needs to CONTINUE READING: Bernie Should Oppose Nonprofit Charter Schools, Too

Education Sec. Betsy DeVos hindering Obama-era law meant to help disabled minority students - theGrio

Education Sec. Betsy DeVos hindering Obama-era law meant to help disabled minority students - theGrio

Education Sec. Betsy DeVos hindering Obama-era law meant to help disabled minority students
The Trump cabinet member wants to stall laws passed years ago to benefit nonwhite special education students, a group which Blacks have a 40 percent higher chance of being a part of

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has reportedly been trying to block the implementation of an Obama-era law designed to help disabled minority students, for well over a year now.

According to Raw Story, despite repeated efforts by supporters to force her compliance, DeVos and her team have made several attempts to stall the implementation of federal regulations created by the Obama Administration to effectively address the racial disparities that appear in special education.

READ MORE: Betsy DeVos sorry for not condemning racism when talking HBCUs

When those regulations were established under the 2016 Equity in IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Act), states were given until July 2018 to comply, which would mean having an active standardized program in place for monitoring how districts both identified and served minority students living with disabilities.

But just two days short of the deadline, at a time when states should have been gearing up to address the glaring disparities in how Black children with disabilities are treated, DeVos pulled the plug on the endeavor entirely, citing that she had concerns that the methodology could incentivize the use of racial quotas.

This comes months after the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, Inc., wrote a letter to DeVos pleading with her not to stop the process writing, “NASDSE does not believe that addressing equity should ever be put on hold.”

According to a report by Department of Education’s 2016 annual report to Congress on the CONTINUE READING: Education Sec. Betsy DeVos hindering Obama-era law meant to help disabled minority students - theGrio

Parent Teacher Associations: how they can harm democracy - Vox

Parent Teacher Associations: how they can harm democracy - Vox

How can it be wrong to give to your kid’s school?
A school district tried to share rich parents’ donations with poor schools. You will believe what happened next.

The word “philanthropy” conjures up images of big-time donors like Bill Gates or George Soros, hanging out at Davos and announcing sweeping plans to cure disease or save democracy.

But philanthropy isn’t just about the superrich. It’s also about small-dollar donors like you and me. And there’s no better place to see that than in philanthropy-funded nonprofits that most parents should be familiar with: parent-teacher associations.

PTAs are parent-run organizations at the school level organized to get parents and families more involved in their children’s education, and they’re usually funded by contributions from the parents.

Donating to support your kid’s school seems like a great thing to do — and it is! But as we explore on the season finale of the Future Perfect podcast, it’s also a political act that can profoundly affect other families, and your broader community.

Because PTAs are funded by philanthropy, not taxes, their resources can vary dramatically from district to district and school to school, with wealthy students benefiting the most. That can be disturbing when PTAs are tasked with paying the salaries of science and art teachers, and funding key infrastructure like science labs, as happens in some districts.

To think more clearly about the effect of PTAs — and specifically mega-rich PTAs in wealthy school districts — we talked to New York Times education reporter Dana Goldstein about a recent fight in the Malibu-Santa Monica school district, just outside LA. For a few years, the district tried to remedy inequalities between poor Santa Monica schools and uber-wealthy Malibu schools by pooling PTA donations and divvying them up evenly to all schools.

That system isn’t in place anymore — and in the episode, we dive into the revolt of wealthy parents that killed it.

Read more

• Dana Goldstein on the Malibu-Santa Monica PTA wars
• The harm done by parents who hoard donations
• Rob Reich on the damage to democracy done by superrich PTAs
• A Center for American Progress report on PTA donations in rich schools based on tax records
• A counterargument that private PTA donations aren’t that important compared to government spending

Parent Teacher Associations: how they can harm democracy - Vox

Federal Authorities Arrest Former Secretary of Education and Former Director of Health Insurance Administration | Politics | theweeklyjournal.com

Federal Authorities Arrest Former Secretary of Education and Former Director of Health Insurance Administration | Politics | theweeklyjournal.com

Federal Authorities Arrest Former Secretary of Education and Former Director of Health Insurance Administration

Former executive director of the Puerto Rico Health Insurance Administration (ASES, by its Spanish acronym), Angela Ávila Marrero, has been arrested today.

Also, Fernando Scherrer, CEO of BDO, an accounting firm with government contracts, has been arrested this morning along Alberto Velázquez Piñol, a BDO contractor and former Puerto Rico Secretary of Health, Rafael Rodríguez advisor.

EL VOCERO sources said also that former secretary of Education, Julia Keleher has been arrested today in Washington, DC.

The people arrested in Puerto Rico will be brought to the initial hearing before federal magistrate Bruce Magiverin. At 11:00 a.m. the federal authorities will hold a press conference.

Luis Rivera-Santana, FBI spokesperson, confirmed that U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and U.S Department of Education Office Inspector General agents deliver the arrest warrants.

Amid a string of federal investigations involving high-ranking officials, Ávila Marrero resigned from her duties on June 25.

The resignation was issued at a time when both ASES and the Department of Health are rumored to be implied in the FBI’s investigations regarding contract irregularities and probable offenses.

Ávila Marrero had been interviewed by federal authorities.

Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, who is on vacation with his family outside the island, said in a written statement this morning:

"Maintaining the trust of the people in the government institutions is a constant challenge that we all have in the public service.

That trust is lamented when public or related officials are accused of corruption offenses.

As a society we must reject all behavior outside the law, be it in the public service, in the private sector, or in any activity.

As governor, I assume the responsibility and commitment to fight that evil in all CONTINUE READING: Federal Authorities Arrest Former Secretary of Education and Former Director of Health Insurance Administration | Politics | theweeklyjournal.com

Louisiana Educator: Part II: Lessons from Primitive Childhood Education

Louisiana Educator: Part II: Lessons from Primitive Childhood Education

Part II: Lessons from Primitive Childhood Education

Anthropologists and geneticists have discovered that all children are born with a powerful love of learning and genetic instincts that prod them to learn how to live successfully in their environment. But we modern humans with our latest education reforms seem to be determined to kill the joy of learning in our children.

  Scientists studied several primitive hunter-gatherer societies where people were organized in small tribes. They found that in all cases children were eager to explore and learn about their environments. Children seemed to learn effortlessly with little fussing or organized instruction by adults. On their own, through play and imitation, children rapidly picked up the tribal language, knowledge of plants, and animals, use of tools and weapons and survival skills which are vital to success of the tribe. The harsh primitive environment of hunter-gatherers require humans to absorb huge volumes of information and skills and to apply amazing creativity and adaptability to survive. Modern humans could learn a lot from primitive peoples about how to educate children to lead happy, successful lives in our society.

According to this study report: "It would be a mistake to assume that because hunter-gatherer cultures were “simpler” than modern cultures, children had less to learn. The hunting-and-gathering way of life was highly knowledge-intensive and skill-intensive, and because of the absence of occupational specialization, each child had to acquire the whole culture, or at least that part of it appropriate to his or her gender."

If you want to get a glimpse of how difficult it is to survive in the CONTINUE READING: Louisiana Educator: Part II: Lessons from Primitive Childhood Education

With Tony Evers’ New Budget, Wisconsin Begins Long Journey to Shed Scott Walker’s Legacy | janresseger

With Tony Evers’ New Budget, Wisconsin Begins Long Journey to Shed Scott Walker’s Legacy | janresseger

With Tony Evers’ New Budget, Wisconsin Begins Long Journey to Shed Scott Walker’s Legacy

In Gordon Lafer’s 2017 book, The One Percent Solution, in the first chapter entitled  “Wisconsin and Beyond: Dismantling the Government,” Lafer makes Wisconsin the emblem of what happened in the 2010 election, as corporate lobbies, the Tea Party, and the collapse of state revenue following the Great Recession converged to fuel a Red-state wave that took over state governments:

“Critically, this new territory included a string of states, running across the upper Midwest from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, that had traditionally constituted labor strongholds… Starting in 2011, the country has witnessed an unprecedented wave of legislation aimed at eliminating public employee unions, or, where they remain, strictly limiting their right to bargain.  At the same time, the overall size of government has been significantly reduced in both union and nonunion jurisdictions. The number of public jobs eliminated in 2011 was the highest ever recorded, and budgets for essential public services were dramatically scaled back in dozens of states.  All of this—deunionization, sharp cuts in public employee compensation and the dramatic rollback of public services—was forcefully championed by the corporate lobbies, who made shrinking the public sector a top policy priority in state after state.”  (The One Percent Solution, pp. 44-45)

In his fine book, Lafer describes a wave of tax cuts that followed the 2010 election, plus anti-teachers’ union battles and efforts to expand school privatization through enabling charter schools or adding state voucher (and neo-voucher tuition tax credits or education savings accounts).  Lafer points to public schools as one of the institutions targeted by the corporate reformers from state to state:  “At first glance, it may seem odd that corporate lobbies such as the Chamber of Commerce… or Americans for Prosperity would care to get involved in an CONTINUE READING: With Tony Evers’ New Budget, Wisconsin Begins Long Journey to Shed Scott Walker’s Legacy | janresseger

LAUSD Presents A “School Performance Framework” To Parents, While Failing To Notify Any About It – redqueeninla

LAUSD Presents A “School Performance Framework” To Parents, While Failing To Notify Any About It – redqueeninla

LAUSD Presents A “School Performance Framework” To Parents, While Failing To Notify Any About It

Two Aprils ago the District resolved to “Establish A Framework For Continuous Improvement” of its diverse complex of approximately one thousand schools, including traditional, charter, special education, special programming, etc.

The idea was to ‘identify and track a uniform set of measures for each school’s overall annual performance, that would enable district and parents alike to understand and evaluate school performance’.

A little off schedule (about nine months late), two trios of Educational consultants converged from Washington, DC (“Collaborative Commnications”) and Madison, WI (“Education Analytics”) to present some trial dashboard-like screens of the new School Performance Framework (SPF) to a collection of parents assembled during four daytime sessions, still ongoing this week (click here to attend).

The trouble is that at least for Tuesday’s session, fewer than a dozen parents were present, and the preponderance of these had heard of the meeting through “word-of-mouth”, via a shallow pool of friends and acquaintances demographically similar essentially by definition; not directly by invitation or message from the District. Questioned by a parent about outreach sharply, a District official explained that only parents already engaged with elite, District-level councils were notified during this holiday period, and the meetings were not advertised or managed even on LAUSD’s website. The demographic represented directly CONTINUE READING: LAUSD Presents A “School Performance Framework” To Parents, While Failing To Notify Any About It – redqueeninla

Can Education and Social Policy Lift de Blasio to the White House? | Ed In The Apple

Can Education and Social Policy Lift de Blasio to the White House? | Ed In The Apple

Can Education and Social Policy Lift de Blasio to the White House?

When Mayor de Blasio announced his candidacy for the presidency it was greeted with derision and laughter. How could a mayor who was no longer popular in his own city even think of a run for the highest office in the land?

Michelle Goldberg, in the New York Times (“Stop Sneering at Bill de Blasio”) reminded us that de Blasio’s mayoralty has been pretty impressive.

Conventional wisdom holds that de Blasio is a joke, a sanctimonious dork held in widespread contempt by the city he governs. New York’s tabloids despise him. His presidential bid has been greeted with a combination of sneering, eye-rolling and baffled pity.

I’m as confused as everyone else about why de Blasio is running for president. But the mockery greeting his every move obscures what a successful mayor he’s been, particularly for working- and middle-class families.

De Blasio’s election in 2013 was a surprise; he won a four-way primary in which he was a long shot with 40% of the vote, way ahead of the favorite, Billy Thompson, an Afro-American candidate who served two terms as Comptroller.

Under the five years of de Blasio leadership the city continues to thrive. He CONTINUE READING:Can Education and Social Policy Lift de Blasio to the White House? | Ed In The Apple 

TFA Is Shocked, Shocked To Find That It Is An ‘Arm’ Of The Charter School Movement | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

TFA Is Shocked, Shocked To Find That It Is An ‘Arm’ Of The Charter School Movement | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

TFA Is Shocked, Shocked To Find That It Is An ‘Arm’ Of The Charter School Movement

A few weeks ago an article appeared in ProPublica called ‘How Teach for America became an arm of the charter school movement’.  I found this be a very well researched article which shed light on something that public school advocates like me already knew a lot about — that TFA and the charter school movement are highly intertwined.

For people who didn’t already know about this, this would be truly eye opening.  But even for people like me who have always known about this, this article gave some new details that offered even more compelling proof including a major ‘smoking gun.’

The smoking gun is a contract that TFA signed with the Walton Foundation where TFA would receive $4,000 for each public school teacher they recruit and $6,000 for every charter school teacher they recruit.

I thought the article was great and it got a lot of attention but, for me, the most amazing thing was the reaction by TFA and by the TFA supporters.

Here is what TFA tweeted:

To which I responded: CONTINUE READING: TFA Is Shocked, Shocked To Find That It Is An ‘Arm’ Of The Charter School Movement | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Shawgi Tell: Don’t Be Charter-Fooled | Dissident Voice

Don’t Be Charter-Fooled | Dissident Voice

Don’t Be Charter-Fooled

Major problems in the charter school sector have been detailed by many researchers and writers over the years. In the last year or two, however, persistent charter school problems have been exposed with much greater depth, breadth, and regularity by more individuals and organizations.

It has become abundantly clear to more people that the charter school sector is riddled with too many serious difficulties to hide. The consequences of these problems are just too severe to deny.

In this context, some “leaders” in the fractured crisis-prone charter school sector have remained hidebound, arrogant, and dogmatic, nonchalantly ignoring endless valid criticisms and simply chugging along as if everything is hunky dory.

Others in the charter school sector have feigned concern and expressed an ostensible desire to “acknowledge problems” and “improve.” The hope is to fool the gullible by recasting the heavily tarnished image of these deregulated schools so as to prettify them and counteract growing resistance to them.

But can a charter school not be a charter school?

As a general rule, state laws deliberately and consciously establish charter schools as entities (performance-based contracts) that are destined to have all the problems that they have. Charter schools are deregulated, deunionized, and privatized by conscious design. They are not public schools, no matter how often one claims they are.

The problem is not that charter schools are not living up to their “original promise,” but that they are doing exactly what they have always been carefully set up to do: function as pay-the-rich schemes in the context of a continually failing economy and discredited political system.

Nonprofit and for-profit charter schools have always been neoliberal through CONTINUE READING: Don’t Be Charter-Fooled | Dissident Voice

Teacher credentials come in for tough grading as California rethinks charter school rules | CALmatters

Teacher credentials come in for tough grading as California rethinks charter school rules | CALmatters

Teacher credentials come in for tough grading as CA rethinks charter school rules

Heather Williams knew as a kid that she wanted to be a piano teacher. She earned her music degree with a piano emphasis from Brigham Young University and spent decades honing her craft.

Today she not only runs her own academy near Sacramento, offering private lessons with a special certification in the Suzuki Method of instruction, but also teaches in public schools, though she lacks a state teaching credential.

How? Via a loophole that lets charter schools skip some of the credentialing required of teachers in traditional public school classrooms. The exception has allowed Williams to offer music instruction to homeschool charter students and to group classes in brick-and-mortar charters such as the Sacramento-based California Montessori Project network.

Proponents say it encourages enrichment in that privately-run sector of the public school system. In recent months, however—like many state rules that apply to charters—it has drawn legislative attention. And influential lawmakers say it could be on its way out.

Whether all teachers should need a state credential to teach has long been debated. In California, the answer has been “yes” for teachers in traditional public schools.

But California law grants charter schools “flexibility” in credentialing requirements for teachers assigned to classes outside of the “core” subjects of math, reading, science and social studies, as well as “college prep” courses such as Advanced Placement.

Charter advocates and local school officials say the ability to expand limited applicant pools to include, say, professional artists, helps ensure a breadth of course offerings in areas such as dance, theater and music.

But charter school critics say the exception has been abused, and that standards need to be clarified to ensure that CONTINUE READING: Teacher credentials come in for tough grading as California rethinks charter school rules | CALmatters

Should Non-Citizen Parents Be Allowed To Vote In LAUSD School Board Elections?: LAist

Should Non-Citizen Parents Be Allowed To Vote In LAUSD School Board Elections?: LAist

Should Non-Citizen Parents Be Allowed To Vote In LAUSD School Board Elections?

Los Angeles Unified School Board members each represent thousands of constituents who have a direct stake in the success of the district's schools but who cannot currently vote: parents who are not American citizens.

In a few weeks, though, the board may take a first step toward giving all parents — including those living in the U.S. without legal authorization — a right to vote in school board elections.

LAUSD board member Kelly Gonez formally introduced a resolution last week that proposes exploring a possible measure on the 2020 ballot that would open future LAUSD board elections to "all parents, legal guardians, or caregivers of a child residing within the boundaries of Los Angeles Unified."

"Those parents and guardians have an equal stake in the education of their children," Gonez said, "and I believe they should have a say in who represents them on the school board and who votes on their behalf."

WHEN MIGHT THIS HAPPEN?

The board will take up Gonez's resolution in August. If approved after the board's summer break, the resolution directs district staff to present possible ballot language within 60 days along with "strategies for assuring the confidentiality of the right to vote and assuaging fears of retaliation due to immigration status."

Gonez said the timing of her resolution will allow board members to simultaneously consider two proposals to broaden LAUSD's voting base. The board has already moved to explore giving 16- and 17-year-olds a vote in LAUSD elections.

HOW MANY NON-CITIZENS COULD THEORETICALLY REGISTER?

It's hard to say precisely.

LAUSD — like many school districts — doesn't track the citizenship status of the roughly 570,000 children who attend public schools within its boundaries, including charter schools. The same legal cases that require public schools to educate all students no matter their immigration status also limit districts' ability to ask about it, since prying questions might discourage parents from enrolling their children in school.

Statewide estimates show more than 320,000 school-aged children in California are living in the U.S. without legal permission — the equivalent of 5% of the state's K-12 enrollment. But a larger percentage of California's students — about 1 in 8 — have at least one parent who isn't authorized to live in the U.S.

HAS ANYONE ELSE DONE THIS?

If ultimately enacted, LAUSD would join the San Francisco Unified School District in extending CONTINUE READING: Should Non-Citizen Parents Be Allowed To Vote In LAUSD School Board Elections?: LAist

Why many school districts are being set up for fiscal failure | Salon.com

Why many school districts are being set up for fiscal failure | Salon.com

Why many school districts are being set up for fiscal failure
One urban district faces an especially steep climb out of the abyss of oppressive rule

Former vice president and current presidential hopeful Joe Biden recently caught a lot of flak for saying if President Trump were to be booted out of office, politics would go back to being sane again. He then suggested that his history of being “civil” with avowed segregationists was an asset worthy of the presidency. Biden’s critics were right to point out his “nostalgia” ignores the assault on democracy that occurred during those mythical “good times” before Trump, and a more important concern is whether years of systemic corruption and intransigence toward democracy have become so ingrained that government of the people, by the people, and for the people is no longer possible.

That very concern is currently being tested in an arena long regarded as the foundation of democracy itself — the nation’s public schools. Currently, numerous urban school districts around the country are returning to local democratic control after years of authoritarian, and often corrupt, rule by their respective state governments. In New Orleans, Philadelphia, Detroit, Newark, and elsewhere, school districts that have spent

years under the thumb of state-appointed boards and managers are transitioning to public control through either democratically elected boards or boards appointed by an elected mayor.CONTINUE READING: Why many school districts are being set up for fiscal failure | Salon.com