Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity | Diane Ravitch's blog

Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity | Diane Ravitch's blog

Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity

The definition of insanity: funding an experimental education program, discovering that it failed, then funding it some more and expecting different results.

Another definition of insanity: funding a voucher program that depresses student achievement, then demanding more voucher funds so more students can fall behind.

Why fund failure?

Despite Poor Academic Results Groups Sue to Grow Private School Voucher Program

A few weeks ago a pro-school privatization organization, Institute for Justice, announced a lawsuit against the State of Nevada over the impact of AB 458 to private school vouchers recipients, scholarship granting organizations and businesses receiving tax incentives.

Though pro-voucher advocates are framing the suit as “saving vouchers,” in reality, the voucher program did not lose funding. The controversy over some students losing their scholarships is actually the result of a single scholarship granting organization interpreting a law passed this legislative session (AB 458) differently than all other scholarship organizations. Certain families who went through this organization for their voucher funds were the only ones whose funds were not renewed, leaving those students in limbo as the law’s purpose is clarified by the State.

To be clear, AB 458 did NOT cancel funding for the voucher program but only ended the requirement that funding for the controversial program grow by 10% each year. Given that growth in public education funding often struggles just  to keep up with inflation (approximately 2%), automatically growing a voucher program with scant accountability and poor results just doesn’t make sense.

Businesses are also suing on the claim that they would not be able to increase their contributions to vouchers because there is no increase in tax incentives. However ,they could choose to continue supporting private school tuition CONTINUE READING: Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity | Diane Ravitch's blog

Take a walk with me | Cloaking Inequity

Take a walk with me | Cloaking Inequity

Take a walk with me 

It’s a great day to take a walk with me! Watch and get to know what’s ahead for deaning in a community-engaged, community-relevant fashion.

Read more here: http://uknow.uky.edu/campus-news/campus-walk-meet-new-dean-uks-college-education

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

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Take a walk with me | Cloaking Inequity

Aaron Wright: Caught in the Middle: Whatever Happened to the Individuals With Disabilities Act? NANCY BAILEY'S EDUCATION WEBSITE

Caught in the Middle: Whatever Happened to the Individuals With Disabilities Act?

Caught in the Middle: Whatever Happened to the Individuals With Disabilities Act?

No child wants to feel like a failure. No educator wants to feel like they have failed a child. Most children in special education are identified as having a specific learning disability or language impairment. Yet nationally only 67% of children with disabilities will graduate from high school and almost one and five will drop out.

In 1975 Gerald Ford signed into law what would become the Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA). Previously there was no guarantee that a child with disabilities would be provided an education, let alone be allowed into a public school. But even as Ford signed the legislation he lamented its shortcomings, “[T]he funding levels proposed in this bill will simply not be possible…” Those ripple effects continue to this day.

In 1990, the addition of the IDEA’s central principles of a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), Appropriate Evaluation, Individualized Education Plan (IEP), Least Restrictive Environment, Parent Participation, and Procedural Safeguards granted the families of disabled children a formal and standardized means advocacy and redress.

Parents are driven to advocacy by instinct and science. A growing body of data has illuminated the dire consequences of a failed education. Up to 85 percent of youth in juvenile detention have disabilities that made them eligible for special education services, yet only 37 percent had received services while in school. Adding to CONTINUE READING: Caught in the Middle: Whatever Happened to the Individuals With Disabilities Act?

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

In education, as in most things, Philadelphia is its own little state-within-the-state. The public system has a long and messy history, including a state takeover. The district is often used as Exhibit A for pro-choice legislators ("But we must give the poor children of Philadelphia a way to escape their terrible school system even as we refuse to adequately fund that system!") and is consequently the most charter-heavy city in the commonwealth.

In Pennsylvania, the local school district has oversight of charter schools within its boundaries. But like several states, there is also a state-level review board to which charters can appeal, and that board has told Philadelphia that at least one charter is free to go on ahead and do as it pleases.

The charter in question is Franklin Towne Charter. The charter has attracted attention in the past for a variety of reasons.

There's the time a fired principal filed a whistle blower suit, charging that he's been terminated because he pointed out that some Franklin Towne practices such as non-serving ESL students, serious nepotism, and billing the Philly school district for a non-existent all-day kindergarten program. Also, that they had lied to him in his initial interview in order to cover up their high principal turnover rate (it was only later that he learned that the Chief Academic Officer who helped interview him had been removed from the principalship because of outcry over shoplifting and excessive use of force against students). After a pattern of retaliation developed against him, he took it to the board president who allegedly replied, "You know we cannot move CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

New York Post attacks Black Lives Matter at School movement, “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “The New Teacher Book” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

New York Post attacks Black Lives Matter at School movement, “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “The New Teacher Book” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

New York Post attacks Black Lives Matter at School movement, “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “The New Teacher Book”

With the new school year underway, antiracist educators around the country are back at work uplifting Black students–and the New York Post is back at work spewing racist garbage. 

For their back to school coverage, the Post decided to give column space, not to experts in closing opportunity gaps or promising new approaches to supporting Black excellence, but rather to a defender of the racist status quo of schooling. This amateurish and offensive attack was leveled against the entire Black Lives Matter at School movement, as well as two books published by Rethinking Schools, Teaching for Black Lives–a book I co-edited with Dyan Watson and Wayne Au–and The New Teacher Book.

In the attack on Teaching for Black Lives, Peter Meyer, writes:

In the introduction to “Teaching for Black Lives,” a recently published textbook meant to accompany BLM’s classroom efforts, the first sentence reads: “Black students’ minds and bodies are under attack.”

The stoking of students’ fear and anger continues with a reference to “the continuing police murders of black people,” along with this characterization of the galvanizing event for BLM’s street protests: “In August of 2014, Michael Brown was killed in the CONTINUE READING: New York Post attacks Black Lives Matter at School movement, “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “The New Teacher Book” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda | Diane Ravitch's blog

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda | Diane Ravitch's blog

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda

Every year since 2014, Democrats who fervently support the privatization of public schools have gathered at a conference they pretentiously call “Camp Philos.”

https://campphilos.org/

Check the agenda of meetings present and past.

There you will see the lineup of Democrats who sneer at public schools and look on public school teachers with contempt.

These are the Democrats who support the DeVos agenda of disrupting and privatizing public schools.

They are meeting again this year, and they will slap each other on the back for supporting school closures, charter schools, high-stakes testing, evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students, and hiring inexperienced teachers.

They have the chutzpah to call themselves “stakeholders,” although none of them are teachers, parents of public school students, or have any stake in the public schools that enroll 85-90% of all American students. Exactly what do they have a “stake” in?

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda | Diane Ravitch's blog

To bring “prestige” back to education, make teachers tax-exempt, says Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman ON Kara Swisher podcast Recode Decode - Vox

Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman on Kara Swisher podcast Recode Decode - Vox

To bring “prestige” back to education, make teachers tax-exempt, says Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman
He’s an adviser to President Trump — but he also wants to see a national $15 minimum wage and an overhaul of the H-1B visa program.

Much of the world is transitioning to a knowledge economy, but far too few Americans have had enough education to prepare them for that shift, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman says.

“Most people don’t know that two-thirds of the workforce in the United States has a high school education or less,” Schwarzman said on the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. “Those people are not prepared for the modern world ... it’s not the business community that created that. There’s a political problem.”

Schwarzman, a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump whose private equity firm manages $548 billion, focuses on personal advice in his new book What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence. But on the new podcast episode, he shared a series of policy goals — including a national $15 minimum wage and public education reforms.

“Teachers are pretty poorly paid,” he said. “You see these demonstrations on television and strikes, and so I think we need to get teachers in a position where they can attract very high-quality people. One way to do that is to make teachers the only tax-exempt occupation in the United States.

“That would give them a very large boost in income just the day you did it,” Schwarzman added. “But the second benefit is that they would be marked apart as a prestige institution. When I was young, teachers were a big deal. And I wouldn’t be where I was without the education that I got.”

You can listen to the full interview on our podcast Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, which you can listen to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the new podcast, Schwarzman also talked about how he would like to see America’s CONTINUE READING:  Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman on Kara Swisher podcast Recode Decode - Vox

Federal Spending on Children Has Hit a 10-Year Low - Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

Public spending on children aims to support their healthy development and help them fulfill their human potential. As such, federal spending on children is an investment in the nation’s future. To inform policymakers, children’s advocates, and the general public about how public funds are spent on children, this 13th edition of the annual Kids’ Share report provides an updated analysis of federal expenditures on children from 1960 to 2018. It also projects federal expenditures on children through 2029 to give a sense of how budget priorities may unfold absent changes to current law.

A few highlights of the chartbook:

• In 2018, the federal government spent about $6,200 per child younger than 19, less than in 2017 after adjusting for inflation. This decline is driven by a reduction in federal spending on education and nutrition programs and a temporary reduction in child-related tax credits.
• As a share of the economy, federal investments in children fell to 1.9 percent of GDP in 2018, the lowest level in a decade.
• Medicaid is the largest source of federal support for children, followed by the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. More than three-fifths of federal expenditures on children are from health or tax provisions.
• The share of federal expenditures for children targeted to low-income families has grown over time, reaching 61 percent in 2018.
• Looking forward, children’s programs are projected to receive only 3 cents of every dollar of the projected $1.5 trillion increase in federal spending over the next decade.
• Assuming no changes to current law, the children’s share of the budget is projected to drop from 9.2 percent to 7.5 percent over the next decade, as spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest payments on the debt consume a growing share of the budget.
• By 2020, the federal government is projected to spend more on interest payments on the debt than on children.
• Over the next decade, all categories of spending on children except health are projected to decline relative to GDP. Most categories also see declines or remain at similar levels in real dollars.

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

CURMUDGUCATION: Yes, Teachers Are Spending Money On Their Own Classrooms

CURMUDGUCATION: Yes, Teachers Are Spending Money On Their Own Classrooms

Yes, Teachers Are Spending Money On Their Own Classrooms

Like the cost of a romantic date at Valentine's Day or the price of the Twelve Days of Christmas, the amount of money that teachers spend on their own classroom has become a reliable seasonal story. This year the word is that on average teachers spend, depending on your source, somewhere between $400 and $500. But that's not the whole story.

The Economic Policy Institute has crunched the numbers from the National Center for Educational Statistics, including a breakdown by states. The state averages vary (from $664 in California to $327 in North Dakota), though EPI is quick to note that the range says more about variations in state funding and school conditions than about the relative generosity of teachers in different states.

EPI uses relatively old data (2011-2012) to create its picture. The National Teacher and Principal Survey provides data from 2015-2016. A more current look comes from the sixth annual survey of teachers released today by SheerID and Agile Education Marketing. The most notable finding in their survey is not the amount teachers spent, but the sheer number of teachers who spent it--the survey shows that 99% of teachers spent their own money for school-related-purposes. And while the beginning of the school year seems to be prime time for these stories, the survey also notes that teachers do their spending throughout the year.

The SheerID/Agile Education Marketing folks want to make a practical business point--there's a huge market out there, composed of teachers looking for bargains because they are CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Yes, Teachers Are Spending Money On Their Own Classrooms

Sandy Hook Promises releases jarring back-to-school PSA

Sandy Hook Promises releases jarring back-to-school PSA

Sandy Hook Promise releases jarring back-to-school PSA depicting anxiety around school shootings

A powerful back-to-school PSA by Sandy Hook Promise (SHP) is depicting the fear and anxiety that students face as they re-enter their classrooms with supplies and essentials for the new year and discover alternate uses for them during a school shooting.

The one-minute seven-second video created by the Newton, Conn.-based nonprofit organization was released on Wednesday morning. Since its release, it’s made an impact.

“SHP and BBDO New York have produced the new PSA video that starts off as a cheery and often-familiar back-to-school ad but slowly unfolds to highlight students using everyday back-to-school items to survive a shooting, shedding light on the gruesome reality that students face,” a statement by SHP reads.

Throughout the video, viewers hear a student boasting about his new sneakers as he runs from gunshots, see another using a sock as a tourniquet on a wounded classmate and watch a boy use his new skateboard to break a classroom window to escape the building.

The video ends with a girl crying in a bathroom stall as she texts “I love you mom” before the door opens and footsteps CONTINUE READING: Sandy Hook Promises releases jarring back-to-school PSA

Symposium: The deference due state constitutional protections for public education - SCOTUSblog

Symposium: The deference due state constitutional protections for public education - SCOTUSblog

Symposium: The deference due state constitutional protections for public education

Alice O’Brien is General Counsel at the National Education Association.

The Supreme Court in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue faces the question of whether, and if so to what degree, the federal free exercise clause restricts how states provide quality K-12 education systems. The petitioners seek a sweeping ruling that would prevent states from enforcing a myriad of state constitutional provisions safeguarding their free, nonsectarian public schools. This result, they assert, naturally follows from the court’s decision in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer that a state cannot preclude religious organizations from receiving generally available playground-resurfacing grants. The respondents will argue that Trinity Lutheran, for a variety of reasons, does not prohibit states from choosing to fund only nonsectarian public schools. This post focuses on just one of the reasons: the deference due state constitutional public education provisions.

The federal constitution contains no specific education provisions, but every state constitution includes at least one provision requiring the state to establish and support some type of public education system — and most contain several provisions concerning the establishment, administration and funding of public schools. These state constitutional education provisions reflect different, deeply considered and carefully drawn commitments about how to provide educational services. At the same time, these provisions recognize that state education systems must be adequately resourced, subject to uniform standards and open to all students.

For example, almost all state constitutions include education clauses mandating that the public-school systems meet a certain qualitative standard, whether it be “high quality” (Ill.), “thorough and efficient” (Md., N.J., Ohio, W.Va., Wyo.), “suitable” (Alaska, Kan.) or “general and uniform” (Ariz., Minn., N.C., Ore., S.D., Wash.). Many state constitutions also specify how or in what priority schools shall be funded, providing, for example, that public-school funding is a paramount fiscal obligation of the state (Nev.), or may be used exclusively for public primary and secondary education (Fla.) or that certain funds may be used only for the public schools (e.g., Calif., Colo., Conn., Del., Fla., Idaho, Md., Mo., Mont., Neb., N.J., N.D., Ore., R.I.). And most state constitutions, including Montana’s, prohibit funding sectarian schools.

Although a number of these provisions precede the federal constitution’s ratification, state constitutions are typically subject to more frequent review and amendment than the federal CONTINUE READING: Symposium: The deference due state constitutional protections for public education - SCOTUSblog

Ohio Senate Education Committee Blames Educators While Underfunding Schools in the State’s Poorest Communities | janresseger

Ohio Senate Education Committee Blames Educators While Underfunding Schools in the State’s Poorest Communities | janresseger

Ohio Senate Education Committee Blames Educators While Underfunding Schools in the State’s Poorest Communities

Members of the Ohio Senate Education Committee, who have been holding hearings on a new state school district takeover plan, continue to scapegoat the teachers and educational leaders in the school districts which serve concentrations of our state’s poorest children.

Despite a large body of research correlating standardized test scores with aggregate family and neighborhood income, Bill Phillis reports that twice last week at a hearing convened by the Senate Education Committee, one senator repeatedly asked: “How much time should we give those who drove the bus into the ditch to get it out?”  The Plain Dealer‘s Patrick O’Donnell quotes Senator Bill Coley, who mused: “I think its maybe the wrong people are running the show and we need to try something different.”

I guess these guys adhere to the old idea that if we were merely to exchange the staffs of the richest and the poorest school districts in the state, the challenges for students in poor communities would magically disappear.  Instead, research shows that economic segregation—where wealthy families are moving farther and farther into the exurbs—has been rapidly accelerating.  Our senators must imagine that that public school educators can, on their own, swiftly erase the alarming and growing economic gap between children growing up in pockets of extreme privilege and children segregated in our most impoverished city neighborhoods or living in remote rural areas.

There is a lot of evidence, however, that Ohio’s state senators are mistaken when they blame schools and public school educators.  The state takeovers are based on a set of overly complex and opaque calculations that yield the  school district grades on a state report card.  This year’s state report card ratings were released just last week.  It is not surprising, given what is well known about the correlation of standardized test scores with family and community CONTINUE READING: Ohio Senate Education Committee Blames Educators While Underfunding Schools in the State’s Poorest Communities | janresseger

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Climate Strike: SPS Says No Excused Absences if Students Walk Out #ClimateStrike

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Climate Strike: SPS Says No Excused Absences if Students Walk Out

Climate Strike: SPS Says No Excused Absences if Students Walk Out

Today on KUOW's The Record, Superintendent Juneau was asked about SPS students who might want to join the Friday walkout for climate change.  She was totally supportive of young activists and noted many in Seattle Schools.

But then she mentioned the law and teaching and learning and science classes and well, it's a no to being excused to go to the rally.

The only way a student can go with an excused absence is if a parent/guardian comes and takes the student. No note will do.

I put this up on Twitter and many people were not happy with her stance.

Do it anyway.

Yeah, I’ll go get the kid.

Not with Amplify they won’t.

Wow! Well, the only time I got in trouble in school was when I staged a walk-out against the war in Iraq. I got quoted in the local paper and got called into the principal’s office on Monday AM. Got detention and when I got home, my hippie uncle gave me a hi 5! So Hi 5 students! 

Oh hi@SeaPubSchools, did you see@GovInslee’s release? He seems pretty enthusiastic about kids participating.

I note that Governor Inslee is all in as are NYC schools.

Gov. Inslee's statement reads as follows: CONTINUE READING: Seattle Schools Community Forum: Climate Strike: SPS Says No Excused Absences if Students Walk Out

Relay Graduate School: a Slick “MarketWorld” Education Fraud | tultican

Relay Graduate School: a Slick “MarketWorld” Education Fraud | tultican

Relay Graduate School: a Slick “MarketWorld” Education Fraud

By T. Ultican 9/18/2019

Relay Graduate School of Education is a private stand alone graduate school created and led by people with meager academic credentials. Founded by leaders from the charter school industry, it is lavishly financed by billionaires. Contending that traditional university based teacher education has failed; Relay prescribes deregulation and market competition. Relay does not offer “coursework in areas typical of teacher education programs—courses such as school and society, philosophy of education, and teaching in democracy ….” Rather, Relay trains students almost exclusively in strict classroom management techniques.

Ken Zeichner is one of America’s leading academics studying teacher education. In a paper on alternative teacher preparation programs he noted that Match Teacher Residency and Relay “contribute to the inequitable distribution of professionally prepared teachers and to the stratification of schools according to the social class and racial composition of the student body.” Zeichner clarified,

“These two programs prepare teachers to use highly controlling pedagogical and classroom management techniques that are primarily used in schools serving students of color whose communities are severely impacted by poverty. Meanwhile, students in more economically advantaged areas have greater access to professionally trained teachers, less punitive and controlling management practices and broader and richer curricula and teaching practices. The teaching and management practices learned by the teachers in these two independent programs are based on a restricted definition of teaching and learning and would not be acceptable in more economically advantaged communities.”

Relay is another component of the destroy-public-education infrastructure that mirrors Professor Noliwe Rooks’ definition of segrenomics; “the business of profiting specifically from high levels of racial and economic segregation.”

Founding Relay Graduate School of Education

Relay’s foundation was laid when the Dean of City University of New York’s CONTINUE READING: Relay Graduate School: a Slick “MarketWorld” Education Fraud | tultican

Manipulating Data for the Benefit of Charter Schools

Manipulating Data for the Benefit of Charter Schools

Manipulating Data for the Benefit of Charter Schools

Because there are no facts, there is no truth
Just data to be manipulated
I can get you any result you like
What’s it worth to you?
Because there is no wrong, there is no right
And I sleep very well at night
No shame, no solution, no remorse, no retribution”
– Don Henley, The Garden of Allah

After a summer filled with revelations about confidential dealings between the California Charter School Association (CCSA) and Nick Melvoin, one would think that this Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) board member would take some time to regroup. Instead, Melvoin charged ahead during the first meeting of the school year by placing an item to updated board rules on the agenda. It was his fourth attempt to pass the changes that had been formulated behind closed doors. Unlike a previous attempt, this new version did not reduce the amount of time allotted for public comment. However, he still seemed dead set on reducing transparency, as I noted in my public comment:

Again, it would be really nice if the creation of these rules had been done in the public realm and with the public able to have some input into what was happening here. If they had, perhaps the rules would state that these meetings could only take place when most parents, teachers, and students could participate. Instead, you meet during school hours.

In reviewing these proposed rules I did notice that there is a line stating that “Board Members shall maintain strict confidentiality of any confidential matters discussed in closed session consistent with the Brown Act.” Given that these rules are coming from Nick’s Secret Committee, I know where this is directed; Melvoin was not happy with another board member actually letting the public know what had CONTINUE READING: Manipulating Data for the Benefit of Charter Schools