It's Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... A VERY BUSY DAY | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

It's Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... 

A VERY BUSY DAY 

 The latest news and resources in education since 2007

‘Culturally Responsive Teaching Is Not a Quick Fix’

by Larry Ferlazzo / 10h

is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Five educators share culturally responsive teaching “tips,” including the use of restorative circles and creating lessons with students’ cultures in mind. Here are some excerpts: I’m adding it to The Best Resources About “Culturally Responsive Teaching” & “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy” – Please Share More!

Today’s Resources – & There Are Many Of Them – For Teaching Online If Schools Are Closed

by Larry Ferlazzo / 10h

iXimus / Pixabay Here are today’s additions to Here are new additions to The Best Advice On Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have To Because Of The Coronavirus) – Please Make More Suggestions!: I'll add 1 more. There are lots of lists popping up of "best practices in online instruction" I haven't yet found one that starts with "Consider how you will identify struggling learners and personally connect

Very Impressive Interactive On Selma From Teaching Tolerance

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

Here is how Teaching Tolerance describes its new resource, Selma Online : Selma Online is a new resource we developed with Harvard’s Hutchins Center and Left Field Labs, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. The online platform uses scenes from the film Selma directed by Ava DuVernay and offers educators an innovative, interactive resource to teach the history of the civil rights movement and

Video Interview With Authors Of “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You” PLUS Free Teaching Guide

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

Henry Be Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi have just authored a new book for young people on the history of racism. NPR did an interview with them: It’s Not A History Lesson. New Book Tackles Racist Ideas Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul produced a free accompanying teaching guide. And CBS This Morning did this interview with them, too: I’m adding this info to New & Revised: Resources To Help Us Predominant

Today Is Harriet Tubman Day – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources

by Larry Ferlazzo / 12h

Today is Harriet Tubman Day . You might be interested in The Best Teaching & Learning Resources About Harriet Tubman .

New PBS NewsHour Video Segment: “How this school district is educating students at home during coronavirus outbreak”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 16h

coyot / Pixabay Check out tonight’s PBS NewsHour segment on a school district in Washington that closed down because of the coronavirus. They were able to provide 2,000 computers to students who did not have one, along with hot spots! You might also be interested in: THE BEST RESEARCH RELATED TO CLOSING SCHOOLS BECAUSE OF THE CORONAVIRUS The Best Advice On Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have To Beca

My Latest BAM! Radio Show Is On Teaching Poetry

by Larry Ferlazzo / 16h

Yes, Teaching Poetry Can Be Powerful, Riveting and Fun, If You Do This…. is the title of my latest ten-minute BAM! Radio Show. I’m joined by Gretchen Bernabei, Kelly Love, Jennifer Casa-Todd and Donna Shrum, who have also all contributed written commentaries to my Ed Week Teacher column. I’m adding this show to All My BAM Radio Shows – Linked With Descriptions . By the way, the show is now availa

No Surprise – Another Study Finds “Active Learning” Is More Effective Than Lectures

by Larry Ferlazzo / 1d

Underrepresented college students benefit more from ‘active learning’ techniques in STEM is from Eureka Alert which reports on a new study that has found the same thing many others have found before it – “active learning” is more effective than lectures. Here’s more: “You can sum up the difference between passive and active teaching methods in three simple words: ‘Ask, don’t tell,'” said co-corre

Even More New Resources To Help With Online Teaching

by Larry Ferlazzo / 1d

Miguel Orós Here are new additions to The Best Advice On Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have To Because Of The Coronavirus) – Please Make More Suggestions!: Preparing to Take School Online? Here Are 10 Tips to Make It 

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Coronavirus quarantines could rob poor, rural students of access to education - POLITICO

Coronavirus quarantines could rob poor, rural students of access to education - POLITICO

Coronavirus quarantines could rob poor, rural students of access to education
Nearly 12 million children live in homes lacking a broadband connection.

If the coronavirus forces schools to shut down for long stretches of time, millions of students will struggle to keep up because they don’t have broadband to do schoolwork at home.

What’s known as “the homework gap” could be devastating for students who can't easily use the internet — especially in poor urban areas and rural districts where families don’t have a home laptop or high-speed internet connections. Federal and state officials have long known about the online education gap in America, but spending money to fix the problem wasn’t prioritized. If there are mass school closures, it will be too late.

Nearly 12 million children live in homes lacking a broadband connection, and white residents are more likely to have broadband in their homes than people of color, according to a 2017 report from the Democratic staff of the Joint Economic Committee. In 15 states, the majority of rural residents do not have access to broadband, the report says.

Nevertheless, schools are being advised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to begin planning now for possible interruptions, opening the door to a long-term gap between the haves and have nots in public education. While Congress has various proposals floating around for funding, and some states CONTINUE READING: Coronavirus quarantines could rob poor, rural students of access to education - POLITICO

St. Paul Educators Strike, Demand Mental-Health Supports in School - NEA Today

St. Paul Educators Strike, Demand Mental-Health Supports in School - NEA Today

St. Paul Educators Strike, Demand Mental-Health Supports in School

“We sent up red flags—large, large red flags—and were completely ignored,” says one St. Paul, Minnesota, educator. Meanwhile, “there [are] multiple children in each classroom in desperate need of extra time, attention, and care.”

With these children and their critical needs in mind, St. Paul educators went on strike on Tuesday for the first time since 1946. After nine months at the bargaining table, school district officials have refused to move on issues, like increasing mental-health supports, that St. Paul educators and parents believe essential to the health and success of their children.

“District leaders don’t understand the urgency of these issues. Educators do—we see them every day in our schools. Our students can’t wait any longer,” said Nick Faber, president of the St. Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE).

From the beginning, SPFE’s top priorities have been to secure more mental-health supports in every school, more multi-lingual staff to make children and families feel welcome, additional educators to work with students with special needs, and an expansion of restorative practices.

The last proposal that SPFE made to district officials on Monday night accounts CONTINUE READING: St. Paul Educators Strike, Demand Mental-Health Supports in School - NEA Today

Anxiety in the Time of COVID-19: Toilet Paper Edition – radical eyes for equity

Anxiety in the Time of COVID-19: Toilet Paper Edition – radical eyes for equity

Anxiety in the Time of COVID-19: Toilet Paper Edition

A few days ago, I noticed the back-up stack of toilet paper was low. I paused, thinking about the urgency to go buy more toilet paper. I have never been one to let anything run out, and I tend to buy double of things I use often anyway.

But these are not ordinary times, and in one of the oddest twists of irrational panicking, many people across the U.S. have begun hoarding toilet paper in response to the possible COVID-19 pandemic.

A toilet paper panic seems to have happened first in Japan, also fearing COVID-19, but in that case, the toilet paper mania was spurred by fake news that Japan depended on toilet paper from China.

As a life-long resident of the Upstate of South Carolina, I am well-versed in irrational grocery store panicking; if the weather forecast even hints at cold rain, much less snow, ice, and sleet, the bread and milk shelves are almost instantly barren. I am still not certain why the Southern brain is wired to hoard bread and milk in case we have frozen precipitation (which almost never disrupts travel for more than a day or two any way).

No one seems to understand the toilet paper panic over COVID-19 in the U.S. either, but this is quite a real thing.

So I have been more than once lately temporarily paralyzed over taking normal and even rational measures that balance my normal life with preparing for CONTINUE READING: Anxiety in the Time of COVID-19: Toilet Paper Edition – radical eyes for equity

School Privatizers and Education Disrupters Keep Reinventing Themselves | janresseger

School Privatizers and Education Disrupters Keep Reinventing Themselves | janresseger

School Privatizers and Education Disrupters Keep Reinventing Themselves

For over a year, I have listened to parents and school board members from Indianapolis complaining about a group called The City Fund, which is somehow connected to something called The Mind Trust, and which has been investing in the expansion of charter schools. But the organization has managed to emerge relatively quietly in the past couple of years without a lot of coverage in the press.

The California research blogger, Tom Ultican, fills in the history of an organization that has only recently publicly emerged: “Until February of 2020, the secretive City Fund did not even have a web site.  On July 31, 2018, City Fund Managing Partner, Neerav Kingsland, took to his blog and made public The City Fund—a new nonprofit—and named its founding staff.”

According to that new website, the organization’s partners include Kingsland himself, the former CEO of New Schools for New Orleans. Others include Chris Barbic, who founded Yes Prep Charter Schools and was the the founding superintendent of the Tennessee School Achievement District, which was supposed to turnaround so-called failing schools but which now plans to return all 30 schools currently under its jurisdiction to their local school boards by 2022.  Also from Tennessee is Kevin Huffman, Tennessee’s former state education commissioner, now fired. Partners also include three former leaders of Indianapolis’s The Mind Trust—David Harris, Kameelah Shaheed-Dalio, and Ken Bubp; and two leaders from Education Cities—Ethan Gray, and Jessica Pena.  Finally two partners are from New Jersey— CONTINUE READING: School Privatizers and Education Disrupters Keep Reinventing Themselves | janresseger

NYC Educator: Virtual Parent Teacher Night, Great. Now, What About Every Other Day?

NYC Educator: Virtual Parent Teacher Night, Great. Now, What About Every Other Day?

Virtual Parent Teacher Night, Great. Now, What About Every Other Day?

This morning I drove to work. I left my home at 6 AM as per usual. I was thinking a lot about the proposed parent-teacher night, the one in which no parents are coming to school. I'm also getting a lot of email about it.

Are we doing this in our school?

Yes we are. It's citywide.

How am I going to call 170 parents?

You aren't. You don't see 170 parents on any night. Also, I'm mystified as to how the onus is on you. Parent teacher night is when the parents decide to come see you. Or not. Every single day you have to opportunity to call parents. Honestly I don't see that many. Parents of my students do not speak English, and though we provide translators, though I speak Spanish, though I have good friends who speak other languages, most don't show.

It seems to me it's on parents to get in touch with us, and it's on DOE to figure a way they can do that. I understand Google Voice can provide a phone number that will ring you. That's what I'm thinking about.

I don't want to ask to do this from home. The principal may not like it.

Then don't, and don't complain you weren't able to do that. That's an option, the city offered it, and you have a right to take CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Virtual Parent Teacher Night, Great. Now, What About Every Other Day?

I Would Rather Do Anything Else Than Grade Your Final Papers (Robin Lee Mozer) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

I Would Rather Do Anything Else Than Grade Your Final Papers (Robin Lee Mozer) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

I Would Rather Do Anything Else Than Grade Your Final Papers (Robin Lee Mozer)

All teachers  have to read and evaluate student work. It is part of the territory that teachers inhabit. To classroom comrades we voice our occasional distaste for the inexorable round of homework and papers that pile up on our desks and at home waiting for comments and grades. Robin Lee Mozer, Assistant Professor at the University of Louisville wrote the following piece that surely picked up on a lot of negative feelings I had over the years about grading and commenting on student papers as a history high school teacher and university professor. Be prepared to laugh out loud.

Thanks to David Labaree for his blog where he posted the piece.

Dear Students Who Have Just Completed My Class,

I would rather do anything else than grade your Final Papers.

I would rather base jump off of the parking garage next to the student activity center or eat that entire sketchy tray of taco meat leftover from last week’s student achievement luncheon that’s sitting in the department refrigerator or walk all the way from my house to the airport on my hands than grade your Final Papers.

I would rather have a sustained conversation with my grandfather about politics and government-supported healthcare and what’s wrong with the system today and why he doesn’t believe in homeowner’s insurance because it’s all a scam than grade your Final Papers. Rather than grade your Final Papers, I would stand in the aisle at Lowe’s and listen patiently to All the Men mansplain the process of CONTINUE READING: I Would Rather Do Anything Else Than Grade Your Final Papers (Robin Lee Mozer) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Choosing Democracy: Joe Biden is Not a Friend of Public Schools- but, he is not as bad as Trump

Choosing Democracy: Joe Biden is Not a Friend of Public Schools- but, he is not as bad as Trump

Joe Biden is Not a Friend of Public Schools- but, he is not as bad as Trump

With Joe Biden one of only two leading candidates remaining in the Democratic primary, voters deserve to know the truth about his record on public education. Years of thwarting desegregation efforts, pushing privatization, and imposing high-stakes testing make it clear that Joe Biden cannot be trusted to defend our public schools.

As Delaware’s senator, Biden helped Republicans passGeorge W. Bush’s 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which ushered in the punitive testing regime that so many teachers, parents, and students oppose today. Instead of addressing the glaring racial and economic barriers to educational achievement, NCLB made educators “accountable” for poor testing outcomes by laying them off and closing their schools.

As vice president, Biden spoke in favor of the so-called school reform agenda, which doubled down on NCLB’s draconian testing mandates and made federal funding contingent on states supporting charter schools — nearlydoubling charter enrollment from 2008 to 2016. Linking teachers’ pay and job stability to student test scores proved so destructive that the National Education Association called for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to resign, and parents, students, and teachers formed a movement to opt out of high-stakes testing.

When it comes to school privatization, Biden has been inconsistent at best. Though he has voted against vouchers for private schools, he did speak of them favorably in a 1997 floor speech. Under pressure from the growing nationwide Red for Ed movement, he acknowledged that charter schools take resources away from public schools. But unlike the plan being pushed by Senator Sanders — who was one of the few lawmakers to cast a courageous vote against NCLB — Biden’s education platform makes no mention of halting charter school expansion or curbing their excesses.
Biden’s record on school desegregation is particularly problematic. A leading anti-busing crusader, Biden said in a 1975interview that “[t]he real problem with busing is that you take [white] people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school.”

When Senator Kamala Harris at the July 2019 presidential debate called out Biden’s efforts to thwart desegregation, he refused to apologize — instead specifying that he just opposed “forced busing” (a term used by conservatives) by the Department of Education, an agency that has played a historic role in protecting students’ civil rights.

Earlier that month, at a fundraiser, Biden reminisced about his days collaborating with infamous segregationists while assuring his wealthy donors that “nothing will fundamentally change” in their standard of CONTINUE READING: Choosing Democracy: Joe Biden is Not a Friend of Public Schools- but, he is not as bad as Trump

USDA COVID19 Waiver - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

USDA COVID19 Waiver - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

California Department of Education Receives Special Federal Approval That Enables Districts to Feed Students During Coronavirus-Related Closure

SACRAMENTO—The California Department of Education (CDE) has received a special waiver called CA COVID19 from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that will enable a school district that had previously been approved to operate the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) or Seamless Summer Option (SSO) to provide meals to students during a coronavirus-related closure.

SFSP and SSO are both federally funded and state-administered programs that serve free meals to children eighteen and younger when school is not in session and in communities where 50 percent or more of the students quality for free and reduced-priced meals.

“When a school or district closes, our first concern is the safety and care of our students,” said Thurmond. “Our Nutrition Services Division was proactive in reaching out to the USDA to request the necessary approval in anticipation of local educational agencies potentially having to close due to the coronavirus. That advanced planning, combined with the rapid response from the USDA, will allow districts to continue to provide their most vulnerable students with nutritious meals in the event of a closure.”

Under the waiver, meals can be served at school and non-school sites. Students will not be required to remain on-site to consume the meal and can take the meal and go, which is not the usual federal guideline. This exception was made to enable students to continue to be fed without increasing the risk of spreading germs.

The CDE will administer the waiver and approve waiver requests from local districts so that meals can be claimed for reimbursement. The waiver is valid until June 30, 2020.

# # # #

Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

USDA COVID19 Waiver - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

Jeff Bryant - Our Future: Amazon is Coming to a School Near You (Part 2) | National Education Policy Center

Our Future: Amazon is Coming to a School Near You (Part 2) | National Education Policy Center

Our Future: Amazon is Coming to a School Near You (Part 2)

This is the second of a two-part article by Jeff Bryant on Career and Technical Education (CTE). Click here to read part one.

The national discussion about the movement to privatize America’s public schools has mostly focused on the issues of charter schools and school voucher schemes. But a growing number of parents, teachers, and public school advocates, as well as experts in academia, are increasingly warning about another form of school privatization.

You don’t hear very much about this form of privatization in national forums and mainstream news outlets, but it’s being talked about in places like Chesterfield County, Virginia, which borders state capital Richmond.

At a public assembly in Chesterfield in September 2019, an audience gathered to view the movie “Backpack Full of Cash,” a feature-length documentary narrated by actor Matt Damon that exposes how charters and vouchers financially endanger public schools and redistribute resources and students in inequitable ways.

Yet the panel discussion that followed the film quickly veered away from talking about charters and vouchers when one of the panelists, middle school teacher Emma Clark, called the audience’s attention to “a different offshoot of the privatization movement. The privatization we’re seeing here in Chesterfield is through CTE.”

CTE, Career and Technical Education, is a rebranding of what has been traditionally called vocational CONTINUE READING: Our Future: Amazon is Coming to a School Near You (Part 2) | National Education Policy Center

Jitu Brown: Message to Presidential Candidates: "We want sustainable community schools!" | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Message to Presidential Candidates: "We want sustainable community schools!" | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Message to Presidential Candidates: "We want sustainable community schools!"

Remarks by Jitu Brown were one of the highlights of the recent Public Education Forum 2020, which featured the top Democratic presidential candidates in this year’s race. Brown, National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J), delivered a poignant message about the state of public education, and the continued threat of public school privatization. He underlined the fact that the United States has failed to commit to fulfilling its constitutional obligation to all students by fully funding schools, especially the schools that educate students of color and low income students.

“We don’t have failing schools, the public has been failed.” This underlines the experience that so many public school students, parents, teachers and community members have had to endure: our leaders frequently failing to acknowledge the root causes of struggling schools and not investing in real equity in public education. Jitu Brown described the public school system as “a system that intentionally provides one quality of education to one group of children, but denies that justice for another group of children.” Too many of our leaders claim that we can’t afford to pay for a public education system that serves all our children. Still, these same politicians always find a way to pay for new prisons, new defense spending and tax breaks that benefit the super-wealthy. 

Brown’s remarks go to the heart of an inequitable public school system: a system that does not live up to the mandate of quality public education that it promises to all CONTINUE READING: Message to Presidential Candidates: "We want sustainable community schools!" | Schott Foundation for Public Education