Thursday, March 12, 2020
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Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all
Charter School Oversight Remains Weak | Dissident Voice
Charter School Oversight Remains Weak | Dissident Voice
Charter School Oversight Remains Weak
Charter School Oversight Remains Weak
In 2016, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called for a moratorium on new charter schools, citing many problems with these privatized schools, including poor performance, extensive waste, widespread segregation, and inadequate accountability.
Oversight, transparency, accountability, and good governance have never been the strong suits of charter schools or charter school authorizers. Both have been poor stewards of the public interest for more than a generation.
A new report confirms what many already know about chronically poor oversight in the segregated charter school sector.
The report, titled “Improving Oversight of Michigan Charter Schools and Their Authorizers,” was released February 2020 by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan (founded in 1961). It reminds the public that charter school authorizers in Michigan are essentially useless, despite years of scandalous news about charter schools coming out of Michigan.
Quality charter schools are elusive in Michigan. Poor performance is widespread. And parents and government officials are constantly overwhelmed by the chaos and anarchy unleashed by the presence of hundreds of charter schools competing with each other and with public schools. Competition has brought out the worse in everyone and everything. It has lowered the level for everyone and left communities worse off.
Michigan, however, is not unique with its endless charter school problems: “market accountability” has undermined democratic accountability and quality education across the entire charter school sector. Thus, for example, waste, fraud, and corruption plague not only Michigan but the entire charter school sector.1 Every day, news reports expose racketeering, insider deals, CONTINUE READING: Charter School Oversight Remains Weak | Dissident Voice
Human Capital Markets, Digital Identity, & the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – Wrench in the Gears
Human Capital Markets, Digital Identity, & the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – Wrench in the Gears
Human Capital Markets, Digital Identity, & the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Human Capital Markets, Digital Identity, & the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
The following is a presentation that I had planned to make as an invited guest at Big Ocean Women’s Many Waves, One Ocean gathering in coordination with the 2020 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Due to the pandemic, the conference and all related events were cancelled. A decision was made for those who had been asked to present to create a presentation that could be shared online. The video below was created for that purpose.
Below is the text I read from during the above presentation.
Hello everyone. Welcome to “Many Waves, One Ocean Cross Movement Summit.” I’m Alison McDowell, a mom and independent researcher in Philadelphia who blogs at wrenchinthegears.com. I started my activism around public education, first fighting standardized testing, then ed-tech, and eventually realized the push by global finance to turn everything into data for the purpose of digital surveillance and profit meant I had to expand my work beyond schools and start digging into the global poverty management complex.
I organize with the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, an independent anti-poverty group that is led by the poor and does not take CONTINUE READING: Human Capital Markets, Digital Identity, & the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – Wrench in the Gears
More than 1.3 million K-12 students in U.S. now affected by school closings related to coronavirus - The Washington Post
More than 1.3 million K-12 students in U.S. now affected by school closings related to coronavirus - The Washington Post
More than 1.3 million K-12 students in U.S. now affected by school closings related to coronavirus
More than 1.3 million K-12 students in U.S. now affected by school closings related to coronavirus
The World Health Organization says that the number of confirmed cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has surpassed 126,000 people, and that more than 4,600 have died. The death toll in the United States had reached 38 by early Thursday, with more than 1,3000 cases diagnosed and experts warning that they expect the crisis to worsen in the next few weeks.
As of Thursday, UNESCO reported, 26 countries have shuttered schools and universities, impacting almost 376.9 million children and youths. That was several million more students than the day before, showing the continuing impact from the spread of the coronavirus.
An additional 20 countries have had localized school closures to prevent or contain the spread of the virus, UNESCO said, and if they all went to nationwide closures, more than 500 million more students would be affected.
The United States has seen a rapid rise in the number of students affected by school closures as a result of the spread of the coronavirus, according to a tally being kept by Education Week.
On Wednesday, the number of K-12 students affected by schools that have closed or were scheduled to CONTINUE READING: More than 1.3 million K-12 students in U.S. now affected by school closings related to coronavirus - The Washington Post
How to keep students learning and communities calm — from Harvard experts https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/03/11/how-keep-students-learning-communities-calm-harvard-experts/
As coronavirus spreads, so does misinformation — a news literacy lesson https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/03/11/coronavirus-spreads-so-does-misinformation-news-literacy-lesson/
St. Paul Educators are Striking Because their Students are Suffering | Schott Foundation for Public Education
St. Paul Educators are Striking Because their Students are Suffering | Schott Foundation for Public Education
St. Paul Educators are Striking Because their Students are Suffering
To systematize this greater, holistic understanding of public schools and movements working to improve them, Schott released the Loving Cities Index. The Index measures access to 24 community and school-based supports, from clean air to unemployment, from healthy food to public transit.
St. Paul Educators are Striking Because their Students are Suffering
The dedicated educators in St. Paul, MN that went on strike Tuesday know full well that it takes wraparound supports for the city’s neediest children to have a fair and substantive opportunity to learn. They’ve gone on strike after ten months of failed contract negotiations because their students are suffering—and their #1 demand is more mental health supports. We see their fierce determination as an act of love.
St Paul, MN: public #schools are closed today, March 10, due to the @SPFE28 teacher's union strike.
We spoke with some of the strikers, who told us their #1 demand is more #MentalHealth support for their students, some of whom "face tremendous trauma in their day-to-day lives."
As Labor Notes reports:
“There are so many kids with so many issues,” said middle school teacher Leah Van Dassor. “Kids are depressed because they have problems at home. They don’t have anyone to talk to.”St. Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE) Vice President Erica Schatzlein sees a wide range of needs in her work as an elementary teacher with English language learners.“A students that had a parent pass away, instead of acting out, becomes completely withdrawn,” she said. A newly homeless student “has a meltdown, and I have to evacuate the classroom.”In addition to its mental health demands, the union is asking for more bilingual teacher’s aides and limits on class size for special education.“It’s too bad that all these important social services fall on the shoulder of the schools, but they do,” said Van Dassor, who is also on the bargaining team. “We have to try to figure out a way to help.”
To systematize this greater, holistic understanding of public schools and movements working to improve them, Schott released the Loving Cities Index. The Index measures access to 24 community and school-based supports, from clean air to unemployment, from healthy food to public transit.
Key measures in the Loving Cities Index include in-school support staff and mental health supports — and it's going to take broad and dynamic grassroots movements to move the needle.
Demands like these are part and parcel of a longstanding grassroots effort to create CONTINUE READING: St. Paul Educators are Striking Because their Students are Suffering | Schott Foundation for Public Education
Florida: House Passes Bill to Protect “Parents’ Rights” vs. School System | Diane Ravitch's blog
Florida: House Passes Bill to Protect “Parents’ Rights” vs. School System | Diane Ravitch's blog
Florida: House Passes Bill to Protect “Parents’ Rights” vs. School System
Florida: House Passes Bill to Protect “Parents’ Rights” vs. School System
The Florida House passed a bill to protect “parents’ rights” against decisions by the school system.
The House advanced sweeping, if aspirational, legislation codifying a parent’s “bill of rights” on Monday. The vote in favor was 77-41.
The House version (CS/HB 1059), sponsored by Rep. Erin Grall, now includes a technical amendment that reaffirmed parental rights to any type of school (public, private, and even home schooling).
Another Grall amendment vouchsafed parental rights to spike objectionable instructional material “based on beliefs regarding morality, sex, and religion or the belief that such materials are harmful.”
The amendments offered reassured some Democratic critics of the bill, but not enough to earn their votes.
Parents already have the right to home school or send their children to private schools.
This bill would give parents the right to “protect” their children from topics that are objectionable to their CONTINUE READING: Florida: House Passes Bill to Protect “Parents’ Rights” vs. School System | Diane Ravitch's blog
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