Friday, March 13, 2020
DID YOU MISS DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG CATCH UP NOW - Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all
Teacher Tom: Covid-19 Is Breaking My Heart
Teacher Tom: Covid-19 Is Breaking My Heart
Covid-19 Is Breaking My Heart
We all know what to do: wash your hands, cough into your elbow, stay home if you're feeling ill, avoid large crowds, especially stay away from people who are visibly sick, and maybe don't go visit grandma for the time being.
That last one depresses me beyond measure. My mother-in-law is currently a dementia resident of a memory ward in an assisted living facility. They have been on complete lock down for a couple weeks now. This means no visitors, they are confined to their rooms, even dining alone. No group activities are permitted, not even getting together for a hand or two of cards. I haven't had the courage to ask her, but I suspect, if given a choice, she would rather risk death than suffer much more of this kind of isolation.
Before you jump down my throat, please know that I understand why these steps have been taken. I understand that we are keeping everyone safe, that we are trying to prevent the chaos of suddenly overwhelmed hospitals. And please understand that I've not undertaken action to illicitly "free" my mother-in-law, although I've sure thought about it. My heart is simply breaking at what this is doing to people like her, already isolated, and now fully isolated from all but CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Covid-19 Is Breaking My Heart
Covid-19 Is Breaking My Heart
We all know what to do: wash your hands, cough into your elbow, stay home if you're feeling ill, avoid large crowds, especially stay away from people who are visibly sick, and maybe don't go visit grandma for the time being.
That last one depresses me beyond measure. My mother-in-law is currently a dementia resident of a memory ward in an assisted living facility. They have been on complete lock down for a couple weeks now. This means no visitors, they are confined to their rooms, even dining alone. No group activities are permitted, not even getting together for a hand or two of cards. I haven't had the courage to ask her, but I suspect, if given a choice, she would rather risk death than suffer much more of this kind of isolation.
Before you jump down my throat, please know that I understand why these steps have been taken. I understand that we are keeping everyone safe, that we are trying to prevent the chaos of suddenly overwhelmed hospitals. And please understand that I've not undertaken action to illicitly "free" my mother-in-law, although I've sure thought about it. My heart is simply breaking at what this is doing to people like her, already isolated, and now fully isolated from all but CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Covid-19 Is Breaking My Heart
With Voucher Impasse, Ohio Legislature Abrogates It’s Constitutional Responsibility for Our Public Schools | janresseger
With Voucher Impasse, Ohio Legislature Abrogates It’s Constitutional Responsibility for Our Public Schools | janresseger
With Voucher Impasse, Ohio Legislature Abrogates It’s Constitutional Responsibility for Our Public Schools
With Voucher Impasse, Ohio Legislature Abrogates It’s Constitutional Responsibility for Our Public Schools
Ohio’s House and Senate are stuck. They even seem to have stopped arguing about their two different plans to end a public school crisis caused by the surreptitious expansion last summer (in the conference committee on the state budget) of the EdChoice school voucher program. On February 1st, students were due to have begun registering for a whole new round of vouchers for next year, with eligibility expanded to a whole new group of students, but in late January the Senate created one plan to reshape the program and the House designed another plan. The Legislature gave itself two months—until April 1— to work out the differences. But here we are in mid-March without any progress toward a compromise. And neither plan would really do what is necessary to support the school districts the state legislature has trapped in this crisis.
When Ohio state senators describe the problem, they seem to forget about the 1,660,354 students enrolled in the state’s public schools. The senators’ comments betray their sympathy with parents who would like an EdChoice voucher to pay for tuition at a private or religious school. “Why should these parents have to wait until the first of April to begin applying?” ask the state senators. “Why should they be left without being able to make plans?” Ohio’s state senators justify their support of vouchers with a “money should follow the child” theory consistent with Betsy DeVos’s contention that we need to worry about each child and each family and cease focusing on the system.
Bruce Baker, the Rutgers University school finance expert, explains the central flaw in this sort of thinking: “The ‘money belongs to the child’ claim… falsely assumes that the only CONTINUE READING: With Voucher Impasse, Ohio Legislature Abrogates It’s Constitutional Responsibility for Our Public Schools | janresseger
NYC Public School Parents: Schools and coronavirus: listen to the experts
NYC Public School Parents: Schools and coronavirus: listen to the experts
Schools and coronavirus: listen to the experts
Schools and coronavirus: listen to the experts
Today, Governor Cuomo held a press conference where he announced that all gatherings with more than 500 people in the state would be banned from now on, and any gathering under 500 would have to cut their legal occupancy level in half, in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Yet schools and public transit will be exempt from these directives.
When asked why schools are exempted, Cuomo’s Secretary Melissa De Rosa responded that there’s no reason to close schools that have classes of forty students at most. Yet with class sizes as large as they are, and classrooms as small as in most city schools, the person-to-person density is so extreme that the recommendation of “social distancing” of staying six feet apart will be impossible. See the photos above.
Today, the Archdiocese of NY announced it would be closing all its elementary schools (which include Manhattan, Bronx and Staten Island, but not Brooklyn and Queens.) The Governor of Ohio ordered all schools in the state--public, private, charter--closed for at least three weeks, starting next week, even though only five people in the entire state have tested positive for coronavirus, compared to 328 confirmed cases in New York state, and 98 infected in NYC. The governors of Maryland, Kentucky and New Mexico have followed suit, with only 13 and 8 and 5 confirmed cases respectively.
When Gov. DeWine of Ohio was asked about the possibility kids would miss the state testing, he said, “If we can’t have testing this year, we will not have testing this year. The world will not come to an end.” The US Department of Education also issued guidance tonight that waivers from mandated state testing would be considered for those districts where schools were closed due to the epidemic.
Yet both Cuomo and De Blasio seem adamant that they won’t close the public school system – and even at schools where students or staff have tested positive, they would close those individual schools for only a day, and then consider whether to extend that period. See this article, about two schools sharing a building in the South Bronx which were closed for one day after the report of an infected student, which de Blasio called a “pinpoint” approach. The DOE has even apparently refused to close a school in Park Slope, even temporarily, where a parent tested positive after having gathered with other parents and school staff a week ago at an open school night before knowing he was infected.
At his press conference today, the Mayor said “We will fight tooth and nail to protect our schools – its where children are safe” and it allows parents to go to work. Yet does keeping schools open really “protect” them, or keep children and their families safe?
A reporter asked what parents who have medically fragile conditions keep their children at a distance. The Commission of the NYC Health Department Oxiris Barbot said no, CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Schools and coronavirus: listen to the experts
CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos Actually Sparks Bipartisan Action In Senate
CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos Actually Sparks Bipartisan Action In Senate
DeVos Actually Sparks Bipartisan Action In Senate
You may recall that Betsy DeVos really, really, really hates the idea of forgiving the loans that students took out to attend what turned out to be fraudulent predatory not-so-good for-profit universities, to the point that when she had to sign off on loan forgiveness paperwork left over from the previous administration, she felt compelled to add "with extreme displeasure" to her signature.
Either the department had some real problems executing the requirements of the rules requiring loan forgiveness, or they implemented an impressive federal-level program of institutional foot-dragging and deliberate "gosh, we'll get right on that" bullshit. I'm pretty sure I have a good idea which one Judge Sallie "I'm not sending anyone to jail yet, but it's good to know I have the power" Kim was thinking as she fined DeVos and the department.
All of that was just a warm-up for the main event, in which DeVos rewrote the rules of loan forgiveness. Her sales pitch was "It will save the taxpayers $11 billion," but that was because she rewrote CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos Actually Sparks Bipartisan Action In Senate
DeVos Actually Sparks Bipartisan Action In Senate
All of that was just a warm-up for the main event, in which DeVos rewrote the rules of loan forgiveness. Her sales pitch was "It will save the taxpayers $11 billion," but that was because she rewrote CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos Actually Sparks Bipartisan Action In Senate
Listen to Trusted Expert Advice: Coronavirus, Schools, Fear and an Uncertain Future | Ed In The Apple
Listen to Trusted Expert Advice: Coronavirus, Schools, Fear and an Uncertain Future | Ed In The Apple
Listen to Trusted Expert Advice: Coronavirus, Schools, Fear and an Uncertain Future
Listen to Trusted Expert Advice: Coronavirus, Schools, Fear and an Uncertain Future
This was going to be a busy week, meetings, events, every day, planning for events over the next few weeks. My phone began to ping, one by one the meetings/events were postponed and/or cancelled.
An event I was sponsoring, six weeks down the road, after consultation, I postponed.
The NCAA March Madness basketball tournament cancelled; the NBA and the NHL suspending all games, MLB delaying the opening of the season Broadway dark, and, unfortunately some electeds becoming “experts.”
At this writing the stock market is down 10% today!!
The source of all coronavirus advice is the CDC, the federal agency: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/prevention.html
To quote Mayor de Blasio, “We must separate fact from fiction.”
How to respond to positive tests in schools is complex, and is evolving hour by hour, day by day.
China and Italy did not respond quickly, a major error and allowed the virus to spread. The extreme measures that we have taken, hopefully, will slow the CONTINUE READING: Listen to Trusted Expert Advice: Coronavirus, Schools, Fear and an Uncertain Future | Ed In The Apple
The Coronavirus: An Illuminating Bug | Bill Ayers
The Coronavirus: An Illuminating Bug | Bill Ayers
The Coronavirus: An Illuminating Bug
Jack Halberstam’s brilliant book, The Queer Art of Failure, offers an essential insight for these terrible times: when things are “normal”—predictable, common-place, habitual—whether in one’s personal relations, work life, or politics, life putt-putts along at an expected pace with little fanfare, and without much thought or reflection. Then, an unanticipated crisis, a rupture, an upheaval—one’s partner has an affair, one gets laid off, Donald Trump becomes president—and it’s suddenly time to question everything, challenge the taken-for-granted, rethink basic assumptions, reimagine and rebuild.
This is such a time.
Of course I know as much about coronavirus as any other dazed participant-observer—probably more than Donald Trump and Mike Pence combined, but that’s next to nothing.
I do know that the airlines are on life support, that SXSW cancelled, that the NBA suspended the basketball season, and that I can’t meet my classes in person. I know the illness is spreading exponentially, that official inaction wasted precious time at the start, and that a patch-work health care system (“the best in the world!” according to official messaging) and a hollowed out public medical administration has left the country flat-footed.
I also know that the political class and the 1% know what to do for themselves in crisis: remember 9/11? Immediate and huge transfer of wealth from ordinary taxpayers to big corporations, massive military spending, and the surveillance state rolled out at lightning speed.
Remember the 2008 financial crisis? The housing bubble collapsed, CONTINUE READING: The Coronavirus: An Illuminating Bug | Bill Ayers
The Coronavirus: An Illuminating Bug
This is such a time.
Of course I know as much about coronavirus as any other dazed participant-observer—probably more than Donald Trump and Mike Pence combined, but that’s next to nothing.
I do know that the airlines are on life support, that SXSW cancelled, that the NBA suspended the basketball season, and that I can’t meet my classes in person. I know the illness is spreading exponentially, that official inaction wasted precious time at the start, and that a patch-work health care system (“the best in the world!” according to official messaging) and a hollowed out public medical administration has left the country flat-footed.
I also know that the political class and the 1% know what to do for themselves in crisis: remember 9/11? Immediate and huge transfer of wealth from ordinary taxpayers to big corporations, massive military spending, and the surveillance state rolled out at lightning speed.
Remember the 2008 financial crisis? The housing bubble collapsed, CONTINUE READING: The Coronavirus: An Illuminating Bug | Bill Ayers
Thursday, March 12, 2020
The Unknown Virus: A Personal Story | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
The Unknown Virus: A Personal Story | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
The Unknown Virus: A Personal Story
The Unknown Virus: A Personal Story
San Angelo is in West Texas. The county seat between Abilene and the Mexican border. Farms, oil wells, and cattle ranches fenced with barbed wire dot the county. Blessed with a warm climate and reputation as a healthy place to live, in one year San Angelo added to its reputation in ways that city leaders dreaded.*
In mid-spring, the newspaper reported that a local child had come down with a viral disease that had occurred in earlier springs like hailstorms and tornadoes. Previously, when this disease occurred, it had not spread. This one, however, did.
Parents began arriving at Shannon Memorial Hospital with “feverish, aching youngsters in their arms,” the local newspaper reported. Within days these children died: 10 month-old Esperanza Ramirez, seven year-old Billie Doyle Kleghorn, four year-old Susan Barr, and others. The city health officer said that an epidemic was occurring. Because the disease had no known cause or prevention or cure, he recommended that San Angelo children avoid crowds, wash their hands regularly, and get a lot of rest.
A month later, with known cases spiking to over 60, the city council voted to close all indoor meeting places, including theaters and churches. Tourists stopped coming to the city. The economy shrank. One local doctor said, “We got to the point … when people would not even shake hands.”
The year is 1949, not 2020. The disease is polio, not Covid-19.
I got polio in 1944, five years before the epidemic hits San Angelo. But I was CONTINUE READING: The Unknown Virus: A Personal Story | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
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