TODAY’S UPDATE On New Resources To Help Educators
Figuring Out How To Support Students During School Closures
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...
Monday, March 16, 2020
TODAY’S UPDATE On New Resources To Help Educators Figuring Out How To Support Students During School Closures | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007
CORONAVIRUS CRISIS Answer Sheet - The Washington Post
Answer Sheet - The Washington Post
Millions of students could be home for the rest of academic year because of coronavirus, officials warn
With the country facing an unprecedented public health crisis, schools have been ordered closed for days or weeks or even a month.
But officials in several states are now warning the closures could be longer, even through the end of the school year. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday morning that it was even possible that schools would be shut even longer. CONTINUE READING: Answer Sheet - The Washington Post
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Answer Sheet - The Washington Post
Shanker Blog: Interpreting School Finance Measures | National Education Policy Center
Shanker Blog: Interpreting School Finance Measures | National Education Policy Center
Shanker Blog: Interpreting School Finance Measures
Shanker Blog: Interpreting School Finance Measures
Last week we released the second edition of our annual report, "The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems," which presents key findings from the School Finance Indicators Database (SFID). The SFID, released by the Shanker Institute and Rutgers Graduate School of Education (with my colleagues and co-authors Bruce Baker and Mark Weber), is a free collection of sophisticated finance measures that are designed to be accessible to the public. At the SFID website, you can read the summary of our findings, download the full report and datasets, or use our online data visualization tools.
The long and short of the report is that states vary pretty extensively, but most fund their schools either non-progressively (rich and poor districts receive roughly the same amount of revenue) or regressively (rich districts actually receive more revenue), and that, in the vast majority of states, funding levels are inadequate in all but the most affluent districts (in many cases due to a lack of effort).
One of the difficulties in producing this annual report is that the our "core" measures upon which we focus (effort, adequacy, and progressivity) are state-level, and it's not easy to get attention for your research report when you basically have 51 different sets of results. One option is assigning states grades, like a school report card. Often, this is perfectly defensible and useful. We decided against it, not only because assigning grades would entail many arbitrary decisions (e.g., where to set the thresholds), but also because assigning grades or ratings would risk obscuring some of the most useful conclusions from our data. Let's take a quick look at an example of how this works.
The scatterplot below is taken directly from our report. Each red dot represents a state. The measure on the vertical axis is the adequacy of states' spending on K-12 education in its highest poverty districts. More specifically, it represents actual spending divided by the spending level that would be required for the highest poverty districts (i.e., the 20 percent highest poverty districts) in that state to achieve CONTINUE READING: Shanker Blog: Interpreting School Finance Measures | National Education Policy Center
If Schools Close Because of the Coronavirus, Prepare to Help the Neediest Kids and Families | Diane Ravitch's blog
If Schools Close Because of the Coronavirus, Prepare to Help the Neediest Kids and Families | Diane Ravitch's blog
If Schools Close Because of the Coronavirus, Prepare to Help the Neediest Kids and Families
If Schools Close Because of the Coronavirus, Prepare to Help the Neediest Kids and Families
At a time when schools are closing to reduce exposure to the coronavirus, school and community leaders must consider the consequences for students who live in low-income families.
For many, the school is the only place these children are certain to get a meal. Plan to distribute meals to homes in need.
A more pressing problem is the impact on low-wage workers who must stay home to take care of their children and will have no income.
How will they pay their rent if they do not get paid leave?
How will they pay for basic necessities?
Communities should insist that employers offer paid leave to parents who are required to stay home to take care of their children who are not in school.
These plans are essential in large cities and especially difficult because of the numbers of students involved.
But as a society, we cannot allow families and children to suffer because of school closures intended to protect their health.
We must make sure that we protect their well-being while they are home-bound.
2020 Medley #7 | Live Long and Prosper
2020 Medley #7 | Live Long and Prosper
IT’S STILL POVERTY
We know that student achievement is based largely on out of school factors yet we continue to try to “fix” the schools. Changing curriculum, blaming schools or teachers, privatizing, or overtesting won’t solve the problem of low student achievement. The main link to low school achievement is poverty.
About a fifth of American students live in poverty (the same as child poverty in Indiana) and millions of those children live in food-insecure households.
As long as we, as a nation, refuse to address the growing inequality among our students, we’ll continue to have high child poverty levels. Since high poverty correlates with low school achievement, we’ll continue to have a large number of our students who fail to achieve.
World-class education nations don’t do what seems to be our main strategy: Insist schools compete against one another, use toxic accountability measures to control and measure what schools do, and hold teachers as scapegoats for plunged education rankings…
Half a century of systematic research has shown that teachers account for about 10 to 15 per cent of the variability in students’ test scores. A similar amount of variability is associated with other school factors, such as curriculum, resources and leadership. This means that most of the influence on students’ educational achievement lies outside school — in homes, communities, peer groups and students’ individual characteristics.
Make no mistake, teachers are the most influential part of school. We should CONTINUE READING: 2020 Medley #7 | Live Long and Prosper
NYC Educator: We Need Online Instruction in the Worst Way, and That's Exactly How We're Getting It
NYC Educator: We Need Online Instruction in the Worst Way, and That's Exactly How We're Getting It
We Need Online Instruction in the Worst Way, and That's Exactly How We're Getting It
How can the mayor and chancellor continue to show their indifference to the health of UFT families? There's always a new way, and the chancellor's email this morning didn't disappoint.
I'd argue they've outdone themselves once again. It appears we will be asked to come into school buildings and use the filthy, never cleaned keyboards in our offices and libraries. I've carried my own laptop for over ten years now, precisely so I wouldn't have to do that.
The mayor and chancellor's indifference to our health is mind-boggling, and continues unabated. The moment I heard Broadway was closed, I knew the schools needed to close too. The mayor of New York City decided that Broadway theatergoers needed to be protected but 1.1 million students and their families, not to mention staff and their families, somehow merited virtually no consideration whatsoever.
Now the mayor who threw us all to the dogs is in charge of online learning. What does the chancellor know? He's the guy who wanted to hear from 108,000 epidemiologists before closing the schools. Has he consulted 108,000 online learning experts? Probably not. I'd wager he knows nothing.
He's not alone in that. I don't know anything about it either. I'm a language teacher and my classes revolve around student interaction. Without that, I have no idea what to do. I suppose I could model after the many terrible teachers I had in high school. Sit and do this. Sit and read that. I'll sit on my ass and wait for it to be over. As for me, I could lecture. Except I don't.
In Ohio, they're moving toward online learning, just as we are here. There are widespread cyber charters, and you'd think that might be a model to be replicated. You'd be wrong, because cyber charters are so abysmal that no one wants to use them as a role model. Of course, cyber charters are driven by a combination of blind reforminess and greed, so CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: We Need Online Instruction in the Worst Way, and That's Exactly How We're Getting It
We Need Online Instruction in the Worst Way, and That's Exactly How We're Getting It
I'd argue they've outdone themselves once again. It appears we will be asked to come into school buildings and use the filthy, never cleaned keyboards in our offices and libraries. I've carried my own laptop for over ten years now, precisely so I wouldn't have to do that.
The mayor and chancellor's indifference to our health is mind-boggling, and continues unabated. The moment I heard Broadway was closed, I knew the schools needed to close too. The mayor of New York City decided that Broadway theatergoers needed to be protected but 1.1 million students and their families, not to mention staff and their families, somehow merited virtually no consideration whatsoever.
Now the mayor who threw us all to the dogs is in charge of online learning. What does the chancellor know? He's the guy who wanted to hear from 108,000 epidemiologists before closing the schools. Has he consulted 108,000 online learning experts? Probably not. I'd wager he knows nothing.
He's not alone in that. I don't know anything about it either. I'm a language teacher and my classes revolve around student interaction. Without that, I have no idea what to do. I suppose I could model after the many terrible teachers I had in high school. Sit and do this. Sit and read that. I'll sit on my ass and wait for it to be over. As for me, I could lecture. Except I don't.
In Ohio, they're moving toward online learning, just as we are here. There are widespread cyber charters, and you'd think that might be a model to be replicated. You'd be wrong, because cyber charters are so abysmal that no one wants to use them as a role model. Of course, cyber charters are driven by a combination of blind reforminess and greed, so CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: We Need Online Instruction in the Worst Way, and That's Exactly How We're Getting It
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