CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION + ICYMI: How Many Weeks Has It Been Now Edition (4/26)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: How Many Weeks Has It Been Now Edition (4/26)

How Many Weeks Has It Been Now Edition (4/26) 

Well, on it goes. Here's some reading from the week. Remember, your choices about which voices to amplify make a difference.


COVID Stimulus Funds for Private School Vouchers 
The indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at Jeb Bush's old crew at ExcelInEd (formerly FEE) and their idea that stimulus funds should be repurposed to boost school vouchers.

Parents Worried about Special Ed Vouchers   
Rebecca Klein at HuffPost looks at the issues and concerns surrounding the question of whether or not to allow IDEA waivers for school districts struggling wit getting crisis education to students with special needs. Also, there's a picture of Betsy DeVos that makes it look like she has a halo, so that's something.

9 Ways Schools Will Look Different   
Anya Kamenetz at NPR looks at some predictions about how Corona-school might look when it starts up. Important to note that Corona-school looks kind of expensive.

Compassion and Grace  
Accountabaloney looks at a remarkable piece of guidance from, of all things, Georgia's state school superintendent. Worth the read.

Why Don't We Have Internet for All?  
The Have You Heard podcast looks at the origins of the digital divide.

Every Chid Left Behind  
Nancy Flanagan on how a little flexibility and care might avert some of the "crises" we're facing.

6 Reasons Students Aren't Logging On  
At EdWeek, Peter DeWitt looks at some of the reasons that online crisis education isn't getting traction with everyone.

Tacoma Teachers Struggle To Connect With Students
from the News Tribune, a look at the specific issues faced by teachers in tracking down their missing students. (See? It's not just you.)

A Trombonist Wonders When An Audience Will Gather 
Okay, not actually education related, except that this is one of my former students.

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: How Many Weeks Has It Been Now Edition (4/26)

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION

AND DON'T FORGET PETER GREENE ON FORBES CLICK HERE 

Defending the Future of the Big Standardized Test

25by Peter Greene / 15h

What has happened to our beloved Big Standardized Test? Why do people keep picking on it? And can we lift it back up to its hallowed heights of the past? I have a report sitting in one of my tabs here that wants to answer those questions, yet somehow falls short. It's FutureEd's report The Big Test , and it is yet another attempt to repackage reformster alternate earth history. It's not super long

As Schools Tackle Coronavirus Pause, Don’t Forget Career And Technical Education Students.

55by Peter Greene / 1d

At this juncture, nearly all schools in this country have been shut down, forcing teachers, families, and students to grapple with some form of crisis schooling. The need for teachers to teach and students to learn at a distance has sparked discussion of many issues. How do schools keep contact with students who have little or no access to the internet? How do teachers construct useful materials

Still Trying To Stump For Common Core

55by Peter Greene / 1d

Education Next's spring issue is featuring a little Common Core debate, asking if the Core worked. There are three responses in the actual debate, plus a sort of bonus response in a separate article. I'm sorry to report that many of the same delusions that brought us the Core disruption of education are still firmly in place. Let's take each of these one at a time. Warning-- every one of these guy

Remotely Teaching Humanity

by Peter Greene / 1d

It is one of the more arresting headlines I've seen in a while. Atop a new blog at Inside Higher Ed, we find this question : Can remote teaching make us more human? Well, now. Short answer. No. Slightly less short answer. I suppose that anything can make us more human if we use the experience to reflect on our humanity. Long answer. The authors, Caroline Levander and Peter Decherney, are a pair of

MI: Court Says Students Have Right To Actual Education

27by Peter Greene / 2d

Periodically the courts get involved in the question of what states are actually supposed to provide. Back in 2017 a case went all the way to the Supremes that was designed (no case gets before SCOTUS without being carefully prepared and selected and curated by a bunch of Major Players) to get at the question of how hard a district had to work on that whole IEP thing-- how much education is "enoug

Internet Accessibility, Arne Duncan, and Dreaming Big

94by Peter Greene / 2d

Arne Duncan penned an op-ed in the Washington Post this week; the piece is notable because it is not baloney, but addresses one of the issues that the great pandemic pause has brought to the fore-- internet accessibility. Duncan notes that currently if you don't have internet, you don't have school. And he notes that while internet providers stepped forward with heartwarming offers of free intern

Voice Cloning: One More Way Teachers Can Be Replaced

34by Peter Greene / 3d

So, Venture Beat is a website touts itself as the leading source for transformative tech news and events that provide deep context to help business leaders make smart decisions and stay on top of breaking news. That includes "sponsored" news like this very special piece from Lovo , a Berkeley-based company whose sub-title is "Love Your Voice" and whose co-founder explains their mission as "Making

Recovery Commission Targets Gutting Of Public School

2Kby Peter Greene / 4d

While Trump has announced a variety of groups he wants to gather together to charter a pandemic recovery for the nation, there's one group that is already on the job-- and their plans for public education suck. The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission -- doesn't that sound grand? It sounds like a real official government thing, only it isn't, exactly. It's the project of the Heritage Foundatio

MA: Governor Offers Terrible Reason To Re-open Schools

500+by Peter Greene / 5d

Well, of all the stupid reasons to re-open schools before summer comes, this offering from Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has to be among the worst: One reason Baker said he wants to see schools reopen before the end of the school year would be so students could take tests to determine how far behind they fell due to the pandemic. Baker has been an ed reformster since he was elected in 2014,

The Road Out

28by Peter Greene / 5d

Sometimes I use this blog as a sort of macro-- when I find myself engaged in the same pieces of the same argument, it just gets easier to try to hash it all out in one spot so that thereafter I can just point instead of typing it all out again. This isn't very much about education, it's not very carefully edited (in fact, I may well keep adding edits till I get it closer to what I really want--he

We’re About To Hear Many Suggestions About How To Reshape Education. Here’s How To Sort Them Out.

73by Peter Greene / 6d

The vast majority of the nation’s schools have pressed pause due to the current pandemic. In many areas they will stumble through the remainder of a year that will little resemble an ordinary year. This is already prompting many folks to declare this a golden opportunity to reconsider some of the traditional features of U.S. schooling. If we’ve got to have school without grades, without desks and

ICYMI: It's Not Normal Until It's Not New Edition (4/19)

by Peter Greene / 7d

In other words, there's no such thing as a new normal. But here we are anyway. Have some reading to pass the time. My Transition To Emergency Remote Teaching As always, I would like to be as smart as P. L. Thomas when I grow up. Here, while reflecting on his own transition, he offers insight on what is or is not right with remote teaching. A Dozen Good Things That Could (Just Maybe) Happen As A Re

Why Teach Literature? The Whole Collection

46by Peter Greene / 8d

I created a series of posts about the teaching of literature, and they ended up being sprinkled here and there. I thought I would just pump them out one after another but after I got started--squirrel!! So for those of you how enjoyed 

CURMUDGUCATION - http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/

NYC Educator: DOE Grading Policy Is a Big Nothing

NYC Educator: DOE Grading Policy Is a Big Nothing

DOE Grading Policy Is a Big Nothing

It's funny. You build something up. You say it's crucial, vital, the most important thing ever. You say it's coming tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, Wednesday, Friday, next week for sure. Then the thing finally comes out, vetted by multiple committees, after weeks of deliberation, and it's something you could've made up yourself off the top of your head after having drunk one too many glasses of wine.

And here it is, according to Chalkbeat:

It’s expected that the city will announce that no student will be held back as a result of the pandemic. Elementary and middle school students’ work will be graded as “satisfactory” or “needs improvement,” according to details from the forthcoming policy, reported first by NY1.

High school students, meanwhile, will continue to receive grades in accordance with their school’s own policies — with one notable exception: No student will be given a failing mark. Instead, they will receive an “incomplete,” according to the report.

I'm not going to focus on elementary, since I know little to nothing about what they do normally. As for high schools, it appears they placed little or no thought whatsoever into this policy. Just continue doing the same thing, hope for the best, and maybe we'll give the kids an extra chance to pass if they don't do it the first time.

I've seen some people saying that UFT has elicited no input from teachers, and that's not true. Education VP Evelyn de Jesus called me and asked for recommendations. A group CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: DOE Grading Policy Is a Big Nothing

Oklahoma: Governor Stitt Puts Trumpism Above Reality and Common Sense | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: Governor Stitt Puts Trumpism Above Reality and Common Sense | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: Governor Stitt Puts Trumpism Above Reality and Common Sense

John Thompson writes about the latest madness in his home state of Oklahoma:

The shocking headline was that the price of oil dropped to below $1 a barrel. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt was on the phone with Vice President Mike Pence when he heard the news. The legislature now faces “a loss of $1.3 billion in revenue for appropriation between FY 2020 and FY 2022.”

So, why has Gov. Stitt been talking with Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos about Oklahoma giving some of $40 million of new federal money to private school vouchers?

Even though the Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship Program, a tax credit that raises money for scholarships to private schools, was supposed to expand school choice for low-income students, it has long been known that “families who earn up to three times the income limits for free and reduced priced lunch (a family of four earning $139,000 a year) are eligible for scholarships.”

Tough decisions’: Stitt projects $1.3 billion drop, legislators want the math 

TELL GOVERNOR STITT WHAT OKLAHOMA EDUCATION NEEDS
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-governor-stitt-what-oklahoma-education-needs

I’ll save non-Oklahomans the details regarding the range of bipartisan efforts to persuade Stitt to embrace reality. Before the COVID-19 shutdown, it seemed like the CONTINUE READING: Oklahoma: Governor Stitt Puts Trumpism Above Reality and Common Sense | Diane Ravitch's blog

Sanity-saving advice for parents teaching their kids - The Washington Post

Sanity-saving advice for parents teaching their kids - The Washington Post

Sanity-saving advice for parents now trying to teach their kids

This is the first in a weekly series on The Answer Sheet for parents who have found themselves learning to home-school their children on the fly now that the covid-19 pandemic has closed schools across the country.

The series is written by Roxanna Elden, who combines 11 years of experience as a public-school teacher with a decade of speaking about education-related topics.

Her first book, the nonfiction “See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers,” is widely used in teacher training. Her debut novel, “Adequate Yearly Progress,” follows a diverse group of educators in an urban high school. She has adapted some of the advice she has long provided to new teachers for this series. You can see more of her work on her website, here.

By Roxanna Elden

Many educators say nothing prepared them for their first year on the job. Even with good training and intentions, new teachers face a nonstop series of judgment calls they’ve never had to make before. Suddenly, they’re sleeping less and yelling more than they ever imagined. They worry that each mistake is impacting kids’ futures. And they’re swamped with urgent-yet-conflicting advice, even the best of which has exceptions they’ll learn the hard way.

Sound familiar? That’s because in many ways, parents are now rookie teachers. And they’re getting much of the same advice. This advice tends to fall into two conflicting camps, each with their own promises and pitfalls, and many an early-career educator has steered too hard in one of these directions. Here’s a review of both camps, plus tips for correcting course if you need to.

CAMP #1: “THIS IS OUR CHANCE TO SHINE AS HOMESCHOOL SUPER-TEACHERS!”

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Advice from this camp tends to take the form of elaborate science projects, breathtakingly detailed lesson plans, and (insert new creative idea that just popped up in your Facebook feed and that you now feel like you should add to your schedule).

Why this is (at least partly) the right idea: Advice from Camp #1 can be inspiring. It may contain some useful ideas to keep your kids learning. And, depending on your situation, you may find that in this moment you actually do have an opportunity to try that Educational Thing You Always Wanted to Do with Your Kids But Never Seemed to Find the Time For. Also, it's hard to know how long this home CONTINUE READING: Sanity-saving advice for parents teaching their kids - The Washington Post

How past crises changed America’s public schools -- ‘and so too will covid-19’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/04/26/how-past-crises-changed-americas-public-schools-so-too-will-covid-19/

Covid-19 school closures ‘devastating’ for students who rely on music classes 'to get them through the school day’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/04/26/covid-19-school-closures-devastating-students-who-rely-music-classes-to-get-them-through-school-day/

To Access Online Services, New Jersey Students With Disabilities Must Promise Not To Sue | HuffPost

To Access Online Services, New Jersey Students With Disabilities Must Promise Not To Sue | HuffPost

To Access Online Services, New Jersey Students With Disabilities Must Promise Not To Sue
Special education groups are taking issue with waivers from schools — but the districts say they’re necessary in this unprecedented time.

Some New Jersey schools have been forcing students with disabilities to sign waivers promising not to sue the district before giving them access to special education services, HuffPost has learned. 

A form distributed by districts asks families to “waive and relinquish; fully release and discharge; and indemnify and hold harmless” the school district and all of its employees “from all claims, liabilities, causes of action, costs, expenses, attorneys’ fees, damages, indemnities, and obligations of every kind and nature, in law, equity, or otherwise,” before providing students with the counseling and speech services outlined in their individualized education program, or IEP. (An IEP is the legal document that details the educational services districts are required to provide to a given student with disabilities.) 

The form, devised with help from an education law firm, has raised alarms for disability advocates and lawyers, who have taken up the matter with the New Jersey Department of Education. Rebecca Schore, the legal advocacy director at Disability Rights New Jersey, said her organization already has two clients who have been asked to sign the waiver in order to receive counseling and speech support. 

“If the parent refuses to sign it, they will absolutely withhold services,” Schore said.

Lawyers say they have not heard of students who do not require special education services being made to sign any such waivers. 

Legal liability has become a significant concern of school districts as they transition to distance learning amid widespread school closures due to the coronavirus epidemic. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ― the sprawling federal law that CONTINUE READING: To Access Online Services, New Jersey Students With Disabilities Must Promise Not To Sue | HuffPost

EdAction in Congress April 26, 2020 - Education Votes

EdAction in Congress April 26, 2020 - Education Votes

EdAction in Congress April 26, 2020

Coronavirus crisis threatens education funding

An economic downturn that could rival the Great Depression is upon us—and threatening the ability of state and local governments to fund public education and other essential services. Costs are up as the nation struggles to contain COVID-19 and cope with dramatically rising unemployment—in the last five weeks, 26.5 million Americans have lost their jobs. Tax revenues are declining as consumers stop spending on virtually everything except groceries and Netflix subscriptions. The non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says FY2021 could be the worst year EVER for state budget shortfalls.

To address the looming crisis, NEA is calling for an additional $175 billion to stabilize education funding—the $30.7 billion authorized thus far is not nearly enough. The National Governors Association is calling for even more—an additional $500 billion in direct relief to state and local governments. But Congress is going to need convincing even though history shows that’s clearly the right course. A decade ago, during the Great Recession, state and local governments scrapped essential student services and laid off tens of thousands of educators. We can’t let that happen again. TAKE ACTION

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COVID-19 exposes homework gap and digital divide

As part of the next COVID-19 legislative package, NEA is pushing Congress to help narrow the digital divide and close the homework gap—the inability to do schoolwork at home due to lack of internet access. Nationwide, as many as 12 million students are affected—roughly 1 in 5. A disproportionate share of those students are African-American, Hispanic, live in rural areas, or come from low-income families. The Emergency Educational Connections Act (H.R. 6563) would provide $2 billion for a special fund, administered by the Federal Communications Commission’s E-Rate program, to equip students to go online for the duration of the COVID-19 emergency. TAKE ACTION

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Cheers and Jeers

Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY)introduced the Emergency Educational Connections Act (H.R. 6563), which would provide $2 billion for an emergency fund to help close the homework gap and digital divide.

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Mike Crapo (R-ID), and James Risch (R-ID) led a bipartisan group of 23 other senators on a letter calling for the Senate to provide much-needed financial certainty during the COVID-19 crisis for rural communities to ensure long-term funding for education and other essential services.

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) made a floor speech supporting additional state and local funding to address the coronavirus crisis.

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, introduced the COVID–19 Every Worker Protection Act (H.R. 6559), which would require the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to issue an emergency temporary standard, based on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to protect all workers from exposure to COVID-19 in the workplace.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) resisted calls for fiscal relief for states and localities hit hard by COVID-19, saying, “We can’t borrow enough money to solve the problem indefinitely … I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route.”

EdAction in Congress April 26, 2020 - Education Votes

CURMUDGUCATION: Defending the Future of the Big Standardized Test

CURMUDGUCATION: Defending the Future of the Big Standardized Test

Defending the Future of the Big Standardized Test

What has happened to our beloved Big Standardized Test? Why do people keep picking on it? And can we lift it back up to its hallowed heights of the past? I have a report sitting in one of my tabs here that wants to answer those questions, yet somehow falls short. It's FutureEd's report The Big Test, and it is yet another attempt to repackage reformster alternate earth history. It's not super long, but I've read it so that you don't have to. Thank goodness I took my blood pressure meds today. Buckle up and let's go.

Who Are These People?

FutureEd is a project of the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. It was founded by Thomas Toch, whose previous work included some edu-flavored thinky tanks and executive director of Independent Education, a private school network in DC, and an editor at US News. He is one more self-declared education policy expert who has apparently never taught in a K-12 classroom.

FutureEd launched a few years back, with declarations of independence and lack of bias; one more entry in the "new conversation" pageant. But its independence was all that one can expect from a group funded by the City Fund, the Waltons, and Bill and Melinda Gates. Their senior fellows are drawn from 50CAN, Bridge International Academies, Education Trust, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, Alliance for Excellent Education, and NewSchools Venture Fund. It's a whole blooming field of Reformsters without any traditional public education advocates anywhere in sight.

Their stated mission these days-- " committed to bringing fresh energy to the causes of excellence, CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Defending the Future of the Big Standardized Test

Emergency press conference on Monday to fight $825 million cuts to schools | Class Size Matters

Emergency press conference on Monday to fight $825 million cuts to schools | Class Size Matters | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes

Emergency press conference on Monday to fight $825 million cuts to schools

Please join us via Zoom on Monday, April 27 at 3 PM to fight the Mayor’s $825 million cuts to schools by cutting contracts and other unnecessary spending instead.  RSVP here or at http://tiny.cc/6pdrnz

Emergency press conference on Monday to fight $825 million cuts to schools | Class Size Matters | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes