Tennessee: Details About the Ruling Against Vouchers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Tennessee: Details About the Ruling Against Vouchers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Tennessee: Details About the Ruling Against Vouchers

Judge Strikes Down Tennessee School Voucher Law

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Public school children in Tennessee won today when Davidson County Chancellor Anne C. Martin struck down the state’s private school voucher law, known as the Education Savings Account (ESA) Pilot Program. Because the law applies only to students in Davidson and Shelby counties, Chancellor Martin ruled that it violates the Home Rule provision of the Tennessee Constitution, which prohibits the General Assembly from passing laws that target specific counties without local approval.

The rulings are a milestone victory for the plaintiffs challenging the voucher law in two separate cases: public school parents and community members in Nashville and Memphis, who sued in McEwen v. Lee, and Davidson and Shelby County governments, in Metropolitan Government of Nashville v. Tennessee Department of Education.

The voucher law was enacted in May 2019 over the strong objections of legislators from both counties. The voucher program was originally intended to begin in the 2021-2022 school year, but Governor Lee accelerated the timeline with plans to issue vouchers starting this fall.

In March, the plaintiffs in McEwen v. Lee filed a lawsuit to challenge the voucher law in Davidson County Chancery Court. The lawsuit argues that the voucher law violates several provisions of the Tennessee Constitution, CONTINUE READING: Tennessee: Details About the Ruling Against Vouchers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Media Contacts:

Ashley Levett, SPLC, ashley.levett@splcenter.org / 334-296-0084

Sharon Krengel, ELC, skrengel@edlawcenter.org / 973-624-1815, x24

Lindsay Kee, ACLU-TN, communications@aclu-tn.org / 615-320-7142

Christopher Wood, Robbins Geller, cwood@rgrdlaw.com / 615- 244-2203

Mike Turzai is Willing to Sacrifice Pennsylvania’s Students and Families to the Economy | gadflyonthewallblog

Mike Turzai is Willing to Sacrifice Pennsylvania’s Students and Families to the Economy | gadflyonthewallblog

Mike Turzai is Willing to Sacrifice Pennsylvania’s Students and Families to the Economy

Mike Turzai says he’s furious with Pedro Rivera.

Why is the highest ranking Republican in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives so angry with the state Secretary of Education?

Rivera said the Commonwealth’s public schools, which have been closed since mid March due to the Coronavirus pandemic, would not reopen until it was safe to do so.

If that means schools don’t reopen on time in the Fall, so be it.

Specifically, on Wednesday, Rivera said:

“At the end of the day, we’re going to make sure that the health and welfare of our students is first and foremost, front and center. And we’re not going to allow and ask students to return to school in an unsafe environment. We’re preparing for the best, but we’re planning for the worst.”

Turzai was so infuriated by this statement that he wrote a letter to Rivera – which CONTINUE READING: Mike Turzai is Willing to Sacrifice Pennsylvania’s Students and Families to the Economy | gadflyonthewallblog

Russ on Reading: Why Johnny Can't Read. Part 3: Racism and Segregation

Russ on Reading: Why Johnny Can't Read. Part 3: Racism and Segregation

Why Johnny Can't Read. Part 3: Racism and Segregation

The United States of America, legendary land of opportunity, has never come fully to grips with systematically denying opportunity to a significant portion of its population. I am talking, of course, of our African American population, brought here in literal chains and held in metaphorical chains ever since. One of the links of these chains has been the denial of  literacy.
Any school child can tell you the story of how slave holders denied the slaves access to literacy out of fear that a slave who could read would be harder to control. The fear was well founded, of course. Literacy is the enemy of tyranny. Literacy opens up the world to all people. Some slaves managed to become literate, of course, including Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, and one of the leading American intellectuals of the 19th Century.

Woman arrested for trying to read a book in public library, Albany, GA, 1962

What may not be as obvious is how the denial of literacy continued after the Civil War ended slavery. The South, determined to maintain a system that favored white over black, instituted a series of Jim Crow laws intended to segregate all aspects of public life. So we had separate public restrooms, separate hotels, separate restaurants, separate seating on buses, and, of CONTINUE READING: Russ on Reading: Why Johnny Can't Read. Part 3: Racism and Segregation

On Teacher Appreciation Day, Parents Are More Grateful Than Ever

On Teacher Appreciation Day, Parents Are More Grateful Than Ever

On Teacher Appreciation Day, Parents Are More Grateful Than Ever

Surreal. Rollercoaster. Mayhem. Those are just a few of the words parents have used when describing their homeschooling experience.

Respect. Grateful. Heroes. Those are the words they use to describe their kids’ teachers.

But this year as we celebrate National Teacher Appreciation Week, parents are finding that words can’t accurately express the gratitude they feel for their schools’ heroes.

“There are countless stories of educators going far beyond the call of duty for their students and their communities,” says NEA President Lily Eskelsen García. “Never have all of our nation’s educators been more appreciated and seen—even as they work with students from a distance.”

For decades, the first full week of May has been National Teacher Appreciation Week. But this year, with students not in school buildings as a result of the COVID-19 crisis and educators working in new ways to teach from a distance, deliver meals, and more, the occasion is more meaningful than ever.

This is Kyle Washington’s first year teaching and his first Teacher Appreciation Week. He was only two and a half months into his position as a fourth grade CONTINUE READING: On Teacher Appreciation Day, Parents Are More Grateful Than Ever

Headlines: LAUSD Says Back to Class on August 18, More Battles Over Charter Co-Location, and Let’s Appreciate All School Employees – Los Angeles Education Examiner

Headlines: LAUSD Says Back to Class on August 18, More Battles Over Charter Co-Location, and Let’s Appreciate All School Employees – Los Angeles Education Examiner

Headlines: LAUSD Says Back to Class on August 18, More Battles Over Charter Co-Location, and Let’s Appreciate All School Employees

Earlier today, LAUSD announced that the 2020-2021 school year will begin on August 18, as originally planned. Despite some early reporting that this meant the campuses themselves would re-open, LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner made clear that campuses may still be closed, and this could just be the day that remote learning begins for the new school year. Maybe it would help if we all made social distancing hats for our kids.

There have been plenty of false starts and confusion over just when LAUSD would re-open its campuses in the past two months. Even in the past week, Governor Gavin Newsom opined that schools “may re-open” in July, causing UTLA and others to point out that such an opening would be a huge financial hit to districts. Later in the week, President Donald Trump urged states to consider re-opening schools for the rest of the current school year.

Sadly, this affirmation of the school year start date is not the only COVID-19 related news. School districts, LAUSD among them, are warning that massive cuts may be coming as a result of decreased revenue caused by the COVID-19 slowdown. Even as children struggle with distance learning and upheaval in their home lives as parents are laid off or furloughed, school districts could be seeing massive cuts even as Congress seems (maybe – the story is complicated and evolving) to have found money to bail out cruise ships headquartered in other countries and another $500 billion in no-strings-attached “loans” to big businesses.

Superintendents across the country are asking Washington, D.C. for help, CONTINUE READING: Headlines: LAUSD Says Back to Class on August 18, More Battles Over Charter Co-Location, and Let’s Appreciate All School Employees – Los Angeles Education Examiner

A Moment of Silence: Wallace v. Jaffree (1985) | Blue Cereal Education

A Moment of Silence: Wallace v. Jaffree (1985) | Blue Cereal Education

A Moment of Silence: Wallace v. Jaffree (1985)

Is It Constitutional Now? How About Now? Or Now?

Three Big Things:

1. After it became clear that state-sponsored prayer was no longer a realistic option in public education, states began experimenting with the idea of a “moment of silence” during which students could pray (although no one had ever suggested that they couldn’t).

2. Alabama, in particular, kept nudging the idea forward – first it was a “moment of silence,” then a moment in which students might choose to pray, then teachers leading students in “voluntary” prayer, etc.

3. Along the way, one federal judge acknowledged that this was akin to “establishing a state religion,” but determined that was perfectly fine because states could do that. The Supreme Court agreed with the first part of that decision. They did not go along with the second.

Background

In Stone v. Graham (1980), the Court shot down the required posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. In case anyone had wondered, the CONTINUE READING: A Moment of Silence: Wallace v. Jaffree (1985) | Blue Cereal Education

Joint Statement of Education and Civil Rights Organizations Concerning Equitable Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic School Closures | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Joint Statement of Education and Civil Rights Organizations Concerning Equitable Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic School Closures | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Joint Statement of Education and Civil Rights Organizations Concerning Equitable Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic School Closures

April 27, 2020

The undersigned organizations representing school administrators, teachers, parents and education and civil rights advocates are committed to equitable educational opportunities for our nation’s students.  Understandably, as the COVID-19 pandemic extended to the United States, federal, state, tribal, and local governments have closed school buildings to prevent the spread of the novel virus. School closures have impacted 55 million K-12 students nationwide.  Although school buildings are closed, education and support services have continued, as “it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.”  Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 493 (1954). 

Unsurprisingly, the transition to educating students in their homes or shelters has exposed and exacerbated inequities in education, food security, and housing that have long existed. With limited federal leadership and despite heroic efforts by many administrators, educators, and school staff, schools as well as state and local educational agencies are struggling to provide instruction and support to the nation’s students in an effective and equitable manner – regardless of students’ race, ethnicity, national origin, English proficiency, disability, housing status or socioeconomic status. Most public and tribal schools have been closed for weeks and many will remain closed through the end of the school year, resulting in significantly disrupted education for millions of students.  It is, therefore, imperative that schools and state and local educational agencies have guidance to ensure that they meet the mandate to provide equitable education opportunities and critical public resources to all children—including support for their social and emotional health and well-being.

This statement provides promising practices and recommendations to school administrators, teachers, parents, education advocates and policymakers who are working hard to educate and care for America’s students in this unprecedented time of crisis. It focuses on five important areas requiring attention to ensure student success - distance learning and digital access, delivery of school meals, instruction for students with disabilities, instruction for students experiencing homelessness, and combatting discrimination based on race and national origin, including for English learners. 

We thank school administrators, teachers, and other school staff for all they have done to educate the nation’s students during this global pandemic. It is our hope that school districts will adopt the promising examples and suggestions provided below and join our commitment to ensuring that:  all students receive meaningful educational instruction for the remainder of the academic year through effective, accessible distance learning; state and local educational agencies make effective efforts to provide free meals to families; and educational agencies and schools are prepared to provide summer enrichment and social emotional support to students where practicable.

 Distance learning and digital access
         As states closed schools to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, many state and local educational agencies have confronted the inequities of the digital divide with large numbers of students unable to participate in online learning due to a lack of access to broadband internet service or computers or limited English proficiency.  To bridge the digital divide and provide alternatives to online learning, several school districts have taken creative steps as highlighted below.

•  Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD) has retrofitted its buses with Wi-Fi capabilities up to 200 feet. These buses will be strategically positioned at apartments and neighborhoods identified as having the highest needs between 8:00 am and 2:00 pm. Austin ISD will also deliver Chromebooks as well as Wi-Fi hotspots to students in grades 3-7 in need of one or both. For students in grades 8-12, Austin ISD has an existing program that provides one device per student.

• California’s Department of Education issued guidance and resources for school districts in the state, including guaranteeing funding and requiring all school districts statewide to provide distance learning (either online or through hard copy packets).  

• The Los Angeles Unified School District has partnered with the Public Broadcasting Service to provide instruction to students through local television programming. Similar programs have launched in Albuquerque Public Schools as well as in the Washington DC-Maryland-Virginia region through a partnership with Howard University Television, Maryland Public Television and WETA.

•  New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) is working with Apple to obtain and lend 300,000 internet-enabled iPads to students.

• Binghamton University Community Schools, which include 10 school districts, including in rural areas, are providing for basic needs and technology, Chromebooks and Wi-Fi for students and families. They also held virtual cafes for grandparents, who are primary guardians for students, to address remote learning questions. The schools distribute  weekly newsletters with information for families and they have used social media texting and telephone calls to communicate with families and students. Some community school directors conduct home visits (practicing safe social distancing) to families they have been unable to contact. The schools have a virtual drop-in for high school students who can ask questions for their families and receive support.

Recommendations for Distance Learning and Digital Access CONTINUE READING: Joint Statement of Education and Civil Rights Organizations Concerning Equitable Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic School Closures | Schott Foundation for Public Education

John Ewing: We Should Listen to the Real Education Experts: Teachers | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Ewing: We Should Listen to the Real Education Experts: Teachers | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Ewing: We Should Listen to the Real Education Experts: Teachers

John Ewing, a mathematician and president of Math for America, wrote in Forbes about a conference he recently attended about education. He noticed that none of the experts at the conference were teachers. When he asked the conference leader, his question was dismissed.

He remembered that Mike Rose had done a check of articles in the “New Yorker.” Most of the articles about medicine were written by doctors. None of the articles about education were.

Ewing maintains that teachers should make major policy decisions, not politicians. I say, “Hurray for John Ewing!” (By the way, he wrote one of the best takedown of value-added assessment of teachers published anywhere, in 2011, called “Mathematical Intimidation: Driven by the Data.”)

Ewing writes:

Teachers are the ones who drive reform forward, not policy makers. Should teachers weigh in on issues that CONTINUE READING: John Ewing: We Should Listen to the Real Education Experts: Teachers | Diane Ravitch's blog

You Can't Reopen The Economy Without Child Care | HuffPost

You Can't Reopen The Economy Without Child Care | HuffPost
You Can’t Reopen The Economy Without Child Care
As coronavirus lockdowns ease up, parents must choose between child care and work. Policymakers don’t get it.

Catherine Carberry would love to go back to work. The staffing agency she works for in Easton, Pennsylvania, regularly offers her temporary gigs at nearby factories and warehouses. The jobs even pay a few dollars more an hour than she’s used to making. 

But Carberry, 40, can’t work. It’s not because she’s at high risk of contracting COVID-19 or flush with unemployment benefits, as some conservatives would have you believe. 

Carberry can’t work because there’s no one to watch her 4-year-old son, Robbie. Robbie’s child care center is closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, and Carberry’s family lives far away. Carberry is a single mother with less than a dollar in the bank.

“I get the emails to see if I’m available. I told them, if I had child care, I’d be there,” Carberry told HuffPost. Before COVID-19, in a pinch, Carberry could find someone in the neighborhood to watch Robbie. Now, with social distancing, that’s just not possible. “It’s not like I can reach out to the church and find some ladies to fill in,” she said. “Nobody wants to get their family infected.”

I get the emails to see if I’m available. I told them, if I had child care, I’d be thereCatherine Carberry, a Pennsylvania mom who is ready to go back to work

More than half the states in the U.S. are tentatively opening back up, easing restrictions on retail stores and other businesses shuttered to stop the spread of coronavirus. Most day cares and schools, however, are not reopening, and millions of Americans can’t get back to business as usual. They have children at home.

No one is arguing that it’s actually safe to open the schools back up. In most states getting ready to relax restrictions, schools are closed for the rest of the academic year. It’s not clear CONTINUE READING: You Can't Reopen The Economy Without Child Care | HuffPost

Unmasking Rational Humanity – radical eyes for equity

Unmasking Rational Humanity – radical eyes for equity

Unmasking Rational Humanity

Many years ago, just after I moved to higher education, I was having a casual conversation with a colleague in the economics department. He joked that he was socially liberal and fiscally conservative, and that he leaned Democrat because it was easier to teach liberals economics than to make Republicans give a shit about humans.

He also made an off-hand comment about people using Consumer Report when making purchases, or similar rational approaches to being consumers. I paused and stated directly to him that virtually no one shops rationally. I recall that he looked at me as if I were from Mars.

I was reminded of this exchange—and my constant frustration at economics as a field is too often grounded in rational consumer assumptions—when a former student posted on social media about economist Daniel Kahneman, notable for contesting that assumption about rational consumers.

But I have also been thinking about assuming humans are rational in the CONTINUE READING: Unmasking Rational Humanity – radical eyes for equity

Distance learning during the coronavirus pandemic is changing cheating - Vox

Distance learning during the coronavirus pandemic is changing cheating - Vox

Paranoia about cheating is making online education terrible for everyone
A sudden switch to online learning reveals a slew of challenges for educators.

When student Marium Raza learned that her online biochemistry exam at the University of Washington would have a digital proctor, she wanted to do her research. The system, provided by a service called Proctorio, would rely on artificial intelligence and a webcam to monitor her while she worked. In other words, as tests must happen remotely in the Covid-19 crisis, Raza’s school is one of many using a mixture of robots and video feeds to make sure students don’t cheat.

“We don’t have any transparency about how our recorded video is going to be used or who is going to see it,” Raza told Recode. “The status quo should not be visualizing each student as someone who is trying to cheat in any way possible.”

Raza wasn’t the only one in her class who felt concerned about new levels of surveillance. Another student in the class, who did not want to be named, said that in addition to privacy worries, they were concerned that they didn’t even have enough RAM to run the Proctorio software. Worse, the tool’s facial detection algorithm seemed to struggle to recognize them, so they needed to sit in the full light of the window to better expose the contours of their face, in their view an indication that the system might be biased.

When a practice run with the software ultimately failed, Raza said students took the exam online without Proctorio’s monitoring. Given the remote instruction required by the Covid-19 crisis, the University of Washington had signed a six-month contract with Proctorio only CONTINUE READING: Distance learning during the coronavirus pandemic is changing cheating - Vox

NANCY BAILEY: DeVos and The Privatization Connection to Detroit’s “Right to Read” Lawsuit: “Separate and Unequal”

DeVos and The Privatization Connection to Detroit’s “Right to Read” Lawsuit: “Separate and Unequal”

DeVos and The Privatization Connection to Detroit’s “Right to Read” Lawsuit: “Separate and Unequal”

The Detroit landmark decision that children deserve to learn to read in school is a case that reflects decades of troubled education in Detroit. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and school privatization are not mentioned in this case. But school privatization initiatives have been failing children in the Motor City for years. DeVos is the current face of a long line of those peddling such reforms.

Harmful school reform initiatives go back to Gov. John Engler’s administration. Many school reformers, both Republican and Democrat, have their fingerprints on the crime scene. The DeVos family is from Michigan and has affected Detroit and school reform there for years.

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of Detroit students who claim they were denied their rights to a “basic minimum education.” Called the “Right to Read” lawsuit, Gary B. v. Whitmer exposes the decrepit conditions found in schools run by State leaders who failed to support Detroit’s students. The case was originally filed under former Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration.

It’s critical to recognize DeVos’s connection to the Detroit school failures. During this CONTINUE READING: DeVos and The Privatization Connection to Detroit’s “Right to Read” Lawsuit: “Separate and Unequal”

CURMUDGUCATION: Oh, Jeb! Give It A Rest.

CURMUDGUCATION: Oh, Jeb! Give It A Rest.

Oh, Jeb! Give It A Rest.

The vultures are out in force at this point, jostling for the chance to make big bucks by picking at what they hope is the corpse of traditional public education. Education? There's an app for that, and we've got it!

So it makes perfect sense that one of the grandaddies of the drive to disrupt and dismantle education would be in the Washington Post yesterday, making his pitch for "the education of the future." It must be frustrating to be Jeb. He was the smart one, and he was going to ride the noble steed of Common Core and education privatization right into the White House; now he's just stuck beating the same old dead horse.

Jeb! has a couple of points to make here, all of them baloney.

First, he is frustrated that every school district is not on the virtual learning train right now. He agrees that the digital divide is real, but he doesn't really understand what it means. His solution: "Every district should make available a device and WiFi so every child can participate in online learning."

If your internet memory goes back to the nineties, you remember the people (your mom might have been one) who thought that the CD-ROM from AOL had the internet on it. Jeb! reminds me of those CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Oh, Jeb! Give It A Rest.

Our Fork in the Road | Opine I will

Our Fork in the Road | Opine I will

Our Fork in the Road

We all know that we have “red” and “blue” states. We also have states competing with each other for needed supplies. We have armed protesters trying to intimidate their state’s legislators. We have Nazi , Confederate, and KKK flags flying side by side with Trump 2020 banners. We have immigrant kids taken from the mothers and fathers and locked up. We have almost 70,000 dead in the last 2 months. We have some saying it’s ok for some to die but we need to open up our economy. Thousands are dying in nursing homes every week.

We have states saying they now need federal financial help in amounts we have never experienced in our nation’s history. We now have a president who has said he will block any financial assistance to individual states unless they agree with his immigration policies.

Last night we had Trump doing a “Town Hall” on Fox news inside the Lincoln Memorial. With the statue of Lincoln as a backdrop he said that he is being treated worse that Lincoln ever was.

This series of events should send shivers up your spine. Think about history, think what went on during the time of Lincoln.

MAGA my ass, this is an attempt to drive an ideological disease that the Trump family CONTINUE READING: Our Fork in the Road | Opine I will

DeVos Targets $180 Million in State CARES Act Public School Relief Funds to School Choice and Virtual Schools | janresseger

DeVos Targets $180 Million in State CARES Act Public School Relief Funds to School Choice and Virtual Schools | janresseger

DeVos Targets $180 Million in State CARES Act Public School Relief Funds to School Choice and Virtual Schools

Big Education Ape: Tell Congress: Stop DeVos from using emergency funding to advance her privatization agenda - Network For Public Education - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/04/tell-congress-stop-devos-from-using.html

Last Monday, in the same week The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities announced New CBO Projections Suggest Even Bigger State Shortfalls, Betsy DeVos launched a new grant competition made up of coronavirus (CARES Act) relief money to lure states into enacting her own school privatization priorities, something Congress has persistently blocked.  Most of us instead would like to see our states use federal CARES Act money to avoid the kind of massive layoffs of public school teachers being predicted by the Learning Policy Institute to ensure that class sizes remain reasonable when school reopens.  And we’d like to be sure that our schools won’t lay off more counselors, nurses, librarians and music and art teachers.

Congress allocated some of the money in the CARES (coronavirus relief) Act to help states maintain public school funding during what we all know is coming: a state budget crisis as sales and income tax revenues collapse because businesses are shutting down and many people are losing their jobs.  Now, Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum reports: Betsy DeVos has set aside some of this money (1) for states to give parents  microgrants for parents to pay for access to remote learning, (2) for states to invest in virtual schools, and (3) for states to create models for as yet unimagined remote education possibilities.

The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss explains exactly which money Betsy DeVos plans to spend on these microgrants for parents’ online access, for states establishing of new virtual schools, and some kind of unspecified new “innovation” strategies for remote learning: “Congress allocated $30.75 billion in its recent coronavirus relief legislation to help states, K-12 school districts and higher education systems respond to the pandemic… Within that fund, it set aside $308 million in emergency education relief ‘for grants to states with the highest coronavirus burden.’  DeVos is using $180 million of that money for her ‘Rethink K-12 Education Models Grant’ program that invites states to find ‘new innovative ways for students to access K-12 education.”

Despite that the U.S. Department of Education exists for the purpose of providing CONTINUE READING: DeVos Targets $180 Million in State CARES Act Public School Relief Funds to School Choice and Virtual Schools | janresseger

Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies Lays Off During COVID Despite $60M in Reserve, AND She’s Hiring! | deutsch29

Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies Lays Off During COVID Despite $60M in Reserve, AND She’s Hiring! | deutsch29

Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies Lays Off During COVID Despite $60M in Reserve, AND She’s Hiring!

According to the April 21, 2020, New York Post, Eva Moskowitz’s New York-based Success Academy (SA) charter school network has laid off 90 staff and 25 central office workers amid the coronavirus pandemic. From the article:

Moskowitz said the none-core layoffs were triggered by a “significant cut” in state aid from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s $177 billion, coronavirus-wrecked budget that was approved earlier this month.

“It was a reduction of $1,000 per pupil,” Moskowitz said, of funding in the budget.

Moskowitz also cited emergency costs stemming from the public health crises as justification — like expenditures to ship projectors and other supplies to teachers for remote learning. …

Success Academy relies heavily on private donations and philanthropies for funding and any extended financial plunge would likely harm their operations.

A Success Academy source acknowledged some unease but said that the network is getting out in front of looming financial strains with the layoffs.

So, Moskowitz’s justification for cutting loose 115 non-teaching employees in the CONTINUE READING: Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies Lays Off During COVID Despite $60M in Reserve, AND She’s Hiring! | deutsch29

Let's Teach in Pajamas Forever | The Jose Vilson

Let's Teach in Pajamas Forever | The Jose Vilson

LET’S TEACH IN PAJAMAS FOREVER

Contrary to my own public activism and advocacy, I propose that we move the nation’s largest public school system into a completely online endeavor forever and a day. I know this may come as a shock to everyone who’s been following me for years, but I might have developed outright envy for some of my most fervent detractors. I’m jealous of the way they speak, walk, and work as if they’ve got their theory of online schooling fully figured out. Instead of having to fight them amongst the various contrarians in this little line of mine, I’m now squarely in agreement with them.

That is to say, rather than my favorite sweaters and slacks, I’ll teach in sandals and pajamas from home. With no exceptions.

At first, I thought it a ludicrous idea. Before the pandemic, I couldn’t have imagined that tens of thousands of working adults could convert 1.1 million students from full human beings with all their complexities into digits and images shifting about our monitors, but I was wrong. In a week and a day, we not only beat the number of school closures that former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former mayor Rahm Emanuel, and former chancellor Michelle Rhee shut down combined, we moved school operations into multi-color calculators no larger than the length of a shoebox.

I too am impressed by the efficiency.

I marvel at the notion that corporations like Microsoft, Zoom, and Google knelt down to offer free CONTINUE READING: Let's Teach in Pajamas Forever | The Jose Vilson

Can NYC Go Bankrupt? Would It Impact Teacher Pensions and Health Benefits? | Ed In The Apple

Can NYC Go Bankrupt? Would It Impact Teacher Pensions and Health Benefits? | Ed In The Apple

Can NYC Go Bankrupt? Would It Impact Teacher Pensions and Health Benefits?

Every day Governor Cuomo has a press briefing, an update on the data: are the curves flattening? moving downward?  and, muses about the political scene in Washington. Governors and mayors have been asking the feds for another infusion of dollars, this time to the states; after all, teachers, police, fireman, etc., are local and state employees. If you expect states and localities to take the lead in fighting the pandemic you have to support the efforts with federal dollars.

Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), the majority leader  in the Senate, opposed any aid to states, states who didn’t have sufficient resources, McConnell crowed, should declare bankruptcy. Cuomo snapped back,federal law did not allow states to declare bankruptcy, and, New York State was the fifth biggest contributor to the feds and Kentucky 6th in contributing the least.

While federal law does not allow states to declare bankruptcies cities can: Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Law.

The New York Post added to concerns, “New York City is Edging Towards Financial Disaster, Experts Warn.”

A conservative website follows up on the NY Post article supporting the possibility of a New York City bankruptcy.

What is bankruptcy?

What is Chapter 9? It’s the portion of the federal bankruptcy code that applies to municipalities. Created by Congress in 1937, it allows municipalities to seek CONTINUE READING: Can NYC Go Bankrupt? Would It Impact Teacher Pensions and Health Benefits? | Ed In The Apple