CCSD could cut 1.5K jobs if distance learning lasts full school year | Las Vegas Review-Journal - https://wp.me/p8qdWm-9aXU on @reviewjournal
MN’s 20 largest school districts moving online as 69 more schools report coronavirus outbreaks – Twin Cities - https://wp.me/p79gJ9-fLZi on @pioneerpress
More people with bachelor’s degrees go back to school to learn skilled trades - The Hechinger Report - https://hechingerreport.org/?p=75515 via @hechingerreport
Big Education Ape The Damage Betsy DeVos Has Done as Education Secretary and the Challenges Facing Joe Biden’s Pick | Vogue - https://www.vogue.com/article/betsy-devos-education-secretary-damage-joe-biden-challenge#new_tab After 8 months, D.C. Public Schools reopens buildings for more than 400 students - The Washington Post - https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-schools-reopen-build
FL: Bullying, Vouchers, And More Baloney When it comes to school choice, Florida (state motto: "We'll abolish public education any day now") is the place to be. With an array of anti-public education public officials, a non-functioning Democratic party, and the a long history of legislative baloney, it's no wonder that this is Betsy DeVos's idea of how a state is supposed to get things done. But
Latest Ethnic Studies Curriculum Recommendations - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education) State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and Scholars Present Latest Recommendations to Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Teaching Native American Studies Virtual Classroom - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education) - https://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr20/yr20rel95.asp Funding Opportunity: Farm to School Grants - Nutrition (CA Dept o
JEFF BRYANT ON THE RICK SMITH SHOW: “THE IDEA THAT PUBLIC SCHOOLS HAVE FAILED US IS A PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN.” “ The idea that public schools have failed us is a propaganda campaign. Right now we see a lot of parents being upset at school districts and teachers, wondering why they can’t send their children back to school. The bigger problem is there’s a lack of government leadership dealing with fu
"Have To" History Preview: Good News Club v. Milford Central School (2001) I've been posting rough drafts from what I hope will be an upcoming book focused on Supreme Court cases related to church-state separation in public education. Some aren't cases likely to get full treatment in the book but of interest to me personally, so I ramble about them here. Others – like this one – don't require ex
'State-sanctioned segregation': California’s school closure debate boils over SACRAMENTO — Pandemic politics have reached a boiling point in California’s school reopening debate. A hands-off approach by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and public pressure from powerful labor unions has led the state’s biggest city districts to keep schools shuttered, leaving most of California’s 6 million public sch
Goodbye, Betsy: Speculation Increases Over The Next Education Secretary The appointee would take over during a time of unprecedented upheaval in schools . Democrats in the education world are ready to say goodbye to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, but divides within the party about who should replace her fall along familiar lines. On one side, labor leaders like Randi Weingarten and Lily Eskels
The Personal Side of Being a Superintendent In The Managerial Imperative: The Practice of Leadership in Schools (1988), I wrote of my experiences as a superintendent, husband, and father and how the job intersected with my life during and after the workday. Because the family side of being a superintendent is often unwritten much less talked about–especially during the Covid pandemic, I have upd
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007 Big Education Ape: THIS WEEK IN EDUCATION Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007 - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/11/this-week-in-education-larry-ferlazzos_14.html A Look Back: Here’s The Video Of The Keynote I Gave At The VirtuEL Confer
Carol Burris: The Secretary of Education We Need–and Those We Don’t Carol Burris wrote the following post. Marla Kilfoyle provided assistance. They asked me to add that there are dozens more exceptionally well qualified people who should be considered for this important post: they are career educators who believe in public education, not closing schools or privatization. The media has been fille
Imagine If We Stood On the Shoulders of the Remote Learning Giants A couple days ago, I wrote a piece that had been long coming in which I called upon educators to embrace the opportunities and challenges presented by this pandemic to reimagine how we teach young children while continuing to embrace the "freedom, equality, and hands-on democratic education" that so many of us fear we are losing,
Federal Judge Permanently Bars DeVos from Diverting CARES Funds to Private Schools While Trump appointees are doing their best to impose their policies before January 20, a federal judge in California told Betsy DeVos in no equivocal terms by a federal judge that she cannot divert CARES money to private schools. The nation’s nearly 100,000 public schools received $13.2 billion in CARES funding,
The Legacy Of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos What to make of the tenure of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos depends, like Beauty itself, on the eye of the beholder. To the president who asked her to run the Department of Education, she was a loyal lieutenant who argued for her department's irrelevance in a nation where control of schools is a local affair — that is, until she argued the opp
Another Message from Our Esteemed Chancellor Dear Colleagues, This has been an eventful and challenging year on so many levels. Not for me, of course. I’ve been able to not only sit in my office at Tweed, but also stay home and not even get out of bed over the past several weeks. To date, we have seen a COVID-19 positivity rate of only 0.19 percent out of more than 120,000 students and staff tes
Covid-19 In Historic Context If we truly wanted to deal with Covid-19 in an effective manner, designed to minimize and ultimately stop its continuing- yet avoidable- murderous effects on our species, we would have to look at all the historical and scientific factors, that we have so far ignored, that have made us the prime target for such a pandemic- or other plague- that we clearly have the sci
As District Covid Cases Increase, McKeesport Schools Remain Open Temporarily Next week, McKeesport Area School District will go fully remote to keep students safe from an ongoing outbreak of Covid-19 at several district buildings. Two new cases are suspected today at the western Pennsylvania district, says a source close to the school board. However all district buildings were open, and administ
District staff to start subbing... sort of... (draft) You know I wish I didn't have to write pieces like this, ones where I point out how little the district cares about its staff, and this time they are showing it by doing as little as possible to avert the subbing crisis or lack of sub crisis if you will, that is going on in the district. To help out, district staff for two days only will be s
Should we talk about blended learning? Some in the UFT do not think so I submitted a resolution to this month’s Delegate Assembly – to move away from Blended Learning . I am attaching the text at the bottom. I submitted as late as possible – five minutes before the deadline – assuming that I would be #14 on the list and it would not come up. I was a bit surprised – there were only two submission
Next week, McKeesport Area School District will go fully remote to keep students safe from an ongoing outbreak of Covid-19 at several district buildings. Two new cases are suspected today at the western Pennsylvania district, says a source close to the school board. However all district buildings were open, and administrators say classes will continue in-person Thursday and Friday. On Monday, the
“ The idea that public schools have failed us is a propaganda campaign. Right now we see a lot of parents being upset at school districts and teachers, wondering why they can’t send their children back to school. The bigger problem is there’s a lack of government leadership dealing with fundamental problems of a pandemic, causing community spread that’s out of control. Until we get rid of the spi
After more than a month into New York City’s experiment with reopening schools in a hybrid format that has students alternating between classrooms and their homes, teacher Sapphira Hendrix still finds herself working until 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, planning lessons and responding to students. One night in particular, she recounts, when finishing up a lesson plan for one of her classes, she g
College Debt Sucks I passed a milestone a couple of months back--I paid off the last of my children's college loans. I went to college back in the 70s. My entire undergrad education cost about $16K. I could have paid for some of it with the proceeds of my summer job, but my parents covered the costs and that allowed me to save for grad school and to start out on my feet. Lots of my friends from
Showing Faces (or Not) in Remote Instruction This year, our school has asked students to show their faces during remote instruction. This is a large improvement for those of us out here doing the work. Some say this is an intrusion on student privacy. There are workarounds, though, for students uncomfortable with showing their faces or homes. Students can use virtual backgrounds, and many do. Fo
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007 Big Education Ape: THIS WEEK IN EDUCATION Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007 - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/11/this-week-in-education-larry-ferlazzos_14.html “Give Students Choice When It’s Time to Read” by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h Giv
Big Education Ape TODAY'S EDUCATION HEADLINES Progressives turned out for Joe Biden. Now they want a big role - - https://www.kten.com/story/42921925/progressives-turned-out-for-joe-biden-
The Fight for Prop 15 Isn’t Over. It’s Just Begun.
Many of us worked hard this year trying to pass Proposition 15, which would have taxed commercial properties worth over $300 million and given the proceeds – some $12 billion a year – to local governments and schools. Post-mortems have begun trickling in about why Prop. 15 suffered defeat, some of which lay the groundwork for arguing Prop. 15 should be abandoned in the future, lest proponents alienate potential Democratic voters. This argument should be ignored.
Protection of property tax rates is deeply ingrained into the political DNA of California, and Prop. 15’s opposition milked this fact for all it was worth. Nevertheless, Prop. 15 ended up a couple percentage points away from significantly taxing the rich and permanently returning large amounts of money to the public. That’s a victory to be proud of – one to build on and fight for again.
Protection of property tax rates is deeply ingrained into the political DNA of California, and Prop. 15’s opposition milked this fact for all it was worth.
Prop. 15 proposed to alter laws created by a different ballot measure, Prop. 13, which passed back in 1978. Prop. 13 came at a time when property values, and consequently property taxes, were skyrocketing statewide. The Prop. 13 campaign used stories of elderly people being forced out of their lifelong homes because they could no longer afford to pay their taxes to gin up support for the measure, which locked in property taxes at 1978 levels, with only minor increases allowed each year. In a bold but under-publicized move, commercial properties snuck their way into Prop. 13, and ever since Californians have lost out on a massive source of revenue as many of CONTINUE READING: The Fight for Prop 15 Isn’t Over. It’s Just Begun. - LA Progressive
Obsession With “Academic Performance” is Charter School Disinformation
Promoters of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools are obsessed with students’ scores on punitive and curriculum-narrowing high-stakes tests produced by big corporations. They think that test scores on these unsound tests are the end-all and be-all. They have even convinced themselves that the more technical and professional their “academic performance” reports look and feel the more believable and meaningful such test scores are.
Putting aside the 50 problems with these top-down corporate tests, the central issue when it comes to charter schools is not students’ scores on pseudo-scientific tests, but whether education is a public good and social responsibility that must be publicly-controlled and publicly-funded, or if education should be a commodity subject to the chaos, anarchy, and violence of the “free market” and something parents compete for? Is education a social responsibility and basic right that must be provided with a guarantee by government or is it a business run by entrepreneurs who advertise their schools to consumers the same way a retailer advertises goods to consumers? Should education be fully-funded, high-quality, and available for free to everyone in every neighborhood, or should it be based on a hit-or-miss survival of the fittest ethos?
The law of the jungle is not a modern, responsible, and humane way of organizing education in the 21st century. The outmoded “free market” approach to education has led to thousands of charter schools failing and closing over the last 30 years, leaving thousands of black and Hispanic kids and their parents out in the cold. Poor and low-income minority families have CONTINUE READING: Obsession With "Academic Performance" is Charter School Disinformation | Dissident Voice
Tim Shriver as Education Secretary? Fighting for School Control
Tim Shriver is supposedly being vetted to be education secretary, a surprise for those waiting to hear of a Jahana, a Julian, a Randi, Lily, or another educator with classroom experience getting the post. There seems to be a fight for school control between the teachers and the school reformers.
DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) shared their nominees, and now another group the National Charter Collaborative has made the list longer. Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children’s Zone; Charter school CEO Margaret Fortune; Assemblymember Shirley Weber (D); Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.); Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.); and Howard Fuller, considered a school reform and school choice activist, were added to the mix. Bennett isn’t interested.
Tim Shriver? The HuffPost describes him as someone above the fray of debates within the education community on issues of school accountability.
Derek W. Black is a professor of constitutional law who specializes in civil rights issues at the University of South Carolina. His recent book Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy is a must-read.
Black writes here in an essay written for this blog about recent voucher cases in state courts:
This summer in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the US Supreme Court struck down the provision in the Montana state constitution that prohibited aid to religious schools as a violation of free exercise of religion. Some public education advocates understandably feared the sky was falling. Voucher advocates hailed Espinoza as a “major win” and began strategizing how they might expand the decision and leverage it in other contexts. Most notably, the plan they envisioned would use Espinoza to force states to allow religious institutions to operate charter schools. If they achieved that, public education might not only be privatized, it might become religious.
Jill Biden To Teacher Unions: “With AFT And NEA’s Help, We Won This Election”
The winner of the most-hated member of the Trump administration’s cabinet may be the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. Her strongly conservative ideas on public and private education have greatly agitated the union-supporting Democrats who are in charge of our country’s schools.
Once Joe Biden’s administration comes into power, you can kiss school choice goodbye. Betsy DeVos made it her mission to increase school choice, especially for underprivileged children trapped in failing schools. This is the last thing teacher unions want. Teacher unions want families under their thumb, left with no options for which might work best for their children and families. The union leaders want power from the top down where one size fits all and the federal government knows what is best for school children across the country, not local parents and teachers in each community. This speaks directly to the differences between conservatives and liberals (or socialists and Marxists).
The teacher unions have become a political fundraising branch of the Democrat Party. Teachers allegedly teach all students without a political agenda on display though we know that is not true. Presidential candidates running on the Democrat ticket know that they must have the support of the union leadership in order to win elections. This year both ATF (American Teacher Foundation) and NEA (National Education Association) take credit for working so diligently for Joe Biden’s election. Jill Biden held a video conference call with all the players to thank them for their hard work and support. A Twitter thread was created about the video call and it is as cringeworthy as any conservative person would expect. CONTINUE READING: Jill Biden to teacher unions: "With AFT and NEA's help, we won this election"
Yesterday morning, I took a long walk in an unfamiliar place. The advent of global positioning system maps, the kind found on every smartphone, has made this a less adventurous proposition than it was even a decade ago. I used to regularly get myself lost and found, but on this day I checked the map and found a route that avoided major roads. It was a bit of a detour, but I was out, in part, for exercise, so I winded my way through unfamiliar neighborhoods for over half and an hour before discovering that the key connector I'd been shooting for was blocked off by the locked gate of a community of private homes. I briefly considered just climbing the fence, but the camera and signs promising an "armed response" to intruders, made me pause. I finally decided that the solution to this predicament was to backtrack. I cursed the failure of the map in my pocket and the full hour I'd spent getting no where.
Once I was back on a main road, however, I set out once more, confident in my surroundings, my predicament behind me. Not long thereafter, however, a man on a bicycle emerged from a roughly paved path that snaked between houses. The signage indicated it was a bike track. It wasn't indicated on my map application, but I figured, having biked along countless bike tracks that taking it would eventually land me near some landmarks, and from there I could find CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Getting Into and Out of Predicaments
