Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Steve Nelson: Farewell to the Worst Secretary of Education Ever! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Farewell to the Worst Secretary of Education Ever!

Steve Nelson was head of school at the Calhoun School. He is now in retirement. He writes frequently about the need for child-centered education.

“RESIST!” Bernie Sanders? AOC? Malcom X? Saul Alinsky?

No, this was Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s plea to Education Department staffers as she ends her term in office. As reported in The Hill, she specifically implored them to “Be the resistance against forces that will derail you from doing what’s right for students.” DeVos evoking the language of progressive activism is rich – almost as rich as DeVos herself.

She has gotten scant attention in the chaos of these last days. It seems unjust to allow her to go so quietly from the party. It is only in the shadow of Bill Barr, Scott Pruitt, Michael Flynn, Wilbur Ross, Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Mike Pompeo, Ben Carson, Stephen Miller and many others that DeVos’s breathtaking awfulness would go uncelebrated.

I am here to right that wrong.

As with other Trump appointees, her most luminous qualification for the position was absolute disdain for the CONTINUE READING: Steve Nelson: Farewell to the Worst Secretary of Education Ever! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teacher Tom: They Say There are No Stupid Questions. I Beg to Differ.

They Say There are No Stupid Questions. I Beg to Differ.

They say there's no such thing as a stupid question, but I beg to differ. We hear stupid questions almost every time adults and young children are together.

For instance, a child is painting at an easel, exploring color, shape, and motion, experimenting with brushes, paper, and paint. There is an adult watching over her shoulder who points and asks, "What color is that?"

This is a stupid question.

Here's another example: a child is playing with marbles, exploring gravity, motion and momentum. An adult picks up a handful of marbles and asks, "How many marbles do I have?"

The adult already knows the answer. The child probably does as well, in which case, the adult is distracting her from her deep and meaningful studies in order to reply to a banality. Or she doesn't know the answer, in which case the adult is distracting her from her deep and meaningful studies to play CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: They Say There are No Stupid Questions. I Beg to Differ.

Robert D. Skeels: Outgoing Administration Admits Charters are not Public Schools

solidaridad: Outgoing Administration Admits Charters are not Public Schools

Outgoing Administration Admits Charters are not Public Schools

The latest executive order by troglodyte Trump tacitly admits that charter schools are *NOT* public schools. We all knew that, but it's nice when the vile privatizers tell on themselves. *

While it is good to see DeVos and Trump on the way out, there's little to hope for with Biden. It's already been announced that right-wing, neoliberal hatchetman Bruce Reed will be Biden's Deputy Chief of Staff, and the choice of seemingly apolitical Miguel Cardona is probably for a reason.

At the end of the day Biden was part of the second worst administration for education. The damage doltish Arne Duncan did prior to Trump is what opened the door for DeVos in the first place.

DeVos = Duncan + Dominionism *

solidaridad: Outgoing Administration Admits Charters are not Public Schools

Trump’s School Choice Executive Order: A Big Nothing | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Trump’s School Choice Executive Order:

A Big Nothing

On December 28, 2020, President Donald Trump issued this executive order to purportedly allow federal Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) funds to be used to finance “emergency learning scholarships” (school vouchers) “to disadvantaged families for use by any child without access to in-person learning”

This executive order will go nowhere.

First, there is no time for the Department of Health and Human Services create an application process specific to this school voucher purpose and to process new grant applications for states or entities and for those states or entities to establish processes to identify and distribute funds to qualified individuals and for those individuals to locate private schools or other qualifying services, either before the school year ends (we’re a semester in) or before the Trump presidency ends.

Second, even if states and other entities are allowed to redirect current CSBG funding toward Trump’s eleventh-hour voucher flash-in-the-pan, doing so would mean just that– taking money designated for other purposes– which is bureaucratically easier said than done in justifying the reallocation, actually redirecting the money, and establishing a process for its disbursement for a new purpose– and, again, the clock is running out on both the 2020-21 school year and the Trump presidency.

This school choice executive order appeared on December 28, 2020, the day after Trump signed the latest COVID relief bill, which did not include the school voucher funding exiting US ed sec Betsy DeVos wanted. Also on December 28, 2020, DeVos publicly lamented the CONTINUE READING: Trump’s School Choice Executive Order: A Big Nothing | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

CURMUDGUCATION: Schools And Social Capital

Schools And Social Capital

I'm in the middle of reading Robert Putnam's new book (The Upswing) which has gotten me to thinking about his previous work, Our Kids. What has struck me in particular about the latter is his writing about social capital and the children of this country.

The definition of social capital is, in general, a little fuzzy. Putnam's, as put forth in Bowling Alone, another of his books well worth reading, is that it refers to "connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them." My own shorthand is to think of it as the ability to say, in any situation, "I know a guy."

Your child has expressed an interested in playing piano, and you have an old friend who plays, so you call up to ask about lessons. Your child says they'd like to know more about how the hospital works, and you know an administrator up there that you did some work for once. Your child is in trouble over some light theft, but you went to school with a guy in the prosecutors office, so maybe you make a call, or maybe you don't even have to because he says, "I know this kid's family. Let's go easy."

For someone with lots of social capital, there is always slack to be cut and always a large network of support on which one can depend. It is what we think about when we look back to a past where if you were a resident of tight community, a member of a squad, a part of the team, then somebody CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Schools And Social Capital

Parents of Disabled Students: Do NOT Grant College Board Unlimited Access to Your Child’s Sensitive Information | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

PARENTS OF DISABLED STUDENTS: DO NOT GRANT COLLEGE BOARD UNLIMITED ACCESS TO YOUR CHILD’S SENSITIVE INFORMATION

We recently received a query from a Chicago parent whose child has a disability, and was seeking an accommodation when taking a College Board test. Her child’s high school asked her to sign a SSD Accommodation Consent form allowing her school to disclose her child’s disability records, as well as “any other information in the school’s custody that the College Board requests for the purpose of determining my eligibility for testing accommodations on College Board tests“. The form also grants the “College Board permission “to discuss my disability and needs with school personnel and other professionals.”

The Chicago parent was concerned with these overly broad permissions and crossed out portions that she disagreed with. Unfortunately for this parent, she subsequently discovered that her child’s previous high school had apparently already released confidential information to the College Board without asking for her consent.

We wonder if this has happened to other parents. Have parents been asked to sign this form authorizing the school to release their children’s highly sensitive disability information, or worse, have CONTINUE READING: Parents of Disabled Students: Do NOT Grant College Board Unlimited Access to Your Child’s Sensitive Information | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

glen brown: When Children Return to School by Teresa Thayer Snyder

When Children Return to School by Teresa Thayer Snyder

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

I am writing today about the children of this pandemic. After a lifetime of working among the young, I feel compelled to address the concerns that are being expressed by so many of my peers about the deficits the children will demonstrate when they finally return to school.

My goodness, what a disconcerting thing to be concerned about in the face of a pandemic which is affecting millions of people around the country and the world. It speaks to one of my biggest fears for the children when they return. In our determination to “catch them up,” I fear that we will lose who they are and what they have learned during this unprecedented era.

What on earth are we trying to catch them up on? The models no longer apply, the benchmarks are no longer valid, the trend analyses have been interrupted. We must not forget that those arbitrary measures were established by people, not ordained by God. We can make those invalid measures as obsolete as a crank up telephone! They simply do not apply.

When the children return to school, they will have returned with a new history that we will need to help them identify and make sense of. When the children return to school, we will need to listen to them. Let their stories be told. They have endured a year that has no parallel in modern times. There is no assessment that applies to who they are or what they have learned.

Remember, their brains did not go into hibernation during this year. Their brains may not have been focused on traditional school material, but they did not stop either. Their brains may have been focused on where their next meal is coming from, or how to care for a younger sibling, or how to deal CONTINUE READING: glen brown: When Children Return to School by Teresa Thayer Snyder

A VERY BUSY DAY Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

A VERY BUSY DAY

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/2020/12/this-week-in-education-larry-

Here’s Info On “Public Domain Day”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 2h

geralt / Pixabay This is from Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain : On January 1, 2021, copyrighted works from 1925 will enter the US public domain, 1 where they will be free for all to use and build upon. These works include books such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, and Franz Kafka’s The Trial (in the origin

Wednesday’s Must-Read Articles & Must-Watch Videos On School Reopenings

by Larry Ferlazzo / 4h

MIH83 / Pixabay Here are new additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING WHAT SCHOOLS WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE FALL Covid testing plans leave England’s school leaders guessing is from The Guardian.

Depressing Statistic Of The Day: A Lot of Our Students Have Disappeared Since Last Spring

by Larry Ferlazzo / 12h

Report Estimates 1 to 3 Million Students Missing From School Since March, But Data on Disrupted Learning is ‘At Best a Moving Target’ is an article that appeared in The 74 in late October about research on this issue, and NPR published a less detailed piece this morning about it. I’ve never met or heard from several students who are on my rosters, despite many attempts to connect. And others are,

A Look Back: What My Students Say About Teachers Mispronouncing Their Names

by Larry Ferlazzo / 12h

I thought that new – and veteran – readers might find it interesting if I began sharing my best posts from over the years. You can see the entire collection here . This post originally appeared in 2013. I’m a big advocate of teachers making a point to pronounce student names correctly (see The Best Resources On The Importance Of Correctly Pronouncing Student Names ). I always do a lesson on names

“Author Interview: ‘Reading & Writing with English Learners'”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 18h

Author Interview: ‘Reading & Writing with English Learners’ is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Authors Valentina Gonzalez & Melinda Miller answer questions about their book Reading & Writing with English Learners: A Framework for K-5. Here’s an excerpt:

This Was Interesting – Biden Says He Wants K-8 Schools Open In 100 Days; Doesn’t Mention Secondary Ones