A Nation's Shame: Trillions in New Wealth, Millions of Children in Poverty

A Nation's Shame: Trillions in New Wealth, Millions of Children in Poverty:

A Nation's Shame: Trillions in New Wealth, Millions of Children in Poverty

(Photo: Ian Carroll)

America's wealth grew by 60 percent in the past six years, by over $30 trillion. In approximately the same time, the number of homeless children has also grown by 60 percent.

Financier and CEO Peter Schiff said, "People don't go hungry in a capitalist economy." The 16 million kids on food stamps know what it's like to go hungry. Perhaps, some in Congress would say, those children should be working. "There is no such thing as a free lunch," insisted Georgia Representative Jack Kingston, even for schoolkids, who should be required to "sweep the floor of the cafeteria" (as they actually do at acharter school in Texas).

The callousness of US political and business leaders is disturbing, shocking. Hunger is just one of the problems of our children. Teacher Sonya Romero-Smith told about the two little homeless girls she adopted: "Getting rid of bedbugs, that took us a while. Night terrors, that took a little while. Hoarding food.."

America Is a 'Leader' in Child Poverty

The US has one of the highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world. As UNICEFreports, "[Children's] material well-being is highest in the Netherlands and in the four Nordic countries and lowest in Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and the United States."

Over half of public school students are poor enough to qualify for lunch subsidies, and almost half of black children under the age of six are living in poverty.

$5 a Day for Food - But Congress Thought it Was Too Much

Nearly half of all food stamp recipients are children, and they averaged about $5 a day for their meals before the 2014 farm bill cut $8.6 billion (over the next ten years) from the food stamp program.

In 2007 about 12 of every 100 kids were on food stamps. Today it's 20 of every 100.

For Every Two Homeless Children in 2006, There Are Now Three

On a typical frigid night in January, 138,000 children, according to the US Department of Housing, were without a place to call home.

That's about the same number of households that have each increased their wealth by $10 million per year since the recession.

The US: Near the Bottom in Education and Sinking

The US ranks near the bottom of the developed world in the percentage of 4-year-olds in early childhood education. Early education should be a primary goal for the future, as numerous studies have shown that pre-school helps all children to achieve more and earn more through adulthood, with the most disadvantaged A Nation's Shame: Trillions in New Wealth, Millions of Children in Poverty:

AFT, NABE, TESO, NSBA & NEA - Organizational Response to #ESEA

NEA - Letter to the Senate HELP Committee:

Letter to the Senate HELP Committee

April 13, 2015

Dear Senator:

On behalf of the three million members of the National Education Association and the students they serve, we would like to discuss our vision for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and how the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015, scheduled for markup tomorrow, measures up. We recognize there have been and will continue to be adjustments made to the bill. While important areas of improvement are still needed to help students, we believe the bill is moving in a positive direction. We will provide our views on select amendments to the bill tomorrow.

The last time ESEA was reauthorized, Congress did not listen enough to educators and parents—the result was No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which has not benefitted students nearly as much as intended and, in fact, has had many unintended negative consequences. Congress now has an opportunity to correct course and fulfill the original intent of ESEA. Fittingly, your work this week comes on the heels of the 50th anniversary of the signing of ESEA into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who appropriately said, “Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.” It is time to make good on that promise.

Reauthorization of ESEA is an opportunity to set a new vision of shared responsibility for public education that promotes opportunity, equity, and excellence for all students. Toward that end, we have urged Congress fulfill three core goals:

• Creation of a new accountability system with an “opportunity dashboard” as its centerpiece. The dashboard should include data on attendance and graduation rates, as well as students’ access to resources and supports such as advanced coursework, fully qualified teachers, specialized instructional personnel, high-quality early education programs, and arts and athletic programs.
• Giving students more time to learn by addressing over-testing and decoupling the tests from high-stakes decisions. Less high-stakes testing would allow teachers to spend more one-on-one time with students, especially those most in need of extra help, and undo narrowing of the curriculum. States and school districts also need flexibility to determine which tests provide the most useful information to help educators improve instruction and help students learn.
• Ensuring all students have access to qualified educators who are empowered to lead. Every student deserves committed, caring, and qualified educators who are empowered to focus on what is most important: student learning. To help ensure that the expertise of accomplished educators shapes policy and practice, incentives should be provided for educator-led professional development for all school personnel, including education support professionals.  

The Every Child Achieves Act takes a number of steps in the right direction, but also has drawbacks that should be improved going forward. We do want to acknowledge the leadership of Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray in making these significant improvements in the manager’s package:

• The addition of multiple measures of success used by elementary and middle schools. The initial draft bill already included multiple measures for high schools.
• The requirement of student support and school success indicators in state-designed accountability systems, such as access to advanced coursework, access to school counselors or nurses, and access to fine arts and regular physical education. Requiring such indicators is necessary to ensure that states report—and act on—opportunity gaps in order to provide all students with the tools and resources needed to succeed.  

Detailed analysis

Additionally, we are pleased by provisions of the bill in these key areas:   

• Voice of educators. The bill acknowledges the critical role of all educators: principals, teachers, education support professionals (including paraprofessionals), and specialized instructional support personnel (like school counselors). It also promotes school leader and teacher residency programs. We are hopeful the bill can be strengthened so that committees of stakeholders can diagnose and propose improvement plans for struggling schools.
• Accountability system. The bill replaces the unworkable system of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in NCLB that led to the intense focus on over-testing and unfair labeling and punishing of schools. It also replaces the one-size-fits-all system of sanctions and interventions—including the requirement to devote 20 percent of funds to supplemental educational services (SES) and school choice—with a more flexible system: locally determined supports and interventions based on a needs assessment in the identified school. The disaggregation of data for racial, ethnic, and other subgroups of students is preserved, which will help maintain transparency about how schools and students are performing. The bill also allows for alternative standards and assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities.
• School quality and climate. The bill requires state report cards to include information on indicators such as discipline, absenteeism, bullying and harassment, teacher retention, expenditures and class size, as well as data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
• Labor-management collaboration. The bill strengthens labor-management collaboration by retaining the savings clause (collective bargaining protections) in Title I and adding it to Title II.
• Funding. Unlike H.R. 5, this bill preserves maintenance of effort provisions—to preserve state investment in our schools—and does not include Title I portability. The bill also allows funding to be used to improve equitable access to teachers, principals, and other school leaders, and to reduce class sizes for low-income and minority students.
• Family engagement. The bill expands the language governing parent involvement to include extended family and guardians.   

At the same time, we are concerned that the bill falls short in these areas:  

• Closing opportunity gaps. While the manager’s package moves in a better direction, the bill should go further in helping to close opportunity gaps by requiring a broader range of student support and school success indicators to be part of the accountability system, and ensuring that states are held accountable for closing those gaps. Closing opportunity gaps is our highest priority because it will do the most to help ensure students are college- and career-ready.
• Testing. The current mandatory testing regime is left intact, with all 17 tests required by NCLB continuing—14 in reading and mathematics (annually in grades 3-8, once in high school) plus 3 in science (once in elementary, middle and high school), meaning students will still have less time available for learning than they should. Simply put, this bill does nothing to reduce the excessive testing happening across the country. It does not address the number of federally-mandated tests, nor does it require states and districts to take steps to stop the overuse and misuse of tests throughout the school year.

The bill would be improved with the inclusion of grade-span testing (once in elementary, middle and high school) to allow students to focus more on critical thinking and less on rote memorization. We believe the bill’s pilot state-designed assessment system should be accessible to all states that meet the criteria; arbitrarily determined factors should not curtail the expansion of innovation, especially since the pilot is an opportunity to create assessment systems driven by teaching and learning factors rather than accountability alone.

• School segregation. The provision on public school choice does not include language to prevent re-segregation of schools. At a time when our student population is becoming more diverse, federal policy must ensure that diversity is recognized as a national strength and that we do not take a step backwards from the gains of Brown v. Board of Educationwith respect to school integration.
• Educator pay/qualifications. The bill promotes pay for performance, which research shows does not work. Additionally, states should be encouraged to ensure that all educators are profession-ready and that they have the supports needed to be successful.
• Student performance. The bill is inconsistent in that it allows alternative assessments for students with disabilities, but then continues the arbitrary cap of 1 percent on the number of such students who may take them. We believe parents and educators can better make this decision on an individual student basis. The bill also eliminates programmatic focus/national attention on student access to AP/IB programs and dropout prevention initiatives. Additionally, English-language learners are not given enough time to attain proficiency before their test scores are used for accountability purposes.
• Charter schools. The bill largely preserves the status quo: an aggressive federal push to expand the charter sector coupled with weak and inadequate requirements for accountability, transparency, and equity.
• Funding. The bill fails to provide dedicated funding for key elements of education that help ensure student success, such as high-quality preschool, educational technology, after-school programs, and Promise Neighborhoods; instead they are reduced to “allowable uses.” The “pay for success” initiatives in Title IV raise a host of concerns, including the potential to outsource public education services.

Again, we are hopeful that further improvements will be made to address equal educational opportunities for students and look forward to working with you this week to ensure that the bill helps the students it is intended to serve. Our goal remains a final ESEA reauthorization that truly promotes opportunity, equity, and excellence for all students.  

Sincerely,

Mary Kusler
Director of Government Relations

NEA - Letter to the Senate HELP Committee:

NSBA Letter to Senate HELP Committee Prior to Mark-Up of the Every Child Achieves Act

Monday, April 13, 2015

Federal Advocacy Resources

In this letter to Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, NSBA Executive Director Thomas J. Gentzel applauds the Committee's bipartisan effort to modernize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) through its introduction of the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA). In advance of the Committee's mark-up of the bill, the letter outlines NSBA's priorities. These are measures NSBA believes will allow school districts throughout the country to have the flexibility they need to successfully address the educational challenges faced in school board members' local communities. These priorities include strong local governance, the exclusion of Title I portability provisions and the inclusion of maintenance of effort (MOE) provisions, as well as full federal investments in Title I. Mr. Gentzel closes the letter by urging Committee members to oppose any proposals supporting vouchers or tuition tax credits to non-public schools.

 NSBA-Letter-to-Alexander-and-Murray-Every-Child-Achieves-Act-2015.pdf

- See more at: http://www.nsba.org/nsba-letter-senate-help-committee-prior-mark-every-child-achieves-act-0#sthash.PSJEYYys.dpuf

AFT, NABE, TESOL on Senate Bipartisan ESEA Bill

Encouraging Signs for English Language Learners and Their Teachers

WASHINGTON—Leaders of three organizations representing the majority of educators who teach English language learners said Monday they are encouraged by the Senate bipartisan Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization proposal.

“The proposed bill represents a significant step forward to support the academic and language needs of ELLs, to adequately prepare teachers to work with ELLs, and to promote equity,” said leaders of the American Federation of Teachers, the National Association for Bilingual Education, and TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) International Association, in a statement to their members.

One of the most important provisions in the bill, said AFT President Randi Weingarten, would be to give English language learners with basic or little English proficiency a three-year grace period before taking English language arts assessments in English. “This is a significant step toward more appropriately assessing English learners, and it better aligns with what research shows and educators know: that it takes time to learn English. ELLs need enough time to be part of the English-language culture. We’ve seen testing after one year, and it’s just not fair or right. This is an example of the commonsense provisions Sens. Murray and Alexander have put in their bill.”

English language learners—preK-12 students who are working toward becoming proficient in the English language—are one of the fastest-growing student populations. The goals of these three organizations include promoting educational excellence and equity for ELLs to ensure they are able to meet the same challenging college- and career-ready standards required of all students.

Leaders from the three organizations said they were pleased the Senate bill includes funds for professional development for general education and mainstream educators who have not worked with ELLs, and funds to help recruit, retain, mentor and induct educators of ELLs and ELLs with disabilities.

Weingarten said Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) took an important bipartisan first step in reclaiming the original purpose of ESEA, which was to help children, particularly those at risk, and address education equity.

“This is a significant and great beginning of a long legislative process to get a final bill that provides the right resources and policies for those with the most needs, including ELLs, and for their teachers,” Weingarten said.

Santiago Wood, executive director of the National Association for Bilingual Education, said the bill is encouraging, and NABE will work on making it better as the legislative process continues. “We will be advocating for high-quality bilingual education programs, considering we live in a globally competitive economy and all students could benefit from learning more than one language,” Wood said.

“We will focus our efforts on promoting a strong collaboration between English as a second language teachers and other teachers for the benefit of this diverse student population. This collaboration is at the heart of effective instruction for ELLs,” said Rosa Aronson, executive director of TESOL International Association.


The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is expected to take up the Alexander-Murray bill on Tuesday.

Teachers unions on the rise again in New Orleans, 10 years after charters pushed them out - The Hechinger Report

Teachers unions on the rise again in New Orleans, 10 years after charters pushed them out - The Hechinger Report:
Teachers unions on the rise again in New Orleans, 10 years after charters pushed them out

 Teachers sporting “proud to be charter and union” buttons filled almost every seat in Morris Jeff Community School’s library on Tuesday in anticipation of the New Orleans campus’ board of directors vote to recognize their union.

The room buzzed with excitement, and the audience was rewarded with a unanimous board acknowledgement of the union, putting the five-year old charter school onto a barely blazed trail.

Like most urban districts, teachers in the New Orleans Public Schools for decades worked under union-negotiated contracts. But after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, with devastated infrastructure and too few students, the school year was effectively cancelled and the city’s teachers were eventually laid off.

That set off a sweeping wrongful termination lawsuit on behalf of nearly 7,000 teachers that was dismissed by the Louisiana Supreme Court in October but still has a slight chance before the U.S. Supreme Court. With the state takeover of a majority of the district’s schools, and the eventual chartering of all but five city schools, collective bargaining essentially disappeared.

Related: Do charter schools need teachers unions?    

The move by the Morris Jeff board to establish a contract with the union is the second action by a city charter school in the past month that indicates teachers — and school operators — may be willing to give unions a role in education.

Broadly speaking, charters were envisioned as a way to free educators from following tightly scripted tradition and common practice in education, and that includes running a campus without unions. Still, unions are popping up at charter schools nationwide, though it’s by no means a swelling trend.

The American Federation of Teachers, one of the country’s two major teachers unions, said it has collective bargaining contracts with 213 charter schools. The National Education Association didn’t immediately respond to a request for precisely how many charters it’s involved with, but has indicated in previous reports that it represents hundreds more.

Three weeks ago, the United Teachers of New Orleans, AFT’s local affiliate, secured its first collective-bargaining contract of the past decade, at Benjamin Franklin High School.

“It is the first and only charter school in the state to have collective bargaining,” UTNO President Larry Carter said.

Franklin’s board unanimously approved the 25-page agreement. The highly rated charter high school, located on the University of New Orleans campus, requires students to test in and is overseen by the Orleans Parish School Board.

Franklin teachers began to organize about a year ago, after staff noticed discrepancies in their salaries.

Now the Morris Jeff teachers are right behind them, and seeking their guidance.

Third-grade teacher Rowan Shafer said she and her colleagues have talked with Benjamin Franklin staff.

“Mostly, we’re really looking forward to having open dialogue,” Shafer said.

Shafer was part of the group that first organized at Morris Jeff. The charter school actually was the first in the city to recognize a teacher’s association. That happened two years ago when the board recognized the Morris Jeff Association of Educators, but that group never negotiated a contract with the board.

Related: In New Orleans schools, decentralization creates confusion over who exactly is in charge when there’s a problem

Tuesday’s vote recognized that a majority of teachers petitioned to move to a new group, supported by the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT). UTNO is the longstanding union that used to represent teachers before Teachers unions on the rise again in New Orleans, 10 years after charters pushed them out - The Hechinger Report:

Department of Education Believes Video Games are the Future of Learning - Yahoo Games

Department of Education Believes Video Games are the Future of Learning - Yahoo Games:

Department of Education Believes Video Games are the Future of Learning

 VIDEO: MinecraftEdu is Coming To Schools Near You [07:10]

Kids are playing more video games than ever these days. At least according to data from the US Department of Education. That might be cause for some to worry about the intellectual future of the next generation, but Erik Martin disagrees.

Martin is in charge of the Department of Education's Games for Learning program, which will hold a conference to discuss the future of video games and schooling. Speaking to Polygon, he said, "If you look at the life of a student a lot of [them] play on average about 10,000 hours of video games by the time they are graduating high school. That is almost the same amount of time they are spending in schools. You can imagine a lot of the time which of the two activities they might feel more engaged in or more relevant."

Right now, educational games have some hefty stereotypes associated with them. By bringing educators, researchers, students, and game makers together, Martin thinks that can change.

"If you can take that experience of getting outside of school and make it feel just as relevant and just as compelling when they're in school learning stuff and doing stuff and doing something that's interesting and educational, that's the bridging we want to provide."

"This is not about looking at games because they are cool or they are fun, they're a real educational solution."

One of gaming's largest publishers, Ubisoft, will be attending the conference and presenting about games like Assassin's Creed which relies on a high degree of historical accuracy. "Over the years we've heard of universities across US using the games to engage students," Ubisoft Public relations director Michael Beadle told Polygon. "[They] compare the in-game history with the history they learned in class to show students what these periods of history look like visually."

Ubisoft consults with historians and linguists to ensure accuracy for many of their characters and groups, including the Kanien'kesga:ka (Mohawk) nation from Assassin's Creed III as Forbes explains in this article. "History is a core component of the Assassins' Creed franchise," Beadle said, "and one that we know has taught millions of players over the years about key characters and historical events by experiencing pivotal moments in history."

Games for Learning is just the most recent initiative to push for integrating video games into schools. Almost three years ago, we reported on a special version of Minecraft that had been adapted to help Department of Education Believes Video Games are the Future of Learning - Yahoo Games:

New York standardized test boycott: Parents oppose emphasis on results - San Jose Mercury News

New York standardized test boycott: Parents oppose emphasis on results - San Jose Mercury News:

New York standardized test boycott: Parents oppose emphasis on results

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) -- Parent leaders of the movement to boycott New York's standardized tests say opting children out could do more for their education than the tests could.

As English assessments are given Tuesday through Thursday to more than 1 million third- through eighth-grade students, tens of thousands of others are expected, with their parents' permission, to refuse to take them with the hope of eventually changing state policy.

Parent critics and teachers unions say the tests and time spent preparing for them take away from creative instruction and that tying results to annual teacher and school rankings has only worsened the problem.

"The connection between these tests and the teacher evaluations and the school evaluations has changed the entire culture of what our kids are experiencing in school," said parent Eric Mihelbergel, whose fourth- and seventh-grade daughters will sit out the tests in the Kenmore-Tonawanda school district outside Buffalo. "Instead of the focus being on the student in school, now the focus is on the test."

Last year, about 49,000 students did not take the ELA test and about 67,000 sat out the math tests, according to the state Education Department. About 1.1 million students took each test. This year's math tests are scheduled for next week.

Mihelbergel, a member of New York Allies for Public Education, said Monday the group's goal this year is 250,000 opt-outs, or enough to dilute their usefulness in teacher evaluations. State tests count for between 20 and 40 percent of a teacher's mandatory Annual Professional Performance Review under the current statewide formula.

But authorities warn there may be financial implications, as well. Federal law requires states to assess students in grades 3-8 each year and mandates that 95 percent of students in each school participate or risk losing federal funding, the New York State School Boards Association advised districts in a recent legal memo.

Although there were districts that fell short of the threshold last year, none have been sanctioned, state officials said.

"Any sanctions must be decided on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the degree and length of time the district has failed to meet participation rate requirements and the reasons for such failure," the Education Department said in an email.

Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the policy-setting Board of Regents, has said the assessments provide objective information about student progress and help identify students who need extra resources, particularly minority and special education students.

"Opting out could cost us much of the progress we have made, and damage the work that still needs to be done for our most vulnerable students," Tisch said after the head of the state's largest teachers union endorsed the opt-out movement. New York State United Teachers President Karen Magee's comments followed a contentious budget battle during which Gov. Andrew Cuomo had proposed doubling the weight of test results in teacher New York standardized test boycott: Parents oppose emphasis on results - San Jose Mercury News: