CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Charter Laws "Absolute Worst"

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Charter Laws "Absolute Worst":

PA: Charter Laws "Absolute Worst"

States have taken a variety of approaches to the business of replacing public schools with publicly funded private charters. In states like Florida and North Carolina, the focus has been on tearing down the public system to make room for the charters. But in Pennsylvania, the emphasis has been on making charters so easily lucrative that edu-preneurs find getting rich easier than printing money.PA Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has made charter law one of his regular talking points, and charter operators have provided him with ample fodder.

For instance, back in August Nicholas Trombetta finally pled guilty to a tax conspiracy charge that he had  fought for three years, a charge that he had defrauded taxpayers to the tune of $8 million. These were federal charges brought by a US Attorney in federal court; in other words, the state of Pennsylvania was continuing to let this guy do business as usual.

After the guilty plea, DePasquale took a look at Trombetta's business dealings. Trombetta is the founder-operator of PA Cyber Charter School (until 2012, just before the fertilizer met the fan) and also the founder of Lincoln Performing Arts Center School and some other charter-related businesses. DePasquale found a number of issues, including hiring family members for big-money jobs, and funneling giant gouts of money to a no-oversight management company. All shady and costing the taxpayers millions of dollars, but also, as DePasquale notes, perfectly legal under CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Charter Laws "Absolute Worst":

Oregon Save Our Schools: Smarter Balanced Fails to Show Any Merit

Oregon Save Our Schools: Smarter Balanced Fails to Show Any Merit:

Smarter Balanced Fails to Show Any Merit

The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) added information in the opt out form packet that states that if a student doesn’t take the Smarter Balanced Exam (SBAC), then valuable learning information will be lost.  What is this valuable information?  How would this information be used to guide instruction?

Last year, I was called into a full-day meeting to go over the first year’s SBAC results with the intent of looking at what areas of instruction we needed to focus on.  At the end of the day and after contact with ODE experts, we were unable to get one piece of information about which areas we would need to put extra time in for instruction.  We were told that we would have to give additional formative assessments to get that information.  So what were we told is the purpose of the test?  Accountability.  

When the projected cut scores were first released they showed that English Language Learners (ELL) students, had a projected rate pass rate of 5% or less in some of the grades, I filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights.  My complaint was rejected because they said that since most everyone would be failing, then I couldn’t prove discrimination against any protected class, such as ELL or Special Education students.

You don’t need to be an expert in data or statistics to come to the conclusion that this test is not valid.  It does not give teachers the information they need to determine how to better make students college and career ready.  The results don’t Oregon Save Our Schools: Smarter Balanced Fails to Show Any Merit:

Racial Profiling in Preschool - The New York Times

Racial Profiling in Preschool - The New York Times:

Racial Profiling in Preschool

Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

That black adolescents receive harsher disciplinary punishments at school than their white peers for the same offenses is troubling enough. But federal data showing that even at the preschool level black students are nearly four times as likely to be suspended as their white peers is especially shocking. What it suggests is that racial biases are creeping into classrooms filled with 4-year-olds and that schools are effectively criminalizing black children, particularly boys, when they are barely out of diapers.

Two years ago, federal civil rights officials issued guidance calling on school districts to train their teachers to overcome this problem and showing districts how to recognize and avoid discriminatory practices. But researchers are just beginning to understand the psychological mechanisms that lead teachers who see themselves as loving, supportive figures to discriminate against minorities.

Chief among these mechanisms, according to a new report from Yale University’s Child Study Center, are racial preconceptions that shape the way the teachers view black boys in particular. These preconceptions were found to exist in black as well as white preschool teachers.

In the study, the Yale researchers showed teachers a dozen brief video clips of four well-behaved preschool-aged children, two boys, one black and one white, and two girls, one black and one white, working and playing together in a classroom. Though the children were behaving calmly, the teachers were asked to look for signs of behavior that might become problematic.

A computer program that tracked the eyes of the teachers as they watched the video showed that both black and white teachers watched the black children, especially the boys, longer when looking for signs of trouble. And when the researchers asked teachers which child had commanded the most attention, 42 percent of them chose the black boy, 34 percent the white boy, 13 percent the white girl and 10 percent the black girl.

In other words, the black boy in this study received far more scrutiny from teachers than his behavior warranted. This brings to mind the “driving while black” phenomenon, in which police officers stop African-American motorists without cause, or stop-and-frisk practices that predominantly single out blacks.

The Yale study is consistent with previous research suggesting that teachers tend to see “acting out” by black children as more threatening than similar behavior in white children, and thus deserving of disproportionately harsher punishments.

This is counterproductive on a number of counts, but what’s really at stake here is the future of these children, whose early disciplinary problems put them at greater risk later on of falling behind, dropping out and eventually getting caught up in the juvenile justice system.Racial Profiling in Preschool - The New York Times:

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Racial Profiling in Preschool - The New York Times:

The Common Good & Education - The Crucial Voice of the People

The Common Good & Education - The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People:

The Common Good & Education

Republican political analyst and writer David Brooks’ spoke about Character and The Common Good last week in Boise, Idaho. His conflicting views on the importance of community versus our current education “reforms” were striking — to me.

Is doing what is right for the next generation considered a common good?

Brooks spoke about how love, relationships, and friendly interactions changes lives.

He believes the country is suffering from “a crisis of the social fabric.” He sees the hope for humanity in communities’ picking up communities thereby building a “denser moral fabric.”

He knows we are divided by education.

He feels our need for personal relationships.

He sees how both Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln supported “limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility.”

But my theory here is that David Brooks can’t see how education reform policies are destroying our social fabric. There’s a couple of reasons. One, A Nation At Risk (in his own words) marks his involvement with education reform. And two, if you view education reforms from a narrow political perch you can easily fall off. If you fall off, you can’t see far enough back to clearly view the road to educational quality and equality. You can’t see our history.

But, let’s consider the education reform road he, and the nation, traveled.

After the release of A Nation At Risk in 1983, there was a flurry of media sound bites unleashed on the public (more propaganda than substance). But what followed is what The Common Good & Education - The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People:

LINE IN THE SAND IN THE FIGHT FOR OUR SCHOOLS

LINE IN THE SAND IN THE FIGHT FOR OUR SCHOOLS

by Herman Davis

TODAY! Come GOTV with me from 3-5pm at HRC downtown campaign office & get FREE tickets to Northland Roller Skating Rink!  Michigan is a battleground state. Shuette is disenfranchising us everyday!!!!  Michigan is ground zero.  Trump agrees and he wants vouchers.  Across our nation Republicans are disenfranchising our vote, our school boards, our schools. How much will we take.  I'm not laying down, today or ever.  I'm 77 years old and I want my right to vote for how my tax dollars are spent.  Don't you want a say? For 17 years the state has controlled DPS and look what we got. Since 2012, he has given the Board NO SAY!  It is wrong.  We can't lay down and let a bully become President. We can't let this spread across the state and the county.  So please come out to make sure family & friends are registered to vote. 

Herman Davis

I AM FIGHTING FOR YOU!

------400 Monroe St. #409 Detroit MI 48226  3-5pm

----- Grosse Pointe HRC Headquarters on Mack  -7pm

GIVE ME MY VOTING RIGHTS!!  

Latino Students: A Portrait In Numbers : NPR Ed : NPR

Latino Students: A Portrait In Numbers : NPR Ed : NPR:

Latino Students: A Portrait In Numbers

Latinos are by far the fastest growing chunk ofthe U.S. school population. A new report by the National Council of La Raza gives a fascinating snapshot of this fast-growing population.

Here are some highlights:

Demographics

• Over the last 15 years, Latino enrollment has significantly outpaced that of whites and African-Americans.
• Latinos under the age of 18 now total 18.2 million, a 47 percent jump since 2000.
• Though white children are still the majority in this age group — 52 percent — Latino children are projected to make up about a third of total pre-K-12 enrollment by 2023.
• The percentage of Latino children whose parents were born in the U.S. now dwarfs the number of Latino children whose parents were foreign born, 46 to 6 percent. States in the southeastern U.S., led by Tennessee and South Carolina, have seen the most dramatic increases in second-generation Latino children. In other words ...
• Immigration is no longer the primary factor driving Latino population growth. Overall, 95 percent of Latinos 18 and younger are U.S. born.

Achievement: The Good News

• By all accounts, school-age Latinos are doing better academically today than 15 years ago.
• Eight out of 10 are graduating from high school on time.
• Six out of 10 come from households where the mother also earned a high school diploma. Thats good news because a mother's level of education is a key predictor of children's academic success.

The not so good news from the NCLR report is that Latino students still face big challenges.

• Latino children are more likely to live in poverty and lack health care.
• Two in five Latino children between ages 10 and 17 are overweight or obese. Diabetes, asthma and depression are growing problems too.

All of this, of course, has far-reaching implications, not just for Latino youth but for the nation's schools.

This is probably most evident/pressing in the challenge of educating English Language Learners (ELLs).

• Of the more than 5 million ELL students in the U.S., more than 4 million are Spanish-speaking.

In a section titled "Education and Language," the NCLR study points out that even Latino children who start school speaking English are struggling, in part because too many are concentrated in low-performing schools with poorly trained teachers.

Poverty may not be destiny, but it sure does have an impact on teaching and learning.

Achievement: Challenges Remain

• Only 21 percent of Latino eighth-graders read at a "proficient" or "advanced" level, compared with 44 percent of white eighth-graders, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
• The numbers for eighth-grade math are no better.
• Latino children ages 3 to 5 are significantly underrepresented in preschool programs, compared with white or black children. The research shows that this "school readiness" gap has long-term consequences.
• More than 20 percent of Latino teenagers do not graduate from high school.

The NCLR report doesn't offer much that's surprising, but looked at overall, it paints a troubling picture. The data points put in context the ways in which the Latino population is evolving and maturing.

And given its implications for the future, it's data that educators and policy-makers should take seriously.Latino Students: A Portrait In Numbers : NPR Ed : NPR:

 

The Coleman Report at 50: Was Coleman “Right,” Have We Made Progress? What Have We Learned? | Ed In The Apple

The Coleman Report at 50: Was Coleman “Right,” Have We Made Progress? What Have We Learned? | Ed In The Apple:

The Coleman Report at 50: Was Coleman “Right,” Have We Made Progress? What Have We Learned?

Fifty years after the release of the Coleman Report Johns Hopkins University commissioned fourteen scholars to examine the findings of the report and convened a conference to discuss the research papers. The papers can be read on the Russell Sage Foundation website.

Ten years after the 1954 Board v Board of Education Supreme Court decision called for the end of school segregation “with all deliberate speed,” the pace of desegregation was minimal; however, less than a year after the assassination of JFK President Johnson signed an iconic piece of legislation: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Under Title 1 of the law federal dollars would flow to high poverty schools; while the pace of school desegregation might be slow at least resources would assist schools in repairing the damage of segregation. The law also required a study to emphasize the “lack of availability of equal educational access.” The law stated,

The Commissioner [of Education] shall conduct a survey and make a report to the President and the Congress, within two years of the enactment, concerning the lack of availability of equal educational opportunity for individuals by reason of race, color, religion, or national origin in public institutions at all levels in the United States, its territories and possessions, and the District of Columbia.

James Coleman, a professor at Johns Hopkins University was commissioned to “conduct a survey and make a report to the President.”

The report concluded that school resource disparities revolving around race distinctively were not large … differences by race within the same geographic space generally were small, too small to account for what today we call the black-white achievement gap.

The report was not what Congress expected and it was released on the 4th of July in 1966, clearly hoping the report would not receive media scrutiny. The findings of the report were “truly groundbreaking … both surprising and, for many, disappointing.”

The key findings:

1. differences across schools in average achievement levels were small compared to differences in achievement levels within schools;
2. the differences in achievement levels detected did not align appreciably with differences in school resources other than the socioeconomic makeup of the student body; and
3. family background factors afforded a much more powerful accounting of achievement differences than did any and all characteristics of the schools that children attended

Read the introductory paper herehttp://www.rsfjournal.org/doi/full/10.7758/RSF.2016.2.5.03

Sean Reardon, from Stanford University, looks at the findings of the 1966 report and data today: do the findings hold up to scrutiny?

Rather depressingly Reardon finds “… clear evidence that one aspect of The Coleman Report at 50: Was Coleman “Right,” Have We Made Progress? What Have We Learned? | Ed In The Apple:

Yong Zhao: From Deficiency to Strength: Shifting the Mindset about Education Inequality

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » From Deficiency to Strength: Shifting the Mindset about Education Inequality:

From Deficiency to Strength: Shifting the Mindset about Education Inequality

The “achievement gap” as a symptom of persistent social inequity has plagued American education and society for decades. The vast chasm in academic achievement has long existed along racial and poverty lines. Children of color and from low-income families have, on average, performed worse on virtually all indicators of academic success: standardized test scores, high school graduation rates, and college matriculation rates. This gap perpetuates the existing inequalities in society. Efforts to close the achievement gap have had little effect. The gap remains and has actually widened. This article argues the gap is symptomatic of the deficit-driven education paradigm. Fixing the traditional paradigm is unlikely to close the gap because the paradigm reinforce and reproduces educational and social inequity by design. To work toward more educational and social equity, we need to adopt a different paradigm of education. The new paradigm should work on cultivating strengths of individual students instead of fixing their deficits.

From Deficiency to Strength: Shifting the Mindset about Education Inequality

The “achievement gap” has plagued American education and society for decades (Coleman & al., 1966; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Valencia, 2015) (Carter & Welner, 2013; Jencks & Phillips, 1998; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Valencia, 2010). The vast chasm in academic achievement has long existed along racial and poverty lines. Children of color and from low-income families have, on average, performed worse on virtually all indicators of academic success: standardized test scores, high school graduation rates, and college matriculation rates (Duncan & J.Murnane, 2011) (Bailey & Dynaski, 2011; Ford & Grantham, 2003; Fryer & Levitt, 2004; Reardon, 2011; The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2010, 2013) (J. A. Plucker, Burroughs, N. A., & Song, R., 2010) (J. A. Plucker, Hardesty, & Burroughs, 2013).

The “achievement gap” has become synonymous with educational inequality. It not only is morally unacceptable and antithetical to the American ideal of equal opportunities for all (Arrow, Bowles, & Durlauf, 2000; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 2006), but also has serious social and economic consequences (The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2010) (J. A. Plucker, Burroughs, N. A., & Song, R., 2010; The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2013) (Darling-Hammond, 2010; Jencks & Phillips, 1998; J. A. Plucker et al., 2013). Closing the achievement gap has thus become synonymous with removing inequality in education. Supposedly if the achievement gap is closed, education equity will be achieved, which in turn will bring more upward mobility for the poor and break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and inequality (Jencks & Phillips, 1998; The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2010, 2013).

However, closing the achievement gap has proven to be an extremely difficult task. Despite decades of efforts, the gap between the poor and the rich has not narrowed significantly; neither has the gap between children of color and their White counterparts (J. A. Plucker et al., 2013; The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2013).  It actually has widened (Reardon, 2011). The drastic policies such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, the many pedagogical innovations, and the tireless efforts of educators did not seem to have turned schools into an effective mechanism to alter the trajectory set by children’s family background before they arrive at school. Today, factors associated with a child’s home remain a much more powerful predictors of their future than schools (Bailey & Dynaski, 2011; Duncan & J.Murnane, 2011; Fryer & Levitt, 2004; Reardon, 2011; The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2010).

There are many and complex reasons for the lack of progress in closing the achievement gap or improving the education of the poor. The efforts and investment may have been too little and too late to chip away the education debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006) owed to the poor. Many of them are also ethnic minorities. The schools they attend, the neighborhoods they live in, and their home environments are much worse resourced and more challenging than their wealthier suburban fellow citizens (Darling-Hammond, 2010; Valencia, 2015). We need effective policies and actions to counter racism, improve communities, upgrade schools facilities, enhance the quality of teachers, and provide early learning programs for disadvantaged children.

However, these macro-level changes (Valencia, 2015) are difficult to effect, to say the least. They require tremendous political will, massive financial investment, breaking deeply rooted stereotypes, and changing time honored institutions and practices (Darling-Hammond, 2010; Jencks & Phillips, 1998; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Valencia, 2015). None of these tasks is easy and all of them take time, time that we do not have if we are to help the millions of children already in born into disadvantaged schools and communities.

The place where more immediate changes can occur is schools. While it takes time and resources to improve the material conditions of poor schools and the quality of teachers, what happens in a school can be changed more quickly. The sweeping changes in curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment that happened in American schools under No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are good evidence, although the changes were misguided and did not significantly benefit students, poor and wealthy. The Common Core and related standards-based, test-driven accountability reforms have also had quick impact on schools, although for the worse (Tienken & Orlich, 2013; Tienken & Zhao, 2013; Valencia, 2010).

One primary reason that the rapid and widespread changes under No Child Left Behind did not and cannot improve the education for disadvantaged students is that they were aimed to improve the existing education paradigm, which was designed to reproduce the existing social stratification and perpetuate social inequality (Au, 2008; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Brown, 1995, 2003; Collins, 1979; Veselý, 2012; Zanten, 2005). In other words, the achievement gap is a logical, and to some degree intended, outcome of the existing paradigm. The gap is used as justification for sorting people into different social and economic strata so as to ensure the existing social order continues. Improvement of such a paradigm can do little to alter the fate of the already disadvantaged at the best and at the worst exacerbates their conditions.

What we need are policies and practices that transform, rather than improve, the existing education paradigm. Efforts to improve the existing paradigm are not only unable to close the achievement gap and lift people out of poverty, but also threaten the future of all children because the paradigm has become outdated in the face of recent societal changes brought about by technology (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014; Goldin & Katz, 2008; Keeley, 2015) (World Economic Forum, 2016). Thus for the betterment of all children, the prevalent education paradigm must be abandoned and a new one be invented.

This article brings together the literature on educational inequity and points out the fundamental flaws of the conceptualization of the achievement gap as well as problems with attempts to close the achievement gap. It further brings evidence to suggest an alternative paradigm of education. It concludes with recommendations for policy makers, education leaders, and researchers.

Deficit-driven Meritocracy

The education paradigm that determines what happens in schools today can be best characterized as a deficit-driven meritocracy. It operates like a meritocracy and is designed to serve a meritocracy. At the same time, it practices the deficit mindset and focuses on fixing the deficiencies of children. Both characteristics work together to perpetuate inequality and threaten to widen the achievement gap, when further perfected.

Meritocracy

Coined by the British sociologist Michael Young in his book first published in1958 (Young, 1959), the term meritocracy is used to describe a dystopian society that assigns individuals into different occupations based on their merit, defined as intelligence and efforts and measured by IQ tests. The book was a satire meant to be a warning of such a society (Young, 2001). However, much to the chagrin of the author, the term has somehow transformed from a pejorative term into a positive ideal embraced by political leaders and the general public, especially in the United States (Allen, 2011; Celarent, 2009; Lemann, 2000; Young, 2001).

The appeal of meritocracy stems from its ostensible fairness and justness (Allen, 2011). In a meritocratic system, individuals are rewarded for their own merits (Sen, 2000) and social stratification is based on individual ability and efforts (Allen, 2011; Kaus, 1992b; Young, 2001) rather than inheritance. It promises to give everyone a fair chance for social ascendance if they have the ability and put in efforts. Thus, meritocracy is very consistent with the American dream.

American public education did not technically begin with a meritocratic mindset. It started being open, comprehensive, forgiving, and accessible to all children without sorting them based on their test scores at an early age (Goldin & Katz, 2008), which is very different from the more explicit meritocratic systems such as China (Zhao, 2014) and the U.K. (Young, 2001). However, there is no doubt that American education as a whole espouses and practices the essence of meritocracy in a number of ways. First, standardized test scores such as IQ and SAT have been used to grant or deny access to educational opportunities ranging from different levels of universities to talented and gifted programs in schools (Lemann, 2000). Second, credentials or different levels of education attainment have been used as primary determinant in the Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » From Deficiency to Strength: Shifting the Mindset about Education Inequality:

Judge botched rulings on education policy by Wendy Lecker - Wait What?

Judge botched rulings on education policy by Wendy Lecker - Wait What?:

Judge botched rulings on education policy by Wendy Lecker

Education advocate and columnist Wendy Lecker returns to the recent CCJEF v. Rell legal decision in her weekend piece in the Stamford Advocate.  You can read and comment on her piece at:  http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Wendy-Lecker-Judge-botched-rulings-on-education-9945947.php

Judge botched rulings on education policy by Wendy Lecker

In issuing his decision in the CCJEF school-funding case last month, Judge Thomas Moukawsher claimed he was faithfully following the dictates of the Connecticut Supreme Court. However, it is clear that the judge ignored a major warning by our highest court: that the judiciary is “ill-equipped” to deal with educational policy matters. Nowhere is this disregard of the court’s warning more evident than in Moukawsher’s rulings on high school and teacher evaluation. In these rulings, the judge contravened the mountain of academic and experiential evidence showing that what he proposes is dead wrong.

First, the judge declared that Connecticut should institute standardized high school exit exams. The judge decided that because Connecticut does not have “rational” and “verifiable” high school standards, meaning standards measured by a high school exit exam, Connecticut diplomas for students in poor districts are “patronizing and illusory.” He concluded that the cure for this problem is standardized, “objective” exams that students must pass to graduate.

In pushing this proposal, the judge relied heavily on one defense witness, Dr. Eric Hanushek, a witness whose testimony has been flatly rejected in school funding cases across the country. Hanushek claimed that Massachusetts’ status as the “education leader” in the country was a result of instituting an exit exam.

Had the judge examined the evidence, however, he would have discovered that Massachusetts’ high school exit exam has increased dropout rates for the state’s most vulnerable students. In fact, as the New America Foundation reported, decades of research on exit exams nationwide show two things: students are not any better off with Judge botched rulings on education policy by Wendy Lecker - Wait What?:

 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: A warm welcome

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: A warm welcome:

A warm welcome

Joining in on dancing around the campfire

After some 15 hours in their rented vans, a tired, but fired-up group of Chicago students rolled into Standing Rock about 6 p.m. Kudos to LSNA adult leaders Nancy and Juliet for doing the bulk of the driving.

First stop was the Lower Brule Sioux camp where they were welcomed by camp elders, Travis and Louis. Within an hour, while there was still enough sunlight, students had assembled their tents and camping gear. Not bad for a bunch of city kids.

Putting up the tents.

Then we marched up the hill to the main camp to join in to the evening rituals -- traditional campfire, singing, dancing, drumming.

One by one, students took the community mic, introduced themselves and talked about why they had come.

Some talked about their identity quest after learning about their DNA links to indigenous and African ancestry. Others about their struggles back in their own community against gentrification and displacement.

They were greeted with loud applause and then a long line of tribal members and visitors welcomed each one personally with handshakes and hugs. It was a scene I will always carry with me.

After joining in on the dancing,  we hiked back down the hill where Lower Brule folks had built us a fire and cooked up some chili and hot coffee to help take the chill out of the evening air. More talk. More stories exchanged.

A great beginning.Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: A warm welcome:

 

Ms. Katie's Ramblings: An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton, From a Chicago Teacher

Ms. Katie's Ramblings: An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton, From a Chicago Teacher:

An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton, From a Chicago Teacher



Dear Madame Secretary,

I am writing to you today from Chicago on behalf of all the children, families, and staff in the middle of a massive manufactured crisis brewing in the Chicago Public Schools. A crisis in major part worsened by your friend, Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Rahm Emanuel and Hillary Clinton-AP

I am a special education teacher at an elementary school on the far South Side of the city in a high-poverty African-American community. Thanks to Rahm Emanuel's increased attacks on neighborhood public schools like ours, we are living under truly abhorrent conditions for teachers and students alike. My school is a survivor of his vicious, racist school closings from 2013 where the school down the street was forced into ours creating chaos and disruption for all involved. We have been beaten down by at least five separate rounds of budget cuts over the past 2 years since, with yet another round of cuts on the way. These cuts have seen lost teaching positions causing large class sizes (41 kindergartners in one classroom!), split classrooms (more than one grade in a class), and the laying off of other vital staff members. We no longer have a Librarian. We lost a much-needed clerk. We lost our Climate and Culture Coordinator and our mentoring program. CPS even has stolen our social worker and psychologist for all but a day or two a week despite the high number of children who have experienced trauma and need therapeutic services.

And we are indeed experiencing trauma. We are a school located in the middle of a neighborhood facing massive spikes in violence, thanks to Rahm's racist policies causing a lack of housing, jobs, and opportunity. Just yesterday, I sat huddled in my classroom, protecting my students during a lockdown as violence swirled around us, leaving a man dead on our streets just down the block and 2 others injured. As I comforted my students, crying and scared in the dark, the obscenity of Rahm's call for teachers to sacrifice MORE tore through my thoughts. Children at my school are in mental health crisis. Yet Rahm and his unelected school board have cut the very healing services we need now more than ever. As teachers, how can we allow these horrid conditions to stand?

Not only has Rahm gone after neighborhood schools, particularly in Black communities, but now he and CPS are coming after our most vulnerable population: students with special Ms. Katie's Ramblings: An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton, From a Chicago Teacher:

Teaching Senior Civics: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teaching Senior Civics: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Teaching Senior Civics: Technology Integration

Actors Morgan Freeman and Leonard DeCaprio, and the character from TV comedy The Office, Michael Scott, were nominees for U.S. president in the Senior Civics course I observed on September 12, 2016. The district requires the one-semester course for high school graduation. The unit was on political campaigns for the presidency and these actors were candidates that three of the five groups of 27 seniors had nominated. Each group, clicking away on their laptops and tablets while talking to one another were coming up with party labels, nominees and were working on writing a platform. As part of the unit, they would also be creating posters and video ads–all to get their candidate into the White House in November. I was watching a simulation of a presidential campaign .

Sarah Denniston (pseudonym) had invited me to visit her Northern California high school. Hacienda High School (pseudonym) has over 1900 students divided about half white and half minority (Asian and Latino). About 20 percent of the students are eligible for free and reduced lunch–a measure of poverty used in U.S. public schools. Over 95 percent attend college after graduation. About one-third of the students take Advanced Placement exams with well over 80 percent of test-takers qualifying for college credit. Sarah Denniston teaches AP European history and Senior Civics. A graduate (and track star) of the high school in which she now teaches, Denniston has been teaching 10 years at Hacienda.

The high school became a Bring-Your-Own-Device school two years ago. The district adopted BYOD following teacher- and administrator-initiated pilot projects that established nearly all students had laptops or tablets they could use for their classes and enough teachers were sufficiently skilled to integrate the Teaching Senior Civics: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Why Saying Black Lives Matter matters - Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association:

Why Saying Black Lives Matter matters

By Becca Ritchie, Member of the BAT Leadership Team and Washington State BATs  

I woke today thinking about the question one of my friends asked me. She said “I don’t get it, don’t all lives matter?” As I have moved through this thing called life, my journey has taught me many things. I am proud to say, “Black Lives Matter.” Here is what impacted my thinking and the actions in which I will be participating:

I grew up in suburban Tacoma. I remember attending a mostly Caucasian school for grades K-2. I recall lessons about Abraham Lincoln and how he “freed the slaves”. 1973 had lots of upheavals around race and as a five year old, I remember talking to the librarian while checking out a book and being very frustrated that black people didn’t like me simply because I was white. I echoed the sentiment that many others shared saying, “I never owned slaves. I don’t understand.” Oh, the naivety of a 5-year-old. During that same time, the red lining of the area I lived was evident, when looking back at historical archives. Two Jr. High Schools in my district were filled with mostly Caucasian students. One was “mixed” and then, there was Woodbrook. I remember even in Jr. High “knowing” the “good” schools and “bad” schools. It is curious that many years in the future, my first job was at Woodbrook, and I learned as much from the students as they did from me! But I digress…

When I was in 2nd grade, I had the BEST teacher. She danced with us at lunch time (I am showing my age because this was prior to a 30 minute duty free lunch), we baked on Fridays, and we learned so much about being caring human beings. I learned later in my life that my parents had to agree to have me in that class. They did the same for my brother, who had been in her class three years earlier. She was the only teacher of African descent in the building. I loved her and she taught us all how to be patient, to have fun and how to love learning. And more so, she taught me to accept people. This lesson was taught as I was the kid in class that teachers love! I always got to sit by “that kid” in my classes. You know the one that is constantly misbehaving. Two years of sitting by David in both 1st and 2nd grade helped Badass Teachers Association:

Personalized education started with special-ed 40 years ago - Business Insider

Personalized education started with special-ed 40 years ago - Business Insider:

The hottest trend in education actually started in special-ed classrooms 40 years ago

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have a lot in common.

They both have net worths in excess of a billion dollars, they both dropped out of Harvard, andthey both support a buzzy form of education known as personalized learning.

Schools that believe in personalized use technology to tailor lesson plans to specific student needs and goals.

That can look like software thatadjusts reading levels to kids' abilities or long-term plans to help a high-school freshman get into an Ivy.

Given its reliance on technology, personalized learning might seem like a recent solution. But the truth is, the model began in the mid-1970s and had no ties to tech at all. Personalized learning started in special education.

"It's been popularized by the techies, but it's really come from the teachers themselves who recognized that a one-size-fits-all approach is not the most effective way to teach the kids in their classroom," Jennifer Carolan, co-founder and senior partner at the education-focused venture capital firm Reach Capital, tells Business Insider. "We need more differentiated strategies."

Even if special-ed teachers and policymakers didn't use the term "personalized education" to describe the approach, they are essentially the same theories Gates, Zuckerberg, and others now use use to outline their vision for creating a 1:1 ratio between student and device.

In 1975, for instance, Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA). It ensured kids who were blind, deaf, or had other mental disabilities could receive an education that was comparable to their peers. At the time, more than 1 million students legally couldn't access public education because they were deemed unfit for normal schooling.

By 1990, the law had been renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. The law remained mostly the same in that students were guaranteed an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). Schools had to design these IEPs based on the students' unique needs.

Even to this day, one child's IEP might call for a teacher to read instruction aloud rather than write them down, while another child gets a designated reader or more time to complete an assignment.

In the 41 years since EHA was first enacted, a great deal of educational research has found the personalized approach is the most effective in raising student achievement.

A study published last year, for example, found that among 62 schools using personalized education, many of the kids scored higher in math and reading compared to kids learning normally. Many who were below-average scorers ended up above-average.

Another study, this one conducted by a personalized literacy platform called Newsela, looked at kids scoring below the 50th percentile in reading who regularly read Newsela articles and took quizzes. Ongoing collection of data showed the longer kids use the platform, the bigger their literacy gains. Kids who took 6 to 10 quizzes a month saw increases of 5 to 10 percentile points in three months. Over four months, they jumped 7 to 12 points. (The caveat, of course, is that Newsela itself conducted this study).

"That's like passing hundreds of thousands of kids," Matthew Gross, founder and CEO of Newsela, recently told Business Insider. "It's like they're speeding by them in the left lane of the highway."

At its heart, the lesson from special education should be a fairly obvious one — that each student comes from a different family, has different interests, different strengths and weaknesses, and thinks in different ways. These differences should influence how teachers teach.

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are big fans of personalized learning because technology is finally allowing teachers to do for all students what education has always tried to do, and what special-ed teachers have done for decades: teach every individual student effectively.

In a recent post on his blog Gates Notes, Gates expresses admiration for a Seattle-based charter school called Summit Sierra. At Summit Sierra, personalized learning is front and center. Kids guide their own instruction and use technology like tablets and laptops to help them go at their own pace.

"I love that approach," Gates writes. "When students get out in the world, they have to organize their own time, have goals, and realize what they're behind on. It's fantastic to see them getting a head start on those skills in school."Personalized education started with special-ed 40 years ago - Business Insider: