UPDATE VIDEO: NEA President to Representative Assembly: We Have the Power... and They Know It #NEARA17

NEA President to Representative Assembly: We Have the Power... and They Know It:

NEA President to Representative Assembly: We Have the Power… and They Know It

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia to the 96th NEA Representative Assembly - 2017 NEA Annual Meeting - https://ra.nea.org/speech/2017/remarks-preapred-delivery-nea-president-lily-eskelsen-garcia-96th-nea-representative-assembly/ via @neatoday

“This is not a drill,” NEA President Lily Eskelsen García told the 2017 NEA Representative Assembly. “We stand in a dangerous place. We stand between a profiteer and his profits. We have a president who resides at the dangerous intersection of arrogance and ignorance and travels with a moral compass that always points to his own self-interest.”

In her keynote address on Sunday, Eskelsen García laid out in stark terms the dangers posed by the agenda of President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, but reminded the 8,000 delegates gathered in the Boston Convention Center that “we can win. We have the power, and they know it.”

Eskelsen Garcia recalled how she had to turn down an invitation from DeVos to meet because the new Education Secretary failed to answer simple questions about her commitment to accountability and transparency for charter schools and to protecting our most vulnerable students.

We have have already seen some of Devos’ answers. She has made it clear that the Education Department under her leadership will pursue the most egregious school privatization agenda in the form of charter school and voucher expansion, and will not protect our most vulnerable students. The Trump/DeVos administration rescinded the Office of Civil Rights letter that the Obama administration sent to districts clearly stating that they were legally responsible for protecting transgendered students from discrimination.

Over 50k Signed This Open Letter. Add Your Name
NEA is renewing the call for Betsy DeVos to clearly and satisfactorily answer questions on the critical work of the federal Department of Education. Read Lily Eskelsen García’s letter to DeVos and add your name to our call for answers.

“I will not allow the National Education Association to be used by Donald Trump or Betsy DeVos,” Eskelsen García told the delegates to resounding applause. “I do not trust their motives. I do not believe their alternative facts. I see no reason to assume they will do what is best for our students and their families. There will be no photo-op!”

Eskelsen García recounted how many states – Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.- have already scored victories against the Trump-DeVos privatization agenda. Educators in Massachusetts fought back an initiative on unaccountable charter school expansion, voters in Georgia rejected a referendum to give the state the power to takeover schools, and South Dakota educators worked with Republicans and Democrats to direct more revenue to the state’s public schools.

“We will find common ground with many Republicans and many Democrats on many issues. We will not find common ground with an administration that is cruel and callous to our children and their families,” Eskelsen García said.

The current administration, however, knows the NEA is a threat, and will not relent in its attacks on public schools and public school educators.

“They will try to take away your freedom to organize. They will try to take away your freedom to negotiate with a collective voice. They will try to silence us because when we win, the entire community wins. Working people who don’t even have access to a union win, because we’re there to fight for their kids’ schools and affordable college.”

This assault will also target younger, newer educators with lies and distortions about what the NEA is and what it stands for, in hopes of diminishing its ranks in the aftermath of an expected wave of retirments.

“They won’t succeed,” Eskelsen García told the delegates. “Because we know in our bones who we are. And we will tell every new colleague the truth about who we are: We are the members of the National Education Association. We are the voice of education professionals. Our work is fundamental to the nation, and we accept the profound trust that is placed in us.”NEA President to Representative Assembly: We Have the Power... and They Know It:

CURMUDGUCATION: Personalized Bait and Switch

CURMUDGUCATION: Personalized Bait and Switch:

Personalized Bait and Switch

Personalized Learning is getting the hard sell these days. It's marketable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that nobody really knows what Personalized Learning is.

What it suggests is something appealing, like Individualized Education Programs for everyone. Personalized Learning fans like to trot out exemplars like Chugach, Alaska, a remote, tiny town where a school system created a system in which each student had her own personal path to graduation, with projects, content, and assessment.

While there are plenty of problems with the Chugach thing, it's a good example of what most of us think Personalized Learning would mean. An educational program custom designed for each individual learner. Custom designed like a meal at a restaurant where you can choose the protein and spices and sauces and dishes and means of cooking and order exactly what you are hungry for.

But as Personalized Learning rolls out, that's not what it's like at all. 

From the College Board's personalized SAT prep courtesy of Khan Academy, through bold plans like this IBM personalized education pitch is something else entirely. This is just path-switching.

The Brand X that we're supposed to be escaping, the view of education that Personalized Learning is supposed to alter, the toxin for which Personalized Learning is the alleged antidote is an education CURMUDGUCATION: Personalized Bait and Switch:

NEA President: There Will Be No Photo Ops With DeVos - Teacher Beat - Education Week

NEA President: There Will Be No Photo Ops With DeVos - Teacher Beat - Education Week:

NEA President: There Will Be No Photo Ops With DeVos

Boston 

By guest blogger Stephen Sawchuk

NEA President LIly Esekelsen García drew an apparent line in the sand with the Trump administration and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, saying she would not try to bridge the yawning policy and political gap between them.

"I will not allow the National Education Association to be used by Donald Trump or by Betsy DeVos," she said in a fiery keynote before thousands of delegates. "I do not trust their motives. I do not believe in 'alternative facts.' ... There will be no photo op." 

"We will find common ground with many Republicans and ...NEA President: There Will Be No Photo Ops With DeVos - Teacher Beat - Education Week:

One Teachers Union Is Talking to Betsy DeVos. The Other One Isn’t. Which Is Right?

President Donald Trump and his advisers probably didn’t expect his choice for education secretary to cause much of a fuss. After all, Rick Perry was tapped to run the Department of Energy, which he once said he wanted to eliminate. Senator Jeff Sessions, who has spent his career attacking voting rights, was up for attorney general. Scott Pruitt, nominated to run the EPA, has sued the agency at least 14 times. Even Ben Carson was offered a job.

“[DeVos] and her family have spent millions to promote failed private school vouchers and unaccountable for-profit charter schools while working to destabilize and defund public education,” the unions wrote. “This is a dangerous direction that will do nothing to help our most vulnerable students and will exacerbate glaring opportunity gaps.”

DeVos bolstered the case against her with a disastrous performance at her confirmation hearing. She was confused about basic education policy debates. She showed little familiarity with federal education law, and in some cases wouldn’t commit to enforcing it. In one viral moment, she even said schools might need guns to guard against “potential grizzlies.”

Ahead of DeVos’s confirmation vote, union leaders hammered her on cable news, and the NEA organized a million people to email senators in opposition to her nomination. At least 40,000 called the Capitol through a special switchboard the union set up.

DeVos was nonetheless confirmed by the Senate earlier this month, thanks to a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence. Since then, she has only stumbledfurther, most egregiously after her visit two weeks ago to Jefferson Academy, a public middle school in Washington, D.C. Though she called the school “awesome” at the end of her tour, she later told the conservative publication Townhall that the teachers there were in “receive mode.” “They’re waiting to be told what they have to do, and that’s not going to bring success to an individual child,” she said. “You have to have teachers who are empowered to facilitate great teaching.”

Jefferson Academy promptlyOne Teachers Union Is Talking to Betsy DeVos. The Other One Isn’t. Which Is Right?

Science teachers: DeVos’s Education Department is misinterpreting federal law - The Washington Post

Science teachers: DeVos’s Education Department is misinterpreting federal law - The Washington Post:

Science teachers: DeVos’s Education Department is misinterpreting federal law

Science educators aren’t exactly thrilled with the Education Department under Betsy DeVos.

They didn’t think much when President Trump recently pulled the United States out of the landmark Paris climate agreement (which all countries had signed except Syria and Nicaragua) — and DeVos issued a statement in support. And many educators were concerned when the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that strongly backs DeVos and does not believe in human-induced climate change, sent to thousands of K-12 and college science teachers materials that reject basic principles on which nearly all climate scientists agree. A group of Democratic senators asked the Education Department whether DeVos or her staff had anything to do with this Heartland project.

[Senators accuse DeVos of ‘quick about-face’ on climate change]

Now, the National Science Teachers Association and the STEM Education Coalition has sent a letter to the Education Department saying it is misinterpreting the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the federal K-12 education law that replaced No Child Left Behind, in regard to science and school accountability plans.

The Education Department did not respond to a query about this issue.

The department is reviewing state plans for holding schools accountable as required by ESSA. The law was passed in December 2015 to replace the flawed NCLB, which went into effect in Science teachers: DeVos’s Education Department is misinterpreting federal law - The Washington Post:

ICYMI + Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION

CURMUDGUCATION:

ICYMI + 
Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION

Here's some reading for your holiday weekend. May it be a good one.

Arizona Replaces Teachers with Persons

One more state institutes a warm body law as a way of filling more teaching positions

Washington State is Wealthy, But Doesn't Pay for Schools

Can you guess how much rich Washington residents pay in taxes? Can anybody guess why the legislature refuses to meet its own funding requirements for education?

The Charter School Free Riding Problem

Jersey Jazzman takes a look at a little-noted phenomenon: how public schools are doing the work of recruiting teachers for charter schools.

Ohio's Third Grade Guarantee

A very effective discussion of one more state's dumb idea about "guaranteeing" third grade readers

Florida Business Leaders Can’t Enjoy Luncheon Due to Dismal Reading Scores

Floridians are also sad about reading levels. Nancy Bailey has some suggestions about what they could do if they wanted to get serious.

How Black Girls Aren't Presumed To Be Innocent

One more study lays out our oddly groundless and ultimately destructive prejudices about black children.

2017: Business of Ed Tech So Far

Audrey Watters looks at how the ed-flavored tech sector is looking at the halfway point.

Idaho Charter Schools Underserve Minority and Poor Population

We don't talk a lot about Idaho, but they've got some of the same charter school issues we see everywhere else. 

 CURMUDGUCATION:

Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION

Alternative Certification Paths

3by Peter Greene / 20h

We need alternative paths to the classroom. Mind you, we don't need paths that are shortcuts. We don't need an alternative path that is just a five week long truncated training that wouldn't prepare a camp counselor for a summer with jumpy ten year olds. We don't need alternative paths used by charter operators to train people to fill their own charter openings with not-too-qualified bodies. And w

JUN 30

Why Your ESSA Plan Is Nonsense

17by Peter Greene / 1d

At EdWeek, Andrew Ujifusa offers an explanation. In " Here's Why You Can't Understand Your State's New Plan for Education " he points the finger at jargon and offers some rather fun analytics for education argle-bargle. The top four bits of balonial verbage are, in descending order, stakeholder, engagement, professional development, and needs assessment. Yes, this can only end well Ujifusa breaks

Ed Reform v 6.3 Accountability Lite

6by Peter Greene / 2d

Full disclosure-- I made the number 6.3 out of the air, because frankly I've lost track of the various versions of ed reform that we've seen. But we're definitely on to something new. The new ed reform has staked out a position against bureaucracy and paperwork. This conversation starts with a Rick Hess piece , which becomes a thing because Betsy DeVos decided to quote it in her address to charter

JUN 29

Does Zuck Want To Be The Next Gates with Personalized Learning

62by Peter Greene / 2d

Here's lead from the EdWeek article : Pediatrician Priscilla Chan and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg are gearing up to invest hundreds of millions of dollars a year in a new vision of “whole-child personalized learning,” with the aim of dramatically expanding the scope and scale of efforts to provide every student with a customized education. The power couple's Big Initiative has announc

JUN 27

PA: Charter Transparency Fail

17by Peter Greene / 5d

Last night, my district's school board voted to raise taxes. They did it at a public meeting. I could have attended it easily (they meet just across the street from my home) as could any member of the public. I could also have commented on the budget situation, and I could have based my comments on having looked at the proposed budget, a document that has been available for at least a month. And i

JUN 26

Supremes Breaking Down Church State Wall

100+by Peter Greene / 5d

The basic question was minor. The implications are huge. The bottom line is that supporters of using public tax dollars to support private religious schools got some major support from the Supreme Court today. A church in Missouri wanted a shot at some public monies to resurface a playground. The state said no. The trip up through the levels of US courts began. Five years later, here we are. What

HYH: The "i" in School

17by Peter Greene / 6d

Personalized Learning continues to gather steam as a way to privatize and standardize education. And for educating yourself about the movement and what it really means, I'm here to recommend the latest edition of Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider's podcast, Have You Heard. Berkshire and Schneider talk to guest Bill Fitzgerald about some of the more important aspects of this magical "algorithmi

JUN 25

Problems with Performance-Based Compensation

75by Peter Greene / 6d

Bellwether Education Partners want to overcome the obstacles standing in the way of performance-based compensation (aka "merit pay" aka "fun ways to reduce total personnel costs for a school district"). But if you want writer Jen Bolson Meer's fancy definition, that's "Performance-based compensation is an approach where some or all monetary compensation is related to how employee performance is a

ICYMI: What Day Is It Now Edition (6/25)

5by Peter Greene / 7d

I'm pretty sure that before this summer is over, I will miss one of these Sunday reading lists, because the three week old twins in my house exert some sort of time warping field. But today I'm on it. Here are some things to read from the 

CURMUDGUCATION: