The Israel loyalty oath. Teachers in Texas. Pensions in Chicago and Illinois. – Fred Klonsky

The Israel loyalty oath. Teachers in Texas. Pensions in Chicago and Illinois. – Fred Klonsky

The Israel loyalty oath. Teachers in Texas. Pensions in Chicago and Illinois.

Ilhan Omar, the courageous Congress member from Minnesota, has introduced a bill affirming that Americans have the right to participate in economic boycotts for political purposes.

The legislation doesn’t specifically mention the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, but the BDS movement (which some free speech deniers want to make advocating for a crime), would be covered.

House Resolution 496  asserts that boycotts “have been effectively used in the United States by advocates for equal rights since the Boston Tea Party and include boycotts led by civil rights activists during the 1950s and 1960s in order to advocate for racial equality, such as the Montgomery bus boycott, and promote workers’ rights, such as the United Farm Workers-led boycott of table grapes.”

It also identifies historical moments when Americans participated in boycotts to push human rights in other countries: the boycotting of Imperial Japan during the late 1930s, the boycotting of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1941, the boycotting of the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow, and the boycotting of South Africa.

Omar’s bill currently has two cosponsors: Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).

Omar’s bill comes in the wake of a law requiring Texas teachers CONTINUE READING: The Israel loyalty oath. Teachers in Texas. Pensions in Chicago and Illinois. – Fred Klonsky

Tone deaf DeVos disrespects educators in South Carolina - Education Votes

Tone deaf DeVos disrespects educators in South Carolina - Education Votes

Tone deaf DeVos disrespects educators in South Carolina

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos demonstrated her apathy toward underpaid educators yet again during a visit to Nephron, a South Carolina pharmaceutical company, on Thursday.

While the purpose of DeVos’ visit was to call attention to a Trump administration initiative, “Pledge to America’s Workers,” she failed to mention during her speech that 650 current and retired teachers are employed at Nephron because they need the additional income.

Nephron is one of around 250 companies nationwide that have joined the Pledge to America’s Workers program.

As DeVos highlighted the initiative, which is intended to “educate, train, and reskill American workers from high-school age to near-retirement,” she ignored the reality that hundreds of teachers are forced to work part-time jobs just to make ends meet.

These teachers employed at Nephron are not working to reskill, but instead to keep themselves and their families afloat.

South Carolina ranks 48th out of 50 in states in terms of average starting teaching salaries, and 40th in average teacher salary. Due to these low wages, it is no surprise that many South Carolina teachers have had to take on second or third jobs to supplement their income.

Educators working multiple jobs are not unique to South Carolina; one-fifth of teachersnationally work more than one job.

DeVos also used her South Carolina visit to hold a round table discussion at Hidden Treasure Christian School to promote her signature voucher scheme. Like all voucher programs, DeVos’ CONTINUE READING: Tone deaf DeVos disrespects educators in South Carolina - Education Votes

What Should You Do If Your Students Start Using Chatspeak in Assignments? - Teacher Habits

What Should You Do If Your Students Start Using Chatspeak in Assignments? - Teacher Habits

What Should You Do If Your Students Start Using Chatspeak in Assignments?

Guest Writer: Agatha Singer

As it always is with the matters related to teaching, your reaction to some issue should be determined on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, if your students start using chatspeak in their creative writing assignments you should stop and think. Why exactly are they doing this? In some cases, this can be considered a legitimate method of expression. But there are also situations where you’ll need to correct this issue before it turns into a bad habit.

Is Chatspeak the Enemy?

There is this trend for demonizing chatspeak today. Demonizing anything social media and Internet-related really. You can see hundreds of articles and hear dozens of impassionate speeches on how children are wasting away staring at smartphone screens, how they make dangerous connections through social media, or how hanging out online, in general, lowers the IQ of an entire generation.

It’s sad to admit that in a way, all of that is true. However, if you stop and think on the matter a bit more, you might remember that a few decades back you could hear all the same things about television.

And before that, there were radio programs, which ‘corrupted the innocent minds’ with scandalous stories.

And before that, people invented print and book burnings came right after that. During some of those, scholars, authors, and printers were CONTINUE READING: What Should You Do If Your Students Start Using Chatspeak in Assignments? - Teacher Habits

John Thompson: The Cruel Policy of Punishing Little Children to Raise Their Test Scores | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: The Cruel Policy of Punishing Little Children to Raise Their Test Scores | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: The Cruel Policy of Punishing Little Children to Raise Their Test Scores

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, posts frequently about education in his state.

Last week, National Public Radio’s Alexandra Starr first reported on Florida’s mandatory retention of 3^rd graders who don’t pass a reading proficiency test. Even though it is stigmatizing for children to be retained, and “multiple studies have found that flunking a grade makes it much more likely students will fail to graduate from high school,” the high stakes testing law has spread to about 40 percent of states.

States Are Ratcheting Up Reading Expectations For 3rd-Graders

NPR’s Starr draws on experts like Pedro Noguera, Nell Duke, and Diane Horm, while explaining how short-term benefits of 3^rd grade retention “dissipate over time.” She also cites Marty West, a Big Data researcher who sidesteps the anxiety imposed on children and pressure on teachers to increase pass rates through ill-conceived instructional practices, and says that Florida’s well-funded mandatory retention law doesn’t hurt students’ graduation rates. Neither does West address states like Oklahoma, with chronic underfunding of education.And that leads to the first slippery slope created by Florida’s willingness to scale up punishments for young children and their teachers in order to improve student performance. At least it invests more than $130 million per year on its reading sufficiency act. When Oklahoma legislators, who were often persuaded by Jeb Bush’s public relations campaign, passed its reading act, they intended to invest CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: The Cruel Policy of Punishing Little Children to Raise Their Test Scores | Diane Ravitch's blog

School District Threatens Kids Could End Up In Foster Care Over Unpaid Lunches | HuffPost Life

School District Threatens Kids Could End Up In Foster Care Over Unpaid Lunches | HuffPost Life

School District Threatens Kids Could End Up In Foster Care Over Unpaid Lunches
A letter sent to parents in Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley West School District says parents could be taken to court over children's lunch debt.

KINGSTON, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania school district is warning that children could end up in foster care if their parents do not pay overdue school lunch bills.

The letters sent recently to about 1,000 parents in Wyoming Valley West School District have led to complaints from parents and a stern rebuke from Luzerne County child welfare authorities.

The district says that it is trying to collect more than $20,000, and that other methods to get parents to pay have not been successful. Four parents owe at least $450 apiece.

The letter claims the unpaid bills could lead to dependency hearings and removal of their children for not providing them with food.

“You can be sent to dependency court for neglecting your child’s right to food. The result may be your child being taken from your home and placed in foster care,” the letter read.

After complaints, district officials announced they plan to send out a less threatening letter next week.

Luzerne County’s manager and child welfare agency director have written the superintendent, insisting the district stop making what they call false CONTINUE READING: School District Threatens Kids Could End Up In Foster Care Over Unpaid Lunches | HuffPost Life

eBackpack Bankruptcy May Put Student & Teacher Data in Peril | gadflyonthewallblog

eBackpack Bankruptcy May Put Student & Teacher Data in Peril | gadflyonthewallblog

eBackpack Bankruptcy May Put Student & Teacher Data in Peril

Teachers put their assignments into an on-line data base.

Students access them on their computers, iPads or other devices and then submit their work via the Internet.

What could go wrong?

Plenty. Especially when the company that provides this service goes bankrupt.

And that’s exactly what’s happened with Texas-based educational technology company eBackpack.

All those teacher assignments and student works are still there in computer servers somewhere. And now that eBackpack has filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy, all of it has become assets the company could decide to sell off to pay its debts.

The company explicitly reserves the right to do so according to CONTINUE READING: eBackpack Bankruptcy May Put Student & Teacher Data in Peril | gadflyonthewallblog

New Orleans: One of City’s Oldest Charter Organizations Closes Down Amid Multiple Scandals | Diane Ravitch's blog

New Orleans: One of City’s Oldest Charter Organizations Closes Down Amid Multiple Scandals | Diane Ravitch's blog

New Orleans: One of City’s Oldest Charter Organizations Closes Down Amid Multiple Scandals

The University of New Orleans was one of the first to jump into chartering after Hurricane Katrina, and it just announced that it is closing down its charter organization,New Beginnings, as a result of a slew of academic problems and malfeasance.

After allegations of grade-fixing and a major fiasco involving class credits that left dozens of students unable to graduate, the public charter board overseeing John F. Kennedy High voted Thursday night to surrender its charters to operate both of its schools.

The surrender of the charters, which will take place at the end of the 2019-20 school year, was approved unanimously by the New Beginnings Schools Foundation board.

The decision stemmed from a lengthy investigation into management problems at the charter network that led earlier to the resignation of its CEO, career educator Michelle Blouin-Williams, and the firing of five high-ranking administrators at Kennedy…

The problems leading to the collapse of one of the city’s oldest charter organizations first surfaced in February, when the organization’s data director, Runell King, alleged that other staff members had improperly changed CONTINUE READING: New Orleans: One of City’s Oldest Charter Organizations Closes Down Amid Multiple Scandals | Diane Ravitch's blog

THIS WEEK Education Research Report

Education Research Report

THIS WEEK 

Education Research Report

Teachers should have broader access to high-quality professional development x

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 10min

A new report by EPI Economist Emma García and Research Associate Elaine Weiss looks at the career supports and professional development available to teachers and discusses how they can exacerbate the teacher shortage. The authors find that, on one hand, the set of supports already broadly offered in schools represents a foundation to build upon. However, there are multiple weaknesses in the types

YESTERDAY

Teacher treatment of students factors into racial gap in school suspensions

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 17h

Elementary schools tend to discipline black students more harshly than white students, leading to a considerable racial gap in expulsion and suspension. That's among the findings of a new data analysis led by researchers at Brown and Princeton universities. The analysis found that teachers' different treatment of black and white students accounted for 46% of the racial gap in suspensions and expu

Sports participation gap exists between youth from lower-income and middle-income families

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

Lower-income parents are less likely than their higher-income counterparts to involve their children in youth sports because of obstacles such as rising costs of these extracurricular activities, according to a new RAND Corporation study . Researchers surveyed a pool of approximately 2,800 parents, public school administrators and community sports program leaders and found that financial costs an

Study finds maternal race not a factor for children experiencing a 'language gap'

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

In a first of its kind study, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute evaluated the language use of black mothers in comparison with white mothers with the same education levels to measure the amount and complexity of the words they use with their infants and young children. This study resulted in the new discovery that ra

JUL 18

Colorado: When looking at race/ethnicity, there are wide disparities in who goes to college.

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

The Postsecondary Progress and Success of High School Graduates is a yearly report issued by the Colorado Department of Higher Education. It explores both data trends and policy context related to the experience of Colorado’s recent high school graduates in postsecondary education by examining, postsecondary enrollment trends, leading indicators of postsecondary success and progress toward a cred

Nearly 60 percent of Colorado students at two-year institutions and a quarter of students at four-year institutions are placed in developmental education courses

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

As this report shows, nearly 60 percent of Colorado students at two-year institutions and a quarter of students at four-year institutions are placed in developmental education courses—prerequisite classes designed to shore up basic academic skills. Although all students should be prepared for college-level work, the traditional remediation model holds most back. Students must pay for and pass the

JUL 17

Head start accountability systems may be missing how classroom quality varies within preschool centers

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

American Educational Research Association Main Findings: The high-stakes accountability policies used to monitor the quality of Head Start preschool centers may miss important variation in classroom quality within centers, which could lead to incorrect representations of center quality and inaccurate decisions about which programs need to re-compete for their funding. Federal and state accountabi

Nationwide study on teen 'sexting' has good news, bad news

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

The good news is that adolescent "sexting" is not at epidemic levels as reported in some media headlines. The bad news is that it also has not decreased despite preventive efforts by educators and others. Most commonly, the term sexting has been used to describe incidents where teenagers take nude or semi-nude photos or videos of themselves and exchange that content via text or private social med

About 44% of high school seniors who misuse prescription drugs have multiple drug sources U

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

Roughly 11% of high school seniors reported prescription drug misuse during the past year, and of those, 44% used multiple supply sources, according to a pair of University of Michigan studies. More than 70% of adolescents who obtained prescription drugs from multiple sources had a substance use disorder--involving prescription medications, other drugs and alcohol--within the previous year. The n

JUL 16

New Report on Student Reports of Bullying

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 3d

Twenty percent of students ages 12 through 18 in grades 6–12 reported being bullied during the 2016–17 school year. Within the population of students who reported being bullied, 13 percent reported being made fun of; 13 percent reported being the subject of rumors; and 5 percent reported being pushed, shoved, tripped, or spit on. The National Center for Education Statistics released a new Web Tab

JUL 15

The Remarkable Unresponsiveness of College Students to Nudging

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 4d

This study presents results from a five-year effort to design promising online and text-message interventions to improve college achievement through several distinct channels. From a sample of nearly 25,000 students across three different campuses, we find some improvement from coaching-based interventions on mental health and study time, but none of the interventions the authors evaluate signifi

Persistence & Retention – 2019

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 4d

First-Year Persistence and Retention for Fall 2017 Cohort Of the 3.5 million students who enrolled in college for the first time in fall 2017, 74 percent or 2.6 million students persisted as of fall 2018. The overall first-year persistence rate has improved slightly, with a 2.2 percentage point gain between 2009 and 2017. New to this year’s report are the persistence rates for top five popular ma

JUL 12

School suspensions related to increases in subsequent offending

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 7d

About 3.5 million students are suspended each year, and school punishment has been tied to a variety of negative outcomes. A new study took a longitudinal look at how school suspensions are related to offending behaviors that include assault, stealing, and selling drugs. It found that rather than decreasing subsequent offending, school suspensions increase this behavior. The study, by researchers

Exploring Media Literacy Education

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 7d

Research Questions How is ML conceptualized by experts and in extant empirical literature? To what extent does research demonstrate that ML education can build participant resilience to the spread of misinformation and disinformation? What limitations are there to current knowledge of ML effectiveness? What publicly available ML resources are currently offered, particularly as applicable to Truth

JUL 11

FOOD INSECURITY Better Information Could Help Eligible College Students Access Federal Food Assistance Benefits

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 9d

Complete report There is limited information about the national prevalence of food insecurity among college students . GAO reviewed 31 studies that identified a wide range of food insecurity rates among the students studied, but the studies did not provide national estimates. C ollege students at risk of food insecurity may be eligible for benefits from the Food and Nutrition Service’s (FNS) Supp

School Engagement and the Role of Peer Victimization, Depressive Symptoms, and Rumination

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 9d

The purpose of this study was to explore the association between peer victimization and school engagement and the indirect effects of rumination and depressive symptoms in this association. Data on middle school students’ 

Education Research Report