The California city where students with disabilities are 'segregated' | US news | The Guardian

The California city where students with disabilities are 'segregated' | US news | The Guardian

The California city where students with disabilities are 'segregated'

Stephen’s teachers started sending him to the separate room when he was in first grade.

Now 10, Stephen has been diagnosed with autism and anxiety. His mom said that when he got frustrated and behaved in ways teachers found disruptive – breaking pencils, blurting out or crumpling paper – educators swiftly removed him from the classroom, sending him to a room where he would sit the rest of the day without access to school work.

Sometimes the school simply sent him home for the day – it happened more than 80 times by the time Stephen reached fifth grade, his mom said. Eventually, school staff started urging his mom to agree to place Stephen in a separate classes exclusively for students with disabilities where they said he’d be “happier”. His mom believes Stephen’s race makes him a target. Students called him CONTINUE READING: The California city where students with disabilities are 'segregated' | US news | The Guardian

Petition · Investigate Nick Melvoin · Change.org

Petition · Investigate Nick Melvoin · Change.org

 Investigate Nick Melvoin

Sign this petition Investigate Nick Melvoin · Change.org

A California Public Records Act (CPRA) request of past emails shows that in February 2018, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD ) Board Member Nick Melvoin attended a meeting identified as 'Facilities Proposal Meeting' with the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). At that meeting, emails indicate that Nick Melvoin shared confidential legal information pertaining to the LAUSD school board with the opposing party suing the district—the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). As an elected official of our LAUSD School Board, Mr. Melvoin took an oath to represent the interests of all of the students in his district (LAUSD District 4)‚ not just the students attending charter schools.

Due to this serious breach, we the undersigned parents, teachers and members of the public demand the following actions:

1 -- a full investigation into Nick Melvoin’s communication with CCSA, which we believe is unethical and potentially illegal;

2 -- that Mr. Melvoin not act as a voting member of the board until this investigation is resolved;

3 -- that all measures put forward by Nick Melvoin be tabled until the conclusion of this investigation, to insure that he was acting in good faith;

4 -- pending investigation, the school board should not adopt any measure that Nick Melvoin has introduced unless he has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Sign this petition Investigate Nick Melvoin · Change.org

Nick Melvoin’s unprofessional and potentially unethical behavior is the sort of thing that erodes public and parent trust in our LAUSD Board. After the Deasy scandal, the secret backroom deal to hire Beutner, and the delayed resignation of indicted and convicted felon Ref Rodriguez, The LAUSD Board of Education cannot afford any more corruption. We will be reporting Mr. Melvoin to the City Attorney and the State Bar Association.

The Board must act now.

Sign this petition Investigate Nick Melvoin · Change.org

Keeping Public Education Public: New Strategies Against School Voucher Programs | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Keeping Public Education Public: New Strategies Against School Voucher Programs | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Keeping Public Education Public: New Strategies Against School Voucher Programs

Quality public education for all is a centerpiece of the American promise and an aspiration to which generations have worked to fulfill. During Reconstruction in the 1860s and 1870s, one of the very first things Black policymakers in the South did once elected was to institute universal, compulsory public education for all children, regardless of race or wealth. The subsequent campaigns of terror that undid much of Reconstruction's achievements and inaugurated Jim Crow across the South segregated those schools, creating two separate and unequal systems of education.

In many states during the 1960s, school vouchers were used as a way to get around Supreme Court decisions like Brown v. Board of Education and perpetuate that segregated system by allowing white parents to send their children to segregated private schools at taxpayer expense.

Regardless of intent, the effect of private school vouchers is the redirection of public funds to private educational uses, diverting critical resources away from public schools, depriving students of important civil rights protections, and harming communities.

This webinar introduced Public Funds Public Schools, a joint campaign of Education Law Center and Southern Poverty Law Center that seeks to ensure public funds for education are used to maintain and support public schools. We will discuss the history and varied forms of private school vouchers and the strategies we are using—including litigation, advocacy, and research—to halt and roll back voucher programs. We also shared specific examples of our work and the many ways that public education stakeholders can support efforts to keep public funds in public schools that are open to all students.

Speakers included:

• Bacardi Jackson, Senior Supervising Attorney for Children’s Rights for the State of Florida, Managing Attorney of the Miami Office for the Southern Poverty Law Center
• Jessica Levin, Senior Attorney for the Education Law Center (ELC)
• Dr. John H. Jackson (moderator), President & CEO, Schott Foundation for Public Education

CONTINUE READING: Keeping Public Education Public: New Strategies Against School Voucher Programs | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Betsy DeVos: The Musical! – Have You Heard

Betsy DeVos: The Musical! – Have You Heard

Betsy DeVos: The Musical!

Theater teacher Quinn Strassel has seen first hand the impact that Betsy DeVos has had on Michigan’s public schools. And so he decided to fight back, by writing a musical. Strassel grew up and attended schools in Ypsilanti, MI, where he was schooled in the theatrical arts by teacher Diane Hill. Ypsilanti’s acclaimed theater program no longer exists—under Michigan’s “schools of choice” policy, the subject of episode #68, school districts compete against each other for students and the funding that comes with them, and working class districts like Ypsilanti have not fared well. But enough with the bleak back story! Diane Hill, now an award-winning actress, plays the part of Betsy DeVos in Quinn’s musical. Jennifer was lucky enough to get to be in the audience when Quinn staged a reading. In the latest episode of Have You Heard, you get to listen in on Betsy DeVos!: the Musical! and hear Quinn talk about his effort to make a serious point by getting us all laughing, Note: Quinn is currently raising funds to stage a professional, fully realized production next summer leading into the 2020 election. If you want to support his efforts, click here.  

Complete transcript available here.

Betsy DeVos: The Musical! – Have You Heard

2019 Medley #19 | Live Long and Prosper

2019 Medley #19 | Live Long and Prosper

2019 Medley #19

ET TU CANADA?

Schools aren’t failing our kids, our government is.

Since 2012 Grant Frost has been writing about the GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement) infection of Canada. Sadly, the story is similar to what’s been happening here in the US. Outside factors affect school achievement, yet solutions to societal problems seem to fall to the schools.

In 2011, Texas Superintendent John Kuhn asked,

Why do we not demand that our leaders make “Adequate Yearly Progress”? We have data about poverty, health care, crime, and drug abuse in every legislative district. We know that those factors directly impact our ability to teach kids. Why have we not established annual targets for our legislators to meet?

Schools can’t do it alone…and schools can’t solve the problems caused by, in the case of the US, decades of neglect, racism, and economic inequity. State (and Provincial) governments must accept their share of responsibility…not by punishing high need schools with school takeovers and inadequate funding, but with real programs aimed at healing the problems of poverty and systemic racism.

To paraphrase Frost, “The reality of our situation in Indiana is not that our schools are failing our kids; our government is.”

What struck me so soundly as I read through the report, beyond my obvious alarm, was the way in which so many of these issues, or more particularly, the finding of solutions for them, has so often been downloaded by CONTINUE READING: 2019 Medley #19 | Live Long and Prosper

The 'Greta Effect' On Student Activism and Climate Change - NEA Today

The 'Greta Effect' On Student Activism and Climate Change - NEA Today

The ‘Greta Effect’ On Student Activism and Climate Change

Once upon a time a courageous 16-year-old girl set out to save her planet from imminent doom from powers seemingly beyond her control. With the support of millions of other young people determined to help their planet survive, the girl sailed across an ocean on a vessel powered by the sun to take on her greatest foe…

It sounds like something out of the Hunger Games or another dystopian YA novel, but It’s the true story of Greta Thunberg, the teen climate activist from Sweden who is holding world leaders accountable for their lack of action on the climate crisis.

On Friday, Thunberg will lead worldwide international climate strikes where legions of students will walk out of their classrooms across the United States, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and South America. In New York City, where Thunberg will march, and in many other areas, districts are allowing students to take part without penalizing them for missing school, but either way, educators can find ways to support their students’ interest in climate change throughout the year.

“We should work hard to ensure that we’re teaching about all the ways we can take action to mitigate the effects of climate change,” says modified language arts educator Jennifer Hall, the Earth Club advisor for West Seattle High School, who will join the student climate strike in Washington, D.C. on Friday. “Help students plant trees, start school-based compost programs and partner with your city or town to collect the food waste to make the compost and expand composting facilities.”

School gardens, Hall says, are more important than ever in mitigating climate CONTINUE READING: The 'Greta Effect' On Student Activism and Climate Change - NEA Today

Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity | Diane Ravitch's blog

Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity | Diane Ravitch's blog

Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity

The definition of insanity: funding an experimental education program, discovering that it failed, then funding it some more and expecting different results.

Another definition of insanity: funding a voucher program that depresses student achievement, then demanding more voucher funds so more students can fall behind.

Why fund failure?

Despite Poor Academic Results Groups Sue to Grow Private School Voucher Program

A few weeks ago a pro-school privatization organization, Institute for Justice, announced a lawsuit against the State of Nevada over the impact of AB 458 to private school vouchers recipients, scholarship granting organizations and businesses receiving tax incentives.

Though pro-voucher advocates are framing the suit as “saving vouchers,” in reality, the voucher program did not lose funding. The controversy over some students losing their scholarships is actually the result of a single scholarship granting organization interpreting a law passed this legislative session (AB 458) differently than all other scholarship organizations. Certain families who went through this organization for their voucher funds were the only ones whose funds were not renewed, leaving those students in limbo as the law’s purpose is clarified by the State.

To be clear, AB 458 did NOT cancel funding for the voucher program but only ended the requirement that funding for the controversial program grow by 10% each year. Given that growth in public education funding often struggles just  to keep up with inflation (approximately 2%), automatically growing a voucher program with scant accountability and poor results just doesn’t make sense.

Businesses are also suing on the claim that they would not be able to increase their contributions to vouchers because there is no increase in tax incentives. However ,they could choose to continue supporting private school tuition CONTINUE READING: Nevada: Vouchers and the Definition of Insanity | Diane Ravitch's blog

Take a walk with me | Cloaking Inequity

Take a walk with me | Cloaking Inequity

Take a walk with me 

It’s a great day to take a walk with me! Watch and get to know what’s ahead for deaning in a community-engaged, community-relevant fashion.

Read more here: http://uknow.uky.edu/campus-news/campus-walk-meet-new-dean-uks-college-education

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

Check out and follow my YouTube channel here.

Twitter: @ProfessorJVH

Click here for Vitae.

Take a walk with me | Cloaking Inequity

Aaron Wright: Caught in the Middle: Whatever Happened to the Individuals With Disabilities Act? NANCY BAILEY'S EDUCATION WEBSITE

Caught in the Middle: Whatever Happened to the Individuals With Disabilities Act?

Caught in the Middle: Whatever Happened to the Individuals With Disabilities Act?

No child wants to feel like a failure. No educator wants to feel like they have failed a child. Most children in special education are identified as having a specific learning disability or language impairment. Yet nationally only 67% of children with disabilities will graduate from high school and almost one and five will drop out.

In 1975 Gerald Ford signed into law what would become the Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA). Previously there was no guarantee that a child with disabilities would be provided an education, let alone be allowed into a public school. But even as Ford signed the legislation he lamented its shortcomings, “[T]he funding levels proposed in this bill will simply not be possible…” Those ripple effects continue to this day.

In 1990, the addition of the IDEA’s central principles of a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), Appropriate Evaluation, Individualized Education Plan (IEP), Least Restrictive Environment, Parent Participation, and Procedural Safeguards granted the families of disabled children a formal and standardized means advocacy and redress.

Parents are driven to advocacy by instinct and science. A growing body of data has illuminated the dire consequences of a failed education. Up to 85 percent of youth in juvenile detention have disabilities that made them eligible for special education services, yet only 37 percent had received services while in school. Adding to CONTINUE READING: Caught in the Middle: Whatever Happened to the Individuals With Disabilities Act?

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

In education, as in most things, Philadelphia is its own little state-within-the-state. The public system has a long and messy history, including a state takeover. The district is often used as Exhibit A for pro-choice legislators ("But we must give the poor children of Philadelphia a way to escape their terrible school system even as we refuse to adequately fund that system!") and is consequently the most charter-heavy city in the commonwealth.

In Pennsylvania, the local school district has oversight of charter schools within its boundaries. But like several states, there is also a state-level review board to which charters can appeal, and that board has told Philadelphia that at least one charter is free to go on ahead and do as it pleases.

The charter in question is Franklin Towne Charter. The charter has attracted attention in the past for a variety of reasons.

There's the time a fired principal filed a whistle blower suit, charging that he's been terminated because he pointed out that some Franklin Towne practices such as non-serving ESL students, serious nepotism, and billing the Philly school district for a non-existent all-day kindergarten program. Also, that they had lied to him in his initial interview in order to cover up their high principal turnover rate (it was only later that he learned that the Chief Academic Officer who helped interview him had been removed from the principalship because of outcry over shoplifting and excessive use of force against students). After a pattern of retaliation developed against him, he took it to the board president who allegedly replied, "You know we cannot move CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

New York Post attacks Black Lives Matter at School movement, “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “The New Teacher Book” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

New York Post attacks Black Lives Matter at School movement, “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “The New Teacher Book” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

New York Post attacks Black Lives Matter at School movement, “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “The New Teacher Book”

With the new school year underway, antiracist educators around the country are back at work uplifting Black students–and the New York Post is back at work spewing racist garbage. 

For their back to school coverage, the Post decided to give column space, not to experts in closing opportunity gaps or promising new approaches to supporting Black excellence, but rather to a defender of the racist status quo of schooling. This amateurish and offensive attack was leveled against the entire Black Lives Matter at School movement, as well as two books published by Rethinking Schools, Teaching for Black Lives–a book I co-edited with Dyan Watson and Wayne Au–and The New Teacher Book.

In the attack on Teaching for Black Lives, Peter Meyer, writes:

In the introduction to “Teaching for Black Lives,” a recently published textbook meant to accompany BLM’s classroom efforts, the first sentence reads: “Black students’ minds and bodies are under attack.”

The stoking of students’ fear and anger continues with a reference to “the continuing police murders of black people,” along with this characterization of the galvanizing event for BLM’s street protests: “In August of 2014, Michael Brown was killed in the CONTINUE READING: New York Post attacks Black Lives Matter at School movement, “Teaching for Black Lives,” and “The New Teacher Book” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda | Diane Ravitch's blog

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda | Diane Ravitch's blog

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda

Every year since 2014, Democrats who fervently support the privatization of public schools have gathered at a conference they pretentiously call “Camp Philos.”

https://campphilos.org/

Check the agenda of meetings present and past.

There you will see the lineup of Democrats who sneer at public schools and look on public school teachers with contempt.

These are the Democrats who support the DeVos agenda of disrupting and privatizing public schools.

They are meeting again this year, and they will slap each other on the back for supporting school closures, charter schools, high-stakes testing, evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students, and hiring inexperienced teachers.

They have the chutzpah to call themselves “stakeholders,” although none of them are teachers, parents of public school students, or have any stake in the public schools that enroll 85-90% of all American students. Exactly what do they have a “stake” in?

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda | Diane Ravitch's blog

To bring “prestige” back to education, make teachers tax-exempt, says Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman ON Kara Swisher podcast Recode Decode - Vox

Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman on Kara Swisher podcast Recode Decode - Vox

To bring “prestige” back to education, make teachers tax-exempt, says Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman
He’s an adviser to President Trump — but he also wants to see a national $15 minimum wage and an overhaul of the H-1B visa program.

Much of the world is transitioning to a knowledge economy, but far too few Americans have had enough education to prepare them for that shift, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman says.

“Most people don’t know that two-thirds of the workforce in the United States has a high school education or less,” Schwarzman said on the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. “Those people are not prepared for the modern world ... it’s not the business community that created that. There’s a political problem.”

Schwarzman, a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump whose private equity firm manages $548 billion, focuses on personal advice in his new book What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence. But on the new podcast episode, he shared a series of policy goals — including a national $15 minimum wage and public education reforms.

“Teachers are pretty poorly paid,” he said. “You see these demonstrations on television and strikes, and so I think we need to get teachers in a position where they can attract very high-quality people. One way to do that is to make teachers the only tax-exempt occupation in the United States.

“That would give them a very large boost in income just the day you did it,” Schwarzman added. “But the second benefit is that they would be marked apart as a prestige institution. When I was young, teachers were a big deal. And I wouldn’t be where I was without the education that I got.”

You can listen to the full interview on our podcast Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, which you can listen to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the new podcast, Schwarzman also talked about how he would like to see America’s CONTINUE READING:  Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman on Kara Swisher podcast Recode Decode - Vox

Federal Spending on Children Has Hit a 10-Year Low - Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

Public spending on children aims to support their healthy development and help them fulfill their human potential. As such, federal spending on children is an investment in the nation’s future. To inform policymakers, children’s advocates, and the general public about how public funds are spent on children, this 13th edition of the annual Kids’ Share report provides an updated analysis of federal expenditures on children from 1960 to 2018. It also projects federal expenditures on children through 2029 to give a sense of how budget priorities may unfold absent changes to current law.

A few highlights of the chartbook:

• In 2018, the federal government spent about $6,200 per child younger than 19, less than in 2017 after adjusting for inflation. This decline is driven by a reduction in federal spending on education and nutrition programs and a temporary reduction in child-related tax credits.
• As a share of the economy, federal investments in children fell to 1.9 percent of GDP in 2018, the lowest level in a decade.
• Medicaid is the largest source of federal support for children, followed by the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. More than three-fifths of federal expenditures on children are from health or tax provisions.
• The share of federal expenditures for children targeted to low-income families has grown over time, reaching 61 percent in 2018.
• Looking forward, children’s programs are projected to receive only 3 cents of every dollar of the projected $1.5 trillion increase in federal spending over the next decade.
• Assuming no changes to current law, the children’s share of the budget is projected to drop from 9.2 percent to 7.5 percent over the next decade, as spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest payments on the debt consume a growing share of the budget.
• By 2020, the federal government is projected to spend more on interest payments on the debt than on children.
• Over the next decade, all categories of spending on children except health are projected to decline relative to GDP. Most categories also see declines or remain at similar levels in real dollars.

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

Kids’ Share 2019: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2018 and Future Projections | Full Report | Urban Institute

CURMUDGUCATION: Yes, Teachers Are Spending Money On Their Own Classrooms

CURMUDGUCATION: Yes, Teachers Are Spending Money On Their Own Classrooms

Yes, Teachers Are Spending Money On Their Own Classrooms

Like the cost of a romantic date at Valentine's Day or the price of the Twelve Days of Christmas, the amount of money that teachers spend on their own classroom has become a reliable seasonal story. This year the word is that on average teachers spend, depending on your source, somewhere between $400 and $500. But that's not the whole story.

The Economic Policy Institute has crunched the numbers from the National Center for Educational Statistics, including a breakdown by states. The state averages vary (from $664 in California to $327 in North Dakota), though EPI is quick to note that the range says more about variations in state funding and school conditions than about the relative generosity of teachers in different states.

EPI uses relatively old data (2011-2012) to create its picture. The National Teacher and Principal Survey provides data from 2015-2016. A more current look comes from the sixth annual survey of teachers released today by SheerID and Agile Education Marketing. The most notable finding in their survey is not the amount teachers spent, but the sheer number of teachers who spent it--the survey shows that 99% of teachers spent their own money for school-related-purposes. And while the beginning of the school year seems to be prime time for these stories, the survey also notes that teachers do their spending throughout the year.

The SheerID/Agile Education Marketing folks want to make a practical business point--there's a huge market out there, composed of teachers looking for bargains because they are CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Yes, Teachers Are Spending Money On Their Own Classrooms

Sandy Hook Promises releases jarring back-to-school PSA

Sandy Hook Promises releases jarring back-to-school PSA

Sandy Hook Promise releases jarring back-to-school PSA depicting anxiety around school shootings

A powerful back-to-school PSA by Sandy Hook Promise (SHP) is depicting the fear and anxiety that students face as they re-enter their classrooms with supplies and essentials for the new year and discover alternate uses for them during a school shooting.

The one-minute seven-second video created by the Newton, Conn.-based nonprofit organization was released on Wednesday morning. Since its release, it’s made an impact.

“SHP and BBDO New York have produced the new PSA video that starts off as a cheery and often-familiar back-to-school ad but slowly unfolds to highlight students using everyday back-to-school items to survive a shooting, shedding light on the gruesome reality that students face,” a statement by SHP reads.

Throughout the video, viewers hear a student boasting about his new sneakers as he runs from gunshots, see another using a sock as a tourniquet on a wounded classmate and watch a boy use his new skateboard to break a classroom window to escape the building.

The video ends with a girl crying in a bathroom stall as she texts “I love you mom” before the door opens and footsteps CONTINUE READING: Sandy Hook Promises releases jarring back-to-school PSA