John Thompson: An Open Letter About a New School in Oklahoma City | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: An Open Letter About a New School in Oklahoma City | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: An Open Letter About a New School in Oklahoma City

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, writes an open letter:

Open Letter to Enes Kanter

Mr. Kanter,

Thank you for your continued support of children, especially low-income and immigrant students in Oklahoma City. And thank you for your opposition to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. I live halfway between Dove Academy, a part of the charter Gülen chain, and the Raindrop Turkish American Cultural Center in Oklahoma City. I’m so thankful for the multicultural contributions of immigrants to Oklahoma City.

While I’m thrilled by the contributions of past and present Thunder NBA basketball players to Oklahoma City schools, I would ask you to please reconsider your application for the Enes Kanter School for Exceptional Learning charter school (EKSEL). Rather than open another charter, which will inevitably sow divisiveness and damage neighborhood schools serving our poorest children of color, I hope you will consider a proposal along the lines of the win-win education contribution of Lebron James.

https://www.readfrontier.org/stories/former-thunder-player-seeks-to-open-charter-school-in-oklahoma-city/

The New York Times notes that the LeBron James’s I Promise School is:

Unlike other schools connected to celebrities, I Promise is not a charter school run by a private operator but a public school operated by the district. Its population is 60 CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: An Open Letter About a New School in Oklahoma City | Diane Ravitch's blog

BRUCE BAKER and PRESTON GREEN: Should plaintiffs in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling about school choice be careful what they wish for?

Religious institutions, school choice and tax credits in education

OPINION: Should plaintiffs in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling about school choice be careful what they wish for?
How the impacts of a decision on Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue could differ from expectations

Editor’s note: Montana parent Kendra Espinoza hoped a tax credit would help her pay for a private Christian school for her daughters. But her state’s constitution contains an amendment that bars taxpayer aid to religious institutions. Now, it’s all up to the U.S. Supreme Court as it decides Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. What would a decision in Espinoza’s favor really mean for school choice and public education? The Hechinger Report asked several experts to weigh in. For the perspective of the Heritage Foundation’s Jonathan Butcher, click here. Rutgers’ Bruce Baker and UConn’s Preston Green discuss the issues below.

When states choose to operate a program that involves public (or publicly governed) financing of private service providers, can the state choose to exclude religious providers?

That’s the question that Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue asks about U.S. schools.

It’s been nearly two decades since the U.S. Supreme Court said government programs that provide vouchers for schooling, including religious schools, do not violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment, even where most available options are religious schools.

That is, publicly financed, government-administered voucher programs that include religious schools are permissible under the CONTINUE READING: Religious institutions, school choice and tax credits in education

A Donor Named “Anonymous”: Mysterious $250,000 RNC Contributor has Close Ties to Gülen Movement - CREW

A Donor Named “Anonymous”: Mysterious $250,000 RNC Contributor has Close Ties to Gülen Movement - CREW

A DONOR NAMED “ANONYMOUS”: MYSTERIOUS $250,000 RNC CONTRIBUTOR HAS CLOSE TIES TO GÜLEN MOVEMENT

On September 4, 2018, a man named Ömer Adsız gave four large contributions to the Republican National Committee, one to the committee’s main fund and the rest to three different RNC expense accounts. In total, Adsız’s donations added up to the eyebrow-raising sum of $250,000, all given to the RNC in a single day. These contributions placed Adsız in an elite category: He is one of less than 50 donors who gave maxed-out contributions to multiple RNC accounts during the 2018 election. Given the unusual circumstances surrounding these contributions, the RNC should follow past precedent and refund the contributions or, at the least, conduct a thorough investigation into the money’s origins.

Adsız, whose surname literally means “anonymous” in Turkish, has a very unusual profile for such a large political donor. Prior to these donations, he did not have a history of making any major political contributions. His source of income was unclear at the time he gave the money, having left his most recent publicly known job in 2016. Instead, in statements filed with the Federal Election Commission in 2018, Adsız listed himself as the president and founder of a mysterious limited liability corporation with no publicly traceable record of commercial activities.

Adsız does have one notable connection to a monied interest, however: He is a longtime associate of the Gülen movement, a political and religious network led by exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, who has been accused of plotting to overthrow the Turkish government. While it’s not clear whether Adsiz’s Gülenist ties were the impetus for his sudden political generosity, he adds to a growing trend, reported on by CREW and others, of individuals with deep foreign ties who appear to be ramping up their involvement in politics via large, first-time political contributions made during the Trump administration.

A LONGTIME GÜLEN AFFILIATE

Who is Ömer Adsız? Publicly available information paints a fairly comprehensive picture. According to one biographical web page, Adsız was born in Turkey in 1979. After going to school in Turkey, he pursued his postgraduate education in the United States, receiving masters’ CONTINUE READING: A Donor Named “Anonymous”: Mysterious $250,000 RNC Contributor has Close Ties to Gülen Movement - CREW

SCCTE 2020: Teaching Writing as a Journey, Not Destination (F.9, Saturday February 1, 8:30-9:15 am) – radical eyes for equity

SCCTE 2020: Teaching Writing as a Journey, Not Destination (F.9, Saturday February 1, 8:30-9:15 am) – radical eyes for equity

SCCTE 2020: Teaching Writing as a Journey, Not Destination (F.9, Saturday February 1, 8:30-9:15 am)

SCCTE

SCCTE Schedule

Embassy Suites Conference Center

Myrtle Beach, SC

Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 8:00 AM –Sat, Feb 1, 2020, 1:30 PM

Session F.9, Saturday February 1, 8:30-9:15 am

PowerPoint available HERE

See Also

Teaching Writing as Journey, Not Destination

SCCTE 2020: Teaching Writing as a Journey, Not Destination (F.9, Saturday February 1, 8:30-9:15 am) – radical eyes for equity

Bob Shepherd Reviews Annie Murphy Paul’s Review of SLAYING GOLIATH in the “New York Times“ | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bob Shepherd Reviews Annie Murphy Paul’s Review of SLAYING GOLIATH in the “New York Times“ | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bob Shepherd Reviews Annie Murphy Paul’s Review of SLAYING GOLIATH in the “New York Times“

Bob Shepherd has worked as an editor, author, assessment developer, curriculum writer, and most recently a classroom teacher in Florida.

In this post, he reviews the review of my book SLAYING GOLIATH, which was written by journalist Annie Murphy Paul and published in the New York Times Book Review.

To summarize, he thought the review was uninformed and mean-spirited.

He writes:

On January 21, 2020, Annie Murphy Paul’s “review” of Diane Ravitch’s Slaying Goliathappeared in The New York Times. Being reviewed in the Times is a big deal.  Such a review affects public opinion and sales. That’s why a hatchet job done on a truly important book is truly irresponsible.

In her new book, education historian Ravitch presents a recent history of the popular resistance to an “Education Reform Movement” led by billionaires interested in

• privatizing U.S. PreK-12 education via charter schools and vouchers,
• foisting upon the country a single set of national “standards,”
• busting teachers’ unions,
• selling depersonalized education software, and
• evaluating students, teachers, and schools based on high-stakes standardized tests.

Here’s Ms. Paul’s opening salvo:

“She came. She saw. She conquered.”

This opening is, of course, an allusion to the boast about his role in the Gallic Wars attributed to Julius Caesar by Appian, Plutarch, and Suetonius—Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered). Caesar’s is doubtless the most famous boast in Western history, and the allusion is meant to be deflating. Technically, the term for what Ms. Paul is attempting here is bathos, a powerful rhetorical technique in which one plunges from the sublime into the ridiculous. She means to ridicule Ravitch as someone who sees herself as the great conqueror of the “Reform CONTINUE READING: Bob Shepherd Reviews Annie Murphy Paul’s Review of SLAYING GOLIATH in the “New York Times“ | Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch on Disruption’s Educational Carnage | Capital & Main

Diane Ravitch on Disruption’s Educational Carnage | Capital & Main

Diane Ravitch on Disruption’s Educational Carnage
No Child Left Behind was a disaster and school choice has failed. A new book points the way forward from the wreckage.

It’s been 10 years since education historian and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch became the school choice movement’s most vocal apostate by detailing its fallacies in her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

Her tale of how a onetime charter school true believer from within the corporate-reform think-tank establishment could no longer ignore the contrary evidence of her own eyes came as a wake-up call. It gave authoritative voice to the anger and frustration of the over 3 million public school classroom teachers whose hands had been tied by the country’s destructive disinvestment in its children. And it contained Ravitch’s own vow to devote the rest of her life to trying to make up for her error.

That mea culpa thrust the New York University research professor into the center of the national public education debate and elevated her to a role as a revered leader of the groundswell of political resistance that followed. With 2013’s Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, she further documented the failure of charters and the carnage wreaked by high-stakes testing, while inventorying evidence-supported and cost-effective reforms that had been sidetracked by the school-privatization movement.

Now, Ravitch completes the arc with Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools, which was published last week.

The completed trilogy bears all the Ravitch signatures: her mastery of the rapier epithet and CONTINUE READING: Diane Ravitch on Disruption’s Educational Carnage | Capital & Main

La. BESE’s Process for Selecting Next Superintendent | deutsch29

La. BESE’s Process for Selecting Next Superintendent | deutsch29

La. BESE’s Process for Selecting Next Superintendent

Below are excerpts from a January 30, 2020, Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) press release related to the process of selection Louisiana’s next state superintendent:

BESE adopts administrative process for selection of new State Superintendent

Jan 29, 2020, 14:55 PM by BESE Admin

At its meetings this week the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) received the initial report of its Superintendent Selection Work Group and adopted the group’s recommended administrative

process regarding the appointment of a new State Superintendent of Education.

Over the next several weeks, the work group plans to partner with a search firm to develop criteria to screen candidates and initiate an open application process. The work group will also directly contact potential candidates submitted by individual BESE members for screening and review initial applications. By early spring the work group anticipates selecting semi-finalists for interviews and recommending one to three finalists to the Board for consideration. BESE has granted the work group the authority to amend the process as necessary, subject to general Board notification. …

A general, tentative timeline for completing the process was detailed by the work group. Candidate applications and Board member nominations will be received during February, with work beginning in March to review and screen candidates. The work group will conduct interviews and facilitate the interview process with individual BESE members in accordance with the state’s Open Meetings Law. Finalists could be CONTINUE READING: La. BESE’s Process for Selecting Next Superintendent | deutsch29

CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Another Voucher Problem (And Not The One You Think)

CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Another Voucher Problem (And Not The One You Think)

FL: Another Voucher Problem (And Not The One You Think)

When the Orlando Sentinel revealed that many Florida schools-- 156 of them!-- were both receiving taxpayer dollars and openly discriminating against LGBTQ students, it was not exactly news. Rebecca Klein had the same story on a national level at Huffington Post back in 2017. Voucher money goes to religious schools, and some religious schools discriminate against LGBTQ students (and teachers).

But sometimes a particular story hits at just the right moment and suddenly draws a huge reaction. That's apparently what happened this time, because the backlash against Florida's tax credit scholarship program has begun (tax credit scholarship programs, you may recall, are the programs that let wealthy donors fund their favorite private school in place of paying their taxes).

Two huge banks-- Wells Fargo and Fifth Third Bank-- have indicated that they would no longer contribute to the Florida program (Step Up for Children) funding the vouchers.

We have reviewed this matter carefully and have decided to no longer support Step Up for Students. All of us at Wells Fargo highly value diversity and inclusion, and we oppose discrimination of any kind.

We have communicated with program officials that we will not be contributing again until more CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Another Voucher Problem (And Not The One You Think)

Slaying Goliath | Deborah Meier on Education

Slaying Goliath | Deborah Meier on Education

Slaying Goliath 

Slaying Goliath
The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools
By Diane Ravitch
Penguin Books

Dear friends and colleagues,
Three cheers for Slaying Goliath.
Diane Ravitch and I have been agonizing together over the fate of public education (and the fate of teacher unions) for a long time. As usual we have different takes on it from time to time. This time our differences about this or that person or situation are definitely minor.

I am a supporter of the singleton self-governing charters started by teachers like myself who did not have the good luck I did. I essentially was given the chance—along with many, many friends, starting in the mid-1970s, to create several charter-like schools in East Harlem within the regular New York City system and again in the 1990s in the Boston school system. These exciting opportunities led to many dozens, maybe hundreds, of mostly small successful innovative schools throughout the country. Most resembled what Al Shanker had hoped for, which Ravitch reminds us of favorably (and that I had forgotten).

But this enthusiasm for teacher-led innovations—never the dominant trend amongst reformers—has gradually disappeared. It is this that makes me ambivalent about attacking charters “in general” when there are hundreds that resemble the work we did CONTINUE READING: Slaying Goliath | Deborah Meier on Education

Do You Have the Backbone for a PLN? | My Island View

Do You Have the Backbone for a PLN? | My Island View

Do You Have the Backbone for a PLN?

The discussion around technology in education often revolves around what technology can or can’t do in regard to affecting kids’ learning. The fact of the matter is that technology in education only works for kids, if it works for their teacher.The best technology in the world will not be effective if the teacher is not a committed advocate for it. That commitment requires an understanding of how the tech fits into what it is the teacher is trying to accomplish. The marriage of those two requires an understanding of not just subject content, but an understanding of the technology and the students as well. It is far more complicated than throwing the tech at the kids and sitting back to record the miraculous results in a grade book.

Technology’s effect on education is difficult to assess, because it is not just the technology that affects the learning. If there are three teachers teaching the same subjects in a school and are given equal access to technology, how can the technology impact on learning be fairly assessed? If one teacher welcomes the CONTINUE READING: Do You Have the Backbone for a PLN? | My Island View

LAUSD Candidate Elizabeth Badger Responds

LAUSD Candidate Elizabeth Badger Responds

LAUSD Candidate Elizabeth Badger Responds

Don’t shoot the messenger,

You might miss the message.”

After reading my candidate profile of Elizabeth Badger, she called to express her displeasure and to demand a retraction. While she demanded a retraction of the article, I stand by what was written. I will, however, present her arguments along with the responses that were given to the candidate. 

Badger’s first complaint was that I had “lied about her record.” When pressed she stated that the article said that she had not been active in her community since losing the school board election in 2015. She then went on to say that she founded a non-profit, serves on the board of the Regional Center and has been elected as a member of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party’s Central Committee.

As explained to the candidate, the specific wording of the article stated that “she has not been a regular face around the district since her last run and her lack of knowledge about the issues is readily apparent in the Speak Up article”. In fact, her work with the Regional Center and the Democratic Party was actually specifically mentioned.  However, none of this work has given her any insight into how the CONTINUE READING: LAUSD Candidate Elizabeth Badger Responds

Are the NEA and AFT leaders gun shy on a presidential endorsement this time? – Fred Klonsky

Are the NEA and AFT leaders gun shy on a presidential endorsement this time? – Fred Klonsky

ARE THE NEA AND AFT LEADERS GUN SHY ON A PRESIDENTIAL ENDORSEMENT THIS TIME?

When Clare Kelly and Trisha Connolly,  Evanston teachers and delegates to last summer’s National Education Association’s Representative Assembly, offered their new business item which directed NEA “to make endorsements for political candidates at the national level through direct membership vote only,”  it was pretty much doomed.

Union democracy has its limits when it comes to political endorsements.

So, rather than allowing a vote, Clare and Trisha’s NBI was referred the executive committee, consisting of NEA’s nine highest-ranking officers.

“Referring to committee” is where rank and file members’ ideas go to die if the leadership isn’t happy with them.

But Clare and Trisha’s NBI was prompted by the wide-spread criticism from members – mainly Bernie supporters – of the bullshit tactics and manipulated process that NEA leaders used to ensure its endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

Clare told me recently, “If elected (as a delegate) to the NEA RA, we will definitely present it again.”

On the AFT side, President Randi Weingarten has been silent this time on who the AFT will endorse, but she has not been quiet about her dislike for the progressive CONTINUE READING: Are the NEA and AFT leaders gun shy on a presidential endorsement this time? – Fred Klonsky

NANCY BAILEY: Common Core, Camouflaged in Testing and Technology

Common Core, Camouflaged in Testing and Technology

Common Core, Camouflaged in Testing and Technology

Common Core State Standards (CCSS) might seem to have diminished, but the standards are still embedded in testing and technology and still hurting students.

When the standards were first imposed on students, parents and teachers complained. Sandra Stotsky, now Professor Emeritus, was an outspoken critic of CCSSs. She had previously helped develop the Massachusetts standards, once considered the best in the nation. As a member of the Common Core Validation Committee, she refused to sign off on the CCSS.

Diane Ravitch, in her book Slaying Goliath, notes that CCSSs were supported by the national teachers’ unions, conservative and liberal think tanks, the National PTA, United Way, and the Chamber of Commerce (p. 230-231). Bill Gates gave education organizations and civil rights groups millions to promote CCSSs. Ravitch states, Gates may have spent as much as $2 billion to develop, implement, and promote the Common Core (231). 

In the last Presidential election, Common Core was said to be the Democrats “third rail.” Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos promised to get rid of Common Core, and CONTINUE READING: Common Core, Camouflaged in Testing and Technology

Did Rosa Parks Really Support Charter Schools? | gadflyonthewallblog

Did Rosa Parks Really Support Charter Schools? | gadflyonthewallblog

Did Rosa Parks Really Support Charter Schools?

They say history is written by the victors.

But fortunes change, and sometimes you can even reclaim a figure from the past who the last round of winners had cast in an unlikely role.

Take Rosa Parks.

She is universally hailed as a hero of the civil rights movement because of her part in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Everyone knows the story. Parks, a black seamstress in Alabama, refused to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus and was arrested. Then working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other activists, she helped encourage black people throughout the city to stop riding the buses until they were eventually desegregated.

But did you know that 40 years later after she had moved to Detroit, Parks tried to open a charter school?

It’s true – from a certain point of view.

And school privatization cheerleaders are quick to reference her advocacy.

President Bill Clinton used the anecdote to sell the charter school concept in a speech to the NAACP in Pittsburgh in 1997.

Joe Nathan, one of the authors of the first charter school law, still likes to troll CONTINUE READING: Did Rosa Parks Really Support Charter Schools? | gadflyonthewallblog

Andre Perry: Advocates for school choice must stop whitewashing ‘choice’

Advocates for school choice must stop whitewashing ‘choice’

Reformers must stop whitewashing ‘choice’
Freedom to choose in privatized school system is illusion where it fails to address inequality born of slavery and ultimate lack of ‘choice’

"It’s ironic when abortion rights supporters don’t back school choice,” said U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. But her attempt to point out some kind of moral absurdity during her remarks to Colorado Christian College students at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., last week only pointed out her own.

According to the Colorado Times Recorder, Devos also invoked slavery to underline her point. President Abraham Lincoln had to deal with the ‘pro-choice’ arguments of his time, she continued. “They suggested that a state’s ‘choice’ to be slave or to be free had no moral question in it. Well, President Lincoln reminded those pro-choicers that [there] is a vast portion of the American people that do not look upon that matter as being this very little thing. They look upon it as a vast moral evil.’”

Aside from the obvious differences in choice between the expansion of education service providers and a woman’s right to control her reproductive choices and her body, DeVos clearly needs to learn that the Republican understanding of words like choice, freedom, liberty differs significantly for black people with our history of slavery. And this is not the first time DeVos has publicly misinterpreted history. Remember when our education secretary called HBCUs “pioneers of ‘school choice,’” completely missing the fact that black postsecondary institutions were born of government-backed segregation?

When Republicans, who are often the biggest proponents of school choice, use the term and other words like “freedom” and “liberty,” they usually mean it in the sense of freedom from government. “I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism,” said Ronald Reagan in a 1975 interview in Reason magazine. “The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom.” It is assumed that freedom (from government) makes us free to choose. However, the basic liberties black people have gained throughout our time in the U.S. required federal intervention. Thus, the government protection from racism that black CONTINUE READING: Advocates for school choice must stop whitewashing ‘choice’

2020 School Climate Survey for Families - Sacramento City Unified School District

2020 School Climate Survey for Families - Sacramento City Unified School District

2020 School Climate Survey for Families

We want to hear from you!

Please take the SCUSD School Climate survey to inform how our district and our schools are meeting the needs of our families and students. The survey will be open from February 3 to March 6, 2020.

The district surveys families every year for their opinion on issues such as safety and feelings of connectedness to school. We hope you will share your opinion every year, and complete one survey for every school that your students attend. 

The survey should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. Links to the family survey, in 6 different languages, can be found below. If you prefer, printable versions appear in the yellow box at the right.

Links to Online Family Surveys:

• ENGLISH
• CHINESE
• HMONG
• RUSSIAN
• SPANISH
• VIETNAMESE

printable versions

• English_Family Survey_Printable
• Chinese_Family Survey_Printable
• Hmong_Family Survey_Printable
• Russian_Family Survey_Printable
• Spanish_Family Survey_Printable
• Vietnamese_Family Survey_Printable

2020 School Climate Survey for Families - Sacramento City Unified School District