Pennsylvania Governor Sets Out To Fix “Worst Charter School Laws” In Nation

Pennsylvania Governor Sets Out To Fix “Worst Charter School Laws” In Nation

Pennsylvania Governor Sets Out To Fix “Worst Charter School Laws” In Nation

It was Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale who four years ago deemed Pennsylvania’s charter school law the “worst in the United States,” but it may be Governor Tom Wolf who takes a first step toward fixing it. The law is over two decades old, and after letting that sleeping dog continue to lie for the first part of his term, Governor Tom Wolf has pledged to push changes in accountability and funding rules for the charter school industry.

Pennsylvania already has school funding problems. Pennsylvania has ranked consistently near the very bottom for contributing state money to local districts, which means that local districts must provide the bulk of the money to run schools. Since schools depend on that local funding, it’s no surprise that the commonwealth also has the largest gaps between rich and poor districts in the country.

Charter funding exacerbates the funding problem, with some communities having been besieged by charter schools that are draining taxpayer dollars. At one point, Chester Uplands School District was paying more to charter schools than it was receiving in support from the state.

Charter schools are paid on a per-pupil basis, based on the per-pupil CONTINUE READING: Pennsylvania Governor Sets Out To Fix “Worst Charter School Laws” In Nation

Blue Serials (2/8/20) - Social Media Edition | Blue Cereal Education

Blue Serials (2/8/20) - Social Media Edition | Blue Cereal Education

Blue Serials (2/8/20) - Social Media Edition

 Happy chocolate-covered stuff!

I suppose this is – by default – the Valentine’s Day Edition of Blue Serials this month.

I’ll be honest. This is NOT one of my favorite holidays. It seems contrived and completely driven by guilt, expectations, and consumerism. It also makes it REALLY hard to get into any decent restaurants for several days before and after.

I mean, I’m glad you’re SO IN LOVE, people – but I was wanting an apple pecan salad, dammit!

Since it is the time of the year for celebrating dysfunctional love, however, I will be offering you a few Blue Cereal-approved love songs, each with a tainted twist. Don’t worry, however – there’s still plenty of education and educational news to discuss this week.

The Regrettes - I Dare You

Are You Sure That’s How Karma Works?

A high school principal in Camas, Washington, is in hot water for a Facebook post made in response to news of Kobe Bryant's death:

"Not gonna lie. Seems to me that karma caught up with a rapist today,"

Ouch.

Principal Liza Sejkora of Camas High School (Go Papermakers!) was put on leave and later resigned, despite having deleted the post once she learned how many others had CONTINUE READING: Blue Serials (2/8/20) - Social Media Edition | Blue Cereal Education

Betsy DeVos' approval rating is 28% as voters back investigations into student debt scandal: poll | Salon.com

Betsy DeVos' approval rating is 28% as voters back investigations into student debt scandal: poll | Salon.com

Betsy DeVos' approval rating is 28% as voters back investigations into student debt scandal: poll
After gutting loan forgiveness programs, DeVos is the most unpopular Trump administration official in a new poll

A majority of voters support congressional investigations into Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' handling of student debt programs, according to the results of a new poll, which exposes how deeply unpopular the Trump Cabinet member is across the country.

DeVos has an approval rating of just 28%, according to a survey conducted by Global Strategy Group on behalf of government watchdog Allied Progress, who provided the results to Salon. DeVos received the lowest approval rating of any Trump administration official tested. The next most unpopular official was acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney at 33%.

The survey, which sampled 1,008 registered voters, also found overwhelming support for congressional investigations into whether DeVos abused taxpayer funds or used her position to benefit herself or her family.

"If Secretary DeVos was hoping Americans are too distracted by President Trump's scandals to notice or care are about her efforts to sell out student borrowers, she's in for a shock," Derek Martin, the director of Allied Progress, said. "We found the public is especially skeptical of Secretary DeVos — for good reason. What motivated DeVos' decisions to disregard the law in order to deny debt relief to defrauded borrowers and disabled veterans? Americans want to know, and it's Congress' duty to find out."

The poll finds that 58% of voters support an investigation into DeVos withholding automatic student debt relief from severely disabled veterans despite calls to do so from nearly every attorney general in the country. Data released by the department showed that although it had identified more than 42,000 veterans who were eligible for debt forgiveness, fewer than 9,000 submitted the new applications it required. A bipartisan group of 51 attorneys general said the requirements "may prove insurmountable CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos' approval rating is 28% as voters back investigations into student debt scandal: poll | Salon.com

There Are No Bernie Bros, Just Diverse Supporters Being Made Into What They’re Not | gadflyonthewallblog

There Are No Bernie Bros, Just Diverse Supporters Being Made Into What They’re Not | gadflyonthewallblog

There Are No Bernie Bros, Just Diverse Supporters Being Made Into What They’re Not

It’s time to call the whole “Bernie Bros” phenomenon exactly what it is – racist, sexist, homophobic propaganda.

I don’t mean that Bernie Sanders’ supporters are any of those things.

I mean that the term used to lump us all together is.

There is no monolithic group of angry straight men backing the Vermont Senator’s bid for the Democratic nomination for President in 2020. Nor was there in 2016.

A substantial portion of Sanders’ supporters are female, racially diverse and/or LGBTQ.

Women under 45 make up a larger share of Sanders’ base than do men of the same age, according to February findings from The Economist.

Moreover, women have given more money to his campaign than to any other candidate.

In November, Sanders raised about $17.1 million in itemized contributions, or 40% of CONTINUE READING: There Are No Bernie Bros, Just Diverse Supporters Being Made Into What They’re Not | gadflyonthewallblog

The inconvenient truth about charter ‘success’: They weed out students; traditional public schools must teach all - New York Daily News

The inconvenient truth about charter ‘success’: They weed out students; traditional public schools must teach all - New York Daily News

The inconvenient truth about charter ‘success’: They weed out students; traditional public schools must teach all

Cheerleaders for New York City’s charter school sector typically trumpet the academic achievements of charter school students.

But there is an inconvenient truth about these schools that charter supporters rarely discuss, or even admit. The schools’ “success” is due not to any superior instructional strategy but rather to segregation — segregation based on students’ academic and social needs.

Though charters are open to all by lottery, as a group they enroll a significantly smaller percentage than public schools of our neediest children, such as English language learners, special education students or those from the poorest families. Children like these typically have the largest learning challenges.

For the 2018-19 school year, for example, the latest for which data is available, charters as a group enrolled half the citywide average of ELLs (6.9% vs. a citywide average of 14.6%) and a third of the special education students with the highest level of need (1.7% vs. a citywide average of 5.4%).

But the charter sector average turns out to be only half the story. An analysis of individual charter schools clearly shows that the schools most successful at excluding these kinds of students turn out to be — no surprise — the charters with the highest test scores.

As measured by the most recent state English language exam, the most academically successful charters (those with a pass rate of 67% or higher) had even fewer English Language Learners and special ed students.

That’s not a bug in the charter world; it’s a feature. Throughout the charter sector, as the number of children with academic and other needs grows, the average proficiency rate on the state test CONTINUE READING: The inconvenient truth about charter ‘success’: They weed out students; traditional public schools must teach all - New York Daily News

The Last Time Democracy Almost Died (Jill Lepore) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Last Time Democracy Almost Died (Jill Lepore) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Last Time Democracy Almost Died (Jill Lepore)

With the rise of dictatorships across Europe and Asia in the past quarter-century, the current impeachment and then acquittal of President Donald Trump, fear, anger, and despair about the present state of America and its future as a democracy has become a topic of discussion. Recent books entitled How Democracies Die and The People Vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is In Danger & How To Save It point to the angst that is in the air about the present and future of democracy in the U.S.

Historian Jill Lepore looks to the 1930s when the U.S. was mired in the Great Depression and totalitarianism was on the march in Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Adolph Hitler’s Germany. In the U.S., anti-immigration sentiment, lynchings of blacks, and antisemitism rose dramatically in these years as authoritarian governments toppled democracies internationally.

As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal took hold of the country, Lepore argues that Americans engaged in sustained discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of democratic government and daily democratic practices. And many public schools were involved in those civic discussions. I have excerpted part of the article dealing with one Midwestern school district’s efforts.

Jill Lepore contributes to The New Yorker. She is a professor of history at Harvard University. Her latest book is “These Truths: A History of the United States.” The entire article appeared in The New Yorker.

It’s a paradox of democracy that the best way to defend it is to attack it, to ask CONTINUE READING: The Last Time Democracy Almost Died (Jill Lepore) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Mao Vang Named as New Assessment Director - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

Mao Vang Named as New Assessment Director - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Appoints

Dr. Mao Vang 

as Director of the Assessment Development and Administration Division

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced today that he has appointed Dr. Mao Vang as the new Director for the Assessment Development and Administration Division (ADAD) at the California Department of Education (CDE). The division manages the development and administration for all statewide assessments.

“Mao brings a wealth of experience, knowledge, and passion to the CDE’s leadership team,” said State Superintendent Tony Thurmond. “After more than 20 years of serving in various roles in education, she knows the important role of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and data in providing high-quality educational experiences to all our students.”

Dr. Vang spent the last two-and-a-half years as an Education Administrator at the CDE. Before that she served as Director of Assessment, Research and Evaluation in both San Ramon Valley Unified School District and Sacramento City Unified School District. She also spent time working for Educational Testing Services (ETS), where she directed and managed the development and administrative activities of the California High School Exit Exam program as the contractor working with the CDE.

Dr. Vang earned her Doctorate in Educational Leadership from U.C. Davis and Sonoma State University. She also received a Master of Education from Saint Mary's University of Minnesota in the area of brain development research and family literacy, as well as a B.A. in Social Studies from the University of Saint Thomas. She replaces Michelle Center, who now works at California’s Department of Consumer Affairs.

# # # #

Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

Last Reviewed: Friday, February 7, 2020

Mao Vang Named as New Assessment Director - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

Hmong American Experience 
- Home - https://www.facebook.com/HmongAE/

Hmong Innovating Politics
 - https://hipcalifornia.com/

NO GLOVE LEFT BEHIND, Season 2 | The Merrow Report

NO GLOVE LEFT BEHIND, Season 2 | The Merrow Report

NO GLOVE LEFT BEHIND, Season 2

I made a huge mistake last year when I waited until the beginning of April to introduce my campaign to match lost gloves and deliver them to the gloveless.  What I am now calling “No Glove Left Behind” is now running at full speed when it’s most needed, during the harsh months of winter.  I’m writing to enlist your help.

Whenever I walk the streets of New York City I see lost and abandoned gloves, at least one every time I walk our dog, and sometimes more. Below are images of five gloves that I have “rescued” in the past three days. 

Let me ask you: How many times have you, during a walk around your city, come across a single glove or mitten, lying on the sidewalk….and kept on walking?  That is what I used to do, until last March, when I enlisted my wife and a couple of neighbors to search for matches.  

Last year we donated several dozen matching pairs to a nearby place of worship. However, in our apartment right now we have about 75 unmatched gloves, waiting for YOU to find and send us the match!

As you can see below, sometimes the lost gloves almost match, but we strive for CONTINUE READING: NO GLOVE LEFT BEHIND, Season 2 | The Merrow Report

CATCH UP WITH NEWBLACKMAN (IN EXILE)

NewBlackMan (in Exile)

CATCH UP WITH NEWBLACKMAN (IN EXILE)

Left of Black S10:E9: LaKisha Simmons and Black Girls Studies

by Mark Anthony Neal / 4d

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal (@NewBlackMan) is joined in the studio by Dr. LaKisha Simmons (@ProfLSimmons), an associate professor of history and women’s studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Crescent City Girls: The Lives of Young Black Women in Segregated New Orleans (University of North Carolina Press 2015), which won the SAWH Julia Cherry Spruill Prize for best b

What Is The Relationship Between Black Comedy & Activism?: Extra Credit with Dr. Mark Anthony Neal

by Mark Anthony Neal / 4d

In this #ExtraCredit, Mark Anthony Neal , the James B. Duke Professor of African & African American Studies, discusses the legacy of comedian Dick Gregory and the role that standup comedy played in impacting race relations in the United States. Professor Neal teachers the course "Dick Gregory and the History of Black Humor" at Duke University, which is supported by a generous gift from the Estate

"Baldwin's Nigger": A Conversation with James Baldwin and Dick Gregory (1968)

by Mark Anthony Neal / 5d

'A 1969 conversation with writer James Baldwin and humorist Dick Gregory in London about the Black experience in America and how it relates to the Caribbean and Great Britain. Directed by Horace Ové .'

Art & Design in Chicago: The Wall of Respect

55by Mark Anthony Neal / 5d

'It had a short and contentious existence, but the Wall of Respect has an outsize influence and importance. In 1967, a group of African American artists formed the Organization for Black American Culture – OBAC , which sounds like the Yoruba word for chieftain. Inspired by ongoing civil rights struggles and the emergent Black Power movement, the Visual Arts Workshop of OBAC decided to collectivel

FEB 02

Betye Saar: Taking Care of Business

27by Mark Anthony Neal / 6d

'At 93, there’s no stopping when it comes to the legendary artist Betye Saar . A self-proclaimed “recycler,” Ms. Saar has been creating assemblage art for decades. The objects in her work reflect her very personal visions of nature, spirituality and ideas addressing equality and a new kind of African-American representation. By taking a derogatory caricature like Aunt Jemima and outfitting her wi

Black Music Honors: Avery Wilson, Tony Terry and Tevin Campbell Tribute to Freddie Jackson

by Mark Anthony Neal / 6d

' Avery Wilson , Tony Terry and Tevin Campbell join forces to deliver a medley of throwback hits in honor of Black Music Honors Honoree, Freddie Jackson . '

JAN 31

Is D'Angelo's 'Voodoo' The Perfect Album? A Conversation with Questlove and Rick Rubin

by Mark Anthony Neal / 7d

' On the Broken Record Podcast with Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell , Questlove talks about how he got involved with D’Angelo ’s Voodoo record, the process of it, and Rick Rubin shares that it's one of the greatest albums of all 

NewBlackMan (in Exile)