3 easy ways to help get smaller classes for NYC kids! | Class Size Matters

3 easy ways to help get smaller classes for NYC kids! | Class Size Matters | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes

3 easy ways to help get smaller classes for NYC kids!

Please help us urge the Speaker and NYC Council to invest $100 million in hiring additional teachers to lower class size, starting first in the early grades and in struggling schools.

This would pay for the salaries of about 1,000 new teachers, which could reduce class size in as many as 4,000 classrooms—as adding a new teacher at a grade level lowers class size for all the other students in that same grade in the school. These funds would represent less than one percent of the $27 billion that the DOE will be spending next year.

NYC kids will never be provided with true equity as long as their class sizes remain 15-30% larger than they are in the rest of the state.

If you support this critical goal, please take five minutes to do the following:

1.Call Speaker Corey Johnson’s office at: 212-788-7210; if busy, call 212-564-7757.

Say the following: Please make sure that at least $100 million is allocated towards reducing class size in next year’s budget and the Council’s budget response should include this initiative.

2. Contact your City Council Members via phone and urge them to do the same; also let them know you are a constituent. To find your City Council members and their contact information, plug your address in here: https://council.nyc.gov/districts/

3. Once you have done that, please fill out our follow-up survey.

Unfortunately, the Council hearing and rally on class size had to be postponed because I broke my leg in Spain. More on this here.

Hopefully these events will be rescheduled soon — but we’re not going to wait to put this issue squarely on the Council’s agenda. Please make those calls today!

Thanks so much, Leonie

There is more data on class size and overcrowding trends citywide and in particular districts on our website here. If you’d like a briefing for your CEC or community organization, let us know.

ways to help get smaller classes for NYC kids! | Class Size Matters | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes

CURMUDGUCATION: NC: Can Fed Money Get Charters To Accept Poor Students

CURMUDGUCATION: NC: Can Fed Money Get Charters To Accept Poor Students

NC: Can Fed Money Get Charters To Accept Poor Students

North Carolina's charter schools have some issues, such as draining resources from public schools and increasing segregation in a state that has not exactly set a high standard for de-segregation. White flight segregation academies are turning into charters, and they're also looking at district secession (white flight via redrawing school district boundaries).

But the federal government has awarded North Carolina a pile of money for-- well, here it's called "a statewide initiative to help meet the needs of educationally disadvantaged students" and here it's called "federal funding to help increase enrollment in charter schools, particularly for children from low-income groups" and here it's called "$36.6 million to increase the number of 'educationally disadvantaged students' attending charter schools."

You get the idea. Federal money is supposed to get charters to accept more poor students.

This is.... odd. If the whole point of charters is to give poor students the sort of choices that are available to wealthier families, why is it that North Carolina charters are apparently not providing those choices? "Economically disadvantaged students" (I love some good bureaucratic euphemisms) are the majority of the NC pub lic school population. In charters, they are 18.8%. It makes one wonder what the barrier might be, and why federal money is needed to breach it.

NC set up a whole program called ACCESS to award grants from the grant to "increase the EDS population in charter schools," and the applicants for the grant are required to show a variety of strategies, including a marketing and recruitment plan, a school climate plan, a transportation plan, and SMART goals including how the school will eliminate barriers. There's also a requirement for a CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: NC: Can Fed Money Get Charters To Accept Poor Students

Education Week: Common Core Is Still a Hot Item for Vendors | Diane Ravitch's blog

Education Week: Common Core Is Still a Hot Item for Vendors | Diane Ravitch's blog

Education Week: Common Core Is Still a Hot Item for Vendors

The controversy over the Common Core standards has died down since so many states have renamed and rebranded them as if they no longer exist. But below the eye of public attention, Common Core does what it was intended to do: It has created a marketplace for vendors. 

Alex Harwin, in her update of the marketplace, writes that more than two-thirds of district leaders say they are still buying CCSS products.

This is a good time to recall that Arne Duncan’s chief of staff Joanne Weiss wrote in the Harvard Business Review blog that building a national marketplace for vendors was one of the central goals of CCSS:

Technological innovation in education need not stay forever young. And one important change in the market for education technology is likely to accelerate its maturation markedly within the next several years. For the first time, 42 states and the District of Columbia have adopted rigorous common standards, and 44 states are working together in two consortia to create a new generation of assessments that will genuinely assess college and career-readiness.

The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets CONTINUE READING: Education Week: Common Core Is Still a Hot Item for Vendors | Diane Ravitch's blog

In Budget Snub, Betsy DeVos Treats Charters Like “Public Schools” | deutsch29

In Budget Snub, Betsy DeVos Treats Charters Like “Public Schools” | deutsch29

In Budget Snub, Betsy DeVos Treats Charters Like “Public Schools”

In President Trump’s proposed FY2021 budget, charter school funding is lumped together in block-grant fashion with funding once seperately designated for 29 federal K12-related programs. From the US Department of Education (USDOE) FY2021 proposed budget press release:

The budget calls for consolidating nearly all existing K-12 formula and competitive grant programs into one block grant to States, called the Elementary and Secondary Education for the Disadvantaged (ESED) Block Grant. Funds would be allocated using the same formulas as the Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies program.

Specifically, the block grant includes consolidating these 29 federal programs:

FORMULA GRANT PROGRAMS (9)

• Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies
• Migrant State Grants
• Neglected and Delinquent State Grants
• Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants
• 21st Century Community Learning Centers
• Education for Homeless Children and Youths
• Rural Education
• Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants
• English Language Acquisition Grants

COMPETITIVE GRANT PROGRAMS (20)

• Comprehensive Literacy Development Grants
• Innovative Approaches to Literacy
• High School Equivalency Program CONTINUE READING: 
In Budget Snub, Betsy DeVos Treats Charters Like “Public Schools” | deutsch29

Jersey Jazzman: Sorry, NJ Charter Schools -- You Can't Have It Both Ways

Jersey Jazzman: Sorry, NJ Charter Schools -- You Can't Have It Both Ways

Sorry, NJ Charter Schools -- You Can't Have It Both Ways

Some news on the NJ charter school front this week*:

The state Supreme Court yesterday agreed to hear a lawsuit that had challenged the expansion of charter schools in Newark, arguably the state’s nexus for the alternative schools with more than a third of its students enrolled in them.

By apparent coincidence, a group of charter school parents and the sector’s association on the same day filed to become “friends of the court” in a separate case before the high court regarding the state’s epic Abbott v. Burke school equity rulings. 

In that case, the charter schools are trying to get in on a challenge seeking what would surely be billions of dollars in new school construction aid for 31 needy districts statewide. 

The confluence before the court of the two cases comes at a time when charter schools face increasing fire from traditional school districts, largely over the public money that charter schools draw from the other districts. But while those battles have been fierce in several communities, including in Newark, they have largely stayed out of the courts in recent years.

This was a long time coming: the Christie administration happily encouraged the expansion of charter schools without seriously thinking about appropriate oversight, regulation, and funding of the sector. Now the state has to contend with a system that CONTINUE READING: Jersey Jazzman: Sorry, NJ Charter Schools -- You Can't Have It Both Ways

NYC Educator: UFT Delegate Assembly February 12, 2020--We Reminisce About Emperor Mike, and Many Resolutions

NYC Educator: UFT Delegate Assembly February 12, 2020--We Reminisce About Emperor Mike, and Many Resolutions

UFT Delegate Assembly February 12, 2020--We Reminisce About Emperor Mike, and Many Resolutions

4:28 UFT President Michael Mulgrew welcomes us.

National—Impeachment’s done, DeVos wants to voucher everything. Horrendous. President’s SOTU v. budget proposals contradictory. Watching presidential race. Mentions former mayor running, gets many boos from crowd. Says we have worked with him, really know him. His ed proposal says he wanted to hold charters accountable, but never did that here. He wants unions with no power.

We are sticking to what we said—Census will start before next DA. 191 of 200 volunteers came to a weekend to be trained. Usually many people don’t show. Volunteers stand. Our budget issues wouldn’t exist if we scored 10 points higher on census.

State—Proposed budget is governor’s. Will be two more. We now have more people covered with health insurance. Governor wants municipalities to pay for anything over 3% spent on Medicaid. NYC has no control over who gets services and what it pays for. State controls these factors. County executives upset. Big issue.

2011 first year NYC put more money into ed than state did. Gotten worse every year. Cost shift. Every school district in state suffering. Last week started working with DC37 and others, saying there can be no cost shift to municipalities. Governor loves to fight with mayor, but this is NYC and others as communities. Cannot balance budget by making us pay more. This is unexpected.

Charter proposal ridiculous. Tuition allotment per pupil 830 charter student, 200 public school student. Parents were here, CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: UFT Delegate Assembly February 12, 2020--We Reminisce About Emperor Mike, and Many Resolutions

Schools Reach Beyond The Classroom – redqueeninla

Schools Reach Beyond The Classroom – redqueeninla

Schools Reach Beyond The Classroom

On the eve of launching LA’s new Education Examiner, I attended a Los Angeles Public Library “ALOUD” discussion stimulated by the new book of America’s leading populist, progressive Education theorist Diane Ravitch:  Slaying Goliath. UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl very capably nailed out the corners of a conversational tapestry warped by the current reality of today’s educational landscape on the ground, in our schools, as felt by kids and teachers in every classroom; a tapestry woven by the weft of administrative realities, political pressures and evolving ideology.

It’s not enough to understand what we experience in the classroom as our kids learn and grow. That’s a snapshot in time of their experience; the system of which they are an integral part is informed by more, a political landscape of economics, rhetoric, law, power, governance – local, regional and federal. It is fundamental to our responsibility as citizens of a republic, to trace and follow construction of this integrated fabric: the weave of daily experience shot through with politics and policy.

That’s why we all need to contribute as informed, voting participants in this CONTINUE READING: Schools Reach Beyond The Classroom – redqueeninla

Local Law 167 & 168, Information and Memo to City Council | Class Size Matters

Local Law 167 & 168, Information and Memo to City Council | Class Size Matters | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes

Local Law 167 & 168, Information and Memo to City Council

Two bills were passed last year by the City Council, with the goal of helping to alleviate school overcrowding: Local Law 167 which required the DOE to make more transparent its data sources and methodology for projecting the need for new school seats, and Local Law 168, which created a Task Force for School Siting to expedite the identification of locations where new schools could be built.

Both laws  resulted from recommendations made by the City Council Working Group report Planning to Learn, as well as problems we had previously identified in our reports, including, Space Crunch and  Seats Gained and Lost in NYC Schools: The Untold Story.

Local Law 167 came into force on December 1, 2019.  The SCA/DOE claims to have provided the data here:  http://www.nycsca.org/community/capital-plan-reports-data#Local-Law-167-Reports-352

But much of the data required is missing, and in fact the DOE is providing no more data than in years past:

• No data is posted on the number of seats lost over the last few years or projected into the future from lapsed leases, removed TCUs, or the elimination of mini-schools or annexes, that have a significant impact on the need for new seats.
• No disaggregated projections are provided for the seats needs, disaggregated by grade span or type of school, i.e. Pre-K/elementary schools/middle schools, either citywide, or  by district or sub-district, as called for in the law.
• No seats need estimates are provided by sub-district at all.
• The law mandates that they provide an explanation of all the inputs that help determine their projections, CONTINUE READING: Local Law 167 & 168, Information and Memo to City Council | Class Size Matters | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes

The Effective Classroom. Do You Know It When You See It? | Teacher in a strange land

The Effective Classroom. Do You Know It When You See It? | Teacher in a strange land

The Effective Classroom. Do You Know It When You See It?

Over the past couple of days, there’s been a flurry of pushback against this tweet from Tom Rath: Classrooms are such an overlooked part of the sitting epidemic. We need to blow up our thinking about the best ways for kids and adults to learn in groups. We simply learn better when we move more.

Daniel Pink responded: Offices are adopting standing desks & walking meetings. But classrooms still make students sit all day. To improve, consider:

• Regular breaks to stand & stretch
• Small-group activities that require moving to switch desks
• More open space & adjustable desks.

Most of the tweetback looks like this: Obviously, these guys have never seen MY tiny classroom and/or the crappy 1960s-style desks that my students are compelled to use, let alone the crumbling concrete square that we call the playground. Some teacher feedback is defensive: MY students take brain breaks every 45 minutes, to stretch and oxygenate! There’s a lot of cynicism: More open space! Adjustable desks! As if! Hahahahahhaha!

There’s an underlying sense that once again, schools and teachers are being painted as 19th century anachronisms, unwilling to change in response to new ‘thinking’ (whose thinking?) about learning. It’s our fault, somehow, that education is ‘stuck’ in an ‘industrial model’ of straight rows and straight content delivery, and could really CONTINUE READING: 

Why charter school leaders are now furious at President Trump and Betsy DeVos - The Washington Post

Why charter school leaders are now furious at President Trump and Betsy DeVos - The Washington Post

Why charter school leaders are furious at Trump and Betsy DeVos

The charter school world was certain it had faithful supporters in President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. After all, the pair made “school choice” their No. 1 education priority. DeVos has spent decades working to expand the charter sector. And Trump and DeVos repeatedly proposed boosting charter school funding, without giving a hint that federal funding of charters would be in danger under their watch.

Now, some leaders in the charter world, including the head of the nation’s largest charter school organization, are furious at them.

On Monday, the Trump administration released its 2021 budget proposal, and there was a gargantuan surprise in the Education Department’s plan for charter school funding.

It calls for the effective elimination of the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP), which has funded the expansion of charter schools since 1994 to the tune of $3.3 billion. Forty percent of operational charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately operated — were created with money from this program.

Instead of maintaining CSP as a discrete program, the administration is proposing it be lumped with nearly 30 other Education Department programs — including support for homeless students, civics education, magnet schools and school safety — into a single $19 billion block grant for states to use as they want on programs most important to them. The administration said it wants to give states more control of how they spend federal money while reducing the federal education footprint. States could use grant funding to expand charter schools, but other priorities would compete with it.

The administration’s main education priority doesn’t even show up in the Education Department’s proposed budget. Instead, it appears as a line item in the Treasury Department as a tax expenditure: $5 billion to give tax breaks for a program called the Education Freedom Scholarships, which would use CONTINUE READING: Why charter school leaders are now furious at President Trump and Betsy DeVos - The Washington Post

Test the water and HVAC systems just as much as the students

Pay attention to school infrastructure if we care about equity in education

Test the water and HVAC systems just as much as the students
If we care about equity in education, we need to pay attention to school infrastructure

When boilers failed at multiple public schools in Baltimore in 2018, teachers adapted by bringing in space heaters to warm shivering students’ hands. Kids huddled in their winter coats indoors. A full 60 schools had problems, though administrators were only forced to close eight that had major mechanical irregularities to heating problems, according to The Baltimore Sun.

The infrastructure failures of Baltimore schools symbolize the overall lack of investment in black-majority cities and the people in them. People who blame black leadership and residents’ choices for the conditions of their neighborhoods and schools obviously won’t invest in them. No less than the president of the United States faulted the leadership of the late U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, representative for Maryland’s 7th Congressional District, for what the president called a “rat and rodent infested mess.”

When something goes wrong in black neighborhoods, it isn’t long before you hear the reflexive criticism “it all starts at home,” or “if only they weren’t that way” — “they” referring to black people. Sure, poverty, crime and educational parity are real issues that black people face, but how high can we fly if the very ground beneath us is crumbling?

A January 2020 report by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Applied Public Research found that “[p]roblems with heat and cooling accounted for lost school time of more than 1.2 million hours, equivalent to more than 179,000 days, over the last 5 years, representing about 80% of the time missed.” The condition of a CONTINUE READING: Pay attention to school infrastructure if we care about equity in education

NewBlackMan (in Exile) TODAY

NewBlackMan (in Exile)

NewBlackMan (in Exile) TODAY

Rappers are ‘Products Made to Crumble’: A Review of Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics and Guilt in America

by Mark Anthony Neal / 12min

by Tyler Bunzey |@t_bunzey | NewBlackMan (in Exile) Hip-hop has changed quite a bit since its early years as a small cultural movement in the South Bronx. Almost half a century old, hip-hop is now a massive international cultural force with multiple subgenres , a force that informs the layout of the recording industry, fashion, marketing, the American vernacular, and, hell, even U.S. diplomatic

YESTERDAY

Actor-Comedian Tommy Davidson Dives Into His New Memoir, 'Living In Color: What's Funny About Me'

by Mark Anthony Neal / 12h

'In his new memoir, Tommy Davidson shares his unique perspective on making it in Hollywood, being an integral part of TV history with the pioneering sketch show, In Living Color , and on living a life that has never been black and white. Told with humor and hard-won honesty by a singular voice whose family and friendships help him navigate a life of personal and professional highs and lows, Livin

Class Incarceration: A New Understanding of Prison and the American Population

by Mark Anthony Neal / 13h

'Sociologist Adaner Usmani advances a new explanation for mass incarceration in America - not as an elite-driven tool of racialized social control, but as a wide-scale punitive response to the growing crime and violence of an unequal society with no social democratic push for redistributive policies. Usmani wrote the article "The Economic Origins of Mass Incarceration" with John Clegg for Catalys

Jessie Reyez On The Power Of Sad Songs

by Mark Anthony Neal / 13h

'The 28-year-old Colombian-Canadian singer Jessie Reyez makes emotional music that has connected deeply with fans. She recently received her first Grammy nomination for best urban contemporary album for her EP, Being Human in Public .' -- Weekend Edition Saturday

How Black Women Were 'Skimmed' By Infant Formula Marketing

by Mark Anthony Neal / 13h

'Here & Now 's Tonya Mosley speaks with Andrea Freeman — whose book Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice looks at how formula was marketed to black women in the late 20th century.'

Writer Danez Smith Discuses New Collection 'Homie'

by Mark Anthony Neal / 13h

Photo by Hieu Minh Nguyen. Danez Smith joins All Of It to discuss their work and latest book, Homie: Poems .

NewBlackMan (in Exile)