Tuesday, December 1, 2020

RANDI WEINGARTEN: A blueprint to safely open schools | TheHill

A blueprint to safely open schools | TheHill

A blueprint to safely open schools

The United States has the sad distinction of having the most confirmed coronavirus cases and death in the world, which has kept many schools shuttered for instruction in person. Parents and educators know that our children do best at schools, where they can get support, and they worry that the lack of learning in person has hurt students in need.

Systems from New York City to the Netherlands have shown that, with the necessary protocols to prevent transmission, students can safely return to learning in person. But schools are not islands. Americans must summon the collective will to follow science both in and out of schools. If we can do this, we can allow children across the country back to schools for the second semester and then for enriched summer programs.

Reopening schools is vital for the health and education of our children. It is also critical for the economy. We all have a role in doing this safely. Our holidays will look very different this year as infections surge with hospitals at capacity. Our leaders must use every tool at their disposal to reduce the spread of the coronavirus and pass a relief package that includes funding for states, schools, businesses, and the Americans who now struggle with rents, nutrition insecurity, and student loans. It is why we need a national blueprint that has these objectives to safely reopen schools.

We must get the coronavirus under control. This will take a national mask mandate, a federal system for both testing and contact tracing, targeted regional closures of schools and restaurants, making sure our exhausted health care workers have everything they need, and a robust coronavirus vaccination program once it is proven as sound and effective.

We must place public health protocols in schools. We know what works, such as masks, hand washing, physical distancing, sufficient ventilation, electrostatic cleaners, and broad testing. These protocols are enabling CONTINUE READING: A blueprint to safely open schools | TheHill

How to Assign Writing When You Don’t Teach Writing – radical eyes for equity

How to Assign Writing When You Don’t Teach Writing

Over a decade ago, my university transitioned from an English Department-based composition sequence (often designated as ENG 101 and ENG 102 in many universities) to a first-year seminar format that would be staffed across all departments. This change, of course, meant that many professors with no background or training in how to teach writing were now teaching first-year writing.

The university fumbled this move quite a bit, but gradually the significance of that hurdle was recognized. We continue to find ways to support professors new and still learning to teaching writing.

Two of the foundational concepts repeated by those of us helping support these professors have been that teaching writing is not an inoculation (one course, or even a few courses, cannot produce students who need no more writing instruction) and that assigning writing is not teaching writing.

For many years, I have been posting my thoughts and strategies for anyone who is tasked with teaching writing or who must teach a writing-intensive CONTINUE READING: How to Assign Writing When You Don’t Teach Writing – radical eyes for equity

Joe Biden reportedly to be tough on charter schools

Joe Biden reportedly to be tough on charter schools

Charter school advocates may not have an ally in President-elect Joe Biden or his Education Department.

“He has been working closely with us over these last few months to listen and understand what the issues are that we are facing in this moment. We know we have a partner,” Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, told the Wall Street Journal.

Unlike President Barack Obama, who showed deference to the rise of charter schools and support for school choice, Biden has called for a ban on federal funding for charter schools that are operated by for-profit companies, which account for 12 percent of charter schools, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

He also pledged, as part of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force, to “support measures to increase accountability for charter schools.”

“We will call for conditioning federal funding for new, expanded charter schools or for charter school renewals on a district’s review of whether the charter will systematically underserve the neediest students,” the task force’s final platform read.

The policy position has sparked worry among parents and school choice advocates representing such students.

“The data is consistently clear that nonprofit public charter schools, particularly in our urban communities that serve our African American and Latino students, have performed well. For that reason, there’s also very strong support among African American and Latino parents for charter schools,” Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform, told the Journal.

“I absolutely am deeply concerned that a union-controlled Biden Education Department could have a chilling effect on the progress that the states and parents have made in securing educational options and excellence for the kids,” Jeanne Allen, chief executive of the Center for Education Reform, told the paper. CONTINUE READING: Joe Biden reportedly to be tough on charter schools

‘Black Lives Matter at School’ — a new book on anti-racist work in education - The Washington Post

'Black Lives Matter at School’ — a new book on anti-racist work in education

To the Black children of the future who will one day all be taught the epic story of how Black people finally got free, and who will grow up knowing that their lives matter at school — and everywhere else.

That’s the dedication to a new book, “Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice,” which springs from a movement that started several years ago to resist racism and imbue anti-racism in school curriculums as well as educational practices and policies.

The book — edited by educators and activists Denisha Jones and Jesse Hagopian — is a collection of essays, interviews, poems, lessons and more from educators, students and parents who have become involved with the movement. It discusses the movement’s four demands: ending zero-tolerance discipline and implementing restorative justice; hiring more Black teachers; mandating Black history and ethnic studies in K-12 curriculum; and funding counselors and not police officers in schools.

The movement — connected to but not directly linked to the Black Lives Matter movement — sponsors an annual event called Black Lives Matter at School Week in early February, with the aim of teaching students about Black identity and history, restorative justice and related issues. Thousands of people took part in schools across the country in each of the past two years, according to the organizers, and it has been supported by school boards, unions and other organizations, as well as public officials.

The book is a follow-up to the 2018 “Teaching for Black Lives,” a collection of writings that help educators humanize Black people in curriculum, teaching and policy and connect lessons to young people’s lives.

On Wednesday, Hagopian and Jones will launch the book they co-edited during an online discussion of anti-racist education with Brian Jones. You can tune in to the conversation by getting tickets here.

Hagopian, who teaches ethnic studies at Seattle’s Garfield High School, is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine. Denisha Jones is also on the steering committee and is director of the Art of Teaching, a graduate teacher education program at Sarah Lawrence College. Brian Jones is associate director of education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and writes about Black education history and politics. CONTINUE READING: ‘Black Lives Matter at School’ — a new book on anti-racist work in education - The Washington Post

Andrea Gabor: We Need Civics Education! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andrea Gabor: We Need Civics Education!

Andrea Gabor, the Bloomberg Professor of Business Journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York, writes here about the importance of civics education, especially in a time when democracy is under attack by a defeated president and the leadership of the Republican Party.

Put Civics Back in the Classroom, Right Now

Has there ever been a better time to resume lapsed efforts to teach young Americans the structure and purpose of U.S. democracy?

By Andrea Gabor

The presidential election seemed to mark a revival in American civic engagement. A record two-thirds of the electorate voted. Candidates raised at least $3 billion in small-dollar donations, and historic get-out-the-vote efforts had an impact in Nevada, Georgia and elsewhere.

Yet large numbers of Americans appear to believe President Donald Trump’s baseless charges of election fraud. Civic life and discourse have been eroded by the normalization of lying by elected leaders, the CONTINUE READING: Andrea Gabor: We Need Civics Education! | Diane Ravitch's blog

KATY MURPHY - California families sue state over distance learning inequities - POLITICO

California families sue state over distance learning inequities

California families sue state over distance learning inequities

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Seven families took California to court Monday, accusing the state of failing to ensure "basic educational equality" during a prolonged period of remote learning brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The plaintiffs say the state isn't providing the equipment, training and support that low-income families desperately need and that it has left it up to districts and teachers to navigate the challenges on their own, providing scant guidance or oversight. Meanwhile, they say, families have been forced to pay for basic school supplies or make do without a computer for each child or reliable internet access.

“Because of the State’s inadequate response, parents and grandparents have had to become tutors, counselors, childminders, and computer technicians, and they have had to find a way to pay for what are now basic school supplies — laptop/tablets, paper, printing, and internet access,” the lawsuit says, adding that the state has "offered families no training, support, or opportunity to provide input into plans for remote learning, the eventual return to in-person instruction, or the delivery of compensatory education.”

The Alameda Superior Court filing comes as most public schools in the state have yet to return to classrooms nearly nine months after closing campuses when the pandemic struck. The challenges of distance learning are exacerbating the existing inequalities in the public education system, the suit said, causing many to miss lessons and fall behind their classmates whose families have the means to overcome such barriers. In particular, the suit says, Black and Latino students CONTINUE READING: California families sue state over distance learning inequities

A Former Principal, Jamaal Bowman Has A List Of Names For Joe Biden’s Education Secretary | HuffPost

A Former Principal, Jamaal Bowman Has A List Of Names For Joe Biden’s Education Secretary

The incoming New York congressman named Randi Weingarten, Dr. Betty Rosa and Freeman Hrabowski as possibilities to head the Department of Education.

Before he ousted longtime Democrat Rep. Eliot Engel in a stunning primary win earlier this year, Representative-elect Jamaal Bowman was a public middle school principal in New York City. Now, as he prepares to enter the House, Bowman hopes to push President-elect Joe Biden to choose a Secretary of Education that would understand the struggles faced by public school educators.

Bowman’s short list includes Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teacher’s union in the country; Dr. Betty Rosa, New York’s state education commissioner; and Freeman Hrabowski, the long time president of University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

The three represent an important set of criteria for Bowman: Rosa and Weingarten were in-classroom educators. All three have experience focusing on underrepresented kids — whether as first-time English learners like Rosa, or an administrator who has emphasized opportunities for Black students in the science and medical fields, like Hrabowski. In Weingarten’s case, Bowman said she also fits the need for a “resurgence of labor.”

Bowman has been a vocal critic of policies put in place in recent years — including by the Obama administration. He’s a staunch critic of charter schools and has advocated against the Common Core standards and the emphasis on standardized testing, despite his own school’s high performance in them. He said his conversations with the Biden team have been positive — but he’s still operating with caution.

Democrats were united in their opposition to the Trump administration’s Education CONTINUE READING: A Former Principal, Jamaal Bowman Has A List Of Names For Joe Biden’s Education Secretary | HuffPost

Teacher Tom: "Now Eat Your Food"

"Now Eat Your Food"

The two-year-old said to me, "If you eat this food you can have some ice cream." She placed a plate in front of me on which she had positioned a glob of purple play dough.

I said, "What is it?"

"It's healthy food."

"What kind of healthy food."

"You just have to eat it."

"I'll need a fork."

"I'll get one for you, Teacher Tom." She dug around on the shelf until she found a plastic one. "Here's your fork, now eat your food."

I pretended to take a bite. Sometimes when kids want me to taste their imaginary food, I make a comical face and say, "It's yucky" or "It's too hot!" but this time I said, "That is so good! I'm going to eat it all!" I stabbed the play dough with my fork pretending to shove the whole thing in my mouth, then hid it on my lap while mimicking chewing and swallowing. "Now I'm ready for my ice cream."

The "ice cream" was more play dough she held in a container. CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: "Now Eat Your Food"

NAEP 2021 Has Been Canceled. State Tests Should Also Be Canceled. | Diane Ravitch's blog

NAEP 2021 Has Been Canceled. State Tests Should Also Be Canceled.

The accountability hawks have decided that NAEP testing must be canceled this spring because of the pandemic, but the burdensome, useless, meaningless annual testing of every single student from grades 3-8 should not be disrupted. Betsy DeVos proposed canceling NAEP, and the director of the National Center for Education Statistics complied. There will be no NAEP 2021.

This is backwards.

If we want to understand the impact of the coronavirus on American students, NAEP testing should go forward. NAEP—the National Assessment of Educational Progress—has been administered to scientific samples of American students since the late 1960s. Since 1992, it has provided state-by-state comparisons. It disaggregates scores by race, gender, income, English language status, disability status, and other criteria. It measures achievement gaps among whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. It supplies the same valuable information for a score of urban district that volunteer to be tested. No stakes are attached to NAEP results.

In short, NAEP is the ideal gauge for measuring the CONTINUE READING: NAEP 2021 Has Been Canceled. State Tests Should Also Be Canceled. | Diane Ravitch's blog

Waiting for the Secretary of Education. – Fred Klonsky

WAITING FOR THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION.

Arne Duncan tweets like he never had the job.

It was disturbing to read the Arne Duncan tweet yesterday.

Although it was classic Arne, including words like “rigor” and “successful teachers,” without ever having to define what that all means.

When Arne was Obama’s Secretary of Education it was all about accountability as a race to the top, measured by test scores.

Federal funding was distributed on the basis of how students performed on standardized tests.

Test scores defined the successful teacher.

In Illinois, in order to even apply for a Race to the Top federal grant, laws were passed by the state legislature that tied teacher evaluation to individual student test scores.

Innovative teaching became the enemy of a good teacher performance review.

Then came Betsy DeVos. Her four year tenure as Secretary of Education was a full on CONTINUE READING: Waiting for the Secretary of Education. – Fred Klonsky

CURMUDGUCATION: Is This How Post-pandemic Ed Tech Will Be Different

Is This How Post-pandemic Ed Tech Will Be Different

Andreesen Horowitz is a silicon valley venture capitalist investment firm looking to strike it rich in the ed tech world. That is more than enough reason to distrust them (here's just one article laying out how vc firms--particularly tech ones--are wrecking our world). But they want to play in the ed tech sandbox, which is another reason. But they have some thoughts about how ed tech will look after the pandemic, and it is always important to keep an eye on where the vultures are circling.

"Edtech's Answer to Remote Learning Burnout" comes from Anne Lee Skates and Connie Chan. Chan is a specialist in Chinese consumer tech investment, while Skates graduated from Princeton, started a failed company, went to work for McKinsey, and ended up with Andreesen Horowitz (she also came to the Us from Taiwan to become a violinist and performed a solo at the 49th Grammy Awards, so that's cool). No education background in either case.

As always with investment articles, this is less about prediction and more about selling. Consider this paragraph from the introduction:

Public schools’ budget limitations have created a surge in alternative avenues of education, for CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Is This How Post-pandemic Ed Tech Will Be Different

CDFA Seeking Public Comment on Farm to School RFA - USDA Proposed Rule on Meal Flexibilities - Nutrition (CA Dept of Education)

CDFA Seeking Public Comment on Farm to School RFA - Nutrition (CA Dept of Education)

CDFA Seeking Public Comment on Farm to School RFA

CPAG December 2020 Meeting Agenda - California Practitioners Advisory Group (CA Dept of Education) - https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/cc/cp/cpag2020agendadec11.asp

USDA Proposed Rule on Meal Flexibilities - Nutrition (CA Dept of Education) - https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/usdaproposedrulemealflex.asp

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Office of Farm to Fork (F2F) is now seeking public comments regarding the 2021 Farm to School (F2S) Incubator Grant Program’s Request for Applications (RFA).

The funding for this grant program was made available by the Budget Act of 2020, which includes a $10 million one-time General Fund allocation for the 2020-21 fiscal year and $1.5 million annually thereafter for CDFA to establish a F2S Incubator Grant Program and provide ongoing support for the California Farm to School Network (CFSN).

The F2S Incubator Grant Program will award competitive grants to support innovative local and regional farm to school projects in nutrition education, sustainable food production and procurement, and high quality student engagement through experiential learning. Review the CDFA 2021 California Farm to School Incubator Grant Program web page (PDF).

Comments received will be considered before this F2S RFA is made final and when developing future F2S RFAs.

Written comments should be submitted by email to cafarmtofork@cdfa.ca.gov by December 4, 2020. Please include Farm to School Stakeholder Comments in the subject line of the email.

Contact Information

If you have any questions about providing public comment, contact Steve Lyle, Director of Public Affairs, CDFA, by phone at 916-654-0462 or by email at officeofpublicaffairs@cdfa.ca.gov.

Questions: Nutrition Services Division | 800-952-5609

CDFA Seeking Public Comment on Farm to School RFA - Nutrition (CA Dept of Education)

Louisiana Educator: Why Distance Learning Will Always be Just a Supplement to Classroom Learning

Why Distance Learning Will Always be Just a Supplement to Classroom Learning

The Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns have destroyed a major myth upon which some of the recent attempted reforms to public education are based. The myth is that classroom teachers can be replaced with remote/distance learning. One of the leading promoters of this myth is former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Bush has proposed that computers and distance learning could somehow take the place of in-person classroom teaching by real live teachers. Many of our current education reformers have longed for a way to replace classroom teachers with much cheaper forms of instruction using technology and automated teaching. Jeb Bush and others have invested heavily in teacher replacement technology, even starting technology companies that supposedly could greatly cut education costs and possibly make a lot of money for the companies providing automated teaching systems.

These education entrepreneurs were convinced that children could get though K-12 schooling without the need to attend a physical school. These for-profit non-educator executives have welded much political power in convincing state legislatures to allow the creation of a type of charter schools that could supposedly provide a much more efficient means of educating children by piping in instruction directly to children in their homes using computers and various distance strategies. These charter management companies are now profiting greatly by being granted most of the per pupil tax support going to traditional brick and mortar schools for their much cheaper methods of teaching.

The Federal Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, had been aggressively pushing for the replacement of traditional public schools with on-line distance learning private schools. School privatization advocates such as DeVos, without evidence, had proposed that such “choice” schools could CONTINUE READING: Louisiana Educator: Why Distance Learning Will Always be Just a Supplement to Classroom Learning

IMPOSSIBLE ENDEAVORS – Dad Gone Wild

IMPOSSIBLE ENDEAVORS

“God and the Soldier all men adore, In time of trouble and no more, For when war is over And all thing righted, God is neglected, And the Old Soldier slighted.”
― Jan Morris, Pax Britannica: Climax of an Empire

If you are a Metro Nashville Public Schools parent, this week presents quite the quandary – to spend next semester going virtual or send your child back into a school building, whenever they open. Parents are being forced to make the decision at a time when COVID-19 cases are rising at an alarming rate, so much so that those who chose in-person for the fall semester are being sent home for the remainder of the year. Further complicating matters, announcements arrive almost daily of a vaccine soon being available. Maybe as soon as mid-Spring. But you’ve got to decide about school by Friday.

As a parent, I’m supposed to take the very limited information available and make a decision that will having a lasting impact on my children, in a very short window of time. A decision that will be carved in stone and will be irreversible, no matter what changes between now and the end of the school year. The ironic part is that MNPS is asking me to make an irrevocable decision while still retaining for themselves the ability to modify it.

Just because I decide to send my children back to school in-person doesn’t mean that they will stay in-person throughout the duration of the school year. Schools may or may not open come January 7th. Schools may stay open all the way until the end of May, or they may close intermittently throughout the Spring based on data the district is closely monitoring. In other words, I’m supposed to make my decision based on a snapshot and intuition, while the district gets to rely on science and a constantly updated data stream. Seems fair, right?

I’ve racked my brain over the weekend trying to think of a single other decision I’m required to make that holds the same level of permanence. The only one I can find is enlisting in the military. If CONTINUE READING: IMPOSSIBLE ENDEAVORS – Dad Gone Wild

JENNIFER BERKSHIRE - JACK SCHNEIDER | How Betsy DeVos Has Influenced Education Policy's Future - The New York Times

Opinion | How Betsy DeVos Has Influenced Education Policy's Future - The New York Times

Trump’s Longest-Serving Cabinet Official May Start a Revolution

Betsy DeVos’s assault on public education has provided a chance for major policy renewal.

Measured solely by policy accomplishments, Donald Trump’s longest-serving cabinet official, Betsy DeVos, was a flop in her four years as secretary of education.

Early on, her efforts to move a federal voucher program through a Republican-controlled Congress more concerned with taxes and deregulation repeatedly fell short. This year, she was forced to abandon a directive ordering states to redirect coronavirus funds to private schools after three federal judges ruled against her.

And significant pieces of Obama-era civil rights guidance that she rescinded — moves meant to protect transgender students, for instance, or address racially disproportionate school discipline — will be immediately restored by the incoming Biden administration.

Though Ms. DeVos has been mostly stymied, both by Trumpism’s policy indifference and progressive opposition, her legacy will still be far-reaching and long-lasting. This is not a result of what she made, but of what she broke: a bipartisan federal consensus around testing and charters that extended from the George H.W. Bush administration through the end of the Obama era.

For progressives, this shift hasn’t necessarily been bad news. In response to Ms. DeVos’s polarizing influence, moderate Democrats including President-elect Joe Biden recommitted to teachers unions and adopted more skeptical positions on school choice that were out of the question just a few years ago. Mr. Biden has pledged to exclude for-profit charter schools from federal funding, and he has proposed making larger investments in public education by using Title I statutes to double federal support for schools serving low-income students.

Yet Ms. DeVos has also elevated the education policy agenda of the far right, giving voice and legitimacy to a campaign to fundamentally dismantle public education. That campaign, pursued for the past few decades only in deep-red states, and often perceived as belonging to the libertarian fringe, has become the de CONTINUE READING: Opinion | How Betsy DeVos Has Influenced Education Policy's Future - The New York Times

Big Education Ape: 100th Episode: A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door – Have You Heard - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/10/100th-episode-wolf-at-schoolhouse-door.html

Latest News and Comment from Education