NANCY BAILEY: Why Are Schools Opening When Covid-19 is Surging?

Why Are Schools Opening When Covid-19 is Surging?

Why Are Schools Opening When Covid-19 is Surging?

It has become a cruel joke. Shut everything down! Stay home! Cancel the holidays! Close everything! But open schools!

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious diseases expert, told Americans to stay home throughout the holiday season, avoid groups, wash hands, wear masks, and stay socially distanced. There’s a horrific death count in case you harbor doubts.

But there’s a gap between what Dr. Fauci and the medical community recommend to the public and what he and they think is A-O.K. for America’s schoolchildren and teachers. Remember back in July when Dr. Fauci told teachers they would be a part of a learning curve experiment.

Dr. Leana Wen, M.D., seems to understand that schools are no match for Covid-19 and should be closed throughout the winter. Why are other doctors, CONTINUE READING: Why Are Schools Opening When Covid-19 is Surging?

State’s Poor Pandemic Response Takes Toll on Teachers + MICROVOUCHERS – Tennessee Education Report

State’s Poor Pandemic Response Takes Toll on Teachers – Tennessee Education Report

RESPONSE TAKES TOLL ON TEACHERS

The Tennessee Education Association (TEA) today released the results of a statewide survey of teachers regarding the experience of teaching during the pandemic. According to the report, 74% of teachers rated the state’s handling of the issues surrounding schools and COVID-19 as “poor.”

The findings should come as no surprise as Governor Bill Lee continues to pursue a privatization agenda while failing to actually do much of anything about the spiking COVID cases.

Here’s the full press release from the TEA:

As students and educators begin the Spring semester, a statewide Tennessee Education Association survey of educators reveals just how difficult and time-consuming the fall semester was on educators across the state. Public school educators are struggling under tough teaching conditions of the pandemic, working longer hours with little training or support—often with inadequately supplied classrooms—and enduring the daily threat and reality of infection.

“Tennessee public school educators have been staying strong for months, taking the challenges of teaching in a pandemic head-on,” said TEA President Beth Brown. “Our educators need more support and resources as they begin what will certainly be another difficult semester. As the survey showed, most public school staff are working longer hours with daily disruptions and changing tasks, but with little guidance, support or tangible encouragement from the state. The state must do more to assist with the burdens of teaching in a pandemic.”

In December, more than 7,000 teachers, education support professionals, administrators and certified personnel participated in the confidential TEA survey on education working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. An overwhelming majority of those polled said their work is more or much more difficult than in past years.

Key findings of the survey include: CONTINUE READING: State’s Poor Pandemic Response Takes Toll on Teachers – Tennessee Education Report

MicroVouchers – Tennessee Education Report - http://tnedreport.com/?p=5074 via @TNEdReport

The pursuit of privatization never ends with Gov. Bill Lee. Remember those CARES Act funds the governor and his team were NOT spending? Well, it turns out they now have a plan for those funds – a reading initiative that includes a voucher scheme.

Here’s more from The Center Square:

The new initiative, Reading 360, will provide an array of supports to districts, teachers and families, including opt-in training and coaching in literacy instruction for teachers, regional networks focused on literacy and an online platform for video lessons for teachers and families at home.

The initiative also will fund more than 13,000 microgrants for literacy tutoring for students and families.

Who will provide this tutoring? CONTINUE READING: MicroVouchers – Tennessee Education Report

The Lives They Lived (personal edition) | The Merrow Report

The Lives They Lived (personal edition) | The Merrow Report

The Lives They Lived (personal edition)

COVID-19  was responsible for the deaths of hundreds and hundreds of teachers in 2020, enough alone to make the year an ‘annus horribilis,’ to borrow Queen Elizabeth II’s phrase.  But the world of education also lost Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis, Sir Ken Robinson, Jim Lehrer and Les Crystal of the PBS NewsHour,  the Reverend Darius L. Swann, David K. Cohen, Arnold Packer, and (on the island of Martha’s Vineyard) Nelson Bryant, Lee Fierro, and Dr. Susan Whiting Shanock.

Although they weren’t educators per se, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and U.S. Representative John Lewis contributed mightily to the cause of public education: Justice Ginsburg by the cases she brought as an attorney and the cases she decided while on the Supreme Court, and Mr. Lewis by his work as a student leader and his leadership in the struggle for civil rights as a protestor and as a member of Congress.  Barriers against women, in education and in the workplace, fell because of RBG. John Lewis nearly lost his life on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, but it was that savage beating that led directly to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I probably should have placed my tribute to Sir Ken Robinson at the end of this post, because I am going to ask that those who haven’t seen his TED talk, the most widely CONTINUE READING: The Lives They Lived (personal edition) | The Merrow Report

Some Questions for 2021 | JD2718

Some Questions for 2021 | JD2718

Some Questions for 2021

If you are reading this, you might know me. And if you know me, you know I can ask questions that are not really questions. That’s not these.

Real questions for the New Year (in the order in which I expect us to learn the answers)

November – January: How will the national elections turn out?

• January 5 – what happens in the Georgia Senate runoffs? 2 Republicans, 2 Democrats, or split?

If the Democrats win both, I do not expect that Schumer plans to win any votes 51 – 50. They will more likely try to return to business as usual, and forge some agreements not to go full-on obstructionist in the future. If the Republicans win either one, they very well might defeat stuff 51-49 or 52-48… but I think they also may want to move away from full-on obstructionism. Certainly their distancing themselves from Trump make that seem possible. Anyhow, I started writing on Sunday, and I’m wrapping this up Tuesday evening. There’s definitely a slight edge for the democrats, but it is way too early to tell. Plus, in this instant, the actual lead is split.

(finally posting, almost three hours later, and the lead is still split, but it looks like both CONTINUE READING: Some Questions for 2021 | JD2718

Using DATA and RESEARCH to Unlearn Chait’s False Opinion about Charter Schools | Cloaking Inequity

Using DATA and RESEARCH to Unlearn Chait’s False Opinion about Charter Schools | Cloaking Inequity

USING DATA AND RESEARCH TO UNLEARN CHAIT’S FALSE OPINION ABOUT CHARTER SCHOOLS

In this blog I respond to Chait’s grossly unfounded opinions in the New York Magazine article entitled Unlearning an Answer with data, peer reviewed research and by highlighting the work of scholars who have conducted extensive research about charter schools. I will also recognize when the predominance of the research supports his opinions.

Political support for Charters is waning among Democrats Chait writes that “political support among Democrats has collapsed.” Chait is right on this point, it’s true political support amongst Democrats has dropped. In a recent meeting I was shown internal polling from the last election that indicates this fact. I also saw in the same data that Republicans are bigger fans of vouchers than they are of charters. The memory of Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump’s unwavering support for charters will probably have a longstanding and poisonous political legacy for Democratic party support of charter schools. Also, this past year, I met with legislative staffs on the Hill and they relayed that previously increased federal funding for charters had been a requirement for Republicans in the budget but in recent years they have had other priorities besides charters— such as vouchers.

Charter Schools do not deliver extraordinary results— in fact on average their results are quite limited. Contrary to Chait’s argument, as an academic, I can assuredly tell you that “education researchers” HAVE NOT been shocked by charter schools gains— I think unimpressed is probably a better word. Check out this extensive list of more than 30 National Education Policy Center “top experts” whose peer reviewed research findings are largely contrary to Chait’s grandiose claims about school choice. Also, Chait cited studies produced by The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) located at the conservative Hoover Institution. CREDO studies are not peer reviewed. But Chait and charter school supporters point to CREDO’s 2015 urban charter study to say that African American and Latino students have more success in charter schools. Leaving aside the integrity of the study for a moment, what CONTINUE READING: Using DATA and RESEARCH to Unlearn Chait’s False Opinion about Charter Schools | Cloaking Inequity

What Do We Know about Our Next Education Secretary, Dr. Miguel Cardona?, | janresseger

What Do We Know about Our Next Education Secretary, Dr. Miguel Cardona?, | janresseger

What Do We Know about Our Next Education Secretary, Dr. Miguel Cardona?

Today Congress will meet to certify the electoral college vote and confirm Joe Biden as our next president. Biden’s election guarantees Betsy DeVos’s exit as Secretary of Education.

It looks as though, by nominating Dr. Miguel Cardona, currently Connecticut’s state Commissioner of Education, President-Elect Biden has fulfilled the prediction of satirist Andy Borowitz (in his funniest Borowitz Report for the year): “Betsy DeVos warns that Biden will pick Education Secretary with background in education… ‘In order to be impartial toward education, an Education Secretary must be as ignorant as possible,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to boast, but I am going to be a tough act to follow in that respect.'”

Dr. Cardona is definitely someone with a strong background in public education. He has devoted his career to serving public schools. In his acceptance remarks, Cardona describes his life work: “I was blessed to attend public schools in my hometown of Meriden, Connecticut, where I was able to expand my horizons, become the first in my family to graduate college, and become a teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent in the same community that gave me so much. That is the power of America—in two generations. And I, being bilingual and bicultural, am as American as apple pie and rice and beans.”

For Inside Higher Education, Kery Murakami describes Cardona’s credentials: “Cardona’s background is primarily in elementary and secondary education. In 2003, Cardona, then 28, CONTINUE READING: What Do We Know about Our Next Education Secretary, Dr. Miguel Cardona?, | janresseger

Thinking Beyond Bean Dad: A Reader – radical eyes for equity

Thinking Beyond Bean Dad: A Reader – radical eyes for equity

Thinking Beyond Bean Dad: A Reader

First, Bean Dad (as he would become known) posted a Twitter thread about teaching his daughter a lesson. The thread was flippant, snarky—and about a child not knowing how to use a can opener.

I was, frankly, surprised that Bean Dad took a beating on this because his approach to his child is essentially the foundational belief system in the U.S. about child rearing: The world is dangerous so I better pound on my kid before the world does so she/he is prepared for the Real World.

In far too much of the U.S., that pounding is literal—corporal punishment—but the pounding takes many forms such as grade retention and “no excuses” policies and practices in K-12 schooling.

Gradually, the clever thing to do about the Bean Dad trending on social media was to interrogate the phenomenon as an example of everything-that-is-wrong-with-Twitter. While a valid take, I think, it is also careless to set aside how this thread (whether it was hyperbole, as he claims, or not) is one small but ugly picture of how we mistreat children in the U.S., both in our families CONTINUE READING: Thinking Beyond Bean Dad: A Reader – radical eyes for equity

John Ewing: “Learning Loss” is an Absurd Concept | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Ewing: “Learning Loss” is an Absurd Concept | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Ewing: “Learning Loss” is an Absurd Concept

John Ewing, president of Math for America, skewers the concept of “learning loss” in this article in Forbes.

I have been a fan of Dr. Ewing ever since I read his article “Mathematical Intimidation: Driven by the Data,” in which he eviscerated the idiotic idea of rating students by the test scores of their students. If you have not read it, you should.

In his latest essay, he shows how various interest groups, politicians, and pundits have used the idea of “learning loss” to promote reopening of schools, regardless of local conditions. The same concept is now used to promote the useless requirement of standardized testing in the midst of the pandemic.

You might say that he is the anti-Emily Oster; Oster is the Brown University economist who has written extensively about why schools should reopen and how young children are unlikely to catch or carry the coronavirus.

Ewing disagrees.

He writes:

With a mix of exasperation and despair, many writers CONTINUE READING: John Ewing: “Learning Loss” is an Absurd Concept | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teacher Tom: Isn't This Belittling to Children?

Teacher Tom: Isn't This Belittling to Children?

Isn't This Belittling to Children?

There was an old hamster wheel in our classroom. Most of the children had no idea what it was, but it was nevertheless an endlessly popular plaything. Someone was forever spinning it or turning it upside down to roll on the floor or otherwise employing it in their games. Over the years, I saw it used as a part of block castles, as a bulldozer in the sensory table, as a Ferris wheel for little people, as a play dough tool, and as a way to apply paint to paper. One boy spent weeks using it as a kind of impromptu puzzle, taking it apart, then putting it back together again.

Over the years, I watched hundreds of children play with it for the first time. They would mess with it for a few minutes, quickly figuring out that they could spin it, then take it from there, employing it in an endless variety of ways. In nearly two decades of playing with the hamster wheel, not a single child, ever, asked "What is this thing?" On occasion, however, a well-intended adult would take it upon themself to provide CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Isn't This Belittling to Children?

NYC Educator: Desperation, Thy Name Is De Blasio

NYC Educator: Desperation, Thy Name Is De Blasio

Desperation, Thy Name Is De Blasio

In the face of an exploding epidemic, and in the face of a new more virulent strain, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has decided that quarantine needs to be cut rather than extended. The mayor just decided that rather than quarantine for 14 days, as recommended by CDC, he will cut it to ten, because they said it was allowable. It's remarkable in this day and age to find a politician who can unite both left and right, but we've got one in our current mayor.

The fact is that, no matter where on the political spectrum you may fall, you almost certainly hate Bill de Blasio. People on the right contend he's the second coming of Fidel Castro, while those of us on the left wonder how we ever counted him as one of us. And whether left or right, if you haven't drunk deeply of the Trump Kool Aid you know that deadly disease is a bad thing, and its spread ought to be avoided by any means possible. 

We're learning that the new strain tends to affect younger people more, but that doesn't bother Bill de Blasio. After all, his kids aren't in school anymore. And why should he worry about UFT? After all we didn't support him in the primary, opting for some guy who told the NY Daily News the city couldn't afford the raise NYPD and FDNY got. Is he still mad at us for that? Does he think by making us go out and risk our lives and those of the kids we serve CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Desperation, Thy Name Is De Blasio

CURMUDGUCATION: About Teachers4OpenSchools

CURMUDGUCATION: About Teachers4OpenSchools

About Teachers4OpenSchools

You may have run across a shiny new group on line that is agitating for teachers to be back in the classroom-- Teachers4OpenSchools.

The arguments are the usual ones, from the legitimate concern about mental health to the learning loss baloney. There's not much of anything new here, and not the kind of balance we find in a piece like this one.  But I'm always curious about these little pop-up goups, and the website is pretty opaque about who, exactly, is happening here. But poking around the site, I found two teachers who are apparently acting at least as spokespersons for the group.

One is NYC teacher Stephanie Edmonds, who runs the Youtube channel Class Disruption, where you can find vidcasts like this one, in which she explains what Ibram X. Kendi gets wrong about equity issues and also describes how lefties like emotional language "that may not exactly align with reality" while righties prefer reason and statistics and things that reflect reality (though she "doesn't subscribe" to the whole left-right thing). Power. Vibe. She's a little rambly. She was the president of her college's Libertarian Club. She wants unity and the media is hurting it. She's a history teacher who uses the 1776 unites materials. She has a very distinctive voice, sometimes. She's been a teacher since the fall of 2016.

Her compatriot is Catherine Barrett. We've encountered Barrett before, as a teacher voice on the CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: About Teachers4OpenSchools

A Teacher’s Predictions For 2021 | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

A Teacher’s Predictions For 2021 | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

A TEACHER’S PREDICTIONS FOR 2021

Some of these predictions are educated guesses that I hope don’t come true, and some may be pipe dreams. Check them out, let me know which ones are off-base, and share your own! You can see the predictions I’ve made in previous years at the end of this post.

*The new stimulus package will be a much-needed boost for schools.  However, it won’t be sufficient to deal with the full negative impact of the recession, and another stimulus – this time including support for states – will be approved in February.   Unfortunately, the Democrats will only pick-up one of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats being decided in January (Editor’s Note: I’m thrilled to say that based on still incomplete election returns, it appears that I was wrong on this), so the support won’t be as generous as it would have been if that party controlled both houses of Congress.  That shot-in-the-arm to states will substantially reduce potential education cuts next year.

*President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory should not only lead to greater support for schools during this pandemic, but will also reduce additional pressures on our students and their families (and their subsequent negative impacts on student academic achievement), including through the elimination of President Trump’s draconian immigration crackdowns and policies negatively impacting low-income families.

*Speaking of the new administration’s education policies, its plans look great, and new Education Secretary Miguel Cardona will be about a zillion times better than the non-educator who has held that position for the past four years.

*Many more school districts will be joining the San Bernardino school system in deciding to finish the rest of the school year full online. It’ll be a wise decision for many in high infection areas. Unfortunately, however, many of those same districts will stockpile new funds from the federal stimulus package for the following year and won’t use it in ways they should – to solicit teacher input about professional development needs to improve remote teaching, increase online classes for vulnerable student populations, and increase social service support for students and families who have become disconnected to schools during the pandemic.

* The vaccine roll-out for adults will take longer than expected, and a vaccine for children won’t arrive until CONTINUE READING: A Teacher’s Predictions For 2021 | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Education Matters: Poor leadership is destroying the district.

Education Matters: Poor leadership is destroying the district.

Poor leadership is destroying the district

 I want to acknowledge that being a superintendent is undoubtedly a hard job, and the powers that be in Florida often work to undermine public education. That being said, I can’t imagine a superintendent doing worse than Greene. Her leadership is just plain bad, and don’t take my word for it, take the Times Unions. 

The indifference to the pandemic. 

Adding to people’s plates. 

Forcing staff into the buildings and encouraging more students to do so. 

The indifference to the plight of veteran teachers and staff 

Then as hundreds of millions go to the pockets of charter owners, I don’t believe the referendum will be the panacea it was sold as. 

The terrible contact tracing. 

Giving in to the state over and over again.  

I could go, but instead, I will let the Times Union do so for me. 

From the Times Union, my comments in bold. 

 "We have to show that with students who have poor attendance or are failing, we've done everything we can to bring them back to brick-and-mortar," Greene said at a School Board meeting. "We sent notice saying if that was the case, we would call them back to brick-and-mortar. Once that happens and those families don't CONTINUE READING: Education Matters: Poor leadership is destroying the district.

NewBlackMan (in Exile) TODAY #BLM #BLACKLIVESMATTER

NewBlackMan (in Exile)

NewBlackMan (in Exile) TODAY

Big Education Ape: THIS WEEK WITH NEWBLACKMAN (IN EXILE) - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2021/01/this-week-with-newblackman-in-exile-blm.html

Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Season 7 of 'Finding Your Roots'

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One Night in Miami... | Official Traile

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The Quarantine Tapes 146: Kiese Laymon

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A Former Negro League Player Reflects on Major League Baseball Accepting Negro League Stats

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Brother and Sister Duo Create Puzzles Using Diverse Art Work

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A Colors Encore: Girls Don't Always Sing About Boys

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Coffee & Books: Marc Lamont Hill Talks with Michael Eric Dyson about His New Book "Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America"

by Mark Anthony Neal / 13h

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NewBlackMan (in Exile)