Tuesday, April 9, 2019

CURMUDGUCATION: Freedom and Indignity

CURMUDGUCATION: Freedom and Indignity

Freedom and Indignity


The ed reform movement has always had a language problem, starting with the word "reform," which does not really adequately describe a movement built on privatization and corporate takeover.

There have been other casualties along the way. I've railed long and fruitlessly about the continued use of "student achievement" and "teacher effectiveness" when what we really mean is "high scores on a narrow standardized test." Most recently we've had "personalized learning," which is not exactly learning and is certainly not personalized.

Now, the reformsters are coming for "freedom."

It's not the first time. Charter operators insisted that they needed non-union teachers so that those teachers would be free of terrible restrictions. Liberated from their union chains, teachers would be free to work eighty hour weeks, free to be paid poorly, free to be fired for any reason at any time.

Now Betsy DeVos has re-rebranded vouchers as Educational Freedom.


If you want to understand the freedom involved here, it helps to find a libertarian because they are generally willing to say the quiet part out loud. Here, for instance, is Kerry McDonald, a Havard GSE-certified "educational analyst" for both the Heartland Institute and the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). It's for FEE that she wrote "Compulsory Schooling  Laws Aren't Progressive; They're Inhumane."

McDonald would like to end compulsory attendance laws as a necessary step on the path to
CURMUDGUCATION: Freedom and Indignity 


Sacramento Mayor Steinberg not involved in teacher strike talks | The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento Mayor Steinberg not involved in teacher strike talks | The Sacramento Bee

As Sacramento teacher strike approaches, a key negotiator isn’t involved
 

Sacramento City Unified School District teachers are planning their first strike in 30 years Thursday, and the man who brokered a last-minute deal to avoid a strike 18 months ago is not involved this time around.
Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who hosted key negotiations between district and union officials at his Greenhaven home two days before a planned strike in November 2017, offered his help this time around. But the mayor has remained on the sideline this time, after his defense of School District Superintendent Jorge Aguilar upset the Sacramento City Teachers Association, the union representing roughly 2,500 educators in the district, the mayor said Monday.
The mayor said union leadership is upset with him because he issued a statement defending Aguilar after the union called for a state investigation of Aguilar and the district in February.
“I didn’t think (the union’s call for an investigation) helped the situation in any way,” Steinberg told The Sacramento Bee on Monday. “I’ve always had a good relationship with the teachers and labor movement, I’ve been a friend of organized labor for a long time, but fair is fair and I did not think it was productive or fair to attack the superintendent.”
Sacramento City Teachers Association President David Fisher said Steinberg has not been asked to be a part of the negotiations this time around because both sides have agreed to use a state-appointed mediator.

Teachers voted Friday to approve a one-day strike set for Thursday, claiming the administration is not honoring the terms of the contract, such as using the savings from a lower quality health plan strictly toward improving student services. The district, which faces a $35 million budget gap, is under the threat of a state takeover if the district can’t pass a balanced budget by the end of June.
The union believes the district has other options it could utilize before a state takeover would occur, Fisher said.
Steinberg agrees with the district administration on one major issue – health plan savings should be used for addressing the district’s $35 million deficit in order to avoid a state takeover, he said.
The union believes the deal Steinberg brokered in 2017 stipulated the health plan savings would be used to improve school services, not to put toward the $35 million deficit, Steinberg said.
“The intent was to use health benefit savings to try to improve the schools. (Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools) Dave Gordon intervened after that and said you’ve got a major math problem here, and so the circumstances changed,” Steinberg said. “Ultimately I believe those health benefit savings should and can go to improving the schools – decreasing class sizes, CONTINUE READING: Sacramento Mayor Steinberg not involved in teacher strike talks | The Sacramento Bee


Sac Unified  teachers at crisis point, part 1: How did we get to now? https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article228980354.html


How a tiny California school district sparked calls for a charter crackdown | CALmatters

How a tiny California school district sparked calls for a charter crackdown | CALmatters

How a tiny California school district sparked calls for a charter crackdown



One was a charter school operator desperate for authorization after years of rejection by multiple school districts. The other was a teeny district in the rural high desert, hemorrhaging students, facing insolvency and in dire need of revenue.
The Albert Einstein Academy of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the Acton-Agua Dulce Unified School District at the northern edge of Los Angeles County answered each other’s prayers in 2013 when they partnered. In a novel use of California’s charter school rules, the district agreed to oversee Albert Einstein’s elementary charter school even though it sat far outside Acton-Agua Dulce’s geographical boundary, and was inside the attendance area of another district that had already denied an Einstein petition.
In return, Acton-Agua Dulce collected oversight fees of 3.5% of the school’s revenue, a formula that officials quickly replicated with more charter authorizations. By 2015-16, the district had approved and was collecting fees from a whole stable of charters, netting an additional $1.9 million in revenue.
But the win-win creative partnership was also the kindling for a prolonged legislative and legal battle over reforms to California’s system for authorizing charter schools.
Citing claims that the district and charter network improperly gamed the system, Democratic lawmakers are redoubling efforts to tighten rules that have let small, financially-strapped school districts boost their budgets by offering authorization and oversight to charter schools dozens or hundreds of miles from their supposed minders.
The issue strikes close to home for the legislator behind this year’s proposal to clamp down on so-called far-flung charters. Democratic Assemblywoman Christy Smith of Santa Clarita, the sponsor of Assembly Bill 1507, sat on the board of the Newhall School District, about 20 miles west of Acton-Agua Dulce, when Acton’s authorization stuck her community with an Einstein charter school it had rejected, eventually prompting Newhall to sue.
AB 1507 is one of several charter regulation proposals forming the battle lines of this year’s faceoff between charter advocates and teachers’ unions. In past sessions, the longstanding rivalry between those two politically powerful forces has typically ended more or less in a draw.
But this year, the political calculus has shifted. Both the governor and the state’s top school administrator were elected with strong backing from teachers’ unions, which blame declining enrollment and funding, in part, on competition from the publicly funded, independently operated charters that are mostly nonunion. Already, Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a fast-tracked law that requires charters to follow the same open-meeting and conflict of interest laws as traditional schools in the public system.
Now on April 10 the Assembly Education Committee will begin hearings on bills that would curb the growth of charters from an assortment of angles, capping the number of charter schools allowed to operate in California, removing a charter’s ability to appeal petition denials to county and state authorizers and putting strict limits on locations of charter schools.

‘Nothing added up’

In California, a charter school must be “authorized” to operate by a local school district that is willing to monitor its finances and academic progress. In the event of a denial by a school district, the law also lets charter applicants CONTINUE READING: How a tiny California school district sparked calls for a charter crackdown | CALmatters




Stealing Scarce Education Funds From LAUSD Students

Stealing Scarce Education Funds From LAUSD Students

Stealing Scarce Education Funds From LAUSD Students


– LAUSD Charter School Division
The LAUSD School Board took the rare step of considering the denial of a charter school’s renewal during their April 2, 2019, “special” meeting. In reviewing the hundreds of pages of documentssupporting this recommendation, it was clear that the Community Preparatory Academy (CPA) has been in trouble since it was opened five years ago. During public comment I summarized the worst of their offenses for the Board:


In recognition of Autism Awareness Day, I would like to point out that 6.87%of the students at this charter have disabilities. The resident schools median is 12.43%. This discrepancy is a systematic problem throughout the LAUSD. 
The Charter School Division is recommending denial now, but the problems are not new. This charter was originally approved in 2014 and has had a net deficit since the 2014-15 fiscal year. It’s ending Fund Balance last year was ($820,303).
That deficit not only affects the students who go to this charter, but it also takes money from the 80% of students who attend LAUSD public schools. According to the Charter School Division (CSD), CPA entered into Single-Year Food Services Agreements with the District. As of February 22, 2019, the District had not received payments from CPA for the months of January 2017 through June 2017, which total $82,240currently owed to the District.

Sometimes Fences Set Us Free + What Not To Wear: Joan of Arc Edition | Blue Cereal Education

Sometimes Fences Set Us Free | Blue Cereal Education

Sometimes Fences Set Us Free



My first year teaching, I had only one prep. I had four sections of U.S. History, fifth hour plan, and finished my day monitoring whatever in-house detention was called – essentially a second planning period. Compared to what we normally do to baby teachers, it was an amazing schedule.
Nevertheless, within about six weeks I was fresh out of lesson ideas. I’d done a few lectures with moderate success. I’d written my own 25 – 30 questions over several textbook chapters in hopes of guiding students through some form of close reading. We even spent an entire period looking through pictures, maps, and graphs in whatever chapter we were on, asking questions and making inferences – pretty cutting-edge pedagogy for me in those days.
I hadn’t yet grown comfortable with artsy-fartsy options, so I’m sure we didn’t color or fold or turn content into children’s bedtime stories, but I did my best to keep things engaging. I was scrambling to stay ahead of my students in the textbook – if not by a chapter, at least by a few sections – and I loved it, even though I was pretty sure it would kill me my very first year. 
But as week seven loomed, it was time to break things up a bit. We needed a… a… project of some sort. Something hands-on – maybe collaborative! Something where they did most of the work while I caught up with grading, and lesson-planning, Something sort of fun, but still, you know… educational – or at least educational enough.
But what to assign? What sort of project should it be?
I vaguely recalled something from teacher school about the importance of “student CONTINUE READING:   Sometimes Fences Set Us Free | Blue Cereal Education

What Not To Wear: Joan of Arc Edition

Joan on Stage and Black

Most of us have at least a working familiarity with the story of Joan of Arc. A simple (but not impoverished) French peasant girl, she began hearing voices from God telling her she was going to save France from the English and their Burgundian allies. Through some combination of cleverness, sincerity, and miraculous signs, she convinced Charles VII to let her lead French soldiers in battle and eventually secured his coronation.
Having outlived her political usefulness, Joan was then pushed aside. She was captured by the English, put on trial for heresy, and burned at the stake when she was only nineteen years old. In her final moments, she begged for a cross to be held before her, high enough to see through the flames. She called out to Jesus while she burned. 
It’s a gripping tale, and surprisingly well-documented for its times. Accounts of Joan pop up everywhere in the historical record, as do endless legends, rumors, and interpretations of her life and death. By far the most detailed accounts were the trial records so carefully preserved, first by those who wished to condemn her, then several decades later by those who wished her redeemed. For five months, Joan was questioned, criticized, badgered, and abused by learned men with little interest in legal or spiritual truth. Their goal was to destroy her reputation, to invalidate her apparent CONTINUE READING: What Not To Wear: Joan of Arc Edition

The Real Crime in Higher Education: Not Gaming Admissions but Underinvestment in Public Universities | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Real Crime in Higher Education: Not Gaming Admissions but Underinvestment in Public Universities | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Real Crime in Higher Education: Not Gaming Admissions but Underinvestment in Public Universities



Alan Aja, Joseph Entin, and Jeanne Theoharis identify the true crime in higher education: the abandonment of public higher education by the states and the federal government. The three authors are professors at Brooklyn College, which is part of the City University of New York (CUNY).
Image result for disinvestment in public universities
They write:
The biggest scandal in American higher education today is the staggering disinvestment in public universities like CUNY, even as politicians and the public pay lip service to abhorring the inequalities in higher education. What would it mean to view as scandalous the well-documented decline in federal and state funding of public universities across the country over the last 25 years, at the same time students have been expected to shoulder the cost of those “missing expenditures” through tuition hikes (amid other persistent cuts to federal and state financial aid and vital support services)? What would it mean to view self-declared “education governor” Andrew Cuomo of New York as a part of the problem for the ways he has underfunded public universities in the state and to see members of the public who allow this as his accomplices? What would it mean to see the scandal that the broken ceiling exposes as part of a larger systemic problem directly tied to the current state budget’s continued underfunding of CUNY (which once again this time around, fell dramatically short)?
Nearly a quarter of a million undergraduates attend the City University of New York, and they are caught in a vicious bind. Tuition for CUNY — which was free until 1975 — has risen by 31% since 2011. It now stands at $6,730 for full-time students at CUNY’s senior colleges CONTINUE READING: The Real Crime in Higher Education: Not Gaming Admissions but Underinvestment in Public Universities | Diane Ravitch's blog

Image result for disinvestment in public universities
Image result for disinvestment in public universities
Image result for disinvestment in public universities

ANDRE PERRY: DeVos’ support of charter schools spells disaster for Democrat backers

DeVos’ support of charter schools spells disaster for Democrat backers

DeVos’ support of charters spells disaster for their Democrat backers
The party of diversity should promote policies that embrace inclusion

When U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos put out the department’s 2019 budget, Democrats who support charter schools found themselves in an awkward political situation. DeVos proposed cutting $17.6 million the Department of Education had allocated for the Special Olympics, but she somehow found room in the budget to increase charter school funding by $60 million. DeVos’ proposed cuts signaled that the government doesn’t care about students with disabilities.
Charters earned a reputation for enrolling fewer students with disabilities than traditional schools and are already blamed by many for “siphoning” funds from their district counterparts. DeVos has all but confirmed those suspicions. Charters can’t be a centerpiece issue for Democrats running for public office if the schools’ biggest champion sees fit to make athletes with disabilities the sacrificial lambs of a leaner budget.
Democrats must instead focus on issues that affect all schools, teachers and students, regardless of school type — issues such as teacher diversity.

After the 2018 midterm elections, the 116th Congress looks radically different, with the most women in a single class; the first Muslim women; and the first Native American women. On the other side of the aisle, Republicans, whiter and more male, are looking less and less like America. The party of diversity must promote it in a new era of education reform. Political hopefuls should offer policy solutions to two divergent statistics: The percentage of students of color in public elementary and high schools is increasing, but the proportion CONTINUE READING: DeVos’ support of charter schools spells disaster for Democrat backers

Privately funded CT RISE program raises a number of key issues in public education - Jonathan Kantrowitz

Privately funded CT RISE program raises a number of key issues in public education - Jonathan Kantrowitz

Privately funded CT RISE program raises a number of key issues in public education





Source: NHPS (New Haven Public Schools) Advocates
Complete report The CT RISE program interacts with a number of key issues in public education, including: how we define, quantify, and measure student learning; teacher autonomy; teacher morale; student data privacy; and the role of philanthropists and other external and private interests in our public schools.
This report takes CT RISE as a concrete and revealing case study. NHPS (New Haven Public Schools) Advocates are volunteers, who do not have access to all the potentially relevant information and have not undertaken exhaustive research. Accordingly, this report is “preliminary” in that it summarizes emerging findings, based on the available information. It does not supply a comprehensive overview, but is aimed at contributing to ongoing discussion.
The CT RISE program—currently being piloted at high schools in New Haven (Career), Meriden, Hartford, and East Hartford—is under consideration for expansion in NHPS. The core of the CT RISE program is a “data dashboard” that collates data such as grades, test scores, attendance  data,course credits, and behaviors. The program provides a number of potential benefits, including streamlined access to student data and added supports for students and teachers. NHPS Advocates also note concerns in the following areas:
1. Instruction : There is no compelling evidence that the CT RISE program improves student learning. At the same time, its dashboard may bring unintended consequences, such as distracting from teaching and learning, prioritizing engagement with data profiles rather than human connections, steering teachers’ attention toward discrete data points and away from holistic development, and focusing excessive energieson narrow and/or standardized metrics.
2. Governance : Though it provides data in a useful collated format, the CT RISE dashboard essentially duplicates existing NHPS services. The RISE program also operates without oversight structures thatincorporate key participants, such as CONTINUE READING: Privately funded CT RISE program raises a number of key issues in public education - Jonathan Kantrowitz

When I was a little girl, I remember singing the song “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let It Shine.” – Fred Klonsky

When I was a little girl, I remember singing the song “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let It Shine.” – Fred Klonsky

When I was a little girl, I remember singing the song “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let It Shine.”

chi-toni-preckwinkle-politician-public-servant-photos-20140715

At the end of Mayor-elect Lightfoot’s speech last Tuesday evening, she ended with a rememberance of a song.
I thought of the lyrics again yesterday afternoon following the decision by current alderman and chair of the Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee, Patrick O’Connor, to delay the Lincoln Yard’s TIF vote at least until tomorrow.
2nd Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins had insisted that the request by Mayor-elect Lightfoot and Mayor Rahm be ignored.
“I have the votes,” Hopkins said. His ward is where the awful Lincoln Yards is planned to be plopped, a walled city for the rich on the north side.
Hopkins is a bought and paid for tool of the Sterling Bay developers.
Maybe he did have the votes. Maybe he didn’t.
Maybe the vote will go ahead tomorrow, Wednesday.
Maybe it won’t.
City Hall was jammed with protesters. The Chicago Teachers Union is calling for CONTINUE READING: When I was a little girl, I remember singing the song “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let It Shine.” – Fred Klonsky



More Than Drawing and Coloring: Art (and Art Teachers) Have Power

More Than Drawing and Coloring: Art (and Art Teachers) Have Power

More Than Drawing and Coloring: Art (and Art Teachers) Have Power


“What are you going to do with that?” It’s a question college students and newly minted college graduates often hear from family and friends. For Allison Richo, who finished college in the 1980s, the that” was an art degree.
Allison Richo
Allison Richo
Today, she holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga., and for the last 25 years has helped high school students in Prince Georges County, Md., see the world through artistic eyes.
“It’s been the best thing ever,” says Richo, who once owned an architectural design business with two friends.
When the business folded, Richo started to substitute teach.
“I did so well as an art teacher, I got a call [to return] and that started my career.”

Multiple Hats

It’s been nonstop for Richo, who teaches at Oxon Hill High School. Despite her love of art, and her long list of personal awards and recognitions, her attention is squarely centered on her students. So much so that she takes on a mammoth amount of responsibility: visual arts chairperson, interactive media and production coordinator, and academy and national art society sponsor. She also teaches five prep classes that include AP Drawing Studio, AP 2-D Design Studio, Basic Design, Drawing and Painting, and Art 1. Richo also earned National Board Certified status while battling a health crisis.
From your shoes to your cell phone, everything is connected to the arts.” – Allison Richo, art teacher
“I know it’s a lot, but I’m determined to give my students the best art education I can. If that means taking on more than what I need to, then I’ll do it.”
Richo is unafraid when it comes to looking directly at societal challenges, and bringing them into her classroom. Her students have examined issues like the murder of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man who was killed by police in Ferguson Mo., during August of 2014, and the Louisiana communities that were neglected following Hurricane CONTINUE READING: More Than Drawing and Coloring: Art (and Art Teachers) Have Power

Charter School Sector Swindles the Public, Burns Tax Dollars, and Cheats Children—Part 1 | janresseger

Charter School Sector Swindles the Public, Burns Tax Dollars, and Cheats Children—Part 1 | janresseger

Charter School Sector Swindles the Public, Burns Tax Dollars, and Cheats Children—Part 1


Many of us have been aware of problems with charter schools for a long, long time.  For over two years now, the Network for Public Education has been logging reports in local newspapers when an entrepreneur is caught stealing tax dollars; or when a state, a school district or charter authorizer finally shuts down a charter school for academic malpractice; or when a charter school goes broke mid-school year leaving children without a school mid-semester.
But the past month has produced an uptick in reports of large scale charter school ripoffs and charter school failure.
At the federal level: In late March, the Network for Public Education published Asleep at the Wheel, an explosive report documenting the waste of billions of federal charter school startup dollars on schools that that never opened or opened and then shut down.  The researchers conclude that if you want to start a charter school with seed money from the federal Charter Schools Program, you ought to hire a grant writer skilled at creating a compelling fictional narrative, because the Department of Education makes its grants almost exclusively based on the story spun in the grant application.  And the Department of Education rarely follows up to monitor the schools it has funded—neither to prevent conflicts of interest and profiteering, nor to ensure equitable open enrollment practices nor to oversee academic services for students.  (This blog covered NPE’s report here.)

But the federal Charter Schools Program is only a part of the problem.  Charters schools are enabled in state law—in 44 states, and each state’s authorization and oversight laws are different. Most of the recent exposure of widespread problems with charter schools involves CONTINUE READING: Charter School Sector Swindles the Public, Burns Tax Dollars, and Cheats Children—Part 1 | janresseger

13 Affluent Parents Plead Guilty in College Admissions Scam, Face Jail Time | deutsch29

13 Affluent Parents Plead Guilty in College Admissions Scam, Face Jail Time | deutsch29

13 Affluent Parents Plead Guilty in College Admissions Scam, Face Jail Time


Thirteen parents and one coach involved in a massive college admissions scam pled guilty federal court in Massachusetts on April 08, 2019.
Felicity Huffman and a dozen other wealthy parents swept up in the far-reaching college admissions scandal have agreed to plead guilty after being charged in the scheme, according to court records.
The actress and 12 other parents, including Los Angeles marketing guru Jane Buckingham, will plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. Bay Area real estate developer Bruce Isackson will plead guilty to one count of money laundering conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to defraud the IRS. His wife, Davina Isackson, will plead guilty to one charge of conspiracy to commit fraud. …
Michael Center, the former men’s tennis coach at the University of Texas at Austin, will also plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. Center is accused of accepting $60,000 in cash and a $40,000 donation to his tennis program to ensure a student was admitted as a recruited athlete. …
Manny Medrano, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said that based on 2019 federal sentencing guidelines, Huffman would face from four to 10 months in prison as part of her plea. …
In a statement Monday, Huffman acknowledged her guilty plea.
I am in full acceptance of my guilt, and with deep regret and shame over what I have done, I accept full responsibility for my actions and will accept the consequences that stem from those actions. I am ashamed of the pain I have caused my daughter, my family, my friends, my colleagues and the educational community,” she said. …
Those who have signed plea agreements face recommended sentences of a few months to a year and a half in prison, prosecutors said.
When it came to charges, Huffman’s husband, actor William H. Macy, apparently lucked out. As People magazine notes, Macy was recorded discussing a cheating scheme for his younger daughter, not his older daughter. Huffman and Macy  CONTINUE READING: 13 Affluent Parents Plead Guilty in College Admissions Scam, Face Jail Time | deutsch29