Big Education Ape: Sep 30, 2019

Monday, September 30, 2019

See how closely Ohio school report card grades trend with district income - cleveland.com

See how closely Ohio school report card grades trend with district income - cleveland.com

See how closely Ohio school report card grades trend with district income

CLEVELAND, Ohio - The latest set of Ohio school report cards not only provided a scorecard for each district statewide - they once again drove home the point that wealthier districts do better on such reports.

For example, incomes in the "A" districts were three times higher than those in the "F" districts, and the child poverty rate was 13 times higher in the worst performing districts, cleveland.com found.

To get an idea of how closely report card grades from the Ohio Department of Education follow demographic factors, cleveland.com compared those grades to U.S. Census Bureau community data for household income, child poverty and the education level of the adults.

In nearly every key report card category, the trends followed census data closely.

For example, taking the median household income for each district, the average among those getting "A" overall grades was $95,423. It was $65,307 for B-graded districts, $54,058 for C-graded districts, $44,428 for D-graded districts and $32,658 for F-graded districts.

In the A districts, 58.5% of the adults age 25 and older have at least a bachelor's degree. That share drops to 17.1% for D-graded districts and 16.3% for F-graded CONTINUE READING: See how closely Ohio school report card grades trend with district income - cleveland.com

Big Education Ape: CURMUDGUCATION: OH: Meaningless School Grades And Money - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/09/curmudgucation-oh-meaningless-school.html

CURMUDGUCATION: Are School Vouchers A Path To Religious Freedom?

CURMUDGUCATION: Are School Vouchers A Path To Religious Freedom?

Are School Vouchers A Path To Religious Freedom?

Let me make a confession-- I am not at all unsympathetic to many Libertarian beliefs. I am wary of government involvement in many arenas, and the bigger the government, the warier I am. Additionally, I know some Libertarians personally, and they are perfectly nice human beings. But when you start turning general Libby philosophical notions into specific policies, particularly in areas where my exercise of my liberty crashes into your exercise of your liberty-- well, that never seems to work out well-- or even consistent. At a minimum, I find some of these conclusions puzzling.

Let's take the new Libby talking point on school vouchers, as articulated in many venues by CATO Institute's Education Guy Neal McCluskey.

The argument that to have "equality under the law," religious folks need to be able to fully exercise their beliefs, including sending their children to a private religious school, and so taxpayers should fund vouchers for just that purpose.

This is a close cousin of the argument that this administration has put forth in a variety of forms, which boils down to this: if your personal faith says you should discriminate against certain classes of people, but federal law says you can't, then federal law should step aside for your personal beliefs. This point of view has scored a victory or two, and it's important because it marks the first time that the battle between the free exercise clause (you should get to exercise whatever religious beliefs you hold) and the establishment clause (the government should not choose a side in the world of unending religious debates) is being decided in favor of the exercise clause.

You have, of course, always been free to send your chid to a religious school. What's new here is the argument that the government should pay for it.

I'm confused at finding this argument coming from conservative Libby folks. These are the same CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Are School Vouchers A Path To Religious Freedom?

Talk Out of School WBAI Radio

WBAI Radio Archives

Talk Out of School WBAI Radio

Tune in this Wednesday when I Talk Out of School with Jessica Levin from Public Schools Public Funds Project & Katherine Dunn from the Southern Poverty Law Center. We will be talking about Betsy De Los, vouchers & school privatization. Wed, Oct 2, 2019 10:00 AM est on WBAI 99.5 fm & online at www.wbai.org

If you can't make it at that time it will be archived here https://www.wbai.org/archive/

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Talk Out of SchoolHosted By: Leonie Haimson + Carol Burris High Stakes Testing and Lead Contamination in NYC Schools -	Wed, Sep 25, 2019 10:00 AM 60 min
Talk Out of SchoolHosted By: Leonie Haimson + Carol Burris Class Size Lawsuit & Education Equity and Funding -	Wed, Sep 18, 2019 10:00 AM 60 min
Talk Out of SchoolHosted By: Leonie Haimson + Carol Burris Student privacy and school diversity proposals. -	Wed, Sep 11, 2019 10:00 AM 60 min

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Andrea Gabor: The Demand for A New Kind of Civics | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andrea Gabor: The Demand for A New Kind of Civics | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andrea Gabor: The Demand for A New Kind of Civics

Andrea Gabor wrote this article for Bloomberg News.

Andrea Gabor, a former editor at Business Week and U.S. News & World Report, is the Bloomberg chair of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York and the author of “After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform.”

The College Board, which administers college entrance exams to high school students, is trying to use its advanced placement courses and tests for high-achieving students to get American schools to take civics seriously again.

That’s a welcome development after years of neglect by both schools and policymakers. Even better, last year’s redesign of its AP U.S. government and politics course — the first since it was introduced in 1986 — goes well beyond requiring basic knowledge of, say, how a bill becomes law, and seeks to get students engaged with civic life. While the academic part of the AP U.S. government course explores the diverse forces that shape everything from legislation to Supreme Court precedents, students also are required to put their knowledge into action by working on a civics project, even one that takes sides in today’s partisan political battles.

The new U.S. government AP is part of a nationwide CONTINUE READING: Andrea Gabor: The Demand for A New Kind of Civics | Diane Ravitch's blog

Quit Using “Alignment” Referring to Children and Tests!

Quit Using “Alignment” Referring to Children and Tests!

Quit Using “Alignment” Referring to Children and Tests!

Alignment refers to a car’s wheels pointing in the right direction, or an orthodontist correcting a child or adult’s dental occlusion. Alignment is rigid. It’s right or wrong. Yet alignment has been used for years to describe how students learn in school.

Children are not machine parts that need adjustment.

What if consideration was given to the student instead of the test, if teachers could work with parents to determine student objectives? What would we find? What ideas and knowledge goes unnoticed when children are matched to specific canned standards that come to schools from outsiders?

Children have different needs, strengths, and weaknesses. They think differently. They learn differently. They face different personal hurdles when it comes to learning. Even students who correctly align their answers to tests could have special talents or interests that go unnoticed.

Alignment leads to technology without teachers.

Alignment is mechanistic. Aligning a student’s learning to standards leads to placing CONTINUE READING: Quit Using “Alignment” Referring to Children and Tests!

Fight over charter schools heading to Florida Supreme Court - South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Fight over charter schools heading to Florida Supreme Court - South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Fight over charter schools heading to Florida Supreme Court

Nine county school boards, including Broward County, are going to the Florida Supreme Court in a battle about the constitutionality of a controversial 2017 law that sought to bolster charter schools.

The school boards filed a notice Friday that is an initial step in asking the Supreme Court to take up the case.

The move came after the 1st District Court of Appeal last month upheld the constitutionality of the law. The appeals court backed a decision by a Leon County circuit judge, who rejected arguments that the mammoth education law improperly infringed on the rights of school boards to operate their districts.

The law, known in education circles by the shorthand HB 7069, included steps to direct additional money to charter schools and to authorize “schools of hope,” a new type of charter school aimed at areas where children have been served by low-performing traditional public schools.

The school boards have argued that the law gave too much power to the state and violated part of the Florida Constitution about local operation of schools. As is common, the notice filed Friday does not detail arguments the school boards will make at the Supreme Court.

The school boards are from Alachua, Bay, Broward, Hamilton, Lee, Orange, Polk, St. Lucie and Volusia counties. Fight over charter schools heading to Florida Supreme Court - South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Shawgi Tell: Florida: Terminate Public Funds for Charter Schools | Dissident Voice

Florida: Terminate Public Funds for Charter Schools | Dissident Voice

Florida: Terminate Public Funds for Charter Schools

Nearly 10 county school boards in Florida recently took collective action to pursue a case against privately-operated-owned charter schools in the Florida Supreme Court.

These public school systems that serve tens of thousands of students oppose the dreaded HB 7069 legislation, which the neoliberal governor of Florida, Rick Scott, signed into law in 2017.

The law does many things, including allowing the transfer of enormous sums of public money from public schools to privately-operated-owned charter schools, thereby leaving public schools in a worse position. Understandably, public school systems want to stop the flow of tens of millions of public dollars to privately-operated-owned charter schools.

As in other states with privately-operated-owned charter schools, Florida’s charter schools are notorious for being non-transparent and rife with corruption. Many also regularly perform poorly. And like many other non-profit and for-profit charter schools across the country, Florida’s charter schools under-enroll different types of students and intensify segregation. Public schools in Florida serve considerably more poor students, English CONTINUE READING: Florida: Terminate Public Funds for Charter Schools | Dissident Voice

John Thompson: Can Online Learning Survive the Profiteers and Frauds? | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: Can Online Learning Survive the Profiteers and Frauds? | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: Can Online Learning Survive the Profiteers and Frauds?

John Thompson is a historians and recently retired teacher in Oklahoma.

For more than two decades I’ve mourned the loss of opportunities for online instruction to augment and enhance student learning, as opposed enabling a Social Darwinian competition where charters attack traditional public schools. Educators seeking meaningful choices, such as real personalized learning, have been shackled by the need to fight back against “choice” advocate, as well as their spin, claiming to offer “personalized” instruction, measured by impersonal test score metrics.

Above all, I’ve been saddened by the way that beaten-down educators have often been bogged down in a defensive war against test-driven, competition-driven reformers. In order to survive the charter assaults armed with bogus test scores, too many schools merely complied with the corporate reformers’ mandates. In doing so, they robbed the students of the opportunity to be taught and to learn how to make the real choices that can guide them to lifelong learning.

This year’s Oklahoma legislature’s Common Education Committee Interim Studies are revealing a new, brave, and worthy campaign for holistic instruction. Almost all of the legislators who attend these hearings are former educators. Even though the committee avoids mentioning the unfolding Epic virtual charter school scandal, their CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: Can Online Learning Survive the Profiteers and Frauds? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Innovation Ohio Report: Ohio Budget Eases Oversight of Charter Schools and Provides Windfall for Ohio School Vouchers | janresseger

Innovation Ohio Report: Ohio Budget Eases Oversight of Charter Schools and Provides Windfall for Ohio School Vouchers | janresseger

Innovation Ohio Report: Ohio Budget Eases Oversight of Charter Schools and Provides Windfall for Ohio School Vouchers

In the 2020-2021 biennial Ohio budget signed into law in July, lawmakers quietly embedded the radical expansion of school privatization. Rewards for charter schools and tuition voucher expansion are written into the budget in a lots of little ways, however, which means that, during the budget debate, few noticed the overall significance of exploding state support for school privatization. A new report released last week by Innovation Ohio, however, connects the dots among several measures which together will undermine oversight of charter schools and at the same time radically expand tuition vouchers. The report includes an examination of the fiscal implications for local public school districts.

The former chair of the Ohio House Education Subcommittee of Finance and now Innovation Ohio’s education policy fellow, Steve Dyer authored the report, which ought to be essential reading for legislators and a broad range of citizens—from experts to people who have not previously tracked the issue. Dyer writes a basic primer and at the same time an analysis sophisticated enough to teach experts something new.

Dyer begins: “When Governor Mike DeWine signed HB166 into law, he approved a budget that lawmakers had packed full of little-noticed gifts to those who seek to erode support for traditional public schools through a proliferation of charter and private school options funded at taxpayer expense.” Dyer explains that the new Ohio budget:

weakens Ohio’s 2015 charter school oversight law that mandated automatic closure for academic failure after two years;
weakens standards for Ohio’s already deplorable sector of “dropout recovery” charter schools;
weakens Ohio’s oversight of its many charter school authorizers; and
increases the transfer of state and even local taxpayer dollars to private—mostly religious—schools.

STATE BUDGET WEAKENS OVERSIGHT OF CHARTER SCHOOLS

Although in 2015, the state cracked down on academically failing charter schools by mandating their closure after two years of failing test scores, the new budget awards these CONTINUE READING: Innovation Ohio Report: Ohio Budget Eases Oversight of Charter Schools and Provides Windfall for Ohio School Vouchers | janresseger

Why Can’t All of Education Look Like This? (Greg Toppo) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Why Can’t All of Education Look Like This? (Greg Toppo) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Why Can’t All of Education Look Like This? (Greg Toppo)

From time to time, readers say “Enough, Larry, about the ubiquity and longevity of age-graded schools and their rules and rhythms or the ‘grammar of schooling.’ ” A few say it is too pessimistic about school reform and plays down efforts to alter the dominant age-graded organization.

Sure, I get defensive and reply that I am a realistic, no, I am a tempered optimist about what thoughtful, passionate educators create in making an age-graded school a “good” one even within a severely flawed, larger political and socioeconomic system that maintains under-funded, re-segregated schools across the nation.

Then I may go on to point out pieces I have written about the need to have many “grammars of schooling,” not just one. I also write about those uncommon instances of districts and schools, past and present–public and private–that have not only instituted major efforts to alter the prevailing model of schooling but also sustained them over time. I write about such efforts because I know what has occurred before in school reform.

None of this criticism of age-graded schools or efforts to incrementally improve or even overturn the abiding model is new. A century ago, a wing of the educational progressive movement produced schools that challenged the then dominant model. John and Evelyn Dewey wrote about such innovative schools in Schools of To-Morrow (1915). There has been this back-and-forth volleying CONTINUE READING: Why Can’t All of Education Look Like This? (Greg Toppo) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Education Reform Now: Manufacturing Grass Roots Support for La. BESE Candidates Castille and Orange-Jones | deutsch29

Education Reform Now: Manufacturing Grass Roots Support for La. BESE Candidates Castille and Orange-Jones | deutsch29

Education Reform Now: Manufacturing Grass Roots Support for La. BESE Candidates Castille and Orange-Jones

DC/New-York-based Education Reform Now (ERN) is a 501c3 nonprofit associated with Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). Both are led by Shavar Jeffries (see here and here).

ERN advertises itself as “a national think tank and advocacy organization.”

The “advocacy” comes from an associated 501c4 (lobbying nonprofit), ERN Advocacy.

“Public school choice” is a major DFER/ERN/ERN Advocacy push, and DFER is open about actively promoting its priorities at the federal and state levels.

In Louisiana’s 2019 state board (BESE) elections, ERN Advocacy is supporting two candidates: Kira Orange-Jones (Dist 2) and Preston Castille (Dist 8) (see here also).

Castille is a Baton Rouge lawyer who also happens to be Immediate Past Chairman of the Board of Directors of New Schools for Baton Rouge (NSBR) and Chairman of the Board for Helix charter schools. (Aside: Another BESE candidate, Ronnie Morris of District 6, is also connected to a recently-approved BASIS charter school in Baton Rouge as its treasurer.)

Castille’s time on NSBR board was shared with Louisiana businessman Lane Grigsby, whose recently-disbanded Empower Louisiana PAC funneled $3M in out-of-state billionaire cash into Louisiana’s 2015 BESE race.

It’s a small corporate ed reform world, after all.

ERN Advocacy’s other BESE prize, Kira Orange-Jones, is a Teach for America CONTINUE READING: Education Reform Now: Manufacturing Grass Roots Support for La. BESE Candidates Castille and Orange-Jones | deutsch29

Juliot, A Letter | The Jose Vilson

Juliot, A Letter | The Jose Vilson

JULIOT, A LETTER

To my father,

It was one of the last times we ever had an extensive conversation. You had the news radio on blast in your car. Tim Hardaway had just revealed his homophobia to the country and the first words of wisdom you shared were “… it’s not that he thought it; it’s that he said it aloud.” You went on to dig deeper into the caverns of bigotry before I abruptly asked you how long it’d take before we got to Ft. Lauderdale International Airport. I had ridden on the passenger side of your car – typically Camrys – on average once a year, when you mostly filled the air with jazz, kompa, and meanderings about the ways of the world. You knew Brooklyn, Manhattan, Miami, and Ft. Lauderdale well enough to ignore the roads for long junctures as you hoped to remind your third child that you were his – my – father.

As a boy, I listened with hopes that you would return. As an adolescent, I listened for whatever keys you had for kindling a confidence that seemed first-nature to you and tertiary at best for me. As a young adult, I uncovered that I had aged quicker than I wanted to, through bruises, humiliation, and restraint. I had already grown angry with you through those years, resenting that our phone rang incessantly from family friends, but rarely had you on the other end. Your barely-annual visits featured those protracted journeys to whichever spot that was, the drop-off to my grandmother’s house or your significant other’s house, and agony that the man I exalted so often would leave me CONTINUE READING: Juliot, A Letter | The Jose Vilson

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