Wear Red and Show Solidarity with Chicago #FairContractNow #CTUstrike #CTU #putitinwriting

Wear red and show solidarity with Chicago - YouTube

Wear Red and Show Solidarity with Chicago

Wear red and show solidarity with Chicago - YouTube

TFA and Relay Occupy Early Childhood Education | Cloaking Inequity

TFA and Relay Occupy Early Childhood Education | Cloaking Inequity
TFA AND RELAY OCCUPY EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

The new episode of the Truth For America podcast is now available. We discuss early childhood education and the entrance of Teach For America and Relay Graduate School into the classrooms of America’s youngest students.

Episode 21 features two TFA corps members that were assigned to early childhood education. We discuss their perspectives on the lack of relevance of the training that they received at TFA Summer Institute and the Relay Graduate School. They also discuss their departure from Teach For America, the required usage of their Americorps stipends for graduate school and other many other issues.

Truth For America is a podcast about Teach For America (TFA) that provides voice to educators, parents, students, and other key stakeholders. Truth For America is co-hosted by Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig and Dr. T. Jameson Brewer. Dr. Barb Veltri guest hosts this episode.

You can check out new episodes hot off the press and much much more by following my YouTube channel. You can also listen and download the Truth For America program from iTunes while you are on the road here.

For all of Cloaking Inequity’s posts on Teach For America click here.

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

Want to know about Cloaking Inequity’s freshly pressed conversations about educational policy? Click the “Follow blog by email” button on the home page.

Twitter: @ProfessorJVH

Click here for Vitae.

Truth For America is sponsored by the Network for Public Education Action. Copyright permission from REM for use of song “World Leader Pretend” in Truth For America podcast worldwide: http://www.dropbox.com/s/80jynkybgpz5r29…rmission.pdf?dl=0

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TFA and Relay Occupy Early Childhood Education | Cloaking Inequity

Tired of Democratic Infighting? How Much of it is Sexism? | Teacher in a strange land

 Tired of Democratic Infighting? How Much of it is Sexism? | Teacher in a strange land

Tired of Democratic Infighting? How Much of it is Sexism?

So—Elizabeth Warren released her very progressive K-12 Education Plan yesterday. As soon as it was released, I got a text with a link to the plan, which I read, top to bottom. Just as I have read the other K-12 education plans.

I get texts about all of Warren’s plans, as soon as they’re developed. I assume this is because I donated to Warren. Actually, I have donated to six candidates this year (those tiny little donations that candidates claim they treasure). One of them has dropped out, but I gave money to two men and four women. Warren is not my preferred candidate—although she’s certainly in my top three. She just seems to be the one with the target on her back. Or, more likely, her head.

I get plenty of email and texts from all of these candidates, some more than others. I delete the money requests, but I read the plans. Because I am interested in what candidates see as political priorities.

Not that any of them, individually, has the political muscle to leverage a full-blown transformation of public education, a totally free national health program, tuition-less college and cancelling student debt. I am a mature, well-informed citizen who pays attention to politics. I’ve known better than to vote for the candidate with the most tempting promises since the 1970s.

That doesn’t mean that policy briefs don’t matter. They certainly do. But could we please stop doing line-by-line comparisons of campaign platforms, looking for CONTINUE READING:  Tired of Democratic Infighting? How Much of it is Sexism? | Teacher in a strange land

California Department of Education seeking feedback on LCAP template redesign - LCAP Redesign Survey - lcapredesign . org

LCAP Redesign 2020

LCAP Redesign Survey

October 22, 2019California Department of Education seeking feedback on LCAP template redesign

The California Department of Education (CDE) is seeking feedback from all stakeholders on the redesign of the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) template. 

The template has been redesigned to:

(a) Streamline the content and format to make it more accessible

(b) Clearly show how and where the district is improving services for unduplicated students (English Learners, socioeconomically disadvantaged students, foster youth, and homeless students).  

To provide feedback, stakeholders can visit the following link: https://www.lcapredesign.org/ 

Survey responses for each section of the LCAP can be submitted separately and each section provides stakeholders the opportunity to indicate their level of satisfaction as well as provide narrative feedback.  The deadline to submit the survey is November 1, 2019. 

The CDE will use the feedback provided to inform their recommendations to the State Board of Education at the January 2020 meeting.

No previous familiarity with the LCAP is required for participation in this survey. For those who do not have prior knowledge of the LCAP, this is a great opportunity to learn more about the tool districts and counties are using to communicate their goals, actions, services, and expenditures to their stakeholders.  Additional information and resources can be found below:

• SCUSD’s LCAP page
• CDE’s LCAP Resources page
• California State PTA’s LACP page for parents and community

To provide feedback, stakeholders can visit the following link: https://www.lcapredesign.org/ 

Eighth county superintendent asks for state audit of Inspire charter schools - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Eighth county superintendent asks for state audit of Inspire charter schools - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Eighth county superintendent asks for state audit of Inspire charter schools

The superintendent’s letter includes concerns about Inspire’s rapid enrollment growth, questionable expenses

An eighth county superintendent has joined a group requesting the state to audit the Inspire charter school network, adding to those calling for an investigation into potential fraud by Inspire.

Fresno County Superintendent Jim Yovino asked a state fiscal agency last week to investigate concerns he has about potential conflicts of interest, questionable finances and unusually fast enrollment growth at Inspire Charter School Central, a school authorized by the small Westside Elementary School District in Fresno County.

The Inspire school changed its name this year to Yosemite Valley Charter School.

Yovino’s concerns echo those of other county superintendents and findings in an August investigation by The San Diego Union-Tribune of the Inspire charter school network. Yovino’s office first requested information from Westside Elementary about Inspire Central on Sept. 10, Yovino said in a letter to the state fiscal agency last week.

READI THE LETTER: Fresno County Superintendent Letter

Yovino’s letter specified several concerns about Inspire Charter School Central including:

• The school’s enrollment has grown rapidly, from 248 students when the school opened in 2016 to 1,800 students two years later. That’s higher than what was projected in the school’s charter petition.
• The school’s attendance rates exceeded 100 percent and reached as high as 168 percent. State funding for schools is based on attendance.
• The school co-mingles funds with other Inspire-affiliated nonprofit corporations, including other Inspire schools and the Inspire District Office, the corporation founded by former Inspire director Herbert “Nick” Nichols that collects 15 percent of Inspire schools’ revenue for services. The schools and corporations borrow and lend money among themselves. Nichols signed the articles of incorporation for many of the entities, including Inspire Central and Inspire District Office.
• The school paid as much as $924,000 in one year for debt service interest and as much as $4.6 million in one year for contracting outside services. Last school year, the school estimated it collected about $18.5 million in revenue, according to Inspire’s financial documents.
• The school has no stated location within the boundaries of the school district that authorized it. It regularly serves students at several locations outside the district’s boundaries and outside Fresno County. State law says charter schools can only serve students outside the boundaries of their authorizing district in limited circumstances; charter schools are meant to primarily serve students in their authorizing district.
• As far as Yovino knows, the school changed its name and its managing entity without asking Westside for a material revision to its charter, as required by state law.

The state fiscal agency, called the Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team, is required to fulfill the county superintendents’ audit request.

The superintendents’ concerns are still allegations; they must be verified by the state fiscal team, which will work to determine whether fraud has occurred.

Inspire District Office Executive Director Steven Lawrence has said Inspire is prepared to work with the state fiscal team.

“As an organization, we are committed to continual improvement of our practices in order to better serve our students and families,” Lawrence said in a previous statement about the superintendents’ audit request. “We expect the FCMAT experts will ultimately be able to provide additional guidance and direction that will be useful for all of our schools going forward.”

Lawrence took over for Nichols as executive director of Inspire District Office last week. Inspire announced on Friday that Nichols resigned for undisclosed reasons after being on a leave of absence for weeks.

Inspire offers families a home school model and provides $2,600 or more per student for families to buy classes, curriculum, field trips, extracurricular activities and more. Inspire has at least a dozen schools throughout California and was expected to enroll 35,000-plus students this year.

READ MORE FROM THE EXCELLENT REPORTING ON THE ONGOING CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOLS SCANDALS: Eighth county superintendent asks for state audit of Inspire charter schools - The San Diego Union-Tribune

JENNIFER C. BERKSHIRE: Could Betsy DeVos Cost Trump the Election? | The New Republic

Could Betsy DeVos Cost Trump the Election? | The New Republic

Could Betsy DeVos Cost Trump the Election?
The president needs to win Michigan again, but many of his supporters there hate the education secretary

In 2016, Darrin Camilleri was 24 and teaching at a Detroit charter school 20 miles from where he grew up, when Michigan lawmakers took up a measure to implement more rigorous oversight of the city’s charter schools. Seemingly anyone could open a charter in Detroit, and the schools closed just as suddenly as they opened. From his classroom on the city’s southwest side, Camilleri watched the reform effort fail. “Watching that play out really showed me the downside of deregulation,” he told me. “No one is holding anyone accountable.” That year, he decided to run for state representative in southern Wayne County, a largely blue-collar area that shades rural at its edges. Rather than hewing to standard Democratic talking points—health care, for instance, or Donald Trump’s erratic comments—Camilleri made charter school oversight and school funding his central issues, and in 2016, he became the only Democrat to flip a Republican state house seat in Michigan.

Trump would win the state by the slimmest of margins—just 10,704 votes. Today, his political advisers are determined to court the same coalition of suburban, rural, and blue-collar voters that sent him to the White House three years ago, but the president will have a serious liability during this cycle: Betsy DeVos. When Camilleri ran for reelection in 2018, he lost count of the number of people he met who still supported Trump but had come to loathe DeVos. “She is the most polarizing figure in Michigan,” Camilleri told me. “People can’t stomach the fact that Trump picked her. They care about good schools.”

In the three years since Trump turned Michigan red, education has emerged as a potent political issue in the state, thanks to a steady stream of grim studies and embarrassing news stories. Between 2003 and 2015, the state ranked last out of all 50 for improvement in math and reading. According to a recent study, CONTINUE READING: Could Betsy DeVos Cost Trump the Election? | The New Republic

CURMUDGUCATION: CT: Another Way To Privatize Education

CURMUDGUCATION: CT: Another Way To Privatize Education

CT: Another Way To Privatize Education

To read press accounts, one must conclude that Ray and Barbara Dalio are not exactly like other billionaire dabblers in education.

He is a successful hedge fund manager and the richest guy in Connecticut. She immigrated from Spain fifty-ish years ago and worked at the Whitney before settling into the mom-and-kids track. He has announced that capitalism is  not working, and that income gap is a huge national crisis. When she decided she was interested in working on education, she started visiting actual schools. After a start working with charters and Teach for America, she pulled away and started supporting public schools instead through her philanthropies and organizations like Connecticut RISE. Teachers, even union presidents, describe her as humble, a good listener, "truly a partner."

And yet, in some respects, they are exactly like other members of the wealthy philanthropist club. Ray Dalio thinks that the solution to dysfunctional capitalism and the wealth gap is that there "need to be powerful forces from the top of the country to proclaim the income/wealth/opportunity gap to be a national emergency and take on responsibility for reengineering the system so that it works better." In other words, the same old "empower a visionary CEO" model.

After giving some money here and some money there to public education in Connecticut, the Dalios decided last spring to up the ante, and offered $100 million to the public ed system. The money, they said, will be matched by the state and other philanthropists and "will be used to benefit students in under-resourced communities with a specific focus on communities where there is both a high poverty rate and a high concentration of young people who are showing signs of disengagement or disconnection from high school." The state teacher union president said, "I usually hate public-private partnerships, but this one looks okee CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: CT: Another Way To Privatize Education

Elizabeth Warren Releases Strong, Comprehensive Public Education Plan | janresseger

Elizabeth Warren Releases Strong, Comprehensive Public Education Plan | janresseger

Elizabeth Warren Releases Strong, Comprehensive Public Education Plan

The education plan Elizabeth Warren released on Monday is urgently important. Today, I am not going to focus on the math—whether Warren’s plan can be funded by the wealth tax she has also proposed. Neither am I going to speculate about whether, politically, she might be able to get Congress—and in the case of some of her proposals, the fifty state legislatures—to enact her ideas.

The paper she published on Monday matters, I believe, for a very different reason. Warren articulates a set of principles that turn away from three decades of neoliberal, corporate school reform—the idea, according to The American Prospect‘s Robert Kuttner, that “free markets really do work best… that government is inherently incompetent… and an intrusion on the efficiency of the market.”  Competition is at the heart of the system, all based on high-stakes tests, and punishments for the schools whose scores fall behind.

In her education plan, Warren endorses the civic and democratic principles which, from the nineteenth century until the late 1980s, defined our nation’s commitment to a comprehensive system of public education. Her plan incorporates the idea that while public schools are not perfect, they are the optimal way for our complex society to balance the needs of each particular child and family with a system that secures, by law, the rights and addresses the needs of all children. And she acknowledges the massive scale of the public commitment required to maintain an equitable education system that fairly serves approximately 50 million children and adolescents across cities and towns and sparsely populated rural areas.

I urge you to read Elizabeth Warren’s education plan.  Here I will highlight what I believe are CONTINUE READING: Elizabeth Warren Releases Strong, Comprehensive Public Education Plan | janresseger

Elizabeth Warren Stands Up for Traditional Public Ed, Puts Charter Schools in Their Place | deutsch29

Elizabeth Warren Stands Up for Traditional Public Ed, Puts Charter Schools in Their Place | deutsch29

Elizabeth Warren Stands Up for Traditional Public Ed, Puts Charter Schools in Their Place

Democratic presidential hopeful and Massachusetts senator, Elizabeth Warren, has finally released her plan for education, entitled, “A Great Public School Education for Every Student.”

Note that in Warren’s plan, the term, “public school” means traditional public school– the neighborhood school, sufficiently supported and defended against much of the corporate ed reform attack against it.

Warren’s education plan is refreshing to read, and extensive. I encourage readers to view Warren’s entire ed plan firsthand.

Below are some of my favorite parts. But my favorites-of-favorites is the ending of federal funding for charter schools and Warren’s pledge to fight against charter schools’ outsourcing operations to for-profit companies.

MORE THAN HALF OF SCHOOLS NEED REPAIRS TO BE IN “GOOD” CONDITION

The vastly unequal state of public school facilities is unacceptable and a threat to public education itself. We cannot legitimately call our schools “public” when some students have state-of-the-art classrooms and others do not even have consistent running water. The federal government must step in.

That’s why, as President, I’ll invest at least an additional $50 billion in school infrastructure across the country – targeted at the schools that need it most – on top of existing funding for school upgrades and CONTINUE READING: Elizabeth Warren Stands Up for Traditional Public Ed, Puts Charter Schools in Their Place | deutsch29

The Mona Lisa curriculum. – Fred Klonsky

The Mona Lisa curriculum. – Fred Klonsky

The Mona Lisa curriculum

In order see the great Andy Warhol retrospective now currently at the Art Institute of Chicago we had to walk through the Ken Griffin Atrium of the Modern Wing to the galleries designated for special exhibits.

Above the entrance to the exhibit we saw the sign that the Andy Warhol show was sponsored by Ken Griffin.

In case that name is unfamiliar to you, Griffin is a Chicago billionaire – the richest man in Illinois –  a hedge funder who just recently bought another house in New York for more than 250 million dollars.

250 million bucks for a house.

In Griffin’s home town we are trying to get nurses in our schools and Ken Griffin just bought one house that could pay for that.

But enough about Ken Griffin.

Wait.

One more thing. They are going to change the name of Chicago’s venerable Museum of CONTINUE READING: The Mona Lisa curriculum. – Fred Klonsky

Is PD only required for teachers harmful? | My Island View

Is PD only required for teachers harmful? | My Island View

Is PD only required for teachers harmful?

Anyone who thinks that there is one answer to all that is wrong in education is at the very least ill informed. Public education has had hundreds of years to establish practices and procedures that would ultimately slow down any progressive ideas for change. This is the Kevlar vest against any silver bullet that an insightful, forward-thinking change agent might shoot. That seems to be the strategy to protect most bureaucracies, but that being said, there are still many good things happening within the education system.

Most change in education comes about through the leadership and passion of individuals within the system. More often than not, change is localized rather than a national movement. Too often, if the person driving that change is removed from the movement, then the movement itself is soon diminished and eventually forgotten. That might be the key for promoting lasting change. Do not put the responsibility for continuing change on the backs of one or two lead teachers. If change is to last, it requires support from the top leadership. Bottom-up change is great when successful, but how often does that happen without top-down support?

The best example I can think of is the Edcamp movement. It is a different approach to professional development. It is a model based on educators discussing specific topics that they are interested in learning more about, or topics that specific educators know quite a bit about and want to share that knowledge with other educators through discussion. Using discussion to collaborate is more in line with adult learning. It is also a model that is based on respect for what every participant brings to the table on the subject.

This model has been successful because administrators, as well as teachers, have supported it. The driving force behind the Edcamp model is the need that educators have to learn more about their profession in a world that is changing more rapidly than the education system can deal with. The goal of education is to educate kids to: live, learn, survive, and thrive in that ever-changing world. All of that considered, one would think, that this model of professional development would have been adopted nationally over this last decade of its existence. It CONTINUE READING: Is PD only required for teachers harmful? | My Island View

New report on egregious cost to the city for charter school facilities | Class Size Matters

New report on egregious cost to the city for charter school facilities | Class Size Matters 

New report on egregious cost to the city for charter school facilities

Yesterday we released a  new report, entitled Spending by NYC on Charter School Facilities: Diverted Resources, Inequities and Anomalies, revealing how the NYC Department of Education spent more than $377 million on charter school facility costs from FY 2014 to FY 2019.  This amount includes both public funds for facility upgrades for public schools co-located with charter schools, and on leases and rent subsidies for charter schools.  NYC is the only district in the state and indeed the country legally obligated to pay for private space for all new and expanding charter schools, if they are not given space in our already overcrowded public school buildings.

The cost to taxpayers is increasing fast, with more than $100 million spent by the city on charter rent last year. Perhaps our most startling finding is that DOE has spent $15 million since FY 2015 to help eight charter schools lease space in buildings owned by their Charter Management Organization, affiliated foundation or LLC.

We also found that  between FY 2014 and FY 2019, more than $22 million in charter school expenditures for facility upgrades were not matched in the 175 public schools that share their buildings, in apparent contradiction to a state law passed in 2010.  In FY 2019, only one third of co-located public schools received their full complement of matching funds.

The two schools which experienced the largest shortfalls were both District 75 schools that serve seriously disabled students: Mickey Mantle School (M811), located in two sites in Harlem, which lacked $1.5 million in matching funds, and P.S 368 (K368), located  in two sites in Brooklyn, which lacked $1.2 million. All four sites are co-located with different branches of Success Academy Charter schools.  Yet there are schools in nearly every district with co-located charters that suffered shortfalls.

Our full report is posted here, the press release is here, and here is the list of the 175 schools lacking their fair share of matching funds.  Check it out to see if your child’s school is on the list, and if so, reach out to your principal, superintendent or Community Education Council to ask why.  And let us know if your CEC or community group wants a briefing.

Thanks as always,

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
phone: 212-529-3539/917-435-9329
leonie@classsizematters.org

www.classsizematters.org

Follow on twitter @leoniehaimson

Subscribe to our newsletter for regular updates on class size and related issues at http://tinyurl.com/kj5y5co

New report on egregious cost to the city for charter school facilities | Class Size Matters

Charter schools do NOT get better NAEP test results than regular public schools | GFBrandenburg's Blog

Charter schools do NOT get better NAEP test results than regular public schools | GFBrandenburg's Blog
Charter schools do NOT get better NAEP test results than regular public schools

It is not easy to find comparisons between charter schools and regular public schools, partly because the charter schools are not required to be nearly as transparent or accountable as regular public schools. (Not in their finances, nor in requests for public records, nor for student or teacher disciplinary data, and much more.) At the state or district level, it has in the past been hard or impossible to find comparative data on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress).

We all have heard the propaganda that charter and voucher schools are so much better than regular public schools, because they supposedly get superior test scores and aren’t under the thumb of  those imaginary ‘teacher union thugs’.

However, NCES has released results where they actually do this comparison. Guess what: there is next to no difference between the scores of all US charter schools on the NAEP in both reading and math at either the 4th grade or 8th grade level! In fact, at the 12th grade, regular public schools seem to outscore the charter schools by a significant margin.

Take a look at the two graphs below, which I copied and pasted from the NCES website. The only change I made was to paint orange for the bar representing the charter schools. Note that there is no data available for private schools as a whole.

If you aren’t good at reading graphs, the one above says that on a 500-point scale, in 2017 (which was the last year for which we CONTINUE READING: Charter schools do NOT get better NAEP test results than regular public schools | GFBrandenburg's Blog