Latest News and Comment from Education

Monday, January 6, 2020

Why isn't our teacher workforce diverse enough?

Why isn't our teacher workforce diverse enough?

Why aren’t our teachers as diverse as their students?Several states and districts have pledged to try to close the diversity gap



Diversity is growing among students in most U.S. schools, but not among teachers, The Washington Post reports
Only one-tenth of 1 percent of Latino students attend a school system where the portion of Latino teachers equals or exceeds the percentage of Latino students, according to the Post’s analysis.
For black students, that figure is 7 percent, while for white children, it’s nearly 100%, the newspaper reported.
“Representation absolutely matters and it matters for … almost every educational outcome you can think of,” Seth Gershenson, a public policy professor at American University, told the Post. 
In Chicago Public Schools, the district school board recently held a hearing with stakeholders who said there aren’t enough teachers of color in the district and questioned why the ones who have worked have left, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
While only 10% of the district’s students are white, half of its teachers are, according to the Sun-Times. “We’re down to only 20 percent of our educators in CPS being black. That’s unacceptable,” Chicago Teachers Union chief of staff Jennifer Johnson said at the hearing, according to the newspaper. “I was often the only black educator that many of my students saw in the high school where I taught.”


In Rhode Island, Johns Hopkins University researchers found that lack of diversity among teachers at Providence Public Schools was a major concern, but it that was not being address by education leaders, according 89.3-FM, The Public’s Radio.
The state education department, which took over the district this fall, says it plans to address the CONTINUE READING: Why isn't our teacher workforce diverse enough?

Fraud, waste, misconduct: Inspector General’s report details year of cases in Chicago schools

Fraud, waste, misconduct: Inspector General’s report details year of cases in Chicago schools

Fraud, waste, misconduct: Inspector General’s report details year of cases in Chicago schools


Chicago schools’ investigative office discovered a swim coach who pocketed nearly $30,000 in pool-rental fees, the district’s failure to collect nearly $2 million in pre-kindergarten payments, and school employees underreporting their income to obtain free preschool. And the office opened nearly 500 investigations into alleged sexual abuse.
The board of education’s Office of the Inspector General details those and other findings of waste and misdeeds in a 72-page report released Monday summing up last school year’s cases in Chicago Public Schools.
By far the largest portion of complaints, more than one-fifth, that the independent office received dealt with alleged sexual abuse. That may be because of heightened public awareness from stories in the Chicago Tribune detailing school-related sexual assaults, and the inspector general forming a specialized unit to deal with them. 
The report from the office of Nicholas Schuler details the district’s response to the findings, which included termination and debarment in some cases. 
“We take seriously our duty to hold accountable any individual who commits serious breaches of district policy or seeks to cause harm,” said a school district spokeswoman, Emily Bolton, in a statement.  “The district appreciates the Office of the Inspector General’s continued efforts to investigate wrongdoing as we work to CONTINUE READING: Fraud, waste, misconduct: Inspector General’s report details year of cases in Chicago schools

Charlotte, N.C.: Voucher School Abruptly Closes Mid-Year | Diane Ravitch's blog

Charlotte, N.C.: Voucher School Abruptly Closes Mid-Year | Diane Ravitch's blog

Charlotte, N.C.: Voucher School Abruptly Closes Mid-Year




The Legacy Prep School in Charlotte, North Carolina, closed its doors at the end of the holidays, leaving parents and students on their own to find a school.
Legacy Prep was a private school that relied on vouchers from the state.
Parents were stunned.
Yes, 100% caught off-guard,” said Jackie Davis, whose son attends Legacy Prep. 
On Friday, she and other parents whose children were enjoying holiday break, received an email from Stacey Rose, the school’s principal, that told them the school would not re-open on January 7th due to funding issues. 
It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that Legacy Preparatory will have to close its doors and cease all operations immediately.  As such, we will not reopen for classes on January 7th (or any time thereafter) as originally planned,” Rose wrote in-part.
“It’s a burden,” Davis said. “I’m thinking I’m in a CONTINUE READING: Charlotte, N.C.: Voucher School Abruptly Closes Mid-Year | Diane Ravitch's blog

Prison “Reform” To Incarcerate The World: “Smart” Justice & Global Finance – Wrench in the Gears

Prison “Reform” To Incarcerate The World: “Smart” Justice & Global Finance – Wrench in the Gears

Prison “Reform” To Incarcerate The World: “Smart” Justice & Global Finance




Imposition of social control through brutal policing, incarceration, state supervision, exorbitant fines, and forced labor has a long, well-documented history in the United States. The ongoing harm, and devastating legacy of trauma linked to it, disproportionately affects Indigenous and Black communities, the very ones upon whose stolen land and labor this nation’s wealth has been extracted. Dismantling the prison industrial complex MUST be a priority, and yet care should be taken that we do not allow short-term “wins” to inadvertently pave the way for long-term disasters.
For the past month and a half I’ve been attempting to sort out the deep-pocketed interests behind what is being represented as prison “reform.” Many names I encountered were familiar to me from my previous education and impact investing research including the MacArthur, Ford, and Casey Foundations, Arnold Ventures, and Chan Zuckerberg. The same folks aiming to engineer the futures of preschoolers as human capital have their sights on incarcerated populations, too.
There’s actually quite a lot of overlap between communities accepting MacArthur Foundation “Safety + Justice” grants and those involved in “cradle to career” efforts implemented through Strive Together and other “collective impact” organizations. I will discuss this more in future posts, but below is a map to give you a sense of it. Use the link to the interactive CONTINUE READING: Prison “Reform” To Incarcerate The World: “Smart” Justice & Global Finance – Wrench in the Gears

CURMUDGUCATION: NC: Whitewashing The Charter Report

CURMUDGUCATION: NC: Whitewashing The Charter Report

NC: Whitewashing The Charter Report

North Carolina's 2020 Annual Charter Schools Report has caused some consternation among members of the state's Charter Schools Advisory Board (CSAB). They've seen the first draft and requested a rewrite, because, well, members of the public might become confused by the information that suggests Bad Things about North Carolina's charter industry.

This is not the first time the issue has come up. Back in 2016 the Lt. Governor called the report "too negative" and pushed to have it made "more fair." The report was not substantially changed-- just more data added. But in 2016 it still showed that North Carolina's charter schools mostly serve whiter, wealthier student bodies. This prompted a remarkable explanation:

Darrell Allison, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, said that fact is simply a reflection of which families are applying to charters.



Well, yes. Education reform in North Carolina has been about crushing the teachers' unions and teachers themselves, while also being aimed at enabling white flight and accelerating segregation. One might be inclined to deduce that they hope to set up a spiffy private system for whiter, wealthier folks (including a corporate reserve-your-own-seats policy) along with vouchers, while simultaneously cutting the public system to the bone so that wealthy taxpayers don't have to spend so much educating Those People's Children. North Carolina has done plenty to earn a spot in the education policy hall of shameenabled by some of the worst gerrymandering in the country.

But while NC legislators don't seem to experience much shame over what they do, they sometimes CONTINUE READING: 
CURMUDGUCATION: NC: Whitewashing The Charter Report





Vouchers: Should States Be Subsidizing Private Education at a Steep Cost to Public Schools? | janresseger

Vouchers: Should States Be Subsidizing Private Education at a Steep Cost to Public Schools? | janresseger

Vouchers: Should States Be Subsidizing Private Education at a Steep Cost to Public Schools?

Wisconsin and Ohio were the pioneers, the states which launched school vouchers—public tax dollars covering private school tuition.  Wisconsin launched Milwaukee vouchers in 1990, and Ohio followed suit in 1996 with a Cleveland voucher program.
What are the problems with the idea of vouchers?
Vouchers have always been endorsed by their proponents as providing an escape for promising students from so-called “failing” public schools—as measured by test scores.  But research demonstrates (see here and here) that test scores correlate not with school quality but instead with the aggregate income of the neighborhoods where public schools are located and the families who live there.  Research demonstrates that ameliorating student poverty would more directly address students’ needs.
The idea that vouchers help students academically hasn’t held up either.  A study by the pro-voucher Thomas Fordham Institute demonstrates that in Ohio, voucher students regularly fall behind their public school counterparts.  But proponents of school privatization (including the Thomas Fordham Institute itself) regularly ignore the evidence.
In a recent summary published in The NationJennifer Berkshire explains that while there is a lack of empirical evidence justifying vouchers, their proponents support them ideologically: “But the GOP’s true policy aim these days is much more ambitious: private school vouchers for all. In Ohio, students in two-thirds of the state’s school districts are now eligible for vouchers, a ballooning program that is on track to cost taxpayers $350 million by the end of the school year. And in Florida, school vouchers are now being offered to middle-class students, the latest gambit by conservatives in their effort to redefine public education as anything parents want to spend taxpayer money on. ‘For me, if the taxpayer is paying for the education, it’s public education,’ Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis proclaimed earlier this year.”
In Ohio, based on state report card grades which legislators from both parties seem to agree are deeply flawed, vouchers are now to be awarded to students in so-called ‘under- CONTINUE READING: Vouchers: Should States Be Subsidizing Private Education at a Steep Cost to Public Schools? | janresseger