Cade Brumley Is Louisiana’s New Superintendent. What LDOE Chaos Has He Inherited? | deutsch29

Cade Brumley Is Louisiana’s New Superintendent. What LDOE Chaos Has He Inherited? | deutsch29

Cade Brumley Is Louisiana’s New Superintendent. What LDOE Chaos Has He Inherited?

On May 20, 2020, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) voted 8-3 to appoint Jefferson Parish superintendent, Cade Brumley, as Louisiana’s next state superintendent.

Brumley was not a choice of ed reformers.  It seemed that their top choice was John White associate, Jessica Baghian, who currently serves as an assistant superintendent. Even so, some, like Sandy Holloway and Kira Orange-Jones, cast their initial votes for former St. James Parish superintendent Alonzo “Lonnie” Luce, who currently works for for-profit charter school management company, Charter Schools USA, as overseer of its Louisiana charter schools.

Brumley won the supermajority in a second round of voting. In the first round, all three candidates wound up with votes of 5-6. In Brumley’s case, the five voting for him included Ashley Ellis, Tony Davis, and governor John Bel Edwards’ three appointees, Doris Voitier, Belinda Davis, and Thomas Roque.

In a surprising move, Kira Orange-Jones, who headed the superintendent search committee, changed her vote in favor of Brumley in the second round, as did Holloway and Preston Castille.

Orange-Jones told the Advocate that Brumley is “a proven reformer.”

I don’t think so. Yes, Brumley attended the ed-reform Broad Superintendents Academy. However, Brumley has a steep history in the traditional classroom, as teacher, assistant principal, principal, and district superintendent, which is CONTINUE READING: Cade Brumley Is Louisiana’s New Superintendent. What LDOE Chaos Has He Inherited? | deutsch29

Social Distancing Should Not Mean Student Push Out - LA Progressive

Social Distancing Should Not Mean Student Push Out - LA Progressive

Social Distancing Should Not Mean Student Push Out

Almost all schools in the U.S. have closed their doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Educators and policymakers have largely focused on finding solutions for providing instruction remotely, access to essential technology, meals to families, counseling services, special education services, and all of the other services schools typically provide to their communities. What has been lost in the conversation, however, has been any meaningful discussion about how the school closures are affecting students who face suspensions, expulsions, and other school discipline.

Jason is a 12-year-old Black student who has a learning disability in addition to generalized anxiety disorder and depression. For years, his mother, Jennifer, who is herself an educator, pleaded with Jason’s school district to provide him with therapeutic counseling, but the district repeatedly denied her request.

This year, in the continued absence of any meaningful support, Jason’s social-emotional needs escalated; as a result, he was involved in multiple physical conflicts with peers. However, rather than finally acknowledging that Jason needed more support and amending his Individualized Education Program (IEP), Jason’s school instead recommended him for expulsion. His mom called the East Bay Community Law Center, which immediately requested a copy of Jason’s school records. But then schools shut down due to COVID-19.

In light of the fact that schools will be closed for the remainder of the school year, one would expect the school district to rescind the expulsion recommendation. That’s not what happened. Instead, the district told Jason and Jennifer that they intended to continue with the expulsion process—in other words, carry on with business as usual. Now, even while trying to stay safe CONTINUE READING: Social Distancing Should Not Mean Student Push Out - LA Progressive

Breaking Apart During COVID-19 – Parenting for Liberation

Breaking Apart During COVID-19 – Parenting for Liberation

Breaking Apart During COVID-19

“In the healing from that breaking apart and the healing from that trauma, we can choose to either become harsher, angrier, more bitter, closed off, and controlling of other people—or we can take that moment to see that, even while we are breaking apart, we haven’t been broken.”

— Mai’a Williams in Parenting for Liberation: A Guide to Raising Black Children 

The day California, my home state, issued it’s shelter in place order, I sent an email through Parenting for Liberation, an organization I founded in 2016  rooted in an Afro-futuristic vision of a world where black parents are in community with each other to raise black children without fear and instead parent for liberation, calling for a Blacks parents check in. Using the Erykah Badu meme, “Y’all alright?” created space to connect about how we were feeling. It’s not too often that Black parents are asked about how they are doing; as a Black mama I have struggled to push against the Black Superwoman phenom where I’m supposed to do it all and not need anyone. What I’ve grown to learn from the COVID Community Check in and also over the course of developing Parenting for Liberation is that a true “superwoman” is only as strong as her village, and the inherent power was in the collective. 

Fifteen Black parents joined a virtual session a week later, connecting over our fears, worries, frustrations. It was a space where Black parents could take the cape off and be vulnerable with one another. It’s in the sharing of the difficulties and challenges that true healing can be possible. One participant reflected “There’s so much heaviness these days, which is also important to process and CONTINUE READING: Breaking Apart During COVID-19 – Parenting for Liberation

Antiracist Parenting During COVID-19 and Beyond - Yes! Magazine

Antiracist Parenting During COVID-19 and Beyond - Yes! Magazine

Antiracist Parenting During COVID-19 and Beyond

Over the past two months, our lives have shifted dramatically. One day, we were reading about the spread of COVID-19 abroad, and the next, most of the world’s population was sheltering in place. For those of us who are parents, we are suddenly everything to our children: teachers, caretakers, playmates, and more. All of this while holding the grief of an altered life with little time to process. Even as some states and cities begin reopening, the lingering effects of the coronavirus, and the accompanying political and economic shifts, will continue to inform us over this year and beyond.

We met at an Emergent Strategy training in Detroit in October 2018. During that weekend, we explored what it means to embrace change, harness creativity, and work collaboratively toward a more liberatory way of working and living. As two White people raising young children—Rachel has a 2-year-old and Jardana has a 4- and an 8-year-old—we have remained in support of each other around the exploration of antiracism, queerness, activism, and parenting. 

We cannot pretend this pandemic is a great equalizer and ignore the Impact that it is having on Black people and other people of color.

We have been grappling with the questions: How do we enact antiracist parenting practices during the pandemic and beyond? And, how is this time asking more of us as parents committed to social justice? After conversations with our communities, we found many people were experiencing grief, fear, and isolation. While these feelings are a direct reaction to the coronavirus public health and economic crises, they’re also a response to the undeniable racial disparities these crises have exposed. Here, we discuss how to meet CONTINUE READING: Antiracist Parenting During COVID-19 and Beyond - Yes! Magazine

There Is No Good Reason To Return To School - Teacher Habits

There Is No Good Reason To Return To School - Teacher Habits

There Is No Good Reason To Return To School

Amid all of the debate about when and how America should reopen its schools, there has been little talk about why we should bother to at all. The arguments are familiar:

• We’re exacerbating inequalities and widening the achievement gap

• Staying home is bad for kids’ mental health and social development

• We can’t restart the economy without reopening the schools

• Remote learning is a poor substitute for in-person learning and it sucks in all sorts of small and not-so-small ways.

Those are in fact all good reasons to return to school as it was. But none of them are good reasons to return to school as it is likely to be.

While no one knows exactly what reopened schools will look like next fall, we can look to schools that have reopened for some indications.

Here’s what Quebec is doing:

Here’s an example from France showing what social distancing on a CONTINUE READING: There Is No Good Reason To Return To School - Teacher Habits

Education software: Educators are forced to figure out which ones works

Education software: Educators are forced to figure out which ones works

Ed tech companies promise results, but their claims are often based on shoddy research
With few watchdogs, educators (and now parents) are forced to figure out on their own which education software really works

School closures in all 50 states have sent educators and parents alike scrambling to find online learning resources to keep kids busy and productive at home. Website traffic to the homepage for IXL, a popular tool that lets students practice skills across five subjects through online quizzes, spiked in March. Same for Matific, which gives students math practice tailored to their skill level, and Edgenuity, which develops online courses.

All three of these companies try to hook prospective users with claims on their websites about their products’ effectiveness. Matific boasts that its game-based activities are “proven to help increase results by 34 percent.” IXL says its program is “proven effective” and that research “has shown over and over that IXL produces real results.” Edgenuity boasts that the first case study in its long list of “success stories” shows how 10th grade students using its program “demonstrated more than an eightfold increase in pass rates on state math tests.”

These descriptions of education technology research may comfort educators and parents looking for ways to mitigate the devastating effects of lost learning time because of the coronavirus. But they are all misleading.

None of the studies behind IXL’s or Matific’s research claims were designed well enough to offer reliable evidence of their products’ effectiveness, according to a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University who catalog effective educational programs. And Edgenuity’s boast takes credit for substantial test score gains that preceded the use of its online classes.

A Hechinger Report review found dozens of companies promoting their products’ effectiveness on their websites, in email pitches and in vendor brochures with little or shoddy evidence to support their claims.

Misleading research claims are increasingly common in the world of ed tech. In 2002, federal education law began requiring schools to spend CONTINUE READING: Education software: Educators are forced to figure out which ones works

Michigan Settles Recent Detroit Case, Establishes Right to Literacy as a Federal Precedent | janresseger

Michigan Settles Recent Detroit Case, Establishes Right to Literacy as a Federal Precedent | janresseger

Michigan Settles Recent Detroit Case, Establishes Right to Literacy as a Federal Precedent

Sunday, May 17, 2020, was the 66th anniversary of the landmark education civil rights case, Brown v. Board of Education. America’s continued failure to realize the promise of the Brown decision has been appalling.

Although Brown and follow-up lawsuits ended de jure segregation (the intentional creation, by law, of segregated schools for black and white children), most Americans have found a way legally to persist in educating their children in racially isolated school settings. Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the early 1970s are well known for protecting separate and unequal public education: the 1973 decision in San Antonio v. Rodriguez, which found that public education is not a federally protected right under the U.S. Constitution, and the 1974 decision in Milliken v. Bradley, which banned cross-district busing for racial integration. Across many school districts, including the schools in big cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and New York, children attend school in buildings that are more racially segregated than they were all those decades ago.

At the end of April, however, in a Detroit case, a three judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals established a new precedent, extending federal protection over every student’s right to basic literacy.  The worry in recent weeks has been that the decision would be overturned. Michigan’s legislature had requested the full 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to set aside the ruling of its three-judge panel. Many also worried that the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn the decision.

But the further appeal of this case now seems far less likely. Last Thursday, the state of Michigan settled the case and agreed to a financial remedy.

For the Detroit News, Jennifer Chambers and Beth LeBlanc report: “A historic settlement reached between the state and Detroit students calls for $94.5 million in future literacy CONTINUE READING: Michigan Settles Recent Detroit Case, Establishes Right to Literacy as a Federal Precedent | janresseger

CURMUDGUCATION: 19 Rules for Life (2020 Edition)

CURMUDGUCATION: 19 Rules for Life (2020 Edition)

19 Rules for Life (2020 Edition)

I first posted this list when I turned 60, and have made it an annual tradition to get it out on my birthday and re-examine it, edit it, and remind myself why I thought such things in the first place. I will keep my original observation-- that this list does not represent any particular signs of wisdom on my part, because I discovered these rules much in the same way that a dim cow discovers an electric fence.

1. Don't be a dick.

There is no excuse for being mean on purpose. Life will provide ample occasions on which you will hurt other people, either through ignorance or just because sometimes life puts us on collision courses with others and people get hurt. There is enough hurt and trouble and disappointment and rejection  naturally occurring in the world; there is no reason to deliberately go out of your way to add more. This is doubly in a time like the present, when everyone is already feeling the stress. 

There's a lesson here, somewhere.

2. Do better.

You are not necessarily going to be great. But you can always be better. You can always do a better job today than you did yesterday. Make better choices. Do better. You can always do better.

3. Tell the truth.

Words matter. Do not use them as tools with which to attack the world or attempt to pry prizes out of your fellow humans (see Rule #1). Say what you understand to be true. Life is too short to put your name to a lie. This does not mean that every word out of your mouth is some sort of Pronouncement from God. Nor does it mean you must be unkind. But you simply can't speak words that you know to be untrue. I'll extend this to social media as well: if it's not the truth, don't post it.

4. Seek to understand.

Do not seek comfort or confirmation. Do not simply look for ways to prove what you already believe. Seek to understand, and always be open to the possibility that what you knew to be true yesterday CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: 19 Rules for Life (2020 Edition)

Chancellor Carranza, “There is no fat to cut … we’re at the bone,” Is he correct? Does the NYC School Management Model support schools effectively, or, Should we design a bottom-up model? | Ed In The Apple

Chancellor Carranza, “There is no fat to cut … we’re at the bone,” Is he correct? Does the NYC School Management Model support schools effectively, or, Should we design a bottom-up model? | Ed In The Apple

Chancellor Carranza, “There is no fat to cut … we’re at the bone,” Is he correct? Does the NYC School Management Model support schools effectively, or, Should we design a bottom-up model?

Susan Edelman, in then May 16th edition of the NY Post wrote,

“Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza says students will suffer next school year because he can’t find anything more to cut in the Department of Education’s $34 billion budget. Insiders say he’s lying.(no, not lying, committed to a model)

‘There is no fat to cut, there is no meat to cut — we are at the bone,’ Carranza testified Tuesday at a City Council budget hearing.”

How do you measure “fat”?

Let’s take a look at the Department of Education Organization Chart; the Chancellor added another layer, nine Executive Superintendents (and staff) each supervising a number of superintendents,

The current leadership includes the Chancellor, First Deputy Chancellor, Chief Academic, Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Deputy Chancellors for School Climate and Wellness, School Planning and Development, Early Education and Student Enrollment and Community Development, Partnerships and CONTINUE READING: Chancellor Carranza, “There is no fat to cut … we’re at the bone,” Is he correct? Does the NYC School Management Model support schools effectively, or, Should we design a bottom-up model? | Ed In The Apple

Betsy DeVos Needs to Work Harder | The Merrow Report

Betsy DeVos Needs to Work Harder | The Merrow Report

Betsy DeVos Needs to Work Harder

Betsy DeVos has been working to undermine public education ever since she became Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education in February 2017, about 1200 days ago.  Will a recent exposé on the front page of the New York Times derail–or even slow down–her determined effort?

That’s doubtful.  But you should know that she’s now using pandemic dollars to weaken public schools.  

Frankly, she’s not as efficient as she could be, so at the end of this piece I have a couple of tips that will help DeVos finish the job of completely destroying public schools, forever.  Please read on…  

In a story headlined “DeVos Funnels Coronavirus Relief Funds to Favored Private and Religious Schools,” the Times’s Erica Green lays out in excruciating detail how the Secretary, herself a graduate of a Christian high school and a Christian college, has taken the $30 billion appropriated by Congress to help education institutions upended by the pandemic and diverted it to institutions and policies that support her vision of privatized, God-centric education.  In doing so, she’s taking dollars away from low-income children–not because she’s against disadvantaged children. They happen to attend public schools, her target.

And we are not talking chump-change here, either.  For example, Bergin University of Canine Studies in California, whose purpose is to ‘advance the human-canine partnership through research and education,’ received $472,850 in pandemic relief CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos Needs to Work Harder | The Merrow Report

Buffoon – Bumbler – Brilliant? | JD2718

Buffoon – Bumbler – Brilliant? | JD2718

Buffoon – Bumbler – Brilliant?

Trump the buffoon, de Blasio the bumbler, but Cuomo’s been brilliant?
Not so fast!

The nightly news version, the press conference version, that fits.

Trump blusters, brags, bullies. He exudes confidence in his intellect and abilities, despite ample evidence to the contrary.

He really wants to be good at this, he wants to sound official, and somber, and caring, but de Blasio’s meandering, whining, pleading, plodding press conferences inspire mostly sighs.

Cuomo stands out. He’s punchy. He’s sharp. He’s confident. He’s cogent. He cares. He’s realistic.

Donald the Buffoon, Bill the Bumbler, and Brilliant Andrew. Case closed?

Not so fast.

When the bar is set at “not completely insane” Cuomo clears it pretty easily. But we should not be using such a low bar.

Cuomo grabbed more emergency powers than were reasonable, and then abused them: to cut aid to localities (schools and health care) and to take revenge on political opponents.

But the crisis, right? Hasn’t he been a shining light in the storm? Well, no. Take an hour, read this Propublica piece. (might take you 20 minutes, took me 40, deserves an hour). Or, here, let me pull out some highlights. The article contrasts the response in NY State and California, with a lot about NYC and San Francisco, as well. Cuomo and de Blasio get blasted. Strangely, de Blasio, even with criticism, CONTINUE READING: Buffoon – Bumbler – Brilliant? | JD2718

Shanker Blog: Educational Equity During A Pandemic | National Education Policy Center

Shanker Blog: Educational Equity During A Pandemic | National Education Policy Center

Shanker Blog: Educational Equity During A Pandemic

This post is part of our series entitled Teaching and Learning During a Pandemic, in which we invite guest authors to reflect on the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic for teaching and learning. Our contributor today is Peter Levine, Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship at Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life. He blogs regularly on his own site. Posts in the series will be compiled here.

My wife and I have each spent many hours teaching by video this spring. While sitting in the same house, I meet online with college students who attend a selective private university; she meets with 5-to-9-year olds in an urban public school system, helping them learn to read. 

Both of us think and worry about equity: how to treat all students fairly within our respective institutions and across the whole country (even the world). And both of us discuss these issues with our respective colleagues. I suspect that many other educators are similarly wrestling with the challenges of teaching equitably while schools are closed. 

Before the pandemic, schools were already dramatically inequitable. In our state of Massachusetts, total expenditures per pupil vary from $14,000 to $31,000 among regular school districts. But the worst-funded Massachusetts district still allocates twice as much per student as Utah does. In Uganda, the government spends $2.12 per student per year on education (although many families spend more).

Boosting a school’s budget certainly does not guarantee better results—as Utah’s decent outcomes show—yet inequity takes many other forms besides cash, from biased adults' expectations to the amount of pollution in the air, or even the degree to which other students are focused on learning.

Although such disparities persist, at least there are some ways of promoting equity within the walls of a bricks-and-mortar school. Every enrolled child can be required to attend for basically the same amount of time, can be afforded the same fundamental rights, can be allocated similar equipment and materials, and can count for roughly the same when it comes to allocating funds or measuring outcomes. 

Equity becomes more challenging when schools close their doors and teachers try to serve students CONTINUE READING: Shanker Blog: Educational Equity During A Pandemic | National Education Policy Center

NYC Public School Parents: "Talk out of School" with Naftuli Moster of Yaffed and biomedical expert Kaliris Salas-Ramirez on reopening schools

NYC Public School Parents: "Talk out of School" with Naftuli Moster of Yaffed and biomedical expert Kaliris Salas-Ramirez on reopening schools

"Talk out of School" with Naftuli Moster of Yaffed and biomedical expert Kaliris Salas-Ramirez on reopening schools

On tomorrow's "Talk out of School" on Wed. May 20 at 10 AM on WBAI Radio 99.5 FM and wbai.org, I'll talk to Naftuli Moster of Yaffed about the latest "smoking gun" emails, revealing Mayor de Blasio promised to delay & soften the Yeshiva report in exchange for renewing Mayoral control; and also parent leader & biomedical expert Kaliris Yimar Salas-Ramirez on what precautions will be necessary to safely reopen schools . Please join us!

NYC Public School Parents: "Talk out of School" with Naftuli Moster of Yaffed and biomedical expert Kaliris Salas-Ramirez on reopening schools

Have you ever met children? | Live Long and Prosper

Have you ever met children? | Live Long and Prosper

Have you ever met children?

We Cannot Return to Campus this Fall

Harley Litzelman, Oakland public high school teacher and union organizer, has written a piece for Medium that likely echoes the thoughts of the majority of America’s public school teachers.

We cannot and dare not return to school this fall.

Read the whole post.

The “reimagining” of public education by non-educators now taking place in board rooms and government offices throughout the country fails to take into account the fact that children are not adults. Trying to force students into social distancing while on the bus, in the classroom, in the cafeteria, and on the playground will result in the very worst kind of educational practices.

Litzelman, a high school teacher, tries his hand at explaining how social distancing would likely fail in elementary schools.

No more group seating. No story time on the carpet. No small group stations. Coloring must be strictly monitored to eliminate sharing, probably requiring children to keep their own personal sets of crayons and markers, revealing stark class differences within classrooms and between schools. No fingers in the mouth or nose, and several minutes spent washing their hands after they inevitably forget. They, too, cannot get out of their seats during class, and no longer can they enjoy the couches and bean bag chairs that their teachers have acquired. Again is the time to ask: Have you ever met children?

The preceding paragraph follows a description of how difficult — and costly — it CONTINUE READING: Have you ever met children? | Live Long and Prosper

Gates Foundation's Tactics to Remake Public Education During Pandemic Are Undemocratic (Opinion) - The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Gates Foundation's Tactics to Remake Public Education During Pandemic Are Undemocratic (Opinion) - The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Gates Foundation's Tactics to Remake Public Education During Pandemic Are Undemocratic

During one of his recent daily press briefings, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that his state will work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to “reimagine” its school system. Cuomo presented this as a grand opportunity to transform learning through technology and significantly alter “the old model of everybody goes and sits in a classroom and the teacher is in front of that classroom and teaches that class . . . in all these physical classrooms.”

While there is a place for educational technology in U.S. schools and classrooms, Governor Cuomo’s announcement, including a call for greater reliance on virtual classrooms, reflects the power of foundations to propose technical solutions to high-stakes political debates on educational equity and quality. As a nation, we must be wary of foundations capitalizing on political opportunities created by crises such as Covid-19 to assert their influence over public education.

In this case, the health crisis is being used as an excuse to radically reshape public education without public deliberation or accountability. In any other moment, rethinking classrooms and the entire nature of schooling would be a highly contested solution to the challenge of educating the nation’s children. This undemocratic process leaves marginalized people particularly vulnerable to negative consequences from philanthropic actions.

Powerful foundations like the Gates Foundation do not simply impose policies on governments like New York State, according to research by Megan Tompkins-Stange, public-policy assistant professor at the University of Michigan, and Sarah Reckhow, a political scientist at Michigan State University. Rather, they influence state officials’ consensus about which policies to adopt by positioning themselves as experts on education, garnering widespread support for their policy proposals, and offering economic and organizational support to put those policies into effect. In our research, we refer to this as a process of “philanthropizing consent” for highly controversial policy solutions. On the surface, this educational policy game may seem fair, but the Gates Foundation’s role in shaping public policy stems from its tremendous economic clout, including its vast networks and ability to draw media attention.

Yet the Gates Foundation’s past experiments have failed to improve public education despite spending billions of dollars. As Bill Gates admitted in his 2009 annual letter, the foundation’s expensive push to break up large high schools into small ones in places like New York City and Oakland, Calif., “did not improve students’ achievement in any CONTINUE READING: Gates Foundation's Tactics to Remake Public Education During Pandemic Are Undemocratic (Opinion) - The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Teacher Tom: Children Have Few of the Rights of Citizenship, Yet They are Citizens

Teacher Tom: Children Have Few of the Rights of Citizenship, Yet They are Citizens

Children Have Few of the Rights of Citizenship, Yet They are Citizens

I'm worried about children. No one is asking them what they want. Of course this is nothing new. Oh sure, we make a show of listening to individual children, but since they possess precious few of the rights of citizenship, there is no reason, beyond compassion of course, to heed them.

I wonder what they are thinking right now, children in the aggregate. We poll adults, we offer them forums, we have elections in which the adults express their collective voice, but we have nothing like that for children. We know what the white middle class is thinking. We know what the seniors in the South are thinking. We know what urban black women are thinking. We know what Republicans and Democrats are thinking. But we don't know what children are thinking about what is going on the in the world today.

I imagine that many of them are simply bored with it all. I know that at least some of them simply tune out the moment the adults with whom they are quarantined start, for the forty millionth time, to belabor the fine details of what this politician has said or that doctor has warned or that study has found. Who cares?!?

I imagine others are frightened, their imaginations ablaze with the scary news that never seems to end.

I imagine some are interested, asking lots of questions about viruses, ventilators, and vaccines.

I imagine most children, like most adults, are at some level sad.

What do they think about returning to their schools and child CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Children Have Few of the Rights of Citizenship, Yet They are Citizens