The movement to privatize public schools marches on during covid-19 pandemic - The Washington Post

The movement to privatize public schools marches on during covid-19 pandemic - The Washington Post

The movement to privatize public schools marches on during covid-19 pandemic

While many Americans see 2021 as the year that may bring back something close to normalcy after the covid-19 pandemic, it has instead been declared the “Year of School Choice” by the American Federation for Children, an organization that promotes alternatives to public education and that was once headed by Betsy DeVos.

Anyone who was thinking that the departure of DeVos as U.S. education secretary would stem the movement to privatize public education should think again.

In numerous states, legislatures have proposed or are considering legislation to expand alternatives to the public schools that educate most American schoolchildren, often using public funding to pay for private and religious school.

This post looks at some of the latest state actions. It was written by Carol Burris, a former prizewinning principal in New York and now executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group the Network for Public Education, which opposes charter schools and the privatization of public education.

Former lobbyist details how privatizers are trying to end public education

By Carol Burris

Legislatures in 35 states have proposed bills to enact or expand voucher programs or charter schools. A few have passed; others have failed. Still others are sitting on governors’ desks or are stalled in the state’s House or Senate. Several are obvious attempts to please right-wing donors with no chance of moving out of committee. So far, eight states have enacted one or more bills. CONTINUE READING: The movement to privatize public schools marches on during covid-19 pandemic - The Washington Post

Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books - The Washington Post

Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books - The Washington Post

Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books

Philip Nel is the author of “Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature and the Need for Diverse Books,” a 2017 book that helped launch a conversation about racism in children’s books that led to a recent decision by Dr. Seuss Enterprises to stop publishing six of the prolific author’s books.

Nel, who is a professor of English at Kansas State University and director of the children’s literature program there, spoke with me about the book a few years ago. I republished the conversation here earlier this year when it was falsely reported that a Virginia school district had banned the books of Dr. Seuss, the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel.

No, a Virginia school district didn’t ban Dr. Seuss books. Here’s what really happened.

Nel is back with this post, in which he discusses racism in children’s books and the way the issue has become politicized. At the heart of his piece is this:

“Why not break up with your favorite racist childhood classics? Maybe doing so will break your heart a little. But, to quote a line attributed to Rumi (but which is probably not him), ‘You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.’"

By Philip Nel

It is possible to cancel a culture. More than 300 Indigenous languages were once spoken in the United States. Only about 175 of those languages remain today. Colonization, genocide, forced assimilation have all been very effective at canceling cultures.

However, the “cancel culture” that animates professional grievance actors today refers to culture under no threat of cancellation. Dr. Seuss books. Muppets. Disney. White innocence. Because it’s hard to cancel a dominant culture. “Cancel culture” is a White supremacist fantasy that creates villains and then mobilizes anger against the villains it CONTINUE READING: Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books - The Washington Post

What the divorcing Bill and Melinda Gates did to public education - The Washington Post

What the divorcing Bill and Melinda Gates did to public education - The Washington Post

Let’s review how Bill and Melinda Gates spent billions of dollars to change public education

Now that the philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates have announced they are divorcing after 27 years of marriage, let’s look at the controversial investments they made together to reform K-12 public education — and how well those worked out.

Together, the two have been among the most generous philanthropists on the planet, spending more over the past few decades on global health than many countries do and more on U.S. education reform than any of the other wealthy Americans who have tried to impact K-12 education with their personal fortunes.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent billions of dollars on numerous education projections — such as creating small high schools, writing and implementing the Common Core State Standards, evaluating teachers by standardized test scores — and the couple has had enormous influence on what happened in classrooms across the country.

Their philanthropy, especially in the school reform area, has been at the center of a national debate about whether it serves democracy when wealthy people can use their own money to drive public policy and fund their pet education projects. The foundation’s financial backing of some controversial priorities of the Obama administration’s Education Department put the couple at the center of this national conversation.

Critics have said that many of the foundation’s key education projects have harmed public schools because they were unworkable from the start and consumed resources that could have been better spent.

But you don’t have to go any further than the Gateses themselves to learn that some of the billions of dollars they put into public education reform efforts did not go as well as they liked.

In 2013, Bill Gates said, “It would be great if our education stuff worked. But that we won’t know for probably a decade.”

It didn’t take 10 years for them and their foundation to acknowledge that key education investments didn’t turn out as well as they hoped.

In the foundation’s 2020 annual letter, Melinda Gates said: “The fact that progress has been harder to achieve than we hoped is no reason to give up, though. Just the opposite.”

That same annual letter had a rather remarkable statement from Melinda Gates about the role of the wealthy in education policy, given her and husband’s role in it:

We certainly understand why many people are skeptical about the idea of billionaire philanthropists designing classroom innovations or setting education policy. Frankly, we are, too. Bill and I have always been clear that our role isn’t to generate ideas ourselves; it’s to support innovation driven by people who have spent their careers working in education: teachers, administrators, researchers, and community leaders.

Bill and Melinda Gates have spent billions to shape education policy. Now, they say, they’re ‘skeptical’ of ‘billionaires’ trying to do just that.

The Gates Foundation began its first big effort in education reform about two decades ago with what it said was a $650 million investment to break large, failing high schools into smaller schools. CONTINUE READING: What the divorcing Bill and Melinda Gates did to public education - The Washington Post

New report provides reality check on virtual schools - The Washington Post

New report provides reality check on virtual schools - The Washington Post

New report provides reality check on virtual schools

Online education has been at the center of the national education discussion since the coronavirus pandemic forced schools last year to close and teachers to find ways to teach virtually — often online. While some students thrived learning virtually, educators and parents around the country have said that most did not.

But online learning has been with us for years before the coronavirus pandemic in the form of virtual schools, many of them operated by for-profit organizations. The growth of these schools has been tracked since 2013 by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a nonprofit education policy research center located in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

This post, written by Alex Molnar and Faith Boninger, explains the findings of a new report about the state of virtual schools that was released Thursday by the NEPC, titled “Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2021.”

The report finds virtual school enrollment growing despite a persistent lag in student performance as compared with brick-and-mortar schools. It examines the characteristics and performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools and reviews relevant research on virtual school practices.

Molnar is a research professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the NEPC publications director, as well as co-director of the NEPC’s Commercialism in Education Research Unit. Boninger is the NEPC’s publications manager and co-director of the Commercialism in Education Research Unit.

(I ordinarily don’t publish footnotes, but I am in this case because the blog is based on a report that includes them and you may find them useful.)

By Alex Molnar and Faith Boninger

“Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2021,” a report released on Thursday by the National Education Policy Center, finds that: New report provides reality check on virtual schools - The Washington Post

Former lobbyist details how privatizers are trying to end public education - The Washington Post

Former lobbyist details how privatizers are trying to end public education - The Washington Post

Former lobbyist details how privatizers are trying to end public education

A few years ago I ran a piece by Joanne Barkan about the long history of the movement to privatize public education. It began:

When champions of market-based reform in the United States look at public education, they see two separate activities — government funding education and government running schools. The first is okay with them; the second is not. Reformers want to replace their bête noire — what they call the “monopoly of government-run schools” — with freedom of choice in a competitive market dominated by privately run schools that get government subsidies.

Today, that privatization movement is alive and pushing ahead, with Republican legislators in 16 states actively pushing bills to create or expand school vouchers and/or charter schools that are part of that movement.

What and who are fueling the movement to privatize public education — and why you should care

This post — a continuation of sorts of the Barkan article — is a discussion with a man named Charles Siler, who was once a lobbyist for school privatizers but who came to oppose the very thing he was working toward. Siler worked for two privatization organizations, including the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, where his job was to convince legislators to pass laws that privatize public services, especially K-12 schooling.

In March, Siler had a conversation with education historian and activist Diane Ravitch as well as with podcaster Jennifer Berkshire, in which he provided insight into the playbook used by “school choice” proponents, the belief system that drives them and their long-term objective. He makes it very clear: their ultimate goal is to dismantle K-12 public schools. CONTINUE READING: Former lobbyist details how privatizers are trying to end public education - The Washington Post

Education Secretary Cardona stands firm on standardized testing mandate amid criticism - The Washington Post

Education Secretary Cardona stands firm on standardized testing mandate amid criticism - The Washington Post

Education Secretary Cardona stands firm on standardized testing mandate amid criticism

A day after more than 500 education researchers asked Education Secretary Miguel Cardona not to force school districts to administer federally mandated student standardized tests this year during the coronavirus pandemic, Cardona said Tuesday that policymakers needed the data obtained from the exams.

Appearing at the 2021 legislative conference of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), Cardona said giving school districts flexibility in how and when they administer the exams — as the department has already given — was the right thing to do. “One size does not fit all,” he said.

But he said, student data obtained from the tests was important to help education officials create policy and target resources where they are most needed. When federal funding is distributed to states, he said, “we have to make sure we are laser-focused on addressing inequities that have existed for years. ... Every bit of data helps.”

The Education Department announced this week how much money each state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico would receive from the $122 billion in funding for K-12 schools that was included in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act.

Cardona made the comment during a question-and-answer period at the CCSSO conference when he was asked what he hoped to learn from the exams. His CCSSO appearance came a day after 548 members of the academic research community sent Cardona a letter, urging him to award states waivers from the exams because they will “exacerbate inequality” and “produce flawed data.”

They also urged Cardona to invest in “more holistically evaluating school quality” by “developing new measures of educational opportunities.”

Don’t force schools to give standardized tests this pandemic year, research scholars ask Education Secretary Cardona

Cardona said Tuesday that he would be willing to “reexamine what role assessments” play in education — but not immediately. CONTINUE READING: Education Secretary Cardona stands firm on standardized testing mandate amid criticism - The Washington Post

Don’t force schools to give standardized tests this pandemic year, research scholars ask Education Secretary Cardona - The Washington Post

Don’t force schools to give standardized tests this pandemic year, research scholars ask Education Secretary Cardona - The Washington Post

Don’t force schools to give standardized tests this pandemic year, research scholars ask Education Secretary Cardona

More than 540 education researchers and scholars are asking Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to reconsider his department’s decision requiring school districts to administer federally mandated standardized tests this pandemic year, saying the exams will “exacerbate inequality” and “produce flawed data.”

A letter signed by 548 members of the academic research community was sent to the Education Department on Monday, urging that Cardona award states waivers from federal testing mandates. It also urges the department to invest in “more holistically evaluating school quality” by “developing new measures of educational opportunities.”

The Education Department announced in February — before Cardona was confirmed by the Senate — that public school districts had to administer exams in math and English Language Arts required annually by the federal 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced the 2002 No Child Left Behind law.

One month in, Biden angers supporters who wanted him to curb standardized testing

And as late as last week, Cardona said at an education forum that the department was planning to go ahead with its testing decision.

The high-stakes tests are given every spring as a central part of the two-decade-old school reform movement. Testing advocates say the exams provide vital data on how all student groups are performing in school. Student test scores are used — at least in part — by some states to evaluate teachers and by states to evaluate districts and schools.

The academics’ letter notes that critics of high-stakes testing have warned for decades that “the high-stakes use of any metric will distort results,” and that documented consequences include “curriculum CONTINUE READING: Don’t force schools to give standardized tests this pandemic year, research scholars ask Education Secretary Cardona - The Washington Post

Biden promised to end federal funding of for-profit charter schools. A new report explains how they operate. - The Washington Post

Biden promised to end federal funding of for-profit charter schools. A new report explains how they operate. - The Washington Post

Biden promised to end federal funding of for-profit charter schools. A new report explains how they operate

President Biden said while running for the White House that he would bar for-profit charter schools from receiving federal funding, and the 2020 Democratic platform explained why:

Charter schools were originally intended to be publicly funded schools with increased flexibility in program design and operations. Democrats believe that education is a public good and should not be saddled with a private profit motive, which is why we will ban for-profit private charter businesses from receiving federal funding.

Now a new report, titled “Chartered For Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain,” details how many for-profit management companies (referred to as EMOs) evade state laws banning for-profit charters.

They set up nonprofit schools and then direct the schools’ business operations to related corporations. For example, it says, one of the largest EMOs, National Heritage Academies, “locks schools in with a ‘sweeps contract’ where virtually all revenue is passed to the for-profit management corporation, NHA, that runs the school.”

“In other cases, the EMO recommends their own related companies for services that include leasing, personnel services, and curriculum,” it says

The report was produced by the Network for Public Education, an education advocacy group that opposes charter schools. It was written by Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a former award-winning New York principal, and Darcie Cimarusti, the network’s communications director.

The authors wrote that despite “strict regulations against the disbursement of funds from the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) to charter schools operated by for-profit entities,” they identified more than 440 charter schools operated for profit that received grants totaling approximately $158 million between 2006 and 2017.

They also found that fewer disadvantaged students, proportionally, attend charters run for profit than CONTINUE READING: Biden promised to end federal funding of for-profit charter schools. A new report explains how they operate. - The Washington Post

Wayne Au: The futility of standardized testing in a crazy pandemic year - The Washington Post

The futility of standardized testing in a crazy pandemic year - The Washington Post

The futility of standardized testing in a crazy pandemic year

Critics of federally mandated K-12 standardized tests were upset when the Biden administration recently said it would require states to administer them this year. They raised pre-pandemic questions about reliability and validity of test scores — as well as concerns about how scores would be affected by the instability of the school year during the coronavirus pandemic.

In this post, a longtime testing critic looks at why giving standardized tests after a year in which children were educated during a pandemic is nothing but an exercise in futility. The author is Wayne Au, a professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington at Bothell. He is also an editor for the social justice magazine Rethinking Schools.

One month in, Biden angers supporters who wanted him to curb standardized testing

By Wayne Au

The Biden administration’s decision to require schools across the country to administer high-stakes standardized tests this spring caught many parents, students and teachers by surprise. It contradicts President Biden’s campaign promises to cut back on testing — and seems to ignore the deep inequities and wild inconsistencies associated with remote schooling over the last year.

What the administration and testing advocates seem to miss is that any data generated by high-stakes standardized testing this spring will be invalid and, therefore, useless. Even in non-pandemic years, high-stakes standardized tests don’t accurately and objectively measure teaching and learning.

I am a longtime critic of high-stakes standardized testing for reasons including:

• The racist history of standardized testing in the United States, including a direct lineage to our country’s eugenics movement. Over 100 years ago, U.S. psychologists used I.Q. tests to claim that intelligence and other traits were genetically based, and subsequently cast the poor, people of color, and immigrants as biologically less intelligent.
• Our high-stakes test scores today basically mirror the race and class inequalities produced by the racist and classist I.Q. tests created a century ago.
• For decades, research has shown that test scores do not accurately reflect teaching and learning. Rather, they overwhelmingly reflect levels of poverty and other non-school factors such as housing insecurity, food insecurity and access to health care.
• These tests do not work as promised. In the roughly two decades since high-stakes, standardized testing was federally mandated by the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, there has been virtually no decrease in test-score inequality between major racial and economic student groups, and in some cases, the gaps in scores may have increased.
• High-stakes testing narrows the curriculum to tested subjects, restricts the amount of space for multicultural curricula and culturally relevant teaching, and has resulted in cuts to important time spent at recess and lunch.

These are all concerns I have about high-stakes, standardized testing in a normal year, let alone during CONTINUE READING: The futility of standardized testing in a crazy pandemic year - The Washington Post

Biden’s American Rescue Plan is actually a huge new school reform - The Washington Post

Biden’s American Rescue Plan is actually a huge new school reform - The Washington Post

Biden’s American Rescue Plan is actually a huge new school reform

President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is aimed at helping the country recover from the coronavirus pandemic — but it is another thing, as well: a major federal school reform unlike those we’ve seen in the past few decades.

While the new law is aimed at helping families get back on their feet and helping businesses and schools reopen after a year of turmoil, it includes measures that together have the potential to slash poverty among the 12 million students who live in low-income households.

Biden himself tweeted recently: “No child should grow up in poverty. The American Rescue Plan will expand the child tax credit and cut the child poverty rate in half.”

Outside estimates on its impact have come to the same conclusion, including one from the nonprofit Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, which said that two key tax credit provisions could “together lift more children above the poverty line, 5.5 million, than any other economic support program.” An Urban Institute analysis of the plan said the child poverty rate in 2021 will fall by more than 52 percent, largely from changes in tax law and the $1,400 stimulus checks that are part of the relief package.

It should be noted that most of the provisions in this new law will remain in effect only for a year or two — and there is no guarantee what will happen beyond then. But directly aiming to reduce child poverty is exactly what many advocates for children have long said is needed.

Policymakers have been focused for decades on improving public schools with a culture based on standardized testing, the expansion of charter schools and other “school choice” measures, and, in some places, the demonization of teachers. Child poverty, they said, was an excuse for poor performance by adults.

But the testing/choice/big data approach has not closed the achievement gap, and on some measures, it has barely moved.

Critics say research clearly shows that standardized test scores are fundamentally a metric of the state of child poverty in America, not of school quality. Students who live in low-income Zip codes virtually CONTINUE READING: Biden’s American Rescue Plan is actually a huge new school reform - The Washington Post

What ‘learning loss’ really means - The Washington Post

What ‘learning loss’ really means - The Washington Post

What ‘learning loss’ really means

It’s not a loss of learning.

Last May, I published a post with this title: “Can we stop telling the ‘corona kids’ how little they are learning?”

Written by Rachael Gabriel, associate professor of literacy education at the University of Connecticut, it made the case that students were actually learning when schools closed last spring as the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States — just not all of the things they would have learned in class:

Students are learning how to reset the rhythms and structures of their days. They are learning different patterns and modes of communication. They may be taking on different roles in their homes and learning how to complete new tasks, engage in new games and develop or sustain new and different activities.

Some are learning from the outdoor world on walks that go slower and last longer than before. Others are watching nature change day-by-day out their window, in their gardens, and along trails and bodies of water. Some are spending more time in their imaginations because it’s the only place to go, but this is not unimportant work.

Students cannot help but learn about themselves, others and the world around them in this time when solitude has steadily increased alongside disconnection and uncertainty. Even those who are too young to verbalize their understandings understand their world has changed, and are changing right along with it.

Gabriel is back with a new look at “learning loss” and what it really means.

Gabriel has written or edited five books for literacy teachers, leaders and education researchers, as well as numerous articles, and teaches courses for educators and doctoral students pursuing specialization in literacy.

By Rachael Gabriel

There is no such thing as learning loss.

When it comes to K-12 schooling, the truth is that some of us are more used to interruptions than others. Those of us who have to move around a lot, are living between two countries, or who have experienced a major injury, illness or are chronically ill, and even those who just changed schools once know what loss feels like. CONTINUE READING: What ‘learning loss’ really means - The Washington Post

Carol Burris: Fordham Study Misleads the Public About Fiscal Harm of Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Carol Burris: Fordham Study Misleads the Public About Fiscal Harm of Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Carol Burris: Fordham Study Misleads the Public About Fiscal Harm of Charter Schools

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently published a study claiming that charter schools do no fiscal harm to public schools, and may even lead to greater funding. Dr. Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Schools, has visited public school districts that are in a deep financial hole because of the financial drain caused by the proliferation of charter schools. She read the Fordham study with care and concluded that it was misleading and inaccurate.

Her article was published on Valerie Strauss’s “The Answer Sheet,” along with a response by the author of the study, Mark Weber. Weber agreed with her main point: – That said, I agree that my report does not provide evidence that charter school growth does not harm school district’s fiscal health. That fact is that this report can’t answer that question. My hope, however, is that it does provide a framework for having a more informed discussion about the costs of charter schools on the entire K-12 system.

Her full post is here.

It begins like this:

A recent study published by the Thomas B. Fordham CONTINUE READING: Carol Burris: Fordham Study Misleads the Public About Fiscal Harm of Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Biden angers supporters who wanted him to curb standardized testing - The Washington Post

Biden angers supporters who wanted him to curb standardized testing - The Washington Post

One month in, Biden angers supporters who wanted him to curb standardized testing

In December 2019, Joe Biden appeared at an education forum and was asked if he would commit to ending standardized testing in public schools if elected president. His answer was surprising — given that the Obama administration, in which he served as vice president, made testing a central part of its controversial education agenda.

“Yes,” Biden said. “You are preaching to the choir.” He said that evaluating teachers by student test scores — a feature of President Barack Obama’s overhauls — was “a big mistake” and that “teaching to a test underestimates and discounts the things that are most important for students to know.”

Critics of high-stakes testing took heart in his response and hoped he would diminish the importance of the standardized tests that federal law requires states to give annually to hold schools accountable for student progress. An early indication of that would be whether he would do what Betsy DeVos, President Donald Trump’s education secretary, did in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning: allow states to skip them.

Now, a month into the Biden presidency, the Education Department announced this week that states must give the exams — although with some flexibility about how to administer them and use the scores. (An Education Department spokesperson said Miguel Cardona, Biden’s nominee for education secretary, did not participate in the decision.)

Education Department offers flexibility, but not a way out, for spring testing

Specifically, states were told they could shorten the exams, administer them remotely or give them later in the year. States were also offered flexibility with how they use test scores, which has included for teacher evaluation, school grades and graduation requirements. And the department said it would work with individual states to address their unique circumstances, suggesting further flexibility.

At least nine states have asked the Education Department for permission to skip the exams and more than 20 have asked if they could refrain from using the test scores for accountability purposes, according to a department spokesperson. Now they and other states that want flexibility from federal law will enter into negotiations with the department, which is expected to be led by Cardona if he is CONTINUE READING: Biden angers supporters who wanted him to curb standardized testing - The Washington Post

The distorted debate about reopening schools - The Washington Post

The distorted debate about reopening schools - The Washington Post

The deeply distorted debate about reopening schools

For nearly a year the Trump administration was accused of ignoring science by trying to bully schools into reopening during the coronavirus pandemic without requiring that proper safety steps being taken. Now the Biden administration, less than a month in office, is being accused of ignoring science — largely for doing the opposite.

A popular construct of the criticism of the Biden administration goes like this: Frustrated parents everywhere want their kids back in schools right now, but fearful (and sometimes lazy) teachers don’t want to go. Their unions are nothing but obstructionist. Researchers say there is little evidence that schools contribute to increased community transmission of the coronavirus. President Biden, a friend of labor, is siding with the unions by supporting the idea of instituting safety precautions before reopening.

There is a lot that is distorted with that thinking, which suggests that critics believe that there is a firm consensus on which safety measures are necessary and that all schools will or are implementing them.

Actually, there is a continued lack of governmental clarity over exactly what proper safety measures are necessary — and plenty of evidence that many school districts already open are not coming close to implementing some of the key measures. Researchers reporting on transmission in schools qualify their results by saying that safety measures matter, a point that sometimes gets left out of the reopening debate or gets added as an aside.

CDC offers road map for safely reopening schools

Encapsulating some of the pointed discussion was a conversation on Sunday between Jake Tapper, host of MSNBC’s “State of the Union” and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky. Tapper asked Walensky why more schools weren’t open when she and infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci and other experts have been saying for months that schools should open as long as there are certain safety measures in place.

“There are a lot of people out there watching who think, like, ‘I thought the science said we should open the schools as long as we are taking the safety steps,'" Tapper said. “We’re taking the safety steps, and we’re not opening the schools.” CONTINUE READING: The distorted debate about reopening schools - The Washington Post