Good News from Oakland! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Good News from Oakland! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Good News from Oakland!

Several years ago, the Walton Family Foundation and the Gates Foundation decided that it was not enough to open new charter schools. No, they had to devise mechanisms to make sure that school officials put charters on an equal footing with public schools and that the public didn’t care whether schools were run by their elected school board or a private board of directors.

The Gates Foundation created something called “the Gates Compact,” paying districts to treat public and charter schools the same.

The Waltons played a different angle. To advance their agenda of embedding charters and wiping out any differences between public schools and charter schools, they pushed for the adoption of a common enrollment form. The two sectors are intermingled, and neither students nor parents know which schools are public and which have private or corporate management.

In Oakland, where a slate of pro-public school parents won the last school board election, the board voted to eliminate the OneApp system.

Jane Nylund, a parent activist in Oakland, sent the CONTINUE READING: Good News from Oakland! | Diane Ravitch's blog

School assignment system set for major overhaul – The San Francisco Examiner

School assignment system set for major overhaul – The San Francisco Examiner

School assignment system set for major overhaul

SFUSD board weighing proposal that would limit choices, offer increased predictability

School board members on Tuesday will discuss a long-awaited proposal to overhaul the notoriously complicated student assignment system.

The San Francisco Unified School District has been working since 2018 to develop an alternative system that increases diversity in elementary schools while offering families predictability on which school they will attend within a reasonable distance from their homes.

The proposal set to be presented to the board Tuesday would end a decade-old lottery system that lets families choose from more than 100 schools across The City and instead limit their choices to eight to 10 sites.

Elementary school students would be assigned to sites within a certain zone, which have yet to be determined, which will provide access to language and special education programs.

Assignments would first prioritize students who have older siblings at the same school or live in federal public housing or historically underserved areas, or attended a pre-kindergarten program at the same school. The student’s attendance and test score areas, which are currently factored into the assignment process, would no longer be priority considerations.

“Ultimately we hope this policy will lead to integrated schools and classrooms, offer families of elementary school students greater predictability in where their CONTINUE READING: School assignment system set for major overhaul – The San Francisco Examiner

What we should be fighting for—Letter from a Lowell (and Mission) High School parent - SF PUBLIC SCHOOL MOM

What we should be fighting for—Letter from a Lowell (and Mission) High School parent - SF PUBLIC SCHOOL MOM

What we should be fighting for—Letter from a Lowell (and Mission) High School parent

As you may have heard, the SFUSD Board of Education is considering a change to Lowell’s regular enrollment policy due to COVID and a lack of grades and test scores. We are doing this with the understanding that it’s much easier for all concerned to allow students to apply using the regular enrollment process for one year rather than try to figure out an alternate method of conducting an already questionable enrollment system during a pandemic, staff is recommending this policy shift as a temporary solution which will allow students grace as we all navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and crisis distance learning.

I think my colleagues on the Board would likely agree, we would much rather focus our meeting time discussing reopening schools and improving distance learning, and supporting families during a pandemic. That said, it is enrollment season, so the issue must be addressed.

If you’ve been following me on FaceBook (or Twitter) you will note that most of my posts have not been focused on the actual enrollment policy. Rather, they’ve been focused on the tone of discussion and underlying assumptions around this topic. (I’ve reposted a call to action here.)

Recently, an SFUSD parent educator reached out to share some thoughts on the controversy. With his permission, I am sharing his thoughts below.

What we should be fighting for.

by Matt McDonnell, SFUSD parent and educator

“I have two children attending public high schools in San Francisco: one is at Mission (where I have been part of the faculty for over two decades), the other is at Lowell.

I have long found two things about Lowell to be problematic. The first is that admissions decisions are made in a way that consistently produces CONTINUE READING: What we should be fighting for—Letter from a Lowell (and Mission) High School parent - SF PUBLIC SCHOOL MOM

Where Have All the Children Gone? - LA Progressive

Where Have All the Children Gone? - LA Progressive

Where Have All the Children Gone?

COVID-era Kindergarten Enrollment Drop Raises Deep Concerns

Newly released figures from the Los Angeles Unified School District – one of the nation’s largest – show that roughly 6,000 fewer students registered for kindergarten this school year than in the previous year – a roughly 14% decrease from last year’s number of 42,912 children. 

At a recent public address, Superintendent Austin Beutner said the biggest declines came from the most impoverished neighborhoods, where economic hardship resulting from the pandemic is most acute.

“We suspect some of this is because families may lack the ability to provide full-time support at home for online learning, which is necessary for very young learners,” Beutner said. “This is yet another reminder that this crisis is having a disproportionate impact on low-income families.”

Formal education isn’t legally required for California children younger than age 6, but experts have long said that high-quality preschool and kindergarten programs can narrow racial and economic achievement gaps among students. That’s why this year’s kindergarten decline could roll back the academic progress of vulnerable students – low-income youth, English language learners, children in foster care or from communities ofc olor. 

Children who sit out kindergarten may not only suffer academically but also socially, entering first grade without basic skills. 

And as the spread of coronavirus leads to unprecedented job, housing and food insecurity, Beutner expects volatility in enrollment to continue for the foreseeable future.

“Since the crisis began, schools have had to balance three, sometimes–conflicting, priorities: the learning needs of students, the needs of working families and the health and safety of all in the school community,” he said during his Aug. 31 update to the LAUSD community.

Los Angeles Unified schools ended in-person instruction on March 13, but with COVID-19 cases dropping and CONTINUE READING: Where Have All the Children Gone? - LA Progressive