Top 6 Administrative Failures of the Pandemic Classroom | gadflyonthewallblog

Top 6 Administrative Failures of the Pandemic Classroom | gadflyonthewallblog

Top 6 Administrative Failures of the Pandemic Classroom

This school year has been a failure in so many ways.

But don’t get me wrong.

I’m not going to sit here and point fingers.

The Covid-19 pandemic has tested the public school system like never before.

Teachers, administrators and school directors have been under tremendous pressure and I believe most really tried their best in good faith to make things work as well as possible.

But as the year comes to a blessed close, we need to examine some of the practices common at many of our schools during this disaster and honestly evaluate their success or failure.

Some things worked well. Many made the best of a bad situation. But even more were blatant failures.

We need to know which was which.

As a classroom teacher with 17 years experience who worked through these times, CONTINUE READING: Top 6 Administrative Failures of the Pandemic Classroom | gadflyonthewallblog

Moms Have Borne the Brunt of Pandemic Turmoil at Work and at Home – Mother Jones

Moms Have Borne the Brunt of Pandemic Turmoil at Work and at Home – Mother Jones

Moms Have Borne the Brunt of Pandemic Turmoil at Work and at Home

A Mother’s Day labor force check-in: It’s getting a bit better. It’s still bad.

Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter and get a recap of news that matters.

On this Mother’s Day, let’s remember the pandemic’s dire impact on American moms, who have shouldered the burden at work and at home.

In April 2020, the coronavirus’s impact on working mothers was disproportionately acute. In the United States, the number of mothers both working and living with school-aged children fell 22 percent from the previous April, a sharper decline than among fathers, the New York Times reported. The 10 million mothers not working meant that one third of moms with school-age children in the US were unemployed, a Census survey noted in March. Single mothers have been hit especially hard, with the sharpest decline in labor force participation and the slowest recovery.

The flip side of this decline is the disproportionate share of childcare at home mothers are handling themselves. And working moms are more likely than working dads to say they face challenges in the office due to balancing work and family responsibilities, according to the Pew Research Center. CONTINUE READING: Moms Have Borne the Brunt of Pandemic Turmoil at Work and at Home – Mother Jones

During Pandemic, More Parents Come To Appreciate Teachers and Understand Teaching | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

During Pandemic, More Parents Come To Appreciate Teachers and Understand Teaching | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

During Pandemic, More Parents Come To Appreciate Teachers and Understand Teaching

Teacher Appreciation Week begins May 3rd. With school closures over a year ago and the onslaught of remote instruction, many parents have come to appreciate not only what teachers do in classrooms (and now on screens) than ever before (see here) but also how complex the act of teaching is.

Celebrities sport T-shirts asking that teacher should have higher salaries. Actor Ron Farrell who has three children being home schooled was seen in his neighborhood picking up garbage.

Celebrity parents calling for higher salaries only mirrors now more than ever that Moms and Dads sitting in kitchens and bedrooms hovering over their children have a deeper understanding (and appreciation) about teaching being not only a complex activity but also a relationship built on trust and respect.

That appreciation and understanding were too often unconsidered by many CONTINUE READING: During Pandemic, More Parents Come To Appreciate Teachers and Understand Teaching | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teacher Tom: To Continue Becoming

Teacher Tom: To Continue Becoming

To Continue Becoming

A few days ago, a medical doctor was being interviewed on CNN about the psychological impact of the pandemic on children. She provided several caveats along the way, but her bottom line response was "I expect that kids will bounce back."

It's a hopeful answer and one that is, in some fashion, true. More to the point, however, it's what we all want to hear. Perhaps in some ways, we need to hear it because, I suppose, we too hope to "bounce back" from our negative experiences. But no matter how hard we hope, over a half million people in the US died and it's estimated that 40,000 children lost a parent to this plague. I'd very much like for us all to "bounce back," but it hardly seems an appropriate wish, especially for these poor children. A young child doesn't simply bounce back from a parent's death. Indeed, the concept of bouncing back seems far more appropriate to, say, dealing with the loss of a baseball game, than the cruel lessons of life itself.

The doctor, of course, wasn't talking about these children, nor is she talking about the children who suffered themselves, or those who have spent the pandemic trapped in a household CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: To Continue Becoming

Ken Futernick: Teacher Stories about Life Today | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ken Futernick: Teacher Stories about Life Today | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ken Futernick: Teacher Stories about Life Today

About a decade ago, when policy elites were bashing teachers on a regular basis, Ken Futernick was writing about the challenges that teachers face every day, including lack of support by administrators and poor working conditions. Recently, he has been creating podcasts in which teachers explain how they teach about important issues of the day, like teaching about racism and the Black Lives Matter movement, teaching during the pandemic, and teaching history in a way that is relevant to all students. He shared these three podcasts with me.

Brown University Psychology Professor Malik Boykin Teaches about Prejudice and Invites us to Dance for FreedomMalik Boykin (aka Malik Starx) is an accomplished musician and a professor of psychology at Brown University where he teaches a course on stigma and prejudice. Boykin shares two transformational teacher stories–the first from second grade when he was sent to the principal’s office for raising questions about Christopher Columbus. The second is about Dr. Jaia John, his social psychology professor at Howard University who carved out time at the start each class for students to share a poem, a personal story, or even a musical performance that had some relation to the course content. 

Inspired by Dr. John, Boykin became a social CONTINUE READING: Ken Futernick: Teacher Stories about Life Today | Diane Ravitch's blog

Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona Joins Roundtable Discussion with Students to Discuss Experiences During the Pandemic | U.S. Department of Education

Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona Joins Roundtable Discussion with Students to Discuss Experiences During the Pandemic | U.S. Department of Education

Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona Joins Roundtable Discussion with Students to Discuss Experiences During the Pandemic

Following the Department of Education's release of the COVID-19 Handbook, Volume 2: Roadmap to Reopening Safely and Meeting All Students' Needs, which includes research-based strategies to address the impact of the pandemic on students, educators, and staff, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona held a virtual roundtable with a diverse group of students and parents to discuss their educational and personal experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Secretary Cardona listened to students and parents and promised to take the information he learned and the stories he heard back to stakeholders and policymakers.

During the conversation, participants shared highlights and asked for improvements based on their experiences during the pandemic. Some of the students spoke about the importance of continuing to use prevention practices such as wearing masks consistently and correctly. The Secretary encouraged them to share that same information with their peers as a way to support everyone's safety and hasten a return to safe social events.

Other students shared that they miss social activities and interactions among their peers. A twelfth-grade student who joined the conversation said, "I would say in class we would have discussions, when we moved to virtual it is impossible to get the same type of engagement in class discussions. A lot of the communication between students and teachers broke down."

Secretary Cardona also asked each student about how they are dealing with their mental and emotional health. "Parents and teachers think that kids can handle all of the stress, but there are mental health issues that are being neglected. We haven't been able to see our friends and need more social interaction during school," said a seventh-grade student who participated in the conversation.

Secretary Cardona said, "Listening to all of you, I feel that there's a sense of urgency to get this right because our kids are waiting. Throughout this conversation, I took great notes. I'm gathering information so when I meet with the President, when I meet with policymakers and folks that are interested in education, we have your voice at the table."

Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona Joins Roundtable Discussion with Students to Discuss Experiences During the Pandemic | U.S. Department of Education

The “Learning Loss” Pandemic | The Merrow Report

The “Learning Loss” Pandemic | The Merrow Report

The “Learning Loss” Pandemic

“Learning Loss” has grown to pandemic proportions, devastating the lives of millions of young people, particularly here in the United States.  

Worse yet, “Learning Loss” is mutating, and today an astounding 16 different and uniquely challenging manifestations have been identified.  To save their students, our teachers will need to acquire a specific skill set that will enable them to identify, diagnose, and treat this dizzying array of “Learning Loss.”  

Not only are there 16 varieties; there are also degrees of “Learning Loss.”  Unfortunately, some so-called experts rate “Learning Loss” as First Degree, Second Degree, and Third Degree without specifying whether they are using the BURN scale or the MURDER scale. That’s confusing because, while a First Degree Burn is mild, First Degree Murder is the most extreme charge.  Similarly, a Third Degree Burn is life-threatening, while Third Degree Murder is the least serious murder charge (though the victim probably doesn’t care about the distinction).  

Amidst all this confusion, there is good news: Teachers can be trained to recognize and treat “Learning Loss.”  This must be our nation’s first priority in the battle CONTINUE READING: The “Learning Loss” Pandemic | The Merrow Report

My Pandemic Classroom | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

My Pandemic Classroom | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

My Pandemic Classroom

Due to the complications associated with living life during this pandemic, my blogging frequency has taken quite the plunge this past year. Our school district has been in session full time, in person, since September. Faculty reported to school late August. In order to adjust for a delayed school year, our district cut many of our holidays even as the school day itself became longer to keep students from congregating. Desk cleaning happens with each change of class, and conveniences such as wooden hall passes cannot be used, so that means writing a pass on paper every time a student needs the restroom. For quarantined students, there’s Google Meet happening simultaneously as class meets in person. More than once I have had my class at a standstill because a quarantined student needed extra assistance via the bumbling that can easily happen when people are trying to work out an issue without the simplicity of being together in the same physical space.

In short, I am tired. Long-term tired. However, I have also accomplished a major goal: To date, and by God’s grace, I have not missed a single day of school. My only premature exit was two hours early one Monday to bring my mother to the dentist. As of this writing, my seniors have only three weeks to go (which is both a relief and pressure to get our work done and graded).

In my classroom, I have masked; I have distanced; I have cleaned; I have made careful decisions with my personal time so that I minimized the likelihood of CONTINUE READING: My Pandemic Classroom | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

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

Photos on Schooling during the Pandemic | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Photos on Schooling during the Pandemic | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Photos on Schooling during the Pandemic

Meghan Gallagher at The 74 Million gathered photos that capture some of the effects of the pandemic year when schools were shuttered and then slowly reopened. I have selected a few of them for this post. All 52 can be seen here.

Children play in front of a school in Orlando, Florida on March 20, 2020 that was closed due to the coronavirus but will begin distance learning on March 30. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

A teacher from P.S. 124 in New York City conducts remote classes on her laptop from her roof. (Getty Images)

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – APRIL 1: High School language arts teacher Emily Olin held her three-year-old daughter Genevieve on her lap as she distance taught her classes from her home in Minneapolis, Minn., on Wednesday, April 1, 2020. Olin never imagined life like this “u2013 teaching her students virtually while tending to her own kids at the same time. There is joy, but also great anxiety in making sure everybody gets what they need daily. (Photo by Renee Jones Schneider/Star Tribune via Getty Images)

SEE MORE PHOTOS: Photos on Schooling during the Pandemic | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Code Acts in Education: Pandemic Privatization and Digitalization in Higher Education | National Education Policy Center

Code Acts in Education: Pandemic Privatization and Digitalization in Higher Education | National Education Policy Center

Code Acts in Education: Pandemic Privatization and Digitalization in Higher Education

The state of emergency in higher education systems around the world during the Covid-19 pandemic has opened up the sector to an expanding range of education technologies, commercial companies, and private sector ambitions. In our new report commissioned by Education International (the global federation of teacher unions), entitled ‘Pandemic Privatisation in Higher Education: Edtech and University Reform’, we examine various ways commercialization and privatization of higher education have been pursued and advanced through the promotion of edtech and ‘digital transformation’ agendas during campus closures and disruptions over the last year. Although we recognize that digital technologies and private or commercial organizations can bring many benefits to HE, they also raise significant challenges with long-term implications for HE staff, students and institutions. Many of these challenges are long-term political and economic matters as much as they are short-term practical matters of online teaching.

The report is detailed and long enough, but even since we finished it in late 2020, the developments we identified have accelerated and expanded. These include investors seeking to capitalize on new visions of teaching and learning, and multisector coalitions coming together to reimagine the future of HE through digital infrastructure and platform-based transformations — ultimately ‘re-infrastructuring’ and ‘platformizing’ universities to operate according to design principles imported by the digital tech industry. These are profoundly political issues about control, power, influence and governance in HE, mirrored by similar shifts of control to technology in the health sector.

Maybe most of the proposed changes associated with so-called digital transformation won’t work CONTINUE READING: Code Acts in Education: Pandemic Privatization and Digitalization in Higher Education | National Education Policy Center

Hope During a Pandemic is Both Hard and Inescapable | gadflyonthewallblog

Hope During a Pandemic is Both Hard and Inescapable | gadflyonthewallblog

Hope During a Pandemic is Both Hard and Inescapable

I cried when I got my second Covid-19 shot.

Not a lot.

Just a few drops.

But the flood of emotions I felt that accompanied that tiny pinch in my arm was totally unexpected.

It was like I gasped for breath and hadn’t realized until then that I was suffocating.

I looked up at the volunteer who had injected me to see if she’d noticed, but it’s hard to read someone’s expression under a mask.

So I found myself shrugging the feeling off, giving her a brisk “Thank you” and heading off to file my paperwork, get another stamp on my vaccination card and plopping in a chair for 15 minutes of observation before heading on my way.

As I sat there, I started to feel this growing sense of excitement in my chest.

Two weeks, I thought.

In two weeks I will be fully vaccinated.

Moderna is 94.1% effective at preventing infection. That means I should be able to return to school and teach my students in-person. Safely.

Some of them have been back in the classroom for weeks now, but I’ve had to stay CONTINUE READING: Hope During a Pandemic is Both Hard and Inescapable | gadflyonthewallblog

A Half-Dozen Things You (Could Have) Learned in School: Lessons from a Pandemic | Teacher in a strange land

A Half-Dozen Things You (Could Have) Learned in School: Lessons from a Pandemic | Teacher in a strange land

A Half-Dozen Things You (Could Have) Learned in School: Lessons from a Pandemic

If you’re old and loyal to NPR, like me, you may have listened to Whad’ya Know? on the radio, out running errands on Saturdays, a decade ago. A gently sardonic quiz show, hosted by Michael Feldman, my favorite category of question was Things You Should Have Learned in School (Had You Been Paying Attention).

I was always interested in what people think is, you know, core knowledge–stuff that everyone should have mastered, in the place where I worked for more than 30 years. Mostly, it was prosaic things—the isosceles triangle or the gerund—that you likely haven’t thought of in years.

It begs the question: What do we really want—or need– kids to learn in school? Besides basic literacy and numeracy, you’d think our next highest priorities would be good citizenship, and an appreciation for the benefits of modern science, helping us make progress on the issues that have plagued mankind for centuries. But—thinking about the Governor of Texas here—evidently not.

A year ago, as it was just beginning to dawn on us that this thing was coming our way, I wrote a ridiculously sunny blog about things we could learn from being in quarantine. Naïve things. A new appreciation for teachers was one of them, as well as an up close and personal understanding of both the uses and limitations of remote CONTINUE READING: A Half-Dozen Things You (Could Have) Learned in School: Lessons from a Pandemic | Teacher in a strange land

Give Thanks to Our Teachers for Braving the Pandemic! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Give Thanks to Our Teachers for Braving the Pandemic! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Give Thanks to Our Teachers for Braving the Pandemic!

I am breaking my recent promise not to post articles that were previously published, but this is one of those rare exceptions to the rule, because it would not get the national audience it deserves without reposting it here. This article by Sandra Vohs, president of the Fort Wayne Education Association, appeared originally in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, one of the few newspapers in Indiana and the nation that appreciates our public schools and their teachers.

Vohs writes:

These days, it’s impossible not to hear cries of “get kids back in school” and “we need to reopen schools.” These declarations certainly suggest that schools are closed.

In this era of alternative facts, there is some bizarre belief out there that, all over the nation, school leaders have decided just to skip this year, allowing teachers to take a long, paid vacation. Of course, that would mean students have a year of free time with no lessons to complete, no CONTINUE READING: Give Thanks to Our Teachers for Braving the Pandemic! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Prepare Now for Pandemic EBT 2.0 + Adult Ed Providers Receive National Recognition - Nutrition (CA Dept of Education)

Prepare Now for Pandemic EBT 2.0 - Nutrition (CA Dept of Education)

Prepare Now for Pandemic EBT 2.0

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Main Web Page

As previously shared, the federal Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) program was extended through the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2021 and Other Extensions Act. This law extends P-EBT benefits through September 2021.

To provide P-EBT benefits for School Year (SY) 2020–21, the California Department of Education (CDE) and Department of Social Services (CDSS) has submitted a P-EBT state plan for approval to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). As we await USDA approval, there are immediate action steps that we are asking local education agencies (LEA) to take now to prepare for P-EBT 2.0 issuances:

• Ensure student enrollment and eligibility information are up-to-date in California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS): In order to be eligible for P-EBT benefits, a student must be enrolled at a school participating in the National School Lunch or School Breakfast Program and be eligible during either SY 2019–20 or SY 2020–21 for free or reduced-price (F/RP) meals based on: (1) an approved F/RP meal application or Alternative Household Income Form, (2) participation in a benefits program (CalFresh, CalWORKs, Medi-Cal) as identified through direct certification, or (3) a status of homeless, migrant, or foster. It should also be noted that all students enrolled at schools operating school meals programs under a Community Eligibility Provision or Provision 2 or 3 are eligible for P-EBT regardless of whether they are individually F/RP meal eligible. Therefore, throughout the year, it is important that LEAs keep the following data up-to-date in CALPADS:
  
  
  • Student enrollments and exits, especially enrollments in provision schools
    
    
  • F/RP meal program records
    
    
  • Migrant, homeless, and foster records
    

In addition, the CDE will rely on the foster and direct certification data maintained in CALPADS to identify eligible students.

• Ensure student mailing addresses are up-to-date in CALPADS: In round one and the extension of P-EBT, all students (with the exception of students receiving benefits from CalFresh) were required to apply for the program. If the students were found eligible based on CALPADS data, they were mailed P-EBT benefit cards to the address provided on the application. This year no P-EBT application process is required, and eligible students will be mailed P-EBT benefit cards based on their address in CALPADS. Therefore, it is critical that student addresses in CALPADS are kept up-to-date throughout the year. The CDE is requesting that LEAs update student addresses for the first issuance of P-EBT benefits by March 12, 2021.

Thank you in advance for your efforts. The P-EBT program provides an important source of funding for California’s most vulnerable students. For more information about P-EBT, you can visit the CDSS P-EBT web page.

Questions:   Nutrition Services Division | 800-952-5609

Adult Ed Providers Receive National Recognition - Year 2021 (CA Dept of Education) - https://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr21/yr21rel13.asp