Cheer Up Oakland SFUSD is Getting It's Very Own Broadie: Inglewood Superintendent Headed to SF Unified - Year 2017 (CA Dept of Education)

Inglewood Superintendent Headed to SF Unified - Year 2017 (CA Dept of Education):

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson Announces Inglewood Superintendent Will Become

San Francisco School Chief

SACRAMENTO – State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced today that Dr. Vincent Matthews, the State Administrator of the Inglewood Unified School District, is the finalist for Superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District.

Torlakson two years ago appointed Matthews to oversee the Inglewood School District, which went into State oversight because of budget problems.

“Dr. Matthews is an outstanding educator who has done a fantastic job of turning around the Inglewood Unified School District. He built great working relationships with teachers, staff, administrators, and the local community,” Torlakson said. “It’s a loss for Inglewood, but I know he will do the same great things for San Francisco. I wish him all the best.”

The State took control of the Inglewood district in 2012, when, at the district's request, Governor Brown approved legislation that provided up to $55 million in emergency loans to help the district meet its financial obligations.

The legislation also required the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to assume all the legal rights, duties, and powers of the governing board of the district and appoint a state trustee invested with the powers of an administrator. By law, the school district's elected governing board serves only in an advisory capacity until a number of conditions are met.

“I am extremely proud of the hard work of the Inglewood staff,” Matthews said. “I am also appreciative of the assistance given by Tom Torlakson and the entire California Department of Education (CDE) team. This was an extremely difficult decision, but I needed to take this opportunity to be closer to my family while returning to the district where I began both my student and teaching career.”

Inglewood has about 13,000 total students. San Francisco Unified has about 60,000 students.

Matthews is a 30-year education veteran and has held a range of roles including teacher, principal, and superintendent.

He is a San Francisco native who attended public schools there and earned his bachelor of arts degree, teaching credential, and doctorate in education from San Francisco State University. Matthews also served as a state-appointed superintendent for the Oakland Unified School District.

Matthews will meet with the San Francisco Board of Education on Friday, and the Board is scheduled to officially approve him as superintendent next week.

Torlakson will appoint an Acting Administrator for the Inglewood Unified School District while a search starts for a new superintendent.

# # # #

Tom Torlakson — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

Last Reviewed: Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Maintaining the Achievement Gap by Threatening Opt Out. | BustED Pencils

Maintaining the Achievement Gap by Threatening Opt Out. | BustED Pencils:

Maintaining the Achievement Gap by Threatening Opt Out

Let’s make this quick.  At this point it is no mystery that high stakes testing does nothing to reduce the achievement gap (30 + plus years of trying).  In fact, the reality is that the achievement gap is maintained by the constant insistence of using test based accountability.  Yes, accountability is responsible for maintaining the achievement gap.

It is also responsible for:

1. Perpetuating the false failing schools narrative.
2. Reducing the vibrancy of the curriculum.
3. Destroying recess and totally upending kindergarten.
4. Entrenching a system of continued profit and blame that denies children basic needs.
5. Ruining a wonderful profession and creating a mass exodus of our best teachers from classrooms.
6. Smashing the dreams of many students that once considered teaching as a future profession
7. and…………………..

Knowing this you would think that Opt Out would be the go to tactic for those concerned with the future of public schools.  Not so in Wisconsin!

In fact check out this email I received—with the recipient list suppressed—from the Maintaining the Achievement Gap by Threatening Opt Out. | BustED Pencils:

A Message for ALL Beginning Teachers – Cloaking Inequity

A Message for ALL Beginning Teachers – Cloaking Inequity:

A Message for ALL Beginning Teachers

Since you are a beginning teacher, I’d like to talk to you about classroom management and corporal punishment.

You know what they say! Spare the rod and spoil the child!

I’m only kidding.

I’d really like to talk to you about justice and the new technological canvas.

The world has sped up. It’s forever changed.

Most of us now live in a world of memes, 140 character tweets, almost instantaneous news alerts, Facebook status updates, snapchats and Instagram photos of your friends’ latest meal.

We are now living in a world of #FakeNews written by teenagers in Eastern Europe and distributed by bots design by foreign governments.

We live in a world of #AlternativeFacts and reality show styled public policy.

We must now sort through mounds of information and mis-information that arrives each day, each hour.

This speed and brazen falseness of some information in the public discourse has made you more important than ever before.

You are a teacher.

Not “Just a teacher” Please never introduce yourself as “Just a teacher.”

Because each day YOU lay the foundation of democracy.

You are entrusted with a very special responsibility.

You are an expertly trained educator.

An educator that will be respected by your community.

Deservedly respected by families.

Deservedly respected by policymakers (most of the time).

Deservedly respected by education stakeholders.

You have a very sacred responsibility to live up to these expectations.

You have a sacred responsibility to impart knowledge.

But I have to tell you, we must go further.

In the word of DJ Khaled, you’ve got the keys keys keys!

We must train our students to be warriors for democracy and critical thought.

We should encourage our students to not only use their new and social media for leisure, but also to further our democracy.

Encourage your students to:

• Investigate and engage in contemporary issues. A safe space to explore beyond preconceptions. Develop critical discourse based on A Message for ALL Beginning Teachers – Cloaking Inequity:

Choosing Democracy: Teaching the Legacy of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta

Choosing Democracy: Teaching the Legacy of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta:

Teaching the Legacy of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta

When we are really  honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us.  So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of people we are. ..I am convinced that the truest act of courage..is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice.

Cesar Chavez (1927-1993)

On March 31, 2017, Eleven states and numerous cities will hold holidays celebrating labor and Latino leader Cesar Chavez. 

Conferences, marches and celebrations will occur in numerous cities and particularly in rural areas of the nation. A recent film Cesar Chavez: An American Hero, starring Michael Peña as Cesar Chavez and Rosario Dawson as Dolores Huerta presents important parts of this union story.  With the work of the Chicano/Mexican American Digital History Project their story of union organizing will begin to be covered in all public school history texts in California this year, 

The current UFW leadership, as well as former UFW leaders and current DSA Honorary Chairs Eliseo Medina and Dolores Huerta are recognized leaders in the ongoing efforts to achieve comprehensive immigration reform in the nation.

UFW President Arturo Rodriquez says, “We urge Republicans to abandon their political games that hurt millions of hard-working, taxpaying immigrants and their families, and help us finish the job by passing legislation such as the comprehensive reform bill that was approved by the Senate on a bipartisan vote in June 2013,” Rodriguez said. “The UFW will not rest until the President's deferred relief is enacted and a permanent immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for all 11 million undocumented immigrants, is signed into law.” www.UFW.org

Let us be clear. Chavez was religious, but he was not a saint. Neither were the growers, their Teamster collaborators, nor corporate agribusiness saints. Celebrations should not be about hero worship or uncritical praise, nor should we ignore the present oppression of farm workers in the U.S.

What they did accomplish along with Philip Vera Cruz ,  Larry Itlong, Marshall Ganz, LeRoy Chatfield, Gil Padilla, Eliseo Medina and hundreds of others was to   organize in California the first successful farm worker union against overwhelming odds. 

Each of the prior attempts to organize a farm worker union had been destroyed by racism and corporate power. Chavez, Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and the others deliberately created a multiracial union; Mexican, Mexican American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW. This cross racial organizing was necessary in order to combat the prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial and language lines, as well as immigration status always left the corporations the winners.

The violent assaults on the farmworkers and UFW from 1960- 1980 along with the current reconquest of power in the fields by corporate agriculture are examples of strategic racism, that is a system of racial oppression created and enforced because it benefits the over class- in this case corporate agriculture and farm owners. Strategic racism as described by Ian Haney López in Dog Choosing Democracy: Teaching the Legacy of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta:

 

DeVos: Picking a school should be like choosing among Uber, Lyft or a taxi - The Washington Post

DeVos: Picking a school should be like choosing among Uber, Lyft or a taxi - The Washington Post:

DeVos: Picking a school should be like choosing among Uber, Lyft or a taxi

In 2012, former Florida governor Jeb Bush gave a speech in which he likened shopping for a school to selecting milk in a grocery store:

Everywhere in our lives, we get the chance to choose. Go down any supermarket aisle – you’ll find an incredible selection of milk. You can get whole milk, 2 percent milk, low-fat milk or skim milk. Organic milk and milk with extra Vitamin D. There’s flavored milk — chocolate, strawberry or vanilla — and it doesn’t even taste like milk. They even make milk for people who can’t drink milk. Shouldn’t parents have that kind of choice in schools?

On Wednesday, his ally, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, did something similar. DeVos, who like Bush is a fervent believer in school choice, compared selecting a school to choosing among ride-providing options. She made the comment as part of a speech she delivered at the nonprofit Brookings Institution, which unveiled its fifth annual Education Choice and Competition Index, its ranking of school choice in the nation’s 100 largest school districts.

School choice activists who have worked to inject business principles into the operation of public schools say that competition will force all schools to improve. There isn’t any serious evidence that this is true, but this is one tenet of some proponents.

Here is a transcript of her remarks, as prepared for delivery and provided by the U.S. Education Department:

Thank you, Russ, for that kind introduction, and thank you for your work to develop this important report. And thank you to all of you for taking the time to come here today.

This report focuses on something everyone here knows I’m passionate about: increasing education options for parents and students. It’s something I view as a fundamental right too long denied to too many kids. My views on this were shaped early on in my time as a mother.

…

This experience led me to the following conclusions:

First, parents know what is best for their kids. No parent should be denied the opportunity to send his or her son or daughter to a school with confidence that he or she can learn, grow and be safe.

Secondly, good teachers know what’s best for the students in their classrooms. Teachers deserve more respect than many give them, and more opportunities than the system affords them today.

And thirdly, state and local leaders are best equipped to address the unique DeVos: Picking a school should be like choosing among Uber, Lyft or a taxi - The Washington Post:

Camelot Education Under Siege - ProPublica

Camelot Under Siege - ProPublica:

Camelot Under Siege

Camelot Education, a for-profit manager of alternative schools, is facing challenges nationwide after our report on alleged physical abuse of students by staffers.

This story was co-published with Slate.

Officials in three cities are rethinking their relationship with for-profit Camelot Education, which runs alternative programs for more than 3,000 students with emotional, behavioral or academic difficulties.

In Philadelphia, a councilwoman is seeking more information about the city’s alternative schools, including their disciplinary practices, in the wake of a report on alleged physical abuse of students by Camelot staff members. Camelot has a contract with the Philadelphia school district for almost $10 million a year to run four schools. Alternative schools typically take in students who have left regular high schools after violating disciplinary codes or falling behind academically.

“There is almost zero public data about these schools,” Helen Gym, the councilwoman, said in a recent interview. “These are very vulnerable young people who end up in these programs where a lot of information about them drops off the books.”

In addition, Teach For America’s Philadelphia branch said it will no longer place teachers in Camelot schools. While the decision to end the partnership after this school year is not related to abuse allegations, “we take allegations of this kind very seriously,” the organization said. Tremaine Johnson, a former executive director of Teach For America in Philadelphia, expressed concern in an interview about what he called Camelot’s “incarceration type of environment.”

Camelot also suffered a setback in Houston, where it manages one school under an $8.6 million contract. On March 9, a day after ProPublica and Slate published the report on Camelot, the Houston school board voted unanimously to end the contract with the company and bring management of its alternative school operations in-house. It’s unclear if the decision was related to the article.

And in Columbus, Georgia, the school board Monday night delayed a vote on hiring Camelot to take over alternative education programs in Muscogee County School District. It decided to hold two public forums first so that residents can learn about and respond to the proposal.

After reading the report on Camelot, Muscogee board member Cathy Williams said in an interview, she wanted time to conduct her own research on the company. “Whenever you seek out private service providers for highly specialized services, track record matters a lot,” she said. The article “probably did provoke some qualifying questions from myself.”

More than a dozen Camelot students have alleged in interviews or documents that they were shoved, beaten, or thrown — assaults almost always referred to as “slamming” — by Camelot staff members, in separate incidents that span 10 years and three states. Two other students, and five Camelot staff members, said they had personally witnessed beatings or physical aggression by staff. The abuse allegedly occurred in Camelot programs in Philadelphia and two other Pennsylvania cities, Reading and Lancaster, as well as in Pensacola, Florida, and New Orleans, Louisiana. For the most part, staffers who allegedly assaulted students have faced no criminal charges or internal discipline; some have even been promoted.

In one case, a Pensacola family alleged a month ago that a Camelot staffer knocked a 13-year-old to the ground, causing a bloody abrasion near the student’s eye. Both Camelot Camelot Under Siege - ProPublica:

Conservatives to DeVos: Be careful what you wish for on school choice

Conservatives to DeVos: Be careful what you wish for on school choice:

Conservatives to DeVos: Be careful what you wish for on school choice

WASHINGTON — By her own admission, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos came here to push the USA’s public education system to support not just public schools, but also private and religious schools.

A leading proponent of private-school choice, the GOP mega-donor last January asked lawmakers during her Senate confirmation hearing, “Why, in 2017, are we still questioning parents’ ability to exercise educational choice for their children?”

GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill have already responded, floating several proposals to give families taxpayer-funded tuition and federal tax credits to help them send their kids to the school of their choice. On Wednesday, DeVos delivers the keynote at annual D.C. event that ranks the nation’s 100 largest school districts by how well they deliver on private-school options, among others.

But even with the legislative and executive branches controlled by Republicans, conservative policy wonks in DeVos’ own party are warning: When it comes to school choice, be careful what you wish for.

“I think that there are real reasons to be worried about how on earth this thing comes out right,” Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning D.C. education think tank, told USA TODAY.

While school choice advocates steadfastly support the federal government underwriting small private-school voucher efforts in places like Washington, D.C., and in Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, among others, even these folks caution that the Trump administration should think twice before expanding school choice nationwide. On the campaign trail, Trump proposed giving families $20 billion for school choice. In his 2018 budget, he proposed $1.4 billion in new spending on school choice.

“When I hear folks talking about getting Washington involved in tuition tax credits for scholarship-granting organizations, and I hear the proposals that are being broadly floated, it makes me extraordinarily nervous,” said the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess.

At a forum on the topic held last week at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Hess and others said that perhaps the biggest concern was what federal regulations and Conservatives to DeVos: Be careful what you wish for on school choice:

Video - DeVos: Outcomes at U.S. schools are so bad, they probably can’t get much worse - The Washington Post

DeVos: Outcomes at U.S. schools are so bad, they probably can’t get much worse - The Washington Post:

DeVos: Outcomes at U.S. schools are so bad, they probably can’t get much worse

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said on Wednesday that U.S. public schools nationwide are in such bad shape that she isn’t “sure how they could get a lot worse.” She cited what she called “stagnant at best” scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, though NAEP scores in math for low-performing students have gone up substantially in the past few decades.

DeVos said repeatedly at a Washington event at the nonprofit Brookings Institution that the federal government should have a largely advisory role in education policy and encourage states to experiment with choice to find what is best “for each individual student.” But when asked by Brookings senior fellow Russ Whitehurst whether the Education Department would reject state accountability plans it didn’t see as promoting choice, she said, “I don’t know. It’s too early to say that.” The plans are required to be submitted to the department by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, and officials can choose not to accept them.

[The convenient pattern of Education Secretary DeVos’s school visits]

Whitehurst pressed her, asking whether the department would turn down a state plan that proposes an accountability system seen as being “antithetical to serving parents’ interests.” She responded by saying, “I think there is certainly going to be a lot of discussion back and forth as we go through this process.”

DeVos is the most controversial education secretary in the department’s history. She was confirmed by the Senate only after Mike Pence became the first vice president ever to break a tie for a Cabinet nominee, and some of her visits to schools have been met with protests. Critics say she is focused on privatizing public education, while she and her supporters say she wants to provide parents choices.

DeVos gave keynote remarks at Brookings, where the think tank unveiled its fifth annualEducation Choice and Competition Index, its ranking of school choice in the nation’s 100 largest school districts. For the 2016 index, the district with the highest score was Denver, followed by the Recovery School District in New Orleans, New York City, Newark and Boston. D.C. Schools was ninth on the list, which isDeVos: Outcomes at U.S. schools are so bad, they probably can’t get much worse - The Washington Post:

Betsy DeVoucher Starts at 22.00

Brookings Sullies Its Reputation By Aligning with DeVos Agenda for Privatization | Diane Ravitch's blog

Brookings Sullies Its Reputation By Aligning with DeVos Agenda for Privatization | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Brookings Sullies Its Reputation By Aligning with DeVos Agenda for Privatization

The Brookings Institution used to be referred to as a liberal think tank. In reality, it was a nonpartisan think tank that hired former high-level officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations and produced valuable studies and reports. As I was ending my time in the first Bush administration in late 1992, the president of Brookings came to my office at the US Department of Education and invited me to accept the Brown Chair in Education Policy. Since I did not want to live permanently in DC, I declined his offer but agreed to be a Senior Fellow. I was in residence at Brookings until 1995, wrote a book on national standards, then returned to Brooklyn. I continued to be a Non-Resident Senior Fellow until 2012, when I was summarily fired from my unpaid position by Grover Whitehurst, who joined Brookings as chair of the Brown Policy program after serving as director of education research in the George W. Bush administration. Perhaps it was happenstance, but the email from Whitehurst came a few hours after the online release of my blistering critique of Mitt Romney, whom Whitehurst was advising. Whitehurst fired me because, he said, I was “inactive.”

Whitehurst served for a few years as head of the Brown Center but was quietly removed as the Chair. Now, he uses Brookings and its prestige to promote the Republican agenda of privatization.

Here is the latest, in which Whitehurst plugs charters because “We do not know how to create or sustain uniformly great neighborhood schools.” He should have added that “We also don’t know how to create or sustain uniformly great charter schools.” There is no existence proof, even though charters choose their students and exclude students with serious disabilities and ELLs and push out behavior problems. Residents of Clark County, Nevada, may be surprised to see that he raised their grade, since most charters in Nevada are failing schools, concentrated in Clark County, and the funding for the voucher program (which he hails) has been halted by state courts. Columbus, Ohio, got good marks even though the scandal-ridden charters in Ohio have become a bad joke.

To make sure that everyone noticed that Brookings was linking its reputation to the most controversial, least qualified member of the Trump cabinet, DeVos was invited to speak at the press conference on the only subject she knows: the glories of school choice.

The press release reads:

School Choice Increasing Nationally; Secretary DeVos to Speak at Release of Brookings’ Annual School Choice Rankings
Proportion of large school districts allowing choice has nearly doubled since 2000; Denver wins top spot for large districts for second year in a row

Rankings from Brookings’ 2016 Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI)—an annual ranking of school choice in the nation’s 100 largest school districts—will be unveiled today at a Brookings event featuring keynote remarks by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. You can watch a livestream of the Secretary’s remarks at 9:30 AM EDT.

In a summary of the results (PDF), ECCI’s author and Brookings Senior Fellow Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst highlights the growth of choice across the nation’s school districts according to trends tracked by ECCI, many of which can be observed since 2000. Whitehurst notes that the proportion of large school districts allowing choice has nearly doubled over the past 16 years. That coincides with other measures of the growth of school choice, including that the number of large districts for which charter school enrollment is at least 30 percent of total public enrollment has increased from one to ten.

Whitehurst writes: “There is no question empirically that opportunities for parents to choose among traditional public schools for their children, to Brookings Sullies Its Reputation By Aligning with DeVos Agenda for Privatization | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Magnolia Avenue parents, teachers protest sharing campus with charter school

Magnolia Avenue parents, teachers protest sharing campus with charter school:

Magnolia Avenue parents, teachers protest sharing campus with charter school

Student Yesenia Serrano, 9, is a fourth grader at the school. Parents and students from Magnolia Ave. Elementary in Westlake, Korea town area protested at the LAUSD headquarters on Tuesday, March 28, 2017. They don't want the co-location of a charter school in their school, saying it will cut resources and classrooms for kids already at the school. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG) 

About 50 parents, teachers and students from Magnolia Avenue Elementary School gathered Tuesday in downtown Los Angeles to protest the addition of a charter school on Magnolia’s campus.

“Our children will lose several programs,” said Guadalupe Garcia, a parent of two Magnolia Avenue Elementary students. “It’s unfair.”

Garcia said the school is located in a low income area and parents are concerned that the school’s resources will be stretched too thin if the charter move is approved. The school is located near the Pico-Union neighborhood, just south of MacArthur Park and covers pre-kindergarten to sixth grade.

On Feb. 1, the school district made a preliminary proposal of space - 11 classrooms and one administrative space - to Equitas Academy Charter School identifying Magnolia Avenue Elementary as a potential location, according to district spokeswoman Ellen T. Morgan. Letters about the proposal went out to parents and legal guardians.

On Tuesday, protesters gathered just outside the doors of the Los Angeles Unified School District building. Inside, the board was to hear about another proposal to move a charter to an existing school’s campus. This proposal would move Citizens of The World Charter School-Hollywood to the campus of Third Street Elementary in Hancock Park.

The Magnolia Avenue protesters carried signs with slogans including “Help us keep Magnolia’s Mariachi program” and “Save our computer labs. Change Prop 39!” in reference to a California law voters passed in 2000. Under Proposition 39, school districts must share public school properties fairly among all public school students, including those in charter schools.

David Hessell, one of the protesters and a Magnolia Avenue teacher for 20 years, said the issue is space.

“Our parents are really worried because under the law, under Proposition 39 ... the district counts as vacant space any room that doesn’t have a regular teacher and a classroom in it,” Hessell said. “So our Magnolia Avenue parents, teachers protest sharing campus with charter school:

 

Parents and students from Magnolia Avenue Elementary School protested at the LAUSD headquarters in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, Mar. 28, 2017. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG) 

Betsy DeVouchers' School Voucher Plan Hurts Poor Children. PERIOD. | YourTango

Betsy DeVos' School Voucher Plan Hurts Poor Children. PERIOD. | YourTango:

Betsy DeVos' School Voucher Plan Hurts Poor Kids. PERIOD.

Even though Besty DeVos's confirmation as Education Secretary benefits my Christian middle-class family, it hurts children in poverty who attend public school. And that deeply disturbs me.

My issue isn't directly against Betsy DeVos, specifically.

I just have a problem with anyone who holds the power and desire to defund public education by close to $9 billion from the Department of Education with a private or homeschool education agenda that benefits organizations outside the public ed domain with educational tax dollars.

Huffington Post reported that "the proposed budget adds money to school choice options, including $250 million for a 'new private school choice program.' This would likely be a voucher program ― providing public money for kids to attend private schools ― although the exact plan is still nebulous. The budget also adds $168 million for charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated."

With the school voucher debate going around where educational dollars 'follow the child,' any person can choose their educational program of choice. It doesn't matter if you are homeschooling, paying for private Christian education, or staying in public education.

I've already had an experience of how this could work.

The other day, I was driving my homeschooled children from sports camp and passed a school with a banner that said, "FREE PRIVATE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL."

But let's be real here, I thought. There is no such thing as free school for anyone, anywhere. That money is coming from somewhere, and from someone.

I decided to make a call and find out more.

The admissions person informed me that this was an entirely new school, but the qualifications for teachers were different. The school was not required to have certified teachers, but that the teachers had three years of education experience.

What's worse is that these schools will also be able to tap into public education dollars by providing on-campus virtual education, which is the same public school option offered to homeschooling families.

This again, removes funding from public education and puts it into for profit and non-profit organizations that does not benefit the poor children 

 

Is Turkish religious scholar Fethullah Gulen funding his movement abroad through U.S. charter schools? - CBS News

Is Turkish religious scholar Fethullah Gulen funding his movement abroad through U.S. charter schools? - CBS News:

Are some U.S. charter schools helping fund controversial Turkish cleric's movement?

As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson travels to Turkey on Thursday, he’ll want to talk about the fight against ISIS. But the Turks want to talk about a controversial Turkish religious scholar: Fethullah Gulen.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan accuses Gulen of being behind a bloody coup attempt in the country last July. Gulen, who lives in the United States, denies he was involved. Now the Turkish government is also lobbying the Trump administration to extradite Gulen back to Turkey.

Over the past two decades, Gulen’s Turkish followers have opened up taxpayer-funded charter schools in the U.S. Some parents have expressed concern about the connection to the Gulen movement, while others don’t seem to mind. But CBS News has learned the FBI is investigating whether Gulen’s followers have skimmed money from those schools in order to fund his movement in Turkey. A senior State Department official believes Gulen-linked charities and educational institutions in the U.S. look “a lot like the ways in which organized crime sets itself up... to hide money for money laundering.”

During the violent coup attempt that shook Turkey last July, hundreds were killed as rogue military tanks rolled into the streets of Istanbul. But Gulen, who the Turkish government blames for inciting it, has lived in a Pennsylvania compound for 16 years.

Gulen’s followers run publicly-funded science and math-focus charter schools in the United States. By our count, they’ve opened 136 charter schools in 28 states, operating on more than $2.1 billion taxpayer dollars since 2010.

But former teachers at those schools have told CBS News there is a scheme by Gulen’s followers in the U.S. to take advantage of the American charter school system and fund Gulen’s movement.

Ersin Konkur was once a follower of Gulen. He worked as a math teacher at schools founded by Gulen supporters in New York and Texas. But he said school officials made a special demand of the Turkish teachers who worked there: a kick-back from their taxpayer-funded salary.

“They’d force you to give some of that money back to them?” CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan asked.

“Yes,” Konkur responded.

“Were you writing checks?”

“They were asking cash. But in my last two years, I paid some of them in check,” Konkur said, adding that he’s paid “maybe a lot more than $20,000” in total to the Is Turkish religious scholar Fethullah Gulen funding his movement abroad through U.S. charter schools? - CBS News:

 

The Every Student Succeeds Act: A keynote address by Senator Lamar Alexander - AEI

The Every Student Succeeds Act: A keynote address by Senator Lamar Alexander - AEI

The Every Student Succeeds Act: A keynote address by Senator Lamar Alexander

Want to ask the second panel a question? Go to https://www.sli.do and enter code AEIEvent to submit a question for consideration by the moderator.

Heralded as a Christmas miracle, the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in December 2015 marked a turning point in federal education policy. The latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESSA replaced the much-maligned No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and returned significant control over education back to the states.

Join AEI as Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander, one of the law’s chief architects, discusses ESSA and American education. Following his remarks, an expert panel will deliberate on the new law and what it means for states, families, and students.

Join the conversation on social media with #AEIESSA.

If you are unable to attend, we welcome you to watch the event live on this page. Full video will be posted within 24 hours.

The Every Student Succeeds Act: A keynote address by Senator Lamar Alexander - AEI

Fewer districts than expected say they’re facing financial distress | EdSource

Fewer districts than expected say they’re facing financial distress | EdSource:

Fewer districts than expected say they're facing financial distress

Only 39 school districts have indicated they will have a hard time balancing their books within the next two years, according to the latest reports filed with their county offices of education.

That low number may mask the difficulties many districts will face amid flattening revenues, rising pension costs and, for many, declining enrollments. And some districts may be too optimistic about the extent to which Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget revision in May will solve their problems, said the head of the state agency in charge of keeping districts fiscally solvent.

“When given the choice, districts will generally choose the ‘rosy glow’ position regarding the state’s economy. Right now, there is a ton of mixed messaging out there about how revenues will look at the May Revision,” Joel Montero, CEO of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, wrote in an email.

Twice each year, following the passage of their budgets on July 1, the state’s 1,094 districts file updates, the first one in the fall and the second in March. The updates state whether they are on track to balance their budgets for the current year and the following two years. County offices of education must review and verify they are accurate.

Last Friday, the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team posted a graph showing that 38 districts had self-certified as “qualified,” meaning they foresee difficulty paying their bills in 2018-19. One, San Miguel Joint Union in San Luis Obispo County, self-certified as “negative,” meaning it is struggling to remain solvent this year or the upcoming year, and the rest signed off as “positive,” signifying they foresee no problem ending the third year with a required 3 percent budget reserve. The number of qualified reports may creep upward to around 45 districts after county offices have reviewed them, Montero said. They have until Fewer districts than expected say they’re facing financial distress | EdSource:

With A Brooklyn Accent: The Link Between Broken Windows Policing and Deportation:

With A Brooklyn Accent: The Link Between Broken Windows Policing and Deportation::

The Link Between Broken Windows Policing and Deportation:

Of all the new information presented during last nights forum on Defending Bronx Communities at Fordham University, what I found most disturbing was the revelation of how the DeBlasio Administration's imposition of "Broken Windows" policing- arrests for minor offenses such as jaywalking, drinking in public and jumping over turnstiles- has led to deportation of many undocumented immigrants.

Apparently, all arrests for misdemeanors are automatically recorded in all national law enforcement data bases including those of the FBI and Homeland Security and if the person arrested is undocumented, can trigger deportation proceedings

The head of the Sauti Yetu Center for African Women, Zeinab Eyega, gave a chilling example of how this could work. One of the families her organization worked with consisted of a woman from Chad and her teenage sons living in a shelter after they escaped a domestic violence situation. Although the shelter was in the Bronx, her two sons attended school in Queens One day, one of her sons lost his metro card and had no way to get home. So he decided to jump over the turnstile at the subway station nearest his school There he was arrested and taken to the local police station, where the mother was told she needed $150 dollars to get him released. The mother didn't have the money and the Sauti Yetu Center had to give it to her. But that wasn't the worst outcome. Six month later, Homeland Security began deportation With A Brooklyn Accent: The Link Between Broken Windows Policing and Deportation::

DeVos Last in Approval Rating Among a Selection of Trump Officials, Poll Says - Politics K-12 - Education Week

DeVos Last in Approval Rating Among a Selection of Trump Officials, Poll Says - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

DeVos Last in Approval Rating Among a Selection of Trump Officials, Poll Says

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos didn't enjoy the smoothest confirmation process, to put it mildly. How has that affected public perceptions of her? It doesn't seem to have helped.

At least that's the conclusion you could draw from a recent nationwide poll from Saint Leo University, in St. Leo, Florida.

Using an online survey, the university's Polling Institute asked 1,073 adults for their impressions of various high-profile members of Trump's administration. The response? More than half of those polled, or 52.3 percent, said they either somewhat or strongly disapproved of DeVos. Among those surveyed, 41 percent said they "strongly disapproved" of DeVos, while 11.3 percent said they "somewhat disapproved" of her. Her combined approval rating was 34.5 percent, also the lowest.

The second-most-unpopular top Trump official, among the six on the list, according to the poll, was Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president , whose combined disapproval rating was a shade under 50 percent. Secretary of Defense James Mattis enjoyed the lowest combined disapproval rating, clocking in at just under 30 percent. The survey also asked people about their general impressions of Trump's cabinet picks, and their combined approval rating was 40.5 percent, while their combined disapproval rating was 51.9 percent. Saint Leo also asked about Trump's handling of various topics, but did not ask about education specifically.

The Saint Leo University poll was conducted from March 3 to March 11, and had a margin of error of DeVos Last in Approval Rating Among a Selection of Trump Officials, Poll Says - Politics K-12 - Education Week: