Oklahoma: A Sick Joke on the Public | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: A Sick Joke on the Public | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: A Sick Joke on the Public

You may recall that the Oklahoma State Board of Education recently voted 4-3 to allow charter schools to share in local tax revenues, over the opposition of State Commissioner Joy Hofmeister, who said that the decision might violate state law. You may also recall that the virtual charter school in Oklahoma called EPIC has been embroiled in scandal after scandal (just google “Oklahoma EPIC scandal” and you will get lots of references to allegations of theft, embezzlement, ghost students, etc.). For example, in fall 2020, the state auditor reported that EPIC owes the state $8.9 million for inaccurate reporting, improper transfer of funds, and a multitude of other egregious (you might say “epic”) calculations. That $8.9 million was the tip of a very large iceberg. The state auditor said that about 1 of every 4 dollars that the state paid to EPIC (a total of $458 million) was deposited as profit by the school’s owners. The story is breathtaking.

The Oklahoma Parent Legislative Action Committee (PLAC) posted this on its Facebook page:

Oklahoma PLAC  Facebook post:

TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY???  Where art thou?

We’re wondering why State Board of Education member Jennifer Monies did not recuse herself during last week’s vote to settle a lawsuit that directly benefited another entity of which she serves as board member. She is both plaintiff and defendant in this case yet she still cast a CONTINUE READING: Oklahoma: A Sick Joke on the Public | Diane Ravitch's blog

Kevin Welner: Parents Thrilled with Return of Testing! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Kevin Welner: Parents Thrilled with Return of Testing! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Kevin Welner: Parents Thrilled with Return of Testing!

Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center and professor of education at the University of Colorado in Boulder, writes here about the “testing pods” created by enthusiastic parents. Welner recently published a book of satirical essays called Potential Grizzlies.

Parents Rush to Form “Testing Pods”

Throughout the nation, anxious parents are worried that the pandemic will prevent their children from being sufficiently subjected this spring to the usual battery of state assessments. Some of these parents are taking the initiative and forming “testing pods” with neighbors and friends.

The pods typically include a testing proctor hired by the parents, who is tasked with ensuring that the students sit still, don’t interact with one another, and quietly focus on the days-long succession of test questions.

The nation’s children themselves have been fretfully yearning to experience testing again, after last spring’s cancellation of the incomparable CONTINUE READING: Kevin Welner: Parents Thrilled with Return of Testing! | Diane Ravitch's blog

There Can Be No Equity without Community and Empathy – radical eyes for equity

There Can Be No Equity without Community and Empathy – radical eyes for equity

There Can Be No Equity without Community and Empathy

[D]espite overwhelmingly good intentions, most of what passes for intercultural education practice, particularly in the US,
accentuates rather than undermines existing social and political hierarchies.

PAUL GORSKI, GOOD INTENTIONS ARE NOT ENOUGH: A DECOLONIZING INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION

A split second of awareness kept me from stepping into my apartment’s elevator, the floor covered in vomit, recently.

I thought about this moment yesterday while standing in that same elevator filled with an unpleasant smell as I also noticed a new orange-brown stain on the floor.

A week or so ago, I was unloading two bicycles from my car rack, going up and down the elevator and walking through the enclosed garage of the complex a couple of times. I encountered twice a women with her small dog on a lease, and in both cases, she paused while the dog urinated on a steel beam in the garage.

It isn’t uncommon to see dog dropping scattered down the hallway carpet in this complex either.

Having lived almost four decades in my own homes before becoming an CONTINUE READING: There Can Be No Equity without Community and Empathy – radical eyes for equity

LOLGOP: The entire GOP is fixated on kids’ genitalia | Eclectablog

The entire GOP is fixated on kids’ genitalia | Eclectablog

The entire GOP is fixated on kids’ genitalia

It’s not just Matt Gaetz

The GOP’s failure when it comes to Covid-19 — which is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, according to a Lancet commission— is even more unforgivable when you realize how effective and focused Republicans can be when it comes to something they care about, like stopping Black people from voting or bullying trans kids.

Arkansas has become the latest GOP-led state to frantically confront what the right sees as the most pressing problem in the midst of a pandemic that has killed almost 600,000 Americans and put almost 10 million out of work. That problem? Some trans kids possibly not feeling suicidal.

A bill signed into law on Tuesday by Governor Asa Hutchinson denies trans teens gender-affirming care and is the “the single most extreme anti-trans law to ever pass through a state legislature,” according to Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU.

This is the most extreme poke of the spear from the GOP’s war on trans kids, which is generally fixated on “preserving” girls’ and women’s sports and stomping out the fictional scourge of trans competitors showing up and dominating the landscape. This scourge is so immense and urgent that Republicans either can’t produce any significant examples of it occurring.

Why is America’s right so concerned about the “fairness” of sports they’d never watch?

Their foray into making bathrooms the wedge issue they could nail trans people to has generally failed, thanks to effective activism that engineered a backlash to these sick laws that exist simply as a way to humiliate people Republicans have decided to bully for fun and profit.

The game here is obvious. Pretending concern for kids, especially the poor, “helpless” young female athletes of America, reinforces the “strict father” worldview that the right is built upon. It CONTINUE READING: The entire GOP is fixated on kids’ genitalia | Eclectablog

School Violence In U.S. Thwarted When Others Speak Up: Report | Across America, US Patch

School Violence In U.S. Thwarted When Others Speak Up: Report | Across America, US Patch

School Violence In U.S. Thwarted When Others Speak Up: Report

Early intervention not only stopped dozens of school shootings. It also kept 100 kids from becoming killers.

Averting Targeted School Violence (pdf)

The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative: Implications for the Prevention of School Attacks in the United States (271K .pdf)

Threat Assessment in Schools: A Guide to Managing Threatening Situations and Creating Safe School Climates (185K .pdf)

Additional Materials
Making Schools Safer: Quick Reference Guide (404K .pdf)

Evaluating Risk for Targeted Violence in Schools (80K .pdf)

ACROSS AMERICA — Students and parents who saw something amiss about another student's behavior spoke up and likely saved lives. the U.S. Secret Service said in a new report on school violence released this week.

In its report titled "Averting Targeted School Violence," the Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center studied 67 thwarted school violence plots, as well as the motives and backgrounds of 100 students who intended to carry out the plots.

Seeing early warning signs of a student who might carry out a mass attack and getting that person help is critical to stopping school violence, the center found through its research.

Sixty-eight shootings have taken place in U.S. schools since the Columbine High School massacre in April 1999, according to the most recent data available through the K-12 School Shooting Database.

While school shootings are still rare compared to daily gun violence, data shows they are happening more often. In fact, from 2015 to 2018, the United States averaged one school shooting every 77 days, according to the database.

To create its report, the National Threat Assessment Center looked at cases at K-12 schools in 33 states between 2008-2017. A majority of the targeted schools (84 percent) were high schools and one-third were in suburban communities.

While the cases examined came from public records, the locations of the thwarted violence attempts were intentionally anonymized in the report, a Secret Service spokeswoman told Patch.

Students who plotted school violence attacks also shared similar history and behaviors as those who actually carried out attacks, such as a history of school discipline, contact with law enforcement, and drug and alcohol use, research found.

Many experienced bullying or had mental health issues like depression or suicidal thoughts. A majority also came from a home where parents CONTINUE READING: School Violence In U.S. Thwarted When Others Speak Up: Report | Across America, US Patch

Need some advice about a tattoo | Cloaking Inequity

Need some advice about a tattoo | Cloaking Inequity

NEED SOME ADVICE ABOUT A TATTOO

I need some advice today. I made a bad decision to get a tattoo when I lived in Houston back in 1999. How much would it cost to get my large @walmart tattoo removed?

Need some advice about a tattoo | Cloaking Inequity

Jeb Crow, pt. 5: Reformers, you long ago stopped being the good guys -- if you ever were. Will you join us now? - Public Enemy Number 1

Jeb Crow, pt. 5: Reformers, you long ago stopped being the good guys -- if you ever were. Will you join us now? - Public Enemy Number 1

Jeb Crow, pt. 5: Reformers, you long ago stopped being the good guys -- if you ever were. Will you join us now?

Help us end Big Test/Jeb Crow. We could create equity together by rebuilding the capacity you've helped bad people destroy. You may have to swallow some pride; but what's most important to you?

Part 1: Florida's voucher segregation factories imitate pre-Brown American education - only worse

Part 2: What "Jeb Crow" has wrought for FTC, McKay, and Gardiner kids -- and everybody else

Part 3: How to shop in a Jeb Crow voucher marketplace built to cheat and grift and harm your child

Part 4: The dark story of "Failure Factories" and "Schools without Rules" shows how power dominates education journalism, narrative, and humanity

Today is the final installment of this series, which evolved in its focus as I wrote it. And that has led me to change its name from “Segregation Factories” to “Jeb Crow.” That’s the title I want readers to take with them when they leave. I appreciate everyone who has read the first four pieces. I tend to ask a lot from readers in what I write because I respect readers very much; and I know it’s my job to make the complex and long fun to read. I hope I’ve done that here. And I hope this series serves as resource for a long time to come.

Adam Miller was the Florida Department of Education’s Office of Independent Education and Parental Choice for nearly six years until July 2019. That gave him official state government oversight of both voucher schools and charter schools.

I had two substantive conversations with Miller during my time as an elected Polk County School Board member. One was strained because I was asking about the CONTINUE READING: Jeb Crow, pt. 5: Reformers, you long ago stopped being the good guys -- if you ever were. Will you join us now? - Public Enemy Number 1

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

Teacher Tom: Paying It Forward

Teacher Tom: Paying It Forward

Paying It Forward

One five-year-old boy frequently brought a toy from home to school with him: a truck, an action figure, a play set of some sort. His father cautioned his son each morning while dropping him off, "It might get lost." "It might get broken." He would offer, "I can take it with me. I'll keep it in the car so you can have it as soon as school is over." But the boy resisted. He wanted the toy he had selected for that day with him at school.

The boy well knew that his father's warnings weren't empty: some of his toys had been broken already and a couple had even gone missing. For most kids this would have been a problem involving repair attempts, all-hands-on-deck searches, and tears, but this boy's typical response was a shrug. Even more interesting was that when the lost toys turned up again, be it days or weeks later, he would be delighted, remind everyone that the toy was his, then promptly lose track of it again.

The boy's father really didn't care about the toys one way or another either. They were mostly gifts, he told me, from his mother-in-law, who regularly cared for the boy during the week. The grandmother was a little more possessive about the toys, often asking the boy to help her find them when she was on point for the end-of-day pick up. Often he would refuse to help, leaving her to her own search, although CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Paying It Forward

Are Social Studies Teachers Politically Biased? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Are Social Studies Teachers Politically Biased? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Are Social Studies Teachers Politically Biased?

A journalist I have known for decades and have great respect for recently asked me a question that required me to think, click on a bunch of websites, and re-read the work of a popular historian who died in 2010.

The Washington Post‘s Jay Mathews has written about education for nearly a half-century.* He emailed me the following question:**

Hi Larry—I hope you are well. In any of your wonderful excursions into actual classrooms, have you ever tested the thesis that US history teaching has gotten kind of lefty in recent decades? I think it’s untrue but I have no data.—jay**

Here is my response to Mathews:

Hi Jay,
Hope you and your family are in good health.

When I got your query, Jay, I looked up the most obvious “lefty” influence insofar as textbooks and readings are concerned: Howard Zinn and his People’s History.

The Poynter Institute  did a piece on Zinn’s influence on teaching U.S. history in 2015 (see: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/apr/15/rick-santorum/book-howard-zinn-most- [politifact.com]  ). There is no data on how many teachers in U.S. public schools use the book, popular as it has been since CONTINUE READING: Are Social Studies Teachers Politically Biased? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

My series of videos about school math finally complete! | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

My series of videos about school math finally complete! | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

My series of videos about school math finally complete!

Though I am most likely known to those who read my blog as a miracle school debunker, a TFA watchdog, or a education research number cruncher, the thing that I do most with my time is do math, think about teaching math, and teach math.

Sometimes an ed reform twitter troll will accuse me of just being a nay sayer who has nothing positive to contribute to the discussion and I guess they sometimes have a point that I do spend a lot of time fighting against false claims made in The74 or Education Post or places like that. It is true that they have kept me quiet busy.

What you may not know about me is that I have made hundreds of hours of YouTube videos on my YouTube channel when I try to share what I know about math to whoever in the world wants to learn it from me. While my videos are not as popular as the stuff you see on Khan Academy, they do get some traffic and I’ve received a lot of very nice comments.

Most of my videos are geared at high school students and cover some really esoteric topics like math proofs from the History Of Math, which is a hobby of mine. But I had an ambitious idea over the summer: Create a series of videos where I start with kindergarten math and work my way up, sequentially, until I get to about eleventh grade. Though of CONTINUE READING: My series of videos about school math finally complete! | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Texas: Senate Education Committee Guts Local Control of Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Texas: Senate Education Committee Guts Local Control of Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Texas: Senate Education Committee Guts Local Control of Schools

The Texas Senate Education Committee bowed to the wishes of the powerful charter lobby and granted sole power to the State Commissioner (appointed by the Governor) to approve charter schools. His decisions can be vetoed only by a supermajority of the State Board of Education.

The State Commissioner of Education is Mike Morath. He is not an educator. He is a software executive who served on the Dallas school board and advocated for charter schools.

Local elected authorities—including mayors and school boards—are prohibited from blocking a charter school that wants to open in its jurisdiction. Charters can locate wherever they choose without regard to the views of local communities that want to protect their own public schools from rapacious charters.

Right now, Texas is being overrun by corporate charter chains aiming to grab market share. This bill will help them by canceling democracy and the will of the people.

This is the bill that passed the committee.

CSSB 28 (Bettencourt), as substituted, increases the CONTINUE READING: Texas: Senate Education Committee Guts Local Control of Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

NYC Public School Parents: Latest Talk out of School podcast with Jasmine Gripper of AQE and MS principal Michael Perlberg

NYC Public School Parents: Latest Talk out of School podcast with Jasmine Gripper of AQE and MS principal Michael Perlberg

Latest Talk out of School podcast with Jasmine Gripper of AQE and MS principal Michael Perlberg

Check out the latest #TalkoutofSchool with AQE's Jasmine Gripper on what state budget deal is looking like for NYC & MS principal Michael Perlberg on challenges faced by his school this year & what students should be offered next year to help them recover & reconnect. 

 Resources: 

• New Class Size Matters report on overspending on charter facilities and underspending on public school matching funds
• Daily News article; and WCBS TV segment on the lack of matching funds.
• AQE: Send a letter to Gov. Cuomo and state leaders on protecting students in the state budget by taxing the ultra-wealthy
• More on Outward Bound NYC public schools, including MS 839.
• Gothamist article on different proposals that have been made for the use of the federal funds, including reducing class size.

NYC Public School Parents: Latest Talk out of School podcast with Jasmine Gripper of AQE and MS principal Michael Perlberg

Alfie Kohn: Dewey, Piaget, and Frosted Mini Wheats | National Education Policy Center

Alfie Kohn: Dewey, Piaget, and Frosted Mini Wheats | National Education Policy Center

Alfie Kohn: Dewey, Piaget, and Frosted Mini Wheats

In case you are not familiar with the cereal called Shredded Wheat, it is basically hay. Many of us who are members of the species Homo sapiens, rather than, say, Equus ferus, do not find hay appetizing, even when it is pressed into small packets and sold in a brightly colored box. This may explain why, in 1969, Kellogg’s introduced a variant called Frosted Mini Wheats, which made the hay somewhat more palatable by coating it with 11 grams of sugar per serving. (For purposes of comparison, Shredded Wheat has -5 grams of sugar per serving. Attempting to chew it actually extracts sugar from your body.) More than 70 million boxes of Frosted Mini Wheats are sold every year.

I would argue, however, that the relevant contrast to Frosted Mini Wheats is not Shredded Wheat but Cheerios. I love Cheerios. For many years I have patiently endured teasing — from my children and, before them, a series of roommates — about my prodigious consumption of, enthusiasm for, and loyalty to Cheerios.¹ Cheerios are simple, nutritious, and extremely tasty without the need to add anything other than milk, and even that isn’t entirely necessary.

I mention all of this because it recently occurred to me that the adjective “sugarcoated” appears in not one but two important books about education. Moral Classrooms, Moral Children was written by Rheta DeVries (who studied with Jean Piaget and, along with Constance Kamii and Eleanor Duckworth, was one of the key thinkers who worked out the educational implications of his theories) and Betty Zan. The book draws from Piaget’s distinction between “autonomous” relationships between adults and children, which are defined by mutual respect and cooperation in order to promote children’s independent thinking and moral growth, on the one hand, and CONTINUE READING: Alfie Kohn: Dewey, Piaget, and Frosted Mini Wheats | National Education Policy Center

(PDF) In School for After School: The Relationship Between Extracurricular Participation and School Engagement | Karlyn Gorski - Academia edu

(PDF) In School for After School: The Relationship Between Extracurricular Participation and School Engagement | Karlyn Gorski - Academia.edu

In School for After School: The Relationship Between Extracurricular Participation and School Engagement

In School for After School: The Relationship Between Extracurricular Participation and School Engagement

Sociological Forum, 2021

Karlyn Gorski

This paper

A short summary of this paper

35 Full PDFs related to this paper

(PDF) In School for After School: The Relationship Between Extracurricular Participation and School Engagement | Karlyn Gorski - Academia.edu

ANDRE M. PERRY: Standardized tests aren’t the problem, it’s how we use them - Brookings

Standardized tests aren’t the problem, it’s how we use them

Standardized tests aren’t the problem, it’s how we use them

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona is refusing to back down on a federal requirement that states must administer standardized tests this year, although a letter to state leaders from the Department of Education last month said that states will have flexibility on how to apply results. States concerned about the safety of administering a test during a pandemic may implement shortened versions of assessments.

This relief from the hammer of accountability, if not from the tests themselves, has gotten a mixed reception from anti-testing advocates, school leaders, and teachers who are still trying to ready schools for face-to-face learning. They’re right: Greater accountability and standardized testing won’t give students the technology they need, give teachers the necessary PPE to stay safe, or give families the income to better house and feed themselves during the pandemic so that kids can focus on learning. And if there was ever a time to see how misguided our accountability systems are in relation to addressing root causes of achievement disparities, it’s now.

On its face, relieving students, teachers, and families from the grip of test-based accountability makes sense. We know student achievement, particularly in low-income schools and districts, will dip due to circumstances related to the pandemic and social distancing. We know the source of the decline.

And we currently use standardized tests well beyond what they were designed to do, which is to measure a few areas of academic achievement. Achievement tests were not designed for the purposes of promoting or grading students, evaluating teachers, or evaluating schools. In fact, connecting these social functions to achievement test data corrupts what the tests are measuring. In statistics, this is called Campbell’s Law. When a CONTINUE READING: Standardized tests aren’t the problem, it’s how we use them