SI&A Cabinet Report :: Parent involvement may be key to raising student achievement

SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Parent involvement may be key to raising student achievement

(Md.) More and more, schools are turning to research-based programs to engage parents and guardians in the education of their children -- a strategy that evidence is showing may be a key impact upon a student's academic achievement.

by Carrie Marovich / 15h 

Housing costs affect children’s cognitive abilities

(Md.) According to new research from Johns Hopkins University, the percentage of income a family spends in housing costs affects their children’s reading and math ability.

by Alisha Kirby / 15h 

What Happens When Parents, Students and Teachers Take a Stand Together? | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign | Education Reform for Equity and Opportunity

What Happens When Parents, Students and Teachers Take a Stand Together? | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign | Education Reform for Equity and Opportunity:

What Happens When Parents, Students and Teachers Take a Stand Together?

Posted on: Tuesday June 24th, 2014

When it comes to creating real change in public schools, the answer isn't to impose top-down reforms. Instead, it comes down to the hard work of creating partnerships between teachers, parents, students and all the stakeholders in a community to ensure that every student has access to the resources they need to succeed. 

Over the past year, St. Paul, MN, has emerged as a leader in creating these types of partnerships, and a new report from the St. Paul Federation of Teachers (SPFT) details how teachers, parents and students banded together and used the union's contract negotiations to secure key resources and opportunities for all students. 

"Power of Community: Organizing for the Schools St. Paul Children Deserve" centers on the SPFT contract negotiations that culminated in February 2014. Ahead of the negotiations, the union spent months holding community meetings with parents and students to build a collaborative platform, "The Schools St. Paul's Children Deserve," which they took with them to the bargaining table. The platform calls for increased access for students to things like smaller class sizes, school nurses, couselors, pre-k and culturally relevant education.

With the community at their backs, the SPFT teachers also threatened to go on strike if the district refused to consider the platform's demands. The threat of a strike and the powerful labor-community coalition were enough to push the district into addressing the coalition's demands, and the resulting contract was a victory for teachers and their students. 

Whether St. Paul's strategy for labor-community organizing catches on in other cities remains to be seen, but the whole story is well worth reading, so check it out here! And read their platform, "The Schools St. Paul's Children Deserve," here.

School Funding Declines due to Tax Cutting, Austerity Budgeting, and Paring Down Title I and IDEA | janresseger

School Funding Declines due to Tax Cutting, Austerity Budgeting, and Paring Down Title I and IDEA | janresseger:

School Funding Declines due to Tax Cutting, Austerity Budgeting, and Paring Down Title I and IDEA

Posted on June 24, 2014 by janresseger

A new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) documents that 35 states continued to spend less in the 2013-2014 school year on their public education formulas than they did before the recession hit in 2008.  Alabama and Oklahoma have cut per-pupil school funding by over 20 percent since 2008.  In 14 states, per-student funding remains fully 10 percent below what those states were spending before the recession. Fifteen states are providing less funding per student than they did a year ago.  At the same time, according to the report, an additional 775,000 students are now enrolled in public schools compared to the 2007-2008 school year. (All CBPP statistics are adjusted for inflation.)

What do these numbers say about our society?  Do we believe it is our public responsibility to educate all children?  Are we committed to expanding opportunity for the children who have been left behind by racial segregation and economic inequality?  Is society’s commitment to educating our children diminishing?  Have we stopped believing in the public schools and hence stopped investing?  Have state elected officials come to accept widespread rhetoric about “failing” public schools, language generated by our national test-and-punish law, No Child Left Behind?  And if so, is disinvestment a smart response?  A moral response?  What do the budget priorities of legislatures across our 50 states say about our society?

Maybe we have come to accept the rhetoric of those who have signed the pledge distributed widely across state legislatures by Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform. Legislators who sign the pledge promise they will never vote to raise taxes. If states persist in reducing the funds available by cutting taxes, then school funding is likely to diminish over time.  The arithmetic is very simple.  Because public education for over 50 million children in the United States is such a large endeavor, and because 44 percent (according to CBPP’s recent report) of all education funding comes from state governments, public education remains the biggest budget line for most states.   CBPP reminds us: “States have avoided raising new revenues.  States have disproportionately relied on spending cuts to close the very large budget shortfalls they have faced over the last several years, rather than a more balanced mix of spending cuts and revenue increases  Between fiscal years 2008 and 2013, states closed 45 percent of their budget gaps through spending cuts, and only 16 percent of their budget gaps through taxes and fees….”

Here is how the tax cutting has played out in my state, Ohio. Columnist Thomas Suddes, writing for the Cleveland Plain Dealer on June 22, declared, “Republicans grabbed control of the state Senate 30 years ago this November by pledging to cut Ohio’s income tax.  They, and House Republicans, have vowed the same ever since.”  Suddes traces the history of tax cuts—the elimination of the tax on inventory and equipment that shifted the responsibility for School Funding Declines due to Tax Cutting, Austerity Budgeting, and Paring Down Title I and IDEA | janresseger:

Allowing the Market, Failing Kids | educarenow

Allowing the Market, Failing Kids | educarenow:

Allowing the Market, Failing Kids

Posted on June 24, 2014 | Leave a comment

The Detroit Free Press has come out with a scathing indictment of charter school operations in the state of Michigan.  The series reveals the greed and almost total lack of oversight that has allowed charters to churn over $1 billion in public money spent into private profit.  The series is well-done and a necessary must read. However, because this report accepts the basic assumptions that allow for privatization in the first place, it also dangerously obscures the pattern of elements that continues to decimate public education.

Education as an Economic Utility

The first assumption that the Free Press uncritically accepts as normative is the idea that the purpose of education is economic.  That is, education serves to allow for individuals to have access to our economic system.  That the purpose of education is to allow for students to make money in the future and drive our country’s economic engine.  In his introduction to the series, Free Press editor Stephen Henderson starts with the presumption that charter schools are in theory, as he puts it in the first two words of his article, a “Great idea.”  He references positively former Michigan Governor, and current President of TheBusiness Roundtable, John Engler’s push for charters in 1993- a push that was motivated by economic utility.  (And the Business Roundtable continues topromote the idea that we need a solid education system because, “America needs a world-class, skilled workforce to lead in global innovation, ensure future economic growth and drive…”) Henderson later writes that children’s future success, “… is largely determined by the quality of public education.”

The problem is that this frame of economic utility and the idea that “future success is largely determined by the quality of education” are what allow for the privatization of education in the first place.

Education is important.  Among other things, it’s important as a foundational Allowing the Market, Failing Kids | educarenow:

6-24-14 Curmudgucation

CURMUDGUCATION:

Quite Possibly the Stupidest Thing To Come Out of the US DOE

In announcing a new emphasis and "major shift," the US Department of Education will now demand that states show educational progress for students with disabilities.Arne Duncan announced that, shockingly, students with disabilities do poorly in school. They perform below level in both English and math. No, there aren't any qualifiers attached to that. Arne is bothered that students with v

100+ by Peter Greene / 2h 

GOP and Dems Once Again United by Disdain for Teachers

Well, we knew it was coming. We just didn't know it would be quite so bald-faced.As reported by Politico, the coming push to trash teacher job protections will bring together players from both the Obama and Bush administration.Campbell Bown, former journalist and current-- well, I hesitate to call her a teacher-hater, but it's hard to find any evidence to the contrary, will be launching a lawsuit

5 by Peter Greene / 1h hide  //  save

Arne Blows Some Smoke at the PTA

Monday the US DOE put up the full prepared text of Secretary Arne Duncan's speech to the National Convention of the PTA. As always, Duncan presents a compelling pastiche of baloney, things that aren't technically "true," and fine rhetoric that bears no relation to the actual behavior of the administration. Let me take you through the highlights. It won't be pretty, but it's useful to see

16 by Peter Greene / 2h 

6-23-14 Curmudgucation

CURMUDGUCATION: Behaving As Expected"You just didn't react the way you were supposed to."This is another thread that runs through support of the CCSS complex. There's nothing wrong with the policy or program; people just didn't react the way they were supposed to.For instance, Anne Hyslop over at Real Clear Education, called concern over test-and-punish a "state of mind, not state o

by mike simpson / 8h

6-24-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter:

This Week's Charter Corruption and Crime Log

Charter schools release teacher salaries, withhold admin payCharter school officials face federal bribery chargesMost Michigan charter companies don't follow financial disclosure lawHartford Charter School CEO Acknowledges Inaccurate Academic CredentialSE Idaho charter school could have charter revokedCharter schools under more scrutinyCriminal Convictions Of Charter Schools Group's CEO Raise Ques

by Jim Horn / 30min hide  //  save

Isolation and Restraint: Will MicrosoftNBC Televise School Lockup?

Great reporting by ProPublica and Alternet on the realities that are never presented by the corporate media:Public schoolchildren across the country were physically restrained or isolated in rooms they couldn’t leave at least 267,000 times in the 2011-2012 school year, despite a near-consensus that such practices are dangerous and have no therapeutic benefit. Many states have little regulation or

2 by Jim Horn / 1h 

NJ Legislature Waking Up to Damage of Common Core and High Stakes Testing

This didn't happen by osmosis. It happened because parents, teachers, administrators and citizens in New Jersey have been lobbying their local representatives to end the damage being done to their children by high stakes testing that is abusive and punitive for teachers, schools and communities.The people of New Jersey have had enough of Governor Christie and Common Core Standards tied to multiple

by freetoteach / 1h hide  //  save

Pence's Indiana Career Council: The Latest Power Grab?

by Doug MartinEarlier, I found the below message posted on facebook.  I haven't seen the original text this facebook post quotes from, since it costs money to subscribe to the Indiana Education Insight, but it would not surprise me if there's another attempt in the works to steal power from Glenda Ritz and taxpayers in Indiana.The Indiana Career Council mentioned below met on June 16th.  Pence is

50 by Doug Martin / 7h 

6-23-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter: Former Student Sees KIPP As "a cancer"This student graduated from KIPP in the early 2000s:KIPP at its core means well but it is a cancer, one that threatens children with Machiavellian methods and punishments that are unneccessary.by Jim Horn / 41min 6-22-14 Schools MatterSchools Matter: Learning About Liberty in a Charter Chain GangThis KIPP knock-off, Nashville Prep, ha

by mike simpson / 6h 

6-24-14 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District):

JUST IN: LAUSD school board passes $7.2B budget unanimously

The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education unanimously approved a $7.27 billion budget for the 2014-15 school year, ending a tumultuous year for the district and Superintendent John Deasy. The budget represents the first in seven years that does not include cuts from the previous year. It reflects a $332 million injection of statewide revenue over last year, as a result of the state’s new Local Co

2 3h 

JUST IN: Courtni Pugh, executive director of SEIU 99, steps down

Courtni Pugh, Executive Director of SEIU Local 99 The Executive Director of SEIU Local 99, LA Unified’s school workers union, announced today she is stepping down to take a job in Sacramento. Cournti Pugh, who’s been at the helm of the local union for four years, announced her plans today on SEIU’s website and Facebook page. Pugh said she is leaving “to immediately work to elect pro-worker legisl

by Vanessa Romo / 5min 

Calculus camp at LACES drawing in more LAUSD students

Robert Vriesman The popularity of calculus classes at the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (LACES) has skyrocketed, thanks in large part to a unique calculus camp that combines learning with outdoor fun and adventure. Every year, seniors and juniors at LACES, a high-performing school that serves grades 6-12 and has an API of 897, attend the camp, but this isn’t your typical camp. It’s a fou

3 by Yana Gracile / 2h 

LA Unified board nearing finish line on 2014-2015 budget

Superintendent John Deasy The long road toward finalizing LA Unified’s budget for the 2014-2015 school year ends later today (maybe) when the school board votes to approve Superintendent John Deasy‘s $7.2 billion spending plan. The new budget reflects not only added support from the state but also new guidelines for how to use the money, which is earmarked to assist students with the greatest need

3 3h 

LIVESTREAM coverage of today’s LAUSD School board meeting

The Curriculum Instruction and Assessment Committee of the LA Unified School board will meet today starting at 10 a.m., followed by a special board meeting at 4 p.m., where the board will adopt the District’s Final Budget and the Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP). For Curriculum and Assessment meeting agenda, click here, and materials, here. For Special Board Meeting agenda, click here, and

2 by Aaron Stella / 4h 

In LAUSD board race, McKenna extends his victory over Johnson

George McKenna George McKenna‘s victory in the June 3 school board race has grown bigger than the initial results showed. According to the latest update from the LA County clerk’s office, released yesterday, McKenna finished with 19,802 votes — 4,360 more than the unofficial results that were announced hours after the polls closed. The new totals gave him 44.6 percent of the vote, compared with th

4h hide  //  save

SEIU rolls out OASIS wellness program at 4 LAUSD schools

Via KPCC | By Annie Gilbertson The union representing Los Angeles school employees — cafeteria workers, custodians, teachers’ assistants and others — is launching a pilot program to help students at four schools get access to counseling and health care. They say their workers can help provide a missing link. “Optimizing Access to Services, Inspiring Success,” or OASIS, will train employees to coor

2 by Aaron Stella / 4h 

Morning Read: Toward what end is ‘parent trigger’ moving?

Parent-trigger efforts: At a crossroads? A standstill? A dead end? Parent-trigger campaigns have spurred changes at six schools in southern California, only one of which involved a full charter school conversion. Every successful parent union had the backing of the Los Angeles-based Parent Revolution, the nonprofit group formed to promote the law, teach parents how to organize into unions and fund

2 5h 

6-23-14 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District)

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District): LAUSD board may wait for new member before electing presidentIncumbent Board President Dr. Richard Vladovic In its final meeting of the 2013-14 fiscal year, the LA Unified school board may decide to break tradition by delaying the annual vote for board president. Normally, board members elect a new leader

by mike simpson / 5h 

NYC Educator: Oopzie! UFT and NYSUT Goof Again

NYC Educator: Oopzie! UFT and NYSUT Goof Again:

Oopzie! UFT and NYSUT Goof Again

Education/ legal expert Campbell Brown is at it again, and this week, rather than simply labeling teachers a bunch of shiftless perverts via stereotype, she's going after teacher tenure for all of us. She won't tell us where her money comes from, but I'm pretty sure it comes from our good pals in Reformyville.

Do you know where Reformyville is? It's the place where teachers can be judged by value-added via test scores. I watched up close and personal while former NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi was excoriated for his participation in the NY State evaluation law. This couldn't be tolerated. And thus Michael Mulgrew's UFT leadership told Unity's loyalty-oath-bound faithful to dump him, leaving him with a 34% vote deficit before he lifted a finger to protect his job.

And yet--pardon me if I'm not recalling correctly--Mulgrew himself was part of the team that negotiated this law. It was the bestest thing ever. Finally, he told us at the DA, we would have multiple measures. Before, principals could do whatever they liked. Now, everything was perfect. We could negotiate evaluation ourselves. Unless, of course, we couldn't, in which case totally objective John King could just do whatever he wished.

The point is, we played ball on evaluations. We played ball on mayoral control, not once, but twice, after we knew it was an unmitigated disaster. We sat on the sidelines while Bloomberg changed the law and bought himself a third term. We supported and helped enable Race to the Top. We supported Barack Obama, who promised he'd find comfortable shoes and stand with labor when we were under attack. We supported Common Core and Arne Duncan, the man who stood in front of God and everybody and stated that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to education in New Orleans, the man who ridiculed suburban mothers when their kids failed tests for which they were utterly unprepared. And we didn't say boo when Andrew Cuomo took mayoral control away from Bill de Blasio and passed it to Eva Moskowitz.

And here's what the UFT told us when they sold us the sellout 2005 contract, the one that created the wretched absent teacher reserve--they won't like us if we don't take it. The tabloids will attack us. What will they say? Actually, I saw the same questions asked as they sold theNYC Educator: Oopzie! UFT and NYSUT Goof Again: