Latest News and Comment from Education

Show All

Saturday, January 10, 2015

UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform - United Opt Out National serves as a focused point of unyielding resistance to corporate ed. reform. We demand an equitably funded, democratically based, anti-racist, desegregated public school system for all Americans

UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform - United Opt Out National serves as a focused point of unyielding resistance to corporate ed. reform. We demand an equitably funded, democratically based, anti-racist, desegregated public school system for all Americans that prepares students to exercise compassionate and critical decision making with civic virtue.:



UNITED OPT OUT: THE MOVEMENT TO END CORPORATE EDUCATION REFORM INFO [AT] UNITEDOPTOUT [DOT] COM

0
UNCATEGORIZED
17 DEC, 2014

Time to Disrupt the “Disrupters”!!!

Post by Ceresta Smith Disruption! Teachers and support staffs are not typically characterized as people that engage in disruption.  By nature we strive to keep our classrooms and our academic intuitions running smoothly, as...
madeloni0
UNCATEGORIZED
10 DEC, 2014

Stand Up for Action with Barbara Madeloni

  Barbara Madeloni says : “The accountability regime has done too much damage for too long. Under the pretense of reform and civil rights, corporatists have exploited our children, undermined public schools as sites...
Posted by at

Want your kids to opt out of standardized tests? The Constitution may be with you. - The Washington Post

Want your kids to opt out of standardized tests? The Constitution may be with you. - The Washington Post:



Want your kids to opt out of standardized tests? The Constitution may be with you.


Parents are finding constitutional arguments to support opting out of standardized tests, Anya Kamenetz writes, and in many cases they’re winning. (Michael Quirk/iStock)
By Anya Kamenetz January 9
Anya Kamenetz writes about education for NPR. This essay is adapted from her book“The Test: Why Our Schools Are Obsessed With Standardized Testing — but You Don’t Have to Be.”
When Jeanette Deutermann’s older son began third grade, he started crying and begging not to go to school. He developed stomachaches that a doctor said were stress-related. Deutermann, a stay-at-home mom in Nassau County, Long Island, was mystified. “In kindergarten, first, second grade, he wasn’t a kid who was like, ‘Please let me go to school,’ ” she recalled. “But he didn’t have issues.”
She eventually realized what was stressing him out: the advent in third grade of high-stakes standardized testing. On top of state-mandated annual exams, her school and district had imposed many more diagnostic, benchmark and practice tests. For Deutermann, the last straw came in February 2013, during her son’s fourth-grade year, when he brought home a notice that he’d been “selected” for something called “Sunrise Academy.” Based on their scores on the NWEA, a benchmark test, some fourth-graders — gifted as well as struggling kids — were asked to come in at 7:30 a.m. two mornings a week to prep for the state exam. “For me it was a total red flag,” Deutermann recalled. “I start asking: ‘What happens if he doesn’t do well? Will he be put on a lower track? What is the consequence?’ ” She was told the test would measure the school’s performance, not her son’s.
But Deutermann had had enough. So she founded a Facebook group, Long Island Opt-out Info, that February and started organizing other parents. The next spring, nearly 30,000 Long Island students skipped state-mandated tests — one of the biggest protests in what has become a national movement.
Parents and teachers across the country — determined to reclaim local control and opposed to market-based reforms, school closures and cutbacks — are losing their patience with standardized tests. Designed to assess students and hold teachers, schools, districts and states accountable for their performance, high-stakes exams have come to define education for many kids. The Council of Chief State School Officers has reported that, on average, students take 113 such tests between pre-kindergarten and 12th grade. Even President Obama has spoken in favor of cutting back.
The new national resistance holds that these exams do not provide useful or timely information; that they are unfair to minorities and otherdisadvantaged groups; and that tests and prep are crowding out arts, science, social studies and 21st-century skills. Officials are pushing back. Yet parents are finding constitutional arguments to support their approach, and in many cases they’re winning.
There are no hard numbers. But starting in 2013, changes to teacher evaluations related to Race to the Top, a federal incentive program, as well as the adoption of the Common Core standards, triggered a new wave of opt-out protests and boycotts led by parent groups and teachers unions. A reported 60,000 students opted out across New York state last year. Organizers in Denver and Chicago also recruited many defectors during the 2014 testing season, and protests made news in Kansas, Oklahoma, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. Bob Schaeffer of FairTest, an anti-testing group, calls the movement “unprecedented.”
This controversy goes back at least to the 19th century. In “Testing Wars in the Public Schools: A Forgotten History,” historian William J. Reese tells the story of what happened in 1845 in Boston, when reformers, led by the legendary Horace Mann, gave a very difficult surprise essay test to public Want your kids to opt out of standardized tests? The Constitution may be with you. - The Washington Post:

Posted by at

Chart of the Day: Vaccinate Your Kids! | Mother Jones

Chart of the Day: Vaccinate Your Kids! | Mother Jones:



Chart of the Day: Vaccinate Your Kids!

—By 
| Sat Jan. 10, 2015 2:02 PM EST
Via the LA Times from a few months ago, here's the rise in "personal belief" exemptions from state-mandated vaccinations among kindergartners in California:
And here's where it's happening:
In Los Angeles County, the rise in personal belief exemptions is most prominent in wealthy coastal and mountain communities, The Timesanalysis shows. The more than 150 schools with exemption rates of 8% or higher for at least one vaccine were located in census tracts where the incomes averaged $94,500 — nearly 60% higher than the county median.
....At Santa Cruz Montessori in the small coastal community of Aptos, about 7% of kindergartners in 2007 got belief exemptions. Last fall, that rate was 22.6%. Principal Kathy Rideout said the school has tried different approaches to encourage parents to immunize children. They asked a doctor to talk with fellow parents. They produced handouts emphasizing the importance of immunizations and asked parents seeking belief exemptions to get counseling from a healthcare practitioner. A state law that went into effect this year makes this a requirement. But none of it made much difference, Rideout said.
...."We have schools in California where the percent of children who exercise the personal belief exemption is well above 50%," said Dr. Gil Chavez, deputy director of the California Department of Public Health's Center 
Chart of the Day: Vaccinate Your Kids! | Mother Jones:
Posted by at

AFT’s Weingarten on Her Priorities for ESEA Reauthorization

AFT - American Federation of Teachers - A Union of Professionals:





AFT’s Weingarten on Her Priorities for ESEA Reauthorization





WASHINGTON— Statement from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten on her hopes for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. For an overview of the AFT’s policy priorities on the ESEA reauthorization, please click here.



"Fifty years ago, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson as part of the War on Poverty. It sought, as all federal policy regarding education should, to provide equal access to a high-quality education for all kids.



"Today, as Congress is gearing up to reauthorize ESEA, it is time to return to the law's moral and legal roots as a vehicle to ensure civil rights and equal opportunity for all children, particularly those most at risk. The factors that have undermined that goal—inequity, and the fixation on high-stakes tests that has eclipsed all other learning and accountability measures—must be fixed. To that end, we must expand the law with support for big ideas, such as community schools and wraparound services; project-based learning; service internships; and individual plans for over-age students, under-credited students and those who are not reading at grade level by third grade. These ideas will help address the fact that two-thirds of what affects student achievement occurs outside the classroom.



"Let's face it: Any law that doesn't address our biggest challenges—funding inequity, segregation, the effects of poverty—will fail to make the sweeping transformation our kids and our schools need. We're ready and willing to work with Congress; the White House; civil rights, education, business, community and civic organizations; parents; students; educators; and anyone else, to ensure that the reauthorization of ESEA moves us closer to the goal of reclaiming the promise of public education for each and every child."



AFT’s Weingarten on Her Priorities for ESEA Reauthorization
Posted by at

Friday, January 9, 2015

Dissent from Obama Plan to Make Community College Free | Diane Ravitch's blog

Dissent from Obama Plan to Make Community College Free | Diane Ravitch's blog:



Dissent from Obama Plan to Make Community College Free

By dianeravitch



Earlier today I posted approvingly about President Obama’s proposal to make two years of community college free for all who work for it, meaning, “Students must attend community college at least half-time, maintain a 2.5 GPA, and make steady progress toward completing their program.” In the announcement, the White House said that his proposal is similar to one enacted in Tennessee by Republican Governor Haslam.
Dissenting readers feared this plan would be a means of imposing NCLB, Race to the Top, and VAM on higher education.
Here is an email I received with other concerns from a professor of mathematics at the University of Memphis:
Dear Professor,
Perhaps you are aware that President Obama is visiting Knoxville, TN, today to talk about his free community college program
http://wate.com/2015/01/08/pres-obama-to-propose-free-community-college-program/. Please see the short video in the bottom of the even shorter announcement.
I think there are many people who (should) have a less than enthusiastic take on this proposal, since it is just a manifestation of the national movement to privatize public education.
In my opinion, the idea behind this free community college proposal is to weaken high quality education (public universities), and then easily implement privatization in the form of outsourcing university/college functions (teaching, research) to private companies. Part of this future will be the wide spread use low quality forms of education, such as online courses.
Concrete example for transferring funds from high quality education to lower quality
Here is a concrete example from my university, The University of Memphis (UofM), that should give a pause to the celebration of free higher education. Last year, shortly after the announcement of a $20 million cut to UofM’s budget, came the announcement of Tennessee Promise that offers free education to all TN residents at public community colleges. In my opinion, TN Promise is a perfect example for taking money away from high quality education (UofM, in this case), and use the extra funds to invest in low quality education (community colleges). Then this lower quality education is offered to the masses as a solution to their educational needs.
To make the high-to-low quality education transformation explicit, I remark that we at UofM are now pressured to start accepting lower level courses to our major requirements to “ease the transition of students from community colleges to our university”.
This transformation to low quality education is, of course, quite similar to what’s happening in K-12 education. In Tennessee, the Achievement School District takes over schools, fires the teachers, then the teachers get replaced by young underpaid, undertrained teachers. This scheme is presented as a solution to the educational needs of the poor.
In other words, both in higher and K-12 education, low quality alternatives are offered to the poor with obvious social (and often racial) implications.
Weaken the opposition: eliminate the tenure system
The first step in the privatization movement is the weakening of the opposition. Community colleges have a much greater number of adjunct faculty than 4 year colleges. Adjuncts are much easier to control than tenured faculty. This is one of the reasons Gates is supporting community colleges instead of 4 year colleges. It’s “educational” to listen to him as he answers a question about why he focuses his efforts to community colleges and especially why he prefers adjunct professors over tenured ones; just watch this for, say, 3 minutes




At UofM, the total salary increase of all employees between 2009-2014 was $10 million. Most of this increase went to increase administration and temporary faculty. The total salary of tenured faculty during these 5 years not only didn’t increase but got reduced.
So again, the strategy of the privatizers seems clear: strengthen Dissent from Obama Plan to Make Community College Free | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Posted by at

Thursday, January 8, 2015

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: PARENTS, YOU’RE VOLUNTEERED: Charter schools' volunteer demands may discourage needy students + smf’s 2¢

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: PARENTS, YOU’RE VOLUNTEERED: Charter schools' volunteer demands may discourage needy students + smf’s 2¢:



PARENTS, YOU’RE VOLUNTEERED: Charter schools' volunteer demands may discourage needy students + smf’s 2¢

BY THE L.A. TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD | HTTP://LAT.MS/14ZPOFP

January 8, 2015  ::  Charter schools must welcome all children, not just those whose parents can commit to volunteer hours

Charter schools in the Los Angeles area have enrolled their share of disadvantaged students, and for the most part those students have done well, graduating at a higher rate and with higher standardized test scores than children in traditional public schools. But not all the credit goes to the charter schools: Their students tend to have more involved parents. In many cases, the very act of enrolling in a charter school means that parents must be engaged enough to locate and compare charter campuses and sign up their children for the attendance lottery. Parent involvement is an important factor in how well students fare in school.

Charter schools

Many charter schools require parents to volunteer a certain number of hours each year, often working in classrooms or school offices or helping at campus events. (Los Angeles Times)
But many charter schools demand more than that, requiring parents to volunteer a certain number of hours each year, often working in classrooms or school offices or helping at campus events. The practice has been around for years, but only now is it being challenged. Public Advocates, a nonprofit organization that has promoted equal education for disadvantaged students, recently released a report showing that the practice is widespread.

The group found that about a third of the charter schools it surveyed in California required parents to commit to a set number of volunteer hours before admitting a child. Seventy-three of the schools are in Los Angeles County, including many of the well-known Green Dot, Alliance and KIPP schools. There were many more schools that firmly suggested volunteer time or called for keeping work logs and minimum hours, without stipulating that the work was mandated.

In many cases, charter schools may have only the best intentions in encouraging parents to be engaged. And the California Charter Schools Assn. says it doesn't know of any schools that excluded or expelled a student because of a parent's failure to work as a volunteer.

But that's not enough. The requirement itself, even if it isn't enforced, might discourage families from applying and should not be allowed. As charter schools frequently point out, they are public schools, funded with public dollars. That means they should be welcoming to all children. But not all children have parents who are able or willing to volunteer. Some have multiple jobs, child-care responsibilities and so forth. Others simply might not be interested in volunteering. Children in group foster homes have no one to volunteer on their behalf. Rules about volunteer work might leave out the children most in need, intentionally or not.

Once children are enrolled, it's fine for schools to encourage voluntarism as a way of engaging parents in their children's education. But setting discouraging rules should be prohibited. The state Board of Education should impose firm rules to stop schools from requiring unpaid parental labor; California students are guaranteed the right to a free and public education.



THE PUBLIC ADVOCATES REPORT

Forced Parent Work Policies

Issue: Education
Topic: Charter Schools
Case Date: January 14, 2014
Public Advocates researched 555 charter schools in California and found that almost one-third of them (30%) require parents to do work at the school for a set quota of hours. This practice is illegal under the California constitution and the Education Code. In our report, we expose the extent of the practice and explain why it is illegal. We have sent a demand letter to the California Department of Education and the State Board of Education urging them to take immediate steps to abolish the practice. Below, we provide a list of all the charter schools we found that have such a practice, with a link to their policy documents.
Charter Schools researched in  
  • Academia Moderna
  • Academy of Science
    and Engineering
  • Alain Leroy Locke
    College Prep Academy (Green Dot)
  • Alliance Cindy & Bill Simon
    Technology Academy High School
  • Alliance College Ready Alice M Baxter
  • Alliance College-Ready Academy
    High School #16
  • Alliance College-Ready Academy
    High School #5
  • Alliance Collins Family
    College-Ready High School
  • Alliance Dr. Olga
    Mohan High School
  • Alliance Gertz-Ressler
  • Alliance Health Services Academy
  • Alliance Judy Ivie Burton
    Technology High School
  • Alliance Marc & Eva Stern
    Math and Science School
  • Alliance Media Arts and
    Entertainment Design High School
  • Alliance Ouchi-O'Donovan
    6-12 Complex
  • Alliance Renee & Meyer
    Luskin College-Ready Academy
  • Alliance Susan and
    Eric Smidt Technology High School
  • Alliance Tennenbaum
    Family Technology High School
  • Animo Avalon Charter
    Middle (green dot)
  • Animo College Prep
    Academy (Green Dot)
  • Animo Ellen Ochoa Charter
    Middle School (Green Dot)
  • Animo Inglewood
    Charter High (Green Dot)
  • Animo Jackie Robinson
    Charter High (Green Dot)
  • Animo Jefferson
    Charter Middle (Green Dot)
  • Animo Leadership High
  • Animo Middle
    School #2 (Green Dot)
  • Animo Middle
    School #3 (Green Dot)
  • Animo Middle
    School #4 (Green Dot)
  • Animo Pat Brown
  • Animo Ralph Bunche
  • Animo South Los Angeles
  • Animo Venice Charter High
  • Animo Watts College
    Preparatory Academy
  • Animo Westside Charter
    Middle School
  • Aveson Global Leadership Academy
  • Aveson School of Leaders
  • ICEF Frederick Douglass Academy 
  • ICEF Frederick Douglass Charter Middle
  • ICEF Inglewood Charter
    Middle Academy
  • ICEF Lou Dantzler Preparatory
    Elementary School
  • ICEF Lou Dantzler Preparatory
    Middle School
  • ICEF View Park High
  • ICEF View Park Prep
    Accelerated Charter Middle 
  • ICEF Vista Elementary and
    Middle Charter Academy
  • Ivy Academia
  • Keck Early Learning Center
  • KIPP LA Prep
  • KIPP Philosophers Academy
  • KIPP Scholar Academy
  • Life Source Charter School
  • Los Angeles Big Picture High School
  • Los Angeles Leadership
    Academy (LALA)
  • Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts
  • Metro Charter SChool
  • Multicultural Learning Center
  • New Academy of Science and Art
  • New Heights Charter School
  • New West Charter
  • North Valley Military Academy
  • Oscar de la Hoya Animo
    Charter High (Green Dot)
  • Pacoima Charter School
  • Palisades Charter Elementary
  • Palisades Charter High School
  • Prepa Tec
  • Rise Kohyang Middle School
  • Rowland Heights Charter Academy
  • Santa Clarita Valley
    International (SCVI)
  • The Accelerated Charter
    Elementary School
  • The Accelerated School
  • Today's Fresh Start Charter
    School
  • Valley Charter Elementary School
  • Valley Charter Middle
  • Vista Charter Middle
  • Wallis Annenberg High School

Note: The policy statements listed here were available publicly as of Nov. 20, 2014, when this report was released. Some charter schools may have changed their policies since then and may no longer state that parent work hours are required. We plan to release an update to the report and to this web site in early 2015 to reflect those changes. 
2cents smallWelcome to this discussion, LA Times Editorial Board – this “recently released” report is one-week-shy of a year old!
The issue itself is complicated by the fact that charter schools by their very nature require additional parent involvement – parents elect to send their children to charters; they fill out an applications and go through an application process. Charters are schools of choice and conversely: Choice parents choose them.
Charter school parents have acquired the taste for the Kool Aid and have decided to wait for Superman!
The argument that charters don’t really enforce their requirement for voluntarism is bogus in the extreme. Of course they don’t – they know its illegal and absolutely 
4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: PARENTS, YOU’RE VOLUNTEERED: Charter schools' volunteer demands may discourage needy students + smf’s 2¢:
Posted by at

Teaching Children How to Think Instead of What to Think | The Mind Unleashed

Teaching Children How to Think Instead of What to Think | The Mind Unleashed:



Teaching Children How to Think Instead of What to Think

http://themindunleashed.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/teachinggg.gif
Right now our education system is doing more to indoctrinate our children than to educate them. In fact, that has been the case for quite some time. Our young minds are being told to accept authority as truth instead of truth as authority, and teachers talk at the students instead of with them.
Teachers have become repeaters of information. They are merely regurgitating everything they once learned from their own teachers, and perpetuating the recycling of information; information that has managed to evade scrutiny for generations. Children are no longer the masters of their own learning, and instead, their minds are being treated as storage containers.
childddd
The factory model of education, with its focus on academic and economic elitism, is churning out obedient workers for the system, encouraged to conform every step of the way. We are not being treated as organic, creative, investigative human beings, but instead as parts in the machine. The education system is filtering out the inquisitive nature of our being, with the ultimate goal being to prevent dissent against the system. The system doesn’t want thinkers. It doesn’t want people toquestion its methods. It wants a population that can be easily manipulated and controlled so as to relinquish all its power to the elite.
philosss
There are those who say that critical thinking skills cannot be taught in schools. Socrates would likely scoff at that notion, were he still alive today. It was Socrates who said, “I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think.” If we’re going to solve the problem of indoctrination in our school system, we have to learn to begin asking questions instead of giving answers. Real learning is achieved through the investigative process. Children have to be encouraged to search for the answers themselves. It is up to the teachers to provide the tools and resources necessary for the children to conduct these inquiries and make meaningful discoveries. One well-formed question will do more to inspire than any number of answers. In every facet of our educational pursuits, it becomes crucial to begin an open dialogue with our students, to encourage healthy debate and to have them form their own conclusions.
The importance of teaching philosophy in schools cannot be underestimated. In a world where most of humanity is running on the treadmill with the blinders on, it is paramount that we re-evaluate our own perspectives from time to time, and look at the big picture. What teaching philosophy does is it gets us thinking, it gets us questioning, and it gets us contemplating. Without these skills, humanity Teaching Children How to Think Instead of What to Think | The Mind Unleashed:
Posted by at

“Stupid, absurd, non-defensible”: New NEA president Lily Eskelsen García on the problem with Arne Duncan, standardized tests and the war on teachers - Salon.com

“Stupid, absurd, non-defensible”: New NEA president Lily Eskelsen García on the problem with Arne Duncan, standardized tests and the war on teachers - Salon.com:



“Stupid, absurd, non-defensible”: New NEA president Lily Eskelsen García on the problem with Arne Duncan, standardized tests and the war on teachers

Arne Duncan has met his worst nightmare -- an NEA president armed with facts and guts. She tells Salon what's next



"Stupid, absurd, non-defensible": New NEA president Lily Eskelsen García on the problem with Arne Duncan, standardized tests and the war on teachers




Lily Eskelsen García, Arne Duncan (Credit: NEA.org/AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
For years, politicians and policy leaders have been running the nation’s public education system basically by the seat of the pants, drafting and passing legislative doctrine that mostly ignores the input from classroom teachers, research experts and public school parents.
Just the latest example of this fly-by-night leadership came from Rand Paul, the senator from Kentucky and expected GOP presidential contender. According to the Politico newsletter, Paul is “planning a major push on education reform, including ‘education choice, school choice, vouchers, charter schools, you name it.”‘
Gotta love the “you name it” proposal, don’t you? So reassuring to parents. “Relax, we’re enrolling your kid in the ‘You Name It’ program this year. Everything will be fine.”
In an astonishing display of incoherence, he told the Politico reporter how much he, and his children, had benefited from traditional public schools – “I grew up and went to public schools. My kids have gone to public schools” – and then suggested we create something that looks nothing like them.
“Have one person in the country who is, like, the best at explaining calculus … teach every calculus class in the country,” he rambled, in belief, somehow, that having “2 million people in the classroom” would ensure more children “have a teacher that may be having a more hands-on approach.” Really?
Have education policies from the Democratic Party been any better?
Apparently, most teachers don’t think so. As Politico, again, reported, teachers are organizing at an unprecedented level. Through their unions, teachers have amassed “tens of millions in cash” and have acquired “new data mining tools that let them personalize pitches to voters,” in an effort to “run a huge get-out-the-vote effort.”
Education Week suggested that a “new era” in teacher organizing has begun, with “a remarkable policy convergence, portending what could indeed be a more unified response to national and state education issues.
“The convergence, observers say, is the product not only of the unions’ need to assume a defensive posture in the face of legislative and legal attacks, but also of the pressure brought by internal factions that have urged the unions to take a tougher stance against market-based education policies.”
What’s got teachers stirred up? How real and potent is this upsurge of their activism? Why should people who identify with progressive causes care? Salon recently posed those questions, and others, to Lily Eskelsen García, the new president-elect of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, at the recent Netroots Nation conference in Detroit.
First of all, congratulations on becoming the new NEA president.
Still president-elect. I take office Sept. 1. We have an incredible president, Dennis Van Roekel, who basically said a transition period should be a transition period, not go stand in the corner. So he gave me the president-elect title and told me I would take the press “Stupid, absurd, non-defensible”: New NEA president Lily Eskelsen García on the problem with Arne Duncan, standardized tests and the war on teachers - Salon.com:

Posted by at

NYC Public School Parents: Public Advocate and Class Size Matters legally challenge DOE on authority and transparency of School Leadership Teams

NYC Public School Parents: Public Advocate and Class Size Matters legally challenge DOE on authority and transparency of School Leadership Teams:



Public Advocate and Class Size Matters legally challenge DOE on authority and transparency of School Leadership Teams

Yesterday, Public Advocate Letitia James and Class Size Matters filed papers in court, requesting to intervene in a lawsuit in which the Department of Education is arguing that School Leadership Teams are not subject to Open Meetings Law because they have only advisory powers. 

In April of 2014, Michael P. Thomas, a retired teacher,  tried to attend a School Leadership Team at a middle school on Staten Island,  and was prevented from doing so.  In an earlier case, teacher Francesco Portelos, was also prevented from attending his school’s SLT meeting.  In that case, a Judge wrongly found on the side of the DOE that SLTs are not public bodies because they are only advisory.  

Yet the DOE's position is wrong for at least three reasons.  First of all, School Leadership Teams, made up of half parents and half school staff,  have more than advisory powers, and they make critical decisions for each school, as clearly delineated in Chancellor’s regulations and in New York State law. In 2008, when then-Chancellor Klein rewrote the regulation on SLTs and tried to strip them of their powers, Class Size Matters helped Marie Pollicino, then a member of the Community Education Council in District 26, file a complaint with the State Education Commissioner. (Here's a Daily News article and our blog about this complaint.) Marie's complaint was later joined by Mel Meer, an active Queens parent and Community Board member, and the UFT.

In his decision, Education Commissioner Mills ordered the Chancellor to rewrite the regulation, because it “strips the SLT of this basic, statutorily mandated authority” to develop the school’s Comprehensive Education Plan, which contains the fundamental goals of each school and the roadmap for achieving them.  Principals must align the school-based budget with the CEP, and if they do not, SLT members have the right to issue a formal complaint.  (Here's an article about this decision from our blog, and Chalkbeat, then called GothamSchools.) The SLT’s ultimate authority over the CEP was subsequently reinserted not only in Chancellor’s regulations but also in the 2010 state law pertaining to New York City school governance.

Secondly, the DOE errs in its definition of a “public body.” There are many public bodies that are subject to Open Meetings law, such as Community Boards, Commissions and other official bodies that may have only advisory powers but have a mandated role in governance.  Public bodies perform a governmental function for the state, an agency or department, must follow certain set procedures and require a quorum to operate.  This is also the case with SLTs, which according to state law, must meet monthly, have a quorum to make decisions, and  must “provide notice of monthly meetings that is consistent with the open meetings law.”   Even a DOE powerpoint during Walcott's chancellorship NYC Public School Parents: Public Advocate and Class Size Matters legally challenge DOE on authority and transparency of School Leadership Teams:
Posted by at

Proposed Teacher Prep Legislation Needs Changes! Badass Teachers Association:

Badass Teachers Association: Proposed Teacher Prep Legislation Needs Changes!:



Proposed Teacher Prep Legislation Needs Changes!









The Badass Teachers Association calls for changes to be made to the Department of Education’s recent legislative proposal to attach student test scores to the effectiveness of new teachers and their credentialing programs. This proposal, under the guise of providing access to more meaningful indicators of teacher preparation program performance, proposes to create a continuous feedback loop of communication between school districts and institutions of higher learning to facilitate program improvement and provide information that can be used by potential employers to guide their hiring decisions as well as prospective teachers to guide their application decisions.

We disagree with the premise that teacher preparation programs are not adequately preparing teachers. The trend of a higher attrition rate for new teachers has little to do with how well they are educationally prepared and armed with theoretical knowledge of classroom management and teaching skills. This is yet another false narrative created in an attempt to disguise the fact that the over-management of the classroom by people who have little educational background or training is one of the biggest causes of stress for any educator and therefore, one of the leading reasons teachers leave the classroom. This legislation fails to acknowledge the very people that it proposes to assist - new teachers and underserved student populations. This new proposed rule sets in motion the construction of yet another data analysis system that fails to address the real issues that are faced by the new teacher in socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.  

The Department of Education is seeking to define “high-quality teacher program” through statutory regulation in an attempt to provide limits and definitions for the purpose of establishing TEACH Grant eligibility. Authorized under title IV of the HEA, the TEACH Grant program provides aid to students and institutes of higher learning who are preparing to become teachers. In return, a student must teach in a low-income school and in a high-need field for four years. Effectively, the groundwork is being laid for a decimation of the TEACH grant program. If a teacher that is teaching in a low-income or high-need school, the fact that is still being ignored is that student educational achievement is directly related to a student’s socio-economic status. Research shows that student growth scores will not be measurably increased in these areas until the issues of poverty are dealt with; the perceived effectiveness of schools that educate teachers to teach in these urban and rural areas will not be rated highly and grant eligibility will likely be revoked. The DOE does not need to Badass Teachers Association: Proposed Teacher Prep Legislation Needs Changes!:

Posted by at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)