Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 5/25/15

SPECIAL NITE CAP 

CORPORATE ED REFORM

The Washington Teacher: Principal Bullying in DC Public Schools: Our Hidden Little Secret

The Washington Teacher: Principal Bullying in DC Public Schools: Our Hidden Little Secret:Principal Bullying in DC Public Schools: Our Hidden Little SecretPrincipal Bullying in DC Public SchoolsBy Candi Peterson, WTU General Vice PresidentA great deal of attention has been given to bullying in schools since the inception of Bullying Prevention month which was first initiated in 2006. According to

1 by mike simpson / 2h 

What learning cursive really taught me - Quartz

What learning cursive really taught me - Quartz: What learning cursive really taught meSince the US Department of Education dropped cursive writing from the standard national curricula in 2011, the debate on the value of learning penmanship has raged.Some argue that the skill is obsolete, akin to learning how to use an abacus in the age of supercomputers. “[The] time kids spend learning to write c

1 by mike simpson / 2h 

Privatized schools are a public problem - Silver Chips Online

Silver Chips Online : Privatized schools are a public problem: Privatized schools are a public problemThe school reform movement is moving the wrong wayI think we can all agree that, though it has its fair share of issues, we have been given an amply-resourced and more-than-adequate education in the Montgomery County Public Schools system. This is something that we sometimes take for granted; a pu

1 by mike simpson / 3h 

CURMUDGUCATION: The Testing Circus: Whose Fault Is It?

CURMUDGUCATION: The Testing Circus: Whose Fault Is It?: The Testing Circus: Whose Fault Is It?Andrew Rotherman of Bellwether Education Partners, a reformster-filled thinky tank, took to the pages of US News last week to address the Testing Circus and shift the blame for it explain its origins.The ridiculous pep rallies? The matching t-shirts? The general Test Prep Squeezing Out Actual Education? T

1 by mike simpson / 6h 

And the Research said: Executive function: More about $$$ than Brains? - Ideas - The Boston Globe

Executive function not a panacea for education ills - Ideas - The Boston Globe: Executive function not a panacea for education illsONE OF THE hottest topics across the American education system is a set of cognitive skills called executive function. Curriculums based around improving executive function have been deployed in some of the country’s top schools to make their top students even better.

1 by mike simpson / 7h 

A Plea to Ed Tech Entrepreneurs (Randy Weiner) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

A Plea to Ed Tech Entrepreneurs (Randy Weiner) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: A Plea to Ed Tech Entrepreneurs (Randy Weiner) Randy Weiner is a co-founder and CEO at BrainQuake, a co-founder at Urban Montessori Charter School in Oakland, CA and former Board Chair, a former teacher, father to two elementary school-aged daughters. In this post, he uses the phrase “we” to refer

1 by mike simpson / 9h 

CURMUDGUCATION: Bell Curve Beatdown

CURMUDGUCATION: Bell Curve Beatdown: Bell Curve BeatdownIf you are only going to read one blog post this month, it should be this post by Jersey Jazzman about standardized testing. Come for sentences like this one:This can't be stressed enough in the testing debates: we design tests not based on objective criteria, but on socially constructed frameworks that assume some of us are above average, so

1 by mike simpson / 9h 

Petition from Central High: State policies hurt disabled, violate the law, cause “chaos.” | Bob Braun's Ledger

Petition from Central High: State policies hurt disabled, violate the law, cause “chaos.” | Bob Braun's Ledger: Petition from Central High: State policies hurt disabled, violate the law, cause “chaos.”Newark’s Central High School: Facing chaos? Picture is from NPS websiteMoveOn.Org has posted a petition apparently written by a courageous Newark principal, backed by an equally brave staff,  that pr

1 by mike simpson / 10h 

Public-Sector Jobs Vanish, Hitting Blacks Hard - NYTimes.com

Public-Sector Jobs Vanish, Hitting Blacks Hard - NYTimes.com: Public-Sector Jobs Vanish, Hitting Blacks HardRichard Ingram Jr., with his son Richard, is a second-generation Miami-Dade County bus driver. Credit Angel Valentin for The New York TimesMIAMI — For the Ingram clan, working for the Miami-Dade County transit system has led to regular paychecks, a steady advance up the economic ladder and e

1 by mike simpson / 10h 

#BlackTeachersMatter. The suit against CPS and the larger national context. | Fred Klonsky

#BlackTeachersMatter. The suit against CPS and the larger national context. | Fred Klonsky: #BlackTeachersMatter. The suit against CPS and the larger national context.Yesterday I posted on U.S. Judge Milton Shadur’s ruling that African American teachers who were laid off by the Chicago Public School constituted a class.In other words, Shadur ruled that there was a basis for the claim that African

1 by mike simpson / 10h 

CPS forgot 22 schools in estimate for Aramark at a cost of $7 million | Chicago

CPS forgot 22 schools in estimate for Aramark at a cost of $7 million | Chicago: CPS forgot 22 schools in estimate for Aramark at a cost of $7 million Chicago Public Schools somehow forgot about 22 schools, including a selective enrollment high school, in its estimate to hire Aramark to manage school janitors.That mistake — in all, the district underestimated by nearly 3.2 million square feet the

1 by mike simpson / 10h 

Check it out: Bill Gates has a reading list for you this summer - Firstpost

Check it out: Bill Gates has a reading list for you this summer - Firstpost: Check it out: Bill Gates has a reading list for you this summerMicrosoft CEO Bill Gates needs no introduction. Apart from being a billionaire, he's also a philanthropist, investor, computer programmer, a role model for thousands and as it turns out-an avid book reader, as well.This summer however, Gates has a special set

1 by mike simpson / 11h 

Revere school board requests changes in Ohio laws on charter schools - Local - Ohio

Revere school board requests changes in Ohio laws on charter schools - Local - Ohio: Revere school board requests changes in Ohio laws on charter schoolsBATH TWP.: For the five members of the Revere Board of Education, enough is enough when it comes to charter school regulations in the state of Ohio.The board last week unanimously passed a resolution asking Gov. John Kasich and the Ohio General As

1 by mike simpson / 11h 

Everything You Didn't Know About Common Core - NBC News.com

Everything You Didn't Know About Common Core - NBC News.com: Everything You Didn't Know About Common CoreBY LEIGH ANN CALDWELLCommon Core has become a litmus test for Republicans in the presidential race. Republican presidential candidates have disavowed it, promised to repeal "every word" of it, and elevated it to the likes of Obamacare and the IRS. Only Jeb Bush has maintained his supp

1 by mike simpson / 11h 

Common Core Does Not Cure Student Mobility | gadflyonthewallblog

Common Core Does Not Cure Student Mobility | gadflyonthewallblog: Common Core Does Not Cure Student MobilityWe have real problems.We need real solutions.But we get deceptions instead. And if anyone tries to complain, they get blamed for trying to avoid solving the problem!Take Common Core.Badly designed, unproven, flying in the face of human psychology. It is all that and more.However, there’s a g

1 by mike simpson / 11h 

Memorial Day Tribute to Staff Sgt. Morgan Deshawn Kennon (1980-2003)

Memorial Day Tribute to Staff Sgt. Morgan Deshawn Kennon (1980-2003): Memorial Day Tribute to Staff Sgt. Morgan Deshawn Kennon (1980-2003)MAY 24, 2015 BY NANCY BAILEY LEAVE A COMMENTLike many, I hate war. I don’t understand why we haven’t evolved to a better civilization after all this time. As an educator, I am saddened especially by all the young lives that have been lost throughout the years.Wh

1 by mike simpson / 11h 

YESTERDAY

Who Does Gates Fund for “General Operating Support”? | deutsch29

Who Does Gates Fund for “General Operating Support”? | deutsch29: Who Does Gates Fund for “General Operating Support”?On its website, the Gates Foundation makes it clear that it often initiates contact with organizations to apply for specific grants and that it does not fund what it does not consider a Gates Foundation “priority.”The assertiveness of the Gates Foundation in funding its approved ve

2 by mike simpson / 21h 

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 5/24/15

SPECIAL NITE CAP CORPORATE ED REFORMSeattle Schools Community Forum: What Do You Think?Seattle Schools Community Forum: What Do You Think?: Seattle Schools Community Forum: What Do You Think? I saw this video from Creative Evolution; it's called The Truth About School (in a two-minute video).  I think that it is simplistic and probably less-than-accurate about all public education because I don't

2 by mike simpson / 23h 

FLIP THE 
LOUISIANA BOARD OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION 
( BESE)

Click Here to Follow Flip BESE on Facebook 

Big Education Ape: FLIP THE LOUISIANA BOARD OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ( BESE) http://bit.ly/1JKBCtL #flipbese 

The Washington Teacher: Principal Bullying in DC Public Schools: Our Hidden Little Secret

The Washington Teacher: Principal Bullying in DC Public Schools: Our Hidden Little Secret:

Principal Bullying in DC Public Schools: Our Hidden Little Secret

Principal Bullying in DC Public Schools

By Candi Peterson, WTU General Vice President

A great deal of attention has been given to bullying in schools since the inception of Bullying Prevention month which was first initiated in 2006. According to the American Psychological Association, "40% to 80% of school-age children experience bullying at some point during their school careers."

Many say that bullying in our schools has reached epidemic proportions, but what many don’t under- stand is that bullying is not limited to just students.

Just last year at Largo Public High School former employees filed legal action against Principal Angelique Simpson-Marcus stating that she routinely belittled, berated teachers and staff and made inappropriate comments about white teachers.

A former Largo High School English teacher, Jon Everhart won a discrimination case and was awarded $350,000 by a US District Court jury. Other teachers filed similar claims citing they were fired for supporting Mr. Everhart.

Despite this court victory, Principal Simpson-Marcus remained the administrator at Largo High School and the Board of Education continued to defend this principal as an effective leader. No surprise there.

A 2014 National Survey on workplace bullying defined bullying as repeated mistreatment; and abusive conduct that is: threatening, humiliating, or intimidating, work sabotage, or verbal abuse. This is consistent with the definition used in the Healthy Workplace Bill.

Even with this high threshold, workplace bullying remains an American epidemic. Bullied individuals pay dearly with the loss of their economic livelihood to stop it. In the absence of legal prohibitions against it, employers are failing to take responsibility for its prevention and correction.

As the Washington Teachers' Union (WTU)  General Vice President, I hear countless stories of DC Public Schools teachers being bullied by their own local school principals. Like spousal abuse, this is our dirty little secret.

The extent to which our teachers suffer at the hands of cruel administrators is a hidden fact of school life.  ATTES Connect, an education website based in the UK, reports that one out of three teachers says he or she has experienced bullying at work.

Some of the workplace bullying complaints that have been alleged right here on our doorsteps have occurred at Jefferson MS, Lafayette ES, Orr ES (2014), Truesdell EC, Watkins ES (2014), and West EC. Out of all of the complaints I have received on workplace bullying; only one teacher was willing to come forward. 

Not unlike the School Board in Prince George's County Public Schools, our central office district administratorsThe Washington Teacher: Principal Bullying in DC Public Schools: Our Hidden Little Secret: 

What learning cursive really taught me - Quartz

What learning cursive really taught me - Quartz:

What learning cursive really taught me

Since the US Department of Education dropped cursive writing from the standard national curricula in 2011, the debate on the value of learning penmanship has raged.

Some argue that the skill is obsolete, akin to learning how to use an abacus in the age of supercomputers. “[The] time kids spend learning to write curvy, connected words, is time kids could be spending learning the basics of programming and any number of other technology skills they’ll need in our increasingly connected world,” wrote blogger and podcast host Justin Pot in a spirited editorial rejecting the utility of such “anachronistic skill.”

But for me, holding a Bic ballpoint pen—that anachronistic tool—always takes me back to third grade penmanship class. Then, the cheap disposable pen was a trophy of achievement, and the day I upgraded from pencil to pen is as memorable as any graduation day.

I attended an all-girls private school in the Philippines run by Belgian missionary sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a school that was both ultra-traditional and very progressive, if not outright socialist. There were days when classes were cancelled so we could march on the streets in solidarity with disenfranchised farmers for agrarian reform. (I practiced lettering on political signs and could make a sturdy papier-mâché protest effigy at a young age.)

But there were also many days spent learning how to sew, touch-type, and yes, master the art of cursive writing—truly one of the greatest sources of angst for a third grader.

Our bible was the Peterson Directed Handwriting Manual. Peterson is a particular type of cursive style where the letter P had an antenna; the capital Q looked like a fancy number two; and the Z had a funny loop that dipped below the baseline. We started learning at the end of second grade, when we were all issued manuals to trace and practice on as homework during the summer break.

For what must have been hundreds and hundreds of hours, we toiled and persevered—training our young hands to commit those letterforms to muscle memory. Rhythm, form, slant, space. Rhythm, form, slant, space, I would sometimes silently chant to coax my wild clumsy hand. These were the things I obsessed with at 7 years old.

Perfect penmanship was expected in all our classes. Our notebooks were even collected at the end of every semester and graded based on fidelity to this style and the neatness of our note-taking. We had to do this in proper sitting posture too. It was about conformity, discipline and deportment. It was religion. It was penitence. It was torture.

We knew that we were doomed to writing with a pencil until we got it right and nobody wanted to languish in that graphite purgatory.

I was second in a class of 40 to graduate to a pen. I remember that it was our language teacher who announced it, somewhat out of the blue—interrupting class for an impromptu ceremony in my honor. She proclaimed, “Anne can now use the pen,” beaming while my classmates applauded. It was epic. This was the day. I felt different—instantly taller, smarter, perhaps.

I recall ceremoniously demoting my yellow #2 pencils to the second What learning cursive really taught me - Quartz:

Privatized schools are a public problem - Silver Chips Online

Silver Chips Online : Privatized schools are a public problem:

Privatized schools are a public problem

The school reform movement is moving the wrong way

I think we can all agree that, though it has its fair share of issues, we have been given an amply-resourced and more-than-adequate education in the Montgomery County Public Schools system. This is something that we sometimes take for granted; a public school education of this quality is not a given and is fairly rare in other cities around the country. That's not due to an abundant amount of bad teachers or a widespread lack of motivation in students, but rather to the tight testing requirements and scarce funding in many public schools. Many people have noticed that some public schools are struggling (though it is often implied that more are in straits than is really the case) and are taking action in an attempt to provide better alternative options for students. These options, which are called charter schools, are pushing the widespread movement for the privatization of education. But the effects are not better. In many cases, they're much, much worse.

 Charter schools were developed in the 1980s as innocent, well-intentioned projects by teachers who wanted to provide a more focused, alternative education opportunity to students whose needs weren't being met in traditional public school systems. This goal is undescriptive of what charter schools now look like: publically funded institutions led by private companies and investors. This means that the money provided by taxpayers on both state and local levels that is usually given to public schools is now also being given to schools that are held to vastly different standards and operated under a completely different system. They're not even required to adhere by the same transparency laws which public schools are, even though they're receiving most of their money from the same place (the rest of charter school funding comes from private investors and corporations). Since 2008, the number of charter schools has increased by fifty percent while 4,000 public schools have closed. Could this just be random chance? It seems not. In school districts across the country, particularly those in impoverished areas or those seeing a decrease in population, charter schools have beenflourishing, and the public schools have been losing money towards these alternative institutions and some are even being forced to shut down. In 2012, the Ohio Department of Education reported that $774 million was taken from public schools to fund charter schools in the state, resulting in public schools students receiving, on average, 6.5 percent less state aid than they needed. The public school system may need a boost in these areas, and charter schools sound like an appealing alternative. But they shouldn't be operating at the great expense of public schools that, if given more funding, can perform just as well, if not better. 

Many charter schools have been created to increase the achievement of students in the surrounding area which is a wholly admirable effort. However, it's been proven that most haven't been successful in doing that. According to a report published in the Washington Post, charter schools in Pennsylvania had, on average, lower scores than those of public schools. And while these scores in and of themselves are problematic—they're based largely off the standardized test results of students in the school, usually an inaccurate representation of the learning that's actually going inside the building—they still show that the original goal of charter schools is not being realized. 

There's one goal of charter schools that is being met: making rich people richer. Though they rely largely on public money, charter schools are operated by private investors and companies who also put their own money into them, and come out with more. "It's the most high in demand, it's the most recession-resistant. And a great opportunity set with 500 schools starting every year. It's a two and a half billion dollar opportunity set in rough measure annually," David Brian, president and CEO and of Entertainment Properties Trust, which owns movie theaters, recreational facitlities and charter schools said about the privatized education business in a video interview with CNBC. This just shows that there are people in charge of charter schools who don't think that they're great because they will give students a good education. They think that they're great because it's a good investment. If the country starts to look at schools in that way, we begin to lose sight of the very purpose of them. It's not to accumulate money, but rather to provide students with a good education. Charter schools are surely accomplishing the former, but have been shown to fall short with the latter. 

There are parts of the public education system in the United States which need to be reformed. But no students should have to undergo the reform movement of privatization that is now in place and growing at a steady pace. The focus of education has been taken off of students and placed on money and tests. If that's not a call for reform–true, effective reform that supports and strengthens public schools–then I don't know what is.Silver Chips Online : Privatized schools are a public problem:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Testing Circus: Whose Fault Is It?

CURMUDGUCATION: The Testing Circus: Whose Fault Is It?:

The Testing Circus: Whose Fault Is It?

Andrew Rotherman of Bellwether Education Partners, a reformster-filled thinky tank, took to the pages of US News last week to address the Testing Circus and shift the blame for it explain its origins.

The ridiculous pep rallies? The matching t-shirts? The general Test Prep Squeezing Out Actual Education? That's all the fault of the local districts. In fact, Rotherman notes, "a cynic might think it's a deliberate effort to sour parents on the tests." Yes, that's it-- the schools are just making all this up in an attempt to make the public think testing is stupid.

Reformsters have been doing this a lot-- trying to shift the blame for testing frenzy from the policy makers and the reformsters pushing testing policies onto the local teachers and districts. In a video that I cannot, for some reason, link, John White, education boss of Louisiana, argues that its local tests from teachers and school districts that are muddying the testing water, and so every single test deployed in a classroom ought to come under the control and direction of the state. Or we could go back to Arne Duncan et al suggesting that we need to trim back "unnecessary" tests, which turns out to mean tests developed on the local level.

It is hard to see this working. Can we really mollify Mrs. McGrumpymom by saying, "We know that your child really hated the PARCC and found the whole experience stressful and useless, so we're going to have her teacher stop giving those weekly spelling quizzes. All better, right?"

As with Arne Duncan, who continually seems just oh so mystified about how schools could possibly have gotten so worked up over testing, the reformster mystery here is this: do they really not understand what they've done, or do they understand and are just unleashing the lamest PR campaign ever?

Rotherman blames the Testing Circus on three factors.

First, he thinks it's a matter of capacity. But his explanation suggests that he simply doesn't understand the problem.

What elementary schools are asked to do is daunting though not unreasonable. Getting students to a specific degree of literacy and numeracy is challenging but it can be done. 

Bzzzzrtt!! Wrong. Elementary schools were not asked to get students to a specific degree of literacy and numeracy. They were commanded (do it, or else) to raise test scores, and that is what they have devoted themselves to. Achieving a specific degree of literacy and numeracy might help with that goal, but only if the test is a good and valid measure, and that topic is open to debate. On top of achieving the specific degree etc, students have to actually care about the test to the point that CURMUDGUCATION: The Testing Circus: Whose Fault Is It?: