Diane Ravitch to Lecture at Baylor Sept. 24

Baylor University || Media Communications || News:

Diane Ravitch to Lecture at Baylor Sept. 24

Diane Ravitch will speak at Baylor's Waco Hall on Thursday, Sept. 24 at 6 p.m.

WACO, Texas (Sept. 15, 2015) – Dr. Diane Ravitch, controversial former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, will speak at Baylor University on Thursday, Sept. 24, at 6 p.m. in Waco Hall. Her appearance is part of the Academy for Leader Development Lecture Series and the School of Education Distinguished Lecture Series. The lecture, titled “Leading for Equity in Education,” is free and open to the public, with no tickets or reservations required.

Ravitch is research professor of education at New York University and a historian of education. In her role at the Department of Education in the 1990s, Ravitch led federal efforts to promote standardized testing, teacher accountability and school choice. But in 2010, she abandoned those ideas and now decries the rampant testing culture and legislation including No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

“Dr. Ravitch’s complete turnaround on standardized testing issues is extraordinary,” said Dr. Doug Rogers, professor and associate dean in the Baylor School of Education. “Her point — and it’s a good one — is that the good that could be done through testing has been overshadowed by the excessiveness of standardized testing. Because of testing, we now know more than ever about what students need, but because of the timing and schedule, we no longer have classroom time to address what we know.”

Dr. Wesley Null, Baylor’s vice provost for undergraduate education and professor of education, will introduce Ravitch, whom he has known for many years. Null and Ravitch co-edited the book Forgotten Heroes of American Education: The Great Tradition of Teaching Teachers in 2006 and have collaborated on other projects.

“Diane Ravitch has been one of our nation’s leading educational historians and policy analysts for at least 30 years,” Null said. “We are very fortunate to have her visiting our campus.”

Null called Ravitch a “true fighter for classroom teachers and the teaching profession” and said she is “unafraid to argue for the kind of high-quality education that she expects for all young people.”

Dr. Michael McLendon, Dean of the Baylor School of Education, said, “Diane Ravitch is a vocal proponent for public education in this country at a time when our collective prosperity depends heavily on the conditions and quality of our educational system. She is very much at the center of the national conversation around accountability and testing, their purposes and their impacts.”

In 2014, Politico magazine named Ravitch among 50 people influencing policy in Washington. Politico said, “Ravitch today is a staunch defender of teachers and their right to organize against what she calls the ‘privatization’ of our school system by ‘people who make false promises,’ ‘drain students and funding away from public schools’ and ‘blame teachers for conditions beyond their control.’”

Ravitch’s lecture will include tips for concerned citizens about what they can do to improve public education locally, and she will take questions from the audience. Her books — including her latest, Reign of Error: the Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools — will be available for purchase. Ravitch blogs at dianeravitch.net, a site which has had nearly 8.3 million views in less than a year.

Additional sponsors for the lecture are the Baylor Division of Student Life, the University Lecture Committee and the Campus Diversity Committee.

Media recordings of Dr. Ravitch’s presentation will only be allowed during the first 10 minutes that she speaks.

ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked research institution, characterized as having “high research activity” by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The University provides a vibrant campus community for approximately 16,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 80 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions. Baylor sponsors 19 varsity athletic teams and is a founding member of the Big 12 Conference.

ABOUT BAYLOR SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

Founded in 1919, the Baylor School of Education is accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. The School prepares leaders beginning in undergraduate programs, continuing through master’s-level work and culminating in both Ed.D. and Ph.D. programs; impacts the world as students participate in faculty-guided fieldwork, service learning and community-focused research in local and global contexts; and shapes the future by mentoring the whole person, developing an understanding of theory and practice and encouraging responsiveness to one’s calling.Baylor University || Media Communications || News:

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 9/15/15 #FightForDyett

SPECIAL NITE CAP 

CORPORATE ED REFORM

Kristina Rizga's Mission High and the Twentieth-First Century Schools We Need | John Thompson - Linkis.com

Kristina Rizga's Mission High and the Twentieth-First Century Schools We Need | John Thompson - Linkis.com: Kristina Rizga's Mission High and the Twentieth-First Century Schools We NeedWant to feel 40 to 50 years younger? Then, read Mission High by Kristina Rizga.On virtually every page in Rizga's great book, I relived my idealism of the late 1960s. She tells the story of a school that embodies th

by mike simpson / 4h 

CURMUDGUCATION: Brookings and CCSS Conservative Roots

CURMUDGUCATION: Brookings and CCSS Conservative Roots: Brookings and CCSS Conservative RootsBrookings Institute can always be counted on to come up with some confused coverage of education matters. But this time they have given David Whitman a platform from which to combat the conservative anti-Common Core hordes. Whitman was a reporter for US News who spent five years as Arne Duncan's speechwrite

by mike simpson / 8h 

Guiding Principles on Teaching, Learning, and Reform | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Guiding Principles on Teaching, Learning, and Reform | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Guiding Principles on Teaching, Learning, and ReformFrom time to time readers will ask me what I believe should be done about teaching, learning, and school reform. They usually preface their request with words such as: “Hey, Larry, you have been a constant critic of existing reforms. You ha

by mike simpson / 8h 

School Closure: A Tragic Turnaround Strategy | janresseger

School Closure: A Tragic Turnaround Strategy | janresseger: School Closure: A Tragic Turnaround StrategyChicago’s Dyett High School, which had been phased out by the school district beginning in 2012, will be re-opened as an open-enrollment, arts-focused high school for 550 students.  The school was slated for closure following the graduation of 13 students last June at the end of the phase-out pr

by mike simpson / 8h 

Florida’s big charter school problem (which Jeb Bush manages not to talk about) - The Washington Post

Florida’s big charter school problem (which Jeb Bush manages not to talk about) - The Washington Post: Florida’s big charter school problem (which Jeb Bush manages not to talk about)In 2011, the Miami Herald ran a special report called “Cashing In On Kids — Florida’s Charter Schools: big money, little oversight” that reviewed the state’s 15-year charter expansion and found that after spending bill

by mike simpson / 9h 

Best Cities for Teachers

Best Cities for Teachers: Best Cities for Teachersby Andrew PentisAfter earning their graduate degrees, aspiring teachers head in all kinds of directions, depending on what, who and where they want to teach. Some seek the inner-city challenge, the suburban support or perhaps a school with a greater mission. For these professionals, unlike those in many other careers, the best city to be in a class

by mike simpson / 9h 

Children need teachers to teach them - not computers, says the OECD | ZDNet

Children need teachers to teach them - not computers, says the OECD | ZDNet: Children need teachers to teach them - not computers, says the OECDAn over-reliance on computers will damage a child's education, not improve it.OECD education director Andreas Schleicher says: "The socio-economic divide between students is not narrowed by technology." Image: OECDWalk into any school in term tim

by mike simpson / 9h 

Sacramento steps toward a better ethics policy | The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento steps toward a better ethics policy | The Sacramento Bee: Sacramento steps toward a better ethics policyThe Sacramento City Council will vote Tuesday night on a plan to direct its staff to create a detailed ethics package, a step that is worthy of encouragement and support.The goal would be for the components to come back to the council in three to six months for votes.Mayor Kevin Johns

by mike simpson / 9h 

Carl Cohn to oversee California’s school district spending

Carl Cohn to oversee California’s school district spending: Carl Cohn to oversee California’s school district spendingCLAREMONT >> Carl Cohn’s the man who’s going to give report cards to California’s public school districts and charter schools.In 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown announced a sweeping change to how California’s public K-12 schools are funded.The Local Control Funding Formula replaces the coun

by mike simpson / 10h 

YESTERDAY

The Elephant in the Classroom - Decoding Dyslexia Arizona

The Elephant in the Classroom - Decoding Dyslexia Arizona:The Elephant in the ClassroomResponding to the concerns of parents from across the United States that the word "dyslexia" is not being allowed into the IEP process, a coalition of disability groups recently sent a request to the U.S. Department of Education asking for guidance to be issued on the subject.  Several members of Congr

by mike simpson / 19h 

CURMUDGUCATION: Forgetting History

CURMUDGUCATION: Forgetting History: Forgetting HistorySo it's not 9/14, a date that carries no particular power. And after sitting in the cultural silence that follows any powerful observance, I'm reflecting again on 9/11.Friday was a day not much different from many others. The social studies teacher whose classroom shares a door with mine was playing a documentary stitched together from footage

by mike simpson / 22h hide  //  save

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 9/14/15 #FightForDyett

SPECIAL NITE CAP CORPORATE ED REFORMThe Education Reform Oligarchy & Their School Choice Conversation - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial VoiceThe Education Reform Oligarchy & Their School Choice Conversation - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial Voice: The Education Reform Oligarchy & Their School Choice ConversationThe education reform oligarchy of the 80’s had a school choice conversation —at l

by mike simpson / 1d 

Kristina Rizga's Mission High and the Twentieth-First Century Schools We Need | John Thompson - Linkis.com

Kristina Rizga's Mission High and the Twentieth-First Century Schools We Need | John Thompson - Linkis.com:

Kristina Rizga's Mission High and the Twentieth-First Century Schools We Need

Want to feel 40 to 50 years younger? Then, read Mission High by Kristina Rizga.

On virtually every page in Rizga's great book, I relived my idealism of the late 1960s. She tells the story of a school that embodies the ideals which schools should exemplify. Schools (and our society) were not as good when I was a student. But, we believed that the day would come when schools like San Francisco's Mission High would be the norm.

Rizga describes the dignity, the dynamism, and the wisdom of the diverse students at the high-challenge school. In doing so, she reminds us why integration works. Bring all types of students together with all type of adults, and awesome things happen.

Maria, whose auntie was murdered by the gang MS-13 in El Salvador, originally struggled to write two paragraphs. Maria's teachers recognized her as "an intellect battling to find its voice." They helped her to build on her tenacity, to write and rewrite research papers, and author sophisticated analyses such as her essay onMendez v. Westminster.

Darrell had a reading disability, and like many African American students, he did not see himself as a good test-taker. But challenging lessons, such as analyzing U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, taught him how to achieve "the highest high," a "sense of pride in his own thoughts and ideas ... [that] fed his resilience." Not surprisingly, lessons on the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 worked with students of all races just like it did for my kids in Oklahoma City.

Rizga recounts the backgrounds and the distributive leadership of Eric Guthertz, Mission High's principal (whose guidance is described here), of social studies teacher Robert Roth and language arts teacher Pirette McKamey. They treat each student as an individual. They build on students' strengths; they don't just remediate weaknesses.

These progressive educators teach a complete curriculum, not just bubbling in the Kristina Rizga's Mission High and the Twentieth-First Century Schools We Need | John Thompson - Linkis.com:

CURMUDGUCATION: Brookings and CCSS Conservative Roots

CURMUDGUCATION: Brookings and CCSS Conservative Roots:

Brookings and CCSS Conservative Roots

Brookings Institute can always be counted on to come up with some confused coverage of education matters. But this time they have given David Whitman a platform from which to combat the conservative anti-Common Core hordes. Whitman was a reporter for US News who spent five years as Arne Duncan's speechwriter before jumping on Peter Cunningham's $12 million Core-boosting PR website.

Whitman is here to try to address what has to be one of the Obama administration's great frustration-- here they are implementing a set of education policies that are an extension of conservative GOP policies from years before, and suddenly conservative Republicans are lambasting it. It's like Nixon going to China and being called a Commie sympathizer by people on the left.

"The Surprising Roots of the Common Core:How Conservatives Gave Rise to ‘Obamacore’" is a challenging read, containing a pretty thorough look at the conservative pedigree of the Core that is wrapped in lots of heavily balonified conclusions.

Intro

Everybody keeps saying that conservatives hate the Core, and Whitman has the media quotes to prove it. But that's just not fair. In fact, Whitman says with the kind of shameless straight face that will exemplify his work, that the Obama-Duncan Department of Education "has substantially shrunkthe federal role in advocating for anything resembling a model national curriculum, national standards, and national assessments." Which kind of ignores the whole "creating waivers that allow the Obama-Duncan department to effectively write law from the USED office" thing.

Whitman says that CCSS is out there still thriving in classrooms precisely because this administration didn't repeat the federal overreach mistakes of its predecessors, which is just... well, Not True CURMUDGUCATION: Brookings and CCSS Conservative Roots:

Mrs. Jobs Antes Up

Laurene Powell Jobs came out of the Wharton School of Business with an MBA and went to work for Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. She started a health food business and went to Stanford's business grad school. And then she married Steve Jobs.

She's no lightweight. She's spent time working in various philanthropic undertakings, includingCollege Track, a group that works to support "underserved" students in getting into, and through, college and they haven't done poorly. Her husband died after a long bout with pancreatic cancer at age 56, which is too young to die from such a crappy disease no matter how much money you do or don't have.

Jobs is now responsible for a huge pile of money, mostly as part of a trust that owns, in addition to a giant chunk of Apple, 7.3% of the Walt Disney Corporation.

Mrs. Jobs is rich, and powerful, and she would now like to fix schools.

The Good News

Jobs has said, “We want to make high schools back into the great equalizers they were meant to be."

Her new initiative is a huge grant competition called XQ: The Super School Project. 


The Super School Project is an open call to reimagine and design the next American high school. In 

Mrs. Jobs Antes Up

Guiding Principles on Teaching, Learning, and Reform | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Guiding Principles on Teaching, Learning, and Reform | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Guiding Principles on Teaching, Learning, and Reform

From time to time readers will ask me what I believe should be done about teaching, learning, and school reform. They usually preface their request with words such as: “Hey, Larry, you have been a constant critic of existing reforms. You have written about schools not being businesses and have pointed out the flaws in policymaker assumptions and thinking about reform. And you have been skeptical about the worth of new computer devices, software, and online instruction in promoting better teaching and faster learning. So instead of always being a critic just tell us what you think ought to be done.”

Trained as a historian of education and knowledgeable about each surge of school reform to improve teaching and learning over the past century, I cannot offer specific programs for school boards, superintendents, principals, teachers, parents, and voters to consider. Why? Because context is all-important. I know of no reform, no program, no technology that is context-free. The setting matters. So suggesting this program or that reform for all math classes or urban districts or elementary schools is impossible. But there are principles I embrace that guide my thinking about teaching, learning, and reform. These principles set the direction yet need to be adapted to different settings. These principles come out of my five decades of being a teacher, administrator, and scholar. These principles come out of my school experiences and as a site-based researcher. Most readers will be familiar with what I say. No surprises here. But these principles do steer my thinking about teaching, learning, and reform.

1. No single way of teaching works best with all students. Because students differ in motivation, interests, and abilities, using a wide repertoire of approaches in lessons and units is essential. Direct instruction, small groups, whole-group guided discussions, student choice, worksheets, research papers, project-based instruction, online software, etc., etc., etc. need to be in the tool kit of every teacher. There are, of course, reformers and reform-minded researchers who try to alter how teachers teach and the content of their instruction from afar such as Common Core State Standards, the newest version of New Math, New Science, New History, or similar curricular inventions. I support such initiatives as long as they rely upon a broad repertoire of teacher approaches to content and skills. When the reforms do not, when they ask teachers to adhere to a certain best way of teaching (e.g., project-based teaching, direct instruction) regardless of context, I oppose such reforms.
2. Small and slow changes in classroom practice occur often. Fundamental and rapid changes in practice seldom happen.While well-intentioned reformers seek to basically change how teachers teach reading, math, science, and history, such 180 degree changes in the Guiding Principles on Teaching, Learning, and Reform | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

School Closure: A Tragic Turnaround Strategy | janresseger

School Closure: A Tragic Turnaround Strategy | janresseger:

School Closure: A Tragic Turnaround Strategy

Chicago’s Dyett High School, which had been phased out by the school district beginning in 2012, will be re-opened as an open-enrollment, arts-focused high school for 550 students.  The school was slated for closure following the graduation of 13 students last June at the end of the phase-out process. A dozen protesters, led by Jitu Brown of Chicago’s Kenwood Oakland Community Association, are responsible for the re-opening of Dyett as a neighborhood high school.  Since August 17, the protesters have conducted a hunger strike to protest the school’s closure.

As the Chicago Public Schools capitulated by agreeing to re-open the school, Jitu Brown commented: “We are happy the school is opening as a neighborhood CPS-run school.  All is not lost.  But what we want is what the community demanded.”  Earlier this year, when the school district had issued a request for proposals (RFP), citizens of the neighborhood had submitted a proposal for a school with a focus on green energy and global leadership, with support from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Education and the Chicago Botanical Gardens, which Chicago Catalyst reports “had agreed to partner with Dyett under the proposal submitted by activists.”

CPS has declared that the school will have an arts, not a science, focus, in honor of the school’s namesake, Walter Henri Dyett, a DuSable High School music teacher known for educating a number of Chicago’s great jazz musicians.  Although the school district described its agreement to re-open Dyett as a high school with an arts focus as “a compromise” (intended to end the hunger strike), the protesters continue to declare that their hunger strike is about something much larger—the autocratic, top-down management of a school district that has persistently disdained the Chicago neighborhood communities the public schools are said to serve. While Dyett High School will re-open to serve the neighborhood, the District’s leaders ignored the wishes the community has been expressing through the hunger strike and that they framed several months ago in a formal proposal.

School closure is one of the four approved, top-down “turnaround” plans prescribed by the federal No Child Left Behind Act for schools unable to raise test scores after several years. The implication of the “turnaround” language, of course, implies that somehow closure will inspire rebirth, but too often school closure has meant not only the death of the school but also the demise of the neighborhood for which the school was the institutional anchor.

School closure was a favorite plan of New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg and his chancellor, Joel Klein, writes Jelani Cobb in an extraordinary New Yorker profile of New York’s Jamaica High School, closed last June.  Over the years Bloomberg and Klein closed 74 schools.  In 2010, Chicago’s mayor Rahm Emmanuel and his public schools CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett closed 50 schools.  Adrian Fenty, Washington, D.C.’s mayor, and his superintendent Michelle Rhee closed two dozen schools—one of the factors that is said to have precipitated his defeat in a subsequent election.  Quoting the phraseology used by Joel Klein to justify New York City’s school closures and the co-location of a number of small high schools into the buildings that had housed the comprehensive high schools, Cobb explains: “The real problem was that the schools had ‘started getting many kids who were low-performing and entering School Closure: A Tragic Turnaround Strategy | janresseger:

Florida’s big charter school problem (which Jeb Bush manages not to talk about) - The Washington Post

Florida’s big charter school problem (which Jeb Bush manages not to talk about) - The Washington Post:

Florida’s big charter school problem (which Jeb Bush manages not to talk about)

In 2011, the Miami Herald ran a special report called “Cashing In On Kids — Florida’s Charter Schools: big money, little oversight” that reviewed the state’s 15-year charter expansion and found that after spending billions in public funds to support these schools, the educational reform had “turned into one of the region’s fastest-growing industries, backed by real-estate developers and promoted by politicians” with little oversight.  It said in part:

Charter schools have become a parallel school system unto themselves, a system controlled largely by for-profit management companies and private landlords — one and the same, in many cases — and rife with insider deals and potential conflicts of interest.

In many instances, the educational mission of the school clashes with the profit-making mission of the management company, a Miami Herald examination of South Florida’s charter school industry has found. Consider:

• Some schools have ceded almost total control of their staff and finances to for-profit management companies that decide how the schools’ money is spent …
• Many management companies also control the land and buildings used by the schools — sometimes collecting more than 25 percent of a school’s revenue in lease payments, in addition to management fees …
• Charter schools often rely on loans from management companies or other insiders to stay afloat, making charter school governing boards beholden to the managers they oversee …

The story made the point of noting that Florida’s charter school laws “are aimed more at promoting the schools than policing them, leaving school districts with few ways to enforce the rules.”

Fast forward to 2015. Has anything changed? Not much, according to a new exposé on Florida charter schools, this one done by the Sun-Sentinel, with the headline: “Forida’s Charter Schools UNSUPERVISED — Taxpayers, students lose when school operators exploit weak laws.”

It says that in the past five years, 56 charter schools in South Florida have closed because of mismanagement and/or other issues, and that “a handful” of them  “owe a total of at least $1 million in public education money to local school districts” but because districts have a hard time documenting Florida’s big charter school problem (which Jeb Bush manages not to talk about) - The Washington Post: