“Edu-speak” is a disease that undermines efforts to improve U.S. schools - The Hechinger Report

“Edu-speak” is a disease that undermines efforts to improve U.S. schools - The Hechinger Report:

“Edu-speak” is a disease that undermines efforts to improve U.S. schools

Time to take a stand against confusing acronyms and overused jargon in education.

I was taking notes during one of those tedious but important school board meetings rookie reporters are assigned to cover when I realized I had no idea what was going on. Board members and various school officials spouted an inaccessible language of acronyms. The board members spent hours talking to and over one another, using terms that must have baffled audience members. I later learned they were discussing raising property taxes to boost the school budget, a critical issue local voters and parents needed to understand.

This was more than 25 years ago and I’ve been determined to eradicate jargon ever since. For education journalists, though, cutting through the argle bargle is a full-time job that distracts from what we should actually be doing: telling stories about how children are faring in American classrooms. I’m more convinced than ever that we can’t improve U.S. education until we figure out how to talk and write clearly about it. I despair each time I get yet another impossible-to-decipher research report or press release, and cringe when educators using phrases like “human capital” and “value propositions,” not to mention those endless acronyms: RTI, PLC, SLT, IEP, PD and LMS.

I’ve ranted about this before, but now I’m determined to fight back, and I’m urging all journalists who cover education to do the same. In the name of public service, let’s agree to stop abetting the school establishment’s “edu-speak.” Stop passing along empty buzzwords and clichés. Let’s finally make the conversation about challenges and solutions accessible to all. (For a look at how to apply a solutions approach to education journalism, see the Education Reporter’s Toolkit, something many of us at The Hechinger Report contributed to)

Why do we need terms like “value-added,” or “formative assessments?” Ugh. Must we really be “intentional” or “empowering” when we talk about education? And can we please stop using “silver bullet” — a cliché you’ve heard as often as the assertion by everyone in education that they, unlike everyone else, put “children first.”

Don’t get me started on overused phrases like “grit” and “rigor,” along with “21^st century skills” or “researched-based programs” that educate “the whole child.” As opposed to only half of a child? And what of charter-school movement lingo, replete with “restorative “Edu-speak” is a disease that undermines efforts to improve U.S. schools - The Hechinger Report:

Where have all the teachers gone? By Jean Jaykus and AnneMarie Surfaro-Boehme - Wait What?

Where have all the teachers gone? By Jean Jaykus and AnneMarie Surfaro-Boehme - Wait What?:

Where have all the teachers gone? By Jean Jaykus and AnneMarie Surfaro-Boehme

Jean Jaykus and AnneMarie Surfaro-Boehme are both educators, Teacher of the Year awardees in Ridgefield and both won Connecticut Celebration of Excellence Awards. Their recent commentary piece entitled, “Where have all the teachers gone?” was first published in the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Times.

Where have all the teachers gone?”

Common Core claimed its vision was to close the achievement gap and bring test scores up, guaranteeing every high school graduate to be “college ready.” None of that has been attained. Common Core was really designed to assume government control of the public education system. That goal has been achieved. Autonomy has been taken away from local boards of education, administrators, and most importantly, the classroom teacher.

Common Core was mandated for all states ignoring where individual school systems were testing. For those school systems which already ranked high, this changed the teaching of their curricula, and focused instruction on test preparation, upsetting students, parents, and teachers. It is clear that for those schools in high-risk districts, more than just common standards and tests are needed to bring students up to parity. Common Core has not delivered.

By buying into the veil of Common Core and not challenging its underpinning mandates from the beginning, education communities have lost their way, while education spirals down. They have misplaced their ethical and moral 

Where have all the teachers gone? By Jean Jaykus and AnneMarie Surfaro-Boehme - Wait What?:

With A Brooklyn Accent: An Oral History Inteview with the Bronx African American History Project With Lessons for Today

With A Brooklyn Accent: An Oral History Inteview with the Bronx African American History Project With Lessons for Today:

An Oral History Inteview with the Bronx African American History Project With Lessons for Today

Yesterday, we resumed interviewing for the Bronx African American History Project by bringing in Mario Sprouse, a musician, composer, arranger, educator and musical director who grew up on Ritter Place in the Bronx in the 1950's and 1960's on the same block where the great jazz singer Maxine Sullivan lived. The story he told left everyone in the room enraptured. The community Mario Sprouse described growing up on a block of homeowners in the South Bronx defied every stereotype people have of Bronx neighborhoods during that period. It was multiracial and multicultural, filled with energy and, optimism, and provided a mentoring experience to many young people that prepared them for successful and productive lives. For Mario Sprouse, that mentoring came from his block, where people like Maxine Sullivan and the person who ran the dance studio down the street took a personal interest in him; in schools, where he got support and encouragement from teachers, most of them white, some black; and in the church he attended, St Augustine Presbyterian Church, whose minister Rev Edlar Hawkins was a powerful figure in the neighborhood and someone who influence hundreds of neighborhood youth to pursue professional careers. At St Augustine, Mario Sprouse sang in the choir, learned to play the organ, attended the Church's summer camp and performed with his musical group when he became a teenager. He also drew inspiration as a budding intellectual, from the famous African American political With A Brooklyn Accent: An Oral History Inteview with the Bronx African American History Project With Lessons for Today:

Walton Foundation sustains local funding for Teach For America with new grant - LA Times

Walton Foundation sustains local funding for Teach For America with new grant - LA Times:

Walton foundation sustains local funding for Teach For America with new grant

e Walton Family Foundation, a major education funder in Los Angeles, has announced a $50-million grant to Teach For America that will support the organization’s work in Southern California as well as across the nation.

Teach For America recruits are mostly recent college graduates who commit to teach for two years.

Nationwide, the Walton grant will support 4,000 TFA instructors over the next three years, with the greatest number, 800, going to the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta region. TFA began its work in that area and in the nation’s urban core to address a teacher shortage.

The Los Angeles Unified School District also has relied on TFA, though less so in recent years, when the district made few hires. Currently, about 30% of the local TFA corps works in L.A. Unified, the nation’s second-largest school system. A handful also works in Lynwood.

“This generous support over the long term means everything to us in terms of our ability to apply the talent, leadership and support that are needed to serve Los Angeles, its most underserved schools and the students in them,” said Lida Jennings, executive director of Teach For America Los Angeles. 

LAUSD school in Porter Ranch shows the importance of parent involvement

While their mission to work in low-income, urban areas continues, the group also has become associated with reformers who support charter schools and other strategies to fuel aggressive change in the nation’s education system.

Opponents of these measures also have become critical of TFA, which is based in New York City.

Charters are independently operated public schools that are exempt from some rules that govern traditional campuses. Most are non-union.

The Arkansas-based Walton foundation has provided millions of dollars in start-up funding for charters and is a major supporter of the California Charter Schools Assn.Walton Foundation sustains local funding for Teach For America with new grant - LA Times:

Education Policy Q&A with teachers in Las Vegas ( and @BernieSanders ) | Cloaking Inequity

Education Policy Q&A with teachers in Las Vegas ( and @BernieSanders ) | Cloaking Inequity:

Education Policy Q&A with teachers in Las Vegas ( and @BernieSanders )

I was recently honored to discuss Teach For America, Vouchers, Charters at a Leading Educators Activating a Difference (LEAD) caucus convening in Nevada. I enjoyed joining the educators in Las Vegas to engage in powerful discussions led by teacher leaders, and, most importantly, work collaboratively to apply this knowledge to inform their work plans to improve learning conditions and student performance.

Who is the LEAD Caucus? From their Facebook page:

We are social justice educators and unionists committed to creating schools and workplaces that advance economic justice, racial justice, and democracy. We call for equitable public education as a human right. We assert that the workplace rights of educators are an essential element of public education and that the well-being of communities in which our children live is as much a part of our mission as the work we do in our schools. We commit ourselves to the struggle for equitable and adequate funding for public schools. Without this our words cannot become reality.

To that end, we join under these core principles:

Public schools should be sites of creativity, imagination, and critical questioning in which students, educators, and parents work together to create meaningful learning experiences.

Every student deserves an education grounded in trust, respect for diversity of all types, and opportunities for joyful engagement in the world.

Workplace justice and education justice are equally important and connected. both vitally important and inexorably linked. 

Every educator deserves autonomy, respect, trust, economic security, and the time and resources to develop and enact a rich and varied curriculum.

Educators also deserve adequate salary, job security, and retirement pensions. 

Our work requires and flourishes within democratic workspaces in which all workers are economically secure, their knowledge and Education Policy Q&A with teachers in Las Vegas ( and @BernieSanders ) | Cloaking Inequity:

L.A. Board of Education will weigh Broad charter-expansion plan - LA Times

L.A. Board of Education will weigh Broad charter-expansion plan - LA Times:

L.A. Board of Education will weigh Broad charter-expansion plan

Members of the Los Angeles Board of Education will be under pressure to take a position on a controversial plan to expand local charter schools because of a resolution being introduced at its meeting this week.

The measure, sponsored by board member Scott Schmerelson, calls for the district to go on record against the expansion, which would move half of district students into charter schools over the next eight years. The charter plan is being spearheaded by the locally based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Efforts to develop and fund the plan were disclosed by The Times.

The resolution, which needs four votes to pass, states that the school board “opposes the Broad Foundation plan and all initiatives that present a strategy designed to serve some students and not all students.”

Under board rules, a resolution first is introduced for public review, then voted on at a later meeting, typically the next one.

Behind the scenes, the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, has been urging the board to take action and found a sponsor in Schmerelson, a retired administrator who was elected with substantial financial backing from the union. School board president Steve Zimmer also is on record against the Broad proposal. Three other board members—Richard Vladovic, Monica Ratliff and George McKenna—have expressed reservations about the charter expansion. And two board members—Monica Garcia and Ref Rodriguez—said they support giving parents choices that include charters as well as strong programs in district-run schools.

Teachers unions and their allies have squared off with Broad and his supporters in recent and costly school board elections. Additionally, the union does not support the types of changes and accountability measures favored by Broad and some influential foundations. Most charters are non-union.

State law requires L.A. Unified to approve valid petitions for new charter schools, so it isn’t clear what powers the board would have to stop the expansion. About 16% of district students attend charters.

The Broad Foundation has defended its plan as an effort to provide more students with a high-quality education. A spokeswoman characterized a written version obtained by The Times as a "preliminary discussion draft.” Some local charters have L.A. Board of Education will weigh Broad charter-expansion plan - LA Times:

Teacher’s Rant On Why She Quit Goes Viral As Thousands Relate To The ‘Demanding’ Job - Yahoo News

Teacher’s Rant On Why She Quit Goes Viral As Thousands Relate To The ‘Demanding’ Job - Yahoo News:

Teacher’s Rant On Why She Quit Goes Viral As Thousands Relate To The ‘Demanding’ Job

A woman who wrote a lengthy rant about why she quit teaching has seen the note go viral after it struck a chord with hundreds of thousands of other teachers.

A woman who wrote a lengthy rant about why she quit teaching has seen the note go viral after it struck a chord with hundreds of thousands of other teachers.

Ali Simpson said she was leaving her profession for good after realising just how much she was missing out on.

The 37-year-old said she was forced to use days off to write lesson plans, spend weekends alone making resources and skipping her children’s bedtime stories to finish marking.

After 15 years teaching general subjects with a specialism in English, the mum-of-two finally decided to call it quits earlier this year.

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She wrote the post ‘Why I’ve Left Teaching’ on her blog mylifemylove.com in April - and it soon went viral as teachers across the globe related to the points she made.

One line that seemed to resonate particularly with other teacher parents was: “Why was I putting the 30 children in my class before my own two children?”

Ali, who lives in Poole, Dorset with husband Luke and children Harley, five, and one-year-old Lola, now juggles private tutoring with work as a freelance writer.

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Her parenting and lifestyle blog, which she started a year and a half ago while she was on maternity leave, also bagged her a social media marketing job she can do from home after a regular reader recommended her for a role.

Ali, who also has two stepsons aged 12 and nine, said: “I had no idea when I hit the publish Teacher’s Rant On Why She Quit Goes Viral As Thousands Relate To The ‘Demanding’ Job - Yahoo News:

College Professors Begin Revolt Against Common Core

College Professors Begin Revolt Against Common Core:

College Professors Begin Revolt Against Common Core

In Kentucky, the first state to adopt Common Core, college professors are protesting that it means teaching woefully unprepared students. A newly elected Matt Bevin will be receptive.

It’s been obvious from the beginning of the Common Core scheme that one of many weak links in the enterprise was college professors. What would happen when their classes were flooded with increasingly ill-prepared Common Core-“educated” students? That problem is now becoming apparent, and a professors’ revolt has now begun in Kentucky—the first state to adopt and implement the national curriculum mandates.

Coupled with newly elected governor Matt Bevin’s desire to see Common Core removed from Kentucky, a state that Bill and Melinda Gates have touted as being a Common Core leader may soon join the others dropping Common Core like a hot potato.

In connection with federal Race to the Top grant applications in 2010 and No Child Left Behind waivers in 2011, states had to demonstrate that their institutions of higher education (IHEs) would “exempt from remedial courses and place into credit-bearing college courses” students who attained a certain score on Common Core-aligned assessments.

But as detailed by critics such as Dr. Sandra Stotsky and Dr. James Milgram, the massive deficiencies of the national standards mean students will be even more unprepared for college work than they were before.

Have Fun with Remedial Students, Professors

So what happens when those unprepared students matriculate at a college that has already agreed to place them in courses that count towards graduation, without remediation? Exactly what is now happening in Kentucky. Richard Innes of the Bluegrass Institute points to multiple pieces of evidence that the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) has decided to simply abolish remedial courses.

Students who formerly would have gone through remediation are now to be thrown into credit-bearing courses.

As CPE president Robert King explained to the Kentucky Board of Education during its October 6 meeting, students who formerly would have gone through remediation are now to be thrown into credit-bearing courses. But since such students obviously won’t be ready for real college work, the courses will be designated “co-requisite”—meaning lagging students will receive extra help of some sort so they can catch up.

Especially in math, where instruction is sequential and builds on prior instruction, the idea that students will “catch up” on old material while learning new material is dubious at best. Kentucky math professors agree. In an extraordinary letter sent to CPE president Bob King in May, the math-department heads of almost all of Kentucky’s four-year universities decried the ludicrous plan that will mask the insufficiency of students’ math preparation.

These professors pointed out what critics of the Common Core scheme have been College Professors Begin Revolt Against Common Core:

Recess Is Not a Privilege | Laura Hanby Hudgens

Recess Is Not a Privilege | Laura Hanby Hudgens:

Recess Is Not a Privilege

I am a high school teacher, and if there is one thing I know about education it is that modern education is steeped in research and data. Teachers collect and examine data in formative assessments (checking to see if students are learning as we go) and summative assessments (checking to see if student learning is complete). We look at data from last year's test scores and this year's test scores. We look at what the research says about effective and ineffective teaching methods. We are even expected to collect and use data to determine and communicate how we can improve professionally. Research-based and data-driven are big, big buzz words in education. We are reminded time and again that our instruction must be research-based and data-driven.

Except when it isn't.

When it comes to recess and the importance of play and physical activity, too many schools ignore the current research. Instead of treating recess as an important, in fact crucial, part of a student's day, some schools still act as if recess is a privilege bestowed on well-behaved, compliant students. They use recess as a bargaining tool and withhold it as a form of punishment.

As parents we tend to accept this. After all, most of us remember losing a recess now and then due to too much talking or an incomplete assignment. I remember staying in Mr. Lovelady's fourth grade class during more than a few recesses, writing, "I will not talk in class." until my hand ached. I hated to miss recess, but I survived it. So why should it bother me if my son or other kids lose recess from time to time? The difference is that we had three recesses. In total, we had over an hour every day to play, run, talk, and be with our friends. Many kids today are lucky to get twenty minutes.

The research is clear. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, recess plays Recess Is Not a Privilege | Laura Hanby Hudgens:

Behind The Shortage Of Special Ed Teachers: Long Hours, Crushing Paperwork : NPR Ed : NPR

Behind The Shortage Of Special Ed Teachers: Long Hours, Crushing Paperwork : NPR Ed : NPR:

Behind The Shortage Of Special Ed Teachers: Long Hours, Crushing Paperwork

There is a letter that school districts really don't like sending home to parents of special education students. Each state has a different version, but they begin with something like this:

"Dear Parent, as of the date of this letter your child's teacher is not considered 'highly qualified.' " And then: "This doesn't mean your child's teacher is not capable or effective. It means they haven't met the state standards for teaching in their subject."

Quick Facts

• 49 States

  Report a shortage of special education teachers/related service personnel

• 12.3 percent

  Of special education teachers leave the profession. Nearly double the rate of general education teachers

• 82 percent

  Of special educators across the nation report there are not enough professionals to meet the needs of students with disabilities

• 51 percent

  Of all school districts and 90 percent of high-poverty schools report having difficulty recruiting highly qualified special education teachers
  (Compiled by the National Coalition on Personnel Shortages in Special Education and Related Services)

In any other subject, that's an annoying problem that suggests students may not be well served. In special education, it means the school district is breaking the law.

The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, requires that every student have what's known as an IEP — Individualized Education Program. And almost always, those IEP's spell out that students — either some of the time or all of the time — must be taught by a teacher fully certified in special education.

'Under A Microscope'

And yet, around the country, that's exactly the category of teacher that's most in demand, as many states and districts are reporting severe shortages.

"This crisis has been coming for a long time," says David Pennington, superintendent of Ponca City public schools in Oklahoma. Many teachers there are nearing retirement and he's not sure he can replace them.

"Forget about replacing them with someone of the same quality," he says. "I'm just worried about replacing them. Period."

Pennington's rural district of 5,300 students northwest of Tulsa has been hit hard by the shortage. He says it's extremely difficult to persuade newer special education teachers to stay beyond two or three years.

"The job is not what they thought it was going to be," Pennington explains. "They feel like they're under a microscope all the time."

On top of the normal demands of teaching, special education teachers face additional pressures: feelings of isolation, fear of lawsuits and students who demand extra attention. Many are the only special-needs teacher in their grade or their school, or sometimes in the entire district.

And then, there's the seemingly endless paperwork.

"It is not uncommon," Pennington says, "for a special ed teacher to tell me, 'I did not Behind The Shortage Of Special Ed Teachers: Long Hours, Crushing Paperwork : NPR Ed : NPR:

Is it time to update NAEP? - The Hechinger Report

Is it time to update NAEP? - The Hechinger Report:

Is it time to update NAEP?

Common Core classrooms shift away from what the nation's report card measures

 the most recent nationwide U.S. math test, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP, an eighth grader might have been asked a question about stem-and-leaf plots (see the sample question in the graphic on this page or here).

Have no idea what those are? Probably the eighth grader didn’t either. It’s an old-fashioned way to depict data, one that isn’t used much anymore. The Common Core standards, used in more than 40 states, intentionally pared down the list of data representations that students should learn to ones that are commonly used in the real world, such as bar charts and time-series graphs, so that students could spend more time mastering them.

But the NAEP, unchanged since 1990, tested eighth graders on stem-and-leaf plots anyway. “It becomes something of an IQ test to figure out what the heck you’re looking at,” said Fran Stancavage at the American Institutes of Research, a nonprofit research organization that has helped develop the NAEP exam for the U.S government.

So when the 2015 NAEP results came out last month, showing the first declines in math scores in 25 years (a two-point drop in fourth-grade math and a three-point drop in eighth-grade math between 2013 and 2015), Stancavage didn’t think the problem was only that teachers needed more practice and training to teach the new Common Core material effectively.

“The kinds of things we’re seeing, it wouldn’t matter if someone had become an expert implementer,” said Stancavage.  “Some of these things the kids have never been exposed to.”

In other words, last month’s NAEP scores might have gone down even if every teacher in the nation had taught the new Common Core content perfectly.

Stancavage has made a career out of developing and maintaining the NAEP exam and her work is one of the reasons that the NAEP is prized as an unbiased yardstick of educational progress. She recently co-authored an October 2015 study, comparing NAEP content with the Common Core standards, and found several areas of what she calls “mismatch”.

It’s all in the timing

For example, certain geometry concepts, particularly terminology and vocabulary, have been purposely shifted from fourth to fifth grade in Common Core, so that students can spend more time with fractions in fourth grade. Even if students have the knowledge to Is it time to update NAEP? - The Hechinger Report:

L.A. schools swapped 'zero tolerance' for 'restorative justice.' Is it working? - CSMonitor.com

L.A. schools swapped 'zero tolerance' for 'restorative justice.' Is it working? - CSMonitor.com:

L.A. schools swapped 'zero tolerance' for 'restorative justice.' Is it working?

Staff applaud the goals of 'restorative justice,' a community-minded alternative to schools' 'zero tolerance' policies, which have not proven to be effective, but they add that more training and resources are needed.

San Antonio seventh grader Jayden Witter discusses a recent conflict at school in a restorative justice circle at Ed White Middle School. Districts across the country have experimented with restorative justice methods, which emphasize relationships and problem-solving, as an alternative to zero tolerance policies. Eric Gay/ AP

When a South Carolina sheriff's deputy threw a high school student from her chair in late October, tossing her across the classroom in a cellphone-captured video that quickly went viral, Americans caught a glimpse of how debates over school discipline play out every day in the nation's schools, where "zero tolerance" policies have led to an uptick in police referrals and out-of-school suspensions.

What makes students misbehave? What is the appropriate punishment? For years, educators have grappled with how to keep students and staff safe from fights and extreme disruptions, often combating disrespectfulness with policies often solve the immediate problems, but often also lead to to long-term academic failure.

California has led the way in an alternative practice, called "restorative justice," that holds promise in building students' understanding, responsibility, and relationships, while keeping students at their desks. But in Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest district, teachers are now alleging that administrators have put the policy in place with little training, creating chaos for students and staff alike.  

Recommended: Do you have a clue about teenage behavior? Take our quiz!

On the face of it, banning suspensions for "defiance" has been a numerical success: as the Los Angeles Times reports, suspensions are down to 0.55 percent, compared to 8 percent in the 2007-2008 school year. 

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE Do you have a clue about teenage behavior? Take our quiz!

IN PICTURES Restorative Justice: Oakland's school discipline program

PHOTOS OF THE DAY Photos of the weekend

On the ground, though, some teachers allege that it's been a change for the worse: they claim that disciplinary issues are getting out-of-hand, and leaving teachers at a "breaking point," in the words of school union rep Art Lopez. 

"Where is the justice for students who want to learn?" math teacher Michael Lam asked at a district forum, citing pressure to keep disruptive student in class. 

Superintendent Ramon Cortines agrees that implementation had not been well thought-out. "You cannot piecemeal this kind of thing," he told the Times. 

Psychologists and educational researchers support restorative justice as a means to build community, bolster students' problem-solving and accountability, and resolve conflicts, often through intense discussions that emphasize mutual respect between students, staff, and parents as they reflect on what caused problems in the first place and how L.A. schools swapped 'zero tolerance' for 'restorative justice.' Is it working? - CSMonitor.com: