Maybe #TeachStrong can answer this question for me. | @ THE CHALKFACE

Maybe #TeachStrong can answer this question for me. | @ THE CHALKFACE:

Maybe #TeachStrong can answer this question for me.

At what point in the “non-traditional” teacher’s preparation, over the course of the five-week summer camp, does it say in the syllabus that it is acceptable for a young woman to fireman carry an elementary student throwing a tantrum up two flights of stairs?

Would it not be more appropriate to triage the student, to de-escalate the situation, before the student suffers the indignity, and lack of safety I might add, of being carried up two flights of stairs by someone barely larger than the student?

I get it. As teachers, we take it deeply personal when a fully autonomous human being doesn’t follow directions. We shouldn’t, but we do. However, own it and try to handle the situation. Don’t try to hide it and run for cover by carrying a student up the stairs.

Where was your mental health team to assist? Where was your co-teacher to assist? Where was administration?

Oh charter schools, when will you have any answers?Maybe #TeachStrong can answer this question for me. | @ THE CHALKFACE:

Firefighters visited our Kindergarten

There was nothing particularly remarkable about the visit, other than the truck getting two emergency calls during their visit, leaving and coming back each time. That was great of them so we could get to see the truck.

At one point, when we were all outside and the kids were trying on the equipment by the truck, one of the firefighters asked me how long I’d been at the school and if I came from Teach for America.

I said, “Helllllllllll, no. I can’t stand them.”

He chuckled.Firefighters visited our Kindergarten

The mysterious “morning collaboration.”

Simple question. What do other teachers do in the morning?

Over a decade ago, when I taught fifth grade in Silver Spring, MD, I recall getting to school between 7:30 and 8:00 before my students walked in at around 9:10. For the first year at that school, I taught in a “learning cottage” out back. Conceivably, I could go the whole morning without entering the building and seeing another adult. I can’t recall any regular meetings or other activities taking place. I had the time to myself to prepare and do what I needed to do.

When I started supervising student teachers for about eight years, on the days I arrived before students, I recall teachers being in their classrooms entire mornings. There were no meetings.

In DC, we have these things call “morning collaboratives.” They are technically scheduled between 8:10 and 8:40 each morning. Language in the teachers’ contract is fairly specific on how those times are to be used. Yet a frequent bone of contention between teachers and administrators is the use of this time. Most teachers are hard at work preparing for their day. For me, I create and arrange all of my materials for The mysterious “morning collaboration.”

Charter School Problems Just Continue to Surface | janresseger

Charter School Problems Just Continue to Surface | janresseger:

Charter School Problems Just Continue to Surface

You have to give John Merrow credit for being fair, thorough, and dogged.  Merrow is the reporter, just retired, who has covered education for the PBS NewsHour.  Merrow has never been ideological and he has shown himself willing to change his mind.  He is the guy who filmed the tough Michelle Rhee firing a principal and later, after USA Today broke some of the evidence, went on to question the impact of Rhee’s rigid and punitive philosophy when it emerged there was a D.C. test-cheating scandal. Merrow doggedly investigated and exposed allegations of test-answer erasures one piece of evidence at a time to create a convincing case, despite that Rhee herself has continued to deny it.

Now Merrow is looking at charter schools. He explains that he has been covering charter schools since they were first discussed back in 1988.  Here is the vision he remembers described at a conference he moderated: “(T)he dream was that every district would open at least one ‘chartered school,’ where enrollment and employment would be voluntary and where new ideas would be field-tested.  Successes and failures would be shared, and the entire education system would benefit.”  Merrow continues: “That naive optimism would be laughable if it were not for the harm that has befallen many students and the millions taken from public treasuries by some charter school operators (regardless of whether their schools are ‘for-profit’ or ‘non-profit’).”

He faults the Obama administration, which has provided billions of Charter School Program grants to start and grow charter schools across the states: “President Obama and his Secretary of Education are always careful to say that they support ‘good’ charter schools and oppose ‘bad’ ones, even as they approve spending federal funds to support charters schools.  I question whether that qualifies as strong leadership.”  The U.S. Department of Education has Charter School Problems Just Continue to Surface | janresseger:

With A Brooklyn Accent: Time for a 180 Degree Reversal on Education Policy

With A Brooklyn Accent: Time for a 180 Degree Reversal on Education Policy:

Time for a 180 Degree Reversal on Education Policy

As economic conditions worsen for both the middle class and the poor many children are coming to school harboring extreme stress. They are fearful, tense, in the worst instances lacking sleep and nourishment, wondering if anyone can care for them

The LAST thing they need when they get to school is more pressure, and more stress.

We need to make schools places where they are nurtured, loved, supported and given confidence.

But to do that, we need to cut back radically on the testing, and hire teachers who have the right personality to nurture students and the freedom to respond to them individually.

Teacher temps fearful for their jobs- which is what current reforms are flooding our schools with- is exactly what we don't need.

If we are going to save this generation of children, the ENTIRE array of reforms which this administration and the last one have endorsed have to be discarded, to be replaced by child centered pedagogy and entirely new methods of identifying, recruiting, and supporting great teachers.

And we must cherish and empower those great teachers we still have.

It is time for a 180 Degree reversal on school policies

Get rid of Common CoreWith A Brooklyn Accent: Time for a 180 Degree Reversal on Education Policy:

LAUSD board hears about coming financial crisis, considers impact of charters | 89.3 KPCC

LAUSD board hears about coming financial crisis, considers impact of charters | 89.3 KPCC:

LAUSD board hears about coming financial crisis, considers impact of charters

For nearly an hour on Tuesday, Los Angeles Unified School District board members heard bleak news about the school district’s finances over the next five years from members of a blue-ribbon panel.

The panelists pointed to expensive employee benefits, declining student enrollment and other factors that are contributing to a projected $333 million budget deficit in two years and a doubling of the shortage two years following that.

Members of the panel told LAUSD board members that fixing the district's finances to avoid bankruptcy would be difficult.

“There’s no one single villain. You can’t turn to this person or this organization or to this movement and say, ‘If only they went away, all problems would be OK,’” said Miguel Santana, a panel member.

His comments appeared to refer to a charter expansion plan pushed by philanthropist Eli Broad and others, that would double the number of charter schools over eight years at a cost about $500 million. The authors envision as many as half of the LAUSD's students could be enrolled in the charter schools, which they see as an antidote to low-performing public schools.

But as the district's enrollment declines, so too does state funding tied to student counts. The school district’s enrollment has dropped by about 100,000 students in the last six years. Roughly half of that decline is due to students enrolling in charter schools, the panel reported. 

The panel laid out short-term and long-term recommendations to reduce district expenses and increase revenues, many of which require buy-in from LAUSD administrators, employee unions and parents.

“Here’s an opportunity for us to really come together, the charter movement, our labor partners, this district, our communities,” said Ref Rodriguez, board member LAUSD board hears about coming financial crisis, considers impact of charters | 89.3 KPCC:

Children's Education in the Age of Mass Incarceration - The Atlantic

Children's Education in the Age of Mass Incarceration - The Atlantic:

How Parental Incarceration Affects a Child’s Education

“Through it all, children suffer.”

An inmate looks at his daughter during a special Father's Day visit as part of the "Get On The Bus" program at California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo in May 2015. Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

This past summer, The Atlantic’s Sarah Yager wrote about the rising popularity of prison nurseries as a means of saving costs, enhancing morale, and reducing recidivism among the ever-growing female inmate population. Such nurseries are, however, still fairly rare, and generally reserved for the women who give birth when they’re already behind bars and have babies 18 months or younger. Once the babies grow past that age, they’re sent out into the world to join the 3 million children in the United States who currently have a parent in custody—a population that, for policymakers, “can fade into the background.”

These children do indeed fall off the public radar, as do the 2 million or so additional U.S. children who’ve previously had a parent in prison, according to a recent Child Trends report. All in all, the report’s researchers, David Murphey and P. Mae Cooper, analyzed the National Survey of Children’s Health to conclude that more than 5 million kids—or one in 14 U.S. children—have at one time or another experienced parental incarceration. And that number, they argue, “is almost certainly an underestimate.” Unsurprisingly, parental incarceration is most prevalent among black, poor, and rural children.

Research has long found that children who have (or have had) a parent behind bars tend to suffer from problems including poor health, behavior challenges, and grade retention, but it’s been difficult to suss out the degree to which those issues are attributable more generally to other realities common in communities with high incarceration rates. “It can be challenging to disentangle the effects of parental incarceration from … other risk factors, such as extreme poverty,” Murphey and Cooper write. “Complicating matters further, parental incarceration can also exacerbate these associated risk factors, through loss of income, for example.”

The new report strives to do that disentangling and identify any outcomes in children that are uniquely associated with parental incarceration. And while much of the report’s findings on health outcomes and social relationships are inconclusive, one of the few risk factors that does seem to have a direct association with parental incarceration has to do with the kids’ education. Children of all ages were significantly more likely to have problems in school, Children's Education in the Age of Mass Incarceration - The Atlantic:

Hillary Clinton wades into the internal Democratic battle over public schools - The Washington Post

Hillary Clinton wades into the internal Democratic battle over public schools - The Washington Post:

Hillary Clinton wades into the internal Democratic battle over public schools

Hillary Clinton long skirted the internal Democratic Party conflict over the best way to improve public schools. She avoided the fight between teachers unions, which want heavier investment and less blame for educators, and those who believe non-unionized charter schools should be expanded and teachers held accountable for student achievement.

But Clinton’s neutrality has started to fray.

By early October, she had pocketed presidential endorsements from both major teachers unions. Before she got the nod from the National Education Association, Clinton told a private gathering of NEA leaders she wanted the country’s largest union to be “at the table, literally and figuratively” as she formulates policy, according to excerpts published in an NEA publication.

[Clinton wins the backing of the country’s largest union]

At a town hall meeting in South Carolina on Sunday, Clinton was critical of public charter schools, saying “most” intentionally exclude or expel children who are difficult to educate.

“Most charter schools — I don’t want to say every one — but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them,” Clinton said in response to questions at an event hosted by the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus.

By contrast, she said, traditional public schools do “thankfully, take everybody, and then they don’t get the resources or the help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education.”

The remarks lit up the world of K-12 education policy, prompting outrage from organizations that have been fighting to expand charter schools as an alternative to traditional schools. Some alleged that the presidential hopeful is out of touch.

“That is absolutely false,” Jeanne Allen, the founder of the Center for Education Reform, said of Clinton’s claims about charters. “She sounds like Hillary Clinton wades into the internal Democratic battle over public schools - The Washington Post:

Common Core testing showdown in Massachusetts - The Hechinger Report

Common Core testing showdown in Massachusetts - The Hechinger Report:

Common Core testing showdown in Massachusetts

As the state considers what standardized test to give this spring, here’s a closer look at two of the options

Massachusetts could further undermine the commonness of the Common Core standards when it votes this month on which standardized test the state will use this spring.

The Massachusetts Board of Education is deciding whether to use a multi-state test, the Partnership for Assessing College and Career Readiness, known as PARCC, or to stick with its own test.

In 2010, the 45 states that adopted the Common Core State Standards, a set of guidelines for what students should be able to do in each grade in English and math, were part of two multi-state groups. PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium designed tests that would measure the new standards and be given to millions of students across the country. For the first time, the results of annual standardized tests would be comparable across states lines to give educators and researchers a more complete picture of how students in different parts of the country were performing.

But as controversy around the standards – and the testing that accompanies them – has grown, states have dropped out of the tests or dropped the standards entirely. PARCC has been particularly hard hit, going from 26 states to seven. Experts and advocates around the Common Core testing showdown in Massachusetts - The Hechinger Report:

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » No one expects the Spanish Inquisition…

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » No one expects the Spanish Inquisition…:

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition…

As we ramp up to a Presidential election year, articles are coming out looking at the long term viability of the major political parties. As many know, our country has been undergoing a demographic change. We’ve seen this in the outcome of the last two presidential elections, where the last one ended with Republicans having the rug pulled out from under them when a whole lot of infrequent, newly registered, and largely minority voters, turned up to an election where they were not expected. At least not by the GOP. This trend to more minorities and minority voters is only increasing.

Two articles are making the rounds with a tale of two parties, the GOP and the Dems. First is pollster Stan Greenberg who has a book out on the demographic changes, and how it’s a death knell for the GOP. In this article, the GOP is stuck appealing to their base on social issues (like marriage equality) and immigration. Meanwhile, the more they appeal to their base, the less they appeal to the general electorate. The only way out of this is for the party to shift their stand on these issues which their base will not stand for. He lays out the case well, and as a pollster, he knows the numbers.

Next, we have Matthew Yglesias on Vox, saying it’s the Democrats who are Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » No one expects the Spanish Inquisition…:

Professional Teachers—Click, Click! Poof! You’re Gone!

Professional Teachers—Click, Click! Poof! You’re Gone!:

Professional Teachers—Click, Click! Poof! You’re Gone!

The attack on teacher education is fast and furious. Privatizing America’s public schools means getting rid of career teachers who support instruction geared to a child’s needs. A way to purge the country of real teachers is to extinguish their teacher education programs and make teaching look like a regimented practice that any drill sergeant can learn.

Some (not all) Colleges of Education (COEs) have been cash cows in the past and were in need of a face lift. But getting rid of the COEs altogether in order to allow novices to run schools like sweatshops, where teachers bark rigid orders at students and point clickers at them to get their attention, is not only abusive to poor children, but it is now going to be the law of the land!

Opt Out leader, reading specialist and activist Peggy Robertson describes here, well, the kind of boxed-in, high-stakes testing style teaching being foisted on teachers around the country. The program is from a book called Teach Like a Champion 2.0 written by Doug Lemov, who never studied child development or teaching, but who seems to know how to manage children. Lemov must be feeling like a champion himself, because his book is being used around the country to train teachers.

This kind of teaching is not student-centered. It is group think. Get all children to fit Professional Teachers—Click, Click! Poof! You’re Gone!:

The Common Core-Inspired “Explain Your Answers” Rule in Math Is Misguided - The Atlantic

The Common Core-Inspired “Explain Your Answers” Rule in Math Is Misguided - The Atlantic:

Explaining Your Math: Unnecessary at Best, Encumbering at Worst

Common Core-era rules that force kids to diagram their thought processes can make the equations a lot more confusing than they need to be.

At a middle school in California, the state testing in math was underway via the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) exam. A girl pointed to the problem on the computer screen and asked “What do I do?” The proctor read the instructions for the problem and told the student: “You need to explain how you got your answer.”

The girl threw her arms up in frustration and said, “Why can’t I just do the problem, enter the answer and be done with it?”

The answer to her question comes down to what the education establishment believes “understanding” to be, and how to measure it. K-12 mathematics instruction involves equal parts procedural skills and understanding. What “understanding” in mathematics means, however, has long been a topic of debate. One distinction popular with today’s math-reform advocates is between “knowing” and “doing.” A student, reformers argue, might be able to “do” a problem (i.e., solve it mathematically) without understanding the concepts behind the problem-solving procedure. Perhaps he or she has simply memorized the method without understanding it and is performing the steps by “rote.”

One distinction is between “knowing” and “doing.”

The Common Core math standards, adopted in 42 states and the District of Columbia and reflected in Common Core-aligned tests like the SBAC and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), take understanding to a whole new level. “Students who lack understanding of a topic may rely on procedures too heavily,” states the Common Core website. “But what does mathematical understanding look like?” And how can teachers assess it?

One way is to ask the student to justify, in a way that is appropriate to the student’s mathematical maturity, why a particular mathematical 

The Common Core-Inspired “Explain Your Answers” Rule in Math Is Misguided - The Atlantic:

 

Hillary Clinton on charter schools: “They don't take the hardest-to-teach kids” - Vox

Hillary Clinton on charter schools: “They don't take the hardest-to-teach kids” - Vox:

Hillary Clinton on charter schools: “They don't take the hardest-to-teach kids”

One of the big, undecided policy issues of the post-Obama Democratic Party is whether education reformers or teachers unions and their allies will control the party's education policy. Hillary Clinton said something over the weekend that made unions very happy and reformers very worried.

"Charter schools can have a purpose, but there are good charter schools and there are bad charter schools, just like there are good public schools and there are bad public schools," she said at a Congressional Black Caucus event in South Carolina:

The original idea behind the charter schools… was to learn what worked and apply them in the public schools. And here's a couple of problems. Most charter schools, I don't want to say every one, but most charter schools, they don't take the hardest-to-teach kids. And if they do, they don't keep them.

The public schools are often in a no-win situation, because they do thankfully take everybody, and they don't get the resources and help and support they need to take care of every child's education. I want parents to be able to exercise choice within the public school system. Not outside of it, but within it.

I am still a firm believer that the public school system is one of the real pillars of our democracy, and it is a path for opportunity. But I am also fully aware there are a lot of substandard public schools. But part of the reason for that is policymakers and local politicians will not fund schools in poor areas that take care of poor children to the level they need to be.

This is a very different tone than you'd hear from the charter-friendly Obama administration.

Nationally, charter schools students perform about as well as public school students. In most cities, charter schools educate a smaller proportion of kids with disabilities and kids learning English than public schools in those cities. It's much more tenuous to argue that "most" charter schools deliberately push out kids who are hard to teach, although, as the New York Times recently reported, a branch of the wildly high-achieving Success Academy charter school chain kept a list of students who had "got to go."

But Clinton's remarks — which were in response to a charter-friendly question that noted black parents are heavily in favor of such schools — signaled whose side she was on in the contentious Democratic Party education debate.

On education, 2016 is not 1996

Teachers unions and other groups skeptical of reform make the same argument Clinton is advancing here: that charter schools have an unfair advantage due to the students they Hillary Clinton on charter schools: “They don't take the hardest-to-teach kids” - Vox:

Democrats Push Arne Duncan To Aid Defrauded For-Profit College Students

Democrats Push Arne Duncan To Aid Defrauded For-Profit College Students:

Democrats Push Arne Duncan To Aid Defrauded For-Profit College Students

Pressure is mounting on the education secretary to relieve defrauded student loan borrowers of their debts.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan should stop delaying promised debt relief to defrauded student loan borrowers and use a recent federal court ruling to immediately cancel all federal loans owed by former Corinthian Colleges Inc. students, a group of Democratic lawmakersurged Monday.

A federal judge in Chicago ruled on Oct. 27 that Corinthian violated federal law by defrauding more than 115,000 of its former students when its schools used false job placement rates to deceive them into taking out private student loans. Students typically take out private loans after reaching federal student loan borrowing limits.

The company declared bankruptcy in May, eight months after the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleged it systematically cheated students by advertising "bogus" job prospects to lure them into enrolling and taking out the private loans. At its peak, Corinthian operated more than 120 colleges under the Everest, Wyotech and Heald brands.

A little-used provision in federal law allows defrauded student borrowers to apply for debt cancellations when they believe they’ve been misled into taking out federal student loans. Debtors hoping to get their loans discharged by arguing they were duped by their schools into taking out the debt would have an easier time if they obtained court judgments in their favor, Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell said in June.

"The department should use this judgment to make good on that promise to students and move expeditiously in granting relief for Corinthian’s former students who were the victims of harmful and deceptive practices," 17 lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), wrote in a joint letter dated Monday.

Dorie Nolt, an Education Department spokeswoman, said department officials "appreciate the concerns for the welfare of Corinthian students."

Their demand comes as influential Democrats increasingly criticize Duncan for what they describe as inaction in the face of mounting evidence that some for-profit colleges routinely mislead prospective students into enrolling with false job placement and graduation rates, then load them up with debt in exchange for credentials of dubious value.

"The Department of Education for far too many years has not ensured that for-profit schools have credible programs," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Democrats Push Arne Duncan To Aid Defrauded For-Profit College Students:

A serious rant about education jargon and how it hurts efforts to improve schools - The Washington Post

A serious rant about education jargon and how it hurts efforts to improve schools - The Washington Post:

A serious rant about education jargon and how it hurts efforts to improve schools

If you have ever had children in school, or read a story about education policy, or participated in a school meeting, or attended school (which is pretty much every one of you), you have been confronted with edu-speak. You know, words used to describe various education programs or initiatives or theories that often wind up sowing confusion or rendering important ideas incomprehensible.

The problem is so prevalent that there is even an Education Jargon Generatoron sciencegeek.net, which offers complete jargon-filled sentences or gives you parts of sentences (prepositional phrases, verbs, adjectives and nouns) to create your own. Here are examples of sentences created with the push of the “generate jargon” button:

*”We will triangulate mission-critical culminating products across content areas.”
*”We will agendize innovative communities for our 21st Century learners.”
“We will cultivate competency-based technologies through the experiential based learning process.”
“We will reinvent proactive ESLR’s across cognitive and affective domains.”                                                                                                    “We will visualize performance-driven cohorts through the Big Ideas.”

You get the ridiculous idea.

Here is a full-throated rant about edu-speak and the damage it causes by Liz Willen, editor of the The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, where it was first published. The piece was adapted from an article written for The Education Reporters Toolkit published by The Solutions Journalism Network.

By Liz Willen

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 theEducation Reporter’s Toolkit, something many of us at the Hechinger Reportcontributed 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 “21st century skills” or “researched-based programs” that educate “the whole child.” As opposed to only half of a child? And what of charter-schoolmovement lingo, replete with “restorative practices” and “growth mindsets”?

It’s not just educators who are to blame. The federal government is most certainly guilty as well for creating an alphabet soup of acronyms that bogs down stories about national education policy with explanations and parentheticals about what all the abbreviations mean before readers ever get to the point of whether the policies are actually working. Consider: ESEA(Elementary and Secondary Education Act); NCLB (No Child Left Behind); and President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top competition, also known as R2T, RTT or even RTTT.

Don’t get me started on overused phrases like “grit” and “rigor,” along with “21stA serious rant about education jargon and how it hurts efforts to improve schools - The Washington Post:

After Video of Calif. Police Breaking Up Teachers Union Meeting Goes Viral, School Apologizes - Working In These Times

After Video of Calif. Police Breaking Up Teachers Union Meeting Goes Viral, School Apologizes - Working In These Times:

After Video of Calif. Police Breaking Up Teachers Union Meeting Goes Viral, School Apologizes

In a video widely circulated on social media, Alameda County sheriff’s deputies can be seen interrupting a lunchtime union meeting held at San Lorenzo High on October 20 for local teachers in the midst of a contract bargaining dispute with their employer, the San Lorenzo Unified School District (SLUSD). The deputies, there at the request of a vice principal, entered the classroom where the meeting was being held and asked a California Teachers Association (CTA) representative leading the meeting to leave campus.

The next day, October 21, CTA filed an unfair labor practice charge with the Public Employees Relations Board against SLUSD, arguing that the school district had violated California state labor law. Guillermo Durgin, the CTA staff organizer speaking with the deputies in the video, told In These Times, “By trying to keep me out of the classroom, and then trying to interrupt our union meeting, the district is essentially intimidating and preventing members from communicating with their exclusive bargaining representative about the impasse that had been declared.”

The CTA-affiliated San Lorenzo Education Association (SLEA) has been in collective bargaining negotiations since March, but reached an impasse on October 13. Durgin was invited on to campus by SLEA members to inform San Lorenzo High educators about the bargaining situation during their off-duty lunch hour break.  

After signing in as a visitor at the school’s office, Durgin says he was approached by assistant principal Andrew Vavuris. He claims that he identified himself as a union representative with the California Teachers Association, informing Vavuris that he had signed in and why he was there.

“He proceeded to tell me that I did not have the right to be there and I need to leave. I proceeded to tell him that I actually did have the right to be there as a representative of their exclusive bargaining representative,” he says. “About 15 minutes later—fortunately we had gone through most of our agenda—the assistant principal returned with three Alameda County Sheriff, and they proceeded to interrupt our union meeting, saying I had to leave. After a minute of this one of our members started to record.”

After the video stopped recording, Durgin says, “At that point, I pretty much ignored the three Alameda County Sheriffs as well as the assistant principal, left the classroom, signed out and proceeded to my car. I noticed though that the assistant principal actually followed me to my car… just to make sure I was going to leave the school campus.”

In an email to In These Times, SLUSD superintendent Fred Brill says that what transpired in the video, which has been seen over 280,000 times, was a result of a “misunderstanding” and that “the assistant principal should not have interfered with the meeting.”

“When an unknown visitor comes onto campus, even if they claim to be from CTA, the administration will consider the safety of students very seriously and work to confirm that visitors are who they claim to be.  The safety of students must come first,“ Brill added, alleging that although Durgin had a visitor's badge he had declined to give his name to administration.

With negotiations at an impasse, a state-appointed mediator has met with SLEA and the school district twice, bringing the After Video of Calif. Police Breaking Up Teachers Union Meeting Goes Viral, School Apologizes - Working In These Times:

Agency’s Historic Ruling Will Help Teachers Improve Learning Conditions at Statewide Charter - California Teachers Association

Agency’s Historic Ruling Will Help Teachers Improve Learning Conditions at Statewide Charter - California Teachers Association:

AGENCY’S HISTORIC RULING WILL HELP TEACHERS IMPROVE LEARNING CONDITIONS AT STATEWIDE CHARTER

Three CTA teachers at CAVA – from r. Debbie Scoltock, an algebra and geometry high school teacher; Sara Vigrass, an elementary teacher; and Jen Shilen, a social sciences teacher – told the legislative staff they were committed to telling the story about CAVA because change is needed.

Teachers at the California Virtual Academies (CAVA) have gained a stronger voice in advocating for their 15,000 students, thanks to a decision by the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).

The ruling in favor of educators requires their employer, at the state’s largest provider of online education, to recognize the CTA chapter, an outcome actively opposed by CAVA. The PERB ruling comes after 17 months of hard work by the teachers and intense CTA advocacy on their behalf.

“We are elated,” said Sarah Vigrass, a 9-year CAVA Community Day teacher in Redlands. “We applaud the decision, and we look forward to sitting down and negotiating as soon as possible over much-needed improvements for teachers and the students we serve. Our students’ learning conditions would improve if more resources were focused on them. There are many problems and now we have a real way to fix them.”

“The ruling by PERB clears the way for negotiations toward a first contract that will address some of the many concerns that CAVA teachers have voiced,” said CTA President Eric C. Heins. “Now, these teachers can begin to address the problems that are hurting their students, such as insufficient time spent on instruction, high teacher turnover, and too much public money going out of state.”

Read CTA’s news release containing additional information about the ruling and its implications.Agency’s Historic Ruling Will Help Teachers Improve Learning Conditions at Statewide Charter - California Teachers Association:

Carmel Martin’s TeachStrong: An Offering for Hillary? | deutsch29

Carmel Martin’s TeachStrong: An Offering for Hillary? | deutsch29:

Carmel Martin’s TeachStrong: An Offering for Hillary?

On November 10, 2015, the Center for American Progress (CAP) issued this press release promoting what it calls a “campaign… to modernize and elevate teaching,” TeachStrong.

Allow me to offer some observations on this TeachStrong press release, particularly as concerns CAP VP Carmel Martin’s background and words.

Martin was once with the Obama administration.  She left in 2013 to join CAP. Here is how reported Andrew Ujifusa of Ed Week described Martin and her USDOE role upon her USDOE exit:

Carmel Martin, who has been one of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s right-hand people, will be leaving the U.S. Department of Education to oversee policy development at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank closely aligned with the Obama administration.

This is a potentially ground-shifting development at the Education Department. As assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development, Martin has overseen the creation of the department’s blueprint for revising the No Child Left Behind Act, and the waivers from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Martin is into test-score-driven reform.  And she is all in for Common Core and its ability “to close our nation’s gaping achievement gaps or prepare future generations to compete with China.”

In leading this TeachStrong effort, it seems that Martin is hoping to provide an education platform to a 2016 presidential hopeful– a Democratic presidential hopeful– say, uhh, the one that both teachers unions already endorsed– Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, in the opener of the Teach Strong press release, the unions are listed first:

The TeachStrong campaign brings together teachers unions, teacher voice 

Carmel Martin’s TeachStrong: An Offering for Hillary? | deutsch29: