Parents: Who is (mis)Labeling Your Children? – Missouri Education Watchdog

Parents: Who is (mis)Labeling Your Children? – Missouri Education Watchdog:

Parents: Who is (mis)Labeling Your Children?

Labels are good on soup cans, on prescription bottles, but on children? …not so much.

Here’s a newsflash for the data driven educrats:  Children change, develop at different rates, aren’t easily or accurately quantified. Data can bebiased and data can be wrong.
Take, for example, a 7 year old child who was labeled as profoundly developmentally disabled. One specialist told the parent that his child would likely need assistance getting on and off a school bus, and would be in a “classroom of her peers, would not play sports, and likely not attend college.” Turns out, the specialist, who prepared this report for a school disability meeting, was wrong. The specialist couldn’t accurately predict this child’s future, which in itself is great news. (The little girl, now 10 years old, plays soccer and is hoping to be a pro-athlete or scientist when she grows up.) The bad news: the inaccurate report remains in her education record, and has been digitally shared outside of the school. The report was uploaded to the state’s education data records system, SLDS, which collects, stores records on every child beginning in preschool. (For more on this longitudinal data system in every state, see here.) Once data is entered into the state’s SLDS data system, a parent doesn’t know who outside the school has had access to their child’s records, because the information in a child’s education record and SLDS can be shared without parental consent, to anyone the school or state authorizes (vendors, researchers, government agencies like Dept. of Labor, Dept. of Corrections, etc.) Parents often do not know that Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) does not apply to schools and that FERPA privacy law was relaxed, (despite many protests) to allow sharing of a child’s personal information, no parental consent required.

Many parents do not know that the information in their child’s education record, (photos, even medical information, disability status, IEPs, mental health, discipline records, etc.) can be shared outside of school.Parents: Who is (mis)Labeling Your Children? – Missouri Education Watchdog:

Dignity and Respect in Public Schools - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Dignity and Respect in Public Schools - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

Dignity and Respect in Public Schools

Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here.

Dear Harry and friends,

I've spent the last five days trying to get my new fancy iPhone 6 Plus to work. Hours on the phone and a visit back to the Apple store Genius and ... it still is misbehaving. It gives me a slight delight. Even the experts can't always save us. Why does that please me? I'm not sure. Since teachers were never considered experts, perhaps it's a kind of revenge fantasy. For years when I spoke I shared the stage with someone who was called "the expert" while I was "the practitioner." For a while, after I got the MacArthur "Genius" Award I was treated somewhat better. But it wears off.

Thanks for filling me in a bit more on what you were doing before we met—down South.

Someday I'll make you sit down and tell me the whole story.

Meanwhile. I like the Oliver Harvey story. I was stuck by his use of the word "dignity," which has not been in fashion of late. It was the loss of dignity that I was most struck with when I entered teaching in Chicago. I had never been treated as disrespectfully—even as a child—and wasn't sure how to respond. It turned out to be an advantage since it soon became clear to others that I wouldn't "tolerate" it. But then I became a teacher when I was in my 30s, and I was white. One of the effects of the schooling that the least advantaged get during their years and years of schooling is a kind of outward numbness to institutional disrespect. Among their peers, being treated with dignity becomes even more important perhaps for this very reason.

It became clear to me, Harry, that boys—particularly if they were Black—got the worst of it above all from white teaches. During one of our perennial "hat policy" disputes I came to this conclusion: Dignity and Respect in Public Schools - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

Giving Every Child in America a Fair Shot at a Great Education | U.S. Department of Education

Giving Every Child in America a Fair Shot at a Great Education | U.S. Department of Education:

Giving Every Child in America a Fair Shot at a Great Education

 In the days immediately following the State of the Union, Cabinet officials are embarking on the “State of the Union: Cabinet In Your Community” road tour to engage Americans in small towns, big cities and Indian country about the advancements the Administration has made on the most important issues facing the American people, as well as the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. The President made clear in his State of the Union address that the true test is not the challenges we face, but how we approach those challenges. That’s why he and his Cabinet will keep their feet on the gas in this final stretch to continue driving toward solutions that will move this country forward for generations to come, while highlighting the progress that has been made over the past seven years.

***
Giving Every Child in America a Fair Shot at a Great Education

Today in El Paso, Texas, Acting U.S. Education Secretary John King will kick off his “Opportunity Across America” tour to discuss how the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) will build on progress made in education since the beginning of the Obama Administration to ensure that every student —regardless of disability, race, zip code, or family income—is prepared to succeed in school and in life.

Signed by President Obama, the new law helps ensure educational opportunity for all students by:

• Holding all students to high academic standards that prepare them for success in college and careers.
• Providing more children access to high-quality preschool.
• Reducing the often onerous burden of testing on students and teachers, making sure that tests don't crowd out teaching and learning, without sacrificing clear, annual information parents and educators need to make sure our children are learning.
• Empowering state and local decision-makers to develop their own strong systems for school improvement.
• Promoting competitive programs that will build on the Administration’s efforts to spur reform, expand opportunity, and drive better outcomes for America’s students.

And, in recognition of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s legacy as a civil rights law, ESSA upholds critical protections for America’s disadvantaged students, including vulnerable children. The new law ensures that states and school districts will hold schools accountable for the progress of all students. To help accomplish this goal, it prescribes meaningful reforms to remedy underperformance, ensuring that steps are taken to help students who fall behind and their schools; especially the very lowest-performing schools, high schools with high dropout rates, and schools where certain groups of students are not achieving to their fullest potential.

In order to fully realize these critical protections contained in the law and to support state and local leaders, the Department is moving quickly to provide important support and guidance to states during the transition. In order to ensure that states and school districts meet new requirements and take advantage of new opportunities in the law, while ensuring equity for all students, the Department will need to provide regulations, guidance and technical assistance on key provisions of the law. To that end, the Department:

• Issued a Dear Colleague Letter to states to clarify some initial steps as states, districts and schools transition to the new law and signal the Department’s commitment to facilitating a smooth transition to the new law—with minimal disruption to students, families, teachers, and schools.
• Launched the rulemaking process by publishing in the Federal Register a Request for Information to solicit advice and recommendations from about the implementation of the new law, and specifically whether there are areas for which regulations may be helpful. 
• Will hold a second regional meeting this month to gather input on possible areas for regulation and guidance under the new law. It will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 19, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT, at UCLA in Los Angeles.

The new law builds on key areas of progress accomplished in recent years through the efforts of educators, communities, parents, and students from across the country, as the President highlighted in his State of the Union address. Those accomplishments include:

• More preschoolers with access to high-quality early learning programs. The Administration invested billions of dollars in early childhood education, and is building and expanding high-quality preschool in over 200 high-need communities across 18 states that span the geographic and political spectrum.
• The highest high school graduation rate. The nation’s high school graduation rate hit 82 percent in 2013-14, the highest level since states adopted a new uniform way of calculating graduation rates five years ago. The greatest progress has been among students of color. The dropout rate among Hispanics is half of what it was in 2000, and rates for African-American and low-income youths have been cut by more than a third.
• Greater college opportunity. The Administration has dramatically increased investments in the Pell grant program, supporting 2 million more students to attend college each year than in 2008. And more students of color are attending college than ever before. Enrollment for African-American and Hispanic students has risen by more than 1 million since 2008.

Over the past seven years, the Obama Administration has laid the groundwork for generational change in America’s education system. The new law extends many of the key reforms the Administration has encouraged states and districts to adopt in exchange for relief from the more onerous provisions of No Child Left Behind, and as a part of the Administration’s competitive grant programs. The nation has seen tremendous efforts to improve education from cradle to career, with substantial progress made—thanks to the hard work of students, educators, and state and local education officials. The Administration’s efforts include:

• Spurring Comprehensive Change. President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative offered strong incentives to states willing to enact systemic changes that would improve teaching and learning in America’s schools, including adopting higher standards, turning around the lowest performing schools, building strong data systems, and recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals.
• Investments in Innovation. The 15 new experimental sites launched during the Administration, including the Dual Enrollment program and Second Chance Pell, and the Investing in Innovation (i3) program, have helped develop a culture of evidence-based decision-making that accelerates student achievement in pre-K-12 and postsecondary education.
• Creation of Promise Neighborhoods. Since 2010, the Administration’s Promise Neighborhoods program has sought to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty by investing $270 million in more than 50 of our nation’s most distressed communities, representing more than 700 schools.
• A campaign to prepare 100,000 excellent science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teachers: In his 2011 State of the Union address, the President called for a new effort to prepare 100,000 STEM teachers over the next decade with strong teaching skills and deep content knowledge. The President’s Educate to Innovate campaign has resulted in more than $1 billion in direct and in-kind support for STEM education.
• Expanded access to technology students need to succeed. Since President Obama launched his ConnectED initiative in 2013, 20 million more students have access to high-speed Internet. Today, 77 percent of school districts meet minimum standards for high-speed broadband, compared to 30 percent in 2013.

Making college more affordable: Our historic investments in student aid for college, a far simpler Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and the new College Scorecard are helping to give all students the opportunity to go to college by providing them with more scholarship support and the cleared information possible to make informed college choices. We’ve increased the maximum Pell Grant by more than $1,000, expanded education tax credits, kept student loan interest rates low, and helped more than 4 million borrowers manage their debt through plans like the President’s “Pay as You Earn” plan, which caps payments at 10 percent of monthly income. 

In Texas, King will hear from local students, educators, and community leaders about the unique challenges and opportunities faced by border communities. The Obama Administration is committed to expanding opportunity for all students, including English learners and immigrant students. The Administration’s efforts in this area include providing:

• Guidance to ensure equal access for all children to public schools, regardless of immigration status. The guidance is intended to help schools understand their responsibilities under the Supreme Court's decision in Plyler v. Doe and federal civil rights laws to provide all children with equal access to an education regardless of their or their parents' immigration status.
• An English Learner Tool Kit prepared by the Office of English Language Acquisition for states, school districts and school administrations to help them meet their legal obligations to English learner students and to provide students with the support needed to attain English language proficiency while meeting college- and career-ready standards. The tools and resources in the kit are free, available in multiple languages, and accessible on the Department of Education’s website.
• A Resource Guide: Supporting Undocumented Youth to help schools, colleges, teachers, and other personnel seeking to support the college and career success of undocumented youth in secondary and postsecondary institutions, including information about requesting consideration for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) announced in 2012. The Department is currently in the process of developing a separate Resource Guide on early learning and elementary education that includes promising practices for serving undocumented children and children of undocumented parents.
• A Dear Colleague Letter to school districts, colleges, and universities on promoting and maintaining safe, respectful and nondiscriminatory learning environments for all students by protecting students against discrimination or harassment based on their actual or perceived race, religion, or national origin. The letter urges schools to ensure that systems for reporting and responding to bullying and harassment are understood by all students and staff and ensure that the well-being of students and their ability to learn is not negatively affected. It includes several links to federal resources on issues like student harassment, discrimination on the basis of religion or national origin, and refugee and asylee students.
• More than $118 million to states on the southwest border (Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas) to turn around chronically low-performing schools which have demonstrated the greatest need and the strongest commitment to implementing rigorous reforms to raise student achievement.

For more information, please visit whitehouse.gov/sotu.

Is Alabama the New, New Mexico? | VAMboozled!

Is Alabama the New, New Mexico? | VAMboozled!:

Is Alabama the New, New Mexico?

In Alabama, the Grand Old Party (GOP) has put forth a draft bill to be entitled as an act and ultimately called the Rewarding Advancement in Instruction and Student Excellence (RAISE) Act of 2016. The purpose of the act will be to…wait for it…use test scores to grade and pay teachers annual bonuses (i.e., “supplements”) as per their performance. More specifically, the bill is to “provide a procedure for observing and evaluating teachers” to help make “significant differentiation[s] in pay, retention, promotion, dismissals, and other staffing decisions, including transfers, placements, and preferences in the event of reductions in force, [as] primarily [based] on evaluation results.” Related, Alabama districts may no longer use teachers’ “seniority, degrees, or credentials as a basis for determining pay or making the retention, promotion, dismissal, and staffing decisions.” Genius!

Accordingly, Larry Lee whose blog is based on the foundation that “education is everyone’s business,” sent me this bill to review, and critique, and help make everyone’s business. I attach it here for others who are interested, but I also summarize and critique it’s most relevant (but also contemptible) issues below.

For the Alabama teachers who are eligible, they are (after a staggered period of time) to be primarily evaluated (i.e., for up to 45% of a teacher’s total evaluation score) on the extent to which they purportedly cause student growth in achievement, with student growth being defined as the teachers’ purported impacts on “[t]he change in achievement for an individual student between two or more points in time.” Teachers are also to be observed at least twice per year (i.e., for up to 45% of a teacher’s total evaluation score), by their appropriate and appropriately trained evaluators/supervisors, and an unnamed and Is Alabama the New, New Mexico? | VAMboozled!:

How one student asked the state to tackle a looming education question - LA Times

How one student asked the state to tackle a looming education question - LA Times:

How one student asked the state to tackle a looming education question

Oakland High School junior Sky Lowe addressed the Board of Education on Wednesday.

 (Pamela Palma)

The roomful of grownups closed their eyes because a teenager told them to. 

“Imagine if you are 16 years old. It’s only Tuesday, and all you have left is $10,” Sky Lowe, a junior at Oakland High School, said to the California State Board of Education on Wednesday. “You sit there and you ponder: ... Will it be bus money to get to school, or will it be laundry detergent for clean clothes? You can open your eyes now.” It’s a decision he was forced to make after his mother lost her job.

The student was one of several who addressed the State Board of Education at its January meeting Wednesday. At stake is the entire foundation of the state’s education system: how California’s public schools are evaluated for their performance.

The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the replacement of the No Child Left Behind Act, is requiring the state to rethink how it grades schools. In addition to measures of academic progress, under the new law states must take into account at least one out-of-the-classroom factor, such as suspension rates, attendance or school climate, a sense of how safe students feel in school. 

The state board was going in that direction anyway, but now that the federal law requires compliance by the 2017-2018 school year, it has to figure out exactly how to weight the factors, and how to use them to determine which schools need extra help. The new direction reflects a sense across the country that standardized testing has gotten out of hand, and that academic results don’t provide a complete picture of school performance.

Because Lowe didn’t have enough bus money, he missed a lot of school this semester — enough, he told the board, that in the parlance of school accountability, “you would call [it] chronic absence.” He found himself ready to give up on school altogether, let alone college.

One of his teachers, though, sensed he was struggling and helped him in a number of ways, including giving him a bag of quarters for laundry. “I decided to get my grades up and back on track,” he said. “That is what it looks like to make school engagement a How one student asked the state to tackle a looming education question - LA Times:

Detroit teachers fed up with shoddy school conditions - CBS News

Detroit teachers fed up with shoddy school conditions - CBS News:

Detroit teachers fed up with shoddy school conditions

View More: Live News|More News Videos

DETROIT -- Many teachers in the Detroit Public Schools spent a third day out sick Wednesday in protest of conditions in the debt-strapped school district. Since Monday, nearly 70 schools have had to close due to a teacher sickout. Teachers claim the health of 46,000 is in danger.

At Spain Elementary School, some kindergarteners wore their coats in class. In several rooms, it's just too cold for five-year-olds.

A kindergarten student wears her coat in a cold classroom at Spain Elementary School in Detroit on January 13, 2016

CBS NEWS

School counselor Lekia Wilson led CBS News on a tour, when we noticed a smell.

"You can smell the mold through the hallway," Wilson said.

An entire section of the school is closed off, including the gym. It's been ripped up for a year.

"You're seeing the result of rain coming right into the school," Wilson explained.

Water leaking from the roof warped the wood floor, and now the smell of mildew fills the air.

Spain Elementary School in Detroit has been without a gym for a year, due to a leaking roof that damaged the floor.

 CBS NEWS

The school's swimming pool has been waiting for repairs for five years. How do you teach gym without a gym?

"We do conditioning in the hallway," gym teacher Andre Harlan told CBS News.

The state took over financial management of Detroit Public Schools in 2009. The district is still $515 million in debt.

"We kept talking, and talking, and talking and talking, and it was going on deaf ears," said Ivy Bailey, interim head of the teachers' union. "Nothing was changing. And teachers were just fed up."

Darnell Earley is the emergency manager appointed by Michigan's governor to fix the problems.

"Certainly if we don't get the money that we need to deal with the debt situation, Detroit teachers fed up with shoddy school conditions - CBS News:

Where in the world teachers make the most money, and the least - Quartz

Where in the world teachers make the most money, and the least - Quartz:

Where in the world teachers make the most money, and the least

Teaching often involves long hours and grueling effort for little financial return, making the take-home pay of educators the subject of recurring political debates and protests around the world.

But the value placed on teacher’s time varies widely globally, the latest figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which tracks international education trends, show.

OECD’s data reveal that the paychecks of lower secondary (in the US, middle school) teachers in 2013 ranged from a paltry starting salary of $10,647 in Hungary to a comfy $138,920 for accomplished teachers in Luxembourg. Take a look at the data set below. (All salaries have been adjusted for cost of living using the Purchasing Power Index and converted to US dollars.)

On average, the OECD says, lower secondary teachers around the world get a starting salary of $31,013, which slowly inches up to $57,201 when they reach the peak of their qualifications and careers. But there are wide swings on either side of the average; teachers in the Slovak Republic and Estonia make roughly 7% of what those in Luxembourg do, for example. And in the US, where concerns are often raised about underpaid educators, teacher salaries are actually relatively high in comparison to those in other Western countries like France and England (although not compared to their peers in the private sector).

American teachers are also among the hardest-working in the world, according to a recent analysis by teacher resource site Chalk.com based on OECD data. Among all the countries tracked, Colombian teachers spend the most time teaching—but are among the most poorly compensated.

Chalk’s data points to Luxembourg as not only having the highest annual salary for teachers, but also providing the highest payment for hours worked. If you’re one of the millions of teachers appalled by the numbers on your paycheck every month, you might want to seriously consider a relocation.Where in the world teachers make the most money, and the least - Quartz:

How Walton is Doubling Down on Charter Schools - Inside Philanthropy: Fundraising Intelligence - Inside Philanthropy

How Walton is Doubling Down on Charter Schools - Inside Philanthropy: Fundraising Intelligence - Inside Philanthropy:

How Walton is Doubling Down on Charter Schools

Recent volatility in the stock market has been giving investors plenty of jitters lately, but the Walton Family Foundation has no such worries about its investment in the nation's charter school movement.

The funder is so confident, in fact, that it just announced a major new initiative to grow new charter schools and keep existing ones running. Walton announced it will spend $1 billion—that's billion with a "B," folks—over the next five years. That's almost equal to the amount the funder has spent on K-12 education initiatives in the last two decades, and signals that the the funder will continue its high funding levels in this area of recent years. (WFF spent around $200 million on K-12 in 2014, a big jump from the previous year.)

Related: A 900-Pound Gorilla Gets Even Bigger: Walton Ramps Up Its Education Funding

The Walton announcement also comes a few months after the unveiling of a $500 million plan, spearheaded by the Broad Foundation, to double the number of students in charter schools in Los Angeles. That ambitious effort, which involves a number of foundations including Walton, suggests that key ed reform funders haven't lost faith in charter schools despite questions about their effectiveness over the years. 

Related: If You Thought Charter School Funders Might Be Losing Steam, Think Again

The Walton announcement also comes on the heels of news that several members of the Walton family recently set aside $400 million for philanthropy—above and beyond the normal flow of funds into the family's foundation. The bigger picture, here, is that the Waltons are reducing the size of their stake in Walmart, which has the potential to free up vast new resources for philanthropy. Collectively, the Walton heirs were worth nearly $150 billion last year, according to Forbes. 

It's not surprising that the Waltons would choose to double down on charter schools, which have been a signature focus of the family's giving for years, along with the infrastructure that supports such schools. Charter management organizations, charter school associations, pro-charter policy advocacy and research, and organizations such as Teach For America—a major source of teachers for the nation's charter schools—all have received funding from Walton. About a quarter of charter schools nationwide have received start-up grants from Walton. Last year alone, the foundation supported 100 new charter school startups with more than $20 million in grants—or one in five of all new charter schools that opened in 2015. 

Walton plans to spend the new $1 billion over the next five years in areas where the funder already has a presence. The funding will create new charter schools and develop "pipelines of talent," according to Marc Sternberg, Walton's director of education philanthropy. The foundation also indicates that it will continue to invest in K-12 research and policy advocacy, an area that it has given a lot of attention to in recent years.

In a public five-year strategic plan, the foundation says that it's realized that it needs to do more to promote environments that support school choice. Originally, it says, the "thought was that more choices would generate more competition. Competition would catalyze systematic How Walton is Doubling Down on Charter Schools - Inside Philanthropy: Fundraising Intelligence - Inside Philanthropy:

 

Charter schools campaign draws strong pushback from teachers’ union - The Boston Globe

Charter schools campaign draws strong pushback from teachers’ union - The Boston Globe:

Charter schools campaign draws strong pushback from teachers’ union

News that a business-backed coalition with ties to Governor Charlie Baker could spend up to $18 million on a campaign to increase the number of charter schools in Massachusetts drew a reaction from teachers’ unions this week.

A strong one.

American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts president Tom Gosnell released a statement Tuesday calling the planned spending – which kicked off with direct mail to Democrat-controlled districts, including that of Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg – “a downpayment on the over $100 million in public funding they could rob from our locally controlled public schools every single year.”

The campaign, run by the Great Schools Massachusetts coalition, is seeking to pressure lawmakers to consent to legislation that would raise the cap on charter schools. But organizers are also preparing, if the legislative results don’t go their way, for a November ballot question. AFT, which claims 25,000 members, and its allies are gearing up to fight both measures.

Continued Gosnell, “If they think they can rip off Massachusetts voters and taxpayers with sleek mailers and slick ads, they’re wrong. If they think they can come from out of state and tell legislators and communities in the top-ranked state for education how to improve our schools, they’re wrong.”

Play nice, everybody.Charter schools campaign draws strong pushback from teachers’ union - The Boston Globe:

 

Teachers union plans "Enough is Enough!" rally in capital - Florida Politics

Teachers union plans "Enough is Enough!" rally in capital - Florida Politics:

TEACHERS UNION PLANS “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!” RALLY IN CAPITAL

The Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers union, is planning a noon rally in the Capitol courtyard Thursday to show lawmakers their “anger and exasperation” with how the Legislature handles education issues.

The group announced the “Enough is Enough!” event in a Wednesday news release.

Parents, public school supporters and others “will express their anger and exasperation with Florida’s testing mania, the blaming and shaming of teachers, the state’s unfettered support for vouchers and for-profit charters, the state’s refusal to fairly implement the class size rules voters placed in the state constitution, changes in higher education and the need for a higher minimum wage,” the release said.

Before the rally, there will be a “March for Public Education” from the Tallahassee-Leon County Civic Center to the Capitol, beginning at 11:15 a.m.

On a separate web page, the group posted: “Our children are being cheated out of a good education by policy makers and education reforms that are designed to meet the needs of adults rather than the needs of our children: High stakes testing, demonizing of teachers, voucher school and charter school profiteering disguised as ‘choice’ and schemes to undermine Florida’s class size amendment.”

Featured speakers include FEA President Joanne McCall, FEA Vice President Fedrick Ingram, FEA Secretary-Treasurer Luke Flynt, Florida PTA President Mindy Haas, NAACP Florida State Conference President Adora Obi Nweze ,and Service Employees International Union Florida State Council President Monica Russo. 

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Teachers union plans "Enough is Enough!" rally in capital - Florida Politics:

Anonymous no more - Sacramento News & Review

Sacramento News & Review - Anonymous no more - News - Local Stories - January 14, 2016:

Anonymous no more

Second month of City Hall homeless protest propels issue to front pages

Police confiscated most of the City Hall homeless protesters supplies this past Saturday—but by Monday, activists had regrouped along Ninth Street.

PHOTO BY NICK MILLER

When homeless activists started the occupation of City Hall grounds on December 8, there wasn’t much action in the local media. But this past Monday night, the 35th day of this homeless campout in the shadow of the city’s headquarters, nearly every television station in town was parked on Ninth Street. Cameras rolled at 5 p.m. as protesters elevated signs and shouted “We demand / a right to rest.” And, online, videos allegedly from hacker group Anonymous trickled on to YouTube.

It’s been a long five weeks for the homeless occupiers. On New Year’s Day, the city manager’s office sent some 50 police officers, many sporting riot gear helmets and masks, into the camp just before midnight, which led to seven citations, including four arrests.

Subsequent police actions eased up on the show of force. Yet enforcement persists; 12 arrests in total this year, plus at least five citations for illegal camping. The first court date for protesters is next week, January 21.

This past Saturday morning, January 9, police confiscated all the tables, blankets, Sacramento News & Review - Anonymous no more - News - Local Stories - January 14, 2016:

How Two Opt-Out Leaders View the Presidential Race - Politics K-12 - Education Week

How Two Opt-Out Leaders View the Presidential Race - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

How Two Opt-Out Leaders View the Presidential Race

The testing opt-out movement—and progressive voices on K-12—have big plans to expand their influence after the passage of the Every Student Succeds Act, the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 

So how do a couple of the opt-out movement's leaders view the 2016 presidential race?

Diane Ravitch, the president of the Network for Public Education and a leading voice against the use of high-stakes tests, acknowledged to me that when it comes to Democratic candidates, most of her blog's readers, at least, prefer Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Sanders shared his views on "privately run" charter schools and public school funding, voiced during a recent town hall event:

That isn't the first time Sanders has criticized charters. Consider his comments in that video side-by-side with his response to an American Federation of Teachers "Election 2016" questionnaire, in which Sanders wrote that he thought charters schools should be held to the same standards as traditional public schools, and that those standards should be extended to both nonprofit and for-profit charter management organizations.

And Sanders has caught fire with progressives in other ways. You may also remember that Stephen Sawchuk zeroed in on dissatisfaction among some National Education Association members in particular when the NEA endorsed Clinton in the Democratic primary last year, instead of giving more serious consideration to Sanders. Recall also that the AFT backed Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary over Obama, and the NEA didn't endorse Obama until the general election.

Still, Ravitch gave credit to Clinton for her recent critical remarks about some charter schools. She said people shouldn't view those critical statements as a cynical political shift; there's simply more information available about charter schools today for Clinton to consider, Ravitch said, than several years ago.

So in the end, does Ravitch have a preference in the presidential contest? She does—she'll back How Two Opt-Out Leaders View the Presidential Race - Politics K-12 - Education Week: