Seattle Schools Community Forum: On the Costs of the Legislature Continuing to Drag Its Collective Feet on McCleary

Seattle Schools Community Forum: On the Costs of the Legislature Continuing to Drag Its Collective Feet on McCleary:

On the Costs of the Legislature Continuing to Drag Its Collective Feet on McCleary

From the Arizona Republic (another state that underfunds public education):

Why didn't GE choose Arizona as its new HQ? 

General Electric announced this week that it is moving its corporate headquarters from Connecticut to Boston.

“We want to be at the center of an ecosystem that shares our aspirations,” the company said, in a prepared statement. “Greater Boston is home to 55 colleges and universities. Massachusetts spends more on research & development than any other region in the world, and Boston attracts a diverse, technologically-fluent workforce focused on solving challenges for the world. We are excited to bring our headquarters to this dynamic and creative city.”

In Arizona, education is treated an expense. In Massachusetts, it’s an investment.

I wish I could remind Boeing, Microsoft, etc. of this when they want their huge taxbreaks and whine about not enough educated/high tech workers.  How about giving back one-third? One-half? of those tax breaks to support public education. 

I was watching Seattle Channel's City Inside/Out that featured Seattle legislators speaking about the upcoming legislative session.  (I'll probably do a separate thread as Pettigrew, Carlyle, Pedersen and Tarleton all had interesting things to say.  Also, I was part of a panel yesterday along with former legislator, Marcie Maxwell, and SCPTA president, Cassandra Johnston, speaking on the Seattle Schools Community Forum: On the Costs of the Legislature Continuing to Drag Its Collective Feet on McCleary:

This is Bad! Attack on Teacher Unions is an Assault on Students, Workers and Democracy | Alan Singer

This is Bad! Attack on Teacher Unions is an Assault on Students, Workers and Democracy | Alan Singer:

This is Bad! Attack on Teacher Unions is an Assault on Students, Workers and Democracy

The New York Times headline said "Mandatory Union Fees Getting Hard Look by Supreme Court." The picture caption showed "Harlan Elrich, a high school mathematics teacher in California," who "is party to a lawsuit challenging mandatory union dues." Of course fees and dues are not the same thing, which is the crux of the latest challenge to public employee unions in the United States.

On Monday, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of public employee labor unions in the 1977 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education case. Writing for the court majority at that time, Justice Potter Stewart argued that whatever potential interference there might be with First Amendment rights was more than justified by the right of workers to form associations and constitutionally permitted to prevent individuals from benefiting from union activity without paying their far share and to promote "labor peace."

But the current court membership is much more rightwing and anti-union. In a 2012 majority opinion, Associate Justice Samuel A. (for anti-union) Alito argued "Because a public-sector union takes many positions during collective bargaining that have powerful political and civic consequences, the compulsory fees constitute a form of compelled speech and association that imposes a significant impingement on First Amendment rights." That opinion set the stage for the newest freedom of speech challenge to public employee unions.

This is the same Court majority that declared class war on the American people in the 2010 Citizens United decision when it overruled election financing reform and decided that wealthy corporations were "people" and had the right to send unlimited amounts of money to shape public opinion and influence elections. This has This is Bad! Attack on Teacher Unions is an Assault on Students, Workers and Democracy | Alan Singer:

Ethnic Studies Shows Huge Impact in San Francisco - Living in Dialogue

Ethnic Studies Shows Huge Impact in San Francisco - Living in Dialogue:

Ethnic Studies Shows Huge Impact in San Francisco 

By Anthony Cody.

In San Francisco a recently implemented Ethnic Studies course has been startlingly successful in boosting student attendance, GPA, and earned credits. That is the conclusion of a Stanford University study, done by Emily Penner and Thomas Dee. I wrote about these courses back in 2014, when the San Francisco school board voted to approve them. Last year, the California legislature approved a law tasking the state superintendent with developing a plan to make such courses available statewide. Unfortunately, Governor Jerry Brown refused to sign this into law.

The results in San Francisco should encourage Governor Brown to take a second look. While we know there are no silver bullets in education, this research shows effects too large to ignore. The report states:

We find that ES [Ethnic Studies] participation had large, positive effects on each of our student outcomes. Specifically, ES participation increased student attendance (i.e., reduced unexcused absences) by 21 percentage points, cumulative ninth-grade GPA by 1.4 grade points, and credits earned by 23 credits.3 These GPA gains were larger for boys than for girls as well as higher in math and science than in ELA. We find that these surprisingly large effects are robust to a variety of model specifications as well as checks for possible confounds related to the treatment contrast we study (e.g., unobserved teacher effects, the possibly independent effects of an at-risk designation, “heaping” of the assignment 

Ethnic Studies Shows Huge Impact in San Francisco - Living in Dialogue:

What Really Happened in Alaska? – Save Maine Schools

What Really Happened in Alaska? – Save Maine Schools:

What Really Happened in Alaska?

If you didn’t know better, you might think that whatever happened in the Chugach School District in Alaska over a decade ago was a full-blown, ed-reform miracle.

“This district literally leaves no child behind,” gushes Edutopia in this article, which describes the big jump in test scores its students made after switching to a competency-based system of education.

As tends to be the case with legends of ed reform, however, it doesn’t take a whole lot of digging for the whole thing to unravel.

First you find out that the only thing this district has in common with most American school districts is that it happens to be located on Planet Earth.

In Chugach, 214 students live in tiny villages spread out among 22,000 square miles. Students must be flown by private aircraft to reach school sites, and a majority of students are actually home-schooled.

Then you keep digging, and it all starts to get weird.

Like really weird.

You find out, for example, that the entire district wasWhat Really Happened in Alaska? – Save Maine Schools:

Governing Urban Schools in the Future: What’s Facing Philadelphia and Pennsylvania

Governing Urban Schools in the Future: What’s Facing Philadelphia and Pennsylvania:

Governing Urban Schools in the Future

What’s facing Philadelphia and Pennsylvania

Since 2001, the School District of Philadelphia has been run by a state-controlled commission.

Overview

In 2001, the state of Pennsylvania took over the School District of Philadelphia. The move, which came with the consent of the city’s mayor and included an increase in state and city funds for the schools, followed years of turmoil during which the district twice sued the state over funding, the superintendent resigned in frustration, and state officials pushed to have a private company manage Philadelphia’s schools. The School Reform Commission (SRC), which was created as part of the takeover, runs the district, with three members appointed by the governor and two by the mayor. That arrangement has been the subject of continuing debate, with education advocates calling for a return to local control—and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter also advocating an end to the state takeover of the city’s schools.

Given that debate, The Pew Charitable Trusts commissioned an analysis comparing key elements of Philadelphia’s school governance system with those of 15 other major urban districts. The districts—serving Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami-Dade, Milwaukee, Newark (NJ), New York, and St. Paul (MN)—were chosen for their size and their demographic and economic similarities to Philadelphia.

Three key findings emerged:

Ten of the 15 districts studied and more than 90 percent of those in the U.S. are run by elected school boards; those in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York are not. The School District of Philadelphia has never had an elected board.

Of the 15 districts, only Baltimore, Boston, and New York lack the authority to raise revenue on their own—relying instead on city government for the entire local share of the school system’s operating funds. This has always been the case in Philadelphia, even before the state takeover. While the absence of taxing power is rare among districts nationally, it is not uncommon in large northeastern cities.

In all of the districts studied that have experienced some form of state intervention, the governance change has been long-lasting; in Philadelphia, it is entering its 15th year in 2016.

There is no consensus among researchers about whether any particular form of school governance—including state takeovers, mayoral control, or elected local boards—leads to better student performance or fiscal management. But there is strong agreement that any governance system must avoid uncertainty about responsibility and accountability in order for schools to make progress.



If and when state control of the School District of Philadelphia comes to an end, policymakers will have to decide how to govern the city’s schools. This brief is intended to inform those decisions.

Download related materials

Governing Urban Schools in the Future: What’s Facing Philadelphia and Pennsylvania (PDF)

Governing Urban Schools in the Future: What’s Facing Philadelphia and Pennsylvania:

Explaining Khan Academy's patent application for A/B testing in education

Explaining Khan Academy's patent application for A/B testing in education:

Patenting Pedagogy?

Experts attempt to make sense of Khan Academy's patent application for A/B testing in education -- and whether it can even be patented.

A recent patent application by Khan Academy is raising questions about whether teaching methods can be patented, but patent law experts see the move as an influential player fortifying its position in the market. Ultimately, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will have the last say.

The online education platform, which primarily focuses on K-12 education and test preparation, in March applied for a patent for “systems and methods for split testing educational videos” -- in other words, the method of showing students two different clips and determining which one is more effective at teaching a certain topic.

News of the patent application, first reported by Slashdot, was met with confusion from ed-tech analysts over the holidays. Why, they asked, would Khan Academy, a nonprofit whose mission is to “provide a free, world‑class education for anyone, anywhere” patent what effectively amounts to A/B testing in education? How would it affect other online education providers? Most importantly, could it even be patented?

Intellectual property and patent law experts, pointing to supporting documents filed with the patent application, said the patent suggests Khan Academy is aware of the growing interest in online and adaptive education. Applying for a patent now, the experts said, could prevent legal issues in the future.

“Generally speaking, dominant players in a marketplace only run off to get patents to solidify their space in the market they’re already in,” said Jacob S. Sherkow, associate professor of law at New York Law School. “By virtue of that, the only reason I could think of why the Khan Academy is pursuing this patent is to stave off competition.”

Khan Academy is stressing that it only intends to use the patent for “defensive purposes,” for example by countersuing Explaining Khan Academy's patent application for A/B testing in education:

Will the Friedrichs Case Turn Teaching into Just Another Gig? - Living in Dialogue

Will the Friedrichs Case Turn Teaching into Just Another Gig? - Living in Dialogue:

Will the Friedrichs Case Turn Teaching into Just Another Gig?

By John Thompson.

 Linguist Geoff Nunberg announced his word of the year on NPR’s Fresh Air, and he nailed it. Nunberg’s choice is “Gig.” For over a century, “gig was a slang term for a musician’s date or engagement.” In the 1950s, hipsters and the Beats used the term for “any job you took to keep body and soul together while your real life was elsewhere.” Nunberg explains, “A gig was a commitment you felt free to walk away from as soon as you had $50 in your pocket.”

Nunberg explains that it was easy to embrace such a gig when a person had access to a “‘real job’” which was “permanent, well-paid and with benefits.” Thanks to the New Deal, strong unions and the postwar boom, he recalls, the 1950s and 1960s’ were “America’s moment.” Now, some Millennials refer to their jobs as gigs. Some do so because they have the “luxury reserved for people who can pretend they don’t need one [a job].” Most young workers still need careers, but gigs are often the best they can get. Working people must cobble “a livelihood cleaning apartments, delivering groceries and doing other people’s laundry.”

The U.S. Supreme Court is supposed to be the opposite of a gig.  American constitutionalism was founded on a commitment to deeper, time-proven principles of law and justice.  “America’s moment” was not shared by everyone, but the Warren Court was devoted to turning American democracy into more than a gig for the privileged. It extended American rights to all, regardless of race, religion, or wealth. Other justices opposed the broad construction philosophy of liberals such as Earl Warren and they made the case that judicial activism went too far. But, too many of today’s conservatives are treating the law of the land as a gig, as a Will the Friedrichs Case Turn Teaching into Just Another Gig? - Living in Dialogue:

Federal Education Funding: Where Does the Money Go? - US News

Federal Education Funding: Where Does the Money Go? - US News:

Federal Education Funding: Where Does the Money Go?

Here's a look at what your tax dollars have gone toward in the education sphere.

 Government spending on education has surged over the last decade and a half, with money being funneled to federal programs for low-income students, students with disabilities and a slate of competitions that the Obama administration launched through the economic stimulus package.

Since 2002, federal funding for education has increased by 36 percent, from $50 billion to $68 billion, according to an analysis by the Committee for Education Funding, a District of Columbia-based advocacy organization. It peaked in 2009 at $97 million, thanks to an injection of dollars from the economic stimulus, most of which went to staving off teacher layoffs.Federal Education Funding: Where Does the Money Go? - US News:

Authority, Discipline, and the Marginalization of Youth in Schools #EdResearch4SpringValley – Cloaking Inequity

Authority, Discipline, and the Marginalization of Youth in Schools #EdResearch4SpringValley – Cloaking Inequity:

Authority, Discipline, and the Marginalization of Youth in Schools #EdResearch4SpringValley

A young female student at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina was assaulted in her classroom by a police office on October  26, 2015. She was asked to leave a classroom by a teacher after allegedly using her phone during a math class. She refused and was later confronted by Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields, who asked her to leave. When the student ignored him, the officer proceeded to grab her by the neck, slam her desk to the floor and then drag her out of the desk. The footage went viral, and the masses began to react on social media.

Many academics were horrified by what we saw, knowing that the forces that undergird such harsh treatment are similar to the ones that fuel disproportionate suspensions and expulsions and the so-called school-to-prison pipeline. In response, the faculty director of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University, Professor Prudence Carter, with the assistance of Dr. Travis Bristol, a research and policy fellow at the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE), and doctoral student, Kia Darling-Hammond, spearheaded an effort to put together a list of research that addresses the marginalization and treatment of youth of color in our schools.

The call as educational researchers and other social scientists “to make informative research more widely known to educators, parents, students, activists, community-based organizations and many others, as they continue to eradicate disparate treatment in discipline, suspensions, and expulsions in schools.”

The response was immediate. Educational researchers and other social scientists connected via social media to offer their suggestions for Authority, Discipline, and the Marginalization of Youth in Schools #EdResearch4SpringValley – Cloaking Inequity:

New L.A. schools chief favors steady progress and collaboration over drastic change - LA Times

New L.A. schools chief favors steady progress and collaboration over drastic change - LA Times:

New L.A. schools chief favors steady progress and collaboration over drastic change

New Supt. Michelle King says of L.A. Unified: "I see the district as having ... pockets of success, and I see building on the achievements we have. And then I see areas we want to strengthen." (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles' beleaguered school system doesn't need the aggressive shake-up some critics have called for so much as consistent, steady progress and collaboration, new schools Supt. Michelle King said in a meeting Thursday with The Times.

In her first extended interview since taking office this week, King talked more about the "listening" she intends to do in coming weeks than specific decisions she may make, suggesting that she'll take a cautious, measure-twice, cut-once approach to problems at the Los Angeles Unified School District.

"I see the district as having ... pockets of success, and I see building on the achievements we have," she said. "And then I see areas we want to strengthen."

That diplomatic style was clearly part of what won over school board members, who voted 7 to 0 to hire her this week after a five-month, nationwide search. She replaces Ramon C. Cortines, who retired in December.

King said she would not depart from current, defining board policies, including a mandate to limit suspensions and a push to make all graduates eligible to apply to a state college. The key, she said, is to resist one-size-fits-all solutions for schools.

"I stay away from: This is the way; this is the bullet," she said.

Some of the district's detractors are impatient with King's seeming patience. They point to lagging student achievement, financial problems, drift in the instruction division, a divided, sometimes fractious board, and a recent history of failed or abandoned initiatives, such as one to deliver an iPad to every student.New L.A. schools chief favors steady progress and collaboration over drastic change - LA Times:

Are the Common Core math standards being misinterpreted? - The Washington Post

Are the Common Core math standards being misinterpreted? - The Washington Post:

Are the Common Core math standards being misinterpreted?

Kathy Liu Sun is an assistant professor of math education at Santa Clara University who was a public high school math teacher for nine years in San Jose, California. She argues in the following post that the Common Core math standards — which have caused great consternation in many places around the country — are being misinterpreted. Here’s her argument. See if you agree.

By Kathy Liu Sun

If you feel like screaming after helping your children with their math homework, you’re not alone. Across the United States there’s mounting frustration towards the Common Core State Standards for mathematics.

What many parents and teachers are experiencing is not the intent of the standards.

The key idea of Common Core is for students to come up with the solutions on their own, and not be prescriptively told how to solve the problem. The goal is for students to be able to think flexibly. Students should have the opportunity to explore, test strategies, and make sense of answers when solving problems.

In my research and work with math teachers, I’ve observed that educators are trying to fit the standards into an old system of teaching math. We used to learn math by memorizing a “rule” and then repeating it to solve a series of similar problems. Teachers would stand at the board and model how to follow this algorithm. Students would then practice the algorithm over and over.

Under the guise of Common Core, rather than learning one rule, students are now memorizing and executing three or more different rules for the same set of problems.

To better understand this, let’s look at an example of subtraction.

In the past, many of us learned subtraction by following the traditional Are the Common Core math standards being misinterpreted? - The Washington Post:

Schooling the Secretary of Education | SocialistWorker.org

Schooling the Secretary of Education | SocialistWorker.org:

Schooling the Secretary of Education

New York City educator and writer Brian Jones was part of a roundtable with the new Secretary of Education John King. Here's what he and other teachers had to say

Teachers meet with Education Secretary John King (center, with glasses) for a roundtable discussion (Department of Education)

 LAST WEEK, I had the opportunity to join a small group of teachers at acting U.S. Secretary of Education John King's very first "Tea with Teachers" conversation during his first week on the job.

The topic was teacher retention. Roughly a dozen teachers and educators from around the country sat around a large conference table with King Behind us along the walls sat perhaps two dozen department staffers, many of whom, I learned later, are former educators appointed by King.

King opened the meeting by explaining that he has roughly 13 months in office before the next administration moves in. The new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) reduces the power of his agency to enforce standards, testing and curriculum, thus overturning crucial elements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)--though it leaves the overall edifice of standardized testing untouched, as even some supporters of the new law have commented.

King said his first concern is to figure out how to make sure states promote racial and economic equity in education, in keeping with the spirit of the 1965 law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, that ESSA reauthorizes. King vowed to focus on students who are "most vulnerable"--including students of color, immigrant students and low-income students. He reminded us that he is the child of teachers and that he worked as both a teacher and as a principal himself. More recently, he was New York Commissioner of Education.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

BEFORE MAKING the trip, I asked several colleagues, on social media and in person, what I should say to John King about teacher retention.

Several of the responses can't be repeated in a family newspaper. Suffice it to say, King made some enemies during his time as New York's education commissioner. He Schooling the Secretary of Education | SocialistWorker.org:

With A Brooklyn Accent: Three Sports Moments- Thoughts on Coaching and Parenting

With A Brooklyn Accent: Three Sports Moments- Thoughts on Coaching and Parenting:

Three Sports Moments- Thoughts on Coaching and Parenting

One of the things I learned from coaching and parenting is that children choose their own sports to excel in. I exposed both of my children and my grand daughter Avery to many sports. But THEY were the ones who figured out what sports they would most make their mark in. Here are three moments when I realized each had found their sport

Sara and Tennis.

I taught Sara how to throw catch and hit from the time she was three years old and she was a star in boys baseball and basketball from an early age. She showed little interest in tennis until she started taking group lessons with the best boy athletes in the neighborhood and started beating boys who were actually better baseball players than she was. Then, the indoor tennis facility where she took lessons was abandoned by owner and was basically run by the pros who taught there, especially Steve Carberry and Joanne Bongiorno Sheeler. They worked out an arrangement where kids who took lessons with them could play for free on off hours. During that winter, Sara, who was 8 was "adopted" by the best older kids at the bubble, including R.j. Sheeler, With A Brooklyn Accent: Three Sports Moments- Thoughts on Coaching and Parenting:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: On MLK Day, time to talk about inequality in America and schools

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: On MLK Day, time to talk about inequality in America and schools:

On MLK Day, time to talk about inequality in America and schools

Chicago State students march to save their school from closure. 

 "Inequality is inevitable; the vast inequality of America today isn’t." -- Paul Krugman in today's NYT. 

Krugman even tips his hat to Pres. Obama for raising the tax rate on top earners and pushing through his health care reform. Not only didn't the sky fall, as conservatives predicted, but over the past six years, we've had the best job growth since the 1990s.

But job growth is only a small part of the struggle for equality, especially when that growth is accompanied by flattening or shrinking real wages, union-busting, and the re-creation of a two-tier school system through privatization and charteriztion, and limited access to higher education.

Case in point -- the imminent closure of predominantly-black Chicago State Univ. as a result of Gov. Rauner's austerity program and his holding hostage the Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: On MLK Day, time to talk about inequality in America and schools:

Stop Blaming Public Schools for Jobless Economy | janresseger

Stop Blaming Public Schools for Jobless Economy | janresseger:

Stop Blaming Public Schools for Jobless Economy

In recent weeks Fortune Magazine in Business Gets Schooled and the NY Times in The Counterfeit High School Diploma blame public schools for turning out workers ill-equipped for today’s jobs.  Both articles allege that public school failure is causing our nation’s economic problems and the loss of our edge in the global marketplace. This is, of course, an old story, but according to economists, this story line may not describe our economic reality at all.

Robert Kuttner explains in a detailed and very readable piece, “The New Inequality Debate,” in the Winter 2016 issue of The American Prospect, that although the consensus among economists used to be that economic inequality derives from a skills gap—between what employers need and job seekers present—the problem is instead about power on all kinds of levels—the power of employers over workers in these days of weakened unions—the power of wealth influencing the political system and so on.

Kuttner describes recent work by the British economist Anthony Atkinson and a new, more popular book by Robert Reich, who describes, “all the ways that political power by economic elites rigs the rules of how markets work—in favor not of efficiency, but of the rich and the powerful—increasing both inefficiency and inequality.  With increased market power comes increased concentration of wealth, and still more concentration of both political and economic Stop Blaming Public Schools for Jobless Economy | janresseger:

Support Fair Funding for ALL Baltimore City Public School Students | Re:education in Baltimore

Support Fair Funding for ALL Baltimore City Public School Students | Re:education in Baltimore:

Support Fair Funding for ALL Baltimore City Public School Students

Dear Readers of Re:education in Baltimore:

Nine charter school operators representing 14 of the more than 30 public charter schools in Baltimore City are suing for more money. We know they already get more. A new grassroots advocacy group of Baltimore City Public School parents and supporters called People for Public Schools compared a traditional and a charter of similar size and demographics. Charters have a clear advantage: more staff, more teachers, lower student-teacher ratios, more academic coaches and after-school activities – and they can carry surplus money over from year to year. If these charters win, they all will get more. And traditional schools will get even less. I think that’s wrong. I think fair and equitable funding is right. I think ensuring the sustainability of the public school system is right. I think decisions about budgets that have an impact on all our children should be made in public. If you agree, sign here:

“It’s about collective struggle”: Interview with Jesse Hagopian on education & the movement for Black Lives | I AM AN EDUCATOR

“It’s about collective struggle”: Interview with Jesse Hagopian on education & the movement for Black Lives | I AM AN EDUCATOR:

“It’s about collective struggle”: Interview with Jesse Hagopian on education & the movement for Black Lives

As the one-year anniversary of a Seattle police officer pepper spraying me on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day approaches, I sat down with the Seattle Weekly reporter, Casey Jaywork, to discuss ongoing struggles for social justice. Here are my reflections on police brutality, the intersection of race and class, and disrupting the school-to-prison-pipeline.

—

Teacher and activist Jesse Hagopian. Photo by Jose Trujillo.

You Don’t Have to Be a Klan Member to Be Racist

A conversation with Jesse Hagopian.

By Casey Jaywork Tue., Jan 12 2016 at 06:07PM

Last year, teacher and activist Jesse Hagopian broke the Internet—but not in a good way. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Hagopian was randomly pepper sprayed by a panicked cop. Video of the incident went viral, adding yet another chapter to the Seattle Police Department’s long history of excessive force. Hagopian is currently suing the city.

Teacher and activist Jesse Hagopian. Photo by Jose Trujillo.

But there’s more to this teacher than his receipt of SPD’s favored less-than-lethal weapon. With another MLK Day approaching, Seattle Weekly sat down with Hagopian to talk about race and justice in Seattle.

SW: You’re a teacher and advocate, but you may be best known for getting pepper sprayed during last year’s MLK march.

JH: It’s rough to be known for your worst day of your life. It’s hard that random people come up 

Trying to teach in DPS amid decay: 'It's a travesty'

Trying to teach in DPS amid decay: 'It's a travesty':

Trying to teach in DPS amid decay: 'It's a travesty'

Temperatures outside are in the 20s, but the windows in the principal’s office at Detroit Institute of Technology Preparatory High School are cracked open and two fans are running to keep the indoor temperature from reaching 90 degrees.

Fifteen ceiling tiles are missing over the head of Principal Latoya Hall-King as she explains that her side of the building must tolerate desert heat to keep the other side of the building from freezing in the January air.

"We have a boiler that needs to be fixed," Hall-King said. "But it's very expensive with a cash-strapped district."

Hall-King was hosting Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who visited Detroit today for a meeting and toured the school to see first-hand some of the conditions that have prompted teachers across Detroit to call in sick in recent days, forcing more than 70 schools to close.Trying to teach in DPS amid decay: 'It's a travesty':

Alabama Teacher of the Year, Ann Marie Corgill: Reflecting and Dreaming | deutsch29

Alabama Teacher of the Year, Ann Marie Corgill: Reflecting and Dreaming | deutsch29:

Alabama Teacher of the Year, Ann Marie Corgill: Reflecting and Dreaming

 Ann Marie Corgill

On October 30, 2015, Alabama Teacher of the Year Ann Marie Corgill suddenly resigned from her teaching position.



 There is a lot to her story.

On November 20, 2015, I traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, to learn of the details behind Corgill’s resignation, and then some. She graciously allowed me to interview her for over four hours.

I produced a series of five posts based upon our conversation:

• Part I: Corgill’s resignation hits the media;
• Part II: Events leading to Corgill’s resignation;
• Part III: Corgill becomes Alabama Teacher of the Year;
• Part IV: Corgill’s years in New York, and
• Part V: Corgill’s encounters with professional bullying.

Even though Part V was the end of my series, I wanted to offer Ann Marie the opportunity to have the final word. So, I invited her to both reflect on my series and discuss her future plans.

The remainder of this post is Ann Marie’s eloquent and detailed response.

***

Dear Readers,

My name is Ann Marie Corgill, and I have taught and learned from children in grades one through six since August of 1994. I know for a fact that my purpose on Earth is Alabama Teacher of the Year, Ann Marie Corgill: Reflecting and Dreaming | deutsch29: