Unaccountable Private School Voucher Program a Billion Dollar Boondoggle Under Gov. Walker and Republican Legislature

Unaccountable Private School Voucher Program a Billion Dollar Boondoggle Under Gov. Walker and Republican Legislature | Educate All Students: Larry Miller's Blog:

Unaccountable Private School Voucher Program a Billion Dollar Boondoggle Under Gov. Walker and Republican Legislature

‘A Bad Deal For Our Children, Our Public Schools and Wisconsin Taxpayers’

MADISON, Wis. — A new analysis from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau finds that under Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature, Wisconsin taxpayers will have to foot a $1.18 billion plus tab for the private school voucher program by the end of the 2016-17 fiscal year. In addition, the state treasury will take a $30 million per year hit from a no top income limit tax giveaway to parents already sending their kids to private schools.

One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross commented, “Not only did Gov. Walker and Republicans in the state legislature make the largest cuts to K-12 public education in state history, but by the end of this current budget they’ll have blown over $1.1 billion of taxpayer dollars on the unaccountable private school voucher program.”

According to a memo from the Fiscal Bureau, released today by Senate Democratic Leader Jennifer Shilling, spending on the unaccountable private school voucher program will skyrocket from $145.9 million in 2011 when Walker and Republicans came to power to over $257 million in 2016.

The state Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has reported that under the expanded voucher program approved by the GOP, in excess of over 80% of the students applying for the program for the 2014–15 school year did not attend a Wisconsin public school in the previous year and in 2013 over 70% of the student receiving taxpayer funded vouchers were previously covering their tuition by other means.

Independent reviews of student achievement has found that voucher students do no better, and in some cases worse, than peer students in public schools. Over the years the voucher Unaccountable Private School Voucher Program a Billion Dollar Boondoggle Under Gov. Walker and Republican Legislature | Educate All Students: Larry Miller's Blog:

Great Public Schools are for Every Student. No Exceptions! - Lily's Blackboard

Great Public Schools are for Every Student. No Exceptions! - Lily's Blackboard:

Great Public Schools are for Every Student. No Exceptions!

By Toni Smith, Trainer and board member, Georgia Safe Schools Coalition. Educator for 32 years. 

As an educator, I’ve been guided by a philosophy that evolved as I worked and developed my practice, and I’ve tried to articulate what I want for all children, including children who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ). These students are marginalized and rejected with impunity. I want them to have love, security, and peace; how can I contribute to that?

Understanding that education is the key that unlocks all human rights, I know that the schoolhouse is the one institution that almost all people pass through and it holds the promise for all children.

So you see, the NEA vision statement says it all for me: Great Public Schools for Every Student. The word everymeans all of the individual members of a group without exception. As educators, policy makers, and supporters of public education, it is critical that we look at students through lenses not clouded by bias and cultural expectations. In choosing our life’s work, we have dedicated ourselves to the whole child — the unique individuals who populate our public schools.

So, let’s break down what we mean when we consider the whole child and how we can support every student.

Children come to us full of personality, assumptions, and values of their own. And while these change as they grow older, children start out with a baseline that is not solely formed by their surroundings; much of who we are is innate. Sexual orientation and sense of gender, like race, are real and inborn and make up so much of the human experience that they cannot be ignored or rejected.

That sense of “boyness” or “girlness” or something altogether different is as much a part of the whole child as their physical build. In addition, at some point in growth, attractions to other people develop, and these crushes and relationships can make or break a child’s self-image and view of the world. We cannot separate children into little segments and cherry-pick those we accept.The whole child includes who they are inside and who they loveoutside. We must accept and include the whole child. Every child.

LGBTQ students are often regarded as “outside” of what society sees as the norm and that “otherness” can be reinforced daily through their home and community interactions, the media, and many institutions. School must not be one of those places.

It’s important to understand that what takes place in and around the schoolhouse can mean the difference between life and death for some students. School is sometimes the only place where students find unconditional acceptance. For LGBT or questioning students, this acceptance and the support that comes with it affects how they learn, the social decisions they make, the goals they set andGreat Public Schools are for Every Student. No Exceptions! - Lily's Blackboard: 

James Kirylo: Gates’ Plan to Take Over Teacher Education Advances | Diane Ravitch's blog

James Kirylo: Gates’ Plan to Take Over Teacher Education Advances | Diane Ravitch's blog:

James Kirylo: Gates’ Plan to Take Over Teacher Education Advances

Many of us could live our lives without giving a second thought to teacher education. Either we earned a degree in a teacher preparation program or we didn’t. Only those who work in these institutions are deeply engaged in their future.

Never fear, as Laura Chapman reported in the last post, and as James Kirylo documents here, Bill Gates has trained his laser vision on teacher education.

Kirylo writes:

“As most know, Bill Gates, through his foundation, has worked hard in an attempt to disturbingly shape K-12 education in his own image. Next on his radar is teacher preparation—with the awarding of $35 million to a three-year project called Teacher Preparation Transformation Centers funneled through five different projects, one of which is the Texas Tech based University-School Partnerships for the Renewal of Educator Preparation (U.S. Prep) National Center.

“A framework that will guide this “renewal” of educator preparation comes from the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET), along with the peddling of their programs, The System for Teacher and Student Advancement (TAP) and Student and Best Practices Center (BPC). Yet, again, coming from another guy with bags of money, leading the charge of NIET is Lowell Milken [brother of junk bond king Michael Milken] who is Chairman and TAP founder.

“Though a handful of other places could serve as an example, the state James Kirylo: Gates’ Plan to Take Over Teacher Education Advances | Diane Ravitch's blog:

This is What You Should Do for Valentine's Day (Pretty Please) - Lily's Blackboard

This is What You Should Do for Valentine's Day (Pretty Please) - Lily's Blackboard:

This is What You Should Do for Valentine’s Day (Pretty Please)

 We’re a little more than midway through the 2015-16 academic year, and what a whirlwind it’s been! I bet many of you can hardly remember those first heady days of school – learning students’ personalities, finding your rhythm, making it all work. After years in the classroom, much of it seems to just come naturally. But I remember my own early days in Utah. I didn’t start off as the state’s Teacher of the Year. Some days when I went into the classroom, I felt more like this.

Each year, 200,000 new educators join us as newbies. Many of them have yet to find their groove. They are struggling to keep their heads above water and may even be thinking that this first year may well be their last.

Now’s a great time for you to check in with your newest colleagues. You’ve been in their shoes. Offer them support, show them love, and let them know they’re part of a union that wants them to have everything they need to thrive.

A National Center for Education Statistics study last year said that about 17 percent of new teachers leave the profession after only one year. Some estimates are upwards of 30 percent. As Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University points out, the challenge is not always recruiting new teachers, but retaining current teachers.

Many new educators wish they’d had more training in how to manage their classrooms and they yearn for meaningful, relevant professional development that will give them the confidence we all needed that first year.This is What You Should Do for Valentine's Day (Pretty Please) - Lily's Blackboard:

At Success Academy School, TWA Teaching While Angry - The New York Times

At Success Academy School, a Stumble in Math and a Teacher’s Anger on Video - The New York Times:
At Success Academy School, a Stumble in Math and a Teacher’s Anger on Video

 In the video, a first-grade class sits cross-legged in a circle on a brightly colored rug. One of the girls has been asked to explain to the class how she solved a math problem, but she has gotten confused.

She begins to count: “One… two…” Then she pauses and looks at the teacher.

The teacher takes the girl’s paper and rips it in half. “Go to the calm-down chair and sit,” she orders the girl, her voice rising sharply.

“There’s nothing that infuriates me more than when you don’t do what’s on your paper,” she says, as the girl retreats.

The teacher in the video, Charlotte Dial, works at a Success Academycharter school in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. She has been considered so effective that the network promoted her last year to being a model teacher, who helps train her colleagues.

After sending the girl out of the circle and having another child demonstrate how to solve the problem, Ms. Dial again chastises her, saying, “You’re confusing everybody.” She then proclaims herself “very upset and very disappointed.”

The video was recorded surreptitiously in the fall of 2014 by an assistant teacher who was concerned by what she described as Ms. Dial’s daily harsh treatment of the children. The assistant teacher, who insisted on anonymity because she feared endangering future job prospects, shared the video with The New York Times after she left Success in November.

After being shown the video last month, Ann Powell, a Success spokeswoman, described its contents as shocking and said Ms. Dial had been suspended pending an investigation. But a week and a half later, Ms. Dial returned to her classroom and her role as an exemplar within the network.

Success’s own training materials, provided by the network’s leader, Eva S. Moskowitz, say that teachers should never yell at children, “use a sarcastic, frustrated tone,” “give consequences intended to shame children,” or “speak to a child in a way they wouldn’t in front of the child’s parents.”

Ms. Moskowitz dismissed the video as an anomaly. A group of parents gathered by the Cobble Hill school’s principal defended Ms. Dial and said the video did not reflect their experience of the school.

But interviews with 20 current and former Success teachers suggest that At Success Academy School, a Stumble in Math and a Teacher’s Anger on Video - The New York Times:

The new math section of the SAT doesn’t just test students’ knowledge of math - Quartz

The new math section of the SAT doesn’t just test students’ knowledge of math - Quartz:
The new math section of the SAT doesn’t just test students’ knowledge of math

The SAT, one of the US’ two major college admissions exams, has long been separated into its math and verbal components. But the newest version of the test, to be administered starting on March 5, would seem to make the split a little less clear.

In addition to algebra and data analysis, the math sections will require linguistic adroitness—enough, at least, to parse problems dealing with real-life applications. “It’s about the real world,” the nonprofit College Board, the test’s creator, says on its website. “Instead of testing you on every math topic there is, the new SAT asks you to use the math that you’ll rely on most in all sorts of situations.”

The new test seeks to show math in context, but some sample questions released through the online education platform and College Board partner Khan Academy may be straight-up confusing to teens.

A question on the old test about manipulating exponents might appear like this:

If p and m are positive integers and 16p = 2m, what is the value of p ⁄m?

On the new test a similar skill appears as a word problem:

B = 70M0.75

Kleiber’s law, above, relates the basal metabolic rate, B, measured in kilocalories per day, of an animal to its body mass, M, measured in kilograms. If the body mass of an elephant is 106 times that of a 

The new math section of the SAT doesn’t just test students’ knowledge of math - Quartz:

Stop Humiliating Teachers - The New Yorker

Stop Humiliating Teachers - The New Yorker:
Stop Humiliating Teachers

A Necessary commonplace: Almost everyone we know has been turned around, or at least seriously shaken, by a teacher—in college, maybe, but often in high school, often by a man or a woman who drove home a point or two about physics, literature, or ethics, and looked at us sternly and said, in effect, You could be more than what you are. At their best, teachers are everyday gods, standing at the entryway to the world. If they are fair and good, they are possibly the most morally impressive adults that their students will ever know. For a while, they are the law, they are knowledge, they are justice.

Everyone celebrates his or her personal memory of individual teachers, yet, as a culture, we snap at the run-down heels of the profession. The education reporter Dana Goldstein, in her book “The Teacher Wars,” published in 2014, looks at American history and describes a recurring situation of what she calls “moral panic”—the tendency, when there’s an economic or social crisis, to lay blame on public-school teachers. They must have created the crisis, the logic goes, by failing to educate the young.

We have been in such a panic for more than a decade, during which time the attacks on public-school teachers have been particularly virulent. They are lazy, mediocre, tenaciously clinging to tenure in order to receive their lavish pay of thirty-six thousand dollars a year (that’s the national-average starting salary, according to the National Education Association). As Goldstein put it, “Today the ineffective tenured teacher has emerged as a feared character, a vampiric type who sucks tax dollars into her bloated pension and health care plans, without much regard for the children under her care.” Because of this person, we are failing to produce an effective workforce; just look at how badly we’re lagging behind other nations in international standardized tests. Our teachers are mediocre as a mass; we have to make a serious effort to toss out the bad ones before they do any more damage. And so on. It’s not just Republicans who talk this way. Democrats, too, are obsessed with ridding the system of bad teachers. From the President on down, leaders have been demanding “accountability.”

There’s an element of this rage at bad teachers that’s hard to talk about, and so it’s often avoided: the dismaying truth that we don’t know how to educate poor inner-city and rural kids in this country. In particular, we don’t know how to educate African-American boys, who, according to the Schott Foundation for Public Education, graduate high school at rates no better than fifty-nine per Stop Humiliating Teachers - The New Yorker:

Bringing failing charter schools to heel

Bringing failing charter schools to heel:
Bringing failing charter schools to heel

Gov. Rick Snyder and would-be education reformers in both parties talk ad nauseum about holding all Michigan’s schools accountable. But charter schools, which now serve 145,000 K-12 students in Michigan and vacuum up more than $1 billion in taxpayer funds, remain maddeningly insulated from public scrutiny.

When state legislators opened the floodgates to charter schools a generation ago, the charter movement’s champions pledged that nonprofit and for-profit operators freed from the yoke of teachers unions and meddling bureaucrats would dramatically improve educational outcomes for students, especially in impoverished cities, such as Detroit and Flint, where the failure of traditional public schools was manifest in low academic achievement and high dropout rates.

In some states — notably Massachusetts, where demanding standards and strict oversight have fostered charters that regularly out-perform that state’s exemplary public schools — the charter movement has been as good as its word.

But in Michigan, many charters cannot even clear the low bar set by the state’s most challenged traditional schools. In a survey conducted by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, eight in 10 Michigan charter schools reported academic achievement metrics below the state average in reading and math.

In its second annual report card assessing the performance of Michigan’s burgeoning charter sector, Education Trust — Midwest sees some evidence that increased scrutiny by the media and nonprofit community has yielded modest improvements in the performance of 16 charter authorizers whose schools serve 95% of the state’s charter students. Eastern Michigan University and Oakland University, which ranked near the bottom in ETM’s initial assessment a year ago, were among authorizers who Bringing failing charter schools to heel:

Common Core State Standards: Debunking myths and concerns | Fox17

Common Core State Standards: Debunking myths and concerns | Fox17:
Common Core State Standards: Debunking myths and concerns

 GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – Since Michigan adopted the Common Core State Standards into our classrooms, they have become highly politicized and very controversial. Parents and teachers alike have concerns and some have led to myths about what these teaching standards actually are.

Common Core State Standards are a set of English language arts and math standards that specify what K-12 students need to know at each grade level. Think of them as a road map for teachers to plan and create their curriculum.

They are a first-of-their-kind national standards that the National Governors Association and non-partisan group, the Council of Chief State School Officers, created, along with state educators. They are also internationally bench marked.

The Michigan Board of Education adopted Common Core in June 2010. Now, 42 states use them in full: four states have not adopted the standards (AK, TX, NE, VA); three states adopted and then withdrew from participation (OK, IN, SC); and Minnesota has only adopted the ELA standards.

Common Core State Adoption | StartClass

A widely held concern is that Common Core tells teachers how to teach.

“It’s forcing the teachers to require all the children learn at the same pace, and children do not learn at the same pace,” said Melanie Kurdys, the co-founder of Stop Common Core in Michigan.

Kurdys is a former Portage School Board member and is now a math tutor who believes Common Core has taken the control out of the classroom. However, educators like Michelle Goodwin disagree, and believe it is still up to teachers to determine how to Common Core State Standards: Debunking myths and concerns | Fox17:

Chicago Dad's Sarcastic Absence Note Takes on Standardized Testing

Chicago Dad's Sarcastic Absence Note Takes on Standardized Testing:

Dad's Cheeky Absence Note Takes on Standardized Testing

Chicago's Jeff Jenkins said his daughter couldn't wait to get back to exams

In this Feb. 12, 2015, file photo, practice test books sit on a table at Morgan South Elementary School in Stockport, Ohio.   (AP Photo/Ty Wright, File)

(NEWSER) – A Chicago girl was sick from school on Wednesday, so her dad had to pen a note to explain her absence. And Jeff Jenkins didn't hold back in describing both why she missed class and how he feels about standardized testing, CBS Chicago reports. After noting his child had been ill, Jenkins wrote, in an obviously sarcastic tone: "She is feeling much better today and is eager to get back to school in hopes of achieving a high score on any number of Standardized Tests that will be given this year to insure that Private Corporations continue to receive huge and profitable contracts from [Chicago Public Schools] voted on by the Appointed Board of Education." Jenkins joins an outspoken number of parents who are raising a ruckus about what they say is a "toxic culture of testing," per CBS News.

Although students are made to take state tests once a year in grades three through eight and once more in in high school, states and districts often pile on their own tests, many tied to Common Core standards. The Council of the Great City Schools found that students end up taking an average 112 standardized tests during their pre-K-to-12th grade career,spending about 25 hours per school year on such exams. But many parents and students are now rebelling against the tests and joining the "opt-out" movement (the Sun-Timesreported 11% of Chicago students skipped the new PARCC test last year). In regard to his own rant, Jenkins tells CBS 2 that "using humor and irony to point out injustice and hypocrisy can be an effective way to promote dialogue and change." (But does it measure up to this school note?)Chicago Dad's Sarcastic Absence Note Takes on Standardized Testing:

Don't Scoff Conservatives and labor find common ground. Can they do it again? | The Weekly Standard

Don't Scoff | The Weekly Standard:

Don't Scoff

Conservatives and labor find common ground. Can they do it again?

 The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaces No Child Left Behind, unceremoniously ushers Uncle Sam out of a domestic arena like no legislation since welfare reform two decades ago. How in the world did that happen during the hyper-progressive Obama administration?

The conventional wisdom ascribes it to the president’s depleted political capital, bipartisan exasperation with recently departed education secretary Arne Duncan, and Senate committee chair Lamar Alexander's shrewd legislative strategy. But another explanation has gotten entirely too little attention: the collaboration of Republicans and teachers' unions. This ostensibly unlikely partnership contributed to an unexpected bipartisan win. But it also speaks to a deep-seated—some might say deeply buried—bond between conservatism and workers.

Political conditions may have created an unusually propitious opportunity to exploit this attachment. Elections analyst Henry Olsen recently noted how blue-collar anxieties are transforming political coalitions in a number of nations. Across the pond, for example, David Cameron's Conservative party is aiming to rebrand itself the "party of workers." Domestically, the most improbable pair of candidates, billionaire Donald Trump and socialist Bernie Sanders, are demonstrating that working-class votes are very much up for grabs.

But a pending Supreme Court case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, may prove to be the most disruptive and auspicious variable in this equation. It could help untether labor from its progressive moorings and make new coalitions possible.

All of this is occurring alongside conservatives' peaking frustration with the power-consolidation of big government and crony capitalism. If that augurs the right's reinvigorated commitment to decentralization, a key question emerges: Might conservatives see workers and their local organizations as allies?

The story of this new federal education law offers invaluable insights into the roots and implications of Don't Scoff | The Weekly Standard:

Is America's Most Controversial Education Group Changing Its Ways? | Mother Jones

Is America's Most Controversial Education Group Changing Its Ways? | Mother Jones:

Is America's Most Controversial Education Group Changing Its Ways?

"The fact that we're discussing race and privilege in such a frank way is completely new."

Audrey Pribnow, with Teach for America, leads her class at University Academy in Kansas City, Missouri. Photo by Tammy Ljungblad/TNS/ZUMAPRESS.com

 Last weekend, Teach for America, the nonprofit that places freshly minted college graduates in schools to teach for two years, held a national summit in Washington, DC, to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The event featured a number of the organization's most celebrated alumni who helped build today's education reform movement—known for its passion for testing, ranking of teachers, and deep support of charter schools. Michelle Rhee, the former DC schools chancellor was there; so was Eva Moskowitz, the head of the largest chain of charter schools in New York City, and Michael Johnson, the Colorado senator who helped pass one of the early laws mandating the use of test scores in teachers' evaluations.

As soon as the summit began, Teach for America's zealous supporters and fierce critics took to Twitter. "Please tell me that somebody is protesting this awful, anti-public education conference," writer and author, Nikhil Goyal, tweeted. Joel Klein, a former superintendent of New York schools who now works for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, tweeted, "[Teach for America] has produced more great leaders fighting for edu[cational] equity than any other." Teach for America alum Gary Rubenstein launched a #FactCheckTFA25 hashtag that he said would deflate many of the organizations' exaggerations about its successes.

It's hard to think of an education reform organization today that is more well-known and more divisive than Teach for America. Many advocates say Teach for America is on the front lines of fighting educational inequity and racism by sending top talent to the most struggling classrooms; opponents charge that Teach for America sends poorly trained teachers into schools with high rates of kids in poverty that need qualified teachers the most. Opponents also argue the organization's elite recruits often displace veteran black and Latino teachers.

In the last three years, a stream of articles and open letters from Teach for America alums have fanned the flames. In 2013, Olivia Blanchard published an essay in The Atlantic, "I Quit Teach for America," in which she declared that the five-week Is America's Most Controversial Education Group Changing Its Ways? | Mother Jones:

Sacramento County, our Action Civics Initiative | Comstock's magazine

Action Civics | Comstock's magazine:

Action Civics

Civic learning belongs at the forefront of preparing students for college, career and civic life

 We hear a lot about the bad news: Fewer than 8.2 percent of eligible voters ages 18–24 turned out in the 2014 general election; most Americans cannot name the three branches of government; many young people do not think their civic involvement is worthwhile. But there are pockets of good news all around us. More schools are building on the old adage, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” We call this “action civics,” and we know it works.

Here in Sacramento County, our Action Civics Initiative, comprising 12 teams of teachers in five districts, has a unified vision: to integrate civic awareness, skills and engagement across the curriculum; empower students to identify local issues, develop strategies and become change agents in their communities; and equip the next generation with the skills they need for college, career and civic life.

Every day in Sacramento County, schools are moving away from dry memorization of facts and, in doing so, seeing students ignite their own civic interests when they are encouraged to ask compelling questions, apply disciplinary tools and concepts, evaluate sources and gather evidence, communicate conclusions and take informed action. They begin to build the tools and dispositions to help solve societal problems. These teaching methods help students become better communicators, problem solvers and critical thinkers. They prepare students for the 21st century workplace, and for civic life and involvement in the democratic process.

Here’s how it works: Over 40 percent of Sacramento County’s Action Civics teachers are from disciplines other than history, civics or government. Through this initiative, students are not just learning civics as a stand-alone subject, often relegated to the last semester of their senior year. Instead, they are learning how to turn civics concepts into action at every grade level, across the entire curriculum. Math, language arts and science teachers are integrating civics as a tool to teach students how they can take action to address societal and local problems. For example, students in science classes discuss the role of government and what they can do to address environmental issues. Science teachers team up with history and social science teachers to guide students in Socratic seminars around current events that might focus on relevant topics such as the drought, clean water Action Civics | Comstock's magazine:

CURMUDGUCATION: Fordham Provides More Core Testing PR

CURMUDGUCATION: Fordham Provides More Core Testing PR:
Fordham Provides More Core Testing PR

The Fordham Institute is back with another "study" of circular reasoning and unexamined assumptions that concludes that reformster policy is awesome.  

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is a right-tilted thinky tank that has been one of the most faithful and diligent promoters of the reformster agenda, from charters (they run some in Ohio) to the Common Core to the business of Big Standardized Testing.

In 2009, Fordham got an almost-a-million dollar grant from the Gates Foundation to "study" Common Core Standards, the same standards that Gates was working hard to promote. They concluded that the Core was swell. Since those days, Fordham's support team has traveled across the country, swooping into various state legislators to explain the wisdom of reformster ideas.

This newest report fits right into that tradition.

Evaluating the Content and Quality of Next Generation Assessments is a big, 122-page monster of a report. But I'm not sure we need to dig down into the details, because once we understand that it's built on a cardboard foundation, we can realize that the details don't really matter.

The report is authored by Nancy Doorey and Morgan Polikoff. Doorey is the founder of her own CURMUDGUCATION: Fordham Provides More Core Testing PR:

Toni Morrison Speaks To Me About Racism [The Work] | The Jose Vilson

Toni Morrison Speaks To Me About Racism [The Work] | The Jose Vilson:

Toni Morrison Speaks To Me About Racism [The Work]

For Lent, I’ve given up.

Actually, that’s not true at all. If anything, I’ve re-dedicated myself to loving in spots that I shouldn’t, and letting go in spaces where I wouldn’t. The issue with many racists is that they’re heavily-armored in pushing some of us to the edge. In turn, some of us internalize this hatred and push it upon those we should love more often. Whenever I’m in a collective, EduColor included, our most powerful work is when we give each other space to heal and grow. It makes the work we do where it’s not as safe more authentic and more empowered.

How does one get liberated without that sense of love?

“The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It 

Toni Morrison Speaks To Me About Racism [The Work] | The Jose Vilson:

NYC Public School Parents: Looking for volunteers for a Citizen's Oversight Committee on DOE wasteful contracts

NYC Public School Parents: Looking for volunteers for a Citizen's Oversight Committee on DOE wasteful contracts:

Looking for volunteers for a Citizen's Oversight Committee on DOE wasteful contracts

As part of the reforms promised after the scandal with the $1.1 billion Computer Specialists contract erupted, DOE officials  promised to post more complete information about proposed contracts (called the RA's) at least a month ahead of the Panel for Educational Policy vote, to allow for more public vetting.

The DOE contract page now includes more  information about these contracts as well as some brief information about contracts to be voted on in March and April.

http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/leadership/PEP/documents/Contracts/default.htm

• February 24, 2016 Agenda - a 4 page list of  contracts to be voted on at the Feb. 24 PEP  - items #1 through #20, including many multi-million dollar professional development contracts.

• February 24, 2016 Look Ahead for February 24, 2016 Meeting  - a 2 page document showing which categories of contracts the above list of contracts belong to - competitive sealed bid, vs. RFP, vs. Multiple task award contract process etc

• February 24, 2016 Look Ahead for Future Meetings - a 5 page document with brief descriptions of contracts to be voted on March 23 and April 20,  2016.

• February 24, 2016 RA's - the full 55 page document that describes in more detail contracts that will be voted on Feb. 24 and that Patrick Sullivan posted online so that people can comment on them individually and as a whole at  http://nycpublicschoolcontracts.blogspot.com/

Because there will be  many pages of information made available in advance, we are looking to crowd source comments from volunteers as part of a Citizen Oversight Committee -- to help screen and vet these contracts and glean information and concerns that could then be communicated to elected officials and members of the PEP.  Yet as you will see, some of thee contracts to be voted on in two weeks, especially those related to preK vendors, still lack critical information.

There is also a new document, highlighting changes in DOE procurement, which will be voted on at the Feb. 24 PEP as well posted here.  We NYC Public School Parents: Looking for volunteers for a Citizen's Oversight Committee on DOE wasteful contracts:

CALPADS Update FLASH #114 - California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) (CA Dept of Education)

CALPADS Update FLASH #114 - California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) (CA Dept of Education):

CALPADS Update FLASH #114

Fall 1 Amendment Window Deadline Has Been Extended.

FALL 1 DEADLINE EXTENDED

Due to the delay in the availability of the preview of Fall 1 data, which includes the Unduplicated Pupil Count (UPC) that will be used in 2015–16 Second Principal Apportionment (P-2), the California Department of Education (CDE) has extended the Fall 1 deadline to March 18, 2016. The Fall 2 deadlines remain the same. The deadlines are summarized below:

Submission		Original Deadline	New Deadline
Fall 1	Last Day of Amendment Window	February 19, 2016	March 18, 2016
Fall 2	Certification Deadline	March 4, 2016	No Change
Fall 2	Last Day of Amendment Window	April 8, 2016	No Change

The preview of Fall 1 data will be made available later this week. While the preview reflects the data that LEAs can view within CALPADS and which they certified in Certification Report 1.17 – FRPM/EL/Foster Youth – Count, the preview also shows: (1) aggregate counts of students enrolled in County Offices of Education (COEs) whose enrollments will be attributed back to the district of geographic residence based on their Student School Transfer Category; and (2) of the total enrollment, the number of students (free or reduced-price meal eligible, English learner, and foster youth) who will count toward the district’s UPC which is used in determining the LEA’s supplemental and concentration grant funding under the Local Control Funding Formula. Since addressing issues identified as a result of reviewing these data requires communication between COEs and school districts, the CDE is extending the Fall 1 deadlines to provide additional time for any necessary updates to be made.

When the Fall 1 preview data are made available, accompanying explanations will be provided in a FLASH.

Questions:   CALPADS/CBEDS/CDS Operations Office| calpads@cde.ca.gov | 916-324-6738

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A new political strategy: throw online charters overboard to save the rest of the school privatization industry.| Alternet

Online Public Schools Are a Disaster, Admits Billionaire, Charter School-Promoter Walton Family Foundation | Alternet:
Online Public Schools Are a Disaster, Admits Billionaire, Charter School-Promoter Walton Family Foundation
A new political strategy: throw online charters overboard to save the rest of the school privatization industry.

 For the second time in three months, the Walton Family Foundation—which has spent more than $1 billion to create a quarter of the nation’s 6,700 public charter schools—has announced that all online public school instruction, via cyber charter schools, is a colossal disaster for most K-12 students.

“If virtual charters were grouped together and ranked as a single school district, it would be the ninth largest in the country and among the worst performing,” co-wrote Walton’s Marc Sternberg and Marc Holley, respectively the foundation’s director of educational giving and its evaluation unit director, in a recent Education Week commentary. “Online education must be reimagined. Ignoring the problem—or worse, replicating failures—serves nobody.”

Last fall, the giant foundation, which has pledged to spend its second billion to expand charter public schools nationally between now and 2020, simultaneously released three detailed comissioned studies finding more than two-thirds of America’s 200,000 charter students receiving all of their instruction over the Internet were barely learning the basics.  

“The majority of online charter students had far weaker academic growth in both math and reading compared to their traditional public school peers,” their experts’ press release said, after noting that kindergarten-through-high school students need to be in classrooms with live teachers, not occasional faces on computer screens. “To conceptualize this shortfall, it would equate to a student losing 72 days of learning in reading and 180 days of learning in math, based on a 180-day school year.”

Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes, or CREDO, which calculated the semesters of lost learning, looked at virtual charter schools in 18 states. It found enrollments had nearly doubled between the 2009-'10 and 2012-'13 school years, documenting a rapidly growing corner of the charter school industry, which presents itself as an alternative to traditional public schools.

“Based on even modest funding levels of $6,000 per student, 65,000 students [in 18 states] represents a public investment of $390,000,000 annually,” CREDO’s report said. With 200,000 students in 200 online schools in 26 Online Public Schools Are a Disaster, Admits Billionaire, Charter School-Promoter Walton Family Foundation | Alternet: