New York Schools Wonder: How White Is Too White? - The New York Times

New York Schools Wonder: How White Is Too White? - The New York Times:

New York Schools Wonder: How White Is Too White?

How white is too white? At the Academy of Arts and Letters, a small K-8 school in Brooklyn founded in 2006 to educate a community of “diverse individuals,” that question is being put to the test.

The school — along with six others in New York City — is part of a newEducation Department initiative aimed at maintaining a racial and socioeconomic balance at schools in fast-gentrifying neighborhoods. For the first time the department is allowing a group of principals to set aside a percentage of seats for low-income families, English-language learners or students engaged with the child welfare system as a means of creating greater diversity within their schools.

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Carmen Fariña, the schools chancellor, have disappointed school diversity advocates by failing to make integration a priority. The set-asides plan, approved by Ms. Fariña in November, was the first attempt at addressing the issue across multiple schools.

All of the schools involved enroll children by lottery, rather than having a school zone.

In its early years, Arts and Letters was more than 90 percent black and Hispanic, reflecting the Brooklyn neighborhoods around it, including Bedford-Stuyvesant, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene. More than 80 percent of its students qualified for free or reduced lunch.

But the school gained a reputation for its humanities curriculum, its science lab and its focus on the arts. And newcomers changed the demographic mix of its surrounding blocks. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, the white population rose 120 percent from 2000 to 2010 and the black population fell by 30 percent, according to the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Now, Arts and Letters has become one of Brooklyn’s hottest schools. Half of the school’s kindergartners are white; a mere 12 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch. That has its principal, John O’Reilly, worried.

“I love the fact that so many white affluent families would want to send their children to my school,” he said recently, before rushing off to give another tour. “But I know the impact it has on the diversity of my school.”

Mr. O’Reilly is one of a group of principals — including Julie Zuckerman at the four-year-old Castle Bridge School in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, where 21 percent of the students are white, and Arthur Mattia at the Children’s School in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn, where the student population is now 59 percent white — who said they had hoped to create schools where no one race or socioeconomic group was dominant.

Instead, their schools are becoming magnets for middle-class families moving into gentrifying neighborhoods who prefer them to their local zoned schools. The principals are concerned that their schools will “tip” over into majority white, middle-class schools.

They hope the new program will help them maintain more balanced populations.New York Schools Wonder: How White Is Too White? - The New York Times:

LAUSD needs to reverse its neglect of black students - LA Times

LAUSD needs to reverse its neglect of black students - LA Times:

LAUSD needs to reverse its neglect of black students

LAUSD superintendent Michelle King in the LAUSD board room, in Los Angeles on January 12. (Los Angeles Times)

 In the speculation about whether LAUSD superintendent Michelle King – a product of the district and its first black female chief executive -- will be a gentle consensus builder or a maverick innovator there has been little discussion about the fate of black children in the nation's second largest school district. This is unacceptable. As an advocate and mentor in South Los Angeles' schools, I continually see the impact of the district's gross neglect of black students' academic needs and social capital.

When black students arrive at LAUSD schools they can be confronted with teachers and administrators who view them as ticking time bombs, chronic screw-ups who are intellectually incapable of pursuing a college degree. When they look around their segregated campuses they see more police officers and military recruiters than do their white and Asian peers on the Westside and in the Valley. When they open their textbooks, they don't see their history or culture meaningfully represented.

 Granted, the district has addressed some of the disparities black students face. After pressure from community activists, in 2013 LAUSD banned suspensions for willful defiance, discipline that had disproportionately affected black students. In South L.A. schools, a low level offense such as talking back to a teacher was much more likely to result in a suspension or even an arrest than it might at a white school. It's been well documented that "zero tolerance" policies lead to lower achievement for black students and "push out" (students failing to complete school) – factors that contribute to the so-called school to prison pipeline.

By the beginning of the 2013-14 school year (the most recent available data), LAUSD could proudly announce that its disciplinary reforms had decreased suspensions overall by 53% compared to 2011-12. The district also achieved a steep drop in police citations for tardiness, absences and truancy, and an overall increase in its graduation rates. In 2012, 56% of the district's black students graduated; in 2014, 66% did.

Such gains, however, are not the whole picture. Despite the changes in the district's disciplinary policies, black students accounted for more than 30% of those suspended or expelled in 2013-14, even though they made up less than 11% of the district's population.

Similarly, while arrests and police citations decreased, nearly 95% went to students of color and 31% of those went to black students. In South L.A. schools, a culture of criminalization prevails. When students are more accustomed to seeing police than college counselors on their campuses, it sends a message that school is for containment rather than learning.

When black students arrive at LAUSD schools they can be confronted with teachers and administrators who view them as ticking time bombs [and] chronic screw-ups.-  

Even black students' improved graduation rates by no means indicate that the district is meeting their real educational needs.Last year, the school board had to retreat from a mandate that all its graduates, starting with the Class of 2017, earn a C or better in college prepratory classes required by the UC and Cal State systems. By the district's estimate, nearly 75% of the Class of 2017 (then in 10th grade) weren't on track to meet the mandate. In too many cases, the schools hadn't provided the courses or the necessary support.

Black students are deeply affected by the nexus of low college preparedness and low LAUSD needs to reverse its neglect of black students - LA Times:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: If I had a million dollars

Seattle Schools Community Forum: If I had a million dollars:

If I had a million dollars

 The recent $1.5 Billion prize in the PowerBall lottery made a lot of news. A lot of people who don't normally buy lottery tickets bought some for that drawing. I didn't because, as my brother succinctly told me, buying a ticket does not significantly improve your odds of winning. Needless to say, I didn't win the big prize.


I didn't think about what I would do with the money if I won. That's what you buy when you buy a lottery ticket, right? You buy the license to dream. I didn't buy a ticket so I didn't have license to think about how I would spend the money and I certainly didn't presume that I would win and start spending the money before the drawing. That would be crazy, right?

Yet that's what Seattle Public Schools does on a regular basis. They draw up all of these initiatives - Targeted Universalism is the latest one - which, I suppose, are all very high-minded and well-intentioned, but are predicated on one or more fantasies.


With Targeted Universalism they rely on about four of these fantasies.

First, they assume that they can implement a consistent Tier 1 curriculum across all classrooms and schools. They can't. They have been trying to do this ever since they introduced Standards-based Learning over fifteen years ago, but they have never been able to do it. Not only have they repeatedly and utterly failed in this, they have never admitted it so they have never learned from the failure. Instead, they chose to declare victory and move on. Since they claimed success, they could never figure out what kept them from succeeding and, worse, they persist in the delusion that they can do it.

It could that the JSCEE just doesn't know that standardization has not been implemented in the schools, it could be that they know but they have been lying to the Board about it, it could be that they do know, but they are lying to themselves about it, it could be that the schools have lied to the JSCEE about it to get the bureaucrats off their backs, or it could be some other possibility. But no matter who is misrepresenting the facts - knowingly or unknowingly - there is no consistent implementation of curriculum in Seattle Public Schools. Not across schools - not even across classrooms within schools.

When I think of this I am haunted by the emails that came after the Board's adoption of Math In Focus in which the Executive Directors of Schools Seattle Schools Community Forum: If I had a million dollars:

School budgets long recovered, not teacher-librarians :: SI&A Cabinet Report

School budgets long recovered, not teacher-librarians :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

School budgets long recovered, not teacher-librarians

 (Calif.) The good news is that the number of certificated librarians in California schools has increased slightly the past three years.

The bad news, however, is that the state’s ratio of one librarian for every 7,187 students ranks at the bottom nationally for professional library staffing.

“Most elementary schools don’t have a dedicated teacher librarian, and in many cases at the intermediate or middle school level, teacher librarians are only available a few hours a day or even a week if that,” Rosan Cable, full-time teacher librarian at Pacifica High School, said in an interview.

“That’s a common story throughout the state,” said Cable, who also serves as vice president of communications for the California School Library Association.

In spite of research showing that students at schools with full-time librarians score better in reading and writing on assessments of state standards, the number of certified librarians employed in California’s public schools has declined every year since 2000-01, according to statistics from the California Department of Education.

Librarian staffing levels reached an all-time low of 804 in the 2012-13 school year but rose to 859 in 2014-15, the most recent year for which data are available. With just over six million K-12 students in the state, that puts the librarian: student ratio at 1:7,187. By comparison, Texas with its five million students has 4,639 teacher librarians.

The drop in working school librarians mirrored a sharp decline in school funding that began in 2008-09 as a result of a massive economic recession. The economy has improved and school funding has increased the past few years but librarian numbers have remained fairly stagnant.

At the same time, the need for the services these professionals provide has increased substantially in large part because of the adoption of the Common Core State Standards.

These new math and English language arts standards call for students to be adept at accessing, evaluating and using content from a diverse range of sources. In today’s media-saturated society, learners must be able to assess information gleaned from websites, blogs, social media sites and online news sources, reference books and videos. Students also have to learn to locate and use School budgets long recovered, not teacher-librarians :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

I’m a New York City school administrator. Here’s how segregation lives on. - Vox

I’m a New York City school administrator. Here’s how segregation lives on. - Vox:

I’m a New York City school administrator. Here’s how segregation lives on

The doors opened to our homemade banners and smiling faces. It was the first day of school ever for the Urban Assembly Unison Middle School in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. It was my first day ever as a leader in the school I co-founded. I was 27 years old.

The racial demographics of the 85 students arriving: 74 percent African American, 15 percent Hispanic, 9 percent Asian, and one white student. At the beginning of sixth grade these students, on average, read at a second-grade reading level. Nearly 40 percent of them had special needs, 35 percent had been left back once or twice, 10percent lived in temporary housing, 10 percent lived in foster care, and 92 percent lived in families whose aggregate family income fell below the federal poverty line.

My colleagues and I started this school in 2012 because we wanted to bring a progressive curriculum called Learning Cultures — which promotes collaboration and creativity and all the qualities that middle-class families want in their children's education — to a population of students that normally gets stuck with rigid, test-prep-oriented teaching. I'd seen Learning Cultures work at a school with both well-to-do and less well-off kids in downtown Manhattan. I wanted to see it work in a full-on high-poverty Brooklyn school, too.

We've had tremendous success in our three years as a school: Test scores are improving, and our students are getting better and better at reading. But our school, like so many others in New York City, remains segregated: by Christmas our first year, our one white student transferred out. Last year, white children made up just 2 percent of our student body.

My time in the New York City public school system —€” first as a student, then as a teacher, and now as an administrator —€” has shown me that segregation is unacceptable. No amount of curriculum magic, or experienced teachers, or school choice, can overcome the fact that to overcome educational inequality, white students need to be in school with minority students.

American schools are resegregating

Stories of resegregation in America's public schools are popping up everywhere, fromMissouri to Alabama to New York City. Nationally, racial segregation in schools hasreturned to levels not seen since 1968.

New York City is among the worst offenders. Among the city's 1.1 million public school students — the largest school system in the nation — children of color have an 80 percent chance of attending a school where the student body consists of fewer than 10 percent white children. Fifty percent of white students attending New York City public schools are concentrated in 7 percent of the schools.

Statewide, African-American and Latino students typically attend schools where 70 percent of the students are low-income, whereas white students typically attend schools where 30 percent of the students are low-income.

Bad as this appears from the outside, on the inside it's even worse. Teachers try to make separate equal. And policies push schools to make it more separate.

I've spent almost my entire life in New York City schools

I've spent 22 of my 30 years in the New York City public school system. In 1990, I started kindergarten at PS 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the borough's best elementary school, I’m a New York City school administrator. Here’s how segregation lives on. - Vox:

Hillary Clinton's plan to undo the school-to-prison pipeline, explained - Vox

Hillary Clinton's plan to undo the school-to-prison pipeline, explained - Vox:

Hillary Clinton's plan to undo the school-to-prison pipeline, explained

At a speech in Harlem on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton will call for a $2 billion plan to help end punitive school policies that can push black children from schools to jails and prisons.

The new $2 billion plan, which goes after the so-called "school-to-prison pipeline," will incentivize the hiring of "school climate support teams" — made up of social workers, behavioral health specialists, and education practitioners — to work with school staff to reorient and develop comprehensive reform plans for school discipline policies.

Specifically, reform plans should try to establish "early warning systems" to identify and help at-risk students and provide training to school staff on conflict deescalation and other ways to defuse a situation without resorting to harsh discipline measures, according to Clinton's campaign.

RelatedWhy police so often see unarmed black men as threats

Clinton's staff said Clinton acknowledges that students who commit violent offenses should be removed from the classroom. But she also believes such incidents are very rare (they are), and that the rush to handle school discipline through the criminal justice system does more harm than good.

The proposal is part of a much broader plan — what Clinton's campaign calls the "Breaking Down Barriers" agenda — which would direct $20 billion to youth jobs, $5 billion to reentry programs for formerly incarcerated people, and $25 billion to support entrepreneurship and small business growth in underserved communities.

But the proposal to tackle the school-to-prison pipeline in particular, while somewhat vague, is the latest major salvo against a system that has gotten more attention over the past several years as the Black Lives Matter movement protests the massive racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

The school-to-prison pipeline, explained

When lawmakers and politicians — including Clinton — began calling for and enacting tough-on-crime policies in the 1970s through '90s, some of the concepts trickled down to schools, which began outsourcing discipline to police through school resource officers Hillary Clinton's plan to undo the school-to-prison pipeline, explained - Vox:

Michigan: The Poster Child for How Not to do Charter Schools

Michigan: The Poster Child for How Not to do Charter Schools:

Michigan: The Poster Child for How Not to do Charter Schools

 Behind the Detroit schools crisis lies a troubling charter school sector.

As Detroit Public Schools' teacher sick-outs and mounting debt capture the attention of press around the world, it might be easy to conclude money alone will solve the Motor City's educational woes. The truth is, its school landscape is complex -- and its solutions don't all come down to money.

One of the city's greatest challenges comes down to something that's free, but demands strong state leadership and political will: accountability.

That might sound simple, but in Michigan it's an incredibly difficult political challenge, especially when it comes to some of the most powerful actors who have greatly shaped Detroit and Michigan communities' school markets over the last two decades: charter school authorizers.

This is a story about what happens to a state when its leaders lift a charter school cap and open the state's doors to massive charter school growth -- supported by billions of taxpayer dollars -- without thinking through how they will hold charter authorizers accountable for their decision-making. And it has national implications, as a growing number of states consider whether to open the doors to charter school growth.

In states such as Massachusetts, where state leaders developed an admirably strong system of performance standards, accountability mechanisms and safeguards to ensure their charter sector would well serve all students -- especially vulnerable children -- the story is quite different than Michigan's narrative.

Consider: Students in Boston Public Schools far outperform students in Detroit Public Schools on the national assessment in every subject and all grades tested. What's more, over 90 percent of Boston charter schools are showing greater math learning gains than the local traditional district, according to Stanford University research.

In comparison, Michigan's overall charter sector performance is a national embarrassment. To be sure, there are some terrific charter schools in my state -- and more of them are needed to serve the thousands of poor children who lack access to great public schools.

The problem is, there simply aren't enough strong Michigan charters. Michigan has failed to put into place any real performance standards or accountability for its charter authorizers and operators, despite the fact that the sector has been open in the state for more than two decades.

The result: Roughly half of Michigan's charter schools ranked in the bottom quarter of all public schools for academic performance, according to state accountability data from 2013-14. Recent research from Stanford University also found that about eight in 10 Michigan charter schools have academic achievement below the state average for both reading and math.

The challenge is particularly acute in Detroit, where the traditional public school district had already failed children for decades. Detroit Public Schools (DPS) has been among the lowest performing urban school districts for years in many subjects; it's an incredibly low bar to beat for student achievement. Yet among charter districts with significant African American enrollments, two-thirds actually performed below DPS for African American students on the state's 2013 8th grade math assessment. Moreover, roughly 70 percent of charter schools located in Detroit ranked in the bottom quarter of all Michigan public schools in 2013-14 for academic performance.

That's nothing less than remarkable -- and truly heartbreaking. Instead of providing better school options to low-income parents, as the charter sector promised here, too often Michigan charter leaders are replicating failure.

Indeed, according to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, Michigan's no-accountability approach has wreaked havoc in the city and caused about 80 percent of all schools -- both charter and traditional -- to open or close over the last seven years. That's not good for high-performing schools of any kind. Further complicating the accountability conversation is the fact that well over three-quarters of Michigan charter schools are run by for-profit management companies.

As an organization committed to improving outcomes for all Michigan students, we support all high-performing schools, whether they are run by charter operators or traditional districts. For us, what matters is student outcomes.

Michigan's charter sector problems are simply too great to ignore. With about 60 percent students of color and 70 percent low-income, persistent underperformance is not just a topic of major concern -- it's a pressing civil rights issue. It's also a taxpayer issue. Some of Michigan's large charter school authorizers are trusted public universities, such as Northern Michigan University and Eastern Michigan University, which have collectively taken in millions of taxpayer dollars over decades.

Lately my organization has documented better decision-making by some authorizers -- as we highlight in our new report -- but marginal improvement is simply not enough. Charter authorizing should be a privilege earned and maintained through strong performance -- not an entitlement, as it's become in Michigan.

We strongly believe that high-quality charter schools can be an effective tool for closing Michigan's -- and America's -- unacceptable achievement gaps.

Sadly, my home state has become a national poster child of how not to do charter schools.
Leaders elsewhere should take notice: Michigan's charter school path is a tragic one to be avoided.

Amber Arellano is the executive director of The Education Trust-Midwest, a nonpartisan research, policy, practice and advocacy nonprofit organization committed to making Michigan a top ten education state for all students.

Follow Amber Arellano on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Arellanotweet

Charter schools bristle at Wolf proposal to give unspent cash to districts | TribLIVE

Charter schools bristle at Wolf proposal to give unspent cash to districts | TribLIVE:
Charter schools bristle at Wolf proposal to give unspent cash to districts

 When City Charter High School invited state police to do a safety inspection of the building Downtown, the agency recommended adding bullet-proof glass at the entrance for extra security.

The school followed that advice, CEO and principal Ron Sofo said, and used about $80,000 from its reserves to pay for the project.

Those unassigned funds, which aren't earmarked for specific yearly expenses, are necessary to help cover unanticipated costs, Sofo said. That's why he and other charter school leaders are against Gov. Tom Wolf's proposal to make charter schools reimburse districts for the tuition money they doesn't use.

“It's not to buy private jet planes,” Sofo said. “It's all related to the school.”

Charter schools are privately operated but funded by taxpayers in the form of tuition payments from public school districts.

Wolf says he wants to prevent charter schools from “collecting more in tuition revenue than they actually spent on students,” according to his 2016-17 budget outline. His proposal for next year includes cuts to cyber charter schools because they don't have the same facility costs as their brick-and-mortar counterparts and would change the formula used to calculate reimbursements for special education students.

Charter school advocates contend that the reimbursement plan discriminates against charters, a notion Wolf's office disputes.

“Governor Wolf is fighting for a historic investment in education, and he introduced tougher measures designed to hold charter schools to the same accountability standards as public schools,” Wolf's spokesman Jeffrey Sheridan wrote in an email. “The governor's proposal proposes a reconciliation process to ensure districts are refunded the money they paid out, but was not spent on students.”

Bob Fayfich, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, said reserves are “an insurance policy in case there is some unexpected issue that you have to address, like a budget impasse.”

School districts “dwarf” charter schools in the amount of money they have in reserve, he said.

Pennsylvania charter schools collectively had about $148 million in unassigned funds at the end of the 2013-14 school year, the most recent available. The state's 499 school districts collectively had about $1.6 billion in unassigned funds, data show.

Of the 18 charter schools in Allegheny County that reported data to the state that year, City Charter had the most money in unassigned funds with $1.3 million. Manchester Academic Charter School followed with about $1.1 million, and Environmental Charter School at Frick Park ranked third with about $998,000.

In Pennsylvania, cyber charter schools collected the most in reserve funds, with Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, based in Midland, taking the top spot overall with close to $8 million. Several charter schools in Philadelphia also had millions of dollars in unassigned funds. Some charter schools, like Pittsburgh's Urban Pathways 6-12, had none.

Jon McCann, CEO of Environmental Charter School, said his school's reserve funds are “negligible.” It's responsible accounting for any district, charter school or other organization to have some money in reserve in case of emergencies. Environmental has just enough to cover two payroll cycles, McCann said.

“To hold charter schools to a different standard where they would have zero funds, it's just unthinkable,” he said. “It's very irresponsible to put an organization in that kind of situation.”

Both school districts and charter schools have tapped into their reserve funds during this school year because of the budget impasse in Harrisburg.

Districts including Penn Hills, Sto-Rox and Elizabeth Forward were forced to take out loans to pay their bills after they used what they had in reserve. Last week, Agora Cyber Charter Charter schools bristle at Wolf proposal to give unspent cash to districts | TribLIVE:

Teachers Union Organizes ‘Walk-In’ Protests Over CPS Budget Cuts « CBS Chicago

Teachers Union Organizes ‘Walk-In’ Protests Over CPS Budget Cuts « CBS Chicago:

Teachers Union Organizes ‘Walk-In’ Protests Over CPS Budget Cuts

CHICAGO (CBS) — Students, parents, and teachers at nearly 200 schools across Chicago were staging a series of “walk-in” demonstrations, to protest budget cuts by the Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago Teachers Union said the protests are part of a national demonstration to show support for public schools.

Supporters will meet before school to rally and show unity before walking into the building together, and then breaking up so students can go to class.

The CTU said the walk-ins show the collective power of the community. The protest is designed to show Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Board of Education that the teachers’ union and its supporters will act together to protect teachers’ jobs and the educational opportunities of students.

Protesters want the mayor and CPS Chief Executive Officer Forrest Claypool to find sources of funding that force the wealthy pay to makeup the system’s budget gaps.

“Why you make swap deals with banks, why you protect developers with TIFs, why you pass property taxes for everyone else except the schools, and we can’t fund our schools. They have to fund the schools, or else we’re going to start doing permanent damage to the public education system, and they’re going to provoke a strike,”CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said.

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Kelly High School senior Evelyn Solis was among about 75 students, parents, and teachers taking part in a walk-in at her school at Archer and California avenues.

“I love it how Kelly is like a huge family, you know? If it wasn’t for the teachers and staff, I wouldn’t have been a straight A student. I wouldn’t know how important my education can be, and how it can affect my future,” she said.

The walk-ins are part of a nationwide protest demanding more money for public education. In Chicago, where CPS recently imposed $120 million Teachers Union Organizes ‘Walk-In’ Protests Over CPS Budget Cuts « CBS Chicago:

Frank Cagle: Beware the money behind vouchers

Frank Cagle: Beware the money behind vouchers:

Frank Cagle: Beware the money behind vouchers

 The school voucher bill isn't dead, but it is lying in a coma on the clerk's desk, unlikely to rise for the rest of this session. The pros and cons of public school money being given to private schools aside, the fate of the bill is a hopeful sign for our state House of Representatives.

The out-of-state special interest groups trying to get their hands on taxpayer money are still lurking out there, assembling a war chest from the eccentric idle rich, with which to threaten House members with thousands of dollars if they don't toe the line. House members are to be commended for not running scared and, instead, following the wishes of constituents back home.

Legislators are wising up to the fact that there are forces out there who realize America spends billions on education and they want a big chunk of it.

During the upcoming legislative races, if your representative is being hammered with hundreds of thousands of dollars in negative ads, consider where the money is coming from. Well-meaning education reformers have had various of these groups latch onto them — parasites who see a pot of gold in taxpayers' pockets. Not to mention well-meaning people with a lot of money who are being led around by smooth-talking charlatans who have convinced them to give up on public education.

I'm sure Students First will be around this campaign season spending money and trying to dictate educational policy through fear and intimidation. But at least we don't have to put up with Michelle Rhee anymore. When Rhee got run out of the District of Columbia, she decided to come down here and help us reform education, I suppose because her ex-husband, Kevin Huffman, was our education commissioner and their children were in a suburban Nashville private school. She has moved on to "reform" Sacramento, California.

Rhee married NBA star Kevin Johnson, who is now mayor of Sacramento. (Fun factoid: They got married at Blackberry Farm.) She has turned over the reins of her non-profit to Johnson and joined the board with fellow members that include Bill Cosby. Johnson was such a success as president of the National Conference of Black Mayors that the organization went out of existence at the end of his tenure.

Pearson, a company that has had state contracts, is a billion-dollar conglomerate based in London that sold off its media properties to invest in textbooks, testing and other education activities – 'cause that's where the money is.

A lot of these pressure groups are being funded by Betsy DeVos, who married the heir to the Amway fortune. The Walmart heirs have taken Sam Walton's money and have spent $700 million to "transform" education. (You reckon Sam Frank Cagle: Beware the money behind vouchers:

10 million California student records about to be released to attorneys - San Jose Mercury News

10 million California student records about to be released to attorneys - San Jose Mercury News:

10 million California student records about to be released to attorneys

California public-school records on about 10 million students -- including their Social Security numbers -- will soon be handed over to attorneys for a parent group suing the state, with both parties blaming the other for the impending release of private information.

Fewer than 10 people will receive the student data, and their review will be overseen by a court-ordered special master in electronic discovery. The attorneys reviewing the records are required to keep the data private and confidential, and will have to return or destroy it afterward. Parents also may request by April 1 an exemption from the court order to release their students' information, which will include addresses, test scores, disciplinary records, health and mental health records and more.

(ThinkStock Photo)

But privacy advocates worry about potential for the data to escape.

"Where does that software sit, where does that data sit?" asked Steven Liao, a Danville parent and IT professional. Once data has left the Department of Education, he said, there's no way to confirm control over it. The data will migrate to where it's backed up, he noted, and even if the analysts then destroy it once they're done, he asked, "where is confirmation it's been destroyed?"

Parents in the Morgan Hill Unified School District filed the lawsuit, which contends that the California Department of Education does not force school districts to provide appropriate special-education services for children needing them.

California Concerned Parents Association, a group with members in 80 school districts throughout the state, has sought statewide data to prove its case that students with identified needs are not being provided adequate services. To do that, it needs to survey student school records.

But the group said it wasn't seeking kids' private information.

"We asked repeatedly, many times, for the data without identifiable information," said the group's president, Linda McNulty, whose son formerly attended Morgan Hill schools. She said the state Education Department refused.

But state officials insist they're not at fault.

"The California Department of Education has been fighting vigorously to defend the privacy rights of students throughout California, but we are required to comply with the court order in this case," department spokesman Peter Tira said.

It was not immediately clear why Social Security numbers and other sensitive information couldn't be redacted.

Judge Kimberly J. Mueller of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California has required the state to turn over data on all students in K-12 schools since January 2008. The data will go to the plaintiff's attorneys, Sagy Law Associates of San Francisco, sometime 10 million California student records about to be released to attorneys - San Jose Mercury News: