CURMUDGUCATION: CA: Court Rejects Test-based Teacher Eval : CA: Court Rejects Test-based Teacher Eval While astro-turf group Students Matter, a front for the reformster activism of Very Rich Man David Welch, is most famous for concocting and then losing the Vergara case , they have been trying to skin the reformy cat with other knife-like lawsuits as well. With Doe v. Antioch, Welch's group set o
Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: TUNE IN TOMORROW 9 AM (CDT) TO LIVE FROM THE HEARTLAND : TUNE IN TOMORROW 9 AM (CDT) TO LIVE FROM THE HEARTLAND September 24, 2016 • 9-10 am CDT The Live from the Heartland Show Standing Rock, Song & Good Food in School • Nick Estes, Mike Klonsky, Joel Frankel, Alexander DeSorbo-Quinn • MIKE KLONSKY & NICK ESTES —Report from Standing Rock • JOEL FRANKEL —Old
Exclusive Photos of Mayor Kevin Johnson's Pie Incident - Sacramento Magazine - October 2016 - Sacramento, California : Exclusive Photos of Mayor Kevin Johnson's Pie Incident Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson was hit in the face with a pie at the Edible Sac High Seeds of Hope Harvest Dinner at Sacramento Charter High School on Wednesday, Sept. 21. The mayor struck a blow before Sean Thompson, 32, was
Schools Matter: Mis-Educative Technology and Human Capital Management: Part 2 : Mis-Educative Technology and Human Capital Management: Part 2 Triumph Learning’s Waggle is a personalized learning system now in use by Clarke County Schools in Athens, Georgia, where Dr. Philip Lanoue is Superintendent. Dr. Lanoue was named Superintendent of the Year in 2015 by the American Association of School Admi
Classrooms with rats instead of teachers: Is Detroit denying children of color their right to an education? - LA Times : Classrooms with rats instead of teachers: Is Detroit denying children of color their right to an education? the early days of our nation, it was a crime to teach slaves to read. And through the first half of the 20th century, segregation funneled their descendants into inferior
Editorial: Charlotte is Drowning in Systematic Injustice - NBC News : WILLIAM J. BARBER, II: Charlotte is Drowning in Systematic Injustice Just before 4pm, on Tuesday, September 20th, a Charlotte police officer shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott outside Scott's parked car. Eyewitness and police reports do not agree on who the officer was, whether Scott was holding a book or a gun, or what took pl
U.S. Department of Education Releases Guidance on English Learners | U.S. Department of Education : U.S. Department of Education Releases Guidance on English Learners The U.S. Department of Education today released non-regulatory guidance to help states, districts and schools provide effective services to improve the English language proficiency and academic achievement of English learners (ELs)
Social Impact Bonds (Pay for Success): Yet Another Privatization Scam | janresseger : Social Impact Bonds (Pay for Success): Yet Another Privatization Scam For those of us who know more about public education than Wall Street investment schemes, Valerie Strauss and Kenneth Saltman (education writer and professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth) did us a favor last week. In her Washi
Asleep at the Switch? : Asleep at the Switch? In response to this very unexpected action, the district has assembled a team to provide support to students and families as they transition during this difficult time, just one month after the start of the district’s traditional school year ”. – LAUSD The charter industry has a propensity for manipulating data to meet their propaganda needs. For exam
The enduring false binary of the "education reform" debate. : Charter Schools Aren’t All Scams. They’re Just Not a Good Enough Solution. Two smart writers engaged in a familiar debate about education reform this week on account of a proposition on the ballot in Massachusetts this November that would allow more charter schools to operate in the state . Esquire 's Charles Pierce, a Massch
State urging charter school reform | Centre Daily Times : Pa. auditor general calls for charter school reforms The state auditor general is calling for charter school reform, including that of PA Cyber Charter School, which educates more than 75 students from Centre County. It comes on the heels of a longtime audit led by Auditor General Eugene DePasquale that he said showed “how poorly” charter
Yuba City strike magnified tension over funding formula | EdSource : Yuba City strike magnified tension over funding formula Yuba City Teachers Association President Dina Luetgens speaks outside of Yuba City High following the vote Monday in which 97 percent of teachers approved the contract. A tense, closely watched seven-day teachers strike at Yuba City Unified that ended this week was, at its
Man who hit mayor with pie says it was ‘least violent action I could take’ | The Sacramento Bee : Man who hit mayor with pie says it was ‘least violent action I could take’ The man who hit Kevin Johnson in the face with a coconut cream pie Wednesday night said he told the Sacramento mayor before the attack that “he has to do better to represent the people.” In an interview at the Sacramento Count
Turkey’s Battle With Muslim Cleric Careens Through U.S. Classrooms - WSJ : Turkey’s Battle With Muslim Cleric Careens Through U.S. Classrooms American charter schools have become embroiled in a proxy fight between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen Lawyer Robert Amsterdam is working for the government of Turkey to investigate schools and other institutions he says are conn
2016–17 Exemplars of 21st Century Learning - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education) : State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson Announces California Districts, Schools Chosen as 2016–17 Exemplars of 21st Century Learning SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced today that two California districts, three schools, and one early learning program have been chosen throughout the
Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 9/22/16 Featured Post Walton public school attack continues for Massachusetts charters and Arkansas vouchers | Arkansas Blog We have to talk about opioids and heroin. Our kids are dying - Lily's Blackboard by mike simpson / 1h We have to talk about opioids and
While astro-turf group Students Matter, a front for the reformster activism of Very Rich Man David Welch, is most famous for concocting and then losing the Vergara case, they have been trying to skin the reformy cat with other knife-like lawsuits as well.
With Doe v. Antioch, Welch's group set out to compel thirteen California districts to include Big Standardized Test results in teacher evaluations. To do so, they dragged out the Stull Act (a law old enough to have been signed by Governor Ronald Reagan). The law (also amended in 1999) was supposed to require districts to base teacher evaluations on student test scores-- but it has the words "reasonably relate" which are, depending on your point of view, a necessary bit of slack to allow schools to handle the problem of alllllll those teachers who don't teach tested subjects (how exactly do you tie the evaluation of your phys ed teacher to the results of a math and reading test).
School districts have made use of that wiggle room, and reformsters have periodically waxed cranky over the wiggling.
We have actually been down this Via del Lawsuit before-- back in 2010 Doe v. Deasy was filed in Los Angeles by EdVoice, the group used as a front by Eli Broad, Reed Hastings and Richard Merkin. The CURMUDGUCATION: CA: Court Rejects Test-based Teacher Eval:
TUNE IN TOMORROW 9 AM (CDT) TO LIVE FROM THE HEARTLAND
September 24, 2016 • 9-10 am CDT The Live from the Heartland Show Standing Rock, Song & Good Food in School • Nick Estes, Mike Klonsky, Joel Frankel, Alexander DeSorbo-Quinn
• MIKE KLONSKY & NICK ESTES
—Report from Standing Rock
• JOEL FRANKEL
—Old Town School of Folk Music
• ALEXANDRA DESORBO-QUINN
— Pilot Light: helping kids make healthier choices
Exclusive Photos of Mayor Kevin Johnson's Pie Incident
Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson was hit in the face with a pie at the Edible Sac High Seeds of Hope Harvest Dinner at Sacramento Charter High School on Wednesday, Sept. 21. The mayor struck a blow before Sean Thompson, 32, was restrained, transported to a hospital, then booked into the Sacramento County Jail on a felony charge of assaulting a public official and a misdemeanor charge of battery on school property.
Sean Thompson said the coconut-cream pie was a protest of Kevin Johnson’s $556 million basketball arena.
The man who pied Kevin Johnson, the Sacramento mayor, this week says the former NBA star “has to do better to represent the people.”
Sean Thompson, a member of the Occupy movement, is being held at the Sacramento County jail on charges of felony assault on a public official, and misdemeanor battery on school property. From behind a glass partition late Thursday, he said Johnson has spent his time in political office focusing on the Golden 1 Center, the Sacramento Kings arena that’s expected to cost more than half a billion dollars, instead of projects that can actually help the community. So, Thompson said, Johnson deserved a pie in the face.
The pieing occurred Wednesday night, while Johnson spoke at a farm-to-fork fundraiser for a charter school to a crowd of about 200 people. Thompson walked near the mayor, pulled a coconut-cream pie from a bag, and smacked the pie into Johnson’s face. Accounts of Johnson’s reaction vary. The East Bay Expressreported that Johnson tackled Thompson, then punched him more than half a dozen times until his face looked like a “bloody pulp.” But Johnson’s Chief of Staff, Crystal Strait, has denied that claim, saying, “He struck back in some way” but this “was not like some bloody punch-fest.”
In images and video of the interview, Thompson has a swollen black eye and two sets of stitches on his face. Of his politically motivated pieing, he said: “I feel bad that I sent the message to a lot of people of violence and that I sent a message that would scare people, because that wasn’t my intention. I still stand by what I did.” Thompson said instead of spending $556.6 million on the new arena, Johnson should have collected the money for public schools, community development, or to help the city’s homeless. “If he had put the energy into those things that he put into the arena, we would have so few problems left in the city,” he said.
And when asked if he’d pie the mayor again, Thompson said: “Absolutely, I’d do it twice.”
As The Sacramento Bee pointed out, the Bay Area has a history of political pieing, most notably in 1998, when then-San Francisco Mayor Willie brown “was struck by cherry, pumpkin and tofu pies while giving a speech. Three pie-throwers from the Biotic Baking Brigade were arrested and later sentenced to six months in jail for committing misdemeanor battery. The protesters said they were opposed to police sweeps of the homeless in downtown San Francisco.”The Man Who Pied the Sacramento Mayor
Mis-Educative Technology and Human Capital Management: Part 2
Triumph Learning’s Waggle is a personalized learning system now in use by Clarke County Schools in Athens, Georgia, where Dr. Philip Lanoue is Superintendent. Dr. Lanoue was named Superintendent of the Year in 2015 by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA’s next conference is entitled “Personalized, Accountable, and Visionary). Lanoue's name is prominently posted in Triumph Learning's online ads and in their sales promotions.
The video linked from the this Waggle ad is provided further down in this post. In the video, Dr. Lanoue and two of his principals at Clarke County praise the new Waggle system for a number of reasons, chief among them being that students may progress at their own pace and that the system’s endurance training system (it grades for Grit) requires students to get the right answer before moving on.
The learning analytics running within Waggle are handled by Knewton, which has the capacity to collect, store, and share data on individual student performance for both academic proficiency and "grit."
Utilizing Knewton’s adaptive learning platform, Pearson is updating enVisionMATH2.0, a dynamic digital curriculum. The product tailors core instruction for each student, helping teachers better address unique
Classrooms with rats instead of teachers: Is Detroit denying children of color their right to an education?
the early days of our nation, it was a crime to teach slaves to read. And through the first half of the 20th century, segregation funneled their descendants into inferior schools. Like the ugly attempts to disenfranchise African Americans through so-called literacy tests calculated to make them seem illiterate, these efforts were a perverse tribute to literacy’s power, which was recognized by the many people of color who fought so hard, against the odds, to educate themselves.
Now, at least in theory, literacy is universally regarded as a human right. Every state makes K-12 education mandatory, and basic education has been recognized unanimously by the Supreme Court as “necessary to prepare citizens to participate effectively and intelligently in our open political system if we are to preserve freedom and independence,” to quote what Warren Burger, appointed chief justice by Richard Nixon, wrote in 1972.
Yet as a carefully crafted lawsuit filed this month by seven Detroit schoolchildren reveals, deliberate indifference to public schools in already disadvantaged communities means that many children of color still do not receive an education — at least not an education that will prepare them to participate effectively and intelligently in our system.
The Detroit lawsuit describes a shocking and comprehensively documented denial of access to literacy. These students attend schools all but exclusively serving children of color. Barely a pretense of education takes place there, under deplorable conditions that make teaching and learning nearly impossible: classrooms without adult teachers, wildly outdated books or no books at all, sweltering or freezing temperatures, rampant vermin infestation and other grossly unsafe physical conditions.
Unsurprisingly, students in these schools perform years below their grade level, many altogether unable to read or write. In one school, not a single sixth-grader achieved even minimal proficiency in English or math. The result is whole generations of students who lack the skills to earn a lawful living and who, in consequence, are relegated to the criminal justice system.
The Detroit students, ably represented by attorneys from Public Counsel and Sidley Austin LLP, have asserted an innovative legal claim: that Michigan has violated the 14thAmendment’s equal protection clause by effectively excluding them from the state’s system of free public education and denying them the right to literacy.
Although novel, this claim is well grounded in decades of Supreme Court precedent, including a landmark 1982 decision, Plyler vs. Doe, in which the Supreme Court held that a state cannot bar children in the country illegally from its tuition-free public schools, recognizing that “the stigma of illiteracy” would hobble them for the rest of their lives, rendering them a permanent underclass.
Without a functioning right to literacy, moreover, the Supreme Court’s affirmative action jurisprudence collapses. Some justices oppose the continued use of race-based preferences to grant students admission to college and universities; they believe that admissions, and the law, should be color blind. But that aspiration is only as good as its essential premise: that everyone has an at least minimally adequate opportunity to succeed. The Detroit lawsuit shows that some students are instead starting out with their ankles shackled, and that they have no meaningful ability to compete on equal terms — either to improve their lot in life or to contribute to the life and governance of their communities.
The Detroit case gives the federal court system a chance to consider the massive body of evidence demonstrating what schools undeserving of the name do to the children forced to attend them — and to consider the appropriate role of the judiciary in remedying this problem.
Federal judges should not look to the California Supreme Court, which last month twice decided against hearing cases that questioned the circumstances under which students may sue the state for failing to guarantee equal educational opportunity. Over compelling dissents, the California justices rejected claims that appeared to pit the interests of students against those of teachers and their unions. The Detroit litigation poses no such difficulties.
Federal courts should look instead to the example set in Connecticut. A judge there recently found that the state was not fulfilling its constitutional duty to provide an adequate education to all children. He ordered state officials to overhaul the public school system.
Like the historic litigation leading to Brown vs. Board of Education, the Detroit lawsuit has the potential not only to improve the opportunities afforded to poor children of color in one community, but also to make good nationally on some of our most fundamental and cherished constitutional obligations. Although the Brown ruling ended legally sanctioned segregation, it has not in practice eliminated separate and inferior schools for many students of color. The conditions in Detroit will sound all too familiar to those acquainted with school-system failures across the country.
The federal judiciary has a responsibility to ensure that Brown vs. Board of Education is not, to borrow a phrase from Justice Robert Jackson, an empty “promise to the ear to be broken to the hope, like a munificent bequest in a pauper’s will.” It has a duty to ensure that a school is more than a building, and that all children have access to literacy and the broad range of powers it confers. Our Constitution’s commitments to the “Blessings of Liberty” and to the “equal protection of the laws” demand no less.
Recognizing that the 14th Amendment confers a right to basic literacy would mark a legal development that liberals and conservatives alike should welcome. To liberals, such a right is essential to social justice. To conservatives, it is essential to social stability and order.
WILLIAM J. BARBER, II: Charlotte is Drowning in Systematic Injustice
Just before 4pm, on Tuesday, September 20th, a Charlotte police officer shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott outside Scott's parked car. Eyewitness and police reports do not agree on who the officer was, whether Scott was holding a book or a gun, or what took place between officers and Scott before the shooting.
There is much we do not know. But there is unrest in Charlotte because of what we do know.
CHARLOTTE, NC - SEPTEMBER 21: Protestors march down W.T. Harris Blvd. September 21, 2016 in Charlotte, NC. The protests began the previous night following the fatal shooting of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott by a police officer at an apartment complex near UNC Charlotte. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images) Sean Rayford / Getty Images
We know, whatever the facts, that the law protects the officer, not the victim, in cases like this. Three years ago, a Charlotte officer shot and killed Jonathan Ferrell, an unarmed black man who was asking for help after his car broke down.
The Movement for Black Lives led peaceful protests, and the state conference of the NAACP insisted on due process. The case ended in a hung jury. The attorney general's office denied our request for a re-trial.
There is unrest in Charlotte because of what we know.
We know that the law, as written and enforced, cannot protect us from police violence. We know Darryl Hunt and Henry McCollum, two in a long list of African-American men wrongfully convicted in this state. We know our criminal justice system does not function to protect black life, but to control it.
We also know, since the Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling on August 31st, that Governor Pat McCrory, former mayor of Charlotte, targeted African-Americans with "almost surgical precision" when he signed a 2013 voter suppression bill. When the highest court in the land declared the law intentionally racist, McCrory made no apology. His party's chairman doubled-down by trying to use the state Board of Elections to limit the number of polling places in areas where African-Americans generally vote.
We know that, despite the fact that it would benefit more poor white people than African Americans, our legislature has refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, denying health insurance to the most vulnerable among us, simply because they don't like a black man in the White House.
We know that, while 56 percent of African-American workers make less than a living wage, Governor McCrory signed the mean-spirited HB2, which not only writes discrimination into state law but also forbids municipalities from passing a living wage ordinance or even measures to protect children in the workplace.
We know that our legislature, while touting an average increase in teacher pay, reduced total funding for public education and supported policies designed to undercut schools like the one Keith Scott's son was coming home from on the bus when he lost his daddy.
We know that they increasingly funnel public money to private academies, which lend themselves to the resegregation of public education, even though we know segregation hurts poor kids.
CHARLOTTE, NC - SEPTEMBER 21: Police and protesters carry a seriously wounded protester into the parking area of the the Omni Hotel during a march to protest the death of Keith Scott September 21, 2016 in Carolina. Scott, who was black, was shot and killed at an apartment complex near UNC Charlotte by police officers, who say they warned Scott to drop a gun he was allegedly holding. (Photo by Brian Blanco/Getty Images) Brian Blanco / Getty Images
True, there are things about the Scott case that we do not know. But it's the injustices we do know—the facts on the ground that are choking the life out of black and brown communities—that created what we see in Charlotte this week.
Some say we must condemn the unrest in Charlotte. As a pastor and as an organizer, I do not condone violence. I suspect that much of it has been instigated by provocateurs with their own agenda. But to condemn the uprising in Charlotte would be to condemn a man for thrashing when someone is trying to drown him.
Whatever righteous indignation the public can muster ought to be directed toward the systems that created a situation where a man can drive to the bus stop to pick up his son and end up dead before he gets there.
I am a pastor. I will not condemn grief. But I was trained as a lifeguard, and I learned a long time ago that when people are drowning, their instincts can kill them and anyone who tries to help them. If a lifeguard can get to a drowning person, the first thing the lifeguard says is, "Stop struggling. Let me hold you up in this water, and we can get to the shore together."
The riots in Charlotte are the predictable response of human beings who are drowning in systemic injustice. We must all pray that no one else gets hurt. But we must understand why this is happening.
Ta-Nahisi Coates writes: "A society that protects some people through a system of schools, government-backed home loans, and ancestral wealth but can only protect you with the club of criminal justice has either failed at enforcing its intentions or has succeeded at something much darker." The unrest in Charlotte is not about black people hating police. It's about black, white and brown people rising up against systems of injustice that shield officers who kill but leave millions defenseless.
As hopeless as the situation may seem, we also know what's needed to change the conditions under which Keith Scott lived and died. Right here in North Carolina, we have seen how people impacted by unjust policies can come together in coalitions across color and lift up a moral agenda that embraces the good of the whole. Just last week, I was outside Pat McCrory's office with clergy and the Fight for 15, with Black Lives Matter activists from Charlotte and education advocates, with healthcare workers and citizens fighting coal ash pollution. This coalition that came together in North Carolina's Moral Mondays has spread to 30 states, uniting people who can elect new leadership and continue to push for a more perfect union in this nation.
Just last week, I was outside Pat McCrory's office with clergy and the Fight for 15, with Black Lives Matter activists from Charlotte and education advocates, with healthcare workers and citizens fighting coal ash pollution. This coalition that came together in North Carolina's Moral Mondays has spread to 30 states, uniting people who can elect new leadership and continue to push for a more perfect union in this nation.
This kind of coalition movement building is not easy, and we cannot win the change we need in a single election. But every step forward in this nation's history has come from movements like this one. This week our decision is as clear as ever: it's the ballot or the riot. We who believe in the possibility of democracy must mobilize to vote like never before.
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II is president of the NC NAACP and architect of the Moral Mondays movement. His book The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear, was just released in paperback.Editorial: Charlotte is Drowning in Systematic Injustice - NBC News:
