EdSource symposium focuses on state’s “new vision for school success” | EdSource

EdSource symposium focuses on state’s “new vision for school success” | EdSource:

EdSource symposium focuses on state's "new vision for school success"

Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the Learning Policy Institute, at  EdSource’s 2016 symposium in Oakland.

Several education reforms currently underway in California have the potential to result in improved student achievement, but more work is needed to ensure that they achieve their goals, speakers at EdSource’s annual symposium said Thursday.

Nearly 600 education leaders, advocates, teachers and parents attended the event, which EdSource has sponsored in one form or another since its founding in 1977. The theme of this year’s symposium was “Making It Work: Implementing California’s New Vision for School Success.”

The symposium was conducted in partnership with the Learning Policy Institute.

“The real shift that’s going on in California is ultimately not a policy shift,” said David Plank, executive director of the Policy Analysis for California Education organization known as PACE. “What’s really at stake here is a culture shift.”

Plank said the state is “trying to move from a system of compliance (to state and federal regulations) to one of continuous improvement.”

That culture shift he referred to includes transitioning from an accountability system that focused largely on test scores to one looking more broadly at student and school success in multiple areas, including social and emotional learning and school climate.EdSource symposium focuses on state’s “new vision for school success” | EdSource:

Chicago is a union town. Public schools and charter schools prepare for a shut down. | Fred Klonsky

Chicago is a union town. Public schools and charter schools prepare for a shut down. | Fred Klonsky:

Chicago is a union town. Public schools and charter schools prepare for a shut down.

“The Chicago Teachers Union is the most democratic union in the country,” President Karen Lewis told the crowd at The Girl Talk with Erika Wozniak and Jen Sabella last week.

It wasn’t boasting. And it really wasn’t a criticism of anyone else.

She was responding to the Chicago Tribune’s laughable  editorial attacking the second time Chicago union teachers voted strike authorization. The Tribune compared the CTU to North Korea.

Whatever.

The clock is ticking on the strike deadline of Tuesday.

As a result of a law that the state teacher unions, the IFT and the IEA, supported, the CTU and CPS can only bargain and the CTU can only legally strike over salary and benefits.

It was the same law that requires the CTU to get no less than 75% of their members  to authorize a strike.

It was the same law that links teacher evaluation to individual student test scores.

And it undermined teacher seniority and tenure rights.

And that was the law the IFT and the IEA supported as, in the words of IEA Executive Chicago is a union town. Public schools and charter schools prepare for a shut down. | Fred Klonsky:

Demand the Impossible (excerpt # 6) | Bill Ayers

Demand the Impossible (excerpt # 6) | Bill Ayers:

Demand the Impossible (excerpt # 6)

Demand the Impossible! is available now from Haymarket Books:

 Bill Ayers -- Demand the Impossible!: A Radical Manifesto | Haymarket Books -http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Demand-the-Impossible

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

—Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (1865), Section 1

Say what? Slavery and involuntary servitude were abolished in 1865 “except as a punishment for crime?” So if a person has been legally convicted of crime, he or she could again be enslaved or forced into involuntary servitude, according to the US Constitution. That helps to explain the creepy feeling I’ve always had whenever I’m in or even near a prison: the stench of the slave market in the air, and the specter of the plantation hovering every- where. In many places the prison/plantations didn’t even bother changing their names: Angola Plantation in Louisiana became Angola Prison, Parchman Farm is still Parchman Farm. The language remained intact, and so did the deeper political structure.

We begin to see clearly the tough bond of white supremacy over changing times and reorganized systems, the thick white glob of Elmer’s glue binding slavery to Jim Crow and then to prisons, bondage, and mass incarceration. The slave system and the mass incarceration system each violently subordinate subjugated persons to the will of their masters; each insists that subjects follow strict routines dictated by the rulers; each reduces subjects to dependency for everything including food and shelter; each isolates their subjects from normal human contact or intercourse; and each forces subjects to work for minimal compensation.

For the oppressors and the exploiting class there’s a ready rationale in every age: from the start white supremacy was promoted to justify aggression, theft, occupation, kidnapping, and murder—it was never based on inferiority, real or imagined. Racism has been aggressively employed in the service of cheap labor and in the suppression of wages and the precariousness of workers’ status and racism justified colonial plunder from the start. As the US Empire began its long and dangerous decline and the indus- trial heartland collapsed in the middle of the twentieth century creating, excess labor became a fearsome predicament for the rulers. The Black freedom movement pushed forward at the same time, demanding access, recognition, and equality. But the counterrevolution pushed back—the gains of African Americans were nominally accepted as an accomplished fact, but in reality they were challenged, halted, and reversed wherever possible. When overt bigotry became socially unacceptable to many, coded markers—crime, drugs, violence—took its place. With African Americans on the march and revolution in the air, with unemployment soaring and jobs disappearing, prison became a central strategy to address multiple crises.

All of this is racism in operation, and it’s worth noting here that the word “racism” has multiple meanings: in popular usage it means bigotry, often manifest in ignorant comments, stereotyped views, and backward language. For example, Cliven Bundy, the cattle rancher from Nevada, is a racist—just listen to him and you know he’s an offensive bigot. And since you and I aren’t bigots, we can glibly claim the high moral ground. But there’s a problem: “racism” is also the structures of white supremacy and the institutional practices of oppression based on race. The examples above are instances of the execution of institutional racism. And so the question for antiracists isn’t, Are you a bigot?, but What are you doing to attack the institutional expressions of white supremacy? The mayor of Chicago shuttered more than fifty public schools in predominantly Black communities and never used the N-word; a slick, sophisticated, and “charming” president pushed harsh legislation that resulted in mass incarceration and the overrepresentation of Black people in prisons. This is white supremacy, and racist practice on the ground and in the world. Call its name.Demand the Impossible (excerpt # 6) | Bill Ayers:

CPS Screening Process Discriminated Against Black Candidates | WBEZ

CPS Screening Process Discriminated Against Black Candidates | WBEZ:

CPS Screening Process Discriminated Against Black Candidates

Chicago Public Schools has admitted a teacher screening process used since 2012 discriminated against black and Latino applicants.

The process blocked many applicants of color from even getting interviews.

The district agreed the process was unfair and halted it after WBEZ learned of the disparity this year through a Freedom of Information Act request.

According to 2015 data released by CPS, which got the data from the private company that conducted the screenings, 74 percent of the 2,417 white applicants advanced to the pool of potential hires. Of the 430 Latino candidates, 58 percent made it. And of the 729 black candidates, just 45 percent made it.

CPS officials didn’t have an explanation for the disparity. 

“Obviously, when we saw the data it was troubling, which is why we sought to reverse that policy swiftly,” Chief of Education Janice Jackson said. “Obviously, any type of practice that puts people in a disadvantage and -- with this situation where a minority or another subgroup is disproportionately impacted -- we want to shut that down quickly. We want to strike that down quickly.”

But the district could still be in trouble with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for using the screening process, and the numbers call into question if the decline in black teachers is because of the lack of applicants or because of the process.

In 2014-2015, the most recent data available, 22.3 percent of the CPS teaching staff were black, 20 percent were Latino and half were white. Meanwhile, 39.3 percent of students were black, 45.6 were Latino and 9.4 percent were white.

As recently as a decade ago, about 40 percent of CPS teachers were black.

Studies have increasingly shown it is important for black students to have black teachers, who tend to demand more from black students academically and help them build confidence. Black teachers are also role models for black students. 

But studies also found it is important for white students to be exposed to a diverse teaching staff.

‘They can be non-service workers’

Michelle Evans, an African-American teacher at Nettelhorst Elementary School in the Lakeview neighborhood, said she and her roommate, who is white, talk about how her CPS Screening Process Discriminated Against Black Candidates | WBEZ:

Michigan to Retain Children with Lead Poisoning

Michigan to Retain Children with Lead Poisoning:

Michigan to Retain Children with Lead Poisoning

Michigan has a lead problem with its children in Flint, and a governor who failed badly his own accountability test. Many wonder why he is still governor. Some wonder why he isn’t in jail. But yesterday he signed off on a bill to fail third graders. How many children in Flint will wind up failing third grade due to the leaded water they drank? I’m guessing many.

So children fail, through no fault of their own, while the governor gets a pass. Fancy that.

I know there are exemptions to failing in Michigan, but that doesn’t excuse a rotten bill that highlights retention as something good.

We know that the fear of failing a grade for a child is on the same level as losing a parent. Once a child is humiliated by this action, they will have a difficult time ever fully recovering.

And children who fail third grade don’t do any better than those who are socially Michigan to Retain Children with Lead Poisoning:

Malloy Administration considering 64.5% tuition increase for 17,000 Community College students - Wait What?

Malloy Administration considering 64.5% tuition increase for 17,000 Community College students - Wait What?:

Malloy Administration considering 64.5% tuition increase for 17,000 Community College students

Governor Dannel Malloy and the Democrat controlled General Assembly have already made record cuts to Connecticut’s public colleges and universities, cuts that have resulted in massive tuition increases and reduced services, but as the CT Mirror is reporting, Governor Malloy’s austerity budget strategies may now lead to a 64.5 percent increase in tuition and fees for more than 17,000 of Connecticut’s college students.

While Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other national Democratic leaders propose to make a community college education free in the United States, the Malloy administration is floating a proposal that would lead to a massive spike in cost for those attempting to get a college degree at one of Connecticut’s community colleges.

In, Steep tuition hike pitched for many community college students, the CT Mirror reports

Currently, students who pay full-time tuition can take up to 18 credit hours. A proposal that the Board of Regents’ finance panel will consider next Thursday would charge students $150 in tuition and $74 in mandatory fees 

Malloy Administration considering 64.5% tuition increase for 17,000 Community College students - Wait What?:

U.S. Dept. of Education’s Own Inspector Again Condemns DOE’s Oversight of Charter School Grants | janresseger

U.S. Dept. of Education’s Own Inspector Again Condemns DOE’s Oversight of Charter School Grants | janresseger:

U.S. Dept. of Education’s Own Inspector Again Condemns DOE’s Oversight of Charter School Grants

You may not be aware that the U.S. Department of Education—under President Barack Obama’s appointees, Arne Duncan and John King—has been awarding billions of dollars to promote the growth of charter schools across the states. Even less reported has been the failure by the U.S. Department of Education to ensure good stewardship of federal funds through careful administration of the federal Charter Schools Program.  Although the operation of the federal Charter Schools Program has been little-reported, there have been warnings. A 2012 report from the Department of Education’s internal Office of Inspector General  (1) exposed the Department’s failure to ensure careful oversight of federal funds by the state departments of education who received grants, and (2) confirmed the Department’s failure to regulate the charter school management organizations that have been charged with overseeing the operations of the schools  supposedly under their purview.

Another—September 2016—report from the U.S. Department of Education’s own Office of Inspector General has uncovered the very same problems. On Wednesday, Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post, shared the new scathing, new indictment by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General of the Department’s own Charter Schools Program: “The Education Department has… poured in excess of $3 billion into the creation and operation of charter schools, but according to a new audit by the agency’s own inspector general’s office, it has failed in some cases to provide adequate oversight and as a result has put its own grants at risk.  The audit titled, Nationwide Assessment of Charter and Education Management Organizations, and conducted by the department’s inspector general… looked at the relationship that several dozen charter schools have had with their own charter management organizations (CMOs).  It found, among other things that there were ‘internal control weaknesses’ related to the schools’ relationships to their CMOs that were so severe that the department’s own program objectives were at ‘significant risk.'”

Strauss continues: “The newly released report comes just as the department announced $245 million in new grants to state educational agencies (state departments of education) and CMOs under its Charter Schools Program, which funds the creation and expansion of charters around the country.  The Charter Schools Program has invested more than $3 billion into these schools since 1995, helping more than 2,500 charter schools open… According to the audit… the department didn’t do enough to ensure that some of the charter schools it is funding have been able to reach the stated goals.”

At the end of Strauss’s column where it is posted, you can examine the new review by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Charter Schools Program. This year’s investigation by OIG focuses on charter schools that are part of large chains—some nonprofit and some for-U.S. Dept. of Education’s Own Inspector Again Condemns DOE’s Oversight of Charter School Grants | janresseger:

CURMUDGUCATION: Bill Gates Wants Your Tax Dollars

CURMUDGUCATION: Bill Gates Wants Your Tax Dollars:

Bill Gates Wants Your Tax Dollars

On his blog yesterday, Bill Gates made his pitch to get more our of our tax dollars.

Gates notes that the Presidential campaign hasn't touched much on innovations (which I guess is true if you don't count innovative ways to repackage reality).  Invoking the 1961 moon-shot declaration of John F. Kennedy, Gates wants to make a case for four areas in which the government can spur innovation. With money.

He tries to frame this as a centrist idea by creating an imaginary extreme on one end of the debate:

I’ve heard some people argue that life-changing innovations come exclusively from the private sector. But innovation starts with government support for the research labs and universities working on new insights that entrepreneurs can turn into companies that change the world. The public sector’s investments unlock the private sector’s ingenuity.   

If he means, as his essay suggests, that some people argue that the private sector does these things while refusing any dirty government money, well, I haven't heard anybody argue that. Have you heard, for instance, of any charter schools that have insisted on finding their own funding and have refused any solitary cent of government support? No, me neither.

Gates is arguing for the same old, same old-- private corporations getting their hands on that sweet, sweet pile of tax dollars to fund their enterprise. Gates is arguing that we need to elect leaders who see that the government can make progress on the issues that face us by unlocking innovation with a big fat key made out of money. He cites the space race as one of the great public-private partnerships, but what he doesn't discuss is the manner of the partnership and the rules by which it CURMUDGUCATION: Bill Gates Wants Your Tax Dollars:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Busy first day back at Standing Rock

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Busy first day back at Standing Rock:

Busy first day back at Standing Rock

I took this picture at 6:30 p.m. By 8 p.m. the tepee construction was complete

The ride down from Bismarck was easy. I decided to take the main road, Hwy. 1806, to Standing Rock rather than trying to evade the roadblock. It's now manned by National Guardsmen, mobilized by the state's right-wing governor, instead of by state cops, and I wanted to check it out.

The young trooper in well-pressed, camouflaged fatigues was very polite. I suppose he saw an old white guy, driving alone in a rented Ford SUV and figured I was headed over to the casino in Ft. Yates.

"There's a protest going on, about 20 miles down the road," he warns.

"No shit", I don't say.

"So, slow down when you get close. There may be people out on the road."

"I sure will."

He waves me through, smiles and says, "Good luck at the casino."

About 20 minutes later, I pass the now dormant front-line camp and then turn into the main camp. I have a friendly chat with the two guys manning security at the entrance, tell them who I am and why I'm back. They remind me -- no weapons, no drugs, no booze. I'm good with that, of course.

The encampment looks a little different than it did a few weeks ago when heavy rains had left us ankle-deep in mud, car wheels spinning and stuck vehicles needing a push up the hill.  Now everything is dry. But temperatures have dropped and cold winds whip through the camp. You can feel winter coming on and the hard-core people are digging in and building traditional cold-weather housing. I'm going to look at some new, traditional home construction-in-progress Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Busy first day back at Standing Rock:

CHRIS CHRISTIE: The master of political porn |

CHRIS CHRISTIE: The master of political porn |:

CHRIS CHRISTIE: The master of political porn

New Jersey, despite the sentiments of many residents and the producers of television shows and authors of books with catchy titles, is no more politically corrupt than any other big urban state. It has, however, in the last few decades become the center of a new political phenomenon:  Political pornography.  And, in this less graphic version of “Boogie Nights,” the Jack Horner character, the producer—Burt Reynolds—is, of course, Chris Christie, the punk who became governor.

Why call it pornography?  Sure, it doesn’t have much to do with sex—although, as we’ve seen from the Bridgegate trial, profanity and obscenity are prominent in dialogue. It’s more like poverty porn, the exploitation of the degraded circumstances of people in a way that titillates observers, draws media like flies to manure, produces emotion-packed stories, results in a transfer of wealth to the organizations that do the exploiting–and yet nothing is changed for the poor.

And, like both sexual and poverty pornography, political pornography is essentially amoral. Its stories—and Bridgegate is only the most prominent at the moment—provide no guide to good behavior, produce no heroes as examples of right-thinking,  and end with no spiritual uplift. Watching political pornography titillates but doesn’t inform, just as sexual pornography arouses without any sense of romance.

Richard Aregood

We should have seen it coming to New Jersey when the story first broke that Chris Christie, a small-time Morris County Republican with little expertise in criminal law but with a brother with a lot of money to donate to the Republican Party, would be named the US Attorney in New Jersey—an office that had reached national prominence through crime-busting prosecutors like Herbert Stern and Frederick Lacey. My friend and colleague,  the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer Richard Aregood, tried to warn us, even then.

Like porn producers who care nothing about plot and porn actors whose natural physical endowments make up for lack of theatrical skills, Christie became New Jersey’s chief federal prosecutor to advance, not justice, but his own political CHRIS CHRISTIE: The master of political porn |:

NYC Public School Parents: Receivership schools, class size and nine years of broken promises to our kids from the DOE: a letter from the Education Law Center

NYC Public School Parents: Receivership schools, class size and nine years of broken promises to our kids from the DOE: a letter from the Education Law Center:

Receivership schools, class size and nine years of broken promises to our kids from the DOE: a letter from the Education Law Center

Check out the letter below from Wendy Lecker of the Education Law Center, asking Commissioner Elia if she is going to approve NYC's deeply flawed Contracts for Excellence plan, a "plan" in name only that does not even pretend to reduce class size citywide and thus does not comply with the state C4E law passed in 2007.

Even in the limited number of 90 plus Renewal schools the DOE says it has focused its class size reduction efforts on for the last few years,very few of these schools significantly reduced class size.  Last year, only seven out of 94 Renewal capped class sizes at the original (and fairly modest) C4E goals of 20 students in grades K-3, 23 students in 4th -8th grade and 25 students in high school classes -- which would still be larger than class sizes averages in the rest of the state.

This is flagrantly unacceptable.  Since 2007, DOE has promised to reduce class size in its lowest-performing schools.  For the first 7 years or so, this involved a list of 75 low-performing schools with especially large class sizes.  None of these schools ever lowered class size to acceptable levels, and many of these schools have now been closed.  Others have continued to struggle.  Promises have been repeatedly made to these children, to parents, and to the state, and repeatedly broken, and the state hasn't even bothered to pretend to care. For the last three years, DOE has promised to reduce class size at the Renewal schools.  This hasn't happened either.

The three most persistently struggling NYC schools, according to the state, are all Renewal schools in the Bronx.  They have been on various permutations of the failing list for at least a decade.  They are middle schools, composed primarily of students from low-income families with large numbers of English language learners and special needs children: JHS 162 Lola Rodriguez De Tio in District 7, IS 117 Joseph H. Wade, and JHS 22 Jordan Mott, both in District 9.

JHS 162 and IS 117 have been on the city's priority list for class size reduction since 2007, when the Contract for Excellence law was first passed; JHS 22 since 2009.  Yet DOE has never bothered to cap class sizes in these three schools at levels that would guarantee significant progress. Though JHS 162 did finally lower average class size to 22 last year, many classes remained as large as 28 in all four core subjects, according to DOE data.  JHS 22 actually increased class size last year, and also had classes of 28 students.  At  IS 117, class sizes not only increased, but grew to 29 students per class on average.  Many core classes were as large as 33-34 students --which are so large they actually violate the UFT limits for Title I middle schools  -- supposed to be capped at 30 students per class.

On Wednesday it was announced that JHS 162 will be put into receivership, having made the least progress of the three schools in terms of test scores. Within 60 days, Chancellor Fariña must appoint an outside individual or organization to manage the school, merge or close it. If it is closed it will join the many NYC schools that met this fate without the DOE officials having tried the most obvious method -- and the method they promised to carry out -- to improve them.

Below Wendy's letter is the testimony she earlier submitted on C4E.  The excellent ELC report she cites showing growing class sizes over the last nine years is posted here.

NYC Public School Parents: Receivership schools, class size and nine years of broken promises to our kids from the DOE: a letter from the Education Law Center:

ELC Letter to Commissioner Elia Re NYC C4E Plan by Leonie Haimson on Scribd

Education Law Center C4E Testimony 2016-17 by Leonie Haimson on Scribd

NYC Public School Parents: Receivership schools, class size and nine years of broken promises to our kids from the DOE: a letter from the Education Law Center:

Fedex Sued for Printing Eureka Math Without a License | deutsch29

Fedex Sued for Printing Eureka Math Without a License | deutsch29:

Fedex Sued for Printing Eureka Math Without a License

Eureka Math (also known as EngageNY) was once owned by the nonprofit, Common Core, Inc., which is now the nonprofit, Great Minds, Inc. If you click thiscommoncore.org link, it will redirect you to greatminds.org.

The Great Minds website has rewritten its history to remove any trace of its former identity as Common Core, Inc. However, the Common Core, Inc., history is archivedhere.

The nonprofit, Common Core, Inc., predated the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Whereas CCSS did not originate in connection to Common Core, Inc., the nonprofit, Common Core, Inc., AKA Great Minds, Inc., it is proud to note that its products are Common Core-aligned:

ABOUT GREAT MINDS

A group of education leaders founded the non-profit Great Minds in 2007 to define and encourage content-rich comprehensive education for all American schoolchildren. In pursuit of that mission, Great Minds brings schoolteachers together in collaboration with scholars to craft exemplary instructional materials and share them with the field. Great Minds’ Eureka Math curriculum has won accolades at the state and national levels, and is the only comprehensive math curriculum aligned to the Common Core State Standards at every grade. The non-profit also just released Wit & Wisdom, a new English curriculum that taps the power of literature, history and science to meet the expectations of the new standards.

Great Minds even brags that Eureka Math/EngageNY is featured on David Coleman’s Student Achievement Partners (SAP) website. (Coleman and his SAP were at the center of CCSS development.):

National Impact

Eureka Math is the only curriculum found by EdReports.org to be fully aligned to the standards for all grades, K–8. Lessons from Eureka are exemplars on Student Achievement Partners’ AchievetheCore.org and at Achieve.org/EQuIP. The version of the curriculum on EngageNY.org has been downloaded 13.5 million times, reaching every state in the nation.

I wrote about Eureka Math in September 2014 because the Louisiana Department of Fedex Sued for Printing Eureka Math Without a License | deutsch29:

WEAC: New style of vouchers 'back-door scheme' to defund public schools | State-and-regional | wiscnews.com

WEAC: New style of vouchers 'back-door scheme' to defund public schools | State-and-regional | wiscnews.com:

WEAC: New style of vouchers 'back-door scheme' to defund public schools

The state’s largest teachers union came out swinging Thursday after the Wisconsin State Journal reported that Assembly Republicans are looking at bringing a new style of school voucher to Wisconsin.

Assembly Republicans are considering a program that would allow Wisconsin parents to pay for K-12 school expenses — including private school tuition, textbooks and tutoring — with a taxpayer-funded stream of money known in other states as Education Savings Accounts.

The subsidies — now being offered in Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Nevada and Tennessee — have been dubbed the next generation of school vouchers, which allow students to use tax money to attend private schools and have been used in Wisconsin since 1991.

Ron Martin, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, said in a statement Thursday after the State Journal published a story about the lawmakers’ plans, that the programs amount to a “back-door scheme” to take money away from public school funding.

“Education savings accounts literally take money out of our neighborhood public schools and hand it over to subsidize private tuition, with zero accountability,” said Martin. “Politicians who turn their backs on the public schools that provide all children with opportunity in return for campaign contributions from voucher lobbyists had better be ready to look parents in their communities in the eye in the next election and explain why local public schools are cutting teachers and programs, while tax dollars go unaccounted for through private subsidies.”

If lawmakers move forward with creating such a program, it would add another option for Wisconsin parents, who already have a variety of alternatives to their designated public school, including open enrollment to other public schools, voucher-assisted private schools and independent charter schools.

In general, under the subsidies, parents of eligible children — typically students with disabilities, low-income students or those attending schools that don’t meet state education standards — receive several thousand dollars from taxpayers to pay educational expenses.

In the states that have such programs, parents either are issued a debit card that accesses the money or are reimbursed for their expenses.

Rep. Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield, said a starting point might be to offer the programs to families whose income currently makes them qualify for school vouchers — which is 185 percent of the federal poverty level in the statewide voucher program and 300 percent of the federal poverty level in the Milwaukee and Racine programs.

School Choice Wisconsin president Jim Bender said Martin’s “hyperbolic rhetoric” shows he doesn’t understand how the program might work in Wisconsin.

“Given the ability to customize educational programs, public schools could be leaders in innovating new solutions that improve education and attract new revenues in response to the clear, and growing, demand from parents for quality options,” said Bender.

A spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said lawmakers won’t look at the idea in earnest until January, when the new Legislative session begins.

Scot Ross, executive director of the liberal group One Wisconsin Now, on Thursday also reacted to the State Journal report, saying Republican lawmakers “are willing to sell out our public schools” in exchange for campaign donations from pro-voucher supporters.WEAC: New style of vouchers 'back-door scheme' to defund public schools | State-and-regional | wiscnews.com:

Testing, Common Core Place Additional Stress on Teachers - The Atlantic

Testing, Common Core Place Additional Stress on Teachers - The Atlantic:

The Disproportionate Stress Plaguing American Teachers

Unrealistic standards put educators on an anxiety-ridden trajectory.

Forty-six percent of U.S. teachers say they experience a lot of daily stress—that’s more than what the nation’s doctors report, and the topmost among other professional categories, level with nurses.

“High levels of stress,” said a 2016 research brief by Pennsylvania State University, “are affecting teacher health and well-being, causing teacher burnout, lack of engagement, job dissatisfaction, poor performance, and some of the highest turnover rates ever.” Does teacher stress affect students? "When teachers are highly stressed,” the authors noted, “children show lower levels of both social adjustment and academic performance.” They identified, amidst other findings, that high turnover rates have been to linked to lower student-achievement and increased financials costs for schools.

Teacher burnout might be associated with student stress, suggested a Canadianstudy published in April. Researchers at the University of British Columbia retrieved saliva samples from several hundred students in grades four to seven and analyzed their cortisol levels, and they discovered that in classrooms where educators reported greater burnout, or emotional fatigue, the cortisol levels of the children were higher, according to a press release. “This suggests that stress contagion might be taking place in the classroom among students and their teachers,” said Eva Oberle, the lead author of the study.

American teachers, I recently discovered, report the most weekly hours of classroom instruction compared to their international counterparts—and given the lack of time during the school day for other essential things such as planning, assessing and collaboration, I assumed that the primary reason behind the high level of teacher stress was almost entirely time-related. But the more I looked into this question of why so many American teachers report high levels of stress, the clearer it seemed that an exceptionally full teaching schedule worked in tandem with another factor: an abundance of professional demands.

Last year, more than 30,000 teachers completed an online 80-question survey created by the American Federation of Teachers and Badass Teachers Association. The results showed, as covered by The Washington Post, that the majority of teachers reported high levels of stress and were “particularly anxious about having to carry out a steady stream of new initiatives—such as implementing curricula and testing related to the Common Core State Standards—without being given adequate training.”

“We ask teachers to be a combination of Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr., and, I’m dating myself here, Tony Soprano,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told The Washington Post, which emphasized that the survey’s findings weren’t scientific. “We ask them to be Mom and Dad and impart tough love but also be a shoulder to lean on. And when they don’t do these things, we blame them for not being saviors of the world. What is the effect? The effect has been teachers are incredibly stressed out.”

“[T]he system that we have right now ... has teachers being pulled in so many different directions.”

Recently, a 25-year veteran U.S. teacher told Colorado Public Radio (CPR) he left Testing, Common Core Place Additional Stress on Teachers - The Atlantic:

 

Diane Ravitch: 'We have been through an era of disastrous attacks on education. The next president must treat teachers with respect.' | News

Diane Ravitch: 'We have been through an era of disastrous attacks on education. The next president must treat teachers with respect.' | News:

Diane Ravitch: 'We have been through an era of disastrous attacks on education. The next president must treat teachers with respect.'

'We need to stop using teachers as a scapegoat to excuse our society’s unwillingness to do anything to improve the lives of children' says the academic and author.

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As the United States prepares to elect a new President, leading figures in education have given their views on Barack Obama's legacy and what the next education secretary should focus do.

Previously, Andy Hargreaves, Howard Gardner, Randi Weingarten, Julia Freeland Fisher, have all given their opinions. Now, Diane Ravitch, research professor of education at New York University, commentator, and author of books including The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, shares her views.

Diane, what will be the legacy of Race to the Top and Barack Obama’s other education initiatives?

In years to come, when historians look back on the early twenty-first century, they are likely to refer to the “Bush-Obama policies,” because No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top share a similar ideology.

The shared assumptions are that standardized testing is both the best measure of educational progress and the goal of education. The ideology rests on a firm belief in extrinsic rewards and punishments. If children are tested, their test scores are used to identify their rating, as well as the ratings of their teachers, principals, and schools.

Race to the Top required schools across the nation to adopt test-based evaluation and to fire educators and close schools based on test scores. And like NCLB, Race to the Top encouraged the mistaken belief that privately managed charter schools and state takeovers were a successful remedy to low-scoring schools.

Both NCLB and Race to the Top – and the assumptions behind them – were not only ineffectual but demoralizing to educators and major policy failures. They led to many school closures, especially in impoverished communities and communities of color.

These policies failed to recognize that the single most important correlate (or cause) of low scores is poverty, family income.

Many educators were unjustly fired, using flawed measures. At the same time, unregulated charters opened by the thousands, diverting resources from public schools and frequently refusing admission to the children with the greatest needs.

In my view, historians will look on this era as a period of failed mandates, of willful and ignorant Diane Ravitch: 'We have been through an era of disastrous attacks on education. The next president must treat teachers with respect.' | News:

The Wemstroms: A closer look at Chicago teacher pensions

The Wemstroms: A closer look at Chicago teacher pensions:

The Wemstroms: A closer look at Chicago teacher pensions

Continuing with his “Let’s hate Chicago” agenda, Rep. Brian Stewart contributes to public misunderstanding regarding pensions.

Stewart lists the average Chicago teacher’s salary as more than $78,000 a year. As Diane Ravitch, a research professor at New York University, points out, this number is highly inflated. It includes the salaries of assistant principals, downtown consultants, counselors and just about anyone else with a teaching certificate. It also includes many university professors. According to the Chicago Public Schools 2016 annual budget, the average salary of a Chicago public school teacher is $56,720.

Stewart gives the salary of “the average retiring pensioner,” which would include all government pensioners, as more than $68,000. But the average pension of a Chicago teacher is $42,000. Most teachers do not receive social security.

Stewart said, “State law mandates that teachers pay 9.4 percent of their yearly salaries into their retirement fund. In Chicago, teachers pay 2 percent, and the school district supposedly covers the other 7.4 percent.”

He leaves the impression, purposely of course, that only in Chicago does the school district have what’s called a “pension pickup.” However, the Illinois Policy Institute finds that two-thirds of the school districts in Illinois pay some or all of the teachers’ required contributions to their pension fund.

For example, teachers in Rockford School District 205 paid nothing toward their pensions. According to Illinois Policy’s 2012 article RPS 205 paid it all.

Apparently forgetting that Chicago is in Illinois, Stewart complains that “the state is expected to step in.” But as we’ve pointed out before, other school districts have their pensions funded by the state. Chicago does not.

From the CPS Budget: “CPS is in a uniquely difficult financial situation because it is the only school district in Illinois that is required to support its pension system. Teachers outside of CPS are part of the state Teachers’ Retirement System, funded by the state from taxes, including those paid by Chicago taxpayers. However, CPS teachers are part of the CTPF, which is funded by Chicago taxpayers, with almost no support from the state. This double-taxation of Chicago taxpayers is inequitable and a main cause of the financial challenges that CPS faces.

“Even though both systems are governed by state statute, there is a vast difference in how pensions are funded, and Chicago is at a great disadvantage.

“In FY16, the state will make a $3.7 billion contribution to TRS. This amounts to a pension subsidy for downstate and suburban school districts of $2,266 per student. In contrast, CPS receives only $31 per student. The significant gulf in state pension support has created a structural budget crisis that will continue to divert scarce resources away from classrooms to cover pension payments until action is taken to correct this imbalance.”

So when Stewart complains that “the state will pick up a minimum of $215 million dollars of CPS pension costs,” he’s talking about less than 6 percent of what the state will pay for pensions in other districts.

Meanwhile, Illinois legislators are among the highest paid in the country, receiving $67,836 per year, plus office and travel expenses. And many legislators have other jobs. Rep. Stewart does not mention that he’s making a salary, paid by taxpayers, higher than that of most people who spend the day in Chicago’s classrooms.

Can’t Illinoisans all work together? Trashing one city in Illinois in order to win votes is unworthy of an elected representative.

Chuck and Pat Wemstrom live in rural Mount Carroll. Reach them at patandchuck@gmail.com. The Wemstroms: A closer look at Chicago teacher pensions: