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Monday, December 19, 2016

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 12/19/16


Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 12/19/16

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School choice gutted Detroit’s public schools. The rest of the country is next. – VICE News







Yong Zhao » Perils or Promises: Education in the Age of Smart Machines: Presentation at the City Club of Cleveland
by mike simpson / 4h
Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Perils or Promises: Education in the Age of Smart Machines: Presentation at the City Club of Cleveland : Perils or Promises: Education in the Age of Smart Machines: Presentation at the City Club of Cleveland On December 14th, 2016, I made a presentation at the City Club of Cleveland . Watch the presentation The Club’s website or Youtube . Tit
DeVos' hostility to public schools should be a disqualifier
by mike simpson / 4h
Commentary: DeVos’ hostility to public schools should be a disqualifier : DeVos’ hostility to public schools should be a disqualifier In the United States, 90 percent of children attend public schools. These young people and their families rely on this system, which is funded by tax dollars and is answerable to democratically elected school boards. In many communities, the public school sys
DiSalvo: De Vos' private school vouchers betray public education
by mike simpson / 4h
DiSalvo: De Vos' private school vouchers betray public education : DiSalvo: Vouchers betray our commitment to public education for all Will children and American education lose under a Trump administration? Is Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s pick for Education Secretary, going to preside over a Cabinet position to destroy America’s public school system as we know it? DeVos said the 2016 election resu
Mass incarceration and children’s outcomes: Criminal justice policy is education policy | Economic Policy Institute
by mike simpson / 4h
Mass incarceration and children’s outcomes: Criminal justice policy is education policy | Economic Policy Institute : Mass incarceration and children’s outcomes: Criminal justice policy is education policy Executive summary Download PDF Press release As many as one in ten African American students has an incarcerated parent. One in four has a parent who is or has been incarcerated. The discrimina
Cook: Protect public schools, cherish public education
by mike simpson / 5h
Cook: Protect public schools, cherish public education : Cook: Protect public schools, cherish public education For those of us who cherish public education among our democracy’s greatest civic institutions, these are trying times. We strive every day to support the American vision for a strong and inclusive public education system that ensures that all students can succeed, regardless of their z
Decline in Students’ Physical Fitness Test Results - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education)
by mike simpson / 5h
Decline in Students’ Physical Fitness Test Results - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education) : State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson Reports Slight Decline in Students’ Physical Fitness Test Results; Asks Schools, Parents to Maintain Focus on Healthy Kids SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson reported today that the percentage of students who met the Healthy Fitness Zone (HFZ)
School’s (Not) Out for Summer
by mike simpson / 6h
School’s (Not) Out for Summer : School’s (Not) Out for Summer During last week’s LAUSD meeting, the Board suddenly reversed course and abandoned a carefully compromised plan that would have slowly returned the beginning of the school year closer to its traditional Labor Day start. Without a warning to the parents who had been pushing for this change, they rejected the calendar that they told Supe
NYC Public School Parents: 3 simple steps to stop the privatization and destruction of our public schools
by mike simpson / 6h
NYC Public School Parents: 3 simple steps to stop the privatization and destruction of our public schools : 3 simple steps to stop the privatization and destruction of our public schools Here are three simple steps you can take to stop the privatization and destruction of our public schools: 1. Call your Senators now to oppose the nomination of Betsy DeVos. Tell them that Ms. DeVos is least quali
When women retire, yet another gap - Lily's Blackboard
by mike simpson / 6h
When women retire, yet another gap - Lily's Blackboard : When women retire, yet another gap Back in April of this year, I discussed Equal Pay Day and the sad reality that in the 21st century, women still aren’t paid at the same rate that men are for the same jobs. Here’s news that heightens our awareness of this pressing concern. The National Institute on Retirement Security reports that women ha
On Kafka, Misreading Postmodernism, and Giving Up | the becoming radical
by mike simpson / 6h
On Kafka, Misreading Postmodernism, and Giving Up | the becoming radical : On Kafka, Misreading Postmodernism, and Giving Up In 2008, through a Republican connection with then-governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, a graduate of the university, President George W. Bush gave the primary commencement address at Furman University, sparking a faculty protest and a student push-back to that protest
Schools Matter: The gift no one wanted–how digital learning came to MA & Fair Test finally woke up.
by mike simpson / 6h
Schools Matter: The gift no one wanted–how digital learning came to MA & Fair Test finally woke up. : The gift no one wanted–how digital learning came to MA & Fair Test finally woke up. from Wrench in the Gears December 15, 2016 The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education announced yesterday, the creation of a new statewide personalized-learning initiative called MAPLE ( Ma
Wendy Lecker: When it comes to charter schools, facts matter - Wait What?
by mike simpson / 6h
When it comes to charter schools, facts matter (By Wendy Lecker) - Wait What? : When it comes to charter schools, facts matter (By Wendy Lecker) Below is Wendy Lecker’s interview with Robert Cotto, Jr. about recent claims made by charter school advocates. It was first published in the Stamford Advocate. Robert Cotto Jr. is a veteran Hartford Board of Education member, director of Urban Initiative
School choice gutted Detroit’s public schools. The rest of the country is next. – VICE News
by mike simpson / 7h
School choice gutted Detroit’s public schools. The rest of the country is next. – VICE News : School choice gutted Detroit’s public schools. The rest of the country is next. It was a chilly afternoon in April 2013 when Roy Roberts, a former GM executive now charged with righting the struggling Detroit Public Schools, appeared in the auditorium of Oakman Elementary/Orthopedic, a school on the city
Report on L.A. school shutdown shows confusion over who was in charge, technology shortcomings - LA Times
by mike simpson / 7h
Report on L.A. school shutdown shows confusion over who was in charge, technology shortcomings - LA Times : Report on L.A. school shutdown shows confusion over who was in charge, technology shortcomings An internal report on last year's unprecedented one-day shutdown of Los Angeles schools due to a terrorist threat reveals a confused chain of command among school district and city officials that
Ed Notes Online: Beware Tainted Research from Brookings Institute - report on school integration has limited utility
by mike simpson / 7h
Ed Notes Online: Beware Tainted Research from Brookings Institute - report on school integration has limited utility : Beware Tainted Research from Brookings Institute - report on school integration has limited utility "because most forms of school choice further segregation, the report's recommendation will likely only further segregation and inequality for students."... Great Lakes Review Yes,
This Mostly White City Wants To Leave Its Mostly Black School District : NPR Ed : NPR
by mike simpson / 8h
This Mostly White City Wants To Leave Its Mostly Black School District : NPR Ed : NPR : This Mostly White City Wants To Leave Its Mostly Black School District DeVonte Kirkland is in his second to last year of school at Center Point High in Jefferson County, just outside of Birmingham, Ala. When he graduates next year he wants to head to Alabama State University. DeVonte also wants a car, so he's
Brown exploring if new bond measure can be divvied up differently | EdSource
by mike simpson / 8h
Brown exploring if new bond measure can be divvied up differently | EdSource : Brown exploring if new bond measure can be divvied up differently Gov. Jerry Brown hasn’t given up his quest to reform how the state allocates money for school construction, even though state voters last month approved a $9 billion school facilities bond that left the current funding system in place. Brown opposed Prop
The real problem with Head Start — and why it needs a fresh start - The Washington Post
by mike simpson / 8h
The real problem with Head Start — and why it needs a fresh start - The Washington Post : The real problem with Head Start — and why it needs a fresh start A new study on Head Start finds the federal program falls far short of its goal of providing high-quality services to all young children who need them and that there are “fundamental and difficult to understand disparities across states” in ac
The new standardized testing craze to hit public schools - The Washington Post
by mike simpson / 10h
The new standardized testing craze to hit public schools - The Washington Post : The new standardized testing craze to hit public schools Last year, the Obama administration conceded that U.S. public school students were taking too many standardized tests, this after after a revolt among students, parents and teachers, and after a two-year study found that there was no evidence that adding testin
Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES
by mike simpson / 10h
Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES : WEEKEND QUOTABLES Pres. Obama "You've got a situation where they're not only entire states but also big chunks of states where, if we're not showing up, if we're not in there making an argument, then we're going to lose," Obama told NPR. "And we can lose badly, and that's what happened in this election." -- CNN John Podesta, Clinton campaign chai
Beyond Vouchers: How Trump Could Boost Private School Choice - Politics K-12 - Education Week
by mike simpson / 10h
Beyond Vouchers: How Trump Could Boost Private School Choice - Politics K-12 - Education Week : Beyond Vouchers: How Trump Could Boost Private School Choice Since President-elect Donald Trump nominated Betsy DeVos to be his education secretary, there's been a lot of discussion about how a Trump administration could expand school choice. Could Trump and DeVos, for example, push to "voucherize" at
Appellate Court Denies School District's Claim That It Would Suffer Irreparable Harm by Granting Equal Restroom Access to Transgender Student
by mike simpson / 11h
Education Law Prof Blog : Appellate Court Denies School District's Claim That It Would Suffer Irreparable Harm by Granting Equal Restroom Access to Transgender Student The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of a transgender student's access to facilities consistent with her gender identity, bring the number of favorable circuit courts to two. In Dodds v. U.S. Department of Educatio

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Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 12/18/16
by mike simpson / 23h
Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 12/18/16 Featured Post Stanford Research: Investing in Public Schools Is More Effective Than Privatization | Diane Ravitch's blog Colorado: State Tells District to “Reconsider” Walton-

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Yong Zhao » Perils or Promises: Education in the Age of Smart Machines: Presentation at the City Club of Cleveland

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Perils or Promises: Education in the Age of Smart Machines: Presentation at the City Club of Cleveland:

Perils or Promises: Education in the Age of Smart Machines: Presentation at the City Club of Cleveland


On December 14th, 2016, I made a presentation at the City Club of Cleveland. Watch the presentation
Title: Perils or Promises: Education in the Age of Smart Machines.
According to a 2016 World Economic Forum report, advances in technology could displace as many as five million jobs by 2021. Furthermore, according to the same report, 65 percent of children entering elementary school today will, as adults, be working in jobs that currently do not yet exist.
How do we prepare our children for this vast revolution? Can we adapt our current educational model to account for this changing employment landscape and skills requirement? Or do we need to entirely rethink how we educate our children?Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Perils or Promises: Education in the Age of Smart Machines: Presentation at the City Club of Cleveland:

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DeVos' hostility to public schools should be a disqualifier

Commentary: DeVos’ hostility to public schools should be a disqualifier:

DeVos’ hostility to public schools should be a disqualifier

Image result for devos not qualified


In the United States, 90 percent of children attend public schools.
These young people and their families rely on this system, which is funded by tax dollars and is answerable to democratically elected school boards. In many communities, the public school system is the glue that holds a diverse population together.
We therefore expect the men and women who set federal education policy to support public education.
Yet President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Betsy DeVos to be secretary of education in his administration. That’s a problem. DeVos isn’t just indifferent to public education; she’s hostile to it.
DeVos simply has no credentials to do this important job. Our country’s education secretary should focus on promoting and improving public education. Instead, DeVos wants to dismantle it.
She has spent most of her adult life promoting private school vouchers. A lobbying group she heads, the American Federation for Children, seeks to transfer tax funds from public schools to private ones.Commentary: DeVos' hostility to public schools should be a disqualifier:
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DiSalvo: De Vos' private school vouchers betray public education

DiSalvo: De Vos' private school vouchers betray public education:

DiSalvo: Vouchers betray our commitment to public education for all

Image result for big education ape DeVos

Will children and American education lose under a Trump administration? Is Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s pick for Education Secretary, going to preside over a Cabinet position to destroy America’s public school system as we know it?



DeVos said the 2016 election results were a vindication of “bold school choice policies.” In this assertion, she means private school vouchers.

Yikes.
Let me explain my worse fears and my queasy stomach since Nov. 8.
I have been a life-long progressive Democrat who believes that children without voice deserve courageous actions from elected leaders to ensure they attend a school where all teachers promote, through their expectations, high levels of achievement for each child.
I have been proud to support Rocketship, ACE, Summit, Downtown College Prep, Voices, Discovery, and Alpha charter schools approved by Santa Clara County Board of Education. In addition, I praise local school districts like Alum Rock and Gilroy Unified for the smart work they do in underfunded systems to achieve their noteworthy student results.
The locally governed and grown charters I listed above create parental choice and competition for local public schools that increase learning opportunities for all. That is what the facts indicate; see the SCCOE 2015-16 Annual Charter School Data Book. During the eight years of the Obama administration’s school choice advocacy and the expansion of high quality charter schools, publicly accountable schools have received strong bi-partisan support.
Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Educational Reform recently said, “I can’t think of anything more potentially harmful to the charter school movement, or anything more antithetical to its progressive roots, than having Donald Trump as its national champion.” I agree with Jeffries.
By choosing DeVos as the Education Secretary nominee, Trump is saying yes to private DiSalvo: De Vos' private school vouchers betray public education:
Image result for big education ape DeVos

The NPE Toolkit: Stop Betsy DeVos - Network For Public Education

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Mass incarceration and children’s outcomes: Criminal justice policy is education policy | Economic Policy Institute

Mass incarceration and children’s outcomes: Criminal justice policy is education policy | Economic Policy Institute:

Mass incarceration and children’s outcomes: Criminal justice policy is education policy

Image result for Mass incarceration and children’s outcomes: Criminal justice policy is education policy

Executive summary

As many as one in ten African American students has an incarcerated parent. One in four has a parent who is or has been incarcerated. The discriminatory incarceration of African American parents is an important cause of their children’s lowered performance, especially in schools where the trauma of parental incarceration is concentrated. In this report, we review studies from many disciplines showing that parental incarceration leads to an array of cognitive and noncognitive outcomes known to affect children’s performance in school, and we conclude that our criminal justice system makes an important contribution to the racial achievement gap.
Educators have paid too little heed to this criminal justice crisis. Criminal justice reform should be a policy priority for educators who are committed to improving the achievement of African American children. While reform of federal policy may seem implausible in a Trump administration, educators can seize opportunities for such advocacy at state and local levels because many more parents are incarcerated in state than in federal prisons. In 2014, over 700,000 prisoners nationwide were serving sentences of a year or longer for nonviolent crimes. Over 600,000 of these were in state, not federal, prisons.
Research in criminal justice, health, sociology, epidemiology, and economics demonstrates that when parents are incarcerated, children do worse across cognitive and noncognitive outcome measures.
Key findings include:
  • An African American child is six times as likely as a white child to have or have had an incarcerated parent. A growing share of African Americans have been arrested for drug crimes, yet African Americans are no more likely than whites to sell or use drugs.
  • Independent of other social and economic characteristics, children of incarcerated parents are more likely to:
    • drop out of school
    • develop learning disabilities, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
    • misbehave in school
    • suffer from migraines, asthma, high cholesterol, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and homelessness
Each of these conditions presents a challenge to student performance.
To improve their students’ outcomes, educators should join forces with criminal justice reformers to:
  • eliminate disparities between minimum sentences for possession of crack vs. powder cocaine
  • repeal mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offenses and other nonviolent crimes
  • encourage President Obama to increase the pace of pardons and commutations in the final days of his term
  • increase funding for social, educational, and employment programs for released offenders

Introduction

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Cook: Protect public schools, cherish public education

Cook: Protect public schools, cherish public education:

Cook: Protect public schools, cherish public education

Image result for Protect public schools, cherish public education
Cook, Steven

For those of us who cherish public education among our democracy’s greatest civic institutions, these are trying times.
We strive every day to support the American vision for a strong and inclusive public education system that ensures that all students can succeed, regardless of their zip code.
That’s why it is so disappointing to see President-Elect Trump’s choice of Betsy DeVos to head the U.S. Department of Education.
DeVos has no experience or expertise in public education. In fact, her sole qualification seems to be using her family’s billions to fund relentless efforts to dismantle America’s public school system, while promoting failed private school vouchers and unaccountable for-profit charters.
Her efforts have been laser-focused on undermining our public schools and, in doing so, have harmed students. She wants to spend tax dollars on private school tuition, and she pulled the strings that freed for-profit corporate charter schools to run rampant in our state.
Barrett: Betsy DeVos and education reform in Michigan
In no way do these failed schemes support opportunity for all students. Instead, they syphon public tax dollars from traditional neighborhood schools to fund for-profit charters and private schools – thereby speeding up privatization of our public education system.
That’s especially worrisome here in Michigan, where we’ve experienced destructive DeVos policies firsthand.
Michigan spends $1 billion a year of public money on charter schools. These schools don’t disclose their financial dealings and are completely unaccountable to the public. These schools have not improved student learning and have done nothing to help our most vulnerable students by closing glaring opportunity gaps.
And we have Betsy DeVos to thank for this.
Last year’s investigation of Michigan’s charter school system by the Detroit Free Press found wasteful spending, double dipping, contract steering, overall poor academic performance and no state standards for how to deal with it all.
Voucher schemes haven’t proved any better. Vouchers have failed to bridge the achievement gap in any of the 30 states where they have been tried, while continuing Cook: Protect public schools, cherish public education:


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