John Thompson: Early education? Great! After that, not so much - NonDoc

Early education? Great! After that, not so much - NonDoc:

Early education? Great! After that, not so much

Oklahoma has always had a surplus of weird paradoxes. We exhibit so many contradictions that even the most important of them can get overlooked.

For instance, how is it that Oklahoma is praised nationally for taking the lead in high-quality preschool even as we have starved our traditional public schools?

It is a tribute to whatever it is in Oklahoma culture that produced a grassroots campaign for universal pre-kindergarten that, subsequently, has earned many accolades. The highly respected American Education Research Association (AERA) recognized these pioneering efforts during one of its centennial celebration lectures Feb. 22 at the Oklahoma History Center.

Among some of the greatest early education experts and political leaders, UCLA’s Deborah Lowe Vandell delivered the keynote address. In it, she reviewed the public’s strong support for early childhood education and its excellent record of improving the lives of children. She also noted the recent pushback by some in terms of scaling up high-quality programs.

Early ed by the numbers

As Vandell explained, up to 90 percent of the public supports early education. Few parents would oppose high-quality services for their own kids. In the Midwest, parents with two children in paid childcare invest an average of $17,733 per year for it.

She went on to say that 5.3 million children attend preschool programs their parents pay for, but only 2.4 million kids attendEarly education? Great! After that, not so much - NonDoc:

How does California rank in per-pupil spending? It all depends | EdSource

How does California rank in per-pupil spending? It all depends | EdSource:

How does California rank in per-pupil spending? It all depends

 Californians struggle to determine what constitutes a sufficient level of education funding, one yardstick is what California spends compared with other states. So here’s a question: How does California rank in K-12 per-pupil spending nationally in the latest studies? a) 46th; b) 41st; c) 29th; d) 22nd.

The answer is all of them. Depending on how spending is calculated and how up-to-date the data are, the per-student amount differs by thousands of dollars, and the state’s ranking varies widely.

This FAQ explains the most frequently cited methodologies, their differences and the reasoning behind them. While useful, state spending comparisons won’t provide Californians the answer only they can answer: What would constitute adequate funding in the state with the world’s sixth-largest economy, and with the largest number of children living in poverty and highest percentage of English learners in the nation?

Which organizations are the primary sources of information on per-student spending data?

• Education Week, which each January updates Quality Counts, a comparison of state education systems. States’ per-student spending is one component.
• The National Education Association, which releases its annual survey of state spending each May .
• The California Budget and Policy Center, a Sacramento-based nonprofit, which periodically has done its own annual analysis to determine California’s per-student ranking. Its most recent report was published in January 2017.

What are the big differences in their methodologies?

EdWeek uses data collected by the federal government, the National Center for Education Statistics. The center publishes 2-year-old data because it waits for states to update their actual spending, and the center takes months scrubbing the information to make sure the state data are comparable. EdWeek then applies a cost-of-living factor, the Comparable Wage Index, which has the effect of lowering the rankings of states with high costs of living. Developed for the federal government by a professor at Texas A&M University, the index incorporates regional variations in the salaries of college graduates.

The California Budget and Policy Center, in an analysis that examined the How does California rank in per-pupil spending? It all depends | EdSource:

VIDEO: Head of Betsy DeVos’s anti-public education group testifies in Senate hearing that he likes to “shake” indecisive women | Eclectablog

VIDEO: Head of Betsy DeVos’s anti-public education group testifies in Senate hearing that he likes to “shake” indecisive women | Eclectablog:
VIDEO: Head of Betsy DeVos’s anti-public education group testifies in Senate hearing that he likes to “shake” indecisive women

“I wanted to shake her, like I like to shake my wife.”

Gary Naeraert is the Executive Director of the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP). GLEP was founded and largely funded by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to influence policy and law in Michigan with the aim of promoting charter schools and the elimination of traditional public schools. The group consists of a PAC, a foundation, a 501(c)(3) group, and a 501(c)(4) group.

While giving testimony before a Senate Education Committee meeting yesterday, Naeyaert revealed that he likes to “shake” indecisive women, including his wife. It was an astonishing moment:

He was referring to the head of the State School Reform Office, Natasha Baker, a Snyder appointee, someone he’s clearly frustrated with.

“I wanted to shake her, like I like to shake my wife.”

Fortunately for Baker, Naeyaert would go to jail if he assaulted her in this way. Naeyaert’s casual, laughing reference to shaking his wife when she can’t decide which restaurant she wants to go to raises serious questions about his situation with her, however.

Lonnie Scott, Executive Director of Progress Michigan, excoriated Naeyaert, calling on him to publicly apologize:

The head of GLEP will likely say he was making a joke, but in what world is domestic violence funny? He was addressing a committee in the Michigan Senate, but he seemed to think he was with Billy Bush on the Access Hollywood bus. Naeyaert should apologize for his comments and explain why he thought invoking images of domestic violence was relevant in a discussion about education. Also, making decisions about school closures, which will affect students and neighborhoods for years to come, is not the same as deciding which chain restaurant you want to eat at for dinner.

Gary Naeyaert represents and leads a group formed by Betsy DeVos to destroy public schools and reshape them in the image she has for them: for-profit charters and private religious schools that use our tax dollars to enrich the people running them. And it appears, by his own admission, that he is a perpetrator of domestic violence against his wife.

UPDATE: Ironically, GLEP’s twitter account (likely run by Naeyaert himself) tweeted this out yesterday morning before his testimony:

 Follow

GLEP @GLEP_MI

The Senate Education Committee is hearing a presentation on character education from Seth Maust and @thefivestarlife. #MichEd#MiLeg

9:26 AM - 28 Feb 2017 · Lansing, MI

 
•  11 Retweet
 
•  11 like

“Character education”??? Sounds like a curriculum Naeyaert himself should be taking.VIDEO: Head of Betsy DeVos’s anti-public education group testifies in Senate hearing that he likes to “shake” indecisive women | Eclectablog:

Will DeVos Department of Education Enforce Students’ Civil Rights? | janresseger

Will DeVos Department of Education Enforce Students’ Civil Rights? | janresseger:

Will DeVos Department of Education Enforce Students’ Civil Rights?

One of the U.S. Department of Education’s primary roles has been the protection of students’ civil rights.  The federal government’s role in education emerged after the Civil Rights Movement, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education which began the dismantling of de jure school segregation, and the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 as a centerpiece of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.  Later came the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe, that protects the rights of children of undocumented immigrants to a free public education. Part of the reason for the U.S. Department of Education has been to step in when states neglect to protect students’ rights at school. The Department’s record hasn’t been perfect; some administrations have more fully embraced the Department’s mission to protect children’s rights.

While the Obama administration brought us some politically (and some believe morally) questionable programs like Race to the Top, it is generally acknowledged that under Arne Duncan’s leadership and then John King’s, the U.S. Department of Education—through its Office of Civil Rights—aggressively pursued injustices reported around racial discrimination, the disparate impact of school discipline plans, services for disabled students, and violations of the rights of LGBT students.

What is likely to happen around civil rights enforcement in the Trump administration, with the Department of Education led by Betsy DeVos?  This is the subject of an interview conducted by journalist Jennifer Berkshire with Derek Black, a law professor in South Carolina, author, and blogger.  Berkshire’s interview appears on her own blog.  It was also reprinted by Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post on Monday.

Derek Black believes we are likely to see “a rollback of civil rights enforcement in education under Trump and DeVos.”  He has been watching Betsy DeVos: “At her confirmation hearing, Betsy DeVos was reluctant to take an affirmative stance on enforcing students’ disability Will DeVos Department of Education Enforce Students’ Civil Rights? | janresseger:

NYC Educator: DeVos of Da People?

NYC Educator: DeVos of Da People?:

DeVos of Da People?

There is no question that US Secretary Betsy DeVos is an active enemy of public schools. At the right-wing conference she attended last week, she opened with a hilarious commentary ridiculing public school students who are too poor to buy lunch. She proudly told the crowd that she told Bernie Sanders there was no such thing as a free lunch.

That's news to most students in my Title One school, which relies on the federal government to give them lunch every day. Maybe DeVos is feeling jolly because her BFFs in the House are moving to take away lunch from poor kids who come to school hungry. Or maybe she finds the free lunch thing amusing because she herself was born rich and married richer. Clearly my students (and I) showed a lack of vision by failing to do that.

I don't suppose there were many free lunches in the elite private educational institutions DeVos and her children attended. When your family can pay tens of thousands of dollars annually for you to be away from the riff raff, you don't mix with the sort of people who fall into that category. That, of course, is one reason a whole lot of private schools exist.

The problem, in fact, is exactly the opposite of what DeVos says it is. She'd tell you that we need more choice. She'd tell you that we need charter schools and vouchers. She'd tell you that HBCUs are about school choice rather than utter lack of it. She'd tell you that we're condemning our children to inadequate facilities by sending them to the public schools that she and Donald Trump have deemed unfit for their children. Ironically, under absolutely no scenario they put forth will our children, whether or not they get free lunch, be attending school alongside the DeVos and Trump children.

If so-called school choice is not the problem, what is? I'd argue it's Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump. I'd argue it's Michelle Rhee and Michael Bloomberg. I'd argue it's Andrew Cuomo, Joel Klein, Bill Gates, John King, and absolutely every one of the so-called education reformers who NYC Educator: DeVos of Da People?:

Difficulties When Combining Multiple Teacher Evaluation Measures | VAMboozled!

Difficulties When Combining Multiple Teacher Evaluation Measures | VAMboozled!:

Difficulties When Combining Multiple Teacher Evaluation Measures

A new study about multiple “Approaches for Combining Multiple Measures of Teacher Performance,” with special attention paid to reliability, validity, and policy, was recently published in the American Educational Research Association (AERA) sponsored and highly-esteemed Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis journal. You can find the free and full version of this study here.

In this study authors José Felipe Martínez – Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, Jonathan Schweig – at the RAND Corporation, and Pete Goldschmidt – Associate Professor at California State University, Northridge and creator of the value-added model (VAM) at legal issue in the state of New Mexico (see, for example, here), set out to help practitioners “combine multiple measures of complex [teacher evaluation] constructs into composite indicators of performance…[using]…various conjunctive, disjunctive (or complementary), and weighted (or compensatory) models” (p. 738). Multiple measures in this study include teachers’ VAM estimates, observational scores, and student survey results.

While authors ultimately suggest that “[a]ccuracy and consistency are greatest if composites are constructed to maximize reliability,” perhaps more importantly, especially for practitioners, authors note that “accuracy varies across models and cut-scores and that models with similar accuracy may yield different teacher classifications.”

This, of course, has huge implications for teacher evaluation systems as based upon multiple measures in that “accuracy” means “validity” and “valid” decisions cannot be made as based on “invalid” or “inaccurate” data that can so arbitrarily change. In other words, what this means is that likely never will a decision about a teacher being this or that actually mean this or that. In fact, this or that might be close, not so close, or entirely wrong, which is a pretty big deal when the measures combined are assumed to function otherwise. This is especially interesting, again and as stated prior, that the third author on this piece – Pete Goldschmidt – is the person consulting with the state of New Mexico. Again, this is the state that is still trying to move forward with the attachment of Difficulties When Combining Multiple Teacher Evaluation Measures | VAMboozled!:

Smarter Balanced is Looking for a Pal in ACT or SAT for High School Assessment | deutsch29

Smarter Balanced is Looking for a Pal in ACT or SAT for High School Assessment | deutsch29:

Smarter Balanced is Looking for a Pal in ACT or SAT for High School Assessment

On February 27, 2017, the University of California at Los Angeles, on behalf of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a “college admission collaboration” in which SBAC “wishes to engage in collaborative work with developers of college admissions tests”– in other words, SBAC is looking to beef up its high-school assessment game by befriending the likes of SAT or ACT.

In the parlance of *choice,* SBAC is giving itself a voucher to *escape its consortium zip code.* Of course, that does not mean that either SAT or ACT will choose to hitch its lucrative college admin wagon to the disadvantaged SBAC star.

ACT and SAT do not need SBAC. Thus, theirs is the upper-hand choice to refuse the SBAC voucher.

Complete details are in this RFP statement of work. Below are excerpts in which SBAC tries to present its dilemma regarding garnering the high school assessment market as “promising,” even though those high school students might not see any value in the benefits of a SBAC assessment:

The Smarter Balanced Assessment System was developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium currently UCLA GSEIS-Smarter Balanced (“Smarter Balanced” or “the Consortium”) in response to the 2010 Race to the Top Assessment Program. Current Smarter Balanced members include 15 states, one territory, and the Bureau of Indian Education.

Smarter Balanced assessment development began with in-depth discussions among many groups of educators, content experts, and researchers of the high level content identified in the Common Core State Standards (“CCSS”). …

The resulting Smarter Balanced Assessment System includes interim assessments, formative assessment resources, and summative assessments in ELA/literacy and mathematics for students in grades 3-8 and high school. …

Given this promising outlook for providing relevant and useful information to postsecondary institutions, Smarter Balanced members have engaged in 

Smarter Balanced is Looking for a Pal in ACT or SAT for High School Assessment | deutsch29:

Audio: Schools in affluent SoCal areas call Brown's budget inadequate | 89.3 KPCC

Audio: Schools in affluent SoCal areas call Brown's budget inadequate | 89.3 KPCC:

Schools in affluent SoCal areas call Brown's budget inadequate

Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed budget calls for an increase of $744 million for California's K-12 schools, but six  school districts in affluent Southern California neighborhoods say their share won't be sufficient. 

They’re unhappy that a preexisting funding formula will direct more of those funds to schools in poorer areas, and they want the state to alter a requirement that all schools pay about 2 percent more next fiscal year for their employees’ pensions.

If nothing changes, said South Pasadena Unified School District Superintendent Geoff Yantz, he will be forced to cut costs.

"There are some positions where people have retired that we’re not going to fill, we’re going to have to reduce some hours of employees" and the district would spend less on textbooks, he said.

Besides having the state pick up more of the tab for employee pensions, Yantz would like to see a lowering of the threshold for voters to pass parcel tax increases from a two-thirds majority to 55 percent.

Yantz and leaders in other wealthy districts also have issues with the four-year-old Local Control Funding Formula, which gives extra funding increases to schools with high proportions of low-income and English-learner students.

“When this funding formula went in place, we received in a sense a permanent cut as a result of it,” he said.

The South Pasadena school district has been talking to public school leaders in La Cañada, Arcadia, San Marino, Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach, said Yantz.

They’re talking to lobbyists about helping them make their case to legislators in the next few months as budget deliberations ramp up.

“The Local Control Funding Formula is a signature measure by this governor and is not likely to get changed much,” said Kevin Gordon, president of Capitol Advisors, a powerful Sacramento lobbying group for school districts. He’s advising South Pasadena and other school districts on how to try to convince lawmakers to help their districts.

“The thing that is really important that they need to underscore is that they may live in affluent neighborhoods but the school districts’ base funding is not competitive with what other districts are getting,” Gordon said.

Since the state's base funding doesn't cover the cost of lower class sizes and Advanced Placement classes that the community wants, South Pasadena leaders carry out aggressive fundraising that has provided 15 percent of the district's budget, said Yantz.

Some education researchers point out that California is on the low end nationally when it comes to per student funding.

"When you see wealthy districts that don’t have enough money and are frustrated, you can only imagine how difficult things are for poor districts," said Sacramento State University education researcher Su Jin Jez.

Yantz and the other school leaders are keeping an eye on Brown's revised budget expected to come out in May. If tax revenues are greater than expected, Yantz feels the educators can make a stronger case to get additional state funding.Audio: Schools in affluent SoCal areas call Brown's budget inadequate | 89.3 KPCC:

Future Ready Schools: How Silicon Valley and the Defense Department Plan to Remake Public Education: A talk by Alison McDowell | Seattle Education

Future Ready Schools: How Silicon Valley and the Defense Department Plan to Remake Public Education: A talk by Alison McDowell | Seattle Education:

Future Ready Schools: How Silicon Valley and the Defense Department Plan to Remake Public Education: A talk by Alison McDowell

How Silicon Valley and the Defense Department Plan to Remake Public Education

March 25th, from 10:30 AM-Noon

Lake City Branch of the Seattle Public Library

12501 28th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98125

This talk is free and open to the public.

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, schools across the country have been destabilized by ongoing austerity budgets and punitive data-driven policies. Meanwhile, an alternative infrastructure of digital education has been quietly developed and refined through public-private partnerships set up between the Defense Department’s Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative, technology companies, and higher education interests.

The Obama administration made a big push for 21st Century School redesign where teachers would be turned into “guides on the side” with children spending more and more time on adaptive learning management systems. Now we face a future in which education policy is being handled at the state level, where ALEC holds considerable sway, and a new Secretary of Education who touts the benefits of virtual schools and vouchers.

We are on the brink of being pushed into a new paradigm for education, known as “Learning Ecosystems.” The goal of this talk is to identify Ed Reform 2.0 elements and discuss strategies we can use to advocate for public education that prioritizes learning in human relationship rather than technology-based education that isolates and commodifies children.

Alison McDowell is a parent activist from Philadelphia, PA, a district that has been a crucible of education reform efforts for over a decade. She has a high school-age daughter who attends a magnet school in the district.

Alison has served as an elected parent representative on the School Advisory Council. She was a state-level contact for United Opt Out for three years, working locally with Opt Out Philly, the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, and the Caucus of Working Educators to raise awareness around issues with high-stakes testing, particularly as it relates to ongoing school privatization efforts.

Recently, she has turned her attention to the forces behind implementation of digital-curriculum and data-driven “personalized” learning across the nation. Her research is available at: https://wrenchinthegears.com.

Please join Alison McDowell as she delivers her talk: Future Ready Schools: How Silicon Valley and the Defense Department Plan to Remake Public Education.Future Ready Schools: How Silicon Valley and the Defense Department Plan to Remake Public Education: A talk by Alison McDowell | Seattle Education:

Albert Camus, President Trump, Betsy DeVos, U.S. legislators – and our task | Reclaim Reform

Albert Camus, President Trump, Betsy DeVos, U.S. legislators – and our task | Reclaim Reform:

Albert Camus, President Trump, Betsy DeVos, U.S. legislators – and our task

 President Trump’s successful appointment of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was the sole nomination opposed by all Democrats.

All of the other nominees received approval votes from some Democratic legislators. Therefore all supportive Republican legislators and those Democratic legislators who voted with them are to blame for the life endangering appointees who threaten us with the dismantling of public education, the dangers of fracking, and the lack of necessary regulations regarding everything from healthcare and climate change to economic safeguards against the predators on Wall Street.

What does that mean to those of us who are attempting to resist the entire corporate attack that makes a mockery of the declaration articulated in the preamble of the U.S. Constitution to “promote the general welfare” of all Americans?

It means that we must RESIST and remember our duty to defend ourselves “against all enemies” who seek to take away our Constitutional guarantees.

“Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.”– Albert Camus

With that clear, we must do what we can to actually prevent our country from destroying itself and all of us.

RESIST. Albert Camus, President Trump, Betsy DeVos, U.S. legislators – and our task | Reclaim Reform:

Trump Can’t Fight Anti-Semites. They’re His Base! | gadflyonthewallblog

Trump Can’t Fight Anti-Semites. They’re His Base! | gadflyonthewallblog:

Trump Can’t Fight Anti-Semites. They’re His Base!

“In a short time, a large number of Jews are going to be slaughtered. Their heads are going to [sic] blown off from the shrapnel. There’s a lot of shrapnel. There’s going to be a bloodbath that’s going to take place in a short time. I think I told you enough. I must go.”

This is one of at least 89 bomb threats at Jewish institutions since Donald Trump was inaugurated.

Just yesterday, alone, at least 21 Jewish community centers and Jewish day schools across the country received bomb threats.

So far, at least 72 Jewish cultural centers in 30 U.S. states and one Canadian province have been affected, according to the Jewish Community Center Association of North America.

Besides bomb threats, hundreds of graves at Jewish cemeteries were desecrated, there was a foiled massacre at a synagogue and swastika graffiti has dramatically increased in public spaces.

American Jews are victims of more reported hate crimes than any other group in the United States, and have been subject to the majority of religiously motivated offenses every year since the FBI started reporting these statistics in 1995.

Such offenses were not unknown in this country before Trump’s rise, but the rate is increasing.

This is consistent with a rise in hate crimes for all ethnic groups across the country. Southern Poverty Law Centre recorded more than 1,000 hate crimes in January alone – the same amount usually reported over a six-month period.

Far from helping the situation, Trump has made it worse.

His statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day deliberately left out any mention of Trump Can’t Fight Anti-Semites. They’re His Base! | gadflyonthewallblog:

‘Totally nuts’: Senators blast DeVos for historically inaccurate comments about black colleges - The Washington Post

‘Totally nuts’: Senators blast DeVos for historically inaccurate comments about black colleges - The Washington Post:

‘Totally nuts’: Senators blast DeVos for historically inaccurate comments about black colleges

There she goes again. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has sparked a new controversy, this time making comments about historically black colleges and universities that betrayed ignorance of the history of HBCUs and racial segregation in the United States.

DeVos, who has been education secretary for only three weeks, issued a statement Monday evening after meeting HBCU leaders. The statement said this about historically black colleges and universities:

They started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education. They saw that the system wasn’t working, that there was an absence of opportunity, so they took it upon themselves to provide the solution. HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice. They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish.

[DeVos called HBCUs ‘pioneers’ of ‘school choice.’ It didn’t go over well.]

DeVos has been focused on promoting school choice — vouchers, charter schools, private schools and other alternatives to the traditional public education system for decades, but this was a step apart from other statements she has made in support of  “choice.” This time she touted HCBUs as choice “pioneers” rather than a reaction to institutionalized racism that prevented blacks from attending white schools.

Although she made a speech on Tuesday — noting that “the traditional school system systemically failed to provide African Americans access to a quality education — or, sadly, more often to any education at all” — she didn’t really clean up the mess, and she wound up  adding ammunition to critics who say that DeVos does not understand fundamental aspects of public education and its history.

During her Jan. 17 confirmation hearing before the Senate Education Committee, she could not discuss a key federal law protecting students with disabilities — and didn’t seem to know that it was a federal law — and could not discuss how student progress on standardized tests is measured. She was confirmed by the Senate only after Mike Pence became the first vice president in American history to break a tie for a Cabinet nominee.

She recently drew the wrath of teachers at a D.C. public school that she had visited, saying that they seemed to be in “receive mode,” waiting to be told what to do.

The HBCU comments by DeVos — presumably written by  someone at the Education Department — adds to criticism that the Trump administration has no real connection to African Americans and their history.

[So far, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is just what her critics feared]

On Feb. 12, someone at the Education Department posted a tweet that misspelled the name of W.E.B. Du Bois, a black sociologist, historian, civil rights activist and co-founder of the NAACP, the oldest civil rights organization in the United States. That followed comments by President ‘Totally nuts’: Senators blast DeVos for historically inaccurate comments about black colleges - The Washington Post:

Inbox: @BetsyDeVosED statement on today's meeting with HBCU leaders pic.twitter.com/J7SvKFjlcB

— adam harris (@AdamHSays) February 28, 2017