DeVos Meets with Home School Lobby | Diane Ravitch's blog

DeVos Meets with Home School Lobby | Diane Ravitch's blog:

DeVos Meets with Home School Lobby

From Politico Education:

EDUCATION SECRETARY BETSY DEVOS MEETS WITH HOMESCHOOL ADVOCATES: DeVos spent roughly 45 minutes late Monday afternoon listening to the needs of homeschooling families during a meeting with officials from the Home School Legal Defense Association. William Estrada, director of federal relations with the group, tells Morning Education they sought to convey to DeVos that homeschooling shouldn’t be included in any efforts to use public funds for vouchers because homeschoolers don’t want the government regulation that could come with it. They also conveyed to DeVos that homeschoolers should continue to have their diplomas treated “fairly” so they have access to federal aid once they enter higher education – something that’s previously been spelled out in department guidance. Estrada said the meeting was a “true meeting of the minds” and DeVos was “very supportive.”

– The group’s meeting with DeVos included Mike Smith, a founder of the group, and Tricia Powell, a local parent who homeschools her children, Estrada said. DeVos has previously expressed support for homeschooling, and the group backed her during her Senate confirmation process. “It was very clear that she’s an advocate for all students, all children, whether they are in public schools, private schools or home schools, and we appreciated having the opportunity to chat with her,” Estrada said.”

Politico also reports that Minnesota legislators have passed a tax credit bill that will enable wealthy individuals and corporations to give their taxes to a private corporation that turns them into vouchers. Governor Mark Dayton has said he will veto any voucher bills but this one is embedded in the state budget.

Let’s hope that Governor Dayton vetoes this program and forced the legislature to strip out the vouchers.

http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2017/05/how-safe-are-schools-and-college-campuses-220338

DeVos Meets with Home School Lobby | Diane Ravitch's blog:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Takeover Lie

CURMUDGUCATION: The Takeover Lie:

The Takeover Lie

One of the techniques in the reformster arsenal has been the school takeover, in which some august body declares a public school a failure, and that school is marked for Takeover. That failure can be certified by specious Big Standardized Test results (yay, PAARC and SBA) or by the more cynical method of refusing to fuly fund a district and then certifying them, as financially distressed. This particular "solution" was built into Race To The Trough Top and RTTT Lite (more waivers, less paperwork), but it has been embraced in a variety of forms, such as the Achievement School District of Tennessee and other attempts to create via bureaucracy what had previously been accomplished by natural disaster (aka Hurricane Katrina).

You can see it happening yet again in Gary, Indiana, where the schools have been taken over by the state. That state takeover, which strips the elected school board of power and replaces them with a state-appointed manager, was enacted a month ago and explained to the public more fully just a week ago. Gary was a two-fer, a district slammed for both low test scores and for failing to get enough money to keep itself solvent. Within roughly five minutes, a charter company was putting in its bid to run the formerly-public school system.

The proposed management group is the Phalen Leadership Academies, a group with strong ties to Indianapolis's big charter boosters with giant apsirations loaded into its name-- the Mind Trust. The group was founded by a former Indianapolis mayor and his head of charter schoolery, and it has done a fine job of finding ways to funnel public tax dollars into private pockets. So there are plenty of specific and historical reasons to oppose Phalen's glomming up one more set of de-public schools.

But the whole takeover process is itself a scam of tremendous proportions, a house of cards resting on a foundation of falsehoods.

Remember, the basic idea here is, "You public school people couldn't make this school work, so we're going to bring in someone who can." Let's consider that premise for a moment.

What's your secret?

The takeover premise requires someone who knows the secret of making a school "work." Someone who knows more about how to educate children than the trained professionals who previously ran CURMUDGUCATION: The Takeover Lie:

Different Conversations | Blue Cereal Education

Different Conversations | Blue Cereal Education:

Different Conversations

“So… why do you think they hate Mexicans so much? Do they really think we’re all bad people, or are they just racists, or…?

It was a sincere question from one of my most brilliant girls. She doesn’t yet know all she will, but she sees more than most and asks the most sincere, probing questions. They always grab my interest, and are rarely easy to answer.

And yeah – her family is from Mexico.

I acknowledged her concerns, and did my best to suggest maybe most Republicans (the “they” in the context of our larger conversation) didn’t see themselves as hating Mexicans and might not be overtly racist. In my best developmentally-appropriate, big picture way, we talked about fear and frustration and how the U.S. has changed in the past few generations and how difficult that is for some people – especially when they think they recall a simpler, stronger past.

We recalled discussions in class about the general narratives of the political left and the political right, and while I don’t think she walked away feeling like she owed any hugs to the Trump campaign, I hope she saw complexity where before she saw naked hostility.

Then again, people don’t yell and post “complexity” at you for being Hispanic, so it’s a tough sell, even when I’m at my most fair and balanced.

You can’t teach American Government or Oklahoma History – or any Social Studies, I would think – without social and political disputes coming up. I have a disconcerting number of freshmen boys (and one girl?) this year with the strangest Nazi obsession… they’re not proper fascists, near as I can tell – it’s hardly that developed or ideological. I’m not sure they’re even truly racists – although you wouldn’t know that from their whispered comments.

Mostly they seem to just find the whole movement strange and funny and abrasive, in the same way one watches reality TV transfixed by the shouting matches or Maury Povich announcing “you ARE the father!” They love Trump, but know little of his policies or even his daily scandals – they just like the way he’s able to be such an a-hole and stir Different Conversations | Blue Cereal Education:

Protecting the Public Commons - The Atlantic

Protecting the Public Commons - The Atlantic:

Protecting the Public Commons

At a moment when institutional distrust is surging, there’s an urgent need to support civics education.

The debate about the role technology plays in society is as old as humankind’s ability to use tools and techniques to change our world. The technologies we have in our hands today would be magic to our forefathers, from gene editing to spacecraft to the smartphone you’re likely using to read this article.

The impact of information technology on democracies is a comparatively younger concern, driven by the quicksilver pace of innovation and invention in the minds, labs, and garages of people around the globe, as well as the disruption of the institutions that held monopolies on the production and distribution of information.

For the billions of humans who are now connected to the broader world by mobile devices, our experience is increasingly mediated by screens animated by endless rivers of news, livestreams, and entertainment. Our feeds are personalized not only by our individual choices about media outlets but the algorithmic determinations of technology companies that may placed commercial interests before public goals. Our public squares are hosted on private platforms that weren't designed with civic good in mind.

Disintermediation, dystopia, and dismay are the words of the day, eroding the last of the romantic dreams of a better world, built anew in virtual spaces and places. “Digital dualism” is finally on life support, replaced by a dawning recognition that the distinction between offline and online has collapsed. Instead, we face pervasive surveillance enabled by the growth of cameras, sensors, connected devices, and data collection in our communities.

Despite systemic issues in education, criminal justice, and elections, the United States remains an inherently open society, where freedom of speech, information, association, and assembly are baked into Americans’ understanding of their culture and enshrined in statute.

As we move into the next century, however, we are faced with renewed challenges around our politics, as partisan polarization expresses itself not only in party affiliation but through media consumption and the accountability Protecting the Public Commons - The Atlantic:

The Privatization Prophets

The Privatization Prophets:

The Privatization Prophets

JENNIFER BERKSHIRE

For years, millionaires and religious zealots have teamed up to preach "school choice" in an effort to dismantle public education.

During a recent talk to tech investors and “edupreneurs,” Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, the least regarded of all of the rogues and billionaires who compose the Trump cabinet, returned to a favorite theme of hers.

Apple, Uber, and Airbnb have worked their disruptive magic on one industry after another. Why aren’t our public schools being similarly disrupted? “Who here can pull out their Blockbuster card?” she asked the crowd.

But if the nation’s schools are the equivalent of a kitchen-wall rotary phone or the cab that never comes, DeVos was eager to let the audience know that a quick fix is at hand: school choice. The way to disrupt our educational malaise once and for all is to shift the way we think about education to focus “on students, not buildings. If a child is learning, it shouldn’t matter where they learn.” Even the best schools won’t be the right “fit” for all kids, DeVos noted. “The simple fact is that if a school is not meeting a child’s unique needs, then that school is failing that child.”

Beneath the folksy tech talk, though, lurks a radical vision, one that is taking root in state after state. The ultimate aim of the project of which DeVos is now the most visible face is to remove education from the public system. Those “buildings” of which she speaks so disdainfully, the disparaging “status quo” never far behind, represent the entire architecture of public education, and more importantly, its democratic control.

Diminishing this is key to reaching the promised land of privatization. Stodgy school boards are standing in the way of getting there; so are superintendents and parent teacher associations and teachers unions — above all, the teachers unions.

Unfettering the markets is only part of the vision. Control over the process of socializing children, the near-monopoly domain of a system that is both secular and, as the libertarian right deridingly characterizes it, collectivist, is another prize. And if there is some money to be made along the way, well, there’s nothing wrong with that.

DeVos’s efforts to take public education private are uniting seekers of profits and prophets. Let’s take a look at some of the key battles overThe Privatization Prophets:

Drive to increase charter enrollments triggers massive spending in LA school board race | EdSource

Drive to increase charter enrollments triggers massive spending in LA school board race | EdSource:

Drive to increase charter enrollments triggers massive spending in LA school board race

School board races tend to be sleepy affairs, drawing little attention and even less campaign spending compared to other higher profile races on most local ballots.

Not in Los Angeles, which has become the site of the most heated – and by far the most expensive – battle over charter schools in the nation.

An extraordinary $15.9 million has been contributed to decide who will fill two seats on the seven-person Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education.

The battle, which a Los Angeles Times headline over the weekend described as “brutal, expensive and important,” is coming to a head Tuesday in a runoff election pitting incumbent school board President Steve Zimmer against Nick Melvoin in District 4, and Imelda Padilla against Kelly Gonez in District 6 for an open seat vacated by former teacher Monica Ratliff, who ran unsuccessfully for Los Angeles City Council in March.

The contest has been generally framed as a contest between pro- and anti-charter forces, with Zimmer and Padilla in the anti-charter camp, and Melvoin and Gonez in the pro-charter one. But that vastly oversimplifies the issues at stake in the election.

From a historical perspective, the district can hardly be characterized as hostile to charter schools.

With 279 charter schools, L.A. Unified has more charter schools than any other district in the nation.  Of those, 224 are “independent” charters and 54 are “affiliated” ones. The 156,000 students enrolled in them exceeds that of any school district in the nation. New York City is next with 201 charter schools and an enrollment of close to 107,000 Drive to increase charter enrollments triggers massive spending in LA school board race | EdSource:

 

Eve Ewing. | Fred Klonsky

Eve Ewing. | Fred Klonsky:

Eve Ewing.

Eve Ewing with my brother, Michael Klonsky on our Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers radio whow and (right) with Chicago playwright Ike Holter (Chicago Magazine photo).

I am so glad to see our friend Eve Ewing included in Chicago Magazine’s Who’s Got Next?

Of course, we had her first on our weekly radio show, Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers, which you can hear each Friday at 11AM, FM in Chicago or streaming live on http://www.lumpenradio.com all across the universe. Our show is also downloadable from iTunes or from Liberated Syndication.

You can listen to our one hour conversation with the brilliant Logan Square native here.

And here is the Chicago Magazine feature:

Ignore Eve Ewing at your own intellectual, political, and cultural peril. The 31-year-old education scholar, scribe, and artist has got a lot to say, and people—including her 50,000 Twitter followers—are listening. In the past two years alone, the Logan Square native has coedited a fiction anthology, contributed to a collection of breakbeat poetry, served on the board of a major youth organization, and written features and opinion pieces for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, and The New York Times. 

By the end of next year, the Harvard alum and former schoolteacher will have released a collection of her own poetry and prose, seen the production of a play she wrote with poet Nate Marshall, assumed an assistant professorship at the University of Chicago, and released her much-anticipated book When the Bell Stops Ringing: Race, History and Discourse amid Chicago’s School Closures (University of Chicago Press), which promises to propel her directly to the center of the heated debate over the fate of public education in America.

“I want teachers and policymakers and students to have something to hold in their hand when they’re fighting this fight,” she says of the book. “I think my role is to be an amplifier, to be a bullhorn, to be a storyteller.” Ewing is all those things and more. —Hannah NyhartEve Ewing. | Fred Klonsky:

L.A. school board candidates tackle questions on tenure, charter growth, graduation rates - LA Times

L.A. school board candidates tackle questions on tenure, charter growth, graduation rates - LA Times:

L.A. school board candidates tackle questions on tenure, charter growth, graduation rates

n Tuesday, voters in two regions of Los Angeles will go to the polls in a pivotal school board election.

In one contest, school board President Steve Zimmer, 47, is facing challenger Nick Melvoin, a 31-year-old attorney who’s worked recently for groups trying to limit union influence and promote the growth of charter schools. They are vying to represent District 4, which stretches from the Westside to the west San Fernando Valley.

In District 6, in the east Valley, Imelda Padilla, 29, a community activist and labor organizer, is running against Kelly Gonez, 28, who teaches at a charter middle school. The winner will fill the seat of Monica Ratliff, who did not run for reelection.

None of the candidates has children.

Melvoin and Gonez are supported by charter-school advocates, Zimmer and Padilla by school-district employee unions.The campaign spending and messages have been dominated by supporters of charter schools on one side and teachers unions on the other.

Because it’s difficult to get past their overblown and false claims, The Times submitted the same questions to each candidate to clarify where they stand on some key issues.

Portions of their answers, along with some context, are presented below.

Exactly how, if at all, would you change the current tenure and seniority system? Should there be tenure at all? How long should it take to earn tenure? Should it have to be re-earned every few years? How should the layoff system be changed if all? Strictly seniority based? Strictly evaluation based?

Both Melvoin and Gonez favor extending the time required to earn tenure. Under state law, fully credentialed teachers can earn the strong job protections of tenure near the end of their second year in the job.

As far as the “last in, first out” rules for laying off teachers, Gonez supports “the formation of a commission with teachers, principals, parents and academics to look at what works best for the students, teachers and LAUSD as a whole.”

Padilla said she is open to new ideas to improve the tenure process, but hasn’t staked out a position. Regarding seniority, she said, “layoffs should not be strictly seniority based. I look forward to exploring a hybrid idea, but ideally I would look forward to managing the budget in a way that we would never have to deal with the pink-slip era again.”

Before attending law school, Melvoin worked for two years as a low-seniority teacher at L.A. Unified during a period of layoffs. As a result, his job was at risk and he had to work several months classified as a temporary teacher. He said he feels strongly that layoffs should be based on performance evaluations and not time on the job. He has participated in lawsuits to limit teacher seniority rights.

“Both teacher tenure and seniority-based hiring/firing systems need reform,” he said. “As a teacher in Watts, I had firsthand experience with these policies and fought for their revision. I remain concerned about the inherent inequities in how layoffs affect students as well as teachers.”

Zimmer said the district, during his tenure, developed rules that protect teachers with certain skills, and noted that the district subsequently agreed to protect schools that would be disproportionately harmed by layoffs.

Zimmer said he is open to extending the length of time needed to earn tenure but that other steps are more crucial to improving teachers’ skills and keeping high-quality teachers in the field of education.

“We need to make sure that training and support systems from universities are stronger and that we are broadcasting a positive image about the field of education,” he said. “And once a teacher is in the classroom, we need to offer continuing support and opportunities for career advancement without leaving the classroom.”

Melvoin, Gonez and Padilla agree, but Melvoin in particular places a greater emphasis on limiting current teacher job protections as a centerpiece of reform.

(Most tenure and seniority rules are part of the state education code, however, so L.A. L.A. school board candidates tackle questions on tenure, charter growth, graduation rates - LA Times:

Milwaukee's School Voucher Program: Some Black Leaders Are Divided Over Who Benefits : NPR Ed : NPR

Milwaukee's School Voucher Program: Some Black Leaders Are Divided Over Who Benefits : NPR Ed : NPR:

Milwaukee's School Voucher Program: Some Black Leaders Are Divided Over Who Benefits

Howard Fuller (left) is one of the architects of the voucher program in Milwaukee; Wendell Harris led early opposition to vouchers.

LA Johnson/Getty/NPR

The Trump administration has made school choice, vouchers in particular, a cornerstone of its education agenda. This has generated lots of interest in how school voucher programs across the country work and whom they benefit.

The oldest school voucher program was created in Milwaukee in 1990 with a singular focus on African-American students living in poverty. This school year, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program issued nearly 28,000 vouchers for low-income kids to attend dozens of private and religious schools at public expense.

Over the years, though, most voucher recipients have performed no better academically than their public school peers. In some cases they've done worse. So who exactly is benefiting? It's a question that has raised serious misgivings in Milwaukee's African-American community. So much so that some of the city's prominent black leaders today are divided.

Howard Fuller and Wendell J. Harris, in many ways, represent that split.

Harris is currently on the Milwaukee school board. As a member of the NAACP's education committee in Wisconsin, he was one of the original plaintiffs who sued the state in 1990 in a failed effort to block vouchers.

NPR ED

The Promise And Peril Of School Vouchers

Fuller, a professor at Marquette University, is one of the architects of the voucher program. He's also a former superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools and founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, a national pro-voucher and school choice group.

Fuller's support for vouchers is pretty straight-forward. He says most of Milwaukee's African-American students are trapped in failing schools. These kids' parents, says Fuller, should have the right to choose a better school for their children because very little else that the African-American community has fought for has helped rescue poor black children in need of good schools.

"After (Brown vs. Board of Education)", says Fuller, "people thought that integration was going to lead to equal education for black kids. It didn't. Since then, there's a long Milwaukee's School Voucher Program: Some Black Leaders Are Divided Over Who Benefits : NPR Ed : NPR:

Sacramento city after-school program shrinks after budget woes | The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento city after-school program shrinks after budget woes | The Sacramento Bee:

Two Sacramento districts will hire new after-school providers once city subsidy ends

Sacramento Can't Afford Poor Kids But Has The Best Arena In The NBA 

The free Sacramento after-school program START that Mayor Darrell Steinberg launched 21 years ago will shrink dramatically this fall after two large school districts chose to look for different providers.

Sacramento City Unified and Twin Rivers Unified will rely on other organizations to provide free after-school services at schools that predominantly serve low-income families, according to district officials. Only the Robla School District will continue the city’s START program for 670 students at its five elementary schools under an existing multi-year grant, said Robla Superintendent Ruben Reyes.

This spring, the city asked Sacramento City Unified and Twin Rivers Unified to pay a higher rate for START that would account for the actual costs of the program.

“In the past when it had run over budget, the city … extended the budget, and chose not to do it this time,” Steinberg spokeswoman Kelly Rivas said.

Sacramento City Unified has 61 after-school programs, including 10 that were the focus of this year’s proposal for START, which stands for Students Today Achieving Results for Tomorrow. Providers for those 10 sites are still being chosen, according to the district.

Sara Noguchi, associate superintendent at Twin Rivers, said her district learned that the city needed $123,000 above the available grant funding to operate the program at three school sites. She said that put the city’s proposal out of the running.

Sacramento last week reported that state funding for after-school programs has not increased since 2006. The city also said higher labor costs were a factor.

During the last three years, the city chipped in to ensure the program could operate, the report said.

The change means up to 45 START staff could lose their jobs at sites the city will no longer run, said Sacramento Parks and Recreation Director Chris Conlin.

Conlin said his department wasn’t sure how many employees would be let go because there may be retirements or other attrition over the summer when staff face mandatory layoffs Sacramento city after-school program shrinks after budget woes | The Sacramento Bee:

Brown v. Board is 63 years old. Was the Supreme Court’s school desegregation ruling a failure? - The Washington Post

Brown v. Board is 63 years old. Was the Supreme Court’s school desegregation ruling a failure? - The Washington Post:

Brown v. Board is 63 years old. Was the Supreme Court’s school desegregation ruling a failure?

The historic Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education turns 63 years old on Wednesday, May 17, 2017. The decision famously ordered the desegregation of public schools in the United States, declaring segregated schools “inherently unequal” and unconstitutional, but all these years later, segregation is far from being eliminated.

In fact, 2016 federal data showed that poor, black and Hispanic children are becoming increasingly isolated from white, affluent children in America’s public schools. Given that, how should Brown v. Board be evaluated? Given persistent school segregation, was it a failure? This post addresses that question.

It was written by Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers. He is also a fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and he is the author of books including “Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right, and “Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap.” His newest book, published this month, is “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.” He was a national education writer for The New York Times as well.

By Richard Rothstein

Sixty-three years ago on Wednesday, the Supreme Court prohibited school segregation. In the South, Brown v. Board of Education was enforced slowly and fitfully for two decades; then progress ground to a halt. Nationwide, black students are now less likely to attend schools with whites than they were half a century ago. Was Brown a failure?

Not if we consider the boost it gave to a percolating civil rights movement. The progeny of Brown include desegregation of public accommodations and the mostly unhindered right of African Americans to compete for jobs, to vote, and to purchase or rent homes. Brown’s greatest accomplishment was its enduring imprint on the national ethos: the idea of second-class citizenship for African Brown v. Board is 63 years old. Was the Supreme Court’s school desegregation ruling a failure? - The Washington Post: