No Drive Thru at Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

No Drive Thru at Diane Ravitch's blog 

A site to discuss better education for all

Contact Your PBS Station to Demand Equal Time for Pro-Public Education Message

15by dianeravitch / 1h

The Network for Public Education invites you to contact your local PBS station to protest the one-sided three-hour special “School Inc.” The letter in the link tells you how to contact your PBS affiliate. We urge two courses of action, for the sake 

Michael Hynes: “The New Normal” Is Sick

5by dianeravitch / 29min

Michael Hynes is superintendent of the Patchogue-Medford public schools on Long Island in NewNew York. He writes: “Is hypernormalisation even a word? I didn’t believe so until recently. According to Wikipedia, (insert sarcasm), “The term … is taken from Alexei Yurchak’s 2006 book Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, about the paradoxes of life in the Soviet Un

Florida: Governor Scott Will Sign Bill That Funnels More Public Money to Private Schools

1by dianeravitch / 58min

Public education activists have pleaded with Governor Rick Scott to veto HB 7069, because it diverts public money to charters and religious schools. All to no avail. Scott will sign 7069 today in Orlando at Morning Star Catholic School. http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/rick-scott-sign-controversial-hb-7069-law

New York Agrees to Cut State Testing from Three Days to Two Days

1by dianeravitch / 1h

Let the pointless torture continue! New York’s Board of Regents has agreed to reduce the time devoted to state tests from three days for each subject (math and ELA) to two days for each subject. Pray tell, why does it take two days of 

Wayne Gersen: To Billionaires, a Contribution of $200,000 is Chump Change

3by dianeravitch / 9min

Wayne Gersen explains here why billionaires are willing to spend millions of dollars to privatize public schools and to keep their taxes low. Education is the most expensive item in every state’s budget. Teachers are the most expensive 

Kansas: The Collapse of Governor Brownback’s Radical Tax-Cutting Plan

2by dianeravitch / 16min

When Sam Brownback became governor of Kansas, he was all fired up with a simple yet radical idea: Cut taxes and businesses will expand and the economy will grow. State revenues dropped dramatically. School funding suffered deep cuts. Social services of all kinds lost money. And now the legislature is repudiating Brownback’s tax cuts. They voted to increase taxes. Brownback, having learned nothing

Peter Greene on the DeVos Doctrine: Choice Choice Choice

5by dianeravitch / 1h

Peter Greene read Betsy DeVos’s speech to the big privatization conference in D.C. and he figured out the DeVos doctrine. Remember the song from “Oklahoma,” about “the farmers and the ranchers can be friends?” Well, DeVos assured her allies in the privatization movement that voucher-lovers and charter-lovers are on the same team. They both want the money that now goes to public schools! Greene wr

YESTERDAY

Politico: Virginia Democrats Unite As Republican Split

1by dianeravitch / 18h

Politico posted an excellent recap of the primaries in Virginia. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/14/virginia-gov-primary-northam-perriello-democratic-party-215258 Democrats are uniting behind their candidate, while Republicans are bitterly divided. Tom Perrielo urged his supporters to unite behind the victor, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam. Ed Gillespie was supposed to coast to victory but

Andy Borowitz: Man Ravaged by Amnesia Manages to Hold Down Demanding Legal Job

4by dianeravitch / 19h

Andy Borowitz is a humorist for The New Yorker. This is a good one.

As Four Detroit Charters Fold, Detroit Public Schools Come to the Rescue

500+by dianeravitch / 22h

The turbulence and instability in the charter industry continue. Four charter schools in Detroit closed their doors. You know, Betsy DeVos’s home state. Under the leadership of its aggressive new superintendent, Nikolai Vitti, Detroit Public Schools began a campaign to win back students from failing charter schools. “With a slew of charter schools closing and thousands of Detroit families expecti

NEPC Evaluates a Report on How to Remove Democratic Control of Your Public Schools: Thumbs Down!

14by dianeravitch / 23h

The National Education Policy Center specializes in reviewing think tank reports, few of which are peer-reviewed. Many think tanks are advocacy organizations that use pseudo-scholarship to promote policy goals. NEPC’s latest review gives a thumbs down to a report that advises on ways to eliminate democratic control of public schools. None of its so-called “reforms” have worked in practice, and th

PBS Explains Why It Ran a Pro-Privatization Series

200+by dianeravitch / 1d

Valerie Strauss contacted PBS to ask why the public TV Network ran a one-sided three-hour documentary that lambastes public schools and celebrates vouchers, charters, and for-profit schools. PBS gave its response. It likes to air diverse views (clearly without fact-checking). It pays no attention to where the money comes from, even it is dark money funneled through Donors Trust, which bundles con

Arthur Camins: Why We Should Care About Educating Other People’s Children

22by dianeravitch / 1d

Arthur Camins writes in Huffington Post about the importance, the necessity of caring about the education of everyone’s children, not just our own. This is the basic premise of public education. We educate all children because it is our 

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

Gov. Brown, Democrats to require school districts to give greater access to unions | EdSource

Gov. Brown, Democrats to require school districts to give greater access to unions | EdSource:

Gov. Brown, Democrats to require school districts to give greater access to unions

Public employee unions worried about a potential hemorrhage of dues-paying members are getting help from Gov. Jerry Brown.

The governor and Democratic leaders in the Legislature agreed to include language in the 2017-18 state budget that will require school districts, cities and other government agencies to give their employee unions regular opportunities to meet and sign up new workers.

The Democrat-controlled Legislature is expected to pass the language, which is included in Senate Bill 204 and Assembly Bill 119, two of the budget “trailer” bills, on Thursday (see Section 2, starting 3555). It would require government agencies to negotiate the details of when, where and how unions could have access to recruit new employees; and to provide job titles and contact information for all employees at least every 120 days.

Public unions see the new requirement as one strategy they’ll need to stave off a decline in members if, as anticipated, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that public workers don’t have to pay the unions’ cost of negotiating contracts on employees’ behalf and representing them on issues related to working conditions, wages and benefits.

A majority of the Supreme Court was poised to take that action last year in Friedrichs v. the California Teachers Association, a lawsuit filed by 10 California teachers who challenged the constitutionality of mandatory “agency” or “fair share” fees. But the court split 4-4 after Justice Antonin Scalia died in early 2016, leaving the case up in the air.

Now, a similar case out of Illinois, Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, has filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, which could decide to hear it as early as next fall. Unions are all but resigned that President Donald Trump’s first appointee to the court, Neil Gorsuch, will be the fifth vote to reverse the court’s earlier decision allowing agency fees. In that 1977 ruling, the court said agency fees were permissible in order to avoid “free riders” – union Gov. Brown, Democrats to require school districts to give greater access to unions | EdSource:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Betsy DeVos is a Menace

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Betsy DeVos is a Menace:

Betsy DeVos is a Menace

First up to be aware of is this:

If you go to the website of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington that believes in privatizing the public education system, you will learn about a three-part documentarycalled “School Inc.,” which is narrated by the late director of the organization’s Center for Educational Freedom. The documentary has been called the magnum opus of Andrew Coulson, who was a researcher and author who promoted the idea that free markets and the profit motive would improve education in the United States. 

It is no surprise, then, that School Inc. — whose primary funders have the same educational beliefs as Coulson — would extol the virtues of privatized education and attack public education. What is surprising to some public education activists, however, is that the documentary is being shown on publicly funded PBS stations.

Uninformed viewers who see this very slickly produced program will learn about the glories of unregulated schooling, for-profit schools, teachers selling their lessons to students on the Internet.

What they will not see or hear is the other side of the story.

Don't know if KCTS is showing this - I don't see it on their schedule - but I sure hope not.

Probably the biggest news lately is DeVos' appearance before and what she said...and didn't say.

Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos faced questions from the Senate Appropriations subcommittee regarding the Trump administration's education budget. It was not an easy day for her, as senators from both parties took issue with some of the suggested cuts. Republican Chairman Roy Blunt, R-Miss., bluntly called it "a difficult budget request to defend."

Perhaps the most controversial proposal in the budget was the $250 million increase in Department of Education funding to support private school choice.

But, with no specifics about how the department would run the program, lawmakers focused on whether the secretary would require participating private schools to prevent discrimination Seattle Schools Community Forum: Betsy DeVos is a Menace:

Transgender Teachers Talk About Their Experiences At School : NPR Ed : NPR

Transgender Teachers Talk About Their Experiences At School : NPR Ed : NPR:

Transgender Teachers Talk About Their Experiences At School

Growing up, Kelly Jenkins spent his spare time playing sports. He was an all-star player on the baseball team at his school in the mountains of east Tennessee. And sometimes, he wore lipstick to practice.

As he grew up, Jenkins felt like he wanted to become a teacher.

"Everybody told me it was a horrible idea," Jenkins remembers. "They said, 'Nobody will ever hire you as a transgender woman.' "

Transgender students have been in the spotlight this year – from President Trump's decision to rescind rules aimed at protecting them, to the Texas legislature battling over a bathroom bill.

There has been less focus, though, on how school can be a difficult place for transgender teachers.

"I didn't tell anybody anything"

When Jenkins finished college, he picked the most masculine profession he could imagine: firefighting.

He hoped that by battling blazes he'd somehow convince himself that he wasn't transgender. That didn't happen. Instead, Jenkins learned that his favorite part of the job was doing fire safety presentations for kids at schools.

Kelly Jenkins' school ID before she transitioned. For years, Jenkins presented as a man during the day and as a woman on her free time.

Courtesy of Kelly Jenkins

Eventually, Jenkins transitioned to a woman and decided to become a teacher, started using female pronouns and taking hormones. Jenkins knew that she had to be stealth about her gender identity, presenting as a man at work and a woman at home.

"I didn't tell anybody anything," Jenkins recalls in talking about the start of her career more than a decade ago at Knox County Schools in Tennessee.

However, a few months into teaching, Jenkins confided in a coworker. "She went to my principal the next day and told him."

When it came time for the district to renew her contract, Jenkins was not rehired. "They said, 'We're not hiring you because you are transgender,' " Jenkins says.

In a statement, Knox County Schools did not comment on Jenkins's specific situation. However, officials said the district is an equal opportunity employer, which does not discriminate based on sex. The statement did not mention gender.

Experts say it's hard to know exactly how many transgender teachers there are in the Transgender Teachers Talk About Their Experiences At School : NPR Ed : NPR:

Inside the oil industry’s not-so-subtle push into K-12 education - The Hechinger Report

Inside the oil industry’s not-so-subtle push into K-12 education - The Hechinger Report:

Inside the oil industry’s not-so-subtle push into K-12 education

Pipeline to America’s schools

This story was produced by the Center for Public Integrity in collaboration with StateImpact Oklahoma, a reporting project of NPR member stations in Oklahoma. It was reprinted with permission.

Jennifer Merritt’s first-graders at Jefferson Elementary School in Pryor, Oklahoma, were in for a treat. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, the students gathered in late November for story time with two special guests, state Rep. Tom Gann and state Sen. Marty Quinn.

Dressed in suits, the Republican lawmakers read aloud from “Petro Pete’s Big Bad Dream,” a parable in which a Bob the Builder lookalike awakens to find his toothbrush, hardhat and even the tires on his bike missing. Abandoned by the school bus, Pete walks to Petroville Elementary in his pajamas.

“It sounds like you are missing all of your petroleum by-products today!” his teacher, Mrs. Rigwell, exclaims, extolling oil’s benefits to Pete and fellow students like Sammy Shale. Before long, Pete decides that “having no petroleum is like a nightmare!”

The tale is the latest in an illustrated series by the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board, a state agency funded by oil and gas producers. The board has spent upwards of $40 million over the past two decades on K-12 education with a pro-industry bent, including hundreds of pages of curricula, a speaker series and an afterschool program — all at no cost to educators.

A similar program in Ohio shows teachers how to “frack” Twinkiesusing straws to pump for cream and advises on the curriculum for a charter school that revolves around shale drilling. A national program whose sponsors include BP and Shell claims it’s too soon to tell if the earth is heating up, but “a little warming might be a good thing.”

Decades of documents reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity reveal a tightly woven network of organizations that works in concert with the oil and gas industry to paint a rosy picture of fossil fuels in America’s classrooms. Led by advertising and public-relations strategists, the groups have long plied the tools of their trade on impressionable children and teachers desperate for resources.

Proponents of programs like the one in Oklahoma say they help the oil and gas industry replenish its aging workforce by stirring early interest in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. But some experts question the educational value and ethics of lessons touting an industry that plays a central role in climate change and air pollution.

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, likened industry-sponsored curricula that ignore climate science to advertising. “You’re exploiting that trusted relationship between the student and the teacher,” he said. Leiserowitz — whose research has focused on how culture, politics and psychology impact public perception of the environment — said fossil-fuel companies have a stake in perpetuating a message of oil Inside the oil industry’s not-so-subtle push into K-12 education - The Hechinger Report:

PBS Airs Libertarian Propaganda Endorsing Privatization of Public Education | janresseger

PBS Airs Libertarian Propaganda Endorsing Privatization of Public Education | janresseger:

PBS Airs Libertarian Propaganda Endorsing Privatization of Public Education

The Public Broadcasting System has been airing a three part documentary, School Inc., on the local PBS stations that have chosen to pick up the program. It is a piece of libertarian propaganda and makes no attempt to balance its advocacy for privatized and unregulated schooling. The film was created and is narrated by Andrew Coulson, who, for ten years before his premature death of brain cancer at age 48, served as director of the  libertarian, Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. In 1999, he published a book, Market Education: The Unknown History, but he is said to have considered the film, School Inc., his magnum opus.

On Tuesday afternoon, Diane Ravitch posted on her blog a commentary on Coulson’s three-part “personal reflection” on school privatization.  Ravitch posted the same piece on Huffington Post, and in her Washington Post column, Valerie Strauss picked up and republished Ravitch’s commentary. Ravitch was also interviewed about Coulson’s film on New York’s WNET, Channel 13. You can watch the 10 minute interview.

Ravitch correctly pegs School Inc. as a piece of right-wing, libertarian propaganda, an unbalanced attack on public education: “(T)he Public Broadcasting System is broadcasting a ‘documentary’ that tells a one-sided story, the story that (Betsy) DeVos herself would tell, based on the work of the late free-market advocate Andrew Coulson… Uninformed viewers who see this very slickly produced program will learn about the glories of unregulated schooling, for-profit schools, teachers selling their lessons to students on the internet. They will learn about the ‘success’ of the free market in schooling in Chile, Sweden, and New Orleans. They will hear about the miraculous charter schools across America, and how public school officials selfishly refuse to encourage the transfer of public funds to private institutions… What they will not see or hear is the other side of the story.”

On his blog The Grade, on the website of the Phi Delta Kappan, Alexander Russo printed a very PBS Airs Libertarian Propaganda Endorsing Privatization of Public Education | janresseger: