States Key to Undoing School Reform’s Federal Era | Ray Domanico, City Journal

States Key to Undoing School Reform’s Federal Era | Ray Domanico, City Journal

School Reform’s Lost Momentum
The legacy of education’s federal era won’t be undone quickly, but states and localities should lead the way forward.

The 2018 midterms marked the second straight electoral cycle paring back the education reforms favored by the Barack Obama and George W. Bush presidential administrations. Education reform was relegated to the background in the 2016 election, but a well-funded effort to increase modestly the number of charter schools in Massachusetts went down to defeat. In 2018, Wisconsin voters replaced a strong supporter of school choice with a candidate more likely to raise educational spending. And New Yorkers flipped the state senate, the last refuge of charter school support, from Republican to Democrat. In these and other states, voters backed candidates promising more funding for traditional public schools.

Reformers set themselves up for these defeats with their bipartisan support for reforms driven from Washington, seemingly at the expense of local control. Prior to the mid-twentieth century, American educational policy had largely been a local matter. Schools operated under local and state control, in close collaboration with parents. This model had much to recommend it. Sociologist Anthony Bryk has shown that schools succeed where trust exists between school professionals and the local families they serve.

Starting in the mid-1960s, Washington took a growing role in education policy, culminating in large-scale efforts by the Bush and Obama administrations to establish local education directives at the federal level. We’re now seeing a reaction against those efforts. The Trump administration’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, seemed to grasp this at the outset of her term, stating: “You cannot fix what ails education by telling people how to do things from the Washington-level down; it really has to be a grassroots local initiative.” Yet the Education Department she leads has only begun to introduce the changes necessary to make this vision a reality. The divided government delivered by the midterms almost guarantees that we’ll be stuck with some of the legacy of education’s federal era, while lasting reform efforts will have to take place at the state and local levels. The diversity of outcomes that will likely mark these initiatives should not be feared, however; it is truer to America’s historical approach to education policy.

At the height of 1960s federal activism, Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration had to fight hard to enact a major education-funding program, Title I, as part of its War on Poverty. Given the venerable American tradition of local control of schools, the 1965 legislation established only a limited federal role: “In recognition of the special educational needs of children of low-income families and the impact that concentrations of low-income families have on the ability of local educational agencies to support adequate educational programs, the Congress hereby declares it to be the policy of the United States to provide CONTINUE READING: States Key to Undoing School Reform’s Federal Era | Ray Domanico, City Journal

L.A. school board calls for moratorium on new local charter schools - Los Angeles Times

L.A. school board calls for moratorium on new local charter schools - Los Angeles Times

L.A. school board calls for moratorium on new local charter schools

Los Angeles school officials made good on a deal with the teachers union on Tuesday, bringing forward and passing a resolution that calls for a local moratorium on new charter schools until their impact can be studied.

The resolution is non-binding for state officials, but it was vigorously opposed by charter supporters — more than 1,000 turned out to protest at district headquarters. The resolution was one product of a deal to end this month’s six-day teachers’ strike.

Earlier in the same meeting on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Board of Education unanimously approved a contract with the teachers’ union, despite a warning from an oversight agency that the costs of it are “unsustainable.”

Just before school board members voted, they received a report from the L.A. County Office of Education, which provides financial oversight for local school districts. While the agency stopped short of urging a rejection of the new contract, it did issue a warning, saying the district would have to submit a revised three-year budget plan that meets the county’s parameters.

Under the new contract, the school system appears to be unable to meet all of its budget obligations. The pact is “not sustainable on an ongoing basis,” according to the county agency’s analysis.

If the district does not take the necessary steps to avoid financial risk, then the county agency can appoint a fiscal advisor who will have the authority to override district spending decisions.

The sober analysis did not prevent the L.A. school board from approving the new contract quickly and with little discussion.

L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner said he was well aware of the district’s financial challenges— indeed, he had repeatedly called attention to them during contract negotiations. Still, he said, the contract was the right step forward and that all parties had compromised to get to an agreement. Resolving the labor conflict would allow all groups to focus on shared challenges, such as cutting costs, winning more revenue from the state and voter initiatives.

“We are at a historic moment to start addressing these issues,” Beutner said. “This contract is not an end. It is a beginning.”

Board member Nick Melvoin said the district would have to make sure that its budget remained solvent.

“It’s up to us, collectively, to make it sustainable,” Melvoin said of the new contract.

The bigger drama inside the building and outside on the streets Tuesday was over another part of the deal that brought teachers back to the classroom this month — a resolution calling on state officials to place a moratorium on the opening of new local charter schools.

Well over 1,000 charter school supporters rallied Tuesday outside district headquarters, west of downtown.

“I felt that it was important to be here today because students and families should have the choice of where to go to school,” said Lexi Hopp, 18, a senior at Granada Hills Charter High School. “Not every school is perfect. So every school, every family, needs to have their choice of where to send their student, to have the best fit possible for them.”

Charters are privately operated public schools that compete with L.A. Unified — and with CONTINUE READING: L.A. school board calls for moratorium on new local charter schools - Los Angeles Times

Here We Go: Another Billionaire Push to “Remake” K12 Ed from the Koch Network | deutsch29

Here We Go: Another Billionaire Push to “Remake” K12 Ed from the Koch Network | deutsch29

Here We Go: Another Billionaire Push to “Remake” K12 Ed from the Koch Network

Some more billionaire experimentation with K12 ed, as the January 29, 2019, Washington Post reports (sort of— guinea pig districts still not revealed)– this time by the American legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) money funnel, Charles Koch:

THE BIG IDEA:

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — The donor network led by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch will launch a new organization next month to focus on changing K-12 education as we know it.

The effort will begin as a pilot project focused on five states with a combined school-age population of 16 million kids, but officials said Monday that they aren’t ready to identify them yet because they’re still finalizing partnerships with some of the country’s leading educational organizations.

The still-unnamed entity purportedly plans to focus on three buckets: changing public policy to address “the root causes” of failing schools, developing new technologies to promote individualized learning, and investing in teachers and classrooms.

The announcement came Monday at the end of a three-day seminar where 634 donors who have each committed to contribute at least $100,000 annually to Koch-linked groups gathered under palm trees at a luxury resort in the Coachella Valley.

The article later has the phrase, “questions their motives” in the same paragraph as’ “Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been a longtime ally”– which does nothing to bolster confidence in this billionaire, the-world-is-our-laboratory, uh-oh:

[Koch chairman Brian] Hooks recognizes that many will question their motives, but he said the goal is to “really shake things up” by “coming alongside concerned teachers” to “find a better way.” Teachers union leaders, who are closely aligned with the Democratic Party, have accused CONTINUE READING: Here We Go: Another Billionaire Push to “Remake” K12 Ed from the Koch Network | deutsch29

By Striking, Teachers Are Demonstrating Society’s Failure to Value our Children and Their Schools | janresseger

By Striking, Teachers Are Demonstrating Society’s Failure to Value our Children and Their Schools | janresseger

By Striking, Teachers Are Demonstrating Society’s Failure to Value our Children and Their Schools

The 30,000 striking teachers in Los Angeles won better conditions for their students —smaller class size maximums, more counselors, librarians and nurses and an addition of 30 Community Schools with wraparound medical and social services for families. This week teachers in Virginia, a state where strikes are technically illegal, walked out for the day to rally at the state capitol in Richmond.  And school teachers in Denver had voted to go on strike this week, although their action was delayed when Denver Public Schools filed a request for intervention from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. It is evident that last spring’s teachers’ walkouts were not a mere blip.

Nineteen-year labor and workplace reporter for the NY Times, Steven Greenhouse commentsin the Washington Post about the meaning of this year’s actions by masses of school teachers fed up with the collapse of state budgets and the working and learning conditions they have been telling us ought to be unacceptable in the wealthiest society in the world: “The overall number of strikes by American labor unions has declined sharply decade by decade, an unmistakable measure of organized labor’s diminished clout.  But last week’s strike by more than 30,000 Los Angeles teachers belongs to an extraordinary surge in recent union militancy—a surge that includes statewide teachers’ strikes last year in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona… The L.A. walkout was particularly unusual in that the teachers won more for the kids than for themselves—the school district agreed to hire 300 more nurses so that every elementary school would have a nurse five days a week, and 84 more librarians so that every middle school and high school would have one. Even though much of labor remains in a defensive crouch, the unions and workers joining the recent strike wave took to the streets with picket signs because they were fed up… The teachers and their students were lagging badly behind, their pay stagnating, their school budgets squeezed when so many parts of the economy were booming, when corporate profits, the stock market, the incomes of the richest Americans were at or near record levels, and Congress and many states were handing out big tax cuts to business and the rich.”

Writing for The Guardian, Mike Elk details the complaints by Virginia teachers: “Due to overcrowding, more than 22,000 students in Fairfax county receive their education in cheaply constructed plywood trailers, often with visible signs of green mold, like those parked next to CONTINUE READING:  By Striking, Teachers Are Demonstrating Society’s Failure to Value our Children and Their Schools | janresseger

Ten of 15 Cyber Charter Schools in PA Are Operating Without a Charter – Close Them All | gadflyonthewallblog

Ten of 15 Cyber Charter Schools in PA Are Operating Without a Charter – Close Them All | gadflyonthewallblog

Ten of 15 Cyber Charter Schools in PA Are Operating Without a Charter – Close Them All

Cyber charters schools are an experiment that failed.

It’s time to pull the plug and recoup our losses.

First, let’s get straight exactly what we’re talking about here.

Like all charter schools, these are contracted institutions. In fact, that’s what charter means – they’re independent businesses that sign a deal with the state to teach kids.

So they’re publicly financed but privately run. And in the case of cyber charters, they agree to educate children online without the benefit of a physical building.

Students access lessons via computer or other device, submit work electronically, get virtual feedback and assessment.

At best, these institutions are the grade school equivalent of the University of Phoenix – good only for independent, self-motivated learners. At worst, they’re the kiddie version of Trump University – a total scam.

In Pennsylvania, 10 of the state’s 15 cyber charter schools are operating with expired charters, according to a report by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

That’s incredibly significant – especially for an industry that enrolls about 35,000 students across the state.

These are charter schools operating without a charter. They only get the right to CONTINUE READING: Ten of 15 Cyber Charter Schools in PA Are Operating Without a Charter – Close Them All | gadflyonthewallblog

Announcing the 2019 Curriculum Resource Guide – Black Lives Matter At School

Announcing the 2019 Curriculum Resource Guide – Black Lives Matter At School

Announcing the 2019 Curriculum Resource Guide

The national Black Lives Matter At School coalition’s brilliant Curriculum Committee worked this year to bring you lessons for every grade level that relate to the 13 principles of Black Lives Matter. Here now is the 2019 Curriculum Resource Guide–free, downloadable lessons to challenge racism, oppression and build happy, healthy classrooms.

Visit http://www.BlackLivesMatterAtSchool.com to find other resources for the BLM@School Week of Action…And to let us know which lessons you loved and used in your class this year.

Enjoy!

Announcing the 2019 Curriculum Resource Guide – Black Lives Matter At School

Andre Perry: Schools should not be battlegrounds for Trump’s fake war

Schools should not be battlegrounds for Trump’s fake war

Schools should not be battlegrounds for Trump’s fake war

Schools bear the brunt of the immigration crisis

We’ve all seen images of migrant caravans comprised of thousands of asylum seekers from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador making their way to the U.S. to find refuge from the poverty and violence in their home countries. “This,” according to President Trump via tweet, “is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!”

Trump’s words have cast our neighbors as enemies.

And his inflammatory use of language is infecting others. An October 2018 Associated Press headline dubbed the caravan an “army of migrants.” While the AP changed the headline after the backlash they received, a commenter on Fox News Network’s Fox and Friends doubled down on the sentiment, saying, “They [terrorists] are a threat to our national security because today, war — it’s not only countries that go to war, it is groups such as ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and they have declared war openly against the United States.” The Fox News commenters intimated that terrorists were among those in the migrant caravan.

To be clear, there isn’t an emergency at the border. Immigrants seeking asylum aren’t aiming to hurt us. Inward migration has slowed significantly, declining to its lowest levels in the past decade, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center report. Security seems to be working; there have been more arrests along the border than ever before. However, Trump’s manufactured war does have casualties: children. Thousands of immigrant youth have been traumatized from being separated from their families because of the administration’s policy to detain and prosecute illegal border crossers — even those with children in tow.

Related: To un-muzzle upstart Negros, we need black-owned news media

The maker of the policies may flit from one subject to the next on a whim, but schools will bear the brunt of the immigration crisis for CONTINUE READING: Schools should not be battlegrounds for Trump’s fake war

Lessons from the LA Teachers Strike

Lessons from the LA Teachers Strike

Lessons from the LA Teachers Strike

By Jim Miller

After a little more than a week of striking, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) captured the public’s imagination, helped transform the national narrative about education, won a solid new contract, and positioned themselves well for the battles to come.

For those of us in education this was an inspiring moment that showed the potential for smart organizing and activism to change the game in important ways.

As I wrote last week, UTLA was taking a lead from both the social movements of the sixties and other, more recent examples of militant protests and strikes by fellow educators elsewhere in the United States from Chicago to West Virginia.

The LA strike was a light in the greater darkness of the present American social and political landscape, and it offers some important lessons not just for teachers but for all unionists, Democratic politicians, and progressive activists moving forward.

What did we learn?

Social Justice Unionism Gets the Goods: By making real, solid community alliances and incorporating them into their demands, UTLA won over 80% approval by the public.  Thus, despite decades of anti-union “teachers. vs the children” narratives promoted by corporate education reformers and frequently parroted by the media, the teachers’ efforts to reach out to parents, community groups, and other allies paid off big time with an incredible display of solidarity coming from all quarters in Los Angeles and the country at large.  That doesn’t happen by accident; it takes long, hard, savvy organizing and commitment to a broader vision of social justice than simple bread and butter unionism allows.

As a recent Nation (insert link: https://www.thenation.com/article/los-angeles-teachers-strike-utla-organizing-solidarity/) piece on the teachers’ organizing efforts observes:

UTLA’s strategy has hinged upon making sure that their message is heard by parents, CONTINUE READING: Lessons from the LA Teachers Strike

‘It’s every educator standing up’: Virginia teachers march in Richmond - The Washington Post

‘It’s every educator standing up’: Virginia teachers march in Richmond - The Washington Post

‘It’s every educator standing up’: Virginia teachers march in Richmond

RICHMOND — Hundreds of Virginia teachers descended on the state Capitol on Monday, following in the footsteps of educators nationwide who have launched a wave of activism highlighting the plight of public education.

They protested low wages that force educators into second jobs, decrepit school buildings that sometimes leave students shivering and a dearth of school support staff — issues that have animated protests in Los Angeles, West Virginia, Oklahoma and elsewhere.

“We’ve got kids in crumbling school buildings. We’ve got students with textbooks 15 years old. We’ve got teachers and support staff paid far below the national average. We’ve got technology that either doesn’t work or doesn’t exist,” said Jim Livingston, president of the Virginia Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union. “It’s time to fund our future.”

They were clad in red, the color worn in teacher protests that began last year in Republican-led states, as they marched through downtown streets flanked by police. They spanned several city blocks, halting traffic as people watched and captured video from balconies and stoops, the public library and a YMCA.

They carried signs that declared “Education is a right” and chanted “Fund our schools!”

They marched until they crowded the steps of the Capitol, where speakers including Virginia Teacher of the Year Rodney Robinson waited.

Educators demonstrate for better pay and working conditions in Virginia. (Julia Rendleman for The Washington Post)

Unlike the demonstrations in other states, the Virginia march wasn’t expected to evolve into a days-long walkout or strike. Sarah Pedersen, a march organizer, described the march as a first step to put the General Assembly “on notice.”

Public school enrollment has grown 5 percent in the past decade, while the amount of money the state spends on each student has fallen, according to the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, a Richmond think tank. That has forced school systems to CONTINUE READING: ‘It’s every educator standing up’: Virginia teachers march in Richmond - The Washington Post

The Science of the Human Brain – Sam Chaltain

The Science of the Human Brain – Sam Chaltain

THE SCIENCE OF THE HUMAN BRAIN

It is the most complex living system in the known universe, built of hundreds of billions of cells, each as complicated as a city.

It is the primary author of the deeply personal story we tell ourselves about who we are and why we are here.

And it never, ever, shows us the world as it truly is — only as we need it to be.

This is the conundrum of the human brain, which is why understanding its peculiar science is a prerequisite towards our ability to imagine, and then build, a better world.

Consider this: Human beings — or, for that matter, any other life form on earth — see only what has helped them survive in the past. The way we make sense of the present is still being shaped by the innovations, fears and assumptions our ancestors made hundreds, thousands, even millions of years ago. And yet our success as a species has occurred not in spite of our inability to see reality, but because of it.

As neuroscientist Beau Lotto puts it, human beings didn’t evolve to see the world objectively; they evolved to “not die.”  And all living things have managed to “not die” thus far by developing different perceptual overlays on the same planetary backdrop. Bats developed echolocation. Cephalopods learned to change colors. Birds got GPS. And we developed a wet computer with a parallel processor — otherwise known as a bi-hemispheric brain.

Why did our brains evolve that way, with a singular blueprint stamped out twice? No one knows for sure, although psychiatrist Iain McGlichrist believes it happened to help us “attend to the world in two completely different ways, and in so doing to bring two different worlds into being,” and two different ways of surviving life’s slings and arrows.  

“In the one,” he explains, “we experience — the live, complex, embodied, world of individual, always unique beings, forever in flux, a net of interdependencies, forming and reforming wholes, a world in which we are deeply connected. In the other we ‘experience’ our experience in a special way: a ‘re-presented’ version of it, containing now static, separable, bounded, but essentially fragmented entities, grouped into classes, on which predictions can be based.

“These are not different ways of thinking about the world,” McGilchrist claims. “They are different ways of beingin the world. If the left hemisphere is the hemisphere of ‘what’, the right hemisphere, with its preoccupation with context, the relational aspects of experience, emotion and the nuances of expression, could be said to be the hemisphere of ‘how.’”

Who we perceive ourselves to be is a mashup of these different perceptual overlays — ostensibly equal parts logic and emotion. And yet the reality of the modern world, says McGilchrist, is that our way of seeing has gotten out of balance.

For a number of reasons, we have become left-hemisphere heavy.

“My thesis is that for us as human beings there are two fundamentally opposed realities, two different modes of CONTINUE READING: The Science of the Human Brain – Sam Chaltain

Teacher Strikes Shift Politics of Charter School Agenda | OurFuture.org by People's Action

Teacher Strikes Shift Politics of Charter School Agenda | OurFuture.org by People's Action

Teacher Strikes Shift Politics of Charter School Agenda

The emergence of charter schools as an important consideration in teacher collective bargaining agreements, and the recognition of charters as a form of privatization, are two major developments in the education policy and politics of choice.

Republican lawmakers held a press conference on Capitol Hill to kick off National School Choice Week, an annual event that began in 2011 under President Obama who proclaimed it as a time to “recognize the role public charter schools play in providing America’s daughters and sons with a chance to reach their fullest potential.” This year, Democratic lawmakers took a pass on the celebration. You can thank striking teachers for that.

In the latest teacher strike in Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest school system, some 30,000 teachers walked off the job saying unchecked growth of charter schools and charters’ lack of transparency and accountability have become an unsustainable drain on the public system’s financials. The teachers have included in their demands a cap on charter school growth, along with other demands, such as increased teacher pay, reduced class sizes, less testing, and more counselors, nurses, librarians, and psychologists.

The L.A. teachers’ opposition to charter schools is just the latest voice in a growing chorus of public school teachers calling on politicians to do more to support the public schools we have rather than piling more dollars and accolades onto a competitive charter school industry. And CONTINUE READING: Teacher Strikes Shift Politics of Charter School Agenda | OurFuture.org by People's Action

What Do We Want? – redqueeninla

What Do We Want? – redqueeninla

What Do We Want? 

Jackie Goldberg

When Do We Want Her?

When The Vote-By-Mail ballots drop next week.
Or At-The-Polls on March 5, 2019

Marches aren’t particularly reasoned or reasoning affairs. There’s a lot of shouting and assertions amidst a dearth of nuance.

Why should voters in a school district that’s approximately 3/4 Latino vote for a grey-haired, white-skinned, LGBTQ, retired State Legislator?  That is:

Why Do We Want Her?

Because: (1) Experience (2) Competence (3) Fearsomeness (4) Integrity

Jackie Goldberg has a prodigious knowledge of Education Politics. She can talk just about anybody under the table with State bill numbers and legislative strategies and nuanced understanding of where education legislation helps and who is opposed to it and why and how to move things along. That goes for locally as well as in Sacramento. She understands what underlies esoteric funding schemes and shortfalls.  She comprehends what drives and motivates teachers and students and communities. And Unions. And Union members.

It is critical to flip the open LAUSD5 seat away from Charter interests and back to the Public’s. There is no way that had Jackie Goldberg been appointedto fill Board District’s 5’s disgraced charter-representative Rodriguez’s seat that the Kabuki of January’s historic strike would have been fully enacted. The tremendous and valuable gains for public education that were assuredly won, CONTINUE READING: What Do We Want? – redqueeninla

Basic Dilemma Teachers, Principals, Superintendents Face: Supervising Others While Seeking Approval | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Basic Dilemma Teachers, Principals, Superintendents Face: Supervising Others While Seeking Approval | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Basic Dilemma Teachers, Principals, Superintendents Face: Supervising Others While Seeking Approval 

In the second week of my superintendency in the mid-1970s–I came from outside the district and had no entourage–the head of the principals group (there were 35 schools in the district), met me in the stairwell of the Administration building and we chatted a few moments about the weather and the beginning of the school year. He leaned toward me and whispered whether I would like to join a Friday night poker game with a small group of veteran principals. He added that my predecessor and key district office administrators had played weekly for years. I paused and said: “Let me think about it.”

After dinner when the kids had gone upstairs to do their homework, I told my wife about the invitation and we discussed it thoroughly. My wife pointed out that the invitation was a very important gesture on the part of veteran administrators who had been clearly unenthusiastic when the School Board appointed me. I was an outsider and first-time superintendent who had worked across the river in the largely black D.C. schools for nearly a decade as a high school teacher and district administrator. She pointed out that it was a splendid opportunity for me to satisfy a strong personal need that we had discussed prior to taking the post. That is, I wanted to secure the respect and approval–and eventually trust–of those I am expected to lead and who report to me. We had talked about the tension between seeking approval of subordinates who I depended upon while at the same time being in a position where I would have to judge their performance annually. She and I chewed on that dilemma for a long time.

Then she reminded me that Friday nights were supposed to be set aside for the family’s Sabbath meal. In offering me the job, I had asked the Board to keep Fridays clear of any meetings or assignments. They had agreed. So after further discussion, my wife and I decided that I would the forego Friday night poker games. I called the head of the principals’ group, thanked him for the invitation and told him I would not be able to join the group.

In the seven years that I served the district, 30 of those 35 principals retired, transferred to other posts, left the district, or I fired. I never regretted that CONTINUE READING: Basic Dilemma Teachers, Principals, Superintendents Face: Supervising Others While Seeking Approval | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice