Operation Varsity Blues: One Corrupt Tree in the Forest of White Wealth Privilege | radical eyes for equity

Operation Varsity Blues: One Corrupt Tree in the Forest of White Wealth Privilege | radical eyes for equity

Operation Varsity Blues: One Corrupt Tree in the Forest of White Wealth Privilege

It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

—George Carlin

Andrew Lelling, the US attorney for Massachusetts, made a nearly laughable opening claim in his press conference about a college admissions scandal named “Operation Varsity Blues”:

“This case is about the widening corruption of elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud,” Lelling said. “There can be no separate college admission system for the wealthy, and I’ll add that there will not be a separate criminal justice system either.”

He added, “For every student admitted through fraud, an honest, genuinely talented student was rejected.”

Nearly laughable, in part, because this grandstanding of justice wants to proceed from the position that discovering the wealthy gaming a system they already control is somehow shocking (it isn’t), and nearly laughable as well because Lelling offered as context and with a straight face the following:

We’re not talking about donating a building so that a school’s more likely to take your son or daughter.

We’re talking about deception and fraud – fake test scores, fake athletic credentials, fake photographs, bribed college officials.

The layers of bullshit in what is being called a “massive admissions scandal” are nearly as complicated as the story itself, an intricate web of complicit parents, college and athletics officials, SAT/ACT shenanigans, and CONTINUE READING: Operation Varsity Blues: One Corrupt Tree in the Forest of White Wealth Privilege | radical eyes for equity

CURMUDGUCATION: OH: Beating Back School Takeovers

CURMUDGUCATION: OH: Beating Back School Takeovers

OH: Beating Back School Takeovers

If there is any benefit at all to the complete hash of the takeover of Lorain  City Schools, it's that it has brought renewed attention to Ohio's terrible takeover law and renewed energy to attempts to bust that law.

There are actually two proposals floating around currently, both bipartisan. State Reps. Kent Smith, D-Euclid, and Steve Hambley, R-Brunswick, announced House Bill 127 this week. The bill calls for a moratorium on all school takeovers. The bill would not roll back the three takeovers already under way (Youngstown, Lorain, and East Cleveland). Hambly told the Chonicle:

At this point, untangling that knot’s a little bit more complicated, but I think the one thing I can say about our proposal is it doesn’t create any more victims.

Hambly says at this point the bill has disrupted not just schools, but the entire city, providing "three case studies on how not to help a community."

Meanwhile, Rep. Joe Miller, D-Amherst, and Rep. Don Jones, R-Freeport,  say they will be proposing a bill that will dissolve the Academic Distress Commissions that run the takeovers. Once again, the Chronicle is all over this story.

“We realize that when you move decision-making farther and farther away from students, the more likely you’re not going to be able to meet their needs,” Miller said Friday in a phone CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: OH: Beating Back School Takeovers

5 Key Trends in the Teacher Workforce - NEA Today

5 Key Trends in the Teacher Workforce - NEA Today

5 Key Trends in the Teacher Workforce

Thanks largely to a nationwide campaign by educators, the country is finally talking about how we can recruit, support and retain teachers. This is an important discussion, says Richard Ingersoll,  professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, because “the teaching force has been transformed over the last 30 years, with significant financial, structural, and educational consequences.” 

Ingersoll recently updated “Seven Trends: The Transformation of the Teaching Force,” his longitudinal study on the elementary and secondary teaching force that culls data from several comprehensive sources, including the Schools and Staffing Survey.

“Too often, researchers, school leaders, and policymakers are still operating under false assumptions about who goes into teaching and how teaching careers unfold,” Ingersoll said. “If we want to improve student performance, we must understand this new reality.”

Here are Ingersoll’s key  findings:

A Growing Profession

Since 1987, the size of the teaching force, says Ingersoll, has “ballooned.”

Student enrollment and the number of teachers peaked in the 1970s, then leveled off before climbing again in the late ’80s. The teaching force has been on the uptick ever since (except for the period following the Great Recession), even outpacing the rate of increase for students.

From 1987-88 to 2015-16, total K-12 student enrollment in the nation’s public CONTINUE READING: 5 Key Trends in the Teacher Workforce - NEA Today

Six Things More Important than that Desperate Housewife Cheating to Get Her Kid into a Prestigious College | Teacher in a strange land

Six Things More Important than that Desperate Housewife Cheating to Get Her Kid into a Prestigious College | Teacher in a strange land

Six Things More Important than that Desperate Housewife Cheating to Get Her Kid into a Prestigious College

I was mildly shocked by the network news leading off with the ‘cheating to get into college scandal’ last night. Were they just sick of starting each broadcast with the latest on Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Tim Apple?

The story is pretty juicy, involving real-life arrests and Famous Actresses Shamed and photoshopping rich kids’ heads onto actual athletes’ bodies posed in rowing sculls—and, oh yeah, an ex-basketball coach taking in hundreds of millions to ‘help’ them cheat.

But really—who’s surprised by this? In my last blog, I mentioned David Labaree’s superb white paper on how social mobility—not democratic equality, job preparation or something as mundane as the joy of learning—had become the predominant reason and purpose for schooling in America.

To Labaree, it’s all about credentialing. And to wealthy, influential parents, evidently, the right kind of credentialing matters more than setting a good example, or, you know, personal integrity.

In the end, I think it’s a kind of dumb and not very important story, for six reasons I’ll list in a bit.  A national episode of schadenfreude isn’t going to change people’s minds about the actual value of a college degree, unfortunately.

But first, I’d like to re-share one of the more interesting stories that got buried when it first surfaced, in the days after the 2016 election: The Story Behind Jared Kushner’s Curious Acceptance into Harvard.
ProPublica editor Daniel Golden wrote a book a decade ago about how the rich buy their CONTINUE READING: Six Things More Important than that Desperate Housewife Cheating to Get Her Kid into a Prestigious College | Teacher in a strange land

The Benefits of Libraries for Teachers and Students - Teacher Habits

The Benefits of Libraries for Teachers and Students - Teacher Habits

The Benefits of Libraries for Teachers and Students

For a long time, libraries have served as sanctuaries for many students and teachers. Libraries aren’t being visited as often as they once were, but educators can still benefit from utilizing libraries in their lessons. Additionally, they provide a place of solitude and refuge from the hardships associated with day-to-day school life. Within the rows of books, there are other worlds to escape to, history to be revisited, and information to gather.

Library Importance

Many consider libraries to be dead because of today’s focus on technology. This is a common misconception; in fact, many libraries are thriving across the country. As a teacher, offering the chance for your students to spend time in their local library will continue the support that is needed for libraries to keep their doors open.

Including a visit to your local library in your curriculum can benefit your students. It is there they have access to the news stories and history of their town that they cannot find in any other library. Today, many of the libraries’ newspaper collections and historical photographs are being digitized and are available on their websites. However, research being conducted on students shows that information retention for data obtained in print is greater than digital media.

By enabling your students to become library patrons, you are empowering them to utilize a space that can act as more than just a place to study. In addition to access to information, libraries offer many benefits as an institution:

• They serve as a community hub and meeting place.
• They can offer a place for oral histories and storytelling.
• Libraries create ties and partnerships between community members and organizations.
• 
  
• The Internet’s Role in Change

Many people aren’t going to the library anymore because they can find answers to questions online so easily. The danger of the age of the internet, however, is the lack of credible sources. This has created a need for instilling critical analysis skills to enable our students to CONTINUE READING: The Benefits of Libraries for Teachers and Students - Teacher Habits

Louisiana Bamboozles! – Educate Louisiana

Louisiana Bamboozles! – Educate Louisiana
Louisiana Bamboozles!

Raise your hand if you’ve ever checked your weight against one of those charts that tells you how much you should weigh based on your height. You know. The ones with unrealistic goals that you immediately dismiss because of their ridiculousness. Well, I have. I can tell you that in all my 35 adult years, even at my thinnest and best condition, I have never been less than 40 pounds overweight according to the scale.

Now, imagine if we started measuring the height/weight of our children in kindergarten with the goal of them exiting high school within the recommended range. We all know there will be some kids that do it with zero effort. Others will achieve the goal with moderate to heavy dieting. And still, others will never make it. Let’s take it a little farther. The federal government provides minimum guidelines for determining reliable diets to follow, and the State’s job is to select a diet and develop a plan to monitor the progress toward meeting the goal. Would you be mad if, in choosing how to achieve these goals that a large percentage of children won’t meet, the State requires the use of a diet that doesn’t meet the minimum guidelines, and a one-time/one-use scale produced by a particular manufacturer? Of course, you would, and every state legislator would be asking questions and changing laws to correct the problem.

Whether you know it, or not, this is exactly what is happening in education, in Louisiana. When Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), there was a fundamental shift in requirements for interventions. Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), states were required to use “research-based” interventions when implementing plans to improve failing schools. Under ESSA, the requirement is “evidence-based.” What is the difference? Research-based interventions are designed around CONTINUE READING: Louisiana Bamboozles! – Educate Louisiana

DeVos opens door to taxpayers funding religious orgs by stopping enforcement of church-state separation rule

DeVos opens door to taxpayers funding religious orgs by stopping enforcement of church-state separation rule

DeVos opens door to taxpayers funding religious orgs by stopping enforcement of church-state separation rule

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has announced she will no longer enforce the provision of federal law that bans religious organizations from being funded with taxpayer dollars for secular projects.

DeVos is citing a 2017 Supreme Court decision that ruled a Missouri Lutheran church-run school could not be barred from having taxpayers pay for repaving its playground under a local ordinance that made it ineligible solely due to separation of church and state policies.

The Education Secretary, in an official notice to Congress, now appears to be turning that ruling on its head.

“The law calls for students in public and private schools to receive ‘equitable services,’ such as special education, tutoring or mentoring, and allows districts to hire contractors to deliver those services,” The New York Times explains.

The Washington Post adds, “school districts are now open to contract with religious organizations,” although “the services they provide must be ‘secular, neutral and non-ideological.'”

The education reporter for US News, a right-leaning news site, says, “DeVos blurs church-state boundaries” with her new rule.

Indeed, DeVos is claiming that the provisions of the federal laws she is now refusing to enforce are “discrimination against religious organizations.”

The Education Secretary, in an official notice to Congress, now appears to be turning that ruling on its head.

“The law calls for students in public and private schools to receive ‘equitable services,’ such as special education, tutoring or mentoring, and allows districts to hire contractors to deliver those services,” The New York Times explains.

The Washington Post adds, “school districts are now open to contract with religious organizations,” although “the services they provide must be ‘secular, neutral and non-ideological.'”

The education reporter for US News, a right-leaning news site, says, “DeVos blurs church-state boundaries” with her new rule.

Indeed, DeVos is claiming that the provisions of the federal laws she is now refusing to enforce are “discrimination against religious organizations.” CONTINUE READING: DeVos opens door to taxpayers funding religious orgs by stopping enforcement of church-state separation rule

Improving Democracy: Ranked Choice Voting

Improving Democracy: Ranked Choice Voting

Improving Democracy: Ranked Choice Voting

In the end, the ultimate winner has the support of at least half of voters  —  not a terribly radical idea in a democracy.”

– Lawrence Lessig

In Los Angeles, the allegedly cash-strapped school district will spend approximately $2.4 million in the special elections to replace disgraced former Board member Ref Rodriguez. This is money that won’t be available to reduce class sizes, give students with special education needs the services they need or ensure that every school is staffed with a trained librarian. Even worse, it will be used in an electoral system where the vast majority of those eligible to participate will not do so and little will be done to promote the exchange of ideas between candidates.

In the primary round of this election, Jackie Goldberg won handily with 15,241 votes, representing 48.45% of the ballots cast. This was 11,097 votes more than her closest competitor who was only chosen by 13.17% of those who voted. However, since Goldberg did not win more than 50% of the vote, a runoff election will be held on May 14. There is little reason to believe that turnout will be any more than the 9% that voted in the primary.

If Los Angeles used a Ranked Choice method of voting like Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) would not be preparing to spend more money on another CONTINUE READING: Improving Democracy: Ranked Choice Voting

CURMUDGUCATION: NY: Rochester, Mayoral Control, Vultures, and the Problems of Democracy.

CURMUDGUCATION: NY: Rochester, Mayoral Control, Vultures, and the Problems of Democracy.

NY: Rochester, Mayoral Control, Vultures, and the Problems of Democracy.

It has been almost a decade since a mayoral school coup was a hot topic in Rochester. Mayor Robert Duffy wanted to implement NYC style mayoral control. There seemed to be support for the move; the superintendent even had a nifty portfolio plan whipped up and ready to go. But Andrew Cuomo tagged Duffy as his running mate for governor, and Duffy was out of Rochester politics about a year after he'd proposed the takeover. The Senate was moving on it, opponents were ready o file lawsuits, but the whole business just sort of languished.

Well, there's your problem.

Fast forward to last year. In August, Education Commissioner MaryEllen Alia sent a consultant to Rochester to talk to folks, assess the situation, and make recommendations. Jaime Aquino,Distinguished Educator (seriously, that's his title), had held leadership positions in NY, Denver, and Los Angeles before he arrived in Rochester to talk to many people and wsw`determine that-- well, the full report, issued in November 2018, was a brutal sixty pages. It's not pretty:

“That lack of stability in leadership really has an impact on the work that happens in school," Dr. Aquino said of the district having five superintendents in the past decade. "There is also, in the district, lack of a laser-like focus on student achievement. There’s not a lot of attention being paid to teaching and learning, and a lack of accountability in the system in terms of monitoring what goes on in the school and in the progress the kids are doing.”

The picture that emerges from the report is of fully-dysfunctional top-down leadership, starting with a dysfunctional board that is both splintered and prone to micro-management, and on to a  CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: NY: Rochester, Mayoral Control, Vultures, and the Problems of Democracy.

Politicians Forget that Cut Scores on Standardized Tests Are Not Grounded in Science | janresseger

Politicians Forget that Cut Scores on Standardized Tests Are Not Grounded in Science | janresseger

Politicians Forget that Cut Scores on Standardized Tests Are Not Grounded in Science

Last week the NY Times‘ Dana Goldstein and Manny Fernandez reported on a political fight in Texas over the scoring of the STAAR—the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness—the state’s version of the achievement test each state must still administer every year in grades 3-8 and once in high school.  The federal Every Student Succeeds Act, passed in 2015 to replace No Child Left Behind, still mandates annual testing, although Congress no longer imposes its own high stakes punishments for failure.

However, Congress still does require the states to submit plans to the U.S. Department of Education declaring what will be the consequences for low-scoring schools.  Goldstein and Fernandez explain that Texas, like many other states, still imposes punishments for the low scorers instead of offering help: “The test, the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, can have profound consequences not just for students but for schools across the state, hundreds of which have been deemed inadequate and are subject to interventions that critics say are undue.”  Schools have to provide help for students who are not on grade level. Also: “Texas grades its districts on an A through F scale, in part based on how many students are meeting or exceeding grade-level standards… Persistently failing schools, and districts with just a single such school, can be shut down or taken over by the state—a threat facing the state’s largest school system, in Houston.”

Decades of research show that, in the aggregate, standardized test scores correlate with family and neighborhood income. In a country where segregation by race and poverty continues to grow, it is now recognized among experts and researchers that rating and ranking schools and districts by their aggregate test scores merely brands the poorest schools as failing. When sanctions are attached, political regimes of test-based accountability merely punish the schools and the teachers and the students in the poorest places.

In an excellent 2017, book, The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better, Harvard professor Daniel Koretz explains the correlation of aggregate standardized test scores with CONTINUE READING: Politicians Forget that Cut Scores on Standardized Tests Are Not Grounded in Science | janresseger

Pam Harbin Wants to Go From Pittsburgh School Board Watchdog to School Board Member | gadflyonthewallblog

Pam Harbin Wants to Go From Pittsburgh School Board Watchdog to School Board Member | gadflyonthewallblog

Pam Harbin Wants to Go From Pittsburgh School Board Watchdog to School Board Member

My friend Pam Harbin is trying to undergo a startling metamorphosis.

She wants to transform from an education activist into a Pittsburgh School Director.

Now that Board President Lynda Wrenn is stepping down after 4 years, city voters in District 4 will have to decide whether Harbin can make the change. The election is on May 21.

Residents in parts of Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze, Shadyside and North Oakland already know Harbin as a fierce warrior for children’s civil rights, the plight of disabled kids and authentic public schools.
I’ve known Pam, personally, for years in my own role as an education activist. Though I don’t live in the city, I’ve participated in numerous collective actions to fight for the schools all our children deserve. And right beside me in every case – often in front of me – was Pam.

I may not live in the district, but I wish I could vote for her. Harbin is an amazing leader with boundless energy, piercing intelligence, a deep knowledge of education policy, an advanced degree in finance and marketing, and an impressive track record of education justice achievements.
“I am deeply concerned for our system of public education,” she says. “The status quo isn’t working for all children. Thankfully, there are many people here in Pittsburgh and across the country who are fighting for investment in, and transformation of, our public schools. Unfortunately, their efforts are hindered by the well-funded organizations who fight for public school disinvestment, privatization, and for the elimination of teachers’ right to unionize.”

For the past 12 years, Harbin has been at the forefront of every major battle for the future of Pittsburgh’s public schools and the rights of its students.
Harbin was instrumental in pushing city school board directors to enact a suspension ban from Pk-2nd grade for minor non-violent conduct. She successfully fought to CONTINUE READING: Pam Harbin Wants to Go From Pittsburgh School Board Watchdog to School Board Member | gadflyonthewallblog

MORE ABOUT PAM

Pam Harbin for School Board District 4 - https://www.pamharbin.com/

Meet Pam Harbin

Pam Harbin is the mother of two children in Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) and has been active with the district for the past twelve years, working for the schools all our children deserve. She is a qualified, proven leader with experience in school policy at the local, state, and national level. Pam is the Co-Founder of the Education Rights Network, a parent-led organization working for fully resourced, inclusive and quality education for students in Pennsylvania. She is also a member and past Co-Chair of the Pittsburgh Local Task Force on the Right to Education (LTF), a parent-led organization that works with administrators of PPS and community agencies to improve services for students with disabilities.

Pam is the immediate past president and serves on the board of directors for Evolve Coaching (formerly Arts for Autism Foundation of Pittsburgh), supporting individuals with disabilities and their communities through education, employment, and the arts. Pam’s children currently attend Sci-Tech and Allderdice; before that they both attended Liberty and one of them attended Sterrett. As a PPS volunteer since 2007 Pam has served on district-wide advisory committees, including the Community Schools Steering Committee, Envisioning Educational Excellence Advisory Committee, Parental Involvement Policy Committee, Excellence for All Steering Committee, and the Special Education Delivery Model Advisory Committee. Pam has also been an unofficial school board watchdog, streaming and/or attending more than 2000 hours of school board meetings in the last 12 years. Pam is also a past member of the board of trustees at Rodef Shalom Congregation where she chaired the Family Center Committee overseeing preschool and family programming.

Pam holds a BS in Finance and Marketing from LaSalle University in Philadelphia.

MORE ABOUT PAM

Pam Harbin for School Board District 4 - https://www.pamharbin.com/

California’s Teachers Are Finally Going After the Original Sin That Wrecked the State’s Public Schools – Mother Jones

California’s Teachers Are Finally Going After the Original Sin That Wrecked the State’s Public Schools – Mother Jones

California’s Teachers Are Finally Going After the Original Sin That Wrecked the State’s Public Schools
“There’s no reason that California shouldn’t be the state that spends the most on students.”

On February 20, just before Oakland’s teachers went on strike, Carmelita Reyes organized a carpool of 35 city principals to travel to Sacramento to meet with state lawmakers. Their plan: to urge legislators to spend more on schools, cancel the Oakland Unified School District’s $36 million in outstanding debt, and revise the state’s laws on charter schools.

A day before the trip, Reyes, the co-principal of Oakland International High School, had laid out their argument in an open letter to the state that she’d written with 74 other school leaders. “If our education budget is a reflection of our values, then we are morally bankrupt when it comes to our children,” they wrote. That letter echoed a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed written in early February by Oakland school board president Aimee Eng and board member Jody London, who warned that the district’s issues “will be the problems that far too many California school districts will face in a few years if the state does not step up to solve the basic problem: inadequate funding.” 

“If our education budget is a reflection of our values, then we are morally bankrupt when it comes to our children.”

When the principals got to Sacramento—dressed in red in a nod to the #RedForEd teacher protests that swept the nation last year—they split up and met with lawmakers, staffers, and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. Cliff Hong, the principal of Roosevelt Middle School, said he left the capitol that day feeling empowered, noting that legislators offered “some assurances” they would spend more money on education.

Now comes the hard part. The recent strikes in Los Angeles and Oakland are over, with teachers winning raises and calls for checks on charter schools, CONTINUE READING: California’s Teachers Are Finally Going After the Original Sin That Wrecked the State’s Public Schools – Mother Jones

How for-profit charter schools are ripping off California taxpayers

How for-profit charter schools are ripping off California taxpayers
How for-profit charter schools are ripping off California taxpayers

Across California and the country, corporations are expanding their ownership and operation of charter schools and their profits, subsidized by taxpayers.

In California, 34 charter schools operated by five for-profit education management organizations enroll about 25,000 students. These for-profit charter schools siphon hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money away from students to generate massive corporate profits, and in many cases provide an inferior education.

They exploit loopholes in California’s charter school law allowing them to cheat our students and reap huge profits at taxpayer expense.

We have a long way to go before California’s public education system is adequately funded and cannot afford to line shareholder pockets with scarce state revenues.

The Legislature has the opportunity to fix this flaw in state law. Assembly Bill 406, authored by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty and sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers, would prohibit for-profit corporations from operating public charter schools. The bill was approved by the Assembly on Wednesday and now heads to the state Senate.

It is estimated that California taxpayers provide these companies with more than $225 million a year with little public transparency or accountability.

K12 Inc., the state’s largest for-profit education management organization, received $310 million in state funding over the past dozen years. In 2016, it reported revenue of $872 million, including $89 million paid to its Wall Street investors.

It pays millions to top executives while its average teacher salary is $36,000, thanks to heavy  CONTINUE READING: How for-profit charter schools are ripping off California taxpayers