CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: BBQ And Blues Edition (6/15)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: BBQ And Blues Edition (6/15)

ICYMI: BBQ And Blues Edition (6/15)

Today in our city park you can listen to jazz and blues all day while sampling a variety of barbecue offerings. Now don't you wish you lived near me?

In the meantime, here is some reading for you. Remember to share.

Better Schools Won't Fix America

Another wealthy reformster figures out that ed reform is on the wrong path.

She Left The Education Department For Groups It Curbed; Now She's Back 

Yet another fox lands a sweet henhouse gig. Hoping Americans we'll be defended from predatory for-profit scam colleges? This lady is not going to help.

Churn and Burn 

Turns out that charters run through staff far more than public schools do.

Are Charters Hurting School Distracts 

Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat runs some numbers and finds that (suroprise) charters do damage the districts they come from.

Cyber Accountability

Testimony day in Harrisburg, PA, becomes a little heated when cyber charter boosters come out to defend their businesses from ac tual educators.

Betsy DeVos, meet Ralph from Comcast.

Betsy DeVos, meet Ralph and find out what fuss about predatory privatized college looks like on the ground.

Charter Schools and Buying Double 

Steven Singer looks at duplication of services and the extra costs of charter schools.

White Home Buyers, Black Neighborhoods, and the Future of Urban Schools  

Another invaluable episode of Have You Heard, looking at gentrification in an interview with Yawu Miller.

One State Sets Out To Rethink Charter Oversight 

Jan Resseger takes a look at some important results from California's charter study.

What About ALICE?

One more creepy technocratic program for managing and profiting from the Lessers. Wrench in the Gears has dug up details.

Comics Resources   

Like to use graphic novels, comics, etc in your classroom and you need some backup for the practice? Here's a list of some resources you can use.


CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: BBQ And Blues Edition (6/15)

Winners Take All, Education Edition

77by Peter Greene / 1d

Every so often you come across a book that unpacks and reframes a part of the universe in a way that you can never unsee. Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas has been a book like that for me. Giridharadas is writing about "the elite charade of changing the world," and while he is taking a broad look at the way the Betters are trying to influence our country and our world, the connections to edu

Winners Take All-- Read This Book (Excerpts)

80by Peter Greene / 1d

Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas might be the most important book you read this year. It is not directly aimed at education or education reform, and yet it has everything to do with education form. I 'll address that in a separate post going up the same time as this one . But here I just want to share some important quotes from the book as a means of encouraging you to buy it and read it, b

Eight Weeks of Summer: Professional Growth Plans

by Peter Greene / 1d

This post is week 1 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators . This is a little blogventure put on by hotlunchtray.com; for eight weeks they invite teachers to respond to a prompt about how they actually spend summer. I am a sucker for A) busting the myth that teacher summers are all unicorns and pina coladas and B) a prompt. I am, of course, a retired teacher, but I'm just going

JUN 14

Magical Money And School Choice

77by Peter Greene / 2d

Pennsylvania's legislature is currently having Version 2,433,672,127 of the same argument that emerges every five minutes in the places where charter schools and public schools bump up against each other. The PA legislature just passed a suite of charter school bills addressing a variety of issues, but not the single issue that folks on all sides want to have addressed: Absent from all four bills

JUN 13

The Trouble With The College Board's New Adversity Score

86by Peter Greene / 2d

The College Board has for years been trying to rescue its floundering flagship, the SAT. The newly announced adversity score is just the latest unforced error from the testing giant. Just keep telling yourself that For almost a decade, the company has been fighting for market share. In 2012 , it hired David Coleman, fresh from his work as architect of the language portion of the Common Core Stand

JUN 12

PA: Voucher Expansion Goes To Governor

100+by Peter Greene / 3d

The Pennsylvania GOP-controlled legislature is continuing its assault on public education, this time taking a page from the Betsy DeVos Big Book of Voucher Love. HB 800 worked its way through the House a while back, and it has just cleared the Senate . The bill is a big wet kiss to the business community and to private schools, particularly religious ones. The Catholic Church loves this bill, as d

JUN 11

FCC To Throttle School Internet

98by Peter Greene / 4d

It looks like a bunch of kerfluffling about more of those oddly-named, obscure gummint programs, but the news from the FCC is ominous for schools. According to edscoop , the FCC has filed a notice of proposed rulemaking intending to cap the FCC's Universal Service Fund. That fund subsidizes broadband infrastructure and access for schools, libraries, and rural communities. It includes the E-Rate pr

JUN 10

Can SEL Learn From Common Core

100+by Peter Greene / 5d

At the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Michael McShane (EdChoice) recently took a look at what the nascent social-emotional learning movement for education could learn from studying the checkered history of the Common Core . It's an interesting paper both for what it says about SEL and for what it gleans from the story of the Common Core, operating as it does from the reliably free-market lov

JUN 09

ICYMI: Time For Summer Edition (6/9)

100+by Peter Greene / 7d

Summer break has arrived in my neck of the woods, which means the Board of Directors will no longer have me outnumbered!. In the meantime, here's some reading from the week. Remember-- sharing is how you amplify the voices that you think need to be heard. Bloggers and journalists can write all day, but we all depend on readers to help put us in front of our audience. Robots Are Not Coming For Your

JUN 08

The Twins Are Two

500+by Peter Greene / 8d

The Board of Directors celebrated its birthday this week. Okay, they're two, so "celebrate" might be a bit of a stretch, because they didn't really know what exactly was happening other than it involved cake and ice cream and some new toys. This is not my first parenting rodeo; I have two older children and a trio of grandchildren who are, in my completely unbiased opinion, geniuses. You know the

JUN 07

Talking Point Update: Focus on Fit

58by Peter Greene / 9d

This has been going on for a while, but just in case you've missed this rhetorical shift, I want to highlight the tweaking of a reformy talking point. Complete this sentence: "We need school choice because____________________" The classic answer has been "because students need to escape failing public schools." Or "because the quality of your education shouldn't be determined by your zip code." Be

JUN 06

WV Senate Can't Seem To Hear Teachers

100+by Peter Greene / 9d

It would be funny if it weren't so angrifying. But West Virginia's legislature is at it again. Back in February of 2018, the teachers of West Virginia were fed up. Low pay. Lack of support. Lack of respect. They were fed up enough that they staged an illegal wildcat strike that shut down every school district in the state . The governor and legislature backed down, and in short order, the teachers

JUN 05

A Spectacular Charter Scam

100+by Peter Greene / 10d

You may skimmed past reports of the San Diego indictment of charter scam artists thinking, "Ah, just another charter fraud story." But this $50 million scam is worth a closer look because it highlights several of the problems with modern 

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/

Three Years Ago | Teacher in a strange land

Three Years Ago | Teacher in a strange land

Three Years Ago

I wrote this three years ago, right after the shootings in Orlando. I was working, at the time, as pianist for Sunday services in a local church–a nice, friendly church a short distance from my home in northern Michigan. I had an experience there that rattled me–and I wrote about it, on Facebook. It was June, 2016–before the Access Hollywood tape, before the debates, before the dawning recognition that someone had welcomed Russia into our electoral process.

Facebook dished this up to me as a ‘remember when?’ option–and I was startled to see just how prescient it was. So I’m sharing it now, three years later:

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I have been thinking, all day, about something that happened yesterday. It’s been nagging at my consciousness as I read and watch coverage of the tragedy in Orlando. It’s not something I can put into a blog post, because it covers a wider swath than education. But it’s bothering me, a lot.

I live in a purple county in a purplish state. Among my true friends, the big discussion lately has been “Bernie or Hillary?” But among my neighbors, acquaintances and the organizations I belong to (and work for), there are lots of Republicans. Good people, I think–people who work hard, who care for their families and do good work in the CONTINUE READING: Three Years Ago | Teacher in a strange land

Capitol & Main: Can California’s Run-Away Charter Expansion Be Curbed? Plus: Why EE failed | Diane Ravitch's blog

Capitol &Main: Can California’s Run-Away Charter Expansion Be Curbed? Plus: Why EE failed | Diane Ravitch's blog

Capitol & Main: Can California’s Run-Away Charter Expansion Be Curbed? Plus: Why EE failed

Bill Raden of Capitol & Main has a sharp analysis of the recommendations from Superintendent Tony Thurmond’s Charter School Task Force.

Plus, public school advocate David Tokofsky explains why Measure EE—which was supposed to raise $500 million annually for the schoolsof Los Angeles—failed.

With allies like L.A.’s neoliberal supe Beutner running the Yes on EE campaign, who needs enemies? Beutner’s biggest blunder, according to Tokofsky, came last year when he and his pro-charter allies on the board torpedoed the efforts by board members Dr. George McKenna and Scott Schmerelson to get the tax on the November, 2018 midterms ballot, when polling suggested that a larger, more liberal turnout would have made it a shoo-in.

Beutner  compounded that error by not only scheduling EE for June’s low-turnout, single-measure special election but by bunglinga last-minute language change that effectively translated as millions of dollars worth of free publicity for the measure’s opponents — anti-taxers like the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association CONTINUE READING: Capitol & Main: Can California’s Run-Away Charter Expansion Be Curbed? Plus: Why EE failed | Diane Ravitch's blog

Computers In The Classroom May Do More Harm Than Good | PopularResistance.Org

Computers In The Classroom May Do More Harm Than Good | PopularResistance.Org

COMPUTERS IN THE CLASSROOM MAY DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD

New Research Finds That Computers Are Most Effective As Teaching Tools When Used Sparingly, And To Teach Kids At Certain Ages Specific Subjects.

Initiatives to provide every schoolchild with a laptop or tablet computer have, to date, been well-publicized failures. And perhaps they were bad ideas to begin with.

Computers can certainly be effective tools for teaching children of certain ages specific subjects. But a large new study suggests their presence in the classroom is far from universally positive.

“Students worldwide appear to perform best on tests when they report a low-to-moderate use of school computers,” Helen Lee Bouygues, president of the Paris-based Reboot Foundation, argues in a just-released report.

“When students report having access to classroom computers and using these devices on an infrequent basis, they show better performance,” Bouygues writes. “But when students report using these devices every day, and for several hours during the school day, performance lowers dramatically.”

The Reboot Foundation is a non-profit devoted to “cultivating a capacity for critical thinking.” Its new report suggests that, while computers can sometimes help children grasp certain concepts, their overuse is highly worrisome.

Bouygues analyzed data from two sources: the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which provided math and reading scores for American CONTINUE READING: Computers In The Classroom May Do More Harm Than Good | PopularResistance.Org

Education Insider for June 16, 2019 - Education Votes #StrongPublicSchools

Education Insider for June 16, 2019 - Education Votes

Education Insider for June 16, 2019

House debate drags on, but vote on education funding expected this week

The full House may vote by Wednesday on the Labor-HHS-Education funding bill, which would increase the overall federal investment in education by $4.4 billion or 6 percent in FY2020. Specifically, the bill increases funding for Title I and IDEA by $1 billion apiece, Pell grants and other student financial aid by $492 million, higher education by $431 million, and English-language acquisition by $243 million. The bill also provides $40 million for community schools—more than double the amount they now receive. Click on the take action button to send an email urging your representative to VOTE YES to increase education funding.

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Enough is enough! Tell your senators to push for action on House-passed bills

Wondering where Congress stands on all those bills you’ve been urging your senators and representative to support? The House continues to pass groundbreaking legislation—on education funding, civil rights, gun violence prevention, immigration, and more—only to have it die in the Senate. That’s by design. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is proud of his refusal even to consider legislation with broad-based support—in the House and among the American people—and smilingly  describes himself as the Grim Reaper. Enough is enough! More than 100 House-passed bills are languishing in the Senate’s legislative graveyard. Email your SENATORS—again, if you’ve already done so—and tell them to push for  action on the Dream Act, the Equality Act, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and Gun Violence Prevention.

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Cheers and Jeers

Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), and Tom Udall (D-NM) for raising concerns during a Commerce Committee oversight hearing about the Federal Communications Commission’s proposal, published in the June 13 Federal Register, to impose an overall funding cap that could reduce support for E-Rate and other critical programs for rural students.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) offered an amendment during the Appropriations Committee’s consideration of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill to increase funding for the DC private school voucher program and remove the requirement that participating schools must give their students the same fundamental civil rights protections as public schools.

Education Insider for June 16, 2019 - Education Votes

Big Education Ape: NEA Announces #StrongPublicSchools Presidential Forum - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/06/nea-announces-strongpublicschools.html

Ed Notes Online: NYC Parents, kids, advocates, union members and elected officials rally for smaller classes

Ed Notes Online: NYC Parents, kids, advocates, union members and elected officials rally for smaller classes

NYC Parents, kids, advocates, union members and elected officials rally for smaller classes

Note in particular Councilman Mark Trager's comments (starting at 4:10) where he exposes the folly of the differentiation of instructions with high class sizes.

The UFT sent one rep. His comments are at 24:06. There was a retired teacher meeting attended by 500 people just a few blocks away starting at 1PM and some could have been urged to attend. But the class size issue is not a priority item in the lexicon of the UFT leadership as it would if they made it an issue in contract negotiations.

Watch what they do, not what they say.

https://vimeo.com/342448807

Class Size Press Conf City Hall June 11 2019 from GEM/Education Notes on Vimeo.

Here are Leonie's reports - and don't forget her Skinny Award dinner this Wednesday.

We held a very successful rally  - thanks to all of you who came!
There were 100+ parents, kids, and advocates who filled the steps of City
Hall. Gale Brewer and several CMs spoke about the importance of reducing CONTINUE READING: Ed Notes Online: NYC Parents, kids, advocates, union members and elected officials rally for smaller classes

Sac Schools Cut ‘Hope Closet’ Coordinator, Threatening Aid To Disadvantaged Students Amid Push To Lower Administrative Costs - capradio.org

Sac Schools Cut ‘Hope Closet’ Coordinator, Threatening Aid To Disadvantaged Students Amid Push To Lower Administrative Costs - capradio.org

Sac Schools Cut ‘Hope Closet’ Coordinator, Threatening Aid To Disadvantaged Students Amid Push To Lower Administrative Costs

Amaya Weiss started gathering donations of clothes, shoes, coats and books for students at Freeport Elementary in Meadowview 12 years ago, when she worked on site as a resource specialist. When she moved to nearby John Still K-8 she expanded that effort, dubbing it the “Hope Closet.”

The Hope Closet was a way to invite high-need families into the student support center on campus, build trust and then help them tap into social services and support for housing and health.   

Two years ago, the Sacramento City Unified School District hired Weiss as Executive Community Director. She ran a hub Hope Closet from the campus of New Joseph Bonnheim Community Charter School.

Weiss previously told CapRadio her goal was to build up Hope Closets at each of the more than 70 Title-I schools in the district. Those efforts were underway at several schools, including Ethel Baker Elementary School and Edward Kemble Elementary School.

But the district recently eliminated Weiss' position in the midst of wide-spread cuts in an attempt to address a $26 million budget deficit. Weiss will continue to be employed as a student support center specialist at Rosa Parks K-8 in Meadowview, according to the district.

When CapRadio reached out to Weiss for an interview, SCUSD spokesperson Alex Barrios said he would handle interviews on the cuts. He says the district is responding to demands from its “labor partners and community stakeholders” who say the district must “do the same with less” and “cut from the top.”

"The perception that an administrator is just somebody sitting at their desk, doing paperwork that's irrelevant, is not correct,” he said.

Administrators play important roles across the district, Barrios argued.

“That's just the reality of the situation. We're being forced to cut from our administration," Barrios said. "This is one of those administrative cuts. This is what it looks like."

An estimated 20,000 thousand students were served by SCUSD student support centers over CONTINUE READING: Sac Schools Cut ‘Hope Closet’ Coordinator, Threatening Aid To Disadvantaged Students Amid Push To Lower Administrative Costs - capradio.org

Los Angeles Times: What Tony Thurmond’s Charter School Task Force Recommended | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles Times: What Tony Thurmond’s Charter School Task Force Recommended | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles Times: What Tony Thurmond’s Charter School Task Force Recommended

A few months ago, Governor Gavin Newsom and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond appointed a task force to make recommendations to the State Legislature about the needed reforms of the state charter law. Of the 11 people on the Task Force, several had ties to the charter industry, two work for the California Charter Schools Association, and others are employed by charter schools. I had my doubts. But Superintendent Thurmond read my posts and called me to say, don’t judge me until you see what happens.

When the report was released, it was clear that a majority voted for important reforms of the charter law, while the charter advocates fought against, for example, allowing districts to take into account the fiscal impact of new charters on existing public schools. This was their way of saying, “let us drive public schools into fiscal crisis.” The Task Force did not agree.

Twenty percent of students in LA attend charters. At least 80% of LA charters have vacancies, contrary to phony claims about “long waiting lists.” The UTLA commissioned an audit which concluded that public schools lose $600 million every year to charters.

Howard Blume explained the recommendations of the Task Force report in the Los Angeles Times.

Blume writes:

When Los Angeles teachers went on strike in January, a major issue was charter schools: Union leaders talked about halting the growth of these privately operated campuses and exerting more local control over where and how these schools operate.

California took a step in that direction last week with the release of a much-awaited report by a task force set up in the wake of the six-day walkout.

The report supports new restrictions on charters and is expected to shape statewide policy.

One of the most important recommendations was to give a school district more authority when a charter seeks to open within its boundaries. Under current law, a school district must approve the opening of any charter that meets basic requirements.

The idea was to spark competition and give parents high-quality options for their children — and thousands of parents have responded enthusiastically. Charters enroll nearly one in five students in the nation’s second-largest CONTINUE READING: Los Angeles Times: What Tony Thurmond’s Charter School Task Force Recommended | Diane Ravitch's blog

Big Education Ape: Hired Guns, Scholars and the California School Policy Task Force | tultican - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/06/hired-guns-scholars-and-california.html

NYC Educator: A Tale of Two Teachers and the Central Park Five

NYC Educator: A Tale of Two Teachers and the Central Park Five

A Tale of Two Teachers and the Central Park Five

After having watched When They See Us on Netflix, I'm understanding the outrage over the so-called Central Park Five more clearly than I used to. I knew that they were proven not to have committed the atrocity for which they spent years behind bars, and I knew that former village idiot, now national idiot Donald Trump had declared their guilt with no need of proof. I knew Trump used their case as an argument for the death penalty, even though it's one of the best arguments against it.

I somehow missed the story of this teacher, who was fired for presenting this story to her class back in 2016. Evidently administration thought telling the story could get students all riled up, and wanted a more "balanced" view. This reminds me of Deborah Lipstadt, who refused to appear with a holocaust denier on CSPAN. Lipstadt knew, unlike Fox News and the Trump administration, that demonstrable falsehood does not represent the other side of an issue.

The other side of this issue is that prosecutors did not, in fact, rush to judgment and go all in to find these young men guilty of crimes they did not commit. But they did, and the only defense I hear from said prosecutors in light of the new documentary is that the young men were in the park and were up to no good, that they were guilty of something. Well, even if the prosecutors are correct, highly doubtful given their track record, these young men were not guilty of the crimes for which they were falsely convicted.

So when I read that the young woman in question had her suit to get her job back tossed in court, I'm a little upset. I can understand the argument that your First Amendment rights do not extend to the classroom. I have a whole lot of opinions, many or most of which have been on this page, that I don't share with my students. I don't go into my first period class ranting about Andrew Cuomo, Michael Bloomberg, or whoever happened to have disgusted me that morning.

Sometimes there are two sides to an issue. We recently discussed the issue of arming teachers. I tried to present both sides even though I think it's a ridiculous idea. I proved so good at playing devil's advocate that one of my students told me she was afraid to speak against it because she thought I wanted to carry a gun in school. I had to tell her that I CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: A Tale of Two Teachers and the Central Park Five