Today's Education Research Report
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Education Research Report
Latest News and Comment from Education
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The Charter Money Trail - Following public dollars through a traditional school district is, by comparison, straightforward. District budgets are public record. Board meetings are o...3 hours ago
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LITTLE HANDS, BIG STAKES: CHILD LABOR, IMMIGRATION, AND THE IRONY OF LABOR DAY 2026 - A unflinching look at who’s really doing America’s dirty work — and how young they are6 hours ago
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LITTLE HANDS, BIG STAKES: CHILD LABOR, IMMIGRATION, AND THE IRONY OF LABOR DAY 2026 - LITTLE HANDS, BIG STAKES: CHILD LABOR, IMMIGRATION, AND THE IRONY OF LABOR DAY 2026 *A unflinching look at who's really doing America's dirty work — and...6 hours ago
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The Tigers broke new ground pledging $4 million to a 12-year-old - Because this story is going to be misunderstood by 95 percent of people that read it, let’s get the basics out of the way: the Detroit Tigers reached a ...8 hours ago
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Mike Klonsky's Blog: A Dystopian Vision Of American Education
Mike Klonsky's Blog: A Dystopian Vision Of American Education
A Dystopian Vision Of American Education
In the wake of the latest wave of politically-driven, mostly white supremacist terrorism that left at least 31 dead in El Paso and Dayton, Trump and the Republicans are scrambling to create a narrative that acquits them and their leadership of culpability and collusion in the bloody affair.
In the past few days, the GOP line has shifted blame away from Trump's demagogic violent appeals to his racist supporters, on to the mentally ill, video games, and "fake news".
That was exactly the imagery laid out in the El Paso shooter's "manifesto".
Their narrative portrays America as a holy battlefield in a war in defense of white, christian values and a future of Republican political power.
It now includes a dystopian vision of schools as armed camps with gun-toting teachers, cops and militia surrounding school buildings and waiting for the invading enemy of infidels to make their next move.
This represents a giant-step past their previous neoliberal vision of school "choice".
Their current line was best articulated by Trump adviser Sean Hannity yesterday. The Fox News host is calling for a volunteer army of armed ex-cops and soldiers that would be CONTINUE READING: Mike Klonsky's Blog: A Dystopian Vision Of American Education
A Dystopian Vision Of American Education
In the wake of the latest wave of politically-driven, mostly white supremacist terrorism that left at least 31 dead in El Paso and Dayton, Trump and the Republicans are scrambling to create a narrative that acquits them and their leadership of culpability and collusion in the bloody affair.
In the past few days, the GOP line has shifted blame away from Trump's demagogic violent appeals to his racist supporters, on to the mentally ill, video games, and "fake news".
That was exactly the imagery laid out in the El Paso shooter's "manifesto".
Their narrative portrays America as a holy battlefield in a war in defense of white, christian values and a future of Republican political power.
It now includes a dystopian vision of schools as armed camps with gun-toting teachers, cops and militia surrounding school buildings and waiting for the invading enemy of infidels to make their next move.
This represents a giant-step past their previous neoliberal vision of school "choice".
Their current line was best articulated by Trump adviser Sean Hannity yesterday. The Fox News host is calling for a volunteer army of armed ex-cops and soldiers that would be CONTINUE READING: Mike Klonsky's Blog: A Dystopian Vision Of American Education
Shawgi Tell: Charter School Apologia | Dissident Voice
Charter School Apologia | Dissident Voice
Charter School Apologia
Charter School Apologia
The frenzied promotion of illusions about charter schools by the rich reflects their growing fear of losing the power to impose their narrow interests on the public.
Mounting internal and external criticism of privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools rightly has charter school advocates and their wealthy supporters anxious. In this fractured context, it is not an accident that the discourse and agenda of charter school advocates is becoming more irrational, brazen, and destructive.
On July 26, 2019, the charter school–friendly New York Times carried another piece attempting to apologize for scandal-ridden charter schools: “How Did Charter Schools Lose Their Luster? Our Reporter Explains.”1
The short article, which explains little, introduces a conversation around the troubled charter school sector between Eliza Shapiro, New York City education reporter now working at the New York Times, and Dodai Stewart, deputy editor of the Metro desk at the New York Times. A link to a 45-minute podcast featuring the entire conversation, with questions from Times readers, is provided at the end of the article.
Throughout the article and podcast Shapiro focuses mainly on the growing backlash against charter schools, especially against punitive “no-excuses” charter schools which siphon money from public schools and implement authoritarian student discipline practices to control low-income minority students. KIPP charter schools and Success Academy charter schools are just two of the most notorious for implementing harsh and punitive control methods over student behavior, thoughts, and appearance. Numerous disturbing reports of their Skinnerian practices are available online.
Shapiro’s main goal is to find a way to co-opt criticism of privately-operated CONTINUE READING: Charter School Apologia | Dissident Voice
The facts on the US children and teens killed by firearms
The facts on the US children and teens killed by firearms
The facts on the US children and teens killed by firearms
The facts on the US children and teens killed by firearms
Injury is the leading cause of death for U.S. children and adolescents, accounting for over 60% of all deaths in this group.
Many of these deaths occur during fun, everyday activities, like swimming in the backyard pool or during a family car ride. But a disproportionate and disturbing number of these deaths in the U.S. occur as a result of firearms.
Firearms are the second leading cause of death among U.S. children and adolescents, after car crashes. Firearm deaths occur at a rate over three times higher than drownings.
We have dedicated our careers to understanding violence and injury prevention, including how firearm injury and deaths happen and how they can be prevented.
Causes of injury and death due to motor vehicle crashes have steadily declined over the last 20 years, but death and injury due to firearms has remained about the same over the same period.
Firearm death rates
Since 2013, fatal firearm injuries for children and teens have risen unabated.
Rates of death from firearms among ages 14 to 17 are now 22.5% higher than motor vehicle-related death rates. In the U.S., middle and high school age children are now more likely to die as the result of a firearm injury than from any other single cause of death.
For Americans between the ages of 1 and 19, a little over half of 2017 firearm-related deaths are homicides.
Another 38% of firearm-related deaths in this age group are suicides, while the rest result from unintentional injuries or undetermined causes.
What’s more, the U.S. has had 1,316 school shootings since 1970. The numbers of these tragic events have been increasing, with 18% of the total occurring in the past seven years since the Newtown school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
School shootings are a focus of media attention and raise awareness about the problem of CONTINUE READING: The facts on the US children and teens killed by firearms
How Do Teachers Teach–Then and Now | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
How Do Teachers Teach–Then and Now | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
How Do Teachers Teach–Then and Now
How Do Teachers Teach–Then and Now
Most policymakers, researchers, and parents believe that good teachers and teaching are the keys to school improvement yet these very same folks know little about how teachers teach daily. And that is the rub. Good teachers and teaching are the agreed-upon policy solutions to both high- and low-performing students yet reliable knowledge of how most teachers teach and what are the best ways of teaching in either affluent or low-income, minority schools are absent among policymakers, researchers, and parents.
How do most teachers teach?
The short answer is that teachers draw from two traditions of teaching.
From the early 19th century, teacher-centered and student-centered traditions have dominated classroom instruction. The teacher-centered tradition refers to teachers controlling what is taught, when, and under what conditions. Were you to sit for a few minutes in such a classroom you would note that the furniture is usually arranged in rows of desks or chairs facing the front whiteboard, teachers talk far more than students, the entire class is most often taught as one group with occasional small groups and independent work, and students regularly use texts to guide their daily work. Scholars have traced the origins of this pedagogical tradition to the ancient Greeks and religious schools centuries ago and have called it by various names: “subject-centered,” “teaching as transmission,” and “direct instruction.”
The student-centered tradition of instruction refers to classrooms where CONTINUE READING: How Do Teachers Teach–Then and Now | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
Are 85% of TFA alumni really “working in education or careers serving low-income communities”? | Gary Rubinstein's Blog
Are 85% of TFA alumni really “working in education or careers serving low-income communities”? | Gary Rubinstein's Blog
Are 85% of TFA alumni really “working in education or careers serving low-income communities”?
Are 85% of TFA alumni really “working in education or careers serving low-income communities”?
In a recent podcast on ‘Getting Smart,’ they interviewed TFA CEO Elisa Villanueva-Beard. At the 0:56 mark the host gave this series of numbers, straight from the TFA PR department, “Of the 53,000 alumni, 85% work in education or in careers serving low-income communities. That includes 1,260 school leaders, 471 school system leaders, 500 policy and advocacy leaders and 200 social entrepreneurs.”
A major critique of TFA is that the teachers use TFA as a way to pad their resumes — that they teach for two or maybe three years and then go on to law school, medical school, or business school. If this 85% number is accurate, it would serve as a great counter to any critique of TFA that the corps members do not commit long enough.
Six years ago in a HuffPost editorial, Elisa Villanueva-Beard said that it was 80%. Over the last few years this has grown, at least in theory, to 85% and it is something that is now quoted on the Teach For America website in the section about their impact.
Teach For America has a 28-year track record of advancing educational excellence and equity in the United States through our network of remarkable and diverse leaders working to expand opportunity and access for all children. With nearly 60,000 alumni and corps members in 51 regions around the country, our network now includes 14,000 teachers; 3,700 school principals, assistant principals, and deans; more than 300 school system leaders; 500 policy and advocacy leaders; nearly 200 elected leaders; and almost 200 social entrepreneurs. And while only one in five Teach For America corps members had plans to teach before applying to TFA, 85% of alumni are now working in education or careers serving low-income communities.
This 85% statistic, if to be taken literally, would mean that 43,350 out of 51,000 TFA CONTINUE READING: Are 85% of TFA alumni really “working in education or careers serving low-income communities”? | Gary Rubinstein's Blog
Poll: Parents Continue to Stand Beside Educators In Fight for Funding
Poll: Parents Continue to Stand Beside Educators In Fight for Funding
Poll: Parents Continue to Stand Beside Educators In Fight for Funding
Poll: Parents Continue to Stand Beside Educators In Fight for Funding
Almost eighteen months after educators ignited the #RedforEd movement to call for greater investment in our public schools, parents – and the general public – are unwavering in their support.
According to the 2019 Phi Delta Kappan (PDK) Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, 74 percent of parents and 71 percent of all adults say they would support a strike by teachers in their community for higher pay. Furthermore, 84 percent of parents would support a strike for more school funding, and similar numbers would support a strike for greater teacher voice in a school’s academic policies.
For the eighteenth consecutive year, adults surveyed in the PDK poll named inadequate funding as the most pressing problem facing U.S. public schools.
The PDK poll has been tracking public opinion on schools since 1969. For the first time in 18 years, the poll this year includes responses from educators.
While the #RedforEd movement has scored multiple victories in communities across the country – not only securing more education funding but also changing the national conversation around the future of public education – the movement is only getting started. Politicians now recognize that teachers and education support professionals are a force to be reckoned with, one that’s getting ready to make an impact in 2020.
“Over the last several years, hundreds of thousands of NEA members and parents CONTINUE READING: Poll: Parents Continue to Stand Beside Educators In Fight for Funding
CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Governor Calls Charters Private, Makes Advocacy Group Sad
CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Governor Calls Charters Private, Makes Advocacy Group Sad
PA: Governor Calls Charters Private, Makes Advocacy Group Sad
When Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf trotted out his budget last month, he made it a point to note that he was raising money for public schools-- and that he had some definite ideas about which schools are public and which schools are not.
He wants to see more of those basic education dollars to school districts get distributed through the state’s fair funding formula. He also wants to address concerns related to cyber charter schools, which he referred to as “the growing cost of privatization of education in our public schools.”
And just in case that wasn't clear enough, a press release from the governor's office was even more direct:
Pennsylvania must help school districts struggling with the problem of increasing amounts of school funding siphoned by private cyber and charter schools. Funding reform would increase transparency so all schools that receive state dollars are accountable to the taxpayers.
This made Ana Meyers sad.
Meyers is the current executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public [sic] Charter Schools. She has previously worked as "Director of Legislative Affairs" for LeadingAge PA (an advocacy group for aging services providers) as well as PA Field Director for Libertarian advocacy group, FreedomWorks. Before that she co-chaired the Kitchen Table Patriots, a Tea Party group in southeastern PA, and before that sales and marketing for the likes of Nickelodeon and American Airlines. Her degrees are in business. In CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Governor Calls Charters Private, Makes Advocacy Group Sad
PA: Governor Calls Charters Private, Makes Advocacy Group Sad
He wants to see more of those basic education dollars to school districts get distributed through the state’s fair funding formula. He also wants to address concerns related to cyber charter schools, which he referred to as “the growing cost of privatization of education in our public schools.”
And just in case that wasn't clear enough, a press release from the governor's office was even more direct:
Pennsylvania must help school districts struggling with the problem of increasing amounts of school funding siphoned by private cyber and charter schools. Funding reform would increase transparency so all schools that receive state dollars are accountable to the taxpayers.
This made Ana Meyers sad.
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| This lady |
Seattle Schools Community Forum: Equal Right to Representation In Education - Washington
Seattle Schools Community Forum: Equal Right to Representation In Education - Washington
Equal Right to Representation In Education - Washington
I know I mentioned this new Facebook group briefly but I do want to give them applause for their incredible work. From their Facebook page:
Equal Right to Representation In Education - Washington
We advocate for the necessity of a public advocacy service to guide families and help them understand regulations of special education and also support families with other issues of justice as they relate to education.There is some discussion but it is very much a sharing of resources. Things like: CONTINUE READING: Seattle Schools Community Forum: Equal Right to Representation In Education - Washington
This is a group with intention to ask the legislators to make changes to the laws to provide appropriate supports to families, and to brainstorm how to address the inequity of the supposed right to representation. We need to address the inequity and secure Free Appropriate Public Education for all students.
All parents/guardians have a right to representation. Having the right to representation does not give the parents the resources to do so, so often their financial situation prevents them from executing their right. District staff has been for too long taking advantage of parents not being aware or their parental rights and their student's rights.
School Districts have been using the tax payers’ money for legal fees to rid themselves of their legally required obligation to identify and serve students with disabilities, as well as serve Twice Exceptional students (Highly Capable Students with disabilities), bullying, students with other challenges.
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