Top Reads of 2019 | Teacher in a strange land

Top Reads of 2019 | Teacher in a strange land

Top Reads of 2019

For the past decade or so, I’ve tried to read 100 books a year. It’s been a worthy and mostly achievable goal, a nice round number, and incentive to be deliberate in choosing titles, because—hey, tick-tock.  I don’t log books that I didn’t finish (or almost finish—I included one 600-pager this year that I started skimming after diligently reading 400 mind-numbing pages).

I also don’t count children’s books, although some terrific YA titles have made the cut. I use GoodReads to archive titles, rate them one-five stars, and compose a brief review, mostly to remind myself what the book is about, especially series books. My role model is Nick Hornby, whose Ten Years in the Tub is, IMHO, the Way to Write Reviews.  That is, sloppily and non-linearly, reading multiple books at the same time, being honest about what I love and what moves me–and constantly changing my mind.

Therefore… no neatly ordered top ten titles, no bumping off a favorite because it doesn’t feel prestigious enough for an audience, always embracing good ideas and good writing while overlooking flaws.

I have 14 noteworthy books to share this year, seven fictional titles and seven nonfiction. I’ll begin with books about politics CONTINUE READING: Top Reads of 2019 | Teacher in a strange land

La. State Superintendent John White Resigns | deutsch29

La. State Superintendent John White Resigns | deutsch29

La. State Superintendent John White Resigns

On January 08, 2020, Louisiana state superintendent John White submitted his letter of resignation to the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE).

In it, White states, “I write to advise you… I will be vacating the position March 11, 2020, and to recommend that the board identify a new state superintendent.”

White’s resignation letter comes five days before the second inauguration of Louisiana governor, John Bel Edwards, who has wanted White gone since 2015.

The complication was that in Louisiana, the governor submits her/his preference for state superintendent to BESE, and the board usually votes on the governor’s preference. However, the governor does not control the ability to terminate the state school superintendent. BESE does. And since 2015, BESE has lacked a majority wishing to oust White. BESE also lacked the supermajority (8 out of 11 votes) to issue White a new contract. So, BESE did not have the votes to renew White’s contract (though 7 out of 11 BESE members apparently wanted to), and the governor could not force a termination, which left Louisiana taxpayers continuing to foot White’s $275K salary for another four years as White became a month-to-month employee.

Apparently, there has been some behind-the-scenes negotiating to send White on his way, likely contingent upon Edwards being elected to a second term, and part of that negotiation may have included White’s agreeing to formally resign prior to the seating of the next BESE board (which happens on January 13, 2020).

One reason I believe White’s exit is the result of negotiation is that the newly-elected BESE might have enough White-sympathetic votes to grant him a second contract against the governor’s will. However, White’s announcing his exit only CONTINUE READING: La. State Superintendent John White Resigns | deutsch29

Daniel Koretz: American Students Are Not Getting Smarter, and Test-Based “Reforms” Are to Blame | Diane Ravitch's blog

Daniel Koretz: American Students Are Not Getting Smarter, and Test-Based “Reforms” Are to Blame | Diane Ravitch's blog

Daniel Koretz: American Students Are Not Getting Smarter, and Test-Based “Reforms” Are to Blame

Daniel Koretz is one of the leading authorities on testing in the United States. A professor at Harvard University, he has written two important books about testing–its uses and misuses.

The first was Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us.

His latest is The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better. 

He recently wrote an article about how the federal government’s demand for high-stakes testing has actually undermined education.

He wrote:

In December, we received more bad news about the achievement of American students: Our 15-year-olds made no significant progress in math and reading on PISA, the largest of the international tests. This followed on the heels of a new report from our National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which showed no real progress in reading or math for fourth or eighth grade students for the past decade, and longer for reading.

The routine debate is underway about how bad this news is, but such arguments mostly miss a core lesson: CONTINUE READING: Daniel Koretz: American Students Are Not Getting Smarter, and Test-Based “Reforms” Are to Blame | Diane Ravitch's blog

Air filters create huge educational gains - Vox

Air filters create huge educational gains - Vox

Installing air filters in classrooms has surprisingly large educational benefits
$1,000 can raise a class’s test scores by as much as cutting class size by a third.

An emergency situation that turned out to be mostly a false alarm led a lot of schools in Los Angeles to install air filters, and something strange happened: Test scores went up. By a lot. And the gains were sustained in the subsequent year rather than fading away.

That’s what NYU’s Michael Gilraine finds in a new working paper titled “Air Filters, Pollution, and Student Achievement” that looks at the surprising consequences of the Aliso Canyon gas leak in 2015.

The impact of the air filters is strikingly large given what a simple change we’re talking about. The school district didn’t reengineer the school buildings or make dramatic education reforms; they just installed $700 commercially available filters that you could plug into any room in the country. But it’s consistent with a growing literature on the cognitive impact of air pollution, which finds that everyone from chess players to baseball umpires to workers in a pear-packing factory suffer deteriorations in performance when the air is more polluted.

If Gilraine’s result holds up to further scrutiny, he will have identified what’s probably the single most cost-effective education policy intervention — one that should have particularly large benefits for low-income children.

And while it’s too hasty to draw sweeping conclusions on the basis of one study, it would be incredibly cheap to have a few cities experiment with installing air filters in some of their CONTINUE READING: Air filters create huge educational gains - Vox

Louisiana Educator: The Legacy of Superintendent John White

Louisiana Educator: The Legacy of Superintendent John White

The Legacy of Superintendent John White

 

John White has submitted his letter of resignation from the position of Louisiana State Superintendent of education.

In his resignation letter White claims the following:
"Louisiana is better educated today than any point in its history,"

BESE Vice-President Holly Boffy, said the state made "great strides" during White's time.

This post examines the key measures that John White himself set as standards for determining success and therefore the legacy of his superintendency.

John White was appointed State Superintendent of Education for Louisiana in January 2012 for the purpose of raising achievement standards, closing the achievement gap between rich and poor students and to insure that our high school diplomas indicated real achievement and eliminated diploma mills. White was appointed at a time when Louisiana’s education performance was considered to be embarrassingly low compared to all the other states. It was expected that White would get Louisiana off the bottom of the state rankings and also take steps to close the gap between high poverty students and more privileged students.

White has claimed repeatedly that Louisiana’s students were just as CONTINUE READING: Louisiana Educator: The Legacy of Superintendent John White

18 years ago, Mike Pence voted against No Child Left Behind. So did Bernie Sanders. Their reasons weren’t the same. - The Washington Post

18 years ago, Mike Pence voted against No Child Left Behind. So did Bernie Sanders. Their reasons weren’t the same. - The Washington Post

18 years ago, Mike Pence voted against No Child Left Behind. So did Bernie Sanders. Their reasons weren’t the same.

On Jan. 8, 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the K-12 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. It was hailed as a civil rights law that would help historically marginalized students but is better known for ushering in the high-stakes standardized testing era.

The law — a compromise version was approved by the House and Senate in December 2001 — had bipartisan support. In fact, it was crafted with the help of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a liberal Democrat who did not often embrace Republican legislation. The votes in the House and the Senate were lopsided, with the House voting 381 to 41 and the Senate 87 to 10.

Two of the leading candidates for this year’s Democratic presidential nomination were in Congress at the time: former vice president Joe Biden, then a senator from Delaware, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I), then a member of the House from Vermont.

Vice President Pence was a Republican House member from Indiana.

How did the three vote? Biden voted in favor of the final legislation. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, did not. Neither did the very conservative Pence, but their reasons were far from the same.

Pence viewed the measure as a federal intrusion into education policy he believed rested with the states.

Sanders has said, including in a USA Today opinion piece published Wednesday, that he opposed it because he knew then that “so-called choice and high-stakes standardized testing would not improve our schools or enhance our children’s ability to learn.” The long-term effects of NCLB, he said, “have been disastrous.”

NCLB’s chief mechanism required all public schools to give students standardized tests in most grades every year and use the results to determine how well schools were helping students achieve. Schools were supposed to review the scores of certain groups of students, aiming to show how historically CONTINUE READING: 18 years ago, Mike Pence voted against No Child Left Behind. So did Bernie Sanders. Their reasons weren’t the same. - The Washington Post

Choosing Democracy: Public Advocates Endorses Schools & Communities First Initiative

Choosing Democracy: Public Advocates Endorses Schools & Communities First Initiative

Public Advocates Endorses Schools & Communities First Initiative

Today, Public Advocates Inc. announces its endorsement of the Schools & Communities First ballot initiative and pledges to support the effort to place it before California’s voters on the November 2020 ballot and secure its passage. Below is a statement from our President and CEO Guillermo Mayer:

Public Advocates - 

https://www.publicadvocates.org/

For nearly 50 years, Public Advocates has joined parents, students, teachers and community partners throughout California in working to create a public school system that serves all students. For far too long, our public schools have been woefully underfunded, leaving students of color and low-income students behind. Since the 1970s, as our public schools increasingly served more diverse students, our investment as a state in public education has plummeted, leaving us bouncing around the bottom third to, at times, near last place nationally for school funding and near dead last in school student-to-staff ratios. This year voters have an opportunity to right this wrong and turn the page on the racist underfunding of our public schools by supporting Schools & Communities First. 

Schools & Communities First is an important step towards California reclaiming its place as the Golden State when it comes to investing in young people. The initiative will close loopholes in the state’s tax system by requiring large corporations to pay their fair share of property taxes, while protecting homeowners and small businesses. This initiative would significantly boost equitable school funding through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) while supporting local governments to expand services to the same communities where schools with high-need students – English language learners, low-income, foster youth—are located. While LCFF was a significant community victory by providing the framework for more just school funding, equity for our kids and communities cannot be realized without adequate school funding. Most importantly, this measure comes authentically from, and has the growing support of the communities most impacted by our multi-decade disinvestment in public education and local government. We wholeheartedly support this grassroots movement to build racial and economic justice in California schools and communities. 

Supporting Schools & Communities First is consistent with Public Advocates’ nearly five decades of leadership in advocacy on school funding equity in California, from our role as a lead counsel in Serrano v. Priest (equalizing school funding statewide), Williams v. CA (requiring equal access to basic educational necessities), and the Campaign for Quality Education v. CA (seeking adequate school funding statewide) as well as our central role in helping to shape and implement the Local Control Funding Formula.

The Schools & Communities First initiative is a smart and just way to begin to address the adverse effects of our inequitable tax system under Prop 13. We are honored to join in this movement, which will take us that much closer to the day when all schools will be beacons of hope and places of infinite possibility and opportunity for every public school student in California.

Choosing Democracy: Public Advocates Endorses Schools & Communities First Initiative

Schools and Communities First - 

https://www.schoolsandcommunitiesfirst.org/

Bernie Sanders: Standardized tests have failed America's students

Bernie Sanders: Standardized tests have failed America's students

Bernie Sanders: America must end high-stakes testing, finally invest in public education
Across the country, teachers, parents and students are pushing back against an ineffective and punitive standardized tests regime. I stand with them.

Wednesday marks 18 years since the signing into law of No Child Left Behind, one of the worst pieces of legislation in our nation’s history. In December 2001, I voted against NCLB because it was as clear to me then, as it is now, that so-called school choice and high-stakes standardized testing would not improve our schools or enhance our children’s ability to learn. We do not need an education system in which kids are simply taught to take tests. We need a system in which kids learn and grow in a holistic manner. 

Under NCLB, standardized tests were utilized to hold public schools and teachers “accountable” for student outcomes. As a result, some schools that underperformed were closed and their teachers and unions blamed. 

The long-term effects of this approach have been disastrous. NCLB perpetuated the myth of public schools and teachers as failing, which opened the door for the spread of school voucher programs and charter schools that we have today. Some of these charter schools are operated by for-profits; many of them are nonunion and are not publicly accountable.

NCLB also undermined the profession of teaching and hurt our students. Now, educators are routinely forced to teach to the test rather than encouraged to draw on their expertise. Students spend hours each year taking tests, and that doesn't include the hours it takes to prepare for them. This burden of testing has CONTINUE READING: Bernie Sanders: Standardized tests have failed America's students

A Personal Message to Bill & Melinda Gates | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Personal Message to Bill & Melinda Gates | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Personal Message to Bill & Melinda Gates

Hi, Bill and Melinda,

We have never met but I feel that I know you because I am so familiar with your education projects.

I have tried in the past to meet you and have a candid conversation but have never had any luck.

You were always too busy or out of town.

But I am trying again.

I will be in Seattle on February 3-4.

I arrive on the afternoon of the 3rd and am speaking at a public event on February 4 at Town Hall. The wonderful teacher-leader Jesse Hagopian is introducing me.

I have some down time and wondered if we might be able to meet at last.

Are you available to meet in the late afternoon or evening of February 3 or during the day on February 4?

Please let me know if you can make time on your busy schedule.

My partner will be with me.

I hope you can do it!

We have a lot to talk about!

Diane

A Personal Message to Bill & Melinda Gates | Diane Ravitch's blog

In 2020, Black People Must Demand a Black Education Agenda

In 2020, Black People Must Demand a Black Education Agenda

In 2020, We Must Demand a Black Education Agenda

As a black woman, mother and grandmother, the words I want to hear from presidential candidates on “public education” are this: How do we innovate for, build true academic progress around and save trapped black students from dysfunctional education systems?

Full stop.

Instead, what I’ve heard as candidates discuss education on the campaign trail—like what they did last month during a major forum on the topic—is that Democratic presidential “hopefuls” are eager to just carry out business as usual.

Now, here we are in 2020, and there are still few signs the “leaders” of the education conversation are really prioritizing it. Amid all the ambitious talk of wealth tax increases, funding formula fixes, teacher and para-educator pay increases, student debt loan reductions, fully funded IDEA, Title I tripling, universal pre-K, and CTE pathways, we haven’t yet heard candidates share a plan that eliminates present inequities and race-based disparities. We have learned, however, that candidates are paying little attention to black children, K through 12, trapped inside toxic buildings, school-to-prison pipelines and worsening achievement gaps—with no plans to remedy that list and more anytime soon.

It’s true that we need a public education conversation. But, you can’t have that conversation by ignoring America’s very destructive black student crisis. Maybe we’d have one if we considered or included the voice of black parents who know all about that. Instead, no one is sounding alarms about National Assessment of Educational Progress 12th Grade Reading Level Assessments showing just 17 percent of black high school seniors at or above reading proficiency—the lowest CONTINUE READING: In 2020, Black People Must Demand a Black Education Agenda

The Criminal Miseducation of Black Students in the LAUSD - LA Progressive

The Criminal Miseducation of Black Students in the LAUSD - LA Progressive

The Criminal Miseducation of Black Students in the LAUSD

If African American students in the Los Angeles Unified School District were a single district, that district would be the eleventh largest in California. This stat comes from a recent analysis of LAUSD test results that unsurprisingly confirms the district’s systemic failure of Black students. Over half of South L.A. schools with the largest concentration of Black students were rated “poor” in academic achievement. These schools received a red rating. By contrast, only fifteen schools were rated red for white students. District-wide, only two out of ten African American students are proficient or on grade level in math, while only three out of ten are proficient in English. For Black students transitioning to college, the implications are dire.

District-wide, only two out of ten African American students are proficient or on grade level in math, while only three out of ten are proficient in English. For Black students transitioning to college, the implications are dire.

Yet, where is the outrage??

Although African American high school graduation rates have increased, only half of Black LAUSD graduates have the grades and A-G (or college preparation) classes required for admission to UCs and CSUs. This combination of low access to college readiness resources, minimal access to college and guidance counselors, as well as high quality instruction, after school enrichment and tutoring programs, is informed by the systemic criminalization of African American students. While the LAUSD phased out willful defiance as an “offense” that students can be suspended for, Black students continue to be suspended at higher rates than non-black students.

Moreover, widespread district practices such as random searches (which the board voted to phase out in July after community organizing by student activist coalitions like Students Deserve and the Students Not Suspects campaign) and over-policing by school resource officers further undermine student learning, safety, and engagement.

The dwindling number of Black students at traditionally African American campuses is another factor. For the most part, faculty of all ethnicities are not trained to be culturally responsive to the needs and communities of Black students. Despite the millions poured into professional CONTINUE READING: The Criminal Miseducation of Black Students in the LAUSD - LA Progressive

Did Tennessee Learn Any Lessons From Its Failed School Reform Plan?

Did Tennessee Learn Any Lessons From Its Failed School Reform Plan?

Did Tennessee Learn Any Lessons From Its Failed School Reform Plan?

Tennessee’s Achievement School District, a plan to rescue the state’s worst schools, is not yet a decade old. But according to a proposal obtained by Chalkbeat, the ASD will not live to see the ten-year mark— at least not in its present form.

Kevin Huffman was a lawyer who had spent a couple of years in a Teach for America classroom placement pre-law school, then came back to TFA on the management side. In 2011, Governor Bill Haslam brought him on as Tennessee state Commissioner of Education. It was the most high-profile example of someone parleying TFA experience into a high-level leadership role in education. He quickly fell in step with the Duncan-Obama reform program, signed Tennessee on for Race to the Top, and in 2011, he launched the Achievement School District.

The ASD concept was simple; the state would pluck schools from those ranked in the bottom 5% of the state and lump them into a separate school district that would be overseen by state officials rather than a local school board. Focus resources on your most challenging cases and try to learn some turnaround techniques that CONTINUE READING: Did Tennessee Learn Any Lessons From Its Failed School Reform Plan?

2020 Teachers’ New Year’s Resolutions: 2. Teach your students, not “the test” | Live Long and Prosper

2020 Teachers’ New Year’s Resolutions: 2. Teach your students, not “the test” | Live Long and Prosper

2020 Teachers’ New Year’s Resolutions: 2. Teach your students, not “the test”

2020 Teachers’ New Year’s Resolutions
2. Teach your students, not “the test”

It’s a new year and as is our custom here in the USA, we make resolutions which, while often broken, can be redefined as goals toward which we should strive.

[Updated and slightly edited from 2018]

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION #2

• Teach your students, not “The Test.”

NO, DON’T TEACH TO THE TEST

I taught third grade in the mid-1970s. At that time the State of Indiana didn’t require standardized testing for evaluation of teachers or promotion of third graders. Nevertheless, my school system used standardized tests in grades three, six, eight, and ten. The purpose of the test was to see how our students were progressing and to diagnose any specific problems. We were specifically told by the administration not to “teach to the test.” It wasn’t professional!

When the results came back (always within a couple of weeks) we were able to see how each of our students was doing in particular areas, and plan our instruction accordingly.

10 years later, Indiana started the ISTEP. We were still told to remain professional and not to “teach to the test.”

NCLB — YES, TEACH TO THE TEST

In 2001 everything changed. No Child Left Behind shifted the attention from students to test scores. No longer were we told not to teach to the tests. Teaching to the tests was now encouraged because, we were told, the test covered CONTINUE READING: 2020 Teachers’ New Year’s Resolutions: 2. Teach your students, not “the test” | Live Long and Prosper

2020 Teachers’ New Year’s Resolutions: 1. Read aloud | Live Long and Prosper - https://wp.me/pUgLi-1rM

NYC Educator: On Teacher Morale

NYC Educator: On Teacher Morale

On Teacher Morale

Our school is generally a good place to work. Sure, there are things to complain about, and I spend a good portion of my time complaining about them and/ or trying to fix them. Nonetheless, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that, having gotten rid of two really insane supervisors recently, we haven't got any more of them. Of course, that could change at any moment, but for now I'd say we're beating the odds.

What are the odds? I'd say maybe one in three you get some lunatic telling you what to do. Of course it's not completely their fault. There's a whole lot of trickle-down crap from the geniuses in Albany, and it's all you can do these days to get in there and teach anything that students actually need to know. Making a jump from one school to another, though, is risky business.

I've long maintained that "getting out of the classroom" is just not a worthy goal. Anyone harboring such a goal doesn't love teaching and likely as not doesn't know how to do it well. The most efficacious way to get out of the classroom is to go into supervision. Sure, you have to go through the C30 process, but there's no guarantee the person the C30 board likes will get the gig. You know, if you happen to be spending Wednesday afternoons with the superintendent over at the Comfort Inn you might have the inside track. If your mommy works at Tweed that wouldn't hurt either.

Yesterday I was discussing so-called emergency sixth classes with a supervisor. The supervisor said, "I used to get a hundred applications for every opening, but now it's really tough to find people." That kind of amazed me. The supervisor theorized that perhaps people, comfortable with whoever is Danielsoning them, don't want to take a chance with CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: On Teacher Morale

Slaying Goliath: Diane Ravitch’s New Book Traces a Quarter Century of Public Education Disruption | janresseger

Slaying Goliath: Diane Ravitch’s New Book Traces a Quarter Century of Public Education Disruption | janresseger

Slaying Goliath: Diane Ravitch’s New Book Traces a Quarter Century of Public Education Disruption

In her new book, Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools, Diane Ravitch summarizes, defines, and humanizes the widespread attack that has threatened public education across the United States in the past quarter century. And she tracks an encouraging backlash, a growing resistance led by dogged individuals, community organizations, and organized schoolteachers.

What’s been called corporate-accountability-based, test-and-punish school reform is something we’ve all watched over the years—nationally in No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top—statewide as school budgets have been stretched to pay for privatized charters or vouchers—and locally as our children began taking too many standardized tests, our local schools began receiving letter grades on state report cards, or students left the local public school for a nearby charter school.

With only scanty newspaper coverage to guide us, however, we may have struggled grasp the ideology behind this war on public education or see how all the lines of attack were converging to discredit public schools and the work of local teachers.  Diane Ravitch, the education historian, has done us all an enormous favor with this new book.

Ravitch defines the ideology of the war being waged on public education by a giant army. Ravitch names the so-called “school reform” movement a Goliath-sized experiment in disruption.  Goliath’s work can be seen in “the wreckage that the so-called ‘reform’ movement had created by demonizing teachers as if they were adversaries of their students and treating them as malingerers who required constant evaluation lest they fail to do their duty…. (in) the damage inflicted on public schools, their students and teachers, by heedless billionaires who had decided to disrupt, reinvent, and redesign the nation’s public schools…. (in) the work of  CONTINUE READING: Slaying Goliath: Diane Ravitch’s New Book Traces a Quarter Century of Public Education Disruption | janresseger

Jersey Jazzman: Hoboken, NJ Charter Schools: An Update for 2020

Jersey Jazzman: Hoboken, NJ Charter Schools: An Update for 2020

Hoboken, NJ Charter Schools: An Update for 2020

Long time readers know I have always thought one of the most interesting charter school sectors in New Jersey, if not the United States, is in Hoboken. A small city across the Hudson from Manhattan, Hoboken has undergone a period of extraordinary gentrification over the last several years. As detailed in a great book by Molly Vollman Makris --  Public Housing and School Choice in a Gentrified City; Youth Experiences of Uneven Opportunity -- Hoboken's charter schools have become an alternative system of schooling for affluent parents in a city that still has large numbers of children living in public housing and experiencing economic disadvantage.

I interviewed Molly back in 2015, and she made an important point: segregation is not an issue that can be laid entirely at the feet of Hoboken's charter schools. There are, in fact, many factors involved in why Hoboken's schools enroll the student populations they do. But the charters, as Molly put it, are part of the reason the city hasn't been able to adequately address the realities of segregation:"So I don’t think the charters and intra-district school choice are creating segregation so much as inhibiting desegregation. I think we all could do a better job."

Other than a few visits with family, I haven't been back to Hoboken much since I did that interview. But I've kept my eye on the city, if only because I think it's a unique case study in CONTINUE READING: Jersey Jazzman: Hoboken, NJ Charter Schools: An Update for 2020