Dangerous COVID-19 surge leads to hard shutdown of L.A. public schools Los Angeles campuses will shut down completely beginning Thursday for all in-person tutoring and special services, as prospects for fully reopening the nation's second-largest school district recede further into 2021 amid a dangerous coronavirus surge, Supt. Austin Beutner announced Monday. The move immediately affects some 4
The next education secretary must know about much more than education The next education secretary must know about much more than education Our schools are in crisis. We need Biden to tell us who our new secretary of education will be ASAP In the days after President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, you didn’t have to be inside the beltway to hear whispers of names being floated for cabinet positions —
Learning Rules Vs. Intellectual Development and Understanding I've had the opportunity, through this blog and in person, to talk to hundreds of thousands of educators and parents about how our version of progressive, play-based preschool education works. I've shared about creating interesting, safe-enough environments in which children are free to follow their own curiosity, to ask and answer th
Stunningly Oblivious On Thursday, November 19, all school buildings (NYC public schools) were closed. Today, December 7, New York City elementary schools buildings are reopening. This is not because the situation has gotten better. It has gotten worse. Much worse. There is a huge wave of COVID moving across the United States. The case rate in NYC was 3% when buildings closed. The case rate today
WISHES FROM A NEW YORK CITY TEACHER WHO HAPPENS TO BE MY DAUGHTER. On my mind are all the NYC elementary school teachers going into classrooms today with only window ventilation on a 35 degree day. I hope you don’t have yet another schedule. I hope if you are also teaching remote students those classes don’t have 50 students in them to balance out the less than 10 you see today. Despite everythi
How to Return to Campus Safely: Test, Then Test Again Some colleges are using lessons from the fall to bring back more students in spring This is the Coronavirus Schools Briefing, a guide to the seismic changes in U.S. education that are taking place during the pandemic. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. The fall semester has been hell for most colleges — canceled classes, dorm
How Has School Privatization Contributed to Mental Illness in Students Before and During Covid-19? How Has School Privatization Contributed to Mental Illness in Students Before and During Covid-19? Mental illness in children existed before Covid-19. How many students are struggling with it during the pandemic? How did school privatization contribute to this phenomenon? Before Covid-19 A 2018 surv
Donors Choose Monday: Mice I donate locally when I can identify a need, and for a few weeks I've also been donating to teachers across the country on Donors Choose, because it makes me feel slightly less helpless in these crazy days. I've been blogging about it here to encourage you--if you can--to offer some help to someone. Maybe you know of worthy causes or programs local to you. But if you'r
US Export: Failing Schools Again with the phrase failing schools ! This time it’s in Australia where the New South Wales (NSW) state government has announced that it will intervene in public schools that don’t meet “performance standards.” Here’s a tweet from Pasi Sahlberg who has been working in Australia for the past few years… I’ll give you one guess what the “performance standards” are. Yes,
NewBlackMan (in Exile) NewBlackMan (in Exile) TODAY Big Education Ape: THIS WEEK WITH NEWBLACKMAN (IN EXILE) http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/12/this-week-with-newblackman-in-exile.html Artist Titus Kaphar on Depicting Loss and Finding Purpose by Mark Anthony Neal / 14h 'One of the country's hottest artists, Titus Kaphar has long tackled under-representation of minorities in Western art t
Who Is Doing the Work in the Teaching/Learning Dynamic? The end of a course often challenges my fundamental beliefs as a teacher. Once again, in the final days of my courses when students are allowed and encouraged to revise their major essays as often as possible, I have returned several without responding because the resubmitted essays are mostly the same as the last draft I marked or the stud
Distance Learning and Compliance Culture Compliance culture in the classroom has always, always been a problem. This is the teacher who demands compliance, in fact, grades on compliance. Most folks have a story about That Teacher--the one who wouldn't accept a paper because it was ten minutes late, or who took off a letter grade because the paper had the "wrong" heading on it. For some people, c
Actions Last Week Extend the Student Loan Debt Cliff and Protect DACA There is a lot to worry about right now—an unhinged President who has given up governing, a divided Congress, a raging pandemic, and, so far at least, Congressional failure to pass an economic relief bill as the COVID-19 recession intensifies. Two developments last week should, however, be seen as hopeful. Both will protect vu
Lily Eskelsen Garcia Pursues US Ed Sec Post As the December 04, 2020, Politico reports , former National Education Association (NEA) president, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, is seriously pursuing President-elect Biden’s nod for next US secretary of education. Eskelsen Garcia earned her BS in elementary education in 1980 and her MEd in instructional technology in 1985, both from the University of Utah. S
CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: So It's Really December Edition (12/6) So It's Really December Edition Still trying to take care of all the places the cold gets into our house, because apparently the season is serious about things. Still counting down to the magical day when I can go many days at a time without asking, "Well, what has the President done today?" But there are still some good things to read
The Jingle Bells Effect And The Canon So, if you need a little something to jumpkick you into the season, here's a playlist challenge for you. Yes, that's roughly 76 minutes of various versions of "Jingle Bells," carefully selected, curated and ordered for your listening pleasure. "Jingle Bells" is a curious song to become a Christmas standard, mostly because it has nothing to do with Christmas
EdAction in Congress December 6, 2020 Democratic leaders push for bipartisan COVID-19 compromise Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are working toward a bipartisan compromise to address the rampant spread of COVID-19 that is preventing the safe reopening of our schools and our society. The effort took on new urgency earlier this week, as Congress tr
America's children are facing a mental health crisis that no one is talking about Mental health-related hospital visits for children are way up, as kids’ lives are disrupted by the pandemic With a third wave of COVID-19 infections sweeping the United States and widespread infection around the world, some schools are grappling with how to stay open safely , while others remain shuttered with remo
Grace – Tennessee Education Report GRACE In response to the responses she received to this post about poverty, school funding, and teacher pay in light of the realities laid bare by COVID-19, MNEA President Amanda Kail posted a follow-up. Here’s what she has to say: What a hard and heavy year. In the fierceness of all the rage and bitterness, I will do my part. I will apologize. If you are a pare
Oklahoma: Governor Stitt Appoints Home-Schooling Anti-Masker to State Board of Education Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt kicked his own appointee off the State Board of Education who made the terrible error of trying to claw back millions from a for-profit charter school and supported a mask mandate in all public schools. Gov. Kevin Stitt abruptly replaced one of his own appointees to the Oklahoma
More students than ever got F’s in first term of 2020-21 school year — but are A-F grades fair in a pandemic? Students’ grades for the first period of the 2020-21 academic year are being recorded and we are seeing stories from around the country about an unprecedented rise in F’s. Is anybody surprised? Millions of kids are living through the most disruptive school year of their lives because of
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007 Big Education Ape: THIS WEEK IN EDUCATION Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007 - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/12/this-week-in-education-larry-ferlazzos.html Sunday’s Must-Read Articles On School Reopenings by Larry Ferlazzo / 1h tors
Tennessee: Why Do Failed Reforms Survive, Only to Fail Again? In 2012, Tennessee created the “Achievement School District” (ASD) and promised that it would catapult the state’s lowest performing schools into high-performing schools. So confident were state leaders that they hired Chris Barbic, who ran a celebrated charter chain in Houston, and he was confident that the state’s weakest schools co
Sense, Nonsense, and de Blasio's DOE Things are at a new level now, yet agaon. Every time you think the DOE has outdone itself, it does something else to show you that the last thing was nothing. The NY Post reports that UFT members who don't consent to testing will be removed from payroll . That would be surprising if it weren't for the fact that this was agreed to back in September. While peop
Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Scheider: What Betsy DeVos Accomplished Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider have written a valuable new book called A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School. They recently published an opinion article in The New York Times in which they demonstrate the role of Betsy DeVos in the “school reform” movement. They point
My Remote Teaching Tips Videos Maybe the only advantage to teaching remotely is that you can fart anytime you want. Compared to live teaching, remote teaching introduces so many new challenges. I think the biggest challenge is that teachers don’t get to leverage a personal connection with their students. Hearing a pep talk from a teacher in a small square on your screen just doesn’t have the sam
New Teachers Union Leader Fighting Trump, School Reopening Battles As president, Becky Pringle said her mission is to “lead a movement to reclaim public education as a common good.” She wants to transform the system into one that is racially and socially just and equitable. Becky Pringle, who became president of the National Education Association in September, speaks at a human rights rally duri
Interrogating European Exceptionalism: The Scientific Revolution - Living in Dialogue Interrogating European Exceptionalism: The Scientific Revolution By Paul Horton. In the introduction to his widely used introductory text, The Scientific Revolution , Steven Shapin, a professor of the History of Science at Harvard, caused quite a stir in mid 1990s academic and public circles when he provocativel
For Teachers, “Silence of Our Friends” May be Worst Part of Pandemic “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” -Martin Luther King Jr Teachers want a safe place to work. But in 2020 that is too much to ask. As the global COVID-19 pandemic rages out of control throughout most parts of the United States, teachers all across the country want to be
Big Education Ape TOP POSTS THIS WEEK 12/5/20 ‘Slaying Goliath’: Diane Ravitch argues in new book that public education advocates have beat back efforts to privatize schools - The Washington Post The real story of New
Dangerous COVID-19 surge leads to hard shutdown of L.A. public schools
Los Angeles campuses will shut down completely beginning Thursday for all in-person tutoring and special services, as prospects for fully reopening the nation's second-largest school district recede further into 2021 amid a dangerous coronavirus surge, Supt. Austin Beutner announced Monday.
The move immediately affects some 4,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade and outdoor conditioning for athletes. Beutner's emergency order comes on the first day of a sweeping stay-at-home order across much of California and as Los Angeles County's coronavirus rates reach unprecedented numbers.
"My commitment has been throughout to protect the health and safety of all in the school community," Beutner said in an interview with The Times. "We have an imperative to get kids back to school as soon as possible the safest way possible. But all that comes through the front door, and the front door is what is COVID in the overall Los Angeles community. Right now it's at extraordinary and quite dangerous levels."
The superintendent's remarks follow those from teachers union president Cecily Myart-Cruz, who said Friday on social media that it has become a question of "if" rather than "when" campuses would reopen for the spring semester.
Beutner is not alone in pulling back from campus-based services, but there's been a range of responses across California.
The school board in San Bernardino City Unified, which serves about 47,000 students, voted Nov. 17 to keep campuses closed in that district, the state's eighth-largest, for the remainder of the school year.
In northwest L.A. County, Las Virgenes Unified, with about 11,000 students, has expanded in-person instruction — bringing back third-graders to campus on Monday. About three-quarters of students in transitional kindergarten through second grade had already returned under a county-approved waiver that is available to any school.
The next education secretary must know about much more than education
Our schools are in crisis. We need Biden to tell us who our new secretary of education will be ASAP
In the days after President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, you didn’t have to be inside the beltway to hear whispers of names being floated for cabinet positions — rumors that were later confirmed as fact: Janet Yellen, former chair of the Federal Reserve Board (Department of the Treasury); Vivek Murthy, former Surgeon General under President Barak Obama (named to serve in the same role); Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Politics (Office of Management and Budget); and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who served as the top diplomat in Africa during the Obama Administration (Ambassador to the United Nations).
But alas, we’re still waiting on the name of Biden’s education secretary, the person who will help lead our schools out of one of the biggest crises in the history of American education.
Because of President Donald Trump’s clownish denial of the election results, Biden got a later start than his predecessors at naming his nominees for the top spots in his nascent administration, and there are many more departmental roles Biden must begin to fill. However, if there is anything that the entire country can agree on it is that our schools are in the middle of an epic disaster. Uneven access to broadband, resource disparities between upper- and lower-income districts and differences in family resources across racial lines, foreshadow widening achievement gaps. Also, parents are tired of playing the roles of substitute teacher, lunch lady and security guard (all at the same time). They desperately need to hear when and how all students might return to schools safely.
The country needs an education secretary who understands the systemic nature of our current problems, across sectors.
Learning Rules Vs. Intellectual Development and Understanding
I've had the opportunity, through this blog and in person, to talk to hundreds of thousands of educators and parents about how our version of progressive, play-based preschool education works. I've shared about creating interesting, safe-enough environments in which children are free to follow their own curiosity, to ask and answer their own questions, while engaging with the people they find there. Among the most frequent follow-up question from friend and skeptic alike is something along the lines of: "That all sounds well and good, but how do the children do once they find themselves in public school?"
My answer has changed over the years because public schools have changed. Two decades ago, my honest answer was, "They do just fine," because kindergarten was still at least somewhat play-based and the kids naturally adapted even as their freedom over what and how they would learn would be gradually throttled during the course of the next 13 years. I wouldn't necessarily tell parents the second part CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Learning Rules Vs. Intellectual Development and Understanding
On Thursday, November 19, all school buildings (NYC public schools) were closed.
Today, December 7, New York City elementary schools buildings are reopening.
This is not because the situation has gotten better. It has gotten worse. Much worse. There is a huge wave of COVID moving across the United States. The case rate in NYC was 3% when buildings closed. The case rate today is over 5%. Hospitals across the country are reaching capacity. Cities, states, regions are bracing for shutdowns. Indoor gatherings are being restricted. Outdoor gatherings are being restricted. New Jersey yesterday imposed a 25-person maximum on outdoor gatherings.
Not everyone is reacting with proper concern. Many Trump supporters are refusing social distancing and masks. In NYC a bar owner was arrested yesterday, not for flouting public safety (which he had done) but for trying to run down a deputy who was enforcing COVID restrictions. And there are some restrictions in place. But more are needed in New York State. And Andrew Cuomo has dithered. As the surge begins he has avoided updating the state’s color zones. And in NYC Carranza, de Blasio, and Mulgrew are sending children and staff back into schools.
We know that the virus spreads in schools. Masks, conduct, ppe can mitigate that spread, but they cannot stop it. I know in my school, in March, one room where a significant number congregated, and several became infected. With more care we can slow the spread. We cannot stop it. Testing is a CONTINUE READING: Stunningly Oblivious | JD2718
In part, that’s a financial consideration: Students paying room and board are crucial for strained budgets. But it also reflects schools’ confidence that they have learned how to handle the pandemic.
A picture of successful campus containment has emerged: Maintain social distancing. Contact trace assiduously. Put more faith in students by calibrating restrictions properly.
The most important piece of the puzzle seems to be aggressive testing. Many colleges that ran their own testing programs successfully kept cases low; those that didn’t often became hot spots.
How Has School Privatization Contributed to Mental Illness in Students Before and During Covid-19?
Mental illness in children existed before Covid-19. How many students are struggling with it during the pandemic? How did school privatization contribute to this phenomenon?
Increasingly, a harsh school environment with unbridled high-stakes standardized testing, a pushdown to what’s expected of the youngest learners, an overemphasis on impersonal screens and addiction to social media, and a dramatic increase and focus on college expectations of middle and high school students have dominated how students live. While these factors don’t necessarily cause mental illness, they don’t help students who struggle with it.
I donate locally when I can identify a need, and for a few weeks I've also been donating to teachers across the country on Donors Choose, because it makes me feel slightly less helpless in these crazy days. I've been blogging about it here to encourage you--if you can--to offer some help to someone. Maybe you know of worthy causes or programs local to you. But if you're just not sure where you can help, well, here's my cause of the week.
This is a chance to give students individual mouses for photo studio class in Stamford, CT. If you've tried to do photo editing with a touchpad, you know how useful a mouse can be. This is a large, rural high school and I'm envious that they have a visual arts program like this. As a yearbook advisor, I would have been delighted to have someone in the building training photographers instead of doing it all from scratch myself. So this is a project I'm happy to support.
Join me in supporting this project. Or support some other project at Donors Choose. Or support something in your community. Give to a food bank. Contribute to your library, or a local theater, or some vital local business that is currently struggling. Do what you can.
This time it’s in Australia where the New South Wales (NSW) state government has announced that it will intervene in public schools that don’t meet “performance standards.”
Here’s a tweet from Pasi Sahlberg who has been working in Australia for the past few years…
I’ll give you one guess what the “performance standards” are. Yes, they include attendance, well-being (not sure how that’s defined), studying, and employment upon graduation. But check out what’s mentioned first…
The NSW Department of Education will intervene in public schools that fail to meet performance targets in priority areas such as HSC and NAPLAN results, attendance, wellbeing and whether students are studying or can CONTINUE READING: US Export: Failing Schools | Live Long and Prosper
Who Is Doing the Work in the Teaching/Learning Dynamic?
The end of a course often challenges my fundamental beliefs as a teacher.
Once again, in the final days of my courses when students are allowed and encouraged to revise their major essays as often as possible, I have returned several without responding because the resubmitted essays are mostly the same as the last draft I marked or the student is merely dutifully addressing only what I have marked.
Many years ago when I was teaching high school English, my classroom was directly across the courtyard from a math teacher. We could see each other’s desks through our windows.
Part joking and part shade, that math teacher occasionally prodded me with “I wish I could teach while sitting at my desk.”
Some of the tension here is the essential nature of teaching math versus teaching writing as an English teacher, but there is also the more pronounced tension of what it means to teach. [1]
Compliance culture in the classroom has always, always been a problem.
This is the teacher who demands compliance, in fact, grades on compliance. Most folks have a story about That Teacher--the one who wouldn't accept a paper because it was ten minutes late, or who took off a letter grade because the paper had the "wrong" heading on it.
For some people, compliance is practically the whole point. No Excuses charter schools are founded on the principle that students need to learn to comply with every action in every moment of the school day. Just this weekend, a USA Today op-ed suggested that if students aren't given zeros for late work, that's a failure to hold those students to standards of excellence.
Students have to learn compliance, the argument goes (though it rarely uses the term "compliance"), because out in the Real World, students will have to learn to meet deadlines and expectations and basically do as they're told promptly and "correctly," and the longer the argument goes, the more you can see that compliance culture is often meant for Those Peoples' children. But it is also true that life involves deadlines and expectations and most of us don't grow up to live in the world of do-as-you-please. Compliance has its place (like on your face, over your mouth and nose, too, please).
Actions Last Week Extend the Student Loan Debt Cliff and Protect DACA
There is a lot to worry about right now—an unhinged President who has given up governing, a divided Congress, a raging pandemic, and, so far at least, Congressional failure to pass an economic relief bill as the COVID-19 recession intensifies.
Two developments last week should, however, be seen as hopeful. Both will protect vulnerable young people through the Presidential transition and into the Biden administration, when it is expected that policies will be revised.
Student Loan Debt Cliff Extended until January 31st to Protect 41 Million Borrowers
Last Friday, Betsy DeVos extended a COVID-19 moratorium on the collection of student loan payments, a moratorium that had been expected to expire on New Years Eve. The moratorium on student loan payments began with the CARES Act and last summer had been extended by President Trump’s executive order until December 31.
Politico‘s Michael Stratford reports: “The Trump administration on Friday granted an extra month of student loan relief to the 41 million Americans who have been benefiting from a freeze on monthly payments and interest that was set to expire at the end of the year. The relief was set to expire on Dec. 31, but will now end on January 31. The last-minute extension averts what could have been a potentially chaotic resumption of payments just weeks before President-elect Joe Biden takes office… Roughly 33 million of those borrowers have had their payments paused, and the Education Department has stopped seeking to collect from the 8 million other borrowers who were in default.”
As the December 04, 2020, Politico reports, former National Education Association (NEA) president, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, is seriously pursuing President-elect Biden’s nod for next US secretary of education.
Eskelsen Garcia earned her BS in elementary education in 1980 and her MEd in instructional technology in 1985, both from the University of Utah. She taught at Orchard Elementary School (Utah) from 1980-1990, and was selected as the Utah Teacher of the Year in 1989. The next year, in 1990, Eskelsen Garcia ran as a write-in candidate for Utah Education Association (UEA) president and won. She exited the classroom at that time and was UEA president for nine years, until 1999. In 1998, Eskelsen Garcia ran for the Utah House of Representatives and gave a close showing of it, earning 45% of the vote as a Democrat and losing to Republican incumbent, Merrill Cook.
During her time as UEA president, in 1996, Eskelsen Garcia also served at the national level on the National Education Association’s (NEA) executive committee. Her career as NEA leadership contiued with a steady rise, from secretary treasurer (2002-2008), to vice president (2008-2014), to president (2014-2020). Eskelsen Garcia’s time as NEA president officially ended when newly-elected Becky Pringle took office on Septemner 01, 2020. After serving two three-year terms, Eskelsen Garcia did not run in 2020.
As she pursues Biden’s approval for US ed sec nomination, Eskelsen Garcia has several qualities in her favor. First of all, she was a classroom teacher. In July 2020, Biden said he would “make sure the secretary of education… is a teacher.” Eskelsen Garcia spent a decade in the classroom and is a bonafide classroom teacher, and not one who appeared merely for a year or two (or less) with the ulterior motive of padding a politcal or administrative career CONTINUE READING: Lily Eskelsen Garcia Pursues US Ed Sec Post | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog
