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Friday, January 29, 2021

NYC Educator: NY Times Continues Its Battle on Common Sense

NYC Educator: NY Times Continues Its Battle on Common Sense
NY Times Continues Its Battle on Common Sense




I've been amazed for years as the NY Times, with some notable exceptions, offered the worst education reporting in Fun City. This is a revered name, with generations of history, and yet you always feel they hate union as much as the tabloids. Of course, the Times has had to deal with union and likely would have made more money if all those who worked for it were doing the whole $7.25 an hour thing. So much for the bastion of liberalism so reviled by Trump and his goons.

Over the last year, I've gotten the distinct impression its education reporter takes regular swipes at us, and why not? Teachers are public enemy number one. Who the hell do we think we are, getting paid to educate children? What the hell kind of public service is that? Wouldn't the world be better off if we were all writing for some fancy paper, filling our news stories with personal and/ or company bias, while wholeheartedly opposing Trump for doing precisely the same thing?

The big issue, of course, is opening schools. We aren't sufficiently pushing for it, evidently. Never mind that we're the only city in the country that's opened as long and far as we have. Perhaps we should be out striking for the right to fully open schools CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: NY Times Continues Its Battle on Common Sense

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Teacher Comments on Being Tech Skeptics | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teacher Comments on Being Tech Skeptics | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
Teacher Comments on Being Tech Skeptics




I am fortunate to have many readers who are classroom teachers. I have published posts over the past few years about my research on exemplary teachers who integrated technology into their lessons. Some of those posts triggered responses from teachers. Here are a few of their comments.

Louise Kowitch, retired Connecticut social studies teacher:

….The impact of technology can vary greatly depending on the subject matter (among all the other things you’ve addressed). While some pedagogical practices are universal, when “doing the work of the discipline”, content-specific practices,and by extension the impact of technology, might vary widely.

I mention this to say that as someone who lived through the IT revolution in the classroom (from mimeographs, scantrons, and filmstrips to floppy disks and CD-ROM, and finally to smart boards, Skype and Chromebooks), by the time I reached three decades as a full time classroom teacher, I was spending MORE time on my lessons and interacting with students, than less. Some tasks were indeed more efficient (for example, obtaining and sharing maps, artifacts, art, primary sources). Others, like collecting data about student performance for CONTINUE READING: Teacher Comments on Being Tech Skeptics | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

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Capital Union President Lied To Every Single Teacher In Capital School District | Exceptional Delaware

Capital Union President Lied To Every Single Teacher In Capital School District | Exceptional Delaware
Capital Union President Lied To Every Single Teacher In Capital School District



For the past several months, teachers at Dover High School have been grappling with Covid, remote learning, hybrid learning and the district itself. But it appears their greatest enemy might just be their own union that is supposed to protect teachers.

This past Monday, WDEL had an explosive article about teachers at Dover High School. The news shocked Delaware teachers up and down the state but it didn’t come as a surprise to many. For Leann Ferguson, her actions in reporting the incidents to WDEL were met with mixed results. Many teachers hailed her as a hero for finally reporting things many would not. Others branded her a traitor to the district and Dover High School.

The article dealt mainly with accommodations teachers could get through the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and how the district responded to those requests. According to the article and Ferguson, one teacher was fired after they were denied an CONTINUE READING: Capital Union President Lied To Every Single Teacher In Capital School District | Exceptional Delaware

The Hierarchy Of The Teachers Union In Delaware | Exceptional Delaware - https://wp.me/p4JboV-5Mb via @ExcptlDelaware

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NYC Public School Parents: Reimagine our City Schools: alternatives to Mayoral control on Sunday at 8 PM

NYC Public School Parents: Reimagine our City Schools: alternatives to Mayoral control on Sunday at 8 PM
Reimagine our City Schools: alternatives to Mayoral control on Sunday at 8 PM





The deep flaws and persistent problems with Mayoral control are even more evident to many people, given the de Blasio’s push to have the Pearson contract for the gifted test approved, and when it failed last night at the PEP, even among many of his own appointees, his insistence to continue this controversial program anyway.  Teachers of NYC are sponsoring a discussion of what alternative governance system would be best on Sunday at 8 PM.

We continue our collective journey to build a coalition of community right-holders to Reimagine Our City Schools. 

This Sunday, January 31 at 8 PM we will discuss viable 21st-century alternatives to mayoral control that democratize school governance.  

This is a must-attend event if you want to reclaim our city schools for our New York city children and neighborhoods.

Join education activists and advocates from The People's Board of Education and the Parent Commission as they share their visions for schools FOR AND BY THE PEOPLE.

Meet like-minded educators, parents, and leaders championing fundamental change of our public schools that anchor our city's communities.

RSVP for the Zoom discussion at: 

http://tinyurl.com/reimagine2

We only have 100 spots available if you want to be part of the interactive Zoom session. Register now!

You also be able to view the livestream on the Teachers of NYC Facebook Fan Page.


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CURMUDGUCATION: Selling Roboscoring: How's That Going, Anyway?

CURMUDGUCATION: Selling Roboscoring: How's That Going, Anyway?
Selling Roboscoring: How's That Going, Anyway?



The quest continues--how to best market the notion of having student essays scored by software instead of actual humans. It's a big, bold dream, a dream of world in which test manufacturers don't have to hire pesky, expensive meat widgets and the fuzzy unscientific world of writing can be reduced to hard numbers--numbers that we know are objective and true because, hey, they came form a computer. The problem, as I have noted many times elsewhere, is that after all these years, the software doesn't actually work. 

But the dream doesn't die. Here's a paper from Mark D. Shermis (University of Houston--Clear Lake) and Susan Lottridge (AIR) presented at a National Council of Measurement in Education in Toronto, courtesy of AIR Assessment (one more company that deals in robo-scoring). The paper is two years old, but it's worth a look because it shows the reasoning (or lack thereof) used by the folks who just can't let go of the robograding dream. 

"Communicating to the Public About Machine Scoring: What Works, What Doesn't" is all about managing the PR when you implement roboscoring. Let's take a look.

Warming Up

First, let's lay out the objections that people raise, categorized by a 2003 paper as humanistic, defensive and construct.

The humanistic objection stipulates that writing is a unique human skill and cannot be evaluated CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Selling Roboscoring: How's That Going, Anyway?
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For Data Privacy Day — take our Survey: online apps used by districts and their privacy provisions | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

For Data Privacy Day — take our Survey: online apps used by districts and their privacy provisions | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy
FOR DATA PRIVACY DAY — TAKE OUR SURVEY: ONLINE APPS USED BY DISTRICTS AND THEIR PRIVACY PROVISIONS



Today, January 28th is Data Privacy Day, the international annual day of action and awareness to promote the privacy of our personal data.

The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy is researching which ed tech apps schools are asking students to use and whether they are sufficiently protective of children’s privacy.

Since the pandemic hit, school districts across the nation have purchased many commercially-produced online apps and programs to implement remote learning. Even before last spring, districts had been using a large number of programs, many of which have access to personal student information. Many of these apps collect and use personal student data in ways that are not transparent and we do not understand.

More recently, this past December, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) warned about “malicious cyber actors … targeting kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) educational institutions, leading to ransomware attacks, the theft of data, and the disruption of distance learning services.” This follows another warning the FBI put out in 2018 that the use of ed tech apps in schools posed a serious threat to children’s privacy and safety.

Please let us know what online apps and programs your district or school is using, and check to see if they have been transparent about their privacy policies. Your name and district will be kept confidential.

Click here to take the survey.

On Data Privacy Day and every day, it is important to protect children’s information. Below are a few resources to help.

The 2019 State Student Privacy Report Card lists and rates state laws based on Transparency, Parental and Student Rights; Limitations on Commercial Use of Data; Data Security Requirements; and Oversight, Enforcement, and Penalties for Violations. https://studentprivacymatters.org/map/map.html

Federal Laws enabling parents to protect their Children’s Privacy: FERPA, PPRA and COPPA https://studentprivacymatters.org/ferpa_ppra_coppa/ . Read how FERPA was weakened here and how to request to inspect your child’s education record maintained by your school or the state here.

Parent Toolkit for Student Privacy https://www.studentprivacymatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Parent-Toolkit-for-Student-Privacy.pdf

Top 10 back to school privacy tips and resources https://studentprivacymatters.org/top-10-back-to-school-student-privacy-tips-and-resources-for-parents/

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A VERY BUSY DAY Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007

 Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007


This Is A Simple Reflection Activity I Used At The End Of The Semester
by Larry Ferlazzo / 5h
I’m not suggesting this is any kind of brilliant innovation, but putting the above text on an editable Google Slides presentation for students to complete (along with an invitation to decorate their slide anyway they would like) ended up to be a pretty nice activity. After students completed the sentence starters, they shared them in breakout rooms, and then they shared what they had heard from o

YESTERDAY

My Latest BAM! Radio Show Is On Retrieval Practice
by Larry Ferlazzo / 12h
Retrieval Practice: What Is It, Why It Matters, How It Works in the Classroom is the topic of my latest ten-minute BAM! Radio Show. I’m joined in the discussion by Luiza Mureseanu, Vivian Simmons, and Blake Harvard, who have also all contributed written commentaries to my Education Week column. I’m adding it to All My BAM Radio Shows – Linked With Descriptions .
Friday’s Must-Read Articles On School Reopenings
by Larry Ferlazzo / 12h
geralt / Pixabay Here are new additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING WHAT SCHOOLS WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE FALL : Chicago Public Schools suspends in-person learning as possible teachers strike looms is from The Washington Post. looking through the most recent data from the

 Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

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