Hunger Strikers Fight for Chicago’s Dyett High School | Education Town Hall Forum: Weekly Broadcast Archives, Extended Discussion, plus Monthly BUS Ride

Hunger Strikers Fight for Chicago’s Dyett High School | Education Town Hall Forum: Weekly Broadcast Archives, Extended Discussion, plus Monthly BUS Ride:

Hunger Strikers Fight for Chicago’s Dyett High School

Jeannette Taylor and Anna Jones of the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett High School in Chicago are in the fourth day of their hunger strike demanding re-opening of a neighborhood high school in their community. They joined the Education Town Hall from outside the school on August 20.

“Racism is alive and well in this country,” say protestors, accusing both Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and their local alderman, Will Burns, of caring more about families from wealthier neighborhoods and willfully closing schools in brown and black communities.

The office of Alderman Will Burns told the Education Town Hall he was “unavailable for comment.” This was no surprise to protestors who say he “does not make working class or poor families his priority.”

Aisha Wade-Bay, another coalition leader, spoke to the Education Town Hall on August 13 about their struggle and their plans for a Global Leadership and Green Technology High School at Dyett.

Hunger strikers say this action is a last ditch effort and that no one has listened to their demands for five years. They ask those outside Chicago to help amplify this message calling Mayor Emanuel to say “we support those who #FightforDyett.”

Chicago Organizers Lead Hunger Strike for Dyett High School 
  Tweet your support to #SaveDyett, #WeAreDyett & #FightForDyett

Go to Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools Website

There he goes again: Gov. Scott Walker keeps talking about a teacher who asked him to stop - The Washington Post

There he goes again: Gov. Scott Walker keeps talking about a teacher who asked him to stop - The Washington Post:

There he goes again: Gov. Scott Walker keeps talking about a teacher who asked him to stop

There he goes again.

For years now, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has been telling a story about a young award-winning teacher who lost her job in a school district layoff under a last-hired, first-fired policy that existed in his state before he pushed through legislation eliminating it.

The teacher is Megan Sampson, who became famous in 2011 when Walkerwrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal defending his efforts to end collective bargaining by teachers unions in Wisconsin. Sampson was offered her job back a few months after being laid off, but by then had gone to work in a different district.

Since then, Walker has mentioned her in speeches as well as in at least one more published op-ed. Details of his story have changed in the telling over the years — the exact nature of the award she won being among them — but the essence remains the same, and he repeated it yet again on Wednesday during an interview with Campbell Brown at an “education summit” co-hosted by her organization, The 74.

Unfortunately, Walker keeps talking about Sampson even though she wishes he would stop it. Shortly after the 2011 op-ed was published, she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

“My opinions about the union have changed over the past eight months, and I am hurt that this story is being used to make me the poster child for this political agenda. Bottom line: I am trying to do my job and all this attention is interference and stress for me.”

She expressed concerns again in June after a new op-ed by Walker was published in the Des Moines Register shortly before he announced his candidacy for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. The Associated Press wrote in this story:

But Sampson says in an email to The Associated Press that “I do not enjoy being associated with Walker’s political campaign.” She says Walker does “not have permission from me to use my story in this manner, and he still does not have my permission.”

I have asked Walker’s campaign if he knows that Sampson wants him to stop talking about her but have not received a response. I’ll update this post if I get one.

One of the things that changed in Walker’s stories of Sampson was the nature of her award. In 2010, Sampson won the Nancy Hoefs Memorial Award  given by the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English for first-year language arts teachers.  In 2011, Walker wrote in his op-ed, “In 2010, Megan Sampson was named an Outstanding First Year Teacher in Wisconsin.”  But in a speech in Iowa on Jan. 24, 2015, he called her Wisconsin’s 2010 “outstanding teacher of the year,”  a description that ruffled the feathers of Claudia Felske, a teacher in Wisconsin who was actually named the 2010-2011 Wisconsin High School Teacher of the Year.

Felske, incidentally, entered Marquette University in 1986 with Walker. She There he goes again: Gov. Scott Walker keeps talking about a teacher who asked him to stop - The Washington Post:

Fixing Teachers » Missouri Education Watchdog

Fixing Teachers » Missouri Education Watchdog:

Fixing Teachers

Dr. Sandra Stotsky published a book in March of this year titled, “An Empty Curriculum: The Need to Reform Teacher Licensing Regulations and Tests”which both explains how we got to a place where our teachers can barely pass a certification exam, and provides a pathway out of the mess. Michael Poliakoff wrote a great review of her book on The American Council of trustees and Alumni’s website. Excerpts are provided below.

Dr. Stostky has devoted her entire career to maintaining high standards in American education, particularly in the training of teachers. As Senior Associate Commissioner in the Massachusetts Department of Education, she directed the revision of Massachusetts’ K–12 curriculum standards, as well as the regulations for teacher licensure and licensure testing. Together, these formed the essential elements of the “Massachusetts education miracle.” Since 2007 she has been a senior professor in the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform. Most recently, she has travelled the nation sounding a warning about the harm that coercive implementation of the Common Core standards will do to both K–12 and higher education. Many in the world of education find her message inconvenient, but it will be to the nation’s great harm not to listen to it with careful attention.

In March 2015, Rowman and Littlefield released Dr. Stotsky’s new book, An Empty Curriculum: The Need to Reform Teacher Licensing Regulations and Tests. It is a relatively short book, as welcoming to the non-expert as it is replete with insights for the veteran, but it is also an uncompromising book that leaves the apologists for poorly trained teachers no room to hide.

Starting on the first page of the book, Dr. Stotsky explodes the convenient and comforting belief that state regulations are a reliable assurance that teachers are “academically competent to teach the subjects they were legally licensed to teach.” These tests, she shows, are often set at a standard well below reasonable expectations for a college student, much less a college senior or college graduate (pp. 105–107). And the percentage of correct answers required for a passing score is shockingly low in many states—what constitutes a passing score is a decision left to each individual state. And adding to all of that, Dr. Stotsky reminds the reader that the passing score is compensatory, i.e., a candidate for a teaching license can get entire sections of the exam wrong but still pass on the strength of other parts of the exam (see esp. pp. 18–20). Nor does accreditation provide any reasonable quality assurance. Dr. Stotsky cites the report of former president of Teacher’s College Columbia, who recommended closing most of the nation’s 1200 education schools and excoriated the system of accrediting education programs for its failure to ensure teacher quality. ACTA publicly—and successfully—opposed the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) for its ideological focus on the “dispositions” of teacher candidates regarding social justice. Dr. Stotsky points (p. 126) to the failure of this organization and its successor, the Council for Accreditation of Education Preparation (CAEP), to ensure that prospective teachers actually know the subjects they will teach.

How did we get into this mess? Chapter 4 of An Empty Curriculum provides a window into the sorry history of how, in a process underway by the end of the Second World War, teacher licensure tests moved away from a serious assessment of intellectual skills, general knowledge, and command of the subject the candidate aspired to teach. The question of the capacity of a licensure exam to predict the effect a teacher would have on his students’ achievement is legitimate. It quickly gave rise, however, to a system in which faculty from education schools would evaluate proposed questions for the licensure exam on the basis of whether each question corresponded to something covered by Fixing Teachers » Missouri Education Watchdog:

Excitement and Anxiety: The First Day of School — Schoolhouse Voices — Medium

Excitement and Anxiety: The First Day of School — Schoolhouse Voices — Medium:

Excitement and Anxiety: The First Day of School

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been seeing teachers posting pictures of their classrooms on Facebook, saying, “My classroom’s ready!” That takes me right back to my childhood, helping my mom prepare her classroom for the students in the waning days of August.

My mom taught second and third grade at Valley Cottage Elementary School. And I remember her ritual of using the days before Labor Day to ready her classroom for her students.

Of course, preparing the classroom — even back then — meant spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars out of her own pocket on supplies — just as her colleagues did and teachers do today.

When I was a kid, we were lucky to have a laundry room that housed the washer and dryer, of course, but also served as my mom’s office, filled with all the supplies she bought for her class. It was a treasure trove of books and paper and pens.

She worked so hard every year to get ready to open the doors and welcome her students. Even years after she retired, when we were moving my parents out of that house, the laundry room was still stocked with school supplies. And my own basement is still stocked with all my lesson plans and supplies from the years I taught.

That brings me to my own time teaching. I remember the first day of school my first year in the classroom. My stomach churned with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Could I do the job? Could I connect with the kids? Will there be the chemistry to build relationships and get the job done, or will I totally flop?

Me with my social studies class at Clara Barton High School, in New York

As much success as I had had doing legal work, doing litigation, advocating in the courtroom or negotiating at the bargaining table, it was really different teaching kids — and frankly much harder.

It’s more than just knowing your content and what you’re going to teach. It’s classroom management. It’s the connection with kids. Can I manage my classroom without a hiccup? Do I have a good set of classroom protocols? Do I have all my handouts in order, all stapled? Will I know what to say, or am I just going to melt into a puddle?

Because kids see you as you really are. It’s like you’re stripped down to nothing. It’s almost like you’re naked, and they can see whether you’re a fraud or the real thing.

I remember my heart pounding as I walked into Clara Barton High School that first day. Will I be able to do it? Do I have what it takes to connect and teach and make a difference in the lives of these kids?

And for that same reason, the first day of school is the most optimistic day of the year. It’s a new start. A new chapter. A new chance to engage with students and colleagues. The dawn of a new day and year.

I loved teaching social studies. And I loved starting each year by teaching Excitement and Anxiety: The First Day of School — Schoolhouse Voices — Medium:

CURMUDGUCATION: The GOP's Education Problem

CURMUDGUCATION: The GOP's Education Problem:

The GOP's Education Problem

Damn you, internet.

I had no intention of watching Campbell Brown's Edfest stream yesterday, but as it turns out, I mostly did. I missed a big chunk of Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker, so I did not follow up my AM postwith a PM one. But the day did crystallize for me some of the huge gaping problems with the narrative that Presidential hopefuls are trying to craft. I'm pretty sure it tells us something when one of the most coherent narratives came from Chris Christie and that it was also the one most completely divorced from reality.

The narrative's basic is Wanting To Have It Both Ways, and that principle is applied in several places.

Teachers

The theory here is that teachers are awesome and wonderful and the most important people in education. The teachers union, however, is the single biggest obstacle to public education in this country. Great teachers should be paid a ton, and we'll be able to afford that because we will fire all of the terrible teachers in schools, because that's an easy call to make, and great teachers can teach as many students as you like? Also lots of teachers are terrible lazy slackers, and that's what the union is for. But teachers are great. Except for the many, many, many, many terrible ones.


Teachers unions are somehow completely disconnected from their members and the interests and concerns of teachers, according to this story (perhaps teachers unions are run by space aliens), and the irony here is that there is some real disconnect but Exhibit A is the degree to which union leaders have supported reformster programs.

But mostly unions are bad because they make us follow all these rules and pay teachers money and keep teacher job securities in place, and our great teachers don't want any of those obstacles to doing their jobs. We teachers apparently love it when we can be paid whatever and lose our jobs at any time for any reasons. Love it.

Local Control & Choice

GOP pols have the message-- local control is great and the American Way and they totally support it CURMUDGUCATION: The GOP's Education Problem:

How Bill and Melinda Gates Want to Transform Teaching

How Bill and Melinda Gates Want to Transform Teaching:

How Bill and Melinda Gates Want to Transform Teaching

You know how Bill Gates helped change the way people all over the world work, play, and communicate? Now he and his wife, Melinda, are talking about changing the way we teach and learn.

This week, to mark the return to school for millions of American students, Bill and Melinda are posting a series of blog entries in which they ponder the ways education could be transformed by technology. The posts are worth a read whether you’re a teacher, parent, or student. (But teachers especially should listen up: These two want to make your job easier.)

Remember, this is a guy who has already changed the world with technology, a couple of times over. And the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed some serious resources — $1.7 billion from 2010-2014 — to K-12 and post-secondary education in the United States. So these blogs could in fact be an indication of what they plan to do.

Sharing the knowledge

In the modern world, computers are constantly collecting massive amounts of data about what we all do, which marketers then use to make deeply informed decisions about how to sell us stuff.

Data collection in the classroom isn’t so advanced. Teachers still do most of it themselves, by hand. “Most teachers spend hours grading homework and tests and then copying everything down into spreadsheets they made themselves,” says Gates. There is a better way to do that, he says — perhaps many ways.

In one of his blog posts, Bill points out a real-world example. One charter school system in California moved assignments to the school network, where computers could be used to analyze how well kids performed the work and then predict how they will do on future assignments. Teachers then use online tools to share that data with other teachers.

Networking teachers

“There are 3 million teachers in the United States,” says Melinda in this post. “And they do almost all of their work on their own — teaching students, preparing lessons, solving problems — because their colleagues are down the hall in their classrooms, doing the same thing.”

Technology could connect teachers so they could get help from colleagues in other classrooms, other schools, even other states. And once teachers reach outside their own classrooms, good ideas could spread virally, saving everyone from creating every lesson from the ground up. “Once they’re outside of their old silos,” writes Gates, “teachers are going to unleash each other’s powers in very exciting ways.”

Learning from mistakes

“Throughout my career,” says Bill, “just when I was feeling self-satisfied, someone would come along and show me a better way to do something. I would look at their code and think, ‘I’m so bad at this.’ And then I would get to work on sharpening my skills.”

In this post, Bill sits down with a great teacher — Lyon Terry, who was named Teacher of the Year in Washington — to discuss how to teach students the fine art of learning from mistakes. (They also talk about ways to keep good teachers in the classroom instead of moving them on to administration and how to give teachers more input in education policy.) It’s nice to hear Gates talking about his own mistakes; it’s also inspiring to hear from a truly great educator.

Making teachers great

Melinda Gates agrees with that last bit. In her role with the Gates How Bill and Melinda Gates Want to Transform Teaching:

Charter Schools: The original vision and the morphed reality «Education Talk New Orleans Education Talk New Orleans

Charter Schools: The original vision and the morphed reality «Education Talk New Orleans Education Talk New Orleans:

Charter Schools: The original vision and the morphed reality

edutalknola:

When I was in New Zealand in 2012 and 2013 I often asked people why would New Zealand need charter schools? New Zealand already had a system that included community voices in their local schools. I was able to see a few different kinds of schools, everything from single sex schools, non-traditional schools and Maori schools. There was no need for the charter school model in New Zealand. Oddly enough, I found myself debating one of the founders of KIPP charter schools. Going with the KIPP model of charter schools would be a step backwards for New Zealand.

Originally posted on Save Our Schools NZ:

As you might imagine, I am often asked why I’m against charter schools. Such questions are posed in ways that range from the genial to the downright combative, yet it always pays to listen and draw out what people feel they are supporting.

More often than not, what people are sold on is the promise of charter schools. I don’t blame them – I am sold on the promise, too.  But, as I point out, it’s wise to learn from what history and experience has taught us and, no matter how beautiful it is, we must meet the dream with facts.

The original vision for charter schools, as laid out by Albert Shanker, was for places where innovation would be encouraged in staff and students, where teachers would have a huge say in how the school was set up, what was taught and how, and where students from all manner of backgrounds would be educated alongside each…

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Obama came through with billions to rebuild New Orleans schools after Katrina | The Lens

Obama came through with billions to rebuild New Orleans schools after Katrina | The Lens:

Obama came through with billions to rebuild New Orleans schools after Katrina

The Lens has partnered with PolitiFact for the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina to see if President Barack Obama has followed through on his campaign promises about the storm and the city of New Orleans. 

Pledge: Rebuild schools in New Orleans

Will help communities in the Gulf make necessary school infrastructure investments so all kids from all backgrounds have safe and supportive environments to learn.

Ruling: Promise Kept

---

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan infamously called Hurricane Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”

The storm destroyed or damaged most of the city’s 120-something schools, displacing massive amounts of students and sending an already broken system into further disarray. Ten years later, we wanted to check in.

DID OBAMA FOLLOW THROUGH ON HIS KATRINA CAMPAIGN PROMISES?

Rebuild hospitals in New Orleans: Promise Kept

Strengthen the levees in New Orleans: Compromise

Coming Thursday

Improve transportation in New Orleans: Compromise

Restore wetlands that protect against hurricanes

Restore housing in New Orleans: Compromise

Establish special crime programs for the New Orleans area: Promise Kept

Direct revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling to increased coastal hurricane protection: Promise broken

Obama’s promise specified infrastructure, so we’ll focus on federal efforts in rebuilding. The Obama-backed 2009 stimulus package allocated $1.4 billion in education funds for Louisiana and $1.1 billion for Mississippi. Since the storms hit in 2005, the two states have respectively received $3.37 billion and $334 million for education from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

New Orleans specifically was awarded a bulk $1.8 billion FEMA grant in 2010 to rebuild and repair about 80 schools. As of May 2015, 28 projects have wrapped up and 52 are underway, while eight have yet to begin.

The school district overseeing the recovery, however,emphasized in 2011 that FEMA dollars alone “will not fund renovation costs for the most stable buildings in the city right now.” But that’s not the feds’ fault, since the construction costs were 20 percent higher than estimated, according to a 2015report by Tulane University’s Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives.

Report co-author Vincent Rossmeier said he could not comment on whether the FEMA grant was sufficient, but added that “the facilities were already in terrible shape prior to the storm and that the settlement was agreed upon by all parties.” (Before Katrina, Louisiana’s education system ranked among the worst in the nation, and most of New Orleans schools were crumbling, underperforming, or both.)

Currently, enrollment has returned to 67 percent of pre-Katrina levels, with the vast majority of the students attending charter schools. The transformation into a nearly all-charter system has sparked intense debate — critics point to, for example, the performance divide between predominantly white and majority black schools. Overall, though, test scores, per pupil spending, and state rankings have all surpassed pre-Katrina levels.

The Obama administration has doled out billions of dollars in federal funding to rebuild and repair Gulf coast schools. While that’s not enough to sustain the continuing recovery efforts, he only promised to “help” rebuild schools, not solve all of the problems. So we rate this one Promise Kept.

SOURCES

Email interview with Vincent Rossmeier, policy director at the Cowen Institute at Tulane University, Aug. 4, 2015

Email interview with Brittany Trotter, spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Aug. 4, 2015

U.S. Department of Education, ‘Mississippi to Receive More Than $129 Million in Additional Recovery Funds,’ June 15, 2000

U.S. Department of Education, ‘Louisiana to Receive More Than $191 Million in Additional Recovery Funds,’ May 10, 2000

Federal Emergency Management Agency, Mississippi Hurricane Katrina, July 30, 2015

Federal Emergency Management Agency, Louisiana — Hurricanes Katrina & Rita, July 30, 2015

Federal Emergency Management Agency, Innovative Solutions Put New Orleans Area Students Back in School, Aug. 3, 2015

Recovery School District, ‘School Facilities Master Plan for Orleans Parish,’ Oct. 2011

Cowen Institute, ‘The State of Public Education in New Orleans, 10 Years After Hurricane Katrina,’ June 2015

Louisiana Department of Education, Recovery School District, accessed Aug. 4, 2015

Times-Picayune, ‘New Orleans public schools pre-Katrina and now, by the numbers,’ Aug. 4, 2014

Times-Picayune, ‘$1.8 billion from FEMA for Hurricane Katrina school rebuilding is ‘worth the wait,’ Sen. Mary Landrieu says,’ Aug. 26, 2010 Obama came through with billions to rebuild New Orleans schools after Katrina | The Lens:

Renowned researcher: ‘Why I am no longer comfortable’ in the field of educational measurement - The Washington Post

Renowned researcher: ‘Why I am no longer comfortable’ in the field of educational measurement - The Washington Post:

Renowned researcher: ‘Why I am no longer comfortable’ in the field of educational measurement

Gene V. Glass is a renowned statistician and researcher who has worked for decades in educational psychology and the social sciences. He created the term “meta-analysis” — a statistical process for combining the findings from individual studies in a search for patterns and other data — and described its use in a 1976 speech when he was president of the American Educational Research Association. He has won numerous awards during his career. He is now a Regents’ Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University, a senior researcher at the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, and an elected member of the National Academy of Education.

Considering that Glass has spent a career in psychometrics, it becomes news when he decides that he is “no longer comfortable being associated with the discipline of educational measurement.” In this post, which appeared on his blog, Education in Two Worlds, he explains why he has reached this point, a decision that explains the state of “accountability” in public education today. I am republishing it with permission.

By Gene Glass

I was introduced to psychometrics in 1959. I thought it was really neat. By 1960, I was programming a computer on a psychometrics research project funded by the Office of Naval Research. In 1962, I entered graduate school to study educational measurement under the top scholars in the field.My mentors – both those I spoke with daily and those whose works I read – had served in WWII. Many did research on human factors — measuring aptitudes and talents and matching them to jobs. Assessments showed who were the best candidates to be pilots or navigators or marksmen. We were told that psychometrics had won the war; and of course, we believed it.

The next wars that psychometrics promised it could win were the wars on poverty and ignorance. The man who led the Army Air Corps effort in psychometrics started a private research center. (It exists today, and is a beneficiary of the millions of dollars spent on Common Core testing.) My dissertation won the 1966 prize in Psychometrics awarded by that man’s organization. And I was hired to fill the slot recently vacated by the world’s Renowned researcher: ‘Why I am no longer comfortable’ in the field of educational measurement - The Washington Post:

Getting to the ‘why’ of discipline disparities | EdSource

Getting to the ‘why’ of discipline disparities | EdSource:

Getting to the ‘why’ of discipline disparities

In the process of changing the uneven application of school discipline, school staff move from lack of awareness to full acceptance of the fact that some groups of students are disciplined more harshly than others, according to a U.S. Department of Education action guide for educators.

What happened at a rural high school was, according to a new guide to school discipline, the starting point for change. Faced with chronically tardy students and a steady stream of office referrals, including a disproportionate number of American Indian students, school administrators asked: Why? Why the lateness? Why the office referrals?

With schools across California and the nation working to reform discipline practices — either voluntarily or under legal pressure — the guide, “Addressing the Root Causes of Disparities in School Discipline: An Educator’s Action Planning Guide,” is intended as a tool to help schools “look for the whole story” behind who is disciplined and why. Produced by the American Institutes for Research for the U.S. Department of Education, the guide offers schools a data-informed road map for improving school climate and reducing discipline disparities.

“People are feeling the pressure to do something immediately,” said David Osher, a vice president at the American Institutes for Research and the lead author of guide. “The purpose of the guide is to help people do something immediately, but do something with strategic analysis.”

Driving the need for discipline reform, the guide noted, are discriminatory discipline practices in schools nationwide, according to an issue brief from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Students of color, students with disabilities and students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender are disproportionately subject to school suspensions, the guide said. The impact on students, families, schools and the community “is serious and the cost is high,” the guide said.

Rather than a prescription for how schools should change or who is at fault for the way things are, the guide is intended to provide a structure for making change, Osher said.

“If people are going to do this well, we have to go beyond blame or guilt,” he said. “It’s rather a problem-solving approach.”

Step by step, the guide outlines how schools can conduct a “root cause analysis” to understand what underlies school discipline disparities and how to take corrective action.

The process is hands-on. A “Discipline Data Checklist” and a “Data Mining Tip Sheet” can help schools organize student data, collected from Getting to the ‘why’ of discipline disparities | EdSource:

Are traumatized students disabled? A debate straight outta Compton | 89.3 KPCC

Are traumatized students disabled? A debate straight outta Compton | 89.3 KPCC:

Are traumatized students disabled? A debate straight outta Compton

The defendants may be one Southern California school district and its top officials, but an unprecedented, class action lawsuit could have a big impact on schools across the country.

Thursday in Los Angeles, a U.S. District Court judge will preside over the first hearing in the suit against the Compton Unified School District. To understand thecomplaint, you need to understand Compton.

The city has long had a violent reputation. Last year, its murder rate was more than five times the national average. Now, a handful of students say they've been traumatized by life in Compton and that the schools there have failed to give them the help they deserve.

The complaint is a terrifying read — of kids coping with physical and sexual abuse, addicted parents, homelessness, and a constant fear of violence.

One of the plaintiffs, listed as 15-year-old Phillip W., says he witnessed his first murder when he was 8.

"Somebody got shot in the back of the head with a shotgun," the boy explains in avideo on a website dedicated to the case. "And they threw him over the rail, and he was just sitting there bleeding, blood all down the sewer line. It was a horrifying sight."

The complaint says Phillip has witnessed more than 20 shootings and, in 2014, was hit in the knee by a bullet.

What's this have to do with Compton's schools?

Susan Ko of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress says exposure to violence can have a profound effect on the brain's ability to learn.

"That impacts concentration, the ability to just listen to what the teacher is saying, to understand what you're reading, to remember something that you learned or what the teacher just said," Ko says.

Not only that, many traumatized students live in a state of constant alarm. Innocent interactions like a bump in the hallway or a request from a teacher can stir anger and bad behavior.

The lawsuit alleges that, in Compton, the schools' reaction to traumatized students was too often punishment — not help.

"They were repeatedly either sent to another school, expelled or suspended — and Are traumatized students disabled? A debate straight outta Compton | 89.3 KPCC:

School choice on steroids - The Hechinger Report

School choice on steroids - The Hechinger Report:

School choice on steroids

New state programs allow students to opt out of their local public schools part time, taking classes online instead

Chatfield High School in Minnesota doesn’t offer sociology (or German, or criminology, for that matter), but when senior Keagan Clarke, 18, finished a fall semester class in psychology, his teacher suggested he try sociology.

Thanks to a relatively new state policy, all spring Clarke went to the school library during second period for an online sociology class.

“It was very cool,” said Clarke, noting it lived up to his psychology teacher’s description: “It was a very interesting topic with some things that will tie back to psychology.”

This initiative, often called “Course Choice” or “Course Access,” is, as one proponent described it, like “school choice on steroids.”

Proponents count at least 10 states that have adopted a collection of policies they began promoting as Course Access — policies that allow students to take classes part-time online (and sometimes in other off-campus classrooms) by choosing from a variety of providers, including charter schools and other districts, instead of being limited to their local course offerings or to one state virtual school. And the Course Access movement is gaining momentum as it expands across the country, with eight states adopting or considering such laws in just the last four years, according to a comprehensive report on Course Access sponsored by the conservative group the Foundation for Excellence in Education and the lobbying firm EducationCounsel.

For Clarke and other students, online schools mean options, but for school district officials, they can mean less revenue, as education dollars flow toward charter schools or other districts that offer the School choice on steroids - The Hechinger Report:

Child Trauma and Schools | Education Town Hall Forum: Weekly Broadcast Archives, Extended Discussion, plus Monthly BUS Ride

Child Trauma and Schools | Education Town Hall Forum: Weekly Broadcast Archives, Extended Discussion, plus Monthly BUS Ride:

Child Trauma and Schools

Nearly half of all children in the United States have experienced trauma, according to recent research. Children in underserved communities face trauma at a higher rate and are more likely to experience repeated trauma or more than one type.

Gun violence persistently affects students and families in many neighborhoods in cities like Washington, DC, with an uptick in incidents and related stress this summer, for example. Families in St. Louis, MO, were gassed last night as part of police response to protests, and students around the country have experienced similar stresses. In some areas, children experience trauma relating to natural disasters or fires. Episodic or chronic financial trouble, homelessness, domestic violence, and other factors also traumatize many children.

Results include attendance, behavioral, and academic problems. But research indicates that trauma-sensitive school environments can help students recover and thrive. Collaborations across the fields of education, psychology, law, and neurobiology have helped create policy and practice addressing this serious and common problem.

Several jurisdictions have taken steps to mandate and support trauma-sensitive or trauma-informed schools. In addition, a suit arguing that schools must address trauma like any other special need is moving through the federal courts

Last August, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts enacted a “Safe and Supportive Schools” boosting the trauma-informed schools movement. Trauma-sensitive practices are also at work in Washington state and in San Francisco. In addition, the District of Columbia’s City Council held a roundtable on the topic in June.

At the time of the hearing, DC Children’s Law Center released a report Addressing Childhood Trauma in DC Schools. (CLC — Addressing Childhood Trauma in DC Schools–June 2015.) National organizations, including the Trauma and Learning Policy Institute and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, offer extensive research and resources for educators and policymakers. (See Washington Post “Trauma is hidden cause of academic struggles for many in DC, report finds.”)

Today, in Los Angeles, a federal judge is scheduled to consider several motions in the landmark case known as “Peter P., et al. v. Compton Unified School District, et al.” The suit was filed earlier this year by five student-plaintiffs who have experienced severe trauma and argue that Compton Unified School District (CUSD) failed to address their needs. Three Child Trauma and Schools | Education Town Hall Forum: Weekly Broadcast Archives, Extended Discussion, plus Monthly BUS Ride: