The most common reasons students drop out of high school are heartbreaking - Yahoo News

The most common reasons students drop out of high school are heartbreaking - Yahoo News:

The most common reasons students drop out of high school are heartbreaking

Even if it feels boring or irrelevant, just staying in school almost guarantees you'll end up in a better place than if you dropped out.

Unfortunately, according to a recent report from America's Promise Alliance, those factors rank among the top reasons why kids take themselves out of school: 

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Skye Gould/Tech Insider

The failure is hardly a personal one. Survey responses of nearly 2,000 students who took at least a semester off at school revealed that systemic factors like boring classes and family obligations were the guiding reasons kids left.

Research shows dropping out is strongly tied to socioeconomic status. Kids who come from low-income areas are 2.4 times more likely to drop out than middle-income kids. Unlike kids from wealthier families, for whom school is usually the primary focus, poorer students must focus on other responsibilities. School becomes secondary, if it's a priority at all. 

Leading education theories suggest the experience of going to school could be greatly improved if teachers and principals took a more personalized approach. If kids felt like their specific problems were being heard and their interests explored, so the argument goes, school would no longer feel like the boring and irrelevant institution many see it as today.

NOW WATCH: Why we should ban non-vaccinated kids from schools

The most common reasons students drop out of high school are heartbreaking - Yahoo News:

Bernie Sanders, Not Hillary Clinton, Deserves Union Endorsements | Ben Spielberg

Bernie Sanders, Not Hillary Clinton, Deserves Union Endorsements | Ben Spielberg:

Bernie Sanders, Not Hillary Clinton, Deserves Union Endorsements

The National Education Association (the union to which I used to belong) isconsidering an early endorsement of Hillary Clinton. This decision, like the American Federation of Teachers' endorsement of Clinton on July 11, would be a huge mistake.

One reason is that it would violate members' trust. As Peter Greene, Steven Singer, and Anthony Cody have noted, teacher voice is too often ignored in education reform conversations. If the NEA follows the AFT and makes a presidential primary endorsement without ample membership involvement, its teachers will feel silenced by their own union. Not only would that likely depress voter mobilization efforts andspark a backlash within the union, it also runs counter to the very principles of what a union is supposed to be.

An early Clinton endorsement would also be a mistake because she's a suboptimal candidate. While Clinton is far more union-friendly than anyone running for the Republican nomination, her labor credentials are significantly worse than her main challenger in the Democratic primary, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Sanders has been a steadfast union supporter since the 1970s. His advocacy on behalf of workers as mayor of Burlington, Vermont in the 1980s helped foster the growth of the city's socially-responsible business culture.

"Thanks to the enduring influence of the progressive climate that Sanders and his allies helped to create in Burlington," The Nation reported in June, "the city's largest housing development is now resident-owned, its largest supermarket is a consumer-owned cooperative, one of its largest private employers is worker-owned, and most of its people-oriented waterfront is publicly owned. Its publicly owned utility, the Burlington Electric Department, recently announced that Burlington is the first American city of any decent size to run entirely on renewable electricity."

Sanders has continued to advocate for the same causes in Congress over the past 25 years. In 1994, for example, he introduced the Workplace Democracy Act, legislation designed to strengthen collective bargaining rights. He currently supports theEmployee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workplaces to hold union elections, and plans to introduce a new Workplace Democracy Act this fall. He has "convened annual meetings of labor activists to help them develop more successful organizing and bargaining strategies" and still walks picket lines with workers.

To be fair, Clinton also supports the Employee Free Choice Act. Her campaign rhetoric is pretty pro-union, and the promises she makes in her video to NEA members don't sound all that different than those made by Bernie.

But Clinton's record is significantly worse than Sanders's. She served on the board of directors of Walmart -- which to this day remains one of the nation's most notoriously anti-union businesses -- from 1986 to 1992, for instance.

According to reports that surfaced in 2008, Clinton sat through dozens of board meetings without ever speaking up on behalf of organized labor. Instead, she stated that she was "proud of Wal-Mart and what we do and the way we do it better than anybody else." Though she has since renounced Walmart's business practices, Clintonmaintains close ties with Walmart executives and lobbyists. And during her presidential campaigns, she's surrounded herself with staffers who have troubling anti-union connections.

The following meme, describing cumulative donations the candidates have received over the past thirty years, is illustrative:

Clinton has worse policy positions on key union issues as well. Bernie Sanders has been a leader in the effort to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a "free trade" deal that could undermine environmental and consumer safety protections and have harmful impacts on workers both in the U.S. and abroad.

Clinton, despite recent attempts to distance herself from the TPP, was heavily involved in negotiating and promoting it. Sanders has been a vocal proponent of a Bernie Sanders, Not Hillary Clinton, Deserves Union Endorsements | Ben Spielberg:

Education Reform is Anti-American | Steve Nelson

Education Reform is Anti-American | Steve Nelson:

Education Reform is Anti-American

In the name of American exceptionalism, the institutions that have actually made us exceptional are under attack. The irony is heartbreaking.

Education reform is one major battleground and the terms of engagement have been largely distorted. "Reformers" would have you believe that the movement is about children and opportunity. It is not about children or opportunity. School reform is part of an ideological campaign to fracture the very nature of our democratic republic.

Opponents of reform often claim, with some real justification, that education reformers intend to privatize schools, thereby opening an estimated $4.4 trillion global market to entrepreneurs. I don't believe that is the primary aim of those behind the reform movement, even if it is a collateral effect. There are certainly profiteers who stand to make a buck. Pearson alone, for example, siphons more than $1 billionfrom the system. Charter management organizations and technology companies are lined up at the trough in droves, but they are the beneficiaries of reform, not the architects.

I needn't document the prime movers. In a recent post, Alan Singer accurately portrayed the real money behind reform. Mercedes Schneider's book, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who's Who in the Implosion of American Public Education, provides even more detailed exposition of characters behind reform. A small group of very wealthy Americans and their sycophants fund nearly all charter and school choice advocacy: Gates, Broad, Walton, Paulson, Loeb and other billionaires, many of them hedge fund managers. I don't believe that these plutocrats press for school choice to make a buck. They are already unimaginably wealthy. They press for school choice as part of a much larger ideological movement.

But, despite the documentation provided by Singer, Schneider, Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody and others, charter and school choice propaganda has persuaded millions of Americans that reform is about helping children.

In recent weeks, ads produced by Families for Excellent Schools have been running constantly on network and cable television. The ads show a white boy attending a hypothetical "good school." He is cheerfully described as college bound. The next frames picture a boy of color who supposedly attends a "failing school" and will have no such opportunity. The ad then declares that 500,000 NYC children desperately need "new" schools and that Mayor Bill de Blasio stands in the way. If only the elected government official would stop obstructing progress, the unelected, self-appointed, masters of the universe would provide those wondrous new schools and lift a generation of youngsters out of poverty and despair! Families for Excellent Schools claims to be a "grassroots" movement. Not at all. It is a coalition of intertwined moneyed-interests that have duped a few "families" to front for them. The "families" in Families for Excellent Schools couldn't buy an ad in the school newspaper, much less produce fancy HD videos and buy $3.6 million of airtime.

And, of course, the wealthy interests behind education reform oppose nearly all of the Education Reform is Anti-American | Steve Nelson:

Broad's support of Clinton raising concerns within teacher unions - LA School Report

Broad's support of Clinton raising concerns within teacher unions - LA School Report:

Broad’s support of Clinton raising concerns within teacher unions

Hillary Clinton and Eli Broad on Jan. 20, 2009 at the inauguration ball of President Barack Obama.

With his massive plan to enroll half of all LA Unified’s students into charter schools, billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad is threatening major disruptions at LA Unified, cementing his role as Public Enemy No. 1 to many district and local union leaders.

But Broad’s enduring support for public charter schools now appears to be contributing to problems for an old friend, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whom he has long supported financially.

Clinton appears poised to receive the endorsement of the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), this weekend, but the potential endorsement is causing controversy among many rank-and-file members. Similar outrage emerged when Clinton received the endorsement of the second-largest national teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in July.

The NEA’s rank-and-file outrage is dominating many national headlines, just as the AFT outrage did, stealing the focus from what should be a public relations victory for Clinton.

Part of the concern is due to her past support of charter schools and connections to Broad, as well as her connections to Bill Gates and the Walton family, who are also major financial backers of charter schools that directly threaten union teacher jobs. An alternate candidate in the field, Sen. Bernie Sanders, a declared socialist with a track record of full-throated support of unions, makes a better candidate, according to some NEA and AFT members.

“[Clinton’s] labor credentials are significantly worse than her main challenger in the Democratic primary, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders,” wrote Huffington Post blogger and NEA member Ben Spielberg, who also pointed out that Clinton once served on the board of directors of Wal-Mart.

“Even if she says things that today sound supportive, she’s not going to be a steadfast friend of organized labor,” Jamie Rinaldi, a teacher from Newton, Mass. and a union activist told Politico. “We don’t know she’s going to be the ally that’s going to stand with our legislative agenda.”

Almost 5,000 AFT members signed an online petition asking AFT to withdraw the Clinton endorsement, which came in July. One comment on the petition, which summed up much of the Clinton opposition, said, “The support that Hillary receives from Wall Street, and gives them in return, and her misguided support of charter schools clearly shows whose interests she is working for.”

Several NEA state branches have already called on the organization to withhold any endorsement.

“We are concerned that an early recommendation does not allow members to be participants in a real debate around the issues that are still unfolding,” Nebraska State Education Association president Nancy Fulton said in a statement Wednesday. “A recommendation this early in the process is premature.”

With most charter schools being non-union, the math behind Broad’s charter expansion plan in LA is simple to the LA teachers union president, Alex Caputo-Pearl: lose half of the district’s students, and his union, UTLA, will also lose half of its teachers. Caputo-Pearl sees this as a threat to UTLA’s very existence, which makes it strange when his two national affiliates may both end up supporting Clinton, who once said, “I stand behind the charter school/public school movement, because parents do deserve greater choice within the public school system to meet the unique needs of their children.”

The Clinton Foundation has even gushed over Broad’s charter school philanthropy. From the foundation’s website, which is referring to a 2007 donation Broad made to LA charters totaling $27 million: “[Broad’s donations] will have a far-reaching impact on improving the education of students in Los Angeles. By broadening the investments in charter schools in Los Angeles, a tipping point will be created that will put pressure on all other public schools in Los Angeles to improve the educational opportunities for all children.”

The Broads and Bill and Hillary Clinton have connections that go as far back as 1983 and as recently as Sept. 19, when Bill Clinton attended the second opening night of the Broad Museum in downtown Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Times quoted Clinton at the gala talking about their friendship, which dated back to when Hillary was Broad’s lawyer. “I looked up one day and Eli was in my living room, and my life has never been the same,” Clinton said.

Broad, through one of his corporations, gave $100,000 to Bill Clinton’s presidential reelection campaign and was one of the controversial “Lincoln bedroom donors” who gave the then-president some bad headlines due to the perception that Clinton was using the White House to raise campaign funds.

Broad endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2008, has donated over $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation and was recently a co-chair of the Super PAC “Ready for Hillary” that was formed to draft Clinton into the 2016 race. It has since dissolved.

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Broad's support of Clinton raising concerns within teacher unions - LA School Report:

A Handful of NEA Leaders Have Taken Another Step Toward Endorsing Hillary Clinton Despite Member Outcry | gadflyonthewallblog

A Handful of NEA Leaders Have Taken Another Step Toward Endorsing Hillary Clinton Despite Member Outcry | gadflyonthewallblog:

A Handful of NEA Leaders Have Taken Another Step Toward Endorsing Hillary Clinton Despite Member Outcry

“We are what Democracy looks like.”

With those words, Lily Eskelsen Garcia took the reigns of the National Education Association (NEA) as President in 2014.

A little more than a year later, the NEA is set to prove those words false by endorsing a candidate for the 2016 Presidential Primaries without input from the rank and file.

Despite vocal opposition from thousands of members of the largest union in the country, the NEA Political Action Committee (PAC) Council voted to endorse Hillary Clinton.

The council of 74 educators from the organization’s political arm voted Thursday. The NEA Board of Directors is expected to make a final decision on Saturday.

Despite Garcia’s fierce rhetoric, the decision is being made by a handful of union leaders with next to no input from the more than 3 million members.

Many details of the vote, itself, are shrouded in secrecy and bad math.

Numerous sources in the NEA say the PAC council voted 82% in favor and 18% against. However, these figures are suspect. Two of the largest state delegations – California and New Jersey – abstained. The percentages being touted by PAC Council A Handful of NEA Leaders Have Taken Another Step Toward Endorsing Hillary Clinton Despite Member Outcry | gadflyonthewallblog:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: School Shootings Since Newtown

Seattle Schools Community Forum: School Shootings Since Newtown:

School Shootings Since Newtown



Here, 142 of them.

 The idiot today? TOLD people online he was going to do this and got advice on how to do it.  (Pick a class with girls; they won't fight back.) What happened to "see something, say something?" Oh wait, that's for foreign, not domestic, terrorists (and that's what these guys are).

President Obama seems pissed and disgusted.

“So tonight, as those of us who are lucky enough to hug our kids a little closer are thinking about the families who aren’t so fortunate,” the president said in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, named for a man severely wounded by a would-be assassin’s bullet, “I’d ask the American people to think about how they can get our government to change these laws, and to save these lives and let these people grow up.”

He said that he knew that "there were parents across the country who are scared because it might have been their children." 

Except.

Except there was a guy - there's always someone the media manages to find - in Roseburg who said "things like that don't happen here."

News flash - every town IS everytown in the U.S.A.  Down the street from Roosevelt High School, up I-5 in Marysville, Seattle U, community college campuses, university campuses and yes, elementary schools.  Oh yeah, don't forget your movie theaters and churches.

Don't anyone think that any one of us will be safe from this carnage.  Don't for one minute think your kids are safe because really, they Seattle Schools Community Forum: School Shootings Since Newtown:

Our Justice Is Complicated | The Jose Vilson

Our Justice Is Complicated | The Jose Vilson:

Our Justice Is Complicated

For some reason, my Pocket app has been full of idiosyncratic profile pieces. This Fader one of Drake. This POLITICO one of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. This New York Times obitdedicated to teacher-turned-community activist Terry Rosenbaum. This Esquire bit on the old new Mark Zuckerberg.

So when La Galeria Magazine published their profile on me today, on the same day that the most beloved education blogger would visit my classroom, I was curious about what’s happened since the last time she visited my class.

One of the recurring themes I see in my work is the idea of justice as a messy and complicated idea. That’s where justice needs to be served. Justice isn’t a facile thing. Whereas any number of situations can be looked at from a binary lens, I’m more excited by the idea that most of the work we must do requires finer instruments than folks have used. Most of this work feels more like knowing when to use a Phillips screwdriver instead of a hammer, or when to use a drill instead of a pocket knife.

Most of my friends have more than one tool in their toolbox.

Some of us have grown rather weary of the binary, favoring social justice through all the layers it Our Justice Is Complicated | The Jose Vilson:

Broad and Walton Contribute a Combined $650,000 to Upcoming Louisiana BESE Election | deutsch29

Broad and Walton Contribute a Combined $650,000 to Upcoming Louisiana BESE Election | deutsch29:

Broad and Walton Contribute a Combined $650,000 to Upcoming Louisiana BESE Election

Billionaires Eli Broad and Alice and Jim Walton have contributed a combined $650,000 to Baton Rouge businessman Lane Grigsby’s PAC, Empower Louisiana, so that Grigsby might use it to try to retain a corporate-reform-bent majority on the state’s education board, BESE, from 2016-19.

The BESE election is scheduled for October 24, 2015.

According to Empower Louisiana’s campaign finance report (07-17-15 to 09-14-15), Jim and Alice Walton each donated $200,000 on August 20, 2015, and Broad contributed $250,000 on September 10, 2015.

The total on the above report is $763,710, which means that as of September 14, 2015, money from two billionaires from Arkansas and one billionaire from California constitutes the principal funding for Grigsby’s efforts to preserve a BESE majority known for supporting charters and vouchers without equally supporting adequate oversight; supporting high-stakes testing without supporting timely, clear, comprehensive reporting of testing results, and for allying with a state superintendent known for hiding and manipulating data, refusing to honor public records requests, and refusing to consistently audit the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE).

Grigsby considers the above to be the desired course for Louisiana’s state board of education. According to the October 01, 2015, Advocate, he plans to spend his PARC’s predominately Walton and Broad money on 3 of the 11 BESE seats:

Grigsby’s group — it is limited to independent expenditures — will rely mostly on television and radio advertisements and direct mail.

Races where it will be involved include BESE vice president Jim Garvey, of Metairie, against challenger Lee Barrios, of Abita Springs; incumbent Holly Boffy, of Youngsville, against challenger Mike Kreamer, of Lafayette and incumbent Mary Harris, of Shreveport, against challengers Tony Davis, of Natchitoches, and Glynis Johnston, of Shreveport.

The group backs Garvey, Boffy and Davis in those contests.

Even as they are pouring money into the October 2015 Louisiana state board election, Broad and Walton are teaming up to promote more charter schools in DC, and Broad is trying to privatize half of the schools in Los Angeles (see here also).

Grisgby backs those who will deliver the Walton- and Broad-approved, test-score-dependent privatization agenda for Louisiana schools.

Oppose Grigsby, Walton, and Broad.

Flip BESE.

Click Here to Follow Flip BESE on Facebook 

LEE P.BARRIOS FOR BESE 1 Web Site

JASON FRANCE FOR BESE 6 Web Site

MIKE KREAMER FOR BESE 7 Web Site

Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of the ed reform whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education.

She also has a second book, Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?, published on June 12, 2015.

Don’t care to buy from Amazon? Purchase my books from Powell’s City of Books instead.

Bernie and Hillary on Charters | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bernie and Hillary on Charters | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Bernie and Hillary on Charters

Charters kill unions. Ninety percent of charters are nonunion. Their sponsors want it that way..

Personally, I am completely opposed to for-profit charter schools. I think they are an abomination. I believe that every cent paid by taxpayers should be dedicated to the needs of children and their teachers, and not a single cent should be paid to investors.

http://dianeravitch.net/2015/07/12/bernie-sanders-on-education/

Q. What are your views on private school vouchers, tuition tax credits, and charter school accountability and transparency?

BS: I am strongly opposed to any voucher system that would re-direct public education dollars to private schools, including through the use of tax credits. In addition, I believe charter schools should be held to the same standards of transparency as public schools, and that these standards should also apply to the non-profit and for-profit entities that organize charter schools.

This is what was on her blog from our questionnaire for HRC:

http://dianeravitch.net/2015/07/12/hillary-clinton-on-education/
Q. What are your views on private school vouchers, tuition tax credits, and charter school
accountability and transparency?

HRC: I strongly oppose voucher schemes because they divert precious resources away from financially
strapped public schools to private schools that are not subject to the same accountability
standards or teacher quality standards. It would be harmful to our democracy if we dismantled
our public school system through vouchers, and there is no evidence that doing so would
improve outcomes for children.

Charters should be held to the same standards, and to the same level of accountability and
transparency to which traditional public schools are held. This includes the requirements of civil
rights laws. They can innovate and help improve educational practices. But I also believe that
we must go back to the original purpose of charter schools. Where charters are succeeding, we
should be doing more to ensure that their innovations can be widely disseminated throughout
our traditional public school system. Where they are failing, they should be closed.Bernie and Hillary on Charters | Diane Ravitch's blog:

http://dianeravitch.net/

The Costs of Our Teachers Opting Out | John Ewing

The Costs of Our Teachers Opting Out | John Ewing:

The Costs of Our Teachers Opting Out

As another school year gets underway, the public receives its annual dose of hand wringing about the state of American education. In the past few weeks, we have read about massive "failures" as districts and states report scores from last year's tests, about the rise of the opt-out movement, about parental unease with the Common Core, and about teacher shortages spreading across the country.

Editorials excoriate public schools; pundits offer glib solutions; politicians excoriate "whining" teachers and their unions, which, we are told, have brought education to this state of affairs.

This ritual of education bashing has become so commonplace that it's easy not to notice and move on. But we ought to notice because the annual lamentation is causing great damage. Because of it, confidence in public schools has fallen by nearly half over the past four decades, from roughly 60 percent to below 30. Because of it, job satisfaction for teachers has fallen dramatically, from 62 percent to 39 percent in just five years. And because of it, experienced, accomplished teachers are leaving classrooms in droves, while interest in teacher training programs is plummeting.

Each year, about 13 percent of the nation's roughly 3.5 million teachers either move to a different school or opt-out of teaching altogether. This means schools are in a perennial scramble to find replacements. Some see recruitment programs such as Teach for America as the answer. But filling classrooms with bright people with little training or support is not much of a solution. A few recruits succeed, growing into talented and passionate long-term educators, but many more struggle and leave after a year or two. Recruitment is important, but until we find ways to retain outstanding teachers we will be pumping water out of a sinking ship instead of plugging the holes.

Even more concerning, such programs are predicated on the belief that great teaching requires only enthusiasm and determination, not deep knowledge and carefully-honed skills. By perpetuating this view, they demean the profession and ultimately reduce its prestige. These programs may attract plenty of college graduates eager to burnish their resumes, but until teaching is viewed as a respected profession that requires both talent and training, our best and brightest will never consider it a career.

Study after study shows that experience counts in teaching. While recruitment may be an immediate need, retaining a workforce of outstanding, experienced educators is the ultimate goal.

So what do we do?

First, stop casting teachers as the cause of the problem rather than partners in the The Costs of Our Teachers Opting Out | John Ewing:

Louisiana Legislators, BESE Members, Citizens File a Public Records Request for PARCC(ish) Raw Scores | deutsch29

Louisiana Legislators, BESE Members, Citizens File a Public Records Request for PARCC(ish) Raw Scores | deutsch29:

Louisiana Legislators, BESE Members, Citizens File a Public Records Request for PARCC(ish) Raw Scores

La. Superintendent John White

The following public records request was delivered to Louisiana State Superintendent John White both by messenger and by email at around 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 01, 2015:

Baton Rouge, LA

For Immediate Release:  Date: October 01, 2015

Louisiana Citizens Public Records Request for PARCC Data

Today a group of legislators, BESE members, school board members, educators, and citizens filed a formal public records request for the purpose of securing the release of vital data from the Common Core tests that were given to Louisiana students almost six months ago.

These public officials and citizens believe that the results of the Spring 2015 PARCC testing are in the possession of the Louisiana Department of Education and therefore constitute public records under Louisiana law.

The law provides that any Louisiana citizen over the age of 18 may request any public record and that the custodian of public records must provide such public records immediately, but at least within a period of five business days.

These citizens believe that this formal public records request is necessary because numerous similar informal requests by various citizens have either been denied or ignored by the State Superintendent.

Representative Brett Geymann, the lead author of Common Core related legislation this last session, expressed frustration that the data from the tests has not been provided to the educator and parent committee that was formed to revamp the standards:

“This last legislative session we attempted to remove the Common Core Standards from our curriculum because it was not appropriate for our school children. However, in the course of the legislative process we worked out a compromise agreement that required a thorough review of the present Common Core Standards for the purpose of developing new standards that would benefit our students. Unfortunately, now we find that the Standards Review Committee is being denied access to the test results that could help to inform their work in revising the standards. This is in violation of the spirit of the agreement. The taxpayers paid millions of dollars for these tests and we should have the results in a form that can help the revisions committee.”

Representative Schroder echoed those sentiments: “We kept our end of the bargain. Time is running out for the committee. They need the information now. We are not asking that the test itself be released. We just want the standard each question tests and what percentage of students got it right.”

BESE member, Jane Smith, a former superintendent and state legislator, pointed out that she had helped negotiate the compromise: “I have said from the beginning that I Louisiana Legislators, BESE Members, Citizens File a Public Records Request for PARCC(ish) Raw Scores | deutsch29: