Why Educators Should Get Serious About Free Universal Education - Education Week

Why Educators Should Get Serious About Free Universal Education - Education Week:

Why Educators Should Get Serious About Free Universal Education

By Susan Hopgood, Lily Eskelsen-García, & Randi Weingarten

As educators, we're optimists by nature, and we believe the global goals adopted by the United Nations late last month will be achieved by the 2030 target date, including free quality education for all. What gives this particular goal the best chance of success is how the U.N.-identified "sustainable development goals" are interrelated—the success of one requiring the success of others. The elimination of poverty and hunger and the ensuring of healthy lives and gender equity, to name a few, are all benefits of quality education.

Why the optimism? Start with the people who were not in New York City to attend the United Nations but who dominate global attention—the millions around the world displaced and on the move because of natural and man-made disasters, and the parents who are risking everything to give their children a quality education, a healthy start, and an upbringing free of violence. We can see this most recently with the tens of thousands fleeing war-torn Syria and Afghanistan and the mounting human toll of that exodus.

No single goal's success will end this misery. Teachers in Lebanon working double and triple shifts to accommodate Syrian-refugee students without extra pay are part of a comprehensive solution only when we add meaningful civil society and governmental interventions. The inclusion and accountability that link our challenges together will drive a new definition of success that leaves Why Educators Should Get Serious About Free Universal Education - Education Week:

BAT Fall Fundraising Drive – Please Support Our Mission and Message

BATS:

BAT Fall Fundraising Drive – Please Support Our Mission and Message

Be a BAT Supporter—Donate today as we kick off our fall fundraising drive.  Based on the last 2 days of events (Duncan Resignation & NEA Recommendation of Hillary), we hope to do a fall campaign that will see us buying either newspaper ads, billboards, or radio ads to get our message out about the attempt by billionaires to destroy public education!  We can’t do that without your help! 

Why should you be a BAT Supporter?  Here is why!

1.  Successful rally outside the USDOE in Summer of 2014 that led to a meeting with Secretary Duncan.  We were able to be brutally honest with him regarding the USDOE’s education agenda. 

2.  Summer of 2015 BATs headed back to DC for the BATs Teacher Congress.  The highlight of the event was that BATs from over 25 states convened on Capitol Hill with over 61 appointments to discuss education, children, and funding equity.   6 brave BATs occupied Bernie Sanders office which led to a lengthy phone call with one of his education advisors.  BATs meet and escorted Jesse Turner into DC after he walked 400 miles from Connecticut to DC to bring to light the attack on our public schools.  BATs also partnered with United Opt Out and Save Our Schools in a Mock Trial of Eli Broad, Rahm Emanuel, Campbell Brown, and Arne Duncan that was broadcast by Education Town Hall Radio. 

 

3.  Also, at the BAT Congress our Quality of Life Workplace Team met with the USDOE about teacher working conditions in this country.  This meeting happened due to the partnership between the BATs Quality of Workplace Team and AFT on a study in which  over 90,000 teachers filled out (30,000 completing) on the quality/working conditions of the teaching workplace.  See here for the full report

http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/worklifesurveyresults2015.pdf

 

4.  As a result of our Quality of  Workplace Team, an amendment was written into the ESEA Reauthorization bill to study and assess school conditions for children and teachers. 

 

4.  BATs have presented at some of the biggest education conferences in the nation.  Roots Camp, Netroots, AFT TEACH, and Network for Public Education.

 

5.  BATs have a strong and vocal caucus in the NEA (NEA BAT Caucus) which now has over 200 members and who dropped  17 NBIs this year with  10 were approved.    BATs will be applying for an AFT Caucus this year, so we will have caucuses in both major unions.

 

6.  BATs continues to be a strong presence on social media, specifically twitter, where many of their campaigns highlights the attack on our public school children, our communities, and our teachers.  See #evaluatethat  #whatif  and the hijacking of the #EmployeeFreedom hashtag that Right to Work groups were going to use to tout the fact that educators could not join unions. 

 

7.  BATs appears on radio frequently.  Education Town Hall, The Rick Smith Show, The Jeff Santos Show, and Just Let Me Teach allow rank and file educators from BATs extend their voice over the airwaves to the general public and the nation.  

 

8.  BATs continues to support and partner with other organizations around the country in the fight for equity and public education.  We have proudly partnered with Network for Public Education, United Opt Out, and Save our Schools.

 

9.  Our state BATs groups have mobilized for on the ground action to bring to light the attacks on public education children, schools, and teachers.  Our WA BATs have protested the Gates Foundation, our Oregon BATs protested Pearson, our Nevada BATs held a large rally in Las Vegas about the attacks on the teaching profession, our Florida BATs protested the Jeb Bush education summit, our NY BATs continue to work with NYSAPE and other parent coalitions to demonstrate regularly – the latest was a protest against Gov. Cuomo at the NY State Fair, our Ohio BATs were a strong force in a protest when Gov. Kasich announced his presidential bid.  BATs are everywhere!

 

10.  BATs will be filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the case of Friedrichs vs. CTA.  This is the case that could essentially make us a Right to Work NATION!

 

11.  BATs have been featured in over 200 news articles from the Washington Post, to the New York Times, Time Magazine,  and the Huffington Post.   Google us!

 

What is this letter asking of you today?  We are asking you to be a supporter of our work.  We do not take money from large foundations but we rely on our friends in this fight and on people like you to support our work.  Much of what we do costs money.  We need funds to continue to operate our website, buy supplies, push out mailings, conduct robo calls, hold our yearly event, apply to conferences so that we can spread the BAT message, register BAT panels at education conferences around the nation, and to continue to get our message out in a variety of venues.   We look to the future of BATs as unlimited possibilities.  We look to being able to buy ads in major papers to counter the rhetoric of corporate education reform, we look to the possibility of buying moving ads to get our message out about the attacks on public education, we look to the possibility of buying billboards so that the general public can see in full view that their public schools are under attack by the 1% for profit.  Our future has no limits if we have the revenue to do it.  So, won’t you please be a supporter of our work?

Do you believe in our message?  If so, please support it.   We are now a 501(c ) 4 and have a structure built for success.  See here  http://badassteachers.blogspot.com/2015/10/big-bat-surprise-month-bats-became-501c4.html   (*donations ARE NOT tax deductible)

What will you get?  We will be listing all of our supporters on our website for all to see at the end of this fundraising drive!

We hope that you will consider being a BAT supporter because that will tell us  you believe in our work.  At the end of our Fall Fundraising Drive (October 31) we will be putting all our supporter names on our BATs Wall of Supporters.  We hope you will consider placing your name and/or your organization on that wall.  You can donate on our website by clicking the PayPal donate button at the top left of this page. You can also send a check made out to The Badass Teachers Association, Inc,  P.O. Box 1390, Bellmore, NY 11710.   Thanks for being a supporter, you will NOT regret it. 

 

In Solidarity

Marla Kilfoyle, Executive Director

Melissa Tomlinson, Asst. Executive Director BATS:

Badass Teacher (BAT) Association

WELCOME TO THE BAT CAVE

Badass Teacher Association Web Site

September 2015

Dudley aka Origin
"September 2015" by Dudley aka Origin. Released: 2015.

00:00 / 01:38

• 1. September 2015

Budget Disputes in Pennsylvania’s Legislature Could Force Public Schools to Shut Down - The Atlantic

Budget Disputes in Pennsylvania’s Legislature Could Force Public Schools to Shut Down - The Atlantic:

The Tenuous Fate of Pennsylvania’s Public Schools

The legislature’s budget disagreements could mean that many of the Keystone State’s schools are about to shut down

Pennsylvania public schools are now at Defcon 1—borrowing millions of dollars to keep the lights on, starting to ask teachers to work without pay, and even voting to shut the schoolhouse doors and send the kids home—all because an unprecedented state budget crisis has left them within weeks of insolvency.

Funds are running out so fast in Erie, the state’s fourth-largest city, that the schools could shut down by November 1. The school board last month unanimously authorized this previously unthinkable option. If the money runs dry, Erie would consider requiring its 12,000 students to stay home for a week or two.

Yes, it would disrupt their learning. Yes, it would present families with unexpected childcare chaos. But talking to the anxious administrators on the ground, it soon becomes clear: Their options are disappearing as quickly as their bank accounts.

“By the end of October, if there’s no movement, we’re in trouble.”

“Nobody anticipated the budget would come in on time ... we knew that this impasse would happen, but as it drags on and the effects become more real, it takes on the sense of a crisis,” said the superintendent of Erie’s Public Schools Jay Badams. “It also seems more and more ridiculous. All of our money’s sitting there in Harrisburg [the state capitol] and here we are having to contemplate shutting down.”

Such are the outrageous options that a startling number of Pennsylvania school superintendents are actively considering, three-plus months into the state budget standstill that’s left 500 of them struggling to make it through the first half of the school year with page after page of their budgets missing in action.

Legislators’ inaction since the deal was due June 30 has, so far, resulted in the withholding of some $2 billion in state-aid payments to districts. By the end of this month, that number is expected to soar to $3 billion. Even in the Keystone state, where budgets are routinely delayed by weeks or months, this is uncharted territory, school officials say, and goes far beyond the usual faceoff between states and their school districts over funding allocations.

Exacerbating the Harrisburg hangup: Many Pennsylvania districts, still recovering from the recession and a massive 2011 state-aid cut, were already financially vulnerable.

The PTSA has stepped up to fundraise— but you can only hold so many bake sales.

“They were going into this delayed budget with less financial resources behind them than they would have the last time around,” said Steve Robinson, a Budget Disputes in Pennsylvania’s Legislature Could Force Public Schools to Shut Down - The Atlantic:

Shadow of Paul Vallas hangs over Chicago’s Corporate Education Reform Industry scandal - Wait What?

Shadow of Paul Vallas hangs over Chicago’s Corporate Education Reform Industry scandal - Wait What?:

Shadow of Paul Vallas hangs over Chicago’s Corporate Education Reform Industry scandal

Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools and one of the Corporate Education Reform Industry’s most prominent leaders, we be in federal court today – Tuesday, October 13, 2015 – to face charges criminal stemming from her indictment in a $23.5 million contract and kick-back scheme.  A guilty plea is expected.

Charges were also filed against The SUPES Academy LLC and Synesi Associates LLC, as well as against the owners of those two companies, Gary Solomon and Thomas Vranas.  According to the indictment, their role in the kick-back scheme includes charges of bribery and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

A third company owned by the two individuals, PROACT Search, a superintendent search firm that provided New Haven with Superintendent Garth Harris and Norwalk with Superintendent Steven Adamowski has also been caught up in the FBI’s investigation into the Chicago scandal.

As the Chicago Sun Times reported last week,

“Even before she was hired to run Chicago Public Schools, Barbara Byrd-Bennett set up a scheme to get a 10 percent kickback on all the CPS contracts she could steer to a former employer, in part to set up a college fund for her twin grandsons, authorities said Thursday.

The feds found damning, detailed emails between her and her ex-boss, Gary Solomon —

[…]

“I have tuition to pay and casinos to visit :)” the feds say Byrd-Bennett wrote in one of many emails discussing the alleged kickbacks.

In a follow up story the Chicago Sun Times added,

“In another email from December 2012, Solomon assured Byrd-Bennett that trust accounts had been set up in the names of two of her young relatives, each funded with tens of thousands of dollars, federal prosecutors alleged. The cash would be hers once she stepped down from her public post and rejoined his firm.

‘It is our assumption that the distribution will serve as a signing bonus upon your return to SUPES,’ Solomon wrote, according to prosecutors. ‘If you only join for the day, you will be the highest paid person on the planet for that day.’

Prior to being hand-picked by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to run Chicago’s Public Schools, Byrd-Bennett worked as a consultant and lead teacher for The Supes Academy, worked as a consultant for Synesi Associates and was listed as a part of the management team at PROACT Search.

While many key actors in the Corporate Education Reform Industry have been involved with Gary Solomon and his companies, one of the most prominent names on Solomon’s list of close colleagues is the Great Paul Vallas, the Education Reform Guru and former CEO of the Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans  public school systems.

More recently, Democratic Governor and education reform disciple Dannel Malloy brought Vallas to Bridgeport, Connecticut and then twisted Connecticut law in knots so that Vallas could stay for two years until local residents had finally had enough and forced Vallas to Shadow of Paul Vallas hangs over Chicago’s Corporate Education Reform Industry scandal - Wait What?:

Russ on Reading: Teacher Autonomy, Accountability and Baseball

Russ on Reading: Teacher Autonomy, Accountability and Baseball:

Teacher Autonomy, Accountability and Baseball

I don’t think that the primary problem in American education is the lack of teacher quality, or that part of the solution would be to find the best and the brightest to become teachers. The quality of an education system can exceed the quality of its teachers if teaching is seen as a team sport, not as an individual race.

Pasi Sahlberg, Visiting Professor of Practice in 

Education, Graduate School of Education, Harvard 

University

Pasi Sahlberg is the former director general of the Finnish Ministry of Education, heading a public education program that has long been held up as a model because of high scores on PISA international tests of literacy and mathematics. In my view, Sahlberg is onto something that American corporate education reformers are ignoring at the peril of all school children. Quality education is not a matter of common standards, school choice, hero teachers, principal autonomy or teacher evaluation based on test scores. Quality education is a combination of informed, enlightened and engaged leadership, teacher quality, teacher teamwork, teacher autonomy and teacher accountability based on the quality of instruction, the quality of interactions with other teachers and the ability to reflect and grow as a professional.

I am a huge baseball fan. For me the game of baseball is a metaphor for life. Sahlberg says that education needs to be seen as a team sport. The best baseball teams are made up of individuals of talent who work together for the common good. Sure, many teams have a superstar player or two, but interestingly, superstar players do not guarantee success of the team. Many of the greatest players of all time never played in the World Series – Ernie Banks, Nolan Ryan, Ken Griffey, Jr., Rod Carew. This year 10 teams made the playoffs. One of those Russ on Reading: Teacher Autonomy, Accountability and Baseball:

Top 10 Education Questions for the 2015 Las Vegas #DemDebate @CNN @DonLemon | Cloaking Inequity

Top 10 Education Questions for the 2015 Las Vegas #DemDebate @CNN @DonLemon | Cloaking Inequity:

Top 10 Education Questions for the 2015 Las Vegas #DemDebate @CNN @DonLemon

CNN has invited questions for today’s #DemDebate in Las Vegas. They write,

What would you want to ask the candidates? Let us know on Twitter and Facebook using #DemDebate. Watch the debate on CNN at 8:30 p.m. EST.

Here are my Top 10 education questions for the 2015 Las Vegas #DemDebate in Las Vegas.

Don’t forget to submit your education questions!

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

Want to know about Cloaking Inequity’s freshly pressed conversations about educational policy? Click the “Follow blog by email” button on the home page.

Twitter: @ProfessorJVH

Click here for Vitae.Top 10 Education Questions for the 2015 Las Vegas #DemDebate @CNN @DonLemon | Cloaking Inequity:

How ridiculous would it be if we did this to our schools? (Oh wait, we did.) - The Washington Post

How ridiculous would it be if we did this to our schools? (Oh wait, we did.) - The Washington Post:

How ridiculous would it be if we did this to our schools? (Oh wait, we did.)

Here’s a thought experiment about charter schools from Mitchell Robinson, an associate professor and chair of music education at Michigan State University. Before moving to Michigan State, Robinson taught music for 10 years in the Fulton (NY) City School District, and held collegiate appointments at the University of Connecticut and the Eastman School of Music. This appeared on his blog.

By Mitchell Robinson

Imagine that your town established a private fire or police department, funded with your tax dollars, and staffed by young inexperienced college grads with no previous experience in fire fighting or law enforcement.

Imagine that these parallel organizations were given prime locations in existing facilities (built and paid for with public monies), displacing the professionals that had served your community for many years.

Imagine that these “new” fire and police forces could pick and choose which calls for their assistance they would respond to, choosing only the easiest and least dangerous cases and referring the difficult calls to the “old” departments–who were now understaffed and under-resourced. And that the “new” departments’ artificially high success rates would be trumpeted by the media as evidence of their effectiveness.

Imagine that these “new” employees only spent a year or two in their jobs as fire fighters and police officers, and then moved directly into positions as fire and police department chiefs and town mayors, promoting their former colleagues into positions on their town councils, and enacting changes to town guidelines and ordinances that promoted the “new” departments while continuing to siphon off resources that had previously been dedicated to supporting the “old” departments.

Imagine that as the “new” fire and police departments became more prevalent in your community, the numbers of damaging fires and crime rates showed a steady increase, but your mayor and town council ignored the evidence and passed laws lifting the “caps” on the number of “new” fire and police departments could be established.

Imagine that these “new” departments were clustered primarily in urban centers, while the fire and police departments in the suburbs remained well-funded and staffed by experienced, well-trained professionals.

Imagine that the leaders of these “new” fire and police departments paid How ridiculous would it be if we did this to our schools? (Oh wait, we did.) - The Washington Post:

Perdido Street School: Does Eva Moskowitz Use Suspensions To Boost Test Scores?

Perdido Street School: Does Eva Moskowitz Use Suspensions To Boost Test Scores?:

Does Eva Moskowitz Use Suspensions To Boost Test Scores?

From John Merrow's News Hour report on Success Acadmies last night:

JOHN MERROW: Success Academies are obviously doing something right. Last year, 93 percent of Success Academy students passed the state’s math test, compared to just 35 percent in the city’s traditional public schools.

Could out-of-school suspensions be a factor in the network’s academic success? Eva Moskowitz’s critics think so. They accuse her of suspending very young children over and over to persuade parents to change schools before state testing begins in third grade. Could that be true? We do know that some Success Academy students are suspended over and over.

The 44 suspensions at this school were issued to just 11 kindergartners and first graders. One child was suspended 12 times. Eventually, the family withdrew the child. At another Success Academy, 101 suspensions went to just 32 students.

...

JOHN MERROW: Do you ever use out-of-school suspension as a way to persuade parents that…

EVA MOSKOWITZ: No. No. We don’t suspend in order to boost our academics. Like, that’s just crazy talk.

JOHN MERROW: But our sources, including several public school principals, quite a few former Success Academy parents, and one person inside her organization, charge that is exactly what she does, repeatedly suspend certain kids to push them out. However, none of these critics were willing to publicly confront Moskowitz.

EVA MOSKOWITZ: Well, the numbers just don’t support that, John. I mean, what you get is what you see, which is suspending kids doesn’t lead to high attrition rate. That is what the data shows.

JOHN MERROW: In fact, the attrition rate is at least twice that of another major charter network, KIPP. A Success Academy representative told thaws for every 100 new students, at least 10 leave before the year’s out, most of them in the first few months. They are then replaced by students chosen from the waiting list.

Had Moskowitz run for mayor, this was the kind of thing that would have gotten zoned in on during the campaign - and I guarantee you, Eva and Success would not stand up to real scrutiny.

Not with those suspension numbers, not with those those attrition numbers and especially not with the anecdotes from former students and their parents.Perdido Street School: Does Eva Moskowitz Use Suspensions To Boost Test Scores?: