Why adults have to stop trying so darn hard to control how children play - The Washington Post

Why adults have to stop trying so darn hard to control how children play - The Washington Post:

Why adults have to stop trying so darn hard to control how children play

Here’s a new piece from Angela Hanscom, a pediatric occupational therapist and founder of TimberNook, a nature-based development program designed to foster creativity and independent play outdoors in New England. She has written a number of popular posts on this blog, including “Why so many kids can’t sit still in school today,” as well as “The right — and surprisingly wrong — ways to get kids to sit still in class” and “How schools ruined recess.” This post is the latest in her exploration of the effects on young children of limited movement. Her book, “Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children,” will be published in April 2016.

By Angela Hanscom

“Cut it out!” a little girl screams at the top of her lungs.

“Yeah!” Another girl yells. “Back away!”

I look over in the far corner of the woods to see a small group of girls holding hands and forming what looks to be a wall in front of a teepee they just created. A little boy stands in front of them with a face that is beet red. He is shaking from head to toe.

“I will NOT!” he yells back. “You have to let me play! That is the rules!” He gets dangerously close to them.

The adults observing the children look over at me with worried looks. I instruct them to observe but stay close and hidden among the trees. Secretly, I’m wondering if we should intervene now, but something tells me to wait. The little boy reaches up and tears down a piece of their tepee. “Stop it!” one of the girls yells. They don’t back down. A few more girls come and form a wall with them. The little boy suddenly reaches into their tepee and grabs the “jewels” they have hidden in there and takes off running.

The girls let go of each other’s hands and start chasing after him. They run around and around the trees in hot pursuit of the little boy. He finally comes to a stop and turns to face them. He holds out his hand and says, “FINE! Have them!” He returns the stolen jewels, stomps off, and finally sits down in front of an old oak tree – sulking. The girls resume playing “house” in their tepee.

Not even two minutes pass before one of the girls from the tepee group walks Why adults have to stop trying so darn hard to control how children play - The Washington Post:

The Original ESEA: Only 32 Pages | deutsch29

The Original ESEA: Only 32 Pages | deutsch29:

The Original ESEA: Only 32 Pages

On December 10, 2015, President Obama signed the latest revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) into law.

This latest ESEA version, called the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA),is 1,061 pages long and will replace the 670-page No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB).

ESEA has become really complicated, and through it, the federal government has made standardized testing its centerpiece and has shaped the document in favor of market-based education reform.

The original ESEA (April 11,1965) was only 32 pages long and was itself an amended version of Public Law 81-874 (“Impact Aid”), an effort for the federal government to assist public education costs that were impacted by federal defense. (Read more about PL 81-874 here.)

ESEA of 1965 was originally comprised of six titles (the primary one was Title I, ten pages long):

Title I: Financial Assistance to Local Education Agencies for the Education of Children of Low-income Families and Extension of Public Law 874, Eighty-first Congress

Title II: School Library Resources, Textbooks, and Other Instructional Materials

Title III: Supplementary Educational Centers and Services

Title IV: Educational Research and Training

Title V: Grants to Strengthen State Departments of Education

Title VI: General Provisions

Near the end of the 1965 ESEA document is the following:

FEDERAL CONTROL OF EDUCATION PROHIBITED SEC. 604. Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system.

Arne Duncan has certainly pushed the envelope on this one.

By November 1966, ESEA was amended to include “Education of Handicapped The Original ESEA: Only 32 Pages | deutsch29:

Divided On Arrival: Even In Diverse Schools, New Immigrants Face Bullying | WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio

Divided On Arrival: Even In Diverse Schools, New Immigrants Face Bullying | WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio:

Divided On Arrival: Even In Diverse Schools, New Immigrants Face Bullying 

Students labeled as 'chanchi' can be targets of violence

In Montgomery County, some schools have hundreds of new students who arrived illegally and alone in the United States after fleeing gangs in some of the most dangerous countries in the world. These Central American youth escaped those threats, but new ones are often waiting.

In the halls of many of the Maryland district's middle and high schools you can see a rainbow of races and ethnicities, but barriers divide those students — and the divisions are sometimes manifested through bullying and violence.

Jennifer, who is a junior at Watkins Mill High School in Gaithersburg, says one barrier in particular is very real.

“There’s the Americanized kids, whether they’re Hispanics, or blacks or white, and then there’s the newly arrived kids from Central America,” she says.

Students aren’t the only ones who have felt the effects. Parents and educators have expressed fears, and police have increased their presence at the school. (Like all the youths in this story, Jennifer is going by her middle name because of concerns over retaliation.)

Jennifer considers herself Americanized. She was born in El Salvador but has lived in Montgomery County since she was a toddler. “It doesn’t socially look right for the Americanized kids to be friends with the newly arrived kids,” she says.

There are about 200 newly arrived immigrant students at Watkins Mill. They’re among the thousands of Central American youth who have arrived in the region over the last five years and enrolled in similar schools across Maryland, Virginia and D.C.

Jennifer says it’s hard to make a connection with the newcomers. “We like to exclude them for the simple fact that they are so different,” she says.

“[Chanchi] it's like a piece of garbage you find on the street — you aren’t capable of learning anything, of understanding anything.— Ashli, 16, a student at Watkins Mill High School

A slur, and more

That exclusion comes with a label attached, the Spanish word “chanchi,” which means piglet.

“Anyone that’s not Americanized is basically a 'chanchi' but that only goes for the Hispanic kids. If you are from India and don’t speak English you just don’t speak English, there is no code name,” explains Jennifer.

Ashli is also 16, also from El Salvador, but unlike Jennifer, she is recently arrived in the United States. Since fleeing her home country last year, she’s heard the word “chanchi” frequently.

“That word ‘chanchi,’ it’s something like a dirty animal, a pig,” she says in Spanish. “That word it’s like a piece of garbage you find on the street — you aren’t capable of learning anything, of understanding anything.”

“Chanchi” has become a commonplace slur and a way to “otherize” newcomers according to counselor Giselle Martinez. She says she has heard it at schools in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, and Baltimore City.

“Chanchi was yelled in the hallway, chanchi was written on someone’s notebook," she says. "Chanchi on the locker, it was written with permanent marker.”

It’s gone beyond just words. The bullying has erupted into violence. On Nov. 20, students at Watkins Mill High School posted Twitter videos showing brawls inside and outside the school. Most have been taken down.

According to the school’s administration, 19 students were suspended, while three face permanent expulsion. Police made arrests in the attacks. The victims were two recently arrived immigrant youth.

‘It is a reality’

The Watkins Mill fight is the latest example of the growing tensions. Maria Navarro is the chief academic officer for Montgomery County Public Schools. She says she’s heard the concern about bullying of newcomers from students and staff.

“It is something that we need to continue to step on and not let go of the intensity pedal because it is a reality in our schools,” Navarro says.

That reality makes for unwelcoming conditions. Many school administrators, teachers and counselors don’t speak Divided On Arrival: Even In Diverse Schools, New Immigrants Face Bullying | WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio:

With A Brooklyn Accent: An "Affirmative Action" Story to Bring Us Back to Reality

With A Brooklyn Accent: An "Affirmative Action" Story to Bring Us Back to Reality:

An "Affirmative Action" Story to Bring Us Back to Reality

Just a heads up: the number of alumni children (legacies); recruited athletes ( most of whom are white and play non-revenue sports) and students whose parents pay full tuition far outnumber the "under represented minorities" as beneficiaries of Preferential Admissions Policies at top universities. Yet it is only Race Based affirmative action which prompts outrage and lawsuits.
To illustrate this point, let me point to a real life incident when my son Eric was pitching and winning a championship game against Long Island Lutheran

Eric was having a great day on the mound so the first based umpire said to his coach Walter Paller, "that kid is really good. Where is he going to college When Walter said "Yale" the umpire said "Wow, he must be really smart." The Long Island Lutheran first baseman then entered the conversation " Not necessarily," he said. "My friend is dumb as s..t. But she's a great volleyball player so she is going to Yale."
A book by Bowen and Shapiro called "The Game of Life" documents With A Brooklyn Accent: An "Affirmative Action" Story to Bring Us Back to Reality:

Zuckerbergs’ New Philanthropy Promotes Charity over Justice | janresseger

Zuckerbergs’ New Philanthropy Promotes Charity over Justice | janresseger:

Zuckerbergs’ New Philanthropy Promotes Charity over Justice

After today, this blog will take a winter break. Congress and state legislatures will recess. Schools will close for winter break. Universities that do the research on educational policy will break at semester’s end. And here at home, it’s time to cook and shop and prepare for the visit of adult children.  If there is earth-shaking news on education, I’ll put out an EXTRA.  Otherwise, check for a new post on January 4, 2016. Good wishes to you and yours!  Enjoy your family’s traditions, some good food, great music, and a good book. It is OK to put off until 2016 the project of figuring out what the new ESSA will mean!

In Fire in the Ashes, a reflection on twenty-five years’ of writing about the challenges for families and schools in very poor communities, Jonathan Kozol considers the difference between charity and justice: “(C)harity has never been a substitute, not in any amplitude, for systematic justice and systematic equity in public education… (T)he public schools themselves in neighborhoods of widespread destitution ought to have the rich resources, small classes, and well-prepared and well-rewarded teachers that would enable us to give every child the feast of learning…. Charity and chance… are not the way to educate the children of a genuine democracy.” (p. 204)

Public education serves more than 50 million children in cities, towns, suburbs, and rural areas across the United States.  Public schools are the quintessential institution of the 99 Percent.  But these days, the policy that shapes our public schools is being increasingly driven by the focused investment of the wealthy philanthropists in the One Percent. Charity—by which wealthy donors choose their favorite worthy causes— has driven hedge fund money to Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies in New York City, invested Gates Foundation money in Hillsborough County, Florida to experiment with merit pay for teachers based on econometric measures, and resulted in Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to charterize a large number of schools in Newark, New Jersey.

Charity can be disruptive and experimental—try something new, see whether it works.  By its very definition, justice must be systemic, and it must embody the principles of adequate Zuckerbergs’ New Philanthropy Promotes Charity over Justice | janresseger:

A Guide to Evaluating Pay for Success Programs and Social Impact Bonds | ITPI | In the Public Interest

A Guide to Evaluating Pay for Success Programs and Social Impact Bonds | ITPI | In the Public Interest:

A Guide to Evaluating Pay for Success Programs and Social Impact Bonds

There’s no free lunch. Yet across the country, advocates of Pay for Success (PFS), or Social Impact Bonds (SIBs), serve up this alternative private financing model as a cost-free, risk-free silver bullet to support critical, yet underfunded, public services. As local and state governments rush to pass enabling legislation and strike deals with investors, a closer examination of these schemes is warranted. 

A Guide to Evaluating Pay for Success Programs and Social Impact Bonds aims to help advocates identify the critical issues surrounding PFS contracts and their impact on vulnerable individuals and the public. We describe these issues and include a list of key questions advocates can raise to help ensure that decision makers make choices that advance the public good.

What is Pay for Success?

PFS brings venture capital to the provision of public services. Investors, such as Goldman Sachs or Bank of America, provide up-front funds for critical preventive services with the expectation of receiving a return on their investment. The theory is that the private investment dollars can fill a funding gap when government doesn’t have adequate financial resources to spend on prevention activities.

Under a PFS arrangement, the government repays the loan with interest if pre-determined social outcome targets are met. The theory presumes that even after paying the investors and service providers, the state ultimately reaps financial savings through foregone budget dollars spent to address future more costly, but now avoided, social problems. But PFS looks better on paper than in reality. A closer look at how they operate raises issues that warrant careful consideration for decision-makers looking to undertake a PFS.

Some Important Questions to Ask

• What is the price and performance advantage of the PFS model over traditional financing and performance methods?
• If PFS is being considered to scale up a program with a proven, evidence based record of success, why is the PFS structure being used in lieu of traditional public funding?
• Do the investors, consultants, intermediaries, service providers or government officials have any conflicts of interest?
• Are the outcomes appropriate for the program intervention?

A Guide to Evaluating Pay for Success Programs and Social Impact Bonds is coauthored by In the Public Interest, AFSCME, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, Keystone Research Center, Oregon Center for Public Policy, Economic Opportunity Institute, Center for Effective Government, and the ReFund America Project at the Roosevelt Institute

We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email: info@inthepublicinterest.org.

A Guide to Evaluating Pay for Success Programs and Social Impact Bonds | ITPI | In the Public Interest:

What Are Social Impact Bonds and Why They Are a Very Bad Idea | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/1Ud88Id

Brazil is Testing U.S. Education Policies Including Charter Schools and Pay-For-Performance - The Atlantic

Brazil is Testing U.S. Education Policies Including Charter Schools and Pay-For-Performance - The Atlantic:

Testing U.S. Education Policies in Brazil
The country has implemented a series of strategies including pay-for-performance and charter schools, modeled after the American system.

Tying teacher pay to student test scores. Creating public schools of choice with private operators. Setting common standards for all students. Those issues probably are familiar to any American reporter who covers education. They are also becoming more and more common in Brazil, where many policymakers are deeply inspired by the American experience.

The most widespread policy in Brazil that draws on the U.S. experience is paying performance bonuses to teachers based on students’ test scores. A study presented in August 2015 at the annual meeting of the Brazilian Association of Educational Evaluation showed that 13 of Brazil’s 27 states were already adopting some kind of pay-for-performance approach. Because big states in Brazil, such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas and Pernambuco, have those programs, the majority of Brazilian students are now enrolled in school systems with this kind of policy. (Rio and São Paulo are the two biggest Brazilian cities and capitals of states with the same names.)

As in the United States, the debate over this subject is affected strongly by ideology in Brazil. In this case, the best an education reporter can do is look for empirical evidence on whether the programs are benefiting those who really matter in schools: the students.

* * *

What makes the job for a Brazilian journalist harder is that we still have very few rigorous studies published on the topic. In fact, although this policy is already in place in half of Brazil’s states, only four studies have been published on the subject in my country. And they all show mixed results. Small gains in some areas, no visible results in others.

Because of the weak evidence in Brazil, it makes sense to look for international experiences, mostly in the United States, where more evaluations have been conducted. But again, it seems that there is no simple answer for such a complex issue, and we still don’t have sufficient evidence, even from the American experience, that those programs work. The latest study from Mathematica Policy Research, a U.S. research organization, finds a small gain in students’ reading achievement after two years of implementation of a pay-for-performance program, but in math the impact was not statistically significant.

There is no sign that the majority of Brazilian states will abandon their performance-pay programs. That makes it even more important for journalists to keep looking for evidence about how this policy works (or doesn’t), in Brazil, the United States, or other countries, without forgetting that the context and program details in each state or country matter a lot.

While we are still waiting for more evidence on performance pay, another hot topic in the U.S. context appears to be arriving in Brazil: charter schools. A growing number of Brazilian economists and education managers, often referring to the American experience, argue that we should experiment with giving public money to private organizations to run schools open to all children.

In the state of Goias (in the middle of the country, where the nation’s capital, Brasilia, is located), the governor announced in October that 25 percent of public schools will be run by private organizations. We still don’t know all the details about how this will work, as the local press is reporting that there is no consensus between the governor and the state secretary of education. The governor is pushing for an approach similar to the American charter school model: Schools operate under a contract that gives them some flexibility, such as in the hiring and firing of teachers, but with the obligation to meet certain academic Brazil is Testing U.S. Education Policies Including Charter Schools and Pay-For-Performance - The Atlantic:

Katherine Bradley's influence calls into question who really makes the decisions on D.C. education reform - Washington City Paper

Katherine Bradley's influence calls into question who really makes the decisions on D.C. education reform - Washington City Paper:

Shadow Chancellor

Katherine Bradley's influence calls into question who really makes the decisions about D.C. education reform

She’s the wife of a media mogul, a friend of the Washington Post’s Graham family. She’s a philanthropist, adviser to public officials, and conduit to private foundations and investors in what has become her life’s work. In D.C., likely no private citizen is more involved in public education than Katherine Bradley.

Bradley and her husband, David Bradley, chairman of Atlantic Media Company, are completely committed to education, and they have the means to affect policy at the highest level. They live in a mansion and have offices in the Watergate complex. They host galas and hobnob with business and political elite. In 2012, the Washington Business Journal named the couple “Philanthropists of the Year.”

Operating in a nebulous zone between D.C. Public Schools and a network of charter school operators, innovators, and fellow donors, Katherine Bradley is a force multiplier: As secretary of the Federal City Council, a nonprofit collective of District power brokers, and chair of its Education Reform Committee, she and former Post owner Donald Graham and former Mayor Anthony Williams, both executive officers, form a virtual trilateral education commission. They talk broadly about public education reform, and they pour money, energy, and influence into privately managed solutions.

Bradley’s primary advocacy vehicle is CityBridge Foundation, a nonprofit that distributed nearly $25 million in grants, scholarships, and donations from 2004 to 2013—mostly to charter schools and groups like Teach for America, which received $2.5 million according to tax filings. The Bradleys personally gave more than $20 million to CityBridge during that time. Like Bradley herself, the foundation is at the center of a constellation of private interests that are promoting charter schools in D.C. and around the country. The organization partners with TFA, Friends of Choice in Urban Education, and Charter Board Partners, and counts among its “Thought Partners” the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.

Proponents of “choice” welcome CityBridge as a policy force. Others find Bradley’s influence unsettling, especially at a time when cities are pushing back against privatization of public education as a pathway to successful outcomes and equality of access. Bradley describes herself as a “cross-spectrum advocate,” and denies she has an outsized role: “Like most others in education philanthropy, I have a strategic view about how to build a system of schools that will serve all children well, and I have shared that perspective broadly, if primarily, with a business and philanthropic audience,” she wrote last year in response to inquiries for this story.

DCPS is entering its second decade of a reform effort into its fifth mayoral administration. That “business Katherine Bradley's influence calls into question who really makes the decisions on D.C. education reform - Washington City Paper:

Can Anti-testing Bloc Swing the 2016 Election? | Al Jazeera America

Can Anti-testing Bloc Swing the 2016 Election? | Al Jazeera America:

Can anti-testing bloc swing the 2016 election?

A candidate who embraces the anti-testing movement in education can draw support across party lines

Public school teachers and other opponents of high-stakes testing won a significant, if partial, victory when Congress agreed to revise the No Child Left Behind act on Wednesday. The new law greatly reduces federal penalties on schools that don’t raise standardized test scores quickly enough, even though it leaves many of those tests in place. Most important for teachers, it stops their evaluations from being tied to student test scores. The test-and-punish regime that disappoints and discourages many teachers could soon be a thing of the past.

The No Child Left Behind act, adopted in 2001, brought a battery of tests intended to measure the successes of public schools against a uniform national standard. But as the testing regimen steadily ramped up, consuming more and more school time, a countermovement has grown across the country. This anti-standardized-testing sentiment proves that there are few subjects that get parents as riled up as the education of their children.

The new law, while a welcome change, has not ended the fight against overtesting; it has merely moved the contest back to the states, which will now determine their own policies around testing. As the campaign season continues apace, there is reason for candidates to use their bully pulpits to ride the surge of local discontent over the state of public education in their communities. But it remains to be seen which of the 2016 presidential contenders will decide to champion the effort and tap its momentum. 

Too many tests

It’s not hard to see why tests cause many parents to dread sending their kids to school. An August study from Mother Jones found that the average American student takes 10 to 20 standardized tests per year, and a 2013 study from the American Federation of Teachers found tests take up 50 hours a year, and test preparation, 60 hours. Recess, imaginative teaching and socialization are all compromised in favor of cramming for exams. According to a 2014 PDK/Gallup poll, 2 out of 3 public school parents surveyed said they think “standardized tests are not helpful” in teaching students, and 69 percent of public school parents polled said they oppose using student test results in teacher evaluations — up from 58 percent in 2013; PDK/Gallup polling released this summer showed 44 percent said they believe parents should be able to opt out of having their children take standardized tests. 

The opt-out movement began in New York, where more than 200,000 pupils, or 20 percent of students, opted out of at least one standardized test in the state during the 2014–15 school year, The New York Times reported. Opt out is now spreading across a diverse array of states, including other populous states such as California and Texas.

In September, Seattle teachers went out on strike for the first time in 30 years to advocate for better conditions for teachers and students — and less testing. As with the 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike, these union members were demanding not just wage increases but also benefits for their students, including a more balanced school day Can Anti-testing Bloc Swing the 2016 Election? | Al Jazeera America:

‘Snyder Flu’ Continues As Detroit Students, Teachers Protest Plan For Charter Schools « CBS Detroit

‘Snyder Flu’ Continues As Detroit Students, Teachers Protest Plan For Charter Schools « CBS Detroit:

‘Snyder Flu’ Continues As Detroit Students, Teachers Protest Plan For Charter Schools

DETROIT (WWJ) – A handful of Detroit schools have closed this week due to what has been called ‘Snyder Flu’ and Thursday was no different.

A plan in Lansing supported by Gov. Rick Snyder would turn dozens of schools in the city into charter schools in exchange for millions of dollars to cover a portion of the district’s debt.

A small group made up of students and a few teachers on Cass near Mac Avenue gathered in protest — the group obviously against a legislative plan to turn dozens of Detroit public schools into charter schools.

Protestors gathered across the street from Det DSA to rally against proposed changes by gov Snyder. @WWJ950 pic.twitter.com/zMIWhHhDLE

— Stephanie Davis (@sdaviswwj) December 10, 2015

Cass Tech teacher and activist Steve Conn, who was leading the protest, says the sick-out is just a start of things to come.

“The fight is going to continue until victory because we have had enough of 16 years of dismantling education – the future of the city is the future of public education,” says Conn. “Snyder has to back off and give us our money without charter strings attached – give us the money back that they stole. We’re going to continue to fight, we’re going to continue to strike. Every student, every teacher, every parent is going to be on our side.”

Conn called on parents to help the movement for equality of education.‘Snyder Flu’ Continues As Detroit Students, Teachers Protest Plan For Charter Schools « CBS Detroit: 

Taxpayer money wasted on private property when charter schools close

Taxpayer money wasted on private property when charter schools close:

Taxpayer money wasted on private property when charter schools close

The state lost as much as $150,000 in taxpayer money it invested in two Treasure Coast charter schools that lasted less than eight years.

That money was intended to help pay for rent, renovations and equipment for the now-closed Indian River Academy Charter School and Dizzy Gillespie School of the Fine & Performing Arts in Martin County.

The state and school districts can recover buses, computers and other equipment bought with state funds, but money spent on renting and renovating private property stays in private pockets.

This is symptomatic of a statewide problem. Florida invested more than $70 million in charter schools that closed, according to an AP investigation.

Though conditions for obtaining the money are stricter today, the controversy continues. Of the 10 existing Treasure Coast charter schools that have received $15.2 million from the Department of Education's Charter School Capital Outlay fund since 1999, six are on private property, according to tax records.

Gillespie and the Academy — not to be confused with today's Indian River Charter High School or the renamed Highlands Elementary, Indian River Academy — are the only local charter schools that closed after receiving the state money. Orange Avenue Charter School and The Charter School of Fort Pierce in St. Lucie County closed in 1999 and 2009 respectively, but did not receive these state funds.

Click here to view the map in a full window.

WHO BENEFITTED?

It's difficult to determine how Gillespie and the Academy spent the money because school districts can toss budget documents after seven years. Because Gillespie closed in 2001 and the Academy closed in 2005, the only way to know how the schools spent the money is to talk to officials who were there at the time.

Former Principal Joe Flanagan remembers Gillespie erecting new walls, painting the rented building and installing new wiring, but it's not clear whether the money came from the state, or somewhere else. Gillespie spent $82,718 on building repairs during its first school year, but that was before the school received the state funding, according to an expense statement.

Then-property owner Anna Chason wouldn't comment on the building improvements, as her late husband Vernon Chason was in charge of the company that owned the property when Gillespie was a tenant.

The Academy was in a private building on public land owned by the Vero Beach Regional Airport. No one Treasure Coast Newspapers interviewed knew how the school spent the money.

The airport property's taxable value has increased from $1.2 million to $2.1 million since 2002, but it's difficult to determine whether taxpayer money played any role because the commercial plaza has dozens of tenants in four buildings, each with multiple spaces. Airport Director Ericson Menger said he thinks the school improvements likely added to the property's value.

FEWER STUDENTS, LESS MONEY

Both elementary schools targeted different populations and closed for the same 

How Arne Duncan Lost The Common Core And His Legacy | FiveThirtyEight

How Arne Duncan Lost The Common Core And His Legacy | FiveThirtyEight:

How Arne Duncan Lost The Common Core And His Legacy

Arne Duncan could barely conceal a smirk as he answered the Republican congressman’s question about educational standards that his Education Department had encouraged states to adopt.

“Facts matter,” Duncan, the secretary of education, said, dismissing concerns raised by Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona that the Common Core standards amounted to a “federal takeover of curriculum.”

“It is not a black helicopter ploy,” Duncan said. “We’re not trying to get inside people’s minds and brains.”

The scene, from a May 2013 budget presentation, would seem unfamiliar now. Duncan is weeks away from leaving his post and surrendering much of his education policy reform agenda. When he announced his impending departure in October, a professor writing for the Brookings Institution quipped that he had become a “bipartisan institution — he attracted vitriol from the right and the left.”

On Thursday, President Obama is expected to sign the first new comprehensive education bill since President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law — a bill that will undo many of Duncan’s signature policy changes and scale back the role that the Education Department plays in overseeing schools. It will specifically prevent the secretary of education from attempting to “influence, incentivize or coerce” states to adopt standards such as the Common Core.

But in that budget meeting just two years ago, Duncan had reason to be dismissive of Salmon’s concerns. His department had offered incentives over the first five years of Obama’s presidency that convinced nearly every state to pledge adoption of the administration’s preferred policy changes. First, 18 states and Washington, D.C., won grants from the $4 billion Race to the Top program for promising to adopt the policy changes. Then, nearly all states applied for a waiver allowing them to duck penalties for missing some of the achievement targets of No Child Left Behind in exchange for signing up.

Those changes included pegging teacher evaluations to student performance on standardized tests and adopting “college and career-ready standards.” And while the department didn’t specify any particular set of standards, nearly every state said it would meet that goal by adopting the Common Core, a set of educational benchmarks in English and math that had been jointly developed a few years earlier by governors and state education chiefs across the country.

At that point, both Duncan and the standards shared broad bipartisan support. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman had suggested months before that Duncan’s ability to successfully negotiate with labor unions and drive education policy change made him the columnist’s choice to replace the outgoing Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

The Common Core standards, meanwhile, enjoyed rare approval from both teachers unions and so-called “education reformers,” most notably former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, perhaps thanks to the millions spent by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to get both sides on board. By the end of 2013, 45 How Arne Duncan Lost The Common Core And His Legacy | FiveThirtyEight:

Common Core takes a hit: N.Y. Gov. Cuomo’s task force recommends overhaul - The Washington Post

Common Core takes a hit: N.Y. Gov. Cuomo’s task force recommends overhaul - The Washington Post:

Common Core takes a hit: N.Y. Gov. Cuomo’s task force recommends overhaul

The Common Core initiative just took a hit in New York state: A task force created by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to review the curriculum and aligned standardized testing is recommending a total overhaul, saying that there were big mistakes in its implementation and that some of the early childhood standards are inappropriate.

The report released Thursday recommends a thorough review and suggests that a transition period last until the start of the 2019-2020 school year, when a new system is supposed to be implemented. Until then, it recommends, test scores obtained from Common Core standardized testing should no longer be used to evaluate “the performance of specific teachers or students.”

In New York state, up to 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation has depended on student standardized test scores in an assessment system that many have said was haphazardly designed. It created situations in which teachers were evaluated by the test scores of students they didn’t have in class and in subjects the teachers didn’t teach. For example, an art teacher could be evaluated by student math scores.

Why? High-stakes standardized tests are only given in math and English language arts, but because all teachers have to be evaluated by them, districts have found unusual ways to use the scores. Sometimes, school test averages are factored into all teachers’ evaluations. Sometimes, a certain group of teachers are attached to either reading or math scores; social studies teachers, for example are more often attached to English Language Arts scores while science teachers are attached to math scores.

In an introduction to the report released on Thursday, task force Chairman Richard Parsons wrote that mistakes were made in the rush to implement the standards. He said:

Repeatedly, testimony and public comments to us focused on the fact that educators were inundated with confusing information and new material without having first been brought into the process of developing how these new approaches were to be integrated into curricula and taught to students. And some of the new standards were simply inappropriate for certain student populations.

The Common Core Standards must be revisited to reflect the particular needs and priorities of State and local school districts and, building upon the foundation established by the Common Core Standards, high quality New York State Standards must be developed where necessary to meet the needs of our kids. Thereafter, new State curriculum resources and tests must be 

Common Core takes a hit: N.Y. Gov. Cuomo’s task force recommends overhaul - The Washington Post: