Ed Law Prof Blog: Charter School Study Offers New Findings on Student Achievement, Student Enrollment, and Teachers

Education Law Prof Blog: Charter School Study Offers New Findings on Student Achievement, Student Enrollment, and Teachers | National Education Policy Center:

Education Law Prof Blog: Charter School Study Offers New Findings on Student Achievement, Student Enrollment, and Teachers

A new study by researchers at the University of California, Differing Effects from Diverse Charter Schools: Uneven Student Selection and Achievement Growth in Los Angeles, offers interesting and complex new findings about how charter schools differ from traditional public schools, particularly in regard to the students and teachers they attract. Their breakthrough appears to be a function of distinguishing start-up charter schools from conversion charter schools. This allows them a new baseline against which to make comparisons:

Their major findings include:

• [in elementary school], conversion charters attracted pupils with considerably higher ELA and math scores, 0.34 SD and 0.32 SD higher at baseline than the respective means for TPS peers. 
• Conversion charters served a much lower share of Latino pupils, compared with the mean TPS (55% versus 77%), and a much lower percentage of children eligible for subsidized lunches (50% versus 84%). In short, conversion charter schools fill niches in economically better-off parts of LAUSD. Differences were similar when comparing students among charter and TPS middle schools.
• The organizational niches filled by start-up and conversion charters emerge even more vividly when turning to high schools . . . . The 28 start-up charter high schools enrolled pupils with significantly higher test scores at baseline. The mean ELA score for these students was 0.40 SD higher than TPS peers on average.
• These sectors also varied in terms of the kinds of teachers each attracted and retained. Many conversions essentially inherited their teaching staff after winning their independent status, while gaining discretion to attract the preferred mix of new teachers in the future. Table 3, beginning with elementary schools, shows that start-up charters employed much lower shares of tenured teachers or those with full credentials, although charter elementary schools tended to employ a higher share of teachers with masters degrees, compared with TPS peers. Just 19% of elementary teachers at start-up charters Charter schools in Los Angeles had tenure at baseline, compared with 63% employed by conversion charters and 86% at TPS campuses. These differences are reflected in the mean years of teaching experience: 4.8 years Education Law Prof Blog: Charter School Study Offers New Findings on Student Achievement, Student Enrollment, and Teachers | National Education Policy Center:

The Crucial Debate the Education Writers Association Refuses to Hold - Living in Dialogue

The Crucial Debate the Education Writers Association Refuses to Hold - Living in Dialogue:

The Crucial Debate the Education Writers Association Refuses to Hold 

By Anthony Cody.

Education professor Paul Thomas has raised a powerful challenge to the state of education journalism in two recent posts. The first post tackles an article by New York Times reporter Motoko Rich, focused on the latest supposed crisis in education, that not enough high schoolers graduate “college and career ready.” Thomas provides a clear refutation of many of the faulty premises on which Rich bases her story, pointing out that similar wails regarding our schools have been heard for the past hundred years, with no evidence to support them. He writes:

The nebulous relationship between the quality of education in the U.S. and the fragility of the U.S. economy simply has never existed. Throughout the past century, no one has ever found any direct or clear positive correlation between measures of educational quality in the U.S. and the strength of the U.S. economy.

Thomas goes on to point out that most reporters covering education issues have scant direct experience in the field, and tend to rely on the often flawed “expertise” of think tank sources, most of whom also lack relevant experience in public schools. He states:

Mainstream media appear fatally wed to only one version of the U.S. public education story: crisis.

And thus, journalists reach out to the same know-nothings (political leaders, political appointees, think-tank talking heads) and reproduce the same stories over and over and over.

After Thomas tweeted his critique, a reporter at the Hechinger Report, Nichole Dobo, responded, challenging the idea that education journalism suffers because writers lack experience in the field. SheThe Crucial Debate the Education Writers Association Refuses to Hold - Living in Dialogue: 

Test prep: 'Feed the teacher, or he will eat the kids' - NonDoc

Test prep: 'Feed the teacher, or he will eat the kids' - NonDoc:

Test prep: ‘Feed the teacher, or he will eat the kids’

My first introduction to test prep was as a rookie teacher in 1992. Five educators with advanced degrees grew frustrated when analyzing a test question about what Alexander the Great founded on the Nile River. Did he build a library, a university or a museum? How in the world could we turn such distinctions into a meaningful learning experience?

From 1993 to 1994, my students’ test scores increased more than those of any other teacher in our history department. The biggest reason was that a student we can call “T” had scored a 1 percentile on the previous year’s test under a different teacher, but under me he had scored in the 99th percentile. Perhaps I was that much of a better teacher, or maybe I just needed to ask T why he improved so much. The previous year, T said, he was drunk when taking the test. This year, he was high on marijuana.

In the late 1990s, despite my misgivings, I tried to commit fully to the new End of Instruction (EOI) tests and turn the graduation exams into a constructive learning opportunity. I sought to teach in a holistic manner, without raising students’ stress levels or giving into teach-to-the-test philosophies.

The only enduring benefit of such an experience is that my files from that year are full of candid notes about the resulting classes. My notes are especially enlightening about the issue of testing and remediation for students without background knowledge.

History as more than multiple-choice

Our wonderful junior-level U.S. history class loved learning, but tempers flared as we approached the test. My students had low levels of basic skills, but they loved mastering college preparatory concepts. Students had not studied the American Revolution since 8th grade, so we reconstructed a series of time lines. Even with frequent repetition, few juniors could remember within a hundred years the dates of the War for Independence. During the last practice test — which also dealt with world geography — students were Test prep: 'Feed the teacher, or he will eat the kids' - NonDoc:

Did a Challenging Class Doom this National Board Portfolio Entry? - Living in Dialogue

Did a Challenging Class Doom this National Board Portfolio Entry? - Living in Dialogue:

Did a Challenging Class Doom this National Board Portfolio Entry?

By John Thompson.

As explained in the first post of this three part series,  since my book, A Teacher’s Tale has been released, I’ve been rereading the manuscript’s first draft and some of its original sources.  Mostly, I did so to revisit the stories of students that were edited out, but I also reread accounts of my National Board (NBPTS) teacher certification.  I received good scores on lessons similar to those of many suburban teachers, but rock bottom grades on equally good or better lessons for hardcore inner city classes. Even so, I believe the National Board process was great and it left a record of the best and the worst of my school’s “Year from Hell” in 1998-1999. (All names are pseudonyms)

NBPTS required two videos of class instruction. One video featured an Economics class for students who failed those subjects in 9th grade or who recently moved into the district. (Few people who move into our school are moving up the social ladder.)  I loved this class because both groups of students brought an unusually high number of fascinating (though often tragic) experiences to class discussions.

This class was Survivors 404. After one day Ester, who had just transferred from a standard “read the chapter and answer the questions” class but who would become a star of the video, was so frightened by our format that she asked to transfer, but her classmates talked her out of it. When viewing the video, it would be easy to fall in love with one exceptionally mature class leader.  She had shot her father.  One of the sweetest kids had been forced to stab her stepfather.

The only drawback to teaching this class was the emotional toll. The empty seats in the video testified to the Did a Challenging Class Doom this National Board Portfolio Entry? - Living in Dialogue:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Core vs. Content

CURMUDGUCATION: The Core vs. Content:

The Core vs. Content

Since the Core first popped its tiny head out of its crinkly shell, advocates have insisted that CCSS ELA standards, demand rich content. Meanwhile, I have become increasingly convinced that the demands for rich content and the assertions that rich content must be part of Core implementation rise up precisely because the Core actually has a giant gaping hole where rich content should be.

In other words, rich content Core-o-philes are like guys looking at an automobile with no wheels saying, "Well, obviously the makers of this car intend for us to put on wheels." It's not that the wheels are in evidence; it's that their absence is an obvious fatal flaw. Or to put it another way, surely the emperor must mean for us to buy him some clothes.

But the longer the Core sticks around out in the field, the more obvious it becomes that the Core is anti-content-- particularly once you throw in the Core-based standards-measuring Big Standardized Tests.

Consider this article, written by someone whose intent is to show us how the Core is perfectly swell, even as it explains that part of the swellness is how it "eases literary classics to the sidelines."

Consider some of these quotes:

“It is true that the days for ‘Moby Dick’ or ‘Great Expectations’ might be numbered, but the question that teachers have to ask themselves is ‘What is the purpose of reading this text?’" said Mark Gardner, a high school English teacher in Clarke County, Washington.

“While it may seem like sacrilege, there are many goals that can be achieved by digging deeply into a series of well-curated selections of a text rather than all of it, and then relying on teacher lecture, lessons or even Sparknotes to fill in the gaps,” Gardner said in an interview.

 As an AP English and composition teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland, Ambereen Khan-Baker has included political cartoons and shorter, more complex texts while cutting outCURMUDGUCATION: The Core vs. Content:

After 20 Years: The Disastrous Impact of Welfare Reform | janresseger

After 20 Years: The Disastrous Impact of Welfare Reform | janresseger:

After 20 Years: The Disastrous Impact of Welfare Reform

A couple of months ago, speaking to a large, diverse audience in Cleveland, Ohio, Jonathan Kozol joked that as a Jew, when he has the opportunity to address church audiences, he takes great pleasure in reminding Christians about the meaning of the words of Jesus.  On a hot summer night in 1999, when Kozol presented the keynote at a United Church of Christ General Synod—taking his text from John,  21: 15-17—here is what he preached: “When Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘If you love me, feed my sheep,’ he didn’t say, ‘only the sheep who dwell in the green pastures.’  He didn’t say, ‘only the sheep whose mothers please us by acceptable behavior.’ He didn’t say, ‘only the sheep whose fathers have good jobs and mothers come to PTA.’  He didn’t say, ‘only the sheep whose parents make smart choices.’  He didn’t say, ‘only the sheep who have two parents in the pen.’  He just said, ‘If you love me feed my sheep.'”

Kozol was, of course, speaking about welfare reform, the then three-year-old law that “ended welfare as we know it,” replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and redesigned public assistance as a program to shape the behavior of poor parents.  TANF conditioned welfare on parents’ willingness and ability to secure work outside the home, but it neglected to consider the needs of America’s poorest children.

As welfare reform reaches its 20th birthday in 2016, here is how Peter Edelman evaluates what he describes as “The War on the Poor”: “The welfare reform of the 1990s left millions of Americans near destitution… We should know by now that Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF—the so-called ‘welfare reform’ enacted in 1996—is a failure.  For every 100 families in poverty in 1996, 68 received cash assistance.  Now it’s only 23 in 100.  Less than 1 percent of our population—just 3.1 million people—receives TANF now.  Cash assistance has After 20 Years: The Disastrous Impact of Welfare Reform | janresseger:

Russ on Reading: The Homework Problem

Russ on Reading: The Homework Problem:

The Homework Problem

         Homework! Oh homework!                                I hate you! You stink!                                I wish I could wash you away in the sink.                                        (from Homework, Oh Homework, by Jack Prelutsky)

Sunday’s New York Times carried an article by Vicki Abeles, producer director of the documentary Race to Nowhere,entitled Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick? The article discusses the negative impact on students, both privileged and poor, of the drive for academic success. This opinion piece followed on the heels of an article earlier in the week that reported on the efforts of the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District in New Jersey to deal with the issue of student stress. The Superintendent of the West Windsor Schools, David Aderhold, reported to parents that the schools were in crisis due to the overwhelming feelings of stress students were experiencing. Among many other causes, both articles cited homework as one of the major stressors and both articles suggested that controlling the amount of homework could help in reducing that stress.

Homework is as much a part of the American school culture as the three-ring binder, the text book and the football team. Since seemingly the beginning of time, teachers have assigned homework and students have complained about it. Watch any Our Gang comedy from the 1930’s and you will see that children have always gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid homework. But whether the concern is over-stressed kids or homework resistant kids, homework keeps being assigned, keeps being completed or avoided or copied by kids and keeps being expected by parents. Should it be?

Teachers I have spoken to have argued that homework is necessary for reinforcement of information taught in school, or to prepare for a lesson that is to be given the next day, or to extend learning that has taken place in class or because there is not enough time to cover all the material during class. Some teachers have told me that it is important to assign homework to elementary students so they are prepared for the homework they will get in middle and high school. Other teachers have told me they assign homework because parents expect it.

I must say that I don’t find any of those reasons to be compelling ones for assigning homework, but what does the research say? Do students really Russ on Reading: The Homework Problem:

Kids And Screen Time: A Peek At Upcoming Guidance : NPR Ed : NPR

Kids And Screen Time: A Peek At Upcoming Guidance : NPR Ed : NPR:

Kids And Screen Time: A Peek At Upcoming Guidance

Here's a stark fact: Most American children spend more time consuming electronic media than they do in school.

Rose Jaffe for NPR

 According to Common Sense Media, tweens log 4 1/2 hours of screen time a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. For teens, it's even higher: nearly seven hours a day. And that doesn't include time spent using devices for school or in school.

From babies with iPads to Chromebooks in classrooms, digital devices seem more ubiquitous every year. And one of the hottest issues today in both parenting and education circles is the proper role of electronic media in children's lives.

There's research to support both the benefits and dangers of digital media for developing minds. Plenty of questions remain unanswered.

But those of us raising and teaching children can't afford to wait years for the final evidence to come in. That's why the American Academy of Pediatrics plans to update its guidelines on media use later this year. Current recommendations are to avoid all screens for children under 2, and to allow a maximum of two hours per day of high-quality material for older children.

I spoke with David Hill, chairman of the AAP Council on Communications and Media and a member of the AAP Children, Adolescents and Media Leadership Working Group, to hear about the upcoming recommendations and to get some advice on how to use screens wisely.

Why new screen time recommendations now?

The American Academy of Pediatrics routinely updates all of its recommendations to ensure that they reflect the most current data. We are hoping to expedite the process for these particular recommendations in light of the fast-changing landscape of children's media use. We understand that, as the technologies available to parents evolve, they are looking for guidance that reflect their current realities. Our goal is to release these new policy statements in October of 2016.

What are the intentions behind the new guidelines?

The intentions of all of our policy statements are the same: to translate the best available data on child health and development into recommendations that help Kids And Screen Time: A Peek At Upcoming Guidance : NPR Ed : NPR:

Is it Research – or Propaganda? | Seattle Education

Is it Research – or Propaganda? | Seattle Education:

Is it Research – or Propaganda?

This article was published four years ago on this site but needs to see the light of day again.

-Dora Taylor

There’s a lot of brand new education research coming out nowadays, and it’s telling our policymakers that privatization is good for education. Class sizes are going up? That’s okay, because research shows that class size has little impact on student learning. Charter schools are competing with your neighborhood schools? Hey, many of them outperform public schools!

And this is good research. Great research. In fact, it’s the best research money can buy. Big money, I mean. Corporate money.

How do they buy it? Through right-wing think tanks. Corporations fund think tanks, and the think tanks employ researchers, and then the researchers wrangle leadership roles in strategically placed research centers, which – like schools – are being privatized.

This article takes a quick look at a few right-wing think tanks and how they’re steering education policy in just one city – Seattle, Washington. If you want to delve deeper into the topic of think tank propaganda, visit sourcewatch.org or rightwingwatch.org.

What Are Think Tanks?

Think tanks are organizations that produce propaganda posing as legitimate research for the benefit of their funders – generally, corporations and billionaires. Some of them were founded decades ago by pro-corporate leaders in partnership with millionaires and corporations. They were created for a specific purpose, such as to battle the “communist menace” after World War II or to help out the tobacco industry. Other think tanks have been founded more recently, by people such as the Koch Brothers.

This article will touch on just three: the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, and the Fordham Institute.

American Enterprise Institute

The American Enterprise Institute is a pro-business, conservative think tank that puts profits before people. It was founded in 1943 by a combination of thinkers, business leaders, and finance leaders.

It has a rather spotty past — in the 1980s, it mounted a propaganda campaign for the tobacco industry, and in 2007, it came under fire for bribing scientists to disseminate information that undermined legitimate research on global warning.

In the field of education, AEI scholar Charles Murray drew fire for his book The Bell Is it Research – or Propaganda? | Seattle Education:

A serious rant about homework - The Washington Post

A serious rant about homework - The Washington Post:

A serious rant about homework

It’s one of those perennial subjects that causes consternation in homes and schools across America, decade after decade: homework. In this post, a former teacher and mother offers her serious rant about homework her children are getting. Blaine is now a full-time practicing attorney in New Jersey, and she has written several popular posts, including “Pearson’s wrong answer–and why it matters in the high-stakes testing era” and “You think you know what teachers do. Right? Wrong.” This post first appeared on herparentingthecore blog.

By Sarah Blaine

My family is fortunate to live on one of those old fashioned blocks that is truly a neighborhood.  There are about a dozen families on our street with elementary school aged children, and during their free time, the children run in a pack around the block with the big ones looking out for the little ones.  Their games are incredibly creative: I’ve seen these kids write a script to film a movie, engage in elaborate games of “family” and sword-fighting, climb trees to fantastic heights, and design amazing obstacle courses.  They have their arguments and spats, but overall the culture we’ve watched them create is one in which everyone — from the child with autism to the nerdiest of the nerdy — is accepted.  My girls are glad to have a street full of brothers they know will have their backs.

What I cherish more than anything about this neighborhood is that the kids are able to run around independently.  There are adults around in the afternoon — a combination of parents and babysitters — but once their homework is done, the kids are pretty much on their own until dinner time.  This year, however, my older daughter has not been able to join the gang much at all after school.  That’s not because I over-schedule her: after school she has a half-hour trumpet lesson once a week and religious school on Wednesdays, but rather because homework has become a monster, devouring childhood.

My kids’ schools have a late start (late bell is at 9:20 a.m.) and a late finish (they don’t get off the bus home until about 4 p.m.).  We are an all-choice school district, so many kids on the street have significantly earlier schedules, which admittedly compounds the problem.

E leaves for school at 8:15 three mornings a week because the school band A serious rant about homework - The Washington Post:

Dear Journalists Covering Education, Let Me Explain | the becoming radical

Dear Journalists Covering Education, Let Me Explain | the becoming radical:

Dear Journalists Covering Education, Let Me Explain

In my Twitter timeline, I saw a post praising a recent New York Times article on graduation rates and the devalued high school diploma. Since I had written a blog criticizing the many (and typical) flaws in the piece, I nudged Stephanie Banchero and Nichole Dobo to reconsider.

Dobo was gracious enough to respond [1], but Twitter really doesn’t afford the space to make my case as well as both the topic and Dobo deserve so I want here to lay out better just exactly why so many of us in education are routinely frustrated with how media cover education.

Let me start by reemphasizing why educators have moved from frustrated to exasperated in terms of media coverage of public education.

In the mid-1800s as public schools became a more compelling option for education in the U.S., Catholic schools initiated scathing attacks on public schools—not for educational, but for market reasons.

The history of vilifying public education in the U.S. has replicated that pattern until today—although the negative drumbeat has intensified significantly over the past three decades of high-stakes accountability (which is mostly a political, not an educational, venture).

Therefore, most political and media commentary on public education is misguided. Yes, most.

The problem for educators is not that public education is without flaws and is being unfairly Dear Journalists Covering Education, Let Me Explain | the becoming radical:

Federal sanctions on failing schools don’t die easy :: SI&A Cabinet Report

Federal sanctions on failing schools don’t die easy :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Federal sanctions on failing schools don’t die easy

(Calif.) A key component of the nation’s new education law adopted last month did away with federal sanctions imposed on schools designated as “failing” as defined by the prior regime.

But officials at the California Department of Education have recommended that local educational agencies identified as needing Program Improvement under the No Child Left Behind Act must continue to meet all of the old obligations through August, 2016.

It is unclear what legal footing was used to draw this conclusion, and certainly policy makers in other states might interpret the law far differently. But what is clear are the fiscal ramifications on schools if the policy is upheld by the California State Board of Education next week.

One corrective action, for instance, calls for supplemental tutoring – a service that has cost California districts more than $500 million over the past three years and shown “little evidence” of improving performances, according to a press release issued last year by state schools chief Tom Torlakson after the state lost an appeal for a federal waiver from the mandate.

Two other requirements are also costly – offering free transportation services to students who want to attend a school that hasn’t been designated as needing Program Improvement; and a set aside of as much as 10 percent of a district’s Title I allocation for teacher training.

School officials in California and in other states have repeatedly cited the prescribed NCLB spending as a key reason for participating in a waiver program offered by the Obama administration beginning in 2011.

Still, fighting the question now might be more trouble than it’s worth given that the sanctions would go away in 2016-17.

“I think there’s general consensus that we need to follow along with NCLB through the end of the school year,” said Teri Burns, legislative advocate for the California School Boards Association. “I’m guessing that no one at the state is going to dig too deep to ensure compliance because we are clearly going to be going in another direction, but if there’s blatant disregard that might provoke some response.”

Launched in 2001 with high hopes and bipartisan Congressional support, NCLB came under almost universal criticism largely because of unrealistic performance goals that required all students – including subgroups like English learners and students with disabilities – to test proficient in reading and math.

Schools and districts that couldn’t meet the benchmarks were designated as needing Program Federal sanctions on failing schools don’t die easy :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

CT Charter Schools collect $100 million+ from taxpayers despite discriminating and abusing children - Wait What?

CT Charter Schools collect $100 million+ from taxpayers despite discriminating and abusing children - Wait What?:

CT Charter Schools collect $100 million+ from taxpayers despite discriminating and abusing children

Hidden by the holidays, Governor Dannel Malloy and Lt. Governor Nancy Wyman trotted out their budget chief, Ben Barnes, last week to quietly announce another $93 million in state budget cuts, many of which were targeted at the most critical services and vulnerable citizens in Connecticut.

As CT Newsjunkie reported in Malloy Administration Identifies Savings, But Not Everyone Is Pleased, the Malloy/Wyman administration’s latest cuts target municipal aid, mental health care, services for the developmentally and intellectually disabled, and healthcare services.

The most despicable cut may very well be Malloy’s expanded effort to refuse group home placements for citizens and their families who are in crisis.

However, while vital programs are cut, the companies that own Connecticut’s twenty-three (23) charter schools will be given more than $100 million in scarce public funds this year even though these privately owned, but publicly funded, schools refuse to educate their fair share of students who require special education services and students who need additional help with the English Language.  Furthermore, the “no-excuses” discipline strategies used by Achievement First, Inc. and other charter schools are nothing short of child abuse.

If a Connecticut public school consistently abused children or discriminated against Latinos and other English Language Learners or students with special needs, investigations would be conducted, people would lose their jobs and local boards of education would be sued.  But that simply isn’t the case when it comes to the charter school industry – thanks to their special relationship with the Malloy/Wyman administration.

While Governor Dannel Malloy receives accolades for his “Second Chance” initiative, the CT Charter Schools collect $100 million+ from taxpayers despite discriminating and abusing children - Wait What?:

Girls Fight Back Against Gender Bias in School Dress Codes - NEA Today

Girls Fight Back Against Gender Bias in School Dress Codes - NEA Today:

Girls Fight Back Against Gender Bias in School Dress Codes

In 2014, a group of middle school students in Inglewood, New Jersey, started the hashtag campaign, #IAmMoreThanADistraction, to call attention to their school’s dress code.

Last year, Anna Loisa Cruz, a seventh-grader at Irvington School in Portland, Ore., was among four students who testified before the Portland Public Schools Board of Education to talk about school dress codes. She shared the story of one of her schoolmates who was “dress coded” for wearing a skirt that fell a couple of centimeters above her fingertips when holding her arms by her sides. The student was sent to the office where repeated calls to her home went unanswered. After a two-hour wait, the student went home, too embarrassed to return to her last period class.

Eighth-grade student Hailey Tjensvold added that school dress codes “have unknowingly set up double standards, creating a separation in the application of the punishment for [violating] the dress code.” She explained how boys whose trousers sag are simply told to “pull your pants up” without further repercussion while girls are sent to the office and “forced” to call their parents to bring them a change of clothes.

For many students across the nation—particularly girls—how school dress codes are enforced has been a contentious issue. In April 2015, a Texas honors student wassent home for wearing yoga pants and an oversized shirt that covered her entire backside. In August, a Kentucky student was sent home for showing her collarbone. After her mother brought a scarf to cover her neck, the administration still deemed it “inappropriate.” In Indiana, a 12-year-old student was suspended and missed two days of class. The offense: tight pants. Other dress-code violations include baring shoulders, wearing a tank top, or exposing a bra strap.

The Portland students represent only one group of a growing number of students who are spotlighting unfair and discriminatory school dress codes. In 2014,  New Jersey middle-schoolers, fed up with being shamed for wearing comfortable clothes Girls Fight Back Against Gender Bias in School Dress Codes - NEA Today:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: David Brooks' shaky defense of liberalism

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: David Brooks' shaky defense of liberalism:

David Brooks' shaky defense of liberalism

David Brooks opens hisNYT Op-Ed piece this way: On New Year’s Eve some friends and family members had a drink at a bar in Tel Aviv...

I suppose this literary device is meant to assure the Netanyahu regime that he won't step on their toes in this column. He then goes on to attack rising Donald Trump-ism and call for a defense of cultural pluralism and an open society. Pretty tempting stuff. I'm definitely on board for both. 

Brooks writes:

In country after country this anxiety is challenging the liberal order. I mean philosophic Enlightenment liberalism, not partisan liberalism. It’s the basic belief in open society, free speech, egalitarianism and meliorism (gradual progress). It’s a belief that through reasoned conversation values cohere and fanaticism recedes. It’s the belief that people of all creeds merit tolerance and respect.

Fine words, Mr. Brooks. But it seems you have a blind spot or two. Did you look around that bar in Tel Aviv? Anyone excluded?

These liberal assumptions have been challenged from the top for years Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: David Brooks' shaky defense of liberalism:

All Things Education: Yes, please, to more recess

All Things Education: Yes, please, to more recess:

Yes, please, to more recess

We are lucky that the elementary schools that my children attend still have a full half an hour of lunch and a full half an hour of recess each day. Other kids are not so lucky--recess is becoming a luxury. Though my middle schoolers don't get any recess. Do any middle schoolers get recess any more? So two things of note here:

1) Recess is really important and even half an hour is not enough, especially not for younger children.

2) Secondary students also need some form of recess.

In North Texas, a handful of schools are experimenting with more (not less) recess. Their students go out four times per day, for 15 minutes each, and the results have been very promising so far:

First grade teachers Donna McBride and Cathy Wells say they’ve seen a transformation in their kids. 

They’re less distracted, they make more eye contact, and they tattle less. 

Wells has noticed another difference: She spends less time sharpening pencils. 

“You know why I was sharpening them?” Wells says. “Because they were grinding on them, they were breaking them, they were chewing on them. They’re not doing that now. They’re actually using their pencils for the way that they were designed – to write things!”

I want to say that I've never understood withholding recess, either as a consequence for poor choices or as a way to increase achievement. But it's possible I didn't fully understand that until I had children of my own and then spent two All Things Education: Yes, please, to more recess:

Hair Raising New Study: Charter Schools May Be Economic 'Bubble' That Bursts in Urban Communities | Alternet

Hair Raising New Study: Charter Schools May Be Economic 'Bubble' That Bursts in Urban Communities | Alternet:

Hair Raising New Study: Charter Schools May Be Economic 'Bubble' That Bursts in Urban Communities

Are charter schools the new sup-prime mortgages?

Are charter schools the new subprime mortgages? That's what UConn scholar Preston Green argues in a provocative new paper. Green and his co-authors argue that the rapid expansion of charter schools, with government encouragement but little oversight, is leading to what they warn is a charter school "bubble" in urban communities. Of particular concern: the growing practice of allowing so-called "multiple authorizers" to approve charter schools, but without any responsibility for educating students when the schools struggle or fail.

The following interview with Green has been edited for clarity and length.

EduShyster: It’s unusual to see the words "hair-raising" and "academic study" in tandem, but your new study merits that marriage. You and your co-authors make the case that, just as with subprime mortgages, the federal government is encouraging the expansion of charter schools with little oversight, and the result could be a charter school "bubble" that blows up in urban communities. Do I have it right?

Preston Green: The problem of subprime mortgages began in part because the government tried to increase homeownership for poor people and minorities by enabling private entities to offer more mortgages without assuming the risk. Under the old system, the mortgage originator was still at risk if the mortgage went into default. With subprime, they were able to spread that risk by selling the mortgages on the secondary market. You had all these mortgage originators that could issue more mortgages without careful screening because they no longer had skin in the game. Now how are charter schools similar to subprime? In the charter school context, charter school authorizers are like mortgage originators.

EduShyster: There’s a great moment in the new movie The Big Short when Selena Gomez turns to the camera and explains to the world what collateralized debt obligations are. Here’s your opportunity to do the same, but for the convoluted world of charter school authorizing.

Green: Promoters of charter school expansion are calling for an increase in Hair Raising New Study: Charter Schools May Be Economic 'Bubble' That Bursts in Urban Communities | Alternet:

Bowman: Don't let Richmond dictate charter schools - Roanoke Times: Commentary

Bowman: Don't let Richmond dictate charter schools - Roanoke Times: Commentary:

Bowman: Don't let Richmond dictate charter schools

Laura Bowman Bowman is the leader of the child and public school advocacy group, Parents Across America-Roanoke Valley, a chapter of the national Parents Across America organization. She's a stay-at-home mom and an active parent volunteer in Roanoke County Public Schools.

By Laura Bowman

Bowman is the leader of the child and public school advocacy group Parents Across America-Roanoke Valley, a chapter of the national Parents Across America organization. She’s a stay-at-home mom and an active parent volunteer in Roanoke County Public Schools.

I’m writing you today concerning state Sen. Mark Obenshain’s Charter School Bill, SJ 6. This bill, if passed in the General Assembly and then voted into law by Virginia voters in 2016, would harm our state’s financially strapped public schools by taking funding away from them.

In addition, local decision-making power would be removed from our school boards and localities.

Furthermore, by opening the door to charter school expansion in the commonwealth, passage of the bill into law would invite the myriad problems charter schools have experienced across the nation.

Weekly, I read news stories about charter school fraud, waste, embezzlement and mismanagement. There’s an alarming lack of oversight, transparency and accountability in many charter schools. There are reports of charter schools closing overnight, employing unqualified educators, and having high teacher turnover rates due to hostile work environments.

Many charter schools use selective enrollment tactics to ensure higher test scores. Students with indivdualized education programs, children with behavior problems and English language learners are often not allowed to attend charter schools, or are pushed out once enrolled.

Humiliating and abusive practices are being reported in so-called “no excuses” charter schools, and there are reports of charter schools failing to comply with the IDEA Act. Some charter schools are being rightly accused of promoting “separate but equal” education, and accelerated segregation by race and class.

Charter schools de-fund our public schools and cause cuts in the numbers of teachers and faculties in them. In addition, when children leave their neighborhood schools for charter schools, communities can see their property values go down.

Virginia has only seven charter schools, so citizens of the commonwealth are largely unaware of the disturbing and worrisome problems charter schools are having across the country.

The question we must ask ourselves is: Considering the fact that Virginia’s public schools are consistently ranked between fourth and sixth in the nation, why are we even considering opening this Pandora’s Box in our state?

It’s important we understand that nationwide, only 17 percent of charter schools fare better than their public school counterparts, and 37 percent have worse outcomes. Numbers like these don’t inspire confidence in change and Bowman: Don't let Richmond dictate charter schools - Roanoke Times: Commentary: