The Worst Thing About the Brutal 'No Excuses' Success Academy Video

The Worst Thing About the Brutal 'No Excuses' Success Academy Video:

The Worst Thing About the Brutal 'No Excuses' Success Academy Video

As Vox's Libby Nelson writes, the "undeniably upsetting" video of a Success Academy charter school teacher berating first graders is "the latest exhibit in a long-running debate about Success Academy and similar 'no excuses' charter schools." Nelson is correct in explaining that "it's part of a broader division within the Democratic Party on education."

The video, however, is about much, much more. It raises basic questions about the society we want to leave for the next generations. I hope every parent with children old enough to watch the video will use it as an opportunity to discuss some of the most fundamental issues that we human beings must tackle.

My father and I had such a conversation in the 1950s after the Boston Red Sox star, Jimmy Piersall, had a televised breakdown in Yankee Stadium in the wake of his father's death. As was explained in the book and the movie, Fear Strikes Out, Piersall was pushed over the edge by his father (played by Karl Malden in the film) who combined "the ignorant dominance of a bitter man with the occasional tenderness of a parent who genuinely loves his only son." The baseball star (played by Anthony Perkins) carried "the weight of the paternal ambition" that "is felt by the nerve-racked observer to the point where it is recognizable that the young man must go mad."

As my dad explained, many of my friends had parents who endured great suffering. Fathers who survived the Great Depression, and combat in World War II and Korea The Worst Thing About the Brutal 'No Excuses' Success Academy Video:

Housing squeeze leaves low-income students on the streets :: SI&A Cabinet Report

Housing squeeze leaves low-income students on the streets :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:
Housing squeeze leaves low-income students on the streets

(Wash.) The number of homeless youth in Washington is on the upswing and correlates with an increase in reports of child abuse or neglect in the state, according to recent data.

More than 35,000 students have been identified as homeless, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction said in a report released late last month. That represents a 9 percent increase from 2013, and an almost 63 percent increase since 2009.

Between 2009 and 2014, reports of child abuse or neglect to the Washington Children’s Administration increased 22 percent. Child Protective Services received approximately 90,000 unique reports of child abuse in 2014.

“Many kids who are on the streets are actually running away from something, and it’s not a choice for them as much as it is a necessity,” said Scott Hanauer, CEO of Community Youth Services, an Olympia-based advocacy organization for at-risk youth. “Many of our youth, anecdotally, tell us that it is safer being homeless than it is being where they ran from.”

Hanauer cited instances of physical, emotional or sexual abuse and domestic violence as some of the more common reasons students may run away from home. Others are kicked out for being lesbian, gay bisexual or transgender.

Under the federal McKinney-Vento Act, schools must ensure equal access to educational services for homeless students within each district. Funds are allocated to states to defray the cost of transportation, subsidized meals, tutoring or supplies and other resources for homeless youth.

Washington receives approximately $950,000 each year, which is distributed to districts through Housing squeeze leaves low-income students on the streets :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Parents, teachers and children rally for public education at schools across the nation - The Washington Post

Parents, teachers and children rally for public education at schools across the nation - The Washington Post:

Parents, teachers and children rally for public education at schools across the nation

Parents, teachers, children and community members rallied in support of public education at schools across the country Wednesday morning, many of them calling for more funding and less testing.

Thousands of people were expected to participate in the “walk-ins” at more than 800 schools in 30 cities, according to the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, which organized the event. The organization is a coalition of groups including the nation’s two largest teachers unions.

The walk-ins became venues for many different messages including de-emphasizing standardized tests, slowing down charter school growth and ending state takeovers of local school systems, as well as building more community schools, which offer a host of social, emotional and physical health supports.

Many students and parents showed up with signs declaring appreciation for their local schools and the educators who work in them.

Walk-ins were expected at more than 100 schools in Chicago, where many schools’ budgets are being cut mid-year:

#SWChiWalkIn @CurieHS @BpncChicago @CTULocal1 #ersbnow #ReclaimOurSchools pic.twitter.com/IAHhVDhH9U

— AdamHeenan (@Adam_Heenan) February 17, 2016

National Day of Action "Walk-Ins" 4 Schools ALL Our Children Deserve Hart ES #ReclaimOurSchools @mcricker @AFTunion pic.twitter.com/bMhMh3RprF

— Montserrat Garibay (@MontserratVPEDA) February 17, 2016

Students and teachers at Hamilton High in Los Angeles, walking in to #ReclaimOurSchools pic.twitter.com/H7MM9xC8wf

— AFT (@AFTunion) February 17, 2016

Parents, teachers and children rally for public education at schools across the nation - The Washington Post:

Schools on Trial And What Does Progress Mean? | The Jose Vilson

Schools on Trial And What Does Progress Mean? | The Jose Vilson:

Schools on Trial And What Does Progress Mean?

I don’t have rules posted in my classroom.

I’ve been issuing mandates asking students to respect each other, respect themselves, and respect the classroom and environment around them. As steward for the environment around me, I haven’t had many challenges to these rules from the students themselves. I don’t know what exactly has triggered their good behavior (though I have hints). I do know that I’m trying to make my classroom as open as possible while working within the well-defined parameters of what it means to be a “good teacher.”

This is where I want to root some early thoughts about Nikhil Goyal’s Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice.

In the intro, he has every intention of vexing the casual reader:

Every forty minutes, [students] are shepherded from room to room at the sound of a bell. They sit in desks in rows with twenty to thirty other people of similar age, social class, and often race. They are 

Schools on Trial And What Does Progress Mean? | The Jose Vilson:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: "This Bill is Better Than no Bill"

Seattle Schools Community Forum: "This Bill is Better Than no Bill":

"This Bill is Better Than no Bill"

 The Quarterly Journal of Economics put out a report in October 2015 - The Effects of School Spending on Educational and Economic Outcomes: Evidence from School Finance Reforms.  They linked school spending and school finance reforms in public school spending.  (This follows a very long-term study from James Coleman at Johns Hopkins University.  Coleman's work suggested no connection between money and test scores.)  


Guess what?  District that had more money, on average, did better. And their students had higher wages as adults.  The study was not so much about WHY the money affected change but that it DID.

One issue in all this work is that not all kids are the same. Low-income kids generally test lower.  But a "helicopter drop of money," as lead researcher Kirabo Jackson calls it, can make a difference. 

From the Seattle Times article;

He and his colleagues found that a 25% increase in per-student spending over the course of a student's school-age years could eliminate the gaps in income and years of education between children from low-income families and those making at least twice the poverty line. And so far, Washington has increased state per-pupil spending by 33%.

(I would dispute that per-pupil spending number since, during the recession, funding got cut.  How much of that 33% is replacement funding and how much Seattle Schools Community Forum: "This Bill is Better Than no Bill":

Supreme Court wipes out SRC's powers to waive provisions of Pa. school code

Supreme Court wipes out SRC's powers to waive provisions of Pa. school code:

Supreme Court wipes out SRC's powers to waive provisions of Pa. school code

The ruling has huge implications for both charter schools and the union contract.

 In a decision that could have massive repercussions for Philadelphia schools, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday declared unconstitutional the provision in state law granting the School Reform Commission extraordinary powers to cancel provisions of the state school code.

The decision came in a case involving West Philadelphia Achievement Charter School, which since 2011 has been challenging the District's efforts to limit its enrollment to 400 students. Charter schools are not subject to District-imposed enrollment caps, absent the charter school's consent, according to the school code. 

But the potential impact of the court's action extends far beyond caps on charter enrollment.

The ruling is a severe blow to the SRC, which has frequently sought to suspend the school code in an effort to limit charter expansion, expedite school closings, and cancel provisions in the teachers' contract –including built-in raises for years of service and seniority protections in calling back laid-off employees. 

In essence, the court said that the General Assembly overstepped its bounds and was too open-ended in granting the SRC these powers in 2001.

"The Legislature gave the SRC what amounts to carte blanche  powers to suspend virtually any combination of provisions of the School Code – a statute covering a broad range of topics," the ruling said. It said that prior court decisions "have never deemed such an unconstrained grant of authority to be constitutionally valid."

In the words of the ruling, any actions taken under the provision – Section 696(i)(3) of the School code – are "null and void, and Respondents [the District and SRC] are permanently enjoined from taking further action under the authority it confers."

The vote was 4-2, with bipartisan support for the majority opinion. One of the court's seven justices did not participate.  The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice Thomas G. Saylor, a Republican. Justice Max Baer, a Democrat, wrote a dissenting opinion.

Baer argued that the General Assembly did not unconstitutionally delegate its own legislative power to the SRC, as the majority held, but "rather delegates the authority to Supreme Court wipes out SRC's powers to waive provisions of Pa. school code:

APNewsBreak: Indiana Official Had Say in Independent Report - ABC News

APNewsBreak: Indiana Official Had Say in Independent Report - ABC News:

APNewsBreak: Indiana Official Had Say in Independent Report

 A report summarizing what was billed as an independent investigation into Indiana's new, unpopular standardized student exam includes edits and suggested changes by a state administrator hired by Gov. Mike Pence's State Board of Education who altered language that reflected poorly on Republicans' decision to substitute the exam for one based on national Common Core academic standards.

A Microsoft Word file obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request contains multiple edits and drafts of the report, including the final version, which was ultimately submitted by consultants hired by the state Board of Education but not yet released to the public.

The document shows State Board of Education executive director John Snethen helped shape the content through 92 deletions, revisions and comments, raising questions about how independent the investigation into the ISTEP program was. For example, Snethen objected to strong language in an early version that stated: "It is safe to say that the 2015 ISTEP+ program is a work in progress, put in place quickly and without the usual procedures (e.g., field testing) used with most new assessment programs."

"Why is it safe to say this?" Snethen asked in notes typed into the draft, adding: "This is an example of a statement that could raise concern." The phrase was not included in the final version of the report.

Other draft language that did not make it into the final version included a passage that rated the state exams a "B-" overall.

The changes made by Snethen also suggest the Pence administration is cautious of possible backlash to the new academic standards, which were put in place after Indiana became the first state to withdraw from the Common Core standards in 2014. Conservative critics say the national math and English benchmarks that describe what students should know after completing each grade amount to a federal takeover of education, and Oklahoma, South Carolina and Louisiana officials also have taken steps to drop Common Core.

Pence, who signed the 2014 measure freeing Indiana from Common Core, will face a challenge to re-election this year from Democrat and former House Speaker John Gregg, and has made education improvements a major theme of his campaign.

Snethen did not respond to a request for comment, but a Board of Education spokesman said that any changes were done for clarity.

"Any suggested edits to the executive summary were added to make a very difficult and technical report more easily understood," spokesman Marc Lotter said. "Those suggested edits were reviewed by the independent experts and agreed to before inclusion in their final executive summary. Also, none of the edits altered the fundamental conclusion or recommendations of the independent experts."

One of the report's authors, University of Colorado professor Derek Briggs, said he did not believe the edits changed the report's fundamental conclusions but confirmed that state officials were concerned about "messaging." Snethen viewed the first version of the report as one that had a "glass half-empty perspective," and wanted it to show that the glass was "half full," Briggs told the AP.

"From my vantage point, it was absolutely an independent evaluation," Briggs said. "It is a matter of how these things get messaged and so I appreciate that there is concern about whether the State Board played an active role in messaging."

The ISTEP+ test, which features Indiana-specific academic standards, was hastily rolled out in early 2015. Educators balked, saying it would take a staggering 12 hours to complete; the GOP-controlled Legislature passed a bill shortening the exam before students ever took the test. And some students who later took it online reported computer glitches, which were found to have an impact on their performance.

Others have raised questions about whether the test was scored properly or even an accurate assessment, leading the state Board of Education to call for the investigation, which state officials said would be independent when it launched April.

The documents obtained by the AP show Snethen had exchanges with two outside consultants who were paid by the state to conduct the investigation. The documents also showed:

— Words like "shortcomings," which were used to describe the "the design and development" of the test, appeared in an initial version reviewed by Snethen but later replaced with "areas where we recommend improvements."

— Draft language in one version but deleted later assigned the test "a B-, which is better than would be expected given how quickly the ISTEP+ tests in math and (English and language arts) were assembled under an extremely tight timeline after last-minute legislative changes."

Apparent government involvement in an investigation that state officials billed as independent is "troubling," said Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis public policy professor Sheila Suess Kennedy.

"The broad principle here is that, if you are to retain academic integrity, you do not submit your findings for editing," she said.

Overall, the report found that the test was still a "highly reliable" measure of students' abilities.

But poor student performance on the 2015 ISTEP — 20 percentage points lower than 2014's scores on the state's prior test — was predicted by Democratic state schools Superintendent Glenda Ritz, who has frequently clashed with the GOP over education policy.

APNewsBreak: Indiana Official Had Say in Independent Report - ABC News:

Follow Brian Slodysko on Twitter at: https://www.twitter.com/brianslodysko

With A Brooklyn Accent: The "Best and the Brightest" Who Have Brought us "School Reform"

With A Brooklyn Accent: The "Best and the Brightest" Who Have Brought us "School Reform":

The "Best and the Brightest" Who Have Brought us "School Reform"

 In the 1960's journalist David Halberstam wrote a devastating book, entitled "The Best and the Brightest," about the intellectuals and policy makers who developed the strategic rationale for the Vietnam War. Someone could do the same today for the architects of Common Core and Test Based School Reform. So many of the key figures in this initiative- Wendy Kopp of Teach for America, Michelle Rhee, David Coleman of Common Core, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Arne Duncan- attended Ivy League schools. All of them seem to have a couple of things in common- a contempt for the large majority of teachers who attended public universities and received their teacher training in those institutions; and a belief that all policy initiatives to must be heavily "data based."

The goals they set for themselves were ambitious- reducing gaps in educational achievement by race and class and improving the US position in global educational ranking. But they have been no more successful in achieving those goals than their Vietnam Era counterparts were in transforming South Vietnam into a successful independent nation.

And in both cases, the costs to the nation have been immense- a nation divided and a generation of young people traumatized by war in the first instance; a generation of teachers humiliated and a generation of students demoralized in the second.

The lesson: intellectual arrogance and elitism can extract a very high price.

Reflecting on School Reforms: Scaling Up versus Short, Happy Life or Hanging in | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Reflecting on School Reforms: Scaling Up versus Short, Happy Life or Hanging in | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Reflecting on School Reforms: Scaling Up versus Short, Happy Life or Hanging in

 For decades, under the influence of efficiency-minded policymakers the “wisdom” of reform has been as follows:

To solve serious school problems federal, state, and district policymakers take “good” ideas, find the right people to implement them faithfully on a small scale (e.g., pilots, “experimental” projects), and then, spread the results across a larger playing field to reach the largest number of students. Or scaling up, in policy-talk. That is how reform should be done.

That policy “wisdom”–so rational on its surface (often called a research and development strategy to jump-start innovation)–has dominated reform for the past half-century. The results, however, have been sometimes disappointing, and occasionally disastrous.  Unanticipated issues arose. Faulty implementation occurred.  Unexpected consequences popped up. Sufficient resources went unallocated. Educators lacked capacity. The list of reasons documenting the failure of scaling up innovations from pilots to entire districts or states gets longer as reforms entered the public school arena decade after decade.

How about some examples?

*NCLB and over-testing married to federally-imposed coercive accountability;

*Decentralizing authority to school sites where councils of teachers, parents, and principals make major decisions;

*Mandating that districts and school use new technologies in classrooms to Reflecting on School Reforms: Scaling Up versus Short, Happy Life or Hanging in | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Study shows Grit not all it’s cracked up to be – Missouri Education Watchdog

Study shows Grit not all it’s cracked up to be – Missouri Education Watchdog:

Study shows Grit not all it’s cracked up to be

These videos are hysterical. It is amusing to watch an animal who can’t help himself chase the shiny object.  It is less amusing when it is human beings who are chasing something shiny that is not real.

In 2013, to much fanfare, the US The U.S Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology (OET) posted a report for public comment: Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century. Here was this shiny moving target telling us we needed to teach and measure other, more important, things in our kids than just academics. We needed to be teaching them important “life skills” like self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence. OET stepped in to take a  look at how technology can help develop the skills of grit, tenacity, and perseverance. By giving kids tasks that were difficult, maybe even beyond their current capability, we could build up their ability to deal with frustration and failure and move into long term success. Or so the report said.

This fad was immediately so fervently embraced that teachers struggling to implement common core ELA standards were being coached to use “frustration level texts,” with students to get them to work through difficult readings.  David Coleman, the lead author of the Common Core State Standards, and Timothy Shanahan, a contributing author and decorated literacy expert, “both maintained that students need to work in frustration level texts.”

Is it coincidence that this meme began appearing at about the time this philosophy was being pushed in school?

Now comes a new study by researchers at King’s College London that says  “‘grit’, defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, adds little to the prediction of school success.”

How little, you ask?

This new study, which used a sample of 4,500 16-year-old twins*, found that aspects of personality predict around six per cent of the differences between GCSE results and, after controlling for these characteristics, grit alone only predicted 0.5 per cent of the differences between General Certificate of Secondary Education results.

Those who were following the USDED OET recommendations have gone out and purchased technology to help promote something that only predicts half a percent of K-12 education results.

Previous studies, like those cited in the OET report, suggested that grit may be cultivated and improved, whereas other factors that affect academic achievement, such as socioeconomic status and intelligence, were less malleable. This led to the concerted efforts to add or enhance grit training programs in schools. Unfortunately, as we quickly move the flashy light of science to another part of the floor, we find that DNA explains about a third of a person’s grit level and it is not nearly as malleable as first thought.Study shows Grit not all it’s cracked up to be – Missouri Education Watchdog:

The NEA’s strange fight against institutional racism. | Fred Klonsky

The NEA’s strange fight against institutional racism. | Fred Klonsky:

The NEA’s strange fight against institutional racism.

When the NEA talks of teaching excellence, do they mean white?

Pictured above are the winners of the NEA Foundation awards for teaching excellence.

I’m sure they are all good teachers. But it looks like the nominees for this year’s Oscars.

At last year’s NEA Representative Assembly in Orlando, we passed a New Business Item calling for a union-wide fight against institutional racism. Perhaps the Foundation didn’t get the word.

Or perhaps everyone has been too busy working for Hillary.

For second time this year I have received an update on what the NEA has been doing to implement NBI 11. That is the one I submitted and was passed The NEA’s strange fight against institutional racism. | Fred Klonsky:

New York City Has Created a Model Pre-K Program—Affordable, Accessible, High Quality | janresseger

New York City Has Created a Model Pre-K Program—Affordable, Accessible, High Quality | janresseger:

New York City Has Created a Model Pre-K Program—Affordable, Accessible, High Quality

A new report from Padres & Jovenes Unidos in Denver, Colorado names the classic problems that block families’ ability to enroll their children in preschool.  First there are not enough high-quality pre-K programs in the poorest parts of Denver to provide universal access to pre-Kindergarten.  Second is the matter of affordability: “In Denver, the average annual cost of pre-K in a center, for just one child is $11,477… While there are several sources of funds that can assist Denver parents in covering the cost of pre-K, each has significant gaps that prevent it from coming close to meeting the financial needs of all the families….”  And finally there is the uneven quality of the programs: “In particular, parents are experiencing difficulties around inadequate language instruction… and the overuse of harsh disciplinary measures such as suspensions and expulsions….”  The authors conclude: “(I)n Denver, while virtually every child in predominantly white, affluent neighborhoods attends pre-K, only a small fraction of children in predominantly Latino, lower-income neighborhoods of Southwest Denver are enrolled in pre-K.”

And in Ohio, Policy Matters explains:  “(J)ust 4 percent of 4-year-olds from low-income families are enrolled in preschool, compared with 29 percent nationally.  Not only is Ohio behind most of the nation in preschool and childcare support, differing eligibility standards between the two programs means many kids miss out on the opportunities.  Some parents can’t send their kids to half-day preschool because they don’t qualify for childcare assistance for the other half day.  Between underinvestment and misalignment, Ohio is falling behind in developing the workforce of the future…..”  “In this budget (2016-17), Ohio will spend almost what we did during the recession (2008-2009) and less than we did during the budget for 2010 (in inflation-adjusted dollars).”

While these stories represent examples of states and localities struggling to fund and provide pre-school education, David Kirp’s piece in Sunday’s NY Times tells a very different story in New York City:  “In 2013, Bill de Blasio campaigned for mayor on a promise of universal pre-K.  Two years later, New York City enrolls more children in full-day pre-K than any state New York City Has Created a Model Pre-K Program—Affordable, Accessible, High Quality | janresseger:

It’s a CONFLICT OF INTEREST to serve on the State Board of Education while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year via the State Department of Education - Wait What?

It’s a CONFLICT OF INTEREST to serve on the State Board of Education while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year via the State Department of Education - Wait What?:

It’s a CONFLICT OF INTEREST to serve on the State Board of Education while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year via the State Department of Education

 The only thing more incredible than Governor Dannel Malloy’s decision to appoint Erik Clemons to the State Board of Education is the fact that Connecticut’s Democratic controlled legislature appears ready to rubber-stamp Malloy’s nominee despite the “Substantial Conflict of Interest” that should prevent him from serving on the Board.

There has been nothing but silence from Connecticut’s elected officials even though one of Governor Malloy’s recent appointees to the State Board of Education runs a company that is collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the very State Board that Malloy has appointed him too.

In two separate articles Wait, What? has outlined the conflict of interest associated with Malloy’s appointment of Erik Clemons to the Connecticut State Board of Education.

See:

Company run by Malloy appointee to the State Board of Education collects $517,128 in funds allocated by the State Board of Education. (2/16/2016

Malloy gives Charter School Industry another seat on the CT State Board of Education 12/23/2015

The issue is not whether Mr. Clemons is a “good guy” or that despite his close relationship with the Charter School Industry he is willing to work for the benefit of all students, parents, teachers and citizens.

The fact is Governor Malloy and Lt. Governor Wyman “signed-off” and appointed an individual who has a  “SUBSTANTIAL” CONFLICT OF INTEREST”  under state law.It’s a CONFLICT OF INTEREST to serve on the State Board of Education while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year via the State Department of Education - Wait What?:

New York Schools Wonder: How White Is Too White? - The New York Times

New York Schools Wonder: How White Is Too White? - The New York Times:

New York Schools Wonder: How White Is Too White?

How white is too white? At the Academy of Arts and Letters, a small K-8 school in Brooklyn founded in 2006 to educate a community of “diverse individuals,” that question is being put to the test.

The school — along with six others in New York City — is part of a newEducation Department initiative aimed at maintaining a racial and socioeconomic balance at schools in fast-gentrifying neighborhoods. For the first time the department is allowing a group of principals to set aside a percentage of seats for low-income families, English-language learners or students engaged with the child welfare system as a means of creating greater diversity within their schools.

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Carmen Fariña, the schools chancellor, have disappointed school diversity advocates by failing to make integration a priority. The set-asides plan, approved by Ms. Fariña in November, was the first attempt at addressing the issue across multiple schools.

All of the schools involved enroll children by lottery, rather than having a school zone.

In its early years, Arts and Letters was more than 90 percent black and Hispanic, reflecting the Brooklyn neighborhoods around it, including Bedford-Stuyvesant, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene. More than 80 percent of its students qualified for free or reduced lunch.

But the school gained a reputation for its humanities curriculum, its science lab and its focus on the arts. And newcomers changed the demographic mix of its surrounding blocks. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, the white population rose 120 percent from 2000 to 2010 and the black population fell by 30 percent, according to the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Now, Arts and Letters has become one of Brooklyn’s hottest schools. Half of the school’s kindergartners are white; a mere 12 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch. That has its principal, John O’Reilly, worried.

“I love the fact that so many white affluent families would want to send their children to my school,” he said recently, before rushing off to give another tour. “But I know the impact it has on the diversity of my school.”

Mr. O’Reilly is one of a group of principals — including Julie Zuckerman at the four-year-old Castle Bridge School in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, where 21 percent of the students are white, and Arthur Mattia at the Children’s School in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn, where the student population is now 59 percent white — who said they had hoped to create schools where no one race or socioeconomic group was dominant.

Instead, their schools are becoming magnets for middle-class families moving into gentrifying neighborhoods who prefer them to their local zoned schools. The principals are concerned that their schools will “tip” over into majority white, middle-class schools.

They hope the new program will help them maintain more balanced populations.New York Schools Wonder: How White Is Too White? - The New York Times:

LAUSD needs to reverse its neglect of black students - LA Times

LAUSD needs to reverse its neglect of black students - LA Times:

LAUSD needs to reverse its neglect of black students

LAUSD superintendent Michelle King in the LAUSD board room, in Los Angeles on January 12. (Los Angeles Times)

 In the speculation about whether LAUSD superintendent Michelle King – a product of the district and its first black female chief executive -- will be a gentle consensus builder or a maverick innovator there has been little discussion about the fate of black children in the nation's second largest school district. This is unacceptable. As an advocate and mentor in South Los Angeles' schools, I continually see the impact of the district's gross neglect of black students' academic needs and social capital.

When black students arrive at LAUSD schools they can be confronted with teachers and administrators who view them as ticking time bombs, chronic screw-ups who are intellectually incapable of pursuing a college degree. When they look around their segregated campuses they see more police officers and military recruiters than do their white and Asian peers on the Westside and in the Valley. When they open their textbooks, they don't see their history or culture meaningfully represented.

 Granted, the district has addressed some of the disparities black students face. After pressure from community activists, in 2013 LAUSD banned suspensions for willful defiance, discipline that had disproportionately affected black students. In South L.A. schools, a low level offense such as talking back to a teacher was much more likely to result in a suspension or even an arrest than it might at a white school. It's been well documented that "zero tolerance" policies lead to lower achievement for black students and "push out" (students failing to complete school) – factors that contribute to the so-called school to prison pipeline.

By the beginning of the 2013-14 school year (the most recent available data), LAUSD could proudly announce that its disciplinary reforms had decreased suspensions overall by 53% compared to 2011-12. The district also achieved a steep drop in police citations for tardiness, absences and truancy, and an overall increase in its graduation rates. In 2012, 56% of the district's black students graduated; in 2014, 66% did.

Such gains, however, are not the whole picture. Despite the changes in the district's disciplinary policies, black students accounted for more than 30% of those suspended or expelled in 2013-14, even though they made up less than 11% of the district's population.

Similarly, while arrests and police citations decreased, nearly 95% went to students of color and 31% of those went to black students. In South L.A. schools, a culture of criminalization prevails. When students are more accustomed to seeing police than college counselors on their campuses, it sends a message that school is for containment rather than learning.

When black students arrive at LAUSD schools they can be confronted with teachers and administrators who view them as ticking time bombs [and] chronic screw-ups.-  

Even black students' improved graduation rates by no means indicate that the district is meeting their real educational needs.Last year, the school board had to retreat from a mandate that all its graduates, starting with the Class of 2017, earn a C or better in college prepratory classes required by the UC and Cal State systems. By the district's estimate, nearly 75% of the Class of 2017 (then in 10th grade) weren't on track to meet the mandate. In too many cases, the schools hadn't provided the courses or the necessary support.

Black students are deeply affected by the nexus of low college preparedness and low LAUSD needs to reverse its neglect of black students - LA Times:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: If I had a million dollars

Seattle Schools Community Forum: If I had a million dollars:

If I had a million dollars

 The recent $1.5 Billion prize in the PowerBall lottery made a lot of news. A lot of people who don't normally buy lottery tickets bought some for that drawing. I didn't because, as my brother succinctly told me, buying a ticket does not significantly improve your odds of winning. Needless to say, I didn't win the big prize.


I didn't think about what I would do with the money if I won. That's what you buy when you buy a lottery ticket, right? You buy the license to dream. I didn't buy a ticket so I didn't have license to think about how I would spend the money and I certainly didn't presume that I would win and start spending the money before the drawing. That would be crazy, right?

Yet that's what Seattle Public Schools does on a regular basis. They draw up all of these initiatives - Targeted Universalism is the latest one - which, I suppose, are all very high-minded and well-intentioned, but are predicated on one or more fantasies.


With Targeted Universalism they rely on about four of these fantasies.

First, they assume that they can implement a consistent Tier 1 curriculum across all classrooms and schools. They can't. They have been trying to do this ever since they introduced Standards-based Learning over fifteen years ago, but they have never been able to do it. Not only have they repeatedly and utterly failed in this, they have never admitted it so they have never learned from the failure. Instead, they chose to declare victory and move on. Since they claimed success, they could never figure out what kept them from succeeding and, worse, they persist in the delusion that they can do it.

It could that the JSCEE just doesn't know that standardization has not been implemented in the schools, it could be that they know but they have been lying to the Board about it, it could be that they do know, but they are lying to themselves about it, it could be that the schools have lied to the JSCEE about it to get the bureaucrats off their backs, or it could be some other possibility. But no matter who is misrepresenting the facts - knowingly or unknowingly - there is no consistent implementation of curriculum in Seattle Public Schools. Not across schools - not even across classrooms within schools.

When I think of this I am haunted by the emails that came after the Board's adoption of Math In Focus in which the Executive Directors of Schools Seattle Schools Community Forum: If I had a million dollars:

School budgets long recovered, not teacher-librarians :: SI&A Cabinet Report

School budgets long recovered, not teacher-librarians :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

School budgets long recovered, not teacher-librarians

 (Calif.) The good news is that the number of certificated librarians in California schools has increased slightly the past three years.

The bad news, however, is that the state’s ratio of one librarian for every 7,187 students ranks at the bottom nationally for professional library staffing.

“Most elementary schools don’t have a dedicated teacher librarian, and in many cases at the intermediate or middle school level, teacher librarians are only available a few hours a day or even a week if that,” Rosan Cable, full-time teacher librarian at Pacifica High School, said in an interview.

“That’s a common story throughout the state,” said Cable, who also serves as vice president of communications for the California School Library Association.

In spite of research showing that students at schools with full-time librarians score better in reading and writing on assessments of state standards, the number of certified librarians employed in California’s public schools has declined every year since 2000-01, according to statistics from the California Department of Education.

Librarian staffing levels reached an all-time low of 804 in the 2012-13 school year but rose to 859 in 2014-15, the most recent year for which data are available. With just over six million K-12 students in the state, that puts the librarian: student ratio at 1:7,187. By comparison, Texas with its five million students has 4,639 teacher librarians.

The drop in working school librarians mirrored a sharp decline in school funding that began in 2008-09 as a result of a massive economic recession. The economy has improved and school funding has increased the past few years but librarian numbers have remained fairly stagnant.

At the same time, the need for the services these professionals provide has increased substantially in large part because of the adoption of the Common Core State Standards.

These new math and English language arts standards call for students to be adept at accessing, evaluating and using content from a diverse range of sources. In today’s media-saturated society, learners must be able to assess information gleaned from websites, blogs, social media sites and online news sources, reference books and videos. Students also have to learn to locate and use School budgets long recovered, not teacher-librarians :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet: