Special Education teacher on leave after controversial letter about tests | WCBD News 2

Upstate teacher on leave after controversial letter about tests | WCBD News 2:
Upstate teacher on leave after controversial letter about tests
Special Education teacher requested students be exempt from federally mandated testing

An Upstate special education teacher says she was pulled from her classroom this week and put on leave after requesting in a letter that her students be exempt from federally mandated standardized testing.

“There’s a difference between testing and standardized testing,” Tracie Happel explained, Wednesday.

Happel says she’s learned this first hand in her 25 years in the classroom. She says testing holds students and teachers accountable, but standardized testing is purely a federal mandate.

In her first year teaching for White Oak Middle in Oconee County, she says the “SC PASS” and “SC READY” tests will force her special education students to meet unreachable standards, based on federal guidelines.

She wrote he concerns in a 3 page letter to the Oconee County School District the day before testing was set to start.

“I expressed my concerns about my students having to take a test where everything was a grade level, when I was working with the kids because they were not at grade level in their academics,” said Happel.

She asked they’d be exempt. She said the district told her it was impossible, but didn’t stop there.

“A few hours after I submitted my letter of objection, I was called to our district office and I was put on administrative leave,” said Happel.

She says the district told her she used derogatory names referencing her students.

“In my letter, I referred to my students and they relayed to me that they feel stupid, and like idiots and like retards,” explained Happel.

She says she works every day to inspire her kids, but they shouldn’t be subjected to fail. She believes it gets down to money with schools earning federal dollars for matching federal standards.

“Children are not exchangeable for money,” said Happel.

Wednesday, the district told 7 News that this was a personnel matter and they could not comment.

In the meantime, Happel just wants to encourage her students faced with taking the tests while she’s away.

“You guys, you can do this. I know you can do this. We talk about this every day how awesome you are. Just do what you’re supposed to do, listen to your mom and dad and I know you can do this,” said Happel, speaking to her students.

Our sister station, 7 News looked into state law. Currently, there is no mandate Upstate teacher on leave after controversial letter about tests | WCBD News 2:

What Frustrates This Educator about Rick Hess – Cloaking Inequity

What Frustrates This Educator about Rick Hess – Cloaking Inequity:

What Frustrates This Educator about Rick Hess

 As a former high school English teacher in two large, urban school districts, I completely understand how educators, parents and policymakers who are wrestling each day with the most pressing issues facing public education — standardized testing, the effects of poverty on learning, opportunity gaps — might be a bit impatient with educational theory and research. Is this new theory about the intersection of culture, politics, and digital media going to give me the answers about how to help my most struggling students today? If not, it can wait. My students need me right now.

So, I can chuckle for a moment along with Dr. Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, when hepokes fun at some of the paper titles that were presented earlier this month at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the largest professional organization of education researchers in North America. The titles he singles out are often extremely lengthy, contain more than their fair share of colons and million-dollar vocabulary words, and generally seem far away from classroom life.

I am now an educational researcher and freely admit that I have been guilty of these crimes against clarity and precision in my writing. Too often, academic writing that hopes to offer information to address the most pressing problems facing practitioners uses language that serves to alienate the very people researchers are trying to help — an issue that Dr. Mike Rose of UCLA just implored researchers to address at the AERA conference. The community of academia, like many other specialized communities, can get wrapped up in its own jargon to the detriment of its larger mission.

I can even give Dr. Hess a pass when he declares during a session on public scholarship at the AERA conference that Twitter is a social media site that does not lend itself to substantive public conversations. Perhaps he has seen too many snarky tweets and missed out on the amazing dialogues created by #FergusonSyllabus or #SlaverywithaSmile.

Yet, shortcomings in the communication of research, whether online or at conferences, do not mean that educational research is not crucial to informing and improving educational practice. In my courses for pre-service and in-service teachers, I remind my students that theory and research are inextricably linked to practice — that all decisions made in public education, from how we organize our lessons and assess student learning to how we structure school financing and school choice, flow from theories we have about the purpose of public education, the abilities of our students, and the kind of society we want to create. Naming these theories produces productive debate about the future directions of What Frustrates This Educator about Rick Hess – Cloaking Inequity:

Charitable Plutocracy: Bill Gates, Washington State and the Nuisance of Democracy | Alternet

Charitable Plutocracy: Bill Gates, Washington State and the Nuisance of Democracy | Alternet:

Charitable Plutocracy: Bill Gates, Washington State and the Nuisance of Democracy

Today’s multi-billionaires are a different species of philanthropist; they keep tight control over their foundations while also operating as major political funders.

This article was first published in the Nonprofit Quarterly (spring 2016; vol. 23, no. 1).

Once upon a time, the super-wealthy endowed their tax-exempt charitable foundations and then turned them over to boards of trustees to run. The trustees would spend the earnings of the endowment to pursue a typically grand but wide-open mission written into the foundation’s charter—like The Rockefeller Foundation’s 1913 mission “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.” Today’s multi-billionaires are a different species of philanthropist; they keep tight control over their foundations while also operating as major political funders—think Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, or Walmart heiress Alice Walton. They aim to do good in the world, but each defines “good” idiosyncratically in terms of specific public policies and political goals. They translate their wealth, the work of their foundations, and their celebrity as doers-of-good into influence in the public sphere—much more influence than most citizens have.

Call it charitable plutocracy—a peculiarly American phenomenon, increasingly problematic and in need of greater scrutiny. Like all forms of plutocracy, this one conflicts with democracy, and exactly how these philanthropists coordinate tax-exempt grantmaking with political funding for maximum effect remains largely obscure. What follows is a case study of the way charitable plutocracy operates on the ground. It’s a textbook example of the tug-of-war between government by the people and uber-philanthropists as social engineers.

The Case of Bill Gates and Washington State

This story begins in 1995, when the Washington State House of Representatives first considered legislation that would enable private individuals and organizations to obtain charters to create their own K–12 schools. These were to be taxpayer-funded schools, but privately run and exempt from many of the regulations governing district (regular) public schools. The funding would come from the resources of regular public schools: each student would “carry” his or her per-child funding out of the district system to a charter school.

The bill died in the state senate, so supporters went directly to voters with a ballot initiative to enable charter schools. The campaign attracted little money on either side, but turnout was high because the vote took place on the same day as the 1996 presidential election. Washingtonians rejected charter schools decisively: 64.4 percent against, 35.6 percent in favor.1

State representatives kept trying. They proposed new bills in 1997, 1998, and 1999, but got the same results: success in the lower chamber, failure in the Charitable Plutocracy: Bill Gates, Washington State and the Nuisance of Democracy | Alternet:

 

Troy LaRaviere Learns about Free Speech in Rahmistan

Lakeview - Troy LaRaviere Accused By CPS Of Misusing Equipment, Accounting Missteps - Neighborhood News - DNAinfo Chicago:
Troy LaRaviere Learns about Free Speech in Rahmistan

 LAKEVIEW — Ousted Blaine Elementary Principal Troy LaRaviere faces a dozen charges — ranging from mishandling school equipment to insubordination — that could lead to the dismissal of the outspoken critic of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, officials said Monday night in addressing the reasons for his removal.

The contentious news was met with boos from a crowd gathered at the school Monday night, as Blaine parents demanded to know specifics behind the sudden removal of a popular and seemingly successful principal.

"I think you can be high-performing and still break the rules," said Janice Jackson, chief education officer of Chicago Public Schools. "Over the past month, there have been so many acts that made it clear we were not able to redirect [LaRaviere's] behavior."

Although the district legally cannot discuss specific charges against personnel, Jackson said LaRaviere is free to share the list of charges with the community.

Jackson spoke broadly about the dozen allegations of misconduct, accusing LaRaviere of "dereliction of duty, violations of state and CPS ethical policies and insubordination."

Among violations were charges that LaRaviere disregarded teacher assessment guidelines, misused district equipment and broke rules governing how schools manage internal accounting.

Such infractions, however, can be for minor issues like mistakes in submitting cash receipts and purchasing information or failing to file a financial report.

While the local school council appoints principals, disciplining school administrators is left to CPS, Jackson said.

The insubordination charges are largely tied to a warning resolution the Chicago Board of Education issued to LaRaviere in August, lambasting him for insubordination and defying district directives related to Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, better known as PARC testing.

A written reprimand in December warned that ignoring CPS directives and continuing to speak out against the school district "could result in dismissal," Jackson said.

"As an administrator, you do have loyalties to the district that are expected," Lakeview - Troy LaRaviere Accused By CPS Of Misusing Equipment, Accounting Missteps - Neighborhood News - DNAinfo Chicago:

Most high school seniors aren't college or career ready, says 'Nation's Report Card' | 89.3 KPCC

Most high school seniors aren't college or career ready, says 'Nation's Report Card' | 89.3 KPCC:

Most high school seniors aren't college or career ready, says 'Nation's Report Card'

U.S. college readiness scores are down according to the standardized test known as the Nation's Report Card. LA JOHNSON/NPR

 The latest results of the test known as the Nation's Report Card are in. They cover high school seniors, who took the test in math and reading last year. The numbers are unlikely to give fodder either to educational cheerleaders or alarmists: The average score in both subjects was just one point lower in 2015 compared with the last time the test was given, in 2013. This tiny downtick was statistically significant in mathematics, but not for the reading test.

But even though the changes are small, chances are you're going to be hearing about them in a lot of places.

Why is this test so widely reported on, widely cited and widely debated? And how does it line up with common-sense yardsticks of how students are doing? Let's take a closer look.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, has become a standardized test that even some critics of standardized tests rely upon. One big reason: It's a research project conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, not a state accountability test.

Unlike state tests, which have been shifting year by year with the adoption of the Common Core, NAEP scores are comparable across decades — back to 2005 for math and all the way back to 1993 for reading.

"In our era of incredibly volatile state and local testing practices, it is our North Star," says Andrew Ho, a measurement expert at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who sits on NAEP's bipartisan governing board.

A large sample of high school seniors nationwide, in both public and private schools, took the tests last year — 18,700 students in reading and 13,200 in mathematics. This allows direct comparisons across states and cities.

And the absence of consequences for schools or teachers means students are not typically prepped or drilled to take the test, which potentially makes it a more useful measurement of student achievement than some state tests.

But what do NAEP scores mean? On the 12th-grade test in particular, Ho says, research shows that NAEP maps well with estimates of college and career readiness from Common Core-aligned tests, the SAT and the ACT.

According to research by Ho and others, just under 40 percent of students score at college and career ready levels on NAEP.

"College and career ready" means these scores strongly predict that students will be able to succeed doing college-level academics, or with on-the-job training in a position requiring only a high school diploma.

That seems clear enough.

Except when you realize a couple of things.

One is that in 2015 the nationwide high school graduation rate was 82 percent, not 40 percent. That leaves a potentially large group of kids who got diplomas but who weren't ready to succeed in college.

Who is right: their high schools or NAEP?

"I think the charitable view is that graduation is not just reading and math," says Ho, meaning that high school diplomas also include things like "social studies, Most high school seniors aren't college or career ready, says 'Nation's Report Card' | 89.3 KPCC:

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas. Learn more ...

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Can AI fix education? We asked Bill Gates | The Verge

Can AI fix education? We asked Bill Gates | The Verge:
Can AI fix education? We asked Bill Gates
How personalized learning is changing schools

The rise of smartphones has transformed the way students communicate and entertain themselves. But the classrooms they spend so much of their time in remain stubbornly resistant to transformation. On one hand, technology has long had a home in classrooms — I learned to type on an Apple IIe in the late 1980s. But for most schools, the approach to teaching remains stubbornly one-size-fits-all: a single teacher delivering the same message to a group of about 30 students, regardless of their individual progress.

Bill Gates is working to change all that. Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft’s co-founder and chairman has invested more than $240 million to date in a developing field known as "personalized learning." It’s a diffuse set of initiatives, led mostly by private companies, to develop software that creates individual lesson plans for students based on their performance, coaching them through trouble spots until they have mastered the subject at hand. Teachers still play a central role in the classroom, but they do less lecturing and more one-on-one coaching.

The effort is led by a dizzying array of startups with terrible names — think "Learnosity" — but big companies are starting to pay attention. In 2014 Google launched Classroom, which lets teachers post class announcements, assign work to students, and collect and grade their assignments. And last year Facebook announced a partnership with Summit Public Schools, in which the Gates Foundation is an investor, to create personalized learning software and make it freely available.

This week Gates spoke at the ASU GSV Summit, an education technology conference in San Diego. In a standing-room-only speech, he laid out the foundation’s vision for accelerating the adoption of personalized learning around the world. Gates asked investors to take a longer view in education than other fields, because of epic school district purchasing cycles. He asked school districts to speed up those cycles by using more pilot programs, and by supporting data standards that make it easy to compare the efficacy of different products. And Gates told entrepreneurs to invest in research around the efficacy of their products, producing data that will encourage other schools to adopt personalized approaches.

Last year I wrote about Facebook’s efforts around personalized learning, and afterward Gates’ people invited me to speak with him about his evolving thinking about education. A few hours after his speech, Gates bounded into a hotel room on the 38th floor of the Manchester Grand Hyatt and sat in a chair by the window. We were joined by a Gates Foundation spokeswoman and, on the other side of the window, a lone seagull who observed our interview with great interest.

"It’s still early stages," Gates said about personalized learning. "In five years, 10 years from now, will it be highly penetrated? That’s not absolutely clear."

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Casey Newton: I think it’s fair to say that even people who love tech don’t always pay close attention to the ways it’s transforming education. So at a high level, what is personalized learning doing for students at the schools where it’s being tried? And what opportunities do you see it creating over time?

Bill Gates: Well the term "personalized learning" doesn’t have an exact definition. In general, the idea is that people progress at a different rate. If you’re ahead of what’s being taught in the class, that’s not good, you get bored. If you’re behind, then they’re using terms and concepts that create a general impression of "Hey, I’m not good at this." And science and math in particular — if they’re talking about something you haven’t had the explanation on, you just really give up in that area. And there is no way that you are brought back into it.

For me, one of the most interesting areas you’re focusing on is remedial education in community colleges. Kids are asked to spend lots of money on these classes, which don’t earn them any credit, and so they never get their degrees as a result. In your speech, you say institutions that use personalized learning software for remedial education see their completion rates double. How does this work? Why is this a problem that software has been better at solving than traditional methods?

There’s a boundary between high school and college where the all-access colleges make you take an exam as you come in. And depending on what your math score or your reading or writing score is, if it’s low enough, then you get placed in the remedial class, and they re-teach you everything. They don’t tweak the results you got and say, "OK, you’re missing this part or this part." It’s just a binary "You’re OK, go ahead" or "You have to get in the class." And so that’s one of the reasons we have such high dropout rates in higher ed. If you use a personalized tool, you’d sit down and it would sort of figure out, Can AI fix education? We asked Bill Gates | The Verge:

The toxic environment of standardized testing

The toxic environment of standardized testing:
The toxic environment of standardized testing

High-quality tests that accurately assess student learning and help teachers understand how to improve instruction are an essential part of an excellent education. But in some states and districts today, large-scale standardized testing has gotten out of hand, with students taking as many as 20 standardized tests per year.

This was the situation in Michigan not too long ago. Teachers, parents, and students felt powerless when it came to government-mandated standardized tests such as the Michigan Student Test for Educational Progress (M-STEP).

It was difficult for us to understand if the amount of time spent on standardized testing was actually beneficial to students. Hours were taken away from teaching and learning time last school year in order to administer the M-STEP. This was a problem.

Many teachers thought standardized tests were an unreliable and inaccurate measure of student growth. Educators argued standardized tests should not be on the cutting edge of education because it promotes teaching to the test, which can impede, rather than promote, learning. Frustrated teachers and parents of Michigan finally came together and demanded less time for standardized testing and more time for learning. They had enough.

After listening to public opinions, complaints, and feedback, the Michigan Department of Education shortened the length of the M-STEP. This change shows the importance of teachers’ voices in education policy.

Teachers need to be as respected as other professionals. They need to have a say in education reform efforts. Michigan lawmakers seem to have accepted the importance of teacher input when developing education policies.

But one thing our state’s elected leaders can’t continue to do is place such an emphasis on standardized testing. Instead, we must focus our energy on The toxic environment of standardized testing:

Stop saying it’s “best for the kids” when it’s really about ignoring the black community - The Hechinger Report

Stop saying it’s “best for the kids” when it’s really about ignoring the black community - The Hechinger Report:

Stop saying it’s “best for the kids” when it’s really about ignoring the black community 

Communities shouldn’t accept the flagrantly negative tradeoffs that come with school reform.

Reform can only be sustained by the very communities that use them. That’s the bottom line for New Orleanians involved in the current effort to bring charter schools in the Recovery School District back into the New Orleans Public School District. The public has the rights to good schools and good governance. And if it isn’t the bottom line and for the rest of the country, it should be.

The charter movement was supposed to be about greater autonomy for schools. It doesn’t require tearing apart school districts, dividing educators and removing basic voting rights of citizens. But all of these things happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. So what if we have higher test scores. The goal isn’t to myopically improve schools; the goal is to improve community.

Elected officials seem to agree. Louisiana State Senator Karen Carter Peterson, in consultation with district and school leaders introduced senate bill 432, which sees to the return of RSD schools back to the Orleans Parish School Board by 2018. The bill is receiving little to no opposition.

Join the conversation later on Andre Perry’s radio show, “Free College,” hosted Tuesdays on WBOK1230 in New Orleans at 3pm Central/4pm Eastern 504.260.9265.

The meat of the bill is that that “the local school board shall not impede the operational autonomy of a charter school under its jurisdiction.”

Many prominent educators are on board as well.

“The most important factor is the unification of our school system for our city,” said Jamar McKneely, CEO of Inspire NOLA Charter Schools. “I believe that our citizens deserve the right to democracy, to actually be in control of our current school system, and as a city we have to move there as early as possible.” McKneely, who was part of a panel hosted by 100 Black Men of New Orleans, also points to inequities that are created by having two systems. He has charter schools in both Orleans Parish and the RSD.

In a statement announcing the 100 Black Men’s The Time is Now! initiative, chapter president Jonathan Wilson stated, “The time is now for us to bring the conversation to the public and seek unified action by our school board and other local elected officials to bring the schools back to our community’s control.”

Even stalwarts of the New Orleans charter movement don’t see the Stop saying it’s “best for the kids” when it’s really about ignoring the black community - The Hechinger Report:

 

Is enough ever enough when it comes to parents being involved in school? | www.ajc.com

How Atlanta parents strike balance of involvement in kids' school | www.ajc.com:

Is enough ever enough when it comes to parents being involved in school?

What's the right balance of parental involvement in children's education?

According to a recent Pew Research survey, a narrow majority of respondents — 54 percent — say parents can never be too involved in their children's education. But 43 percent say too much parental involvement in a child's education can be a bad thing.

Parental involvement was a hot topic earlier this year when Cobb County School Board member David Morgan suggested that if parents don't show interest and engagement in their children's academic work, then their kids can't participate in sports or other extracurricular activities.

Photo courtesy of Susan Wilson

Marietta mom Susan Wilson volunteered in the kindergarten class of her oldest daughter. As her girls matured, she stayed involved, but her involvement began to look different. Today, her oldest daughter is a rising junior in college, and her youngest daughter is a rising junior at Marietta High School.

The outcry was fierce and the measure was voted down 5-2. But the incident put a spotlight on the importance of parental involvement in education.

"For schools to be successful, families need to place an overt emphasis on learning," said Leigh Colburn, director of the Graduate Marietta Student Success Center at Marietta High School, where she previously was principal for 10 years.

"Parents need to be involved, and children need to see that their parents place high value on education," she continued.

Her perspective is echoed by the National Center for Families Learning: "... (I)t has been well established that young people whose parents are more engaged in their education do better academically than their peers, adding that "all parents — regardless of socioeconomic or educational level — can help their children succeed in school and in life."

Marietta mom Susan Wilson said she has been involved in her daughters' education through the years in a variety of ways.

"My husband, Neal, and I place high value on education. I believe teaching is a partnership between home and school, so I want my daughters' teachers and administrators to know they have my interest and support for a positive educational experience," she said.

Striking that right balance can be difficult. When children are in elementary school, parents tend to welcome involvement opportunities — whether it's going into a classroom to read a book, serving as a field-trip chaperone or participating in career day – and kids generally are proud to have their parents involved.

Yet, as children mature, moving into middle and then high school, parents may be less sure about the need and avenues for their involvement. And children might begin to resist their parents' attempts at involvement.

As her girls matured, Wilson said she stayed involved in their education, but her involvement began to look different. "I followed the leads and needs of my children and balanced that with my goal of having them be confident, independent children," she said.

Middle and high school are not the time to pull back from involvement, Colburn said. It's just the time to rethink what that involvement might look like.

During these years, she said, "You want to stay involved, but parent differently."

Sandra Sommerman, who lives in Marietta, said she enjoyed a lot of hands-on involvement in the educations of her two sons when they were in elementary How Atlanta parents strike balance of involvement in kids' school | www.ajc.com:

Tilson-Ravitch Exchange, Tilson Pens 5K Word ALL CAPS Essay On Politics - ValueWalk

As Kase Cap Struggles, Tilson Pens 5K Word ALL CAPS Essay On Politics - ValueWalk:

As Kase Cap Struggles, Tilson Pens 5K Word ALL CAPS Essay On Politics

 As Whitney Tilson’s Kase Capital struggles in Q1 (and 2015 and other years) Whitney Tilson is busy writing 5,137 word posts about important issues.. As Whitney Tilson notes regarding his conversation with Diane Ravitch “she was kind enough to reply, so I have included her comments (in ALL CAPS), interspersed and at the end of my original email (shared with her permission of course).” Via Tilson’s Education Blog – presented without further comment.

An exchange of emails with Diane Ravitch, focused on what we AGREE on

STOP THE PRESSES!!!

I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations in my life – and this ongoing one with Diane Ravitch certains ranks up there.

If I recall correctly, we first exchanged emails a few years ago when I send her my presentation about K12, the awful for-profit online charter school operator. I knew we’d have common ground there, as she’d also exposed K12’s misdeeds in her book, Reign of Error.

I reached out to her again recently because I knew we’d have common views on North Carolina’s hateful HB2 law (in fact, we’ve both now published articles in the Huffington Post on this; here’s mine: An Open Letter to a North Carolina State Legislator; and here’s hers: That Dumb Bathroom Bill in North Carolina).

Our common views got me thinking: how is it that two well-informed people can agree on so much in almost all areas, yet apparently disagree on so much in one area (ed reform)? Is it possible that we agree on more than we think?

So I sent her themail below, in which I wrote 24 statements about which I thought we might agree, and asked if she’d reply, in the hopes that we might both learn something, find more areas of agreement where we could work together, and, in general, try to tone things down.

She was kind enough to reply, so I have included her comments (in ALL CAPS), interspersed and at the end of my original email (shared with her permission of course).

Overall, I was heartened to see how many things we agree on.

That said, we still disagree on many things, about which I will respond in due time. But in the interests of keeping this email to a manageable length, I’ll let her have the last word here – but not the final word, as we’ve both committed to continuing (and sharing) our ongoing discussion.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll find our initial exchange as interesting and illuminating as I did.

——————————

Hi Diane,

You know, despite our disagreements on ed reform, I’d bet we agree on 95% of everything else. I’m certain that we agree that the Republican party has been hijacked by extremists, Trump is a madman, Cruz is terrifying, and there’s nothing more important than getting a Democrat elected president in November (and, ideally, retaking the Senate and maybe even the House as well).

We agree.

I’ll admit that this creates quite a dilemma for me: I want the teachers unions, which remain the single most powerful interest group supporting the Democratic party, to be strong to help as many Democratic candidates as possible win. But when it comes to my desire to implement the reforms I think our educational system needs, I usually want them to be weak.

I disagree.

I want the teachers’ unions to be strong so they can defend their members against unfair practices and protect their academic freedom. Teachers have been blamed for the ills of society, most especially, poverty. Today’s reformers have created the myth that great teachers–as defined by their students’ test scores– can overcome poverty and close the achievement gaps among different groups of students. I wish it were true, but it is not. The myth encourages lawmakers to believe that wherever poverty persists or test scores are low or achievement gaps remain, it must be the teachers’ fault.

Race to the top required states to evaluate teachers to a significant degree by their students’ test scores, which was a huge mistake that has cost states and districts hundreds of millions of dollars but hasn’t worked anywhere. This method has proved unstable and inaccurate; it reflects who is in the class, not teacher quality.

Scores on standardized tests are highly correlated with family income, over which teachers have no control. In the past few years, some states have eliminated collective bargaining, and there is no correlation between the existence of a union and students’ academic success. In fact, the highest-performing states on the As Kase Cap Struggles, Tilson Pens 5K Word ALL CAPS Essay On Politics - ValueWalk:

REPOSTED: Whitney Tilson and I Exchange Views on Education Reform and the Future | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/1pC85eT

A Disillusioned Teacher Responds to the Tilson-Ravitch Exchange | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/1MWZVJh

'We’re At War' Says Organizer Behind Education Protests Sweeping The Country | ThinkProgress

'We’re At War' Says Organizer Behind Education Protests Sweeping The Country | ThinkProgress:

‘We’re At War’ Says Organizer Behind Education Protests Sweeping The Country

Keron Blair will look you directly in the eye the whole time he’s talking to you, making sure you absorb every single word he’s saying. His personality seemed a bit reserved when he sat down with me at a Starbucks to discuss Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, the coalition he is director of, which been responsible for organizing and supporting school protests across the country. But when you listen to his speeches, you hear a minister’s voice.

“Public education…could die on our watch,” Blair said at a recent event for the Milwaukee Teachers Association. “The reality is what drew me to this fight is the shared acknowledgement that we are in fact at war, and what I’ve learned about wartime is that you cannot operate with the same kind of rules. You’ve got to make some wartime adjustments.”

AROS’ ongoing protests have conveyed exactly that level of urgency.

The coalition’s campaign began with a “day of action” where cities across the U.S. protested cuts to public education, the closure of schools in low-income neighborhoods that are predominantly black and Hispanic, the expansion of charter schools, and the proliferation of standardized testing. An estimated 40,000 parents, teachers, and students from over 830 schools in more than 30 cities participated in the February 17 walk-ins. A spokesperson for AROS said the protests were biggest in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Seattle, and Chicago.

#BuffaloStudentsDeserve #ReclaimOurSchools pic.twitter.com/sgDxBBpMPe

— Michelle Couture (@michellecoutur3) April 14, 2016

 AROS believes that schools are ultimately community institutions that help in the fight against poverty by providing support services. The coalition rejects top-down reform from “corporate executives, entrepreneurs or philanthropists,” and wants the voices of teachers, parents, and students to be prioritized in the decision-making process about important changes in education policy, whether local, state, or federal.

Drawing inspiration from other grassroots movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, Blair easily weaves together various political and economic issues to ensure that AROS is engaged in a broader fight — one focused on narrowing the gap in economic inequality and focusing on the voices of teachers, students, and parents in black and Hispanic communities. Blair says he learned what not to do from Occupy Wall Street as well. He wants to make sure the message isn’t so broad that people don’t see a focused policy agenda.

“I came to AROS because I felt that the fight for education and public schools in this country would be one of the defining fights of the decade,” Blair said.

Blair’s background as an immigrant helped informed his views about the value of public schools. Blair and his mother emigrated from Jamaica to the United States, where he attended Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School in New York. At the time, the school was struggling, but it was important 'We’re At War' Says Organizer Behind Education Protests Sweeping The Country | ThinkProgress:

What’s the Matter With Corporate Education Reform?

What’s the Matter With Corporate Education Reform?:

What’s the Matter With Corporate Education Reform?

Why Students and Teachers Won When the Vergara Decision was Overturned

Last week I reviewed Thomas Frank’s Listen Liberal: What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? in which he lambastes professional-class Democrats for thinking that there is “no social or political problem that cannot be solved with more education and job training.”  This makes perfect sense because, as a class, professionals are “defined by educational attainment, and every time they tell the country that what it needs is more schooling, they are saying: Inequality is not a failure of the system; it is a failure of you.”  

But, Frank contends, the only problem with education, for the professional crew, is that it is “not meritocratic enough.”  Thus, all that needs to be done is bust the teachers’ unions (whose sin is their outdated belief in solidarity), open charter schools, test our kids to death, and give tax breaks to “innovators.”

Nothing is more illustrative of this aspect of Frank’s critique than the way so many Democrats lined up to support the Vergara decision in 2014 even against the interests of a key Democratic constituency and key Democratic electeds.  

What was the Vergara Decision?

Nearly two years ago, a Los Angeles-area judge struck down the due process rights of California’s K-12 teachers in what many educators like myself found to be a distinctly bad ruling.  As Kelly Mayhew and I wrote at the time:

Last week’s decision in the Vergara v. the State of California lawsuit that undermined tenure and seniority rights was a profound slap in the face to teachers who have committed their careers to improving the lives of our children.  It was yet another significant victory for those who are seeking to impose corporate education reforms by pitting teachers against children in a cynical, destructive, and utterly counterproductive fashion.

As tenured professors in the community college system, union members, and parents of a child in California’s public school system, we have a unique perspective on this matter.  Although the “Vergara” decision has no effect on our jobs at San Diego City College, it does affect the professional lives of the educators who teach our son and it will do them, and him, more harm than good . . .

Pitting our child against his teachers, as the “Vergara” lawsuit seeks to do, is a fool’s errand. It destroys any sense of community in our schools and heaps scorn on the very people we all want to trust with our children’s futures.  The interests of teachers and students are not diametrically opposed, as so many in the corporate education reform industry would have us think, but rather inextricably linked.  When we disrespect teachers, we demean our education system and do nothing to help students.

San Diego is full of [good] schools . . . as is the rest of the state.  If you read much of the news media, however, you’ll believe differently given the endless drumbeat of education “reformers,” who often hide their true agenda of privatization and union busting behind a deeply dishonest rhetoric of “saving children” from “bad teachers.”

More specifically, with regard to the “Vergara” decision, David Welch, a conservative Silicon Valley millionaire and corporate education reformer who has been funding a group called “Students Matter,” won the opening salvo in a battle to deprive teachers of their constitutional due process and seniority rights.

The suit, which hid behind a group of poor and minority students, several of whom did not even attend schools where the teachers had tenure or due process rights, alleged that California’s teacher workplace rights infringe on the constitutional rights of students to an equal education–basically saying that hard-won job security, due process (i.e. that teachers cannot just be fired without a process), and seniority adversely impact low-income and minority students by keeping on “bad” teachers and too-often sticking inexperienced teachers in low-performing schools.

The problem with this argument and the “Vergara” decision (which will be appealed) is that it is based on What’s the Matter With Corporate Education Reform?: