Civil rights groups call for end to school violence ads - NY Daily News

Civil rights groups call for end to school violence ads - NY Daily News:

EXCLUSIVE: Civil rights groups call on pro-charter school organization to end ad campaign on public school violence

JEFFERSON SIEGEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

“They offer no solutions and are simply politicizing a real issue in order to push their agenda of harsh discipline practices,” Billy Easton said.

More than a dozen progressive education and civil rights groups signed onto a letter calling for a pro-charter school organization to end its ad campaign on public school violence, the Daily News has learned.

The groups, including the union-backed Alliance for Quality Education, accuse Families for Excellent Schools’ “Safe Schools Now” TV and digital media campaign of fear-mongering at the expense of students. The letter also accuses the hedge fund-backed group of promoting disciplinary policies that disproportionately affect black and Hispanic students.

PRO-CHARTER ADVOCACY GROUP CALLS FOR AUDIT OF CITY'S $400 MILLION PLAN TO OVERHAUL TROUBLED SCHOOLS

“Your organization’s mission is steeped in the language of civil rights and equality, but your campaign is steeped in messaging and rhetoric that feels intended to undermine a struggle for racial justice,” says the letter sent Monday.

Families for Excellent Schools representatives say they rolled out the splashy campaign to highlight legitimate problems and press the city to take action. CEO Jeremiah Kittredge said victims of violent incidents in city schools are mostly black and Hispanic kids — and the group won’t back down.

“As long as the city deprives these students of their right to safe schools, we will continue to fight alongside parents and children,” Kittredge said.

Families for Excellent Schools also organized a class-action suit in March with families who allege violent conditions in city schools deprived them of their right to a sound basic education.

But Alliance for Quality Education Executive Director Billy Easton said all Kittredge’s group is doing is preying on people’s fear to make the public schools look bad.

“They offer no solutions and are simply politicizing a real issue in order to push their agenda of harsh discipline practices,” Easton said.

Families for Excellent Schools has published several reports showing violent and disruptive incidents have worsened in public schools in recent years, but other stats show schools are actually getting safer.

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Civil rights groups call for end to school violence ads - NY Daily News:

The debate over student off-campus speech and First Amendment protection

The debate over student off-campus speech and First Amendment protection:

The debate over student off-campus speech and First Amendment protection

A recent federal court ruling about a public-school student punished for a Facebook post about a bomb threat may have some bigger First Amendment implications, says a judge who wrote the decision.

In the case of R.L. v. Central York School District, Judge John E. Jones III said last week that the York School District’s punishment of the student with a 23-day suspension didn’t violate his First Amendment rights, as his parents claimed. But Jones, echoing some other federal court judges, believed broader issues involved with this case and similar cases needed definition from federal appeals courts and the Supreme Court.

Jones issued his ruling on May 3 for the federal court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

Link: Read The Ruling

“How school administrators must balance students’ First Amendment rights with their duty to protect and foster a safe learning environment is a tension of principles the circuit courts, as well as the Supreme Court, are actively negotiating and developing,” Jones wrote.

In one example, where R.L.’s parents argued that the school’s handbook overstated its ability to regulate student speech under the Supreme Court’s Tinker decision, Jones sided with the parents, but he also said schools needed input from the higher courts on their off-campus speech policies.

“We must observe that schools need clear guidance from the Third Circuit or the Supreme Court as to whether and when they can regulate off-campus speech. Once a clearer rule is pronounced, schools would be well advised to revise their disciplinary policies to clearly outline when off-campus student speech or conduct can be regulated by the school,” Jones wrote.

In this specific case, a bomb-threat letter was discovered at the school in October 2013. School was later dismissed, and while at home, the student made the Facebook post which he later said as intended as a joke, which read, “Plot twist, bomb isn’t found and goes off tomorrow.”

The student later returned to school to get his belongings, which included a mobile device he used to delete the Facebook post. By that time, local police had noticed the post and consulted with the school. School officials then spoke with the student and his father at a football game that night, and told the student he faced a suspension. A disciplinary board later set the suspension at 23 days, and the parents sued on behalf on their son.

The parents claimed their son had his First and 14th Amendment rights violated, since there wasn’t a higher court precedent that allowed schools to punish students for off-campus speech that didn’t cause a substantial disruption at school.

The 1969 Supreme Court decision in Tinker v. Des Moines held that schools could restrict student speech when it threatens a substantial disruption to the school environment or invades the rights of others.

Judge Jones said the location where the student made the Facebook post didn’t matter in this specific case. “Schools should be able to discipline students on account of off-campus speech they reasonably believe could cause disruption in the form of danger or violence, or fear of danger or violence, in schools. Such a rule would also account for the modern reality of the Internet and The debate over student off-campus speech and First Amendment protection:

How Many Schools Should Be Eligible to Provide Free Lunch Under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act? - The Atlantic

How Many Schools Should Be Eligible to Provide Free Lunch Under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act? - The Atlantic:

When All Kids Eat for Free

Congress is considering a rule change to the school-nutrition law that would bar thousands of schools from offering complimentary lunch to all students.

 Much has been made recently of Detroit’s resurgence and growth. In January, President Obama made a swing through the Motor City, touting “something special happening in Detroit.” Yet the comeback has not been evenly felt across the city. The Michigan League for Public Policy’s 2016 Kids Count Data Profilerevealed a major fault line earlier this year. From 2006 to 2014, child poverty in Detroit increased by 29 percent, to about 94,000 children or well more than half (57 percent) of the city’s population under the age of 18.* The unavoidable conclusion: Many of Detroit’s youngest residents remain mired in hardship and hunger.

During the school day, the job of filling children’s empty stomachs rests with Betti J. Wiggins, the executive director of Detroit Public Schools office of school nutrition. The district enrolls about 46,000 students, and advertises free breakfast and lunch for every child—not just those who qualify and apply for the benefit. Wiggins credits a little-known provision in the federal child-nutrition bill for boosting participation and feeding more of Detroit’s students at school. But those nutritional benefits are now at risk, as Congress moves to reauthorize the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. A proposed rule change to the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP)—widely praised by budget experts and school officials—would effectively leave thousands of impoverished Detroit students, who now eat breakfast and lunch at school, unfed.

The rationale for the program is fairly straightforward. CEP, now in its second year of nationwide availability, allows high-poverty schools to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students at no cost, instead of collecting individual applications for free or reduced-price meals for students who qualify based on family income. Whether a school is eligible for the provision is based on data illustrating how many children are food insecure, whether they live in households that receive food stamps, live in foster care, are homeless, or other criteria that identify them as part of a food-vulnerable group. Under the program, a school district, group of schools, or single school with 40 percent or more “identified students”—those who automatically qualify for free school meals because they fall within the prior special classification—is eligible to adopt community eligibility. The House bill would raise the eligibility threshold to 60 percent, forcing thousands of high-poverty schools nationally to rollback school meals.

“In income-insecure households, the first item to be reduced is food, in both quantity and quality.”

Wiggins said the program allows districts like hers to feed more hungry kids. “In income-insecure households, the first item to be reduced is food, in both quantity and quality,” she said. Since CEP, Detroit has experienced an average daily participation increase of 22 percent across the district. She anticipates that with the higher eligibility limit almost 8,000 fewer breakfasts and about 9,300 fewer lunches would be served to students each day. This represents a projected 40 percent drop in eligible high-school students who will abandon school meals, Wiggins said, because of the “consequential identification” of being a free-lunch student. Additionally, CEP reduces administrative costs associated with processing school meals applications. Wiggins said the cost of printing, How Many Schools Should Be Eligible to Provide Free Lunch Under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act? - The Atlantic:

Union-commissioned report says charter schools are bleeding money from traditional ones - LA Times

Union-commissioned report says charter schools are bleeding money from traditional ones - LA Times:
Union-commissioned report says charter schools are bleeding money from traditional ones

A teachers union-funded report on charter schools concludes that these largely nonunion campuses are costing traditional schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District millions of dollars in tax money.

The report, which is certain to be viewed with skepticism by charter supporters, focused on direct and indirect costs related to enrollment, oversight, services to disabled students and other activities on which the district spends money.

L.A. Unified has the most charters — 221 — and the highest number of charter students — more than 100,000 — of any school system in the nation. Charter students make up about 16% of the district's total enrollment.

The union gave The Times the study in advance of its scheduled presentation at Tuesday's Board of Education meeting, with the stipulation that the report not be distributed to outside parties.

The study calculates that services to charters encroach on tax money the district intended to use for traditional schools, adding up to at least $18.1 million a year and growing.

The biggest financial problem for the district, however, is that money follows students and a huge number of students have enrolled in charters instead of traditional district schools. With more education tax dollars going directly to charters, the result is a decline of more than $500 million a year — about 7% — in the district's core budget, the researchers say.

The effects of this drop are difficult to quantify because fewer students in traditional schools also means a reduced need for teachers and other personnel.

But even with reduced staffing, the district faces a net loss of about $4,957 per student, the study says. That amount accounts for fixed costs, such as maintaining buildings.

Whatever the exact amount, the district has less money to spend with the flexibility its leaders would prefer or to offset legacy costs that include aging school buildings and retiree health benefits.

“The findings in the report paint a picture of a system that prioritizes the growth opportunities for charter school operators,” according to a separate policy brief co-written by the union.

Charter supporters take a different view, seeing the district as the fundamental problem and charters as an important solution.

“Like all businesses, the district has to compete for its customers,” said Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

“The growth of charters is putting pressure on the district. The district can't do what it did in the past and come out ahead,” added Hanushek, who hadn't seen the report. “They can try to compete for the students or sell off the buildings. But the point is: Charters look attractive to parents, which means that the district is not attractive.”

Prompted in part by concern about the district's judgment in how it spends money, a group of philanthropists and foundations has bet big on charters in Los Angeles, subsidizing their growth over the last two decades. Last year, local philanthropist Eli Broad spearheaded a proposal to more than double the number of charters over the next eight years, hoping to reel in half of district students.

About six months ago, a group formed to develop Broad's vision for new, high-quality schools.

Meanwhile, both the district and employee unions have been trying to develop counter-strategies. From the district, the push is to increase enrollment, to compete with charters more aggressively and possibly to limit their growth. Until now, the union has been most visible at the bully pulpit, speaking at gatherings and leading demonstrations.

The new report is from Florida company MGT of America. It builds on the work of an earlier, independent district advisory panel, which concluded that charter growth is one of several factors threatening the solvency of L.A. Unified.

This latest analysis was reviewed by pro-labor Washington group In the Public Interest, which prepared the separate policy brief with the union.

“Unmitigated charter school growth limits educational opportunities for the more than 542,000 students who continue to attend schools run by the district, and … further Union-commissioned report says charter schools are bleeding money from traditional ones - LA Times:

Scientific Studies - John Oliver

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Scientific Studies (HBO) - YouTube:

Scientific Studies - John Oliver

Georgia ‘psychoeducational’ students segregated by disability, race

Georgia ‘psychoeducational’ students segregated by disability, race:

Georgia ‘psychoeducational’ students segregated by disability, race

Part one of a three-part series: Schools send disproportionate number of black children to programs already under fire for ‘warehousing’ students with behavioral disorders.

 David punched and kicked and spat on his teachers. He knocked over furniture. He poked a hole in a classroom wall. He pelted other students with stones and shoved a school police officer.

At age 7, David was too much for his teachers to handle. So they decided to send him to a special program — unique to Georgia — called a psychoeducational school. He was like so many others already there: male, diagnosed with a behavioral disorder — and black.

Georgia’s public schools assign a vastly disproportionate number of African American students to psychoeducational programs, segregating them not just by disability but also by race, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found.

Black children form the majority at programs where teachers restrained children with dog leashes, where psychologists performed behavioral experiments on troubled students, and where chronically disruptive students spent time in solitary confinement, locked in rooms with bars over the windows. In one such room, euphemistically called a “time-out” area, a 14-year-old boy hanged himself.

Fifty-four percent of students in Georgia’s psychoeducational programs are African American, compared to 37 percent in all public schools statewide, the Journal-Constitution found. In half of the 24 programs, black enrollment exceeds 60 percent. In one, nine of every 10 students are African American.

The Journal-Constitution analyzed data on most of the 3,382 students assigned last fall to the psychoeducational programs, formally known as the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS. The analysis, along with interviews with parents, their lawyers, educators and others, depicts a system that provides little of the mental health treatment and other therapies for which it was created. Just 5 percent of the programs’ full-time employees are psychologists, social workers or behavior specialists. Nine programs employ more clerical workers than therapeutic professionals.

The newspaper’s findings add a new dimension to allegations that Georgia illegally segregates disabled students in GNETS programs. The U.S. Department of Justice says the Americans with Disabilities Act gives GNETS students the right to attend school in less-restrictive settings with children who are not disabled. Federal authorities may file a lawsuit to force the state to close the programs.Georgia ‘psychoeducational’ students segregated by disability, race:

2016 Building a Grad Nation Report | GradNation

2016 Building a Grad Nation Report | GradNation:
2016 Building a Grad Nation Report
PROGRESS AND CHALLENGE IN RAISING HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION RATES
Written annually by Civic Enterprises and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, and released in partnership with America’s Promise Alliance and the Alliance for Excellent Education, this report examines the progress and challenges the nation faces in reaching the GradNation goal of a national on-time graduation rate of 90 percent by the Class of 2020. Release Date: 05/9/16

 Introduction

Download the Full Report
Download the Executive Summary
Download the 2016 Data Brief

The nation has achieved an 82.3 percent high school graduation rate – a record high.

Graduation rates rose for all student subgroups, and the number of low-graduation-rate high schools and students enrolled in them dropped again, indicating that progress has had far-reaching benefits for all students.

This progress, however, has not come without its challenges.

First, this year the nation is slightly off pace to reach a 90 percent on-time graduation rate by 2020.

Second, at both the national and state levels, troubling graduation gaps remain between White students and their Black and Latino peers, low-income and non-low-income students, and students with and without disabilities.

Third, low-graduation-rate high schools – a key focus of the recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act – pose a significant roadblock to the national goal of a 90 percent graduation rate for all students. While the number of low-graduation-rate high schools has declined considerably over the past decade, in some states they still predominate.

The 2016 Building a Grad Nation report is the first to analyze 2014 graduation data using new criteria established by ESSA and the first to show the impact of additional time on graduation rates.

If all states were required to report five-year graduation rates, the national high school grad rate would go up about 3 percentage points. If all states were required to report six-year grad rates, the rate would go up an additional point.

The report provides a new national and state-by-state analysis of low-graduation-rate high schools; the number of additional students it will take for the country and each state to reach 90 per-cent; a look at the validity of graduation rates; and policy recommendations for change.

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National & State Picture

After flat-lining for 30 years, high school graduation rates began to rise in 2002. This steady climb became more accelerated in 2006 and, in 2012, the nation reached an historic milestone, an 80 percent on-time graduation rate.

The upward trend continued through 2014, as the national graduation rate hit another record, 82.3 percent, up more than 10 percentage points since the turn of the century.

When the graduation rate hit 80 percent, we calculated that the national graduation rate would need to increase by roughly 1.2 percentage points per year to achieve 90 percent by the Class of 2020. Between 2013 and 2014, the nation missed this mark, and will now have to average closer to 1.3 percentage points per year to reach the goal.

Moving from percentages to raw numbers, meeting the 90 percent goal would mean graduating 284,591 more students.

To graduate students equitably across all subgroups means focusing on students of color, those with disabilities, English-language learners and students from low-income homes. Despite all the progress, these subgroups still graduate at lower rates than other students.

For more information on subgroup graduation rates, go to the 2016 Building a Grad Nation Data Brief.

At the state level:

• Iowa became the first state to surpass 90 percent, with a 90.5 percent rate in 2014.
• 20 other states are on pace to reach a 90 percent graduation rate.
• Five on-pace states – Nebraska, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Texas and Wisconsin – are within 2 percentage points of the goal.
• 21 states are currently off track to reach 90 percent by the Class of 2020.

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Low-Grad-Rate Schools

The number of low-graduation-rate schools – defined by ESSA as those enrolling 100 or more students and graduating 67 percent or less of them – has declined considerably, but in some states they still predominate. (Note: Previous reports have focused on high schools with at least 300 students. This calculation, made to align with ESSA, allows a closer look at more rural, charter, alternative and virtual schools.)

• There are 1,000 large, low-graduation-rate high schools (more than 300 students) nationwide, enrolling 924,000 students, compared to 2,000 in 2002, enrolling 2.6 million students.
• Vulnerable students are overrepresented in low-graduation-rate high schools. Of the roughly 924,000 in large low-graduation-rate high schools, 65 percent were from low-income families, and 63 percent were Black or Hispanic/Latino.
• When including high schools with student populations of at least 100 students, there are 2,397 graduation-rate high schools across the nation, enrolling 1.23 million students.
• Nationwide, 33 percent of all non-graduates in 2014 were enrolled in low-graduation-rate high schools.
• Though alternative, charter, and virtual schools collectively account for 14 percent of high schools and 8 percent of high school students, they make up 52 percent of low-graduation-rate high schools nationwide and produce 20 percent of non-graduates. Regular district high schools account for 41 percent of low-graduation-rate high schools and are where the majority of students who do not graduate on time can be found.
• Low-graduation-rate high schools by school types. Out of all low-grad-rate schools in the nation, 41 percent are regular district schools, 28 percent are alternative schools, 26 percent are charter schools and 7 percent are virtual schools. (According to NCES definitions, there is inherent overlap between the alternative, charter, and virtual schools categories, so these numbers do not add up to 100 percent. When looking just at district-operated alternative schools, they make up 23 percent of low-graduation-rate high schools, and when separating virtual schools out from charter schools, the percentage of low-graduation-rate schools that are charter schools falls to 22 percent.)
• Regular district schools (84% of all high schools). Seven percent (7%) of regular district public schools, or roughly 1,000 schools nationwide, were low-graduation rate high schools. Regular district high schools had an average graduation rate of 85 percent. The number of low-graduation-rate regular district high schools across states ranges from zero in Delaware, Hawaii, and Kentucky to more than 276 in New York and 203 in Florida.
• Charter schools (8% of all high schools). Now authorized in all but seven states, the of charter schools is rising with mixed results on graduation rates. Thirty percent (30%) of charter schools were low-graduation-rate high schools, while 44 percent had high graduation rates of 85 percent and above. Nationwide, charter schools reported an average graduation rate of 70 percent. Hawaii, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio and California have the highest percentages of low-graduation-rate charter high schools.
• Alternative schools (6% of all high schools). Established to meet the needs of “at risk” students, 57 percent of alternative schools are low-graduation-rate high schools. They have an average graduation rate of 52 percent. Sixty percent (60%) of students at alternative high schools are students of color. In 10 states, including Kentucky, Texas, Washington, Idaho and Iowa, 50 percent or more of low-graduation-rate high schools were alternative schools in 2014. Other states have experienced greater success with alternative schools.
• Virtual schools (1% of all high schools).Schools offering all instruction online have greatly increased in recent years. Virtual schools were disaggregated in NCES data for the first time in 2013-14. The data shows that 87 percent of virtual schools are low-grad-rate schools with an average graduation rate of 40 percent. States with the highest percentage of non-graduates coming from virtual schools include Ohio, Idaho, Pennsylvania and Colorado.

Read more: 2016 Building a Grad Nation Report | GradNation:

Who Does the Movement to Opt Out of Standardized Testing Help? | US News Opinion

Who Does the Movement to Opt Out of Standardized Testing Help? | US News Opinion:
The Opt-Out Reckoning
An ever-growing call to opt out of standardized tests is prompting serious questions in education.

 In public school districts across the country, spring is commonly referred to as testing season. But for the past several years, parents across the country have passively resisted participating in standardized testing by opting out. And the movement is gaining momentum. Last year, over half a million school-aged children did not participate instandardized testing. In New York state alone, nearly 1 out of every 5 students opted out.

Standardized testing, a longstanding feature of American education reform, is meant to serve at least three purposes: monitor student performance; improve teaching and learning; and evaluate the quality of teaching and schools. Policymakers have relied on standardized tests as a mechanism for assessing student progress and identifying racial and economic achievement gaps since the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed in 1965, which was followed by the No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law in 2002 and the recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act.

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RELATED CONTENT

4 Lessons From the Opt Out Debate

Test refusals may force education reformers to re-evaluate their priorities.

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Criticism of standardized testing is nearly as old as the testing itself. For decades, opponents have argued that the tests cause undue stress for both teachers and students, and that they do not provide valid or timely information about what students know and understand. Critics have also noted the consequences that high-stakes testing has for the curriculum, marginalizing courses in so-called untested disciplines like art and social studies, as well as untested skills and topics within tested courses. Recent research has shown that there is often very little overlap between the content that is actually covered in math and English language arts classes and the content that shows up on state standardized tests.

Given new urgency by the implementation of standardized tests aligned to Common Core State Standards, which were fully implemented in the 2014-2015 school year, many of these same criticisms have helped catalyze the current opt-out movement. These concerns were exacerbated, in many cases, by widespread technical issues that hampered the rollout (including issues with curricular materials and resources; issues with providing adequate professional development to teachers; and problems with new computer-based assessment systems), and the belief among some opponents that these Who Does the Movement to Opt Out of Standardized Testing Help? | US News Opinion:

Charter-Driven Gains? in New Orleans Schools Face a Big Test - The New York Times

Charter-Driven Gains in New Orleans Schools Face a Big Test - The New York Times:

Charter-Driven Gains in New Orleans Schools Face a Big Test

NEW ORLEANS — Nothing has defined and even driven the fractious national debate over education quite like this city and the transformation of its school system in the decade since Hurricane Katrina.

So-called reformers say its successes as an almost all-charter, state-controlled district make it a model for other failing urban school systems. Charter school opponents and unions point to what has happened here as proof that the reformers’ goal is just to privatize education and strip families of their voice in local schools across the country.

Now comes another big moment in the New Orleans story: In the next few weeks, the governor is expected to sign legislation returning the city’s schools to the locally elected school board for the first time since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Strikingly, that return is being driven by someone squarely in the pro-charter camp, the state superintendent, John White. A veteran of touchstone organizations behind the efforts to remake public schools —Teach for America and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and its superintendent training program — as well as the hard-charging charter school efforts in New York City, Mr. White represents the wave of largely white, young idealists who rushed to this city post-Katrina to be part of the Big Thing in education.

To Mr. White, the move to local control is not the retreat it may seem. He argues that it will make New Orleans a new model, radically redefining the role of central school boards just as many urban school districts are shifting increasingly large portions of their students to independently run but Charter-Driven Gains in New Orleans Schools Face a Big Test - The New York Times:

Survey: Linda Darling-Hammond, Ben Carson Most Likely Ed. Secretary Picks - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Survey: Linda Darling-Hammond, Ben Carson Most Likely Ed. Secretary Picks - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Survey: Linda Darling-Hammond, Ben Carson Most Likely Ed. Secretary Picks

Education researcher Linda Darling-Hammond and former Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson are the most likely picks to be U.S. Secretary of Education for White House candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, respectively, according to an "Education Insiders" survey by Whiteboard Advisors released Monday. And who's second on the list for Clinton? American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, say these insiders.

The survey of roughly 50 to 75 current and former White House and U.S. Department of Education leaders, current and former congressional staff members, state education officials, and think tank leaders also found that a slight majority of them believe that over the next two years, more states will stop participating in two consortia (PARCC and Smarter Balanced) that were originally funded by Washington and create tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards. 

And these "insiders" are generally pessimistic about the extent to which both the media and presidential politics will focus on education, although there's some belief that higher education could be an exception.

"I'm not sure if K-12 will get much attention because the recent reauthorization of ESEA [Elementary and Secondary Education Act) probably means that the next president won't have an opportunity to influence K-12 education (at least not legislatively) unless he or she gets a second term," according to one respondent, none of whom were quoted by name.

Let's go back to the favorites for the next secretary of education. The survey asked respondents for the most likely picks for Clinton and Trump. Here's what they came back with: 

Darling-Hammond is the president of the Learning Policy Institute (launched last year) and a professor emeritus at the Stanford University graduate school of education. She's got a long track record in K-12 policy work—her activities range from significantly influencing California's shift to a new accountability system, to serving as an adviser to the Smarter Balanced testing consortium that creates exams aligned to the Common Core State Standards. She helped to start two charter schools through Stanford, but in 2010 the elementary school's charter was not renewed, and it shut down—the high school is still operating. And she's pushed for less testing in American schools. 

Weingarten has been an outspoken advocate for Clinton. The AFT acted quickly to endorse the Survey: Linda Darling-Hammond, Ben Carson Most Likely Ed. Secretary Picks - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

State board to choose school improvement metrics | EdSource

State board to choose school improvement metrics | EdSource:
State board to choose school improvement metrics

 The State Board of Education on Wednesday is planning to choose a handful of statewide metrics to measure student performance as part of its creation of a new school accountability system.

The board will approve the new system in September and begin using it in the fall of 2017. It will replace the Academic Performance Index, the single-number score, based solely on standardized test scores, that the board suspended two years ago. The board is also designing the new system to satisfy federal accountability requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act.

State board staff are recommending that the board initially choose five metrics to identify which schools and districts need assistance and which demand more intensive intervention. They are:

• Student test scores on Common Core tests in math and English language arts;
• Progress of English learners toward English language proficiency;
• High school graduation rates;
• An added weight for two markers of a student’s progress through school: test scores in Grade 3 reading and Grade 8 math;
• Student suspension rates at various grade levels.

Not included on the initial list are three measures that student and parent advocacy groups have pressed the board either to adopt now or commit to using in the future: rates of chronic student absenteeism, which is an indicator of school climate and a predictor of a student’s underperformance; as-yet-to-be developed tests on the new state science standards, and indicators or an index of college and career readiness. Board members have expressed interest in eventually incorporating these measures, and at its meeting this week, the state board is expected to adopt an annual timetable for researching and approving new metrics.

In a letter sent Friday to the state board, a collection of nonprofit organizations expressed disappointment that college and career indicators weren’t chosen.State board to choose school improvement metrics | EdSource:

Did Mark Zuckerberg Just Get Taken In Again on Education Reform? | janresseger

Did Mark Zuckerberg Just Get Taken In Again on Education Reform? | janresseger:
Did Mark Zuckerberg Just Get Taken In Again on Education Reform?

 You may remember that Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg’s initial foray into education was in Newark, NJ, where he allowed then-mayor Cory Booker and governor Chris Christie to convince him to donate $100 million to fund their scheme to charterize Newark’s public schools.  Now Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan, have launched the huge Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and they have hired Jim Shelton to run it.  Shelton headed up the Office of Innovation and Improvement at Arne Duncan’s U.S. Department of Education, where he rose through the ranks to become Assistant Deputy Secretary, Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer.

Shelton was really good with the rhetoric. In 2012 he told Michele McNeil of Education Week: “(T)hough the federal government provides only a small fraction of education funding, we are one of the largest single sources. We send incredible signals to the marketplace about what should happen with innovation.  That’s not been something either policymakers or regulators have thought a lot about… (I)nnovation happens in the context of an ecosystem.  R&D leads to entrepreneurship and investment, which leads to adoption and use… (W)hen we create things like the Investing in Innovation competitive grant program (i3), we are defining an evidence threshold that was not a part of most federal education programs before… As i3 continues and as we get more comfortable putting tiered evidence levels in other areas of the department, we will work on that.”

Shelton has now taken a job heading up the new Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, described by Benjamin Herold for Education Week: “The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was formed last fall, when the couple announced their intent to give 99 percent of their Facebook stock, valued at an estimated $45 billion, to a variety of causes, headlined by technology-enabled personalized learning in K-12 education.  Created as a limited liability corporation, the organization is free to make philanthropic donations, invest in for-profit companies, and engage in political lobbying and policy advocacy.” Mark Zuckerberg built his fortune from Facebook.

In many ways, Shelton’s resume and training are a perfect match for his new job running the Chan Zuckerberg philanthropic limited liability corporation. Shelton came to the U.S. Did Mark Zuckerberg Just Get Taken In Again on Education Reform? | janresseger:

Business-inspired School Reform: Has the Wave Crested? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Business-inspired School Reform: Has the Wave Crested? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:
Business-inspired School Reform: Has the Wave Crested?
I saw this cartoon and burst out laughing.

 The cartoonist takes airline frequent flier practices that sort out passengers for best-to-worst seating and applied it to school busing.  The New Yorkercartoonist’s pen  gives satisfaction to critics of business-influenced school reform, by poking at the unrelenting “privatization” of public schooling over the past three decades.

Although no critic of such reforms that I have read or heard has suggested this practice, those who criticize  the charter school movement, expanded parental choice, the standards/testing/accountability movement, and evaluating teachers using student test scores have pointed to  hedge fund managers, philanthropists who made their money in business, corporate CEOs, Business Roundtable executives and Chambers of Commerce knee-deep in these initiatives. Critics see such support for these reforms as strong evidence of “privatization.”

Both critics and champions of these reforms, however, seldom mention the decades-long commercial penetration of schooling in everything from ads displayed on high school gymnasia and football fields, or curriculum materials supplied by corporations, or deals with soda companies in vending machines–and on and on. And don’t forget ads on school buses.

Researchers have documented the spread of this sort of business influence for decades. This nexus between commerce and public schooling has a long history and is not a recent phenomenon. As early as the 1890s, business leaders have lobbied for vocational education and succeeded in adding such courses of study to public schools. Since then, reformers have turned to using successful business practices in schools time and again (e.g., Malcolm Baldrige Quality Awards to schools).

“Educationalizing” national problems from racial segregation to national defense to economic growth has been a definite pattern in the history of school reform. But is the current instance business-minded reform tying schooling to economic prowess fading in U.S. public schools?

There are some signs that it is. With the slow-motion retreat from the punitive No Child Left Behind law in the U.S. Congress reauthorizing the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015), increasing evidence that National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores have leveled off and even fallen, a growing “opt-out” movement of parents objecting to standardized tests, and increasing public awareness of non-school factors strongly influencing students’ academic performance, talk about “privatization”  is slowly waning as policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and parents see that simple-minded applications of business “best practices” fail to deal with core issues in schooling U.S. children (see N-gram mentions of “privatization” peaking in 2003). And so has the failed adoption of business-inspired practices such as determining teacher effectiveness on the basis of student test scores.

Yet there are signs that counter such evidence of waning interest in business-inspired reforms. Charter school annual growth continues at a six percent rate; 43 states now allow charter schools (see here). In some urban districts, more than half of public school students attend charter schools (e.g., New Orleans, Detroit) and others are approaching that (e.g., Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Ohio). Widespread adoption of charter schools have left what appears to be a permanent footprint in U.S. schools.

Moreover, while growing popular resentment to testing is clearly in evidence, and the number of annual tests will probably decrease, ending annual standardized testing is not about to happen simply because quantitative school outcome measures are essential accountability tools in any $600-plus billion industry, public or private . And standardized test scores are an inexpensive way Business-inspired School Reform: Has the Wave Crested? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: