Nguyen Mailer Highlights Major Endorsements, Education Heavyweights; Davis Tries Maternal Appeal - Elk Grove News.net

Nguyen Mailer Highlights Major Endorsements, Education Heavyweights; Davis Tries Maternal Appeal - 

Nguyen Mailer Highlights Major Endorsements, Education Heavyweights; Davis Tries Maternal Appeal 

 With the June 7 primary just five days away, the two most visible candidates for the Area 6 Sacramento County Board of Education hit Elk Grove mailboxes with mailers today. Those candidates are Heather Davis and Stephanie Nguyen (pictured above) and each employed a distinct strategy. 

Davis, whose mailer was paid for by the state's leading charter school advocate and employer of her husband, Elk Grove Gary Davis, the California Charter School Association seems to be aimed at women voters. This mailer, titled "Teachers Say: "Put a Mom on the School Board"" features four female teachers from the Elk Grove Unified School District and seems to be targeting maternal instincts suggesting that a mother needs to serve on the board. 

Among the four educators endorsing Davis is Cua Lo-Ly, the wife of Elk Grove Vice Mayor Steve Ly. Vice Mayor is the political protege of Mayor Davis.

Countering those four endorsements, Nguyen, a mother herself, highlights educational and political heavyweight endorsements. Among the educational heavyweights endorsing her candidacy are former legendary Elk Grove Unified School District school principal Marielle Tsukamoto and Los Rios Community College Board Member Kay Albiani.  

In addition to Tsukamoto and Albiani, Nguyen's major endorsements include local Democratic heavyweights Assembly Members Jim Cooper and Kevin McCarthy, Former California State Senate Leader and current Sacramento Mayoral Candidate Darrell Steinberg, and Sacramento County Supervisor Patrick Kennedy. 

Nguyen, a Democrat, is also endorsed by the California Schools Employee Association, California Teachers Association, and the Sacramento Central Labor Council. Although not registered as a Democrat, Davis, a charter school advocate, has tried appealing to Area Six voters by appearing on a slate mailer targeted to Democratic voters. 

Closer to Elk Grove, Planning Commissioners Frank Maita and Kevin Spease and Maggie Ellis, former President of the Elk Grove Education Association are among others on the lengthy list of endorsements.

On the flip side of Nguyen's mailer, which by our count her third and was paid for my her own campaign committee, is perhaps the more significant endorsement, and that is from the Sacramento Bee. The pull quote from the Bee's editorial board endorsement says "She wants to improve collaboration between the county and community-based non-profits to close the achievement gap ... Her rivals ... lack the understanding of the board." , 

In addition to Davis and Nguyen, the other two candidates for the Area 6 seat are Orlando Fuentes and Jrmar Jefferson. Although neither of these candidates has sent mailers, Fuentes won the endorsement of the Elk Grove-South County Democratic Club.   

- See more at: http://www.elkgrovenews.net/2016/06/nguyen-highlights-major-endorsements.html#sthash.ScX3QLvn.dpuf

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Standardized testing put to the test - The Boston Globe

Standardized testing put to the test - The Boston Globe:

Standardized testing put to the test

Every new year, I ink all nine SAT test dates on our calendar. Why? Because my husband, John, is a high school tutor, with SAT prep a big wedge of his business. Those last weeks before each test (June 4 is the finale for this school year) bring down a mighty squall for him, full of long hours, revved students, and fretful parents.

So I have a stake in testing — but I’m ambivalent about it too. You’d think roughly half of the education books would be in favor of standardized testing, half against. No way. They’re almost all inimical to the acronym-ical, and not just the SAT. Each state, after all, has its own assessment, from our MCAS, to the TAKS (Texas), to Utah’s yearningly named U-PASS, some of them created years ago and the rest after a nudge from the federal No Child Left Behind Act (2001).

With such an alphabet soup, I needed to get the FYI ASAP. One cover blurb grabbed me: The New York Times declares “the [anti-testing] movement now has a guidebook,” which is the lure for “The Test: Why Our Schools Are Obsessed with Standardized Testing — But You Don’t Have to Be” (PublicAffairs, 2015). The guidebook’s guide is Anya Kamenetz, NPR reporter and former Fast Company senior writer.

She offers ten arguments, like: “1. We’re testing the wrong things. 2. Tests waste time and money. 3. They are making students hate school and turning parents into preppers.” Other points explore how the tests penalize diversity and the states game the system to get federal funds. To sum up the problem, Kamenetz cites an economist’s koan from 1975, known as Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

There is a long tail here. Her short history of standardized tests goes from a psychologist measuring “the more elementary powers” on visitors to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, to the Binet-Scale I.Q. tests introduced in 1905 in France, to a series of chilling mental acuity tests that were grounded in eugenics. In World War I, the military took over, giving Army Alpha tests (for the literate recruits) and Army Beta (for the not). One of the Alpha test creators helped develop the SAT.

“The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999) fills in even more ovals, and it’s a fascinating if unwieldy read (the afterword acts as a good SparkNotes). Author Nicholas Lemann, then a staff writer at The New Yorker and now dean emeritus of Columbia Journalism School, had full access to the archives of the Educational Testing Service. And so he colors in the major players: Henry Chauncey, head of the ETS, and Harvard president James Bryant Conant, who hammer out a test to select bright public school students for Harvard, thus breaking the stranglehold of the private-school elite.

These democratic origins seem ironic now, since questions have been raised about how race, class, and ethnicity play into aptitude tests results. Thus to the front lines with “More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing” (Haymarket, 2014). It’s an anthology edited Standardized testing put to the test - The Boston Globe:

Chicago Kids Dodge Gunfire, Now Face Closed Schools? Union Rips Rauner, CPS - The Loop - DNAinfo Chicago

Chicago Kids Dodge Gunfire, Now Face Closed Schools? Union Rips Rauner, CPS - The Loop - DNAinfo Chicago:

Chicago Kids Dodge Gunfire, Now Face Closed Schools? Union Rips Rauner, CPS

THE LOOP — Angry at the prospects of city schools not opening in the fall, the Chicago Teachers Union on Thursday slammed Gov. Bruce Rauner and Chicago Public Schools chief Forrest Claypool over their use of schoolchildren as pawns in the state's budget battle.

Claypool, the district's chief executive officer, lashed back that he was "shocked" the union was "surrendering to Gov. Rauner and letting him off the hook." Claypool charged that it was the governor who was holding students hostage across the state and "he should let the children go."

The union's comments came in response to Claypool insisting that CPS won't open in the fall without a state budget, or at least an education spending plan. The state has been without a budget for over a year, and legislators failed to ink a deal this spring.

 A day after Claypool called on legislators to stay in session in the General Assembly to reach an education funding deal with Rauner, he told media outlets Wednesday that Chicago schools and many districts statewide would not be able to begin the fall term without it.

"Now we need the governor to end his strategy of pitting one region against another and fix the funding for all the districts suffering under Illinois’ worst-in-the nation approach," Claypool said.

Claypool's comments are an "admission of failure" on behalf of the city and CPS to find stable funding for the school system, said Jesse Sharkey, vice president of the teacher union. The union has long suggested that the city could stabilize CPS's budgets through shifting priorities and levying new, progressive taxes.

"Claypool has a lack of a vision for Chicago Public Schools," Sharkey said Thursday at a press conference at the union's River North offices in the Merchandise Mart. "This is the impact failed leadership has had on our children.

"Children can't play outside out of fear of being shot. Now they can't go to school," Sharkey said.

The union is planning a June 22 rally Downtown to put pressure on the state and city to find new revenue for schools.

Sharkey acknowledged that Claypool's comments about next school year might be a negotiating tactic with Springfield, but said the possibility of schools being closed to students in September is a possibility.

What's more likely, Sharkey said, is that the district would have enough cash to open Chicago Kids Dodge Gunfire, Now Face Closed Schools? Union Rips Rauner, CPS - The Loop - DNAinfo Chicago:

The latest on the School to Prison Pipeline – Cloaking Inequity

The latest on the School to Prison Pipeline – Cloaking Inequity:

The latest on the School to Prison Pipeline

The school-to-prison pipeline refers to the policies and practices that push school children, particularly low-socioeconomic and racial/ethnic minority youth, out of classrooms into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Critically, school failure for these youth appears to be driven by inadequate and persistently low-performing schools, disproportionate disciplinary and school suspension practices, and the combination of zero-tolerance discipline policies and the increased prioritization of test scores as the measure of success in educational contexts.

This Society for Prevention Research symposium held in San Francisco on June 1, 2016 highlighted policy, practice, and programmatic efforts aimed at dismantling the link between schools and justice systems. Specifically, Nayna Gupta (ACLU, Northern California), Daniel Losen (UCLA Civil Rights Project) and Julian Vasquez Heilig (California State University Sacramento) outlined 1) the extent to which disproportionate school discipline policies have initiatives have led to exclusionary practices thus affecting youth of color in terms of denying access to an equitable education; 2) the impact of state and federal policy initiatives addressing this issue, 3) the extent to which police presence in urban schools (e.g., Oakland, Richmond) affect the school-to-prison pipeline, given the community context, and how the community has responded to this phenomenon; and 4) a discussion about a set of community-based solutions to address the school to prison pipeline.

I discussed a about a set of community-based solutions including School-based Youth Courts, better data and restorative justice practices in The latest on the School to Prison Pipeline – Cloaking Inequity:

What Do Changes to the SES Program Mean for Expanded Learning Programs?

What Do Changes to the SES Program Mean for Expanded Learning Programs?:

What Do Changes to the SES Program Mean for Expanded Learning Programs?

With the passage of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), California is now in the process of transitioning from the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law to the new law. California is required to implement a Transition Plan to provide districts guidance on how to utilize federal dollars and programs during this interim phase (the 16/17 school year) until ESSA is fully implemented later in 2017. 

One federal program affected of particular significance to the expanded learning community is the Supplemental Educational Services program, or SES. Under NCLB, SES required districts to use a portion of their Title 1 dollars for additional academic support services for socioeconomically disadvantaged students struggling in core academic subjects. Districts were required to give parents options for these services based on a state-approved list of SES providers. For some time there have been mixed feelings about the efficacy of SES, and districts generally did not like the restrictions of the SES funding requirements, including that they had little control over where parents would opt to seek academic assistance for their students, and a disproportionate amount of this funding went to for-profit tutoring services. While our existing publicly funded after school programs would have been great partners for this, there was no incentive in the law for this to happen - and in fact these programs were infrequently utilized or included in district SES plans. 

With the new law, this is all changing. The SES program has been eliminated entirely so once full implementation of ESSA happens, Title 1 districts will have increased flexibility around expenditure of all their Title 1 funds to support students in a variety of ways. For the transition year, the expanded learning field has an excellent opportunity to talk with districts about how to collaborate and leverage Title 1 with After School Education and Safety Program (ASES) and 21st Century Community Learning Centers programs, and new guidance from CDE about the Transition sets the expanded learning field up well for these conversations. 

The CDE guidance to districts on the SES Transition, which was approved by the state board in May, states that students previously eligible for SES - defined as socioeconomically disadvantaged students attending a Title 1 school in Program Improvement Year 2 and beyond - will still be eligible for “alternative supports” in the 16/17 school year, but with much more flexibility in how to provide those supports. As the guidance states, “Alternative supports shall be locally defined and administered by the LEA to provide a well-rounded program of instruction to meet the academic needs of students.” Further, the guidance explicitly suggests districts “Leverage existing programs that currently provide successful expanded learning opportunities for students, such as ASES.”

ASES and 21st CCLC program administrators and partners should review this guidance and reach out to the appropriate school district staff as soon as possible to ensure that district transition plans for former SES dollars and activities include leveraging existing after school and summer learning programs. Go tohttp://www.cde.ca.gov/re/es/essa1617transplan.asp to see the full guidance document. An enormous thank you goes to CDE’s After School Division for advocating for strong language around expanded learning opportunities in this transition guidance document.What Do Changes to the SES Program Mean for Expanded Learning Programs?:
Big Education Ape: SES IS A MESS: 
 Tutor center scammed $2M in federal funds |  http://bit.ly/1L714f6

Top New Orleans Charter Schools Have Impossible Admissions Tests

Top New Orleans Charter Schools Have Impossible Admissions Tests

Impossible Admissions Tests Prevent Many Poor Students from Getting Into New Orleans' Best Schools

New Orleans no longer has "right to attend" neighborhood schools.Sam Camp/Thinkstock

Do some public schools, allegedly open to all comers, go out of their way to attract families with more money, more connections, and more flexibility—and in the process shut out families who lack those resources? It’s a familiar question in the age of school choice, and one that a recent New Orleans Times-Picayune report tackles head on in a disturbing story on the admissions’ processes at three of the city’s most “exclusive, privileged” public charter schools. (Most schools in New Orleans are charters.)

In post-Katrina New Orleans, there is no longer such an institution as a “neighborhood school”—all families must apply for admission to their preferred schools. Since this process can get pretty onerous, the vast majority of New Orleans charter schools use a transparent common-lottery application, similar to the ones used in other cities like New York and Washington, D.C. These applications—and I speak from personal experience—generally take little to no effort to complete: You plug in your desired schools in order of preference, note any priority (geographic proximity, sibling enrollment), hit “send,” and in due time a computer algorithm matches you, or not, with available slots.

But a small minority of New Orleans public schools has yet to embrace the common application, known as OneApp, which was designed to make the admissions process both easy and equitable. The Times Picayune story examines the “mind-numbingly complex application processes that test a parent's savvy, access to transportation and ability to get off work” at three of these schools, which happen to be among the top-ranked in the city.

If you want to send your child to one of the three schools in this story, you must complete “a unique set of requirements so complicated that parents have made spreadsheets to keep track of the steps,” including some combination of: parent attendance at a school curriculum meeting (no tardiness allowed); a questionnaire; an application hand-delivered to the school during business hours (but not, at one school, between the hours of 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.), a “portfolio of the student's work,” whatever that could possibly mean for an early-elementary-age kid; the child's attendance record; and “scores from a single sitting of a standardized exam, with no retests allowed.”

One of the schools requires a “hand-drawn self-portrait, a second piece of artwork and a handwriting sample” for prospective kindergarteners. (Oh, and this work can only be submitted in a specific color of folder that changes every year.) It’s no wonder that one parent in the article compared the admissions process to competing in theTop New Orleans Charter Schools Have Impossible Admissions Tests

Failed Idaho charter schools received $2.3 million in federal grants

Failed Idaho charter schools received $2.3 million in federal grants:

FAILED IDAHO CHARTER SCHOOLS RECEIVED $2.3 MILLION IN FEDERAL GRANTS

Over several years, more than $2.3 million in federal grants went to Idaho charter schools that later closed their doors.

The grants came from $1.8 billion in federal programs designed to provide startup dollars for charter schools. And the U.S. Department of Education concedes the grant recipients include more than 400 failed charter schools.

Idaho no longer receives money from the feds’ Charter Schools Program. That decision has nothing to do with the program’s failure rate. Instead, the State Department of Education found the feds’ rules too cumbersome.

IDAHO’S TRACK RECORD

Twin Falls’ Wings Charter School closed in May 2014, after receiving more than $616,000 in federal startup grants.

All told, Idaho received more than $21.6 millionfrom the Charter Schools Program. The vast majority of that money went to charter schools that remain in operation. The list of recipients includes some of Idaho’s more stable and high-performing charter schools.

But the list, released by the U.S. Department of Education in December, also includes several Idaho charter school failures:

• Southern Idaho Learning Center in Twin Falls, later renamed Wings Charter School. Wings closed in 2014, due to financial problems stemming from low enrollment. The school received a total of $616,750 in federal grants.
• Garden City Charter School, later renamed DaVinci Charter School. DaVinci closed in 2013 due to financial problems, after receiving $592,308 from the feds.
• OWL Charter Academy in Nampa, which closed in 2011 due to financial troubles. The school received a $408,000 federal grant.
• Idaho Leadership Academy in Pingree. Closed in 2008, as the result of low enrollment and related funding shortfalls. The school received a $381,107 grant.
• Nampa Classical Charter School. The school battled with state officials over its plan to use the Bible as a literary source, but financial troubles ultimatelyFailed Idaho charter schools received $2.3 million in federal grants: 

Failing the Test: Charter School Powerbrokers - CAPITAL & MAIN

Failing the Test: Charter School Powerbrokers - CAPITAL & MAIN:

Failing the Test: Charter School Powerbrokers

Photo by Pandora Young

The Billion Dollar Investment

Charter proponents, most notably the Walton Family Foundation, contribute large amounts of money to expand charter schools in select cities around the nation. The foundation says it has invested more than $385 million in new charter schools over the past two decades and, earlier this year, announced that it plans to give $1 billion over five years to support charters and school-choice initiatives.

In announcing its $1 billion strategic plan to support new and existing charter schools, the foundation has said the money would go to four initiatives – investing in cities, supporting the school-choice movement, innovation and research. It identified 13 cities nationwide where it said it can have the biggest impact, including Los Angeles and Oakland. Los Angeles already has more charter schools than any other school district in the United States and Oakland has the highest percentage of charters for any district in California.

See More Stories in Capital & Main’s Charter School Series

“If funders like Eli Broad or the Walton Family Foundation were truly committed to education equality,” says John Rogers, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, “they could have taken steps to simply support reducing class size or after-school [activities] or summer programs that would provide more educational opportunity, rather than try to invest in strategies to undermine the capacities of a school district. The primary aim is to dismantle the school district as a whole and replace it with a new way of doing public education.”

Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University, agrees. “They believe in privatization,” he says. Miron co-authored a critical study, sponsored last year by the National Education Policy Center, that focused on the charter industry’s funding policies.

Philanthropists, says Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center, “like charters in part because they decrease the publicness of public schools.”

But why do so many charter advocates embrace privatization?

“I don’t think it’s about the money,” says Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “They like charters in part because they decrease the publicness of public schools. They want a system much more based on market forces because they don’t trust democracy.”

Netflix founder and prominent charter advocate Reed Hastings seemed to confirm this view when, during a 2014 convention of the California Charter Schools Association, he decried publicly elected school boards for their alleged lack of stability in governance. He then praised the closed-governance charter model of private boards whose “board members pick new board members.”

But should the private sector be in charge of public education?

“No,” says Welner. “The public sector should be in charge of public education. Public education should be under democratic control.”

Welner is not alone in his view.

“The radical agenda of the Walton family,” says a damning report issued last year by the American Federation of Failing the Test: Charter School Powerbrokers - CAPITAL & MAIN:

Big Education Ape: Failing the Test: Charter Schools’ Winners and Losers - CAPITAL & MAIN - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/06/failing-test-charter-schools-winners.html

Big Education Ape: UPDATE: Failing the Test: A New Series Examines Charter Schools - CAPITAL & MAIN -http://go.shr.lc/1t3PT0f

The LA Times Editorial—A Distraction

The LA Times Editorial—A Distraction:

The LA Times Editorial—A Distraction

There’s so much bad news about public schools. When one article makes you want to pop the cork and dance in the streets, it is easy to get excited.

Don’t. The tables haven’t really been turned.

The LA Times Editorial criticizes the Gates Foundation for their poor philanthropic use of billions of dollars spent on school reforms.

They disparage them for failing in three areas:

1. Small Schools
2. Teacher Effectiveness
3. Common Core

They just now figured this all out?

We’ve been here before. Remember the 2006 Business Week article “Bill Gates Gets Schooled” by Jay Greene and William J. Symonds?

That article described how difficult Gates found it to break up schools. But they still did their damage.

Then there was the American Enterprise’s criticism of the Gates Foundation and their failed involvement with the Philadelphia School of the Future. The school threw away books, along with the library, and was an abysmal disaster.

A few weeks later the school wasThe LA Times Editorial—A Distraction

6/2/2016 – Trump University Shows Why For-Profit Motives Don’t Belong In Education

6/2/2016 – Trump University Shows Why For-Profit Motives Don’t Belong In Education:

Trump University Shows Why For-Profit Motives Don’t Belong In Education

THIS WEEK: Charter School Fail … School Conditions Worsen … Poor Kids Shortchanged … College Favors The Rich … Education Is Rigged

TOP STORY

Trump University Shows Why For-Profit Motives Don’t Belong In Education

By Jeff Bryant

“Sure, Trump University is an outrage. But the lesson to learn goes beyond Trump himself and his alleged crookedness. What’s also likely true is that this egregious institution is yet another example of how profit making and education are a bad mix for all except the few who are able to bank the results.”
Read more …

NEWS AND VIEWS

Failing the Test: Charter Schools’ Winners and Losers

Capital & Main

“Some highly motivated students benefit from charters while others do worse; that the growth of charters places a huge financial burden on traditional public schools that send them into a tailspin and that charters may increase racial and economic segregation… Traditional public schools often go into a steep slide once charters enroll a substantial percentage of motivated students with engaged parents. As a result, traditional public schools are left with a disproportionately high percentage of children with disciplinary problems, as well as with severely disabled students, who are expensive to educate … The problem is made worse by the fact that “charter schools discriminate against kids with special needs’ … Even if many charters perform well, there is an overarching problem with a system that entrusts much of its public education to private institutions.”
Read more …

Title I: Rich School Districts Get Millions Meant For Poor Kids

U.S. News & World Report

“Title I, the largest federal K-12 program … can shortchange school districts with high concentrations of poverty, and benefit larger districts and big urban areas instead of poorer, rural districts and small cities … It also shortchanges smaller high-poverty urban districts, like Flint, Michigan … Changing the formula requires congressional action, which nearly everyone agrees is years away.”
Read more …

A Popular College Investment Promised Students A Career, But Didn’t Pay Off

The Washington Post

“Students who sought vocational certificates at for-profit colleges made an average of $900 less annually after attending the schools than they did before … For-profit college industry swindled students by pressuring them into racking up tens of thousands of dollars in debt while adding comparatively little value to their careers … The average tuition for certificate students at for-profit colleges was $8,118, compared to $712 for community college.”
Read more …

Policies To Help Students Pay For College Continue To Shift Toward Favoring The Rich

The Hechinger Report

“Some government, university and private programs to help Americans pay for college have become more likely to benefit wealthier students than even the most academically talented lower-income ones … The proportion of wealthier students earning degrees continues to rise, while the proportion of lower-income degree recipients is falling … The new movement by states to underwrite public universities based on such things as their graduation rates … Even this well-intentioned scheme, called income-based repayment, tends to favor wealthier students.”
Read more …

The Education System Is Rigged Against Low-Income Students, Even In Kindergarten

The Huffington Post

“Students born into poverty enter kindergarten at a disadvantage to more affluent peers. As they advance through the grades, they receive lower test scores. They’re more likely to drop out and less likely to enter higher education. The all-too-familiar cycle … is getting worse… The impact of educational disparities between affluent and low-income students, as well as between white students and students of color, loom large … Still, interventions that boost positive learning approaches appear promising.”
Read more …

6/2/2016 – Trump University Shows Why For-Profit Motives Don’t Belong In Education:

Step-by-step Privatization and Profit: ESSA Delivers Schools to Wall Street with a Bow on Top

educationalchemy | Authored by Morna McDermott-A blog dedicated to democracy, public education, and the power of the imagination to fight corporate greed–if the truth sounds crazy it is because we have become too accustomed to falsehoods:

Step-by-step Privatization and Profit: ESSA Delivers Schools to Wall Street with a Bow on Top

“Social impact bond projects are very definitely privatisation. PFI/PPP projects have effectively privatised the design, finance, construction and maintenance of much public infrastructure. Now social impact bond projects potentially privatise the design, finance, service delivery, management, monitoring and evaluation of early intervention and prevention policies.”

Step One- Curriculum: Common Core standards created one set of standards (modules) (originating from a global agenda circa 1985) For a full history of support for this outline click the link.

According to a promotional flyer created by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:

“Education leaders have long talked about setting rigorous standards and allowing students more or less time as needed to demonstrate mastery of subjects and skills. This has been more a promise than a reality, but we believe it’s possible with the convergence of the Common Core State Standards, the work on new standards-based assessments, the development of new data systems, and the rapid growth of technology-enabled learning experiences.” 

So that…

Step Two-Testing: There can be one consistent numerical metric by which to measure student outcomes (PARCC)

So that…

Step Three- We can have modularized Competency Based Assessment: Instruction and ongoing testing can be educationalchemy | Authored by Morna McDermott-A blog dedicated to democracy, public education, and the power of the imagination to fight corporate greed–if the truth sounds crazy it is because we have become too accustomed to falsehoods:

Federally Mandated Test-and-Punish Didn’t Go Away with NCLB | janresseger

Federally Mandated Test-and-Punish Didn’t Go Away with NCLB | janresseger:

Federally Mandated Test-and-Punish Didn’t Go Away with NCLB

 As you very likely remember, No Child Left Behind, the much hated 2002 version of the federal education law—the one Jonathan Kozol once called “the federal testing law”— was reauthorized last December. Now instead we have the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).  There is widespread agreement that nearly fifteen years’ of test-based accountability has failed to raise overall student achievement; flat and declining scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress confirm that failure. Neither has the annual testing and disaggregation of scores resulted in the diminishing of achievement gaps. But the federal government doesn’t shift direction so easily.  Here is a quick update on what is happening as the rules that will implement the new law are being developed.

There is one bright spot: In the new law, Congress eliminated any federal mandate to tie teacher evaluation to students’ standardized test scores.  The U.S. Department of Education had made it a requirement that states applying for federal waivers from the worst punishments of NCLB could qualify for waivers only if they agreed to pass state laws to tie teacher evaluation to what have been called Value Added Measures—VAM algorithims that try to calculate the amount of learning each teacher “adds” to the overall education of each student.  The American Statistical Association, the American Educational Research Association and a number of academic researchers have demonstrated that VAM scores not only fail to measure many qualities of excellent teachers, but also are inaccurate and unstable from year to year.  It is possible that Congress listened to the experts—more likely that it listened on this one issue at least to the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers and many others who pointed to obviously flawed low VAM ratings for many award-winning teachers and to the collapse of morale among teachers across the United States.

While Congress eliminated the federal push to evaluate teachers by students’ scores, it could not undo the teacher-evaluation laws passed in recent years across the states to qualify for federal waivers. Hawaii, at least, has now begun to undo the damage, according to a mid-May report from the Hawaii Tribune-Herald: “Educators in Hawaii just became a little more Federally Mandated Test-and-Punish Didn’t Go Away with NCLB | janresseger:

State officials find LA Unified shortchanged students | EdSource

State officials find LA Unified shortchanged students | EdSource:

State officials find LA Unified shortchanged students

In a ruling with statewide implications and financial repercussions for the state’s largest school district, the California Department of Education has determined that Los Angeles Unified has shortchanged low-income students, English learners and foster children by hundreds of millions of dollars they should have received through the state’s new funding system.

The department stated in a May 27 report that L.A. Unified improperly attributed $450 million in benefits for special education students as also contributing to meeting the requirements of the Local Control Funding Formula, which is weighted to provide additional services for children in greatest need. The department found that by counting the same expenditure twice, the district spent less than required on high-needs students. As a remedy, the state has ordered the district to revise its 2016-17 spending plan, known as the Local Control Accountability Plan, or LCAP, to add additional services and programs for the district’s high-needs students.

“We applaud the department for issuing its straightforward legal ruling and ordering L.A. Unified to comply with the law under the Local Control Funding Formula,” John Affeldt, managing partner of the nonprofit law firm Public Advocates, said in a statement. “We look forward to seeing the district halt this illegal practice and invest more fully in its low-income students, English learners and foster youth.”

In a statement late this afternoon, L.A. Unified said it intends to challenge the decision, “which we believe is an incorrect interpretation of the Local Control Funding Formula. If the decision is allowed to stand, it would seriously undermine the district’s ability to continue providing our deserving students with the effective instruction and support services they need to succeed.“State officials find LA Unified shortchanged students | EdSource:

More public money for the 1% - less resources for the rest of Connecticut’s public school students - Wait What?

More public money for the 1% - less resources for the rest of Connecticut’s public school students - Wait What?:

More public money for the 1% – less resources for the rest of Connecticut’s public school students

Governor Dannel Malloy, with the support of Democratic legislators, has made the deepest cuts in state history to Connecticut’s public schools.  Already inadequately funded, Connecticut’s elected officials are now truly undermining the opportunity for every Connecticut child to get the education the need and deserve.

However, Connecticut’s fiscal crisis isn’t stopping Malloy’s political appointees on the State Board of Education from shoveling even more public funds to the privately owned and operated companies that run Connecticut’s charter schools – entities that refuse to educate their fair share of students with special education requirements or those who need extra help becoming proficient in the English Language (ELL students.)

At yesterday’s State Board of Education meeting (June 1, 2016)), Governor Malloy’s appointees voted to allocate even more funding for charter schools, while pretending their primary responsibility to adequately fund public schools wasn’t being undermined by Malloy’s actions.

In Charter school enrollment set to rise, the CT Mirror reported that the State Board of Education was moving forward with a proposal from Malloy’s Commissioner of Education to allow charter schools to increase enrollment at charter schools next fall, noting;

While the enrollment increase will cost the state an additional $4.1 million next year, funding for traditional public schools is being cut by $51.7 million and for regional magnet schools, opened to help desegregate city schools, by $15.4 million.

In recommending that 14 of Connecticut’s 23 charter schools be allowed to enroll another 401 students, Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell wrote the publicly funded schools had a “demonstrated record of achievement.”

However, Wentzell isn’t telling the truth.  The reality is that many Connecticut charter More public money for the 1% - less resources for the rest of Connecticut’s public school students - Wait What?:

Will Malloy and Dems cover up new state budget deficit until after the November election? - Wait What? - http://go.shr.lc/1t46gtI