Schools Matter: Hamilton, Hillary, and Diane Ravitch

Schools Matter: Hamilton, Hillary, and Diane Ravitch:

Hamilton, Hillary, and Diane Ravitch

Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys through "No Excuses" Teaching

Just a week ago Diane Ravitch was pitching a petition drive by some Florida teachers urging Hillary Clinton to meet with Ravitch to get straightened out on education reform issues.  One petition signer left this comment at Ravitch's blog:

Ellen Lubic 

July 6, 2016 at 3:16 pm

I signed and added this comment.

“It is imperative that you, Hillary Clinton, learn more about public schools v. charter schools. Most educators are not voting for you due to your insistence that charters are viable to take funding from true public education. Ravitch has the facts and speaks for most of America’s highly trained educators. I am a university professor of public policy.”

I have also sent this petition to all my lists with my personal note urging all to sign.

Then this past weekend, as both unpaid and paid activists convened in DC under the watchful gaze of NEA and AFT to declare to each other how much black lives matter to educators, Randi Weingarten was in Orlando making sure the Democratic platform reflected Clinton's "no excuses" charter priority and to have more special needs and ELL children attend these deracinating and dehumanizing schools.   

Fast forward to yesterday morning, and Bernie Sanders was with Clinton in New Hampshire to pledge his support for Clinton and to claim credit for what he described as the most progressive Democratic platform in Schools Matter: Hamilton, Hillary, and Diane Ravitch:

SOS! LIVE from DC: Being mean to nice TFA? – Cloaking Inequity

SOS! LIVE from DC: Being mean to nice TFA? – Cloaking Inequity:

SOS! LIVE from DC: Being mean to nice TFA?

 “How can you be mean to a nice Teach For America corps member?” This and more in episode 11 of the Truth For America. The podcast was recorded LIVE at the 2016 Save our Schools March and Conference held at the Lincoln Memorial and Howard University.

Truth For America is a podcast about Teach For America (TFA) that provides voice to educators, parents, students, and other key stakeholders. Truth For America is co-hosted by Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig and Dr. T. Jameson Brewer.

The episode features a conversation with David Green (experienced teacher of teachers), Tina Andres (Santa Ana special education teacher), and Emma Howland-Bolton (TFA alum, Detroit teacher, and founding member of Learn with Detroit & the Corps Advisory Board). The conversation includes a discussion about the contracts that TFA signs with districts and universities, the role of Teach For America in school privatization in Detroit, New Orleans and elsewhere. We also discuss Wendy Kopp’s original vision for TFA, how communities can influence conversations about TFA and review some of the conversations from the first ten Truth For America podcasts

Truth For America is sponsored by the Network for Public Education Action.

You can check out new episodes hot off the press and much much more by following my YouTube channel. You can also listen and download the Truth For America program from iTunes while you are on the road here.

For all of Cloaking Inequity’s posts on Teach For America click here.

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SOS! LIVE from DC: Being mean to nice TFA? – Cloaking Inequity:

Bernie Sanders Endorses Hillary Clinton, and I See “Hamilton” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bernie Sanders Endorses Hillary Clinton, and I See “Hamilton” | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Bernie Sanders Endorses Hillary Clinton, and I See “Hamilton”

As you surely know, Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed former Secretary Hillary Clinton at a joint appearance in New Hampshire today.

I listened on the radio to their respective speeches. Bernie was inspirational as he recapped his campaign themes and said that he believed Hillary Clinton would be faithful to his agenda. Hillary Clinton echoed much of what Bernie Sanders said. Both sought unity, facing what is likely to be a tough campaign against Donald Trump. Trump has turned his campaign into an almost stereotypical Republican tough-guy appeal to the Silent Majority. He continually tells people that America is weak but he is strong. He supports “America First,” a phrase that I thought was long associated with the discredited isolationist wing of the GOP. He says that the world laughs at us because we are losers; he will turn us into winners again. I listened to him speak in Indiana this evening, and he said–referring to the Dallas shootings–that he is the candidate who is “tough on crime.” He said again and again that he would build the wall shutting off our southern border, with a gate that opens only for those who have met legal requirements. He said to the crowd, “Who will pay for the wall?” And they thundered back, “Mexico!” I want to know why Trump thinks that the Mexican government is ready to pay billions of dollars to build a wall. I don’t get it.

He is hitting all the right notes in appealing to an angry, fearful public, one that is rightfully worried about their jobs and their economic well-being. Underlying their fear, however, is old-fashioned nativism, a sense that outsiders, aliens, immigrants are taking over the country and that white males are losing their commanding power.

I juxtapose these events with my day. I decided a few days ago that since I had endorsed Hillary and plan to vote for her, I would make a contribution to her campaign. I bought tickets to a special matinee of “Hamilton,” whose cast and crew put on a Tuesday matinee for a private performance dedicated to her campaign. I sat with my partner, Mary, my son and his spouse, and our 9-year-old grandson. For reasons I don’t understand, the show has an enormous following among teens and pre-teens. My grandson was mouthing the words as he watched.

The show was everything it is cracked up to be. I am not a huge fan of Bernie Sanders Endorses Hillary Clinton, and I See “Hamilton” | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Schools Matter: Putting Lipstick on the Platform Pig

Schools Matter: Putting Lipstick on the Platform Pig:

Putting Lipstick on the Platform Pig

AFT, NEA, and AFT promoters at NPE took the lead in supporting the latest ESEA reauthorization last year that came to be known as ESSA. 

Even though ESSA continues annual testing with a mandated 95 percent participation rate requirement, thus killing any opt out option by parents, and even though ESSA guarantees huge new grants for more "no excuses" corporate charter schools that will replace the bottom 5 percent of low-scoring schools each year, and even though ESSA further weakens teacher education programs, and even though ESSA legitimizes "states rights" education policy, thus providing free rein for states, with ALEC's help, to devise any draconian accountability systems without federal oversight, even with all this, AFT, NEA, and NPE declared ESSA a grand success for children, parents, and teachers.  "Better than I could have imagined," Ravitch croaked in 2015.

Now that ESEA is federal law, Weingarten and other Clintonites want to pretend that all the requirements in ESSA that they sold to teachers and parents last year do not exist.  In fact, as reported below by Ed Week, which continues the meme that the Clinton platform is a departure from Obama ed policies, the platform Schools Matter: Putting Lipstick on the Platform Pig:

With A Brooklyn Accent: Baton Rouge: A Divided City by Dr Lori Martin

With A Brooklyn Accent: Baton Rouge: A Divided City by Dr Lori Martin:

Baton Rouge: A Divided City 

by Dr Lori Martin

No, Baton Rouge is not burning. Baton Rouge is a city divided by many fault lines. A single street divides the city’s predominately white and black communities. North Baton Rouge, where Alton Sterling was killed, is under developed relative to south Baton Rouge. Access to emergency rooms, quality schools, healthy food, reliable transportation, and good jobs are limited, while health care complexes, blue ribbon schools, business and industry flow freely to the south. With the exception of a small section of Gardere in south Baton Rouge, which is predominately black, the sight of strong law enforcement presence is hard to find. Conversely, in several zip codes in north Baton Rouge, there is a noticeable police presence. Programs aimed at addressing homicides and violent crimes in predominately black areas are welcomed sites for many members of the dominant racial group but for some blacks in the city and for others the program is viewed as doing more harm than good. Such programs whether intentionally or unintentionally stigmatize both people and place and further increase the gap between blacks and whites who despite some claims have not forgotten the city’s tremulous racial past.

When whites talk about “the university” they are referring to Louisiana State University, while blacks refer to their beloved Southern University, a Historically Black College and University. For a time blacks had few educational opportunities as they were excluded from many public and private schools, colleges, and universities in the city.

Earlier this year I served as co-chair of a commemoration committee with Raymond A. Jetson, Pastor of Star Hill Church located near the site of Sterling’s killing, honoring men and women for their role in the nation’s first bus boycott in 1953. On the same day of the ceremony revelers were in the Spanish Town neighborhood riding on and watching floats as part of annual Mardi Gras festivities. Floats mocking the nation’s first black president, Black Lives Matters, victims of police brutality, among other offenses, were paraded down city streets. Some city residents could not understand why such public displays were viewed as offensive and accused critics of being overly sensitive and bowing to so-called political correctness. A tale of two cities is what we have in Baton Rouge and it is what has always existed.

For those unwilling to believe Baton Rouge was and is a city divided they need only view the Frontline documentary about the effort on the part of a large group of whites living in unincorporated municipalities in south Baton Rouge to secede from the city. While the stated purpose for the creation of the City of St. George, at least in part, was to have access to high-quality schools for area children, it was clear the new city would not resemble the existing city in terms of racial or economic composition.

In the weeks leading up to the shooting of Alton Sterling, the city was debating whether a school in 2016, in the city’s predominately white section should still carry the name of a legend of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee. The district voted to With A Brooklyn Accent: Baton Rouge: A Divided City by Dr Lori Martin:

“Government Schools” vs. “Public Schools” | janresseger

“Government Schools” vs. “Public Schools” | janresseger:

“Government Schools” vs. “Public Schools”

Last weekend, the NY Times published an important story by Julie Bosman about the political importance of how we name our institutions: “Kansas has for years been the stage for a messy school funding fight that has shaken the Legislature and reached the State Supreme Court… Somewhere along the way, the term ‘government schools’ entered the lexicon in place of references to the public school system.”

Bosman briefly quotes George Lakoff, the cognitive linguist from the University of California at Berkeley, an expert on the metaphoric thinking that characterizes our politics.  In his book,Moral Politics, Lakoff describes the way savvy communicators frame political issues with language that connotes deep values and morals:  “(M)ost of our thought is unconscious—not unconscious in the Freudian sense of being repressed, but unconscious simply in that we are not aware of it. We think and talk at too fast a rate and at too deep a level to have a conscious awareness and control over everything we think and say. We are even less conscious of the components of thoughts—concepts. When we think, we use an elaborate system of concepts, but we are not usually aware of just what those concepts are like and how they fit together into a system…  (M)etaphorical thought need not be poetic or especially rhetorical. It is normal, everyday thought. Not every common concept is metaphorical, but a surprising number are.” Moral Politics, (pp. 4-5).

To define the connotation of “government schools,” Bosman quotes John Locke, a linguist at the City University of New York, who worries that the term “government schools” is austere: “It has an oppressive ring to it.  It sounds rigid, the opposite of open or friendly or charming or congenial. The people who use that term are hoping those words will come to mind.”

Actually, I believe that in the context of today’s battle over school reform and privatization, the term “government schools” evokes far more than concerns about rigid and austere schools.  The term “government schools” works as a metaphor for a very different political frame.

As a pejorative, “government schools” immediately evokes the ideal opposite to which it contrasts: privatized charter schools—free of regulation, and vouchers that privilege the  private institution of the family over the calcified “government schools” that impose on the individual freedom and choice of parents. Those who disparage “government schools” are rejecting the twentieth century public school—paralyzed, as they see it, by bureaucracy, resistant to disruptive change and innovation.  “Government schools” lack the efficiency of schools kept accountable through marketplace competition, where individuals are free to choose, free to thrive, free to race to the top. And, especially in Kansas where there is a long-running school funding battle, “government schools” are known to impose a very heavy tax burden.

“Public schools,” on the other hand,  connotes democratic governance, public funding, universal accessibility, and accountability to the public. The term, “public schools” evokes  the “Government Schools” vs. “Public Schools” | janresseger:

Nutritious Meals to Low-Income Families - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education)

Nutritious Meals to Low-Income Families - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education):

State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson Announces Updated List of Programs Serving Nutritious Meals to Low-Income Families

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced today that disadvantaged families in California can find updated lists of child and adult care centers offering nutritious meals at low- or no-cost through the California Department of Education's Web site.

"When children eat well and have access to nutritious meals, they are healthier and more successful students as a result," Torlakson said. "I encourage families to use the services these centers provide."

The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Nearly 9,000 local child care centers and 18,000 sponsored family day care home providers in California participate in the CACFP.

These facilities provide nutritious food to infants, children, and adults. Most participating child care centers provide meals at no charge. In centers that have a separate charge for meals, participants may receive free or reduced-price meals.

Meals are free or reduced price depending on household income guidelines. For example, a family of four earning $31,525 a year (up from $31,005 last year) can qualify for free meals and snacks. A family of four earning $44,863 a year (up from $44,123 last year) also qualifies. The Income Eligibility Scales for 2015–16 for free and reduced-price meals and snacks are included below.

Families also qualify for free meals if they receive benefits from California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids, CalFresh, Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), Kinship Guardianship Assistance Payment Program, Head Start, Early Head Start, or the Even Start Program. Adult day care centers with adults that receive CalFresh, FDPIR, Social Security Income, or Medicaid benefits are also eligible for reimbursement at the free rate. Institutions serve meals to all participants regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability.*

To find day care home sponsors in your area, visit the interactive CACFP Day Care Home Sponsors Web page and search by county. For a child or adult day care center, visit the interactive 2015–16 CACFP Center Sites Web page and search by county.

Free Eligibility Scale: Meals, Snacks

Household Size	Annual	Monthly	Twice Per Month	Every Two Weeks	Weekly
1	$15,301	$1,276	$638	$589	$295
2	20,709	1,726	863	797	399
3	26,117	2,177	1,089	1005	503
4	31,525	2,628	1,314	1,213	607
5	36,933	3,078	1,539	1,421	711
6	42,341	3,529	1,765	1,629	815
7	47,749	3,980	1,990	1,837	919
8	53,157	4,430	2,215	2,045	1,023
For each additional family member, add:	$5,408	$451	$226	$208	$104

Reduced-Price Eligibility Scale: Meals and Snacks

Household Size	Annual	Monthly	Twice Per Month	Every Two Weeks	Weekly
1	$ 21,775	$ 1,815	$ 908	$ 838	$ 419
2	29,471	2,456	1,228	1,134	567
3	37,167	3,098	1,549	1,430	715
4	44,863	3,739	1,870	1,726	863
5	52,559	4,380	2,190	2,022	1,011
6	60,255	5,022	2,511	2,318	1,159
7	67,951	5,663	2,832	2,614	1,307
8	75,647	6,304	3,152	2,910	1,455
For each additional family member, add:	$7,696	$642	$321	$296	$148

* In accordance with federal civil rights law and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) civil rights regulations and policies, the USDA, its agencies, offices, and employees, and institutions participating in or administering USDA programs are prohibited from discriminating based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, or reprisal or retaliation for prior civil rights activity in any program or activity conducted or funded by USDA. Persons with disabilities who require alternative means of communication for program information (e.g. Braille, large print, audiotape, American Sign Language, etc.), should contact the agency (state or local) where they applied for benefits. Individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing or have speech disabilities may contact USDA through the Federal Relay Service at 800-877-8339. Additionally, program information may be made available in languages other than English. To file a program complaint of discrimination, complete the USDA Program Discrimination Complaint Form (AD-3027)  or write a letter addressed to USDA and provide in the letter all of the information requested in the form. To request a copy of the complaint form, call 866-632-9992. Submit your completed form or letter to USDA by mail at U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, D.C. 20250-9410, by fax at 202-690-7442, by e-mail atprogram.intake@usda.gov. This institution is an equal opportunity provider.

# # # #

Tom Torlakson — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5206, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

Last Reviewed: Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Nutritious Meals to Low-Income Families - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education):

San Diego Foundation Biased Toward Privatizing Schools | tultican

San Diego Foundation Biased Toward Privatizing Schools | tultican:

San Diego Foundation Biased Toward Privatizing Schools

San Diego Foundation was established in 1975 and has grown to almost $700 million in assets. It’s self-described purpose: “As one of the nation’s leading community foundations, The San Diego Foundation strives to improve San Diegans’ quality of life by creating equity and ensuring opportunities to be WELL (Work, Enjoy, Live & Learn).” In 2014, they gave over $10 million to educational endeavors. The following table illustrates the spending bias against public education.

Category of Giving	Amount Granted
University and College Grants and Scholarships	$6,106,052
Civic education – Libraries, Camps, etc.	$1,333,266
Charter School and Competency Based Education (CBE)	$1,339,802
Private K-12 Schools	$1,129,225
Public K-12 Schools (Not including charters)	$373,628

Competency Based Education (CBE)

Peter Greene an education expert from Pennsylvania discussed CBE in terms of education reform ideas that should die. He wrote:

“Two years ago, CBE was barely on my radar, and honestly, having lived through the early-nineties disastrous fiasco that was Outcome Based Education, I’m still kind of amazed that we’re back here. But we are. What has changed since 1991? Computers, the internet, the cloud, the sheer raw data collecting and crunching power that a company like Pearson now has at its command. In a CBE world, neither teachers nor schools are necessary– just students at their computer terminal being put through their software-controlled paces, each keystroke and answer filed away (and put to all manner of uses) in their new lifelong data record. Public education and citizen privacy would all be washed away. CBE fans are ju-jitsuing themselves some support for the approach (Quick! Run away from the evil test and take refuge in this CBE sanctuary over here!) and ESSA has opened the door wide for new “personalized” and non-BSTest-based measures of student achievement. I still think there are some serious hurdles in CBE’s path, but if it clears those obstacles, we’ll be looking at a huge threat to public education in this country (and the absolute end of teaching as a career).”

The SD Foundation granted the Girard Foundation of La Jolla $550,415 which they promptly spent on CBE development. They gave Gooru $300,000 and $105,850 went to Make It Matter LLC. Gooru is creating technology that enables CBE and Make it Matter specializes in marketing computer based “1:1” education. Personalized one to one education means a child is stuck in front of a computer with no real human exchange involved. It is terrible education policy with a huge profit potential.

SD Foundation also gave Kid Spark Education of Solana Beach $550,000 dollars to work on CBE development.

Foundations Join Forces and Support Privatizing Schools

Besides sending over $200,000 to seven charter schools in San Diego County, SD Foundation gave $30,000 to Teach for America (TFA). TFA is a program that give college graduates 5 weeks of summer training and then state education leaders allow them to teach classes mostly in charter schools. They are inexpensive unqualified teachers.

SD Foundation spending on Universities is surprising. Almost 40% of that spending is on schools outside of San Diego County totaling $2,409,711. Grants and scholarships given in the county totaled $3,696,341. One would expect an organization that “strives to improve San Diegans’ quality of life by creating equity and ensuring opportunities” would spend a greater share of their education dollars in San Diego.

The largest single grant bestowed by the SD Foundation was $2,6 5 0,7 0 9 to the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego. The JC Foundation had net assets at the end of 2014 of $171,593,990.

The Jewish Community Foundation spending on education follows a similar pattern as the San Diego Foundation. They spent $466,830 for groups working to privatize public education most of which went to TFA ($406,330). They also spent lavishly on private schools including $146,000 to La Jolla Country Day, a decidedly upscale K-12 private school.

By far the largest grant by the Jewish Community Foundation was the $25,817,228 bequeathed to University of California San Diego. A major patron of both the Jewish Community Foundation and UCSD is the Qualcomm founder and billionaire, Irwin Jacobs.

Three more grants from the Jewish Community Foundation were interesting. They gave Cornell University $5,511,000. They also gave the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund $6,362,171.  The Goldman Sachs fund asset total at the end of 2013 was $1,500,395,380. And the JC Foundation gave the SD Foundation San Diego Foundation Biased Toward Privatizing Schools | tultican:

Drive up education degree is an insult to every student, parent, teacher and taxpayer - Wait What?

Drive up education degree is an insult to every student, parent, teacher and taxpayer - Wait What?:

Drive up education degree is an insult to every student, parent, teacher and taxpayer

In her latest commentary piece, Connecticut education advocate Wendy Lecker explains that latest fade from the corporate education reform industry.  In, A blind acceptance of the robot teacher, Lecker takes on the charter school industry advocates who claim that teachers don’t need all those education and child development courses.  All they need, they say, is a quick, fly-by-night crash course on how to make children sit and succeed at taking standardized tests scores.

Wendy Lecker writes;

Connecticut seems to accept a constricted vision of education for its neediest children that is never imposed on more affluent districts. The most recent example of this disparity is the recent partnership between the New Haven Public Schools and an outfit called Relay Graduate School of Education, to provide alternative certification for would-be teachers.

Relay was founded by representatives of three charter school chains, Achievement First, KIPP and Uncommon Schools — chains with a troubling record of suspensions, harsh discipline and attrition. It was founded to train charter school teachers. Relay employs not one professor of education.

The Relay vision of teaching is narrow. Its primary goal is to train teachers to raise test scores. Consequently, Relay focuses on giving its trainees a prepackaged set of “skills” that focus mainly on classroom management and getting students to do what teachers want. The contrast between Relay’s methods and goals and those of existing Connecticut schools of education is stark.

For example, UConn’s teacher education program strives to “establish a safe and positive learning environment” and “promote democratic participation and community. UConn’s core practice principles focus on helping prospective teachers learn to use their professional judgment, and to help students 

Drive up education degree is an insult to every student, parent, teacher and taxpayer - Wait What?:

Adventures in Nonsense: Teaching Writing in the Accountability Era | the becoming radical

Adventures in Nonsense: Teaching Writing in the Accountability Era | the becoming radical:

Adventures in Nonsense: Teaching Writing in the Accountability Era

No, it’s all nonsense, believe me.  I had no idea how much nonsense it was, but nonsense it all is.

Anna Scott, Notting Hill

Everything that is wrong with edujournalism and the teaching of writing in the accountability era can be found in Education Week: the anemic examination of the five-paragraph essay (or when edujournalists discover a field in the same way Columbus discovered America) and Lucy Calkin’s interview about the state of teaching writing (or when edugurus package and promote educommerce).

Both of these pieces frame how the teaching of writing now faces greater demands from (you guessed it) the Common Core. But neither piece admits that the Common Core is at best on life support or that this puts the cart before the horse.

You see, the teaching of writing should be driven by the field of composition—the decades of expertise that can be found in the scholarship of writers and teachers of writing as well as foundational and powerful organizations such as the National Writing Project and the National Council of Teachers of English.

The Common Core is no more than bureaucratic nonsense; these standards serve the needs of educommerce, but do not reflect the field of literacy, do not meet the needs of teachers or students.

And thus, these standards, the high-stakes tests inevitably linked to all standards, and the coverage of writing in EdWeek, as Anna Scott opined, it’s all nonsense.

A little history here: Zip back to 2005 when Thomas Newkirk detailed in English Journal that the “new” SAT writing section had already resulted in “students [being] coached to invent evidence if they were stuck.”

In other words, writing was reduced to conforming to the 25-minute, one-draft prompted assessment in oneAdventures in Nonsense: Teaching Writing in the Accountability Era | the becoming radical: