Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Attacking Children and Teachers

CURMUDGUCATION:

Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION: 

FL: Attacking Children and Teachers

300+by Peter Greene / 3h

AP reporter Gary Fineout did yeoman's work yesterday, live tweeting the Florida hearing about the retention, in some districts, of third grade students who passed their courses but didn't take Florida's Big Standardized Test (the FSA). There were many low-lights as the hearing unfolded, but this had to be the lowest: Lawyer for @EducationFL said that reports card are meaningless and don't show if

MA: The Swift Boating of Public Schools

500+by Peter Greene / 2d

Massachusetts is heating up. Perhaps no state has better exemplified the fierce debate between public school advocates and fans of modern education reform. Ed reformers captured the governor's seat, the mayoral position of Boston, commissioner of education, and the secretary of education offices, and yet have consistently run into trouble since the day they convinced the commonwealth to abandon it

Effect and Effect

400+by Peter Greene / 4d

One of the linchpinny foundational keystones of education reform is a confusion between correlation and causation. Sometimes correlations are random and freakishly mysterious. For examples, check out the collected and recollected Spurious Correlations , by which we learn, among other things, that the divorce rate in Maine correlates with the amount of margarine consumed. But often the correlation-

YESTERDAY

CO: Damn, PAARC-- You Had One Job

48by Peter Greene / 13h

Well, the lead from this Chalkbeat article gets it. For a second year in a row, schools across Colorado are back in session and principals are empty-handed. Somehow the Colorado Department of Education has statewide results, but districts and schools and teachers will have to wait a few more months, because those results will be released "later." And how is that even possible? The articl

To Save the Village...

39by Peter Greene / 1d

There's a new documentary out dealing with the history of the Cabrini Green project in Chicago. 70 Acres in Chicago deals with the many complicated issues of race and urban poverty. But as the Slate article about the documentary notes, it underlines another huge issue with the "improvement" of some urban neighborhoods. Cabrini building demolition. (Photo: MJ Rizk) The idea behind these h

Resolve To Breathe

77by Peter Greene / 1d

For the next couple of weeks, as the beginning of my school year approaches. I'm going to write to renew my resolve to keep focus in my practice. This is one of that series of posts. Years ago, when I would take a long trip either by myself or with family, my focus stayed on the destination, the goal. Drive-through restaurants so that we wouldn't "lose" time stopping to eat. No more res

AUG 11

FL: Test Fetish on Trial

200+by Peter Greene / 2d

You may recall that last spring, some school district officials in Florida lost their damn minds . Florida's test fetish became so advanced, so completely divorced from any understanding of the actual mission of schools and education and, hell, behaving like a grown human adult with responsibility for looking after children, that some district leaders interpreted state law to mean that a student w

AUG 10

ACLU: Illegal California Charter Practices

15by Peter Greene / 2d

The ACLU recently issued a report outlining a variety of widespread illegal practices among California charter schools. The report is worth reading in detail because it gives an impression of just how widespread these practices of restricting student enrollment are, creating one more situation in which "school choice" means that schools get to choose students. California law is pretty cl

Refresh the Resolve

2by Peter Greene / 3d

Of course, we're all on different schedules across the country, but here in NW PA, it's a little under three weeks till school gets started. (Boy, shouldn't we do something about that? I mean, a student moving from PA to TN would find themselves suddenly several days behind, or one moving the other way would have to do the first day all over again, so we probably need a Common Core School Calendar

The Global Agenda for Monetizing Education

57by Peter Greene / 3d

In today's USNews, education historian and activist Diane Ravitch talks about the worldwide movement to buy and sell education, to privatize it, to attack "the very concept of public education." You don't have to look hard to find some of the folks who are heavily invested in driving what some call the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). Take for instance this white paper presented

AUG 08

Summative School Ratings: Not So Great

39by Peter Greene / 4d

Chad Aldeman took to the Bellwether blog to make his case for summative school ratings (grades) under the loaded headline " Summative Ratings Are All Around Us. Why Are We Afraid of Them in K-12 Education? " Of course, plenty of us, maybe even most of us, are not "afraid" of slapping a grade on schools. There just don't appear to be many benefits, and plenty of harm done. Aldem

Standardized Character

81by Peter Greene / 4d

Here we go again. Eight states are going to launch a program for social and emotional learning in their classrooms. A collaborative group has been put together to craft the whole business. I'm going to get in early here with a prediction that nothing good will come of this. I understand the impulse. On top of the usual rantings about Kids These Days, we see the references to research that today's

AUG 07

Reuters: SAT, ACT, and Test Insecurity

67by Peter Greene / 5d

A Reuters investigative team has been taking a look at the ACT and SAT testing industry, and finding a huge mess. We had already seen hints of the problems with, among other things, whistleblowing posts from SAT insider Manuel Alfaro . But this Reuters series, now at five articles plus sidebars, is sort of jawdropping. The articles have maintained a remarkably low profile, so I'm going to give you

ICYMI Hooray for August

12by Peter Greene / 6d

Plenty of goodies for you this week. Snuffing Out Democracy Out in Seattle, the battle is on over mayoral control, because if the school board won't follow the policies you want them to, can't you just get rid of the whole elected mess? Bless Your Heart, Stand for Children Dad Gone Wild provides a good summary of what happened in Tennessee and how Nashville thoroughly humiliated outsiders trying t

AUG 06

MI: Charter Demonstrates Need for Tenure

52by Peter Greene / 6d

Charters are fond of at-will staffing, where all teachers may be hired or fired at any time, for any reason. Sort of the exact opposite of tenure or due process. Here's a story out of Detroit of just how bad that can be-- not just for teachers, but for students and community. Michigan has been a playland for charters. There are well over 300 charter schools operating in Michigan (the number varies

Big Money Loses, But Doesn't Give Up

53by Peter Greene / 6d

This story has been covered extensively, but it's one of those stories that needs to be covered extensively, so if this post seems a little redundant, that's okay. As teachers and marketers both learn, if you really wnat a message to get through, 

CURMUDGUCATION:

Charter Schools’ 25th Anniversary: Why This Reform Has Lasted (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Charter Schools’ 25th Anniversary: Why This Reform Has Lasted (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Charter Schools’ 25th Anniversary: Why This Reform Has Lasted (Part 2)

In investigating school reforms that have taken place over the last century and a half, I have divided them into incremental and fundamental changes (see hereand here). Incremental reforms are those that aim to improve the existing structures of schooling; the premise behind incremental reforms is that the basic structures are sound but need improving to remove defects. The car is old but if it gets fixed it will become dependable transportation. It needs tires, brakes, a new battery, and a water pump–incremental changes. Fundamental reforms are those that aim to transform, to alter permanently, those very same structures; the premise behind fundamental reforms is that basic structures are flawed at their core and need a complete overhaul, not renovations. The old jalopy is beyond repair. We need to get a completely new car or consider different forms of transportation–fundamental changes.

If new courses, new staff, summer schools, higher standards for teachers, and increased salaries are clear examples of enhancements to the structures of public schooling, then the introduction of the age-graded school (which gradually eliminated the one-room school) Progressive educators’ broadening the school’s role to intervene in the lives of children and their families (e.g., to provide medical and social services) in the early 20th century, and more recently the introduction of charter schools in the 1990s are examples of fundamental reforms that stuck.

The platoon school, classroom technologies from film and radio to laptops and tablets, project-based learning, and charter schools, however, are instances of attempted fundamental change in the school and classroom since the early 20thcentury that were adopted, incorporated into many schools, and, over time, either downsized into incremental ones or slipped away, leaving few traces of their presence. Why did some incremental reforms get institutionalized and most of the fundamental ones either became just another part of the “system” or simply disappeared?

Some scholars have analyzed those hardy reforms that survived and concluded that a number of factors account for their institutionalization (see here andhere).

They enhance, not disrupt existing structures. Many prior reforms added Charter Schools’ 25th Anniversary: Why This Reform Has Lasted (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

WalletHub: Ranking “Best”/”Worst,” and Valuing Education on the Cheap | deutsch29

WalletHub: Ranking “Best”/”Worst,” and Valuing Education on the Cheap | deutsch29:

WalletHub: Ranking “Best”/”Worst,” and Valuing Education on the Cheap

 WalletHub is an organization that has taken to rating and ranking many issues, including those related to education.

One of its postings that has received some press of late is this August 01, 2016, piece, entitled, “2016’s States with the Best and Worst School Systems.

Let me note right off that I do not like WalletHub’s reports because the reporting is superficial, and WalletHub does not link to detailed, professional-quality reports. Instead, WalletHub produces research snippets that make for easy headlines, and those who wish for anything resembling a professionally-researched report are out of luck.

In its 2016 “best and worst” states, WalletHub somehow decided, for example, that completion of an AP exam was worth twice as much as the high school grad rate for low-income students. Moreover, it does not clarify if the grad rate is a four-year cohort rate. Also, it gives points for something called “bookworm ranking” (no details), and it accords “double weight” to the percentage of students completing the SAT and/or ACT.

As one might expect in this era of test-centric ed reform, the “best and worst” rankings rely heavily on test scores, some of which are vaguely defined as “math test scores” and “reading test scores.” These could be NAEP scores, and they could be from 2015. The point is that readers should not have to guess what exactly was measured, and they should not have to guess the reasoning behind WalletHub’s weighted ratings– but guess, they must.

And readers should not have to guess about the study’s limitations. Each study should include a section for discussing limitations.

So much for “should.”

One of the obvious limitations of ranked data is that some data point must be last. Too, it is possible for an entity to seemingly “rise” in the rankings not because of any WalletHub: Ranking “Best”/”Worst,” and Valuing Education on the Cheap | deutsch29:

Choice and Segregation | The Patiently Impatient Teacher

Choice and Segregation | The Patiently Impatient Teacher:

Choice and Segregation

This blog is also posted in a shorter version with the Education Post.

Charter school advocates have recently expressed frustration in the final charter language in the Democratic party platform as well as a new NAACP resolutionconcerning charter schools and a platform produced from Black Lives Matters activists that raise concerns about charters “destabilizing” and “resegregating” traditional public schools. I can provide a well-documented example the legitimacy of these concerns in the district I have worked in for 16 years, Durham Public Schools in Durham, NC.

Though Faulkner’s words are misquoted, his sentiment is very true: in the South, the past isn’t history, in fact, it isn’t even the past yet. Like all Southern cities, Durham has its own unique and complex history of segregation and desegregation If you really want to understand the history of Durham, and by extension, of many of the challenges of race relations throughout the South, please watch this excellent documentary.

Durham’s two public school districts were fully desegregated by court order in 1970. White flight from the city to county schools was the result. The two districts coexisted for decades, the city district overwhelming black (including school board, administrators, and teachers as well as students) and the county district overwhelmingly white—though each individual district was technically “integrated.” Despite regular joint school board meetings and reoccurring productive conversations about merger starting in the 1970s, the two districts did not formally merge until 1992.

Through a variety of measures — magnet programs, equitable funding, new school construction and redistricting, urban planning and housing programs — the community successfully diversified most of its schools at that time. However, care was taken to honor and preserve the community’s beloved historically black high school, Hillside. Hillside is the oldest and one of only five historically black high schools that still survive in North Carolina (from 300 that existed prior to desegregation).

Throughout the early and mid-2000’s, DPS worked to maintain the delicate balance necessary in a diverse Southern school system. Using testing data and diverse community input, the district developed an ambitious 10-year plan starting in 1997 to attack various achievement gaps. Throughout the early and mid-2000’s, DPS worked to maintained the complex and delicate balance necessary in a diverse Southern school Choice and Segregation | The Patiently Impatient Teacher:

The First Amendment Can't Save You From Your Homework - Bloomberg View

The First Amendment Can't Save You From Your Homework - Bloomberg View:

The First Amendment Can't Save You From Your Homework

YOU CAN'T MAKE ME DO THIS.

PHOTOGRAPHER: JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES

The First Amendment protects students against being forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. So how was it legal for a Texas teacher to require students to recite the Mexican pledge of allegiance, as a federal appeals court held this week? The answer lies in the difference between compelled symbolic speech and compelled class participation.

The events underlying the case attracted national attention of the Glenn Beck variety when they occurred in 2011. Brenda Brinsdon was then a high school sophomore in McAllen, Texas, a town near the Mexican border. The teacher of her Spanish class gave students the assignment of facing the Mexican flag with a 45-degree salute and reciting the Mexican pledge of allegiance. The assignment was intended both to teach Spanish language and to give students the “cultural” experience of imitating another nation’s pledge.

Brinsdon, whose mother is from Mexico, objected, explaining that she believed “pledging her allegiance to a different country was wrong.” Notably, she also thought none of the students should have to participate. The teacher told her that the assignment was graded and mandatory. Ultimately, after the principal’s intervention, Brinsdon was given an alternative assignment. She got a C, whereas other students mostly got A’s on the pledge assignment.

This being America, Brinsdon sued for violation of her constitutional rights. A federal district court rejected her claims. And the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Tuesday upheld that judgment.

To win a lawsuit against public officials for infringing your constitutional rights, you first have to show that the officials violated clearly established law.

Brinsdon’s best argument was that it’s clearly established law that school officials can’t compel students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

That’s true, of course -- and has been since 1943, when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed an earlier decision and held that there was a constitutional right against compelled speech that allows students to exempt themselves from saluting the flag and reciting the pledge.

That decision, West Virginia v. Barnette, is one of the most remarkable constitutional decisions in the court’s history. I teach it on the first day of my First Amendment class. The court’s opinion, by the great Justice Robert Jackson, has several highlights. Probably the most quoted is this winner:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

But the 5th Circuit correctly noticed that the issue in Brinsdon’s case isn’t whether she could be compelled to recite the U.S. pledge, but whether she could be required to recite the Mexican pledge as part of an educational exercise. And it held that because this was a different circumstance from the one discussed in the Barnette case, Brinsdon The First Amendment Can't Save You From Your Homework - Bloomberg View:

South Carolina schools often criminalize black students. The ACLU is fighting back. - Vox

South Carolina schools often criminalize black students. The ACLU is fighting back. - Vox:

South Carolina schools often criminalize black students. The ACLU is fighting back.

As America’s criminal justice system became more punitive over the past few decades, so did school discipline. In fact, school discipline became so harsh that it became tied to the criminal justice system — getting students sent to jail for infractions that may have gotten them detention before.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Thursday announced that it’s suing South Carolina to fight laws that fuel this "school-to-prison pipeline." According to the ACLU,the "disturbing schools" law "allows students in school to be criminally charged for typical adolescent behaviors including loitering, cursing, or undefined ‘obnoxious’ actions on school grounds." The organization is also going after a vague "disorderly conduct" law, which "prohibits students from conducting themselves in a ‘disorderly or boisterous manner.’"

The ACLU found that these laws have been used on hundreds of students — some as young as 7 years old. And black students are nearly four times as likely to be targeted under the law.

These laws came under some public scrutiny last year when a police officer at Spring Valley High School was fired after he brutally arrested a black student. Richard County Sheriff Leon Lott questioned at the time whether the deputy should have been called into the classroom at all: "I think that's one of the problems that we've got. If we have a child that's not following the rules, deputies are getting called in to handle that. And that's really not our role in the school. And I think sometimes the teachers and administrators should be handling things like this."

One of the students involved in the ACLU lawsuit witnessed and tried to protest the brutal arrest in Spring Valley High School. She was then arrested. The ACLU explained:

Plaintiff Niya Kenny, 18, is a former student at Spring Valley High School in Columbia. As a student last October, she witnessed a violent, headline-grabbing altercationin her classroom when a school resource officer flipped a classmate over in her desk and dragged her across the room.

Kenny, who is African-American, spoke up against the officer’s actions, recounting, "I was in disbelief and I started praying out loud. I said, ‘Isn’t anyone going to help her?’" Kenny was in turn arrested and hauled off to a detention center.

How South Carolina’s "disturbing schools" law works

The "disturbing schools" law is incredibly vague — students can be charged for "acting in an obnoxious manner" at school. It carries a hefty punishment: a fine of up to $1,000 or 

South Carolina schools often criminalize black students. The ACLU is fighting back. - Vox:

Why the Black Lives Matter Movement Has to Take on Charter Schools

Why the Black Lives Matter Movement Has to Take on Charter Schools:

Why the Black Lives Matter Movement Has to Take on Charter Schools

Education reform’s race problems mirror unequal treatment in the criminal justice system.

People take part in a Black Lives Matter rally on April 29, 2015, at Union Square in New York City.EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

 ack school systems are treated like black men and women in America. Urban schools are broken up, experimented on and policed in efforts to improve them. The reformers expect students, teachers and parents to be grateful and accept test score growth in return, just as black communities were expected to be grateful when crime dropped even as incarceration rates rose.

But finally, the same voices decrying the unequal treatment of black communities by the criminal justice system are turning to the unequal treatment of black communities in school reform.

The Black Lives Matter collective—representing approximately 50 organizations—released an official platform last week titled “A Vision for Black Lives.” Its education section called for an end to the privatization of education and petitioned for more community control of schools. A list of demands included “a moratorium on charter schools and school closures.” The NAACP also took a stand against charters at their annual national convention by approving a resolution that calls for a moratorium on the expansion of privately managed charters. It has yet to be approved by the national board.

Zero-tolerance policies in the criminal justice system are the first cousins of zero-tolerance policies in schools. African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. African-American public school students are suspended three times more than their white counterparts. So it’s ironic many in the current reform movement actually believe they should be embraced by Black Lives Matter and the NAACP, even though many of the theories and practices many of us are fighting against in the criminal justice arena are still openly embraced by many charter schools: Sweating the small stuff, walking on white lines and no-tolerance discipline, all of which are not exclusive to charter schools, but have certainly characterized the sector.

What took black activists so long to turn their attention to how black lives are discounted in school reform? One reason: the imposition of charters—which have expanded much faster in cities than in suburban and rural areas—undermined the power of black communities to fight back.

The charter takeover of New Orleans is a case in point.

When I accepted a role to run a charter schools network in New Orleans, I hitched a wagon to an existing effort of the University of New Orleans to live up to its urban mission to build capacity in its neighborhood. Equipped with a college of education faculty, student-teachers and external support, UNO was positioned to uplift struggling schools in the neighborhood we shared—Gentilly. As the first organization under new takeover legislation to convert a traditional public school into a charter in 2004, the university agreed to return the school back to the New Orleans School District after five years with lessons learned. We were one of five charter schools that existed before the storm.

Hurricane Katrina upended this limited and careful foray into chartering public schools to see if it could improve outcomes. In the wake of the storm, the state legislature passed a bill (Act 35), which changed its earlier definition of an academically unacceptable school, allowing for a radical expansion of the number of charter schools in New Orleans. In September of 2005, the board placed all school employees on disaster leave, meaning they would receive no pay or benefits until the schools reopened.

Then in December of 2005, 7,500 school district employees were officially terminated, and because of their varied evacuations, many did not receive official notification. Based on 2000 census data, nearly 5 percent of New Orleans blacks lost their jobs with that decision. On June 30, 2006, the UTNO collective bargaining agreement with the district expired, and the school board did not vote to renew the contract in a city with extensive union membership.

In December 2007, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund, and the Broad Foundation announced their plans to provide several grants for three years to New Schools for New Orleans, New Leaders for New Schools and Teach for America of Greater New Orleans. Instead of fixing the teacher pipeline problem that existed before the storm, the decision to expand these organizations made it worse.

The percentage of white teachers and leaders who were less likely to stay in the city increased dramatically. The Louisiana Department of Education eventually lifted the five-year requirement to Why the Black Lives Matter Movement Has to Take on Charter Schools: