Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 10/8/16
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Saturday, October 8, 2016
CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Charter Laws "Absolute Worst"
CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Charter Laws "Absolute Worst":
PA: Charter Laws "Absolute Worst"
States have taken a variety of approaches to the business of replacing public schools with publicly funded private charters. In states like Florida and North Carolina, the focus has been on tearing down the public system to make room for the charters. But in Pennsylvania, the emphasis has been on making charters so easily lucrative that edu-preneurs find getting rich easier than printing money.
PA Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has made charter law one of his regular talking points, and charter operators have provided him with ample fodder.
For instance, back in August Nicholas Trombetta finally pled guilty to a tax conspiracy charge that he had fought for three years, a charge that he had defrauded taxpayers to the tune of $8 million. These were federal charges brought by a US Attorney in federal court; in other words, the state of Pennsylvania was continuing to let this guy do business as usual.
After the guilty plea, DePasquale took a look at Trombetta's business dealings. Trombetta is the founder-operator of PA Cyber Charter School (until 2012, just before the fertilizer met the fan) and also the founder of Lincoln Performing Arts Center School and some other charter-related businesses. DePasquale found a number of issues, including hiring family members for big-money jobs, and funneling giant gouts of money to a no-oversight management company. All shady and costing the taxpayers millions of dollars, but also, as DePasquale notes, perfectly legal under CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Charter Laws "Absolute Worst":
PA: Charter Laws "Absolute Worst"
States have taken a variety of approaches to the business of replacing public schools with publicly funded private charters. In states like Florida and North Carolina, the focus has been on tearing down the public system to make room for the charters. But in Pennsylvania, the emphasis has been on making charters so easily lucrative that edu-preneurs find getting rich easier than printing money.
PA Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has made charter law one of his regular talking points, and charter operators have provided him with ample fodder.For instance, back in August Nicholas Trombetta finally pled guilty to a tax conspiracy charge that he had fought for three years, a charge that he had defrauded taxpayers to the tune of $8 million. These were federal charges brought by a US Attorney in federal court; in other words, the state of Pennsylvania was continuing to let this guy do business as usual.
After the guilty plea, DePasquale took a look at Trombetta's business dealings. Trombetta is the founder-operator of PA Cyber Charter School (until 2012, just before the fertilizer met the fan) and also the founder of Lincoln Performing Arts Center School and some other charter-related businesses. DePasquale found a number of issues, including hiring family members for big-money jobs, and funneling giant gouts of money to a no-oversight management company. All shady and costing the taxpayers millions of dollars, but also, as DePasquale notes, perfectly legal under CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Charter Laws "Absolute Worst":
Oregon Save Our Schools: Smarter Balanced Fails to Show Any Merit
Oregon Save Our Schools: Smarter Balanced Fails to Show Any Merit:
Smarter Balanced Fails to Show Any Merit
Smarter Balanced Fails to Show Any Merit
The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) added information in the opt out form packet that states that if a student doesn’t take the Smarter Balanced Exam (SBAC), then valuable learning information will be lost. What is this valuable information? How would this information be used to guide instruction?
Last year, I was called into a full-day meeting to go over the first year’s SBAC results with the intent of looking at what areas of instruction we needed to focus on. At the end of the day and after contact with ODE experts, we were unable to get one piece of information about which areas we would need to put extra time in for instruction. We were told that we would have to give additional formative assessments to get that information. So what were we told is the purpose of the test? Accountability.
When the projected cut scores were first released they showed that English Language Learners (ELL) students, had a projected rate pass rate of 5% or less in some of the grades, I filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights. My complaint was rejected because they said that since most everyone would be failing, then I couldn’t prove discrimination against any protected class, such as ELL or Special Education students.
You don’t need to be an expert in data or statistics to come to the conclusion that this test is not valid. It does not give teachers the information they need to determine how to better make students college and career ready. The results don’t Oregon Save Our Schools: Smarter Balanced Fails to Show Any Merit:
Racial Profiling in Preschool - The New York Times
Racial Profiling in Preschool - The New York Times:
Racial Profiling in Preschool
Racial Profiling in Preschool
Isaac Brekken for The New York Times
That black adolescents receive harsher disciplinary punishments at school than their white peers for the same offenses is troubling enough. But federal data showing that even at the preschool level black students are nearly four times as likely to be suspended as their white peers is especially shocking. What it suggests is that racial biases are creeping into classrooms filled with 4-year-olds and that schools are effectively criminalizing black children, particularly boys, when they are barely out of diapers.
Two years ago, federal civil rights officials issued guidance calling on school districts to train their teachers to overcome this problem and showing districts how to recognize and avoid discriminatory practices. But researchers are just beginning to understand the psychological mechanisms that lead teachers who see themselves as loving, supportive figures to discriminate against minorities.
Chief among these mechanisms, according to a new report from Yale University’s Child Study Center, are racial preconceptions that shape the way the teachers view black boys in particular. These preconceptions were found to exist in black as well as white preschool teachers.
In the study, the Yale researchers showed teachers a dozen brief video clips of four well-behaved preschool-aged children, two boys, one black and one white, and two girls, one black and one white, working and playing together in a classroom. Though the children were behaving calmly, the teachers were asked to look for signs of behavior that might become problematic.
A computer program that tracked the eyes of the teachers as they watched the video showed that both black and white teachers watched the black children, especially the boys, longer when looking for signs of trouble. And when the researchers asked teachers which child had commanded the most attention, 42 percent of them chose the black boy, 34 percent the white boy, 13 percent the white girl and 10 percent the black girl.
In other words, the black boy in this study received far more scrutiny from teachers than his behavior warranted. This brings to mind the “driving while black” phenomenon, in which police officers stop African-American motorists without cause, or stop-and-frisk practices that predominantly single out blacks.
The Yale study is consistent with previous research suggesting that teachers tend to see “acting out” by black children as more threatening than similar behavior in white children, and thus deserving of disproportionately harsher punishments.
This is counterproductive on a number of counts, but what’s really at stake here is the future of these children, whose early disciplinary problems put them at greater risk later on of falling behind, dropping out and eventually getting caught up in the juvenile justice system.Racial Profiling in Preschool - The New York Times:
Racial Profiling in Preschool - The New York Times:
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