Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 1/10/17

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 1/10/17

Featured Post

Did Betsy DeVos 'BUY' Donald Trump | Washington Examiner

Two critical education issues for the Connecticut legislature By Anne Manusky - Wait What?

by mike simpson / 6min

Two critical education issues for the Connecticut legislature By Anne Manusky - Wait What? : Two critical education issues for the Connecticut legislature By Anne Manusky Education advocate Anne Manusky weighs in in two extremely important issues that the Connecticut General Assembly should address this legislative session. Her commentary piece originally appeared in the CT Mirror. You can read a

Big Worries About Betsy DeVos - The New York Times

by mike simpson / 1h

Big Worries About Betsy DeVos - The New York Times : Big Worries About Betsy DeVos Lilli Carré The director of the Office of Government Ethics, the nonpartisan agency charged with vetting the financial disclosures of cabinet nominees for potential conflicts of interest, sent an extraordinary letter to Senate Democratic leaders late last week. Never in the four-decade history of the agency, he wro

CURMUDGUCATION: Should Devos Make This Argument for Choice?

by mike simpson / 1h

CURMUDGUCATION: Should Devos Make This Argument for Choice? : Should Devos Make This Argument for Choice? Rick Hess (American Enterprise Institute) is using the occasion of the DeVos nomination to make some points about choice as a reform strategy. This is fair-- all of us in the education debates are both agitated about the nomination and aware that, for at least these fifteen minutes, American

On Writing Workshop, Cognitive Overload, and Creative Writing | radical eyes for equity

by mike simpson / 4h

On Writing Workshop, Cognitive Overload, and Creative Writing | radical eyes for equity : On Writing Workshop, Cognitive Overload, and Creative Writing “The cause for my wrath is not new or single,” wrote Lou LaBrant in 1931 , targeting how too often the project method engaged students in activities other than literacy. This sharp critique by LaBrant has always resonated with me because even thou

The Myth of “Failed” School Reform, (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

by mike simpson / 4h

The Myth of “Failed” School Reform, (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice : The Myth of “Failed” School Reform, (Part 1) Were the “Open Space” schools of the 1960s and 1970s a reform failure?. Instead of self-contained, four-walled classrooms of about 900 square feet holding one teacher and 25 students that opened up into long hallways, school boards hired architects to d

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Following the Bouncing Money Ball at Seattle Schools

by mike simpson / 5h

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Following the Bouncing Money Ball at Seattle Schools : Following the Bouncing Money Ball at Seattle Schools Most of my readers know by now that I am very interested in capital issues and funding. I care for two reasons. One, every single student deserves a clean, well-maintained, safe building to call "my school." It would be great if the technology is up-to-date

Donald Trump Is "an Existential Threat to Public Schools" | Mother Jones

by mike simpson / 5h

Donald Trump Is "an Existential Threat to Public Schools" | Mother Jones : Donald Trump Is "an Existential Threat to Public Schools" How teachers' unions are fighting his education secretary pick, Betsy DeVos. On the day President-elect Donald Trump announced Michigan billionaire philanthropist Betsy DeVos as his pick for education secretary, the heads of the country's two largest teachers unions

Schools Matter: Lamar Alexander Assures Diane Supporters about DeVos

by mike simpson / 5h

Schools Matter: Lamar Alexander Assures Diane Supporters about DeVos : Lamar Alexander Assures Diane Supporters about DeVos When Diane Ravitch wanted her flock to be herded into supporting the federal charter school expansion legislation known as ESSA, she called upon Lamar Alexander's office to offer a nine-part spin session (see below) designed to mislead, obfuscate, and soothe any remaining sk

Did Betsy DeVos 'BUY' Donald Trump | Washington Examiner

by mike simpson / 5h

GOP megadonor wants Trump to start praising school choice | Washington Examiner : GOP megadonor wants Trump to start praising school choice Republican megadonor Betsy DeVos seems to want Donald Trump to start talking about school choice before she'll support him. Trump has yet to mention school choice much on the campaign trail, although he has said education needs to be done at the state and loc

Schools Matter: Who is Cambridge Education?

by mike simpson / 6h

Schools Matter: Who is Cambridge Education? : Who is Cambridge Education? On September 15, 2016, the Philadelphia School Reform Commission approved a $200,000 contract with Cambridge Education for investigation of the cash-strapped Philadelphia School District that stated: RESOLVED, that the School Reform Commission authorizes the School District of Philadelphia, through its Superintendent or his

Betsy DeVoucher - Living in Dialogue

by mike simpson / 6h

Betsy DeVoucher - Living in Dialogue : Betsy DeVoucher I found this great animation by Ryan Sluggett on the web. Hopefully, with Betsy DeVos’ confirmation hearing postponed a week, new disclosures will save us from this nightmare scenario. –Vincent Betsy DeVoucher - Living in Dialogue :

Positive School Cultures Thrive When Support Staff Included

by mike simpson / 7h

Positive School Cultures Thrive When Support Staff Included : Positive School Cultures Thrive When Support Staff Included The whole village concept for improving schools stresses the importance of all school employees working together to help students succeed – everyone from principals, custodians and bus drivers to teachers, nurses, administrators, security and food service workers. The objectiv

Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Education Pick, Plays Hardball With Her Wealth - The New York Times

by mike simpson / 7h

Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Education Pick, Plays Hardball With Her Wealth - The New York Times : Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Education Pick, Plays Hardball With Her Wealth After Tom Casperson, a Republican state senator from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, began running for Congress in 2016, he assumed the family of Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald J. Trump ’s nominee to be education secretary, would not oppos

Marie Corfield: The First Week of the 115th Congress

by mike simpson / 8h

Marie Corfield: The First Week of the 115th Congress : The First Week of the 115th Congress NJ Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman posted this on Facebook yesterday (all emphasis mine): The week in review: Trump fires all Ambassadors and Special Envoys, ordering them out by inauguration day. House brings back the Holman rule allowing them to reduce an individual civil service, SES position, or po

Sen. Patty Murray seeks update on ethics review for Trump’s education pick, Betsy DeVos - The Washington Post

by mike simpson / 8h

Sen. Patty Murray seeks update on ethics review for Trump’s education pick, Betsy DeVos - The Washington Post : Sen. Patty Murray seeks update on ethics review for Trump’s education pick, Betsy DeVos A key Democratic senator is seeking more information about the status of a required ethics review for Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary. The Office of Govern

NAACP | NAACP Task Force to Hold Memphis Hearing on Education Quality

by mike simpson / 8h

NAACP | NAACP Task Force to Hold Memphis Hearing on Education Quality : NAACP TASK FORCE TO HOLD MEMPHIS HEARING ON EDUCATION QUALITY Jan. 10 Discussion between Public and Charter Education Advocates will include Charter Impacts on Underfunded School Districts MEMPHIS, TN – A new NAACP task force studying education quality will be taking input from advocates, teachers, parents, and policy experts

Mitt Romney Speaks Up for Governance by Plutocrats | janresseger

by mike simpson / 8h

Mitt Romney Speaks Up for Governance by Plutocrats | janresseger : Mitt Romney Speaks Up for Governance by Plutocrats Mitt Romney had a preposterous op-ed in the Washington Post over the weekend. He suggests that Betsy DeVos, a billionaire, is ideally qualified to be U.S. Secretary of Education because she is so rich she doesn’t stand to benefit from any kind of future employment in a public scho

Do Connecticut’s privately-managed charter schools outperform local public school districts? (By Robert Cotto Jr.) - Wait What?

by mike simpson / 8h

Do Connecticut’s privately-managed charter schools outperform local public school districts? (By Robert Cotto Jr.) - Wait What? : Do Connecticut’s privately-managed charter schools outperform local public school districts? (By Robert Cotto Jr.) Despite the political rhetoric coming out of ConnCAN and other charter school industry front groups, Trinity’s Robert Cotto reveals that Connecticut’s cha

Opposition grows over Senate confirmation of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education nominee - The Washington Post

by mike simpson / 9h

Opposition grows over Senate confirmation of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education nominee - The Washington Post : Opposition grows over Senate confirmation of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education nominee DeVos Hearing 1/11: UPDATED Senate HELP Committee Members. Call today. - Network For Public Education Public education was not much of an issue during the 2016 presidential campaign — but it sure is now as o

The Long Shadow of John Deasy

by mike simpson / 9h

The Long Shadow of John Deasy : The Long Shadow of John Deasy Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it ” – George Santayana It has been more than two years since LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy was forced to resign in disgrace. Unfortunately, the legacy that he has left for the District’s students echoes into the present day. After spending at least $189 million on the “ disa

US Ed Sec Nominee Betsy DeVos Has More Firsthand Experience Selecting Carpet Swatches | deutsch29

by mike simpson / 9h

US Ed Sec Nominee Betsy DeVos Has More Firsthand Experience Selecting Carpet Swatches | deutsch29 : US Ed Sec Nominee Betsy DeVos Has More Firsthand Experience Selecting Carpet Swatches DeVos engrossed with carpet. On January 09, 2017, founder of the Center for Education Reform (CER), Jeanne Allen , issued a press release stating (warning: worn-out phrase coming), “But charter schools are public

YESTERDAY

Senate postpones confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education pick - The Washington Post

by mike simpson / 19h

Senate postpones confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education pick - The Washington Post : Senate postpones confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education pick The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions has postponed the confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary. DeVos’s hearing, originally scheduled

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 1/9/17

by mike simpson / 23h

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 1/9/17 Featured Post Meryl Streep gives shout-out to public schools during her Golden Globes anti-Trump speech - The Washington Post School Privatization Turns Business Into Predator and

Big Worries About Betsy DeVos

Lilli Carré

The director of the Office of Government Ethics, the nonpartisan agency charged with vetting the financial disclosures of cabinet nominees for potential conflicts of interest, sent an extraordinary letter to Senate Democratic leaders late last week. Never in the four-decade history of the agency, he wrote, have ethics officials felt such “undue pressure ... to rush through these important reviews,” leaving “some of the nominees with potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues shortly before their scheduled hearings.”

As the Senate races forward with confirmation hearings this week, the spottiest disclosures have come from wealthy private-sector nominees with no governing experience and many potential conflicts. In other words, the people most in need of a complete ethics review.

Exhibit A is Betsy DeVos, a billionaire and education lobbyist who is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary. Ms. DeVos’s finances are a tangle that could take weeks to investigate. Despite that, Republicans had set her confirmation hearing for Wednesday. But late Monday night, they pushed it back to next Tuesday.

People who have seen her financial disclosures so far say that Ms. DeVos and her husband, Dick DeVos, have investments in some 250 companies registered to a single Grand Rapids, Mich., address, entities whose investments could take weeks for the ethics office to research. Already, though, there are reports that the DeVoses are indirect investors in Social Finance Inc., a private company that refinances student loans. Private lenders like Social Finance are banned from most of the direct student lending market; their lobbyists have already written to the Trump transition team pitching to change that. That’s only one potential conflict. What if her family has holdings in educational technology or for-profit colleges? Given time, the ethics office will learn this, and reach an agreement with Ms. DeVos to sell off assets that could pose a conflict.

Beyond erasing concerns about her many possible financial conflicts, Ms. DeVos also faces a big challenge in explaining the damage she’s done to public education in her home state, Michigan. She has poured money into Big Worries About Betsy DeVos - The New York Times:

CURMUDGUCATION: Should Devos Make This Argument for Choice?

CURMUDGUCATION: Should Devos Make This Argument for Choice?:

Should Devos Make This Argument for Choice?

Rick Hess (American Enterprise Institute) is using the occasion of the DeVos nomination to make some points about choice as a reform strategy. This is fair-- all of us in the education debates are both agitated about the nomination and aware that, for at least these fifteen minutes, American political discourse is actually paying attention to education. So we're all busy articulating our thoughts about the subject; there's no reason reformsters shouldn't do the same.

So Hess is at National Review with "What Betsy DeVos Should Tell the Senate," a four-part argument for choice that is his dream speech for DeVos, a Hess-crafted argument for choice programs. As is often the case, while I disagree with almost everything he has to say, I appreciate his ability to articulate it clearly so that I can more clearly understand where he goes wrong. So let's look at the four acts of this failed play:

First, teaching and learning are natural, intuitive acts. They aren’t the exotic product of some mysterious alchemy.

There are, of course, other possibilities that are neither gut-based or alchemic. For instance, teaching is a craft that requires training and experience and a serious background of knowledge. Hess's point that "humans are natural learners" with brains "hard-wired" to understand and learn and know is absolutely legit. His observation that "adults are predisposed to share knowledge, interests and skills" might a bit more open to debate. His implication that, therefor, teaching is no big deal and probably anyone can do it (as it doesn't require arcane training or special setting) is arguably false.

His bigger point is that "systems, structures, and bureaucratic rules are getting in the way--" and oh my God, I just realized that Rick Hess of the conservative AEI is actually a closet hippy! Fight the CURMUDGUCATION: Should Devos Make This Argument for Choice?:

On Writing Workshop, Cognitive Overload, and Creative Writing | radical eyes for equity

On Writing Workshop, Cognitive Overload, and Creative Writing | radical eyes for equity:

On Writing Workshop, Cognitive Overload, and Creative Writing

“The cause for my wrath is not new or single,” wrote Lou LaBrant in 1931, targeting how too often the project method engaged students in activities other than literacy.

This sharp critique by LaBrant has always resonated with me because even though I am now a teacher educator and have been a teacher for well over thirty years, I have always balked at pedagogy, instructional practices of any kind but especially those driven by technocratic zeal.

As one example, literature circles as an instructional structure represents the essential problems confronted by LaBrant about 86 years ago: the instructional practice itself requires time to teach students how to do the practice properly, and thus, “doing literature circles” becomes a goal unto itself and as a consequence subsumes and/or replaces the authentic literacy goals it claims to seek.

Further, many instructional practices border on being gimmicky because they are constructed in such a way to facilitate that anyone (regardless of expertise and experience) can implement them in the role of “teacher.”

For a while now, I have been contemplating the tension within teaching writing (composition) between those who teach writing as teachers and those who teach writing as writers.

I certainly default to the latter, and am drawn often to John Warner‘s public examinations of his teaching of writing (see below) because he also teaches writing as a writer.

Warner’s pieces about grading contracts and de-grading his first-year writing course have come when I am beginning my English/ELA methods seminar and wading into how my candidate must navigate ways to seek authentic practices in the context of the real world of teaching that often models for her teaching writing as a teacher, as a technocrat.

Here, then, I want to pull together a few concepts that I think are at their core related to LaBrant’s “wrath” and my rejecting of technocratic instruction—writing workshop, cognitive overload, and creative writing.

Warner in blog posts and on Twitter questions his commitment to writing workshop, and offered that he has abandoned the term “workshop” for “laboratory.”

In one response, I mused that this all depends on what we mean by On Writing Workshop, Cognitive Overload, and Creative Writing | radical eyes for equity:

The Myth of “Failed” School Reform, (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Myth of “Failed” School Reform, (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

The Myth of “Failed” School Reform, (Part 1)

Were the “Open Space” schools of the 1960s and 1970s a reform failure?.

Instead of self-contained, four-walled classrooms of about 900 square feet holding one teacher and 25 students that opened up into long hallways, school boards hired architects to design schools without walls with large open spaces—sometimes called pods– where teams of teachers would teach multi-age children, collaborate with one another nearby and come up with innovative lessons that would engage students and sustain academic achievement. The newly designed physical structure would alter traditional age-graded schools in organizing students (e.g., multi-age groups rather than separating children and youth by age) how teachers worked together (e.g., team teaching rather than teachers assigned to separate classrooms) and how they taught the required curriculum by tailoring instruction and learning to the differences among students in abilities and their needs (e.g., small groups, individual work, and crossing subject boundaries with thematic units rather than whole-group instruction, textbooks, homework, and tests). Student-centered teaching, not the familiar teacher-centered lesson–would become the norm, open space reformers assumed.[i]

Open space architecture and enthusiasm for innovative grouping of children, teaching, and learning customized to individual students spread rapidly across the U.S. In the Washington, D.C. area, for example,

The District of Columbia schools spent $163 million in the 1970s to build 17 open space schools. In the same decade, Arlington County (VA) spent $25 million to convert 13 traditional schools into open space facilities. Montgomery County The Myth of “Failed” School Reform, (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Following the Bouncing Money Ball at Seattle Schools

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Following the Bouncing Money Ball at Seattle Schools:

Following the Bouncing Money Ball at Seattle Schools

Image result for Following the Bouncing Money animated gif

Most of my readers know by now that I am very interested in capital issues and funding. I care for two reasons.

One, every single student deserves a clean, well-maintained, safe building to call "my school." It would be great if the technology is up-to-date and there is natural light and flow to the building to create an inviting atmosphere.

Two, the taxpayers of Seattle vote in ever-increasing huge sums of money for these buildings. And, yet the district does not maintain the system properly. As well, the district has a very convoluted idea that they can move money around from BEXs and BTAs and claim all the work promised will be done. I have disputed that claim for a long time and I still believe it.

There has never been a transparent accounting of all the dollars in the BEXs and BTAs and what work actually happened. Never.

Yesterday, I received the notice of the upcoming BEX Oversight Committee meeting on Friday morning. The notice included several documents including the minutes from the last meeting as well as a status report on BEX IV projects and other major projects. I wrote to the Board this morning about them. (I note that Directors Burke and Geary were at the December meeting.)

I can only say I'm appalled. I'm sure there are MANY reasons for what is Seattle Schools Community Forum: Following the Bouncing Money Ball at Seattle Schools:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Tuesday Open Thread - http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2017/01/tuesday-open-thread.html

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Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 1/10/17

Did Betsy DeVos 'BUY' Donald Trump | Washington Examiner

YESTERDAY

Top Posts This Week

Two critical education issues for the Connecticut legislature By Anne Manusky - Wait What?