Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 3/24/17
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Friday, March 24, 2017
Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State School Funding Updates
Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State School Funding Updates:
Washington State School Funding Updates
Here's the latest.
The GOP-majority Senate passed their budget plan, SB 5875, two days ago after many hours of debate with the vote coming in the middle of the night. It passed 25-24.
In terms of fulfilling McCleary, here are their main points:
- no new revenue. The Republicans find the money to fund public education by cutting (some would say slash and burn) many different programs like the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program and early learning programs. It also does not fund the proposed Department of Children, Youth and Families that would consolidate programs for families in crisis.
- they end local levies that fund basic education and, instead, create a state property tax that would fund some of education spending. (This would not end local levies for other purposes.) While all districts would see an increase, districts like Seattle would see fewer dollars in order to support districts in other parts of the state that are not "property-rich."
From Crosscut:
- they move from a proto-type school funding to per pupil funding. I'll note right up front this is exactly what charter and Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State School Funding Updates:
Washington State School Funding Updates
Here's the latest.
The GOP-majority Senate passed their budget plan, SB 5875, two days ago after many hours of debate with the vote coming in the middle of the night. It passed 25-24.
In terms of fulfilling McCleary, here are their main points:
- no new revenue. The Republicans find the money to fund public education by cutting (some would say slash and burn) many different programs like the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program and early learning programs. It also does not fund the proposed Department of Children, Youth and Families that would consolidate programs for families in crisis.
- they end local levies that fund basic education and, instead, create a state property tax that would fund some of education spending. (This would not end local levies for other purposes.) While all districts would see an increase, districts like Seattle would see fewer dollars in order to support districts in other parts of the state that are not "property-rich."
From Crosscut:
But Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, argued that numerous areas, especially in the Puget Sound area, would get hit with much higher property tax increases while others will see decreases. Inslee said that the GOP plan assumes King County residents are much wealthier than the rest of the state and can easily pay a disproportionate share of property taxes.- it is unclear if this bill truly fully funds schools per the Supreme Court ruling. It appears that it falls short by at least a couple of billion dollars.
- they move from a proto-type school funding to per pupil funding. I'll note right up front this is exactly what charter and Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State School Funding Updates:
Starving Schools to Feed Privatization | Teaching Tolerance - Diversity, Equity and Justice
Starving Schools to Feed Privatization | Teaching Tolerance - Diversity, Equity and Justice:
Starving Schools to Feed Privatization
President Donald Trump’s budget proposal—which includes slashing the Department of Education’s budget by 13.5 percent and allocating $1.4 billion for school choice initiatives—was released last week. 
Starving Schools to Feed Privatization
President Donald Trump’s budget proposal—which includes slashing the Department of Education’s budget by 13.5 percent and allocating $1.4 billion for school choice initiatives—was released last week.
Trump’s proposed $9.2 million in cuts would eliminate, for example, the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which funds after-school programs for students from low-income families. Also on the chopping block: Title II, Part A of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which supports teacher training, recruitment and retention. That loss could dramatically impact states such as California, which is experiencing severe teacher shortages.
As we know, Congress actually crafts the federal budget, and many Democrats and Republicansagree that Trump’s “wish list” of proposals will not survive intact. But examine the ideology underlying Trump’s education blueprint (which is supported by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos), and it becomes clear that there is still cause for concern.
Namely, Trump’s so-called “skinny budget” is designed to starve public education while stuffing the privatization movement with resources, all under the guise of civil rights.
Trump has proposed a $168 million increase for charter schools (which presently receive over $300 annually) and $1 billion to promote and increase school choice in Title I schools. Another $250 million would go to a new “private school choice program,” but details about its structure or reach haven’t been released yet.
DeVos lauded Trump’s proposed budget increases, saying they would protect the “nation’s most vulnerable populations” by providing “an equal opportunity of a quality education for all students.” Trump quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s reference to “inferior education” at the end of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March as a reason to provide more school choice, and has said that, ideally, the federal budget would eventually invest $20 billion annually in school choice programs.
Allocating taxpayer money to subsidize private and religious schools, while failing to provide the same robust support for public schools, will result in the exact opposite of equitable education. It will fail to serve students of color, those who come from low-income families or live in rural America.
These concerns are being raised within Congress. On March 22, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington issued a 20-page memo detailing concerns about school privatization efforts. She writes:
While supporters try to argue the programs proposed in President Trump's budget increase ‘school choice,’ in reality, privatization presents a false choice for parents, students, and communities. … [T]he reality is that private schools receiving taxpayer funds lack accountability and transparency, can deny students and parents basic rights, and are inaccessible to students in rural areas and students who cannot afford to pay the difference in cost between the voucher and private school tuition.
School choice is not the only example of the Trump administration ignoring education data. His budget proposal reduces or eliminates a total of 20 Department of Education programs that were deemed “not effective … or that do not serve national needs.”
The proposal provides no data to support those determinations. President Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney has been criticized for stating that numerous programs on the proposed Starving Schools to Feed Privatization | Teaching Tolerance - Diversity, Equity and Justice:
Facts-Only History | Blue Cereal Education
Facts-Only History | Blue Cereal Education:
Facts-Only History
Facts-Only History
Good morning, class. Today begins the roughly three days we have allotted by our state-mandated curriculum to cover the causes, major events, and impact of the American Civil War.
Unlike past units in which I’ve sometimes been guilty of inflicting my personal opinions and interpretations on your instead of just teaching you history, I’ll be making every effort to present the facts and only the facts. Evaluation, analysis, synthesis, or conclusions are entirely up to you. We've practiced these skills through structured activities, and you already, no doubt, supplement my unwittingly biased and inadequate methods via long, meaningful discussions with your parents and/or clergy, as well as extensive research of your own. Hopefully that will mitigate some of the ongoing damage I've done as a bumbling, leftist, possibly atheistic public school educator out to destroy American values.
It’s not my job to teach you what to think, after all – just to present everything that’s ever happened anywhere in or to our great nation in more or less chronological order without prioritization or unnecessary commentary.
The 1850s: Countdown to Civil War
In 1850, the U.S. census showed a population of 23,191,876.
In 1840 - 17,063,353.
In 1830 - 12,866,020.
In 1820 - 9,638,453.
In 1810 - 7,239,881.
Rather than me inflict my personal interpretations on which elements of this growth were significant, I refer you to the U.S. Census Bureau for more details and to several biased-but-comprehensive overviews of U.S. History which you may read in order to make upFacts-Only History | Blue Cereal Education:
Betsy's Boy: Heritage Foundation Alum Critical of Transgender Rights to Lead HHS Civil Rights Office - ProPublica
Heritage Foundation Alum Critical of Transgender Rights to Lead HHS Civil Rights Office - ProPublica:
Heritage Foundation Alum Critical of Transgender Rights to Lead HHS Civil Rights Office
Roger Severino, the new head of the Office for Civil Rights within Health and Human Services, has opposed transgender patients’ rights, same-sex marriage and Planned Parenthood.
Heritage Foundation Alum Critical of Transgender Rights to Lead HHS Civil Rights Office
Roger Severino, the new head of the Office for Civil Rights within Health and Human Services, has opposed transgender patients’ rights, same-sex marriage and Planned Parenthood.
The Trump administration has quietly appointed a Heritage Foundation staffer who has railed against civil rights protections for transgender patients as director of the federal agency charged with protecting the civil rights of all patients.
Though the administration did not issue a formal announcement, Roger Severino is now listed on the website of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as director of the Office for Civil Rights. His prior position was as director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation, where he focused on “religious liberty, marriage and life issues.” (The DeVos Center is named for the in-laws of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.)
The civil rights office is in charge of enforcing patient privacy protections and ensuring that patients’ civil rights are protected, that they are free from discrimination and that they have access to services such as interpreters.
Asked for comment, HHS forwarded a link to Severino’s title and biography. In a statement, Heritage spokeswoman Marguerite Bowling said, “Roger Severino has a distinguished record of fighting for the civil rights and freedoms of all Americans. We have no doubt that Roger in his new role at HHS will protect the civil rights of all Americans.”
Severino’s position does not require Senate confirmation.
Based on his prior writings, Severino will likely take the agency in a different direction than it had under the Obama administration. Last year, the agency issued rules banning discrimination against transgender patients, carrying out provisions of the Affordable Care Act. (A federal judge put those rules on hold on Dec. 31, siding with a Catholic hospital system, other religious health providers and five states that challenged them. The Trump administration has not sought to overturn the injunction.)
When those rules were proposed, Severino and a Heritage colleague wrote a scathing critique, saying they jeopardized the religious liberty and freedom of conscience of health care providers.
“By prohibiting differential treatment on the basis of ‘gender identity’ in health services, these regulations propose to penalize medical professionals and health care Heritage Foundation Alum Critical of Transgender Rights to Lead HHS Civil Rights Office - ProPublica:
Gulen Scandal and All the President's Men: Mike Flynn secretly met Turkish officials to plan illegal ‘dead of night’ extradition of fugitive cleric
Mike Flynn secretly met Turkish officials to plan illegal ‘dead of night’ extradition of fugitive cleric:
Mike Flynn secretly met Turkish officials to plan illegal ‘dead of night’ extradition of fugitive cleric
Mike Flynn secretly met Turkish officials to plan illegal ‘dead of night’ extradition of fugitive cleric
Former CIA Director James Woolsey said that he attended a secret meeting in September with ousted Trump national security adviser Adm. Mike Flynn to plan a covert operation to “whisk away” a fugitive cleric and him over to Turkey’s authoritarian government.
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Woolsey and other people present at the meeting confirmed that Flynn was coordinating with officials from the cabinet of right-wing Turkish Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan in anticipation of extraditing Fethullah Gulen back to Turkey should Trump win the presidency.
The “dead of night” operation was intended to circumvent normal U.S. extradition laws, Woolsey said. The meeting took place on Sep. 19, and Woolsey said he arrived late only to be startled and alarmed that the discussion was treading into potentially illegal territory.
The plan, according to Woolsey, was “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away.” Gulen is wanted in Turkey for allegedly aiding last summer’s failed military coup against the Erdogan regime.
“It isn’t known who raised the idea or what Mr. Flynn concluded about it,” said the Journal.
Flynn was forced to step down from Trump’s cabinet when it came to light that he lied to Vice President Mike Pence and the public about his communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Mike Flynn secretly met Turkish officials to plan illegal ‘dead of night’ extradition of fugitive cleric:
American Federation of Teachers President to support Cornell grad student unionization | ithaca
American Federation of Teachers President to support Cornell grad student unionization | News | ithaca.com:
American Federation of Teachers President to support Cornell grad student unionization
American Federation of Teachers President to support Cornell grad student unionization
American Federation of Teachers President and Cornell University alumna Randi Weingarten has announced she will rally Saturday with Cornell graduate workers to get out the vote.
Weingarten will speak at a Cornell Graduate Students United event at Hasbrouck Community Center, highlighting the voices of grad employees with families, and the challenges faced by international grad students, two days before voting begins.
The AFT represents more than 1.6 million members comprised of teachers, paraprofessionals and school-related personnel, higher education faculty and staff, nurses and other healthcare professionals, local, state and federal government employees, and early childhood educators.
WHAT: Rally with Cornell graduate workers
WHO: AFT President Randi Weingarten
WHEN: Saturday, March 25, 4 p.m.
WHERE: Hasbrouck Community Center
121 Pleasant Grove Road
Ithaca, NY 14850.
American Federation of Teachers President to support Cornell grad student unionization | News | ithaca.com:
Placing Students Last Doesn’t Make America Great | Schott Foundation for Public Education
Placing Students Last Doesn’t Make America Great | Schott Foundation for Public Education:
Placing Students Last Doesn’t Make America Great
Placing Students Last Doesn’t Make America Great
Federal budget director Mick Mulvaney, recently revealed that President Trump’s “skinny budget” proposal titled, “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” was largely culled from Trump’s speeches and interviews throughout his campaign. But for many observers, the budget proposal highlights once again the dissonance between Trump’s words and factual evidence. During his Address to the Joint Session of Congress, President Trump boldly proclaimed education as the civil rights issue of our time—one that he was deeply committed to—but as budgets are expressions of both commitment and strategy, President Trump’s federal budget proposal indicates that his words and commitment ring hollow.
Simply stated, the president’s “skinny budget” is not indicative of an effort to lead the nation toward strengthening every student’s civil right to an opportunity to learn.
The proposal makes a $9.2 billion, or 13.5 percent, reduction from the previous Department of Education budget. It also makes cuts to programs like TRIO and GEAR UP, which have been lifelines to support low-income learners getting on track for college. The budget proposal eliminates the Supporting Effective Instruction Program (Title II, Part A), which helps states recruit and train teachers for high-need schools. It also eliminates the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which provides critical before- and after-school and summer school services. Furthermore, by flat funding the IDEA, which support students with disabilities, this Administration makes clear that vulnerable students are not prioritized in this budget. Troublingly, 20 additional programs are slated to be cut or reduced, but “America First” doesn’t name them.
Worse, the budget proposal does not fully elaborate how the $9 billion in cuts will be distributed, leaving the future of many programs that serve low-income students, students with disabilities and schools in communities with high concentrations of poverty (that are overwhelmingly communities of color) unknown.
This budget is also noticeably silent on the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, which could be targeted for deeper cuts impacting hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities and those who are victims of inequitable barriers. Not only would this severely undermine the responsibility of the department to protect the civil rights of all children, particularly those who are most vulnerable, but it would drastically hamper transparency to parents and the public about the state of educational equity in our nation’s public schools. Of course, that could be the intention—to eliminate resources to public school students and the schools they attend and worsen the school climate so that selective private schools can benefit from transfers. In fact, it’s hard not to conclude, with the $1.4 billion down payment on creating paths that allow individuals to move Placing Students Last Doesn’t Make America Great | Schott Foundation for Public Education:
CURMUDGUCATION: How Not To Teach Writing
CURMUDGUCATION: How Not To Teach Writing:
How Not To Teach Writing
Imagine how crazy it would be.
An English teacher stands in front of a class and explains, "For every thought you have about the prompt, there is only one correct sentence that can use to express that thought. I'll be grading your essays based on how many of the correct sentences you use."
Nobody teaches writing that way. Nobody says, "Okay, if you have an insight about Jake's injury in The Sun Also Rises, there is on correct sentence for expressing that thought" or "On today's essay about parenting, I'll be looking for seven particular correct sentences that should be used to express these thoughts."
Certainly nobody approaches the use of words in real life in this way. Nobody says, "No, you can't be serious about this job because you didn't even try to say the right sentence," or "No, if you really loved me, you would have said the correct sentence for expressing it."
No, the entire history of human expression, human literature, human song-- it's about finding new and interesting and surprising ways to say what we have to say. It's about finding ways to express a thought that are perfectly suited to that particular person and time and place and circumstances. We are moved, touched, excited, and enlightened by those who can string words together in completely different and yet completely appropriate ways.
Certainly some of these verbal inventions are better than others. Shakespeare's plays are echoes and imitations of other versions of the same stories, and yet four centuries later his Hamlet and his Romero and Juliet endure because, although he was saying what many other playwrights were saying, he said it better. We admire (at least we should) Shakespeare not just for what he did with CURMUDGUCATION: How Not To Teach Writing:
How Not To Teach Writing
An English teacher stands in front of a class and explains, "For every thought you have about the prompt, there is only one correct sentence that can use to express that thought. I'll be grading your essays based on how many of the correct sentences you use."
Nobody teaches writing that way. Nobody says, "Okay, if you have an insight about Jake's injury in The Sun Also Rises, there is on correct sentence for expressing that thought" or "On today's essay about parenting, I'll be looking for seven particular correct sentences that should be used to express these thoughts."
Certainly nobody approaches the use of words in real life in this way. Nobody says, "No, you can't be serious about this job because you didn't even try to say the right sentence," or "No, if you really loved me, you would have said the correct sentence for expressing it."
No, the entire history of human expression, human literature, human song-- it's about finding new and interesting and surprising ways to say what we have to say. It's about finding ways to express a thought that are perfectly suited to that particular person and time and place and circumstances. We are moved, touched, excited, and enlightened by those who can string words together in completely different and yet completely appropriate ways.
Certainly some of these verbal inventions are better than others. Shakespeare's plays are echoes and imitations of other versions of the same stories, and yet four centuries later his Hamlet and his Romero and Juliet endure because, although he was saying what many other playwrights were saying, he said it better. We admire (at least we should) Shakespeare not just for what he did with CURMUDGUCATION: How Not To Teach Writing:
Hannah Skandera Booted from Consideration as DeVos Assistant | deutsch29
Hannah Skandera Booted from Consideration as DeVos Assistant | deutsch29:
Hannah Skandera Booted from Consideration as DeVos Assistant
Hannah Skandera Booted from Consideration as DeVos Assistant
According to Politico’s March 23, 2017, Morning Education, controversial New Mexico education commissioner Hannah Skandera will not be joining US ed sec Betsy DeVos in DC as assistant education secretary. (Note: A December 2016 Politico Pro article had Skandera under consideration for “deputy secretary or undersecretary.”)
The reason? Republicans are spooked by Skandera’s ties to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS):
the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education may still be up for grabs after the Trump administration recently reversed plans to nominate New Mexico Education Secretary Hanna Skandera for the assistant secretary job, POLITICO has learned. The administration’s decision to pull back an offer came after Republicans raised concerns about Skandera’s support for the Common Core standards. The offer appears to have been extended before Hill Republicans were consulted.“About a dozen Republican offices were skeptical that they could ever vote yes” on Skandera because of her embrace of the standards, said a senior GOP aide. … Skandera, who sits on the governing board for the Common Core-aligned PARCC test, declined to comment.
Skandera not only “sits” on the PARCC governing board; she is the board chair, and under clandestine circumstances: PARCC did not formally offer a press release Hannah Skandera Booted from Consideration as DeVos Assistant | deutsch29:
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