Surrendering Will Make You Free | BustED Pencils

Surrendering Will Make You Free | BustED Pencils:

Surrendering Will Make You Free

Life is very short, and there’s no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend
I have always thought that it’s a crime,
So I will ask you once again
Try to see it my way…   -J. Lennon

This is going to be difficult, but here goes. I surrender. 45, and the wealthiest Cabinet ever are the best hope for our future.

Caricature by DonkeyHotey licensed through Creative Commons

Now wait a minute; don’t stop reading. Let me explain. First of all, they won. You know who I mean. The 1%. It’s not just about them winning; it’s why they won. Let me be succinct: Science is on their side.

How ironic is that??? The very ones who seem to deny science at every turn, from climate change to creationism to gutting the EPA of scientific advisers are the benefactors and purveyors of Darwinism. In case you were distracted that day back in 10th grade biology class by a case of natural selection caused by the pheromones emanating from that fine human specimen sitting two seats in front of you, let’s review. In 1869, Charles Darwin, still Surrendering Will Make You Free | BustED Pencils:

FriData Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

FriData Diane Ravitch's blog

A site to discuss better education for all

Your Chance to Join the Success Academy Team!

by dianeravitch / 2min

Success Academy is hiring! Of course they are always hiring teachers due to the high rate of teacher turnover. More than 50% leave every year. https://www.themuse.com/jobs/successacademycharterschools/real-estate-

Southold, New York: Elementary School Will Get Giant Mother Goose Shoe!

by dianeravitch / 6min

David Gamberg, superintendent of schools in both Southold and Greenport, on Long Island, in New York, had a dream. He wanted to install a custom-made Mother Goose shoe, in which children could play. He wanted it to symbolize the 

Borowitz: Betsy DeVos is the Only Person Who Can Stop North Korea

by dianeravitch / 3min

Andy Borowitz, who writes humorous pieces for the New Yorker, says only one person can stop North Korea. He says Betsy DeVos is enroute to North Korea to reverse its progress in math and science. Vouchers for everyone! That will 

A Global Guide to the Power of Philanthro-Capitalism

1by dianeravitch / 51min

Antonio Olmedo wrote this analysis of Philanthro-Capitalism. VENTURE PHILANTHROPY & THE NEOLIBERAL ECOSYSTEM: WHO NEEDS A MINISTRY OF EDUCATION? By Antonio Olmedo, University of Roehampton Coinciding 

Ohio: Kasich Vetoes Bills, Hurts Children

by dianeravitch / 10min

John Kasich likes to be unpredictable. One minute, he plays the moderate, sane Republican in contrast to irresponsible, impulsive Trump. Then he acts in Ohio and shows that he doesn’t have a clue about education, the most important responsibility and budget item in every state. Stephen Dyer of Innovation Ohio writes: “While Gov. John Kasich’s line-item veto of the Ohio Legislature’s freeze on Med

Texas: Voucher Proposal Won’t Help Children with Disabilities

7by dianeravitch / 1h

They’re baaaaccckkk! The zombies called vouchers will be introduced again in the Texas State Senate, once again under the fraudulent claim that they are intended for children with disabilities. Governor Greg Abbott is calling a special session, holding new state funding hostage in exchange for vouchers. Once again, we pray, the Texas House of Representatives will stop the voucher proposal. The Ho

YESTERDAY

Parents File Complaint to New York State, Demanding Reduced Class Sizes

16by dianeravitch / 20h

The press release is self-explanatory: Contact: Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters, 917-435-9329; leoniehaimson@gmail.com Wendy Lecker, Education Law Center, 203-536-7567, wlecker@edlawcenter.org NYC PARENTS FILE COMPLAINT TO ENFORCE LAW TO REDUCE CLASS SIZE Demand Department of Education Reduce Class Size as Mandated in State Law Today, nine parents from every New York City borough filed a petit

Ed Johnson: Neo-Colonialism in Africa–and Atlanta

5by dianeravitch / 21h

Ed Johnson is a passionate advocate for quality education for all. He lives in Atlanta. Ed is a follower of the philosophy of W. Edwards Deming, who taught that you don’t blame frontline workers for the failure of the system and its poor leadership. He frequently writes letters to the members of the Atlanta Board of Education, hoping to enlighten them. Here is the latest: New-age colonialism in A

Graduation Speech: “You Said We Couldn’t Succeed, But You Were Wrong”

35by dianeravitch / 22h

Jo Lieb, who blogs as “Poetic Justice,” posted the powerful graduation speech written and delivered by Coral Ortiz, with Coral’s permission. Coral just graduated from a public high school in New Haven, Connecticut. When we were young, we were taught that we were “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Our country taught us that no matter our income or race, we would

A Guide to Voucher Jargon and Doublespeak

18by dianeravitch / 23h

The NEA posted a handy explanation of the differences among current voucher programs. Learn to understand Betsy DeVos’s euphemisms. School vouchers are actually unpopular, which is why their advocates call them by another term. “Voucher devotees like DeVos know this, which is why the term “school voucher” has been ditched in favor of more appealing terms. “Take for example this line from DeVos’ s

Have You Heard? “Personalized Learning” and the Disruption of Education

37by dianeravitch / 1d

Now that we live in the new gig economy, where kids in their 20s become instant multimillionaires by disrupting every industry, here come the hawkers of (de)personalized learning to replace teachers with smart (but not cheap) machines. These machines never need pensions or health care. They don’t care about tenure or due process. Jennifer Berkshire (once known as EduShyster) and historian of educ

Peter Greene: “Personalized Learning” and the Great Bait-and-Switch

6by dianeravitch / 1d

Peter Greene explains the hoax at the heart of “personalized learning.” The appeal is that it is customized just for you. The reality is that it is a standardized algorithm that adjusts to your responses but doesn’t you from Adam or Eve. The 

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

SC Fails Students Still: More on Grade Retention and Misreading Literacy | radical eyes for equity

SC Fails Students Still: More on Grade Retention and Misreading Literacy | radical eyes for equity:

SC Fails Students Still: More on Grade Retention and Misreading Literacy

But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

Oscar Wilde (1891), The Soul of Man under Socialism

Bells will certainly continue to signal class changes in public schools all across South Carolina this fall, but there is a much more serious (and unwarranted) bell of doom for many third-graders because of SC’s punitive Read to Succeed legislation.

Paul Hyde’s Furman professor: Read to Succeed retention policy ‘a disaster’offers a primer on the politically and publicly popular move across the U.S. to retain students based in part or fully on third-grade high-stakes tests of reading.

Once again, literacy policy often fails to address valid literacy practices or to acknowledge that literacy proficiency is strongly correlated with systemic conditions beyond the walls of the school or the control of teachers.

Worksheets on literacy skills, test-prep for state assessments of reading and writing, linking teacher evaluations to students’ test scores, and retaining children are simply not only flawed literacy policies, but also negative influences on children’s literacy and academic achievement.

And decades of creating ever-new standards and then purchasing ever-new reading textbooks and programs have utterly failed children and literacy.

For about a century, in fact, we have known what is needed to help students develop literacy—but the political will remains lacking.

A robust literacy strategy for schools must include instead the following:

• Addressing access to books in all children’s homes.
• Insuring access to books in all children’s schools.
• Providing all students ample and extended time in class to read by choice.
• Guaranteeing every student balanced literacy instruction based on each student’s demonstrated literacy needs (not the prescriptions of literacy programs).
• Discontinuing the standards and testing disaster dominating schools and classrooms by providing teachers the materials, time, and professional autonomy to teach literacy in evidence-based ways.

Just as education policy ignores a rich research base, political leaders and SC Fails Students Still: More on Grade Retention and Misreading Literacy | radical eyes for equity:

Remarks as prepared for delivery by Sydney Chaffee, 2017 National Teacher of the Year, to the 96th NEA Representative Assembly | Fred Klonsky

Remarks as prepared for delivery by Sydney Chaffee, 2017 National Teacher of the Year, to the 96th NEA Representative Assembly | Fred Klonsky:

Remarks as prepared for delivery by Sydney Chaffee, 2017 National Teacher of the Year, to the 96th NEA Representative Assembly

National Teacher of the Year, Sydney Chaffee.

BOSTON – July 03, 2017 –

Thank you all for welcoming me here today. I deeply respect you and the work of this organization. This room is full of people who have committed their lives to education — whether as teachers, ESPs, administrators, or other leadership roles — and it’s an honor to be able to talk with you.

In his book “Teaching Toward Freedom,” William Ayers wrote, “To be human is to live alone on the nerve islands of our bodies. To connect with another is to imagine with sympathy. The bridge of humanity is constructed of imagination, a certain kind of imagination, mediated by words.” I read that book very early in my career, and that idea — human connection as a feat of empathetic imagination — has stuck with me. We may not be able to step inside of each other’s heads, as humans, but I think sometimes that our work as teachers is to try.

I remember when President Obama was elected for the first time. The next morning, I went into my classroom, ready to talk with my students about his historic election and hear their reactions to it — after they did the Do Now, of course. I stood at the front of my room with my clipboard, taking attendance the same way I did every day, but I only had one student in the room. There he sat, in his assigned seat right in the middle of the room, facing me, as I checked off a little box next to his name. We looked at each other, looked at the clock, looked at each other. After a few minutes, he asked, “Where is everybody?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but they’re late.”

We heard a commotion outside and saw some of his classmates running past the window. Then my principal at the time burst through the door. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Come outside!”

We followed him to the busy intersection outside and saw the rest of the school — students and staff — standing there on the corner. Some people held up that day’s paper with a huge picture of President Obama on the front. Others had grabbed mini-whiteboards from classrooms and written, “Honk for Obama” on them. The scene was messy, loud, and joyous.

Standing there still holding my clipboard, a symbol of the rules and routines that made school feel orderly and productive to me, I realized that my stubborn insistence on sticking to the plan and following the rules had been silly. My neat little plan wasn’t Remarks as prepared for delivery by Sydney Chaffee, 2017 National Teacher of the Year, to the 96th NEA Representative Assembly | Fred Klonsky:

Badass Teachers Association: A NJ BAT at NEA RA in Favor of Voting For NBI 129 by Carrie Odgers Lax

Badass Teachers Association: A NJ BAT at NEA RA in Favor of Voting For NBI 129 by Carrie Odgers Lax:

A NJ BAT at NEA RA in Favor of Voting For NBI 129 

by Carrie Odgers Lax

One year ago, almost to the day, we sat in the convention center in Washington DC and observed a moment of silence for Philando Castile, a cafeteria supervisor at J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School in Saint Paul, Minn., who had just been shot to death during a routine traffic stop. We sat, in our silence, with the knowledge that a police officer had fired seven shots into Philando Castile's car, where he was belted into his seat, with his girlfriend next to him, and her four year old daughter in the back.

On Friday, June 16th, whatever small amount of faith I still had that justice would, or even could, prevail in America, was taken from me as Officer Jeronimo Yanez was found not guilty second degree manslaughter. Not guilty of intentionally discharging a dangerous weapon. Acquitted on all charges.

As a mother, I mourned. As an American, I was consumed with rage. And then, four days later, the dashcam footage was released. And I forced myself to witness.

And what I learned was that I wasn't ready to watch as a man who followed the law, who obeyed every request that was made of him, and who spoke and acted with complete respect for authority...was shot, repeatedly, as he and his girlfriend desperately tried to reassure the Badass Teachers Association: A NJ BAT at NEA RA in Favor of Voting For NBI 129 by Carrie Odgers Lax:

NYC Educator: Mayoral Control Is a Lose-Lose

NYC Educator: Mayoral Control Is a Lose-Lose:

Mayoral Control Is a Lose-Lose

I've opposed mayoral control since its inception, originally because it went to uber-reformy Michael Bloomberg. During his seemingly endless tenure, I learned more about it. I think Diane Ravitch wrote in Death and Life of the Great American School System that it was a reformy tool designed to bypass democracy. Unlike Bloomberg and Trump, I believe in democracy.

Now you'd think that having a professed charter foe like de Blasio in office might make mayoral control better. You'd be wrong because to Andrew Cuomo and the bought-off members of the Assembly and Senate, reforminess is almost like breathing. Because NYC has chosen a mayor who doesn't support the people who sent them suitcases full of cash, they passed a law that the city has to pay charter rent even if it disapproves of the actual charter.

It's fundamentally unfair that NYC has to shoulder the mandates of reformy suburban reps who wouldn't build charters in their own district on a bet. This notwithstanding, there was a barrage of pro-mayoral control talk recently, from self-appointed public education experts as diverse as Andrew Cuomo, Arne Duncan and Al Sharpton. The outcry led to a special session to push mayoral control and a two-year renewal. And we were told it was a clean deal, with no givebacks to the charter sector.

That sounded too good to be true, didn't it? Well it was, and NYC is now going to have 22 more charter schools. Reformy StudentsFirstNY is jumping up and down with giddiness, as are all the astroturf groups that represent the hedge funders who care so much about public education. Evidently these were charters that were granted but somehow did not make it as charters.

There's a lot of talk about charter quality, but the fact is they don't simply take a representative cross section of students. The fact is they don't hold on to the students they have, and they aren't burdened with the stats of the students they shed. The fact is all the students they don't finish with end up in public schools, and we are then vilified for their test scores. Even more importantly, the only stats the media regards as significant are test scores. There's something fundamentally wrong with a school that needs to keep extra clothing around for when kids pee their pants. If kids in your class peed their pants from fear, you'd be sitting in a rubber room somewhere, not making a half-million salary like Eva Moskowitz.

UFT's position is odd. As an organization we favor mayoral control, but not in its current form. Thus there was no UFT presence at some NYC Educator: Mayoral Control Is a Lose-Lose:

Two Citizens and 19 Attorneys General Sue Betsy DeVos for Enabling For-Profit-College Freedom to Exploit | deutsch29

Two Citizens and 19 Attorneys General Sue Betsy DeVos for Enabling For-Profit-College Freedom to Exploit | deutsch29:

Two Citizens and 19 Attorneys General Sue Betsy DeVos for Enabling For-Profit-College Freedom to Exploit

Arguably the most controversial US secretary of education in the history of the office is being sued by two citizens and 19 attorneys general.

On July 06, 2017, two lawsuits were filed against the US Department of Education (USDOE) and its secretary, Betsy DeVos, challenging DeVos’ rescission regarding the Borrower Defense Rule aimed at protecting postsecondary students from abuses of deceptive, predatory postsecondary institutions.

Both lawsuits were filed with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and both petition the Court for declaratory and injunctive relief.

One complaint is filed by two individuals, and the other, by attorneys general of 18 states (MA, CA, CT, DE, HI, IL, IA, MD, MN, NM, NY, NC, OR, PA, RI, VT, VA, and WA) and the District of Columbia.

In this post, for the sake of space, I focus on the latter lawsuit, the one involving the numerous attorneys general (and which I will refer to as the “AG lawsuit”). However, both suits are available for any who wish to read them.

The following text is from the introduction of the AG lawsuit:

This lawsuit challenges the Department’s summary and unlawful rescission of a final agency regulation known as the “Borrower Defense Rule” (the “Rule”) that was designed to hold abusive postsecondary institutions accountable for their misconduct and to relieve their students from federal loan indebtedness incurred as a result of that misconduct.

The Department duly promulgated the Rule on November 1, 2016, after an
extensive negotiated rulemaking process in which the Department reviewed over 10,000 comments, including those of students, postsecondary institutions, state government actors, and consumer advocates. The Department, moreover, allowed affected schools more than half a year to prepare for implementation of the Rule, making it effective on July 1, 2017.

The Rule was designed to ensure “that students who are lied to and mistreated by their school get the relief they are owed, and that schools that harm students are held responsible for their behavior.” Press Release, Department of Education, U.S. Department of Education Announces Final Regulations to Protect Students and Taxpayers from Predatory Institutions (Oct. 28, 2016) (“October 2016 Press Release”) The Rule deters institutions from engaging in predatory behavior and restores the rights of students injured by a school’s misconduct to seek relief in court.

Despite the pendency of the Rule for more than seven months, on June 14, 

Two Citizens and 19 Attorneys General Sue Betsy DeVos for Enabling For-Profit-College Freedom to Exploit | deutsch29: