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

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

BE A FAN Diane Ravitch's blog

A site to discuss better education for all

There Is Hope for the World in This Wonderful Story

by dianeravitch / 11min

Read this story and share the joy! https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/11/a-riptide-swept-away-a-florida-family-then-beachgoers-formed-a-human-chain/?utm_term=.d9e60b8ab518&wpisrc=nl_most-draw7&wpmm=1 People can rise to the occasion to save others. What a great story and photo.

Karen Wolfe: Why Students at Venice High School in L.A. Staged a Walkout

2by dianeravitch / 1h

Karen Wolfe writes here about the decision of students at Venice High School in Los Angeles staged a walkout. They were protesting the removal of an African-American guidance counselor. The problem was the principal, who wanted to 

Dora Taylor: Four Things Betsy DeVos Does Not Want You to Know about Tax Credits

9by dianeravitch / 34min

Dora Taylor writes in “The Progressive” about the disadvantages of tax credit, aka vouchers. 1. Education tax credits deplete state budgets, diverting money from public schools to private and religious schools. 2. Education tax credit programs benefit the rich. 3. Education tax credit programs are risky for students because the private and religious schools are not covered by federal civil rights

New York: Who Is Behind the Effort to Allow Charter Schools to Hire Uncertified Teachers?

5by dianeravitch / 1h

In this article , Alan Singer of Hofstra University connects the dots behind the effort to allow charter schools to hire uncertified teachers. He follows the money, and it leads to one man: Governor Andrew Cuomo. Charters need to hire 

The Book That Betsy DeVos Should Read about Fraternity Life and Sexual Assault on Campus Today

1by dianeravitch / 48min

We have had a vigorous discussion on the blog about Betsy DeVos’s decision to reorient the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights towards protecting the rights of those accused of rape rather than those who alleged that they were victims of rape. Candace Jackson, DeVos’s controversial choice to lead OCR, made these startling remarks to the New York Times, which caused such an uproar

Tim Slekar: Next Step in Wisconsin’s War on Teachers

7by dianeravitch / 1h

Having treated teachers shabbily, Wisconsin now finds it needs to take desperate measures to hire teachers: lower standards. Tim Slekar of Edgewood College in Milwaukee says this is madness . He writes: “There is NO NEED for an “emergency rule” that deregulates teacher licensure. “However: “There IS AN EMERGENCY need to address the reasons why teachers are fleeing Wisconsin classrooms. and… “Ther

YESTERDAY

Bill Moyers’ Website: The Trump-Russia Timeline

5by dianeravitch / 19h

Bill Moyers’ website very usefully assembled a timeline of Donald Trump’s relations with Russia and Russian individuals.

New York City: Mayor de Blasio’s Capitulation to the Powerful Charter Lobby

14by dianeravitch / 20h

There used to be a well-known saying: “You can’t fight City Hall.” Change that to: “You can’t fight the charter lobby.” Mayor Bill de Blasio ran for mayor with the promise that he would fight the charter lobby. He was a public school parent and had served on a community school board. I believed him. I endorsed him. Then after he was elected, the billionaires showed him who runs education policy i

Los Angeles: New School Board President, a Charter School Operator, Calls for Unity

5by dianeravitch / 21h

Two newsworthy items from Los Angeles: First, the new school board elected charter chain operator Ref Rodriguez as its president. Rodriguez leads the PUC (Partnership Uplifting Communities) charter chain of 16 schools. Rodriguez called for unity after the just-concluded dirty election, the most expensive in U.S. history. Politico reports: “LA SCHOOL BOARD PRESIDENT SEEKS UNITY AFTER UGLY ELECTION

Former Charter Teacher: Why Teacher Attrition is High in Charter Schools

16by dianeravitch / 22h

Alternet posted an informative article that explains why charter schools churn through teachers. It was written by Rann Miller, who taught for six years in a charter school in Camden, New Jersey. He writes: “John was fresh-out-of-college and had never set foot in a city school before. Hired the day before the school year started, he missed out on the two-and-a-half weeks of training the charter o

Speak Out for the Teaching Profession!

22by dianeravitch / 23h

Many states are planning to lower standards for new teachers, because charter schools can’t recruit enough teachers to fill their staff. Speak out against lowered standards! Don’t let them destroy the teaching profession! Click here and stand up for qualified teachers! The Network for Public Education invites you to speak up and let the charter authorizers in New York know that every child deserv

Daniel Katz: Charter Schools Should Not Be Allowed to “Certify” Unqualified Teachers

8by dianeravitch / 1d

Daniel Katz prepares secondary school teachers at Seton Hall University. He knows the importance of having highly qualified professionals in every classroom, especially in urban districts where many students need extra support and individual attention. In this post , he expresses his bafflement that the SUNY Charter School Committee is considering a plan to permit charter schools to “certify” the

Jersey Jazzman: Do Charter Teachers Need to be Certified or Pass State Exams?

24by dianeravitch / 1d

Jersey Jazzman explores the flap in New York about certification –or lack thereof–for charter school teachers. The charter industry says, if we get the test scores, we don’t need teachers with masters’ degrees or certification… JJ says: Yes, “better results” are all that matters, no matter how practically small they may be. And no matter how you got them: if your gains are from student attrition,

Carol Burris Will Receive Well-Deserved Honor for Her Tireless Work on Behalf of Public Schools!

48by dianeravitch / 1d

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, has been selected by the board of the Horace Mann League as its 2018 Outstanding Friend of Public Education. The presentation will be made at the HML Annual Meeting 

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

“Don’t It Always Seem to Go that You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till It’s Gone?” | janresseger

“Don’t It Always Seem to Go that You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till It’s Gone?” | janresseger:

“Don’t It Always Seem to Go that You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till It’s Gone?”

“You don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.”  Joni Mitchell was prophetic when she sang those words back in 1970.

Back then, for example, if you drove across the Indiana Turnpike, you’d stop at the James Whitcomb Riley, Booth Tarkington, or Ernie Pyle rest stop. Plain, basic concrete buildings, but also racks of maps, clean restrooms, something to eat and some sense of the heritage of Indiana. All gone today: Indiana’s turnpike—under Governors Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence—has been turned over to an Australian investment consortium that pledged improvements at low cost. Now you can stop at gas station-style convenience stores with 47 kinds of potato chips and some beef jerky. Someone flips hamburgers at a tiny grill and there are five or six tables crowded together where you can sit if there’s room. Dirty, minimal restrooms. Although the old places had fallen into disrepair, today’s version is a reduction, a diminishment.

The late political philosopher Benjamin Barber reflects on the implications for all of us of the reduction of government’s role and the kind of privatization of public services represented by the Indiana Turnpike: “There is today a disastrous confusion between the moderate and mostly well-founded claim that flexibly regulated markets remain the most efficient instruments of economic productivity and wealth accumulation, and the zany, overblown claim that naked, wholly unregulated markets are the sole means by which we can produce and fairly distribute everything human beings care about, from durable goods to spiritual values, from capital investment to social justice, from profitability to sustainable environments, from private wealth to the essential commonweal. This second claim has moved profit-mongering privateers to insist that goods as diverse and obviously public as education, culture, penology, full employment, social welfare, and ecological equilibrium be handed over to the profit sector for arbitration and disposal. It has also persuaded them to see in privatization not merely a paring knife to trim the fat from overindulgent state bureaucracies but a cleaver with which democracy can be chopped into pieces and then “Don’t It Always Seem to Go that You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till It’s Gone?” | janresseger:

Coding: The New Vocationalism (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Coding: The New Vocationalism (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Coding: The New Vocationalism (Part 2)

As more states and districts require courses in computer science for high school graduation and the teaching of coding in elementary school, they will rediscover what previous generations of school reformers have learned. Moving from adopted policy to alter what and how teachers teach is no cinch. Neither is it–pick your cliche–“a piece of cake,” “a walk in the park,” “shooting fish in a barrel,”” nor “taking candy away from a baby.”

Contrary to the above cliches, policies aimed at changing classroom practice, such as curricular reforms have persistently run into problems that  have plagued ardent reformers. The lessons that have to be learned time and again from earlier generations of school reformers are straightforward.

*Build teacher capabilities in content and skills since both determine to what degree, if any, a policy gets past the classroom door.

*With or without enhanced capabilities and expertise, teachers will adapt policies aimed at altering how and what they teach to the contours of the classrooms in which they teach. If policymakers hate teacher fingerprints over innovations, if they seek fidelity in putting desired reforms into practice, they wish for the impossible.

*Ignoring both of the above lessons ends up with incomplete implementation of desired policies and sorely disappointed school reformers.

Curricular reform of the 1950s and 1960s

Examples of these lessons are legion. Consider the new curricula that reform-inspired academic specialists, funded by the federal government, sought for all U.S. teachers a half-century ago. Aimed at revolutionizing teaching and learning Coding: The New Vocationalism (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Personalized Learning Without People – An Education Scam from the 1980s Returns | gadflyonthewallblog

Personalized Learning Without People – An Education Scam from the 1980s Returns | gadflyonthewallblog:

Personalized Learning Without People – An Education Scam from the 1980s Returns

Sometimes it seems that education policy is nothing but a series of scams and frauds that becomes untenable in one generation only to pop up again 10 or 20 years laterwith a new name.

Take Personalized Learning, the latest digital product from the ed-tech industry to invade your local public school.

It’s cutting edge stuff.

Except that it isn’t.

It’s just the same old correspondence school nonsense of the 1980s thrown onto an iPad or a laptop.

It was crap back then, and it’s crap today.

But it sounds nice.

Personalized Learning.

I like that.

That’s exactly the kind of educational experience I wantPersonalized Learning Without People – An Education Scam from the 1980s Returns | gadflyonthewallblog:

Louisiana: Want John White Gone? Then Ask Gov. Edwards to Join Ganey Arsement’s Lawsuit as a Plaintiff | deutsch29

Louisiana: Want John White Gone? Then Ask Gov. Edwards to Join Ganey Arsement’s Lawsuit as a Plaintiff | deutsch29:

Louisiana: Want John White Gone? Then Ask Gov. Edwards to Join Ganey Arsement’s Lawsuit as a Plaintiff

On July 10, 017, I attended the hearing regarding whether or not the plaintiffs in Ganey Arsement et al. vs. La. BESE have standing (i.e., the right to sue) for BESE’s having missed the deadline to submit La. state superintendent John White’s name for reconfirmation by the Louisiana senate. In short, BESE doesn’t have the 8 votes needed to renew White’s contract; so, BESE just ignored the issue beyond the June 08, 2017, deadline to have the senate reconfirm White.

The result of the July 10, 2017, hearing was that Judge Morvant ruled that none of the current plaintiffs have standing, or the right to sue.

But one person who does have that right is Governor John Bel Edwards, who made removing White a campaign promise “to the extent that I can control that.”

Well, JBE, here’s opportunity to “control that” being handed to you on the proverbial silver platter.

In an effort to win JBE’s support, Arsement is asking for the assistance of Louisiana voters who want White gone:

Monday July 10, 2017

Dear Supporters of Public Education,

Today we had our first hearing regarding the lawsuit filed against BESE. By now, you’ve probably seen the news reports that the case was “tossed out,” and John White can “keep his job.” This is not entirely true.

The judge determined that while our petition was for a “declaratory judgement,” the language crossed over into a “challenge to hold office,” which is reserved 

Louisiana: Want John White Gone? Then Ask Gov. Edwards to Join Ganey Arsement’s Lawsuit as a Plaintiff | deutsch29:

Another Brick in the Wall – a 21st Century Howl | Poetic Justice

Another Brick in the Wall – a 21st Century Howl | Poetic Justice:

Another Brick in the Wall – a 21st Century Howl

We don’t need no ed reformers
We don’t need no tests no more
The lack of knowledge in the classroom
We don’t need no data wall

Hey Reformers
Just go and leave our school

All in all we’re just another
soul searching light

We don’t need no politicians
We don’t need no laws at all
The noose of power is so ugly
We don’t need your voice no more

Hey Politicians
Just get out of our classroom

All in all we’re just another
soul searching light

We don’t need no corporate types
We don’t need their callous cash
Their money buys our very thoughts
Go take your big bucks out the door

Hey Big Business
Just leave our schools alone

All in all we’re just another
soul searching light

All in all we’re just another
soul left in fright

All in all we’re just another
brick in the wall

Based on the classic Pink Floyd –

 Another Brick in the Wall – a 21st Century Howl | Poetic Justice: