How Have Charter Schools Affected Students with Special Education Needs

How Have Charter Schools Affected Students with Special Education Needs

How Have Charter Schools Affected Students with Special Education Needs

On February 20, 2018, the LAUSD School Board put the proposed Holding GHCHS Accountable to Their Charter on the agenda of their Committee of the Whole meeting. The following is the written statement that I provided to the Board:

Honorable LAUSD Board Members:

This is Chanda Smith. She was an LAUSD student with special education needs who fell through cracks in the system. In 1993, lawyers from the ACLU filed a class action suit under her name. The result of that suit is a consent decree that the District is still struggling to comply with 22 years after it was signed.

Around the same time that Ms. Smith’s lawyers were filing their paperwork, California began its experiment with charter schools. Since charters claimed that this would give parents more choice, the LAUSD embraced these new types of schools and became the largest charter authorizer in the country. Did those in charge consider the effect on students like Chanda Smith? Were these students given more choices or were they left behind?

Granada Hills High School was not converted to a charter because the school was not performing well. In fact, it was “one of the highest-achieving schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District”. Instead, some saw it as a way to end the district’s practice of diverting their Title I funds to schools with needier populations and to end the practice of busing students from downtown and the East Valley into “their” school. This conversion took away access to a high performing LAUSD school for children like Chanda Smith and provided less opportunity for choice.

At the time of the conversion, 6% of Granada’s students identified as African American. By 2012, African Americans represented only 4% of the school’s population. This seems to contradict the Charter School Division’s (CSD) assertion “that GHCHS has generally increased its diversity over time.”

When it comes to those who are English Language Learners (ELL), the CONTINUE READING: How Have Charter Schools Affected Students with Special Education Needs

Big Education Ape: Special Education in California - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2013/01/special-education-in-california.html

The L.A. Teachers’ Strike Settlement Is a Victory for Students - The Atlantic

The L.A. Teachers’ Strike Settlement Is a Victory for Students - The Atlantic

L.A.’s Teachers Got What They Wanted—For Their Students
The strike showcased unions' strategy of advocating not just for their members but also for better resources for schools.

Teachers across Los Angeles fought hard and, after just over a week of striking, got more or less what they had hoped for: more librarians and nurses for their schools, smaller class sizes, and nicer campuses. Not on that list? Higher pay—the teachers had already successfully negotiated a 6 percent raise before the strike.

This is the most significant part of the L.A. teachers’ strike story, and the key to understanding the broader dynamics of today’s teachers’ movement. Salaries were never a major sticking point in the negotiations: The final figure for the raise is 6 percent, identical to the numbers that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) had outlined in its most recent set of offers—and, in fact, pretty much the same as the number negotiated even before the strike began.

“Our salary demands have pretty much been met, so we’re clearly not striking for that issue per se,” Martha Infante Thorpe, a veteran social-studies teacher and Eastside L.A. native, told me on the eve of the walkout. Instead, she—like the handful of other educators I interviewed—stressed that she and her fellow LAUSD teachers were striking as a last-ditch effort to improve the educations of the nearly 500,000 children they serve.

Topping the union’s list of priorities were demands around class sizes, which in many schools often exceeded the limits stipulated in the teachers’ previous contract—and in some cases were well upwards of 40 kids. While research on the benefits of class-size reduction is mixed, a number of compelling studiessuggest that smaller class sizes can be a significant predictor of student success. Another concern: the paucity of school staff tasked with supporting students’ extracurricular needs and well-being. Many campuses, for example, have for CONTINUE READING: The L.A. Teachers’ Strike Settlement Is a Victory for Students - The Atlantic

The Black Lives Matter At School Coloring Book–Make this year’s week of action beautiful! – Black Lives Matter At School

The Black Lives Matter At School Coloring Book–Make this year’s week of action beautiful! – Black Lives Matter At School

The Black Lives Matter At School Coloring Book–Make this year’s week of action beautiful!

Black Lives Matter At School is excited to announce our new, free, downloadable coloring book for young children and all those young at heart. To download the coloring book, visit: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OLYjlPEAyVN8BEMHL82B6LfUmp2juC05

This coloring book is designed to help teachers, students, parents and community members in their conversations about race and the core values of Black Lives Matter. This book was created as part of the Black Lives Matter At School movement by educators to bring these ideas to the classroom in an age appropriate way to young children.

This book allows kids to colorfully and creatively relate the 13 principles of Black Lives Matter to their own lives and is an excellent classroom activity for our week of action, from Feb. 4-8, 2019.

So sharpen that crayon–and your mind–and make BLM@School week beautiful!

The Black Lives Matter At School Coloring Book–Make this year’s week of action beautiful! – Black Lives Matter At School

Black Lives Matter At School Makes Educator Unions Stronger | PopularResistance.Org - https://popularresistance.org/?p=142283

How Philanthropy Can Get Serious About Racial Healing | Schott Foundation for Public Education

How Philanthropy Can Get Serious About Racial Healing | Schott Foundation for Public Education

How Philanthropy Can Get Serious About Racial Healing

Today, as a member of the Lumbee Tribe and a foundation official, I plan to join with people across the United States to observe the third annual National Day of Racial Healing. Started by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, this national day is designed to bring Americans together to demonstrate solidarity and work toward healing our racial divides. But what does it take to truly heal?

When historians and sociologists document the legacy of imperialism and slavery, we sometimes question whether travesties that occurred centuries earlier still influence the world today. As the saying goes, "Time heals all wounds." And yet, how can time actually heal absent concrete and specific plans to permit victims of suffering to voice their pain, receive an acknowledgment of their suffering, or restitution?

In reality, time is not an elixir, nor does it, alone, have the power to heal.

One of the ways society has responded to communal suffering is through charitable giving. We see a problem, and we reach in our wallets or foundation coffers to give.

But we have sometimes done so without upending imperialist practices. Consequently, the day-to-day operations of the foundation world can sometimes impart further harm on historically marginalized communities. Many of the people managing philanthropic resources, including the people determining the process for gaining access to those resources, are doing so without deep relationships with the communities closest to the pain of social, racial, and economic injustice. They are also doing so without a deep analysis of how their internal systems perpetuate harm.

Indigenous people, people of African descent, and many other people of color — must often apply for access to the very wealth stolen from our ancestors. To apply for financial support, prospective grantees must demonstrate proficiency with the technical aspects of the process.

Never mind that people who are leading the real work to bring about change in our neighborhoods and on the streets do not always have the skills they need to be proficient grant seekers. After all, their energy and skill must be deployed to do critical work, not to understand how to navigate a competitive and disconnected grant-seeking environment. So even foundations and other donors that have declared they want to support grassroots nonprofits and activists are not accessible to the organizations that are most effective and deserving of aid.

Us vs. Them

Wealthy families, individuals, foundations, and other institutions that seek to improve society by giving money away must acknowledge the ways in which their privileged lives blind them to solutions that work best for all people. They must also CONTINUE READING:  How Philanthropy Can Get Serious About Racial Healing | Schott Foundation for Public Education

43 Teens, 1 Adult: Los Angeles Teachers Describe a Typical Day in a Crowded Classroom - The New York Times

43 Teens, 1 Adult: Los Angeles Teachers Describe a Typical Day in a Crowded Classroom - The New York Times

43 Teens, 1 Adult: Los Angeles Teachers Describe a Typical Day in a Crowded Classroom
We asked some of the more than 30,000 teachers who went on strike last week to tell us how they teach their largest classes.

While walking the picket line of the Los Angeles teachers’ strike last Wednesday, Linda Bieber and her friend Jessica Rhee carried signs that outlined a primary grievance of their labor union, United Teachers Los Angeles: overcrowded classrooms.

“I can TEACH 43, but I can’t REACH 43,” said the sign that Mrs. Rhee held.

Ms. Bieber and Mrs. Rhee, along with more than 30,000 other Los Angeles Unified School District teachers, went on strike last week, demanding, among other things, decreased class sizes. The strike ended Tuesday with the district agreeing to cap class sizes, as well as to other resolutions.

Middle and high school math and English classes will be capped at 39 students — as elementary school classes already are — effective immediately. By 2022, academic classes at all grade levels will be reduced by four students.

When we asked teachers to tell us what it’s like to teach their largest classes, we heard from a wide range of them, some of whom teach classes of 60 or more students.

Here is a selection of their stories, which have been condensed and edited for clarity.

‘Using their binders as desks’

Maria Arienza teaches 49 students in her largest class, Spanish, at North Hollywood High School in North Hollywood, Calif.

49 kids. 45 desks. Some students were sitting on the floor until I got extra chairs. They have nothing to write on; they’re using their binders as desks.

It’s impossible to do presentations. We never get through everyone, even in groups, and it’s impossible to give feedback effectively. I run around like crazy trying to get to everyone in class.

‘Individual assessment is impossible’

Paul Bailey teaches at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.

I teach marching band, and my largest class has 68 students. Most other CONTINUE READING: 43 Teens, 1 Adult: Los Angeles Teachers Describe a Typical Day in a Crowded Classroom - The New York Times

Fables of School Reform | Audrey Watters

Fables of School Reform | Audrey Watters

Fables of School Reform

OVER THE PAST FIVE YEARS, more than $13 billion in venture capital has been sunk into education technology startups. But in spite of all the money and political capital pouring into the sprawling ed-tech sector, there’s precious little evidence suggesting that its trademark innovations have done anything to improve teaching and learning.

Perhaps, though, that’s never really been the point. Rather, it may be that all the interest in education technology has been an extension of a long-running campaign to make over American schools into the image of corporate endeavor—to transform education into a marketplace for buzzword-friendly apps and instruction plans, while steadily privatizing public institutions of learning for the sake of enhancing the bottom lines of the business interests promoting investment-friendly school “reforms.”

Viewed in this light, the boom in ed tech has ideological roots that stretch back to the first wave of modern school reform in the Progressive Era. Even pre-internet efforts to upgrade the technological prowess of American schools came swathed in the quasi-millennial promise of complete school transformation. The vision of more efficient classrooms and more “personalized learning” thanks to various kinds of teaching machines appeared in virtual lockstep with the Taylorite quest to impose a new gospel of efficiency on American factory floors. But as a matter of policy, the tech-based overhaul of our schools became firmly enshrined as reformist orthodoxy in the wake of the Reagan-era publication of A Nation at Risk. The report, issued with great fanfare by the ominously named National Commission on Excellence in Education, argued that American schools were failing and, as a result, the prospects for the country’s future economic growth were dire.

To drive this point home, A Nation at Risk seized on a recent decline in SAT scores. But as is often the case with alarmist factoids, this one was wrenched out of historical context: since the 1960s, more students were taking the exam than ever before—and what’s more, SAT performance had actually increased among all subgroups. But these mere empirical concerns were no match for an alarmist media narrative. What mattered was the story, not the research: the system was broken, and business should fix it. The rhetoric of A Nation at Risk helped justify a number of education reform CONTINUE READING: Fables of School Reform | Audrey Watters

In Lease Agreements, Charter Management Companies Rip Off Their Students and the Public | janresseger

In Lease Agreements, Charter Management Companies Rip Off Their Students and the Public | janresseger

In Lease Agreements, Charter Management Companies Rip Off Their Students and the Public

On January 10, 2019, as one of his final actions as Ohio Auditor of State, Dave Yost released a report about how three Charter Management Companies (CMOs)—National Heritage Academies, Imagine Schools and Concept Schools—have been profiting when their own real estate subsidiaries demand outrageous leasing fees from the charter schools managed by the same National Heritage Academies, Imagine Schools and Concept Schools.

Without any competitive bidding, charter schools being managed by the three CMOs have been forced to pay above market rents for school buildings, when they could have spent the per-pupil dollars allotted to them by the state for paying teachers or otherwise serving their students.

For the Columbus Dispatch, Jim Siegel reports: “In 2015, 77 percent of charter schools leased their buildings. Yost looked at lease agreements with eight schools managed by National Heritage, 13 by Imagine Schools and 17 by Concept Schools.  His office found that the average rent paid per pupil ranged from $1,472 at Concept to $2,325 at Imagine, considerably higher than the $848 paid by a random sampling of six other Ohio charter schools not under a management agreement.”

In the new report, Community School Facility Procurement, Yost blames weak charter school regulation by the Ohio Legislature: “Shortcomings in current Ohio law, lax oversight, and support programs geared toward community schools (Ohio’s name for charter schools) have allowed private companies to enter into questionable lease agreements with community CONTINUE READING: In Lease Agreements, Charter Management Companies Rip Off Their Students and the Public | janresseger

CDC: Nearly 2 percent of high school students identify as transgender — and more than one-third of them attempt suicide - The Washington Post

CDC: Nearly 2 percent of high school students identify as transgender — and more than one-third of them attempt suicide - The Washington Post

CDC: Nearly 2 percent of high school students identify as transgender — and more than one-third of them attempt suicide

Nearly 2 percent of high school students in the United States identify as transgender, according to data published Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Other data show:

• 27 percent feel unsafe at school or traveling to or from campus.
• 35 percent are bullied at school. 
• 35 percent attempt suicide.

Amit Paley, chief executive and executive director of the Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, called the report’s findings “groundbreaking.”

“This is the first time we’ve had a federal government report of this magnitude showing that transgender youth exist in this country and in larger numbers than researchers had previously estimated,” he said in an interview. The report, he said, shows “the very real health risks” transgender youth face in school.

Paley said the Trump administration has moved to “erase the identity of transgender youth.” The administration has rolled back or frozen Obama-era anti-discrimination rules aimed at protecting the LGBTQ community in health, education and other areas.

[Pioneering transgender student at Harvard reacts to Trump proposal to redefine gender: ‘You cannot erase us’]

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Trump’s broad restrictions on transgender people serving in the military to go into effect while the policy is fought in lower courts. In 2017, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s first major policy act was to support Trump’s decision to rescind the guidance protecting the right of transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice.

The data published by the CDC comes from the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey in 10 states and nine large urban school districts. The survey is conducted biennially among a representative sample of U.S. high school students in the ninth through 12th grades. The findings were published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, an epidemiological digest with public health information and recommendations sent to the CONTINUE READING: CDC: Nearly 2 percent of high school students identify as transgender — and more than one-third of them attempt suicide - The Washington Post

CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos Has A Hammer

CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos Has A Hammer

DeVos Has A Hammer

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has been busy lately, making actual somewhat-public appearances and talking about all her favorites subjects. Thursday it was the 87th annual United States Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting, and her remarks included many of her favorite points. But she's not just beating a drum; she's working with a big, heavy hammer. Bang bang bang. Here are some highlights:

Droll understatement: "I was active in local politics and policy" sounds so much humbler than "I used to run the GOP in Michigan" and so much cleaner than flat-out admitting that you're buying influence. Bang.

The 100 year complaint: Everything has changed in the last hundred years but "approaches to education have largely remained the same." Bang.

Meat widgets: There are millions of unfilled jobs in this country. Somehow, she fails to see any connection between this unfilled need and the push to stop immigration. Bang.

Fake statistics: Well, at least she didn't use an actual number. But she still claimed that "majority of the jobs that today's students will do just ten short years from now haven't been invented." This oft-cited factoid is bogus. Bang.

Odd transitions: In discussing the fact that employers say they can't find trained people (could it be that they are trying to fill jobs that didn't exist ten years ago?), DeVos unleashes this transitional gem: "There is a disconnect between education and the economy, just as there is often a disconnect CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos Has A Hammer

L.A. Teachers on What Was Won—And Which Battles Are Next

L.A. Teachers on What Was Won—And Which Battles Are Next

L.A. Teachers on What Was Won—And Which Battles Are Next

Following a six-day teachers’ strike over inadequate public-school funding, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) reached a tentative agreement Tuesday. While tallies haven’t yet been released, UTLA has confirmed that teachers voted in favor of the contract and, as of Wednesday, have returned to their classrooms.

The agreement, which was preceded by a nearly 21-month bargaining period, reverses some of the trends the union was protesting, including bloated class sizes, insufficient staffing of nurses and counselors, excessive standardized testing and a lack of resources for special education. (UTLA’s protests, including the strike, were largely the product of a reform movement among educational unions nationwide.)

It also calls for a greater reckoning with charter schools: publicly funded, privately operated schools boosted primarily by wealthy financiers and executives. UTLA members rebuke these schools for siphoning funding from public schools and view a pro-charter district agenda as the cause of the aforementioned problems.

The new contract would restrict school privatization, calling on California to establish a cap on charter schools. It also states that Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti will endorse the Schools and Communities First ballot initiative, which will ostensibly redirect $11 billion per year to California schools, community colleges, health clinics and other local institutions.

In These Times spoke to five teachers from five different LAUSD schools. While most of them contend that more could have been won, these rank-and-file members overwhelmingly consider the new terms an improvement and a testament to the power of strikes.

“I am pleased with the agreement for several reasons,” second-grade teacher and rank-and-file UTLA member Traci Rustin told In These Times. “I think we started a conversation about charter schools among those members of the community and UTLA who had not previously given it much thought.”

Rustin and some other teachers, however, found the vote bittersweet, arguing that while they’re eager to return to work, the proposed terms should have included more aggressive changes. The agreement prevents the district from “unilaterally ignor[ing]” all class sizes and promises a gradual reduction of class size—which routinely exceeds 40—over the next four years, imposing maximums of 39 students for English and CONTINUE WORKING: L.A. Teachers on What Was Won—And Which Battles Are Next

CURMUDGUCATION: The Trouble With Evidence

CURMUDGUCATION: The Trouble With Evidence

The Trouble With Evidence

So now some voices are calling for an emphasis on evidence-based practices in classrooms, and I don't disagree. Evidence-based is certainly better than intuition-based or wild-guess-based or some-guy-from-the-textbook-company-told-us-to-do-this based. But before we get all excited about jumping on this bus, I think we need to think about our evidence bricks before we start trying to build an entire house on top of them.

There are three things to remember. The mot important is this:

Not all evidence is created equal.

Your Uncle Floyd is sure that global warming is a hoax, and his evidence is that it's currently five degrees outside. The Flat Earth Society has tons of evidence that the world is not round at all. Youtube is crammed with videos showing the evidence that 9/11 was faked, that the moon landing was staged, and that the Illuminati are running a huge world-altering conspiracy via the recording industry. Every one of those folks is certain that their idea is evidence-based, and yet their evidence is  junk.

Some evidence is junk because it has been stripped of context and sense. Some is junk because it has been unmoored from any contradictory evidence that might give it nuance and accuracy. Some is junk because it has been mislabeled and misrepresented.

One of the huge problems in education evidence-based anything is that when we follow the trail, we find that the evidence is just the same old set of test scores from a single bad standardized test. Test scores have been used as evidence of student learning, of teacher quality, of school achievement. Test scores have been used as evidence of the efficacy of one particular practice, an influence somehow separated from all others, as if we were arguing that the beans Chris ate at lunch three Tuesdays ago are the cause for Chris's growth spurt. And don't even get me started on the absurd notion that a teacher's college training can be evaluated by looking at student test scores.

Certainly test scores are evidence of something, but not much that's useful. Don't tell me that CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: The Trouble With Evidence

Chalkbeat Disputes Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative’s Claim that Summit–“Personalized”–Learning is Research-Based | janresseger

Chalkbeat Disputes Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative’s Claim that Summit–“Personalized”–Learning is Research-Based | janresseger

Chalkbeat Disputes Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative’s Claim that Summit–“Personalized”–Learning is Research-Based

“Personalized learning” is how the creators and promoters of computer driven education at school describe their programs, which they claim are advanced enough to tailor education to the particular needs of each student.  One of the biggest “personalized learning” platforms is Summit Learning, developed by Facebook engineers and now engineers at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative as one of the philanthropy’s largest projects.  School districts can use Summit Learning for free, courtesy of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

In November, the Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss described Summit Learning: “The free platform, which offers online lessons and assessments, was developed by a network of 11 charter schools in California and Washington known collectively as Summit Public Schools, and Facebook engineers helped develop the software. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, back the learning platform with engineering support through their… Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The Summit website says the platform is a ‘personalized, research-backed approach’ to teaching and learning.”

The contention that Summit Learning is research-based is challenged, however, in a report last week from Chalkbeat.  Matt Barnum reports: “Summit Learning, a fast-growing ‘personalized learning’ system, touts a partnership with Harvard researchers even though Summit actually turned down their proposal to study the model… The program ‘is based on collaboration with nationally acclaimed learning scientists, researchers and academics from institutions including the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research,’ Summit’s website says. ‘Summit’s research-backed approach leads to better student outcomes.'”

Barnum continues: “Schools have used that seeming endorsement to back up their decision to adopt the model.  In fact, though, there is no academic research on whether Summit’s specific model is effective. And while Summit helped fund a study proposal crafted by Harvard CONTINUE READING: Chalkbeat Disputes Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative’s Claim that Summit–“Personalized”–Learning is Research-Based | janresseger

Cartoons on Teaching Social Studies | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Cartoons on Teaching Social Studies | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Cartoons on Teaching Social Studies

For this month of giggles, grins, and groans I offer a collection of cartoons on kids and teachers during social  studies lessons. Well, most of them. Enjoy!

Cartoons on Teaching Social Studies CLICK HERE Cartoons on Teaching Social Studies | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Marie Corfield: @GovMurphy Promised To Ditch #PARCC. Is He Going Back On His Word?

Marie Corfield: @GovMurphy Promised To Ditch #PARCC. Is He Going Back On His Word?

@GovMurphy Promised To Ditch #PARCC. Is He Going Back On His Word?

What's harder than navigating 'Spaghetti Junction' on the Garden State Parkway? Figuring out what it takes to graduate high school in New Jersey. We thought we had it fixed, but not so fast...

Parents, educators and education activists cheered last month when the New Jersey appellate court struck down the requirement that high school students must pass the PARCC Algebra 1 and English Language Arts 10 tests in order to graduate high school because it violated state law requiring students to take only one exam in 11th grade to graduate.

There was plenty to cheer about. The test is awful, and was never designed for its current use. From its inception under Gov. Christie, it was met with sustained and vociferous pushback from parents, educators and testing experts. And it has turned our public schools into test-prep and data-collection factories, gavage-feeding our students more and more grade level inappropriate info lest educators be found sleeping at their desks. This despite the fact that New Jersey consistently ranks in the top two or three states in the country for quality public education. The test is so bad that out of the 24 states originally in the PARCC consortium, only one other remains: New Mexico, which consistently finishes at or near dead last. In its first year of administration, we had the second highest opt-out rate in the nation, bested only by New York. But Gov. Christie and his buddies down at the DOE (with plenty of help from some powerful state Democratic lawmakers) couldn't have that egg on their faces, so they forced it on our kids as a graduation requirement.

State graduation requirements have changed so many times in the past five years, that it's clear the DOE has no idea what it's doing. And it's hurting kids. Here are just two of CONTINUE READING: Marie Corfield: @GovMurphy Promised To Ditch #PARCC. Is He Going Back On His Word?

Badass Teachers Association: Whole Child Education by Greg Sampson

Badass Teachers Association: Whole Child Education by Greg Sampson

Whole Child Education by Greg Sampson

Originally posted at: https://grumpyoldteacher.com/2019/01/19/whole-child-education/?fbclid=IwAR2cn3ZOpWVXDQ_RRnDCDbIxXYdy9D5pqoQyvDd7YFlkninEwRLa79FNFpk

A recent post by Rick Hess* (American Enterprise Institute) is being shared across social media. That got my attention and you can read the post here.

With fellow writer Timothy Shriver*, Mr. Hess leads off with this great quote: “the need for schools and communities to embrace children as individuals and future citizens, and ENSURE THAT THEY DON’T FEEL LIKE TEST-TAKING COGS IN A BUREAUCRATIC ENTERPRISE.” (Emphasis mine.)

Who will disagree with that? As a math teacher, one of my major frustrations is the difficulty in getting high school freshmen out of the mindset that all they need to know is how to put the right answers into the test: no learning, no understanding, no curiosity necessary. Besides Geometry, every year my teaching challenge is to turn test-takers into eager, self-directed learners.

Hess and Shriver call for an end to the dichotomy in education that they describe as false: “Schools should not have to choose between chemistry and character; between trigonometry and teamwork.”

Props from GOT for the alliteration; it makes for a memorable quote. BUT! That is exactly what schools have to do as long as the test-and-punish policy of reformsters, billionaires, politicians, and the like are maintained by state laws and regulations.

Hess and Shriver get much correct. They recognize the role of schools to develop character and help children grow into responsible, capable adults. They recognize the difficulty educators face in this job because collaboration, empathy, and integrity are not innate (their word) for children.

However, they betray themselves when they say “the Commission (the National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development) suggests … every teacher should be trained in child and adolescent development and the science of learning. This would require, of course, major improvements in educator preparation that must be accompanied by ongoing professional CONTINUE READING: Badass Teachers Association: Whole Child Education by Greg Sampson