What I will never forget about the State of the Union - Lily's Blackboard

What I will never forget about the State of the Union - Lily's Blackboard

What I will never forget about the State of the Union

So, yes, I was in the House gallery to hear Donald Trump’s surreal State of the Union address. But no, it was certainly not by his invitation. I was invited by the most powerful woman in the United States of America, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who single-handedly stopped the most powerful man in the United States of America, Donald Trump, from prolonging a cruel and dangerous government shutdown. 

I sat in the gallery and watched one side of the room stand and applaud like robots at almost every sentence Donald Trump uttered, no matter how bizarre or self-serving. I waited to hear anything on education, especially with state after state, from West Virginia to Oklahoma to Arizona and North Carolina, and districts like Los Angeles, where educators were massing in the streets along with parents, advocates and community allies to demand that educators be listened to and that our students be valued.

Then it came. His plan for education. With a nod to Betsy DeVos he said, “To help support working parents, the time has come to pass school choice for America’s children.”

One side rose on cue to applaud. One side sat silent. He gave one sentence. Nothing on funding.  Nothing on protecting students from discrimination. Nothing on support for health or social-emotional learning or the arts or STEM or making it affordable for a teacher to pay off a student loan…

One sentence. And a nod to Betsy DeVos.

After the address, we were invited back to the Speaker’s reception room where she sat with us and spoke with us – educators, unionists, doctors, transgender soldiers, immigrants, victims of gun violence… and she just talked about how what she was seeing was different from any other administration. That what we had just heard about immigrants and women’s health and about how “wasting time” looking into the accusations of corruption within this administration CONTINUE READING: What I will never forget about the State of the Union - Lily's Blackboard

Teachers At Four Chicago Charter School Campuses Walk Out | PopularResistance.Org

Teachers At Four Chicago Charter School Campuses Walk Out | PopularResistance.Org

TEACHERS AT FOUR CHICAGO CHARTER SCHOOL CAMPUSES WALK OUT

With contract talks stalled after nine months of negotiations, 175 teachers at four Civitas campuses, part of Chicago International Charter School (CICS), walked out on strike Tuesday at 6 a.m. Teachers and staff are seeking raises, smaller class sizes, a reduction in healthcare costs and more support staff including social workers.

The talks broke down over the demand for 8 percent raises in the first year. CICS says it would accept the proposal only by eliminating crucial support staff, like social workers and counselors.

The four schools—ChicagoQuest, Northtown, Wrightwood and Ralph Ellison schools—are managed by Civitas Education Partners and have an enrollment of about 2,200 students. This walkout is the second strike of charter teachers in the US; the first took place at Acero Charter Schools, also in Chicago, last December. Charter schools are publicly-funded by taxpayers but privately managed.

CICS has kept the schools open with non-union strikebreakers and school administrators, according to the Sun Times. The charter operator said there would be “enough adults in the building to ensure that students are safe,” and students will be in “online learning, recreational and arts activities.”

Justifying this decision, Civitas CEO LeeAndra Khan said, “Our first responsibility is the safety and well-being of each of the 2,200 students who attend our four schools. If teachers go on strike, it is simply too great a burden on the families of those students to close our schools when many families will struggle to find alternative care for their children.”

Civitas is a subgroup of the CICS chain of charters. Four of CICS 17 campuses CONTINUE READING: Teachers At Four Chicago Charter School Campuses Walk Out | PopularResistance.Org

#BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Twitter Chat: A national conversation on this week of action & the demand for #CounselorsNotCops – Black Lives Matter At School

#BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Twitter Chat: A national conversation on this week of action & the demand for #CounselorsNotCops – Black Lives Matter At School

#BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Twitter Chat: A national conversation on this week of action & the demand for #CounselorsNotCops

e are excited to announce the national #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool twitter chat at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific so we can learn about all the protests, lesson plans, & forums you all have participated in. There are so many stories from the classroom and beyond to share about powerful antiracist teaching and advocacy–and we want to hear them all and learn from each other.

Yet there are also many recent stories of police brutalizing students in school. #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool will be joining Dignity in Schools to hold a #CounselorsNotCops Twitter chat on Thursday, February 7th at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific. Use the two hashtags to join the conversation.

“Fund Counselors Not Cops” became the fourth demand of the Black Lives Matter At School movement this year because of educators and students experience with police in schools–and a powerful report on the many negative impacts of the policing of Black and Brown students in school.

In the last several weeks alone, there have been some egregious instances of criminalizing Black youth and horrific acts of police brutality. According to the Huffington Post, on January 15, 2019, at East Middle School in Binghamton in upstate New York, four 12-year old girls were strip-searched after being accused of acting too “giddy” and suspected of being under the influence of drugs. Later, no drugs were found in their system after being subjected to the humiliation and degradation of an invasive process. 

On January 25 at L.W. Higgins High School in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, a high school senior had an altercation with a Jefferson Parish Deputy that left his face bloody and swollen according to his mother. In Chicago, Illinois, on Tuesday, January 29, 2019, student Dnigma Howard, was tasered by a police officer in school. In a video captured of the assault, one can see the officer tasing Dnigma while she was on the ground. Then, on Tuesday, February 5th, a video was released of a police officer assaulting a Black girl at Hazleton Area High School in Pennsylvania.  

We have so much to talk about, so join us for a conversation on these important topics and more!

Share this: 

#BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Twitter Chat: A national conversation on this week of action & the demand for #CounselorsNotCops – Black Lives Matter At School

Defining ‘High-Quality’ Curriculum | Teacher in a strange land

Defining ‘High-Quality’ Curriculum | Teacher in a strange land

Defining ‘High-Quality’ Curriculum

Hey, remember when Bill Gates and his disciples were pushing the Common Core and every day there was another info piece published in Ed World saying, emphatically and even snippily, that these were STANDARDS, not a CURRICULUM?

Remember those assurances that a national consensus on standards and reliable, aligned assessments evaluating student mastery of those core standards were merely a conceptual framework–the beginning and the end of their Grand Master National Make-Schools-Better plan. Remember when they claimed school districts and individual teachers were free to craft their own curricula? Because teachers knew the kids (duh) and how best to teach them to reach those standards–providing students continued to do well on the tests, of course.

Well, that was then. The headline now is ‘Gates Giving Millions to Train Teachers on High-Quality Curriculum,’ closing the instructional cycle: Standards—Curriculum—Assessments.

Grantees will work to improve how teachers are taught to use and modify existing series that are well aligned to state learning standards.

So–teachers won’t be using hand-selected materials or instructional activities they find relevant or engaging to their students’ lives. They won’t have the authority to ditch packaged materials that don’t work for their kids and create something that does. They will merely be trained—my least favorite word, when it comes to authentic CONTINUE READING: Defining ‘High-Quality’ Curriculum | Teacher in a strange land

Will Booker’s Track Record on Education Be a Problem for his 2020 Campaign? - NJ Spotlight

Will Booker’s Track Record on Education Be a Problem for his 2020 Campaign? - NJ Spotlight

WILL BOOKER’S TRACK RECORD ON EDUCATION BE A PROBLEM FOR HIS 2020 CAMPAIGN?

His vision for improving education has included charter schools and merit pay for teachers — views that are out of fashion for many Democrats

Sen. Cory Booker is running for president — and bringing a lengthy record on education with him.

The former mayor of Newark announced his plans Friday, joining a growing group of Democratic hopefuls. One way he stands out from that crowd: He’s spent much of his career promoting a specific vision for improving education that includes charter schools and merit pay for teachers — views that in recent years have gone out of fashion with many Democrats.

On Friday, Booker vowed to run “the boldest pro-public school teacher campaign there is,” noting he’s previously been endorsed by New Jersey’s teachers unions.

But at a time when teachers across the country are pushing for higher salaries and against charter schools, Booker’s record on education is sure to draw a skeptical eye from unions and public school advocates. And his past work alongside Betsy DeVos may make its way into campaign attack ads from his Democratic opponents, even though he voted against her as U.S. education secretary.

Here’s what you should know about Booker’s education track record, including the dramatic overhaul of schools in Newark he oversaw as mayor.

A lot like Barack Obama’s vision…

Booker, who first ran for Newark mayor in 2002, gained prominence at a time when both Democrats and Republicans were endorsing what became known as “education reform”: a constellation of policies that included school choice, including through privately managed charter schools; accountability for low-performing schools; and ratings for teachers that weighed student test scores.

Booker was among the strongest local evangelists of the movement, which drew criticism from teachers unions and community groups who understood that its goals could be at odds with their own. He even became a leading figure for Democrats for Education Reform, a group that worked to advance the reform agenda among elected officials and successfully influenced President Barack Obama’s education platform.

Booker has championed policies that reward highly rated teachers and remove those with poor ratings.

And he’s been a vocal critic of teachers unions along the way, something that could be problematic as he tries to run a pro-teacher campaign.

“Ten years ago when I talked about school choice, I was literally tarred and feathered,” Booker said in 2008, urging Democratic office holders to “have the political will to stand up against these phenomenally powerful interests.”

“I was literally brought into a broom closet by a union and told I would never win office if I kept talking about charters,” he said.

… and like the Betsy Devos vision too

Like every Senate Democrat (and two Republicans), Booker voted against President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of education in 2017. But unlike his colleagues, he appeared to have a close connection with Betsy DeVos.

That connection stems from one issue where Booker has also gone further than most Democrats: school vouchers. In 2001, he spoke at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, praising private school vouchers, something most progressives opposed then and now.

Booker served with DeVos on the board of directors of the Alliance for School Choice (now known as the American Federation for Children Growth Fund). He also spoke at gatherings of the American Federation for Children, an organization DeVos chaired, in 2012 and again in 2016.

“The mission of this organization is aligned with the mission of our nation,” he said in 2016.

The American Federation of Children has CONTINUE READING: Will Booker’s Track Record on Education Be a Problem for his 2020 Campaign? - NJ Spotlight

CURMUDGUCATION: DC: Charter Leaders Make The Big Bucks

CURMUDGUCATION: DC: Charter Leaders Make The Big Bucks

DC: Charter Leaders Make The Big Bucks

It's a phenomenon noted in many urban education-scapes. The leaders (CEO, Education Visionary, Grand High Muckity Muck, whatever) of a charter operation makes far more money than a) the local public school superintendent responsible for far more students and b) the teachers who work within the charter. But a recent Washington City Paper article by Rachel Cohen lays out some stark examples.

The article starts with Lisa Koenig who left the lawyering biz to teach at a charter. She note that her first year teaching assistant salary was less than her year-end bonus as a lawyer. Koenig stuck with it for seven years, but at one point she asked to see the salary schedule so she could evaluate some further education choices she was considering (would the additional education debt be balance by salary increases). Her charter said no, she could not see that. In fact:

“There are 120 schools but you can’t just call them up and learn their salary schedules,” she says. “It puts us in a position where we can’t make informed choices about where we work. Charter schools are free markets for all the parents and kids, but screw those teachers.”

That kind of information isn't available to anybody, because even though DC charters are funded with taxpayer dollars, they are not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. As the DC public schools for budget information and they have to tell you. But DC charters, as with most charters in the US, can just say "Nunyabiznis."

Nor is anybody trying to find out. The charters don't attempt to figure out what average charter CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: DC: Charter Leaders Make The Big Bucks

CURMUDGUCATION: Count Them As They Go - http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2019/02/count-them-as-they-go.html

I'm asked from time to time (mostly, I think, because some people are curious but reluctant to ask) what it's like to be in my particular spot in life. Retired from teaching, sixty-one years old, raising two babies about thirty years after I raised two other babies-- as my wife and I have said at various times over the last decade, we are kind of off the map here.

So my honest answer is that I'm figuring out what it's like, trying to grow into it. But here's what I know, and I promise, beyond this navel gazing, there's a point about education.

When you first have kids, everyone tells you to focus, to pay attention, to enjoy this time because it goes by so fast. You sort of get it, but not really-- not until you've turned around the world a couple of times and suddenly your babies are gone and your full-grown human offspring have arrived.

With the twins, I can feel all the usual things-- the checking and rechecking of the developmental mileposts and getting anxious when it seems as if, maybe, they're lagging. And there is no doubt in my mind that this is far, far worse than it was thirty years ago. I already knew that-- I spent the tail end of my career teaching students who were pulled out to a high-tension stretched-thin level of anxiety driven by the certainty that they had to be on The Path or their lives would be desolate and disastrous. It's not their fault. Their parents are panicked, and why not-- there CONTINUE READING: http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2019/02/count-them-as-they-go.html

Striking Schoolteachers Have Changed the National Conversation about Our Public Schools | janresseger #REDFORED

Striking Schoolteachers Have Changed the National Conversation about Our Public Schools | janresseger

Striking Schoolteachers Have Changed the National Conversation about Our Public Schools

The editor of Current Affairs, Nathan Robinson offers a profound critique of President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s signature education policy, Race to the Top.  Race to the Top epitomized neoliberalism—“meritocratic, technocratic, and capitalistic, meaning that it (1) sees competition as good and winning competitions as proof of desert, (2) defers to policy experts over the actual people affected by policies, (3) views productivity and success within the marketplace as a measure of the good.”

Robinson reminds us that Race to the Top, “gave $4.3 billion in funding to U.S. schools through a novel mechanism: Instead of giving out the aid based on how much a state’s schools needed it, the Department of Education awarded it through a competition.  Applications ‘were graded on a 500-point scale according to the rigor of the reforms proposed and their compatibility with four administration priorities: developing common standards and assessments; improving teacher training, evaluation, and retention policies; creating better data systems; and adopting preferred school turnaround strategies.’… The Obama administration also wanted states to adopt policies favorable to charter schools. Education secretary Arne Duncan said explicitly that, ‘States that do not have public charter laws or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race to the Top Fund.'”

Robinson condemns the Obama-Duncan strategy: “There is something deeply objectionable about nearly every part of Race to the Top.  First, the very idea of having states scramble to compete for federal funds means that children are given additional support based on how good their state legislatures are at pleasing the president, rather than how much those children need support.  Michigan got no Race to the Top money, and Detroit’s schools didn’t see a penny of this $4.3 billion, because it didn’t win the ‘race.’  This ‘fight to the death’ CONTINUE READING: Striking Schoolteachers Have Changed the National Conversation about Our Public Schools | janresseger

#CounselorsNotCops: Black Girl at Pennsylvania high school brutalized in latest assault by a school police officer; Black Lives Matter At School rallies around the country on Feb. 6-7th.  – Black Lives Matter At School

#CounselorsNotCops: Black Girl at Pennsylvania high school brutalized in latest assault by a school police officer; Black Lives Matter At School rallies around the country on Feb. 6-7th.  – Black Lives Matter At School

#CounselorsNotCops: Black Girl at Pennsylvania high school brutalized in latest assault by a school police officer; Black Lives Matter At School rallies around the country on Feb. 6-7th. 

ack students in schools across our nation are the targets of surveillance, police violence, and abuse in perpetuity. Some of these assaults are made known to the public, while many go under the radar, further subjecting Black students to more abuse, surveillance and neglect. This cannot be tolerated any longer.

According to the Huffington Post, on January 15, 2019, at East Middle School in Binghamton in upstate New York, four 12-year old girls were strip-searched after being accused of acting too “giddy” and suspected of being under the influence of drugs. Later, no drugs were found in their system after being subjected to the humiliation and degradation of an invasive process. 

On January 25 at L.W. Higgins High School in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, a high school senior had an altercation with a Jefferson Parish Deputy that left his face bloody and swollen according to his mother. In Chicago, Illinois, on Tuesday, January 29, 2019, student Dnigma Howard, was tasered by a police officer in school. In a video captured of the assault, one can see the officer tasing Dnigma while she was on the ground. Then, on Tuesday, February 5th, a video was released of a police officer assaulting a Black girl at Hazleton Area High School in Pennsylvania.  

• 

It is with great conviction that we believe police do not belong in schools and call for the immediate firing of these officers.  Black Lives Matter At school will be participating in the following events as part of our week of action:

1. Members of the Black Lives Matter At School movement will be holding rallies in cities across the country on February 6 & 7 to demand funding counselors not cops, including in Philadelphia, Seattle, New York City, Baltimore, and beyond.  
2. #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool will be joining Dignity in Schools to hold a #CounselorsNotCops Twitter chat on Thursday, February 7th at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific. Use the two hashtags to join the conversation.

Assaults like these in schools are the reason that Black Lives Matter At Schools is vitally imperative. The collective value of Black youth should not be subjected to prison tactics within their schools. Arrests, strip searches, and physical assault should never be the norm. At its core, education is a developmental process that involves academic and social risk-taking, radical love, and holistic care. This growth requires a sense of safety if students are to develop to their full potential. Too many Black youth go to school in environments that perpetually violate their humanity and this sense of safety. Each of the incidents illustrate the need to invest in counselors instead of cops, and develop humanizing approach to how we work with and care for Black students.

We at  Black Lives Matter at Schools call for the immediate removal of and regular presence of police officers in schools.

#AssaultAtMarshall #AssaultAtHiggins #AssaultAtHazelton #PoliceFreeSchools #CounselorsNotCops #BlackLivesMatterAtSchools

#CounselorsNotCops: Black Girl at Pennsylvania high school brutalized in latest assault by a school police officer; Black Lives Matter At School rallies around the country on Feb. 6-7th.  – Black Lives Matter At School

Oakland Educators Authorize Strike | PopularResistance.Org

Oakland Educators Authorize Strike | PopularResistance.Org

OAKLAND EDUCATORS AUTHORIZE STRIKE

95% vote to strike for smaller class size, student support and living wage

Oakland educators are ready to walk off the job and onto the picket line to fight for smaller class sizes, more student support and a living wage, following a strike authorization vote that saw a whopping 95 percent of Oakland teachers vote to strike if necessary and 84 percent of members casting ballots.

The announcement came Monday afternoon after a fruitless, two-day fact-finding meeting last week, during which Oakland Education Association (OEA) called Oakland Unified School District’s (OUSD) management of Oakland public schools “educational malpractice.” The vote allows OEA leaders to call a strike, if necessary, to win smaller class sizes, living wages for educators and additional support resources that students need—including more counselors and school nurses for the district’s 37,000 students.

“This is a clear message that our members are ready to fight for the schools our students deserve,” said OEA President Keith Brown. “This powerful vote is a mandate for smaller class size, more student support and living wage. It is a mandate to keep our neighborhood schools open and not shut down our schools.”

OEA will rally Tuesday, Feb. 5, at Frank Ogawa Plaza immediately prior to the Oakland City Council meeting, where hundreds of educators will urge the city council to adopt a resolution supporting teachers and opposing school closures (click on “view report” to see the full resolution). OUSD plans to close or merge as many as 24 schools over five years.

Oakland educators will now wait for the non-binding, fact-finding report, which is expected Feb. 15, the same day as a planned #RedForEd Statewide Day of Action in support of OEA and their fight to defend Oakland schools (check out the #RedForEd digital toolkit for ways to share your support on social media). After the report is issued, the 3,000 members of OEA can legally strike.

Brown said that no strike date has been set, but without a serious proposal by the school district, OEA expects to be on strike by the end of the month.

“If the school board won’t act, we will act,” Brown said. “Instead of watching 600 teachers leave OUSD year after year, all of us are going to leave all at once and CONTINUE READING: Oakland Educators Authorize Strike | PopularResistance.Org

Erika Christakis: Active-Shooter Drills Are Misguided - The Atlantic

Erika Christakis: Active-Shooter Drills Are Misguided - The Atlantic

Active-Shooter Drills Are Tragically Misguided
There’s scant evidence that they’re effective. They can, however, be psychologically damaging—and they reflect a dismaying view of childhood.

AT 10:21 a.m. on december 6, Lake Brantley High School, in Florida, initiated a “code red” lockdown. “This is not a drill,” a voice announced over the PA system. At the same moment, teachers received a text message warning of an active shooter on campus. Fearful students took shelter in classrooms. Many sobbed hysterically, others vomited or fainted, and some sent farewell notes to parents. A later announcement prompted a stampede in the cafeteria, as students fled the building and jumped over fences to escape. Parents flooded 911 with frantic calls.

Later it was revealed, to the fury of parents, teachers, and students, that in fact this was a drill, the most realistic in a series of drills that the students of Lake Brantley, like students across the country, have lately endured. In the year since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last February, efforts to prepare the nation’s students for gunfire have intensified. Educators and safety experts have urged students to deploy such unlikely self-defense tools as hockey pucks, rocks, flip-flops, and canned food. More commonly, preparations include lockdown drills in which students sit in darkened classrooms with the shades pulled. Sometimes a teacher or a police officer plays the role of a shooter, moving through the hallway and attempting to open doors as children practice staying silent and still.

MORE STORIES

• 

  The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids

  ERIKA CHRISTAKIS

• 

  What Are Active-Shooter Drills Doing to Kids?

  JAMES HAMBLIN

• 

  The Futility of Trying to Prevent More School Shootings in America

  BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY

• 

  The Dangers of Distracted Parenting

  ERIKA CHRISTAKIS

These drills aren’t limited to the older grades. Around the country, young children are being taught to run in zigzag patterns so as to evade bullets. I’ve heard of kindergartens where words like barricade are added to the vocabulary list, as 5- and 6-year-olds are instructed to stack chairs and desks “like a fort” should they need to keep a gunman at bay. In one Massachusetts kindergarten classroom hangs a poster with lockdown instructions that can be sung to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”: Lockdown, Lockdown, Lock the door / Shut the lights off, Say no more. Beside the text are picture cues—a key locking a door; a person holding up a finger to hush the class; a switch being flipped to turn off the lights. The alarm and confusion of younger students is hardly CONTINUE READING: Erika Christakis: Active-Shooter Drills Are Misguided - The Atlantic

ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) Scores: Part of the “Pay for Success” Plan? – Wrench in the Gears

ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) Scores: Part of the “Pay for Success” Plan? – Wrench in the Gears

ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) Scores: Part of the “Pay for Success” Plan?

A red flag for me in Gavin Newsom’s “child-friendly” proposed budget was the $45 million he allocated to screen children and adults in Medi-Cal for ACEs. I’m writing this post to express serious reservations I have about the process of developing ACE (Adverse Early Childhood Experiences) scores for people. ACEs are getting tremendous media exposure of late. While I believe this to be a crucial pubic health concern, my fear is that ACE prevention and mitigation interventions will become vehicles for “innovative” finance and will expand profiling of vulnerable populations.

I want to make it clear from the outset that I acknowledge childhood trauma does result in long-term negative health consequences for individuals. I’ve seen it in my own family. I also recognize that systems of structural racism have inflicted stress and violence on communities of color and indigenous peoples for generations, resulting in high rates of chronic illness that make them attractive targets for “social impact” schemes. People have a basic human right to treatment and care, which should not be conditioned on surveillance and having data harvested to line the pockets of social impact investors.

What concerns me about ACEs is the “scoring.”

Why should a standardized rubric developed under the auspices of one of the largest managed healthcare systems, Kaiser Permanente, label clients and structure the way a doctor, therapist, social worker, or educator can care for them? How did this tool come to have such a far reach, and whose interests will it ultimately serve?

Is a reliance on “scores” an intentionally-constructed framework that allows providers to limit their scope to “fixing” individuals and families rather than advancing a more radical approach whereby systemic causes of community trauma, trauma rooted in our country’s deep racist history, can be acknowledged, holistically assessed, and begin to be ameliorated?

And finally, will this “scoring” system be used to transform the treatment CONTINUE READING: ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) Scores: Part of the “Pay for Success” Plan? – Wrench in the Gears

ALEC and Corporate Reformers Make It Hard for Teachers to Cement Gains from Last Year’s Strikes | janresseger

ALEC and Corporate Reformers Make It Hard for Teachers to Cement Gains from Last Year’s Strikes | janresseger

ALEC and Corporate Reformers Make It Hard for Teachers to Cement Gains from Last Year’s Strikes

How can we rid our states of all the education “reform” that has, over the past two decades become part of state education laws—or which legislatures friendly to corporate reform continue to introduce? All this state policy seems hopelessly locked in place despite that we are learning from experience and growing academic research that state takeovers devastate communities, for example, and a growing charter school sector will suck essential funds out of its host school district. The policies have been discredited—thanks especially to striking school teachers this year—but we can’t seem to get rid of them.

Last week Valerie Strauss examined what is happening today in the legislatures of three states where teachers walked out last spring to protest the under-funding of their schools and their salaries.

In Oklahoma, bills have been introduced to put a stop to future walkouts by teachers. One law would demand a fine in advance of $50,000 for any organized protest of more than 100 people at the state capitol.  Another bill would make it illegal for school employees to strike.

Arizona’s House is considering a bill requiring that teachers be ruled by a code of ethics that bans “politics” in public schools—including teachers’ strikes.  Lawmakers in Arizona are also considering a bill to ban the shutting down of school except on holidays and another prohibiting payroll deductions for union dues.

These bills are designed to get back at teachers for what lawmakers consider their unseemly aggressiveness for standing up for the needs of their schools and their own livelihoods.

In West Virginia, the punishment would affect not only teachers but also the state’s entire education system.  An omnibus education bill that just passed in the West Virginia Senate CONTINUE READING: ALEC and Corporate Reformers Make It Hard for Teachers to Cement Gains from Last Year’s Strikes | janresseger

CURMUDGUCATION: Portfolio School Management For Dummies

CURMUDGUCATION: Portfolio School Management For Dummies

Portfolio School Management For Dummies

One of the issues that was hanging over the Los Angeles teacher strike is the idea of portfolio management; the UTLA asserts that Superintendent Austin Beutner already has a plan prepared for converting the LAUSD to a multi-portfolio model. In Denver, the model has already been rolled out,to less than stellar result. It's a challenging issue to discuss because so few people understand exactly how a portfolio model is supposed to work.

So here, with issues over-simplified and corners cut, is your dummies' guide to portfolio management.

The first thing to understand about the portfolio model is that nobody anywhere knows exactly what a portfolio model is. Back in 2010,  it took three writers at Education Week (Jeffrey R. Henig, Katrina E. Bulkley, & Henry M. Levin) to come up with this pretty good explanation:

The strategy is, rather, a loosely coupled conglomeration of ideas held together by the metaphor of a well-managed stock portfolio and its proponents’ unshakable belief that the first step for successful reform must be to dismantle the bureaucratic and political institutions that have built up around the status quo.

That's the second thing to know--that "portfolio" here is based on the idea of an investment portfolio (Austin Beutner, for what it's worth, made his bundle in investment banking). With an financial portfolio, you move your money in and out of various investments depending on how they're performing and what your goals are. With a school portfolio, you move your resources in and out of schools--all schools including public and charter--based on how those schools are performing.

The Center for Reinventing Public Education, a Washington state ed reform thinky tank, has tried to work up a portfolio model strategy guide, and they list seven characteristics of portfolio strategy: CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Portfolio School Management For Dummies