NYC Public School Parents: Not-so-hot news from Class Size Matters; and how you can help

NYC Public School Parents: Not-so-hot news from Class Size Matters; and how you can help

Not-so-hot news from Class Size Matters; and how you can help

I hope you are having a relaxing summer. Unfortunately, the last few weeks haven't been much fun for Class Size Matters. We recently discovered that we lost over $7000, including the donations to our annual fundraiser in June, because NYCharities, our online processor, appears to have collapsed, as reported by Fox News. I am also quoted in this article about our losses.

NY Charities is a well-known organization used by many non-profits, large and small; but it turns out they actually lost their nonprofit status in Aug. 2018 for failing to file three years of financial reports, with the IRS quietly posting this revocation on their website in Nov. 2018. Yet neither the IRS nor the Charities Bureau of the NY Attorney General's office told anyone about it. I only learned about it from a reporter a few weeks ago.

I have filed complaints with the Charities Bureau which now says they are investigating the situation, but meanwhile, Shino Tanikawa, a NYC parent leader, offered to put up a GoFundMe for us. It’s here:  https://www.gofundme.com/f/we-need-small-class-sizes-in-our-schools

We operate on a shoestring budget and $7000 is a lot of money for us. Please give if you can. 

Also, in the last few weeks, we have been served with two subpoenas, one from the Attorney General office in regards the NYSER lawsuit, for which we agreed to be a plaintiff along with many organizations who are suing the state for more equitable education funding. The AG subpoena is unusually onerous, as reported by the media here and here, and demands twelve years of our communications and findings related to school funding and classroom conditions.

I was also served with a subpoena by Success Academy charter schools, for a lawsuit in which a parent of a special needs child is suing Success for mistreating and pushing out her child. In 2017, we provided this parent advice and helped her find an attorney; I expect to be deposed in the case as well. Thankfully, Laura D. Barbieri of Advocates for Justice is serving as our pro bono attorney in regards the Attorney General and Success Academy subpoenas.

But please do contribute to Class Size Matters, or else the losses we suffered will hurt our ability to advocate for smaller classes, an end to school overcrowding, more transparency and parent involvement in education decision-making – - as well as stronger student privacy.

---Thanks for your support, Leonie 


NYC Public School Parents: Not-so-hot news from Class Size Matters; and how you can help

Racism, the White Plague of the U.S. | radical eyes for equity

Racism, the White Plague of the U.S. | radical eyes for equity

Racism, the White Plague of the U.S.

Race remains a deeply misunderstood aspect of the U.S. Some of this confusion lies in basic terminology, such as being able to distinguish between “racial” and “racism/racist.”

Let’s consider the NFL to unpack that language and its relationship to how racism and being a racist applies to the U.S.

Here are racial demographics of the league (from 2018):

These data are racial, but stating facts such as NFL players are disproportionately black or that head coaches and CEO/presidents are overwhelmingly white are not racist.

Here’s where it becomes complicated. Has racism created these disproportions, and can we at least question if not outright accuse the CEOs/presidents of being themselves racist?

Some times being racist or the fact of racism is blatant—such as the unmasking of former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling or the newly released recordings of Ronald Reagan talking with Richard Nixon.

However, the facts of racism in the U.S. and directly identifying someone as racist remain somewhere between impolite and offensive (often responded to in ways that suggest calling a racist “racist” is more offensive than actual racist behavior).

For example, the current occupant of the White House has once again offered a deeply muddled and delusional refuting of his being identified as a racist (based on his language and behavior):

“I think the word has really gone down a long way because everybody’s called a racist now,” the president said. “Her own party called Nancy Pelosi a racist two weeks ago. The word is so overused. It’s such a disgrace. I can CONTINUE READING: Racism, the White Plague of the U.S. | radical eyes for equity

Grassroots Education Network- July 2019 Newsletter - Network For Public Education

Grassroots Education Network- July 2019 Newsletter - Network For Public Education

Grassroots Education Network- July 2019 Newsletter

The NPE Grassroots Education Network is a network of over 130 grassroots organizations nationwide who have joined together to preserve, promote, improve, and strengthen our public schools. If you know of a group that would like to join this powerful network, please go here to sign up. 
If you have any questions about the NPE Grassroots Education Network please contact Marla Kilfoyle, NPE Grassroots Education Network Liaison at marlakilfoyle@networkforpubliceducation.org
Notes from Marla

I have now been in my position as the NPE Grassroots Education Network liaison for six months. Each time I do this newsletter I become more inspired, and informed about what is happening across the nation to strengthen public education and to save it from privatizers! This month there were some great ideas for organizing and getting the message out. Many of the organizations in the NPE Grassroots Education Network marched in 4th of July parades with signs asking the community to support public education, they walked neighborhoods with pamphlets outlining the power of public education, and they held summer education summits to engage their communities. The organizing ideas in this newsletter are a great way to get the message out, have conversations with people about the promise of public education, as well as the attempt to privatize public education. Again, I am humbled by the amazing work being done for our children, our families, and our communities!
National Organizing
Defending the Early Years held their Early Childhood Summer Organizing Leadership Institute in the beginning of the month. Check out all their amazing pictures on their twitter hashtag #DEYInstitute2019. In the Public Interest presented at Netroots Nation in July. They covered the topic of privatization of public service. The Journey for Justice Alliance went to Washington D.C. on July 10th to speak with U.S. Representatives about the school funding crisis. Also check out the podcast On The Ground hosted by Jitu Brown. The podcast airs every Monday at 6 PM CST.
Fairtest publishes an amazing newsletter each week covering both the flaws of relying on standardized exams to make high-stakes educational decisions as well as successful campaigns to roll back testing misuse and overuse. Rethinking Schools editor and Zinn Education Project teacher leader, Adam Sanchez, presented the Poetry of Defiance lesson on celebrating the resistance of the enslaved at the 2nd annual Teaching Black History conference for K-12 educators. Rethinking Schools also launched their NEW Planning to Change the World social justice plan book. You can order it here. The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and The Badass Teachers Association distributed their Educator Toolkit for Teacher and Student Privacy at the AFT TEACH Conference in Washington D.C. July 10-13th. Parents for Public Schools National has been selected to present at the Institute for Educational Leadership’s 2019 National Family and Community Engagement Conference in Reno, NV! Their session, ‘Re-Imagining Evaluation: How Parent-Led Evaluation is Getting to What Matters in Parent Leadership’, took place on Wednesday, July 10. They also published Brown v. Board of Education: A Divided Legacy? An Interview w/ former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Fred Banks, Jr. 
Parents Across America shared the response of Parent Power, Indianapolis Parents Across America affiliate, to the election of Teach for America alum and interim superintendent Alessia Johnson as Indianapolis Public School (IPS) superintendent. Congratulations to Breanna Hall who won the The Schott Foundation #PublicSchoolGrad scholarship. The Badass Teachers Association was in Houston July 2-8 to attend the National Education Association Representative Assembly. Check out all the great work the NEA BAT Caucus did for children, families, and communities! The Trinational Coalition to Defend Public Education (USA) exists in a network with many other organizations in Canada and Mexico. Check out their network here. Ontario (Canada) Secondary School Teachers Federation President Harvey Bischof delivered the OSSTF affiliate report to the members of the Canadian Teachers Federation. The report focused on no cuts to education funding and the economic benefits of investing in education. Wear Red for Ed tracks the Red for Ed movement nationwide. Check out their open Facebook page for the latest on the Red for Ed movement. Find out what Save our Schools March is up to by following their open Facebook page. First Focus Campaign for Children continue to share the latest on the fight to end the detention of migrant children. The Network for Public Education continues to update their Asleep at the Wheel Report. See their state-by-state reports here (scroll to the bottom of the page) and make sure you check back for more additions. 

NPE Grassroots Education Network – State Organizations Support Public Education
Please use this clearinghouse of information to inform people in the various states about the NPE Grassroots Education Network organizations. Please encourage people to join them and support their work! Call on family, friends, and colleagues to join the fight to save public education! This section is also a place to get great ideas on organizing and actions. CONTINUE READING: Grassroots Education Network- July 2019 Newsletter - Network For Public Education

In Wake Of Successful Teachers’ Strike, Reclaim Our Schools LA Releases Case Study Of Parent And Student Organizing | UTLA

In Wake Of Successful Teachers’ Strike, Reclaim Our Schools LA Releases Case Study Of Parent And Student Organizing | UTLA

In Wake Of Successful Teachers’ Strike, Reclaim Our Schools LA Releases Case Study Of Parent And Student Organizing

“Building the Power to Reclaim Our Schools” will serve as a blueprint for bringing together students, parents, teachers, and community for the common good.

LOS ANGELES ⁠— The 2019 Los Angeles teachers’ strike was nothing short of a paradigm shift in the local narrative about public education. The first “Red for Ed” strike to occur in a deeply blue state, it mobilized tens of thousands of Angelenos into rainy morning picket lines and onto the streets of Downtown LA. The strike resulted in a stunning array of substantive victories well beyond the scope of a typical labor agreement. Now, Reclaim Our Schools LA is sharing its strategy in the form of a new case study.

"The six-day strike brought the Red for Ed movement to a new level,” said Alex Caputo- Pearl, President of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). “By collaborating with community, we were able to win smaller class sizes, a nurse in every school every day, and a commitment to reduce testing by 50 percent. This case study tells the story that was actually years in the making, and it can serve as a blueprint for bringing together students, parents, teachers, and community for the common good." 

Years of work went into building the historic labor/community alliance that emboldened the teachers and helped shape their bargaining platform. Bolstered by parent and student involvement, the teachers held firm on the Common Good demands that mattered most to the communities they serve. This resulted in unprecedented wins: more nurses, counselors, and librarians in schools, smaller class sizes, nearly $12 million in funding for the development of Community Schools, reductions in standardized testing, and an end to random searches of students, among others.

“I was proud to be a parent volunteer during the teacher’s strike,” said Alicia Baltazar, a parent at Fries Avenue Elementary School. “I sat-in at politicians’ offices and I knocked on their doors. I talked to other parents and let them know what we were fighting for. Some parents didn’t realize there wasn’t a nurse in school every day, or what the process was to get counseling for their children. We were strong because we had a common goal: our kids’ futures. That’s why we won. That’s why we will continue to win.” 

“Building the Power to Reclaim Our Schools” examines the way UTLA and Reclaim Our Schools LA built and carried out a two-year campaign that lifted a vision of “the schools all our students deserve” into the public consciousness. It also shows how parent, student, and teacher leaders were trained and supported as they took their fight to some of LA’s most powerful political players—and won. Reclaim Our Schools LA’s strategic effort to organize parents and students and bring their ideas to the table can offer insight, vision, and hope at a time when they are much needed. 

“Reclaim Our Schools LA combined deep relationship building, systematic organizing, and sophisticated strategy to produce real change at LAUSD,” said Leigh Dingerson, who authored the case study. “The voices of the parents, teachers, students, and organizers of the campaign speak for themselves. This was a culmination of years of work that transformed individual lives and brought real change to the classrooms of Los Angeles.”

In Wake Of Successful Teachers’ Strike, Reclaim Our Schools LA Releases Case Study Of Parent And Student Organizing | UTLA

School spankings are banned just about everywhere around the world — but not in the United States – Raw Story

School spankings are banned just about everywhere around the world — but not in the United States – Raw Story

School spankings are banned just about everywhere around the world — but not in the United States

In 1970, only three countries – Italy, Japan and Mauritius – banned corporal punishment in schools. By 2016, more than 100 countriesbanned the practice, which allows teachers to legally hit, paddle or spank students for misbehavior.

The dramatic increase in bans on corporal punishment in schools is documented in an analysis that we conducted recently to learn more about the forces behind the trend. The analysis is available as a working paper.

In order to figure out what circumstances led to bans, we looked at a variety of political, legal, demographic, religious and economic factors. Two factors stood out from the rest.

First, countries with English legal origin – that is, the United Kingdom as well as its former colonies that implemented British common law – were less likely to ban corporal punishment in schools across this time period.

Second, countries with higher levels of female political empowerment, as measured by things such as women’s political participation or property rights – that is, women having the right to sell, buy and own property – were more likely to ban corporal punishment. School spankings are banned just about everywhere around the world — but not in the United States – Raw Story

 

Andrea Gabor: What to Do When the Testing Madness Ends | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andrea Gabor: What to Do When the Testing Madness Ends | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andrea Gabor: What to Do When the Testing Madness Ends

Andrea Gabor, The Bloomberg Professor of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York, is one of the nation’s worthy and thoughtful education writers. Her book about W. Edwards Deming has the best refutation of merit pay that I have read (chapter 9, The Man Who Invented Quality). Her latest book book, Education After The Culture Wars, gathers stories of districts where collaboration, not competition, creates a healthy environment for education.

In this post, she argues that America’s infatuation with standardized testing is waning, and it’s time to find a better way to assess how students are progressing.

America’s decades-long infatuation with standardized testing is finally waning, and for good reasons. Despite years of training students to do better on tests, the performance of 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s report card, has flatlined. At the same time, the focus on testing produced unintended consequences, including inattention to important educational priorities and growing teacher shortages.

That’s in part because test performance became a goal in many districts instead of a means to an end and, thus, a prime example of Campbell’s Law, which points to the corrupting influence of using a single measurement as a target, thus ensuring that “it ceases to be a good measure.

Gabor says there is a better way. She describes the work CONTINUE READING: Andrea Gabor: What to Do When the Testing Madness Ends | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Miseducation of the American Voter | Live Long and Prosper

The Miseducation of the American Voter | Live Long and Prosper

The Miseducation of the American Voter

John Merrow, the retired education journalist for PBS, recently wrote,

…public education is an efficient sorting machine that is undemocratic to its core. Schools sort young children in two basic groups: A minority is designated as ‘winners’ who are placed on a track leading to elite colleges, prominence and financial success. While the rest aren’t labeled ‘losers’ per se, they are largely left to struggle on their own. That experience leaves many angry, frustrated and resentful, not to mention largely unprepared for life in a complex, rapidly changing society…

The “losers” who aren’t really labeled “losers,” Merrow said, are the ones who find no reason to vote, and Merrow placed at least part of the blame on public education.

This practice [focusing on test scores] went into high gear with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. “Regurgitation education” became the order of the day. This approach rewards parroting back answers, while devaluing intellectual curiosity, cooperative learning, projects, field trips, the arts, physical education, and citizenship.

Education which focuses on test scores devalues critical thinking. Citizens who do not think critically cannot fully participate in our democracy…

…the end result is millions of graduates who were rewarded with diplomas CONTINUE READING: 

The Miseducation of the American Voter | Live Long and Prosper

World Studies: Technology Integration at Mountain View High School | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

World Studies: Technology Integration at Mountain View High School | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

World Studies: Technology Integration at Mountain View High School

Three years ago on the recommendation of district coordinators of technology, I observed classrooms of teachers in Silicon Valley districts. I described what I saw without making any evaluative comments on the teachers or lessons they taught. Here is one example of a social studies teacher who had integrated the classroom use of technology so that it was in the background, not the foreground.

Carson Rietveld has been teaching for four years at Mountain View High School.*  The class is furnished with four rows of desks facing the front whiteboard; the teacher’s desk is in the far corner. Music is playing as students enter the room.  Student work, historical posters, and sayings dot the walls above the white boards (e.g., “I want to live in a society where people are judged by what they do for others).

Rietveld, wearing a long flowered dress that reaches her ankles, welcomes the 14- and 15 year old students by name as they come in. Students put their backpacks on the floor near a side whiteboard and bring their tablet or laptop to their desk. The high school policy is Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD).**  I ask a student why do all backpacks go on the floor and he tells me that students rooting through CONTINUE READING: World Studies: Technology Integration at Mountain View High School | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

NYC Public School Parents: With little fanfare and some disappointment, yesterday's second and final meeting of the School Siting Task Force was held

NYC Public School Parents: With little fanfare and some disappointment, yesterday's second and final meeting of the School Siting Task Force was held

With little fanfare and some disappointment, yesterday's second and final meeting of the School Siting Task Force was held

Yesterday the second, and it turned out, the final meeting of the School Siting Task Force was held. Reports of this disappointing meeting were published in the Daily News and the Wall Street Journal today.

To recap: In their Planning to Learn report, released in March 2018, the City Council made several proposals to speed up the process of school planning and siting, whose generally slow pace has contributed to over 500,000 NYC students being consigned to overcrowded schools.

In some neighborhoods where the schools are overcrowded, twenty years or more have lapsed without a new one being built, because of the apparent inability of the School Construction Authority (SCA) and the DOE to identify locations, even when these schools have been funded in the capital plan.

The SCA has only four real estate brokers citywide on retainer to help them to find suitable sites, and these brokers never "cold call" or reach out to owners to see if they might sell their properties to the city before they are put on the open market.  Cold calling is considered a "must" in the hot real estate market that is NYC.

The Council’s Planning to Learn report suggested that a process be created to "Improve the school site identification process … that would review City real estate transactions to identify opportunities for SCA. Additionally, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) should alert the Department of Education (DOE) and SCA if a property of appropriate size for a school becomes available."

As a result, the City Council passed Local Law No. 168 in Sept. 2018 to create an “interagency task force to review relevant city real estate transactions to identify opportunities for potential school sites,” including “city-owned buildings, city-owned property and vacant land within the city to evaluate potential opportunities for new school construction or leasing for school use.” The law also said that this task force should provide a report to the City Council no later than July 31, 2019 on their findings.

The first meeting of this task force was held privately on Feb. 26, 2019. After I heard about it, I asked the City Council and the DOE if subsequent meetings would be open to the CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: With little fanfare and some disappointment, yesterday's second and final meeting of the School Siting Task Force was held

The Missed Opportunity Myth | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

The Missed Opportunity Myth | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

The Missed Opportunity Myth

Before Michelle Rhee was a board member for Miracle-Gro she was the founder and CEO of StudentsFirst.  Before that, she was Chancellor of Washington D.C. schools from 2007 to 2010.  Before that, she was the CEO of The New Teacher Project.

And even though Rhee is not a public figure anymore in education, she continues to influence education policy through The New Teacher Project which has since changed its name to TNTP.  TNTP puts out slick papers that it calls research but is really propaganda disguised as research.  Their first one was called ‘The Widget Effect’ which laid out the case for replacing salary schedules with a system based on merit pay based on statistically inappropriate analysis of standardized test scores.

And over the years they have put out other papers with clever titles like ‘The Irreplaceables’, ‘Rebalancing Teacher Tenure’, and ‘Teacher Evaluation 2.0.’  These papers are often quoted by ed reform propaganda sites like The74 and Education Post.

One of their most recent papers is called ‘The Opportunity Myth.’  Its central thesis is something that reformers love to use in their teacher bashing arguments, which is that too many teachers shortchange their students by having low expectations for them.  The work they assign is not challenging enough and since students always rise to the challenge of CONTINUE READING: The Missed Opportunity Myth | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Louisiana Educator: The LDOE claims steady growth in student LEAP scores

Louisiana Educator: 2019 LEAP and EOC Conversion Tables

The LDOE claims steady growth in student LEAP scores

The Louisiana Department of Education recently announced the results of the Spring 2019 LEAP tests. The results statewide and by school district and school are available on the LDOE web site at links given at the bottom of the press release, here. These tables represent the LDOE's decisions on how many and what percentage of students achieved each level of achievement designated by the following categories: Unsatisfactory, Approaching Basic, Basic, Mastery, and Advanced.

The Department, in its press release, reports that Louisiana students are making steady improvement over last year on LEAP scores. This conclusion is based on the slight improvement in scale scores over last year, but since the LDOE has the authority to change the raw scores equivalent to scale scores, this conclusion is highly questionable.

The cut scores for each level of achievement may be manipulated
Each year the cut scores for each category of achievement remain the same, with the lowest passing score on LEAP tests (Basic) for grades 3-8 set at 725 points. However, the Department (LDOE) in consultation with its testing company sets the real raw scores equivalent to each level of achievement after the raw test results are in. Those raw cut scores change by a small amount each year. Some independent researchers, including myself, believe that this process allows the LDOE to manage or manipulate the reported performance of our students. Maybe that's why Louisiana's NAEP scores have dropped compared to our LEAP scores.

Scale scores are not really proportionate to the raw scores
Scale scores for each subject and grade tested run from a minimum of 650 to a maximum score of 850. If a student gets none of the answers right on a particular test she/he still gets the minimum score of 650. (This scale score seems to imply such students have actually achieved something even though they got nothing right) If the student gets all the points possible on a particular test he/she gets a score of 850. Other than those two end points, the scale score system does not tell us much about how many answers or points a student actually got right on a particular test. The actual points a student earns compared to the total possible points is called the "raw score". If we know the raw score and the total possible points on a particular test, we can calculate a raw percentage score by dividing the raw points earned by the total possible. The raw percentage score tells us how much of the material on the test a student actually got right. Unfortunately most parents never get to see their child's real raw percentage scores on state tests.

Using the "secret" conversion tables CONTINUE READING: Louisiana Educator: 2019 LEAP and EOC Conversion Tables

Top 7 Ways Technology Stifles Student Learning in My Classroom | gadflyonthewallblog

Top 7 Ways Technology Stifles Student Learning in My Classroom | gadflyonthewallblog

Top 7 Ways Technology Stifles Student Learning in My Classroom

As a middle school teacher, I have real concerns about the ways technology is used in the classroom and the effects it’s having on students.

That does not make me a technophobe.

The fact that you are reading this article on a blog – a regularly updated Website containing personal writings or a weB–LOG) should prove that point.

I use technology in my everyday life and in many ways find it indispensable.

However, that does not mean I embrace all uses of technology just as criticizing some forms does not mean I think we should get rid of them all.

But after 17 years of teaching, I have legitimate concerns about what all this technology is doing to our students and our schools.

I have seen technologies come and go. Some – like a computerized grade book – have been extremely helpful, and I would not want to have to do my job without them.

Others have fallen by the wayside, been discontinued or proven a waste of time or even worse – they’ve become impediments rather than assistants to student learning.

In general, I think we have become too reliant on technology in schools. We’ve welcomed and incorporated it without testing it, or even reflecting upon whether it CONTINUE READING: Top 7 Ways Technology Stifles Student Learning in My Classroom | gadflyonthewallblog

Jon Schnur and His Nonprofit Accelerator, America Achieves: A Deep Dig | deutsch29

Jon Schnur and His Nonprofit Accelerator, America Achieves: A Deep Dig | deutsch29

Jon Schnur and His Nonprofit Accelerator, America Achieves: A Deep Dig

Sometimes the ed-reform deep dig is really deep.

On July 22, 2019, I wrote a post about a nonprofit, Results for America, that was incubated by another nonprofit, America Achieves.

I had planned to follow up with a post about America Achieves, which received its nonprofit status in November 2010 and which was co-founded by its chair, Jonathan Schnur, and co-chair, Rod Washington. (Washington is no longer listed on the America Achieves site, but his bio can be access using this archived America Achieves bio link from January 2013.)

What I noticed on America Achieves’ 2011 tax form is that in 2010, revenue for this brand-new nonprofit was already $4M, and in its second year (2011), revenue jumped to $13.5M. Contributions and grants accounted for most of the revenue ($2.9M in 2010 and $13.4M in 2011), which indicates that its founders were really connected.

It is in researching Schnur that the ed-reform dive became deep.

Jon Schnur

Princeton University is a hub of education reform. Schnur graduated from Princeton University in 1989 with a degree in politics, the same year that Teach for America (TFA) founder, Wendy Kopp, graduated with a degree in public policy. Whereas Kopp pitched her TFA idea as her senior thesis, Schnur’s idea for a principal training nonprofit, New Leaders for New Schools (name later reduced to New Leaders), happened circa 2000 during his time at Harvard when he took graduate coursework. (Schnur appears not to have graduated; there is CONTINUE READING: Jon Schnur and His Nonprofit Accelerator, America Achieves: A Deep Dig | deutsch29