Education Research Report TODAY
Monday, October 28, 2019
Arkansas: Cathy Frye Offers a Who’s Who of the Walton Privatization Movement | Diane Ravitch's blog
Arkansas: Cathy Frye Offers a Who’s Who of the Walton Privatization Movement | Diane Ravitch's blog
Arkansas: Cathy Frye Offers a Who’s Who of the Walton Privatization Movement
Remember, Arkansas is not the only state being targeted by American billionaires who seek to do away with public education and those pesky teachers’ unions. The Waltons are among those leading the charge. Curious, isn’t it, that the Waltons and other billionaires who are supposedly concerned about education haven’t donated a dime to public schools. Instead, they’re focused on supporting charters and private schools.
Arkansas: Cathy Frye Offers a Who’s Who of the Walton Privatization Movement
Cathy Frye is a veteran journalist who joined the staff of the Arkansas Public Schools Resource Center as communications director for three years. She learned that APSRC was a shell organization funded by the billionaire Waltons to trick rural schools into joining the Walton crusade to eliminate public schools.
She begins:
Tonight, I am sharing a Who’s Who in the Arkansas education “reform” movement.
First – a reminder: The end game is not charterization. It is privatization. Charter schools are merely a bridge. Look at them as place-holders.
The Arkansas Public School Resource Center, where I worked for three years as the communications director, purports to support both open-enrollment charter schools and rural traditional school districts. In actuality, APSRC is one of many Arkansas-based and Walton-funded lobbying entities. Some of these organizations specialize in charters. Others exist to promote private schools and vouchers. One seeks to convince teachers that they don’t need to belong to unions. A couple others promote the alleged glories of school “choice.”
Here’s a list of such organizations:
- Arkansas Public School Resource Center
- Arkansas Learns
- The Reform Alliance
- Arkansas State Teachers Association
- RootEd NWA
Chicago Reaches Tentative Deal With School Support Staff, But Not With Teachers Union | HuffPost
Chicago Reaches Tentative Deal With School Support Staff, But Not With Teachers Union | HuffPost
Chicago Reaches Tentative Deal With School Support Staff, But Not With Teachers Union
The standoff between Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Teachers Union has resulted in an eighth day of striking, the city’s longest in over 30 years.
Chicago Reaches Tentative Deal With School Support Staff, But Not With Teachers Union
The standoff between Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Teachers Union has resulted in an eighth day of striking, the city’s longest in over 30 years.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Sunday night that the city has reached a tentative deal with striking public school support staff, but that there is no agreement with the teachers union.
The lack of a deal between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union led to the cancellation of classes on Monday, making this walkout Chicago’s longest teachers strike in more than 30 years. More than 300,000 students will have missed eight days of school on Monday due to the strike, which is now entering its third week.
Lightfoot and schools CEO Janice Jackson said at a news conference Sunday that the city had reached a tentative agreement with SEIU Local 73, the union representing 7,500 school support staff who had been striking alongside CTU members. School support staff include bus aides, special education aides, custodial workers and security officers.The tentative agreement with SEIU reportedly includes a 16% pay increase; more dollars an hour extra for bus aides, security and custodians after a certain number of years; more input from bus aides on routes; and better working conditions for special education aides, according to Chalkbeat Chicago.
The lack of a deal between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union led to the cancellation of classes on Monday, making this walkout Chicago’s longest teachers strike in more than 30 years. More than 300,000 students will have missed eight days of school on Monday due to the strike, which is now entering its third week.
Lightfoot and schools CEO Janice Jackson said at a news conference Sunday that the city had reached a tentative agreement with SEIU Local 73, the union representing 7,500 school support staff who had been striking alongside CTU members. School support staff include bus aides, special education aides, custodial workers and security officers.The tentative agreement with SEIU reportedly includes a 16% pay increase; more dollars an hour extra for bus aides, security and custodians after a certain number of years; more input from bus aides on routes; and better working conditions for special education aides, according to Chalkbeat Chicago.
LIVE FROM PRESS BRIEFING ROOM: Mayor Lightfoot and Dr. Janice Jackson join with members of the press to provide updates on contract negotiations with Chicago Teachers Union.https://t.co/NJhNd81ho9— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) October 28, 2019
“This is a victory for working people in Chicago and shows what is possible when we unite and take action,” SEIU Local 73 President Dian Palmer said in a statement. “The lowest paid support workers who are the backbone of our schools are going to see CONTINUE READING: Chicago Reaches Tentative Deal With School Support Staff, But Not With Teachers Union | HuffPost
Importance of teaching black culture to black male students
Importance of teaching black culture to black male students
Some evidence for the importance of teaching black culture to black students
A separate class for black boys led to improvements in dropout rates, study finds
Some evidence for the importance of teaching black culture to black students
A separate class for black boys led to improvements in dropout rates, study finds
Since former President Barack Obama launched his My Brother’s Keeper initiative in 2014 to support black and Latino boys and young men, nearly 250 communities across 50 states have launched programs under its umbrella. But although these programs have increased in popularity and spent an estimated $1.6 billion in donations and loans, little is known about how well these support programs accomplish their objectives of raising academic achievement, keeping boys of color in school and helping more go to college.
The first rigorous evaluation of one of the larger programs came out in October 2019 and found some promising results. Stanford University researchers studied a special class expressly for black teenage boys in Oakland, California, called the Manhood Development Program. They found that black boys were less likely to drop out of high school if the class was offered at their school compared to black boys at schools where it wasn’t offered. In a high school with 60 black boys in ninth grade, only three students dropped out, on average, instead of five students in schools that didn’t offer the course.
Most of students in the class were ninth and 10th graders. For black boys who were offered the class in both grades, those annual improvements in dropout rates translate into a 3 percentage point increase in their high school graduation rate, according to Thomas Dee, the lead researcher and a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education.
“This is one of the few evaluations,” said Gloria Ladson-Billings, president of the National Academy of Education and an educational theorist who originally developed the ideas for “culturally relevant” instruction that guide these black-only programs. “It shows that it CONTINUE READING: Importance of teaching black culture to black male students
The Strained Relationship Between Black Mothers And Their Daughters | MadameNoire – Parenting for Liberation
The Strained Relationship Between Black Mothers And Their Daughters | MadameNoire – Parenting for Liberation
The Strained Relationship Between Black Mothers And Their Daughters | MadameNoire
The Strained Relationship Between Black Mothers And Their Daughters | MadameNoire
“I went through it and I made it out alright” is no longer a rhetoric I will accept from Black mothers regarding the abuse of Black girls.”
Young Black girls don’t need to be beaten into submission. They are intelligent beings capable of reason and logic. Young Black girls don’t need to be told how horrible other Black girls are. The western world has perfected that narrative so well that the last thing it needs is help from you and I. Finally, young Black girls are not the sum of their body parts. As women who know firsthand what it’s like to be reduced to our reproductive properties, the last thing we should be doing is punishing our girls for theirs. Young Black girls should both be seen and heard — yes by their mothers too — and they are equally deserving of our love, patience, and support. “I went through it and I made it out alright” is no longer a rhetoric I will accept from Black women regarding the abuse of Black girls. Contrary to widespread belief, we are not better for having endured and childhood trauma is not a rite of passage. If we value the lives of Black women, then we have no excuse to continue failing Black girls. This isn’t an issue we created but it’s one we must take responsibility to resolve. After all, isn’t that what Black Girl Magic is all about?
— Read on madamenoire.com/1026019/the-strained-relationship-between-black-mothers-and-their-daughters/
READ MORE: Parenting for Liberation - https://wp.me/P7fXox-1 on @wordpressdotcom
Enough Basic Staffing and More Community Schools: Two Important but Different Issues | janresseger
Enough Basic Staffing and More Community Schools: Two Important but Different Issues | janresseger
Enough Basic Staffing and More Community Schools: Two Important but Different Issues
Enough Basic Staffing and More Community Schools: Two Important but Different Issues
The NY Times‘ Dana Goldstein published a story last week about the Chicago teachers’ strike. While Goldstein should be commended for supporting the efforts of the teachers in the nation’s third largest school district to bargain around their students’ needs for smaller classes, more counselors, school psychologists, nurses, and librarians, her article is misleading.
Goldstein conflates two important but separate issues when she writes: “These demands have risen as activists promote a broader mission for educators: a vision of schools as community centers that offer an array of health and social services to children, especially those from low income families. In Chicago, it has become clear that teacher pay is not the primary sticking point in the negotiations; after all, the city has already agreed to a raise. The Chicago Teachers Union is asking that the district enshrine in its contract a promise to hire more counselors, health workers and librarians, and to free them from tasks outside of their core duties.”
Yes, the Chicago Teachers Union has demanded that the union contract cover students’ learning conditions. But the teachers’ primary goal in Chicago has been to rectify years of neglect for their students’ basic needs. The union’s central focus was not for a newer—and also very important—idea for wraparound Community Schools.
Here are the two issues Goldstein conflates:
- First, in many underfunded public school districts today—especially in urban school districts with extreme concentrations of student poverty and in isolated rural school CONTINUE READING: Enough Basic Staffing and More Community Schools: Two Important but Different Issues | janresseger
With A Brooklyn Accent: Why Hip Hop Began in the Bronx- My Lecture for C-Span
With A Brooklyn Accent: Why Hip Hop Began in the Bronx- My Lecture for C-Span
Why Hip Hop Began in the Bronx- My Lecture for C-Span
Why Hip Hop Began in the Bronx- My Lecture for C-Span
What I am about to describe to you is one of the most improbable and inspiring stories you will ever hear. It is about how young people in a section of New York widely regarded as a site of unspeakable violence and tragedy created an art form that would sweep the world. It is a story filled with ironies, unexplored connections and lessons for today. And I am proud to share it not only with my wonderful Rock and Roll to Hip Hop class but with C-Span’s global audience through its lectures in American history series.
Before going into the substance of my lecture, which explores some features of Bronx history which many people might not be familiar with, I want to explain what definition of Hip Hop that I will be using in this talk.
Some people think of Hip Hop exclusively as “rap music,” an art form taken to it’s highest form by people like Tupac Shakur, Missy Elliot, JZ, Nas, Kendrick Lamar, Wu Tang Clan and other masters of that verbal and musical art, but I am thinking of it as a multilayered arts movement of which rapping is only one component. What evolved in the Bronx in the early and mid 70’s, and which spread to disfranchised communities around the world in the 80’s, consisted of four connected components: DJ’ing and beat making, the original art form which set the Hip Hop Revolution in motion; B-Boying or Break Dancing, a form of acrobatic group dancing that bore more than a few commonalities with martial arts; Graffiti art, a form of illegal public art and self-expression which found its way into flyers announcing hip hop events as well as on buildings and transportation systems, and finally, Mc’ing or rapping, rhyming over beats in a style that could vary from the boastful, to the reflective to the assertively political.
ALL of these art forms, which emerged in CONTINUE READING: With A Brooklyn Accent: Why Hip Hop Began in the Bronx- My Lecture for C-Span
Design Tech High School (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
Design Tech High School (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
Design Tech High School (Part 1)
Design Tech High School (Part 1)
It is 8:30 AM. I am standing with 30 faculty and staff meeting in a circle in a large room called the Design Realization Garage (more about this space below). This is a daily faculty meeting. Everyone is standing and as Melissa Mizel, Director of the school, holding an open laptop in one hand, makes announcements, describes activities that will be occur during the day, and then asks assembled group if individuals have anything to add. A few teachers speak up: one needs a projector in 205, another announces a special activity in a class, and the counselor tells the group which colleges will be on campus today. Just a few minutes shy of 8:45, Melissa asks for any more announcements. There are none and she says “we are adjourned.” every person in the circle turns to the next person and gives a high five. The stand-up faculty meeting is over.
Design Tech High School, hereafter d.tech, is a charter high school in the San Mateo Union High School District. Students are admitted by lottery. Authorized as a charter in 2014, the school has moved quarters three times, the last occurring in 2018 when they moved into a new building located on the campus of Oracle, a for-profit technology company. The high school cost $43 million to build and Oracle agreed to lease the building to the charter school for one dollar a year. While d.tech has its own school board and is independently operated, this is the first public high school located on a corporate site.*
Students participated in the design of the building. You enter the school into a well-lit, expansive atrium that is the centerpiece and assembly hall for student CONTINUE READING: Design Tech High School (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
Sunday, October 27, 2019
LOIS WEINER: It’s Chicago Educators Versus the Ruling Class
It’s Chicago Educators Versus the Ruling Class
It’s Chicago Educators Versus the Ruling Class
Striking educators in Chicago are showing the country how union power can confront and turn back the abhorrent conditions of the neoliberal era.
It’s Chicago Educators Versus the Ruling Class
Striking educators in Chicago are showing the country how union power can confront and turn back the abhorrent conditions of the neoliberal era.
Though the media is casting the strike of education workers in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) as (just) another episode in the wave of teachers’ strikes, and the press in Chicago is doing its best to defeat the union, this contract campaign has already set a new bar for resistance to policies on education and the economy in place for decades.Two unions whose members are mostly women, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the union representing CPS support workers, SEIU Local 73, are directly challenging not only the billionaires who control the GOP and want policies that benefit their profits and strengthen their hold on government, but also the Democratic Party’s shell game of claiming to be friends of labor and education while continuing the disastrous bipartisan policies that have fostered inequality and degraded public education, especially in low-income communities of color.
Since the publication of “A Nation at Risk” in 1983, which launched what in hindsight we know was the US iteration of the global neoliberal project in education, schools and teaching throughout the country have been transformed — supported by liberals, labor, and the education establishment, which bought the rationale that schools and teachers could save the economy by adopting “excellence” reforms and later, privatization. Though groups of activist teachers and parents have been struggling to make schools something more than joyless sorting machines based on standardized tests, austerity has intensified the pain and unfairness of a narrowed curriculum tied to testing. Cutbacks in social services in the schools and in communities have made conditions in classrooms even worse.
Damage is most intense in the low-income Hispanic and African American communities that most depend on schools to be a refuge and help some students climb out of poverty. Chicago is no exception. Its schools are dirty, cleaned less often and less well, often by janitors working for private companies with CONTINUE READING: It’s Chicago Educators Versus the Ruling Class
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