Yesterday, I posted Statistic Of The Day: Upcoming Budget Cuts Will Devastate Schools. For even more depressing news, check out the Learning Policy Institute’s new report, The Impact of the COVID-19 Recession on Teaching Positions.
ElisaRiva / Pixabay In talking with colleagues and seeing comments on social media from educators and parents alike, I’ve begun to wonder if we might be going about this whole “distance learning” thing all wrong. I’m going to preface what I want to say in this blog post with reprinting what something I’ve written previously : Seventy percent of the school year had already been completed by the ti
qimono / Pixabay I’ve shared a few of my ideas of what I’m doing during my daily Newcomer English Language Learners class (see VIDEO: HERE’S AN EXAMPLE OF MY DAILY ONLINE LESSON FOR ELL NEWCOMERS ). I know there are a lot of other great ideas out there. There have been four Google slides presentations of different ideas that I’ve seen shared regularly on social media that are filled with some coo
It’s unfortunately no surprise, but schools are going to get creamed by upcoming budget cuts. The San Francisco Chronicle outlined what it might look like in its article, From bad to worse: California schools face devastating budget cuts due to the coronavirus crisis (which you might not be able to access because of a paywall). And, it’s not going to help that, as of now, additional federal aid t
Google has just announced that it’s making Google Meet, its video conferencing platform, free for everybody (see Google Meet premium video conferencing—free for everyone ). Of course, it had made it free for teachers to use previously (though our district, in a ridiculous decision, still has not made it available for students to use). I’m adding this info to The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Co
‘We Do the Best We Can’ – Lessons From Six Weeks of Remote Teaching is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Four educators share lessons from six weeks of remote teaching, including the importance of communication and community and what they’ve changed in that time. Here are some excerpts:
KlausHausmann / Pixabay TED-Ed’s latest lesson and video is on Sojourner Truth. I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Teach About African-American History .
Make Learning Stick: Activating Background Knowledge When Teaching Remotely is the topic of my latest ten-minute BAM! Radio show. I’m joined in the conversation by Cheryl Abla, Elizabeth Villanueva, Adam Fachler and Jeffrey Wilhelm, who have also all contributed written commentaries to my Ed Week Teacher column. I’m adding this show to All My BAM Radio Shows – Linked With Descriptions .
The Sacramento Bee reports our governor is suggesting that school begin a lot earlier than usual: California schools might reopen as early as July, Gov. Newsom says. Our district ordinarily begins in late August, so this could be a full four weeks earlier than when we are scheduled to begin. I have to say I have very mixed feelings about this. I feel like I’ve been working incredibly hard since s
Wokandapix / Pixabay I have a number of regular weekly features (see HERE IS A LIST (WITH LINKS) OF ALL MY REGULAR WEEKLY FEATURES ). This is a relatively new addition to that list. Some of these resources will be added to The Best Advice On Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have To Because Of The Coronavirus) – Please Make More Suggestions ! and the best will go to The “Best Of The Best” Resources To
janeb13 / Pixabay “Becoming” is a Netflix film coming on May 6th: Becoming is an intimate look into the life of former First Lady Michelle Obama during a moment of profound change, not only for her personally but for the country she and her husband served over eight impactful years in the White House. The film offers a rare and up-close look at her life, taking viewers behind the scenes as she em
Four Ways to Support African American Students Through the COVID-19 Emergency is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Educator Adeyemi Stembridge, Ph.D., shares strategies to bolster African American students during our present emergency, such as inviting them to share their stories and their art. Here’s an excerpt:
The Webby Awards just announced their nominees for this year. It always takes awhile to look through them to distinguish the wheat from chaff, and it’s not helped by its cumbersome navigation process, but here are some online
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed education forever. This is how
The COVID-19 has resulted in schools shut all across the world. Globally, over 1.2 billion children are out of the classroom.
As a result, education has changed dramatically, with the distinctive rise of e-learning, whereby teaching is undertaken remotely and on digital platforms.
Research suggests that online learning has been shown to increase retention of information, and take less time, meaning the changes coronavirus have caused might be here to stay.
With this sudden shift away from the classroom in many parts of the globe, some are wondering whether the adoption of online learning will continue to persist post-pandemic, and how such a shift would impact the worldwide education market.
AFT PRESIDENT WEINGARTEN DENOUNCES DEVOS’ MISUSE OF COVID-19 FUNDS Weingarten: “DeVos is using what little discretionary money was provided for education in the CARES Act to move full-steam ahead with turning our public schools into online cash cows for her corporate friends."
U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is apparently misusing COVID-19 funding to promote her privatization agenda.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten's statement on the U.S. Department of Education’s announcement that it will create a competition for states to get discretionary Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act money for education:
“Education Secretary Betsy DeVos never misses an opportunity to turn educating our nation’s students into a competition instead of equitably and generously investing in all of our kids’ futures. There are any number of things the Department of Education could try to do: for example, offer guidance on how to help special needs kids, or partner with schools to navigate screening, distancing, hygiene and instruction. But instead of providing any guidance to get kids back to school, the department offers its own version of Race to the Top—this time, a race to privatize.
“DeVos is using what little discretionary money was provided for education in the CARES Act to move full-steam ahead with turning our public schools into online cash cows for her corporate friends and offering families vouchers that divert resources away from the schools that need those resources. Our country’s educators miss their students; they want support and guidance on how to engage and connect with their kids while they remain physically distant and plan for how they can return safely to the physical classroom.”
Follow AFT President Randi Weingarten: http://twitter.com/rweingarten The American Federation of Teachers is a union of 1.7 million professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do.
Christine Langhoff is a retired teachers in Massachusetts who is an activist on behalf of public schools. She warns here about the unfolding plot to impose a state takeover of Boston public schools. Having been decisively rebuffed at the polls by the state’s voters in 2016, the Walton allies on the state board have found another way to disrupt and control the Boston public schools and install Broadies and other willing allies to advance their privatization agenda.
Christine writes:
Massachusetts’ state board of education has been moving inexorably toward a takeover of the Boston’s schools. On March 13, the same day as schools shut down, DESE announced a MOU with Boston’s superintendent. In response, Alain Jehlen, Board Member of Citizens for Public Schools, is taking a deep dive into how and why the state rates city schools so poorly on the Schoolyard News website.
Here’s Part 1:
“Boston has 34 schools (out of about 125) that rank in the bottom 10 percent in the state. BPS as a whole is 14th from the bottom out of 289 districts. Why is it rated so low?
The Importance of Public Schooling and What Has To Change When Schools Reopen
You may remember the outrageous paean to school choice delivered by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council back in the summer of 2017: “Choice in education is good politics because it’s good policy. It’s good policy because it comes from good parents who want better for their children. Families are on the front lines of this fight; let’s stand with them.” “Just the other week, the American Federation of Teachers tweeted at me…’Betsy DeVos says (the) public should invest in individual students. NO. We should invest in a system of great public schools for all kids.’ I couldn’t believe it when I read it, but you have to admire their candor. They have made clear that they care more about a system—one that was created in the 1800s—than about individual students.” “This isn’t about school systems… Schools are at the service of students. Not the other way around.”
The widespread school closures we are experiencing in the midst of the pandemic are exposing the flaws in DeVos’s thinking. Our system of education is ensuring that—despite the problem of students’ wildly unequal access to technology—teachers and school administrators are at least able to stay connected with millions of students. The executive director of the Network for Public Education, Carol Burris reports on surveys the organization conducted with educators and parents to learn how they are experiencing remote learning during the school closures. She reports the response of, “Jeff Palladino… the principal of Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, located (in the Bronx) in the most impoverished congressional district in the United States. Sixty percent of Fannie Lou Hamer students are Latino, and 39 percent are black. Their parents are either workers declared essential or suffering from the worry of being laid off… ‘The first thing we do is check in with our at-risk kids—kids with emotional issues, health issues, kids who were at-risk before Covid-19… We call and make sure they are okay.’ His school (in the Bronx) has lost four parents to the disease to date… School counselors follow up with students who are struggling, speaking with parents as well as kids.”
Los Angeles: UTLA Responds to Governor Newsom’s Suggestion to Open Schools in Mid-Summer
Governor Gavin Newsom laid out his thoughts about a phased reopening of the state, including the possibility of opening schools as early as late a July or early August.
An early start to the school year in LA would have to be bargained between UTLA and the LA Unified School District, and there has been no discussion about doing so.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced today more than $300 million in discretionary grant funds will be available for states to use to create adaptable, innovative learning opportunities for K-12 and postsecondary learners in response to the COVID-19 national emergency. The grants will be funded through the Education Stabilization Fund (ESF), authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law by President Donald J. Trump.
“If our ability to educate is limited to what takes place in any given physical building, we are never going to meet the unique needs of every student,” said Secretary DeVos. “The current disruption to the normal model is reaffirming something I have said for years: we must rethink education to better match the realities of the 21st century. This is the time for local education leaders to unleash their creativity and ingenuity, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do to provide education freedom and economic opportunity for America’s students.”
The CARES Act provides $307.5 million for these discretionary grants, which the Department will divide between two competitions: $180 million for the Rethink K-12 Education Models Grant and $127.5 million for the Reimagining Workforce Preparation Grant.
Note the following statement regarding the purpose of the K12 portion of DeVos’ competition:
SOME REMAINDERS FROM THE “MOVING FROM EQUALITY TO EQUITY AND JUSTICE” WORKSHOP FOR NCTM
If you’d like to watch the video, you gotta go to them. Thanks to the 800+ of you who attended and the other 3000+ of you who’ve watched it afterward. I’m so deeply appreciative. Some thoughts about this work.
Last year, I set to elevate a conversation about belonging within the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. For almost a decade, I felt like NCTM didn’t belong to me, but to other people who saw themselves as mathematicians in classrooms. I also recognize that education has sought to center the equity conversation more intentionally lately, even if the conversation only swims on the shallow end of the pool. At some point, I also sought to change the math conversation from “How can we make sure kids learn math” to “How can we include more ways of knowing math?” That explicitly asks us to push past exclusive narratives of what a good math student looks like, but also includes narratives of what a good math teacher looks like.
Sometimes, people adhere to the stereotypes because it comforts their own identity and allows them to enforce the gates.
Is it? Is it a silver lining that some ed tech folks are going to grab some market share over this? Khan Academy has seen a steady uptick in the use of their product, which, for those of you who somehow missed it, is a huge library of instructional videos (some of them especially aimed at test prep for SATs).
I confess to being highly skeptical about video instruction. If I stand in a classroom and deliver direct instruction, take no questions, and if prompted will only re-deliver the exact same instruction over and over again, then I am a lousy teacher. But somehow if I do all that on a video on line, I'm now a visionary genius. It's not that I see no place for instructional videos--I've watched plenty of great ones. But that's not teaching. It's particularly not teachig with younger vstudents.
“Even when we didn’t have school closures, their value was if I’m a teacher in a class with 30 students, how do I cater to their individual needs? ... So I’m hoping that as we come out of this the silver lining will be we will understand how to leverage both in the best possible ways,” Khan continued. “How to blend them, if you will.” I think they can be blended in the same way that a sprig of decorative parsley is blended with a lobster dinner. It can be a nice extra touch, but A) everything will be just fine without it and B) if your lobster dinner is equal parts lobster and parsley, send it back.
Also, "Go watch this video" is not very awesome individualized instruction.
KIPP Sinks To New Low. Uses COVID-19 As An Opportunity To Abandon Two Memphis Schools.
The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter network is renowned as the ‘gold star’ of charter schools in the country. With over 200 schools throughout the country and over 100,000 students, KIPP is the kind of network that reformers are referring to when they talk about ‘high quality charters.’
In researching KIPP over the years, I have found a huge inconsistency in the performance of their schools. In some states with A to F grading schemes, there are KIPPs with As and KIPPs with Fs. And even if you’re not a big believer in the A to F school rating system, reformers love them so it must be considered at least ‘ironic’ when schools that operate with the same philosophy and training and materials get such different results in the same state.
The Tennessee Achievement School District, or ASD, is the Edsel of school reform. Created with a Race To The Top Grant and developed by TFA alum Kevin Huffman, who was state education commissioner at the time, and TFA alum Chris Barbic, the first ASD superintendent, the ASD completely failed in it’s mission to ‘catapult’ schools from the bottom 5% into the top 25% in five years. It is now eight years into the experiment and hardly any of the 30 ASD schools even made it out of the bottom 5%. Not to worry, both Huffman and Barbic resigned and are doing very well with their new project called The City Fund.
Tell Congress: Stop DeVos from using emergency funding to advance her privatization agenda
It’s outrageous.
Betsy DeVos took $180 million in federal coronavirus relief funds and is using the money to create a competition for states to get millions for voucher-like grants and for private virtual, online education.
Send your letter and tell Congress to direct DeVos to stop using CARES Act funding to advance her privatization agenda.
According to Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, “Secretary DeVos must back down from these inappropriate actions during this time of national emergency and refrain from imposing new restrictions and conditions on the aid provided to States.”
We need money for public schools, not for privatization experiments. Send your email today.
Thank You to All for Participating in Our Survey on Emergency Remote Learning
Over 7,000 teachers and 5,000 parents responded. You can find the results of our survey here and my summary here in Valerie Strauss Answer Sheet in the Washington Post. Please read that report and share the link below with family and friends.
Student Privacy and the Dangers of Online Learning
Kids are now spending more time online than ever. As parents work from home, that time is often unsupervised. Here are some important tips from a nonprofit called Thorn that is dedicated to keeping children safe from online abuse.
Another wonderful resource is the website is the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy dedicated to making sure that personal data is not exploited for commercial use.
We Need Your Help
Since our national health crisis began, we have not engaged in fundraising. Instead, we have directed all of our supporters to other causes directly related to the need caused by COVID-19.
Because of that decision, our income has dropped. We are now asking for your help so that we can continue to do the surveys, reports, and action alerts that keep you informed. Please share whatever you can and donate to NPE.
VIDEO: The Schools Seattle Deserves Press Conference–Vote for Jon Greenberg, Marquita Prinzing, and the full slate of social justice educators!
“Even in the best of times the Seattle Public Schools has needed the union to…hold it accountable. And during a global pandemic, when more and more people are starting to understand the pivotal role that schools play in our society well beyond academics, the common American narratives like, “The rich will save us,” and “health care shouldn’t be a right,” all those narratives are getting turned on their heads. Nurses and grocery story workers are literately saving our lives and we have a chance to reconfigure and transform what normal looks like so that it embodies justice—especially racial justice—and I’m hoping to be part of that transformation as SEA president.”
—JON GREENBERG, SCHOOLS SEATTLE DESERVES PRESS CONFERENCE, APRIL 21, 2020
On Tuesday, April 21st, the Schools Seattle Deserves (SSD), a slate of candidates running for leadership in the Seattle Education Association, held an online press conference to introduce a powerhouse group of social justice union educators. The union election ends on Thursday, April 30th and then we will find out if a new day for social justice unionism has dawned in Seattle.
Jon Greenberg
Marquita Prinzing
The press conference was held on the first day of the election and signaled a new era in the union; already on that first day, SSD secured victories in at least seven executive board positions—including Vallerie Fisher wining the officer position of treasurer—with Jon Greenberg‘s run for union president and MarquitaPrinzing‘s run for Director of the Center for Racial Equity still contested. But even more important than the number of seats secured was the powerful coalition of candidates that was forged and the powerful message of uprooting oppression that they advanced. Speakers addressed many issues including the history of social justice unionism; joining with other social justice unions around the country; opposition high stakes standardized testing; building partnerships with parents and community; fighting against racism, sexism, and homophobia; the struggle for Ethnic Studies; and so much more.
Nikkita Oliver
Notably, the press conference featured leading parent, student, and community allies that will be key partners in transforming education in Seattle, such as parent activist and Washington State NAACP Education Chair, Rita Green, Student leader Cece Chan, and community organizer, attorney, poet, and former Seattle mayoral candidate Nikkita Oliver.
As Nikkita Oliver commented on the importance of unions in the struggle for justice and about her confidence in the leadership of Jon Greenberg saying,
Another View: AV #208 - Being Together in the Classroom - Part 1 (Laughing)
Distance learning: Not remotely or virtually the same as the classroom
I stopped teaching after five years – in 1981—thinking there might be something else I could do. I asked a veteran teacher at that time—who seemed happy in his job—why he kept at it. He answered: “In what other job can you have two good laughs a day?”
Wise words. And perhaps one reason I ended up teaching or coaching another 20 years.
This is why those* who sound (too) pleased, in our Covid-19 isolation, that we have (finally) turned to remote teaching—as if only now have we discovered what they believe to be “the future of education”—don’t understand why teachers teach. Why we love being with our students, in the classroom. And why teaching can often be—lest we forget—so much fun. (*Addendum first quotes from such voices. After that, quotes from teachers and students less sure about this Brave New Online World.)
I fear we might take the wrong lessons from this crisis. I hope we see the irony in the argument that distance learning is how we can truly personalize education. Isn’t being personal, even silly, half the fun of being together in the classroom (remember the old days, back in early March)? Isn’t this how we connect?
