Seattle Schools and The Next Budget
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I have not one, not two, but three budget analyses about SPS' budget.
Finance is not my forte so I am very grateful for this in the weeds,
in-depth work....
THE HUMANITIES
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Get tickets for THE HUMANITIES at Victory Gardens Theater: The Humanities
is a provocative play by Zayd Ayers Dohrn in which faculty and students at
an eli...
The Light She Left Behind
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“Those we love don’t go away, they sit beside us every day.” — Liane
Moriarty, Big Little Lies Forgive us if we are a little sad here in
Tennessee. We lost...
Band Kids. They’re the Best.
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I can’t add anything to the outpouring of love and respect for Dolly
Parton. She was phenomenal, in dozens of ways. As a musician, I appreciate
her melodic...
"The Truth Will Make Me Free"
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*Man is nothing else, but what he makes of himself.* ~Jean-Paul Sartre
Among the founding principles of our American democracy is the ideal that
we eac...
When ‘Parental Rights’ Means Letting a Child Die
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In a new investigative report, ProPublica has identified at least 15 babies
and children in Idaho who died between 2015 and 2025 from conditions
doctors sa...
The Great and Irreplaceable Dolly Parton
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If the state of the world has you down, here’s a reprieve, two interviews
with the great Dolly Parton. The first is my extended interview with her,
13 yea...
Who Wants a Raise?
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Everyone. And if you are a UFTer (and not a retiree), you are getting one.
But get this. A new paraprofessional is getting a raise of $803/year. Man,
do th...
Nashville Public Schools Hall of Fame
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The Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF) will hold an event on
Thursday, August 27th to honor this year’s inductees into the Public
Schools Hall of...
Research Studies Of The Week
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I often write about research studies from various fields and how they can
be applied to the classroom. I write individual posts about ones that I
think a...
AI Bogus EdTech Scheme
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By Thomas Ultican 8/24/2026 Big technology oligarchs are pushing their
dangerous not-ready-for-prime-time artificial intelligence (AI) products
into Americ...
What Is the Far Left ?
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What is the Far Left ?
The growing visibility of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and
victories by some DSA-backed candidates has triggered an upsu...
SQ 844: How is this better?
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In plain terms, the new language gives the Legislature the authority to
establish both the amount and methodology for distributing ad valorem
reimbursement...
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It's time to Revise Louisiana's
School Curriculum
Present standards do not allow for individual differences and life goals
For the last 15 years Louisiana'...
Time to change our Nation’s Diaper
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It’s time to change our nation’s diaper. Our national identity now reeks
due to our inability to clean out the mess caused by the Orange Turd.
Corruption i...
GLP-1 Meds for Kids? Some Info.
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Like many consumers of television and social media, I have been bombarded
with ads for GLP-1s (short for glucagon-like peptide-1). The ads are
everywhere. ...
By One Dishonest Measure
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A loaded question that education reformers like to ponder is: Exactly how
many students in the boroughs of New York City are trapped in failing
schools? In...
1776
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__________
“The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and
conduct of this army…. We have, therefore, resolved to conquer...
May’s Parent Engagement Resources
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San Diego Unified Created a System to ‘Empower’ Parents. It Unraveled is
from The Voice of San Diego. Why Those Disengaged Parents in Your School
Deserve a...
Reflections on America, the world, and life
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I acknowledge that I rarely post here anymore. Folks should remember that I
am approaching my 80th birthday in less than 9 weeks, I am still teaching
ful...
Shutting Down The Site
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Ten years ago, I ran for a seat on the LAUSD School Board of Education with
the goal to *Change the LAUSD*.
I am proud of the campaign we ran. We achieve...
Blogoversary #19 — Time to Move on
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Times have changed. I had a nice long run here, but let’s face it, it ended
a while ago. So I’ve moved. I’m not writing much any more, but when I do it
wil...
Il Papa è Morto
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Francis brought a distinct pastoral outlook to his papacy. A simple man, he
lived in a small apartment in the guesthouse. He sought to make the church
acce...
Mike Shulman the ARISE UFT Judenrat
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I was surprised to learn that Mike Shulman has aligned himself with ARISE.
I previously supported him, advocating that the Castle Doctrine could have
bee...
AIN’T IT AWFUL
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As the terrible feelings of dread and angst spread across the world the
great majority of the American people feel powerless before the onslaught
of those ...
Vote NO on the UFT Contract. Here is Why:
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The best reason to vote no on this contract is this: UFT Unity* lied* to us
in 2018. They misrepresented that contract. It was predicated on deals we
wer...
Testimony to the CPS Truancy Task Force
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I prepared testimony for one of two public hearings held by the Chicago
Public Schools Truancy Task Force, a body mandated by state legislation.
The meetin...
There Is A Teacher Shortage.Not.
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THERE IS A TEACHER SHORTAGE. And just to be sure you understand, it’s not
that teachers don’t want to teach. It’s not that there aren’t enough
teachers cer...
Book Banning Turns to Dick and Jane
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Breaking News: Dateline February 4, 2022 - Parents in Dimwitty, Alabama
have asked the Dimwitty Board of Education to ban the children's primer *Fun
with...
Have You Heard Has a New Website
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TweetHave You Heard has a new website. Visit us at
www.haveyouheardpodcast.com to find our latest episodes and our entire
archive. And be sure to check out...
Follow me at Substack
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I've moved. Follow me at Substack
I'm now posting regularly at Substack. You can subscribe for free to my new
Edu/Pol blog at michaelklonsky.substack.com
...
I’ve moved.
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I’m on Substack now. You can continue to receive periodic posts for free.
Or you can read every post and comment for $5 a month, $60 a year.
fredklonsky.su...
Aspiring Teachers Get New Help Paying For College
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[image: colorful classroom pattern]
*; Credit: shuoshu/Getty Images*
Cory Turner | NPR
New rules kick in today that will help aspiring teachers pay for c...
Tips Akses Situs Judi Qq Tanpa Perlu Takut Nawala
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Kegiatan berjudi slot melalui situs judi qq online, sekarang sudah
dilakukan oleh banyak penjudi Indonesia. Tentu, Kamu yang sedang membaca
artikel ini a...
The Threat of Integration
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I have lived in the same house in the Miracle Mile section of Los Angeles
for over 30 years, where up until now I have had little or no interaction
with th...
We fight for a democracy worthy of us all!
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The nation stands at a crossroads, said NEA President Lily Eskelsen GarcÃa
in her final keynote address to the 2020 NEA Representative Assembly and
it’s up...
The Passing Of Chaz 1951-2020 Age 69
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I am the son of Chaz and like to inform you that he passed away this
afternoon from the COVID virus. My father passed in peace beside his loved
ones. We ar...
The Fight For Our Children
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*The number of suicides among people ages 10 to 24 nationally increased by
56 percent between 2007 and 2017, according to a new federal report showing
the ...
Read to Self: Just a Kid and a Book.
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Date: Monday, January 5, 2020 Place: My classroom Student: Mrs.Mims, could
we start doing Read to Self again because I got this great book for
Christmas an...
Reminiscences
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I just finished dumping the rest of my lesson plans. I guess I held on to
the calculus ones for so long because I spent so much time working on them
an...
Just Asking for some Teachers I know.
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Recently Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers stated, We must … recognize that
part of supporting our kids in the classroom means supporting the educators
who t...
Cara Menang Bermain Judi Bola Online
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Bermain judi bola online tentu saja memiliki kesenangannya tersendiri baik
itu mendapatkan keuntungan maupun ketika menantikan hasil skor pada sebuah
perta...
A Critique of Standards-Based Grading
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It first happened to me about ten years ago. I was beginning my third year
of teaching in a new school in Washington, DC. Social studies teachers were
si...
Reduced time for testing? Not so fast.
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NYSED and Commish Elia continue to say that the NYS Assessments are of
reasonable length, I completely disagree.
Here is what NYSED states are average expe...
The World According to Michelle Rhee
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The men behind the curtain fashioning the brave new world of corporate run
education in America! Michelle Rhee is the founder of StudentsFirst, The
New T...
Whose Opinions Matter in Education World?
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It's hard to identify education heroes and sheroes. And perhaps even harder
to pinpoint just whose work is slanted, paid-for and dishonest.
New Local Businesses in Sacramento
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Starting a new local business in Sacramento is a monumental task, but can
be accomplished with footwork, perseverance and knowledge. One must learn
the loc...
Lesson Plan: Rhyme and Rhythm in Poetry
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I’ve started a recent unit on poetry with my class. I’m not a poet, and I’m
not a poetry fan (I don’t hate it, but I’m a prose gal), so this makes it
harde...
The Apotheosis of Betsy DeVos
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Betsy Devos has drawn few headlines in recent months, and that is a good
thing for the Secretary of Education. Her tenure began with Vice President
Mike P...
Education Is a Civic Question
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In their final post to end Bridging Differences' decade-long run, Deborah
Meier and Harry Boyte urge readers to put the energy, talents, wisdom, and
hard w...
Site News: New Home for Education News & Commentary
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Quick! Get over there! The daily education news roundup and education
commentaries that you're probably looking for are now being published over
at The Gra...
Should We Be Grateful?
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In an odd turn of events, and with little explanation, Michigan Governor
Rick Snyder has decided to return the state’s School Reform Office back to
the Dep...
An Open Letter to NC Lawmakers
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An Open Letter to NC State Lawmakers and NC State Superintendent Mark
Johnson: I am a NC native, voter, and public school teacher. I am
addressing you all ...
The Secret to Fixing Schools (My Next Bestseller)
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The Secret to Fixing Schools (My next bestseller) Prologue I just finished
watching a fascinating documentary on Netflix entitled, “The Secret”. The
film p...
Farewell, Sleep
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Today is the official last day of my spring break. I've done a scientific
survey: My natural bedtime is 2 AM, and my natural wake up time is 9:41
AM. Tom...
REPORT: States With the Best and Worst Schools
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States With the Best (and Worst)Schools
By *Evan Comen, Michael B. Sauter, Samuel Stebbins and Thomas C. Frohlich*
January 20, 2017- http://247wallst.com
...
Test Refusal = People Power
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In recent months, social media has been ablaze with talk of regular folk
taking action to resist the Trump agenda. Protests are a daily occurrence,
and ev...
Random Musings and Observations. . . .
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I’ve been gone a while from the blogging scene. Some of my more regular
readers no doubt noticed but did not hassle me about it. Thank you for
that. Sinc...
AB 934: A LEGISLATIVE FIX FOR VERGARA?
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By Michael Stratford | in the Politco Morning Education Report | via email
05/24/2016 10:00 AM EDT :: Two national education groups are backing a
Califor...
MY NEW BLOG
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My new blog will consist of fictitious headlines, meant to be a blend of
humor and satire. I apologize ahead of time if any other satirical site has
simila...
Thank you
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Dear Readers,
Thank you for visiting *The Perimeter Primate*. This blog is being retired
for the time being. Although I no longer post here, I do still s...
I am Retiring
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I have some news: I am retiring from the PBS NewsHour and Learning Matters.
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other
conte...
New Beginnings: Kickstarter and EdWeek Teacher
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Greetings to InterACT readers one and all! If you’ve been following posts
here recently you might recall that I’m moving my blogging activity to
other loca...
Adelaide L. Sanford Charter School
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*“With Adelaide L. Sanford Charter School closing, Newark families must
move on.”* The Star-Ledger (NJ), 6/25/2013
NEWARK — Bobby and Troy Shanks saw the...
Sacramento school reopening triggers unexpected parent concerns
When local leaders announced plans in June to reopen midtown Sacramento’s Washington Elementary School with an emphasis on rigorous subjects such as science and engineering, parents at nearby David Lubin Elementary School were disconcerted.
After spending two years creating their own science-based curriculum, Lubin parents worried that local politicians might undercut their efforts by trying to install a similar science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) program at a campus less than 2 miles away.
“We’re already on the path toward STEAM,” said Jennifer Aten, whose sons are entering the third and fifth grades at Lubin. The East Sacramento school, she said, is “near the finish line” and could become a model for future science-based campuses in the Sacramento City Unified School District.
The tension reflects just how popular science-focused curriculum has become in recent years as advocates suggest it better prepares students to compete for high-tech jobs.
The Lubin parents’ worries began in June when Trustee Jay Hansen and City Councilman Steve Hansen announced plans to reopen Washington in fall 2016 as a neighborhood school and a destination campus for commuters to downtown who want their children to be STEAM savvy.
At Lubin, parents said they were dismayed by Sacramento leaders throwing their support behind Washington. They said they want district support for their efforts, too.
With guidance from Principal Richard Dixon, parents at Lubin researched a strategy for transforming their campus. This summer, nine teachers attended a California State University, Sacramento, symposium to learn the state’s new science standards. Aten said the Lubin program has integrated STEAM elements into every classroom.
Dixon said the school capitalized on its reputation for award-winning robotics. A community survey and parents’ interest in moving forward, he said, “was really the genesis of this STEAM conversation.”
Common Core and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Way to do Math
It astounds veteran teachers.
It confuses parents trying to help their children.
It is longer and more complicated.
It appears to be out of Abbott and Costello meets The Three Stooges.
None of the school board members or the superintendents could do Math this way.
Neither could principals, assistants or deans.
Math is a universal language; I have seen elementary students new to this country who don’t speak or read English do their Math problems.
Why in the world did some ignorant non educators create Common Core and its non sensible, non credible, unproven, farchadat ways to teach and perform Math?
You can just see foreign students returning home and public school students entering private schools (they don’t use Common Core) trying to do Math the Common Core way.
It has to been the same people that brought you test after test, charter schools abundant and colocations, terrible and costly text books, and removed art, music, and everything not tested from the curriculum, VAM, teacher jails, and so much more.
"Sit Still and Face Forward": How the Myth of Teacher Control Undermines Classroom Management
By Eliot Graham.
My second classroom teaching job was in a charter school serving low-income Black middle-schoolers in an urban neighborhood. This school, like many “no-excuses” schools, put a heavy emphasis on discipline and classroom management. I once saw a student sent out of the room for how she looked at a teacher. Another teacher, a former charter school “teacher of the year,” taught by passing out large, photocopied packets, but was held up as a model for others because her classroom was quiet and orderly.
I had read Doug Lemov’s (2010), Teach Like a Champion, and I bought into the idea that an ideal classroom would involve absolute silence and order. However, my students did not want to be silent, or sometime even orderly. Attempting to meet the expectation that classes enter the room and sit down in total silence, I had them “practice” again and again, sending them back into the hall and having them re-enter the room. I took “points” away from the more obvious talkers, I called parents, and I sent kids to the office. As I continually failed to meet the expectations of the school, the principal started to call me to her office for talks about my failure. Each day, I struggled with the students. Each evening, I dreaded the sound of my classroom phone ringing, summoning me to the office for another dressing-down.
My experience was extreme, but it illustrates one of the fundamental problems in how we think about classroom management. Because teachers are responsible for the behavior in their classrooms, we fall into the trap of believing that they (we) can control the behavior in their (our) classrooms. The reality is that no human being can control the behavior of any other human being. We can attempt to influence it, certainly. Offers of rewards or threat of punishment might influence people’s choices, as do respect, trust, and good relationships. But even young children are still able to make choices about their behavior. Especially as they enter adolescence, young people “have something of their own to say about the formation of their intellectual and social attributes; they have the power to act in what they believe are their own interests, and they do,” (Gillen, 2014, p. 56). If the teacher wants a student to sit down, and s/he insists upon standing, nothing short of physical force can actually make the student sit down.
While this is true in all classrooms, it may be an especially significant issue in schools that, like the one I taught in, primarily serve low-income youth of color. These young people are significantly less likely to trust and acquiesce to the purposes of the teacher simply because s/he is a teacher (Delpit, 1995; Weiner, 2006). Simultaneously, urban schools, teachers and students are increasingly subject to technologies of control (Advancement Project, 2010), and the “successful” urban teacher is often constructed first and foremost as one whose classroom is “under control.”
I am a big believer in the concept of neighborhood schools. I think schools are best as an extension of their communities. I've written pretty about why I see charterizing initiatives such as those in New Orleans as both bad educational practice and an assault on fundamental American values.
At the same time, it's important that I acknowledge the limits of the approach that I value so much, and nothing has highlighted those failings any better than this gut-wrenching story of how Pinellas County in Florida turned five thriving schools into "failure factories." I could hem and haw and hedge, but here's the brutal truth of how they did it.
They turned them into neighborhood schools.
They ended desegregation and starved the five schools of, not only the additional resources they needed to succeed, but also in some cases didn't even provide the basic level of support provided to other schools in the county.
This story, written and reported by Cara Fitzpatrick, Lisa Gartner and Michael LaForgia, deserves your time and attention. I'm just going to hit some critical points and draw some conclusions of my own. But you should read this piece. It tells the story of people who, once again, don't want to educate Other People's Children, and how neighborhood schools are not enough.
The county has a history. St. Petersburg zoned itself for segregation in the 1930's and put the interstate smack through the black part of town in 1970. Black parents went to court to force integration, and the federal government stepped in to monitor the district. That monitoring stopped in 2007, and Pinellas County immediately started working on resegregating their schools. Though the efforts were working — black students were posting steady gains on standardized tests — many parents bridled at the tools of integration. They complained about the inconvenience and the CURMUDGUCATION: Neighborhood Failure Factories:
Education, Inc. A documentary about how money and politics are changing our schools.
ANNOUNCING Education Inc. National Grass Roots Screening!
Friday, August 14th, 2015
American public education is in controversy. As public schools across the country struggle for funding, complicated by the impact of poverty and politics, some question the future and effectiveness of public schools in the U.S.
For free-market reformers, private investors and large education corporations, this controversy spells opportunity in turning public schools over to private interests. Education, Inc. examines the free-market and for-profit interests that have been quietly and systematically privatizing America’s public education system under the banner of “school choice.” Education, Inc. is told through the eyes of parent and filmmaker Brian Malone, as he travels cross-country in search of the answers and sources behind the privatizing of American public education, and what it means for his kids. With striking footage from school protests, raucous school board meetings and interviews with some of the most well known educators in the country, Malone zooms out to paint a clear picture of profit and politics that’s sweeping across the nation, right under our noses.
Groups file complaint alleging civil rights violations in physical education
In the latest salvo in a longstanding effort to enforce a California education law that requires physical education classes for all students, six health advocacy organizations filed a federal complaint Thursday charging that California public schools discriminate against Latino and African-American students by disproportionately denying them access to the classes, in violation of federal civil rights law.
The organizations asked for federal intervention to ensure that the California Department of Education and school districts comply with “the legal obligation to provide students with equal access to resources for physical education and fitness without regard to race, color, or national origin,” according to the complaint.
“Black and Hispanic students are systematically denied quality physical education,” according to the complaint sent to Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education. The complaint was filed by the The City Project, the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, the California Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, the Prevention Institute, the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California and the Anahuak Youth Sports Association.
“Black and Hispanic students are systematically denied quality physical education,” according to a federal complaint charging civil rights violations in California physical education.
Robert Garcia, founding director of The City Project, a Los Angeles civil rights advocacy group, said the complaint was filed as a federal civil rights violation on the basis of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and an October 2014 so-called “Dear Colleague” guidance letter from Llahmon to educators across the country. That letter reminded educators of their obligation to end “unlawful discrimination” caused by inequities in educational resources.
“Lack of funds does not preclude the duty to act” to fulfill civil rights obligations, Llahmon wrote in the letter, which was cited in the complaint. The complaint expanded on the point by stating, “While sound educational and budgetary judgments by state and local education officials may lead school districts to prioritize certain resources, such decisions cannot reflect unlawful race discrimination in purpose or effect.”
A California Department of Education spokeswoman said Friday that the department had not seen the complaint and was unable to provide comment.
Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, said in a statement that educators have turned “a blind eye” to the health consequences for children who are not provided consistent, quality physical education instruction.
“Too often these ethnic and racial disparities have a devastating impact on the long-term health and welfare of our children,” Goldstein said. “Without adequate physical education, children are more likely to be obese, develop type 2 diabetes or have a lifetime of costly chronic disease.”
California Education Code requires public schools to provide a minimum of 200 minutes of physical education every 10 days in elementary schools and 400 minutes in middle and high schools. But several studies have found significant non-compliance, including an audit by the California Department of Education of 155 districts from 2004 to 2009 that reported half were not meeting physical education requirements and a 2012 study of 55 districts from 2004 to 2006 by San Francisco State University researchers that found half of the districts were out of compliance.
In March, 37 school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, settled a lawsuit alleging they failed to provide the minimum number of physical education minutes in elementary schools. As a result, the districts are required to publicly document the amount of physical education instruction that elementary students receive, starting this fall and continuing for two to three years, depending on the district.
According to the complaint filed Thursday, the 2012 study by San Francisco State University researchers found that elementary school students in districts that did not comply with physical education minutes requirements “were more likely to be Hispanic or Black and less likely to be white or Asian.”
The California Department of Education includes an evaluation of physical education in its cycle of compliance monitoring of districts, but according to a 2007 report “Physical Education Matters” by researchers at San Diego State University, “There are no real consequences for failure to comply.”
The complaint asked Llahmon of the U.S. Department of Education to send a “Dear Colleague” guidance letter to California educators reminding them of their obligation to ensure equal access to physical education, and take other steps to ensure that physical education minutes are being monitored and fulfilled. To that end, the organizations recommended the use of a Model Action Plan for physical education and a compliance checklist developed by the Los Angeles County Health Department and several of the health organizations that filed the complaint.
Other health and civil rights advocacy groups praised the complaint. Philip Tegeler, executive director of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, which co-authored an April report titled “Finishing Last: Girls of Color and School Sports Opportunities,” said in a statement,”Disparities in access to sports opportunities and physical fitness programs are another unfortunate aspect of our separate and unequal system of public education – with potential long term health impacts for children of color.”
Five once-average schools remade into the worst in Florida.
FAILURE FACTORIES
In just eight years, Pinellas County School Board members turned five schools in the county’s black neighborhoods into some of the worst in Florida.
First they abandoned integration, leaving the schools overwhelmingly poor and black.
Then they broke promises of more money and resources.
Then — as black children started failing at outrageous rates, as overstressed teachers walked off the job, as middle class families fled en masse — the board stood by and did nothing.
Today thousands of children are paying the price, a Tampa Bay Times investigation has found.
They are trapped at Campbell Park, Fairmount Park, Lakewood, Maximo and Melrose — five neighborhood elementary schools that the board has transformed into failure factories.
Every year, they turn out a staggering number of children who don’t know the basics.
Eight in 10 fail reading, according to state standardized test scores. Nine in 10 fail math.
Ranked by the state Department of Education, Melrose is the worst elementary school in Florida. Fairmount Park is No. 2. Maximo is No. 10. Lakewood is No. 12. Campbell Park is No. 15.
All of the schools operate within six square miles in one of Florida’s most affluent counties.
All of them were much better off a decade ago.
Times reporters spent a year reviewing tens of thousands of pages of district documents, analyzing millions of computer records and interviewing parents of more than 100 current and former students. Then they crisscrossed the state to see how other school districts compared.
Among the findings:
■ Ninety-five percent of black students tested at the schools are failing reading or math, making the black neighborhoods in southern Pinellas County the most concentrated site of academic failure in all of Florida.
■ Teacher turnover is a chronic problem, leaving some children to cycle through a dozen instructors in a single year. In 2014, more than half of the teachers in these schools asked for a transfer out.
At least three walked off the job without notice.
■ All of this is a recent phenomenon. By December 2007, when the board ended integration, black students at the schools had posted gains on standardized tests in three of the four previous years. None of the schools was ranked lower than a C. Today, all the schools have F ratings.
■ After reshaping the schools, the district funded four of them erratically. Some years they got less money per student than other schools, including those in more affluent parts of the county. In 2009, the year after resegregation, at least 50 elementary schools got more money per student than Campbell Park.
■ Other districts with higher passing rates are doing far more to aid black students, including creating special offices to target minority achievement, tracking black students’ progress in real time and offering big bonuses to attract quality teachers to high-minority schools. Pinellas did none of those things.
The problems don’t end in the five south St. Petersburg schools. Overall, black children in Pinellas County are failing at higher rates than black children in virtually any other school district in Florida.
In 2014, they were a third more likely to fail math than black children in Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange and Palm Beach counties. They were 23 percent more likely to fail math than black children in Hillsborough.
Fifty-seven of 67 school districts in Florida recorded better reading scores, putting Pinellas in the same league as the poorest, most rural counties in the state.
In an interview with the Times, Superintendent Mike Grego acknowledged the school district’s role in creating problems at the schools.
“You can’t undo the past. You have to take the district from where it’s at,” Grego said. “I’m going on record saying we’re going to fix this. And we’re going to educate our students as if each one of them was our own kid.”
Pinellas County Schools Superintendent Mike Grego
Hired in 2012, Grego has launched reforms to aid students in the five schools. They include adding extended learning programs, extra summer instruction and bringing in counselors and social workers to connect families with outside services — initiatives that were proposed in the past but never started or were discontinued.
Pinellas County’s black students haven’t been struggling in secret.
School Board members have heard repeatedly from parents and teachers at south St. Petersburg schools who begged for relief. State education officials have stepped in to monitor four of the five schools because of their low test scores.
Yet, when contacted by the Times, board members distorted facts, pleaded ignorance or said they needed more information before they could act.
Linda Lerner, who voted for the plan that resegregated the district in 2007, blamed the schools’ problems on “the cycle of poverty,” not on actions by the School Board.
“This is a nationwide thing, not just us. You hear school districts everywhere talking about this,” said Peggy O’Shea, who also voted for the plan in 2007. “It’s an issue that’s everywhere, unfortunately.”
“We only talk about it in black schools,” she added, “but we resegregated white schools as well.”
“We’ve looked at just about everything we can and put things in place,” said Carol Cook, who also voted for resegregation in 2007. “I think we’re on the right track.”
“Mindblowing,” said Terry Krassner, who joined the board in 2010 and who said virtually the same thing about struggling black students four years ago. “I think we need to figure out what we don’t know.”
Black parents and community leaders hold up such sentiments as proof of a disconnect. They say they are not convinced real changes are coming.
Goliath Davis, a former police chief and deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, speaks to Pinellas County School District officials.
“We keep making the same mistakes over and over and over,” said Goliath Davis, a former police chief and deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. “What happens to all these kids? What do they do? Every time we fail one, the criminal justice system is a winner.
How one teacher's union is struggling for relevance in a hostile political landscape
Milwaukee has stood at ground zero of education reform battles since at least 1990, when the city became one of the first of two to experiment with vouchers for private schools. Today, roughly 26,000 Milwaukee students now use vouchers to enroll at private schools, while about 78,000 remain in the public school system.
Scott Walker’s election as governor in 2010 put Milwaukee back in the spotlight for radical education reform. Over raucous protests at the state capitol, the new GOP governor, and current presidential candidate, enacted his signature “Act 10” legislation, which took on public employee unions, including those of teachers, stripping away most collective bargaining rights. Bitter battles followed, including efforts to recall Walker. He survived three elections in the past five years.
Now, the Milwaukee school system is again on the hot seat, as the state prepares to take control of failing city schools, following the model of the Recovery School District in New Orleans, which took over and chartered almost all public schools in the Crescent City.
What happens in Wisconsin could have national implications, as teacher unions across the country are now playing defense. State leaders on the left, like Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York, and the right, like Gov. Chris Christie and Wisconsin Gov. Walker, are pushing hard to strip the power of unions and privatize, or at least charter-ize, schools.
Kim Schroeder, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Association, the local NEA affiliate, says the union has struggled to respond to the adverse climate and has had to rethink how it relates to teachers, policy makers and the general public. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Deseret News: How should parents and taxpayers think of the role of teacher unions in the public education?
Schroeder: Teacher unions are fighting to make sure that all students, regardless of their income, race, gender or social economic status, get the opportunities and support to learn and succeed. That’s our role. We represent the people in the classroom who are there every single day.
DN: So this raises the question of the critiques recently made by Gov. Cuomo in New York and Gov. Chris Christie in New Jersey, both of whom have in very similar terms attacked teachers’ unions and argued that they do not represent kids, but rather the they only represent the job security and income of the teachers.
Schroeder: Obviously, we vehemently disagree with those comments, especially from Christie, but also from Cuomo. They have attacked in a very ugly and threatening way the expertise and professionalism of hundreds of thousands of professional educators. Teachers’ unions are made of the people who work with the students. The teachers are the best equipped to stand up for the students. They see what happens in the classroom. They are the best ones to make the school and classroom decisions that ensure success.
DN: The membership of the National Education Association, which you are affiliated with, has dropped over 230,000 members in the past four years. What’s causing this decline?
Schroeder: There are fewer public school jobs with the increase in private charters, takeovers of major city school districts. Places like Wisconsin have also lost collective bargaining, which has presented at challenge to us here.
DN: Is Wisconsin a unique situation, or have others seen similar assaults on unions? Is this an oddity or a canary in the coal mine?
Schroeder: Wisconsin is unfortunately not an oddity. Wisconsin is unusual because it happened all at one time, with cuts to public education funding and the attack on collective bargaining. But we are also seeing it in Indiana and Michigan and Missouri. We saw it in New Orleans with the recovery school district, where almost the entire city shifted over to charter schools. There is a concerted effort to end public school as we know it.
DN: What is “Act 10” and how has it affected teaching in Wisconsin?
Schroeder: The legislation eliminates collective bargaining of anything at all except base wages. That means contracts can be written on a Post-it Note. Anything about working conditions, safety in the classroom, class size, hours spent teaching, health insurance can no longer officially be part of collective bargaining. It also required teachers to pay 5.8
In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was instituted and changed the way public schools operated. For the first time in the history of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), NCLB marked a deliberate and strong federal approach to increase equity in education. As a nation, we committed to holding all students to high academic standards, closing the achievement gap for some of our nation's most vulnerable students, and providing parents the tools to hold our school systems accountable for their success or failure. In doing so, the academic performance of students-disaggregated by race and ethnicity, income and disability-took center stage by requiring data that showed academic progress. The law mandated that action must be taken by schools when children were falling behind.
But the overly prescriptive nature of NCLB led to actions like state over-testing. Several weeks ago both the House and Senate passed bills to rewrite NCLB. In the House, H.R. 5 narrowly passed with no Democrat support. This bill known as the "Student Success Act" goes too far to the extreme. Not only would House Republicans allow federal dollars - intended to support the most in-need schools and the children they serve - to be moved to more affluent schools, but they would strip all federal oversight for how tax-payer dollars are spent in the name of "local flexibility." Is taking from the poor to give to the rich how we expect to secure equity and win the battle for civil rights in education in 2015? And are we ready to place our unquestionable trust in states to do right by our kids when they have failed so many times before?
The more bi-partisan Senate rewrite S. 1177, known as the "Every Child Achieves Act," attempts to strike a balance between state flexibility and federal oversight. But while the bill retains vital guardrails such as annual assessments and the disaggregation of data by critical subgroups (i.e., race and ethnicity, English learners, students with disabilities); more needs to be done to secure the civil rights of our most vulnerable students. Nowhere in the bill is there language that requires states to intervene once the state has identified that a school and its students are in need of support.
An amendment sponsored by Senator Murphy (D-CT) that would have made the necessary improvements to the ECAA by requiring states to identify schools where Every Latino Child Left Behind | NCLR Action Fund:
Right now, all sorts of people are trying to rethink and reinvent education, to get poor minority kids performing as well as white kids. But there's one thing nobody tries anymore, despite lots of evidence that it works: desegregation. Nikole Hannah-Jones looks at a district that, not long ago, accidentally launched a desegregation program. First of a two-part series.
Ira speaks with New York Times Magazine Reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones about her years reporting on education and the various kinds of school reforms administrators have tried to close the achievement gap that never seem to work. Nikole says there's one reform that people have pretty much given up on, despite a lot of evidence that it works – school integration. (11 minutes)
Nikole Hannah-Jones reports on a school district that accidentally stumbled on an integration program in recent years. It's the Normandy School District in Normandy, Missouri. Normandy is on the border of Ferguson, Missouri, and the district includes the high school that Michael Brown attended. (30 minutes)
Norman Rockwell's painting "The Problem We All Live With" depicting Ruby Bridges – the first black child to attend an all white elementary school in the South. Image from the website of the Norman Rockwell Museum.