Gus Morales is a teacher whose firing from Holyoke Public Schools prompted an investigation that prevented student’s scores from being publicly displayed. He will be speaking on how to reshape our education system to the needs of our students.
Gus Morales is the current president of the Holyoke Teacher’s Association and a teacher for Holyoke Public Schools. In 2014, Gus was laid off by the Holyoke Public School system for criticizing a directive to post students’ names and test scores on the walls of their classrooms. After an investigation by the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations which ruled in his favor, he was subsequently rehired. At TEDxAmherst 2015, Gus will talk about how we can reshape education to better serve the needs of our children
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
Using Student Journal Writing to Fight Bad School Reform
Every student should have a journal including most students with disabilities and ELL students. Journal writing is one of the best teaching techniques to show students that their voice matters and that their schools are about who they are and what they do.
It also teaches students many writing skills. It is a 180 degree turn from the lockstep Uncommon School’s orderly march like a soldier, stare like a zombie, and get clicked at like an elephant in a circus performance, schools that reformers think will shape students up and make them conform.
Kate Walsh, President of the National Council on Teacher Quality and David Coleman, President of the College Board don’t think journal writing matters.
They are wrong. My guess is many teachers are like me and know the value of having students keep journals.
Walsh, who has her knickers in a knot about how the “the reformers” are sometimes divided on what teachers should teach, even though reformers don’t teach, said Kids are paying a high price for our neglect. It [the reformers inability to get their act Using Student Journal Writing to Fight Bad School Reform:
Just over a year after Gov. Jerry Brown gave schools more money in exchange for their commitment to spend more on the neediest students and involve parents in setting priorities, some schools have made dramatic changes in line with his intentions, while others have dipped into the larger pool of funds to pay for pet projects.
Schools have added translators and other help for parents, tutoring and alternatives to discipline, a sampling of Bay Area schools shows -- but many also are investing in buildings, trying to divert funds to teacher salaries and ignoring their poorest students.
Instead of giving schools pots of money for dozens of specific programs, such as gifted students, music or teacher mentoring, the state is distributing a cauldron of funds -- totaling about $53 billion -- for schools to spend where they see fit, as long they seek parent input. The state designates almost one-sixth of the funds for high-needs students: English learners, kids from low-income families and foster children. Schools also are supposed to set measurable targets for goals, such as improving literacy or graduation rates.
But not all have. And many, while reaching out to parents, haven't necessarily heeded what they heard.
"There's not enough accountability," said Nallely Malaspina, a parent involved in advising the Antioch Unified School District on how to craft its spending plan. Brown's program got off to a good start, she said, but added, "there's no follow through."
A case in point would be the Alum Rock Union School District, which has both responded to parents but insisted on spending one-third of its funds designated for needy children on buildings instead -- and without laying out its justification.
A determined group of parents, led by the community group Somos Mayfair, prodded the district to hire translators and to spend $1.2 million for community liaisons -- who help interpret, educate parents and direct them to resources -- at most of its 26 campuses.
"It is the law that we have a voice and a vote and that we know what they are doing," said Dilza Gonzalez, who has three children in Alum Rock schools and has kept an eye on district spending. She and other campaigners collared parents at stores and on soccer sidelines, held multiple meetings and challenged the district when its plans ignored parents. Despite parents' efforts, an analysis shows that Alum Rock is dedicating less than 10 percent of the Brown's school budget reform: embraced, exploited - Inside Bay Area:
One, I have a screenshot that highlights my own school with the charter with whom we colocate, at 85% and 49% at-risk, respectively. This confirms the many anecdotal observations that I’ve made over the years, most notably the car line that I see during arrival and dismissal. We have no comparable car line because our parents can’t afford cars. That should tell you something.
Two, see how the at-risk line increases from left to right? Also observe that the blue dots on the far left, the ones with the lowest at-risk percentages, possess no complementary orange ones. Those are all schools in affluent parts of town, in the tony Northwest, and one travels across the river into Southeast as you move to the right.
Charter schools in DC almost entirely serve low-income Black and Brown populations. That has indeed been their stated mission: to give families in these communities high-quality alternatives to “failing” public schools. Yet, they do not come close to actually serving the full spectrum of those populations. And for a sector that claims to have all the answers, one would think they would test the virtues of their models on the most challenging students.
The first item involves a report just out from the University of Washington’s Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) (Creepier than CREEP), the Center that awarded Denver Public Schools a bronze medal for being third best in the nation at implementing reform strategies. The study releasedtoday paints a very different picture as it cites Denver as the district with the largest achievement gap in reading and math based on socioeconomics out of ALL OF THE 50 URBAN DISTRICTS STUDIED for the past three years. That’s right. Denver Public Schools is dead last in closing the gap between children living in poverty and those not. Even the “reform” funded, “reform” supporting online newspaper, Chalkbeat Colorado, had a difficult time putting a positive spin on these findings.
“Of all the cities, Denver had the largest achievement gaps in both math and reading between students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch and other students – 38 percent in reading and 30 percent in math over three years studied. The gap nationally was about 14 percent….The report… paints a largely discouraging picture of U.S. urban education, especially when it comes to hard-to-serve students.”
The CRPE report provides information that is extremely important for public education nationally. It is even more important to Denver voters at this time because there is a school board election rapidly approaching (All mail in ballot election. You must vote by 7 p.m., November 3, 2015. Ballots go out mid-October), and three candidates are strongly supporting continuing the direction this District is going. The current Board president and at-large candidate Allegra “Happy” Haynes, touted her work for the past four years, and cited the DPS strategic plan, Denver Plan 2020, with its focus on reducing the gap, as a reason to re-elect her. In a debateOctober 5, 2015she said, “I believe this is the progress we’ve made under my leadership and that of my colleagues.” This gap has increased in all three academic areas for the past ten years of “reform” and this progress has landed this District at the very bottom of the heap regarding one of the five tenets of theDenver Plan 2020– the newly named Opportunity Gap. Call it what you will – opportunity or achievement – the reality is the gap When Is Enough Enough? | Kaplan for Kids:
Sunrise charter school had warning signs before teachers were fired, resigned
School board member says charter schools 'free-for-all'
SUNRISE, Fla. -
With roughly 270 students, the new Paramount Charter School in Sunrise has already received $740,000 in taxpayer-funded money and is slated to get about $3 million during the school year.
Despite the infusion of public cash, Paramount -- an elementary-level school that, like all charters, is privately owned but publicly funded -- is riddled with problems. According to a school board member, it's already had three principals, lost nearly all of its teachers after the first month due to firings and resignations and has some parents alleging their children aren't learning there.
The president of the company that owns the school, Jimika Williams Mason, drove away from a Local 10 News camera in her vehicle. It was discovered the listed vice president of the company, Ashley Challenger, is a 22-year-old Nova Southeastern University student who said she was given a spot on the school's board of directors through the college and had no idea she had even been listed as a corporate vice president of the Advancement of Education in Scholars Corporation.
She said she had met once with Mason but had no idea what was happening at the school and had yet to attend a board meeting.
More findings about the troubled charter school include:
Mason, the president, lists no experience in the education field in the application, instead noting that she spent six years in management at a Miramar company that specializes in unsecured home improvement loans.
Former NFL player and reality TV star Hank Baskett is listed in the application as a "non-voting board member" who will "aid in the Sports and Fitness program." But Baskett's agent, Jim Ivler, said Baskett is not affiliated with the school. "They reached out to us more than five years ago interested in establishing a relationship with Hank," Ivler wrote Local 10. "It never went anywhere and we haven't heard from them in years."
The corporate office goes to a building in Boca Raton's Mizner Park, but a manager there told Local 10 the company doesn't actually rent physical office space, but rather has a "virtual office" where it can receive mail and phone messages.
After promising at least two teachers who spoke to Local 10 on condition of anonymity a salary of $36,000 and full benefits, the school after the first month instructed them that if they wanted to keep their jobs they would have to take a $6,000 pay cut and forego benefits. Both teachers were among those who resigned, while numerous teachers were fired. "I don't understand how you can give someone a school just based on paper," said one teacher. "Not only the school, how can you give them the children," said the other.
Broward County school board member Laurie Rich Levinson voiced frustration about the situation at the school, saying the board has received complaints and been to the school, which she said has had three principals already this year. But she said that because of a lack of regulation coming from Tallahassee, there is little the board can do about the problems. She said without a record of performance failures, which can take two years to establish, the school board's hands are tied unless there is a health or safety risk.
CCSSO Misses Arne Duncan. What Would Your Statement Regarding His Resignation Say?
CCSSO mentions that it has been an honor to work with him in the pursuit of better outcomes for all kids. He is a sincere, committed leader who has been a partner with state chiefs in advancing student achievement for all kids.
That’s a very special partnership a federal government political appointee has with state government bureaucrats (state education chiefs). The vast majority of parents concerned about this public/private partnership never had the honor to work with him. In fact, Duncan dismissed parental concerns and stooped to name-calling those who disagreed with his agenda.
Concerning his partnership with a private NGO for the takeover of public education via mandates and waivers, well, that circumvents the political process of state legislatures setting budgets and policies for its state educational agencies. It’s ironic that CCSSO provides leadership, advocacy, and technical assistance on major educational issues to the Federal Secretary of Education.I thought that was the job of state education chiefs and their state educational agencies. Why did those bureaucrats obtain advanced educational degrees and training if CCSSO is setting educational reform?
Is the CCSSO providing only assistancewhen it owns the copyright for the Common Core State Standards? That sounds more like control of a private organization over public education standards. When the rule of law doesn’t mean anything any more, leadership, advocacy, and technical assistance on major educational issues can mean NGOs can mandate its way (with the partnership of the USDOEd) on how students are educated in your state and how much it’s going to cost your legislature/school district.
Chris Cerf Finally Sees The Light! Schools Need Adequate Funding
It's taken years, but it appears that my most stubborn congregant, Chris Cerf, is finally starting to understand that money matters in education. Let me tell the tale of this poor sinner's ascent into grace:
All the way back in 2012, when Cerf was New Jersey's Education Commissioner, a big part of his job was to go around the state and defend Governor Chris Christie's cuts in state aid to schools:
The state’s top education official today defended the Christie administration’s proposed changes to the school funding formula, including a plan to spend less money on poor students.
Testifying before the Senate Budget Committee in Trenton, acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf said adjusting the way public schools get state aid is good for students and will encourage teachers and administrators to boost student achievement.
"We need to collectively get out of the box that says we can define success in education by how much we spend," Cerf said. "It’s not only how much we spend — the box we’ve been pushed into by the courts — it's about an integrated strategy of policy and funds."
[...]
State Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen) questioned the logic of adjusting the funding before the state can fully fund the formula that was approved in 2008 by the Legislature and the state Supreme Court.
"Is it prudent to be tinkering with this when we haven’t funded what we already found to be constitutional?" Sarlo asked.
Cerf said the formula as it stands is "unfair" and "ill serves our children."
State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), however, called the proposed changes unfair because they will "punish" the same districts,
When Dale Russakoff conceived of The Prize, she “viewed education reform from a distance but as a movement full of promise.” She was eager to follow the story of Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million matching gift to the Newark schools. The subtitle, “Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools?,” gets to Russakoff’s main point.
The best thing about The Prize is that it is an objective analysis of one of the nation’s most prominent corporate school reform failures. And, it comes at great time. Even after the repudiation of Michelle Rhee inWashington D.Cand John Deasy in Los Angeles, edu-philanthropists in love with test, sort, reward, and punish plan to create so many charters in those two cities that it would leave the rest of their schools and unions in ruins. Anyone who reads Russakoff’s balanced narrative about the way that Cory Booker, Chris Christie, Christopher Cerf, Cami Anderson and other corporate reformers squandered the $200 million fund that Zuckerberg made possible, will understand that the new assaults are the same as the old ones. They will cause more harm than good for students, and leave the teaching profession and their cities’ public education in tatters.
Mark Weber, “The Jersey Jazzman,” criticizes the way that reviewers ranging from Conor Williams to Joe Nocera cite The Prize. But, Williams writes for The 74, which spins anything and everything as evidence that teachers unions must be destroyed. I’m more struck by Nocera’s New York Times review of Russakoff’s book. He doesn’t come completely over to the side of teachers who oppose market-driven, test-driven reform, but Nocera comes much closer with his critique of One Newark:
It’s great for the 30 percent who are learning from charter school teachers. But as Russakoff puts it in the most poignant line in her book, “What would become of the children left behind in district schools?”
There is another way to approach reform, a way that includes collaboration with the teachers, instead of bullying them or insulting them. A way that involves the community rather than imposing top-down decisions. A way that allows for cross-pollination between charters and traditional public schools so that the best teaching practices become commonplace in both kinds of schools.
I no longer believe that cross-pollination between charters and neighborhood schools is likely. I also suspect that Russakoff (and Nocera) would not agree with my position on seniority – that we must mend it, but not end it. And some may believe she is too critical of collective bargaining contracts that defend the due Will Reformers Learn a Lesson From Newark? - Living in Dialogue:
This crocodile math problem had Scottish students in tears
LONDON — How quick can a crocodile swim upstream to catch a zebra?
Very few of us will ever know the answer, it seems, as the maths problem was one of many that brought Scottish sixth-form students (ages 16-18) to tears and resulted in the pass mark being lowered for their Higher Maths exam in May.
The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) said the problem was with the overall difficulty of the exam, not individual questions.
But the crocodile question has taken on a life of its own online as a symbol of just how hard that exam was. (Here's the entire exam.)
The question that brought students to tears.
If your head is spinning, here's how to solve it:
In May this year, the frazzled students who had to take the exam took to social media to say it was unjust. More than 14,000 people online signed two online petitions about the exam.
The pass mark for the exam — the level at which students could get a C — was lowered to 34%, compared with 45% the year before.
The primary purpose of Common Core’s implementation throughout the U.S. was to create a standardized testing system across states to level education requirements, but The New York Times found that the new guidelines have done nothing to spur this anticipated consistency.
State officials in Ohio, for example, announced last month that two-thirds of students were proficient in reading and math, according to tests taken under Common Core standards. But in Illinois, despite students receiving similar scores, education officials said only about one-third were deemed proficient.
The discrepancy played out in Massachusetts as well, where about half of the students who took identical tests to those in Ohio were measured proficient.
The inconsistency was not because students were performing at vastly different levels among states, the Times reported, but was rather the result of states using different labels to define the same scores.
In California and North Carolina, for instance, state officials combined students who either passed or nearly passed the tests into the same category. In Florida, the Times continued, officials pushed for “less stringent” passing rates.
Initially, 46 states adopted the standards, but lawmakers in more than a dozen states have since moved to drop out of Common Core, while Indiana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina have repealed it fully.
The Times noted that fewer than half of the states that originally implemented the assessments are still using the same tests developed under Common Core, “making it difficult to equate results from different states.”
Lindsey Burke, a fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation, said that not only are states evaluating outcomes differently, but many are now deviating from Common Core standards to follow their own assessments.
“Proponents have long touted the ‘common’ in Common Core—that every child would be held to the same standard. But it appears the common is being lost as the real world implementation moves forward in some states,” Burke said.
This result, she continued, is the “folly” of believing that a single standard could be effective for all states and students.
Utah has decided that pre-school can be delivered as a software package.
As reported Emma Brown in yesterday's Washington Post, the state has decided-- with the generous financial assistance of the federal government-- to try shrinking the entire pre-school experience into fifteen minutes a day of computer time.
You get an idea of the kind of thinking involved here when you see the name-- Utah Preparing Students Today for a Rewarding Tomorrow! UPSTART!! In it, children will deal with a series of games, songs and lessons, aided by two cartoon raccoons named Rosy and Rusty (fun fact: Utah is one of the few states in the US where raccoons do not live).
Why has Utah decided to launch this brave new world in which fifteen minutes of computer-and-mouse-time (because if there's anything three- and four-year-olds are great at, it's operating a computer mouse)? Well, Utah is one of ten states that doesn't fund pre-school, and it is at the bottom of the barrel for per-student funding in K-12. So you could explain the appeal of this idea as the sponsor of the bill, State Senator Howard A. Stephenson, does:
“We want to reach the greatest number of children with the resources that we have,” Stephenson said. “I don’t think we’re being cheap at all. We’re being smart.”
Or you might go with this theory:
“It’s wishful thinking by state legislatures,” said Steven Barnett, the director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. “We want preschool, we want to get CURMUDGUCATION: Utah's Brave New Pre-K World:
UPDATE: LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines Thursday suspended all commercial filming at LAUSD schools pending an examination of the policies, a day after the first part of this story aired.
Citing limited budgets and a need for additional funding, Los Angeles Unified public schools have embraced Hollywood dollars.
To those in the entertainment industry, LAUSD properties offer a premium convenience: beautiful elementary, middle and high school campuses that can be dressed up as any school in America, as they have for films like "Drillbit Taylor" and "Mother's Day".
But after six months fighting for access to public records, reviewing thousands of pages of emails, permits and receipts from LA public schools, NBC4 has learned the millions of production-company dollars made each year by California's largest public school district may come at the cost of education.
Documents we obtained indicate school officials operating without much oversight into the type of content allowed on campus — or the interruptions to teachers and students.
Superintendent Ramon Cortines refused to interview with NBC4 on the topic, and later told investigative reporter Jenna Susko that is because the district's Office of Inspector General is now investigating. The district would not confirm whether any investigation was taking place at this time.
Raunchy jokes laced with obscenities from films such as "Bad Teacher" and television series such as HBO's "Shameless" are common at LA public schools. Records show much of the edgy content found on premium-cable shows such as HBO's "Big Love" and Showtime's "Masters of Sex" is filmed at schools.
And schools also rent to music video production crews, like the one that produced YouTube personality Trisha Paytas' "Hot for Teacher" video, which suggests a teacher having sex with a student in a bathroom stall, and a hit single "Break the Rules" from breakout singer CharliXCX, which glorifies "getting high and getting wrecked."
At Hollywood High School, the cast members of Glee posed for racy pictures, dressed as underage students, in the school's locker room.
The R-rated "Bad Teacher", which starred Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake and Jason Segal, filmed numerous scenes at two LAUSD middle schools, a scene depicting marijuana use on the drug-free campus and Diaz performing a LAUSD Rents Out Schools for Racy Entertainment | NBC Southern California:
Parents can’t opt out of Common Core testing, AG says
Parents of students in public schools have no legal right to withdraw their children or opt out of statewide standardized tests, Attorney General Mark Brnovich concluded today.
In a formal opinion, Brnovich acknowledged that state law does permit parents to exempt their children from certain learning materials and activities they find objectionable. That even includes keeping them out of a class or lesson where the material is being used or discussed.
But Brnovich, in response to a question raised by state schools chief Diane Douglas, said standardized tests are “separate and distinct” from such materials or activities. And he said nothing in the exemption law specifically includes a right to withdraw from standardized tests.
The attorney general also rejected Douglas’ suggestion that parents gained new rights in 2010 when the Legislature passed a “Parents Bill of Rights.”
That law, he said details the obligation of local school boards to ensure they inform parents about their rights to opt out of certain assignments. It also includes the ability to refuse to have children immunized and the right not to have children taught about AIDS.
But nowhere in that law, Brnovich said, did lawmakers include testing.
“The Legislature’s failure to include such a right is especially telling because the statute specifically mentions the ‘right to review test results’ and the `right to receive a school report card,’” he wrote.
Yet Brnovich pointed out that, even in amending the law in 2010, the Legislature did not see fit to include opting out of testing in that list. And he said that when lawmakers make an extensive list like this, it is presumed they know what is not on it.
Brnovich said parents do have the right to direct the education of their children.
He said, though, that involves whether to send a child to a public district or charter school, a private or parochial school, or to choose to school a child at home.
“It does not allow a parent who sends a child to a public school to prescribe the details of that child’s education,” Brnovich wrote.
The formal opinions of a state attorney general of the meaning of a state law are not the same as a court ruling. But they can be cited by parties who argue a case and provide a legal defense to schools that follow the ruling.
