Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State Fight between Fully-Funding Public Ed and Charter Schools

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State Fight between Fully-Funding Public Ed and Charter Schools:

Washington State Fight between Fully-Funding Public Ed and Charter Schools

Beware of AstroTurf Ed Reformers 

Just Like Michelle Rhee's Students first only BETTER

Astroturf lobbying refers to political organizations or campaigns that appear to be made up of grassroots activists but are actually organized and run by corporate interests seeking to further their own agendas. Such groups are often typified by innocent-sounding names that have been chosen specifically to disguise the group's true backers

Let's start with charters.

You may recall the "yet another faux ed reform group" called Act Now for Washington Students.  This group is organized by the usual suspects - LEV, Stand for Children, DFER and the Washington State Charter Schools Association.  All these get money from the Gates Foundation. 

They have formed a PAC that hopes to raise (and presumably spend) $500,000 just for this legislative session to influence legislators on charter schools.  They have already spent $20K on 13 House members (each got $1,000) including Seattle's charter cheerleader, Eric Pettigrew.  This is in addition to the number of print and tv ads running.  It is not cheap to run a local ad during football Sunday.  


Oddly, ANWS doesn't mention this PAC at their website or their Facebook page.  Now if you wanted parents to be all in, wouldn't you tell them this and be asking them for money?  (WSCSA does have a Save Washington Charter Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State Fight between Fully-Funding Public Ed and Charter Schools:

Teacher reminds presidential hopefuls that hate speech and holidays don’t mix « Education Votes

Teacher reminds presidential hopefuls that hate speech and holidays don’t mix « Education Votes:

Teacher reminds presidential hopefuls that hate speech and holidays don’t mix

As a middle school language arts teacher, Steven Singer understands the power of words. This holiday season, says Singer, the nasty and divisive language coming out of the 2016 presidential election about Muslims, refugees, and immigrants is getting the attention of the kids in his school, 60 percent of whom are students of color.

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So Singer countered the hate speech with love speech in a“give me all your refugees” blog that left hard-hearted cynics teary-eyed. That was before the San Bernadino attack. Now, inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric from presidential wannabes is helping fuel and legitimize a sharp rise in the bullying of Muslim students, and Singer’s blog about welcoming all students is even more relevant.

We asked the Pennsylvania educator if he has some special inspiration for educators who are trying to live up to the spirit of the season by helping all their students feel loved.

In your blog, you said public schools are places of refuge for many kids and that school provides the only stability and love they get all day. What’s been the reaction to your post?

When I published it, I wasn’t sure if anyone was going to care. But it felt good to have said it. Now it’s had over 45,000 hits. On Facebook and Twitter, so many people told me they loved it, that they agreed and that this was what a teacher should be. I replied that in my experience this is just what teachers do. I’m no different than 95 percent of educators out there. I just wrote it down. Of course, I got some hate, too. Every day I get at least a message or two calling me all kinds of horrible things. It just goes with the territory.

How does hate speech during this Presidential campaign infiltrate the classroom?

Kids have a reputation for being uninformed, but when it comes to dealing with prejudice and racism, they could teach all of us a masterclass on the subject. Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, LaQuan Mcdonald—my 8th grade students know who each of these people are. Each of them could have been their classmate, older brother, dad, or uncle. They know what’s happening out there better than we do because they’re living it. And when someone running for president like Donald Trump denigrates Muslims and Latinos, they might not be able to tell you exactly who he is, but they know what he said. Because they know how people look at them and judge them because of the color of their skin, their gender, their nationality, their religion.

I remember when Michael Brown was killed, a student asked me, “How could they do that, Mr. Singer?” I got choked up. So I threw out my lesson plans and we spent the period talking about it. Not me talking to them. Them talking to me and to each other. It wasn’t about me telling them the right answer. It was about us trying to find the answer together. I think that’s the teacher’s responsibility. We need to help kids find their own answers. We need to give them the space to talk—to let them know it’s okay and that we love them.

Change your Facebook and Twitter profile picture to “Love Trumps Hate.”

Why is it so important for educators to speak up outside of their school community?

All teachers know the job doesn’t end at dismissal. We’re all staying late grading papers, planning lessons, making phone calls. But there’s more to it than even that. In an age where the powerful think our students aren’t worth the time and effort, aren’t worth fair funding, aren’t worth sensible education policy, it’s up to us to advocate for them. Dr. Cornell West said “Justice is what love looks like in public.” I love my students so I want them to have justice. They deserve a good education and all the resources rich kids get. But if someone like me doesn’t fight for it, they’re not going to get it. So I’ll take the lack of sleep and the hate mail and anything else that comes with it. Because to me, that’s what teachers do.

Join us to tell our students “Love Trumps Hate.”

As thinking, caring citizens, we can’t be silent in the face of bigotry, and as educators, we have even more of a responsibility to say something. It would be traumatic for my students to hear someone say something bigoted and not have me respond. I don’t want to work in an environment where that’s okay.

– Steven Singer
NEA Member and Activist

Change your Facebook and Twitter profile to Love Trumps Hate

The Northern Student Movement | PopularResistance.Org

The Northern Student Movement | PopularResistance.Org:

The Northern Student Movement

Above photo: From Portside.

New Haven, CT – College students were an integral part of the popular upheaval of the 1960’s. Beginning with the lunch counter sit-ins one month into the decade and continuing on through 1969 and beyond, college students around the country rallied to the cause of justice and freedom. The two best known student organizations of that time were the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Students for Student a Democratic Society (SDS). Another important group, though less well known, was the Northern Student Movement (NSM) and it was founded in Connecticut on the campus of Yale University.

Tens of thousands of young Americans were inspired by the lunch counter sit-ins that began in Greensboro, North Carolina and spread throughout the South. The lie that many knew was a lie — that the United States is based on freedom, justice and equality – was exposed by the incredible bravery of young black people. It was as though a dam had broken and a tidal wave of  people, led by college students, were suddenly passionately committed to making the world a better place and not so concerned about forging comfortable careers for themselves.

Students at Yale University were no exception and some of them got together in the Fall of 1961 to form the NSM. One of the two projects they initiated was support of SNCC, which by then had branched out from the lunch counter sit-ins to spearheading the Freedom Rides, a concerted effort to end segregation and discrimination on the nation’s bus and train systems. The other project the NSM undertook was to challenge racial discrimination in the North. To that end, the group organized an action a month after it was formed with the New Haven chapter of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) to protest local housing discrimination.

Like SNCC, the NSM had struck a chord and there were soon dozens of chapters on campuses throughout the Northeast. Initially, its membership was primarily white, though it worked closely with organizations like CORE whose memberships were mainly or exclusively black. Within several years, NSM had recruited a large number of blacks from both college campuses and from the communities where it established programs. NSM also began publishing a publication, Freedom North, with articles about its work and that of the Black Freedom Movement as a whole.

Peter Countryman, a Yale undergraduate from Chicago, was elected as the group’s first executive director.  Only 19 at the time, Countryman had already been active in civil rights work through the New England Student Christian Movement. He was instrumental in establishing a tutoring program in which students and recent graduates from Yale and other local colleges worked with young people enrolled in New Haven’s public schools. The effort proved a success and NSM established similar programs in several dozen cities in the Northeast. By 1963, the group had enlisted over 2,000 students from a number of colleges to tutor an estimated 3,500 children. Countryman eventually left New Haven to spearhead NSM’s tutoring program in Philadelphia.

In June of 1963, NSM members primarily from Trinity College established a tutorial program in Hartford with a staff of 25 and over 200 volunteers. The tutoring sessions were held in churches and other public facilities in or near the communities where the tutees lived and were so popular that the Hartford chapter grew to be one of the NSM’s largest. Soon the group was holding classes on Black history and the arts and regular forums on police brutality and civil rights activities in the South. The NSM publicized these activities and news of the Freedom Movement through a newspaper, the North End Voice, which members distributed throughout Hartford. Simultaneously, NSM members in Hartford established the North End Community Action Project (NECAP) that organized sit-ins and other protests against discriminatory hiring practices around the city.

As the Freedom Rides continued through 1962 and into 1963, NSM members from college campuses in Connecticut travelled to the South to participate. They were also actively involved in a voter registration drive that SNCC launched in Mississippi in 1963 as well as, aThe Northern Student Movement | PopularResistance.Org: 

Inside the Billion-Dollar Battle for Puerto Rico’s Future - The New York Times

Inside the Billion-Dollar Battle for Puerto Rico’s Future - The New York Times:

Inside the Billion-Dollar Battle for Puerto Rico’s Future

The money poured in by the millions, then by the hundreds of millions, and finally by the billions. Over weak coffee in a conference room in Midtown Manhattan last year, a half-dozen Puerto Rican officials exhaled: Their cash-starved island had persuaded some of the country’s biggest hedge funds to lend them more than $3 billion to keep the government afloat.

There were plenty of reasons for the hedge funds to like the deal: They would be earning, in effect, a 20 percent return. And under the island’s Constitution, Puerto Rico was required to pay back its debt before almost any other bills, whether for retirees’ health care or teachers’ salaries.

But within months, Puerto Rico was saying it had run out of money, and the relationship between the impoverished United States territory and its unlikely saviors fell apart, setting up an extraordinary political and financial fight over Puerto Rico’s future.

On the surface, it is a battle over whether Puerto Rico should be granted bankruptcy protections, putting at risk tens of billions of dollars from investors around the country. But it is also testing the power of an ascendant class of ultrarich Americans to steer the fate of a territory that is home to more than three million fellow citizens.

The investors with a stake in the outcome are some of the wealthiest people in America. Many of them have also taken on an outsize role in financing political campaigns in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. They have put millions of dollars behind candidates of both parties, including Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. Some belong to a small circle of 158 families that provided half of the early money for the 2016 presidential race.

To block proposals that would put their investments at risk, a coalition of hedge funds and financial firms has hired dozens of lobbyists, forged alliances with Tea Partyactivists and recruited so-called AstroTurf groups on the island to make their case. This approach — aggressive legal maneuvering, lobbying and the deployment of prodigious wealth — has proved successful overseas, in countries like Argentina and Greece, yielding billions in profit amid economic collapse.

The pressure has been widely felt. Senator Marco Rubio, whose state, Florida, has a large Puerto Rican population, expressed interest this year in sponsoring bankruptcy legislation for the island, says Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. Mr. Rubio’s staff even joined in drafting the bill. But this summer, three weeks after a fund-raiser hosted by a hedge-fund founder, Mr. Rubio broke with those backing the measure. Bankruptcy, he said, should be considered only as a “last resort.”

And this past week, House Republican leaders said any financial rescue for Puerto Rico may not come until the end of March.

The fight over the island’s future is stretching from the oceanside neighborhoods of San Juan, where a growing number of wealthy investors and financial professionals have migrated in recent years to exploit generous tax breaks, to Capitol Hill. Their efforts are being closely watched by financial institutions, labor unions and policy makers on the mainland, where many ordinary investors own Puerto Rican bonds through mutual funds.

Some warn that Puerto Rico could be a test case for the rest of the country, Inside the Billion-Dollar Battle for Puerto Rico’s Future - The New York Times:

Facebook 'Selfie' Provokes Debate On Online Civility, Teacher Diversity - Courant Community

Facebook 'Selfie' Provokes Debate On Online Civility, Teacher Diversity - Courant Community:

Facebook 'Selfie' Provokes Debate On Online Civility, Teacher Diversity

Hartford teacher Heather Zottolla, left, took a Facebook post by Shelley Best, right, personally, saying it insinuated "that because I'm white, I can't teach children in Hartford."

HARTFORD — Teacher Heather Zottola was at a training session for city educators on the evening of Sept. 2, hearing about ways they can better serve students of color — the bulk of Hartford's students — when she noticed one of the attendees angling a cellphone camera in her direction.

"I remember thinking, at first, 'Oh, she's taking a selfie.' Then I was like, 'Oh, look it, I'm in her picture,'" Zottola recalled this month. The woman, city board of education member Shelley Best, was seated only a few feet away in a downtown banquet room.

"What I should have said to her that night, what I thought to say to her, was, 'How did our selfie come out?' And just kind of get a feel for why she was taking it," said Zottola, 45, who did not know or recognize Best, an A.M.E. Zion minister, a social justice commentator, and one of two African Americans on Hartford's nine-member school board.

Back home that night, Zottola mentioned to her husband that a woman attending the dinner presentation had taken selfies — photos of herself — but that she seemed to intentionally include Zottola in the frame, "and I wonder why."

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Best's social media network had already learned the reason in real time as Best raised a blunt question about who was in the room that evening.

The head of the Hartford teachers' union, Andrea Johnson, would later say that she was "appalled" when she saw the Facebook post that would trigger pained conversations over teacher diversity and online civility.

All Zottola knew was that she felt uneasy when she went to bed that night.

The next morning, she asked one of the consultants at the multi-day training if he knew the woman who was taking photos. The man pulled up Best's Facebook page and showed it to Zottola, a magnet theme coach who has spent her 23-year teaching career at Noah Webster, a prekindergarten-to-grade 8 school in Hartford's West End.

Zottola had to leave the room to collect herself.

'Don't Look Like Us'

Hartford school board member Shelley Best’s “selfie” posted on Facebook ignited conversations on teacher diversity and online civility. This screenshot was included in a letter to Hartford school leaders complaining about the Sept. 2 post.

Best, 53, said she grew up in northwestern Connecticut in the 1960s, in Norfolk, where her father was an activist and Best was the only black child in her Facebook 'Selfie' Provokes Debate On Online Civility, Teacher Diversity - Courant Community:

Weird Words and Phrases about Schools and Common Core

Weird Words and Phrases about Schools and Common Core:

Weird Words and Phrases about Schools and Common Core

Omit needless words.

EB White The Elements of Style (p.23)

It is time to revisit my list of weird education terminology. I have added some new words and phrases from Common Core State Standards, and provide links to other lists and explanations.

Education jargon has always been confusing, but it is even more so today. I think education reformers try to impress with words and wordiness. Mostly, it looks odd. A lot of it also sounds like its purpose is to be confusing, or intent on getting tough on students.

One of my favorite lists is the Educational Jargon G from the science geek. HERE.

Marilee Sprenger lists critical Common Core words. I find it interesting that without Common Core these words probably wouldn’t be critical. HERE.

Here is what’s called Source Coding from Vocabulary for Common Core, 2013 Marzo Weird Words and Phrases about Schools and Common Core:

‘It’s hard to educate a kid that’s dead’ — Education Secretary Arne Duncan - The Washington Post

‘It’s hard to educate a kid that’s dead’ — Education Secretary Arne Duncan - The Washington Post:

‘It’s hard to educate a kid that’s dead’ — Education Secretary Arne Duncan

“It’s hard to educate a kid that’s dead.” — Arne Duncan

I point out this quote, from an interview that Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave to my Post colleague Emma Brown, not for any profound insight that it offers but as a suggestion of what he may be doing when he leaves his post on Dec. 31.

Duncan, who is returning to Chicago, has long been an advocate of stricter gun laws. Speaking with PBS’s Gwen Ifill in December 2012, just after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that left 26 children and adult staff members dead, his eyes teared as he recalled people he knew from his past who had died from gunshot wounds. He then joined more than 350 university presidents to collectively urged Congress to approve stronger gun-control measures — and said he believed that federal lawmakers won’t take such action unless Americans from outside Washington apply the pressure.

[How mass shootings are changing America’s schools]

In his interview with Brown, Duncan made clear that he will work on gun control in some way after he officially vacates the post he has held for seven years. He told Brown:

Education’s always going to be my life’s passion, I’m going to keep finding ways to do education, but it’s hard to educate a kid that’s dead. It’s hard to educate a kid that’s living in constant fear. So will this be a piece of what I work on? Absolutely. It’s a national issue, and, obviously, it’s particularly acute back home in Chicago. I can’t go home and not try and help. I don’t have easy answers, but I’m sure going to try.

There is no doubt that Duncan was the most powerful education secretary in ‘It’s hard to educate a kid that’s dead’ — Education Secretary Arne Duncan - The Washington Post:

Worst and Dumbest, the Sequel | accountabaloney

Worst and Dumbest, the Sequel | accountabaloney:

Worst and Dumbest, the Sequel

Representative Eric Fresen’s (District 114, Miami) much maligned “Best and Brightest Scholarship” program, which snuck into Florida statute during last summer’s extra budget session, is back and it is apparently worse than we originally knew and it’s about to get a whole lot dumber. It is the perfect example of Accountabaloney.

The bill, which Fresen claimed he dreamed up after reading a book purchased at the airport, provided bonuses of up to $10,000 to be paid to Florida public school teachers who scored in the 80% on the ACT or SAT tests they took in high school.  Current teachers also were required to be rated “highly effective” under the state’s teacher evaluation system but new teachers (who had not yet been rated for effectiveness in the classroom) could qualify for the bonus on the basis of their exam scores alone.

In March, Fresen filed HB 5011, the bill proposing the bonus, it passed the House but died in the Senate before being heard in committee. During the special session in June, it was quietly added into the budget where it escaped Gov. Rick Scott’s veto pen.

After the bill’s passage, legislators were “shocked” to learn the budget bill they had passed included $44 million for the scholarships (link here)

“State Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, called the legislation the “worst bill of the year” and an example of how the legislative process has broken down

“The bill went through absolutely no process,” Detert said. “Never got a hearing in the Senate. We refused to hear it because it’s stupid.”

Other Senate Education Committee members, also, questioned the bill’s wisdom.  (read entire article here)

“There are a lot of questions about the implementation and the wisdom of 

Worst and Dumbest, the Sequel | accountabaloney:

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: December 20

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: December 20:

ICYMI: December 20

This week was a full assortment of rehearsals for a local performance of The Messiah, and this weekend is the first time my entire family has gathered in one place for a long time, so if I've seemed a little distant and busy, dear reader, that's why. But I do have a whole stack of things for you to check out today while my family is opening presents and we're singing the Messiah matinee.


The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids

The genre of "here's how ugly and awful early childhood ed has become under the test-and-punish era of education" articles is crowded, but everybody needs to be reminded that this is happening and that it sucks. They need to be reminded repeatedly until we put an end to it. Here's one more stark and painful example.

For Profit Charter Schools Are Fading and Failing

Jessica Huseman misses a few of the finer points (particularly the ways in which non-profits mirror for-profits), but on balance this is a good analysis of why the For Profit charter industry is turning out to be (surprise) a failed experiment.

Worst and Dumbest: The Sequel


Florida's remarkably idiotic plan to give teachers a bonus for their high school SAT scores is back-- and this time it wants to be permanent. A good study in how a bill that nobody thinks is smart can still end up becoming a law.

Stand for Children Louisiana Is an Evil and Malicious Corporate Front Group for Evil People and Organizations 

Crazy Crawfish tells us what he really thinks. Because while some reformsters are folks with a different perspective or different understandings of how schools can best serve students, some are just scruples-free rotters trying to get their hands on money and power.

Ethical ELA

I'm always amazed how, no matter how much I've read and explored, there are still chunks of the interwebs that I've never stumbled into. This is an entire website dedicated to discussing issues of how to ethically teach all the various aspects of language. Worth a look.

This week the Edublog Awards were unveiled and this post of mine about music won an award for being one of the most influential posts of the year. Like most of these sorts of awardy things, it's a nice selection of sites and posts with which you may not be familiar. In particular I was struck by this post:

What Being Gay Has Taught Me About White Privilege 

You may or may not agree with everything that the blogger at Crawling out of the Classroom has to say, but her level of honesty and openness is impressive.

Creativity Is the Key to Happiness

If you're not familiar with the concept of "flow," this is a simple and accessible look at it and the idea that creativity is the key to a happy life.

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: December 20:

Juvenile injustice?: Kids in San Bernardino County pay the price with overzealous school cops - Salon.com

Juvenile injustice?: Kids in San Bernardino County pay the price with overzealous school cops - Salon.com:

San Bernardino County pay the price with overzealous school cops

San Bernardino school police arrested more kids than cops in Sacramento, Oakland or San Francisco. What gives?

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Josue “Josh” Muniz admits that he embraced his girlfriend during lunch, while the pair was out on the quad at Arroyo Valley High School in this city east of Los Angeles.

He admits that after a school cop ordered him to step away, he did, but lightly hugged his girlfriend again, minutes later, because she was upset.

But Muniz won’t agree that he deserved what happened next.

His girlfriend walked off, and Muniz saw the officer approaching again and directing him to go with him. The cop reached out and “put his hand on my throat,” Muniz said. “That’s when I start freaking out. He tells me to stand up. And that’s when his grip on my throat got a little stronger and when I started really panicking.”

Alarmed, Muniz pushed at the officer to get him “just a little bit off me,” he said. They tumbled to the ground and the officer “showered” the student with pepper spray, Muniz alleges in a civil lawsuit that’s still pending. The cop handcuffed him, he said, dragged him into a nearby security office by the cuffs and planted a knee in between his shoulder blades while delivering “multiple blows” as Muniz lay face down on a carpet.

After it was over, the officer read the 17-year-old junior his rights and placed Muniz under arrest — for alleged misdemeanor assault on an officer.

“He told me that I had ‘f’d up,’” Muniz said. “But I never wanted to fight.”

In an initial substantive response in court, the school district claims that Muniz was “careless, reckless, and negligent,” and is the one to blame for any alleged injuries he suffered during the altercation.

Muniz’s arrest in November 2012 sounds extreme, but it was hardly isolated.

In fact, he was one of tens of thousands of juveniles arrested by school police in San Bernardino County over the last decade. The arrests were so numerous in this high-desert region known as the Inland Empire that they surpassed arrests of juveniles by municipal police in some of California’s biggest cities.

The San Bernardino City Unified School District, where Muniz was a student, has its own police department, with 28 sworn officers, eight support staff and more than 50 campus security officers trained in handcuffing and baton use.

The department made more than 30,000 arrests of minors between 2005 and 2014. The area has a reputation for youth-gang crime, but only about 9 percent of those arrests were for alleged felonies. Instead, the vast majority of arrests were for minors violating a variety of city ordinances — such as graffiti violations or daytime curfews — and for nearly 9,900 allegations of disturbing the peace. That’s a frequently-used catchall that raises questions among critics about whether most of these arrests were necessary for public safety.

The bulk of the minors arrested or referred to school police represent some of the most academically vulnerable demographics in the state: low-income Latino and black kids, as well as kids with disabilities, in disproportionate numbers, according to California arrest statistics and national education data examined by the Center for Public Integrity.

Based on 2011-2012 data collected from U.S. schools by the U.S. Department of Education, the latest available, Muniz’s Arroyo Valley High referred students to law enforcement at a rate of 65 for every 1,000 students. That was more than 10 times the national and California state rate of 6 per 1,000.

Those kinds of statistics raise red flags for critics who charge that school officers in some districts, especially those with substantial minority and special-needs populations, are turning what should be minor disciplinary indiscretions into criminal justice matters that put kids on a road to bigger problems — the so-called ‘school-to-prison pipeline.” In San Bernardino, cops, school officials, parents and community groups have started wrestling with how to balance demands for order — and security — without criminalizing kids.

There’s no state rule to define the role of school police, but some California districts have already taken steps to do that by imposing formal limits on police powers in school, and detailing what situations should require police involvement and what should be handled exclusively by educators.

This story is part of Criminalizing kids. Scrutinizing the use of law enforcement and courts to respond to kids’ conduct at school or other circumstances. . Click here to read more stories in this series.

Don’t miss another Juvenile Justice investigation: Sign up for the Center for Public Integrity’s Watchdog email.

The roots of a trend

The ranks of school cops have grown nationally since the 1999 massacre of students Juvenile injustice?: Kids in San Bernardino County pay the price with overzealous school cops - Salon.com:

How the Movement to Teach Creationism in Public Schools Has Lived On and Evolved - The Atlantic

How the Movement to Teach Creationism in Public Schools Has Lived On and Evolved - The Atlantic:

The Evolution of Teaching Creationism in Public Schools

A new study shows that anti-evolution lessons have become more stealthily integrated into curricula.

Some 90 years out from the Scopes Monkey Trial, and a full decade after the legal defeat of “intelligent design” in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the fight to teach creationism alongside evolution in American public schools has yet to go extinct. On the contrary, a new analysis in the journal Science suggests that such efforts have themselves evolved over time—adapting into a complex form of “stealth creationism” that’s steadily tougher to detect.

Call it survival of the fittest policy.

“It is one thing to say that two bills have some resemblances, and another thing to say that bill X was copied from bill Y with greater than 90 percent probability,” Nick Matzke, a researcher at the Australian National University and author of the new paper, tells CityLab via email. “I do think this research strengthens the case that all of these bills are of a piece—they are all ‘stealth creationism,’ and they all have either clear fundamentalist motivations, or are close copies of bills with such motivations.”

* * *

Matzke performed a close textual analysis of 67 anti-evolution education bills proposed by local government since 2004. (Three U.S. states have signed them into law during this time: Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee.) The result was a phylogenic tree—in effect a developmental history—tracing these policies to two main legislative roots: so-called “academic freedom acts,” and “science education acts.”

This phylogenetic tree traces most of the 67 anti-evolution education policies proposed in U.S. states since 2004 to two main roots: one group of “academic freedom acts,” and another as “scientific education acts.” (Nicholas J. Matzke / via Science)

Matzke's analysis shows that academic-freedom acts were popular in 2004 and 2005 but have since been “almost completely replaced” with science-education acts, which emerged as the strategy of choice after the adoption of a 2006 anti-evolution policy in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana. (That policy’s lingering impact on creationist teaching was thoroughly exposed by Zack Kopplin in Slate earlier this year.) These acts tend to call for “critical analysis” of scientific topics that are supposedly controversial among experts. They often lump evolution alongside How the Movement to Teach Creationism in Public Schools Has Lived On and Evolved - The Atlantic:

L.A. Unified officials unable to finish work of picking next schools leader after marathon session - LA Times

L.A. Unified officials unable to finish work of picking next schools leader after marathon session - LA Times:

Marathon session yields no pick for L.A. Unified chief; next meeting in 2016

The Los Angeles Board of Education met behind closed doors for 13 hours Saturday but did not announce a new superintendent for the nation’s second-largest school system.

Instead, the seven-member board scheduled another meeting for Jan. 5.

Board President Steve Zimmer, hoarse from a cold, offered an upbeat message shortly after 9:30 p.m.

"The board is absolutely on track, working extremely hard and I am confident that we will be able to reach a decision within the first month of the school year," Zimmer said. "And the conversations are absolutely appropriate to the weight and significance of the decision."

He added: "I am very proud of this board. Every one has brought their best selves and kept their best selves even through these marathon sessions.”

The board has held four lengthy meetings over the last seven days as it tried to make its most important hire. Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, 83, left the school system Dec. 11 but is reachable on an emergency basis until Jan. 

The district's No. 2 administrator, Michelle King, will serve in place of Cortines, but will not receive the title of interim superintendent. King already effectively has those duties because Cortines is on vacation until his retirement.

No board action is required for King to take on the senior leadership role on a temporary basis, said district general counsel David Holmquist.

Holmquist too seemed to be suffering from the long sessions and the stress of the task. He attended Saturday's session despite a case of pneumonia, against doctor's orders.

King has experience serving for short periods as acting superintendent, especially when she worked under Cortines' predecessor, John Deasy, who was frequently out of town.

Last week, she oversaw the staff presentation at a board meeting over a sensitive topic: the temporary closing of two schools because of a natural gas leak in the northwest San Fernando Valley.

King is among the finalists for the job of schools chief. Other names that have emerged as under consideration or who have been recruited are: Fremont Unified Supt. Jim Morris, a longtime L.A. Unified senior administrator; San Francisco Supt. Richard Carranza; and Miami-Dade County Supt. Alberto Carvalho, who said publicly that he did not want the L.A. job.

Other individuals have been under serious consideration as well.

Cortines came out of retirement after Deasy resigned under pressure 14 months ago. A veteran administrator who ran the district twice previously, Cortines had agreed to serve only until a permanent replacement could be found.

The board had divided sharply over the type of leader needed for this watershed moment, L.A. Unified officials unable to finish work of picking next schools leader after marathon session - LA Times: