A 'No-Nonsense' Classroom Where Teachers Don't Say 'Please' : NPR Ed : NPR

A 'No-Nonsense' Classroom Where Teachers Don't Say 'Please' : NPR Ed : NPR:

A 'No-Nonsense' Classroom Where Teachers Don't Say 'Please'

Any classroom can get out of control from time to time. But one unique teaching method empowers teachers to stop behavior problems before they begin.

You can see No-Nonsense Nurturing, as it's called, first-hand at Druid Hills Academy Charlotte, NC.

"Your pencil is in your hand. Your voice is on zero. If you got the problem correct, you're following along and checking off the answer. If you got the problem incorrect, you are erasing it and correcting it on your paper."

Math teacher Jonnecia Alford has it down pat. She then describes to her sixth graders what their peers are doing.

"Vonetia's looking at me. Denario put her pencil down, good indicator. Monica put hers down and she's looking at me."

In No-Nonsense Nurturing, directions are often scripted in advance and praise is kept to a minimum. The method is, in part, the brainchild of former school principal Kristyn Klei Borrero. She's now CEO of the Center for Transformative Teacher Training, an education consulting company based in San Francisco.

Klei Borrero says the foundation of the program isn't new. It just puts into practice what she's observed from high-performing teachers. That is, keeping expectations high by only praising outstanding effort.

"It notices students who are doing the right thing. It creates this positive momentum, but also gives the students who might have missed the directions another way of hearing it without being nagging, and also seeing it in action," says Klei Borrero.

The center has worked with more than 250 schools across the country since 2009. Many of those are charter schools, but some are traditional public schools in places like Denver and Cleveland. All of them have similar populations: students from low-income families, many of them black and Hispanic. Nine of those schools are in Charlotte.

No-Nonsense Nurturing makes some education specialists uncomfortable, though. "Maybe we are doing them a favor by teaching them codes of power, but maybe we're also participating in some kind of, I don't know, colonization," says Barb Stengel, an education professor at Vanderbilt University. "We're simply teaching kids to look like me."

She worries there's too much emphasis on compliance, not engagement.

School leaders in Charlotte say No-Nonsense Nurturing gives their students structure A 'No-Nonsense' Classroom Where Teachers Don't Say 'Please' : NPR Ed : NPR:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Advanced Learning Updates (Good luck, parents)

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Advanced Learning Updates (Good luck, parents):

Advanced Learning Updates (Good luck, parents)

I say "good luck" only because I read this thing twice and the level of detail that you are supposed to track and follow is hard to believe.  Anyone new to this district and its AL system would be scratching their head.

From the district:

The Advanced Learning office will notify families (who referred a child by the Oct. 8 deadline) via email about a child’s eligibility as Cognitive Abilities Test scores are received and processed from late January through February. Families who haven’t received an eligibility email by Feb. 29 should contact Advanced Learning at alsupportanalysts@seattleschools.org with the subject line “Eligibility Letter.”

Important notes:

Enrollment: Families who would like their child to participate in Advanced Learning programs or services in a school other than the attendance-area school should enroll the child duringOpen Enrollment, Feb. 17 to March 1. Families should submit a School Choice Form during this window even if they have NOT received eligibility results by this time.

Ineligible Students and Appeals: Families who wish to appeal must provide all appeals documents no later than THREE WEEKS from the date of the eligibility email. (We have tightened the appeals window in order to accommodate budget and staffing timelines.) 

Eligible Students and Enrollment 

• Highly Capable-eligible students: HC services are guaranteed, Seattle Schools Community Forum: Advanced Learning Updates (Good luck, parents):

Seattle Schools This Week

It's a fairly busy week in the district.

Monday, Jan. 11th
Curriculum&Instruction meeting, 4:30-6:30 pm, JSCEE.  Agenda

Start of the Washington State legislative session.

Tuesday, Jan. 12th
Special Education Advisory and Advocacy Council Meeting, 5:30-7:30 pm, JSCEE 2765
Highlights of agenda include discussion of Sped issues(including restraint and isolation), CTE, annual report on Equitable Access and Instructional Philosphy.  They will also be discussing what the committee's workplan and goals are for the year.

Thursday, Jan. 14th
Audit&Finance Committee, 4:30-6:30 pm, JSCEE.  Agenda not yet available.

Transition Workshop for Sped Parents, 6-8 pm at Old Van Asselt building, 7201 Beacon Ave. S.
This workshop will focus on helping families of children who receive Special Education Services to understand the Transition Process in developing vocational, social, and independent living skills so that they may transition to adult life as productive community members. We are providing this workshop in partnership with Open Doors for Multicultural Families.
Saturday, Jan. 16th - Director Community meetings
Director Geary - Montlake Library from 11 am-1 pm
Director Harris - SW Library from 3:00-4:30 pm

Seattle Schools Community Forum http://bit.ly/1OJ3lxz

An Open Letter to DPS Parents from DPS Teacher Sarah Jardine

An Open Letter to DPS Parents from DPS Teacher Sarah Jardine

An Open Letter to DPS Parents from DPS Teacher Sarah Jardine

 Dear Parent,

I write this to you on this night because you're on my mind. You live in Detroit and you send your child to Detroit Public Schools. You trust me everyday with your children. I feel that I owe you an apology. I apologize because I should have stood up. I kept quiet as they dismantled our schools. I was silent when they took your schools from you. I didn't protest in the streets when they put our schools in State control. I said nothing when they took your democracy. I should be ashamed of myself. I, the teacher you trusted, had power to start a revolution, and fight for you, and I didn't fight back. Tonight, I am going to make you a promise that I won't sit quiet any longer.

You're going to hear in the news, and in the papers, about how I don't care about the students. You're going to hear that taking days for sick-outs is selfish of teachers. I agree I have been selfish but it was my inaction that was selfish. It was me sitting in my position of authority in your children's life and doing nothing to protect them. I am sorry, I let this get so far. I promise that although I want a living wage that is not what brings me to action today. What makes me fighting mad is that your child, who I call "one of my kids", is learning in an environment that is in total chaos. I am sending a message to Michigan politicians that they must sit at the table and legislate to come up with a solution to the financial crisis that they caused.

I am fighting for these demands:

Supplies Art Music Gym Recess/Play space Proper Maintenance Clean Buildings Safe Buildings Interpreters Support Staff Quality Food Programs Class Size Your Democracy

I also want to say that I take offense when the politicians involved in this say that the children go hungry if they don't eat at school. I know you take excellent care of your child and that isn't the case at all. I thank you for everything you do and all of your support. I stand with you as we fight to take back your schools.

Sincerely,
Sarah Jardine
Teacher of Adapted Physical Education for Students with Autism
Detroit Public Schools

An Open Letter to DPS Parents from DPS Teacher Sarah Jardine

NYC Public School Parents: Please help us put a stop to the new Gates-funded state plan to collect and share personal student data!

NYC Public School Parents: Please help us put a stop to the new Gates-funded state plan to collect and share personal student data!:

Please help us put a stop to the new Gates-funded state plan to collect and share personal student data!

Please send your own letter to the Commissioner, the Regents and Legislative leaders to halt this new student data collection and disclosure by clicking here.  Thanks!

Class Size Matters, the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and NYS Allies for Public Education on Friday wrote Commissioner Elia and the Board of Regents, urging them to put a stop to the new Gates-funded data collection plan until there is more transparency concerning what personally identifiable student and teacher information will be collected, why they are needed, with whom the data will be shared, how they will be stored, and what their ultimate disposition will be, as well as why aggregate anonymous student data is not sufficient.

In addition, the 2014 student privacy law must be fully enforced, including the appointment of a permanent Chief Privacy Officer with expertise in privacy issues, who will develop a Parent Bill of Rights with parent input -- as the law says should have happened by July 29, 2014. There must also be a Stakeholder Advisory Board with representation from parent and privacy organizations to oversee the collection and disposition of personal student data in the NY State's Student Longitudinal Database, including assurances that this data will never be placed in the State Archives, as the state currently plans.

Class Size Matters and NYSAPE Letter to Commissioner Elia and Board of Regents re new student data project

NYC Public School Parents: Please help us put a stop to the new Gates-funded state plan to collect and share personal student data!:

Houston Lawsuit Update, with Summary of Expert Witnesses’ Key Findings about the EVAAS VAM | VAMboozled!

Houston Lawsuit Update, with Summary of Expert Witnesses’ Key Findings about the EVAAS VAM | VAMboozled!:

Houston Lawsuit Update, with Summary of Expert Witnesses’ Key Findings about the EVAAS VAM

Recall from a prior post that a set of teachers in the Houston Independent School District (HISD), with the support of the Houston Federation of Teachers (HFT) are taking their district to federal court to fight for their rights as professionals, and how their value-added scores, derived via the Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS), have allegedly violated them. The case, Houston Federation of Teachers, et al. v. Houston ISD, is to officially begin in court early this summer.

More specifically, the teachers are arguing that EVAAS output are inaccurate, the EVAAS is unfair, that teachers are being evaluated via the EVAAS using tests that do not match the curriculum they are to teach, that the EVAAS system fails to control for student-level factors that impact how well teachers perform but that are outside of teachers’ control (e.g., parental effects), that the EVAAS is incomprehensible and hence very difficult if not impossible to actually use to improve upon their instruction (i.e., actionable), and, accordingly, that teachers’ due process rights are being violated because teachers do not have adequate opportunities to change as a results of their EVAAS results.

The EVAAS is the one value-added model (VAM) on which I’ve conducted most of my research, also in this district (see, for example, here, here, here, and here); hence, I along with Jesse Rothstein – Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the University of California – Berkeley, who also conducts extensive research on VAMs – are serving as the expert witnesses in this case.

Last fall we both submitted our affidavits, which I cannot share now but they will likely be Houston Lawsuit Update, with Summary of Expert Witnesses’ Key Findings about the EVAAS VAM | VAMboozled!:

Is the Supreme Court about to take aim at teachers unions? And what happens if it does? - The Washington Post

Is the Supreme Court about to take aim at teachers unions? And what happens if it does? - The Washington Post:

Is the Supreme Court about to take aim at teachers unions? And what happens if it does?

The Supreme Court (The Associated Press)

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case that holds important implications for organized labor. Here’s what it’s about, from a story by my Post colleague Bob Barnes:

The justices will hear a challenge from a group of California teachers who say it violates their First Amendment rights to be forced to pay dues to the state’s teachers union.

The state is one of about 20 in which public employees are required to either join the union or pay a fee to support the union’s collective-bargaining activities. The unions say this is only fair because they are required to negotiate on behalf of all workers, not just their own members.

The non-members are not required to subsidize the union’s political activities, and the Supreme Court approved such a system in 1977, turning down a challenge that it was a violation of the fee-payer’s speech and association rights. But in a 2014 case involving health-care workers from Illinois, four of the court’s conservatives signed onto an opinion from Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. that called the decades-old decision, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, “questionable on several grounds.” Rebecca Friedrichs and other California teachers have given the majority a clear chance to overrule the precedent.

Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation in Is the Supreme Court about to take aim at teachers unions? And what happens if it does? - The Washington Post:

Marie Corfield: No armed police in my school, please

Marie Corfield: No armed police in my school, please:

No armed police in my school, please

"It'll be a sad day for this country if children can safely attend their classes only under the protection of armed guards." ~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower 

 On January 8th, NJ.com reported:

A bill before the state Legislature would create a new category of police officer, stationing armed, retired cops under the age of 65 inside New Jersey schools.
The bill (S2983) establishes "Class Three" special police officers designated to provide security at both public and private schools. They would not replace school resource officers, who are specially trained full-time police officers stationed at some schools.  

The bill, drafted in the wake of the 2012 attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was approved by the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee Thursday. It's unclear if it will get a full vote before the end of the legislative session next week.

The bill is sponsored by Senators Anthony Bucco (R-25) and Steve Sweeney (D-3).

Writing at Blue Jersey in response to this article, student activist, Melissa Katz, writes about how, if signed into law, this bill would exacerbate the school-to-prison pipeline that currently plagues many of our school districts serving students of color:

This bill will only further criminalize our youth, especially our youth of Marie Corfield: No armed police in my school, please: 

From Compassionate Schools To A Compassionate Society | PopularResistance.Org

From Compassionate Schools To A Compassionate Society | PopularResistance.Org:

From Compassionate Schools To A Compassionate Society

This is the 4th and final post in a series on childhood trauma. In the 1st post, I expose my personal reasons for being an example in this struggle to create Compassionate Schools. In the 2nd post, I tell the stories of how children who have walked through my classroom doors have been impacted by trauma. The 3rd post discusses new pathways to creating cultural changes within our schools. Here, in this last post, I connect the dots of EduActivists’ work to other movements through Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and collaborative activist work I engaged in this summer. Here I make the point that in order to have Compassionate Schools, we also need a compassionate society.

In this post I will discuss the liberation involved in developing compassionate schools and how that liberation is connected to the development of a compassionate society. Who are the leaders and who must be involved in the struggle as examples? How are the genres of activist movements connected to the struggle for a compassionate society?

We are in a stage in fighting education reform where we are gaining power, reaching for the tipping point. While the numbers of children of trauma are increasing in our schools, the reforms themselves are causing trauma, as you can read about in post 2.  One can see that our public schools are becoming schools of trauma. The reformers’ policies have dehumanized schooling, the children, and teachers to the point where schooling itself is traumatic. Children who cry and vomit over high stakes tests. Children and teachers who are punished over test scores. Schools closed causing actual deaths in Chicago for children who must cross gang lines to attend their new schools. Zero Tolerance policies that imprison children for minor infractions. Relay charter schools that treat young black and brown urban youth like animals using compliance training with clicks and demands to walk in silence in the hallways with their hands behind their backs – “prison ready”. And Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil spelling this dehumanization out directly:

“I’m not sure public schools understand that we’re their customer—that we, the business community, are your customer,” said Tillerson during the panel discussion. “What they don’t understand is they are producing a product at the end of that high school graduation.”

The Exxon CEO didn’t hesitate to extend his analogy. “Now is that product in a form that we, the customer, can use it? Or is it defective, and we’re not interested?” American schools, Tillerson declared, “have got to step up the performance level—or they’re basically turning out defective products that have no future. Unfortunately, the defective products are human beings. So it’s really serious. It’s tragic. But that’s where we find ourselves today.” – Peter Elkind, Fortune Magazine

The real thinking of reformers has been clear to many of us by the way we are being From Compassionate Schools To A Compassionate Society | PopularResistance.Org:

GROWING UP IN THE SOUTH BRONX ENLIGHTENED THIS “WHITE SHADOW”. | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing

GROWING UP IN THE SOUTH BRONX ENLIGHTENED THIS “WHITE SHADOW”. | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

GROWING UP IN THE SOUTH BRONX ENLIGHTENED THIS “WHITE SHADOW”.

WARNING: URBAN LANGUAGE  AHEAD

William Wordsworth wrote in his famous poem, TheRainbow, “The child is the father of the man.” It sure applies to me.

I went to kindergarten in PS 96, the Bronx. At the time it was in the mostly Jewish Pelham Parkway area. I wasn’t there long. My mom and I had to move out of our nice digs to my grandmother’s place in the south (at the time misnamed east) Bronx. It turns out that we were evicted for lack of rent. Dad did not pay his obligated monthly child support and alimony payments and mom’s job in the garment district as a former model turned “Gal Friday” paid her slave wages. She had no union. So, like little red riding hood, it was off to grandmother’s (Mom’s mom) I went, and PS 61, on Boston Road and Charlotte Street to finish kindergarten.

You might know grandma’s place. President Jimmy Carter visited the area. She lived on Minford Place and Charlotte Street. Somehow we were able to move to our own place a few blocks away on Longfellow Ave. and 172nd street, not far from Grandma and a block from my new scholastic and athletic home, PS 66. It was there that I endured Mrs. Witch in class 1-3. I have one class picture of me in a cowboy outfit. I was smiling; it must have been Halloween. It was probably the only time. I smiled in first grade. What I do remember is getting yelled out for putting my feet in the aisle because I didn’t GROWING UP IN THE SOUTH BRONX ENLIGHTENED THIS “WHITE SHADOW”. | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

Jersey Jazzman: Can We Please Get the Facts Right About Newark's Schools?

Jersey Jazzman: Can We Please Get the Facts Right About Newark's Schools?:

Can We Please Get the Facts Right About Newark's Schools?

Let me start by saying I like David Kirp's work enormously; I think everyone who cares about education policy should read Improbable Scholars, a detailed and thoroughly readable piece of qualitative research about school reform in Union City, NJ. I have some issues with the generalizability of Kirp's work, but he's a fine writer and I think, like Jonathan Kozol, he does a good job of describing what actually happens in an urban public school system.

Let me further say I think Kirp is on to something in his piece today for the NY Times. There's little doubt the "creative destruction" approach to schooling found in Newark has not led to any measurable gains in student learning. Bruce Baker and I recently pointed out that any gains in test scores in Newark, if they even exist, are part of a larger, statewide pattern. And I'll have new work out soon that shows the same thing with the vaunted increases in graduation rates that the fans of Cami Anderson like to crow about.

Kirp is not the first to note that urban districts in New Jersey that have resisted charter schools, such as Elizabeth and Union City, have schools that do comparatively well on tests compared to state averages, even though they have large numbers of students in economic disadvantage. Of course, we rarely hear about these schools because, unlike the large, - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2016/01/can-we-please-get-facts-right-about.html#sthash.ZsIH8TkV.dpuf

CURMUDGUCATION: NC: Covering Charter Butts

CURMUDGUCATION: NC: Covering Charter Butts:

NC: Covering Charter Butts

This week, reporter Ann Doss Helms of the Charlotte Observer and Lynn Bonner of the News & Observer both offered accounts of a striking example of 'how the sausage is made" and how public officials make sure that the sausage carries a nice chartery taste.

Wednesday was the day to present the state department of public instruction's report on charter schools to the State Board of Education. They were supposed to accept the report on Thursday, but Lt. Governor Dan Forest had a problem. Per Bonner:

Lt. Gov. Dan Forest argued that the report, intended for the legislature and full of data on charter school enrollment, demographics and costs, was too negative. 

“The report, to me, did not have a lot of positive things to say,” he said.

And just in case you're thinking maybe Forest is just concerned that charters aren't getting the job done and he wants to shape them up and that's what he's responding to...

Once the board issues reports, Forest said, “that is the fuel the media uses for the next year to criticize whatever we’re doing.”

And so Forest sent the report back to the drawing board, even though the deadline for acceptance of the report is January 15. Forest said that he would "run interference" with the legislature if anyone complained about the missed deadline. Helms offered her own analysis:

I was among the reporters present. The brief discussion struck me as an unusually blunt demand to CURMUDGUCATION: NC: Covering Charter Butts:

ICYMI: Edu-reading from the week

This isn't everything there is to read out there, but it's a damn fine sampling of worthwhile stuff.

PA Budget or Hell Freezing Over-- Which Will Come First 

Pennsylvania may become the first state to ever lap itself in the budget process. Okay, this is actually just me, writing in this case for NEA's Education Votes website not because I've suddenly developed a love for NEA's political choices, but because I support any attempt by NEA to A) join the late twentieth century and B) include a variety of voices. For the record, they don't pay me, so I still do not qualify as a full-fledged union stooge.

An Open Letter to Janelle Monae : TFA's cultural appropriation

It is hard not to love someone who writes under the name Walter Crunkite. This open letter (to one of the more awesome and underappreciated artists out there) does a great job of addressing the problems of TFA.

Detroit Schools Plan Shows Lack of faith in Democracy

The Detroit Free Press gets exactly to the heart of what is so wrong with the sort of school takeover that so many urban systems are seeing.

Return to Teachers' Village (Part IV)

Begun back in December, Jersey Jazzman has been unrolling an impressive and well-researched look at New Jersey's plan to create its own little educational oasis, and why it all went South. This installment puts a cap on the story, as well as including links to the first three installments.

An Open Letter to Darrell Earley

It would have been easy to miss this gem tucked away in facebook. Here's a teacher's response to one more boneheaded state official.

The Joyful Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland

Not a new piece, and references many pieces that are also not new, but the perspective of an American teacher in Finland makes this special.

All I Really Need To Know I (Should Have) Learned in Kindergarten 

You may remember Emily Kaplan as the Boston-area teacher who wrote a guest post here that gave a gut-wrenching look inside a No Excuses school. She's back this week at Edushyster (connecting those two near-neighbors will stand as one of my more useful accomplishments) with another must read post about pushing young kids too hard.

Reformy Myth Busting: 2016 Edition

Jersey Jazzman again, swatting down some of the currently-favored reformster talking points.

Gaslighting and Turnaround Schools 

You've probably caught this must-read piece from must-read bloggist Peg with Pen, but on the off-chance you missed it, here is a brave, bold take-- from inside a turnaround school-- at how deliberately crazy-making the process is. 

CURMUDGUCATION http://bit.ly/1hqZ7wL

Connecticut’s historic school funding trial finally begins next week - Wait What?

Connecticut’s historic school funding trial finally begins next week - Wait What?:

Connecticut’s historic school funding trial finally begins next week

As Connecticut education advocate and columnist, Wendy Lecker, reports in her latest commentary piece in the Stamford Advocate, Connecticut’s children finally get day in court.

Of the many disappointments that have arisen since Governor Dannel Malloy and Lt. Governor Nancy Wyman were sworn in to office in January 2011, few, if any, is greater than their immoral efforts to dismiss, derail and delay what may be the most important Connecticut court case in our lifetime – the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding (“CCJEF”) v. Rell School Funding Lawsuit.

The truth is that Connecticut’s school funding formula is not only illegal, it is unconstitutional. 

Inadequate funding is robbing Connecticut’s public schoolchildren of their constitutional right to a quality education, while placing an unfair burden on Connecticut’s local property taxpayers.

A new funding formula is needed.  But Connecticut politicians lack the will to adopt one, so the responsibility to act has fallen on the courts.

Despite having been supporters of the lawsuits prior to taking office, Malloy, Wyman and Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen have wasted five years and massive amounts of taxpayer funds trying to stop Connecticut’s judicial branch from even hearing the critically important court case.

As mayor of Stamford, Dan Malloy was actually one of the original sponsors and plaintiffs Connecticut’s historic school funding trial finally begins next week - Wait What?:

Details on the Success Academy “Got to Go List” Lawsuit | deutsch29

Details on the Success Academy “Got to Go List” Lawsuit | deutsch29:

Details on the Success Academy “Got to Go List” Lawsuit

Success Academy Fort Greene (SAFG) opened in the 2013-14 school year as an elementary school with grades K-1, with the intention of adding a grade each year until the school served grades K-4.

An archived SAFG web page from March 27, 2014, features SAFG’s first principal, former Teach for America (TFA) alum Kate Cunningham:

Kate Cunningham

An alumna of Teach for America, Kate taught elementary school in both district and charter settings before joining the team at SA Harlem 1 in 2010 as a Student Achievement Manager. She also managed Success Academy’s special education program prior to becoming a leadership resident at SA Harlem West. Kate is dedicated to leading a school community where scholars love learning and are pushed to their highest potential every day. A graduate of the College of William & Mary, Kate earned her master’s degree from the Relay Graduate School of Education.

Some notable issues: Cunningham was in charge of special education for SA, which implies that SA has (or had) a special education program. As for the specifics regarding Cunningham’s qualifications to run a special education program, Cunningham’s SA bio is lacking.

Though her 2014-15 SA bio (as archived October 20, 2014) includes more details, it lacks information to support that Cunningham was certified to run a special education program:

An alumna of Teach for America, Kate taught elementary school in both 

Details on the Success Academy “Got to Go List” Lawsuit | deutsch29:

On Professionalism and Good Intentions: More on Education and Journalism | the becoming radical

On Professionalism and Good Intentions: More on Education and Journalism | the becoming radical:

On Professionalism and Good Intentions: More on Education and Journalism

While journalist Nichole Dobo has not corresponded with me since I posted Dear Journalists Covering Education, Let Me Explain, Dobo has posted a Tweet I believe deserves additional consideration:

@yikesers With all due respect, I do actually know how to be a journalist. It's my profession. @plthomasEdD

— Nichole Dobo (@nicholedobo) January 9, 2016

Dobo’s insistence that her professionalism be respected (which I support fully) raises a key aspect of my concern for how journalists tend to cover education.

Like Dobo, Stephen Sawchuk, a top education journalist for Education Week, bristled at being criticized for education coverage, characterizing the challenges as “pretty offensive.”

Here, then, I am being sincere when I ask: How is the constant and unwarranted drumbeat about “bad teachers,” “failing schools,” and “education crisis” treating educators as professionals? How is the overwhelming lack of seeking teachers and educators as sources in education journalism treating educators as professionals?

Shouldn’t teachers treat journalists as professionals and journalists treat teachers as professionals? Doesn’t our democracy need the professionalism of both journalists and educators?

I taught high school English for about two decades in a rural South Carolina public school, including several years when I also had achieved my doctorate in education while remaining a high school teacher.

During those years, the best I could manage in many efforts to reach into the media were a few letters to the editor.

Once I was in higher education, however, I was given access to Op-Eds as well as frequent interviews by TV and print journalists.

What message does that send?

For both educators and journalists, demanding our professionalism be respected and havingOn Professionalism and Good Intentions: More on Education and Journalism | the becoming radical:

Lead Poisoning and “No Excuses”

Lead Poisoning and “No Excuses”:

Lead Poisoning and “No Excuses”

It is appalling to hear about the situation in Flint, Michigan where lead has been pouring into the drinking cups of children for months. Lead is known to cause serious health problems, including cognitive disorders and learning disabilities. The effects can last, and most exposed children will need special education.

And, if the trend in schools continues, these same students will someday be told they have no excuses when it comes to learning, mastering standards and doing well on high-stakes tests. Of course, their teachers will be blamed if they don’t do well. And what kind of special education will be left for them?

There could also be a correlation between lead and violent crime. It is connected to impulsiveness and other serious reactions. Think about how that can be a concern with teen and adult behavior.

In Baltimore, they examined the house of Freddie Gray, whose death in police captivity last year caused riots in the city. Freddie had difficulty in school from a young age. The Lead Poisoning and “No Excuses”:

How to Fix the Country’s Failing Schools. And How Not To. - The New York Times

How to Fix the Country’s Failing Schools. And How Not To. - The New York Times:

How to Fix the Country’s Failing Schools. And How Not To.

A QUARTER-CENTURY ago, Newark and nearby Union City epitomized the failure of American urban school systems. Students, mostly poor minority and immigrant children, were performing abysmally. Graduation rates were low. Plagued by corruption and cronyism, both districts had a revolving door of superintendents. New Jersey officials threatened to take over Union City’s schools in 1989 but gave them a one-year reprieve instead. Six years later, state education officials, decrying the gross mismanagement of the Newark schools, seized control there.

In 2009, the political odd couple of Chris Christie, the Republican governor-elect, and Cory Booker, Newark’s charismatic mayor, joined forces, convinced that the Newark system could be reinvented in just five years, in part by closing underperforming schools, encouraging charter schools and weakening teacher tenure. In 2010 they persuaded Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, to invest $100 million in their grand experiment. “We can flip a whole city!” the mayor enthused, “and create a national model.”

No one expected a national model out of Union City. Without the resources given to Newark, the school district there, led by a middle-level bureaucrat named Fred Carrigg, was confronted with two huge challenges: How could English learners, three-quarters of the students, become fluent in English? And how could youngsters, many of whom came from homes where books were rarities, be turned into adept readers?

Today Union City, which opted for homegrown gradualism, is regarded as a poster child for good urban education. Newark, despite huge infusions of money and outside talent, has struggled by comparison. In 2014, Union City’s graduation rate was 81 percent, exceeding the national average; Newark’s was 69 percent.

What explains this difference? The experience of Union City, as well as other districts, like Montgomery County, Md., and Long Beach, Calif., that have beaten the demographic odds, show that there’s no miracle cure for what ails public education. What business gurus label “continuous improvement,” and the rest of us call slow-and-steady, wins the race.

Slow-and-steady was anathema to Mr. Booker and Mr. Christie, who had big dreams for Newark. But as Dale Russakoff writes in her absorbing account “The Prize,” the politicians’ optimism proved misplaced. What went wrong had as much to do with their top-down approach as with the proposals themselves.

The mayor pledged to involve the public before making any decisions, but efforts at community engagement, orchestrated by out-of-town advisers, proved shambolic. The only recommendations that got traction — closing How to Fix the Country’s Failing Schools. And How Not To. - The New York Times:

Yong Zhao: What Easter Island’s colossal stone statues teach about the dangers of modern school reform WaPo

What Easter Island’s colossal stone statues teach about the dangers of modern school reform - The Washington Post:

What Easter Island’s colossal stone statues teach about the dangers of modern school reform

EASTER ISLAND, CHILE: A tourist walks behind a platform with seven huge statues (moais in Rapa Nui language), the only ones facing the sea, in Ahu Akivi in Easter Island, 3700 km off the coast of Chile, 12 February 2005. The Chilean island, located in the Polynesian archipielago, has many archeological sites and its Rapa Nui National Park is included on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list since 1995. AFP PHOTO/MARTIN BERNETTI (Photo credit should read MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP/Getty Images)

Eastern Island is a remote volcanic island in Polynesia that is a territory of Chile and known worldwide for its colossal statues — more than 800 — that were created by early inhabitants during the 10th – 16th Centuries. The carved statues, known as moia, humans with huge heads, sometimes sitting on platforms of rock called ahus. What, you might ask, does this have to do with education reform (given that this is an education blog)? Read on and Yong Zhao will explain. Yong Zhao is presidential chairman and director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education at the University of Oregon. He is also a professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy and Leadership at the university.  He is the author of several books, recently co-authoring “Never Send a Human to do a Machine’s Job: Correcting the Top 5 Edtech Mistakes.” This post was adapted from the introductory chapter of a recent book co-authored/edited by Yong Zhao, titled “Counting What Counts: Reframing Educational Outcomes,”published by Solution Tree.

 By Yong Zhao

The stone statues on Easter Island (Diamond, 2005) have a lot to teach us about education. The hundreds of stone statues on Easter Island have been one of the greatest mysteries on earth. Located in the southern Pacific Ocean, Easter Island is over 2,000 miles away from the closest land, Chile, and 1,400 miles away from the nearest island, which is uninhabited. It is also a very small island, only 15 miles long and 10 miles wide. Yet, on this remote and small island are more than  800 giant statues carved out of stone. They are large and heavy—ranging from 15 feet to 70 feet and from 10 to 270 tons. The largest ever erected weighed over 80 tons. Some of them have a separate headpiece, a cylinder of red scoria that weighs up to 12 tons. When the first European explorers discovered it in 1722, the island was almost uninhabited, with just a few thousand people living in poor conditions without any advanced technology. The explorers did not find any large animals or trees that could be used to help move and lift the statues.

How could the islanders have carved, transported, and erected the statues because “organizing the carving, transport, and erection of the statues required a complex populous society living in an environment rich enough to support it” (Diamond, 2005, p. 81) and such a society was apparently nonexistent when Easter Island was discovered?

Early Europeans did not believe that the “Polynesians, ‘mere savages,’ could have created the statues or the beautifully constructed stone platforms” (Diamond, 2005, p. 82). They attributed these grand works to other civilizations and even intelligent space aliens. Unless you believe in aliens, Pulitzer Prize–winning scientist Jared Diamond (2005), a professor of geography and physiology at the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA), provides a compelling and sobering account of how a civilization destroyed itself by diligently pursuing the wrong outcome in his book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” The giant statues were created by the Polynesians who began to occupy Easter Island about one thousand years ago, when it was covered with forests of big and tall trees, some of which reached to about one hundred feet in height and seven feet in diameter. These trees were used to make seafaring canoes that enabled more productive fishing. Coupled with a rather sophisticated agriculture, Easter Islanders developed a civilization that once had an estimated What Easter Island’s colossal stone statues teach about the dangers of modern school reform - The Washington Post: