Education Lessons From A Sparkly District

Education Lessons From A Sparkly District:

NJ State Board of Ed Ignores Public Testimony

If the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) and the New Jersey State Board of Ed (NJSBOE) are not listening to the public, who are they listening to? What is their reaction to all of our testimony? NJDOE provided responses to testimony when they released the August 3rdagenda and this is what stood out for me.

In some cases they simply disagreed and said so. In other cases, they had some interesting citations to back up their claims related to validity. And, for the special education-related comments, clarification of just who is in control of the graduation requirements for students with IEPs.

One comment, in particular, stuck out (besides the ones that were aimed at me) because the testimony belonged to Dr. Eric Milou, a Rowan University professor, recipient of the Max Sobel Outstanding Mathematics Educator Award, former president of Association of Mathematics Teachers of New Jersey (AMTNJ) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. This is exactly the kind of education professional this board should have listening to, but this is their response:

40. COMMENT: The commenter stated there is no evidence the PARCC assessment is an improvement over previous standardized tests, raises student performance, provides useful diagnostic information, or indicates career or college readiness.  The commenter also stated only rigorous curriculum, instruction, and the use of formative assessments will have a significant impact on student educational success. (99)

RESPONSE: Several studies (e.g., National Network of State Teachers of the Year, 2015; Massachusetts Executive Office of Education, 2015; Center for American Progress, 2016; Fordham/Human Resources Research Organization, 2016; American Institutes for Research, 2016) have supported PARCC as an accurate measure of college and career readiness and endorsed PARCC as an improvement over previous assessments.

Dr. Milou got right to the heart of what's wrong with standardized tests in general and what's Education Lessons From A Sparkly District:

You can count an apple's seeds but not the seed's apples - NonDoc

You can count an apple's seeds but not the seed's apples - NonDoc:

You can count an apple’s seeds but not the seed’s apples

Even if my colleagues disagree, they will understand why I believe that teaching high school history and government is the best job in what must be the best career imaginable.

Typically, my students were more socially conservative than I was. They were aware that I was a former ACLU/OK board member and a pro-choice lobbyist, but they knew that all of their opinions, values and judgments would be treated with equal respect. They also knew how much I preferred addressing persons who disagreed with me on abortion with the term “pro-life” instead of “anti-choice.” OK, my (very few) black Republican students would get some extra ribbing, but often they asked for it by reality-challenged trash-talking during our lunch-hour basketball games (asserting that I fouled?!)

Teaching with an open door produced a bonus. Students, patrons or other visitors continually joined our debates. Often, parents would send their children back to school with their counter-arguments about politics, culture and the meaning of life. The same pattern occurred with preachers, who might urge prayers for me, but not censorship. One junior brought his pastor to class to present an alternative worldview, and he concluded with the words, “We can count the seeds in an apple, but not the apples in a seed,”

The metaphor speaks to last week’s 2016 Democratic Party Convention. We can count Bernie’s delegates, but we can’t even guess as to the number of future voters and activists baptized in the fires of the Bern. The metaphor also speaks to the unprecedented number of Oklahoma teachers who are running for office. We can count the number of educators who are elected this year, but we can’t predict the number of new leaders the grassroots rising of classroom teachers of all types will produce.

Teachers respectfully embrace opinions

Fortunately, teachers and our unions are uniquely poised to help make America unified You can count an apple's seeds but not the seed's apples - NonDoc:

DFER, Achievement First Inc and the flow of charter school money into Connecticut campaigns - Wait What?

DFER, Achievement First Inc and the flow of charter school money into Connecticut campaigns - Wait What?:

DFER, Achievement First Inc and the flow of charter school money into Connecticut campaigns

The Charter School industry and their corporate education reform allies continue to ramp up their effort to impact the political landscape in Connecticut.  Closely associated with Governor Dannel Malloy and his anti-public education policies, the elite behind the education reform and privatization movement are engaged in a broad based effort to control the dialogue and votes in the Connecticut legislature.

As reported yesterday in, Charter School Political Action Committees target Connecticut legislative races, two new corporate funded political action committees (PACS) are have recently been created and are spending money to elect pro-charter school candidates and defeat public school advocates in races for the Connecticut General Assembly.

Change Course CT, a front-group for Democrats for Education Reform, was formed on July 18, 2016.

Charters Care, a new appendage of the Northeast Charter School Network, was formed a few days earlier on July 13, 2016.

Both Democrats for Education Reform and the Northeast Charter School Network are corporate-funded charter school advocacy groups based in New York City and both receive the bulk of their money from the billionaires and millionaires who are trying to privatize public education in the United States.

According to forms filed with the Connecticut State Elections Enforcement Commission, all the funds collected by Change Course CT come from Education Reform Now Advocacy, a non-profit 501 (c) 4 corporation that is operated in conjunction with New York City based Democrats for Education Reform Now and Education Reform Now.

Signing the official documents on behalf of Change Course CT has been Jenna A. Klaus, who appears to be the daughter of Jeff Klaus and Dacia Toll.  Toll is the CEO of Achievement First, Inc., the large charter school management company that owns and operates charter schools in New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island.  In addition to DFER, Achievement First Inc and the flow of charter school money into Connecticut campaigns - Wait What?:

How U.S. Charter Schools May Be Tied to Turkey's Political Unrest - WNYC

How U.S. Charter Schools May Be Tied to Turkey's Political Unrest - WNYC:

How U.S. Charter Schools May Be Tied to Turkey's Political Unrest

The attempted coup in Turkey last month refocused attention on a Turkish dissident currently living in the Poconos region of Pennsylvania, an imam named Fethullah Gulen who is suspected of having financial ties to charter schools across the United States.

Just this week, a Turkish court issued an arrest warrant for Gulen. Although he has denied any involvement in the coup attempt, Gulen's critics claim he’s leading a movement to undermine the current Turkish government, a movement they say is funded in part by a network of about 150 charter schools.

The charter schools share characteristics, such as being run by Turkish immigrants. There are six of them in northern New Jersey and four in upstate New York. The FBI and other federal agencies are investigating charter schools in Ohio and Illinois with possible links to Gulen and a Georgia audit found found three schools engaged in bid-rigging to vendors with ties to him.

The New York charters were audited by the state comptroller in 2013. The office cited problems with their bidding processes. The audit of the Buffalo Academy of Science Charter found the school leased its building in a way that netted millions of dollars for a New Jersey company with ties to Turkey, Apple Educational Services. In the end, the company sold the building to the Buffalo charter.

The director of Buffalo Academy of Science, Mucahit Polat, argued the deal was legal and sound. Polat, who came to the U.S. from Istanbul to study, also said there was nothing nefarious about Turkish immigrants getting involved in charter schools. Turks who come here for an education, he said, often work in the education field and network.

When asked about his views on Gulen, Polat called him a "great scholar." He strongly denied any direct involvement with the man or his movement. Rather, he explained, many educated Turkish immigrants support Gulen because he preaches about the importance of education, science and pluralism.

"Since those ideas are really great to admire, when you ask those people who are in education they’ll say 'I really like his ideas,'" Polat said. "But that’s kind of a social setting it’s not kind of a cult setting."

Gulen's movement espouses religious tolerance, science and high regard for education. The charter schools often have science themes. They enroll tens of thousands of students nationally and receive hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds.

They also share particular characteristics, according to Robert Amsterdam, an attorney who is counsel to Turkey's government in a civil lawsuit against Gulen accusing him of human rights abuses in Turkey. 

"They all have majority Turkish board members," he said. "Number two, they only take foreign teachers from Turkey. Number three, around 75 percent of all vendors are Turkish, and normally have strong ties to Gulen."

He said the suspicion is that school staff and related vendors pay Gulen's movement from their salaries and business deals.

Polat said his school has hired teachers from Turkey, but only for positions in science and math which, he said, were harder to fill with American teachers. He said he currently has just one Turkish teacher, who teaches Turkish.

The other charters in Syracuse, Utica and Rochester also hired many teachers from Turkey over the years, according to documents obtained by New York State United Teachers. Spokesman Carl Korn called this a violation of visa rules.

"The visa program is supposed to be used to fill jobs that cannot be filled by American workers," he said. "They’re filling positions for biology teachers, physical education teachers, English teachers, guidance counselors, with Turkish nationals."

Both Korn and Amsterdam, the counsel for Turkey, said the pattern of financial problems cited in various state audits of the schools, and the federal investigation in the Midwest, prove charter schools need more oversight.

"The U.S. charter school industry is a perfect host for this kind of thing because the whole aspect of charter schools is lack of regulation," said Amsterdam. "So if you’re a foreign entity like Mr. Gulen and you’re in need of funding they see it as a great source."

But Andrea Rogers, New York State Director of the Northeast Charter Schools Network, called that a "smear campaign" by opponents of charters.

"The authorizers see the audits and if there was any evidence of wrongdoing, they would have been all over it," she stated.

Jonathan Burman, a spokesman for the New York State Department of Education, which authorized the four charters upstate, said his agency had "worked extensively" with them following the comptroller's 2013 audits.

"The department requires all charter schools that have audit findings to adopt a corrective action plan to fully implement the audit’s recommendations" he said, adding that the agency will continue to monitor them.How U.S. Charter Schools May Be Tied to Turkey's Political Unrest - WNYC:

CURMUDGUCATION: More Moskowitz Baloney

CURMUDGUCATION: More Moskowitz Baloney:
More Moskowitz Baloney

Eva Moskowitz was given some space by her buddies at the New York Post to run one more advertisement for her Success Academies, this time featuring a twisty interpretation of recently released test scores.


She actually starts from an accurate place, noting that the mayor and chancellor are not really entitled to victory laps about the test results because, as State Ed Honcho Elia already noted, this year's test results are not comparable to last year's. It's a different test, taken under different conditions (most notably, a non-time-limit condition for this year's test). The Big Standardized Test in New York was arguably massaged not to improve its ability to collect useful data, but to make it more politically palatable.

After Moskowitz notes that test conditions make "apples-to-apples comparisons with prior years impossible," she then proceeds to make apples-to-oranges to tout the results at Success Academy. In Moskowitz's worldl, it is, literally, only okay for charter schools to make comparisons between this year and last years test results. 

Charter scores went up this year by a big chunk. That could mean any number of things, including that charters are getting really good at gaming the test and at identifying the kind of students who will help them do it. It's a good example of how folks can play with statistics. For instance, Moskowitz can say it this way:

The benefits to minority students of receiving a charter-school education are particularly remarkable. An African-American student is more than twice as likely to be proficient in math if he attends a charter school rather than a district school (48.8% vs. 20%), and a Hispanic student is nearly twice as likely (46.9% vs. 24.4%).

But we could also read that data to mean that an African-American student who is proficient in math has twice as much chance to be admitted by a charter school. That data don't show that the charters are good at anything except selecting students. When Moskowoitz takes over a NY CURMUDGUCATION: More Moskowitz Baloney:

Report Shows How California Charter Schools Break the Law by Choosing Their Students | janresseger

Report Shows How California Charter Schools Break the Law by Choosing Their Students | janresseger:

Report Shows How California Charter Schools Break the Law by Choosing Their Students

Charter schools are established and regulated primarily in state law, and there is wide variation in degree to which state legislatures protected the rights of children and families back in the mid-1990s when this new education sector emerged across the states. California’s legislature seems to have taken more care than some other states to protect the rights of children and families in charter schools, but the ACLU of Southern California and Public Advocates have just published a report that exposes poor implementation of the law. The report puts Californians on notice that selection screens being imposed by charter schools are illegal under California law; some of these practices even violate federal civil rights statutes. The joint report of the Southern California ACLU and Public Advocates, Unequal Access: How Some California Charter Schools Illegally Restrict Enrollment, explains exactly what the law says and tells parents how to go about filing complaints when their rights are violated.  The report also challenges charter school authorizers and the California Department of Education to enforce the law.

The report explains: “Charter schools are governed by fewer rules than traditional public schools; they have the flexibility to develop unique learning environments and pursue innovative pedagogical approaches. However, under California law… charter schools still must accept all students who apply if space permits. If the school is at capacity, it must use a random lottery to select students. In California, charter schools may not deny admission to students who have struggled academically in their previous schools or push out students who do not meet certain performance standards. Indeed, charters should embrace those students because they may benefit most from the schools’ innovative educational philosophies.” Merely based on their websites, 253 California Charter schools were identified by the Southern California ACLU and Public Advocates as currently violating California law. Because the authors investigated only violations apparent on charter schools’ websites, the report’s authors declare: “The policies identified in this report are likely only the tip of the iceberg.”

The report describes charter schools whose websites present barriers like completing eighth Report Shows How California Charter Schools Break the Law by Choosing Their Students | janresseger:

PA Charter Schools Caught Gaming the System for $2.5 Million | gadflyonthewallblog

PA Charter Schools Caught Gaming the System for $2.5 Million | gadflyonthewallblog:

PA Charter Schools Caught Gaming the System for $2.5 Million

Should a charter school be reimbursed for a lease to itself?

That’s the question at the center of yet another scandal about the industry.

Auditor General Eugene DePasquale found nine Pennsylvania charter schools taking $2.5 million from the state to pay themselves back for properties they already own.

“What we found in some of our audits the same people who own and operate charter schools create separate legal entities to own the buildings and lease them to their charter schools,” DePasquale says. “We keep finding it and supplying the information to the department and they do nothing with it.”

His office found this happening in nearly a third of the 40 charter school audits done since he took office in 2013.

This goes against Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) guidelines adopted 14 years ago, says DePasquale. A charter school is not eligible for lease reimbursement if it owns the building.

PDE spokeswoman Casey Smith agrees. Charter school CEOS “are required to sign a PA Charter Schools Caught Gaming the System for $2.5 Million | gadflyonthewallblog:

 

Text of My Speech in Little Rock, AR (Decenter Yourself) | The Jose Vilson

Text of My Speech in Little Rock, AR (Decenter Yourself) | The Jose Vilson:

Text of My Speech in Little Rock, AR (Decenter Yourself)

I gave this speech at the Clinton School for Public Service in Little Rock, AR as part of Noble Impact’s NobleTalks series. For those who read the last post, I deviated from this text somewhat after my visit to Central High School. Special shouts to Chris Thinnes for hearing me say this aloud in the wee hours of the night. 

Good evening, class.

Thank you for having me here in Little Rock, AR.

We are living in the best of times and worst of times, but the one place that always gives me hope is my classroom.

My classroom has four turquoise-painted walls, long, tall windows, and a bookshelf that’s about seven feet high.

In the back, I keep a poster of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech, centered so every time I see myself getting tired, I can look at him with outstretched hands greeting the thousands of onlookers who are listening to him give the greatest speech of the 20th century. In the speech, he spoke truth to power by speaking to the aspirations of his people, not just his own.

Just to the left of that poster is a huge bulletin board dedicated to our lives mattering, images and quotes from the current street movement, one which I’m still learning from.

In my classroom, a typical student might ask, “Mr. Vilson, what’s the answer?” I tell them, “I don’t know.” They’re visibly frustrated, and they ask again, “What’s the answer?” I tell them, “I don’t know.” They get mad some more, smoke coming out of their little ears, and they ask, “Yo, Vilson, what’s the answer to this?” To which I reply, “I don’t know.”

They eventually learn to ask the right questions, and I say, “Well, have you thought about this?” I then proceed to pepper them with questions they hadn’t considered and reflect back the answers they told me.

After a few minutes, they say, “I think I got it.” And I say, “OK, good. Bye.” and walk to the next table.

In a small, yet simple act of deflection, I managed to decenter myself and put the onus of learning on the students so they can take ownership. I ask them to imagine “What if I wasn’t there? Would you Text of My Speech in Little Rock, AR (Decenter Yourself) | The Jose Vilson:

Laura’s Back and She Still Doesn’t Like Common Core

Laura’s Back and She Still Doesn’t Like Common Core:

Laura’s Back and She Still Doesn’t Like Common Core

Summer is ending, and school is starting in some places. I hope parents and teachers will encourage students to read for fun even though the summer is over. Most who I know will do that.

I hope students will not be hampered by being made to time how much they read after school. I hope they won’t be bribed to read like it is some awful chore they must work through.

I especially hope that adults won’t push children to read before they are developmentally ready.

I also hope parents and teachers will read plenty of picture books and stories to children that are funny and exciting, and that they won’t stop every few seconds and test students to see if they listened. I promise you that they will listen if it is a good Laura’s Back and She Still Doesn’t Like Common Core:

Walt Amses: Teachers unions do make a difference | VTDigger

Walt Amses: Teachers unions do make a difference | VTDigger:

WALT AMSES: TEACHERS UNIONS DO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer and former educator from North Calais.

With the culture’s ascension to post-factual political discourse, it becomes increasingly vital to clarify myths masquerading as gospel truth because when they go unchallenged, or are endlessly repeated, an inordinate number of people believe they’re true. One such fantasy is the conservative-fueled assertion that collective bargaining and teachers unions protect bad teachers, consequently lowering the quality of education.

Several states have moved to limit the union’s ability to negotiate contracts, scapegoating teachers as the primary suspects in educational decline while ignoring their own bare bones spending that’s decimating school programs and poverty levels that undermine learning for many children. Although this is not necessarily a new right wing initiative, last week’s GOP convention clearly illustrated what a post-factual world might look like, a powerfully frightening vision of a political party creating and then capitalizing on a series of affirmations that are simply untrue.

It would seem our only defense against such post-factual rhetoric is an informed and educated electorate capable of synthesizing what they hear and being able to separate fact from fiction. Our public education system, once the envy of the globe, would be the logical place to acquire such skills, but it is under constant assault from the same people who see America as a wasteland; a dystopia with bands of illegal immigrants and radical Islamists murderously roaming the countryside with one objective — to kill us all.

Of course they would also have you believe that the only rational response is to buy guns, lots lots and lots of guns, ban millions of people for practicing a particular religion, or break up families to deport 12 million immigrants who have lived in this country for decades. And as we evolve through this election cycle we learn that beliefs are strong and in many cases overshadow facts. “Believing” something makes it true. Reality is yours for the creating.

The skill of discernment is taught in school. Identifying the sources of what you say and what you write and why they are accurate. Unlike politicians, students need to back up their statements. They learn what facts are and how they differ from opinions. They learn that just saying something is inadequate. It’s no wonder conservative fabulists undermine education every chance they get; their biggest fear is being exposed as the charlatans they are.

But a research study done in 2015 calls into question the entire foundation of their anti-education initiatives, demonstrating that teachers unions do not lower the quality of education. On the contrary, they actually improve it, as well as reducing the dropout rate and helping ensure unqualified teachers are dismissed during their probationary period. Unionized teachers know that having colleagues who are not up to the task makes everyone else’s job more difficult.

For many districts it’s simple economics. Where collective bargaining is allowed, wages are higher, which encourages more careful evaluations during probationary periods to weed out ineffective teachers, thus avoiding the higher salaries that come if tenure is awarded. Unionized schools also have a higher retention rate of teachers, which raises the level of academic performance since the teachers remaining on the job are far more likely to be highly qualified.

In Finland, which has the highest rated schools in the world, school administrators and Walt Amses: Teachers unions do make a difference | VTDigger:

Approx. 400 SAT Items Leaked To Reuters News Agency

Approx. 400 SAT Items Leaked To Reuters News Agency:
Approx. 400 SAT Items Leaked To Reuters News Agency

After his stint as a “lead architect” for the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), David Coleman landed the presidency of one of the CCSS insider groups, the College Board.

He decided to “redesign” the SAT– but he apparently did not redesign the test security to go along with it.

Ineptness from the College Board, including under David Coleman’s leadership,  is not news. 

What is new, however, is that someone decided to send Reuters news agency hundreds of questions from the redesigned SAT, as Reuters reports on August 03, 2016:

Just months after the College Board unveiled the new SAT this March, a person with access to material for upcoming versions of the redesigned exam provided Reuters with hundreds of confidential test items. The questions and answers include 21 reading passages – each with about a dozen questions – and about 160 math problems.

Reuters doesn’t know how widely the items have circulated. …

The materials provided to Reuters contain a wealth of items for upcoming tests: reading passages drawn from novels, historical documents, scientific journals, essays and other texts, each accompanied by questions. Also among the materials were math problems involving geometry and quadratic equations.

To verify the authenticity of the items, which totaled approximately 400, Reuters Approx. 400 SAT Items Leaked To Reuters News Agency:

No One's Kid Is Ready for Kindergarten, According to This School's Checklist

What Kids Should Know Before Starting Kindergarten - Is Your Child Ready for Kindergarten?:

This List of Requirements for Incoming Kindergarteners Will Make You So Mad

​This more than a little bit unrealistic.

 One surprised parent took to Reddit this weekend to share a letter she had received from her child's elementary school. The letter included a list of 11 things that the Hamilton County, Tennessee, school says children should be able to do before starting kindergarten — and we have to say, it's unbelievably unrealistic.

According to this school's requirements, incoming kindergartners should already know how to write their names, use scissors correctly and identify colors and shapes (among other things) by the time they walk through the door on the first day of school. Take a look at the full list here:

You might have noticed that the note also includes "identify 30+ letters" as a requirement, which leaves us a little confused. Although it's probably safe to assume that they're taking both uppercase and lowercase letters into account, Reddit user zarideremery said what we're all thinking in this response to the post: "I can only identify 26 letters :( I'm not ready for kindergarten." Apparently, none of us are!

Ultimately, this ridiculous list leaves us with just one question: Isn't learning these things what kindergarten is for?

[h/t POPSUGAR] What Kids Should Know Before Starting Kindergarten - Is Your Child Ready for Kindergarten?:

Black Boys in Crisis: Does Anyone Even Care? - Education Week

Black Boys in Crisis: Does Anyone Even Care? - Education Futures: Emerging Trends in K-12 - Education Week:

Black Boys in Crisis: Does Anyone Even Care?

 When we talk about reaching students in our classrooms that come from disadvantaged backgrounds, we tend to put several groups under one umbrella. Minority students. Immigrant students. Kids from low socioeconomic households. While it's true that all of these groups of students need a different approach, our education system is not yet doing enough to address specific needs within these at-risk groups. The initiatives that help one group tremendously may not have as large a positive impact on another, and vice versa.

Black boys are a student demographic that has been, and continues to be, misunderstood in P-20 classrooms. Misbehavior, learning styles, and social skills are often misconstrued as problems by educators when in fact, black boys are simply not receiving the most effective forms of discipline, lessons, and peer-interaction opportunities. As a result, many are slipping through the proverbial cracks and not learning at their potential levels. That lack of learning leads to higher school dropout levels, higher rates of poverty, and higher incarceration rates, too.

Perhaps there is no real connection between the academic failures of black boys and incarceration/poverty, or the eerily similar statistics associated with young Latino men. Are these young people simply bad apples, destined to fail academically and then live a life of crime? Proponents of genetic predisposition would argue that these young men never stood a chance at success and have simply accepted their lots in life. When I hear these sorts of excuses for why we aren't best serving the black boys in our classrooms, I often think they are just too easy to be the right answers. They are all just too convenient, particularly if the people speaking them into existence come from backgrounds and experiences that are not indicative of black young men.

What if all of these theories, these so-called truths about these often-vilified children learning in our schools, are just the lazy way out? What if scoffing at a connection between a strong education and a life lived on the straight and narrow is an easy way to bypass the real issues in K-12 learning that actually put real barriers in place for black boys? What if the failures of black boys are really our faults, not theirs?

While there is always a level of personal responsibility on the part of the student to weigh in, I believe all of society's failures when it comes to black boys are traceable back to education. While it is certainly not the fault of teachers or classroom settings, placing the blame on outside factors, like family setup or poverty, does not actually solve the problem. Schools, particularly public ones, are great equalizers for our children and youth.

When we have disadvantaged students in our midst, why aren't we employing every tactic we've got into trying to combat those outside factors that are so detrimental? When we throw up our hands and say that black boys can't be saved, or that individual students are better off serving suspensions or expulsions than sitting in our classrooms learning, we are really saying that we don't have any power in the lives of our students. I think most rational educators would argue that is the farthest argument from the truth.

Consider this: Black students tend to have lower amounts of teachers who are certified in their degree areas. A U.S. Department of Education report found that in public high schools with at least 50 percent Black students, only 75 percent of math teachers were certified, compared to 92 percent in predominantly white schools. In English, the numbers were 59 and 68 percent, respectively and in science, they were 57 percent and 73 percent. Numbers like these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the disadvantages that take place in schools where children of color are the majority. When those children are boys, the outlook is even more dismal.

As an educational community, it's time to stop acting like generational poverty and crime are not related - that harsh discipline in schools is not related to incarceration rates. Low rates of literacy and high rates of special education referrals among black boys aren't coincidences. There isn't one reason that black boys are failing on such a large scale; the factors that play into the general underachievement of the black young men in our classrooms are varied, and complicated. Like all of the intricate problems in our school systems, improving the achievement of black young men in our schools won't happen overnight.Black Boys in Crisis: Does Anyone Even Care? - Education Futures: Emerging Trends in K-12 - Education Week:

The Fifth-Graders Who Put Mexican Repatriation Back Into History Books by Lani Cupchoy — YES! Magazine

The Fifth-Graders Who Put Mexican Repatriation Back Into History Books by Lani Cupchoy — YES! Magazine:

The Fifth-Graders Who Put Mexican Repatriation Back Into History Books

When a California history class noticed the U.S. 1930s Mexican Repatriation had been left out of the curriculum, they decided to take it up with the state Legislature.

About 400,000 people were pressured or forced into “repatriation” by the United States. Photo from University of Denver.

Leslie Hiatt’s fifth-graders are no strangers to politics.

Seeking to empower children as agents of change, Hiatt’s U.S. history class encompasses more than the Pilgrims and the Constitution. Through project-based learning, students also study the Trail of Tears, the Chinese Exclusion Act, child labor laws, and Japanese internment camps.

And, just in time for the next school year, the 2016 presidential election.

“Considering the national political climate, my kids are very afraid of what will happen if Donald Trump becomes president, because they are scared to death for the future and security of their families,” said Hiatt, who teaches at Bell Gardens Elementary near southeast Los Angeles.

Until now, the newest addition to her history lessons was in 2014, when Hiatt looked through the history textbooks and saw something missing: Mexican Repatriation, the unconstitutional deportations of more than 1 million U.S. citizens and lawful residents of Mexican descent during the 1930s.

So Hiatt, along with her student teacher, Ana Ramos, designed a Mexican Repatriation unit to teach the class. The issue hit home for their students, which led to letter-writing campaigns, an audience with a state legislator, and, eventually, a change to state law.

“The kids felt a real personal connection to it because we had issues in the classroom with students and their families getting deported,” said Hiatt.

Ethnic studies looms large in education, and, in some cases, remains a subject of controversy.

Student Nicole Sandoval, along with her classmates, noticed right away the disconnect between what they were learning and what was in the state-issued textbooks. And they wondered why Mexican Americans had not received an apology for the injustices of the 1930s.

“My whole class felt that this is wrong,” Sandoval said. “It happened to kids like us who are Mexican Americans, and we do not want history to repeat itself.”

They launched a campaign that ultimately took them to the California State Assembly, where, late last year, a bill was passed to require the teaching of Mexican Repatriation. And as a new class joined this past year, the students’ effort has evolved to a push for a federal apology, just as other marginalized groups have received.

The story of the bill

Students started by writing persuasive letters to President Barack Obama, but his response did not address their specific questions—it only expressed encouragement. So they created PowerPoint presentations, poems, plays, and a movie, aiming to go viral on The Fifth-Graders Who Put Mexican Repatriation Back Into History Books by Lani Cupchoy — YES! Magazine:

Ed groups worry over proposed federal sanctions for opt-outs | WBFO

Ed groups worry over proposed federal sanctions for opt-outs | WBFO:

Ed groups worry over proposed federal sanctions for opt-outs

Education groups, dismayed by the federal education secretary’s threat to punish schools in New York with high opt-out rates for standardized tests, say he is re-igniting the controversy that state education officials have been trying to calm for the past year.

Education Secretary John King was New York’s education commissioner until about a year ago. Under King’s tenure in the state, controversy over the implementation of the Common Core learning standards escalated.

It led to a boycott movement for the third- through eighth-grade standardized tests that resulted in about one-fifth of students opting out last year. This year, a slightly higher percentage of students skipped the tests —22 percent, compared to 20 percent in 2015.

The new state education commissioner, Mary Ellen Elia, tried to minimize the boycott. Elia issued a recorded statement late last Friday, when the test results were released. She tried to stick to the positive, saying the test results improved over 2015.

“We’re very pleased with the performance this year,” said Elia, who noted English scores improved by 6.6 percent and math results by 1 percent.

Nevertheless, the test results still show nearly two-thirds of third- through eighth-grade students are less than proficient in English and math.

“We obviously have work to do,” Elia said.

The boycott could have some adverse consequences for schools with high numbers of students skipping the tests. King said in July that schools in which fewer than 95 percent of students take the tests should be labeled as low-performing and possibly face fines or even a takeover. The rules would be part of President Barack Obama’s Ed groups worry over proposed federal sanctions for opt-outs | WBFO:

For Anne Holton, Tim Kaine’s Wife, Elite Circles Are Old Turf - The New York Times

For Anne Holton, Tim Kaine’s Wife, Elite Circles Are Old Turf - The New York Times:

For Anne Holton, Tim Kaine’s Wife, Elite Circles Are Old Turf

Anne Holton, who is married to the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Senator Tim Kaine, at a rally on Monday in Richmond, Va. CreditChet Strange for The New York Times

This weekend, Tim Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, are expected to step off the campaign trail for a beach vacation with their extended family at the Virginia shore.

It is an annual tradition, as is Ms. Holton’s practice of making the adults hand over all their grocery store receipts. She ensures that every household, factoring in the number of children, has paid not a dollar more or less than its fair share.

“She is not the accountant, she’s the judge,” said her brother Dwight Holton, a former United States attorney in Oregon. “No one has ever questioned her Solomonic wisdom.”

The daughter of a governor who grew up to marry a man who became governor, senator and now vice-presidential nominee, Ms. Holton has lived since childhood in a world of politics and power. But relatives and friends describe her as being uncommonly unimpressed by the trappings of privilege and instead driven by an almost religious sense of fairness, an aversion to idleness and a family-bred commitment to service that has helped elevate her into one-half of Virginia’s most famous power couple.

As a child, Ms. Holton, 58, had a symbolic role in helping integrate Virginia’s public schools before graduating from Princeton and meeting Mr. Kaine at Harvard Law School. As he rose up Virginia’s political ladder, she achieved renown in her own right as a legal aid lawyer, family court judge and Virginia’s secretary of education, a job she resigned once her husband was chosen as Hillary Clinton’s running mate.

In some ways, Ms. Holton, who has been mentioned as a possible replacement for her husband in the Senate, represents Mrs. Clinton’s road not taken, continuing to pursue her career throughout her husband’s ascent rather than waiting her turn.

But now those roads have converged on the presidential campaign trail, For Anne Holton, Tim Kaine’s Wife, Elite Circles Are Old Turf - The New York Times:

CURMUDGUCATION: Rocketship: Redesigning Children

CURMUDGUCATION: Rocketship: Redesigning Children:

Rocketship: Redesigning Children

Rocketship Academy's blog recently ran a piece by one of their teachers that really captures some critical problems with their entire approach to education. Step One, it suggests, is to get children to not behave like children.

Kindergartners Conquering Personalized “Quests” Learn To Love Reading was contributed by Lauren Berry, who has a solid modern charter background-- after graduating from USC with BA in English Language and Literature in 2013, she put in two years with Teach For America at Rocketship Academy, then moved up to Lead Teacher last year before becoming a Model Teacher for Rocketship just last month.



Berry is here primarily to plug eSpark, a computerized individualized personalized instruction program, aka one of the vendors set up to go after the Competency Based Education market. We could talk aboutwhat's wrong with that approach, and in particular could address the idea of delivering education via tablet to five year old children. But first let's look at some other problematic assumptions here, visible from her very first paragraph.

Anyone who’s worked to teach kindergarteners how to read knows that it can be a slippery challenge. Their squirmy bodies are full of energy, which can make it difficult for them to sit still through reading instruction, let alone through an entire text that they’re still struggling to understand.

This gives me an instant flashback to the words of Yong Zhao-- we are worried about getting CURMUDGUCATION: Rocketship: Redesigning Children:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: SEIU does the right thing. Gives Boardman the boot from Local #73

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: SEIU does the right thing. Gives Boardman the boot from Local #73:

SEIU does the right thing. Gives Boardman the boot from Local #73

Readers may remember back in 2014 when I tangled with Local #73 Pres. Christine Boardman. At the time I was reacting to Boardman's sellout of CPS janitors and custodians by agreeing to Rahm's $340 million sub-contracting deal with Aramark and SodexoMagic ("magic" my ass). It was one of the largest privatization moves of any school district in the nation, leaving custodians out of work, schools filthy, and principals in revolt.

Boardman's threatening letter.

Boardman then put icing on her sell-out with a $25,000 contribution to Rahm's campaign war chest. Local #73 also tried to put the kibosh on other locals' support for Rahm's opponent,Chuy Garcia. 

"Ugh!", I wrote. "She's dirtier than a CPS bathroom" for "signing on" to the deal. I had searched in vain, including on the Local 73 website, for any sign of protest or public resistance.

Boardman flipped out, tried to bully me and even threatened to take me to court over my hyperbolic blog post. Her lawyer's letter to me argued that she never actually "signed off" on the deal and that in fact, she was not "dirtier than a CPS bathroom".

After consulting with my own attorneys at Pro, Bono & Plead, and having made my point, I retracted both statements. I had no hard evidence that Boardman had literally signed an acutal piece of paper on the Aramark/Sodexo deal or that she was indeed, dirtier than a CPS bathroom Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: SEIU does the right thing. Gives Boardman the boot from Local #73: