Major charter organization says it will sit out March primary for L.A. school board seat - Los Angeles Times

Major charter organization says it will sit out March primary for L.A. school board seat - Los Angeles Times

Major charter organization says it will sit out March primary for L.A. school board seat

Recent races for the Los Angeles Board of Education have been the most expensive school board contests in the nation’s history — and charter school supporters spent millions more than anyone else. But a key charter group announced Friday it will sit out a March special election to fill an empty and potentially pivotal seat.

The political arm of the California Charter Schools Assn. is not endorsing any of the 10 candidates for the seat left vacant in July, when Ref Rodriguez resigned after pleading guilty to one felony and three misdemeanors for campaign fundraising violations.

The hopefuls are vying to represent the oddly shaped District 5, which covers some neighborhoods north of downtown L.A. as well as the cities of southeast Los Angeles County. The Board of Education, currently with six members, is split on key issues, including how to interact with privately operated charter schools, which compete with district-operated schools for students.

A spokeswoman for the charter group spoke of the many strong options for the board seat.

“There are a number of highly qualified, inspiring candidates in this race,” said Brittany Chord Parmley of CCSA Advocates. “Given the diversity, strength and depth of the field, we have decided not to endorse. ... This election is an opportunity for the entire community to engage in a dialogue about what it will take to provide an outstanding public education to all Los Angeles students.”

Close observers have described this race as especially tricky for the charter group. District 5’s boundaries were carved to elect a Latino. And in the previous election, charter backers had a strong Latino candidate in Rodriguez, the co-founder of a charter-school organization.

One obvious option, charter group executive Allison Greenwood Bajracharya, is not a Latina. Nor is Heather Repenning, a city commissioner backed by Mayor Eric Garcetti, another power player. Nor is Jackie Goldberg, the pick of the teachers union, which has been the second-biggest spender in board races and has called for halting the growth of charter schools.

Backing a Latino in this district has mattered to United Teachers Los Angeles in the past, but after recent elections losses, union leaders think they have a winner in Goldberg, who has alliances within the Latino community. Goldberg previously served on the school board and the L.A. City Council as well as in the state Legislature. A wildcard for UTLA is the effect of a teachers strike planned for Jan. 10, which could work for or against the union’s endorsed candidate.

The ideal candidate in this race would be a Latina, according to some consultants.

Three Latinos in the race would be hard sells for charter supporters: School counselor CONTINUE READING: Major charter organization says it will sit out March primary for L.A. school board seat - Los Angeles Times

NAACP is supporting ⁦‪union‬⁩ call for charter cap in California | Cloaking Inequity

NAACP is supporting ⁦‪union‬⁩ call for charter cap in California | Cloaking Inequity

NAACP IS SUPPORTING ⁦‪UNION‬⁩ CALL FOR CHARTER CAP IN CALIFORNIA

Glad to announce that ⁦the California NAACP⁩ is supporting ⁦United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) call for charter cap in California.

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

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NAACP is supporting ⁦‪union‬⁩ call for charter cap in California | Cloaking Inequity

CURMUDGUCATION: Why Teachers Don't Use The Software Their Districts Paid For

CURMUDGUCATION: Why Teachers Don't Use The Software Their Districts Paid For

Why Teachers Don't Use The Software Their Districts Paid For

Ryan Baker (University of Pennsylvania's Center for Learning Analytics) unleashed a small surprise last month with a report indicating that the vast amount of software licenses purchased by school districts are simply never used. There are points on which we might quibble, including the smallish sample size of districts (48) and the very small sample size of data management companies (1). But the results still feel correct, and worthy of discussion. Schools spend a great deal of money on software that is barely used, if at all. Why does that happen?

Thomas Arnett at the Christensen Institute took a stab at explaining all that unused software, using the Institute's Jobs To Be Done Theory. We could call it Perceived Utility or Does This Actually Help Me, but the idea is simple. Teachers have an idea of what their job is, and they will evaluate software based on whether or not it helps do the job.

Arnett's team talked to teachers and uncovered three "jobs" that they believed were relevant:

Job #1: Lead way in improving my school.

Job#2: Find ways to CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Why Teachers Don't Use The Software Their Districts Paid For

A teacher makes 2019 education predictions — some he 'desperately’ hopes won’t come true - The Washington Post

A teacher makes 2019 education predictions — some he 'desperately’ hopes won’t come true - The Washington Post

A teacher makes 2019 education predictions — some he 'desperately’ hopes won’t come true

This is the eighth year that I am publishing veteran teacher Larry Ferlazzo’s education predictions for the coming year — and, frankly, some of them are bold, if not scary. (You can see his predictions from earlier years at the bottom of this post.) I don’t quite agree with all of them, but it’s not my list, it’s his! Let him know what you think in the comments.

Ferlazzo teaches English and social studies at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento. He has written nine books on education, writes a teacher advice blog for Education Week Teacher and has a popular resource-sharing blog.

By Larry Ferlazzo

Some of these predictions are educated guesses, some pipe dreams, and some I desperately hope don’t come true. Check them out, let me know which ones are off-base, and share your own!

* Betsy DeVos will be fired as U.S. secretary of education. As President Trump’s poll numbers fall even further through the floor as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation continues to reveal damaging information, he will make a desperate attempts to “stem the bleeding.” Since DeVos is perhaps the least popular member of his Cabinet, she — among others — will be jettisoned.

* Teachers unions will begin to lose members overall as a result of the Janus Supreme Court decision. However, they will begin to add new ones as more and more educators in charter schools across the country begin to recognize that they are not being treated fairly and vote to unionize.

* Public education advocates will renew a push for increased school funding in many parts of the country where they were not successful in the November 2018 election. And in places where teachers are even stronger than before, they will initiate new efforts to gain more resources. Unfortunately, though, the first obvious signs of a new recession will begin to hit in August, and the bad news will short-circuit many of those efforts.

* Who isn’t tired of savior (generally white savior) teacher movies? Well, a different kind of educator will be featured in the upcoming “Wrong Answer” movie, directed by Ryan Coogler, starring Michael B. Jordan and with a script written by Ta-Nehisi Coates . It should finally be filmed and released in 2019 to widespread CONTINUE READING: A teacher makes 2019 education predictions — some he 'desperately’ hopes won’t come true - The Washington Post

Lois Weiner: What's At Stake in the LA Teachers Union Standoff - LA Progressive

What's At Stake in the LA Teachers Union Standoff - LA Progressive

What’s At Stake in the LA Teachers Union Standoff

Far more is at stake in Los Angeles than a traditional contract struggle in the stand-off between United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) and LAUSD.

What even conscientious followers of media outlets likely don’t know is the reforms LAUSD has demanded in Los Angeles schools are based on a decades-long effort to turn education into a market for investors. This project, advanced by wealthy executives and their foundations, has advocated reforms nationally–and internationally–seen in LA schools already:

• using standardized tests to control what and how children learn;
• creating charter schools to weaken neighborhood schools and undermine parent loyalty to public education;
• creating new revenue sources for corporations to profit from the education marketplace; and
• weakening teachers unions.

The “portfolio model” LAUSD will adopt if permitted has already been tested in many cities. The reform fragments the school system into networks operated by private charter management organizations, and though the model is said to provide “choice” for low-income children of color by privatizing school management, we have ample evidence privatization has increased school segregation and racial disparities in educational outcomes.

Across the nation, states have punished districts with low standardized test scores for students with “takeovers,” disenchfranchising low-income communities of color by denying them the right to have elected school boards.

Across the nation, from New Jersey to Louisiana, Massachusetts to Michigan, states have punished districts with low standardized test scores for students with “takeovers,” disenchfranchising low-income communities of color by denying them the right to have elected school boards. In many of these takeovers, states have imposed the “portfolio model” in which a small number of students have increased educational opportunities, but as is clear in New Orleans, the vast majority of schools and teachers flounder. As will likely occur in Los Angeles if this model is implemented, a few elite and well-funded public schools will exist the whitest and most affluent parts of the city. A handful of low-income students may find spots in these schools but most will languish in charter schools that are virtually unregulated by central authorities.

As teacher union influence has waned, especially among Democrats, who have adopted the pro-privatization views of their largest donors, teachers have become angry about their unions’ inability to stem deteriorating conditions in CONTINUE READING: What's At Stake in the LA Teachers Union Standoff - LA Progressive

NYC Public School Parents: Highlights of 2018 in books, education policy and political activism

NYC Public School Parents: Highlights of 2018 in books, education policy and political activism

Highlights of 2018 in books, education policy and political activism
Here is my collection of bests from 2018 – in books, education policy, and politics.  This is far from an exhaustive or authoritative list but merely one from my perspective, sitting here in NYC and glimpsing encouraging and even inspiring events elsewhere across the nation and the world.

Books:

First, I’d like to highlight three terrific books I read this year, each with special relevance to education:

Adequate Yearly Progress,  a novel by Roxanna Elden, a veteran teacher, is set in a struggling Texas high school and is  a hilarious satire of the all the trendy buzzwords and supposedly innovative transformational “reforms” that teachers and schools have been subjected to since NCLB.  Check out the review by Gary Rubinstein here and an interview with the author here.

Ghosts in the Schoolyard, a brilliant study of school closings by Eve Ewing.  It tells the story of how students, teachers and whole communities were devastated by the closing of 50 plus schools in Chicago by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2013. Diane Ravitch writes about this amazing book here.  Many of Ewing’s findings were also reported in a more purely academic way by a report from the University of Chicago Consortium, which confirmed how students from closing schools experienced long-term negative educational effects.  As to Ewing’s book, I can only read a little at a time because it makes me relive in my mind the traumatic hearings on the 100 plus NYC school closings carried out during the Bloomberg years and now the de Blasio administration.  It also makes me regret that with all the scholars and authors in the NYC area, no one has written a similar book about the damage down by the NYC school closings.

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou was probably the most enthralling work of non-fiction I read this year, about Theranos, the start-up blood testing company, whose worth was estimated at one time at a billion dollars – an evaluation built solely on exaggeration, fraud and outright lies.  Though not about education per se, the book reveals how much of the corporate culture in Silicon Valley is based on hype and overly credulous reporting by the media.  This unearned hype is similarly reflected in the popularity of online or “personalized learning” ed tech products in schools throughout the country, despite the lack of any independent research showing they work to improve student outcomes, the risk to student privacy involved, and the growing evidence that they undermine the essential human relationships necessary for real learning.

 Education policy:

The corporate education reform movement in retreat.  All their so-called solutions to the problems of struggling schools have failed, including teacher evaluation based on test scores, the implementation of the Common Core, and charter school expansion.

The recent RAND report on the massive Gates-funded teacher evaluation project in  three school districts and four charter management organizations (CMOs) showed that despite spending millions in taxpayer funds to evaluate and compensate teachers based in part on their students’ test scores, these initiatives showed no positive results.  In one district in particular - Hillsborough County school – these policies led to near bankruptcy of the district,  lower achievement and less access to effective teachers for low-income and minority students.

The Common Core standards have been shown to be a disaster as well, as indicated by stagnant   The standards have led to a “lost decade” in which student achievement has not increased for the first time since the NAEPs have been administered.  Even the Fordham Institute, the chief Gates-funded cheerleaders for the Common Core, released the results of a national teacher survey,showing that, as many of us warned would happen, the Common Core has indeed driven out classic works of literature, including novels and plays, from the English curriculum, in favor of a rigid quota of “informational texts” .  In addition, teachers report that students’ writing skills have worsened,  and the Core’s emphasis on “close reading”, with teachers told  to refer solely to the assigned text rather provide any factual or historical context, has caused curriculum with real content to be sacrificed to hours of content-free test prep. Their conclusion:
NAEP scores.

“Between 2012 and 2017, the percentage of teachers who said they organized their instruction around “reading skills” increased from 56 to 62 percent, while those who said they organized their instruction around “specific texts” declined from 37 to 30 percent. That’s no way to systematically build students’ content knowledge. It’s high time that teachers (and preferably schools) adopt content-rich curricula.” 

Sorry, guys, you and Bill Gates should have thought of that first, before pushing these deeply flawed so-called standards on the nation.

The Pushback against charter schools strengthened as a result of widespread corruption, too frequently push out students and violate their civil rights, drain public schools of critical resources, and exacerbate segregation. 

Student Privacy as a dominant concern:  From being ignored by most policymakers, student privacy has emerged as one of the  most important issues in education since the defeat of inBloom in 2014.  With the continued spread of unsafe and unproven data-mining ed tech products, the CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Highlights of 2018 in books, education policy and political activism

Please give so we can continue our fight 

for smaller classes and student privacy!

Dear friend:

2018 is nearly done, but our fight for  smaller classes and student privacy continues.  We rely on your support to make this happen; please make a tax-deductible donation to Class Size Matters today.

Our organization can survive only because of the generosity of individuals like you, who understand that all children deserve classes small enough to enable them to receive real personalized learning from their teachers.  Please click here to contribute; if you’d like your donation to go to our privacy work, you can indicate that on the line which says “designate your donation to a specific program or fund.”

This fall, our Parent Coalition for Student Privacy released an Educator Privacy Toolkit, along with the Badass Teachers Association, that has already been downloaded more than 1500 times. Take a look and join us for a webinar on January 20, where we will provide practical tips on how teachers can better protect their students’ data and their own.

Two weeks ago, I co-authored an op-ed showing that the deal that NYC made to put a new Amazon headquarters in Long Island City will likely lead to more school overcrowding, with two potential sites for schools given away to this corporate giant.  

Ten days ago, we released a new report, showing how the Mayor’s expansion of preK in NYC has caused worse overcrowding in 352 NYC elementary schools enrolling more than 236,000 students. We continue to press the mayor and the Chancellor to provide equity for NYC children. which can only occur if more schools are built and class sizes lowered to averages that prevail in the rest of the state.   

Please show your support, so we can continue our fight to improve every student’s opportunity to learn next year and in the years to come.

Happy Holidays, Leonie

NYC Public School Parents: Highlights of 2018 in books, education policy and political activism

PS I have posted my personal list of the best of 2018  – in books, education and politics.  Take a look!

2018 Top Ten: Medley #25 – Live Long and Prosper

2018 Top Ten: Medley #25 – Live Long and Prosper

2018 Top Ten: Medley #25

We’re coming to the end of another calendar year so it’s time for resolutions and “best of” lists. Here’s the list of this blog’s Top Ten Posts of the Year according to the number of hits each one received.

#10, MARCH 29

What’s Bugging Me Today: Testing Ignorance – RTFM

The Children’s Defense Fund released a report which revealed that they do not understand how tests work in general, and how the NAEP works, specifically. They claimed that 67% of America’s eighth-graders were reading “below grade level” which was not the case based on the proof they cited. Correctly reading the information they relied upon, we can conclude that 75% of America’s eighth graders are reading at or above “grade level.”

This means that the 67% of students who scored below proficient on the NAEP’s 8th-grade reading test were not honor students, not that they were “below grade level.” Students who are “proficient” are high achieving students. Students who are “basic” are average, and students who are “below basic” are the ones who are at risk of failure. 67% of students below “proficient” does not mean that 67% failed the test!

In fact, 76% of eighth graders scored at “Basic” or above on the NAEP nationally. That’s still not perfect…and some might argue that it’s not even acceptable, but it’s much better than the mistaken assumption that “67% of eighth graders score below grade level.”

#9, MARCH 4

Time for The Test! What Can One Teacher Do?

Each year teachers have to stop teaching to make time for intrusive state standardized tests. It’s a waste of time and doesn’t improve the learning process. Furthermore, the results of the tests are used in invalid and unreliable ways.

Understand that the increased importance of standardized tests — CONTINUE READING: 2018 Top Ten: Medley #25 – Live Long and Prosper

Goliath Responds: I Am Not Goliath! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Goliath Responds: I Am Not Goliath! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Goliath Responds: I Am Not Goliath!

On December 23, I posted an email exchange I had with Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, in which we disagreed about who was the Goliath and who was the David in the field of education.

Mike objected to my characterization of the billionaire-supported “Reform” movement as the Goliaths of American education, the behemoths making war on public schools. He insisted that his side–those supporting charter schools and vouchers–are the true Davids, and those who oppose them are the true Goliaths because we have the AFT and the NEA on our side.

I pointed out to him that the assets of the two big unions are not in the same league as the supporters of school choice, like the Waltons (at least $160 billion) and a long list of other multibillionaires, who avidly fund school choice, along with the U.S. Department of Education, which has shoveled billions into charter schools since 1994 (and will spend nearly $500 million on charters this year alone). You can’t be supported by billionaires, multiple foundations, the U.S. Department of Education, and call yourself the “David” of education.

My clincher, I thought, was to point out the Reformers’ absence from a Twitter campaign on #GivingTuesday sponsored by a website called #Benevity, which offered $10 for every retweet of its message (#BeTheGood) to the charity of your choice. Look at which groups were CONTINUE READING: Goliath Responds: I Am Not Goliath! | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Gadfly’s Dozen: Top 13 Education Articles of 2018 (By Me) | gadflyonthewallblog

A Gadfly’s Dozen: Top 13 Education Articles of 2018 (By Me) | gadflyonthewallblog

A Gadfly’s Dozen: Top 13 Education Articles of 2018 (By Me)

I’m not going to mince words.

This year, 2018, has been a monster.

We’ve been fighting the dumbest and most corrupt President of our lives – Donald Trump. And we’ve been making progress.

Thanks to the midterm election blue wave in the U.S. House, Trump will finally have a check on his power.

We have more black and brown representatives, more women, more nationalities, ethnicities and faiths in the halls of power than ever before.

Charter schools and vouchers are more unpopular today than at any other point in history. High stakes testing is on the decline. And everywhere you look educators and education activists are being heard and making a difference.

But it’s taken an incredible toll on the activist community.

We have had to be out there fighting this ridiculous crap day-in-day-out 365 days a year.

And even then, we’ve suffered devastating losses – family separations at the border, children dying in detention, an increase in hate crimes and gun deaths, all while climate change runs rapidly out of control.

I wish I felt more hopeful. But as I cast my eyes back on the year that was, I’m struck with a sense of bone-deep despair.

I am confident Trump will go down and he will take so many with him.

But the forces of regression, prejudice and stupidity that forced him upon us don’t appear to be going anywhere.

Behind Donald is another Trump waiting to take his place. And behind him another CONTINUE READING: A Gadfly’s Dozen: Top 13 Education Articles of 2018 (By Me) | gadflyonthewallblog

Buy the Book | gadflyonthewallblog - https://wp.me/P4QD1W-2Z9 via @StevenSinger3

CREAM AND CHERRIES: Certain Students Not Encouraged to Apply to Charter Schools | Education News | US News

Certain Students Not Encouraged to Apply to Charter Schools | Education News | US News

Tailoring the Charter School Population
Students with behavior problems, low achievement or special needs are sometimes not encouraged to apply to charter schools.

CHARTER SCHOOLS AND public schools of choice – those in school districts that allow students to choose from any number of schools instead of zoning them to just one – are less likely to encourage students with a history of poor behavior, low academic achievement or special needs to apply.

Charter schools, in particular, were less likely to encourage students with a potentially significant special need to apply.

That's the latest research published Thursday by Peter Bergman, an assistant professor at Columbia University's Teachers College, and Isaac McFarlin Jr., assistant professor at University of Florida's College of Education.

The researchers sent emails from fictitious parents to nearly 6,500 schools in 29 states and the District of Columbia, asking whether any student is eligible to apply to the school and how to do so. Each email signaled either a disability status, poor behavior, high or low prior academic achievement, or no characteristic at all. The researchers also varied students' implied race, household structure and gender.

"We find that schools respond less often to messages regarding students whom schools may perceive as more challenging to educate," the researchers concluded.

The baseline response rate was 53 percent. But emails signaling a student with a potentially restrictive special need were 5 percentage points less likely to receive a response; emails signaling a behavior problem were 7 percentage points less likely to receive a response; and emails signaling prior low academic achievement were 2 percentage points less likely to receive a response.

Notably, emails indicating good grades and attendance were neither more nor less likely to receive a response.

In one sub-analysis, the researchers compared the responses of charter schools directly to the nearby traditional public schools. Overall, they found the response rates similar with one major exception: If an email signaled a child had a significant special need, charter schools were 7 percentage points less likely to respond while traditional public schools were not more or less likely to respond. CONTINUE READING: Certain Students Not Encouraged to Apply to Charter Schools | Education News | US News

SPOTLIGHT BLOG OF THE WEEK: JAN RESSEGER BLOG (janresseger.wordpress.com)

SPOTLIGHT BLOG OF THE WEEK: JAN RESSEGER BLOG (janresseger.wordpress.com)

DEC 14

What If Policymakers Stopped Condemning Poor People and Considered their Real Needs and Circumstances?

by janresseger / 12d

Merry Christmas and Good Wishes for the Season! This blog will take a holiday break. Look for a new post early in the new year. In 2012, Mike Rose published Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education , a book about the potential of community colleges to help people discover their interests, widen their experiences, and perhaps change the direction of their lives. He begins

DEC 13

New Federal Case Launched in Rhode Island to Establish Educational Equity as a Federally Protected Right

by janresseger / 13d

If you think about it, you’ll remember that for more than forty years, school equity cases have been filed under the education clauses of the 50 state constitutions. That’s because, in a 1973 decision, San Antonio v. Rodriguez , the Warren Burger, U.S. Supreme Court decided that, because education is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, education is not protected as a fundamental right under t

DEC 12

Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools Tells New Congress: Fully Fund Title I and IDEA

by janresseger / 14d

In his new book, Educational Inequality and School Finance, the Rutgers University school finance expert Bruce Baker carefully refutes some long-running and persistent myths about the funding of public education—Eric Hanushek’s claim that money doesn’t really make any difference when it comes to raising student achievement, for example, and the contention that public schools’ expenditures have sk

DEC 11

New from the National Education Policy Center: “How School Privatization Opens the Door for Discrimination”

by janresseger / 15d

Last week this blog explored some of the ways the expansion of school choice ends up creating injustice and inequality . The National Education Policy Center just published a new report, How School Privatization Opens the Door for Discrimination , in which Julie Mead of the University of Wisconsin and Suzanne Eckes of Indiana University further investigate one particular aspect of the same topic:

DEC 07

More Education News from Chicago: WBEZ Publishes the Troubling History of Chicago’s Public School Closures

by janresseger / 19d

It is quite a week for education news from Chicago. Yesterday this blog covered the first teachers’ strike at a charter school network, UNO-Acero Charter Schools in Chicago. Today’s post considers nearly two decades of closures of traditional neighborhood schools in Chicago. Chicago’s closure of so-called “failing” schools began in 2002. Two years later, Chicago’s technocratic model of test-based

DEC 06

Chicago Teachers at 15-School Acero Charter Chain Strike: First Walkout at a Unionized Charter School Network

by janresseger / 20d

In the first walkout at a U.S. charter school network, 500 teachers at Chicago’s Acero (formerly UNO) charter school chain went on strike Tuesday. Acero Charter Schools’ teachers are represented by the Chicago Teachers Union. While teachers in a number of Chicago charter schools had formed their own ChiACTS union, at the end of last January, ChiACTS merged with the 28,000 member Chicago Teachers

DEC 05

Why School Choice Ends Up Creating Injustice and Inequality

by janresseger / 21d

In his new book, Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America’s Students , school funding expert, Bruce Baker critiques the rapid expansion of charter schools for siphoning off dollars from state and local public school budgets. Baker also addresses the philosophical contention frequently offered to justify the rapid expansion of school choice—that justice can be defin

DEC 04

Dogged Advocates for Justice Protest Ohio State School Takeovers of Youngstown, Lorain, and East Cleveland

by janresseger / 22d

After January, John Kasich will no longer be governor of Ohio. House Bill 70, the law that paved the way for the Youngstown—and now Lorain and East Cleveland—school takeovers is the biggest stain on his legacy. In gerrymandered Ohio, with huge legislative Republican majorities after the November 2018 election—62 Republicans and 37 Democrats in the Ohio House and 24 Republicans and 9 Democrats in

NOV 30

DeVos Again Protects For-Profit Colleges and Federal Loan Servicing Contractor at Expense of Vulnerable Students

by janresseger / 26d

Betsy DeVos once announced: “Government really sucks.” She doesn’t like government regulation, and she prefers to free up the marketplace. One of the best places to observe her penchant for deregulation is in higher education, where she has regularly done everything she can to protect the investors in for-profit colleges and trade schools, where she has tried to step back from protecting students

NOV 29

Faith in High Stakes Testing Fades, Even Among the Corporate School Reformers

by janresseger / 27d

After a recent twenty-fifth anniversary conference at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, Bothell—a Gates funded education-reformer think tank, Chalkbeat ‘s Matt Barnum summarized presentations by a number of speakers who demonstrate growing skepticism about the high-stakes, standardized testing regime that has dominated American public education for over a

NOV 21

Truly Public Schools Must Form Engaged Citizens and Then Engage Those Citizens in Shaping School Policy

by janresseger / 35d

This blog will take a week long Thanksgiving break. Look for a new post on November 29. Good wishes for Thanksgiving! In its October 2018 issue, Phi Delta Kappan magazine features a pair of articles that, from two entirely different perspectives, trace declining civic engagement around public education to the philosophy at the heart of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. In Preparation for Capable

NOV 20

DeVos Proposes Controversial Rewrite of Rules for Investigating Campus Sexual Assault

by janresseger / 36d

Last Friday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos released—for a 60-day public comment period—new rules for how schools that receive federal dollars must handle allegations of sexual assault. The Washington Post ‘s Laura Meckler explains : “The rules stem from a 1972 law known as Title IX that bars sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funding. Most of the attention is on higher education

NOV 16

Northwestern University Economist Uses Data to Prove Students’ Test Scores Fail to Measure Quality Teaching

by janresseger / 40d

Mike Rose, a UCLA education professor, understands a lot about teaching. In his extensive writing about education, Rose explains good teaching with precision and insight. Rose culminated a four year visit to excellent classrooms across the United States with the publication of the story of those teachers in Possible Lives . He has also written widely about what good teachers do and what ought to

NOV 15

Bruce Baker’s New Book on School Finance Develops a Scathing Critique of Charter School Expansion

by janresseger / 41d

Rutgers University school finance professor, Bruce Baker’s new book, Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America’s Students , covers the basics—how school finance formulas are supposed to work to ensure that funding for schools is adequate, equitable, and stable. Baker also carefully refutes some persistent myths—Eric Hanushek’s claim that money doesn’t really make a

NOV 14

Is America’s Romance with Charter Schools Fading Despite Gobs of Political Money from Its Promoters?

by janresseger / 42d

Last week’s election produced a couple of significant indicators that the public may be growing weary of charter schools. At the same time the public seems increasingly aware that adequately funded public schools may be a better way