CURMUDGUCATION: Creating More Defective Children PLUS When Local Control Turns Toxic

CURMUDGUCATION: Creating More Defective Children

Creating More Defective Children

This has always been a dangerous side effect of educational certainty. If I'm absolutely certain that my program is awesome, my pedagogy is flawless, my materials are on point, and classroom is just generally perfect-- and yet some students are not learning-- well, there's only one possible explanation. The student must be defective.

The defect effect appears to be cropping up in a new place. As reported in EdWeek, a new report published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that children who turn five the month before kindergarten starts are, as a group, being over-diagnosed with ADHD.

"Our findings suggest the possibility that large numbers of kids are being over-diagnosed and overtreated for ADHD because they happen to be relatively immature compared to their older classmates in the early years of elementary school," said study author Timothy Layton, and assistant professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School.

Relative immaturity is one factor to consider here. But why would this start cropping up in recent years; why wouldn't the relative immaturity of August babies be so well-known and widely recognized from the last century of schooling that schools would simply set an earlier cut-off date? In Pennsylvania, 78% of school districts make the cut-off September 1. There is some anecdotal reporting of increased redshirting but the study above suggests that perhaps there should be more.

Are we looking at a correction to bad education policy being made at the grassroots level.

In other words, if kindergarten is the new first grade, are more parents concluding that 6 is the new CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Creating More Defective Children

When Local Control Turns Toxic

I am a fan of local control for school districts, but I'm not going to pretend that under the wrong circumstances it won't produce some terrible results.

EdBuild has just issued a report on a troubling phenomenon-- the secession of wealthy communities from larger school districts. This issue has been reported on before, but this is a report that collects instances of attempts across the nation.

EdBuild is not an organization that I'd ordinarily be promoting. Their reform credentials are deep, from Founder/CEO Rebecca Sibilia who used to be the COO of StudentsFirst to a board headed by Derrell Bradford of NYCAN (among other groups). They do have some actual teachers like Nate Bowling on their board of advisors, but mostly this is another group that runs deep with people without actual experience in education, and most of their policy positions are heavily school choicey.

But neither education experience or complex methodology is needed to collect this kind of data, and the results are not great. Since 2000, 128 communities have tried to secede from their school districts, and 74 have been successful.

A large chunk of those are not hard to explain. The map shows a huge group of seceding districts in Maine. For about a decade, Maine put big pressure on its districts to consolidate, with a plan to turn almost 300 school districts into 26. There were severe financial penalties for keeping your own district, until Governor LaPage eliminated the penalties; at that point, many districts headed for the door. The many secession fights in Maine represent an attempt by districts to maintain their original shape, not surprising in a state that is largely rural and it can take 90 minutes to travel a distance that is 30 miles as the crow flies. The state of Maine accounts for a full half of the 74 seceding districts and so allows EdBuild to inflate their total numbers.

Front of the big beautiful HS Collierville built its students,

once it got them out of Shelby County Schools

Still, the uninflated numbers and the stories that go with them are still pretty troubling. In Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama, what we see are severe examples of school district gerrymandering, and the story, over and over, is of rich white folks trying to get themselves a district that doesn't include so many of those poor Black folks. The Shelby County school districts are a fine example of white flight, district secession, and the hoarding of resources so that wealthy folks don't have to spend tax dollars on Those People's Children.

I presume that this phenomenon can be used to argue that choice has to be implemented to rescue  CONTINUE READING: When Local Control Turns Toxic

Randi Weingarten calls on superintendents: Listen to your teachers | The notebook

Randi Weingarten calls on superintendents: Listen to your teachers | The notebook

Randi Weingarten calls on superintendents: Listen to your teachers
"This de-professionalization is killing the soul of teaching," she said.

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten spoke Thursday in Washington, D.C., about how teachers are leaving the profession at record-breaking rates and how the AFT can help. She wants to create partnerships between local unions and superintendents so that decisions are made based on feedback from teachers — not dictated by the whims of national foundations. That requires reversing a trend to standardize teaching and learning.

“The disinvestment in education and the failure of many states to make teaching a viable career go hand-in-hand with another major crisis,” Weingarten said. “The de-professionalization of teaching.”

Weingarten’s address at the National Press Club, billed as “Freedom to Teach,” was followed by a panel discussion with education and union leaders from states and districts that have moved toward this approach.

In the early 20th century, the principles of Taylorism — a factory philosophy of achieving profit through labor efficiency — were used to creates standard school practices so that lessons could be taught by any literate person without training or experience, reducing the role of the teacher “to an unskilled laborer,” Weingarten said.

That began to change for the better in the mid-20th century, but now teachers face “prepackaged corporate curriculum, intended to standardize teaching to conform with the standardized assessments.”

“Scripted curriculum, a.k.a. teacher proofing, took this to the extreme,” she said, “not only CONTINUE READING: Randi Weingarten calls on superintendents: Listen to your teachers | The notebook

HEY, AMERICA! Don't just sit there! DO something! | Eclectablog

HEY, AMERICA! Don't just sit there! DO something! | Eclectablog

HEY, AMERICA! Don’t just sit there! DO something!

In times like these, it’s…

Screw it. There have never been “times like these” in American history. Yes, we’ve had presidents who were incompetent or narcissistic and who surrounded themselves with like-minded, power-hungry sycophants. And we’ve had Congresses that have abdicated their duty to hold our leadership accountable. But we have never had the sort of confluence of all of these things happening simultaneously that we’re living through now.

And while all of this is happening on the national stage, the donor class that owns our government, for all intents and purposes, continues apace with their inexorable march toward an American corporatocracy that shovels our tax dollars into their bank accounts like a stoker shoveling coal into the firebox of a steam locomotive.

Things are not Good, my friends. Not Good at all.

The reality is that every one of us has a duty to fight back with everything we have. We need to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. We need to replace any member of Congress who refuses to hold him accountable. We need to reclaim power in our state legislatures and work overtime to overcome the powerful influences and the excruciating gerrymandering that has solidified Republican power in our states.

Every waking moment of every day we should ask ourselves what we can be doing and then doing that thing. Rinse and repeat. We won’t win every battle we fight but, if we fight in every battle, we’ll begin to turn the tide. And we should pledge to ourselves and our comrades that we will NEVER LET THEM DO ANYTHING WITHOUT A FIGHT. Because you know just as well as I do that they want you demoralized and complacent and will take advantage of that lull whenever they see it. Period.

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HEY, AMERICA! Don't just sit there! DO something! | Eclectablog

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HEY, AMERICA! Don't just sit there! DO something! | Eclectablog

Andre Perry: Betsy DeVos’s Support for Charters Makes Democratic Charter Supporters Uncomfortable | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andre Perry: Betsy DeVos’s Support for Charters Makes Democratic Charter Supporters Uncomfortable | Diane Ravitch's blog

Andre Perry: Betsy DeVos’s Support for Charters Makes Democratic Charter Supporters Uncomfortable

I have said it before and I will say it again. Betsy DeVos is the most effective weapon against corporate reform, because she activates resistance and personifies noblesse oblige.

Former New Orleans charter leader Andre Perry has become a thoughtful critic of charters, and he points out that DeVos has become a major cause of a widespread charter backlash. 

As Perry puts it, Betsy Devos’s support of charter schools “spells disaster for their Democrat backers.” How can charters be, as their billionaire supporters say, “the civil rights issue of our time” when DeVos and every Red State governor supports them?

The fact that she wanted to cut the Special Olympics by $18 million at the same time she proposed to increase charter school funding by $60 million sent a loud message about what matters to her. Choice above all else.

The teacher strikes in many states specifically protested the introduction or expansion of charters because they drain money from public schools. In Los Angeles, striking teachers demanded a moratorium on new charters, and the state is now considering legislation to rein in the voracious industry.

In Milwaukee, a slate backed by the Working Families Party and the teachers’ union swept to victory in a recent election.

The drumbeat of scandal and failure haunts the charter industry, and DeVos’s warm embrace is a flashing danger CONTINUE READING: Andre Perry: Betsy DeVos’s Support for Charters Makes Democratic Charter Supporters Uncomfortable | Diane Ravitch's blog

In Praise of the Unheralded | One Flew East

In Praise of the Unheralded | One Flew East

IN PRAISE OF THE UNHERALDED

allen watkin from London, UK [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D

Too much of what goes on around the teaching profession these days seems designed to undermine the confidence and effectiveness of teachers. I know, it’s not meant that way, not really. But low pay, false narratives about “failing” schools, imposed methodologies and mythical “outcomes,” the quantification of assessment, and the fallacious idea that “anyone can do it” (backed by training programs claiming a few weeks preparation is enough before entering the classroom) tell us otherwise.

Teaching is hard enough without this nonsense. It requires work and sacrificing one’s ego for the benefit of a room full of students, most of whom would rather be anyplace else. The teacher may seem to be the center of the classroom, but the teacher fails when that becomes the truth–and stopping that is exhausting. Teaching requires constant attention to two things (more, actually, but these are critical), the goals of the lesson and the paths of individual learners, two things that diverge as each class session evolves. Teaching requires adapting syllabi and lesson plans constantly as the reality of student progress unfolds.

No one cares about any of this, or so it seems when we look at discussions of teaching and teachers in the public sphere. Instead of recognizing the difficulties all teachers work to overcome (and do, much of the time), people keep telling me and others about brilliant “master teachers” who shine in the classroom. I’m supposed to be impressed when they mention the performances of colleagues who win teaching awards or have consistently high Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) scores. And I’m expected to applaud when I hear others brag about how tough they are in their grading or how far their star students have gone. I guess I’m supposed to be abashed or moved to shut up, sit at their feet and learn; after all, I concentrate only on CONTINUE READING: In Praise of the Unheralded | One Flew East

Repenning Is The Charter Candidate in LAUSD’s Runoff For Board District 5 – redqueeninla

Repenning Is The Charter Candidate in LAUSD’s Runoff For Board District 5 – redqueeninla

Repenning Is The Charter Candidate in LAUSD’s Runoff For Board District 5

Jackie Goldberg is on record, with great, deep, theoretical and experiential evidence, for not being “against charters”. Do listen to her nuanced and knowledgeable explanation here. Given the opportunity to elect someone with such practical understanding of Education not to mention education politics, there can be no excuse to reject the leadership of Jackie Goldberg. May 14 is the date every voter in LAUSD5 must turn out. Find your polling place here.

But if Goldberg is not against charters, is her candidacy favored by those who would privatize public education?  Positively not.  She has no record of campaign donations from folks associated with the privatization of education, not during the primary campaign or in this runoff:

Her opponent, however, repudiated charter money in the primary to some degree, conspicuously returning donations from KIPP’s Marcia Aaron, Celerity’sNadia Shaiq, and the online charter chain Options For Youth’s Bob Morales. Even while a minimum of 6% (from a very conservative association-count) of her private donations came from charter-associates. These included a fund-raiser and two maxed-out donations from YPI’s Dixon Slingerland and family, as well as thousands more from charter board members, staff and ideologues such as: Bill CONTINUE READING:Repenning Is The Charter Candidate in LAUSD’s Runoff For Board District 5 – redqueeninla