Wendy Lecker, Civil Rights Lawyer, Reviews SLAYING GOLIATH | Diane Ravitch's blog

Wendy Lecker, Civil Rights Lawyer, Reviews SLAYING GOLIATH | Diane Ravitch's blog

Wendy Lecker, Civil Rights Lawyer, Reviews SLAYING GOLIATH 

Wendy Lecker is a civil rights lawyer for the Education Law Center who writes regularly for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and the Stamford (CT) Advocate.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Wendy-Lecker-A-fighter-against-bad-education-15111892.php

She writes:

Diane Ravitch is rare in American public policy — a public figure who very publicly admitted that the positions she once championed were wrong. Dr. Ravitch is a historian of education and former assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush — and was once a vocal champion of two pillars of education “reform”: school choice and standardized testing. In 2010, she published a book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” in which she meticulously critiqued these policies, and rued her role in pushing them.

Since then, Dr. Ravitch has tirelessly fought ill-conceived and harmful education policies and promotes a vision of public education that she believes is better for children and truer to our democratic ideals. She not only writes and speaks out herself, she also gives voice to many others fighting for public education, known and unknown. CONTINUE READING: Wendy Lecker, Civil Rights Lawyer, Reviews SLAYING GOLIATH | Diane Ravitch's blog

Will Teachers Listen to Their Own Message? | Live Long and Prosper

Will Teachers Listen to Their Own Message? | Live Long and Prosper

Will Teachers Listen to Their Own Message?

A STATE THAT HATES ITS PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Last year around this time I listed a short (recent) history of the ways the Indiana Republican-dominated legislature and governors hated Indiana’s public schools.

In Indiana: Still hating public education after all these years I discussed how the legislature, under the leadership of Governors Daniels and Pence restricted collective bargaining for Indiana’s teachers, refused to acknowledge with economic support the value of experience and education among Indiana’s teachers, supported rules making it easier for unqualified non-professionals to teach in Indiana’s schools, withdrew due process from teachers’ rights as employees, and stalled funding.

At the end of 2019, Indiana teachers finally got the message and took it to the streets. On November 19th, 2019, fifteen to twenty thousand (depending on CONTINUE READING: Will Teachers Listen to Their Own Message? | Live Long and Prosper

DeVos Defends Trump’s Education Budget. Will Democrats Stick to Promises for Something Better? | janresseger

DeVos Defends Trump’s Education Budget. Will Democrats Stick to Promises for Something Better? | janresseger

DeVos Defends Trump’s Education Budget. Will Democrats Stick to Promises for Something Better?

Betsy DeVos has been on Capitol Hill in recent weeks trying to defend an indefensible, fiscal year 2021 Education Department budget proposal.  She has testified to House and then Senate appropriations subcommittees, where members of Congress deserve credit for defending common sense and the common good by summarily rejecting what Betsy DeVos was trying to sell them.

In late February, DeVos appeared before the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees the budget of the Department of Education.  Education Week‘s Andrew Ujifusa explains: “DeVos defended the Trump fiscal year 2021 budget blueprint that would cut $5.6 billion from the U.S. Department of Education’s current budget of $71.2 billion and roll most federal K-12 programs—29 in total—into a formula-driven block grant… ‘What have we bought with all that spending?’ DeVos asked, before answering her own question that there were merely ‘sad results’….”  Ujifusa continues: “But the most significant moment of the hearing perhaps came when Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., the chairwoman of the House appropriations committee, told DeVos: ‘We are going to reject this proposal.'”

Last week, DeVos went before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies. Unlike the House, the U.S. Senate is dominated by a Republican majority, but that fact did not change the response of members of the committee to the proposal DeVos came to defend. The Hill‘s Marty Johnson quotes DeVos’s assessment of American public schools: “DeVos, in her opening statements… claimed that the new $19.4 billion block grant program would ‘unleash new innovation at the state and local level, and continue to expand proven reforms, including public charter schools, magnet CONTINUE READING:DeVos Defends Trump’s Education Budget. Will Democrats Stick to Promises for Something Better? | janresseger

CURMUDGUCATION: The Gates Team Wants To Swing For The Education Fences. Maybe There’s A Better Way For Them To Play.

CURMUDGUCATION: The Gates Team Wants To Swing For The Education Fences. Maybe There’s A Better Way For Them To Play.

The Gates Team Wants To Swing For The Education Fences. Maybe There’s A Better Way For Them To Play.

It says something about Bill Gates that after using the expression “swing for the fences” in the title of his foundation’s annual letter, he also feels the need to explain it:

That’s a phrase many Americans will recognize from baseball. When you swing for the fences, you’re putting every ounce of strength into hitting the ball as far as possible. You know that your bat might miss the ball entirely—but that if you succeed in making contact, the rewards can be huge.

It also explains why, after twenty years, Bill and Melinda Gates have yet to get near the fences on education.

The Gates legacy in education includes several expensive whiffs. There was the small schools initiative, on which he spent $2 billion, and then there was the initiative for improving teachers, which was less expensive, but no more successful. And then there’s the Common Core standards, behind which Gates threw an immeasurable amount of money and influence. All created far more disruption and expense than anything resembling success.

All of these were, in fact, swing for the fences initiatives—attempts to hit a home run that ultimately stirred the air over home plate.

Educators have watched the Gates’ take multiple times at bat and wondered if they have learned CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: The Gates Team Wants To Swing For The Education Fences. Maybe There’s A Better Way For Them To Play.

And So We Persist (On LuzMaria Rojas-Vilson and Elizabeth Warren and ...) | The Jose Vilson

And So We Persist (On LuzMaria Rojas-Vilson and Elizabeth Warren and ...) | The Jose Vilson

AND SO WE PERSIST (ON LUZMARIA ROJAS-VILSON AND ELIZABETH WARREN AND …)

I’m watching her wince through her knee injury.

She forces her hips and legs to cooperate while she walks gingerly to the couch. It wasn’t always like this. After graduating from Columbia University with a master’s degree in administration, she went directly to an alternative transfer high school to teach students from ages 15 to 21. She quickly rose from English teacher to assistant principal. In her first year as assistant principal, she would basically run the operations of this school, from programming and professional development to waiting for kids in police custody and in emergency rooms. She reversed attacks on her character and named herself the HBIC of the school.

She never shied away from command and never led her shipmates astray.

In her second year, however, she had other aspirations: her first child and a home for her new family. Under a new principal, she worked tirelessly to cross every t and dot every i. Whatever she didn’t know how to do, she learned on the job. While other adults treated their jobs as a list of compliance measures and commands to hold others responsible for, she understood how the students in her care had been passed over and along too often in their educational careers. Not doing her job was not an option.

Over the next decade or so, she maintained her stellar expectations, work ethic, and energy at the CONTINUE READING: And So We Persist (On LuzMaria Rojas-Vilson and Elizabeth Warren and ...) | The Jose Vilson

Chaz's School Daze: Why Don't Schools Have Hand Sanitizers?

Chaz's School Daze: Why Don't Schools Have Hand Sanitizers?

Why Don't Schools Have Hand Sanitizers?

The DOE is responsible not only in funding and hiring school nurses but should be supplying all schools with adequate toiletries and especially hand sanitizers.  Again if the DOE is failing in their mission to supply hand sanitizers, then principals should be using their budget to pay for them. They should folow the example of the hospitals with no touch hand sanitizes strategically located throughout the building.

I have many colleagues in various schools and few, if any, have hand sanitizers in their schools.  Manny teachers and other staff bring their own personal hand sanitizers to their classroom and offices but few share it with their students.  Moreover, what about school cafeterias, bathrooms, auditoriums, and locker rooms? These common areas are a hotbed for germs and viruses and hand sanitizers are a necessary measure to limit the spread of various germs and viruses.  Let's not forget that many children take mass transit to and from school, buses or trains good places to contract germs and viruses.

While the coronavirus appears not to be fatal for school-age children, CONTINUE READING: Chaz's School Daze: Why Don't Schools Have Hand Sanitizers?

Coronavirus: How to make your own DIY hand sanitizer | Fox News - https://www.foxnews.com/media/how-to-make-your-own-hand-sanitizer on @foxnews

enrique baloyra: Fla. pols outraged by nonprofit waste - unless it's their own - YouTube

Fla. pols outraged by nonprofit waste - unless it's their own - YouTube

Fla. pols outraged by nonprofit waste - unless it's their own

Do you remember the outrage just a few weeks ago after it was reported the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence had paid its CEO $millions in taxpayer money?
In response, the governor issued an executive order demanding accountability from nonprofits that receive at least half of their budgets from the state. https://apnews.com/21d2aff04707f3bf02...
But when it comes to holding accountable the private schools that take a $billion in voucher money every year, crickets.
In fact, the legislature is about to pass a bill expanding the deeply flawed program months after the Orlando Sentinel published a series exposing how private schools that accept public funding turn away LGBTQ students and their parents.
It was such a big scandal that several of the program’s biggest funders walked away after issuing statements. Except for Fifth Third Bank. They apparently think discrimination isn’t such a big deal. So they’re back in.
But it’s not just the hatred and bigotry they teach in these schools that Floridians should be concerned about.
Turns out schools that teach discrimination and Creationism aren’t required by the state to administer the same tests that bog down public schools for months every school year.
A recent study by the FSU Learning Systems Institute concluded that only about a quarter of the schools that participate in the voucher program are using Florida’s standardized tests.
And of those that did test, about 66% of students actually regressed in either their reading or math scores or both.
“If private schools are doing such a bang-up job, you’d think legislators would want parents to know all about it.
“Requiring voucher schools to take the FSA would provide an apples-to-apples comparison, though that solution has drawbacks.” https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opini...
Among which, as any teacher worth their classroom experience can tell you, standardized testing is a crude instrument, unsuitable for determining a student’s progress. Mostly used as a cudgel to punish schools that have historically underperformed — mainly due to poverty — and forcing them to close. So that more unaccountable schools can open under the guise of “school choice.”
Regardless the academic outcomes. And turning a blind eye to blatant discrimination.
Because Florida politicians aren’t really interested in eliminating fraud and abuse.
They just want to make sure to get their cut.

Fla. pols outraged by nonprofit waste - unless it's their own - YouTube

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION + ICYMI: Losing An Hour Edition (3/8)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Losing An Hour Edition (3/8)

 Losing An Hour Edition (3/8)

Surely it's about time to end this whole Daylight Savings baloney. Because as I sit here this morning, it hardly seems worth it.

But here's some reading from the week:

Voucher Programs Undermine Religious Liberty 
The Baptist Joint Committee posts this piece in opposition to voucher programs being used to drain public schools and send money to places like Baptist private schools.

Colonists  
Uncharted is a blog allegedly operated by a former charter school teacher, and it offers some stark and stunning looks at the inside view of charters. This piece is about the realization of a racist system inside the school.

City Fund Spending
The City Fund is the latest organization, featuring many of the same old players, that is out to privatize public schools. Thomas Ultican breaks down some of the organizational and financial connections that are in play for this group. It's not pretty.

No More Middle Ground
Shane Phipps has pretty much had it. This Indiana teacher points out that the legislature just floated a Florida style law that would let charters steal part of the income from a funding levy passed to support public schools.

Trump's Education Policy Is A Chance for Democrats 
Jennifer Berkshire has been traveling in Trump country and noting that his supporters are also big fans of public schools. Will that have implications for the fall election? The Nation has her article.

How The DeVos Rules on Sexual Assault Will Shock Schools  
Betsy DeVos thinks schools and universities are too hard on men accused of sexual assault, and she's about to "fix" that. Politico looks at some of the implications of her coming rules shift.

Betsy DeVos's Problem with Numbers 
DeVos made a visit to the Senate to talk about then budget, and as usual, her talking points included some items that were counter-factual. Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post breaks down the baloney.

100 Years of Teacher Bashing
Have You Heard reminds us that "reform" via shaming and blaming teaches has a long, rich history.

How Will Schools Handle a Pandemic Without Nurses?
Jersey Jazzman crunches some number, builds some charts, and points out that one in five US schools has no nursing coverage. There are details, but the bottom line is that this may not be the best place to be heading into a pandemic.

Black Students Are Being Penalized for their Hair, and That's Bad for Everybody
CNN looks at this issue from the "Wait, Aren't We Living in the 21st Century Filers." An angrifying school trend.

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Losing An Hour Edition (3/8)

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION

AND DON'T FORGET PETER GREENE ON FORBES CLICK HERE 

The Complexity of Performance Tasks

29by Peter Greene / 1d

It's spring musical season here in NW PA, and I am back in a small way playing in the pit orchestra for a production of Seussical being put as a co-op between my old school and a neighboring high school. This is an annual enterprise I was part of for years. I've been doing school and community theater in a variety of capacities for almost forty years now, and it's still pretty exciting. There real

MAR 05

Schneider's Indispensable Guide To Research

23by Peter Greene / 2d

I call her the indispensable Mercedes Schneider. When I entered the blogosphere, hers was one of the first names I learned, because I kept coming back to her blog to get the information that wasn't anywhere else. I have (I hear) a reputation for cranking out a lot of writing, but Schneider posts almost daily, writes books, and carries a full time teaching load. And her posts are usually the result

New Book Argues Christian Right Worships Power

by Peter Greene / 2d

Katherine Stewart is an author and journalist who specializes in issues surrounding te separation of church and state. She has a new book coming out-- The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism , and a recent interview at Salon captures some of the highlights. It's always interesting to see what happens when someone whose main beat is not education takes a look at e

MAR 04

IN: Child Labor Is Fun

by Peter Greene / 4d

Some legislators in Indiana are boldly taking on one of the great problems of their state-- too many restrictions on child labor. The bill intends, among other things, to do away with the requirement for student work permits for teens. Because the fact that a teenager is flunking high school should not stand in his way when it comes to serving as a useful meat widget for employers. Full day of sch

NWEA Offers More Testing Baloney

92by Peter Greene / 4d

When a system doesn't work, you have a couple of choices-- you can address the problems that are causing failure, or you can insist that the original system is super-duper and start imposing new rules to try to work around the flaws in your original system. Like the latch that doesn't work properly, but instead of fixing the latch, you just teach everybody to lift and push the door to the side to

MAR 03

Civics and History in the Classroom

by Peter Greene / 4d

The teaching of US history has always been... well, not a hot topic, exactly, but always one that is simmering on a back burner. From the occasional reaction to one brand of civic illiteracy or another (no, that's not an actual power of the President) to the eternal complaint that schools are teaching students to hate America , the civic conversation is always drawn back to the question of how the

How Do We Measure Your Turf?

by Peter Greene / 4d

In which I ponder the various ways in which private money plays in the public sphere, how much we should care about them, and why. Preface/Warning This post is probably going to be long and only sort of related to education. It has an audience of roughly two people-- a guy who periodically kicks at my ass on Twitter, and me. He's unlikely to be moved by anything I have to say, and I'm indulging my

MO: Arresting Librarians

200+by Peter Greene / 4d

If you haven't already, read this piece from Nancy Bailey that makes two points with crystal clarity and detailed support: * school librarians are an essential part of teaching reading in school (scientifically or otherwise) * school librarian jobs are being shed in many major cities at an alarming and distressing thoroughness. School librarians are essential, and they are a popular target for the

MAR 02

Free Market Winners and Losers

30by Peter Greene / 5d

One of the foundational arguments of modern ed reform is that free market forces would make education work better, that having to compete would make public and private schools work harder, smarter, better and create a rising tide of educational awesomeness that would lift all boats. This is unlikely for a variety of reasons, but the biggest problem with the free market when it comes to public educ

MAR 01

ICYMI: Making Up My Mind Edition (3/1)

by Peter Greene / 7d

I've held onto the privilege of not having to make up my mind about the Dem race, but more and more I find myself gravitating to Elizabeth Warren. Not perfect, but none of them are. I like her combination of policy, plan and temperament. And the whole smartness thing. Anyway. I figured you were just dying to know. Here's some reading from the week. The Myths of Learning Styles From the Atlantic, a

FEB 28

What Ever Happened To AltSchool?

27by Peter Greene / 8d

You remember AltSchool, the miraculous Silicon Valley technoschool that was going to Change the Game. We've checked in on them from time to time, and it's time to see what has happened since the Altschool ship ran aground on the 

CURMUDGUCATION - http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/