Big Education Ape

Saturday, October 3, 2020

The Skinny on Prop 15 - LA Progressive

The Skinny on Prop 15

his November, Californians will vote about whether to close a property tax loophole that favors older commercial properties. Residential property tax is based on the property’s last sale price, not current market value, but that is not true for commercial property. Even if the market value of commercial property increases, and a sale price reflects that, the property’s tax bill does not change if less than half of the property changes hands.

So when Michael Dell (of Dell Computers) buys a Santa Monica hotel, splitting ownership between himself, his wife and a corporation he owns, the property tax doesn’t change–the hotel is, in effect, still taxed at 1978 rates. Commercial properties throughout the state use this dodge to deprive us all of an estimated $12 billion in public money.

Passing proposition 15 puts California on par with the way the vast majority of states treat commercial property.

Since 1978–when prop 13 passed, implementing this loophole–California schools have gone from 21st to 46th in spending per student. The condition of California bridges ranks 18th nationally, and half of its county hospitals have closed. Homeowners pay a bigger share of property tax revenues, too. In 1978, corporations paid 44% of property tax. Currently, they pay 28%, with homeowners paying the rest.

Proposition 15 remedies this by assessing commercial properties at current market value (“split roll”). It also exempts owner-operated small businesses from reassessment until they are sold. It levels the playing field so small businesses can compete more fairly with big CONTINUE READING: The Skinny on Prop 15 - LA Progressive

The week in coveducation: Federal grants, canceled events and an Epic audit

The week in coveducation: Federal grants, canceled events and an Epic audit

Part one of an audit of Epic Charter Schools was released by State Auditor & Inspector Cindy Byrd this week claiming that the charter schools owe Oklahoma $8.9 million for violation of a statute limiting administrative costs at such schools.

Meanwhile, a group of parents at Stillwater Public Schools have requested that a judge order the district to resume in-person classes full time.

The State Department of Education also received $15.2 million in federal grants to support districts in meeting the needs of their students.

Catch up on the week’s #coveducation news with this recap of headlines from around Oklahoma.

Epic Charter Schools audit released

A report released by the State Auditor & Inspector’s Office on Thursday claims Epic Charter Schools owe Oklahoma $8.9 million after allegedly violating state law that limits how much money a charter school can spend on administrative costs. The audit also claims the schools used state tax dollars to fund a venture in California and only repaid the money after being detected by auditors.

NonDoc reported that State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd was asked to audit the charter schools by Gov. Kevin Stitt in 2019.

“I’ve seen a lot of fraud in my 22 years, and this situation deeply concerns me,” Byrd said of the audit.

The Epic audit is being turned over to Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter’s office, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and the Oklahoma Tax Commission. Byrd said the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service and the Office of Inspector General will also receive the 120-page Epic audit.

“We have received the audit and will review it,” said Alex Gerszewski, communications director for Hunter.

OKCPS changes response to Department of Education alert levels CONTINUE READING: The week in coveducation: Federal grants, canceled events and an Epic audit

Hiring? Use an Anti-Racist Lens! - Philly's 7th Ward

HIRING? USE AN ANTI-RACIST LENS!

As a principal of three neighborhood schools serving majority Black students, I was always in talent acquisition mode. More on point, I was always in talent acquisition and cultivation mode, since the best recruitment strategy is a great retention strategy.

You can’t fire your way to building a great institution of learning. You have to hire and coach extremely well. But that does not mean you hold on to anyone whose values do not align with that of your school and the community you serve. And these values must be clear, pervasive, and protected.

HOW SHOULD SCHOOL LEADERS CHOOSE TEACHERS TO HIRE?

I’ve been asked a lot recently: how would you hire for this upcoming school year—given the impact of the pandemic and the summer of uprisings against the more systemic, more ingrained, more destructive culture of racism plaguing our nation?

Other than seeking additional expertise in online education and distance learning, I want to be clear: were I still a school principal, my hiring goals, approach, and practices would not change. CONTINUE READING: Hiring? Use an Anti-Racist Lens! - Philly's 7th Ward

Bruce Baker: New Jersey spent 35 years and $100B trying to fix school inequity. It still has problems. - POLITICO

New Jersey spent 35 years and $100B trying to fix school inequity. It still has problems. - POLITICO

New Jersey spent 35 years and $100B trying to fix school inequity. It still has problems.

New research suggests the state’s failure to fully fund its approach to education spending has left a significant gap between white and Latinx students.

TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey spent more than three decades and over $100 billion targeting money to its most struggling school districts in an attempt to rectify generations of inequity in its education system.

In the end, it just solved one problem and created another.

The funding helped level the playing field for Black students, ensuring children in the state’s poorest cities got the same amount of funding as those in some of the wealthiest towns. But new research suggests New Jersey’s failure to fully fund its approach to education spending after achieving those goals has left a significant gap between white and Latinx students.

New Jersey’s 30-year experiment shows how hard it is to truly fulfill promises to make public schools equitable, something that has been a cornerstone of protests this year after George Floyd’s killing in Minnesota that brought attention to racial and socioeconomic inequities across the U.S. The progressive policy became the subject of never-ending court battles, rancorous debates from Democrats and Republicans alike over who deserves state resources and a cost driver for the state budget, a third of which now goes to education aid.

Instead of making continual progress on funding, New Jersey is "backsliding," says researcher Bruce Baker.

“For the last decade, it’s really kind of fallen apart,” Baker, professor at Rutgers University‘s Graduate School of Education, said of school funding in New Jersey. “New Jersey schools now are about as equitable as they were in the early 1990s.”

New Jersey employs one of the most ambitious school funding approaches in the nation, using a complicated and controversial formula to redistribute state tax revenue to ensure all of its roughly 600 districts spend enough to meet the needs of every pupil.

But it hasn’t been enough. The state’s failure ever to fully fund the formula left many middle-of-the-road communities with fewer resources than either the poorest or richest districts. CONTINUE READING: New Jersey spent 35 years and $100B trying to fix school inequity. It still has problems. - POLITICO

Arthur Camins: To Renew Our Society, Teach Empathy, Ethics, and Evidence | Diane Ravitch's blog

Arthur Camins: To Renew Our Society, Teach Empathy, Ethics, and Evidence

Arthur Camins, lifelong educators, knows that teachers can’t change what happens in the next few months, other than by casting their votes. But they can rebuild the foundation of our society by teaching these three things: empathy, ethics, and evidence.

He writes:

My driving force has always been a core assumption: What happens in classrooms has a significant influence on how students think and behave when they emerge into adulthood, and hence when they vote and interact with one another.

I hope students grow up to treat everyone with dignity and respect. I hope they develop the tools to make sense of the natural and social environments in which they live. I hope they develop confidence and passion to act to CONTINUE READING: Arthur Camins: To Renew Our Society, Teach Empathy, Ethics, and Evidence | Diane Ravitch's blog

How To Prevent Suicide Among Tweens | HuffPost

How To Prevent Suicide Among Tweens

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for children ages 10 to 14, who are online more than ever before. A center in New Mexico is working to change that.

SANTA FE, N.M. ― As with most after-school clubs, the meeting inside Ortiz Middle School begins with kids bumping and jostling into a classroom. A boy with green hair grabs a bag of chips off a table, taking a seat next to a girl. He invites her to share the snack. Another student adjusts the tie-dye bandana she’s using as a headband and shows her friend a funny meme on her phone.

The adult advisers, Robert Kristy and Katrina Koehler, ask everyone to take a seat on the floor in a circle, assuring them that pizza has been ordered and will be delivered shortly.

Koehler asks, “So, on a scale of happy to crappy, how’s your suicide?”

Forget the volleyball team or chess club. This group, which has been meeting weekly since 2015, was formed in the spirit of Project Semicolon, an international movement that began when activist Amy Bleuel shared her mental health struggles on social media. “[E]veryone who self harms, is suicidal, depressed, has anxiety, is unhappy, going through a broken heart, just lost a loved one, etc. draw a semicolon on your wrist,” she posted to Twitter in 2013. “[A] semicolon represents a sentence the author could’ve ended, but chose not to. [T]he author is you and the sentence is your life.”

All over the world, people embraced the punctuation mark, with many acquiring real semicolon tattoos. The Sky Center, an independent mental health clinic that operates out of Ortiz Middle School, also adopted the semicolon for a suicide survivors group created as part of its effort to provide free, in-person support to a growing number of distressed young people.

For years, experts across the United States have been working to address the mental health crisis among teens and young adults. But a growing number of indicators suggest that the same emotional problems ― anxiety, depression and even suicide ― are affecting children at increasingly younger ages.

Even before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, there were worrying signs. The number of anxiety disorders diagnosed by health care providers in children as young as 6 has gone up 17% in just five years, according to the most recent data.

Self-injury, or intentional cutting, scratching, burning or hitting, has been measured as high as 30% in some populations of girls, with the age of onset around 12 or 13.

These intentional self-harming behaviors ― often separate from suicidal intentions ― have become so widespread that a new disorder, non-suicidal self-injury (NSSID), was added to the 2013 DSM-5.

Bark, an app that alerts parents when their children encounter worrisome content online, analyzed the online activity of more than a million tweens in 2019. A staggering 55% of  CONTINUE READING: How To Prevent Suicide Among Tweens | HuffPost

Remote learning has been a disaster for many students - The Washington Post

Some children thrive in remote learning. - The Washington Post

Remote learning has been a disaster for many students. But some kids have thrived.

John was having some trouble in class.

The seventh-grader had been diagnosed with ADHD and a language disorder that makes processing verbal and nonverbal cues a challenge. Despite extra support he received through his Individualized Education Plan for students with disabilities, John often felt overwhelmed by the chaos of his middle school classroom.

“He just gets distracted,” said his mother, Alex, who spoke on the condition that her last name be withheld to protect her son’s privacy. “That’s his biggest issue.”

And then, suddenly, John was no longer in class. Like millions of other American schoolchildren, he was pushed into remote learning from home when the coronavirus pandemic hit this spring.

But something surprising happened. John did better learning remotely than he had in person, the opposite of the experience of most students. He even received a certificate from his school, in a suburb of Boston, for excellence in remote learning, something given to only a handful of students.

“He misses friends, obviously, but at the same time, I can tell that there was a huge change in his stress levels, and he was able to concentrate on his schoolwork,” said Alex. “He enjoyed learning again. Before, school was kind of tedious for him.”

Remote learning has been a struggle for teachers and is expected to set back the learning gains of a generation of students. It has been particularly hard on children of color, kids from families who are financially insecure, and those without access to computers and technology at home.

But a small number of students have done unexpectedly well. In some cases, those students struggled with distractions in the classroom during in-person learning. In others, they had social challenges at school: They were anxious, easily drawn into conflicts with other students, or embarrassed to engage in front of their peers.

“The challenge of in-classroom [learning] can be the social interaction. And for some kids, that’s actually really hard,” said Lynette Guastaferro, chief executive officer of Teaching Matters, a nonprofit that focuses on increasing teacher effectiveness.

Some educators are wondering how the experiences of kids who have done better during remote learning can be applied to improve in-person learning in the future. Takeaways might include having more social and emotional check-ins with students, increased inclusion of students with disabilities in general education class activities, wider use of technology, and accommodating unconventional techniques that individual students have found helpful.

“I know it’s a pandemic. I know it’s hellacious out there, I know it’s hard. I’m not saying it’s not all those things,” said Lauren Katzman, executive director of the Urban Collaborative, a national network of more than 100 school districts focused on improving outcomes for students with disabilities. “I am saying there are opportunities that we’re not thinking about clearly, and I want us to.”

For John, the freedom to work at his own pace and manage his own time, along with a few incentives, played key roles in his success. When Alex allowed him to play video games on weekdays (not allowed before the pandemic), he started to get more involved in planning his schoolwork for the week, and frontloaded assignments so that he could take off Fridays, and sometimes even part of the day on Thursdays.

“He just kind of did that on his own, and saw the value of not procrastinating, like he normally would,” said Alex.

Listening to music while he did his schoolwork was also important.

“He often said, ‘I wish I could do this in school; I bet I could do so much better, and I could concentrate better,’ ” said Alex.

Allowing students such as John to listen to music in a classroom is a simple accommodation a school could make in order for a student to learn better, according to Katzman. “It doesn’t cost anybody any money,” she said. “You don’t need any expertise in how to manage that. It’s a simple thing.” CONTINUE READING: Some children thrive in remote learning. - The Washington Post

Rebekah Ray: Florida Is the Worst Place to Be a Teacher | Diane Ravitch's blog

Rebekah Ray: Florida Is the Worst Place to Be a Teacher

Rebekah Ray responded to another Florida teacher who complained the changes by the State Legislature has destroyed the promises made to him when he became a teacher. It’s method of evaluating teachers is one of the worst in the nation. If they don’t teach reading or math in grades 3-8, they are assigned ratings for students they never taught in subjects they never taught.

Ray writes:

I would not sign that evaluation. The first year Florida started its detrimental evaluation system I taught all 11th grade classes. I was asked to meet with the principal and the AP of curriculum (my evaluator) and was told I was a “Needs Improvement Teacher”. I was devastated because prior to that year, I had always received outstanding evaluations. I was also an NBCT teacher. Additionally, for that first year of the insane evaluation system, all teachers on campus who did not teach 9th and 10th grade were supposed to receive the school-wide VAM. I pointed out that I should have received the SW VAM scores because I taught all 11th grade students. The AP looked at me and said, “No, you have one 10th grade class.” At that point, my devil horns came out, and I CONTINUE READING: Rebekah Ray: Florida Is the Worst Place to Be a Teacher | Diane Ravitch's blog

Effective Remote Teaching Part 1: Tools of the trade | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Effective Remote Teaching Part 1: Tools of the trade

Like many teachers around the country, I am currently teaching my students in a room by myself. Remote teaching is very taxing. It takes me about five to ten times as long as it used to to prepare my lessons each day. At the end of the day my head is spinning from all the screen time and the lack of walking around. And the feedback that I’m used to getting, the energy I get back from seeing the students learn in person is replaced by students looking into a zoom looking equally struggling.

But if I’m going to do something in teaching, I want to do it as best as I’m able so I’ve taken the task very seriously and I’m hoping that I can share some of the methods I’ve come up with to be as effective a remote teacher as I can.

In this first post, I want to show you my setup. Every component of this setup is absolutely critical to me being able to do all the things I need to: teach, give feedback, get student input, and assess. I know that some teachers will not have access to all this technology and they will say they can’t afford to buy all this stuff. But hopefully many will be able to CONTINUE READING: Effective Remote Teaching Part 1: Tools of the trade | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

HARD PLUS INCONVENIENT DOES NOT EQUAL INEFFECTIVE – Dad Gone Wild

HARD PLUS INCONVENIENT DOES NOT EQUAL INEFFECTIVE

“That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.”
― William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace

Am I the only one that sees the irony in us planning to send kids back to school the same week as the President is diagnosed with the virus?

Or the irony that we are sending kids back to school because we feel we can keep them safe for 7 and half hours, but we are not allowing parents into sporting events because we can’t keep them safe for 3 hours?

Then there is the irony of spending 3 weeks focusing on SEL only to blow up any reaped benefits 6 weeks later in order to get back into school to satisfy some sort of political agenda.

It ain’t irony, but it’s still puzzling, we want to send kids back to school in an effort to “return to normalcy” while refusing to acknowledge that what they are returning to is going to be no more familiar then remote learning. Kids will arrive at a school where unscheduled bathroom breaks will not be permitted. If recess time is allowed, and playground equipment is used, equipment will need to be wiped down regularly. For many students, it’ll require remaining in the same room, while teachers rotate, for the majority of the day.

Interactions between kids will be limited. No small group studies. Computers will travel back and forth to school. Florida Virtual School will continue to remain the flavor of the day.

Right now, some of you are reading this and saying to yourself, “That’s not going to be my school. My principal has already told us, things for us are going to be as close to regular school as CONTINUE READING: HARD PLUS INCONVENIENT DOES NOT EQUAL INEFFECTIVE – Dad Gone Wild

CURMUDGUCATION: Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney

Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney

Back in April, NWEA (the MAP test folks) issued a "report" about what we've taken to calling the Covid Slide, which is sadly not a cool new line dance, but is instead an important tool for people in education-flavored businesses who want to try to panic school districts and bureaucrats. Now Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) yesterday threw their weight behind this piece of scholastic chicken littling.

Let me remind you why you can still afford to be unimpressed.

First, even if you do not have first hand experience with NWEA's MAP test (I do--it's a lousy computer-delivered multiple choice test), you should always remember that one of their attempts to make some edu-bucks centers around their program that they promised can read minds by measuring how long it takes students to pick a multiple choice answer.

Second, you know that this "report" is baloney because it leans on that great imaginary measure, the "days of learning." Students during the pandemic will "lose" X number of days of learning. "Days of learning" is actually a measure that CREDO made up themselves, based on some "research" in a 2012 paper by Erik Hanushek, Paul Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann. And if "days of learning" seems like a bizarro world way to measure of education (Which days? Days in September? Days in March? Tuesdays? Instructional days, or testing days, or that day we spent the afternoon in a boring assembly? And how does one measure the amount of learning in a day, anyway?)-- well, here's the technical explanation from that paper:

To create this benchmark, CREDO adopted the assumption put forth by Hanushek, Peterson, and CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney

THIS WEEK'S WILDNESS -Dad Gone Wild – Nobody reads it, everybody quotes it.

Dad Gone Wild – Nobody reads it, everybody quotes it.

THIS WEEK'S WILDNESS

Dad Gone Wild

Nobody reads it, everybody quotes it.

HARD PLUS INCONVENIENT DOES NOT EQUAL INEFFECTIVE

by TC Weber / 21h

“That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.” ― William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace Am I the only one that sees the irony in us planning to send kids back to school the same week as the President is diagnosed with the virus? Or the irony that we are sending kid

GUTCHECK

by TC Weber / 1d

“[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.” ― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir You would think that if a politician stood in front of a room full of microphones and made a pronouncement about pending dire outcomes, that the easiest question to answer after the announcement would be, where is the data to support your announcement? After all, if you a

LET’S SEE WHAT CREDO HAS TO SAY

by TC Weber / 3d

“Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new.” ― Galileo Galilei One of my more pleasant discoveries si

A FIRING OFFENSE

by TC Weber / 4d

“No matter what happens in the world, however brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking themselves to document it. Little sparks cause fires, too.” ― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark The field of student assessments is a complex one. Its a field heavily reliant on high level math, complex algorythm, and a deep understanding of subject matter. Used pr

DOES IT EVER STOP?

by TC Weber / 7d

“Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.” ― Patti Smith One might have thought that three days of posts on education practices and policies in Tennessee would suffice, they would be wrong. Today I turn away from the Circus of Illusions being crafted by the Tennessee Department of Education and it’s erstwhile leader, Penny Schwinn. The leaving out of the honora

DID THE GOVERNOR COMMISSION A BIRD?

100+by TC Weber / 8d

“Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. Telling the truth when the truth matters most is almost always a frightening prospect. If a writer doesn’t give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves; if she doesn’t court disapproval, reproach, and general wr

REPRESENTATIVE MARK WHITE’S INCREDIBLY FANTASTIC PROM DATE

by TC Weber / 9d

“Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.” ― Anton Chekhov Yesterday Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn made a long-anticipated appearance before the Tennessee House Education Committee as part of their Summer study. Luckily she had Memphis State Representative and Education Committee Chairman Mark White to serve as her escort for the affair. White

WHAT’S LEFT WHEN THERE ARE NO GOOD OR BAD CHOICES?

by TC Weber / 10d

“I don’t feel very much like Pooh today,” said Pooh. There, there, said Piglet. I’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.” – A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh “You are either the sort of person who shapes society, or the sort of person whose life is affected by the shape of society.” ― Rumaan Alam, Rich and Pretty Like most parents in Nashville, last week was one fraught with a choice – to remain virt

PROCEED AT YOUR OWN PERIL

by TC Weber / 14d

“When the whole world is crazy, it doesn’t pay to be sane.” ― Terry Goodkind, The Pillars of Creation “The best way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick alongside it” ― D.L. Moody It was about 7, or a little after, as we made o