Put Your Community on the #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Week of Action Movement Map! – I AM AN EDUCATOR #BLM #BLACKLIVESMATTER #BLACKHISTORYMONTH

Put Your Community on the #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Week of Action Movement Map! – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Put Your Community on the #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Week of Action Movement Map!

Click on this link to register your community as participating in the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.

Happy Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action!

Seattle, Philadelphia, New York City, New Jersey, Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, Boston, Iowa, Baltimore, Washington, D.C.… These are just a few of the scores of cities and communities across the country where educators, students and community organizations have participated in Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action events. Throughout the week, many thousands of educators will be wearing shirts to school that say, “Black Lives Matter at School” and will teach lessons about structural racism, intersectional Black identities, and Black history in cities all across the country.

Are you teaching a lesson related to the Black Lives Matter Global Network principals? Are your students engaging in the BLM at School creative challenge? Are you organizing a rally, speak out, student talent showcase? Whatever you are doing to be part of the Week of Action, we want to know about it and we hope that you put your community on the BLM at Schools movement map! Click on the link and register your community as participating.

Thank you!

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Put Your Community on the #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Week of Action Movement Map! – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Octavius V. Catto, Black Educator Hall of Fame - Philly's 7th Ward #BLM #BLACKLIVESMATTER #BLACKHISTORYMONTH

Octavius V. Catto, Black Educator Hall of Fame - Philly's 7th Ward

OCTAVIUS V. CATTO, BLACK EDUCATOR HALL OF FAME

This Black History Month, we’ll highlight 28 Black Educators in our Hall of Fame.

Octavius V. Catto was an educator and an activist; an eduactivist, born on February 22, 1839 in South Carolina. He was born in South Carolina, but he made his mark in Philadelphia. He attended the Institute for Colored Youth; an institution, founded as the African Institute, that trained Black youth to become teachers – free of charge. Catto was valedictorian of his graduating class and was immediately added to the school staff as assistant to the principal. He also taught.

Whether Classical Literature or Higher Mathematics, Catto was in the classroom. But he also taught his students liberation.

White teaching, Catto worked to secure the voting rights of Blacks in Pennsylvania. He was a member of a number of other civic, literary, patriotic and political groups. He worked to secure justice for all workers, specifically Black people and in his spare time, he was a player-coach for the best baseball CONTINUE READING: Octavius V. Catto, Black Educator Hall of Fame - Philly's 7th Ward

What you need to know about standardized testing - The Washington Post

What you need to know about standardized testing - The Washington Post

What you need to know about standardized testing

Diane Ravitch is a former assistant secretary of education and historian. For more than a decade, she has been a leading advocate for America’s public education system and a critic of the modern “accountability” movement that has based school improvement measures in large part on high-stakes standardized tests.

In her influential 2010 book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” Ravitch explained why she dropped her support for No Child Left Behind, the chief education initiative of President George W. Bush, and for standardized test-based school “reform.”

Ravitch worked from 1991 to 1993 as assistant secretary in charge of research and improvement in the Education Department of President George H.W. Bush, and she served as counselor to then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander, who had just left the Senate where he had served as chairman of the Senate Education Committee. She was at the White House as part of a select group when George W. Bush first outlined No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a moment that at the time she said made her “excited and optimistic” about the future of public education.

But her opinion changed as NCLB was implemented and she researched its effects on teaching and learning. She found that the NCLB mandate for schools to give high-stakes annual standardized tests in math and English language arts led to reduced time — or outright elimination — of classes in science, social studies, the arts and other subjects.

She was a critic of President Barack Obama’s policies and his chief education initiative, Race to the Top, a multibillion-dollar competition in which states (and later districts) could win federal funds by promising to adopt controversial overhauls, including the Common Core State Standards, charter schools and accountability that evaluated teachers by student test scores.

In 2013, she co-founded an advocacy group called the Network for Public Education, a coalition of organizations that oppose privatizing public education and high-stakes standardized testing. She has since then written several other best-selling books and a popular blog focused primarily on education. CONTINUE READING: What you need to know about standardized testing - The Washington Post

Grassroots Education Network- 2020 Roundup - Network For Public Education

Grassroots Education Network- 2020 Roundup - Network For Public Education

Grassroots Education Network- 2020 Roundup

The NPE Grassroots Education Network is a network of over 160 grassroots organizations nationwide who have joined together to preserve, promote, improve, and strengthen our public schools. If you know of a group that would like to join this powerful network, please go here to sign on. If you have any questions about the NPE Grassroots Education Network, please contact Marla Kilfoyle, NPE Grassroots Education Network Liaison, at marlakilfoyle@networkforpubliceducation.org

Notes from Marla

Needless to say, 2020 was a very difficult year.  Despite the many hardships that individuals and organizations in the network have faced, we continued to rise up to help others.  As you read the year-end roundup, you will see organizations and individuals ravaged by the impact of COVID and social injustice continue to organize with impact. The NPE Grassroots Education Network 2020 roundup is a testament to a small sample of work that has had a lasting impact on our nation. The 2020 roundup is organized into regions. I know that  2021 will be a year of continued solidarity and respect for the work we each do every single day.  

National Front

The Network for Public Education was very busy this year. In August of 2020, NPE published Broken Promises: An Analysis of Charter School Closures From 1999-2017.  The report provides the first comprehensive examination of charter failure rates over time—beginning in 1999 and ending in 2017. By following all charter schools from the year they opened, we were able to determine how long they lasted before closing down. We also CONTINUE READING: Grassroots Education Network- 2020 Roundup - Network For Public Education

Teacher Tom: Bird Brains

Teacher Tom: Bird Brains

Bird Brains

Yesterday, a pair of crows drove our dog crazy by play fighting outside our living room window. At first I thought it was an actual fight, and maybe it was (I have no idea what was in their hearts) but after awhile it was hard to see it as anything other than a bit of rough housing, especially when they finished by flying off together, wingtip to wingtip to perch side-by-side on a tree branch where they proceeded to casually preen their feathers.

Crows, they tell us, are one of the animal kingdom's most intelligent creatures, certainly at the top of the heap when it comes to birds. They belong to a family of birds called corvids that includes ravens, rooks, and jays. Scientists use things like their ability to solve problems, make tools, and their ability to anticipate future events as evidence of this intelligence. Crows even seem to possess a "theory of mind," which is to say they consider other individuals' states of mind. They actually make customized tools. They  understand causality, can reason, count up to five and it's said they remember individual human faces, so if you're mean to a crow, they'll know to avoid or dive bomb you when next you meet. They're so smart they outperform apes in some tests of intelligence. This has lead some scientists to assert that crows are second only to humans.

These are all criteria we use to determine human intelligence CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Bird Brains

If Schools Don’t Overhaul Discipline, ‘Teachers Will Still Be Calling The Police On Our Black Students’ | HuffPost #BLM #BLACKLIVESMATTER #BLACKHISTORYMONTH

If Schools Don’t Overhaul Discipline, ‘Teachers Will Still Be Calling The Police On Our Black Students’ | HuffPost

If Schools Don’t Overhaul Discipline, ‘Teachers Will Still Be Calling The Police On Our Black Students’

As districts across the country cut their school resource officers, advocates warn it won’t be enough to end overly harsh discipline of Black students.

Shyra Adams vividly remembers the days after the death of Tony Robinson, an unarmed Black teenager killed in 2015 by police in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. 

Angry and distraught over the injustice, Adams, then a high school sophomore, staged a walkout with hundreds of other students, who filled the state Capitol to protest Robinson’s death. She joined weekly protests and helped organize sit-ins at her school. Then, she cried quietly in class as she watched the Dane County district attorney announce on TV that no charges would be filed against the officer who shot and killed Robinson.

“It felt kind of hopeless at that point,” Adams, now 21, said. 

But this summer, after five years of testifying at nearly every Madison school board meeting about the importance of removing police from schools, Adams found herself crying for a different reason. This time, she said, the tears came from her renewed hope that fighting for young people of color could lead to change. In June, she and other members of the Freedom Youth Squad, a group of Black and Southeast Asian activists, gathered to watch the Madison school board’s unanimous vote to cancel its contract with municipal police and remove all officers stationed at its high schools.

“A lot of people in different states were winning, but I thought, ‘In Madison? No way. They’ve been ignoring us for years,’” Adams said. “But that’s changing now. We finally got CONTINUE READING: If Schools Don’t Overhaul Discipline, ‘Teachers Will Still Be Calling The Police On Our Black Students’ | HuffPost

Fighting The Power: Black History Month And Beyond - Philly's 7th Ward #BLM #BLACKLIVESMATTER #BLACKHISTORYMONTH

Fighting The Power: Black History Month And Beyond - Philly's 7th Ward

FIGHTING THE POWER: BLACK HISTORY MONTH AND BEYOND

*Mic check* (Ahem).

Educators: are you aware that next month is Black History Month? Have you asked your students, specifically your Black students, what they’d like to see and/or do for Black History Month? Or, do you plan on doing the least; that is reading brief bios of famous Black people during morning announcements, putting posters on the walls of the school and/or hosting a pot luck with staff, students and families – whereby Black people are in charge of cooking the food (doing the work as usual)?

This year, Black History Month will take place on the backdrop of an insurrection, which was an attempt at installing white rule and erasing the will of a multiracial/multicultural electorate – led by the activism of Black women.

While the events of January 6, 2021 were tragic and traumatizing, educators have an opportunity to provide students quality learning opportunities that infuse Black history into their content — whereby teaching Black history isn’t fitting a square peg in a round hole.

As educators, we have a unique opportunity to connect the dots between the history of violent white mobs that terrorize the country based on lies (which, essentially is what racism is based on) to the fight for Black liberation. In short, we can fight the power – right in their classrooms.

To put it in context for educators, “the power” is made up of politicians who denounce the truth of the 1619 Project in favor of a whitewashed history that conveniently omits the starring role white supremacy played in our nation’s CONTINUE READING: Fighting The Power: Black History Month And Beyond - Philly's 7th Ward

Jake Jacobs Reviewed Hillary’s Dreadful Education Plan | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jake Jacobs Reviewed Hillary’s Dreadful Education Plan | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jake Jacobs Reviewed Hillary’s Dreadful Education Plan

Jake Jacobs, an art teacher in New York City, a leader of New York BadAss Teachers, and a writer for The Progressive, read and reviewed Hillary Clinton’s policy briefing book in 2017 and reviewed the education section for Alternet. I missed his article, but it’s worth reading now to understand how advocates of privatization have inserted themselves into both political parties and use their vast wealth to control public policy and undermine public schools.

Jacobs points out that Laurene Powell Jobs “has been close with the Clintons since the late ’90s, also sat with Betsy DeVos on the board of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education. She set up billionaire “roundtables” with Clinton’s campaign advisors through 2015 while donating millions to Priorities USA, Clinton’s main PAC.”

Jacobs notes:

Notes taken by Clinton aide Ann O’Leary were made in interviews with Powell Jobs and Bruce Reed, President of The Broad Foundation (and former chief of staff to Joe Biden). According to the notes, the “experts” were calling for new federal controls, more for-profit companies and more technology in public schools — but first on the menu was a bold remake of the teaching “profession…” CONTINUE READING: Jake Jacobs Reviewed Hillary’s Dreadful Education Plan | Diane Ravitch's blog

Education Law Center Exposes Collapse of States’ Investment in Public Schools Since 2008 | janresseger

Education Law Center Exposes Collapse of States’ Investment in Public Schools Since 2008 | janresseger

Education Law Center Exposes Collapse of States’ Investment in Public Schools Since 2008

One of the ways we attribute meaning to what we see is through stories.  Here is the story of my school district. We are among the top districts in Ohio in the local school property taxes we have voted.  But our district was forced to cut teachers and programs this year, and the teachers almost went on strike because of threatened cuts to their health care benefits despite that, in November, we passed yet another local school property tax operating levy. When my children were in elementary school in the 1980s and early 1990s, each school had a nurse and each school had a certified librarian, but now schools share nurses and the libraries are staffed by aides. Looking at this situation from a purely local point of view, many people in my community interpret these facts in a way that blames the district for mismanagement or salaries that are too high, or both.

But a new report from The Education Law Center insists that citizens must expand their understanding of funding public schools beyond the local story: “The political dynamics in state capitols have profound implications for the level and distribution of school funding. Nationally, state sources (mainly sales and income tax) provide 47%, and local sources (overwhelmingly from property taxes) provide 45% of the revenue to support public schools. The federal government contributes the remaining 8%. When state governments allow tax revenues to decline or remain stagnant, public schools, which states are legally obligated to maintain and support, pay the price. Elementary and secondary education on average accounts for 36% of states’ general fund spending, the most of any state government services.”

The Education Law Center’s new report, $600 Billion Lost: State Disinvestment in Education Following the Great Recession, sets the financial crisis in my school district and a mass of other school districts in a much clearer context. The Education Law Center blames state policy over more than a decade as the primary cause of our dilemma. I already had some understanding of the current fiscal problems for the nation’s public schools because, for years, I have been reading reports on this topic from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (see this example).  But the new report is short, up to date, readable, and extremely important for CONTINUE READING: Education Law Center Exposes Collapse of States’ Investment in Public Schools Since 2008 | janresseger

Forum on mayoral control, vote on gifted test and BLM in schools this week | Class Size Matters | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes

 Forum on mayoral control, vote on gifted test and BLM in schools this week | Class Size Matters  | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes

Tonight’s forum on mayoral control, vote on gifted test and BLM in schools this week

Jan. 31, 2021

I’ll be speaking tonight Sunday at 8 PM with other teachers, parents and advocates at a forum on how mayoral control or our schools should be changed– more here, including how to sign up and/or watch on Facebook live.

• An example of the problems with this governance system is how last week, the Mayor tried to push through the renewal of the unreliable and invalid Pearson test for giftedness, which luckily was defeated by an 8-7 vote of the Panel for Educational Policy – the first time in the history of the PEP that a DOE contract has been rejected.

Though even the Chancellor admitted that the admission process was “pedagogically unsound”, the main argument the administration made for the renewing the contract was it was too late to do anything else. This is despite the fact that numerous problems with the program and admissions process had been discussed for years, including at a PEP meeting last spring.

You can read a leaked DOE memo from July after the PEP discussion took place, which also suggests what the DOE may be planning to substitute for this test could be worse. The unconscionable delay in decision-making has been a repeated feature of our schools under de Blasio, who also postponed closing the schools last March when the Covid crisis was at its height, and delayed planning for their reopening till mid-July. Mayoral control has been touted as a more efficient form of governance, but it’s been any but efficient under this Mayor, as I point out in my (postponed) testimony to the NYS State Assembly.

Mayor de Blasio says he intends to go ahead with some sort of selection process for four-year-old kids this year to be admitted to the gifted program anyway; we will see if and how he maneuvers this. Already the Staten Island Borough President James Oddo has fired his appointee for voting against the Pearson contract, so it is possible that the Mayor could bring the contract back for another vote next month.

Any supposedly independent board where representatives can be fired at will is not an independent board at all.

• Finally, on my latest Talk out of School podcast, I spoke to Brian Jones about Black Lives Matter in School, to take place starting tomorrow Feb. 1-5, in schools throughout the country, including NYC. Brian is a former NYC public school teacher who now works at the Schomburg Center as the Associate Director of Education. On the show, he explains what BLM in School movement is all about, and places its demands and principles in historical context. It’s a fascinating discussion; there are also a link to some lesson plans in the resources section of the podcast site.

Talk to you soon,  Leonie

 Forum on mayoral control, vote on gifted test and BLM in schools this week | Class Size Matters  | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes

Meet the New Republican Members of the House Ed and Labor Committee | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Meet the New Republican Members of the House Ed and Labor Committee | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Meet the New Republican Members of the House Ed and Labor Committee

The big news of late is that Q Anon-espousing, school-shooting-conspiracy-spewing, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has been assigned to (of all things) the House Education and Labor Committee for the 117th Congress.

I was curious about the other new members of Ed and Labor, so I thought I’d do some light investigating.

Here are the 11 new Republican members:

• Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) is seated for now, but her seat is being contested by her Democratic challenger, Rita Hart. After a recount, Miller-Meeks won by only 6 votes. Hart has appealed to the US House regarding 22 votes that were tossed out; Miller-Meeks has filed with the US House to have Hart’s petition dismissed. Miller-Meeks holds a bachelors in nursing, a masters in education, and an M.D. Her background includes being a director of public health. According to her campaign site, it seems Miller-Meeks did not have a section for education among her platform issues.
• Former NFL player (1973-82), Burgess Owens (R-UT) was in the news as he acknowledged Biden as president and publicly apologized to Democrats for (as the January 28, 2021, Salt Lake Tribune puts it) “lumping liberals in with Marxists and socialists in the past.” Burgess voted against certifying the 2020 election, saying in January 2021 that he was ony objecting to Pennsylvania’s votes, which would not have affected Biden’s win. In December 2020, Owens stated that there was “no question”  CONTINUE READING: Meet the New Republican Members of the House Ed and Labor Committee | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Schools Matter: Red State Governors Pick Up Where DeVos Left Off, Part 1

Schools Matter: Red State Governors Pick Up Where DeVos Left Off, Part 1

Red State Governors Pick Up Where DeVos Left Off, Part 1

It's easy to make a case that Donald Trump was the least informed, least effective, and most racist President since Woodrow Wilson. And it is even easier to do same for his "utterly unqualified" Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos.

Now that a competent and less racist Administration has saved the Nation from international shame and a domestic nervous breakdown, it is up to red state governors to push forward with the kinds of cruel, bigoted, corrupt, and Christian fascist initiatives that DeVos's hedge fund social planners pushed forward to gain the slimy seal of approval from the criminally-degenerate Trump.

Take Iowa, for instance, where Trump loyalist, Gov. Kim Reynolds, along with the Trumper legislature, is seeking to expand school privatization with publicly-funded "scholarships," i. e., schools vouchers, and a new state charter school law.  The legislation would also expand textbook tax credits, which will provide more private school and home school indoctrination materials for K-12 students who don't attend Iowa's historically-great public schools.

 

The State of Iowa also plans to make sure that public schools do not teach the social, political, and economic history of slavery in America, a subject that has never been adequately presented in standard school texts--and certainly not in the conservative doctrinaire curriculum now used in many of the Trump-loving "Christian" schools that operate with public financing. 

Specifically, the proposed legislation cancels the use of a history curriculum, the 1619 Project, developed by Iowa native and Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones.  The 1619 Project essays have been rolled into a CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: Red State Governors Pick Up Where DeVos Left Off, Part 1

Join the 2021 #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Week of Action from Feb. 1-5 with these online events all week! – I AM AN EDUCATOR #BLM #BLACKLIVESMATTER #BLACKHISTORYMONTH

Join the 2021 #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Week of Action from Feb. 1-5 with these online events all week! – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Join the 2021 #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Week of Action from Feb. 1-5 with these online events all week!

February 1st marks the beginning of the 4th annual Black Lives Matter at School national Week of Action!

There are so many events happening all around the country. Below is a calendar of online events for each day of the week to counter anti-Blackness in education. In this era of mass incarceration, there is a school-to-prison-pipeline system that is more invested in locking up youth than unlocking their minds. That system uses harsh discipline policies that push Black students out of schools at disproportionate rates; denies students the right to learn about their own cultures and whitewashes the curriculum to exclude many of the struggles and contributions of Black people and other people of color; and is pushing out Black teachers from the schools in cities around the country. That is why Black Lives Matter at School movement:

1. End zero tolerance discipline, implement restorative justice
2. Hire more Black teachers
3. Mandate Black history/Ethnic Studies, K-12
4. Fund Counselors, Not Cops

Throughout the week, many thousands of educators will be wearing shirts to school that say, “Black Lives Matter at School” and will teach lessons about structural racism, intersectional Black identities, and Black history in cities all across the country.

Join us every day of the week in the struggle for Black joy and education!

2021 BLACK LIVES MATTER AT SCHOOL

EVENTS & RESOURCES: 

Monday February 1:

2021 BLM Week of Action Creative Challenge Submission Youth are encouraged to answer this prompt: What makes you feel free to dream, safe to thrive in schools and communities? 

Tuesday February 2:

Elementary Read Aloud at 11:30am-12:30pm sponsored by the Northshore School District Racial & Educational Justice team. LaTisha Joseph, librarian at Northshore’s Woodmoor Elementary, and Ebony Harvey, principal at Northshore’s Woodmoor Elementary, will facilitate a read aloud and Q&A for elementary students with the two children’s books: “I’m Every Good Thing” by Derrick Barnes and “The Undefeated” by Kwame Alexander.

Wednesday February 3:

For the Culture: An Ethnic Studies Documentary at 6-7pm. Educator and Student Activist Cece Chan presents her documentary in conversation with NAACP-Youth Council student activists. Come learn about Black Lives Matter At School’s demand for Black History and Ethnic Studies.

Thursday February 4:

Black Students United with Michael Bennett at 11-11:50am. Michael Bennett, former defensive player for the Seattle Seahawks, activist, author, and founder of the Bennett Foundation, will speak about his journey and work, what it means to build community, intersectionality, and what it means for Black lives to matter at school.

Making Black Lives Matter: From the Streets to the Classroom at 12:30-1:30pm. Join Opal Tometi, Brian Jones, Denisha Jones, Jesse Hagopian and Marshé Doss in conversation about Black Lives Matter and education justice.

Friday February 5:  

Young, Gifted, & Black Student Talent Showcase Friday February 5 at 5:30-7:30pm pacific. Youth Sign-Up form for any youth interested in participating. Keynote event of the 2021 Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action. 

Additional Resources & Links:   

• Black Lives Matter at School national website. Facebook page. Twitter. Instagram. 
• Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice book, edited by Denisha Jones and Jesse Hagopian.
• Watch the Black Lives Matter at School Transgender & Queer Affirming Town Hall on January 29 sponsored by National Educators United and Black Lives Matter at School.
• Donate here to raise funds for this year’s events. 
• NEA Ed Justice has created a map for people to show that their community has joined the BLM at School Week of Action. Please register your district as having teachers that have joined the movement!

Join the 2021 #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Week of Action from Feb. 1-5 with these online events all week! – I AM AN EDUCATOR