Maurice Cunningham: Questions for the “National Parents Union” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: Questions for the “National Parents Union” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: Questions for the “National Parents Union”

Maurice Cunningham is a political science professor at U of Mass who specializes in following the money, especially Dark Money, where the donors are anonymous.

The Koch-Walton backed National Parents Union is experiencing turmoil at the top and severe mismanagement with two boards of directors featuring revolving directors and a disappeared co-founder.. 

The organization is holding a convening on May 15 and its members should demand some answers. 

Here are questions they should be asking the leadership. Any media member who would like to learn about who is pulling the strings at NPU, feel free. 

1. National Parents Union has two boards of directors, one board listed on the NPU webpage, and another on record with the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s Corporations Division. The website board CONTINUE READING: Maurice Cunningham: Questions for the “National Parents Union” | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: Does The Nation's Report Card Have A New Reading Problem

CURMUDGUCATION: Does The Nation's Report Card Have A New Reading Problem

Does The Nation's Report Card Have A New Reading Problem

Chester "Checker" Finn has concerns about the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), the folks who bring us the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), aka The Nation's Report Card, aka that Big Standardized Test that periodically fuels massive freak outs about the Youths and their Learnings.

Finn recently expressed concern over a "gag order" placed on the group by the chair, Haley Barbour, former Mississippi governor and RNC chair, which is a legit concern for any such body. This week he's worrying about a shift in the framework for reading assessments, both because it will interrupt the stream of consistent data and because there's some concern handling the issue of background knowledge and the socio-cultural context of reading, and this leads to a host of the usual debates surrounding reading tests.

None of this is new. What is reading exactly? What you believe shapes how and what you test. If you think, as the Common Core years encouraged us to, that reading is some set of discrete skills that somehow exist in your brain separate from knowledge etc, then you want to design tests in which knowledge doesn't matter, so, for example, giving third graders reading passages about ancient Turkish trading history or some other topic on which you can expect all students to be equally ignorant. If you think reading is basically decoding, you design extreme tests like the DIBELS test where students are required to decode nonsense syllables. If we drift to the end of the pool that's all about CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Does The Nation's Report Card Have A New Reading Problem

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: When Is School the Answer to Social Problems? | National Education Policy Center

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: When Is School the Answer to Social Problems? | National Education Policy Center

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: When Is School the Answer to Social Problems?

This post is a lecture I gave at University of Luxembourg in 2011, which was published in a book, edited by Daniel Tröhler and Ragnhild Barbu,  Education Systems in Historical, Cultural, and Sociological Perspectives.   To save you the trouble of buying the book on Amazon for $200, I’m reproducing it here.  This piece draws on material from my 2010 book, Someone Has to Fail.

Schools have long been asked to solve myriad social problems, but 

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WHEN IS SCHOOL AN ANSWER TO WHAT SOCIAL PROBLEMS?

Lessons from the Early American Republic

In modern societies, we ask schools to fix an enormous variety of social problems, both large and small.  We ask them to reduce social inequality and increase social mobility.  We ask them to provide the economy with job skills that will increase productivity, enhance economic growth, and strengthen the nation.  We ask them to promote democracy, improve health, save the environment, and empty our prisons.  And at the same time we also assign schools smaller missions, such as improving driver safety, reducing tooth decay, fighting obesity, and deterring teenage pregnancy.

We ask schools to solve all of these problems even though they have demonstrated time and time again that they are unable to do so.  Increasing educational attainment has proven to have no effect on the rates of social equality and social mobility, and its impact on economic growth has proven at best to be indirect and limited and at worst counterproductive.  So why do we keep turning to schools for answers they cannot provide?  One reason is that they are available.  Schools are publicly controlled, located in every community, and willing if not able to take on new public missions.  Another is that asking schools to fix problems is a lot easier than trying to address the problem directly through the political system. 

If schools are a weak mechanism for solving social problems, however, then the topic of chapter – the movement that established the American common school system – was the exception that CONTINUE READING: David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: When Is School the Answer to Social Problems? | National Education Policy Center

Joanne W. Golann: I spent a year and a half at a 'no-excuses' charter school – this is what I saw - The Conversation

I spent a year and a half at a 'no-excuses' charter school – this is what I saw

I spent a year and a half at a ‘no-excuses’ charter school – this is what I saw

1. Joanne W. Golann

   Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education, Vanderbilt University

Disclosure statement

Joanne W. Golann has received funding from the Spencer Foundation, the National Academy of Education, and the American Sociological Association.

Charter schools are 30 years old as of 2021, and the contentious debate about their merits and place in American society continues.

To better understand what happens at charter schools – and as a sociologist who focuses on education – I spent a year and a half at a particular type of urban charter school that takes a “no-excuses” approach toward education. My research was conducted from 2012 through 2013, but these practices are still prevalent in charter schools today.

The no-excuses model is one of the most celebrated and most controversial education reform models for raising student achievement among Black and Latino students. Charters, which are public schools of choice that are independently managed, show comparable achievement to traditional public schools, but no-excuses charters produce much stronger test-score gains. No-excuses schools have been heralded as examples of charter success and have received millions of dollars in foundation support. At the same time, no-excuses schools themselves have started to rethink their harsh disciplinary practices. Large charter networks like KIPP and Noble in recent years have acknowledged the wrongfulness of their disciplinary approaches and repudiated the no-excuses approach.

Here are 10 of the most striking things that I observed at the no-excuses charter school where I spent 18 months.

1. Teachers let nothing slide

Teachers at no-excuses schools “sweat the small stuff.” The long list of infractions at the school that I observed included: not following directions, making unnecessary noise, putting one’s head down on a desk, being off-task, rolling one’s eyes and not tracking the speaker.

Students on average received one infraction every three days. One fifth grader managed to accumulate 295 infractions over the school year. Infractions resulted in detention, loss of privileges like field trips and school socials, and “bench” – a punishment in which students had to wear a special yellow shirt and could not talk to their classmates or participate in gym class.

2. Teachers constantly explained the ‘why’

Teachers were encouraged to explain the “why” of infractions so students would understand the rationale behind the school’s unbending rules. Why did students receive detention for arriving one minute late to school? Because supposedly it helped them develop time-management skills. College applications would not be accepted if they were one minute late, they claimed. Why were there silent hallways? Because, the school argued, self-control would get kids to and through college.

3. Students developed distorted ideas about college CONTINUE READING: I spent a year and a half at a 'no-excuses' charter school – this is what I saw

Schools Must Fully Reopen in the Fall - The Atlantic

Schools Must Fully Reopen in the Fall - The Atlantic

Schools Must Fully Reopen in the Fall

The American Federation of Teachers, which I lead, is committed to making this happen.

Schools must open this fall. In person. Five days a week. With the space and and health safeguards to do so. The American Federation of Teachers, which I lead, is committed to making this happen.

School is where children learn best, where they play together and form relationships and acquire resilience. It’s where many children who otherwise might go hungry eat breakfast and lunch. Parents rely on schools, not only to educate their kids, but so they can work. Nearly 3 million mothers have dropped out of the workforce during the pandemic.

Over the past 14 months, teachers have scrambled to redesign lessons and projects, and to create virtual field trips and labs to keep kids engaged and learning from afar. They are exhausted. They’re working longer hours, troubleshooting IT problems, and trying to connect with students despite the barriers—whether a computer screen or a plexiglass shield. School food workers kept meals coming, often feeding anyone in the community who needed it. Many school-bus drivers delivered those meals, along with schoolwork and internet hotspots so students could learn from home.

All the while, educators have yearned to be back in school, with their students. They asked only for a safe workplace during this pandemic, and the resources they and their students need to succeed.

Yet critics have scapegoated teachers and vilified their unions because of school closures during the pandemic, ignoring the extreme disparities among schools and blaming teachers for problems outside their control.

Creating safe conditions in schools during a public-health crisis is not an obstacle to reopening classrooms; it is the pathway to going back, staying back, and building trust throughout school communities.

We faced stiff headwinds. Donald Trump tweeted multiple times that schools should reopen but did nothing to help them do so safely. The Trump administration politicized safety and undermined science. As a result, from last April right up to January 19 this year, we were working to reopen schools in a climate of chaos, fear, and misinformation as the pandemic surged in wave after wave.

Thankfully, the Biden administration changed course and is fighting the pandemic with science, truth, transparency, and, yes, money. We have experienced some bumps, of course—this is a once-in-a-century pandemic. But today an overwhelming majority of schools across the country are open for in-person learning, either full- or part-time.

Vaccines have been a game changer. I hear this sentiment in educators’ voices and see it in our polling results. The fear that they will bring the virus home decreases the moment they get their shot. According to our data, 89 percent of our members are fully vaccinated or want to be. And this week we had more good news: The FDA authorized use of the Pfizer vaccine for 12-to-15-year-olds. CONTINUE READING: Schools Must Fully Reopen in the Fall - The Atlantic

Teacher Tom: What I Tell Parents About Play-Based Education

Teacher Tom: What I Tell Parents About Play-Based Education

What I Tell Parents About Play-Based Education

Based on my informal and unscientific surveys of early childhood educators, one of the biggest hurdles to fully realizing play-based education is "the parents." Not all the parents, of course, but there are apparently a lot who might like the idea of their children playing, but who have bought into the "fall behind" snake oil. This leads them to apply pressure to us to become "more academic" in defiance of the science behind how young children learn.

I've found that one of the best things one can do for your play-based program is to consciously manage those expectations, right from the start. For us, the process of getting parents on our bandwagon starts with our spring orientation.

I use this opportunity to tell the assembled parents that I will not be teaching their children literacy, although they will be laying the foundations for literacy through their play, their dramatic play in particular; every time we read to them or tell them stories, or when they tell stories to us; each time they get excited and say, "Hey that's my letter!" or "That's your CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: What I Tell Parents About Play-Based Education

CURMUDGUCATION: More Koch Ed Privatization

CURMUDGUCATION: More Koch Ed Privatization

More Koch Ed Privatization

The Koch Network is getting with the times and launching an edu-reform substack. Yay.

The substack is co-hosted by Lisa Snell, director of K-12 education policy for Stand Together, aka the Charles Koch Institute. Previously she spent 23 years as Director of Education at the Reason Foundation. Her co-host is Adam Peshek, who is part of the same Kochtopus, having arrived Jeb Bush's ExcelinEd (formerly FEE). Peshek also works at Yes, Every Kid, a rebranding of some standard reform ideas. 

Their new platform is called "Learning Everywhere," and so far, they're playing all the hits. "Time to scrap the factory approach to education" is the first... issue? ...post? What are we going to call these substack things?  The subheading is "Individualization, not standardization, empowers learners to thrive," which kind of captures one of the odd whiplashes in the reform movement; I'm betting that while he was at ExcelinEd, Peshek spent a lot of time advocating for the Common Core standards, the one-size-fits-all standardization that Jeb Bush backed right into a conservative buzzsaw. But standardization is no longer where it's at.

The piece starts out with an unintentionally apt story about the Air Force's discovery of the problem with averages. In the early 1950s, the Air Force was having problems with pilots who had trouble flying--turns out that a cockpit built to "average" specs doesn't actually fit anyone, so they changed their approach to cockpit seat design (you can thank this development for the adjustable seat in your car). 

This is meant to be a story about how individualization is the key to everything, and I think it works, but I want to point out that while the Air CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: More Koch Ed Privatization

Teachers, Bloggers, Writers: Tell Your Story | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teachers, Bloggers, Writers: Tell Your Story | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teachers, Bloggers, Writers: Tell Your Story

Experienced education journalist Jeff Bryant is collecting stories about successful community schools and he would like to hear from you.

Jeff writes:

Education Writers, Bloggers, Podcasters, Content Sharers WantedA national network has organized a project to lift up stories from public schools about their success in using the community schools approach for transformational school improvement. There is a treasure trove of powerful stories about community schools ready to be told. There is authoritative research to validate the approach. And there are audiences eager to learn of an alternative to decades of failed education policies. But we need people – writers, podcasters, TV and print journalists, videographers and community leaders — to tell those stories to the American public. We can connect you to people in these communities so you can tell their stories through your own outlet, your social media channels, or in a regional or national media outlet to a much larger audience. if you’re interested in joining this network, contact Jeff Bryant at jeffb.cdm@gmail.com.
Jeff

Teachers, Bloggers, Writers: Tell Your Story | Diane Ravitch's blog

Branding Students as Victims of Learning Loss Won’t Help Kids Feel Connected and Engaged | janresseger

Branding Students as Victims of Learning Loss Won’t Help Kids Feel Connected and Engaged | janresseger

Branding Students as Victims of Learning Loss Won’t Help Kids Feel Connected and Engaged

The Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss has been posting reflections on the definition and meaning of learning loss for children during this academic year dominated by disruption, online learning and disruptive hybrid schedules.  A primary theme in these columns is the danger of branding this cohort of students as victims of a lost year, as far behind, and as unlikely to progress well in school from here on out.  None of the authors Strauss has published believes our fear of learning loss is justified, and not one thinks remedial drilling on “lost” content is what should happen now.

In her column on Tuesday, Strauss published an article by Michael Matsuda, a teacher at a California high school, and Debra Russell, researcher at TeachFX. They demonstrate the connection of misplaced but widespread fear about learning loss with what they believe is the Biden administration’s misguided decision to continue requiring standardized testing this year. Ironically, while the existence of the testing puts the spotlight on learning loss, the tests themselves will generate no valid or reliable data to help educators as schools open up: “‘Learning loss’ is emerging as the dominant theme in K-12 education for 2021… But one might argue that the most concerning thing that has been ‘lost’ is our focus on doing what is right for students. The Biden administration’s decision recently to proceed with standardized testing—albeit with expanded flexibility and lighter repercussions—is perplexing where it’s not problematic.”

Matsuda and Russell worry that the test results will be worthless because the data will be, “marred by uneven rates of participation and the varied pace of learning in schools. If (the tests are) administered remotely, these concerns are compounded by the stability of home Internet access, potential help from family members, and proper accommodations for the CONTINUE READING: Branding Students as Victims of Learning Loss Won’t Help Kids Feel Connected and Engaged | janresseger

SPI Visits San Diego County Schools - Year 2021 (CA Dept of Education)

SPI Visits San Diego County Schools - Year 2021 (CA Dept of Education)

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Visits San Diego County Schools Open for In-Person Learning that Utilize Strong Safety Measures and Social-Emotional Supports

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond raised his hand and joined elementary students for class today on two campuses in San Diego County that have stayed open for safe, in-person learning by implementing comprehensive safety measures and offering wide-ranging, whole-child supports for students and families.

State Superintendent Thurmond visited Castle Park Elementary and Joseph Casillas Elementary, both located in Chula Vista, an area among the hardest hit by the pandemic. The schools are two out of 49 schools in the Chula Vista Elementary School District (CVESD), which serves nearly 30,000 students, with 68 percent identified as Hispanic and 36 percent as English learners. CVESD is the largest transitional kindergarten through sixth grade school district in California and is approximately five miles from the border of Mexico.

“These schools are a model for the state and nation in how we support students while recovering from this pandemic and preparing for a full return to in-person learning,” Thurmond said. “Through inspiring investments in school-based mental health support, comprehensive safety measures such as rapid COVID testing, and engaging instruction individualized to student needs, families should feel confident that schools like these are the safest, best places for their children.”

Throughout the day, Thurmond witnessed examples of whole-child support, with layers of physical safety measures combined with onsite mental health support, learning acceleration, and proactive family engagement strategies put in place to serve students and families. In addition, Thurmond learned about CVESD’s series developed for parents to provide ways to support their children’s social-emotional wellness at home as well as resources to enhance classroom practices, such as restorative circles, social-emotional lessons, and mindfulness.

CVESD has 53 school psychologists who support district schools, including charter schools. Every site has access to a school psychologist. In addition, as part of its reopening plans, CVESD is funding part-time mental health support professionals at each of its 41 non-charter school sites from April 12 to June 15, 2021. Highlights include:

• A minimum of two days of counseling support will be provided at each of the non-charter district schools.
• Key support responsibilities: High visibility at ingress/egress, readily available for crisis intervention (triage), 1:1 counseling.
• Site-based social workers/counselors will provide support at 11 sites.
• District social workers will provide support at nine sites.
• Partner organization South Bay Community Services (SBCS) will provide mental health support providers at the remaining 21 sites.
• SBCS’s Community Assessment Team will provide an additional one to two days of case management support to CVESD’s 10 highest unduplicated student sites to connect families with case management and wraparound services (e.g., family counseling, outside therapy, etc.).

CVESD Superintendent Francisco Escobedo, Ed.D., said it is more important than ever to attend to students’ social and emotional needs.

“We believe in educating the whole child through rigorous academic instruction but also with behavioral and social-emotional learning and support,” Dr. Escobedo said. “It was amazing to share with the State Superintendent how our schools are implementing safety measures, dealing with learning loss, dealing with the trauma that our students experienced—and how we are mitigating the effects. We are deploying what we call a strengths-based focus on trauma, where our counselors, social workers, principals, and teachers are utilizing social-emotional constructs, teaching emotional self-regulation, to empower students and parents to overcome the rigors and challenges they had to go through during the pandemic.”

Among the safety measures implemented by the district, CVESD is one of 79 school districts in California that are now offering free rapid antigen testing that can provide COVID-19 test results in as little as 15 minutes. This antigen testing, made available because of a partnership with the County of San Diego, the State of California, and Primary Health and facilitated by Thurmond and the California Department of Education, is available to all staff and students throughout the school district. In addition, CVESD is hosting family vaccination clinics on a weekly basis.

School districts that are interested in enrolling in the state’s rapid antigen testing program are asked to complete this no-commitment interest form. For questions on rapid COVID testing, email RapidTesting@cde.ca.gov.

Note to editors and reporters: For photos and footage of the State Superintendent’s visit to Chula Vista schools, please contact Anthony Millican, CVESD Director of Communications, at Anthony.Millican@cvesd.org.

# # # #

Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

SPI Visits San Diego County Schools - Year 2021 (CA Dept of Education)

Mike Klonsky's Blog: 15 years later, CPS reclaims Duncan's AUSL 'turnaround schools'.

Mike Klonsky's Blog: 15 years later, CPS reclaims Duncan's AUSL 'turnaround schools'.

15 years later, CPS reclaims Duncan's AUSL 'turnaround schools'

"Yet for all the public attention, AUSL's results have been mixed; many students have made considerable progress, but as a group they still lag well behind district averages ... with many ending up on par or even below comparable neighborhood schools." -- Chicago Tribune, 2/6/2012

Yesterday, CPS announced that it was reclaiming the so-called "turnaround schools" which were handed over to the private management and teacher training company, the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) in 2006. 

All I can say about this break from Arne Duncan's privatization "reforms" carried out under the banner of Renaissance 2010 and then rebranded as Race to the Top during his term as Sec. of Education, is -- it's about time. 

Lacking any research base and built on the false premise that private companies, hedge funders, and power philanthropists could best operate public institutions, AUSL's school takeover turned out to be an expensive and dismal flop.

AUSL was founded and run by Chicago venture capitalist Martin Koldyke, who used his connections and big campaign donations to become a powerhouse in the school turnaround business. Koldyke, a golf buddy of then-Mayor Daley, decided he could save the public school system by running it like a business. Koldyke's company, Frontenac, had been a big investor in for-profit colleges like DeVry and Rasmussen College.

Despite AUSL schools ranking at or near the bottom of the system, the company benefited from CONTINUE READING: Mike Klonsky's Blog: 15 years later, CPS reclaims Duncan's AUSL 'turnaround schools'.

Code Acts in Education: Valuing Futures | National Education Policy Center

Code Acts in Education: Valuing Futures | National Education Policy Center

Code Acts in Education: Valuing Futures

The future of education in universities is currently being reimagined by a range of organizations including businesses, technology startups, sector agencies, and financial firms. In particular, new ways of imagining the future of education are now tangled up with financial investments in education technology markets. Speculative visions and valuations of a particular ‘desirable’ form of education in the future are being pursued and coordinated across both policy and finance.

Visions and valuations

Edtech investing has grown enormously over the last year or so of the pandemic. This funding, as Janja Komljenovic argues, is based on hopes of prospective returns from the asset value of edtech, and also determines what kinds of educational programs and approaches are made possible. It funds unique digital forms of education, investing speculatively in new models of teaching and learning to enable them to become durable and, ideally, profitable for both the investor and investee.

We’ve recently seen, for instance, the online learning platform Coursera go public and reach a multibillion dollar valuation based on its reach to tens of millions of students online. New kinds of investment funds have emerged to accelerate edtech market growth, such as special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) that exist to raise funds to purchase edtech companies, scale them up quick and return value to both the SPAC and its investor, plus new kinds of education-focused equity funds and portfolio-based edtech index investing that select a ‘basket’ of high-value edtech companies for investors to invest in.

The result of all this investment activity has been the production of some spectacular valuation claims about the returns available from edtech. The global edtech market intelligence agency HolonIQ calculated venture capital investment in edtech at $16bn last year alone, predicting a total edtech market worth $400bn by 2025.

But, HolonIQ said, this isn’t just funding seeking a financial return—it’s ‘funding backing a vision to transform how the world learns’. These edtech investments tend to centre on a particular shared CONTINUE READING: Code Acts in Education: Valuing Futures | National Education Policy Center

Matt Barnum: Philanthropies are no longer driving education policy - Chalkbeat

Philanthropies are no longer driving education policy - Chalkbeat

After a high point in the Obama administration, philanthropies no longer drive education policy

Soon after the pandemic shuttered school buildings across the state, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced an ambitious plan to “reimagine” education in the state with the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Let’s take this experience and really learn how we can do differently and better with our education system in terms of technology and virtual education,” Cuomo told reporters a year ago, saying the effort would be a collaboration with the Gates Foundation.

The announcement drew widespread attention. It seemed like a blast from the recent past: a deep-pocketed foundation shaping education policy.

But this time, it didn’t play out that way. There was a swift backlash, and it soon became clear the ambitions of the plan were much more modest in scope. In fact, there’s no indication the philanthropy played any role at all, and Gates did not issue any grants to the state.

Why the plan apparently fell apart is unclear, but it’s one recent example of the waning role of education philanthropy in national and state policymaking.

That marks a rather dramatic change from just a few years ago, when wealthy benefactors helped reshape American education in remarkably swift fashion. But their priorities don’t appear to be affecting school policy in the way they used to. That likely reflects the fierce backlash to philanthropies’ influence during the Obama era, as well as a scaled-back federal role in education, a Trump administration that some funders CONTINUE READING: Philanthropies are no longer driving education policy - Chalkbeat