Mercedes Schneider summarizes what happened to education bills in the Louisiana legislature this session.
The good news is that the legislature is no longer rolling over for Jindal.
Some of the damage of last year was undone by the courts and the legislature.
Most surprising was the enactment of a “reverse parent trigger,” allowing charter parents to return their school to the district.
The governor of Mississippi said recently that America’s educational troubles started when women joined the workforce. Please, somebody, send him a copy of my new book when it comes out in September. He will be surprised to learn that test scores of federal exams have never been higher and dropout rates have never been lower. Or send me his address and I will send him an autographed copy myself.
When I visited South Side High School in Rockville Center, where Carol Burris is principal, I was questioned by a group of students as part of my presentation. One of them is featured in this article. He is a young man with a severe disability. He has a sunny disposition and is an inspiration to everyone else in the school.
By SCOTT EIDLER scott.eidler@newsday.com
McKingsley Ryan Williams is beloved at South Side High School in Rockville Centre. Classmates applauded when he was beamed into an International Baccalaureate class after heart surgery, he was voted Homecoming King and has returned to the principal’s advisory committee.
For a month last fall, McKingsley Ryan Williams dealt with the rigors of senior year all from a hospital bed — the limits of integration, conjugating French verbs.
The Rockville Centre student was recuperating from heart surgery, six years after he was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic disorder that has left him in a wheelchair.
Still, it was his final year of high school and Williams insisted on not falling behind. The school set him up with an iPad, and through the FaceTime video chat program his International Baccalaureate classes were streamed live.
“So I wouldn’t be totally lost when I got back,” he said.
Williams, 18, of Rockville Centre, kept at it — though he had to swap BC Calculus for an easier AB class, so he could end his day earlier and rest.
Williams is beloved at South Side, where he is part of the principal’s advisory committee, works in the main office and presses lecturers on issues as diverse as Middle Eastern politics and educational reform. When Andrew Young visited, Williams didn’t ask him the customary Civil Rights-related question. According to Principal Carol Burris, who said she thought Williams might ask Young about meeting famous people, Williams asked about the Middle East conflict between Palestine and Israel. She remembers Young being “quite impressed” with the question.
Burris describes Williams as “an inspiration to his classmates,” who is “humble, but still understands the unique opportunity” he has to affect his peers.
His classmates cheered as he was beamed into IB class the first morning, promptly at 8:02.
By October, Williams was fully recovered. He won science competitions and kept managing his tutor network. When he was ready to return to South Side, his schoolmates greeted him with a surprise, choosing him to be Homecoming King. Weeks later, he made sure he was ready for the coronation.
“I didn’t want to let anybody down,” he said.
HIGHER ED: Williams will attend Stony Brook University, where he will major in engineering science.
AT COLLEGE I’M MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO: “All the clubs, making new friends. And advancing science research: I want to do something that will help change the world.”
WHAT MAKES YOU EXTRAORDINARY: “My personality — usually when anything happens, I always have a positive and optimistic outlook.”
http://www.newsday.com/lifestyle/mckingsley-ryan-williams-south-side-high-school-1.5417875
Maureen Reedy, a veteran Ohio teacher and state teacher of the year, sent this gift, which I gladly share:
Song of Democracy ~ by Walt Whitman
An old man’s thoughts of school,
An old man’s gathering youthful memories and
blooms that youth itself cannot.
Now only do I know You,
O fair auroral skies – O morning dew upon the grass!
And these I see, these sparkling eyes,
These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives,
Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships,
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the soul’s voyage.
Only a lot of boys and girls?
Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?
Only a public school?
Ah more, infinitely more.
And you America,
Cast you the real reckoning for your present?
The lights and shadows of your future, good or evil?
To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school.
Sail, Sail thy best, ship of Democracy,
Of value is thy freight, ’tis not the present only,
The Past is also stored in thee.
Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone,
not of thy Western continent alone.
Earth’s resume entire floats on thy keel, O ship,
is steadied by thy spars,
With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent
nations sink or swim with thee.
With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes,
epics, wars, thou bear’st the other continents,
Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination –
port triumphant;
Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye
O helmsman, thou carriest great companions,
Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee,
And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.
And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.
I received a letter from a student in Renton, Washington. I will not include the student’s name, to protect his or her privacy. I was moved by the honesty and thoughtfulness of this letter. If we have 11-years old this smart, our nation’s future is secure. This young person makes me feel like a teacher. I can’t think of a better way to feel today!
“Dear Mrs. Ravitch,
First of all, let me say that you are my inspiration. I love all that you do. I love how you blog every day. It helps me find out what’s happening to our world.
My name is —– ——. I go to Nelsen Middle School. I live in Renton, Washington. I am 11 years old. I especially like one of the blogs you wrote about on March 13, 2013, “The Day the Teachers Said No.” I strongly agree with you there’s no point to do this pointless testing if all they are doing is marketing students. I like how you said, “in unity there is strength.”
Another one of your blogs called “National day of action for Garfield High School and Seattle Schools Boycotting the MAP.” I’m so glad they’re boycotting it because there is no need to take the test. Like I said before, it is pointless.
The last blog piece I really liked was “Are You As Smart as a 5th Grader,” some of the stuff I thought we were supposed to learn in another grade, I mean really.
Thank you for what you do. I bet thousands of thousands of people read your blog every day and I’m happy to be one of them.
Sincerely,
——- ———“
Public officials in Pennsylvania are trying to starve public education until it dies. They have a constitutional obligation under the state and possibly the federal constitution to provide equal treatment to all. The students hurt most by state budget cuts are disproportionately black and Hispanic. Someone should sue to compel the state to provide education to all students.
Schools have been stripped of essential personnel. And that’s not all. They can’t even provide a sound basic education.
Read this comment by a teacher in Philadelphia:
“I’m a teacher in Philadelphia and I spent my Saturday this weekend finding out throughout the day which of my friends and co-workers had been laid off. Weingarten is absolutely spot on when she says that the students of Philadelphia are not the concern of Hite, the SRC, or the state. Most of my co-workers laId off were history teachers – an untested subject in PA. What is happening in Philadelphia is a complete travesty and a failure of democracy, and not just because I might lose my job or because the union might lose some dues. If I return to the classroom in the fall, the “education” I will be able to give my students will not look anything like what I was taught education should be. And that’s a travesty.”
Gary Rubinstein was one of a small group of TFA alums invited to meet with the new leaders of the organization, who took over as Wendy Kopp took charge of TFA’s international program.
Gary was surprised to hear that others echoed his criticisms of the organization. Gary believes that the education reform movement is nearing its end, as the public and the media realize that their ideas consistently fail.
A good discussion.
In a discussion of the expectations of the Common Core, a reader offered this observation:
“Here in Clark County Nevada we have been treated to a special pep talk by our new superintendent, a 25 year veteran of the district and a former kindergarten teacher. He stated on Jon Ralston’s show that we will have to step up to meet the Common Core standards. He bluntly stated that from his experience kindergarten would be teaching what he said were 2nd and 3rd grade concepts in his time. I am glad for his honesty, but I am sure reality will intrude on his wish that children attain and perform at levels that are developmentally inappropriate. I am not sure he is enough of a bureaucrat to know he made an admission that others should amplify. Our kids aren’t stupid, our schools aren’t failing, the tests are not appropriate.”
Stan Karp, an experienced teacher who retired and now works for the Education Law Center, here describes the state’s decision to give “fiscal control” to Newark, but not control over instruction, personnel, operations, or governance. What this means is unclear. The board cannot hire or fire the superintendent. What power was transferred? No one knows.
He writes:
Small Step Toward Local Control in Newark
Newark parents and community advocates seeking to end the State’s 18-year takeover of the district’s public schools won a small, but significant victory, this week. At a June 4 court hearing on a legal challenge to the State’s continued control, the Assistant Attorney General representing the State announced that Education Commissioner Chris Cerf would open discussions about restoring district control over fiscal management.
The move is a partial step under the State’s complicated takeover law, which provides for restoring local control in any of five areas monitored by the State’s QSAC (Quality Single Accountability Continuum) review process: governance, fiscal management, operations, personnel, and curriculum & instruction. (Local control of “operations” was nominally returned in 2007.) In 2011, a State review gave the district passing scores in three of the four remaining areas, but Cerf declined to restore local authority in any area, citing the district’s low test scores.
Newark community groups and the locally-elected advisory Board challenged that decision in court, with Education Law Center representing the Coalition for Effective Newark Public Schools and attorney Gregory Stewart representing the Advisory Board.
The Commissioner responded by ordering another “interim” review that produced lower district scores and asking the Court to dismiss the challenge on the basis of the new lower scores. The Court refused. The State then pointed to fluctuations in district scores in multiple reviews to argue that the “sustained progress” required for restoring local control in any area was missing.
However, the district’s scores in fiscal management were consistently high across several reviews. This undercut the State’s case and apparently led to the State’s decision to consider restoring partial control over fiscal matters while retaining control over governance, personnel and curriculum and instruction. Such a step, while a modest victory for Newark advocates and community activists who have long been pressing for an end to the takeover, would have limited impact and falls well short of restoring local control of school policy to an elected Board in the state’s largest district.
Advocates await the court’s ruling as to whether Newark will regain local control over governance – including the ability to hire and fire the superintendent. In the meantime, struggles between the local Advisory Board and State district superintendent continue.
For example, in recent months the local Advisory Board rejected the budget submitted by State-appointed Supt. Cami Anderson. It also unanimously passed a resolution of “no-confidence” in Anderson’s administration. Similarly, the Board, the city council and the county board of freeholders all endorsed a sweeping call for a moratorium on school closings and “reform initiatives” in the district. As long as the State retains control over governance, State-Supt. Anderson can override these decisions despite strong local opposition. (Significantly, while the State cited low test scores as a prime reason for not restoring district control, it gave Supt. Anderson a merit pay bonus for improving student achievement during the 2011-2012 school year—the same year the district’s monitoring scores dropped sharply)
Beyond the long and complicated history of NJ’s takeover law, the struggle for control of the state’s largest district has become part of the larger landscape of polarized education politics. Originally, the takeover law was supposed to create the capacity for effective local governance of schools where the state had determined it was lacking. On that score it has failed for over two decades. But today education policy in the three—soon to be four—state takeover districts (Jersey City, Paterson, Newark & Camden) is driven by political commitments to a market reform agenda of budget cutting, charter expansion, closing neighborhood public schools and retreats from equity. At this point, ending the takeovers is part of a larger effort to change the current direction of education reform policies in NJ and the nation.
See also: The Trouble with Takeovers
Governance and Urban School Improvement
You may recall a few weeks ago a post about a teacher who was falsely accused of putting a state math question on Twitter. His principal suspended him. Eventually he was cleared of wrongdoing but there was a cloud over his head and a bitter taste in his mouth about the episode.
Then the parents in his school did something wonderful. Please read about it here.
Not only is it heartwarming but it reminds you that all the badmouthing of teachers is orchestrated by pundits and people with an agenda. The public, especially parents, know how hard teachers work, and they love their children’s teachers.
As Rlratto says, parents will save us from the mess we are in:
“Parents are organizing to opt their children out of high stakes testing. Parents are challenging the motive and research behind the Common Core Curriculum. Parents are challenging those who want to create a data base of their children’s information. Parent’s all across the nation are saying stop scapegoating our teachers, stop closing our schools, stop destroying our nations most important asset. Parents will be setting this all straight.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 