Motoko Rich reports on a district in Pennsylvania where budget cuts have led to teacher layoffs and increased class sizes.
The story could be repeated in districts across the nation.
Class sizes are growing, and schools are eliminating guidance counselors, nurses, classroom aides, librarians, and regular classroom teachers.
In Philadelphia earlier this fall, a 12-year-old student died because there was no nurse on duty that day, due to budget cuts.
We hear so-called reformers proclaim about the importance of teacher evaluation, merit pay, and test scores, but I have yet to hear any of them complain about budget cuts and lack of staff for the arts, physical education, foreign languages, libraries, and so on.
We read the New York Times editorials offering “solutions” to the math and science education or gifted education, but the editorial writers usually forget to mention budget cuts and layoffs. How are schools supposed to enact any of their proposals when teachers are stressed out with crowded classrooms? When they are expecting to be judged by test scores on material they never taught? When they are supposed to introduce Common Core without resources or professional development? When testing companies have been given control of curriculum?
Teachers and administrators are facing a barrage of changes for which they are ill-prepared and for which there is no money for implementation. This is no reform. This is harassment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Actually, a number of people trying to improve education have commented on these issues.
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The standard line among “reformers” is that class size doesn’t matter. They even have their own bought-and-paid-for-research to “prove” it.
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The question that should be asked is – What is the average class size in a private school?
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And a number or these people are front line classroom teachers, the kind that see and hear kids all day, not the opportunistic drifters.
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Except these people have a different definition of “improvement”. In fact most reformers want larger class sizes.
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Our public schools employ about 250,000 fewer people than before the recession, according to figures from the Labor Department. Enrollment in public schools, meanwhile, has increased by more than 800,000 students. At prerecession staffing ratios, public school employment would have grown by about 132,000 jobs in the past four years, in addition to replacing those that were lost, according to Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
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Can someone walk me through Shierholz’s math? She is saying that in the face of an 800,000-student increase, public schools would have had to hire 382,000 school employees to maintain pre-recession staff/student ratios.
It’s hard to find data from more recent years, but in 2009 there were 49 million K-12 public school students, 3.2 million K-12 public school teachers, and 3.1 million K-12 non-teacher school employees (administrators, nurses, social workers, etc.). If we were at 6.3 million : 49 million, then where does 382,000 : 800,000 come from?
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Stephen,
Do you have a link to the study? Quite interesting data, you know real hard data that doesn’t require psychometric twisting to tell a story.
Thanks,
Duane
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CA no longer has a 20 to one ratio in the primary grades. My six year old granddaughter has 29 in her class. Unfortunately, CA has always had large class sizes. I will never forget the year I had 36 ten year olds and my neighbor
Had 42 EL students all year long.
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Cheri, class sizes like the ones you mentioned are ridiculous.
Here’s a column about how some districts and some charters truly put teachers in charge. In such schools, you don’t see class sizes like that:
http://hometownsource.com/2013/03/06/a-book-about-trusting-teachers-draws-praise-from-educators-and-activists/
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Only charters Joe, no traditional public school examples Joe?
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Here’s an example of a newspaper column praising a district public school, one of many that I wrote this year:
http://centerforschoolchange.org/2013/10/sen-franken-students-educators-agree-act-on-important-needs-joe-nathans-column/
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So why can’t you lead with those? You always parade the charter story and only when you want to challenge a post. You never support, you demean.
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Who’s demeaning?
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You: to public school teachers while always singing your own praises.
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Linda, you are the one who describes me as “pimping” and other put-downs, and who does not acknowledge columns praising district public schools when you asked to see them.
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That’s the point. You never post in support of traditional, only to defend charters and privatization. You only posted since I asked. Pimping is a term meaning selling for others. Poor Bill, his “great” ideas can’t speak for themselves. He either needs to create a monopoly or he must pay people off, kind of mafialike, eh?
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Linda wrote, “You never post in support of traditional, only to defend charters and privatization. ”
Simply not true – many many counter examples.
I’ll keep on describing positive examples of what can and is being done.
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Only in defense after cheering for charters.
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I disagree, Joe. Regardless of whether teachers are “truly in charge” or not, there are still budgets that have to be met. I have never had classes as small as 20 in Utah, either as a student or a teacher. And let’s not forget class loads for secondary teachers. I have over 225 students in my class load. That translates to over 30 students per class except my AP class (28) and my advanced debate (23). I teach social studies, and my large (over 1,000 student) junior high has only 3 social studies teachers. Funding cuts have cut 2 1/2 teachers in the past 5 years in my department alone, despite our school having grown by approximately 75 students. And before you blame “top-heavy administration” for this, the entire school has 1 principal and 2 assistant principals, so we’re a pretty “lean” school administration-wise.
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In the district & charter public schools described in the book I cited, teachers find ways to have smaller class sizes. Sometimes they find bargains in purchasing things outside, rather than going through district procedures. Sometimes it’s because they don’t have to support a district bureaucracy.
But nothing solves all the problems.
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I am a little confused by this comment. Did california go from large classes to small classes and now back to larger classes again?
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Yes. For a few years primary grades were 20 to 1 ratio, subsidized by the state. That funding was reduced so most districts opted out. The day before the vacation, 5 of my students were absent so I was back to 20 in class. The difference was amazing, more room, more ability to get to each kid, less tussles, and a sense of calm.
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Yes, TE, Melissa Walsh is correct. In 1996 CA went to 20:1 in K-3. See this article: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/01/20/5126802/california-retreats-on-class-size.html
While in the midst of the “Great Recession,” districts in CA had the option to save some money by cutting 20:1, laying off some teachers, and of course, raising class sizes. Most CA high schools also had 20:1 in 9th grade.
Most districts took the cuts. It is unclear whether much was saved on the local level since the state subsidized some of the money. CA has the biggest teacher to student ratio in the nation (23:1). Governor Brown has hinted that he would do what he could to slowly increment back to pre-Great Recession funding to get 20:1 back. So perhaps there will be another shift soon?
If we only considered charters in CA, the average charter teacher to student ratio would be just slightly lower (.4) than the CA average, putting it in third/second place for the nation (perhaps a close tie with Utah).
It should be known that teacher to student ratios, by and large, misrepresent actual classes that most students take. Special education, speech, and ELL teachers are included in the school average. These teachers tend to have very small classes, 15 or fewer per class. My guess is that the average English/math/ K-6 class in CA is somewhere around 32:1 to 34:1.
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What confused me was the statements that California no longer has a 20:1 ratio and that California had always had large classes. It is clear now that California had small classes for only a relatively short time.
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I retired from a school district adjacent to LAUSD. In the 90’s there was a mandate for K-4 to have a ratio of 20 students to one teacher. This was also applicable to ninth graders. I taught 5th grade. I really saw a difference with those incoming students. If I remember correctly, when I retired this program became too costly and was ended. Of course when the legislators start these kinds of programs they don’t think about the fact that you need more teachers and classrooms. As usual it is up to the school district to figure it out!
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Joe, who? Teachers ?
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Teachers and others who work with teachers.
http://hometownsource.com/2013/01/24/joe-nathan-column-compliments-and-possible-changes-in-gov-daytons-education-budget/
A number of the items described in this column were supported by district & charter educators, as well as by outside organizations. This broad support helped produce tens of millions more for early childhood education, guaranteed all-day kindergarten throughout the state, and additional funds for the public schools “general fund” – spent at the discretion of local boards.
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I retired in 2003 at age 57. When we learned that the following year every 5th grade class had to be on the same story during the same week and we had to read the scripted lessons from the literature book, I just couldn’t do it. Our autonomy and personality was gone . My 6 year old granddaughter is an avid and fluent reader, but I don’t see any art work coming home. I am trying to make up for that by going to art museums and introducing her to different media. We used the Getty art program in my day.
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Diane,
Look no further for proof of this than in New York State, where an undemocratic tax cap shrinks funding amid ballooning mandates. The state recently defended this law in court by arguing that education is “not a fundamental right.”
President Obama, Arne Duncan, and others have called education the “civil rights issue of our time”. Are “civil” rights “fundamental” rights? If so, shouldn’t the federal government ask for its money back from a state which passes laws to undermine this civil right?
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BTW, Diane, am I mis-remembering, or didn’t Motoko Rich do a hit piece on you? Or was it a hagiography of Rhee? Or maybe some ridiculous comparison of the two of you? I seem to remember such a piece that you linked to on your blog.
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They scream that they want better education. THEN they cut funding. Makes perfect sense.
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How coincidental is it that, as states are cutting back funding for education, cutting teachers with experience, cutting costs per pupil, that demands for higher and higher scores, VAM, teacher evaluations are based on bogus tests, and money is funneled into for profit no-accountability private schools and tech based “learning” providers?
While tech was touted as a way to save teachers time so they would have more time to spend on children’s individual learning, it has become this ever-changing amalgam of new ideas almost monthly. Changing course mid-stream is good for no one. The decision to go to year-round school often results in more work for teachers with some ridiculous tutor-pay rate for teachers during summer months. Etc.
And with larger class sizes and less individual attention, somehow students are to magically perform better and better … if only we get rid of those beastly experienced teachers who are robbing the tax dollars of those who work so much harder …
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The ed reformers who are running state government in Indiana pushed property tax caps which are really harming public schools:
http://indianapublicmedia.org/stateimpact/2013/11/20/closing-school-buses-running-muncie/
One of two things is true. They’re either absolutely lousy advocates for public school kids, or they’re not actually working on behalf of public school kids at all.
It’s sort of amusing watching the national reformers push for early childhood ed. Head Start got killed in the sequester. Where were they? It wasn’t a priority. DC is absolutely crawling with paid ed reform advocates. How did Head Start get hit so hard? Are they just really bad at their jobs?
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The “reformers” have been gunning for Head Start for years. Again, they have bought-and-paid-for-research that “proves” it doesn’t work.
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I doubt Joe Nathan would want to destroy his mothers legacy. But perhaps you do not count him as a reformer?
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Does this “bought and paid for” research include Head Start’s own studies?
Click to access head_start_report.pdf
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It’s just amusing to me. WHILE they were all making noise about how they SINCERELY support early childhood ed, head Start funding was the big loser in the DC sequester. Kids were being cut from Head Start WHILE Arne Duncan was on a national media tour promoting early childhood ed.
Advocates for other funding that was cut got the cuts reversed or mitigated. Not ed reformers! Head Start was abandoned, except for the billionaire that did the PR move where he loaned the feds some money.
There’s just no connection between what they say and what they do.
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Tim – like you mean this, from your link: “At the end of 3rd grade, the most striking subgroup finding was related to children from high risk households. For this subgroup, children in the 3-year old cohort demonstrated sustained cognitive impacts across all the years from pre-K through 3rd grade. At the end of 3rd grade, the Head Start children from high risk households showed favorable impacts on the ECLS-K Reading Assessment, the WJIII Letter-Word Identification, and the teacher-reported reading/language arts skills.”
So, in other words, Head Start is showing sustained improvement in the kids it was most designed to help. Personally, I’d call that successful.
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No, Dienne, I was thinking more along the lines of this: “In summary, there were initial positive impacts from having access to Head Start, but by the end of 3rd grade there were very few impacts found for either cohort in any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices. The few impacts that were found did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children.”
“High risk” children were defined by the study as meeting at least 4 of the 5 following conditions: 1. household on food stamps/TANF; 2. neither parent graduated high school; 3. no parent in household is employed; 4. mother is a single parent; 5. mother was <18 years old when child was born. These children made up only about 7-8% of the sample (which was meant to mirror Head Start enrollment).
That this subgroup benefited from the intervention is a great thing, but it does need to be pointed out that this cohort still fell well short of proficiency and college readiness. And the obvious question is whether we have to provide non-effective Head Start to the other 92% to reach this 8%. I'd strongly support enhancing Head Start for high-risk kids while phasing it out for groups where it isn't showing any impact.
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“That this subgroup benefited from the intervention is a great thing, but it does need to be pointed out that this cohort still fell well short of proficiency and college readiness.”
Holy crap! You expect “proficiency and college readiness” from a year or two of preschool intervention?! Are you also one of those who expects 100% proficiency on a bell-curve normed test?
Bottom line is that Head Start produces sustained gains for the most at-risk groups, which is the group Head Start was and is targeted to help.
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Yup, strong targeted early childhood programs are one of the nation’s priorities.
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Only if there’s a buck to make, data to track, children to control and educrap to sell, then it’s a priority.
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Supporters of Head Start and a push for universal high-quality preschool justify it on the basis that it closes the school-readiness gap. This high-risk subgroup did see a closing of that gap, but the gap is still enormous. This is a reasonable detail to point out.
Unless there is something structural about Head Start that would prevent it from being offered (and enhanced) only for this small high-risk subgroup, I’m not sure how you can conclude the bottom line is a success.
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I’m pretty sure no Head Start proponent has ever claimed it would “close” the gap. Only eliminating poverty will do that. If we greatly reduce poverty, Head Start will become unnecessary and we can give it up then. Incidentally, if we were to reduce poverty, economic measures of all sorts would greatly improve.
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Tim, thanks for the link. I have been interested in reading this for a while. I wonder if it really was designed well? The control group isn’t kids without preschooling, but just kids not enrolled in “Head Start”. 60% of the control group had some kind of preschool or group daycare. It seems to me that we would want to compare kids who stayed home with kids who went to headstart? Isn’t that the decision we are using the data for? I thought that was what reformers said this data supported? Like all research, it leaves me with more questions than definitive answers. Thanks for the post.
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Research purporting to prove that Head Start doesn’t work dates from 1966. The “reformers” accept this outdated 50-year-old research as fundamentalist gospel, the Word Of God — not to be questioned or contradicted much less superseded by more recent, more accurate, longer term studies. There are none so blind as those who screw their eyes shut and will not see (especially when paid not to). These snake-oil-selling, flat-earthers are the “American Exceptionals.” But they send their own kids to pre-school. (The whited sepulchers)
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Harold, the study I referred to here and will link to again (http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/head_start_report.pdf) was mandated by Congress in 1998 as part of the Head Start reauthorization bill. It was conducted by the research and data branch of ACS/HHS and covered the years 2002-2010. To say the data is old and corrupted by “reformers” seems pretty wildly off the mark without any evidence to the contrary.
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The research on Head Start is mixed. Some programs considerably more effective than others.
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It is heartening to see do many posters defending Head Start despite the funding model of giving federal government money to private nonprofit organization.
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Apparently all non-profit organizations are not equal. For some, It’s ok to do contracting sometimes.
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Yes, a brand new study from 1998!! My, my, my, how up-to-date we are! Only sixteen years old!
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Harold,
The study was authorized in 1998, it was released in October 2012, and it seems to be based on data collected between 2002 and 2008.
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Here’s the WaPo story of how Head Start kids ended up as the big losers in the sequester cuts:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-sequester-cuts-divided-the-winners-from-the-losers–including-head-start-children/2013/12/11/10811dcc-5c34-11e3-be07-006c776266ed_story.html
“The cuts were supposed to cause equal pain across a broad spectrum of Washington programs. They didn’t. Lawmakers had declined to choose austerity’s winners and losers. But they were chosen anyway by a long national scramble in which programs from Head Start to the Pentagon sought to wriggle out of their share of the cuts.
The winners — those with stored-up cash to spend or powerful friends to help — avoided painful reductions in the sequester’s first year.
The losers did not. And this year, as the cuts trickled down from Washington to a preschool classroom in Kentucky, Carli Hopkins was at the end of a long line of losers.”
Where were the huge paid ranks of national ed reform lobbyists? How did this happen?
Why do actual kids in existing schools always seem to lose under ed reformers like Arne Duncan?
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Not all children are subject to these horrifying cuts.
For example, a shining star in the firmament of charterization/privatization, Michelle Rhee, sends one or both of her girls to Harpeth Hall.
While OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN have to learn docility and low-level skills, the leading charterites/privatizers can count on [among “50 Reasons”] THEIR OWN CHILDREN being able to enjoy [taken directly the Harpeth Hall web page; link follows]:
9. Athlete, scientist, artist: At Harpeth Hall you can be all three.
11. Our state-of-the-art library houses 29,000 books, 1,000 ebooks, 20 electronic databases, 12 Kindles, six small group study rooms, two classrooms for library and technology instruction, and eight really comfortable chairs around a cozy fireplace.
12. We play to win. Harpeth Hall teams have earned 47 state championships in nine varsity sports.
14. Our faculty average more than 18 years of teaching experience and 80 percent hold advanced degrees.
27. International exchanges in China, France, Germany, New Zealand, and South Africa give students transformative cross-cultural opportunities.
29. 8:1 ratio: Our teachers know our students.
35. Five theatrical productions, five musical performances, two dance concerts and hundreds of pieces of original art, each year.
36. Harpeth Hall girls work hard and play hard: We field 29 middle school teams and 12 varsity sports from basketball to lacrosse. More than 69 percent of Harpeth Hall students participated in athletics during the 2012-2013 school year.
42. State standouts: Our cross country and track teams have won more state championships than any other school in the state whether public or private, single-gender, or co-educational.
There you have it! Everybody feel better now?
Link: http://www.harpethhall.org/podium/default.aspx?t=151749
Oops, I almost forgot one of the foundational [yet strangely, in recent times, unmentioned] mantras of the leading charterites/privatizers and their edubully underlings:
‘We want to give poor parents the same school choices for their children that rich parents have.’
Ok. Satisfied?
😎
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Harpreth Hall has uniforms, four pages’ worth of strict conduct/honor code requirements (http://www.harpethhall.org/podium/default.aspx?t=151766), and offers courses taught online through a consortium (http://www.harpethhall.org/podium/default.aspx?t=151766&rc=0). Just some food for thought.
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So what, lots of public schools have uniforms, but do they have theater, art, and a library with a cozy fireplace?
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ITim,
So What?
believe KIPP has uniforms, too.
And we have endlessly discussed and described the strict discipline and high attration of many charters.
But, I don’t think these charter sweat shops have the perks that go with attending Harpreth.
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What state should we all move to? Is any state sane re: education?
When first graders without learning disabilities are in remedial reading, something is definitely WRONG.
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Speaking of ed reformers in government gutting public school budgets, it looks like the challenger in Michigan is an advocate for public schools:
http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/10/democrat_mark_schauer_when_im.html
Should be interesting to see which candidate ed reform lobbyists support, Snyder, who is dismantling Michigan’s public schools, or the challenger who vows to recommit to public education.
How much you wanna bet Broad and Rhee and the rest support Snyder?
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Who needs teachers? Computers/I Pads/ and probably teaching robots produced by Pearson will take up the slack. If a parent is uncomfortable with this corporate version of public schooling they could attend a charter school with uniforms, military style discipline, uncertified teachers, and led by a director of data analysis. This is the educational landscape conservatives have designed and the present administration is promoting. Now of course, the CEO’s/the President/ make sure that they send their children to schools with small class sizes, certified teachers, a rich curriculum (e.g. they go on field trips), and a rich extracurricular program — the same kind of education the middle class received decades ago. I am beginning to question whether the public schools I attended can survive the onslaught of misinformation (read, Reign of Error) and corporate greed that is currently destroying our public schools in lieu of cheaper and more “effective” alternatives. My hope is that Mayors (e.g. Mr. De Blasio) and governors will start waking up to what the accountability/privatization movement has done to our schools and the children that attend them.
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To ensure college readiness and at the same time meet the goal of fiscal responsibility I would suggest that at high school courses could be moved into the school auditorium, lecture hall style. One teacher could effectively provide the same instruction with 200 students per period as ten teachers with 20 students per period.
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Just give ’em iPads and give ’em access to Khan Academy, MOOCS, and the latest windows update. Just think of the savings on school infrastructure, administrative salaries, teachers salaries plus benefits…who needs teachers or school buildings?
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You just might be on to something! Imagine if we could figure out how to remove those money-sucking children from this picture.
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Prenatal attachment of MS/CCS microchip…just feed and water.
College ready in no time at all.
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This humor, correct? Having been in the 200 seat lecture halls, there is a reason the wealthy pay big bucks to go to elite universities with small classes. The back rows of our university lectures were for sleeping and dealing pot. One professor threw his chalk in disgust and never came back.
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I don’t think anyone thinks a large lecture is a good idea, but it is cheap. That is part of the reason that tuition at my institution is less than $10,000 a year.
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Why don’t we realize that providing services is not like providing products? The economy size jar or package has a lower per unit price because each unit is identical. A classroom being sold as an economy size forgets that students aren’t identical. Just because more students are taught by one teacher, there is no reason to believe that the teacher is able to provide the same quality of education to each student as a teacher in a smaller class. This is because a service is individual and should not be provided in the economy size. Would a jeweler put 10, 14, 18, and24 carrot gold in a bin and sell it all for the same price? Or put various diamonds for sale at the same cost? Or put sterling silver in the mix?
If there is one thing to gain from private schools, it would be that smaller classes and individual attention are better than economy sized classrooms. Yet edureformers want to take class sizes in the opposite direction.
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This article dealt with the area where I grew up… and the real story here is about how property taxes distort spending. Here’s my blog post on this article:
The per pupil spending disparities among public schools is something the “reformers” DON’T want to talk about… and it’s a problem that’s been around for at least 50 years!
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Delighted to see another challenge to inequities because education relies too much on local property taxes. But a lot of the priviledged suburban parents (including some who post here) don’t seem eager to give us this priviledge.
I think these inequities are wrong, and that we should be moving toward 80-90% state funding, with additional $ going to support students from low income and limited English speaking families. A coalition of Mn group is moving us in that direction.
But there still are lots of people in suburbs who want more for their kids. It is a dilemma of this democracy:
http://centerforschoolchange.org/2013/11/congratulations-and-concerns-about-school-referendum-victories-joe-nathans-column/
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I am somewhat aligned here, but I do not agree about state funding.
Yes, more from the state indeed.
But compared to how much of our federal tax dolar pays for the military and occupations, the Feds should be kicking in far more money then they do. What we spend on war is sinister.
What we do not spend on public education in equally sinister . . . .
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Not only don’t they want to talk about it, but they are prepared to testify in any court in the land (including the Supreme Court of the USA) that it is the sovereign right of the states to fund schools inequitably; and that, furthermore, funding them equitably will not improve the schools anyway, nor will smaller classes, only free-market, test-driven reforms, and charter schools will (and the earth is also flat). These are the kind of people we are dealing with — outright racists and shameless liars for whom the end justifies the means.
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That’s not a very good start for a discussion with a suburban parent like myself. I see the “racists”, the “liars” for whom “the end justifies the means” as a legitimate characterization of the current administration. Who would want to put any more money in their hands? It’s a difficult situation, for sure, but at the moment I see no solution amid rhetoric like that.
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HU, since most of the money for schools comes from states, not the feds, I think you’re getting out into the weeds here. That being said, I wish just one state would have the courage to return the money to the feds and say “thanks, but we don’t want the strings attached to this money.” Utah discussed it a few years back, but the USDOE sent in a bunch of their bigwigs (this was during NCLB under George W. Bush), and the state legislature backed down.
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Give me 35 kids, in one room, who are well-behaved, enthusiastic, and on roughly the same level and I MIGHT be able to push them up a SD or two. But that isn’t the reality that the reformers live in. I don’t know what planet they inhabit.
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Planet Profit
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The insult is the way cuts never reach the district offices.LAUSD has always been top heavy but in th last decade the offices have swollen 20% according to the DailyNews, which is incredibly biased in the district’s favor. These positions are expensive and unnecessary. A few years ago, Ramon Cortines. conceded that assisatnts have assistants that make $100, 000 yearly which is nearly twice the wages earned by a mid-career teacher. Anyone who surfs lausd.net will note there is eternal recruitment for positions in upper level offices that beg a few questions. All the attacks on teacher tenure and no one mentions that administrators and officials earn incredible pay and perks while being far from accountable for their performance and misconduct. They never are laid off! Much less fired. Several officials and directors were named in a case that involved concealing a teacher’s sexual abuse of students this spring . This allowed the accused pervert to abuse more children before he was finally arrested. The suits who protected him were allegedly demoted, but in looking ovr their latest assignments, I am hard pressed for details to support that assertion as their $180k + saleries and positions of authority are hardly punitive— they were simply transferred. They still get their full pension and even though they broke the law, they do not have to answer for these crimes. Thanks to CA GOV Codes they also have indemnity. So the parents cannot sue them nor can the teachers these people are reponsible for ruining, abusing and defaming in the course of duty.
Meanwhile LAUSD has laid off up to 17.000 teachers according to UTLA’s latent and dubious reports. The union has failed to insist that these teachers be returned to positions that TFA and subs now fill. Their recruitment is ongoing as many teachers apply for public aid and lose their homes. While teacher jails run in two hour shifts to accommodate the growing number of misconduct allegations , UTLA insists it has no clue how many are presently incracerated or what their demographics are. How is that possible? The jailed teachers have taken an informal count in the 4 ESC where they are warehoused that are consistant with my own estimates. More than 300 colleagues are held in teacher jails.—the number does not include those kept under house arrest,which we cannot begin to guess. It is also high because a recent uprising in the jail coupled with UTLA elections and scrutiny aimed at Deasy over the iPad debacle has made black Tuesday a threat to them. Particularly with a ew board member who has some integrity questiining everything. Of course, these teachers are largely older and notably close to vesting in lifetime health care and full pensions–92% are well over 40. Most have unstained records and accolades for their decades of service. Very few are even accused of egregious misconduct. An inordinate number are African American. Most will settle with drastically reduced pensions to clear their names.
These practices are not unique to LA either. NYC’s rubber rooms were allegedly closed but still operate as detention centers for whistle blowers and rabble rousers, who wonder why Diane Ravitch has yet to defend them . I wonder this myself as there are few things in education reform more foul than the wanton defamation and ruin of innocent teachers. As one of those teachers ( I reported abuse and noncompliance) , I find it disconcerting that even on the front lines of this class war, the housed casualties are shunned as if they were guilty as charged despite the denial of due process.
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So the administration steals the money for themselves that the teachers need in the classrooms in the way of smaller classes????
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Seattle looks to fund BrainBox and other data systems, and seeks to cut school funding.
Meanwhile, Gates gives dollars to the Seattle Times to fund their “Education Lab”. The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction has agreed to release personal and confidential student and teacher information to the Seattle Times. Worth mentioning, the Seattle Times is NOT a research organization. The individuals that will have access to our children’s data consists of a data analyst and journalist. What is their agenda?
http://kuow.org/post/state-deal-give-media-organizations-student-data-alarms-privacy-experts
Contract between OSPI and Seattle Times can be found at end of KUOW story. It is worth noting that parents have NOT been made aware of this data sharing agreement.
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How can OSPI make decisions without notifying parents? In everything we do with our personal information, we sign a release. Who does OSPI think they are making decision for thousands of families. These state officials are nothing but Bill Gates croonies. Lawsuit to follow.
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@Jon, Not sure. FERPA laws now allow student data-sharing with third parties for “research”. The Seattle Times is not a research organization- rather a newspaper that is receiving dollars from Gates.
Don’t want to hijack this thread.
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Let’s see. You have 60 oranges and 3 bags. There are 20 oranges in each bag. The bags are full. The store manager takes away a bag and says you must put the oranges into 2 bags. There will now be 30 oranges in each bag. Since the bags are no larger, the oranges will be tightly packed and subject to bruising, so you object. The manager says it has to be done because the bags are now more expensive. He then raises the cost per bag of oranges from $3.00 to $4.50. The cost per orange is the same. However, the oranges are more likely to be bruised, but he doesn’t care because the customer won’t realize that some of the oranges are damaged until about a week has passed.
This is what happens when you put 30 student in a room built for 20. Yet, some advocate for larger class sizes. This is not a good idea for children because some may be damaged by being overlooked. On the books and in the name of “efficiency” in the business mindset, this makes sense.
Children aren’t oranges. Neither scenario is providing quality.
When long-term efficiency is more important than long-term quality, we aren’t “improving” anything except for short-term profits for the few who can shrug, take the money, and walk away.
But, forgive me. I am not a business teacher or professor, but I am a 4th grade teacher. So if I am simplistic, so be it!
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