A North Carolina judge ruled voucher legislation unconstitutional because it gives money intended for public schools to private and religious schools. He ordered an immediate halt to the program.
Yvonne Brannan of PublicSchools First NC sent the following response, which included a video of Judge Robert Hobgood reading his decision:
“PLEASE watch this– you will better understand why this is so critical!! Hobgood is brilliant — he clearly points out how children will be denied the promise and privilege of public education if in a private setting where they have no constitutional rights!!!! EVERYONE must get this!! Rs and Ds…please understand the common good of public education for us all must be protected!!!! THIS IS A WIN FOR all children – regardless of race, income, gender, ZIP CODE!!!
“Our forefathers gave us this gift!!! THANKS TO the Great leaders of the past and thanks to fair courts!!
PLEASE CELEBRATE by joining me on Sat at 3:30 pm at the Bicentennial Mall for Moral Week of Action EDUCATION DAY!!
“I CANNOT STOP WATCHING THIS!
http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/video/13911824/”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For some reason I could not gt the link to work. But I found it easily on Yevonne Brannon’s FB page. The link that works is at: http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/video/13911824/ Let’s celebrate! 🙂
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Somehow an extra ampersand got inserted in the url …
http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/video/13911824/#8221
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Cross posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Breaking-News-NC-Judge-Ru-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Breaking-News_Diane-Ravitch_Education_Money-140821-482.html#comment507713
wit this comment:
Of course it robs the money from public eduction, but this is ONE state, and there are 49 more… and THATis why those intent on destroying public education and THUS, the road to opportunity AND the shared knowledge that democracy depends upon.Vouchers are not about ‘choice’ for Americans… they are a way to steal taxpayer money for private ventures that the oligarchs can control.
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Amazing! Common sense happening.
It is about time. Maybe others will wake up also. We can hope.
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Wouldn’t it be great if similar reasoning were applied to for-profit charters in every state!
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Now you hit on the point I make in everything I post at Oped, FIFTY STATES & almost sixteen thousand districts. The deformers do not even have to divide to conquer… we are already divided and the public, listening to the dominant narrative about those bad teachers and how tenure lets them get away with bad practice, is already uninformed about what LEARNING LOOKS LIKE, let alone what good practice in tails… like all professions pedagogy is complex and the public believes that ANYONE CAN TEACH with a little training; how else could TFA get away with what they do.
The real National standards research into the CRITERIA FOR LEARNING TO HAPPEN, is ignored and replaced by the Duncan narrative about standards for teachers… not learning. As Isay over an dover, what the HECK happened to the Pew funded third level research…zioolions spent to prove the Harvard thesis THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING…4 FOR TEACHERS AND hold on to you hat… 4 for the administrative support. Where is it. If I had not been the nYC cohort for this touted research I would thinkit never existed,as no one, not Diane, or Leonie, or Anthony and especially not Randi talk about it, and no journalist or education reporter even mentions it.
Gone. Poof! What learning looks like and how it is FACILITATED AND ENABLED BY A TEACHER WHO KNOWS PEDAGOGY, and best practice is NEVER A CONVERSATION ANYWHERE…EXCEPT WHEN I WRITE ABOUT IT.
NOW, THAT SHEILA, would be great!
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Susan, Could you please provide the reference info for the research you described–it sounds very pertinent.
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You bet it is.
I attended workshops in district 2, and it was a big hairy deal.
The chancellor in NYC at that time, was Anthony Alverado, and I have scores of district bulletins lauding the presence of the Learning and Research Development Center staff developers who would be showing this district the genuine, authentic research and sharing the findings as they studied the cohorts across the nation… of which I was THE ONE in NYC.
http://www.newvisions.org/page/-/Prelaunch%20files/PDFs/NV%20Publications/challengestandards.pdf
Other districts were Beaumont Texas, San Diego, and I think Rochester NY, but there were 12 chosen by Harvard, and in each district the Pew research was observing big, middle and low functioning schools, to see if and HOW the principles of learning were used by each teacher, and the resulting learning.
Thousands of teachers were studied and the most successful became cohorts. At the end of the research, six teachers had their curricula featured at the LRDC seminars for staff developers across the nation. Why? Because in each case, the teacher had met every indicator for each principle of learning, in a unique way. I was one of the six. My work had a room of its own, I am told, and superintendents posed questions, at the Danforth Seminar, as to creation of this tool that I used to teach writing.
I have the letters from Vicki Bill, at the LRDC, the tolls person who observed me over the 2 years. She wrote to me how my work was traveling across the country.
They purchased one of my literary units for their coffee table book on The Nationbal Standards Research…that no one has ever heard of…. SO CURIOUS.
Because… not only have I never heard boo about these standards, beyond the write-up in The American Educator that featured Elaine Fink, the superintendent of the district in which I taught, who would later harass me out and charge me with incompetence, as she left NYC ,moving on to San Diego— but not for long, as, one day years later, I heard the board chairman in that district on TV saying about her…”we don”t treat our people like that.” Hee hee.
I googled the research and here is what I could find.
Related Info: http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/principles/
The Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center is currently conducting research on a related set of principles. http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/principles/
YEAH… THAT MUST HAVE BEEN IT, BUT WHEN I WENT TO THIS LINK
http://www.learnlab.org/research/wiki/index.php/InstructionalPrinciples
IT DID NOT LEAD TO THE ACTUAL HARVARD/PEW research where the LRDC professionals researched the cohorts.
Maybe YOU can find it…. IT IS A MYSTERY!
BUT I KNOW THAT DISTRICT 2 ALONE GOT TENS OF MILLIONS EACH YEAR FOR THE WORKSHOPS and it was big news..
I went to The American Educator, and found one piece that mentioned Clinton’s pus for standards …which…BTW… go the Pew interested
http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/spring1996/index.cfm
but I remember the issue that touted Fink and Alverado and neary a mention of me… who brought them to the district after the researchers visited my practice.
I googled and got this:
Here is Resnick’s theory. Principles of Learning for Effort-based Education – Ramsey
Click to access polv3_3.pdf
Lauren Resnick is a Distinguished University Professor of Learning Sciences and Education Policy and also of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Pittsburgh. She is an internationally known scholar in the cognitive science of learning and instruction and was Director of the Learning Research and Development Center from 1977-2008. She has researched and written widely on the learning and teaching of literacy, mathematics, and science. Her recent work focuses on school reform, assessment, effort-based education, the nature and development of thinking abilities, and the role of talk and discourse in learning.
Dr. Resnick is founder and Co-Director of the Institute for Learning, which bridges the domains of research and practice by conveying to educators the best of current knowledge about learning processes, principles of instruction, and the design of school systems. Dr. Resnick also co-founded the New Standards Project (1990-1999), which developed performance-based standards and assessments that widely influenced state and school district practice.
Dr. Resnick is a prolific author, a respected editor, and a frequent consultant, with appointments to many national education boards, commissions, and associations. Recognized both nationally and internationally, Dr. Resnick has received multiple awards for her research.
Educated at Radcliffe and Harvard, Dr. Resnick has been an Overseer of Harvard University and a member of the Smithsonian Council.
https://www.coursera.org/instructor/resnick
I also found this:
Lauren B. Resnick: Award for Distinguished Contributions of Applications of Psychology to Education and Training; American Psychologist, Vol 62(8), Nov 2007, 847-849.
AbstractPresents the citation, biography, and selected bibliography for Lauren B. Resnick, the 2007 recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Contributions of Applications of Psychology to Education and Training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2007-16827-033
Gone… missing…. Clinton’s contribution to standards, as he made the case for case for the construction of a professional knowledge base, grounded in and informed by research into high-performing schools.
Sigh. I must have imagined the hundreds of pages of curricula and children’s work I mailed to them, and the film crews that watched me teach, and the interviews with my students, and the workshops, and the praise for my work, that led to my Educator of Excellence award from the NYS English Council (NYSEC in 1998)
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We are rejoicing.
Let me point out here that this is an example where David Coleman is dead wrong.
We care what the judge thinks.
So put that in your Common Core pipe and smoke it Coleman.
We care what the judge thinks.
And the judge thinks public dollars are for public schools.
Hallelujah.
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I think vouchers were and are a political deal in my state between various factions of the ed reform political coalition. They had to keep religious schools on board with the privatization push, so they needed a separate publicly-funded program to keep them open after the huge charter push.
As usual, any effect on public schools from these political machinations was completely ignored. The designated “punching bag” sector, the public schools, took yet another hit for The Cause.
Good for North Carolina for giving some consideration to the public system as a whole. It’s rare. The “consumerist” approach seems to be all the rage and the “public good” approach is not fashionable at all.
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The ‘public good’ approach has been an anathema since the Reagan years. Me first libertarians…..
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Yes!
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Excellent news! At last, finally, a judge somewhere refuses to nullify the constitution! A great day for America…I chalk this up to the growing uproar over CCSS/PARCC. The judicial branch is as political as are the executive and legislative branches. When popular resistance becomes massive, judges find a way to read the law to avoid being on the wrong side of a rising tide. The more massive the democratic opposition, the significant the democratic victories.
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As a North Carolina resident, and a teacher who spent thirty-one years teaching in the state, I can scarcely believe this. One needn’t have been paying terribly close attention to the goings on here to realize North Carolina, under its Republican governor, and majority Republican state legislature, has, in two years, undone decades of hard-earned progressive educational legislation and policy. The state’s public schools, and once sterling system of state universities, is in a shambles. This is but one step back in the right direction and must be precedent setting nationally if public education, and by extension participatory democracy, is to have any chance.
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So where is the penalty for the bums who violated the constitution, the same one they were elected as public servants to uphold? Throw the bums out!
On another point, I fail to see where an appeal will go anywhere. The constitution, as it stands today, is very specific. Hope this judge stays safe–who knows what political ramifications this truthful judgment will have for him. Sad that people (myself included) have become so paranoid of the power and influence these anti-democracy types wield within our systems.
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I read a few weeks ago that funds were already being sent out. I know that many private schools started last week. Does any one know what will happen to those children who have started school already and those funds that have been deposited into those private schools’ accounts?
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NCMom,
The funds must be returned at once unless the decision is overturned on appeal
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I saw that funds had not been dispersed due to a technology problem.
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Thank goodness for a technical problem that hoodwinked them from getting sent. Nice computer, or whatever, glitch, just in the nick of time~!
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I’m so excited about this decision! I do have a question though about public charters, like the many in Colorado Springs. I don’t quite understand how they are different. Anyone know?
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I very much disappreciate funding sectarian atheist education systems.
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Hooray!!!! Thank you Judge Hobgood!!!!
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What does Rs and Ds mean?
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