Archives for the month of: October, 2017
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Gail Collins on Betsy DeVos and Her Crusade to Save Predatory For-Profit “Colleges”

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2017 //
21

This column by Gail Collins is a Must Read.

The bad news from the U.S. Department of Education comes so frequently that it is hard to keep track of it.

DeVos is clear in her goals: roll back the federal role in protecting students and taxpayers’ money.

One egregious example: she is diluting, diminishing, removing federal efforts to rein in for-profit Colleges. In fact, she has hired former executives and lobbyists from the industry to write the regulations. Some of her many investments were in the industry, which she obviously sees as part of the future. And surely she has not forgotten Trump University, the fraud associated with the man who appointed her.

Collins writes:

“DeVos is the superrich Republican donor who once led a crusade to reform troubled Michigan public schools by turning them into truly terrible private ones. Now she’s in the Trump cabinet, and she seems to be dedicating a lot of her time to, um, lowering higher education.

“When no one was watching she hired a lot of people that come from the for-profit colleges,” complained Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who feels the additions are far more interested in protecting their old associates than in overseeing them. Murray is the top Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, otherwise known as HELP. These days it’s hard to tell whether that’s a promise of assistance or a cry of distress.

“To oversee the critical issue of fraud in higher education, DeVos picked Julian Schmoke Jr., whose former job was a dean of — yes! — a for-profit university. Specifically a school named DeVry. Last year, under fire from state prosecutors and the Federal Trade Commission, DeVry agreed to pay $100 million to students who complained that they had been misled by its recruitment pitch.

“That sort of thing is getting to be common in the darkest corners of the for-profit world. For instance, there’s a now-defunct “university” that promised to show students how to get rich quick in real estate and wound up paying $25 million to settle the case. …

“Back to the Department of Education. One of DeVos’s top advisers, Robert Eitel, is on a leave of absence from a company that operates for-profits and once paid more than $30 million to settle charges of deceiving students about the loans they were getting.

“Which is, again, even more than that real estate school, where some students claimed they were encouraged by instructors to increase the limits on their credit cards. …

“There are well over 3,000 for-profit colleges and universities in the country, everything from tiny schools that promise to set you off on a career in cosmetology to conglomerates with campuses all over the world. Some of them have names that might seem intended to be confused with somebody else’s. (Not necessarily thinking of you, Brown College, Berkeley College, Columbia Southern University or Northwestern College.)

“Experts say some for-profits are fine. However, there have been a ton of horror shows in which low-income men and women are promised a path to life-changing jobs but wind up with nothing to show except huge loan bills.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education

Laura Chapman on the Failure of Charter Oversight in Ohio

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2017 //
4

Ohio has many failing charter schools. It has charter schools that gobble up public money and are never held accountable for poor results or wasted money. Apparently taxpayers and legislators in Ohio don’t care about how public money is spent and they don’t give a hoot about the quality of education.

Laura Chapman writes about the farce of charter “accountability.”

She begins by quoting something I wrote about the failure of oversight in California where hundreds of thousands of dollars go missing and no one notices until a whistle-blower blows the whistle. In Los Angeles, board member Ref Rodriguez was facing criminal charges of money laundering during his campaign. His defenders defended him, saying the money laundering was a “rookie” mistake that should be ignored. But then Ref’s own charter chain accused him of paying himself hundreds of thousands of dollars for no services. Didn’t look like a rookie mistake. At the same time, the charter industry in Los Angeles was asking the LAUSD to reduce oversight, accountability, and audits.

I wrote:

“If the charter industry had any sense of integrity, they would insist on annual audits of every charter.”

Laura Chapman wrote:

“The farce of some audits is illustrated in Ohio by The Office of School Sponsorship. This is an office within the Ohio Department of Education that serves as a direct sponsor of 23 charter schools called “community schools.” In effect these schools are under state control, and are supposed to adhere “to the highest standards of approval, oversight, and monitoring” for “academic, fiscal, and governance.”

“The Thomas B. Fordham Institute hatched the current plan for monitoring these state-sponsored charter schools. The auditors/evaluators are equipped with 300 criteria for determining whether the contract for each school should be renewed, terminated, or put into probationary status.

“In order to be “considered for contract renewal,” the Governing Authority for the school is expected to “meet or exceed” a minimum set of standards for (a) academic performance, (b) financial reporting, and (c) responsible operations/governance. But….“An inability to achieve minor elements of the standards may not prevent consideration of contract renewal.” What counts as a “minor element” leaves a lot of room for excuses, including excuses offered by the auditors–well they were late with reports, the reports were incomplete, and so forth.

“I have looked at the standards in this plan and the evaluations of 23 state sponsored charter schools. What a farce. All were approved, a few with a slap on the wrist.

“Not one of the 23 charters passed muster on academic performance. In some cases evaluators did note that the state tests and grading system had been changed (again), so the poor rating was not enough to terminate the charter. Seven charter schools were well below state averages and other charter averages. Three were given credit for a sign of “growth.” One was credited with a satisfactory rate of graduation but not academic performance.

“Ratings on financial reporting were generally OK, meaning the required paperwork was submitted. Six charter schools were cited for no information or failure to report financial data on staffing. One more was praised for “improvement.” One, in operation for two years, was judged to have “growing pains.”

“With one exception, all of these charters had satisfactory ratings on responsible operations/governance. That rating prevailed even though three had reports that lacked required transparency and timely submission of information, two had clear issues with pending investigation of ethics, one had “growing pains,” one was judged flawed but “improved,” and two were excused for problems due to an “new online system for reporting.”

“The brief mission statements offered in these evaluation reports were revealing. An “Honors Academy” for grades 6 to 11 had really bad ratings on academics but claimed to instill passion and self discipline.Inexplicably the charter school did not claim to serve students in grade 12.

“A “startup” said it was committed to building an “multigenerational community of lifelong learns (sic) and spirited citizens.”

“An “elective” academy enrolled only 31 students from Kindergarten through grade 9. In operation since 2006, it failed on academic performance and fiscal accountability including staffing reports. The school described itself as tech-rich with small classes geared to readiness for college, career, and/or military service. That must be a very tech-rich school, ten grade levels and 31 students. No wonder the staffing reports were less than acceptable.

“Readers of this blog are aware of the fiascos in Ohio charter school laws and accountability. These evaluations of charter schools are a farce. All of these charters continue to operate, in spite of having an elaborate point system for ratings. The ratings and rubrics, invented by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute mean nothing at all when it comes down to closing schools that fail to pass muster, including one franchise that began in 1999 and exanded to four by 2009.

http://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Quality-School-Choice/Ohio-School-Sponsorship-Program/Final-Format-Approval-Criteria.pdf.aspx

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Ohio

John Thompson: Spinning “Success” at Gates-Funded Projects

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2017 //
30

John Thompson is a teacher and historian in Oklahoma who writes frequently here, at Huffington Post, and on other blogs.

Ironically, the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) revisionist studies, “Evaluating Newark’s Education Reforms” by Tom Kane et. al, were released as Bill Gates announced his latest, new approach to school reform. This is important because think tank papers consistently perform two basic functions. They first provide pro-reform spin for the mainstream media. Secondly, they reassure the “Billionaires Boys Club” by presenting the case that their critics are wrong. These studies typically imply that if educators and journalists had bought into the Gates’, Mark Zuckerberg’s, and other venture philanthropists’ theories, their policies (such as closing schools and expanding charters) would have worked.

Zuckerberg and the CEPR weren’t likely to be happy with the first headlines prompted by their new research on test score gains produced by the infamous $200 million Newark experiment. USA Today announced that the research found “a bit of progress.” Veteran journalist Greg Toppo also noted:

The study was funded by the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and conducted by a number of Harvard researchers, including Tom Kane, who said that the study’s results were independent of its funding source.

Toppo reported that the Zuckerberg-led grant “made a difference — in a limited way.” He summarized CEPR’s claims, “Newark students improved sharply in English. In math? Not so much.”

https://cepr.harvard.edu/evaluating-newark-school-reform

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/10/19/bill-gates-has-another-plan-for-k-12-public-education-the-others-didnt-go-so-well/?utm_term=.25af39b803d2

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/10/16/what-did-zuckerbergs-100-million-buy-newark-bit-progress/769536001/

Toppo recalled Dale Russakoff’s “widely admired book” which found that “the effort produced ‘at least as much rancor as reform.’” He also cited Kane on the disappointing math results which the corporate-funded researcher said may look different when data from the spring 2017 tests become available,” and scores “could” rise in the future.

I stress Kane’s use of the word “could” because he has a long history of using that sort of word when spinning the modest results he documents in research studies that put Gates Foundation experiments in the best light. For instance, Kane’s study of the Gates’ value-added teacher evaluations concluded that teachers’ effectiveness “can” be estimated, although he reported little or no evidence that they would be estimated accurately enough to make those evaluations valid and reliable. After driving for the change in the laws of more that forty states, the Gates Foundation merely concluded, “It is possible to develop reliable measures” such as those that the law required, while not offering a plausible scenario for doing so.

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/media-center/press-releases/2013/01/measures-of-effective-teaching-project-releases-final-research-report

And that leads to the one quarrel I have with Toppo’s wording. What does he mean when he says that test score growth in English improved “sharply?” And what do Kane et. al mean when reporting that those test scores improved “significantly?”

English growth scores only improved “sharply” in one year, 2015. After five years, the $200 million investment’s one success resulted in less than .08 standard deviation Newark’s test score growth in English relative to similar NJ students.

It’s beyond my expertise to explain how such a meager gain, measured by comparing such small numbers of test results from Newark on a new test, could be seen as significant according to the dictionary definition of the term, as opposed to just being statistically significant. But reading the CEPR evidence, it seems that asking questions that are relevant for real world policy decisions is beyond Kane et. al. They acknowledge one major problem with the new scores; schools that began early in teaching to the new PARCC tests would be more likely to have higher scores. On the other hand, their discussion of an even more important point, missing student scores, completely misses the point.

Kane et. al present two charts that reveal patterns that are virtually identical. As with ELA results, before 2014 the Newark math value-added scores dropped in comparison to that of similar New Jersey students. In 2015, math scores soared by nearly .1 std. But during that year, the percentage of students with missing scores increased dramatically, by almost .2 std! The next year, as the percentage of students missing scores dropped just as dramatically, math scores declined so much that all of the five year gains were wiped out.

Rather than print a similar for graph ELA, the authors merely said, “The plot for ELA was similar.”

Why didn’t Kane et. al see the need to address the most logical correlation? When the percentage of missing scores goes up, Newark test score growth goes up. When the percentage of students with missing test scores goes down, test score growth goes down.

And this leads to the implicit recommendations by Kane et. al, as well as the questions they should have asked before making them. They attribute the gains to closing schools and expanding charters. They indicate that such an approach (which, of course, is dear to the hearts of “the Billionaires Boys Club”) could institutionalize better results for students who attend high-poverty neighborhood schools. The few relevant numbers they reported argue against such a theory.

In the first place, Newark charters had previously served higher-performing students, with the non-representative KIPP and North Star Academy being the charters that expanded the most. So the first question is whether those charters could change their model so that the higher-challenge students in neighborhood schools could be retained. Newark’s free and reduced lunch student population averaged 88% over the five-year study; charters were six points lower. However, KIPP and North Star tend to serve a relatively larger percentage of low income and a smaller percentage of poor students than traditional public schools in the inner city. For instance, Newark’s North Star has served far fewer poor children (14.6% fewer free lunch) while serving relatively more students whose higher family incomes qualify for reduced lunch.

Similarly, Newark’s charters served about 60% fewer students with disabilities, but that is just part of the story. For example, North Star has a record of “serving hardly any children with disabilities and few or none with more severe disabilities.”

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/04/uncommon-comes-to-camden-let.html

These charters also have a long record of benefitting from greater rates of attrition when raising test scores. North Star has a history of suspending students “at an alarming rate,” and that is a reason why “only about half (of 5th graders) ever made it to senior year.” Similarly, as Richard Kahlenberg shows:

The big difference between KIPP and regular public schools…is that whereas struggling students come and go at regular schools, at KIPP, students leave but very few new students enter. Having few new entering students is an enormous advantage not only because low-scoring transfer students are kept out but also because in later grades, KIPP students are surrounded only by successful peers….

Click to access kippstudy.pdf

http://educationnext.org/student-attrition-explain-kipps-success/

In other words, Kane et. al should have asked questions relevant to policy-making. For instance, how different were the tested charter students’ poverty and disability rates in comparison to their classmates who were enrolled in the first quarter? Why was it that the missing test score patterns seemed to have a far bigger effect on “within-school” outcomes? Why did they assume that Newark’s charters can be scaled up?

Did Gates-affiliated researchers overlook these obvious questions because they still are oblivious to realities within school systems? Or did they only ask the questions that they knew would produce answers that would please their bosses?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization

Tony Bennett and Susan Benedetto on the Importance of the Arts and Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2017 //
7

This is a beautiful and inspiring 4-minute video about the iconic singer Tony Bennett and his wife Susan Benedetto,who generously support the arts in public schools.

It is a magnificent testimony to the arts, to public schools, to diversity, and to the way that the arts bring hope to the world.

They may never know about it, but I gladly add Tony Bennett and Susan Benedetto to the blog’s Honor Roll for their love of the arts and for their recognition of the transformative power of the arts in the lives of young people.

Categories Arts Education, Goodness, Honor Roll, Supporting public schools

Nonprofit Quarterly: Will Amazon Buy the Seattle Mayor’s Race?

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2017 //
3

Nonprofit Quarterly is concerned about a sudden surge of corporate spending in the Seattle Mayor’s race, wit Amazon leading the big funders, presumably in a bid to keep taxes and wages low.

“With nonprofits promoting increased civic engagement among their members and the public, the prospect of Amazon’s civic engagement in the Seattle mayoral race must raise some eyebrows.

“This week, it was revealed that the marketing behemoth was a contributor to a political action committee (PAC) supporting Jenny Durkan against Cary Moon in the race for the Seattle mayor’s office. The article, “Seattle mayor’s race picks up $590K in late-money surge,” reveals how ten big name corporations, including Comcast, the Washington Association of Realtors, AT&T, Expedia, Starbucks, and Boeing donated at least $10,000 each to the Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy (CASE), which is the political action arm of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. The Seattle Times calls out Amazon in particular for “adding $100,000 on October 12th to the $250,000 it gave in July.”

“In the Times article, a spokesperson for the Moon campaign suggests that some of the companies supporting the CASE PAC have in the past opposed taxes on the incomes of wealthy households, increasing minimum wages for workers, and the creation of a publicly owned broadband service for Seattle. In response to the CASE PAC, Moon has vowed to use her inherited resources to maintain her campaign.

“What can a nonprofit with a mission of civic engagement to do in the face of massive campaign spending in a local election by national corporations? For years, community-based organizations have followed Saul Alinsky’s first rule: “Power is derived from two main sources—money and people. ‘Have-Nots’ must build power from flesh and blood.” In many cities, business interests have figured out that huge amounts of money in a local election can scare off the best opponents, co-opt the grassroots, and dominate the messaging. The result is a crisis of civic engagement that looks like voter apathy, but is actually voter disengagement.“

That last paragraph caught my eye. We face the same issues in our struggle to prevent the privatization of public education.

Big corporations that use their money to cut wages and services sacrifice civic duty and community. Those who undermine workers and public institutions are bad citizens.

We must build power from “flesh and blood.”

Join the Network for Public Education. Donate whatever you can.

Categories Billionaires, Citizenship

Coming Soon to a School Near You: A Biometric Device to Measure Students’ Brainwaves

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2017 //
32

They said it couldn’t or shouldn’t be done, but here it comes: a biometric headset that measures students’ level of “engagement.”

EdSurge reports that a start-up called BrainCo has invented a headset to measure brain activity. This information can be transmitted instantly to the teacher so she knows which students are engaged and which are not. Apparently, just looking at their faces and their expressions is no longer adequate. (Be sure to see the video that is included in the link.)

A few years back, Bill Gates invested in a biometric bracelet. In 2013, I posted several times about the Gates-funded galvanic response monitor. That didn’t seem to go anywhere, to my knowledge.

But the idea didn’t die. Now it appears to be arriving as a headset, not a bracelet.

If Blade Runner had a classroom scene, it might look something like the promotional video by BrainCo, Inc. Students sit at desks wearing electronic headbands that report EEG data back to a teacher’s dashboard, and that information purports to measure students’ attention levels. The video’s narrator explains: “School administrators can use big data analysis to determine when students are better able to concentrate.”

BrainCo just scored $15 million in venture funding from Chinese investors, and has welcomed a prominent Harvard education dean, who will serve as an adviser. The company says it has a working prototype and is in conversations with a Long Island school to pilot the headset.

The headband raises questions from neuroscientists and psychologists, who say little evidence exists to support what device-and-dashboard combination aims to do. It also raises legal questions, like what BrainCo will do with students’ biometric data.

BrainCo has some big ideas. The company’s CEO has said that BrainCo aims to develop a tool that can translate thoughts directly into text, or “brain typing.” To support that work, the company plans to use data collected from students using its headsets to compile “the world’s largest brainwave database.”

Theodore Zanto, a professor of neurology at the University of California at San Francisco, had two words when he first read through the company’s website: “Holy shit.”

The brains behind BrainCo

The founder and CEO of BrainCo is Bicheng Han, a PhD candidate at the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University. In 2015, his Somerville, Mass.-based startup was incubated in the Harvard Innovation Lab, and last year the company received $5.5 million in seed funding in a round led by the Boston Angel Club, with participation from Han Tan Capital and Wandai Capital, to develop BrainCo’s first product: Focus 1.

Teachers have an innate ability to know when their students are engaged, but we want to give them a superpower so they can track and quantify that over time.

Focus 1 is a headband that aims to detect and report brain activity through EEG, or electroencephalography, which measures in the brain. To advertise the device to schools, BrainCo packages the headset as Focus EDU, which essentially is the headset plus a dashboard where teachers can view all of their students’ EEG data. According to the video, a high numerical score for the EEG signal suggests that a student is paying attention; a low score is interpreted as a distracted or unfocused student.

Max Newlon, a research scientist at BrainCo, adds the company is also studying if the headset could help students and families “train their brain” to improve attention skills.

BrainCo is hardly the first company to sell so-called “brain-training”—or even EEG headsets. Similar devices include Muse, a “personal meditation” headband intended to guide relaxation based on real-time EEG readings. There’s also Neurocore Brain Performance Centers, clinics that “empower you to train your brain” also using EEG readings. (Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is among Neurocore’s investors.)

Focus EDU, by contrast, is among the first EEG products that will be marketed directly to teachers and schools.

“We are trying to be the first company to quantify this invisible metric” of student engagement, says Newlon. “Teachers have an innate ability to know when their students are engaged, but we want to give them a superpower so they can track and quantify that over time.”

The idea was enough for BrainCo to win awards including “Most Innovative” at a pitchfest during the 2017 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) national conference.

But the company has also faced less enthusiastic reviews. At the 2016 CES conference, an electronics and consumer tech tradeshow, BrainCo’s Focus 1 device flopped in a live demo, which attempted to use human brainwaves detected by the headband to control a robotic hand. The Daily Dot called it the most “cringeworthy demonstration” at the event. “That’s a mishap that calls into question the overall function of the device,” the reporter wrote. “Was it ever actually reading the brainwaves at all?”

When BrainCo returned to CES in 2017, the company arrived with an even bigger robot—which the site WearableZone reported was a success—along with a strategic “pivot” towards education.

More recently, BrainCo has chalked up some big wins: It signed education superstar, James Ryan, Harvard’s dean of education, as an adviser. And now it’s closed a $15 million Series A funding round, bringing the the company’s total funding to nearly $20.5 million. The funding was led by Chinese investors Decent Capital and the China Electronics Corporation, which on its website describes itself as “one of the key state-owned conglomerates directly under the administration of central government, and the largest state-owned IT company in China.”

My reaction: The same as Theodore Zanto, quoted above.

Categories Education Reform, Privacy, Technology

Trump Tweeted Today About Saving “Our Great Statues/Heritage”

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2017 //
43

Trump tweeted about the Virginia Gubernatorial election:

Ed Gillespie will turn the really bad Virginia economy #’s around, and fast. Strong on crime, he might even save our great statues/heritage!

Are the statues of Confederate heroes “great”? Do they represent “our heritage”?

If you supported the rebellion against the Union, then the statues of Confederate statues are “great.”

If you are white and if you sympathized with the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, if you regret that the Union won the Civil War, then you identify with the statues as “our heritage.”

I grew up in Texas, I went to a junior high school named for a Confederate General, but I did not think of the Confederacy as “my heritage.”

If I were black, I certainly would not see the Confederate cause as “my heritage.”

Who sees the statues of Confederate leaders as “our heritage”?

White supremacists.

Trump has outed himself. His heart lies with the white supremacists, the “fine” folks who marched with tiki torches in Charlottesville several weeks ago and chanted “The Jews will not replace us.”

Virginians have to decide whether their future lies with the racist past or with a future free of the Confederacy, a future that includes all Virginians, not just those who yearn for the days of white supremacy.

The past or the future? That’s the choice for Virginians when they decide between Ed Gillespie and Ralph Northam for Governor.

Categories Bigotry

Philadelphia: Dean of Students at Mastery Charter Schools Charged with Raping Student

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2017 //
9

The dean of students at a Mastery Charter School in Philadelphia has been arrested and charged with statutory rape. He has been fired.

Omar Harrison, 42, of Cheltenham, Pa. was arrested on Wednesday. He was a dean of students at Mastery Charter’s Harrity Elementary School in the 5600 block of Christian Street in West Philadelphia.

Police say the victim was a 14-year-old 8th grade student.

The victim allegedly told investigators the incident happened at the end of the past school year after Harrison gave her a ride to a hotel in Tinicum Township near Philadelphia International Airport.

Officials from Master Charter Schools say the incident came to light on Friday after the victim’s mother came to the school to confront Harrison. The school was placed on lockdown for student safety, officials said, and no one was hurt.

Harrison has been fired from his position.

Did the charter give him a background check before hiring him? Did he have a previous criminal record? The answers to these questions are unknown. These are procedures that are customary in public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Philadelphia, Privatization, Scandal

Education Law Center Wins Court Ruling on School Funding in New York

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2017 //
9

New York has had a long running court battle over equitable funding. The plaintiffs seeking additional funding have won in court, but the legislature and the Governor have ignored the rulings and owe the urban districts $5.5 billion.

Yesterday the Education Law Center won another judgment in court, this time on behalf of the state’s “small cities.” Will the legislature and Governor obey the court ruling?

IN SMALL CITIES FUNDING CASE NY APPELLATE DIVISION COURT UPHOLDS CAMPAIGN FOR FISCAL EQUITY

ORDERS TRIAL COURT TO MAKE DETERMINATION REGARDING FUNDING NEEDS OF SCHOOLS
October 26, 2017

New York’s Appellate Division Third Department issued a groundbreaking ruling today in Maisto v. State, a challenge to inadequate school funding for students in eight New York “Small Cities” school districts.

The Appeals Court unanimously reversed the trial judge’s ruling, which dismissed the case without examining the extensive evidence presented during the two-month trial in 2015. The Court reaffirmed the framework established in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) rulings for analyzing claims of violations of New York’s Education Article. The Court made clear that in school funding cases, the trial court must examine the evidence regarding deficiencies in essential education resources, or inputs, student performance, or outcomes, and whether a lack of funding is a causal factor in resource deficits and low outcomes.

The Appeals Court remanded the case to the trial court for specific findings on inputs and causation for each of the eight Maisto districts: Jamestown, Kingston, Mount Vernon, Newburgh, Niagara Falls, Port Jervis, Poughkeepsie and Utica.

Highlights of the Appellate Division ruling include the following:

1. The trial court erred by refusing to apply the CFE standards and failing to examine the extensive evidence presented for each district regarding inputs, outputs and causation;

2. On remand, the trial court must consider a broad range of inputs necessary for a sound basic education, including not only teachers and instrumentalities of learning, but also class size and supplemental services, such as academic intervention services, extended learning opportunities and social workers.

3. The proper standard for establishing causation on remand is whether the plaintiffs showed that increased funding can provide inputs that yield better student performance, evidence the State’s own experts conceded for every district.

“This is a great victory for the 55,000 children in the eight districts, and for children across New York State,” said Greg Little, Education Law Center’s Chief Trial Counsel and lead counsel in the Maisto trial. “The abundant evidence showed massive deficiencies in basic educational resources that deprived these needy students of their constitutional rights. We are confident that after considering the evidence on remand, the court will vindicate the rights of the students in these impoverished districts.”

Billy Easton, Executive Director of the Alliance for Quality Education, said, “Once again, a court has upheld the rights of students to a sound basic education. We hope the legislature and Governor will take heed of this decision, the second in two months, and finally make CFE’s decade-long promise a reality, without further delays or the need for further court cases. New York cannot sacrifice another generation of children to political or legal gamesmanship.”

In addition to ELC’s Greg Little, David Sciarra and Wendy Lecker, the Maisto school children are represented by Robert Biggerstaff and David Kunz in Albany, and Robert Reilly and Megan Mercy of the NYSUT General Counsel Office.

More information about the Maisto case is available here.

Press Contact:

Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24

Categories Accountability, Equity, Funding, New York

This Is Your Brain on Art!

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2017 //
13

As this article explains, there is a new kind of neuroscience that examines how the experience of art affects your brain.

https://apple.news/ApKmwwmY7TRiq_MqhOMSkdw

It’s all good.

“There is something about being in a group that stimulates your reactions. There’s something about the performance that heightens your senses.

“If you think about it, having a great time at the theater defies logic in many ways. We’re surrounded by strangers, bombarded with unusual images and often faced with a wordless language of symbols. Yet, on a good night, we generally laugh more, cry more and enjoy ourselves more at a live performance than when we’re watching TV at home. We may even lose ourselves and feel connected to something larger. How does this happen?…

“Social connection is one of the strengths of our species — it’s how we learn from others by imitation. We’re keenly attuned to the emotions and actions of people around us, because our brains are designed for this.

“If, for example, you’ve ever gone to an experimental performance-art piece where there’s hardly anyone in the audience but you, and you’ve felt a little exposed and awkward, this is why. We crave social connection. And the cues we get from those around us help our brains make sense of our surroundings. This starts from the moment we walk into a crowd….

“It helps us make sense of human behavior, a large part of which is evaluating movement and emotion within us and around us. Our brains like to share emotions with others. This is just one reason that seeing a live performance — a concert, play, opera, etc. — is a neural rush. With our brain’s capacity for emotion and empathy, even in the wordless art of dance we can begin to discover meaning — and a story.”

Open the link to see performances and understand how we react to art.

We need the arts. We need to see them, perform them, experience them, enjoy them. They are part of what makes us human.

Categories Art, Arts Education, Education Reform
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