Archives for the month of: July, 2020
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Trump and DeVos: Schools Must Reopen, Without Needed Resources

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2020 //
46

Trump demanded that schools reopen for in-person instruction in a few weeks, as the pandemic surges in more than half the states. He and his party have refused to pass the HEROES act to provide additional resources for schools.

DeVos blasted school districts that hesitate to open, fearing risk to students and staff. She said, patronizingly, that life has many risks: get over it.

THE ANSWER IS NO! TRUMP AND DEVOS ARE WILLING TO SACRIFICE LIVES TO RESTART THE ECONOMY! NO!

Trump doesn’t care about the lives of students and staff. He cares only about his poll numbers. DeVos is arrogant and doesn’t care what might happen to students and teachers and other staff in public schools. She never has.

Opening schools without elaborate and carefully planned protocols for testing, daily screenings, masks, small classes, and social distancing is insane.

Opening schools in the middle of a raging and uncontrolled pandemic is irresponsible. Whose loves will be sacrificed?

What example has Trump set by refusing to wear a mask? Didn’t he just falsely claim that 99% of COVID infections are “totally harmless”?

DO NOT OPEN—DO NOT EVEN THINK OF OPENING—UNLESS EVERYONE IS SAFE, STAFF AND STUDENTS ALIKE.

CORONAVIRUS IS DANGEROUS. IT IS NOT LIKE THE COMMON COLD.

President Trump on Tuesday dialed up pressure on state and local authorities to reopen schools, even as coronavirus cases spike, accusing officials who keep them closed as being motivated by politics.


He said in-person education was essential for the well-being of students, parents and the country as a whole, and he vowed to keep up the pressure on governors to open buildings.
“We want to reopen the schools,” Trump said. “We don’t want people to make political statements or do it for political reasons. They think it’s going to be good for them politically, so they keep schools closed. No way.”


The president did not mention that his own reelection prospects may depend on whether voters see the country as having recovered from the economic and social devastation of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

It’s also unclear whether the schools push will be a political winner for Trump.

Some parents are eager to return to normal but many others, fearful of the virus, have told districts they want to keep their children home this fall.


Virtually every K-12 school in the United States closed this spring in an effort to control infections, abruptly moving to online learning.

The system worked reasonably well for some families in some school districts but was an outright failure in others.

Colleges and universities also shut down, though their remote learning was generally seen as more successful.
Now schools at all levels are struggling to develop plans for the fall, with many planning a mix of in-person and online classes…

During an afternoon dialogue at the White House, federal, state and local officials made the case for in-person schooling, saying it was imperative for the education and social-emotional well-being of children, and critical for parents who need to go to work.

They noted that schools provide children with meals, mental health counseling and socialization.
“Parents have to get back to the factory. They’ve got to get back to the job site. They have to get back to the office. And part of that is their kids, knowing their kids are taken care of,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said.


Children, officials added, are far less likely to become ill and die of the virus than older people, though little was said about the teachers and staff who might be at risk.
“We cannot simply focus on virus containment at the expense of everything else,” said Elinore McCance-Katz, assistant secretary for mental health and substance use at HHS.


The confidence projected from the White House stood in contrast with the angst in many local districts working to develop plans for the fall. Most big cities and many others are developing hybrid models that alternate days in the building and days at home to minimize the number of students present at any given time.



Those models are being developed in part to comply with guidance from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention that recommends “enhanced social distancing” in buildings. For instance, the CDC recommends that desks be placed at least six feet apart, something that might not be possible if all students are on site.


Administration officials did not address these hybrid plans directly, though Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said that schools “must fully reopen and fully operate this school year.”


One guest, Patrick Daly, principal of St. Vincent de Paul High School in Petaluma, Calif., said he plans a hybrid system, where students learn from home on certain days. Trump replied that he hoped the school could be in-person full time.

“I know you want to try,” he said.
CDC Director Robert Redfield noted that the agency never recommended that schools close in the first place. And he appeared concerned that his agency’s guidance has made districts reticent to open.
“Nothing would cause me greater sadness” than learning that schools view the guidance as reason not to open, he said.


Schools can safely reopen if they arrange for appropriate social distancing, face coverings and strong personal hygiene including hand-washing, Azar said.

He and some other administration officials were seen wearing masks at the White House, something the president has resisted.


Making his case for a return to normal, Trump repeatedly played down the rising number of coronavirus cases, saying treatments and vaccines are coming soon. He said there are only more cases because the country is doing more testing, a point health experts dispute.

Politico reported on a phone call that DeVos had with the governors, in which she demanded that schools reopen and ignore the risks.

Lily Eskelsen Garcia responded:

“The reality is no one should listen to Donald Trump or Betsy DeVos when it comes to what is best for students,” said Lily Eskelsen García, National Education Association president. “Trump has not once proven credible, compassionate or thoughtful when it comes to this pandemic.”

The White House is hammering a message of reopening schools even as coronavirus cases spike throughout the country, insisting it’s okay to move ahead and that decisions last spring to close doors came from states rather than health experts at the CDC.

Ignore them. They don’t care about human life. They care about the stock market and the election.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Health, Ignorance, Science, Stupid, Trump

Happy Birthday, David McCullough!

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2020 //
8

Garrison Keillor’s “The Writers’ Almanac” posted this greeting:

It’s the birthday of American author, historian, and narrator David McCullough (books by this author), born in the Point Breeze neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1933). McCullough has won two Pulitzer Prizes, both for nonfiction books about presidents. The first was for Truman (1993); the second was for John Adams (2001).

At Yale University in the early 1950s, McCullough took a writing class with novelist Robert Penn Warren, who required his students to slip a fresh piece of original prose under his door each day at 8:30. If they didn’t, they received a zero. McCullough said, “It was a great way to learn discipline.” He also grew close to playwright Thornton Wilder, who advised him to look for stories that hadn’t been written yet, and write them.

After graduation, McCullough worked at Sports Illustrated as a writer. One editor at the magazine had a red stamp with a four-letter word on it: dull. McCullough grew to fear receiving the stamp on his work, so he became meticulous with his writing. It was later, while working at American Heritage magazine, that he really thought he might become a writer. “Once I discovered the endless fascination of doing research and of doing the writing, I knew I had found what I wanted to do with my life.”

For many years, he wrote in a small, windowed shed in the backyard of his Martha’s Vineyard
home. He said, “Nothing good was ever written in a large room.” The shed had no running water and no telephone. Family members had to whistle when they approached so as not to startle McCullough. On his desk were a green banker’s lamp and a Royal typewriter, which he had freshly oiled for each new book.

When asked how he chooses which historical figure to write about, he admitted to quitting a project on the painter Pablo Picasso. He said: “He was an awful man. I don’t think you have to love your subject — initially you shouldn’t — but it’s like picking a roommate. After all, you’re going to be with that person every day, maybe for years, and why subject yourself to someone you have no respect for or outright don’t like?”

Categories History

Reform Jewish Leaders Criticize Supreme Court’s Espinoza Decision

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2020 //
8

Leaders of Reform Judaism criticized the Supreme Court decision to allow public funding of religious schools.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Sarah Garfinkel, West End Strategy Team
sgarfinkel@westendstrategy.com; Cell: 202-765-4290

Reform Jewish Movement Denounces Supreme Court Decision Allowing Government Funding of Religious Education

WASHINGTON – In response to the Supreme Court decision in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue permitting state funding of private religious education, Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, released the following statement on behalf of the Union for Reform Judaism, the Central Conference on American Rabbis and the wider Reform Movement institutions:

“We are deeply disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate Montana’s prohibition on state funding of private religious schools. We joined an amicus brief in support of Montana’s prohibition on financial support for religious education, because not only do tuition tax credits and other types of school vouchers divert desperately needed funding from public schools, these programs also violate separation of church and state when such funding is directed towards religious schools.

“Government funding to religious schools requires taxpayers to support religious institutions and beliefs that may violate their own, something the First Amendment was intended to avoid. Conversely, such government funding is bad for religion, for with government funding comes government rules, regulations, monitoring and interference. Religious education must always be the responsibility of the family and faith community, not the government.

“Rather than implementing private school voucher programs, the government should invest in public schools to make them safer, stronger, and more equitable. All of America’s children deserve a first-rate education.”

###

The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism is the Washington office of the Union for Reform Judaism, whose nearly 850 congregations across North America encompass 1.5 million Reform Jews, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, whose membership includes more than 2,000 Reform rabbis. Visit http://www.RAC.org for more.

Categories Religion, Separation of church and state

Carl J. Petersen: Los Angeles Charter School Took $4.6 Million from PPP, Then Laid Off Employees

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2020 //
9

Carl J. Petersen, writer and public school parent in Los Angeles, writes here about a Los Angeles charter schools that took millions from the federal Paycheck Protection Plan, then laid off employees anyway.

The purpose of PPP was to help small businesses and to ensure that they did not fire employees because they couldn’t afford to pay them. But charter schools, which had suffered no economic harm, cashed in on the program…because they could.

Petersen writes:

With unemployment rates reaching levels unseen since the Great Depression due to the problems caused by the failed response to COVID-19, every dollar from the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) should be going towards helping small businesses survive. Unfortunately, the charter school industry found a way to double-dip into the government trough to supplement the money they are diverting from public schools with funds from this program.

Despite acknowledging that they could be taking money away from small businesses that needed it to survive the crisis, the governing board of Palisades Charter High School voted last month to accept a $4.606 million dollar loan from the PPP. They admitted at the time that they did not have an immediate need for the money and they failed to articulate a plan to spend the money or to pay it back. They simply felt that it was important to “get the money while the getting’s good.” Discussion of the moral and financial costs of receiving this money was swept aside.

Ignoring the reason for their $4,606,000 windfall, the governing board of Pali voted this month to lay off five members of their staff and reduce the hours for 18 other employees. Even as students throughout the country struggle to transition to distance learning, these cuts included an IT Tech assigned to helping parents, students and teachers navigate the technology needed in this new learning environment. They also eliminated a Tutoring Center Coordinator whom a member of the public and a board member credited with “helping hundreds of kids pass classes and graduate from Pali during e-learning”. A Library Media Technician, Copy Clerk, and Office Assistant will also join the unemployment line in 60 days.

The federal government should “claw back” the wasted $4.6 million.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Funding, Los Angeles, Privatization

Carol Burris: Why Schools Should Reopen, Safely

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2020 //
123

Carol Burris, experienced teacher and educator, writes here about the importance of reopening schools, with caution. Carol is executive director of the Network for Public Education, but she writes here on her own behalf; NPE has not taken a position on when or whether schools should reopen.

This article appeared on Valerie Strauss’s blog, “The Answer Sheet” at the Washington Post.

When covid-19 hit New South Wales, Australia, the majority of students shifted to remote instruction, with in-school instruction only for those families who needed it. After a few weeks, however, educators began to worry when they saw a reduction in calls to child protective services. It was likely that the reduction was not due to a decrease in child abuse, but rather the absence of the vigilance provided by schools. And officials could not guarantee the safety — or the learning — of some of the most vulnerable students, Education Week’s Madeline Will reported, so they shifted to a different strategy.




By May, New South Wales’ schools began to reopen for all — requiring physical attendance for all students at least one day a week. Now, some form of in-school instruction is happening in every Australian state; some have full attendance requirements and others do not. Each state has developed its plan based on local health needs. Schools have been agile in responding whenever an infection occurred.


As a former teacher and principal, I understand New South Wales’ worry. Schools play a critical role in the lives of children beyond the delivery of instruction. As a high school principal on Long Island, much of my day was spent with counselors and social workers addressing crises in teenagers’ lives. Child protective services was called, on average, once a month.
Combating truancy, school phobia, student depression, and drug dependency were part of our everyday work. The tragedy of student suicide was not unknown to us. Some students needed help talking to parents about their pregnancy or support in leaving an abusive relationship. And then there were the students living with parents who themselves were unwell.


Students at risk can easily slip through cracks. Due to the isolation of remote learning, those cracks have become crevices. Anecdotally, pediatricians are reporting rises in depression, obesity, and stress disorders as well as young children having heart palpitations absent a physical cause.


Research tells us that socially isolated children and adolescents are at risk of depression and anxiety. We know that too much screen time can result in inattention and impulsivity, and mental health disorders in both children and adolescents. And preliminary studies have shown that all but top students are academically falling behind — with the most disadvantaged students experiencing the most significant learning loss.


The Maasai tribe of Africa greet each other with the phrase, “Kasserian ingera,” which means, “And how are the children?” Right now, absent in-person contact, most school’s answer would be, “we don’t know.”




There are some things we do know, however. We know that children aged 10 and under are less likely to be infected by covid-19, less likely to be severely ill, and less likely to transmit the disease. A study of the spread of the disease in Iceland did not find even one instance of a child under 10 years old infecting a parent. A study of Australian schools found that “children are unlikely to transmit the coronavirus to each other or to adults in the classroom.” And the cautious, staged reopening of schools in 22 European nations did not lead to “any significant increase in coronavirus infections among children, parents or staff.”


While that is good news, there is a caveat. Reopening schools as they were before the pandemic was, in one case, a mistake. At first, Israel began reopening schools in a cautious way, with smaller classes and staggered schedules. That reopening was problem-free. Then in mid-May, the economy was fully reopened, and the government decided to throw caution to the wind and abandon the safeguards it had put in place. Infections broke out in several schools that had to be shutdown.


All of this, of course, begs the question, what should American schools do this fall?
The virus may very well be with us for a very long time. A vaccine is unlikely to give us perfect protection and surveys show that one-third of Americans may refuse vaccination.

Recognizing the negative impact of children being separated from in-person schooling, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently advised we pursue the goal of having all students physically present in school, while issuing guidance on how best to keep students and teachers safe.




It would be reckless for states with surging cases to reopen schools as though the virus is not happening. However, there are states where the virus is in decline or where low rates are holding steady. When asked whether schools should reopen this fall, Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that decisions should be made locally, based on the severity of the virus.


Yes, it is complicated. It may mean periodic shifts to remote instruction for some classes or even schools if surges return.

Some states may have mid-year openings when the virus retreats.


But that is no reason to throw up so many barriers that it becomes impossible for any school to reopen until (and if) the virus disappears.


A recent Change.org petition claims its signers will not return to in-person school until there are 14 covid-free days in the county in which the school is located, along with universal single-payer health care, full payment of all mortgages and rent throughout the pandemic, and the fulfillment of other demands. Decisions about how much in-person time students receive and how much social distancing is required to reduce risk should be informed by science and medicine, not by politics on the one hand or unreasonable fear on the other.


Reopening schools will not be easy or inexpensive. Flexibility and resources will be required. Congress must send funding to states specifically dedicated to ensuring that schools can open safely — money that supplements, not supplants state funding to schools. If we have the funds to bail out corporations, how can we tell our schools to keep children and teachers safe with less?


We must follow the cautious examples of other countries, as well as learn from the success of those centers that have provided childcare for essential workers throughout the pandemic. Adjustments should be made based on grade level and student need.


Even in states that have put the virus in retreat, we will need to start with hybrid models that combine in-person and virtual learning — perhaps beginning as tentatively as New South Wales.

Safety requires small group instruction, health support in every school, masks and other supplies, as appropriate. And as vitally important as economic revival is, our decisions on the reopening of schools must put children first.


Children have been the silent victims of this pandemic. They have been subjected to harm, in part, by irresponsible adults who have refused to do what it takes to put the virus in check.


We owe it to them to not throw up our hands and say, “It is too hard to bring you back to school.” We must answer the question, “And how are the children?” with “better than last spring, and improving every day.”

Categories Health, Science, Students

Andre Perry: Defund Private Schools. They Perpetuate Racism

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2020 //
9

Tomorrow night, Andre Perry and I will talk about his new book Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Lives in a ZOOM discussion sponsored by the Network for Public Education. We can accommodate only 100 people, so please sign up early. If you don’t get into the first 100, the discussion will be live-streamed on NPE’s Facebook page and archived on its website.

Andre Perry was a charter school leader in New Orleans. He has since rethought the impact of charter schools on children, families, teachers, and communities.

I look forward to meeting him, virtually, and talking about what he learned. I hope you will sign up and join us.

Andre Perry writes, in a piece co-published by the Hechinger Report:

Defunding the police won’t mean much if we keep defunding schools that serve Black children and allowing a school choice movement rooted in anti-Blackness to thrive

A national uprising for racial justice and a pandemic killing disproportionately more Black people have made the call to action clear: We must dismantle the structures that generate racial disparities. Education activists have joined that call by demanding that districts defund police in schools. School boards are listening. The Los Angeles Board of Education last week voted to cut funding to its school police force by 35 percent, amounting to a $25 million reduction.

Calls to defund the police, whether in schools or in our cities, are just one part of what must become a larger movement to end taxpayer funding for institutions that are anti-Black at their core. But as millions of protestors across the country call for monies to be redirected from police to institutions that propel economic and social growth, democracy and unity, school choice advocates are holding fast to their sordid legacy of defunding already under-resourced traditional public schools that serve Black children.

Last week choice advocates won a legal battle that is out of step with the current march toward racial justice and democracy.

On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that a program that grants tax credits to “those who donate to organizations that award scholarships for private school tuition” cannot prohibit families from using such scholarships for tuition at private religious schools. The scholarship tax credits were passed by the Montana legislature in 2015, but the program was effectively modified a year later when Montana’s Department of Revenue barred the scholarships from being used at religiously affiliated institutions. In support of its decision, the department cited the Montana Constitution’s Blaine Amendment, which prohibits the state from allocating public dollars to any school “controlled in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination.” Kendra Espinoza and two other parents took the state to court; the case eventually reached the Supreme Court.

In a 5-4 decision, the Court’s conservative majority found that barring religious organizations from a “public benefit” was unconstitutional. “A state need not subsidize private education,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. “But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

There are several states with similar tax credit programs; this ruling could open the door to more religious schools accessing state dollars from voucher-like programs

The Black Lives Matter uprising should turn its sights to these states.

Voucher programs have largely failed at delivering better educational outcomes, and they prevent us from removing the barriers that stand in the way of quality for public schools. By diverting tax revenue and students away from school districts, states remove much-needed dollars that support a vital necessity of neighborhoods and society: public schools in which people of different religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations, socioeconomic classes and genders can learn basic national principles of justice, fairness, tolerance and the common good. Vouchers support private institutions which do not have to make room for this kind of inclusion.

Public schools are not the problem. Racism is. Parents don’t need escape hatches; we need states to remove the structures that inhibit public school districts that serve Black and Brown children.

Voucher advocates use the words “choice,” “freedom” and “liberty” to promote their programs, but their use of these words is as fraudulent as that of the slave owners who signed the U.S. Constitution. The original supporters of vouchers were unabashed in proclaiming that the sole reason for these grant programs was to maintain racial segregation. After the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision struck down “separate but equal” educational systems, various state governments used public funds to facilitate the choice of many white people to send their children to private schools.

Shortly after the Brown decision was announced, Virginia Gov. Thomas Stanley was of one of many white leaders to look for a work-around. Thomas established a 32-member Commission on Public Education to study the effects of the Supreme Court decision and make recommendations that would, in essence, nullify the Court’s ruling. The group, known as the Gray Commission after its chair, state Sen. Garland Gray, met its mandate.

The Gray Commission’s 1955 Report to the Governor argued that “compulsory integration should be resisted by all proper means in our power.” It included suggestions such as using public funds to “prevent enforced integration by providing for the payment of tuition grants for the education of those children whose parents object to their attendance at mixed schools.” Across the South, many families chose private segregation academies, many faith-based, moving resources away from local districts. Ever since, choice movements in this country have been tied and rooted to anti-Blackness.

Combined with racist housing policies, the concept of school choice has often been a weapon against Black people’s pursuit of quality and justice in public schooling. The collective choice of the majority of white Americans to opt out of integrated school systems, by sending their kids to private schools or by drawing district maps that continue racial and socio-economic segregation in the suburbs or exurbs, has resulted in $23 billion less funding for schools predominated by people of color than for majority white schools.

Even charter schools, many launched as a way to better serve Black children, have been used as a tool for segregation or have been strategically concentrated in Black districts to defund traditional district schools. Many charters embedded racist disciplinary practices that helped drive the school to prison pipeline.

Just last week, the nation’s largest charter chain, KIPP, jettisoned its iconic slogan, “Work hard, be nice,” which it acknowledged “diminishes the significant effort required to dismantle systemic racism, places value on being compliant and submissive, supports the illusion of meritocracy, and does not align with our vision of students being free to create the future that they want.”

Voucher advocates, on the other hand, have celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision and doubled down on rhetoric around choice that fails to recognize the need for the communal good provided by public education and that is short on any acknowledgement that the promotion of individualism has hurt public schools that Black students attend. Choice advocates will say that Black parents should have the same options as white families, but they do not concede the cost of white choices on Black schools — and democracy itself. While public systems should not eclipse individual rights or needs, institutions like public schools that benefit the common good facilitate individual growth and societal stability. Exclusion, which private schools inherently facilitate, has distorted how people view public institutions. Private doesn’t mean better — for students or society. Filtering out students isn’t a reform we should be adopting.

At the precipice of change, we have an opportunity to do more than create escape hatches. We can actually get at the sources of inequality — anti-Black policies and practices within supposedly democratic systems. We don’t know what kind of choices traditional districts serving a majority of Black students could offer, because states have underfunded them for decades. White Americans who wave the banner of choice are promoting racism and getting in the way of real educational reform. And choice is blocking equity in public schools.

Andre Perry is a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities.”

This story about vouchers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Privatization, Racism, Vouchers

Trump Defends the Confederate Flag

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2020 //
35

Today, Trump made a point of defending the Confederate flag, responding to NASCAR’s decision to ban it and Mississippi’s decision to remove it as part of the state flag.

Trump has become the nation’s leading defender of the Lost Cause, the great champion of states’ rights and white supremacy.

The New York Times reports:

President Trump mounted an explicit defense of the Confederate flag on Monday, suggesting that NASCAR had made a mistake in banning it from its auto racing events, while falsely accusing a top Black driver, Darrell Wallace Jr., of perpetrating a hoax involving a noose found in his garage.

Mr. Trump’s reference to the Confederate flag, and its role in a sport whose mostly white fans Mr. Trump remains popular with, was the latest remark by the president as he tries to rally his culturally conservative base behind his struggling re-election effort.

While NASCAR and other organizations have moved to retire symbols of the Confederacy, and lawmakers in Mississippi voted to bring down the state flag featuring the Confederate emblem, Mr. Trump has increasingly used racist language and references to portray himself as a protector of the history of the American South. He has called the phrase “Black Lives Matter” a “symbol of hate,” and he has repeatedly tried to depict pockets of violence during protests against entrenched racism as representative of the protest movement as a whole.

Trump’s campaign rests on an appeal to white nationalism and racism.

Categories Racism, Trump

Happy Birthday, Frida Kahlo!

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2020 //
4

Garrison Keillor’s “The Writers’ Almanac” notes that today is Frida Kahlo’s birthday.


Today is the birthday of Frida Kahlo, born in Coyoacán, just outside Mexico City (1907). She was born in her parents’ home, La Casa Azul — the Blue House.

When Kahlo was 18, the bus she was riding collided with a streetcar. Her collarbone, spine, and pelvis were fractured. She was bedridden for several months, and it was during this time that she first took up painting. Her mother rigged up an easel that would fit over the bed, and, using a mirror, she painted her first of 55 self-portraits. She showed her early efforts to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who encouraged her to keep at it.

Kahlo said: “There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.” She first met the painter Diego Rivera in 1923, when she was 15. He had been commissioned to paint a mural at her school, and she would watch him work for hours. In 1929 they were married. Rivera was notoriously unfaithful and even had an affair with Kahlo’s sister Cristina. The couple divorced in 1939, but they remarried soon afterward and remained together until Kahlo’s death. They led largely separate lives, and both artists had affairs throughout their marriage.

Kahlo’s work was championed by surrealist André Breton and painter Marcel Duchamp, who arranged exhibitions of her paintings, which often combine brilliant colors and striking images from Mexican folk art. She said: “[Critics] thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”

Categories Art

Peter Goodman: Why Is the New York Board of Regents “Bleeding” Public Schools by Expanding Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2020 //
8

Peter Goodman is a long-time observer of education politics in New York State and New York City.

In this post, he asks a reasonable question: Why, at a time of fiscal stringency and uncertainty, is the Board of Regents of New York State rubber-stamping the expansion of charter schools?

Charter schools, as he shows, cherry-pick their students to inflate their test scores. Despite state law, their doors are not open to all.

He writes:

If you look at charter school data virtually every charter school enrolls fewer than the “comparable” percentages required in the law. The reason is abundantly clear, students with disabilities and English language learners frequently have lower standardized test scores, impact the charter renewal process and are more costly to educate, i.e., lower class size = more teachers.

The Buffalo charter was out of compliance with state law. Why did the Board of Regents approve a five-year renewal of a charter in Buffalo when the Regent from Buffalo proposed a three-year renewal? Buffalo schools face a large deficit, but its charters are on track to take $108 million out of the city’s public budget.

Why did the Board of Regents approve the renewal of a low-performing charter school in the Bronx?

Goodman writes:

Later in the [Regents’] meeting three New York City charter schools were on the agenda, one of the schools wanted to add high school grades; although there is a moratorium on the creation of new charter schools State Ed staff interpreted the law as allowing grade expansion, in my opinion, an attempt to circumvent the law and should have not been allowed by the state.

The math scores in the school were in the “far below standard” category, ninety percent of teachers were “teaching out of their certification area,” the state average is eleven percent and the register in the sixth, seventh and eighth grade, was sharply reduced, from 71 (6th grade), to 46 (7th grade) and 29 (8th grade): what happened to the kids? In addition the school SWD and ELL students are far below the district averages.

Why did the NYC Department of Education approve the application? Why did the SED approve the application?

The school has a lobbyist who was a college roommate of Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. I’m sure that’s only a coincidence. btw, who paid the lobbyist?

In spite of objections from some Regents members the SED lawyer bundled all three schools together instead of decoupling and voting separately.

Regent Cashin made a motion: a moratorium on approval of new charters and the grade expansion of existing charter schools for the remainder of the COVID emergency. She explained that with sharp cuts in district budgets, with districts facing layoffs and disruptions, to transfer money from public schools budgets to charter school budgets was unconscionable. The SED lawyer ruled her motion was “out of order.”

Any member of the Board can make a motion at any time. The Board should vote on whether to place the motion on the agenda. The Board “owns” the motion, not the lawyer, who is not a Board member.

If the lawyer meant the motion was not “germane” he was still wrong. If he was serving as a parliamentarian he gives advice to the chair, he does not participate in the debate, or make determinate decisions.

The whole business had what Goodman called “a noxious aroma,” a polite way of saying that the Regents’ rush to approve charters of dubious quality in the midst of a fiscal crisis stinks to high heaven.

Why incentivize privately run charters to divert funding and the students of their choice from the public schools.

Why are the Regents betraying the state’s public schools?

That noxious aroma is the smell that is released when politics seeps into decisions about school funding. Someone’s friends are being taken care of, at the expense of the public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Funding, Hoax, New York, Politics, Privatization

Mike Klonsky on KIPP’s Rebranding

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2020 //
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KIPP is the largest charter chain in the nation. It grew thanks to the generosity of the Walton Foundation, the Fisher Family Foundation (the Gap, Old Navy, etc.), other billionaire funders, and huge grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter School Program (thanks, Betsy DeVos).

KIPP’s slogan was “Work Hard, Be Nice.” Jay Mathews wrote a laudatory book about KIPP with that title. It implied submissiveness as the path to success. KIPP was one of the original “no excuses” chains.

The KIPP team brought students to perform at the Republican National Convention in 2000 that nominated George W. Bush. It became clear that KIPP was a darling of the right. What did Republicans like so much about KIPP? Was it implicit in their slogan?

Michael Klonsky reports that KIPP has decided to drop its famous slogan.

In a world turned upside-down and right-side-up by the Black Lives Matter Movement, a new slogan was needed.

KIPP has not yet found a new slogan.

Any suggestions?

Categories Accountability, Discipline, KIPP Charter Schools
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