Archives for the month of: April, 2022
Newer Entries »

Texas Requires K-3 Teachers to Take a 60-120 Hour Reading Course at Their Own Expense or Leave

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2022 //
38

Texas has a teacher shortage, but that doesn’t stop the state from piling new requirements on teachers.

Brian Lopez of The Texas Tribune reports:

It was one thing to ask Texas teachers — during an ongoing teacher’s shortage — to make extra room in their busy home routines for online classroom teaching for months, then to monitor the latest in vaccine and mask mandates while waiting and adjusting yet again for a return to the classroom.

But now, as teachers attempt to restore all the learning lost by their students during the pandemic, the Texas Legislature has insisted those who teach grades K-3 need to jump another hurdle: they need to complete a 60-to-120 hour course on reading, known as Reading Academies, if they want to keep their jobs in 2023.

And they must do it on their own time, unpaid.

For many like 38-year-old Christina Guerra, a special education teacher in the Rio Grande Valley, the course requirement is the final straw and it is sending teachers like her and others out the door.

“I don’t want to do it,” she said. “I refuse to, and if they fire me, they fire me.”

Course adds to teacher workload

In 2019, the Legislature wanted to improve student reading scores and came up with a requirement that teachers complete this reading skills course. Every teacher working in early elementary grades — kindergarten through third — along with principals, had until the end of the 2022-23 school year to complete it.

Governor Greg Abbott is not satisfied with the performance of Texas students on NAEP. But Texas has a growing crisis of teacher shortages.

But the pressures of the pandemic have forced many teachers to reconsider whether to remain in the profession. From 2010 to 2019, the number of teachers certified in Texas fell by about 20%, according to a University of Houston report.

After recent reports of more teacher departures, Gov. Greg Abbott formed a task force to address teacher shortages.

But teachers and public education advocates alike believe the state should hold itself accountable for the teacher departures, especially when adding requirements that add to teacher workload.

“I just feel like a lemon just squeezing, squeezing, squeezing,” said Guerra, a special education teacher in La Joya Independent School District. “But there’s no more, there’s nothing that you squeeze out anymore. There’s no more juice.”

Guerra plans to leave the profession at the end of the school year.

One way to increase the teacher shortage is to crack down on teachers, demanding more while paying less.

Categories Education Industry, Literacy, Teachers and Teaching, Texas

Amazon Workers in Staten Island, New York, Warehouse Vote to Unionize

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2022 //
16

This could be a historic moment for the American labor movement. Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to join a union.

NEW YORK — Workers voted Friday to unionize an Amazon Staten Island warehouse, a historic decision that marks the first successful U.S. effort at the e-commerce giant and a major victory for the domestic labor movement.


Amazon, the country’s second-largest private employer, has long fended off attempts to unionize workers at its warehouse — a highly prized target among traditional labor groups who have seen membership wane in recent years.

But a small, upstart independent union led by a former employee of the Staten Island warehouse mounted the first successful campaign to unionize Amazon workers, breaking many of the traditional organizing rules and relying on workers‘ momentum.

The vote could start a cascading effect on other Amazon warehouses in the country, labor experts say, encouraging others to consider unionizing. That could transform the way the e-commerce giant conducts business and prioritizes the treatment of workers.


The Amazon workers at the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island will need to ratify a contract to become union members, the next step in an already lengthy process that former Amazon worker Chris Smalls began last year as leader of the Amazon Labor Union.

A separate union vote brought by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in Bessemer, Ala., was tallied Thursday. The union failed to secure the vote, but it was close enough that the number of contested ballots that are still pending could change the result. The final result won’t be decided for weeks or months.

Categories Unions

Michael J. Petrilli: Test the Babies!

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2022 //
37

Michael J. Petrilli drew a lot of criticism a few months ago when he proposed to give NAEP tests to children in kindergarten, arguing that fourth grade was too late to start assessing student skills.

Now he has an even more radical proposal: test the babies, he says.

He writes:

Earlier this year, I took to the pages of Education Next to make the case for NAEP to test starting in kindergarten, stating that, “The rationale for testing academic skills in the early elementary grades is powerful.” Therefore, “Starting NAEP in fourth grade is much too late.”

I was wrong, and I’m sorry.

Kindergarten is much too late. We must begin a program of NAEP testing for newborns. In the hospital. Before parents take them home. Maybe before parents name them.

If we wait until age five to assess students in math and literacy skills, that leaves a half-decade of missing data. How are we to know where our infants fall on a distribution scale of academic achievement? How many of them are already proficient? How can we possibly differentiate preschool playtime with success and rigor?

Some of my critics might point to the difficulty in assessing newborns. Sure, their precious, tiny hands can grip your finger in an act of sublime yet simple affection, but can they grip a pencil? How can they fill in the bubbles on a standardized test when swaddled lovingly in a blanket? How can they deal with a keyboard if they can’t sit up? Do not be swayed by such arguments, which only reinforce the mediocre expectations endemic to America’s nurseries.

Others will assert that newborns are already assessed through the Apgar test. Again, don’t be fooled! The Apgar only measures the ultra-basics, like muscle tone and respiration. Talk about low standards. We’re going to give babies passing marks just for having normal reflexes? Give me a break.

What next? Test the fetuses? Open the link and finish the article. Always good to see people making fun of their own bad ideas on April 1!

Categories Childhood, Education Industry, Humor, Standardized Testing

How Russia Defends the War That Is Not a War

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2022 //
36

A friend forwarded this message from her friend in St. Petersburg, Russia:

1. Russia did not attack Ukraine, but Ukraine must definitely stop defending itself.

2. A special operation is not a war, but economic sanctions are a war.

3. The war began so that the war would not start.

4. Conscripts were not sent to Ukraine, but some of them died there.

5. The maternity hospital was bombed because the Nazis were sitting there dressed as pregnant women, but it was still not bombed.

6. The special operation is proceeding according to plan, the troops do not meet resistance, but in 20 days they only managed to capture Kherson and surround Mariupol.

7. All Ukrainian planes were destroyed by missiles at airfields. But 2 weeks later, Ukraine vilely bombed Belarus.

8. You can wish death on Ukrainians on Russian TV, but wishing death on Russian invaders on Facebook is extremism. 9. Russian troops are fighting not with civilians, but with the Nazis. All 40 million Nazis. You will be surprised, but it easily fits and in all seriousness coexists in the minds of a significant part of Russians.

I added this one, since I recently read a statement from a spokesman for the Russian Defense Agency stating that Russia never targets civilians.

9. Russia never attacks civilians or civilian facilities, like hospitals, apartment buildings, homes, theaters, or civilian evacuees.

Categories Accountability, Hypocrisy, Lies

Kevin Welner: New Courses Teach Laws Forbidding Teaching What the Law is About

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2022 //
6

With so many laws passed forbidding the teaching of “critical race theory,” Kevin Welner has come up with an ingenious solution. Teach the law itself! Kevin is a lawyer who teaches education policy at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is also director of the National Education Policy Center. He means this as an April Fool’s joke, but like all satires, there is more than a kernel of truth here:

In high-school classrooms throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Idaho, and other states that have passed laws apparently intended to prohibit the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT), a new type of elective course is popping up. Students in the classes read the state legislation and explore its meaning and impact.

One such course offered in Houston, Texas is called, “Get to Know SB 3”, which is a reference to that state’s bill passed in late-2021. Courses in other states and school districts have a variety of names, but what holds them together is an attempt to help students gain a deep understanding of their state’s law and what it accomplishes.

Kim Bell, who teaches the SB 3 course at Ladson-Billings High School in Houston, explained that the course was originally proposed by the school’s students. “None of them had heard of CRT until a couple years ago, but then everyone started talking about it and, more recently, about the law we thought would stop us from teaching it. The students turned to us because they wanted to know more, but at first we told them we were afraid to answer their questions about CRT. We thought that maybe the law stops us from even talking with them about it, so instead we told them about the law.”

Not surprisingly, the students then wanted to know even more about SB 3. “The more we told them, the more questions they asked. So we created this course. It’s not specifically about CRT, but we explain the theory because of its relevance to the legislature’s debates and intentions.”

Among the provisions in the Texas law is a prohibition against “inculcat[ing]” in students, “with respect to their relationship to American values, [that] slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.” As Bell’s students learn, this provision is a push-back against the generally accepted view of historians and other scholars, including those who use a CRT lens, who point to the many ways in which racism has been institutionalized in American laws and society.

The students also read the arguments used by proponents of the state laws. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, for example, charged that CRT is “every bit as racist as a Klansmen in white sheets.” Rhode Island State Representative Patricia Morgan complained that she had lost a black friend to CRT – “I am sure I didn’t do anything to her, except be white.”

This teaching hasn’t gone unnoticed by proponents of laws. “Using things we say – that’s just sneaky and divisive!” protested Rep. Leon Alabaster.

The classes, however, are moving forward. “It seems like the legislature wanted SB 3 to stop us from teaching about the reality of structural racism. Fine. Most students reach that conclusion on their own,” said Bell. “If the legislature prohibited our science teachers from telling students that gravity is real, they’d still reach that conclusion after seeing the objective evidence.”

Bell and other teachers we spoke with pointed out that, by the end of the course, their students often observe that the laws designed to stop them from learning about institutionalized racism are themselves institutionalized racism. Also, these laws that are designed to stop students from learning about CRT have instead resulted in their learning about CRT.

Bell’s students even started a CRT club at the school. These students told us that it’s the CRT lens that really helps them understand the institutionalized racism underlying the anti-CRT laws.

“We’re thinking about creating another elective called, Using SB 3 to Explore Irony,” said Bell.

Categories Education Reform
Newer Entries »