My website is dianeravitch.com.
I am a historian of education and Research Professor of Education at New York University.
I was born in Houston, Texas, attended the Houston public schools from kindergarten through high school, and graduated from Wellesley College in 1960. I received my Ph.D. in the history of American education in 1975.
I am the mother of two sons. They went to private schools in New York City. I have four grandsons: two went to religious schools, the third goes to public school in New York City, and the fourth will go to the same wonderful public school in Brooklyn.
I live in Brooklyn, New York.
Diane Ravitch’s Blog by Diane Ravitch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at dianeravitch.net.
Artistic interpretations:
McKinsey, the cancer on the body politic (and any other body with which they come into contact): https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mckinsey-consulting-trump-immigration-deportation_n_5de6e0ebe4b0d50f32aa7f54
Just thinking some blog readers might want to respond to this call on the Common Core:
A follow up to ProPublica’s reporting on isloation units for students:
“Amending emergency rules put in place two weeks ago, the Illinois State Board of Education says it will again allow schoolchildren to be physically restrained in positions it had banned, though only in crisis situations.
The change comes after several schools said they could no longer serve some students with behavior issues because of the new restrictions, put in place after publication of a Chicago Tribune/ProPublica Illinois investigation that found overuse and misuse of “isolated timeouts” in public schools across the state.
An emergency prohibition on putting students alone in locked seclusion rooms stands.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/illinois-schools-students-physical-restraints-isbe-state-board-education?utm_content=buffer4aa21&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=ProPublica+Main+#172351
Does this seem like a legitimate effort to end high stakes testing, or is there possibly a hidden motion towards “portfolio” schools and further privatizing?
https://ncdpi.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9QYyR37HvrlfoYR
I’m seeing the opposite, Involved Mom. This survey looks like an effort to make the end of course tests better and more meaningful. Rarely good news when it comes to these things.
Here’s a shocker (or maybe not). In their subservience to capitalism, teachers union, NEA, endorses Biden, pro-charter, public school privatizer
“Alleged” pro-charter, public school privatizer. Just because Obama was doesn’t mean Biden will be. As a VP, he was only one heartbeat away from the presidency and did not make the decisions, Obama did that.
And even if Biden was what you allege, he is still way, way, WAY better than Turdless Dishonest Me First, all you losers last, DonaldTrump the Chump who thought and probably still thinks COVID-19 is a hoax.
Well here’s some really good news: Boston’s superintendent is moving towards undoing the damage Gates’ small schools initiative caused and restoring comprehensive high schools to our city – 10 of them!
“At a parent meeting in Charlestown High School, Cassellius said it’s harder for small high schools to keep students interested: ‘Extra-curriculars … are the reason teenagers actually come to school. It’s not the math and English language arts.’
‘Some kids like that, but most kids like to come for their friends, and they hang out and do the really cool stuff, like art and music and band and play basketball. So if you have a high school that has 137 kids in it, you can see how you can’t [offer] those other things.’ ”
She has also determined that we will have a new exam which determines admission to the three academically elite schools, Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the O’Bryant School of Math and Science. The current one does not line up with Boston’s curriculum and has resulted in admissions which do not mirror our population.
“The ISEE was developed for private schools. Its questions do not match the Massachusetts standards, which determine much of what is taught in BPS elementary and middle school classrooms.
Many wealthy families invest in expensive tutoring programs to help their children get ready to take the ISEE. Private school students are more than twice as likely to get into Boston Latin School as BPS students, according to a study of exam school admissions by the NAACP, Lawyers for Civil Rights, and other organizations.”
https://schoolyardnews.com/cassellius-wants-to-invest-in-big-comprehensive-high-schools-to-attract-students-and-their-parents-52481c216eab?
Have no illusions in Biden. He is the Democratic party machine that supports charters, vouchers. Why would you possibly think he would change positions? He IS for privatizing-never differentiated himself from Obama.
Just Like he is anti-abortion rights for women…voted for Hyde amendment denying federal funds for abortion services.
Isn’t it time we organized out own party—a labor party based on the potential power of the unions in an alliance with womens, civil rights, Black, Latinx, environmental groups? And stop kissing the ass of the Democrats and Republicans that ALWAYS represent the capitalist class, not the working class and small farmers?
WRONG! Now is not the time to launch another party that will siphon off voters that would never vote for TRUMP.
If the 2020 election ends up being Biden vs Trump, all of the smaller parties should skip the election to guarantee that Trump loses. Once we have traditionally, corrupt politicians in office, we can move ahead with plans to replace them in a future election.
There is only one issue in this election and that is to GET RID of Despicable Donald Trump (DDT is a toxic poison) and throw him to the legal wolves waiting in New York to drag the crook into court and make him pay for his crimes one way or the other: fines that will bankrupt him and/or toss him and his crooked family into prison for at least a few years if not a lifetime.
Lloyd “Once we have traditionally, corrupt politicians in office, we can move ahead with plans to replace them in a future election.”
That’s so sad . . . but that’s where we are: aspiring to being traditionally corrupt. CBK
How many people that actually have this corona virus do you know or heard of. I hear claims of healthy people saying they had it and recovered but where are the pics of the sick ones and names so anyone in contact with those people would come forward and be tested to prevent it’s spread. that’s not happening!!!! Why not???? because it is a crackdown? Wait for the upcoming marshal law.
We do not know how many have the virus because testing for it is very limited
“where are the pics of the sick ones and names so anyone in contact with those people would come forward and be tested to prevent it’s spread.”
Seriously, you expect someone to run around taking photographs of the really sick patients struggling to live, … and include their names? There are laws that protect our privacy and doctors take an oath that includes protecting the privacy of their patients.
As for “those people” that claim they are sick coming forward to be tested, there have to tests available first.
To “LEARN” why the United States doesn’t have enough tests to test everyone, click the link and read the very accurate report that explains why the United States is so far behind the efforts in other country’s to deal with this pandemic.
The Infuriating Story of How the Government Stalled Coronavirus Testing
How one young doctor at a Seattle lab tried to get out in front of the coronavirus crisis by inventing his own test. And why the absurdity of his struggle should make us all afraid.
https://www.gq.com/story/inside-americas-coronavirus-testing-crisis
Believe me, if the test kits were easily avaible, I’d make an appointment through my medical provider, The Veterans Administration medical center closest to me, and get one so I’d know if I was infected or not.
Do you know that people with no symptoms can be contagious for days and even weeks before they feel even mild symptoms? Click that link and educate yourself, John.
Yesterday’s British vote feeds my disturbing belief that republicans will do very well in the next election. It’s one of the reasons I try to keep up with British politics. Since the election of Thatcher, their collective fear and retreat to ignorance and fascism foreshadows what happens here. And it’s another reason more Americans should pay attention to James O’Brien, as his commentary today proves:
The only good side to the UK vote was the exit of Corbyn as leader of the Labor Party. He was inept and unpopular, as the results show.
The UK is also at risk of losing Scotland. If Brexit goes through, Scotland is threatening to leave the UK. In addition, Northern Ireland and Ireland (Ireland will remain in the EU) are also not happy with Johnson’s Brexit plan.
What could happen?
Russia gets what it wanted with Brexit, to weaken the UK and the EU.
Great Britain is made up of England, Scotland and Wales. WIth Scotland gone, the UK will not be the same.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2019/12/13/utah-charter-school/
Forum has started! Jitu Brown was fantastic!
I have a lot more in common with a teacher than a hedge fund manager. @brothajitu! #publicedforum
Senator Michael Bennet coming first. He’s touting himself as the first public school superintendent to run for president. I hope they don’t let him off the hook!
NPE came prepared to ask a question about the federal Charter Schools Program. The event organizers assigned our team a question about testing and nixed the CSP question.
AAAARRRRGGGGHHH
Is there a link to watch on line? I’ve had no success finding one. I don’t have a cable subscription.
Found a link!
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/watch-live-msnbc-s-public-education-forum-2020-with-democratic-hopefuls-74793029546
Thank you, Diane.
Bennet first. Touting himself as first public ed superintendent to run for president. Don’t let him off the hook!
How could moderator look at a Sanders vote against No Child Left Behind as a negative? I didn’t watch that, but am I reading that right? I didn’t know that, but I’d look at that as a badge of honor.
Best question of the day comes from the Network for Public Education. And gets Biden to commit to ending the use of standardized testing. Thank you NPE!
Hooray for Denisha Jones, who represented NPE, Black Lives Matter, Defending the Early Years, and the BATS.
Wonder Woman!
Yes, she is!
Mitchell Robinson
@mrobmsu
1m1 minute ago
More
NEW: Biden’s answer to Denisha Jones’ question about testing is an abrupt 180 from the policies of the Obama-Biden-Duncan-King administration–so this would be a big change…
Mitchell Robinson
@mrobmsu
54s54 seconds ago
More
I wish this Biden would have been advising that Biden on testing policies during the Obama administration.
I have an eerie feeling that this commentary foreshadows another that will come in early November 2020:
Was made aware of this commentary today and it sure fits with the rant above and meshes with so many comments made on a spectrum of subjects discussed on this blog:
https://eand.co/this-is-how-a-society-dies-35bdc3c0b854
Sandra Stotsky, critic of the Common Core, writing in Breitbart, calls for elimination of state boards of education, echoing Reed Hastings. She’s professor emerita at the Walton’s Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2015/04/03/why-we-should-eliminate-state-boards-and-state-departments-of-education/
Here’s a fairly outrageous post about the practice of expecting one teacher to fulfill the roles of a multilingual teacher, a special education teacher and a general education teacher, all at once, all alone.
They call it “inclusion”.
https://t.co/zgzTq6ctd2?amp=1
I went to LinkedIn today for the second time in months today and happened upon charter cheerleader and former Democratic WV Rep. and Gov. Bob Wise’s question: “What #education questions would you like to see asked during the #DemDebate on Thursday?” To which a “public affairs professional” answered: “Why are you treating charter schools like kryptonite?” To which Wise answered: “Thanks for a good question and description.” To which I felt compelled to respond: “Because they are unaccountable to the public, charter operators have repeatedly bilked taxpayers and profited off public property, they drain funds from public schools, they have incredible turnover and disrupt the educations of the most vulnerable children, and they create profit opportunities from public school students and teacher. I’ve got more.”
I hope others who comment here will join me in responding, you are more knowledgeable and articulate than I am.
Thanks for that, Greg.
Ex-Gov Bob Wise tied himself to Jeb Bush, to his everlasting shame.
I would love to read what our esteemed peanut gallery (I consider myself to be one of the nuts, so no denigration intended) thinks about this (thanks to Mitchell Robinson for bringing this to my attention): https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/475595-monica-crowley-revises-dissertation-after-columbia-confirms-localized
Re: our discussion on the “anti-Semitism” of the Labour Party:
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Hi, Dr. Ravitch,
I just launched an education focused podcast and was hoping you’d give a listen and share your thoughts. 😊
http://turnandtalk.libsyn.com
The mission of Turn & Talk Podcast is to give the “education mic” back to those actually responsible for educating our children: teachers, school administrators, and support staff. It is our goal to give all teachers a voice in everything related to public education by having them share their stories, feelings, perspectives, and classroom experiences. The interviews are anonymous and the identity of the interviewee is not revealed at any point before, during, and/or after the interview. Turn and Talk Podcast is a platform for educators to speak their mind freely.
The foundation of the podcast is the idea of creating a safe space where teachers can share their views, concerns, and experiences, fearlessly. I believe that sharing our experiences as teachers can increase awareness regarding public education and be a great source of emotional support, inspiration, professional development, and motivation for teachers to keep doing the challenging and complex work of educating children.
http://turnandtalk.libsyn.com
YaY! Great idea. Willlisten when time permits.
I am going to produce a PodCast… as I Speak as a teacher
Our voices matter. I ‘speak/ write at https://dianeravitch.net/about/comment-page-31/?unapproved=2985137&moderation-hash=55230768b28bdfe3f69ffb29389f7f81#comment-2985137
In which the blog’s fav – Betsy the DeVos – shows just how charming she can be in real life with regard to student loan debt. Vile woman.
Diane, is there anything I can do to be able to post links again? I used to be able to.
I don’t know why you can’t post links. Others do.
Thank you, Diane. Frustrating. Appreciate your response. If others out there have ideas, would be great. (It was nice to learn how to use italics and bold recently).
HOW DO I. USE ITALICS AND BOLD FACE??????
I do not know if this will work, but try writing your comment in Word or another writing program and then copy and past it into the comment section.
LOL, Susan! A helpful poster noted yesterday that…
for italics, use a * before and after what you want italicized.
for bold, use ** before and after what you want in bold.
OMG!
ooooooohhhhh!
LOL
Maybe I’ve missed the news, but I would love to see an active and visible movement in NYS to address the damage done by the disastrous policies enacted under John King, Merryl Tisch, Maryellen Elia, a Republican legislature, all enabled by a questionably democratic, public school opponent, Governor Cuomo. I totally get that the enormity of crises under the current president of the US can be very distracting. But the testing craze and teacher-diminishing policies those characters foisted on public schools has not eased an iota where I teach. I work in a fairly successful suburban district with sufficient resources. While the Board of Regents may be easing off the consequences of state test scores, my district is increasing assessment and returning to test prep, to boot. We’re still teaching engageny curriculum (which has some great topics, but the lessons were meant for the Stepford Wives’ kids.) And now in addition to the State Test (little changed over the last 8 years,) we have increased the amount of benchmarking and on-line skills assessing we do. It’s crazy. I too often feel I have to be a human firewall protecting my kids from the continued irrational dictates of policy deciders who DO NOT get what a learning child needs to thrive and succeed. I want my admins to be the firewall to protect me so I can focus on my kids.
But alas, that appears to be magical thinking.
I guess it’s possible NYSUT is doing more than is currently visible, but they’re communication with members has been greatly reduced in recent years. As a veteran teacher and longtime dues paying member, I honestly have no idea what their priorities are.
Soooo, my ask, once again, is anyone aware of/interested in a concerted effort to push for real and substantive changes in policy to reverse the disastrous policies of the last 10 years? We have a sympathetic ear in so many of the legislators, we have Betty Rosa, and we have others in Albany who could be called upon to support more sensible policies.
Anyone interested?
Let me know.
btw, I know teachers in NYC have been vocal for a while.
My comments are about a state-wide, visible effort, focused on Albany actions. It would be great (and appropriate ) if NYSUT was leading the way, but in the obvious absence of that, I shared my comments above…
Hey there MJ… I was a NYC teacher in1963 and in 1998 when they came for me, and I was. celebrated. I have a lot to say about the failure of my union to protect me, let alone teachers across the city who did not know what hit them.
Go to my author’s page at IpEd News, https://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html?sid=40790
where there is a summary of my background, and the article I wrote about the Bamboozlement etc. If you wish to to email me, you can message me there.
If you go to my Quicklinks, http://www.opednews.com/author/quicklinks/author40790.html
you will see the. links I add each day to journalists and writers who demonstrate to me, that they know that Words Matter…https://www.opednews.com/articles/Words-Matter-Trust-is-at-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-Choice_Civilization_Disinformation_Experience-200108-300.html
My series https://www.opednews.com/author/series/author40790.html
also tell the tale of the war on Public Education that began with the assault on teachers by the NCLB act and the enablers in the NYC DOE.
And BTW I have said for years, what Harvard said when the came to study my practice( to see how I did it— enable and facilitate LEARNING
It is ALL about learning, as we authentic teachers know.
Kateryna Handzyuk is the Urkrainian activist who was burned with acid in July of 2019 and died of her injuries in November. Marie Yovanovitch was honoring her at the US embassy on the night she was told that she had to flee the country for her security. The work of our Foreign Service and its diplomats is this: strengthening democratic norms in countries which seek a better life for their people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46091074
This video conveys Handzyuk’s fierce loyalty to her homeland, wishing only for it to be free of corruption.
What Trump, Pence, Giuliani and Pompeo have done is beyond despicable.
Christine Just received this from the Washington Post:
“News Alert Jan 16, 8:40 AM
Ukraine opens probe into possible surveillance of former U.S. ambassador Marie Yovanovitch
The announcement follows the disclosure of new documents showing Lev Parnas, an associate of President Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, discussing possible efforts to monitor the movements of Yovanovitch before she was removed from her post by the Trump administration.
Read more »”
Sorry! July and November of 2018, not 2019.
“July of 2019 and died of her injuries in November…”
Thank you Catherine. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the Ukrainian people are in a fight for their freedom. The US as usual is too focused on its navel to see the harm we do to others.
These people are thugs. Lev and Igor are thugs of the lowest level. as is that scum Gulliani. The lowest level is then upon which Trump always operates — a corrupt and vastly ignorant man who loves Roy Cohen and has no compunction regarding breaking rules, even those that are the very laws he swore to uphold.
He hired those thugs, and figured no one could find out.
BUT….
Truth has a way of coming out… especially when the mouth uttering words is Rudy. Methinks Trump will run over this vampire… unless Rudy has. evidence that will sink him.
Words Matter. That oath of office matters, because * we* (America) stood for the rule of law. Even flawed we are , the world saw us as a place where laws — even imperfect ones– gave the people a voice. They wanted to come here. They tried to come here…but Emma Lazerous is long gone.
The mobsters in the White House must go, and **SOON!*
What’s left of America is being given away to the power elites.. who are .the only ones that he thinks can save him! Did you see him in that China conference…calling out the bankers by names, and saying out loud, that no president has done what he has done…
you betya’… because they were patriots at heart, and did their best, whilst you are a lowly mobster, a thug…and the whole nation. is getting a good look at you… even if the Senate spits upon the Constitution.
In her January 15 Washington Post column, Valerie Strauss wrote about a Missouri Republican legislator who filed a bill that opens the path to censorship and book banning at public libraries. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/01/15/missouri-bill-new-parent-board-could-toss-any-public-library-book-it-deems-sexually-inappropriate-librarians-could-be-jailed/
Baker has earned a reputation as an opponent of public education in slightly over a year in the legislature and during his campaign, which naturally led the Republican leaders to appoint him to the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee.
Baker was elected with the help of a $10,000 advertising blitz, big for the small community he represents, funded by a dark money group funded by the DeVos family. https://rturner229.blogspot.com/2018/10/dark-money-group-founded-by-devos.html
After he was elected to the legislature, even before he was sworn in, Baker pre-filed a bill that would permit the teaching of the Bible as an elective class in Missouri high schools. https://rturner229.blogspot.com/2018/12/ben-bakers-first-bill-calls-tor-social.html
Though there are many in this corner of southwest Missouri who support the kind of censorship called for in Baker’s library bill, the good news is that even many conservatives are opposed to it and Baker has become quite defensive. https://rturner229.blogspot.com/2020/01/ben-baker-whines-about-overwhelmingly.html
It is easy to dismiss Baker as another fringe politician except that these fringe politicians have become the mainstream. Ben Baker is a young man and an ambitious one. Don’t forget that in its infinite wisdom Missouri voters saw fit to remove a respected, productive U. S. Senator in Claire McCaskill and replace her with Josh Hawley.
Our laws are based on the constitution. the constitution only works for moral people. IF amoral people are making the laws, then amoral people will rule. If moral people make the laws then moral people will rule. The amorals will either change their behavior or get out. Baker is right on with this legislation.Public libraries and schools are not the place for sexual education. The parents should be. It is not the states place to do this but it is it’s place to legislate for a moral behavior or else there is no law. Libraries didn’t have this material when I was growing up in the 1950’s
An excellent post regarding all the ways charters shortchange public schools and their students in Buffalo, NY. The author is a member of Buffalo’s school board.
https://buffalonews.com/2020/01/18/viewpoints-charter-schools-are-no-educational-panacea/
Hello Christine: I think a consistent focus on the fraud, not to mention the utter ridiculousness of the whole idea of self-regulation in a capitalist environment with privatization, charters, and vouchers . . . is essential.
However, from what I can tell, the much longer prize, for many of the oligarchs and organizations who support privatization, is not the money but the politics of it. Like Attorney General Barr, they seem to be thinking from a political philosophy that is rooted in the principle that, forget reason, it’s “might that makes right,” rather than anything resembling a republic.
It’s less kingship than dictatorship, and mainly about the endless power that comes with a stacked, falsely-regulated capitalist system. In that sense, it’s not benign, but rather completely and actively anti-democratic–which means anti-public ANYTHING, even where air and water are concerned. (Trump is also attacking the public parks system in favor of capitalist opportunists.)
My point is that, we SHOULD attack fraud; but we also should not forget that public education is rooted in the ideals of democracy–for all of the people–no matter what, and overseen by (we can still hope) those who understand its importance to the maintenance of a democratic-republican ethos.
Public education is the seedbed of democracy and, overtly and covertly, has a direct relationship with developing persons who understand and can live well in the meaning of our Constitution and particularly the Bill of Rights.
But when we allow capitalist-oligarchs (etc.) to cut the bond that exists between education and our democratic political base, and regardless of (to be expected) rampant fraud, we are, in effect, dealing a mortal wound to the democracy–we are opening a dam at the base of our democratic existence with the hope that no flood will occur, but that will consume the democratic ground that we all presently stand on.
Let us not forget the longer view and the potentially deadly-to-democracy motivations of many who, like us, are citizens of the United States. CBK
Should this interest anyone, check out third bullet on executive summary on page 3:
Examples on pages 29-30.
Is there an Opt Out organization in Utah?
There should be. If not, start one.
I think this is it.
Utahns Against Common Core
Parents, Teachers, and Organizations for Higher Standards and Local Control.
https://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/action-list/opt-out-forms/
Thanks for this. I tweeted it.
Diane, are you aware of Juliana v. the United States: The climate lawsuit that the Trump administration failed to stop three times?
Possible voucher expansion freeze in Ohio:
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/01/27/senate-republican-pitching-temporary-fix-school-voucher-problem/4592568002/
Please delve further into the community school blitz. I suspect we are all being played by the usual ed reform suspects. There is something very wrong with this picture.
The people involved are not Ed reformers.
Virginia HB817, a screens-in-schools act modeled after the one enacted two years ago in Maryland, was voted favorably out of committee and is going to the House floor for a vote later this week.
While more and more Virginia students are being required to use ed tech in school and at home, safeguards for their health and safety have not kept pace. HB817 ensures that schools throughout the Commonwealth adopt and teach state-of-the-art student safety and health practices around digital technology use.
Kudos to Children’s Screen Time Action Network Screens in Schools work group members Ann Marie Douglas, Catherine Stewart, Jennifer Joy Madden, Laura Bowman, Joe Clement, Matt Miles, and many others for their hard work on this!
Diane – I know you’re a fan of Teresa Hannafin. Readers might want to follow Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of American history, as well:
“The overall speech was a compellingly crafted narrative, with Trump as the all-powerful fictional hero. Traditionally, the State of the Union is a tad dull, to be honest. It’s supposed to tell Americans what has changed over the past twelve months. (Actually, historians love it because cabinet officers used to write their own sections, so it’s a terrific short synopsis of finances, foreign affairs and so on, but it ain’t exactly compelling reading in general.) But tonight, Trump used it as a campaign rally. He presented a portrait of a nation that had been on the verge of catastrophe before he swept in to save it. It was a theme that ties into American mythology: the cowboy who saves the villagers from destruction.
Trump did not stop with the general myth, though. He went on to play the game show host turned autocratic ruler. In the course of the speech, he developed the theme that he, the president, could raise hurting individuals up to glory. He promoted an older African American veteran to General. He awarded a scholarship to a child who had previously been unable to get one. He had Melania award the Medal of Freedom to talk show host Rush Limbaugh, a man ill with cancer (who obligingly pretended to be surprised and overwhelmed, although he had done interviews before the speech in which he indicated he was aware of what was about to happen). He reunited a military family. Contrived though all these scenarios were, they made him the catalyst for improving the lives of individuals in ways to which we all can relate. It was reality TV: false, scripted, and effective.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-4-2020?r=1cllq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy
I’m with the guy they kicked out over gun control. But I couldn’t watch the whole thing–I’ve never been so reviled by just seeing a person in my life.
So tell me–did he even mention climate change once? And how about that Nancy. She’s “the man.” TIME should put her on their Person of the Year cover. CBK
Catherine – The man who was ejected was Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jamie was murdered at Majorie Stoneman Douglas High School. It will be two years since that mass shooting next week, on Valentine’s Day.
Comparing Trump to “the cowboy who saves the villagers from destruction” was inaccurate.
Trump is more like the mob boss that sweeps into a city his gang hasn’t corrupted yet and he has his hitmen assassinate every honest bureaucrat and elected official in the city and replaces them with his own people.
Trump wants his ignorant, stupid, hate-filled followers to think he is the cowboy, and once Trump consolidates power and there is no more opposition to stop him or slow him up, he will take everything away from everyone until he is the “lord” and everyone else is his serfs and slaves. If he wants one of his serfs’ daughters, he will take her and use her and then toss her aside. If he wants your property, he will take it and pay you nothing. If you cause trouble, you will vanish.
Do you have proof of this statement being true, or is it assumptions?
What statement? Be more specific. Are you, by the way, Jon the Con?
Lloyd . . . funny you should mention it. . . CBK
LOL!
Hi–I would like to do ad advance story before for my Shelf Life column before your Chicago book event. Who is your book publicist at Knopf? Thanks, Jane Ammeson
Elizabeth Bernard
Ebernard@penguinrandomhouse.com
Just saw a Bloomberg TV ad (6 times so far today). With the preface of praise from President Obama, the ad touts (among other things) Bloomberg’s great work on education while mayor. Where is the truth in advertising squad?!
The Bloomberg era in education was NCLB writ large.
Data-Based decisionmaking.
Corporate leadership.
Top-down mandates.
A standard reading and math curriculum amd pedagogy for all K-8 schools.
Testing as the measure of everything.
Proliferation of charter schools.
Large schools broken up into small schools.
Admission to middle schools and high schools based on choice, not zones.
Assignment of studenys to schools driven by a computer algorithm.
Introduction of more selective schools.
Corporate ideas trump educators’ views and practices.
Technocrats in charge.
Can we be certain he still believes in those reforms? Perhaps he can be convinced these were bad policy decisions, just like the stop and frisk? People do change their ideologies and if he is willing to see the error of educational decisions he used to support maybe he can be a good candidate.
Bloomberg is a strong supporter of charter schools and TFA. His daughter recently married Jeremiah Kittredge, who led “Families for Excellent Schools,” a front for Wall Street financiers. She is also in the board of TFA’s political group called Leadership for Educational Equity. Bloomberg is very proud of bringing hundreds of charters to NYC.
I am wondering if anyone is tracking Dept. of Defense Education Activity Superintendent also a Broad Superintendent graduate. This is recent news: https://www.fedweek.com/armed-forces-news/changes-at-dod-schools-spark-backlash/
Brady was appointed under Obama, perhaps due to that time Secretary of Education Arne and his connection to the Broad Foundation. Since Brady’s coming on-board, these schools have undergone detrimental changes from the attempt to weaken teacher autonomy and union representation, the adoption of CCRLS and Engage NY standards, Catapult Training purchases (AWFUL), top down my way or the highway leadership, unpaid hours implemented in the stateside schools forcing teachers to “collaborate” and participate in worthless trainings, and the list goes on. Teachers are being told to find a new job if they don’t like it. Another issue that some schools are facing is the building of millions of dollars of open concept 21st century schools where the walls are never to be closed, forcing students and teachers to have to endure unreasonable noise levels and administrators to fake success for the public to justify the continued goal of building more. It makes one wonder if there isn’t a connection between the architect/building design companies and the Broad Institute or some other corporation intent on taking down schools as we know it.
Sounds to me like the administration is using the opportunity to use these schools as proving grounds for what can be accomplished if there are no teacher unions and a strict regimented curriculum. I would look for any students being dismissed from the schools next as a clear indication that they will try to manage the results to prove their point. If enough teachers leave, it may not get off the ground.
Those so-called 21st century open concept schools were buitl here in Boston in the ’70’s. They are simply awful and folks who still have to teach in them have tried any number of modifications. Sounds like someone stumbled across some forgotten architectural plans that have already been paid for and they want to save a few bucks.
That 24 free hours of service requirement may be illegal. Workers are dou pay for their time.
Are teachers unionized; many federal employees are.
Happy to report that Colorado Senator Michael Bennet is dropping out of the 2020 presidential race. Unfortunately, I’m sure he will run again.
Bye bye Bennett and Yang.
Time for Gabbard and Steyer to get out.
I have decided to write a series of six articles that detail and expose how all hell has broken loose in education with the goal of identifying where we have gone so wrong and what we’re going to do to fix it.
I am certain that the changes that need to be made in education must start from the inside out. If our government, state boards, district and site leaders were going to get it all right and had all of the answers, we wouldn’t be at this point.
The power to change is right with the most important players in education: The Teachers.
Let there be no mistake: Nothing (absolutely nothing) is more important than a well-skilled, enthusiastic teacher who knows his/her content. That alone is how we get real results with students.
The rest is just shenanigans….
https://jackson-consulting.com/allhell/
I think it’s even more important that students are healthy and well-nourished and have a home to go to.
Secretary DeVos went before the House Appropriations Committee (actually a subcommittee) yesterday. She is more confident than ever in her non-responses to Democratic questioning (while being quite forthcoming with Republicans). The big Trump Administration policy plank this year has been to cut funding but put everything in a block grant…allowing states and localities to decide what to spend it on. Don’t like a proposed cut program? No problem. The state is free to fund what they will. Think the Administration is cutting too much money? You guys are the Appropriations Committee. Fund as you will.
Oh, and the subject of failed and closing charter schools came up. Secretary DeVos said that the research that noted all of these was “thoroughly debunked” and the work of “one person who has it in for charters.”
Secretary of Lies and Evasion.
I’m not a violent person, but watching this, I just want to give Betsy “Cruella” DeVos a smack. Her self-righteous refusal to answer straight-forward questions from a member of Congress is a demonstration of why she is no public servant. Rep. Pocan, of course is referring to NPE’s report, Asleep at the Wheel.
Smacking Besty doesn’t even come close to what I imagined. I was thinking more along the lines of finding a very sharp guillotine and putting it to good use.
She is a ghoul:
https://www.newsweek.com/more-800-poor-rural-schools-could-lose-funding-due-rule-change-education-department-report-1489822?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1582954441
If schools are closed due to the coronavirus, we know who will be hardest hit. I doubt this administration has given this much thought.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-0228-corona-virus-school-closings-ethics-20200227-wpapu2w2xfaujgkqcf3v7t26tq-story.html
Trump and his administration does not think.
Donald Trump does not have critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills or the ability to think logically.
Trump tunes in to Faux News, Hannity, and Limbaugh to get his programmed thinking, and then Trump passes that “thinking” to his administration through unexpected and surprising/shocking tweets that are often illegible.
Donald Trump is the first and hopefully only president of the United States that ruled the country via conspiracy theories and twitter.
You are absolutely right – keep those schools open and if any of them get the corona – hand them a mask and hand sanitizer and spread the infection/ wealth as Bernie would say!
Then we can really blame trump for not doing anything for the children – maybe he should have separated them?
In Florida, Superintendent of schools of South Miami Dade County, Alberto Carvalho, has taken decisive action to see that undocumented children attend school.
“In another school district, the discovery of a hidden camp for undocumented migrants might have spelled doom for the camp’s children. But Carvalho, once an undocumented immigrant himself in search of better prospects, did not alert federal authorities, which might have triggered a raid. Instead, he brought shoes and clothing, mattresses, toiletries, even outdoor furniture, and enrolled the kids in school.
“ ‘I came to this country at 17 from Portugal. I overstayed my visa,’ said Carvalho, who now leads the nation’s fourth largest school district. ‘I was poor. I was, in the eyes of some, illegal. I was homeless under the bridge, blocks away from where today I work… I can relate to them and I really wanted to help.’ ”
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article239316068.html#storylink=cpy
Superintendent Carvahlo deserves a spot on the blog’s Honor Roll.
Scheidell:
When will Mexico pay for the Wall?
Confessions of a charter school teacher or, why Diane Ravitch’s book, exposing charter schools is a must read for all teachers, parents.
By Mark Friedman, one of the lucky “highly rated” teachers at Green Dot Public Schools.
I worked at Green Dot public schools, a for profit charter organization, for 13 years in the LA inner city of Lenox, California. The school was 97% Latino, 3% black. In the initial years of the school, before it was taken over by profiteers and business oriented non-educators, teachers made all decisions. Parents were involved. Students had input. This was one of the few unionized charters and I thought, having been a union activist for decades, it would be different since it was unionized;
Reading Diane Ravitch’s new book, Slaying Goliath, The Passionate Resistance To Privatization And The Fight To Save America’s Public Schools, really convinced me of the dangers charter schools pose to public education. Now I would never recommend any teacher, student or parent to enroll in a charter school and will fight their expansion with all my energy
Green Dot changed and by the 2012 contract, teachers were suckered by union mis-leadership into approving a contract that included Gates high-stakes testing, teacher evaluation based on test scores by anti-union administrators, in exchange for $24 million across Green Dot schools over the years, it was a different animal. Only 1% received bonuses we were all promised.
That year Ánimo Leadership administrators fired a teacher during contract talks as an example, and violated immigrant students constitutional right to free-speech. The GD home office agreed. I was suspended for defending them, but ultimately, won my job back through demonstrations by parents, students, media articles and 100 letters of support from around the world. Instead of recognizing their error, Green Dot held fast, intimidated teachers and parents, hired private investigators ($50,000) to intimidate teachers, students and parents and even promoted those administrators responsible. And by the 2016 contract talks, we found out that CEO Marco Petruzzi was receiving $350,000 a year, yet was fighting a minimal teacher salary increase.
Ravitch’s book is a detailed account of the nationwide efforts and ultimate failure (despite some successes) of whom she calls “Disruptors” to privatize public education, institute vouchers for private and religious schools, so-called peer evaluation of teachers linked to merit pay, and over testing of standardized tests.
Despite billions spent by the Obama and Trump administrations (Obama’s education guru, Arne Duncan was a rabid charter supporter), Gates, Broad, Walton, Koch, Bloomberg and other multi billionaires, continuing today with education Sec. De Vros, hundreds of thousands of parents, coupled with the wave of teachers strikes in 2019, are realizing the lies and are resisting. The Los Angeles teachers strike was another victory over the privatizers.
Here are facts from the book about efforts to privatize public education, bleeding money from 90% of students to support 10%
*Charters operate by stealth giving billions to finance local school board pro charter candidates
*Public schools are closed (50 in one day in Chicago by former Democratic Party mayor. R. Emanuel) and 50 charters opened
*Charter schools assault democracy and democratic elections of school boards through massive funding.
*The federal government gives one half billion a year to charters while public schools are underfunded. Similarly, local districts.
*Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP and Parent Teachers Associations actively fight charters
*Charters openly discriminate against certain classes of students; parents are often forced to volunteer hours or pay fees, which is illegal (done by Green Dot public schools for a decade)
*Charters have re-segregated public schools and are all viciously antiunion. That is their origin and goal.
*Teach for America is a pro-charter privately funded organization with a high turnover rate, inexperienced, short-term teachers.
*In New Orleans, after hurricane Katrina, all the public schools were converted into charters, all teachers were fired and replaced with TFA youth. The mostly Black teacher’s union was replaced with mostly college graduate whites, with promises to pay off their student debt if they taught for a couple of years. 15 years later, students still score below the state average.
*Gates spent $2 billion to implement Common Core, and to force schools compete for Obama’ s “Race to the top” billions.
*The profits by private charters, millions in graft, theft of equipment and services, nepotism describes hundreds of charters.
*After hundreds of millions have been sucked from the public schools to finance charters, a RAND report said there was “No improvement by students in achievement, graduation rates, or dropout rate. These efforts did not change the quality of the teachers, who are always the ones blamed” (as opposed to the large class sizes). Underfunding of public schools, especially in hard-hit Black, Latino and working-class communities and the nature of education under capitalism are the real problem.
“Tests did not save schools, but money could.” Diane Ravitch’s February 17 article mentioned some flaws in today’s current education system. But she, like a lot of others have continued to not make a point that the education process should be looked at as a triangle. The first corner is the student and the second corner is the school system. But no one ever mentions the third corner being the parents/guardian at home. Not once in Ms. Ravitch’s comments is the term “parent” used.
As a single parent raising two boys, I was involved from grammar school through high school with my boys’ education. My involvement was partly prompted by my older sister, a teacher, advising me “get in the classroom.” Also note, that I am going to discuss “some” of the teachers and staff, not all. I found that the classrooms had failures on the part of BOTH the teachers and parents. I think the best way to explain this is to give some actual examples.
1) In middle school I asked one of my sons why he never has homework from a class. He replied, “Oh, the teacher talks about the new subject at the start, and then lets us do our homework in class for the remainder of the time, and she goes back to her computer and the internet.” She was unprepared for the class, not doing her job.
2) I discussed with the Vice Principal a recent behavior incident on a school bus. He replied we have it all on camera. I said if I was teaching I would have two cameras in my classroom at opposite corners, and that all the classrooms should have that. His reply, “Oh, the teachers would not allow it !” I said I don’t understand, it would show the parents exactly the behavior that their child has in class. He said, “But it would also show that the teacher is not teaching.”
3) I had a parent-teacher conference scheduled, so on the day of the appointment I told my son to stay at school for the conference. He asked “What is going to happen? “. I replied that we would all discuss his progress and what we ALL can do to help him do his best. That afternoon, my son and I walked into the meeting room, and the “deer in the headlights” looks on the teachers faces told me a lot. I started the meeting by saying, “This meeting is for my son, and anything said here should be said to him. So in order to have good communication, I brought him.” After the teachers realized that I was not there to defend my son and berate them, that I truly wanted to work together, they relaxed and we got some good work done. Until that meeting the parent-teacher conference seemed to be just a required waste of the teacher’s time, and they were doing it because they had to, but didn’t seem to care. As a side benefit, my son could not come home and tell me a slightly different story than what was told in the classroom.
4) In High School at an Open House to meet your child’s teachers, I was discussing student progress with one of the teachers. She said, the students whose parents that attend these open houses typically are not a problem academically and/or behavior. It is the student that has a parent/guardian that does NOT show up that may be a problem.
So how do we get the parents involved ? A majority of the time the discussions about improving student education say money/funding is the problem. I partially agree, but how to spend it is the question that must be discussed. I suggest three methods:
1) Pay the parent on performance of the student. A simple example would be to start at the beginning of the semester with a parent account of a dollar amount and as the semester progresses deduct certain amounts for absences, behavior incidents, missing homework assignments, and parents not showing up for open house. At the end of the semester a check for the remainder is sent to the parent(s) with an explanation list of deductions.
2) Pay the teachers more, but make the compensation based on student progress. Measuring progress would be very hard to implement, and Ms. Ravitch’s article discussed the testing problems. But, in addition to paying the teachers more, get rid of those teachers that are not teaching. Currently the schools are essentially a monopoly and the teachers’ union is so powerful that it is almost impossible to fire someone. There is no competition in a monopoly and the quality is low because of it.
In summary, the parents must be involved, until this happens the continued call for extra funding for schools will waste a lot of the taxpayer’s money.
Sincerely,
Gary M. Guilbert
1003 Parkcrest Ct.
Pflugerville, TX 78660
512-924-5725
Gary,
Thank you for your comment. Of course, parents are crucial to students’ success in school. You can say everything in a short article. But, resources matter. They matter because without them, a school can’t pay teachers enough to keep them teaching, it can’t reduce class sizes, it can’t provide nurses or librarians or other crucial services. Not funding schools is not a good answer. Parents should be involved with their children and they should be involved with the school. If they are, they will advocate for adequate funding.
Thank you for you notes. The question is “How do we get the parents involved”. My simple idea of paying them is the only idea I have come up with.
How can you raise money to pay parents to get involved if you can’t raise the money to pay teachers a professional salary to teach the kids?
“In summary, the parents must be involved, until this happens the continued call for extra funding for schools will waste a lot of the taxpayer’s money.”
Do you think that ALL parents must be involved before schools should get the funding they NEED to function properly?
I was a public school teacher for thirty years [1975 – 2005] in the same district in Southern California, and there were always involved parents in every class I taught.
In fact, teachers met most if not all of the involved parents each semester on parent-teacher conference nights. But not ALL of the parents were involved.
The majority of parents that took the time to show up for teacher-parent nights had students earning good grades, and we didn’t see many of the parents of students earning poor grades.
The goal is to get ALL parents involved. Obviously, we all know that is not going to happen. But, if we can find some incentives, the overall education bar, I believe, can be raised.
Creating a legislated goal that says, “All parents will be involved in their child’s education” is the same as saying “No Child Will Be Left Behind” or “Every Child Will Succeed”.
Find ONE country on the planet that has managed to do that [Pre-school through the end of high school] without turning into a brutal authoritarian dictatorship that rules through fear.
Even China, that is an authoritarian dictatorship with one-party rule hasn’t achieved that goal, and China is not on any top 10 to 20 list.
“Here Are the 10 Most Educated Countries in the World”
The United States is ranked #6 out of 195 countries.
http://www.usfunds.com/slideshows/here-are-the-10-most-educated-countries-in-the-world/#.XmmWUUp7mUk
“Which Country has the best college education?
The United States is ranked 4th out of 195 countries.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2016-10-04/these-10-countries-have-the-best-colleges-and-universities-survey-says
“2019 World Best Education Systems – Final Rankings”
The United States is ranked #8 out of 195 countries.
https://worldtop20.org/worldbesteducationsystem
Mr. Lofthouse,
Wow, i am trying to come up with an idea to motivate a parent(guardian) to get involved with their child’s education. How did it get to:
Creating a legislated goal that says, “All parents will be involved in their child’s education” is the same as saying “No Child Will Be Left Behind” or “Every Child Will Succeed”.
?????
So if my idea is not practical/too expensive, what do you suggest ?
Organize a PTA.
It makes no sense to pay parents to get involved in children’s education. Who would pay for it?
No one has figured out the “magic phrase/bribe” that will turn a parent into someone that actually cares about their child’s education.
If you pay a parent to get involved (that is if the parent takes the money and doesn’t ignore you), the odds are that the parent will collect the money, put in their time if they have to, and nothing will change. The parent might taketh money and not even show up. The student’s behavior will probably stay the same.
Anyone can become a parent but that doesn’t mean they know how to be a parent or want to be one.
When I was teaching, I made more phone calls than any teacher at the high school where I taught. Administrators told me this because we had to record every phone call we made to parents to prove we made them (that was a lot of paperwork). I was told I made more phone calls than all the teachers combined and the high school where I taught had one hundred teachers.
I called every parent of every student earning a C- (for each report card and in between them, too) or lower and for most of those students, nothing changed no matter how many times I called. Some parents even complained about me calling them, and all I was doing was trying to get them to pay attention to their child so their kid would do the work.
To convert a poor parent into a supporting parent takes a lot of work for teachers. Out of every 100 poor parents, maybe a teacher will manage to convert one. I guess this explains why my work week often ran 60 to 100 hours … a week … for thirty years. Only 25 hours of that time each week was spent in class teaching my students.
And it is a fact that the same challenge exists in every country on the planet.
“There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.”
https://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
I wasn’t going to get involved with this discussion but memories urged me on.
Goals 2000: Educate America Act called on schools to promote partnerships that would increase parental involvement.
“Every school will actively engage parents and families in a partnership which supports the academic work of children at home and shared educational decision making at school…Legislation made $86.5 million available to states in 1994 to begin developing school improvement plans. An additional $5 million was made available to develop plans to use state-of-the-art technology to enhance teaching and learning.“
The creativity, caring, enthusiastic, and drive in our faculty exploded. We had every kind of meeting to get the parents/caregivers involved. We had meetings before, during, and after school time and meetings in the evenings. We had door prizes and refreshments. We provided baby sitters and even transportation. Teachers volunteered to conduct workshops for parents during the day and evenings. Specials: art, music, gym and librarian arranged schedules to accommodate the meetings during the day.
Two teachers wrote a grant for literature books for the primary schools. Each set of books were boxed, labeled along, and most had accompanying big book. The books were placed in the supply closet with easy access for the teachers. Each teacher was supplied with special plastic bags with a hook to hang on rods in their classroom. All details were well planned out.
Each week a book was sent home in a plastic bag along with the reading chart to record the title of the book and comments. After a week the books were returned and a new book is placed in the bag and sent home again.
The goal was to send home the book the students studied in class in grades K,1, & 2. The students took their book home to perform for their parents/ caregivers. Parents/caregivers of kindergarten children were expected to read the story to their child and talk about the story.
We had a program called Project Success, a program that worked with parents of remedial students. A teacher and social worker went into the homes of children whose parents couldn’t come to school. They would bring in a tape recorder for the child to listen to stories; a computer, or Language Master. They even took some poor families on a field trip on a weekend to provide the children with the experience. It usually was to a restaurant.
The workshops for the parents after school hours were on the teachers’ time. Teacher would volunteer for the type of workshop they wanted to conduct.
We had workshops/meetings with teachers in neighboring districts to shared ideas.
One idea I picked up was sending home thematic book bags. I developed 150 back packs of books. Each had a different theme with books for children to read to their parents, books for parents/caregivers to read to the children, and a read along set. If they didn’t have a recorder at home I would supply one.
Books were acquired via book fairs – I took charge of book fairs managed to get some free books; I went to warehouses spending my own money, went to garage sales …
One K teacher bought sets of books and stored them at her home. When the theme of the classroom changed she rolled in crates of new books and rolled out the old. The books were displayed in the reading center which had a rug for the kids to sit on and enjoy.
We had a Board consisting of parents, teachers, and a principal
just for our building to discuss innovations. One such idea developed was a story festival.
Three themes were developed in four centers: Space, Sea/Water and Land/Farm. The library, art room, cafeteria, the gym, and music room were used.
Volunteers from the faculty formed committees to work on each theme. They choose stories to tell and decorated the center to reflect their theme. Storytellers dressed as a character in the book they were reading or telling. Volunteers also came from the PTA and family members of teachers.
The cafeteria was used to set up a Book Fair with three different companies represented. A section of the cafeteria was also used for refreshments, which included cookies in the shape of storybook characters.
The Farm Center had bails of hay, large cut out animal forms painted and made to stand erect. A barn, silo, and picket fence were also constructed. Music reflected the scene such as “Old MacDonald.” A teacher dressed as a farmer played her guitar.
The Sea Center had imitation seaweed hanging from the ceiling and waving in front of the story tellers/reader. The back ground for the stage depicted an under water scene in the ocean.
The Space Center had a tall, long mural stapled on poles arranged in a circular form with Christmas lights placed along the top of the mural. People had to duck to enter the “Space Capsule.” The storytellers dressed in a Space suit. As they were about to tell their story a tape played the theme of “Lift Off” simulating an actual take off. Following that, the storyteller started singing the America the Beautiful and then motioned the audience to join in. The storytellers were so authentic that when a storyteller looked up into the dark as if she were looking at a beam of light from a space ship, everyone looked up as she did.
In the Gym Center, in the gym, had four sections where a story was told. The story teller dressed as the main characters. Children after ten minutes, rotated to the next center.
It was a fantastic experience for students, parents, staff and faculty.
During the day Bernard Waber, children’s artist and writer, presented at a school assembly.
Teachers volunteered to be trained for the Reading Recovery program which involved giving up their summer to go off to a university offering the program. The program called for attendance at workshops during the year.
Teachers attending many kinds of conferences, state and local, and then reported back to the faculty. A couple of teachers conducted workshops for district teachers as well as teachers of neighboring districts after school hours.
At the end of the year our Special teachers had a Triathlon Day involving all students, all area, and inviting parents.
Where there is a will there is a way.
What a wonderful example of parent-teacher collaboration! Thank you, Mary D.
There is no secret sauce to motivate a poor parent. If you want to pay someone, pay the students to do the work based on each assignment. Forget about paying the parents.
My older brother (14 years older than me) and his wife were horrible parents, and they had seven children. Only two of them ended up capable of reading a book. Most of them ended up in prison and on drugs/booze just like my brother who spent 15 years of his 64 years of life in the slammer.
I tried to teach my brother and his wife what to do at home after school with their kids.
For months, I showed up after teaching all day and tutored their kids while struggling to teach them to do what I was doing. Eventually, because of my workload, I had to stop, expecting them to continue what I had taught them.
They did not continue and the younger kids I was teaching to read lost whatever they had gained and stayed functionally illiterate.
Governor Mike DeWine
@GovMikeDeWine
·
4h
K-12: I’m not ordering to close schools. We may get to that point – but not today. If it comes that, we’ll work with the legislature and schools to seek to waive testing requirements if schools need to be closed.
This is in response to Mary D whose amazing story is a must read.
Clear expectations for parents? Wow. That is what real education looks like… because — as was proven by the Harvard research on the Principles that underlie ALL Learning in successful classrooms — the very first Principle of Learning (in the thesis research) was CLEAR EXPECTATIONS.
I didn’t just read about this. I was the cohort in NYC for the research, which studied 60,00 teachers across America. After 2 years of filming and studying what it was that I did, they identified the FIRST PRINCIPLE OF LEARNING in my practice — Clear Expectations
My success was based on the ways in which (i.e. how) I made it clear to parents exactly what was expected of their kids. In a weekly letter — from day one — so that every single parent was informed of what I was doing, and what was expected; they were expected to be engaged with their children. These kids were BTW 13 years old!
The students got a weekly letter, too. The major assignment was a ‘Reader’s Letter,” to me (which discussed what they were reading,– using very specific, clear guidelines/expectations for writing).
They were also required to add a response to my weekly letter, in that assignment;(this was the surprise. They began to talk about themselves, and their own thoughts about everything.)
Parents had to read the letters and sign the skills sheet which I sent home after I responded to the letters.) The parents were stunned by the way the kids talked to me, on paper. One parent wrote her Master’s Thesis, about the ways in which children respond to an adult in their life who encourages them to express their thoughts.
I posted the reader’s Letters, in the hallway. Every visitor to the school, including the Pew researchers could not believe the children were only 13.
Over a year, their letters went form 100 words to over 1000, and more. This gave me a chance to evaluate their progress as writers mastering the process, a way to know what they read and what they thought about the books — but also what they grasped about my requirements.
I gave no tests… the letters in portfolio — and other writing assignments — were all the evidence of success needed. The average student read over 70 books that year (many from my private class library which I purchased for them, and which they began to read in our daily reading period at the start of all classes.)
Reading and talking about what they read enabled the writing process. Listening, speaking, reading writing… hmmm where have I heard that process before?
To conclude: It all begins with the caregiver… the parent! The Reform Movement of Liars, with their Orwellian definitions for ‘choice’ which offered no choice for children to learn, ended our public schools, because they were clueless as to what learning looked like, and substituted ‘magic elixirs’ https://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html.
The power elite substituted the bogus curriculum of Gates and charlatans who wanted the public schools to fail. They took the authority for the classroom practice from the professional teacher-practitioners. I and millions of top professionals were erased from the 15,880 school systems, as the liars bamboozled our people. https://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
Thus, education would become a market. Predatory capitalism at work gave the “choices” to the elites.
But what do I know? https://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html?sid=40790
Reblogged, with Mary D’s note, to National Literacy Association (AAACE-NLA). CBK
File this under disaster capitalism. As coronavirus has everyone in an uproar, the MA department of elementary and secondary education chose today to make the pronouncement on the fate of Boston’s public schools:
“The agreement between the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Boston Public School district sets specific goals and a reasonable timetable for reforms necessary to improve the district’s lowest performing schools,” said Governor Charlie Baker in a statement. “The partnership will leverage the strengths of both the Department and of the Boston Public Schools in order to support the district’s most vulnerable students and allow them to achieve at their highest potential across the system.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/13/metro/mass-officials-release-scathing-review-boston-school-system/?event=event25
Levereging stategic partnerships may well involve Propel America, the new non-profit whose CEO, Paymon Rouhanifard, is a new member or the state board. He is also a, wait for it, “Walton entrepreneur in residence”. His business is already up and running in two districts currently under takeover, Springfield and Holyoke. Mercedes Scheneider has the expose:
https://deutsch29.wordpress.com
One of Boston’s enumerated shortcomings is “the persistently low academic performance of students learning the English language”. That’s about 45% of our kids and there are some 70 languages spoken at home, so it’s a bit complicated. Yet the very first move made in the failed state takeover of the Dever School was the dismantling of the bilingual program. Instruction in the child’s home language is a research based linguistic approach to teaching literacy, but it was discarded. There’s no other possible explanation than ideology, practiced by an “outside partner” lacking any knowledge of the population being served.
Advocates for bilingual education only recently were successful in passing the LOOK Act, which allows for appropriate teaching methods for EL kids. We repealed our research-based approach under the racist Unz ballot question of 2002, which allowed only for Sheltered English Immersion. State run professional development for teachers has been a joke and SEI an abject failure. Seems lack a lack of good faith to blame Boston for this.
https://www.wbur.org/edify/2017/08/09/english-language-learning-bills
The Waltons are undoubtedly still seething that their investment in removing the charter cap failed. This move is unsurprising given the four Walton connected members on the state education board, appointed by our Koch and Walton sponsored governor, Charlie Baker.
Given the severity of the #coronavirus public health crisis, two of my SMCISD school board colleagues and I have called on Texas Education Commissioner @mikemorath to #StopTheSTAAR. Please help us! https://twitter.com/anne_halsey/status/1238940709018832896?s=21
I wonder what you think of this, Diane. The Boston Foundation is a big time privatizer, and we know the basic tenet is that no disaster can go to waste:
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-waldron-charitable-fund-announces-1m-in-grant-opportunities-to-support-children-301024804.html
I expect the Disrupters to take advantage of COVID-19 to promote and expand vouchers for those super-failing internet schools.
yes the disrupters will take advantage of everything—and praise Biden for his support for their efforts. They win if Biden or Trump are reelected.
Apologists for the Democratic (read capitalist) party always say…wait…wait…but that strategy has kept us hamstrung to the parties of big business. We have no independent voice.
Look at the lack of response bym ALL women’s organizations to the on-going assault on a woman’s right to choose…from Obama to Trump. They too, mis-leaders tell us to just wait till November–pull the lever and all will be fine.
But history shows us that every social struggle that was victorious won thru mass action…not voting. Your liberal Democratic friends in office–never even voted to end the war in Vietnam.
it was only the worldwide anti-war protests, the continued heroic struggle of the Vietnamese and the disintegration of the US military that won the withdrawal of US troops after Kennedy introduced 10,000 of them.
Thank you for revealing your RED colors: “Your liberal Democratic friends in office–never even voted to end the war in Vietnam.”
I had no liberal friend in office when I was serving in the U.S. Marines and fighting in Vietnam at 20. In fact, throughout my life, I have never been friends with anyone elected to a public office.
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that made the war in Vietnam legal was passed in the House on August 7, 416 votes to ZERO. In the Senate the vote was 88 to 2.
And what did you do when you blamed that war on “liberals”? You ignored the fact that except for two votes every other Democrat and Republican voted for that war.
At the end of the 88th US Congress, in the Senate, there were 66 Democrats and 34 Republicans. In the House, there were 253 Democrats and 177 Republicans.
What is interesting is that the two votes against the Vietnam War came from Democrats.
It was opposed in the Senate only by Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Gruening (D-AK). Senator Gruening objected to “sending our American boys into combat in a war in which we have no business, which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn, which is steadily being escalated”.
Are you suggesting that Obama and Biden opposed abortion rights for women? That’s false.
Biden’s Catholicism has led him to uphold and support the Hyde Amendment, which impinges on poor women’s access to abortion.
Virginia hopes to press ahead with student testing (for now):
https://www.wsls.com/news/local/2020/03/16/virginia-sol-testing-will-go-on-despite-school-closures-because-of-coronavirus/
Virginia is acting crazy. How do you test kids who have been out of school for 4-8 weeks?
Here’s a shocker (or maybe not). In their subservience to capitalism, teachers union, NEA, endorses Biden, pro-charter, public school privatizer
“Biden says he’ll adopt plans from Sanders, Warren”
The moderate Democrat announced he would include two the progressive candidates’ plans involving education costs and bankruptcy.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/487688-biden-says-hell-adopt-plans-from-sanders-warren
To find out what that actually means, we will have to wait. Will Biden turn out to be a backstabber like Obama was when it came to Education or will he end up supporting the public schools?
I hope when this crisis ends all the politicians who refused to close schools in place like NYC don’t forget how essential they are to the smooth functioning of our society.
This post from an NYC teacher had me in tears of rage, then pride:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nyc-teacher-coronavirus_n_5e711f76c5b60fb69ddf6d02
I know we love to dump on Bill Gates – because he so richly deserves it!
The Nation seems to share our viewpoint:
“The result has been a new model of charity in which the most direct beneficiaries are sometimes not the world’s poor but the world’s wealthiest, in which the goal is not to help the needy but to help the rich help the needy.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/
Five teachers at Brooklyn Tech tested positive for coronavirus, but classes remained n session.
“One after another, sick Brooklyn Technical High School teachers called union chapter leader Nate Bonheimer last week, to tell him they’d tested positive for COVID-19.
By Friday, five of them had shared the devastating news. But after being notified about each one, the city Department of Education still ordered the 6,000-student school’s 350 staffers to show up for work last week, saying the building had been cleaned.
‘The DOE did not close the school for any of the cases,’ said Bonheimer, who worries that inaction exposed others to the dreaded infection.”
https://nypost.com/2020/03/21/blood-on-their-hands-teachers-say-de-blasio-and-carranza-helped-spread-coronavirus/
Here’s a review of Thomas Piketty’s latest book.
“Yet Piketty’s narrative does seem to be missing something about educational attainment and politics. As higher education has expanded, more of it has filtered ‘down’ to the traditional working class. This happened precisely because higher education expansion was re-conceived as a labor market policy, a scheme for promoting ‘human capital’—but one whose cost could safely be transferred onto the backs of its beneficiaries, at least those of them excluded from the best-resourced institutions. This fact complicates the empirical picture. By catering to those with education, parties of the left are not simply abandoning the working class, because the working class is getting more educated.
“Ultimately, though, economists cannot be allowed to be the arbiters of the intensely political concerns Piketty takes up in the book, and the good news is that there is reason to believe they won’t be. The public is intensely dissatisfied with the alternatives on offer from the formal political system and most of what goes on in academia. In a crisis atmosphere like the current one, the transnational egalitarianism Piketty espouses will gain a hearing if only because it is the thing contemporary neoliberalism so clearly and ostentatiously defined itself against and sought to expunge completely from polite company. In that sense, at least, an ideological regime like hyper-capitalism does sow the seeds of its own destruction. In the meantime, as Antonio Gramsci observed, the old is dying but the new struggles to be born. Piketty is as good a midwife as we could want, and much better than we deserve.”
http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/marshall-steinbaum-thomas-piketty-takes-ideology-inequality#.XntorZJPiGR.twitter
One more thing schools and teachers do daily: keep kids safe from abusers.
We have a perfect storm for at-risk kids right now with our schools shuttered – economic uncertainty, a medical crisis, kids inside all day with stressed parents.
https://www.propublica.org/article/illinois-dcfs-child-abuse-hotline-calls-coronavirus
Looks like the Waltons of Walmart have had a hand in the opioid crisis, and that Trump’s DOJ wouldn’t prosecute.
“Investigators had obtained records of similar cries for help from Walmart pharmacists all over the country: from Maine, North Carolina, Kansas and Washington, and other states. They reported hundreds of thousands of suspicious or inappropriate opioid prescriptions. One Walmart employee warned about a Florida doctor who had a ‘list of patients from Kentucky that have been visiting pharmacies in all of central Wisconsin recently.’That doctor had sent patients to Walmarts in more than 30 other states.
“In response to these alarms, Walmart compliance officials did not take corporate-wide action to halt the flow of opioids. Instead, they repeatedly admonished pharmacists that they could not cut off any doctor entirely. They could only evaluate each prescription on an individual basis. And they went further. An opioid compliance manager told an executive in an email, gathered during the inquiry and viewed by ProPublica, that Walmart’s focus should be on ‘driving sales.’”
https://www.propublica.org/article/walmart-was-almost-charged-criminally-over-opioids-trump-appointees-killed-the-indictment?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter
When I was a kid, Pepsi was the lunch available in school. At the time, they owned Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. On days I didn’t eat the Pizza Hut that was served in my public school I ate the Taco Bell. When Michelle Obama was first lady, students had access to whole grains, low salt, fresh food, and other nutrition. Today school lunches were handed to Pepsico again. McLane Global is sending shelf stable foods to school children. Panera is handling school lunches. Pepsico is being brought in as well. Crisis becomes opportunity for corporations.
I’ve become a big fan of The History Guy on YouTube. His short lessons (if you can excuse his butchery of pronunciations! 😷) are always interesting. His two recent COVID-ish themed shows, on toilet paper and soap, are perfect, informing ways to pass some time that I think many of you would appreciate:
I’ve been reading the first-person account of Harry Markopolos, who spent 8.5 years trying to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Bernie Madoff’s multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme only to find they were too knowledgeable to rely on help from an outsider. This paragraph seemed to have a connection to our issues in education:
“I had long ago burned any bridges that might one day lead me back to the financial industry, and I felt it was my duty to report to the American people what I had learned in my career — not just about the government, but also about Wall Street. And it wasn’t pretty. For example, Indiana Democrat Joe Donnelly wondered why all those people on Wall Street who knew something was wrong with Madoff kept silent, pointing out that these were the same people Americans trusted with their retirement savings. I agreed: ‘It is misplaced trust in fraudsters, especially the white-collar variety. These people are much more dangerous than any bank robber or armed robber, because these people live in the biggest homes and have the most impressive resumes. So when they commit a fraud scheme, they destroy companies and throw thousands of people out of work, and they destroy confidence in the American system such that capital becomes unattainable at any price.”
Not a perfect parallel, but it registered with me…
(Back to the distance learning…)
Making this plea here because the most saavy people in education scams are on this blog everyday. Anybody have any info on Kaleidoscope Collective for Learning? MA BESE, looking to takeover Boston’s public schools, wants to have this org run the show in some schools. The website offers nothing. Thanks!
Never heard of it.
Keep checking.
Thanks, Diane!
Christine,
After googling, it seems that the Kaleidoscope is an experimental program with no track record embedded in mumbo-jumbo jargon.
I think it’s a matryoshka doll.
It’s a pilot program rolled out by MA BESE, which is loaded with Waltonites. Its promised innovation is “project-based education”, which was a thing as long ago as when I did that in the 80’s.
The two people to head up the project are Komal Bhasin and Tara Carr. Bios from BESE:
“Komal Bhasin joined the Department on November 4 as the senior associate commissioner leading Kaleidoscope. Komal was principal of UP Academy Leonard Middle School, part of the Lawrence Public Schools, for six years and prior to that was principal of Excel Academy in East Boston. Her previous experience also includes serving as an assistant principal in a district turnaround setting in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Before entering school leadership, she was a science teacher and an English teacher in Laplace, Louisiana.
“Tera Carr joined the Department on October 15 as the associate commissioner for the Kaleidoscope Collective for Learning. Tera recently served students as the director of teacher development and pathways for the Tulsa, Oklahoma Public Schools. Prior to that, she was principal of Hamilton Elementary School in Tulsa, and she has also been an assistant principal, a high school math teacher, a special education teacher, a pre-K teacher, and, in Harbin, China, an English language teacher for first-year students.”
http://www.doe.mass.edu/bese/docs/fy2020/2019-11/item1.html
The current Commissioner of Education, Jeff Riley, was the receiver for the Lawrence Schools when the state took them over in 2011. Lawrence was undoubtedly a failed city at that point, with a corrupt mayor and other issues. Its schools serve poor, mostly Latinx kids; English is not the home language for most. The takeover was lauded in standard reformster terms, but in truth what happened was they got an influx of greatly needed cash from DESE in the first couple of years. Under receivership, some schools were handed over to charter management organizations. Komal Bhasin headed up one of these, UP Academy Leonard Middle School.
Bhasin is a fellow of the 2018-19 cohort of Relay “Graduate” School’s Leverage Leadership Institute. She was a founder of a New Orleans KIPP school in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She had been placed in New Orleans as part of TFA. Before the gig in Lawrence, she ran another charter in Boston.
Carr’s tour of the reformy world includes TNTP, TFA and Relay, where she is a so-called adjunct professor. She also worked in Tulsa public schools during Deborah Gist’s reign of terror. In Tulsa, she directed a 6 week emergency certified teacher training program. Carr is a 2019 Cohort Fellow at School Systems Leaders.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tera-carr-903012aa/
https://sslfellowship.org
Here’s the thing: as a pilot run by the state, school systems had to apply to participate in Kaleidoscope. Every other of the 351 cities and towns in MA has an elected school committee, so there would have been public conversations about the desire to participate in the pilot and an opportunity to vet these two people appointed to lead it. Whether or not that happened in the twenty-two systems approved, I don’t know.
On March 13, the same day the Boston schools closed due to the coronavirus emergency, the state released a 300 page review of the schools and an MOU, stopping just short of a takeover, which includes the imposition of Kaleidoscope on some of Boston’s schools. While other systems have chosen to participate, Boston’s students, parents and teachers have no choice.
https://schoolyardnews.com/inside-the-memo-of-understanding-between-cassellius-and-the-state-threats-promises-and-office-cba3299a2c90
On Tuesday, MA BESE convened its monthly meeting virtually, and BTU president Jessica Tang, city officials, parents and advocates turned out to object to allowing takeover plans to proceed during this time of crisis. Commissioner Riley seemed unmoved.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/31/metro/city-councilors-parents-educators-blast-state-overhaul-boston-schools/?event=event25
The matryoshka?
On the outside, a pilot program from DESE.
Next doll, DESE department members Bashin and Carr; next doll, Relay, TNTP, TFA, KIPP and charters; next doll, Relay and School Systems Leaders.
Is the final, most hidden doll Waltons funding? Because that would surprise me not at all. The Waltons are still smarting from their Question 2 defeat.
Christine,
This looks like a deformer takeover group.
Yes, aka Massachusetts State Board of Education
Diane I think the logistical mess, about virus-treatment supplies, that is presently occurring here in the United States shows the utter depravity of the “pay-to-play” system (capitalism/neo-liberalism) as the ONLY way to handle such a situation as this one. “Pay-to-play” and profit-motive functions ALONE can only interfere with governmental functions that are about keeping the entire system working for all of us, including its economy.
Pay-to-play is just another post-modern form of “tribalism;” only in this case, members of the tribe are the “haves” and the outsiders are the “have-nots,” the workers and the community at large. CBK
So we have received humanitarian aid from China, Taiwan, and today—-Russia.
You are so right. Well said!
Did I hear Jared rightly? Do the medical supplies belong to the Government and not the States? Does he realize WHO PAID FOR THEM? And if they aren’t going to give them to the States, what are they doing with them . . . selling them to the highest bidder and keeping the “profits”?
Gobsmacked: isn’t the half of it. CBK
Looks like it:
Christine Incredible–thanks, . . . It’s amateur hour in Third World America. CBK
In this clip from Bill Moyers’s interview with Alice Walker, she talks about why meditation is so important to her and the inspiration she receives from primatologist Jane Goodall’s attitude toward her personal appearance and aging. And she reads her poem, “You Too Can Look, Smell, Dress, Act This Way.” https://billmoyers.com/story/a-poet-a-day-alice-walker/
During these trying days of social distancing, self-isolating and quarantines, days rife with fear and anxiety, my colleagues and I thought you might like some company. So each day we will be introducing you to poets we have met over the years. The only contagion they will expose you to is a measure of joy, reflection and meditation brought on by “the best words in the best order.”
Enjoy.— Bill Moyers
Hiss Golden Messenger, whose song “I Need A Teacher” and video tribute to NC public school teachers I posted here a couple of times, has released a live album which is a fundraiser for Durham public schools. Consider supporting them both:
http://www.hissgoldenmessenger.com
Here’s an excellent look at the efforts of an Inupiaq teacher and here leadership role in developing a culturally appropriate education for her students.
“But beyond outcomes measured using Western forms of data collection, Alaska Native educators provided a template for all American schools on how to fundamentally reconsider and expand the notions of ‘rigor’ or ‘knowledge’ in education. To upend the ongoing damage inflicted by the legacy of colonial institutions, Kawagley reflected, education-reform efforts would have to value the cultural well-being of diverse communities just as much as outcomes on standardized test scores. Even though participation in the subsistence economy among indigenous communities, for instance, may not serve the national goals of training a workforce that increases the country’s GDP, it promotes daily opportunities to practice Native culture. As another report evaluating the outcomes of the Rural Initiative noted, cultural survival is hard to measure, but it can be felt and observed by the families served by the education system.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2020/04/teaching-native-culture-in-alaskas-classrooms/609292/
Ironically enough, this article is part of a series on education, underwritten by BillandMelinda.
My sister lives in Marion, Iowa and her grandchildren (1st and 3rd grade) attend school there. I just learned from my sister that they are not doing school during the Corona Virus. The school is not providing education. She is frustrated and doesn’t understand. I’m shocked too. I also mentioned this to an educator friend of mine, and she told me that the same thing is happening in her cousin’s district near Hershey, PA.
My sister is still working or she said she would provide them education during the day. Their mother, my niece, is working from home and is unable to teach them during the day. Their father is also working during the day. My sister says the girls run around with the neighborhood kids all day outside. She did say they were playing school. 🙂 I did provide my sister with a couple of websites she could have the girls work on for part of the day. 😦
I also wonder if the teachers are getting paid. I know that in my district our superintendent said that we needed to provide as strong an education as we possibly could in order to justify paying our salaries.
I know you like Andy Borowitz (as I do). David Eggers did a good one here for McSweeney’s that fits: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/white-house-coronavirus-task-force-briefing
The founder of the Free-Range Kids organization, Lenore Skenazy, has a great post today in the WAPO:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/09/why-lockdown-is-great-time-embrace-free-range-parenting/?arc404=true
“Though not every youngster will become an Einstein while quarantining, many seem to be turning into the kids they would have been if they’d grown up a generation or two earlier, with more time to discover their real interests and hobbies (remember those days?), before childhood got so structured and busy.
“So, don’t worry that everyone else’s children are making fabulous ‘Les Misérables’ parodies while yours is hitting his brother with the webcam. You can shower your child with construction paper and glue sticks, but if she hates arts and crafts, she probably won’t emerge from quarantine an artistic genius. (Just like I stocked up on lentils. Why? I am not suddenly a vegan. I should have stocked up on chicken thighs.)”
How to amuse yourself at home. This very talented woman has brought us famous duets from the stage. She sings, makes the costumes and the chereography and photography. Scroll all the way down.
I watched. What an amazing series of performances.
Massachusetts’ state board of education has been moving inexorably toward a takeover of the Boston’s schools. On March 13, the same day as schools shut down, DESE announced a MOU with Boston’s superintendent. In response, Alain Jehlen, Board Member of Citizens for Public Schools, is taking a deep dive into how and why the state rates city schools so poorly on the Schoolyard News website.
Here’s Part 1:
“Boston has 34 schools (out of about 125) that rank in the bottom 10 percent in the state. BPS as a whole is 14th from the bottom out of 289 districts. Why is it rated so low?
“One major reason is that the rating system was designed in a way that almost automatically puts Boston and other urban centers with large numbers of low-income students and recent immigrants at the bottom.
“Here’s how it works: The state rates schools and districts mostly according to test scores. But there are two ways they could use the scores. State officials picked the one that makes urban areas look worse.”
https://schoolyardnews.com/one-reason-boston-gets-low-ratings-from-the-state-the-system-is-designed-to-give-bad-marks-to-f6c9ee3418d
The current board of education is loaded up with Walton connected folks. No doubt that has some impact on decision making.
The always topical Randy Rainbow
Harvard Magazine has published an article which casts a cautious eye at the practice of homeschooling:
“Yet Elizabeth Bartholet, Wasserstein public interest professor of law and faculty director of the Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, sees risks for children—and society—in homeschooling, and recommends a presumptive ban on the practice. Homeschooling, she says, not only violates children’s right to a ‘meaningful education’ and their right to be protected from potential child abuse, but may keep them from contributing positively to a democratic society.
“ ‘We have an essentially unregulated regime in the area of homeschooling,’ Bartholet asserts. All 50 states have laws that make education compulsory, and state constitutions ensure a right to education, ‘but if you look at the legal regime governing homeschooling, there are very few requirements that parents do anything.’ Even apparent requirements such as submitting curricula, or providing evidence that teaching and learning are taking place, she says, aren’t necessarily enforced. Only about a dozen states have rules about the level of education needed by parents who homeschool, she adds. ‘That means, effectively, that people can homeschool who’ve never gone to school themselves, who don’t read or write themselves.’ In another handful of states, parents are not required to register their children as homeschooled; they can simply keep their kids at home.”
https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/05/right-now-risks-homeschooling
The debate about homeschooling of course isn’t new, but what caught my attention is that the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, condemned the article on Twitter. Huh, I thought that man might have more pressing matters, but I guess not. It’s been retweeted nearly 12,000 times.
HELLOOOO Mike Pompeo!!!! Your RELATIVISM is showing! (as well as your return to tribalism).
It’s not that it’s “OUR” values against “YOUR” values. It’s whether they ARE values that are worth keeping. Now if you understand THAT, we might have a good discussion to attend to. CBK
Christine . . . in my view, here is the fundamental issue from your note:
“Homeschooling, she says, not only violates children’s right to a ‘meaningful education’ and their right to be protected from potential child abuse, but may keep them from contributing positively to a democratic society.” (my emphasis) CBK
CBK,
Years ago, when I first started blogging, I posted an article critical of home schooling. It was reposted on a home schoolers website and I was bombarded by hostile comments. I have met a few well-educated home schooling parents, but I think that many are poorly educated or have doctrinaire views and don’t want their children exposed to different world views. Parents should be required to pass fitness tests before being allowed to home school. And their homes should be subject to state inspections to make sure the children are properly cared for. In the Trump era, however, everyone will be left on their own with no oversight.
Diane Like most things in education, some homeschooling will do well by some children. And we know that public schools should always have their finger on the pulse of providing quality education, and that some don’t.
But the very point of being “home” and not being systematically engaged with others of all sorts–from other families, teachers, groups, cultures, outside of the family, not to mention becoming acquainted with a relatively shared history of learning–is a prescription for the re-tribalization of the country and for the growth of all sorts of group bias. That’s a given by the very ABSENCE of concrete differences.
And in that is one dimension of what goes by the name: “hidden curriculum.” CBK
Dear Diane,
many thanks for your work on education governance! I have been an admirer of your work since 2010 when a friend of mine recommended to follow your publications. I just want to say thank you with the publication of my book “Governing the School under Three Decades of Neoliberal Reform: From Educracy to the Education-Industrial Complex,” London and New York: Routledge, 2020. It owes a lot to your work. I am a German sociologist who has been looking at the United States in comparative perspective for four decades.
Best regards,
Richard Muench
Thank you, Richard.
Every time I’m ready to give up, something new pulls me back in. Worth 5 minutes of your time:
Pandemic money headed to private schools, some of them quite elite. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-30/coronavirus-private-schools-ppp-loans
Greg Grandin won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction for his book The End of The Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. Here’s a two part interview from last March on Democracy Now! Lots of interest to historians.
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/6/greg_grandin_on_the_end_of
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/6/greg_grandin_on_the_racist_and
Christine Thank you for this link. What a great connection–the frontier and the wall. CBK
You’re welcome, Catherine. I think the Pulitzer is well deserved!
Great to see you on Sam Bee’s show tonight!
Thank you. How did it go? I didn’t see it because I am in a borrowed house and didn’t know how to find TBS!
Here’s the link:
I think this article by Susan Dynarsky in the NYT deserves a good dissection on the blog.
On the one hand, yaaayyy for more funding for our schools.
On the other, what’s with the handwringing about kids being “behind”? If everyone is behind, then no one is, right? Reduce class size and take the timesuck of testing out of our schools and teachers can adapt curricula.
And while we could use more hands on deck, NO! not unqualified “young people”. We already have TFA for that.
Dynarski is an economist. She should stick to that and not muck about in education.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-pandemic-is-the-time-to-resurrect-the-public-university
A question I would ask…will there be any problem with confusion regarding charter schools? I believe there is obfuscation going on in St. Louis…….
JH set me straight….JH
May 9, 2020 at 10:15 pm
No. Choice schools are just that, a choice within the district rather than a traditional feeder pattern. Magnet schools are just that – officially designated magnet schools that enroll students from the county as well as the city. And, charters are charter schools
I dug a little deeper…..
Note this. Gateway Science Academy of St. Louis
Gateway Science Academy
#2 in Best Charter High Schools in Missouri
B+Overall Grade
Public, Charter9-12
SLPS Magnet and Choice Schools Feeder Patterns 2018-19 School …
https://www.slps.org/…/
Gateway STEM Academy. Give my regards to Fethullah GULEN.
Gateway Science Academy St. Louis – Elementary School by …
es.gsastl.org
Gateway Science Academy St. Louis Elementary is managed by Concept Schools. Concept Schools is a nonprofit charter management organization that provides a high-quality, STEM-focused and college-preparatory education through a network of charter schools while offering exceptional programs, comprehensive services, and opportunities to partner in education.
Great schoosl….but the terminology and connection to Gulen remains intentionally muddled.
You (everyone) need this:
Sorry, Diane. But Lamar Alexander is a pathetic PoS.
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/05/republican-who-voted-trumps-tax-scam-now
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/10/politics/lamar-alexander-self-quarantine-coronavirus/index.html
Sorry, but my head exploded upon see these two clips. If we divided $1 trillion of stimulus to every man, woman and child in the U.S., it would translate to a little more that $3,000 per person. A family of four would have more that $12,000. That would translate into basic security for the majority of Americans and provide stimulus to pay businesses. Congress just passed a $2 trillion bill. Imagine if half went to the American people and the other half to corporations and small businesses. We, the wealthiest nation in the history of the world can afford this. But idiots like Alexander so nothing but whine as they funnel gobs of money to their masters, leaving everyone else behind. I am steaming. How dare anyone call him reasonable or moderate.
do nothing
Greg,
Since he voted that no testimony need be provided at the sham impeachment trial, I have given up on him. He already announced his retirement. He should have stood up to Trump. If he had, other Republican senators might have followed. But he caved completely. And Trump survived.
To George H.W. Bush’s credit, based on his statements before he died, I’m sure he’d be speaking up now. Lamar has proven himself to be hack of the worst kind, even when he as nothing to lose by being honest. Literally nothing to lose. I happened upon a review of a movie I liked and was recommending to a friend tonight and this fragment from a review struck me as oddly contemporary and fitting with our mutual criticism, about an “… ideology that encourages blind devotion, that flatters people’s vanity by telling them they’re intelligent for not thinking and that they’re virtuous for believing themselves better than their fellow citizens.” Sadly, it applies to Lamar.
MUST SEE TV TODAY AT 10 AM EASTERN, FAUCI TESTIFIES!
Editting:
Biden’s campaign announces Education task force including:
Prof. Alejandro Adler
Rep. Marcia Fudge, co-chair
Lily Eskelsen Garcia
Dr. Heather Guatney, co-chair
Maggie Thompson
Christie Vilsack
Randi Weingarten
Prof. Hirokazu Yoshikawa
First impression: not including Dr. Diane Ravitch is strike one against. Second impression, Marcia Fudge is my representative, I have found her staff to be woefully incompetent in my contacts with them, which tells me they have no impact on her views. The one time I was able to ask her a question at a forum, “what are you doing in your committee to address the needs of non-college bound students?”, her shallow answer was, “we can’t do anything without funding,” which did not acknowledge or answer the question In the election, I left the vote for U.S. rep. blank. She does not nurture or respect staff, she is not inquisitive at all. Strike two. Christie Vilsack? The wife of a political hack whose only qualification seems to be that she was a librarian and taught in a middle school. Strike three. I will vote for Biden. But should he win, I hope others will join me in pointing out his hypocrisy and lame lip service on education issues.
Any other thoughts to change my mind?
We are a group of mostly retired progressive activist educators in Chicago who meet regular to discuss issues affecting public education. We’ve written a statement proposing the extension of the suspension of testing for at least the next three years while there is an active effort to replace it with other more humane and constructive alternatives. How do we get this statement to you, in the hopes you’ll include it in your blog?
Google my NYU address
Heaven help us! Here’s a post by the folks at privatize town The74 Million:
https://www.the74million.org/article/rotherham-why-americas-schools-should-stay-open-this-summer/
New England Conservatory alumni have a gift for the class of 2020. Plus the two digital commencement concerts are wonderful.
And here’s one from one of my sons’ band teachers, a thank you the senior class.
I have been ambivalent about posting this, Diane, but upon reflection and not having seen it posted by anyone else, if you haven’t seen it, take a stiff drink or whatever you need to prepare yourself for a horrific experience before watching. This is Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse–you know, the one who tried to carve out a niche of being a “reasonable” Republican but always reverts to form–giving a “graduation speech” for Nebraska seniors. It is truly disgusting and exposes exactly what he thinks of public school students. His contempt for them and teachers is as obvious as it gets.
Comic relief from Randy Rainbow:
Hello Diane, I saw today that the Center for American Progress is planning an online event that intends to “discuss charter policy in a broader context than the often debated talking points.” It would likely be very informative to them if you or some of your well-qualified commenters participated.
Here is the article:
https://www.americanprogress.org/events/2020/04/29/484224/charter-school-policy-equity/
Beyond the Talking Points: Charter School Policy and Equity
Ensuring a Quality Education for Every Child Web Series
Wednesday, May 27, 2020, 1:00 pm ET – 02:00 pm ET
Join the conversation at #QualityEdChat on Twitter.
Charter schools have been the source of some contentious debates in the education policy space, often centered on the growth of charters and their impact on traditional public school systems. Yet beyond these debates are a number of issues and policy choices that have deep impacts on the equity effects of charter schools.
This interactive conversation will cover a range of issues, with a focus on less commonly discussed topics in charter school policy such as enrollment issues around student backfill policies, lottery systems, and the perceived notion that charters are able to self-select students for attendance. Additionally, the discussion will explore operations issues that affect equity in charter schools, such as transportation for students to and from school, participation in meal programs, and how schools receive and use funding for facilities and resources. Finally, the panelists will discuss the ability of charters to serve all populations of students, particularly those who need additional services such as students with disabilities, English learners, and foster or homeless youth.
Please join the Center for American Progress to discuss charter policy in a broader context than the often debated talking points. This discussion aims to step back and examine the current state of the charter debate and where we might go from here, with an emphasis on how equity can be infused more holistically into charter policy.
We would love to hear your questions. Please submit any questions you have for our panelists via email at CAPeventquestions@americanprogress.org or on Twitter using #QualityEdChat.
This event will be live captioned at americanprogress.org/livecaptioning.
This event is part of an online series exploring the five key issue areas that a new public education agenda should include. Each week, experts from across the education field will discuss how educators are adjusting to virtual schooling, the history of the federal government’s role in providing equal access to high-quality and equitable education to all students, preparing students for the future of work, what charter policy could look like in the future that puts equity at the forefront, and the need for greater and more targeted federal investment in education.
Panelists:
Sharhonda Bossier, Deputy Director, Education Leaders of Color (EdLoc)
Laina Cox, Principal, Capital City Public Charter Middle School
Shavar Jeffries, National President, Democrats for Education Reform
Joshua P. Starr, PDK International
Moderator:
Neil Campbell, Director of Innovation, K-12 Education Policy, Center for American Progress
I’m posting about CAP tomorrow.
It’s shocking and shameful that this so-called Democratic group would endorse the DeVos agenda.
This is another example of why we must support Biden and, should he be elected, vigorously expose and oppose his education agenda one minute after the election is called (should he lose, all is lost). I just looked up the bio of: “Neil Campbell is the director of innovation for K-12 Education Policy at American Progress. In this role, he focuses on issues such as personalized learning, charter schools, and the effective use of student data. Prior to joining American Progress, Campbell was the director, next generation at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, where he oversaw policy work related to personalized learning, course access, education funding, and student data privacy. He also worked at the U.S. Department of Education—first as a special assistant and later as chief of staff in the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development—was the director of strategic initiatives at Education Elements, and was a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.
“Campbell received his undergraduate degree in economics and political science from Case Western Reserve University and a master’s degree in business administration from Vanderbilt University.”
What’s missing folks? If this passes for “qualifications,” I should be the next director of the National Institutes of Health.
Information from Snopes tying the DeVos family more closely to the armed protests in Michigan state house, where Gov. Whitmer’s life has been threatened:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/05/20/michigan-lockdown-protesters/
“Betsy DeVos’ family — whose wealth stems from father-in-law Richard DeVos’ success in creating and running the multi-level marketing company Amway — has financed libertarian political causes with an influence comparable to the Koch brothers’ for decades. The children of Richard DeVos, Sr. and their families, through at least five separate foundations, generally provide much of this financial support in a coordinated way as a family unit. To get a sense of the scale of their political involvement, note that in 2015 and 2016 the DeVos family made $14 million in political contributions, including substantial funding to the Michigan state Republican Party and other county-level GOP chapters.
“The link between the DeVoses and the Operation Gridlock event stems from the former’s support of an independent PAC, the Michigan Freedom Network, which received a combined $250,000 from five members of the Devos family on March 18, 2020. The Michigan Freedom Network owns and operates the website of the Michigan Freedom Fund, a political non-profit. The Michigan Freedom Network shares staff, finances, and other resources with both the Freedom Fund and with the DeVos-funded Great Lakes Education Project, which is an ‘advocacy organization supporting quality choices in public education.’ The Michigan Freedom Fund, whose executive director is lobbyist Tony Daunt, was a co-host of the first Operation Gridlock event on Facebook. By email, Daunt told us the fund spent only $250 on Facebook ads to promote the protest.”
Betsy and Trump are cut from the same toxic cloth.
The DeVos and Trump mafia clans raise their children to grow up and become brutal, ruthless narcissists, psychopaths, and sociopaths with no empathy for anyone.
Diane and All Teachers: J. K. Rowlings is web-publishing a new book “The Ickabog” (written some years ago and placed in her attic) for FREE. CBK See link below:
https://theickabog.com/
The Central Park episode involving the mendacity of Amy Cooper is such a stark lesson in these times, of what racism of the Idiot entails in a broader sense, for our culture and nation. I thought this essay summed it up perfectly.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/amy-cooper-knew-exactly-what-she-was-doing_n_5ecd1d89c5b6c1f281e0fbc5
Denis Smith calls out the real reason for the enemies of public education turning the term “government schools” into a dog whistle pejorative the cult wants to hear.
http://plunderbund.com/2020/05/26/theyre-called-common-schools-or-public-schools-any-other-name-comes-with-an-agenda/
This is spectacular. Dems and “reasonable” Reps take note. The time for niceties is over.
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/05/pa-dems-furious-after-gop-hides-positive
Here is the full piece:
If you go to YouTube it has the entire thing.
Whoops:
This just in also from the Washington Post:
“Trump retweets a video saying ‘the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat’ By Aaron Blake” And now they are siding with China over Hong Kong. He’s literally tearing the world apart. CBK
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/28/trump-retweets-video-saying-only-good-democrat-is-dead-democrat/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most
Home schooling in the time of covid-19:
“As we speculate about the ways that our world will be different when we emerge from the global COVID-19 pandemic, it’s important to keep an eye on the way that right-wing authoritarians at home and abroad are exploiting crisis conditions to grab or consolidate power. The dictatorial powers granted to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán by the Hungarian Parliament in late March are an obvious example. But the subtler ways in which right-wing authoritarians are exploiting pandemic conditions for their own ideological ends may be even more insidious.
“Anti-government ideologues in the United States have long awaited the kind of catastrophic system failures that they believe will position them well to gain power and influence in a destabilized society. Some on the Christian Right see our current crisis as an opportune moment to strike a death-blow against public education, one longstanding target. While public schools work heroically to adapt to the challenges of providing remote instruction, far right-wing organizations like the Home School Legal Defense Association are recruiting.”
https://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/04/17/mission-destroy-public-education-rebrands-under-covid-19
Thank you for sharing this story!
Trump’s Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security got his “PhD” at a diplloma mill.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/05/the-dhs-inspector-general-claimed-to-have-a-philosophy-phd-he-doesnt/
In this case, PhD means Phony Doctorate.
Schools Should NOT Reopen During the Pandemic
What a wonderful story and wonderful reaction about the destruction of a statue of a slave trader in England! And note the response of the police:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/07/blm-protesters-topple-statue-of-bristol-slave-trader-edward-colston
Trevor Noah keeps doing the work. Watch his panel on the defund the police movement:
I was concerned by this article’s title when I saw it as the most read in past week at Ed Reform tilted Real Clear Education, but it was actually quite good: https://letgrow.org/let-kids-fail
This is a more typical and disgusting Real Clear effort (with obligatory Fordham Institute research): https://issuesinsights.com/2020/06/15/democrats-accidentally-make-the-case-against-teachers-unions/
Thanks for your relentless work, Diane Ravitch. Would you consider posting my op-ed published in the Salt Lake Tribune on your blog? https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2020/06/17/marilee-coles-ritchie/
Sure.
Last year, Massachusetts finally passed the Student Opportunity Act, designed to reform state education funding. It was a long struggle, but equity won. Now the program, which never enjoyed the support of Republican Governor – and recipient of Koch and Walton largess- Charlie Baker. Thanks to revenue shortfalls due to covid-19, funding is on the chopping block.
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/education/education-funding-shortfall-could-spur-new-lawsuit/
A must read is Bombshell in the Barrio by El Paso Parrhesia Press. The book chronicles what happened in what can now be determined as the Fake Cheating Scandal of the El Paso Independent School District. Not only were the federal charges against the defendants dropped, but there education certifications were restored in full with no blemishes. The fiasco investigation ruined their lives. Yet the media has refused to report on their exoneration. This book highlights how big business is high jacking public education. Available for purchase at Amazon.
The El Paso Times reported the story of the first defendant having the charges dismissed.
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/crime/2019/07/15/first-episd-cheating-scheme-defendant-has-charges-officially-dismissed/1735036001/
KTSM.com El Paso News reported that the “Cases against final five EPISD cheating scandal suspects dismissed”
https://www.ktsm.com/local/el-paso-news/cases-against-final-five-episd-cheating-scandal-suspects-dismissed/
CBS 4 News reported “Former EPISD official entered a guilty plea in the cheating scandal”
https://cbs4local.com/news/local/former-episd-official-enters-guilty-plea-in-cheating-scandal-01-06-2017
The New York Times, though, seems guilty of only reporting the alleged scandal back in 2012 but not following up with the dismissals.
Diane, I try not to post off-topic subjects on your posts, but I hope you will consider highlighting this story. The current occupant of the White House has continually been guilty of treason and should be subjected to the constitutional remedy. If this story doesn’t spark universal outrage, those who are not outraged must quit calling themselves American citizens. This has been known to the administration for THREE MONTHS.
I get the Boston Globe headlines every morning, and today there was an article decrying the union’s push to eradicate the MCAS. With the article behind a paywall, I looked for other sources, and there seems to be a wide push — not just from the union — to at least put a multi-year moratorium on the state testing.
https://boston.cbslocal.com/2020/06/25/mcas-exam-bill-pause-jo-comerford/
Th same coalitions which defeated the Walton initiative to remove MA’s charter cap continue to work towards eliminating useless yearly testing. There was no testing this year due to school closures and we’re focused on securing a moratorium for the coming year, at a minimum.
FYI, the Globe has outsourced its education coverage to the Boston Foundation, a fauxlanthropy bent on privatization.
Your efforts are applauded and greatly appreciated, Christine. Please keep us posted.
Terrific response here to the Globe’s editorial here, from a MA state Senator. https://m.facebook.com/senatorjocomerford/posts/1542125985959214
Outstanding! Thank you, Senator Comerford, for fighting the ignorant demagoguery with facts and wisdom. (And thank you for the information, Christine!)
That was an interesting (fun?) to read. Thank you both!
Diane, I know you are interested in the story of Anne Frank. This week an album of Michael Tilson Thomas’s composition of The Diary of Anne Frank was released and it is quite good. You may want to get a copy or download it from Spotify or Apple Music if you have either. Here’s some background on it:
https://www.jweekly.com/2018/11/08/decades-later-the-return-of-michael-tilson-thomas-orchestral-tribute-to-anne-frank/
Thank you!
This is a report from RAICES, a Texas based advocacy group, documenting the effect of our policies of family separation at our southern border. It’s a long read, but I encourage all to make the time. Under this chaos administration, it becomes easy to have important issues drop from our radar. Readers of this blog love and care about children, so will want to share what has been happening to vulnerable kids who have fled to our country seeking safety.
“Of the formerly separated families in Karnes who continued on into the U.S., 97% of them reported having a sponsor in their intake documents with RAICES. This does not mean that the 3% of families who did not report their sponsor information had no sponsor; it merely indicates that the information was not recorded. Thus, the actual percentage of families who did not have sponsors may be even lower. ICE chose to subject families to indefinite incarceration even though nearly all of them had loved ones waiting to receive them in the United States.
“The Flores Settlement governs the circumstances under which the U.S. government can legally detain minor children. Under Flores, children should not be detained for more than 20 days except under emergency circumstances. In 2018, families arriving at the southern border to seek asylum would typically spend about 14 days in Karnes prior to being released to their sponsors in the United States to continue with the asylum process…
“After inflicting irreparable harm onto migrant families with separation, the U.S. government continued to harm them with detention. The legal system failed families dependent on the settlement as they felt forgotten and, with each passing day without news in detention, more and more hopeless. The reality of settlement agreements playing out in a courtroom does not translate to someone detained with a child they are unable to parent and protect because of their incarceration. Although ICE had the discretion to free families, the government chose not to. Ultimately, all the suffering formerly separated families underwent in detention at Karnes was arbitrary.”
https://www.raicestexas.org/take-action/karnes-pro-bono-project/ms-l-report/?ms=tw20200702_msl
Hundreds or thousands of children—some, just babies—were separated from their families at the border, never to be reunited. This, in my opinion, was the worst thing this administration did, worse even than its failure to protect us from the pandemic, because it was so gratuitously cruel.
I worry about the connection between Bethany Christian Services in Michigan, which has financial ties to Betsy DeVos, and the adoption of these children.