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New York Times: Kids Say They Miss School

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2020 //
13

The New York Times asked children how they felt about learning online at home and most said they would rather be at school.

This article was written by Henry Dodd, age 11, whose father works for the Times.

Kids are getting more bored by the day. We wish we could go back to school to see our friends. But some of us are also really scared about getting the coronavirus, and we don’t want our friends and family to get it either.

That’s what kids across the country told The New York Times (where my dad works) when they were asked about learning from home during the coronavirus outbreak.

Some are having fun with their parents and their brothers and sisters, but most are missing their teachers, their friends and their normal lives. (As Dahlia Stringer, who is 11 like me, said in her letter, “Everyone knows little sisters are annoying” — little brothers sometimes are, too.) And a lot are frustrated about missing out on things like spring break, field trips and graduation.

“I’m hoping that things will be back to normal someday,” wrote Sasha Udovich, 9, from Los Angeles.

Same. Home-school is definitely boring, but I really hope we can make it through this safely and return to how things used to be. I miss my friends.

Here are some of the feelings about learning from home that kids across the country shared in letters and emails. They were gathered together and lightly edited by Adeel Hassan, who works with my dad.

Dahlia Stringer, an 11-year-old from San Francisco, has a lot to say about home schooling.

Let’s start with the positives: Family time, freedom and snacks.

I like that I can stay with my parents the whole day because I really, really love them. I like that we can have our own P.E. with our dad. The only thing I don’t like is math. But I still would have been doing that in school, so I guess it’s better to do it at home at least.

— Judah Rajski, 7, Tampa, Fla.

Alice: I like being home because you can eat and drink while you are doing your schoolwork. And you get to do your homework with your sister. You can ask mom or dad to help you, because they are both at home now. You don’t even have to raise your hand.

Shelby: You can go outside and play when you finish your work, while at school, you have to read silently after you finish.

— Shelby Sanders, 10, Alice Sanders, 6, Baton Rouge, La.

It gives me time to work and complete assignments on my time throughout the day. Rather than sit in school for six hours, I can break up the work throughout the day and use the extra time to work around the house or go outside.

— Ana, 15, Southbridge, Mass.

The positive thing about being home during the coronavirus pandemic is that I get to spend time with my family and share with them what I’m learning. I get to involve my parents in activities that I have only done with my friends. I also get to see what my siblings are learning and help them.

— Miabella Capote, Denver, N.C.

I enjoy staying home as long as I don’t think too much about why I’m not at school. I actually have more time on my hands than I know what to do with. I’ve been trying to use that extra time for productive things, like learning how to cook.

— Charlie, 17, Kirkland, Wash.

Samuel: The best thing about being at home is you get to hang around your family more and not being able to be around other people helps you get outside, and do some exercise.

Anna: I do like learning from home because I get more work done than I usually do because I have my parents’ assistance. I don’t because I am away from all of my friends and my teacher’s assistance. It is also difficult to see and do assignments online. But I do get to take breaks, go to the bathroom when I want, eat snacks, go outside, etc. I also don’t have to do any homework if I get all my work done for the day.

— Samuel Rogers, 12, and Anna Rogers, 12, Berea, Ky.

Declan Walsh, a 9-year-old from Brooklyn, says that he misses his friends at school. And he’s bored, too.
But there is a lot that makes it hard.

The worst is that the teachers might not always see your hand when you’re raising it. I really miss my friends and play dates. My mommy, and sometimes my daddy, have to help because it’s too hard sometimes.

— Noah Bresler, 6, Brooklyn

Life without school is much more boring then I thought it would be. Without the summerlike feeling of no work and being able to see friends, it’s actually very depressing.

— Una Hoppe, 14, Beacon, N.Y.

It’s really easy to get distracted at home. I like going to school and using the time at school to do schoolwork. Now all schoolwork is done at home, so my brain thinks there’s more homework because my brain hasn’t adjusted to staying home the whole day. Learning is difficult because before you were jogging and now you are crawling.

— Juny Tranel, 11, San Francisco

The thing I miss most about school is my friends, but I FaceTimed my friend today and I liked it.

— Ruth Rajski, 6, Tampa, Fla.

It’s hell. My teachers think what a responsible amount of work to be assigning is 40 minutes (about a class period) plus half an hour plus of homework. This is from EVERY teacher, so it adds up real fast. Over the last few days, I’ve had more work than I would usually have if schools weren’t closed — and I have to do it all sitting in the same spot for hours.

— Jasper Smith 17, Brooklyn

Because the work is optional, and the homework is not for a grade, I know many friends who choose not to work on it. Along with that, the assignments do not go along with what I’m currently learning at school. The homework is assigned to the entire grade, the levels of students academic-wise are different. Some students may be taking geometry, while others may be taking algebra or math. The assignments are often easy for a certain group of people, while for others it’s difficult.

— Bryan, 14, Pennsylvania

“I like our video morning meeting every day with my teachers and friends,” says Ella Diwan, 6, of Manhattan. “It makes me feel like I’m still at school. My baby sister won’t leave me alone, so I decided to let her join.”
“I like our video morning meeting every day with my teachers and friends,” says Ella Diwan, 6, of Manhattan. “It makes me feel like I’m still at school. My baby sister won’t leave me alone, so I decided to let her join.”
The technology can be fun, but it doesn’t always help.

I’m doing online learning through Google Classroom, and sometimes it’s difficult. My math problems won’t attach, the file didn’t save properly. But we have to work through that, and it’s necessary to help others.

— Eleanor Pitcher, 14, Wales, Mass.

I like our video morning meeting every day with my teachers and friends. It makes me feel like I’m still at school. My baby sister won’t leave me alone, so I decided to let her join.

— Ella Diwan, 6, Manhattan

I’m a visual learner, and so I prefer to take a hands-on approach, including marking up and annotating the work before me on actual paper. However, with online learning, it’s difficult, and I find myself writing much more than I usually would. My phone is right next to me, so it’s so easy to pick up my phone and text my friend, who I see on the screen, or check the newest post on Instagram and TikTok.

— Daniella Ojugo, 17, Burlington, N.J.

It’s harder to focus at home as there’s no one to discipline you for playing on your phone or talking to a friend. It’s harder to grasp certain concepts, specifically those that are more hands-on. It’s harder to ask questions since there’s no way to virtually raise your hand. And it’s harder to keep a smile on my face, because I don’t know if or when I’ll see my teachers and classmates in person again.

— Josephine Dlugosz, 18, Woodstock, Conn.

Image
Sasha Udovich, 9, left, and Anna Schofield, 8, finding a way to say hello in Los Angeles.
Sasha Udovich, 9, left, and Anna Schofield, 8, finding a way to say hello in Los Angeles.
Many kids miss their friends and would rather be at school.

I miss my friends and having a regular schedule. I used to complain every day about having to go to school, but being in quarantine has really made me appreciate being in class. I’m sure that when I go back in the fall, I’ll probably go back to disliking it again, but for now I wish I was back in school.

— Molly Lawrence, 16, Hyattsville, Md.

I would prefer to go to school rather than be taught curriculum at home, because then I would be able to play with my friends at recess and talk with them at lunch. My parents don’t know what my teacher would teach, so I can’t learn the new science curriculum. I can only review science I have already been taught.

— Kaelin Cunningham, 11, Fairfax, Va.

It’s not as glorious as it seems. It gets boring. I personally am starting to miss my friends and my teachers. I sit inside all day and work. Yes, I am grateful for what I have, and I am grateful I still have a family. Staying home and doing distant learning has made me discover deep respect for teachers I didn’t even know I have. Now I see how hard they work for their students. I see how much they care.

— Tatum Connolly-Wazewski, 13, New Windsor, N.Y.

There are days where I don’t want to do any work, and it’s really easy to just not do it. Learning at school definitely helps motivate me to get my work done, because I’m in the environment to do work and there’s really nothing else I can do. At home I have the liberty to literally do anything other than schoolwork.

— Valeria Ramos, 16, Riverdale Park, Md.

I feel like I understand more at school than at home looking at the screen. I think some of my teachers try their best to teach me through video calls, but for some subjects, it doesn’t always work or help. Sometimes I am lost. Even if I ask a million questions, I don’t feel that it is the same, and I can’t believe I am going to say this, but I would rather be at school than home. I find it distracting that I am at home and learning at the same time, because there are so many distractions — you either hear the TV on, someone’s cooking, police and ambulance sirens in the background, etc. I can say emotionally my teachers have been very helpful and caring, which I love the most.

— Syeda Saima, 15, Queens

Image
Anna Rogers, 12, of Berea, Ky., depicted the global impact of the coronavirus.
Anna Rogers, 12, of Berea, Ky., depicted the global impact of the coronavirus.
The virus is scary. And thinking about it can make you sad.

Every day I take a walk around my neighborhood with my parents and when I see my friends, I’m told I’m have to stay six feet away. I get really sad I can’t be with them. I’m also scared they’ll never find a cure and I’ll never get to play close with my friends again. I’m hoping that things will be back to normal someday.

— Sasha Udovich, 9, Los Angeles

I’m in my last year of middle school, and I will probably have to finish it from home. I wonder about the students next year, students who I’ll spend the next four years with, whose family died because of this, whose parents died because of this. I wonder about my family. Are they going to get sick? I wonder about the children who’ll die. I wonder if I’ll be one of them. If my family will be the one this virus reaches next. I start high school next year, and I wonder how.

— Louisa Elena, 13, Jacksonville, Fla.

My little brother asks every morning if the germs went away yet — he really misses school like me.

— Tessa Podvesker, 7, Montclair, N.J.

Image
Juny Tranel, 11, of San Francisco, says that he tries hard not to get distracted at home.
Juny Tranel, 11, of San Francisco, says that he tries hard not to get distracted at home.
It’s hard to know what the future will be like.

Online school is the equivalent of no school. The one-on-one time, the accountability, the schedule and routine are all gone. No parent is perfect, and no parent can effectively replace seven to eight teachers, all with different subjects. The issue is the loss of many factors for success. Isolation, no routine, even just the lack of repercussions for not doing work. All of this leads to a decline.

— Pres, 17, Fayetteville, Ark.

Thousands of juniors (including myself) have selected rigorous courses for our last full year before our apps our due. Many of us are taking five or six A.P. classes and finally getting leadership positions for the clubs and activities we dedicated so much time to. As I sit at home, I feel that the edge that I have been working so long for is slipping away. I was ready to make this last full semester count.

— Fahad Mohsin, 17, Northborough, Mass.

I feel as if I can’t take a break or “turn off” school. I’m up at 7 a.m. and doing some form of school work or studying until 7 p.m. I even take my flashcards down while I make lunch.

— Madisen Cordell, 17, Lake Stevens, Wash.

Most schools in America have senior prom, Senior Ditch Day, senior prank, senior banquets, and most important, graduation. No one signed a contract giving me the right to any of that, but then again, I feel entitled to my senior year.

When I walked out of school on March 11, I didn’t expect that to be the last time I would see the people and the places that helped me mature into the person that I am today. Now when people ask what high school taught me, I can honestly say that I learned something outside of math and science: Nothing in life is promised.

— Rachel Osband, 18, San Jose, Calif.

Categories Education Reform, Students

Chalkbeat: Big Education Philanthropists Are Missing in Action on Coronavirus Response

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2020 //
13

Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat checked to see what the billionaire philanthropists are doing in response to the coronavirus. The answer: Not much.

When asked to underwrite charter schools, Teach for America, and wacky teacher-evaluation systems, they shell out hundreds of millions of dollars. When the nation’s schools are closed by a pandemic, and it’s clear that millions of children need food security, computers, and internet access, the money slows to a dribble. When the nation’s schools face massive budget cuts because of declining revenues, and these cuts will increase class sizes, cause layoffs, lead to drastic cuts in the arts and athletics, Will they wake up and pitch in to help?

He writes:

Here’s how four of the largest education foundations and grantmakers are responding:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation says its “commitment to and overall objective of our education strategies are not changing.” But it is prioritizing supporting teaching by expanding “access to interactive, student-facing digital content and high-quality print materials” and “supporting data collection efforts to understand the impact of COVID-19 on educators and families.”

The City Fund, which is funded primarily by John Arnold and Reed Hastings, said it has committed new $100,000 grants to in its 14 active cities, and also allowed those organizations to repurpose $100,000 of existing grants to respond to the coronavirus. That will total nearly $3 million in emergency support. In Oakland, for instance, the Oakland Reach has used this to provide small cash payments of families in need. In D.C., money has gone to a fund to make Wi-Fi and laptops available to students. In St. Louis, a nonprofit has created a “remote learning innovation fund.”

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has awarded over $1.6 million to education groups, including money to those aiming to expand broadband access in the San Francisco Bay Area, to disseminate resources to parents, and to provide guidance to school districts moving instruction online.

The Walton Family Foundation did not offer details. But along with the Kauffman Foundation, it has contributed to a $2 million education relief fund in Kansas City designed to support teachers, families, and schools with costs and challenges associated with COVID-19.

So far, most of the private grants in response to the virus amount to a few million dollars at most. By comparison, the federal stimulus for K-12 schools totaled $13.5 billion — and many worry it won’t be anywhere near enough, considering that high-poverty school districts are facing a daunting combination of greater needs and less money.

When billionaires pony up only a few million in the face of a national catastrophe, that’s not a contribution. That’s a tip. That’s surely not “putting children first.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Philanthropy, Privatization

NPE ACTION ENDORSES JOE BIDEN!

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2020 //
64

Please read the NPE Action endorsement of Joe Biden for President.

We support public schools.

Donald Trump and his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, are hostile to the very idea of public schools. They have spent three years proposing deep cuts to public education and attempting to establish federally-funded vouchers for private and religious schools.

In contrast, Joe Biden has proposed dramatic increases in funding to public schools by tripling the amount that Title I schools would receive. He has voiced strong support for more counselors and psychologists in our schools, as well as increased funding for high-quality pre-kindergarten programs. He supports community schools that link social services and the school together to serve children and their families better.

At the Public Education Forum held in Pittsburgh in December of 2019, Joe Biden was asked by NPE Board member Denisha Jones if he would commit to ending standardized testing in schools. His unequivocal response was, “Yes. You are preaching to the choir.” He said to a national audience that “teaching to a test underestimates and discounts the things that are most important for students to know.” He described evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students as a “big mistake.”

At the same public forum in Pittsburgh, he was dismissive of the policies of Secretary of Education DeVos, saying that under his administration, “Betsy DeVos’s whole notion of charter schools…are gone.”

The public statements expressed by Joe Biden encourage us to believe that he does not intend to follow the disastrous education policies of the Obama years included in Race to the Top, which were closely aligned with the failed policies of George Bush’s No Child Left Behind.

We are taking candidate Joe Biden at his word. We believe that he recognizes that Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind were harmful to our schools and our children.

However, if those policies re-emerge, we will vigorously oppose them. We will also continue to be engaged in monitoring the words of both candidates and their parties’ platforms.

We urge our supporters and all friends of public education to go to the polls in November and vote for Joe Biden. The future of our public schools and our democracy is at stake.

In the words of NPE Action President, Diane Ravitch, “We support Joe Biden because he has promised to reverse the failed “test-and-punish” federal policies of the past two decades. For the sake of our children, their teachers, our public schools, and our democracy, Trump must go.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization, Race to the Top, Support for public schools, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, VAM, Vouchers

Don’t Miss It! Cirque du Soleil is Live-Streaming Tonight for Free!

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2020 //
5

You won’t want to miss this great show!

The celebrated acrobatic troupe Cirque du Soleil will be live-streaming a 60-minute performance TONIGHT of a show called ZED.

It was performed only in Tokyo.

I have seen this group perform twice, and each time was thrilling. Their aesthetic is dazzling. Their physical grace is astonishing.

If you tried to catch their show in Las Vegas, the ticket would cost more than $100.

Don’t miss the chance to see them tonight for free.

Categories Art, Education Reform

New York Review of Books: Trump’s Responsibility for the Spread of Coronavirus

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2020 //
21

Trump would like everyone to forget what he said in January, February, and March to minimize the danger of the coronavirus. Other nations acted, we did not. He continually gave false assurances that the disease was no problem, that it was under control, that people should proceed with their lives as usual.

Fintan O’Toole wrote in the New York Review of Books about the contradictory impulses of Trump’s base. On the one hand, all dangerous things come from The Other, and Trump alone has the courage to save us (from outsiders, Muslims, Mexicans, socialists, Communists, Democrats, etc.) On the other hand, his base embraces risk. They love guns. They want everyone to have one. They don’t like regulation. They want the government to stay out of their lives, not regulating the water or the air.

The article is called “Vector-in-Chief.” It might have also been called “Trump and the Paranoid Style.”

Strangest of all, however, is that Trump is a germaphobe, yet didn’t worry about this germ, which can cause death. Maybe it is because he is personally protected, surrounded by minders. He famously said that the CDC believes everyone should wear a face mask, but that he wouldn’t do it. Count on his faithful base to take his advice to “do as I say, not as I do.” They will crowd the pews in church, and they will not wear face masks. Someone on Twitter put the social risk best: “Telling states and counties to make their own decisions about whether to impose social distancing is like setting aside a peeing section in a pool.”

O’Toole writes:

On July 4, 1775, just his second day serving as commander-in-chief of the American revolutionary forces, George Washington issued strict orders to prevent the spread of infection among his soldiers: “No person is to be allowed to go to Fresh-water pond a fishing or any other occasion as there may be a danger of introducing the small pox into the army.” As he wrote later that month to the president of the Continental Congress, John Hancock, he was exercising “the utmost Vigilance against this most dangerous Enemy.” On March 8, 2020, well over two months after the first case of Covid-19 had been confirmed in the United States, Dan Scavino, assistant to the president and director of social media at the White House, tweeted a mocked-up picture of his boss Donald Trump playing a violin. The caption read: “My next piece is called Nothing Can Stop What’s Coming.” Trump himself retweeted the image with the comment: “Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me!”

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Donald Trump is no George Washington, but his descent from commander-in-chief to vector-in-chief is nonetheless dizzying. Trump’s narcissism, mendacity, bullying, and malignant incompetence were obvious before the coronavirus crisis and they have been magnified rather than moderated in his surreal response to a catastrophe whose full gravity he failed to accept until March 31, when it had become horribly undeniable. The volatility of his behavior during February and March—the veering between flippancy and rage, breezy denial and dark fear-mongering—may not seem to demand further explanation. It is his nature. Yet there is a mystery at its heart. For if there is one thing that Trump has presented as his unique selling point, it is “utmost Vigilance,” his endless insistence that, as he puts it, “our way of life is under threat.”

If the United States is to be run by a man who has perfected the paranoid style, the least its citizens might expect is a little of that paranoia when it is actually needed. Yet even on March 26, when the US had surpassed China and Italy to become the most afflicted country in the world, Trump continued to talk down the threat from the virus.

“Many people have it. I just spoke to two people. They had it. They never went to a doctor. They never went to anything. They didn’t even report it…The people that actually die, that percentage is much lower than I actually thought…The mortality rate, in my opinion…it’s way, way down.”

Categories Education Reform

Jack Schneider: Pandemic Lays Bare the Gaping Inequities in Our Society

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2020 //
14

Jack Schneider, historian of education at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, says that the pandemic lays bare the fact that vast social inequality produces vast educational inequality. So-called reformers have argued that “fixing the schools” will “fix society.” Schneider shows that this is backwards. Readers, please send this article to the teacher-bashers and public-school-bashers at Education Post, Teach for America, the Walton Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the many other organizations who insist that public schools alone can fix the inequities that harm children before they enter school.

He writes, on Valerie Strauss’s blog:

For the past generation, we have been talking about the achievement gap in American public education — the fact that low income students and students from historically marginalized racial groups, on average, score lower than their more privileged peers. Chiefly, this matter has been treated as a problem with the schools.
In a news release accompanying No Child Left Behind legislation, for instance, president George W. Bush celebrated that “An ‘age of accountability’ is starting to replace an era of low expectations” in our schools. His Democratic successor, Barack Obama, went a step further, pinning responsibility on educators. “The single most important factor” in determining student achievement, Obama insisted, is “who their teacher is.”



Scholars, meanwhile, have made a very different case.
In the research community, it is widely recognized that students transition into schools not from a blank slate, but from an unequal society. Because of that, young people enter school with vastly different levels of preparation. As renowned teacher educator Gloria Ladson-Billings argued in a celebrated address to the educational research community, the “achievement gap” is a misnomer, implying an expectation that all children would perform equally at school. Instead, she suggested, we should train our collective gaze on the “education debt” — the damage done to particular communities by “the historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral decisions and policies that characterize our society.”




The achievement gap, in this framing, is merely a symptom of broader inequality, past and present. The implication is that maybe schools are not to blame, after all. Such a position is well-supported by educational research. But for many Americans, it remains relatively abstract.


The covid-19 outbreak, then, may be the best time to actually see the education debt in action. The playing field across schools has been leveled with a bulldozer — differences in school funding, facilities, curricular resources, teacher experience, arts and music education and more are essentially moot. With students at home, schooling has shifted online, dramatically reducing what can happen educationally.

Assume, then, that the schools are now more or less equal. An outgoing tide has lowered all boats.
Yet, some students will make significant educational progress during this hiatus from school, even as many of their peers lose ground.


Consider, first, the parental supports some young people have. Roughly 69 percent of students will have two parents at home with them, tag-teaming to offer support and encouragement. Some of those parents — disproportionately drawn from those with extended formal education — will feel at ease generating a school-like environment.


Those adults who successfully navigated school themselves, especially the minority of Americans who have college degrees, will be more likely to press their children to stay focused on academic work for several hours a day. That is not because they are better parents; it is because they are better situated to pass on their educational privilege.

Parents are a child’s first teachers — teaching language, social skills, dispositions and more — and remain the primary influence on how young people approach school.


Consider, too, the resources that are now differentially available to students.

Unlike their high-poverty peers, children from middle-class and affluent households almost all have high-speed Internet access at home, as well as web-enabled devices. They’ve got enough books to see them through the end of the crisis — twice as many, on average, as low-income families and African American families. Their homes are more likely to be set up in a manner that supports school learning.

Such differences explain why summer breaks from school widen the achievement gap.


Finally, it is important to consider the way that basic needs will be met, or not, in American households over the next several months. Many families have well-stocked pantries and a satisfying rotation of takeout orders; others will struggle to put food on the table.


In Somerville, Mass., where I live, the district is preparing “grab and go” meals to replace the free and reduced-price breakfasts and lunches that children here — and 20 million students across America — ordinarily receive at school.

To relax, some families will take day trips for nature walks or retreat to their second homes; their less privileged counterparts will be stranded in place, often without heat.

Twenty-two percent of the homeless population are children.
Our schools are not equal.

Schools in affluent neighborhoods often have more resources than their counterparts in poor neighborhoods, even as research demonstrates a need for the opposite. White children and middle-class children are generally taught by more experienced teachers than their peers and are less likely to experience schooling as an unending preparation for standardized tests. Privileged students receive a more well-rounded curriculum and maintain better access to arts and music education.




Yet even if our schools were equal, they would not produce equal results. They would reflect the different circumstances that characterize the home and neighborhood environments in which young people spend a majority of their time. For the poorest and most marginalized, this means not just present disadvantage, but also the cumulative effects of intergenerational poverty.

Right now, this is what you will see. Gaps are not closing; they are beginning to yawn.


For two decades, we have been trashing schools and blaming teachers. It is easy to assume 
responsibility rests with them. But the achievement gap is a product of our unequal society — the reflection of an education debt that has never been settled.

It is not something schools alone will fix; and as they remain shuttered, that fact will become painfully clear.
Perhaps the present crisis, then, will prompt some deeper reflection about why students succeed. And perhaps we will awaken to the collective obligations we have for so long failed to fulfill.


Schools will eventually reopen. When they do, we should return with eyes unclouded. Rather than finding fault with our schools and the educators who bring them to life, we might begin to wrestle with what it would take for all students to enter on equal footing. Until then, even an equal education will not produce equal outcomes.

Categories Education Reform, Inequity, Injustice, Poverty

Laura Chapman: What “Money Follows the Child” Really Means

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2020 //
12

Our reader Laura Chapman explains what the phrase “the money follows the child” really means. It’s another way of saying that every child should have “a backpack full of cash” strapped on them, to be spent anywhere. Another way to see it is as a jackhammer to destroy our democratically-controlled system of public schools and turn children over to the tender mercies of the free market. The billionaires—the Waltons, Bloomberg, Koch, Gates, Broad, Hastings, Anschutz, Sinquefeld—love the free market. They think it’s best for everyone.

Chapman writes:

The new phrase for money-follows-the-child policies favored by those who want privatized education is this:

We have a “pluralistic system of education.” That phrase is already being used in promote subsidized choice, with everyone eligible for federal funds and expansion of state-level choice programs.

Pluralistic education means that the great American way to educate children will support–
homeschoolers,
free-lance education service providers,
charter schools,
private schools,
religious schools,
traditional public schools,
online instructional delivery,
pay-for-success ventures,
specialty programs for the talented and those in need of therapeutic support (whether in homes, commercial facilities, or brick and mortar schools).
and other possibilities.

In this pluralistic system, market forces and innovative forms of instruction flourish, unimpeded by regulation. Federal subsidies are “fair” when money follows the student.

Proponents claim that all of these flavors of education can and should be subsidized with public funds, eithe in proportion to their market share or their performance on the optional “normative pluralistic standards and curriculum.”

Examples of optional “normative pluralistic standards” are those present in current federal and state legislation, in national campaigns for standards and tests such as those launched to support the “Common Core State Standards,” and the proliferation of rating schemes such as those at GreatSchools.org, US News and World Reports, and EdWeek’s “Chance of Success” reports.

This Pluralism R-US meme is being promoted by EdChoice, the organization once known as the Milton & Rose Friedman Foundation, also Jeb Bush and his Chiefs for Change organization, and scholars.

Key scholars are at the Walton funded University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform; Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes; the University of Washington Bothell’s Center on Reinventing Public Education; Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance; and Johns Hopkins School of Education Institute for Education Policy.

For a brief look at the rationale for this meme and the policy agenda see
“Pluralism in American School Systems,” https://edpolicy.education.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/PluralismBrief-Jan2018.pdf

For a look at other promotions, see this recent 74 Million.org call for the use of stimulus money for “all types of schools.”

Bradford: $13B in Stimulus Money for K-12 Schools Is a Good Start. But All Types of Schools Will Need More Help From the Feds in Order to Reopen


Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Home Schooling, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

SAT Will Offer Tests Online, Without Supervision

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2020 //
35

The College Board relies on the revenues produced by its premier product, the SAT.

What to do in a global pandemic?

Normally the College Board is very obsessed with test security.

But now it has decided students can take the SAT online at home.

How will they know who is answering the questions?

Categories Education Reform

Dana Milbank: Is Trump Comparing Himself to Captain Bligh or Captain Queeg?

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2020 //
15

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post peers into Trump’s erratic and self-aggrandizing behavior, as tests for coronavirus continue to be few in number and very difficult to obtain for ordinary citizens.

Well blow me down and shiver me timbers.

As our ship of state founders in tempest-tossed seas, our captain has just likened himself to one of the most reviled villains in maritime history.
President Trump, disappointed that governors rejected his assertion that his “authority is total,” called them insurrectionists. “Tell the Democrat Governors that ‘Mutiny On The Bounty’ was one of my all time favorite movies,” he tweeted Tuesday. Operating from his customary position of near-total ignorance, he continued: “A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!”

Thus did the president find common cause with Captain William Bligh of the HMS Bounty, whose crew forced him off the ship in the South Pacific in 1789 because of his cruel and tyrannical ways. The real Bligh narrowly survived, but literature and Hollywood made him into a legendary antihero.
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Trump threatens to adjourn Congress to make appointments

President Trump on April 15 threatened to use Article II of the Constitution to force Congress to adjourn to make recess appointments. (The Washington Post)
“I’ve never known a better seaman, but as a man, he’s a snake,” says Clark Gable as mutineer Fletcher Christian in the 1935 version. “He doesn’t punish for discipline. He likes to see men crawl.”
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In the 1962 film, a court-martial judge says: “Justice and decency are carried in the heart of the captain, or they be not aboard. It is for this reason that the Admiralty has always sought to appoint its officers from the ranks of gentlemen. The court regrets to note that the appointment of Captain William Bligh was, in that respect, a failure.”

Is it possible Trump is more self-aware than we thought?

Like Bligh, he is abusive. Unlike Bligh, he is a poor navigator. The Trump-as-errant-captain theme has been explored, delightfully, by novelist Dave Eggers in his recent allegory, “The Captain and the Glory”:

“He nudged the wheel a bit left, and the entire ship listed leftward, which was both frightening and thrilling. He turned the wheel to the right, and the totality of the ship, and its uncountable passengers and their possessions, all were sent rightward. In the cafeteria, where the passengers were eating lunch, a thousand plates and glasses shattered. An elderly man was thrown from his chair, struck his head on the dessert cart and died later that night. High above, the Captain was elated by the riveting drama caused by the surprises of his steering.”

So it is with our captain, who claims absolute authority but takes no responsibility. He announces he’s cutting off funding to the World Health Organization in the middle of the pandemic. He condemns the WHO for praising China’s transparency, even though he said in January he “greatly appreciates [China’s] efforts and transparency.” His conflicting messages about reopening the economy throw the country into confusion. He assembles so many coronavirus task forces that he will need another to keep track of them all. And after his long delayed and botched virus response, even now the number of tests in U.S. commercial labs is falling.

At Wednesday evening’s session, Trump turned the tiller randomly. After proclaiming the United States has “passed the peak” of the virus, he swerved into complaints about “partisan obstruction” holding up his nominees and threatened the never-before-tested “constitutional authority to adjourn both houses of Congress,” which would provoke another crisis in the middle of the pandemic.

He veered into complaints about the “disgusting” Voice of America and the “impeachment hoax.” He lurched into attacks on the World Trade Organization , various Democrats and governors generally, asserting that “we have the right to do whatever we want.” He accused the WHO of a conspiracy to hide the virus and boasted about his name going on government-issued relief checks: “People will be very happy to get a big fat beautiful check, and my name is on it.”

The ship has become accustomed to such unpredictable steering: He touts a virus treatment that so far shows more alarming side effects than efficacy. He announces virus-testing schemes that don’t exist. He talks about pardoning Joe Exotic. He blames everybody except his own administration, which is doing things very, very strongly and powerfully. “The Defense Production Act was used very powerfully, more powerfully than anybody would know, in fact, so powerfully that, for the most part, we didn’t have to officially take it out,” he proclaims.
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As the captain propounds powerful gibberish, the mutiny builds. Regional blocs make their own pandemic-recovery plans. Allies condemn his assault on the WHO. Republican Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) tells Politico that Trump has been “very uneven.” Even Trump-friendly outlets such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page offer some criticism.

“WSJ is Fake News!” shouts the captain.

“What the hell is happening to @FoxNews?”

What’s happening, captain, is you’ve hit the rocks.

Categories Education Reform

Phoenix: COVID patient Saved by Rare and Risky Blood Treatment

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2020 //
27

Doctors in Arizona saved a Phoenix man With COVID 19, who was at death’s door, using a rare and risky procedure. This story, written by Alison Steinbach, appeared in The Arizona Republic.


A Phoenix man is the first in Arizona to survive COVID-19 through a rare form of treatment called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) therapy.

Enes Dedic, 53, was on the brink of death with a ventilator until his doctors at HonorHealth used ECMO as a last resort. Dedic is among the first U.S. COVID-19 patients to survive the disease by using the treatment and is among around 10 worldwide.

ECMO works by helping oxygenate blood outside the body so blood doesn’t need to transfer through damaged or filled lungs. Instead, tubes carry blood from the body to an external artificial lung that removes carbon dioxide and adds oxygen, at which point an artificial heart pumps the blood back into the body.

As a public service, The Arizona Republic is offering coronavirus coverage relating to public safety free of charge. Support The Republic by subscribing to azcentral.com.

It’s a last hope treatment, as the mortality rate on ECMO is around 40% — “extraordinarily high for almost any medical procedure” — according to Dedic’s doctors.

After 10 days in a medical coma on ECMO, Dedic woke up responsive and soon was able to FaceTime his wife.

“I can’t even express myself,” his wife Olivera Dedic said. “I was jumping through the roof when I heard that they woke him up and he’s doing better.”

After returning from travel overseas, Enes Dedic spent a few weeks at home in the Deer Valley area of Phoenix battling fevers, chills, aches and nausea.

He first checked into HonorHealth’s Deer Valley Medical Center on March 15 and quickly deteriorated. He was intubated and transferred to the HonorHealth John C. Lincoln Medical Center in Phoenix for increased mechanical ventilation.

A team of doctors tried everything to save him, said Dr. Anselmo Garcia, a pulmonologist and critical care physician. Enes Dedic was treated with all the potential drugs used for COVID-19 including hydrochloroquine, azithromycin, Kaletra, Actemra, antibiotics and anti-inflammatories.

None of these worked.

As a last resort, doctors turned to ECMO, said Dr. Robert Riley, chief of cardiothoracic surgery at HonorHealth. Riley performed the surgical procedure for ECMO.

Categories Education Reform
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