Archives for category: Education Reform
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My New Plan for Blogging, Starting Today

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2023 //
51

As longtime readers may recall, I started blogging in April 2012. At that time, I posted five times a day. Some days I posted even more frequently. Recently, I have reduced daily posts to three, with occasional increases for breaking news.

Starting today, I will post whatever I choose. Once, twice, three times. Or more. Or not at all.

Maybe nothing will change.

I don’t want to feel compelled to find something to fill a hole in the schedule.

As of this writing, the blog has had 40.8 million page views.

I have written more than 29,000 posts.

You have submitted nearly one million comments.

I will continue to read every comment.

Keep reading and commenting.

Categories Education Reform, Personal

Johann Neem: Begin the New School Year with Gratitude for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2023 //
4

Johann Neem is author of Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America. He teaches history at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.

A Plea for the New School Year- Johann Neem

I am so excited for the new school year to begin. I admit that I am a bit sentimental when it comes to public schools. That’s because public schools are one of the few institutions that almost all of us have been through, which means that the experiences of schooling connect us within and between generations. There are the common schedules and rituals. There will be the first day of school. There will be school pictures. There will be holidays and dances. There will be field trips. And, of course, homework and tests. It’s part of the growing up experience in America. In a diverse society, it’s easy to focus on our differences. But public schools not only bring diverse people together, they give us something to share for a lifetime.

As we head back for another school year, then, I hope that we can put aside some of the loudest and most extreme voices of our partisan culture wars. Actually, most Americans want the same things. We want our kids to have a fair shot. We want our kids to be part of a shared national community. We want our kids to be challenged, and also supported. We want our kids to be safe.

That’s why public schools, I still believe, can bring us together.After all, the overwhelming majority of parents support their local public school. And for good reasons. There is strong evidence that public schools are effective for students at all income levels. Yet partisan rhetoric has eroded support for public schools. From the right, advocates of parental rights and privatization urge parents to find schools that reflect their familyvalues, rather than see the schools as places where we forge common values. But too many on the left, including many educators, also question whether we Americans can share the same histories, holidays, values, and rituals. In the name of cultural pluralism and diversity, they challenge the public schools’ longstanding mission of socialization.

We need to keep the faith. As an immigrant, I know that public schools can be our welcome mats. Our nation has had, and still has, its share of nativism and prejudice, but what other nation welcomes so many people from so many different backgrounds? In public schools, we all become Americans. We read the same books, eat the same cafeteria food, play the same games, studythe same subjects, and get to know each other.

So this is my plea for the new school year. We will always argue over what we should teach, and in a democracy we should. But let’s enter this year focusing on what we share and what binds us together, rather than what separates us. There is so much pulling us apart today. It’s a shame that our public schools have become one more thing to fight over because we need them. We benefit individually and collectively from an educated public.

As the new school year begins, I hope we can all take a deep breath and remember that despite all their flaws, despite all our disagreements, at some deeper level, we Americans all agree that the rituals of American schooling—the academics, the bell schedules, the band concerts, the football games, the fieldtrips, the prom decorations—define us. We maintain them because they maintain us.

Categories Citizenship, Community Schools, Education Reform, Ethics, Supporting public schools

Linda Darling-Hammond: The Promise of Community Schools

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2023 //
33

Linda Darling-Hammond is a prominent professor at Stanford and president of The Learning Policy Institute. She has been a public school teacher, a researcher, and president of the California State Board of Education. In this essay, she explains why the community school model may be the best path forward for school reform.

She writes:

“Kasserian ingera”—the traditional greeting of Masai warriors—asks: “And how are the children?” It is still a greeting among the Masai, acknowledging the high value they place on their children’s well-being. The traditional answer, “All the children are well,” means that the safety and welfare of the young are protected by their communities.

Unfortunately, in the United States, we know that all of our children are not well. Indeed, by any measure, children and youth in the United States are struggling. The aftermath of the pandemic has brought with it an epidemic of mental health issues, from anxiety and depression to suicidal ideation. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report from 2022 found that 44% of adolescents said they felt sad or hopeless most of the time during the spring of 2021, and 20% seriously considered suicide. During that time, 29% had an adult in their household lose a job and 24% went hungry; 55% said they were exposed to harsh verbal or physical treatment at home.

Many report continuing to feel disconnected from school. Among high school students from 95 districts surveyed by Youth Truth in 2021–22, a minority (40%) reported feeling like part of their school community or enjoying coming to school, and just 39% reported having an adult at school they could talk with when they feel “upset, stressed, or having problems.” (See figure below.) These proportions are even lower for students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and students in large schools.

It is in this context that a diverse and growing chorus of educators, students, families, and policymakers are calling for a reimagining of our schools. They are highlighting the need to center relationships, belonging, and community; to create structures and practices to support relevant and engaging learning; and to organize resources, supports, and opportunities in ways that mitigate the pernicious effects of structural racism and decades of disinvestment in low-income communities of color.

As Learning Policy Institute Senior Fellow in Residence Jeannie Oakes noted recently, “We need to have schools really change the way they operate to compensate for deficiencies, not in the kids, but in our social safety net.”

Responding to the uniquely challenging moment we’re in, many districts and states are making big bets on community schools—both to address the tattered social safety net Oakes refers to, as well as to provide a catalyst for the deeper cultural and practice changes needed to better serve students and adults alike.

These initiatives are underway in large urban districts like Albuquerque, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Oakland, as well as in smaller rural communities in California, Kentucky, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont. A number of states have also established funding and supports for community schools. Maryland established the Concentration of Poverty grant program to provide annual community school personnel grants to eligible schools, along with additional per-pupil grant funding for each eligible student. New York created a community schools set-aside in its school funding formula for high-need districts and funded three regional technical assistance centers for community schools. California, for its part, has leveraged multiyear budget surpluses in 2021 and 2022 to make a historic $4.1 billion investment in planning, implementation, and coordination grants—as well as technical assistance—for the state-funded California Community Schools Partnership Program. This investment is intended to provide sufficient resources for every high-poverty school in California to become a community school within the next 5 to 7 years.

Community schools are a place-based strategy deeply rooted in their local context—the needs, assets, hopes, and dreams of students, families, educators, and community partners. They leverage a complex web of partnerships and relationships, like those at Mendez High School in East Los Angeles, to support and engage students and families. By integrating access to services—from medical care to housing and other supports—and making them available to students and families on school campuses, community schools provide a much-needed alternative to the fragmented and bureaucratic social services gauntlet that families in need are typically required to navigate. As we have seen time and again during the COVID-19 pandemic, these services and supports—provided in the context of trusting and caring relationships—can be life changing and can mean the difference between academic success and struggling students and families.

At Mendez, because of the infrastructure created through its community schools approach, the school and its partners were able to provide vital services to students and families as soon as schools shut down in 2020. A mobile clinic that already served the school began COVID-19 testing for the community; mental health providers already in place conducted regular mental health check-ins with students via devices or at a safe physical distance. Other partners created care packages with food, toilet paper, electronic benefit transfer cards, and other essentials, and teachers organized to provide Wi-Fi hot spots to families before the district had the capacity to do so.

But to achieve the transformation our students need and the times demand, community schools must be about much more than providing an efficient structure for integrated student supports (or wraparound services, as they are sometimes called). Transformation requires that we also address the structural barriers to student well-being and academic success that are encompassed by the other foundational elements of community schools: a culture of belonging, safety, and care; community-connected classroom instruction; expanded and enriched learning opportunities; empowered student and family engagement; and collaborative leadership. Foundational to all of this is a grounding in whole childeducation.

When implemented well, community schools are guided by principles for equitable whole child practices that are grounded in the science of learning and development. This whole child framework is at the center of the community schools initiative in California, where the State Board of Education has thus far approved $1.5 billion in planning and implementation grants from a larger initiative that is intended to reach one third of the state’s schools in high-need communities.

The key elements of a whole child framework should be foundational to our vision of transformational community schools:

  • Structures and practices to foster positive developmental relationships and ensure that students are known and supported. Examples include looping in the elementary grades, where a teacher stays with the class for more than one year, and utilizing advisory systems in middle and high school, which create small family units that offer personal attention, space for sharing needs and feelings, and family connections that support each student.
  • Supportive and caring school communities where students feel a strong sense of belonging and are safe to bring their full selves, without fear of being bullied by peers or stereotyped or negatively judged by students or adults at school.
  • Culturally affirming social and emotional learning that is infused throughout the school day and includes skill-building, as well as educative and restorative approaches to classroom management and discipline, so that children and young people learn responsibility for themselves and their community.
  • Rich learning experiences that support inquiry, motivation, competence, self-efficacy, and self-directed learning.
  • Integrated student supports that remove academic and non-academic barriers to learning by providing health and social services as needed, tutoring and other academic supports, and a focus on children’s individual talents and needs.

Move at the “Speed of Trust”

Just as we need to rethink how students are engaged and supported in schools, we also need to reimagine adult interactions—among families and educators, as well as among school staff. That means treating families as trusted partners in their students’ well-being and academic success and intentionally supporting their capacity building and leadership development.

As importantly, it also means investing in educators and school staff, so they have the necessary tools, agency, and support—including support for their mental health and emotional well-being—to shift practices in ways that expand the capacities of students and adults alike. This includes enabling new teachers’ success with strong induction and mentoring, while providing leadership opportunities for more experienced teachers. It means providing the collaboration time essential to advancing meaningful and engaging instruction and supporting teacher-led professional development. And, just as with students and families, it means nurturing trust and collaborative leadership among staff and with school and district leaders.

Open the link to read the rest of this article and to see the graphs.

Categories Community Schools, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Parents, Students, Teachers

Houston: Here Were Mike Miles’ Goals for Dallas in 2012

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2023 //
11

While browsing through some old posts, I stumbled upon this one, which is a story that appeared in the Dallas Morning News in 2012, shortly after Mike Miles took charge of the Dallas public schools. It gives valuable insight into Mike Miles’ thinking. Miles was appointed to lead the Houston Independent School District by State Commissioner Mike Morath after the state of Texas took control of Houston, fired its elected board and their superintendent. Miles is a military man who learned about education at the Broad Academy. Military men give orders; so do Broadies.

Please note that nothing in Miles’ goals addresses early childhood education, class size, medical clinics, or nutrition. Miles believes in metrics, the coin of the conservative, neoliberal realm.

Matthew Haag and Tawnell D. Hobbs wrote this story for the Dallas Morning News. It appeared May 10, 2102.

Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles outlines ambitious plan to help make district one of the nation’s best

Mike Miles not only wants to boost graduation rates but also wants to see more high school graduates go straight into the workforce. To achieve that, he wants to create a “career-ready” certificate that would give eligible students priority for entry-level jobs at area businesses.

 

Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles on Thursday unveiled a slew of ambitious goals, proposals and recommendations designed to turn around the school district and make it one of the nation’s best.

In his first presentation to trustees as the district’s new leader, Miles spent nearly two hours laying out his vision for the district in a presentation that both excited and overwhelmed the board members.

Under the plan, teachers would be under more scrutiny. Principals would have one year to prove their worth. And the business community would be asked to step up.

If the road map is followed, Miles said, Dallas ISD is bound to become a premier school district.

“We are going to raise expectations for our staff,” said Miles, who earned a reputation for disrupting the status quo in the school district he will soon leave in Colorado Springs, Colo. “If you cannot tell that from the presentation, you have to know it from what you heard about me.”

He said DISD will begin rolling out some changes next school year, while other changes will span several years. The most immediate change, he said, will be a philosophical one. The district must embrace a vision and mission of raising academic achievement, improving instruction and not accepting excuses.

“We cannot just post it and market it and put it in little brochures. We have to practice this,” said Miles, adding that he wants 80 percent of DISD employees to be “proficient” on those beliefs in a year.

Many of the changes Miles laid out Thursday mirror those he implemented while in Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs.

A seemingly small change he suggested — one he said stirred outrage among teachers in Harrison — is to keep classroom doors open all day.

With the doors open, principals and administrators can move freely into classrooms to observe teachers. Under Miles’ plan, every Dallas teacher would be observed up to 10 times a year. In three years, those observations will contribute to teachers’ grades and factor into their salaries, as part of a pay-for-performance evaluation system.

Rena Honea, president of the teachers group Alliance-AFT, said “people are going to be in shock” with Miles’ proposals. “I envision it will be very different from what DISD has seen and experienced,” she said.

Miles has said change will be hard, but it’s necessary.

“If you cannot raise student achievement or have high quality of instruction, you cannot be a teacher in Dallas,” he said Thursday.

90% grad rate by 2020.

If the changes are successful, Miles said, the district will see skyrocketing graduation rates and achieve goals former superintendents promised but failed to reach.

Only three-quarters of DISD students currently graduate in four years of high school — a number Miles wants to see hit 90 percent by 2020. He also wants student SAT scores to jump nearly 30 percent over that time.

“Even if the district was in the best position possible, we would have to change things,” Miles said. “There is growing belief that children need more education after high school. High school is not the end point anymore.”

Throughout Miles’ presentation, trustees said little as they absorbed details of the 29-page plan and asked only a handful of questions. At one point, trustee Nancy Bingham, who appeared in favor of the goals, said Miles had caused her heartburn. Other trustees wondered how he would pay for everything.

Miles told trustees that he will spend the next few weeks finding money to cover new programs and initiatives. He said he would have to cut elsewhere to make room for his plans.

Miles’ plan would allow principals more control over their campuses, but they would also be required to meet higher expectations, such as improving communication with parents and the community. If the principals fail, others will be waiting for their jobs.

Starting next school year, Miles wants to create a leadership academy for 50 or 60 educators who want to become principals. They would spend the entire year in training and will vie for open positions.

The idea brought nods and smiles from some board members, but trustee Carla Ranger questioned the program. She hinted that the people who go through the yearlong training lab would have an unfair advantage to land the jobs over existing principals.

“If the notion is that there is an unfair advantage, welcome to principalship,” Miles told her. “You have to compete. That’s the way the world works.”

Miles said he will be open to tweaking his action plan, called “Destination 2020,” but remained unapologetic about his ambitious goals and plans.

Previous downfalls

Lofty expectations for DISD have been mentioned before.

Former DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa rolled out an ambitious reform plan when he arrived in 2005. A major component was to reach a 90 percent passing rate on state exams by 2010 for all student groups.

The ultimate goal, Hinojosa said, was for Dallas to be the top urban district in the nation within five years, culminating by winning the coveted Broad Prize for Urban Education. While test scores improved under Hinojosa’s watch, DISD did not come close to winning the Broad Prize.

Hinojosa also set goals for the district’s graduation rate. Before his arrival, the graduation rate was 81 percent in 2003-04. He had set a 93 percent graduation rate goal for 2009-10. But the goal wasn’t met. The Class of 2010 had a graduation rate of about 75 percent.

Miles not only wants to boost graduation rates but also wants to see more high school graduates go straight into the workforce. To achieve that, he wants to create a “career-ready” certificate that would give eligible students priority for entry-level jobs at area businesses.

Starting next school year, Miles wants 1,000 entry-level jobs for students with the certificates. And he wants the certificate program to grow in the coming years — with 3,000 jobs by 2015.

Miles said he will go to the business community, ask for their support and urge them to focus their efforts on helping DISD students. He said he also wants the business community to help define what it means to be career-ready.

“Let’s let them put their money where their mouth is,” he said.

At a glance: The superintendent’s plan

In his first presentation to the Dallas ISD trustees, new Superintendent Mike Miles unveiled “Destination 2020,” a plan that sets goals for the district. Here are parts of that plan.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT GOALS FOR 2020

Graduation: 90 percent of students will graduate on time. [The Class of 2010 had a graduation rate of about 75 percent, which is the percentage of ninth-graders who graduated in four years, according to Texas Education Agency records.]

Test scores: 60 percent of students will receive a 21 or higher composite score on the ACT out of a possible score of 36, or 1110 on the reading and math portions of the SAT out of a possible score of 1600. [For the Class of 2010, the average ACT score was 17.1; the average SAT score was 860, according to Texas Education Agency records.]

Workplace ready: 80 percent of student will be proficient on the “Year 2020 workplace readiness assessments.” According to the plan, “These assessments will be designed by the business and nonprofit communities and will include critical thinking, communications, teamwork, information literacy, technology skills, and worth ethic.”

College and careers: 90 percent of students will enter college, the military or a “career-ready job” right out of high school. A career-ready certificate will be created for students who meet certain goals. Businesses will be asked to commit to providing entry jobs for those students.

AREAS OF FOCUS

Some areas of focus for the next three years:

Effective teachers: “While teachers in DISD are working hard and are committed to children, a quick review of instruction and discussions with instructional leaders in Dallas reveals that the quality of instruction is inconsistent and that good instruction is not pervasive in many schools.”

Effective principals: “While we will provide the best support and professional development any principal in the state could hope to receive, they will have only one year to demonstrate that they have the capacity and what it takes to lead change and to improve the quality of instruction.”

Professional and high-functioning central office: “The entire central office system will be designed to support schools as teachers and principals try to accomplish three main goals: 1) Improve the quality of instruction; 2) Raise student achievement; 3) Create a positive school culture and climate.”

Engaging parents and the community: “We will be much more purposeful in helping community supporters work in reinforcing ways. … We cannot have 100 different partners spraying reform initiative on our schools. That would diffuse the efforts and take us off our direction. Thus, we will help channel the support and ensure the major educational initiatives work in reinforcing ways.”

KEY TARGETS FOR AUGUST 2015

At least 75 percent of the staff and 70 percent of community members agree or strongly agree with the direction of the district.

At least 80 percent of all classroom teachers and 100 percent of principals are placed on a pay-for-performance evaluation system.

At least 60 percent of teachers on the pay-for-performance evaluation system and 75 percent of principals agree that the system is “fair, accurate and rigorous.”

Create a rubric to assess the professional behavior and effectiveness of each major central office department.

For 90 percent of new hires, the maximum length of the hiring process will be less than five weeks.

The community provides 3,000 jobs for graduates who have “career-ready” certificates.

 

SOURCES: Destination 2020; Texas Education Agency

Miles started in Dallas with a five-year contract. He resigned after three years.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, Dallas, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, History, Houston

Florida: Restaurant Owner Fined $500,000 for Hiring Undocumented Workers

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2023 //
30

The Miami Herald reported that restaurants, hotels, construction, and other industries are experiencing a severe labor shortage due to Governor DeSantis’ crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Not only has he feuded with the state’s biggest employer, Disney, but he’s undermined the state’s tourist industry.

Richard Gonzmart, the fourth-generation owner of the iconic Columbia Restaurant chain based in Tampa, says it’s time for politicians to start listening on immigration. When federal immigration authorities arrived at his Sand Key restaurant in Clearwater to find outdated and noncompliant work documents for 19 of his employees, he was forced to fire them all — including seven people who had worked with his family for decades.

“With 2,000 employees, it becomes very difficult to monitor it,’’ Gonzmart said in an interview. “We think they’re legal but, when we had to check, we found seven people who have been with me 30 years — paying taxes, had children, grandchildren — and we were required to terminate them.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Tampa would not comment on the case, and Gonzmart said he was still negotiating a resolution to the conflict. But the incident underscores the double scrutiny many businesses face as a new state law layers new immigration enforcement policies to existing federal rules in a way that is exacerbating worker shortages.

It’s a scenario that’s playing out across Florida with restaurants, construction companies and farms searching for workers as the political rhetoric over immigration is clanging up against a tight labor market and expanding population. Gonzmart is the great-grandson of Casimiro Hernandez Sr., the founder of the historic Ybor City restaurant that is the chain’s anchor. Since its opening in 1905, the company has treated employees as part of the restaurant family, paying them above market wages and benefits, he said….

It’s a scenario that’s playing out across Florida with restaurants, construction companies and farms searching for workers as the political rhetoric over immigration is clanging up against a tight labor market and expanding population. Gonzmart is the great-grandson of Casimiro Hernandez Sr., the founder of the historic Ybor City restaurant that is the chain’s anchor. Since its opening in 1905, the company has treated employees as part of the restaurant family, paying them above market wages and benefits, he said….

It’s a scenario that’s playing out across Florida with restaurants, construction companies and farms searching for workers as the political rhetoric over immigration is clanging up against a tight labor market and expanding population. Gonzmart is the great-grandson of Casimiro Hernandez Sr., the founder of the historic Ybor City restaurant that is the chain’s anchor. Since its opening in 1905, the company has treated employees as part of the restaurant family, paying them above market wages and benefits, he said….

Many of his employees, especially those working in the kitchens and “back of the house” are fathers, sons and brothers, Gonzmart said. So when immigration officials told him the I-9 forms of his most loyal employees were not in compliance and he would have to fire them, he resisted. “I told them I wouldn’t let them go and they threatened to arrest me,’’ he recalled. “I said, ‘That’s a good idea. Why don’t you all come and arrest me? But let me know when, so I can have cameras here!’ Then, they sent me a $500,000 fine, and I let them go…”

Meanwhile, Gonzmart said the incident “almost put us out of business,’’ and while customer demand has rebounded from the pandemic, the inability to find enough new staff has forced him to suspend his catering services and reduce restaurant hours.

Carol Dover, president and CEO of the more than 10,000-member Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association, said that Gonzmart is not alone. Hotels are not opening all rooms because they don’t have enough housekeepers, restaurants that used to be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner are now open for just lunch and dinner, and existing staff puts in extra hours, she said. “Everybody’s having to get creative with their thinking.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article278161652.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Education Reform

Missouri Allows 19 Districts to Opt Out of State Tests

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2023 //
22

The Missouri State Board of Education has granted permission to 19 school districts and one charter school to use alternative assessments and opt out of the annual state tests. The districts recognize that the results of the annual tests arrive too late and provide too little individual student information to be useful. This suggests “test fatigue.”

The Missouri State Board of Education unanimously approved an exemption for 19 districts and one charter school to measure student achievement using alternative assessments instead of the state’s prescribed methods.

Students in these districts will begin to see changes this fall as districts in the Success Ready Students Network implement their plan.

“Progress monitoring during the school year is already taking place within these school districts, though it may not be monitored by the state at this time,” Jeremy Tucker, superintendent of the Liberty 53 School District and Success Ready Students Network facilitator, told the board Tuesday. “We can really add more touch points from the start of the year all the way to the end of the year.”

The state board’s approval, called an innovation waiver, will allow the districts to break from components of the state’s evaluation system for three years.

“(Missouri Assessment Program results) don’t inform what we do on a regular basis,” Branson Public Schools Superintendent Brad Swofford told the board, mentioning the delay in receiving the test’s results.

Teachers prefer to look at assessments that show students progress over the school year, allowing them to adapt to the data and instill confidence in learning students, he said. Branson currently gives students NWEA assessments, tests that adapt questions to students’ achievement level and outputs a number to describe their level of knowledge.

Lee’s Summit R-VII School District, another of the districts in the network, will use this assessment to track students’ progress over the school year, Associate Superintendent of Academic Services Christy Barger told The Independent.

State Board of Education member Mary Schrag said she has heard that in states that already have similar programs, students feel “much more vested” in their educational progress.

Students in participating districts will likely complete the MAP test to comply with federal requirements, unless districts receive a federal waiver, but their schools will not be scored at the state level based on those results.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Missouri, Standardized Testing

You Are Invited to the 10th Conference of the Network for Public Education in D.C.!

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2023 //
3

Please sign up now for the 10th Annual Conference of the Network for Public Education on October 28-29 in D.C.

We have a lineup of stellar speakers, including Randi Weingarten, Becky Pringle, and Dr. Marvin Dunn, the leading scholar of African American history in Florida.

Categories Academic Freedom, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Resistance

Tulsa: Mayor Tells State Board: Hands Off Our Public Schools! Meanwhile, Mike Miles Stages a Musical in Houston

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2023 //
32

The State Secretary of Education in Oklahoma Ryan Walters has been threatening to take control of the Tulsa public schools, replace the elected school board and fire the district superintendent. State takeovers have a long history of failure. Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum wrote a strongly worded letter to the Oklahoma State Board of Education and told its members in no uncertain terms, “hands off our public schools and our elected board!”

It’s a terrific letter. Open the link and read it. If only every city had leadership who stood up for their public schools like Mayor Bynum did!

Of course, Houston’s Mayor opposed the state takeover of HISD but Governor Abbott and his state Commissioner Mike Morath were determined to destroy democracy in Houston because the people there vote Democratic.

Speaking of Houston, the state-imposed Superintendent Mike Miles celebrated his arrival with a splashy musical performance, while teachers sat obediently in their seats at the NRG Arena.

The Texas Observer reported:

Hundreds of Houston’s teachers gathered at the NRG Center early morning Wednesday, where they were directed to wear school colors, wave school banners, and shake sparkly pom poms. Facilitators started the Harlem Shuffle dance in the aisles. And then, as the teachers were motioned back into their seats, the room turned dark and silence fell.

A single spotlight shined on a student performer in an aisle belting the lyrics to West Side Story’s “Something’s Coming”:

Something’s comin’, something good
If I can wait!
Something’s comin’, I don’t know what it is
But it is
Gonna be great!

The stage lit up to reveal a 1950s diner with red and white checkered tablecloth tables and red rubber stools. In walked new district superintendent Mike Miles, playing “Mr. Duke,” owner of the joint who doubles as a counselor who listens to the teachers’ and students’ grievances.

Since March, when the Texas Education Agency seized control of the Houston Independent School District (HISD), citing the failure to meet state standards at one high school, Houston’s teachers and parents have seen the battle with the state-appointed school board and superintendent play out in community meetings and in the press. Now, during a week of district-mandated conferences at the NRG Center, teachers were watching the takeover play out on stage. Miles directed the script—an hour-long musical that took six weeks to prepare, depicting how the new superintendent will rekindle the extinguished spirits of burnt-out teachers, give hope to hopeless students, and bestow a visionary plan to save public education.

“We are lost as a profession,” a teacher said on stage.

“My dreams are getting smaller and smaller,” a student later echoed.

“Well, maybe that new guy—you know, super … super …”

“You mean Superintendent Miles?”

“Maybe Superintendent Miles will make things better for us.”

Maybe.

But teachers who spoke to the Texas Observer said Miles’ performance wasted the district’s time and money and mocked their professional experience and concerns.

“For him to turn our concerns into satire is really insulting,” HISD teacher Melissa Yarborough said. “It reeks of propaganda.”

“He wasted our time when we could be in our classrooms preparing our lesson plans before school starts,” said Chris, an elementary school teacher who asked only to be identified by his first name.

Jessica, who has been teaching for 24 years, told the Observer Miles’ musical “was very condescending. The message was that we don’t know what we’re doing. And he’s coming in to show us how to do it right.”

The Houston Chronicle also reviewed Miles’ musical event.

A few fine arts teachers who spoke to the Chronicle said Miles is hypocritical for spreading his message through a musical theater production even after disrespecting fine arts teachers, who at NES schools will be paid far less than their peers teaching reading, math or science.

“He claims reading and math are the forefront and he wants to get rid of fine arts. Yet he used fine arts to promote his ideologies,” said one fine arts teacher, who called the production a “slap in the face.”

Another fine arts teacher said it was “the very definition of irony.”

“The fact he used HISD fine arts teachers and students in his presentation, the day after saying in his evaluation sessions that we are not as essential … creates a sense of rage and despair I cannot even describe,” said the teacher, who was told they could be fired for making negative public statements about the district.

Only staff from NES campuses attended the live event at NRG, while educators from other schools watched convocation remotely from their own campuses following a last-minute scheduling change.

Funnily enough, Miles also staged a splashy musical with him as the star when he began his tenure in Dallas in 2012. All of the district’s 18,000 teachers were summoned to watch. The video has been removed from the internet. But The Texas Observer ran a great story about the event, with a photo of him dancing with students. At that performance, he laid out his vision for making DISD the best urban district in the nation by 2020 using ideas he learned at the Broad Superintendents Academy. He was, he said, a believer in disruptive change, like Arne Duncan. “Miles epitomizes today’s school reform movement, convinced that anything worth doing in a classroom can be measured.” But three years later, he was gone.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Reform, Houston, Oklahoma, State Takeover, Teachers, Texas, Tulsa

Rhode Island: Vote for Aaron Regunberg for Congress!

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2023 //
7

Aaron Regunberg is running for Congress in a special election in Rhode Island. He is a thoughtful, dynamic spokesperson for schools and students. Years ago, he was one of the founders of the Providence student Union, one of the best student groups in the nation. It engaged in brilliant tactics to expose the invalidity of the standardized test required for graduation, which had a disproportionate negative impact on students of color, students with disabilities, and ELLS.

Aaron would be a wonderful addition to Congress!

Categories Education Reform

California: School Board Set to Defend Ban on CRT with Help from Christian Law Firm

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2023 //
11

Christian conservatives won control of the school board of the Temacula Valley Unified School District in California. The first thing they did was enact a ban on critical race theory (no doubt they could not define what they banned). A lawsuit was filed by the teacher’s union and a group of students against the board to overturn the ban. The board accepted an offer from a law firm called Advocates for Faith & Freedom to represent the district. The law firm is known for its religious advocacy.

A nonprofit Murrieta law firm with a reputation for defending Christian conservatives will represent the Temecula Valley Unified School District in a lawsuit challenging the district’s ban on critical race theory.

In a special meeting, a divided Temecula school board Wednesday night, Aug. 9, accepted an offer from Advocates for Faith & Freedom to defend the public school district against the lawsuit announced Wednesday, Aug. 2, by Public Counsel’s Opportunity Under Law project, which is suing on behalf of the Temecula teacher’s union and eight students in the district, among others.

The lawsuit, filed in Riverside County Superior Court, alleges the critical race theory ban “hinders Temecula educators’ ability to teach state-mandated content standards, prepare for the coming academic year, and support rather than stifle student inquiry.”

The Temecula school board’s conservative majority — Joseph Komrosky, Danny Gonzalez and Jen Wiersma — enacted the ban the same December night it took office, roughly a month after winning three of five board seats with the backing of conservative Pastor Tim Thompson and a Christian conservative political action committee.

At the time, the majority said critical race theory — originally a term used to describe a graduate school course of study — was hateful and divisive and taught children to judge others by skin color, not character.

Critics argue the ban whitewashes truthful and important lessons about the role of race in U.S. history. The ban sparked two walkout protests by district high school students.

Advocates for Faith & Freedom specializes in representing Christian conservatives and their causes. It fought on behalf of California Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage before being overturned in court.

Open the link to finish the article.

Categories Bigotry, California, Censorship, Education Reform, Religion, Separation of church and state
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