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Who Has Been AWOL in Defending the Schools Against the Attacks on CRT?

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2022 //
41

This day honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is an appropriate time to consider the widespread efforts to restrict the teaching of racism in America’s schools. In Tennessee, the notorious “Moms for Liberty” declared that a second-grade book called Martin Luther King, Jr. and the March on Washington was inappropriate, as was Ruby Bridges Goes to School, about the six-year-old who was the first African-American child to integrate an all-white school in New Orleans. The Central York School District in Pennsylvania banned books about Dr. King and Rosa Parks (parents, students, and teachers fought back against the ban in Central York); a Twitter account called Central York Banned Book Club (CYBannedBooks) reports on censorship in their own district and elsewhere. Young people today are not so easily bullied.

During the past couple of years, the nation’s public schools have been the object of savage attacks by politicians and ideologues who claim that the schools are teaching “critical race theory” and indoctrinating (white) children. CRT emphasizes the tenacity of systemic racism, and legislators in red states have passed laws mandating that teachers are not allowed to teach about systemic racism or to teach anything that might make some students (white) feel “uncomfortable.” At least 10 states have passed such laws, including Florida, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho, Tennessee, South Carolina, New Hampshire, and North Dakota. Sometimes such laws are called “divisive concepts” laws, because they forbid the teaching of anything that is “divisive.” Teaching about racism is apparently divisive, as is any implication that the nation is or has been sexist or unwelcoming to specific racial or ethnic groups. So, no more teaching in history about race riots and massacres and lynching; no teaching in history about hostility to Irish immigrants; no teaching in history about anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism.

Much of the uproar was provoked by the publication of Nikole Hannah-Jones’ “The 1619 Project,” originally published as an issue of The New York Times Magazine and bearing the imprimatur of America’s most respected newspaper. In September 2020, Trump spoke at the National Archives Museum, standing before the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, where he said that radicals and Marxists were responsible for “decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools.” He singled out critical race theory and The 1619 Project as examples of left-wing indoctrination. He called for “patriotic education” He announced his intention to create the “1776 Commission,” which would “promote a ‘patriotic education’ and ‘encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding.’”

The furor over critical race theory during 2021 has not subsided. Teachers in red states that have passed laws against CRT and divisive concepts are wary about teaching about racism. Is teaching about slavery, Jim Crow, and the persistence of segregation a violation of the law? Should teachers avoid any mention of the Ku Klux Klan or modern-day white supremacists?

In June 2021, more than 150 organizations–historians, educators, authors– signed a “Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism in American History.” The joint statement forcefully criticized the laws that aimed to ban teaching about racism in a way that made “some” students uncomfortable. It said “these bills risk infringing on the right of faculty to teach and of students to learn…Purportedly, any examination of racism in this country’s classrooms might cause some students ‘discomfort’ because it is an uncomfortable and complicated subject. But the ideal of informed citizenship necessitates an informed public…Educators owe students a clear-eyed, nuanced, and frank delivery of history, so that they can learn, grow, and confront the issues of the day, not hew to some state-ordered ideology.”

The most puzzling aspect of this coordinated effort to suppress the teaching of accurate history is the silence of people who should have spoken up to defend the schools and their teachers.

The most prominent no-show on the ramparts is Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. Last June, he testified before a Congressional committee and was asked about critical race theory. He responded that his department would leave curriculum decisions to states and local districts. He reiterated that the “the federal government doesn’t get involved in curriculum.” According to Chalkbeat, Cardona “said he trusts educators to do their jobs, including teaching about the progress this country has made combatting racism. ‘But I think we can do that while also being honest about some of the things we’re not proud of.” Those comments might be called “leading from behind.” Other than a comment here or there, Cardona did not make a major effort of combatting the attacks on schools and teacher over teaching about racism. He did not give a major speech, as he should have to defend teaching truth.

Other prominent absentees from the CRT-censorship-book banning controversy were the billionaires who usually are verbose about what schools and teachers should be doing.

Where was Bill Gates? Although rightwing wing-nuts attacked Bill Gates for spreading CRT, Gates said nothing to defend schools and teachers against the attacks on them. He is not known for shyness. He uses his platform to declaim his views on every manner of subject. Why the silence about teaching the nation’s history with adherence to the truth? Why no support for courageous teachers who stand up for honesty in the curriculum?

One could list the many other philanthropists who remained silent as the critics were beating up on schools for teaching honest history to their students. None of them was heard from.

Who else failed to show up and be counted on behalf of academic integrity?

Categories Education Reform

Steven Singer: Public Schools Are Best Equipped to Realize Dr. King’s Vision of Education

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2022 //
20

Steven Singer examines Dr. Martin Luther King’s view of education by quoting from a paper that he wrote as an 18-year-old student at Morehouse College. The young King said that the purpose of education was “intelligence plus character,” not just the academic learning (a necessary ingredient, obviously) but an understanding and appreciation for “the accumulated experience of social living.” In this statement, King sounds very much like John Dewey, whom he had probably never read at this point in his life. When King wrote, there were two kinds of schools: private and public. Now there are many kinds, including voucher schools, religious schools, charter schools, home-schools, and public schools.

Singer writes:

So which schools today are best equipped to meet King’s ideal?

Private schools are by their very nature exclusionary. They attract and accept only certain students. These may be those with the highest academics, parental legacies, religious beliefs, or – most often – families that can afford the high tuition. As such, their student bodies are mostly white and affluent.

That is not King’s ideal. That is not the best environment to form character, the best environment in which to learn about people who are different than you and to develop mutual understanding.

Voucher schools are the same. They are, in fact, nothing but private schools that are subsidized in part by public tax dollars.

Charter schools model themselves on private schools so they are likewise discriminatory. The businesses who run these institutions – often for a profit – don’t have to enroll whoever applies. Even though they are fully funded by public tax dollars, they can choose who to let in and who to turn away. Often this is done behind the cloak of a lottery, but with no transparency and no one checking to ensure it is done fairly, there is no reason to believe operators are doing anything but selecting the easiest (read: cheapest) students to educate.

Charter schools have been shown to increase segregation having student bodies that are more monochrome than those districts from which they cherry pick students. This is clearly not King’s ideal..

There are many public schools where children of different races, nationalities, religions, and creeds meet, interact and learn together side-by-side.

Students wearing hajibs learn next to those wearing yarmulkes. Students with black skin and white skin partner with each other to complete class projects. Students with parents who emigrated to this country as refugees become friends with those whose parents can trace their ancestors back to the Revolutionary War.

These schools are true melting pots where children learn to become adults who value each other because of their differences not fear each other due to them. These are children who not only learn their academics as well – if not often better – than those at competing kinds of schools, but they also learn the true face of America and they learn to cherish it.

This is the true purpose of education. This is the realization of King’s academic ideal and his civil rights dream.

But Singer realizes that many public schools do not meet this ideal. Segregation has intensified in recent years, due to judicial and political retrenchment. Some public schools are richly endowed with resources, while others are not. But public schools permit the possibility of change and improvement.

He adds:

If we want to reclaim what it means to be an American, if we want to redefine ourselves as those who celebrate difference and defend civil rights, that begins with understanding the purpose of education.

It demands we defend public schools against privatization. And it demands that we transform our public schools into the integrated, equitable institutions we dreamed they could all be.

Categories Education Reform

Jitu Brown: Schools Can Fight the School-to-Prison Pipeline

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2022 //
4

Civil rights leader Jitu Brown wrote in an opinion article for The Chicago Tribune about the importance of using the schools to combat the school-to-prison pipeline. Brown is the national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, which connects youth- and parent-led organizations across the nation.

Brown points out studies showing that schools with strict disciplinary policies produce high suspension rates for students of color, which in turn affects test scores and graduation rates.

He writes that schools attended by predominantly nonwhite students have fewer curricular resources than schools where white students predominate.

These environments are punctuated by so-called school resource officers — police stationed in school buildings. More than 1.5 million Black, brown and Indigenous K-12 students are attending schools that have a resource officer but no counselor, guaranteeing that many of these students will be left behind. The violence inflicted upon Black and brown children by school resource officers nationwide must stop. They don’t make our schools safer, and their presence means schools lose precious resources that could be used for counseling and social services.

White-majority schools have always offered much more in core curricular classes, Advanced Placement opportunities, after-school programs, guidance counselors and student supports. Some examples from the Journey for Justice Alliance’s “Failing: Brown v. Board” report elucidate what equity would mean for students of color:

At Marshall High School in Milwaukee, nonwhite students make up 94% of the student body. The school has basic English courses for only freshmen and sophomores and only two other classes. Menomonee Falls High School in a nearby suburb has 21% nonwhite students. It offers 10 English classes.

In Dallas, 39% of Centennial High’s students are nonwhite, compared with 100% of the students at South Oak Cliff High. Yet Centennial offers twice as many language classes, has three times the number of Advanced Placement courses and 23 career path offerings, compared to three at South Oak Cliff.

In Denver, 96% of Manuel High students are minorities. They can choose from fiveart classes, seven AP classes and only one foreign language, Spanish. At Cherry Creek High, 33% of the students are Black or students of color. They have 27 AP classes, six foreign languages and 21 classes in the arts.

The report concludes: “This is racism in action.”

The Equity or Else campaign’s major goal is sustainable community schools. The 2022 federal budget would allocate $440 million to establish such schools, reversing the trend of privatizing public education through charter schools. The movement for equity in public education aims to make American schools more welcoming and truly safe spaces for all children where they can look forward to learning.

Culturally relevant and challenging curriculum, supports for high-quality teaching, wraparound supports for every child, a student-centered school climate, and meaningful parent and community engagement make for the types of schools all children deserve.

Categories Civil Rights, Education Reform, Racism

Billy Townsend: The Collapse of Florida’s “Schools of Hope” Program

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2022 //
10

Five years ago, Florida’s Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran announced his plan to “save” the state’s lowest performing schools. He called it “Schools of Hope.” The idea behind the plan was to turn public schools over to charter operators.

Corcoran believes in choice. He despises public schools. He wants to replace public schools with vouchers and charters. His wife ran a charter school, and he was Speaker of the House of Representatives before Governor DeSantis put him in charge of education. Corcoran, needless to say, is not an educator.

Billy Townsend tells the sad ending to Corcoran’s bold (but old) idea: Florida’s first charter “School of Hope” is, utterly predictably, abandoning all “hope” in Jefferson after just 5 years.

The failure of a plan to turn low-reforming schools to charter operators should not be a surprise. It has been tried and failed elsewhere: the Achievement School District in Tennessee absorbed $100 million of Race to the Top money without meeting its goals; the Education Achievement Authority in Detroit was an expensive fiasco. Despite the failures of these “models,” other states created their own charter districts, with the same results.

Townsend describes Florida’s own fiasco:

Jefferson County’s public school system is tiny — about 800 kids. Its test scores are historically the lowest of Florida counties. This made it a showcase for Richard Corcoran’s “Schools of Hope” charter law, which was designed to convert zoned public schools with low test scores into unzoned charter schools. The Jefferson experiment predates the “Schools of Hope” law. But when the state seized Jefferson’s three-in-one school campus and converted it into a charter school run by the Somerset company, it was touted as the first “School of Hope.”

Here’s how NPR reporter Jessica Bakeman put it in 2019:

Two years into Jefferson County’s transformation, the still-unproven charter-district “experiment” is being used to justify a potentially massive expansion of charter schools in the state’s poorest communities. A state law dubbed “schools of hope,” first passed in 2017 and broadened this year, offers millions of dollars to charter schools that open near traditional public schools that have struggled for years. Jefferson County is home to the first charter “schools of hope.” Neighborhoods in Miami, Tampa and Jacksonville are next.

Five years later, Somerset is straight-up abandoning the kids and community of Jefferson County without explanation. They’re abandoning the “schools of hope” project.

And no other charter “schools of hope” seem willing to tackle the Jefferson challenge. They apparently see no “hope,” as an industry.

So Richard Corcoran’s DoE is admitting abject failure and converting the Jefferson School back to nominal district control — under the direction of what’s called an “external operator.” In some cases, Richard Corcoran’s DoE and Board of Education also saw personal opportunity to make a buck in that transition away from Schools of Hope.

Bidding for that “external operator” role — for the transition and presumably beyond — is what led to the scandal that saw DoE Vice Chancellor Melissa Ramsey and state Board of Education Member Andy Tuck resign in grifty disgrace. You can read my deep dives on the scandal in parts 1 and 1.5., linked above.

Yes, that’s all pretty gross.

Townsend explained the difference between charter schools and “external operators.”

Charter companies and external operators do not always grift; but when they do, which is often, they do so in different ways.

Charter schools, as shown yet again in Jefferson, pick and curate the kids they want to serve. They don’t do ESE, generally, unless it’s a special ESE charter. Charters routinely cut-and-run from any child who does not easily throw off an acceptable contribution to a charters’ aggregate test scores. In Somerset’s case, it’s cutting-and-running from an entire community, which it swaggered into boasting about “hope.” This was entirely predictable. I predicted it; basically everyone who pays any real attention predicted it. I generally referred to “schools of hope” as “schools of fraud” back in 2017. I was right.

External operators, if they’re sorry or lazy, just skim public money off the top of a school to add nothing but boring professional development power points and “critical observations” and “data analysis.” In Polk, under the orders of legislators like Kelli Stargel and Colleen Burton, the taxpayers have fed these people millions of dollars of your money. The external operator grift is just attaching yourself to a giant flow of free money and tick-sucking it. External operators do no operating. They bring no scale because they have none.

Introduced with great fanfare five years ago, “schools of hope” is yet another fraud on the children, their community, and taxpayers. But especially the children.

Townsend wasn’t the only one to connect the dots and spot grift. The Tampa Bay Times did as well.

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Education Department is under fire for trying to steer a multimillion-dollar contract to a company whose CEO has ties to the state’s education commissioner.

Records and interviews show that, before the Florida Department of Education asked for bids, it was already in advanced talks with the company to do the work, subverting a process designed to eliminate favoritism.

The company is MGT Consulting, led by former Republican lawmaker Trey Traviesa of Tampa, a longtime colleague of the state’s education commissioner, Richard Corcoran.

During a bidding process that was open for one week, MGT was the only pre-approved vendor to submit a proposal — pitched at nearly $2.5 million a year to help the struggling Jefferson County School District with its academic and financial needs.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Florida

John Merrow: The Lives We Lost

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2022 //
21

It has become traditional at the end of the year to pay tribute to those who died during the year. Usually, they are famous or celebrities or both.

In this post, John Merrow pays tribute to educators (or people important in the field) who died in 2021.

He begins by paying tribute to the more than 1,000 educators who lost their lives to COVID.

He singles out nine people, “all of whom cared deeply about America’s youth and public education.”

Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, former president of Brown University, and former president of the New York Public Library. I endorse John’s admiration for Vartan. I was on the board of the NYPL when he was selected, and he did indeed save a great public institution from bankruptcy, in large part by wooing great socialites, like Mrs. Vincent Astor, to give generously.

He paid tribute also to bell hooks, James Loewen (author of Lies My Teacher Told Me), Shirley McBay, Robert Moses, Richard Robinson, Eli Broad, Denis Doyle, and George M. Strickler Jr.

As you (and John) might anticipate, I take issue with his characterization of Eli Broad as someone who “cared deeply about America’s youth and public education.” I am sorry that Eli died, and I express my sympathy to his wife and family, but I disagreed that he “cared deeply about America’s youth and public education.” He invested many millions in “training” urban superintendents to share his philosophy of top-down management and his belief that schools with low test scores should be closed, no matter how much parents, students, and staff protested. Many of the “Broadies,” as they were known, were complete failures. He devoted many millions to privatization of public schools, in Los Angeles and in cities across the nation. He selected an incompetent Broadie to run the bankrupt Detroit public schools, who increased the district’s deficit. He poured millions into Teach for America, to send inexperienced, ill-prepared teachers into the nation’s neediest classrooms.

John says he was critical of Eli’s passion for charter schools, and it was not surprising that Eli ignored his criticism. Eli was arrogant and believed that he was always right. I can’t find any evidence that he “cared deeply about America’s children” and for some reason, although both he and his wife were graduates of the public schools of Detroit, he was utterly contemptuous of public schools. He did not “care deeply” about public education. He cared deeply about turning public dollars over to private management.

So, thank you to John Merrow, for honoring the educators and advocates who died in 2021. He needed a different category for Eli Broad. Now, what would that be? Billionaires who thought they knew how to redesign American education to make it more like the corporate sector?

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Education Industry, Education Reform, Health

Why Are They So Angry…About Masks, Vaccines, CRT, Voting, and More?

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2022 //
240

Marty Levine used to write regularly for the Nonprofit Quarterly, and he seemed to be the only person writing about philanthropy who understood the danger of the billionaire foundations’ disparagement of public schools and their love of privatization. Now he hashisown blog called Change Counts, which is consistently interesting. In this post, he examines the emotions that drive today’s angry protestors, who disrupt school board meetings and other public gatherings

He begins:

A few months ago, Rachel Pisani explained to Fox News what she was protesting at a recent Loudon County, Maryland school board meeting to Fox News. . “The goal was really parents being able to speak and express their concern about CRT (Critical Race Theory) and the fact that our school board wants to indoctrinate our children. We do not want to co-parent with our government. We want to be able to instill beliefs and instill our faith in our children without hesitation…we are an army of moms and parents that will not stop until we’re heard. So, they can mute our mics, they can arrest us, they can kick us off of public property. We’re not going to stop…This is insanity in America. This isn’t freedom of speech. It’s not freedom of religion. It’s racism and it’s cloaked in socialism.”

I have spent more hours than I care to count watching videos of public meetings where folks like Ms. Pisani are fired up to fight against CRT, or COIVID-19 policies, or library books, or gender-neutral policies. The subjects vary but the protests all seem to converge around a battle to protect the individual’s freedom. Speaker after speaker step forward and crowds shout to angrily decry the harm that is being done to them, their children, their community, and their nation by the elite, liberals, socialists, and communists. The voices are disrespectful, angry, often threatening…

The frustration, the sense of being wronged, of being ignored, of being dismissed and devalued resonates with me. But these protestors are different. They are not the marginalized. They are not battling to change corrupt systems or right past wrongs. They are fighting to prevent change, to keep the status quo. They speak of harms and threats I cannot see and do not feel. They see themselves as the marginalized and the oppressed; I see them as powerful, fighting to retain their position of privilege and control.

Unlike racism or poverty, they are battling manufactured problems.

The issues on their signs serve as smokescreens from the real motivation of these protestors. These are people who are motivated by their fear of loss not by a desire to make their community better for all. They fear that they will not get some benefit because it will go to some “other” who is not as deserving as they are. They fear that they will be replaced by others who have not paid their dues and waited for their turn…

To mask the game, the victimizers cast themselves and those that they are enlisting in their struggle as the victims. The Heritage Foundation has a “model bill”, one that it wishes Republican state legislators will enact, that speaks to this manufactured threat. The bill which holds back progress is couched in the very issues it opposes. When passed, it ensures “that administrators, faculty, and other employees of public elementary and secondary education institutions maintain policies in accordance with Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” 

The sheer audacity of this rationale for new legislation is breathtaking. The 1964 law was needed to give the Federal Government the power to desegregate the nation’s educational system over the objections of those still fighting to keep black Americans in the back of the bus. Title IV gave the Attorney General to intervene to end desegregation based on race, color, religion, or national origin; Title VI made the funding of all Federal programs conditional on ensuring that there was no discrimination.  For the forces behind the protesters, this is the wizard’s curtain above all curtains.

This inoculation of righteousness is designed to mask the fear or replacement they believe will motivate protestors and voters to hold their line. It is designed to feed the fear of a changing country, of an uncertain time. It builds a fantasy that things were never really bad, that there are no real problems needing to address, that there is no challenging work that we all must do together. It clouds a reality that some have benefited from the pain and suffering of others and that repair of past harms is needed…

The orchestration of this “grassroots” uprising of outrage are those who have the most to gain from keeping us, as a nation frozen, in the past. They are those who fear their wealth and power is at risk if America addresses its wounds and lives its vision.

Standing behind these efforts are a group of ultra-wealthy men and women fighting to maintain their wealth and privilege at a time when it is clear how much richer the rich have become while everyone else falls further behind.Politicians can be purchased with campaign support; social movements are fueled by funds using the benefits of our nation’s charity rules which allow the wealthy to not only spend heavily but gain the benefits of a tax savings to boot!

A recent conference organized by ALEC (The American Legislative Exchange Council) to bring legislators and advocates together to build support for the manufactured outrage over CRT was paid for, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, by “ the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a $934.4 million foundation funding right-wing campaigns to influence lawmakers in statehouses across the country.” And several other nonprofit organizations, also supported by Bradley, provided their expertise to fuel the fire. Included were “Garrett Ballengee, senior policy and research analyst at the Cardinal Institute; Jonathan Butcher, education fellow at The Heritage Foundation; Lance Izumi, senior director for education at the Pacific Research Institute; Libby Sobic, director of education policy at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL); and Jim Copland, director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute.”

As Levine notes, the angry protestors are manipulated by the very rich and powerful. They are foot-soldiers in a well-funded effort to preserve the status quo. The ultra-rich play to their fear of being “replaced” by the others, whom they believe are undeserving. That they borrow the language of the civil rights movement to attack efforts to reduce racism is outrageous. But we have seen this movie before, when Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, President Obama, Michael Bloomberg, and then Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos told us that ”school choice was the civil rights issue of our time.”

Categories Education Reform

Leonie Haimson on de Blasio’s Education Record

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2022 //
17

Leonie Haimson assesses Bill de Blasio’s record on education after eight years as Maor of New York City. He succeeded Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who served for 12 years and completely upended the schools, first, by getting the state legislature to give the mayor total control of the city’s public schools, then by closing scores of schools and replacing them with hundreds of small schools and charter schools. De Blasio had served on a local school board and offered the hope of restoring stability and ending Bloomberg’s era of constant disruption. (New York City has a two-term limit for its mayor but Bloomberg persuaded the City Council to make an exception for him and themselves).

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, reviews de Blasio’s record here.

She begins:

When he first ran for Mayor, Bill de Blasio portrayed himself as a leader who would make a host of progressive changes in our schools. He promised to be a far different leader than Michael Bloomberg, who had expanded high-stakes testing, proceeded to grade teachers and schools primarily via test scores, closed dozens of public schools displacing thousands of students, and helped charter schools expand in their place.

Bloomberg and his schools chancellors had done all this by ignoring community opposition, and despite any tangible evidence that this was the right way to improve education, particularly for disadvantaged students. Though Bloomberg had promised during his campaign to lower New York City schools’ excessive class sizes, they increased sharply during his administration, and by the time he left office he said he would “double the class size” if he could, and that would be “a good deal for the students.”

De Blasio said he would do things differently: to listen to and be responsive to parent and community concerns, de-emphasize test scores, and focus on improving public schools rather than providing space and funding to help charter schools expand. Instead of closing schools, he pledged to increase equity and strengthen learning conditions, including by lowering class sizes.

And yet his record on each of these issues was decidedly mixed. He did attain his primary goal in education – to provide universal, publicly-funded pre-kindergarten to every four-year-old, but in a manner that could have been better achieved, as will be discussed later.

There were some bright spots in the de Blasio record, including the Community Schools initiative, begun in the fall of 2014, in which schools partnered with community-based organizations to provide after-school programs, mental health supports, and other resources. By 2018, more than 200 community schools had been established. An independent study found that in these schools, there were lower rates of chronic absenteeism, more students graduating on time, and in elementary and middle schools, higher math scores and fewer disciplinary referrals.

Open the link to read the rest of this important article.

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Closing schools, Disruption, Education Reform, New York City

NPE: Come to the Annual Conference and Meet Our Terrific New Board Members!

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2022 //
12

The Network for Public Education will host its annual conference in Philadelphia on March 19-20. The conference has been repeatedly delayed by COVID. We now feel confident that we can meet safely in person. Please join us!

Carol Burris writes:

We have reopened registration for our conference to be held in Philadelphia on March 19 and 20. We believe that when the current Omicron surge subsides, we will enjoy a safe and healthy conference. We appreciate that so many of you have remained registered these past two years.

If you previously registered for the conference, and never asked for a refund, there is no need to register again.

However, you must register for your hotel room. You can do that here. These are discounted rooms and they will go quickly.

If you have not registered, or, canceled your registration, you can register here.

Because we need to preorder food, which is a large part of the registration cost, no refunds will be issued after February 21.

In order to attend, you must be fully vaccinated. That is a requirement of both the hotel and the Network for Public Education. At this point, there is also a mask mandate in place (surgical or KN95 please).

It has been a difficult and long haul for all of us. Hopefully, we are nearing the pandemic’s end. We can’t wait to see you again! Let’s draw strength from each other this March.

New Board Members Welcomed by NPE and NPE Action

President Diane Ravitch is happy to announce that Cassandra Ulbrich and Keith Benson have joined the Network for Public Education Board while Gloria Evans Nolan joined the NPE Action Board.

You can read about these three accomplished public education advocates below. Last month we announced the addition of Georgina Cecilia Pérezto the NPE Board. We thank retiring Board members Denisha Jones, Susan Ochshorn, and Roxanazww as Marachi for their service.

Casandra E. Ulbrich, Ph.D.was elected to the Michigan State Board of Education in 2006 and re-elected in 2014 to serve a second eight-year term expiring January 1, 2023. She serves as the President of the Board.

Casandra has spent the majority of her career in higher education administration, currently serving as the Vice-Chancellor for Institutional Advancement at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Prior to joining UM-Dearborn, Casandra was the Vice President for College Advancement and Community Relations at Macomb Community College for eight years, where she oversaw the college’s marketing and communications, public relations, cultural affairs, and foundation, as well as serving as the College’s Title IX Coordinator. Casandra began her career as a Press Secretary to the former U.S. House Democratic Whip David Bonior, acting as the official spokesperson for the Congressman.

Dr. Keith E. Benson is the author of Education Reform and Gentrification in the Age of #CamdenRising: Public Education and Urban Redevelopment in Camden, NJ (2019) and is currently the President of the Camden Education Association. A dedicated community and public education advocate, Keith taught in Camden City public schools for fourteen years prior to being elected to the Association’s presidency. Keith is also an adjunct professor at Rutgers University-Camden.


Gloria Evans Nolan has joined the NPE Action Board.

Grounded in her experience as a St. Louis Public School graduate and parent, Gloria is now serving as Interim Parent Liaison in the St. Louis Public School district. She has over 17 years of experience working in non-profits and fostering excellence in the lives of young people through her work supporting mentoring teams, managing school partnerships, and developing volunteers and caregivers.

Nolan holds a Masters’s Degree in college student personnel administration and a Bachelor of Science in therapeutic recreation. Gloria is a fierce advocate, championing equity and transformational policy change in true public education. Gloria draws her inspiration from being a devoted wife of Kevin Nolan (also known as Cocoa Santa) and the mother of Dylan & Evan.

There is no doubt that the privatizers will continue their fight to destroy public education in 2022. We already see voucher bills introduced and we are watching for charter expansion legislation as well. You can be assured that we will keep on fighting for our democratically governed public schools, the pillar of our democracy. Happy New Year and we hope to see you in March!!

Thanks for all you do,

Executive Director

The Network for Public Education is a 501 (c)(3) organization. You can make a tax deductible donation here.

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Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Philadelphia

CNN: The Most Unlikely Anti-Racists

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2022 //
47

CNN published an excellent story about whites who grew up surrounded by racism, but turned against racism as adults.

You may recall the story of Matt Hawn, the high school teacher in Tennessee who was fired for teaching his students about racism and white privilege. He was a tenured teacher for 16 years. He never received anything less than a satisfactory rating. He was also a coach. He has appealed his termination.

Hawn became one of the most prominent casualties in an ongoing debate over how racism and history should be taught to students in the US. His plight has divided people in his conservative, heavily White city near the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

But Hawn’s improbable personal journey is as dramatic as the headlines he’s provoked.

There is nothing in his background that suggests that he’d take such a public stand against racism. Hawn grew up in a White community and says he didn’t have a single nonwhite classmate from kindergarten through high school. He says he was surrounded by people who used the N-word, flew Confederate flags and wore T-shirts declaring “The South Will Rise Again.”

So why did he turn out differently?

The rest of the story probes that question by asking others who turned out like Hawn.

Hawn says he misses teaching and has financial worries now. A GoFundMe page has been set up to help him.

“What am I going to do for health insurance?” he says. “I’m a Type 1 diabetic.”

Matt needs our help while his appeal is pending. I gave $100 to his GoFundMe page. If you are so moved, I hope you will give whatever you can.

Categories Education Reform

Washington Post: What You Need to Know About COVID Tests

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2022 //
37

The Washington Post provides here a summary of COVID tests, along with online links where you can buy at-home tests. (The at-home tests are expensive.) The story apparently is not behind a paywall.

Categories Education Reform
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