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Jan Resseger: Education and Democracy Are Entwined

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2023 //
6

Jan Resseger writes brilliantly about the importance of education in a democracy. She reads widely in the work of authors who understand why education should not be privatized and turned into a consumer good. You will enjoy reading this essay.

She writes:

I find myself struggling these days to understand how those of us who prize our U.S. system of public education seem to have lost the narrative. As I listen to the rhetoric of today’s critics of public schooling—people who distrust or disdain the work of school teachers and who believe test scores are the only way to understand education, I worry about the seeming collapse of the values I grew up with as a child in a small Montana town whose citizens paid so much attention to the experiences its public schools offered for the community’s children. The schools in my hometown provided a solid core curriculum plus a strong school music program, ambitious high school drama and speech and debate programs, athletics, a school newspaper, and an American Field Service international student every single year at the high school. While many of us continue to support our public schools, what are the factors that have caused so many to abandon their confidence in public education?

It is in this context that I found myself reading “Education and the Challenges for Democracy,” the introductory essay in the current issue of Education Policy Analysis Archives. In his essay, Fernando M. Reimers, a professor in the graduate school of education at Harvard University, explores the interconnection of public education and democracy itself. Reimers explains, for example, that the expansion of our democracy to include more fully those who have previously been marginalized is likely to impact the public schools in many ways and that these changes in the schools will inspire their own political response:

“(T)he expansion of political rights to groups of the population previously denied rights (e.g. women, members of racial or religious minorities) may lead to increased access for these groups to educational institutions and a curriculum that prepares them for political participation. These changes, in turn, feed back into the political process, fostering increased demands for participation and new forms of representation as a result of the new skills and dispositions these groups gained by educational and political changes. But these increases in representation may activate political backlash from groups who seek to preserve the status quo. These forces may translate into efforts to constrain the manner in which schools prepare new groups for political participation. In this way, the relationship between democratic politics and democratic education is never static, but in perpetual, dynamic, dialectical motion that leads to new structures and processes. The acknowledgement of this relationship as one that requires resolution of tensions and contradictions, of course, does not imply an inevitable cycle of continuous democratic improvement, as there can be setbacks—both in democracy itself, and in education for democracy.”

Reimers continues: “Democracy—a social contract intended to balance freedom and justice—is not only fluid and imperfect but fragile. This fragility has become evident in recent years… In order to challenge the forces undermining democracy, schools and universities need to recognize these challenges and their systemic impact and reimagine what they must do to prepare students to address them.” While Reimers explains that the goal of his article is not only, “to examine how democratic setbacks can lead to setbacks in democratic education, but also how education can resist those challenges to democracy,” he presents no easy solutions. He does, however sort out the issues to which we should all be paying attention—naming five specific challenges for American democracy:

“The five traditional challenges to democracy are corruption, inequality, intolerance, polarization, and populism… The democratic social contract establishes that all persons are fundamentally equal, and therefore have the same right to participate in the political process and demand accountability. Democracy is challenged when those elected to govern abuse the public trust through corruption, or capturing public resources to advance private ends… Democracy is also challenged by social and economic inequality and by the political inequalitythey may engender… One result of political intolerance is political polarization… Political intolerance is augmented by Populism, an ideology which challenges the idea that the interests of ordinary people can be represented by political elites.” (emphasis in the original)

Reimers considers how these threats to democracy endanger our public schools: “The first order of effects of these forces undermining democracy is to constrain the ability of education institutions to educate for democracy. But a second order of effects results from the conflicts and tensions generated by these forces….” As the need for schools and educators to prepare students for democratic citizenship becomes ever more essential, political backlash may threaten schools’ capacity to help students challenge the threats to democracy.

In their 2017 book, These Schools Belong to You and Me, Deborah Meier and Emily Gasoi articulate in concrete terms what Reimers explains abstractly as one of the imperatives that public schools must accomplish today: “(W)e need a means of ensuring that we educate all future citizens, not only to be well versed in the three Rs, and other traditional school subjects, but also to be able to see from multiple perspectives and to be intellectually curious and incisive enough to see through and resist the lure of con artists and autocrats, whether in the voting booth, the marketplace, or in their social dealings.” (These Schools Belong to You and Me, p. 25) Schools imagined as preparing critical thinkers—schools that focus on more than basic drilling in language arts and math—are necessary to combat two of the threats Reimers lists: corruption and populism.

But what about Reimers’ other threats? How can schools, in our current polarized climate, push back against intolerance, inequality, and polarization? Isn’t today’s attack on “diversity, equity and inclusion” in some sense an expression of a widespread desire to give up on our principle of equality of opportunity—to merely accept segregation, inequality and exclusion? This is the old, old struggle Derek Black traces in Schoolhouse Burning—the effort during Reconstruction to develop state constitutions that protect the right to education for all children including the children of slaves—followed by Jim Crow segregation—followed by the Civil Rights Movement and Brown v. Board of Education—followed by myriad efforts since then to keep on segregating schools. Isn’t the attempt to discredit critical race theory really the old fight about whose cultures should be affirmed or hidden at school, and isn’t this fight reminiscent of the struggle to eliminate the American Indian boarding schools whose purpose was extinguishing American Indian children’s languages and cultures altogether? Isn’t the battle over inclusion the same conflict that excluded disabled children from public school services until Congress passed the Individuals with Disability Education Act in 1975? And what about the battle that ended in 1982, when, in Plyler v. Doe, the U.S. Supreme Court protected the right to a free, K-12 public education for children of undocumented immigrants? Our society has continued to struggle to accept the responsibility for protecting the right to equal opportunity. As Reimers explains, action to address inequality has inevitably spawned a reaction.

Educators and political philosophers, however, have persistently reminded us of our obligation to make real the promise of public schooling. In 1899, our most prominent philosopher of education, John Dewey, declared: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children… Only by being true to the full growth of all the individuals who make it up, can society by any chance be true to itself.” (The School and Society, p. 1)

In 1992, political theorist Benjamin Barber advocated for the very kind of public schooling Reimers would like to see today: “(T)he true democratic premise encompasses… the acquired virtues and skills necessary to living freely, living democratically, and living well. It assumes that every human being, given half a chance, is capable of the self-government that is his or her natural right, and thus capable of acquiring the judgment, foresight, and knowledge that self-government demands.… The fundamental assumption of democratic life is not that we are all automatically capable of living both freely and responsibly, but that we are all potentially susceptible to education for freedom and responsibility. Democracy is less the enabler of education than education is the enabler of democracy.” (An Aristocracy of Everyone, pp. 13-14)

In a 1998 essay, Barber declared: “America is not a private club defined by one group’s historical hegemony. Consequently, multicultural education is not discretionary; it defines demographic and pedagogical necessity. If we want youngsters from Los Angeles whose families speak more than 160 languages to be ‘Americans,’ we must first acknowledge their diversity and honor their distinctiveness. English will thrive as the first language in America only when those for whom it is a second language feel safe enough in their own language and culture to venture into and participate in the dominant culture. For what we share in common is not some singular ethnic or religious or racial unity but precisely our respect for our differences: that is the secret to our strength as a nation, and is the key to democratic education.” (“Education for Democracy,” in A Passion for Democracy: American Essays, p. 231)

These same principles are prophetically restated by William Ayers in his final essay in the 2022 book, Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy: “In a free society education must focus on the production—not of things, but—of free people capable of developing minds of their own even as they recognize the importance of learning to live with others. It’s based, then, on a common faith in the incalculable value of every human being, constructed on the principle that the fullest development of all is the condition for the full development of each, and conversely, that the fullest development of each is the condition for the full development of all… Schools don’t exist outside of history or culture: they are, rather, at the heart of each. Schools serve societies; societies shape schools. Schools, then, are both mirror and window—they tell us who we are and who we want to become, and they show us what we value and what we ignore, what is precious and what is venal.” (Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, p. 315)

Please open the link to complete the reading.

Categories Citizenship, Civil Rights, Community Schools, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Freedom, Freedom to Read, History, Real Education

Leonie Haimson: Why Bloomberg Is Wrong About Reducing Class Size

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2023 //
30

Leonie Haimson is executive director of Class Size Matters. She has worked tirelessly to persuade legislators in New York State to limit class sizes. Her efforts were successful in the latest legislative session when both houses passed limits on class sizes.

However billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who was mayor of New York City for 12 years, has been an outspoken critic of class size reduction. In this article that appeared on Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet,” Haimson explains why Bloomberg is wrong.

Strauss writes:

In 2014, I wrote this: “Every now and then someone in education policy (Arne Duncan) or education philanthropy (Bill Gates) …. will say something about why class size isn’t really very important because a great teacher can handle a boatload of kids.”


Well, some can do that, but anybody who has been in a classroom knows the virtues of classes that are smaller rather than larger even without the research that has been shown to bear that out.


Now the issue is back in the spotlight, this time in New York City, where a new state law requires the public school system — the largest in the country — to reduce class sizes over five years. Opponents of the law are pushing back, especially Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013. He called for smaller class sizes in his first mayoral campaign but has now changed his mind.


In an op-ed in several publications, Bloomberg says students don’t need smaller classes but better schools — as if the two were entirely unrelated — and he ignores research, such as a 2014 review of major research that found class size matters a lot, especially for low-income and minority students.

This post, written by Leonie Haimson, looks at the issue, and Bloomberg’s position. Haimson is executive director of Class Size Matters, a nonprofit organization that advocates for smaller classes in New York City and across the nation as a key driver of education equity.

By Leonie Haimson


The knives are out against the new class size law, overwhelmingly passed in the New York State Legislature in June 2022, requiring New York City schools to phase in smaller classes over five years, starting this school year. The law calls for class sizes in grades K-3 to be limited to no more than twenty students; 23 students in grades 4-8, and 25 in core high school classes, to be achieved by the end of the 2027 school year. The law was passed despite the opposition of the city’s Department of Education officials, who insist that it will be too expensive, and somehow inequitable, because, they say, the highest-need students already have small enough classes.

Most recently, Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City and an adviser to Mayor Eric Adams, published identical opinion pieces in three major outlets: Bloomberg News (which he owns), The Washington Post, and the New York Post, inveighing against the goal of lowering class sizes. His piece is clearly meant to sway opinion leaders and legislators to repeal the law, and because of his prominent position, some may listen without knowing about fundamental problems in his op-ed.

Class size reduction has been shown as an effective way to improve learning and engagement for all students, especially those who are disadvantaged, and thus is a key driver of education equity. The Institute of Education Sciences cites lowering class size as one of only four education interventions proven to work through rigorous evidence; and multiple studies show that it narrows the achievement or opportunity gap between income and racial groups.

Bloomberg claims that because of the initiative, “City officials say they’ll have to hire 17,700 new teachers by 2028.” Actually, the estimate from the New York City Department of Education (DOE) itself is far smaller. In their draft class size reduction plan, posted on July 21, DOE officials estimated that 9,000 more teachers would be required over five years. While it’s true that the Independent Budget Office estimated the figure cited by Bloomberg, this large disparity between the two figures appears to stem from the fact that, as the IBO pointed out, the DOE’s budget already includes 7,500 unfilled teaching positions, which schools have not been allowed to fill. While Bloomberg claims the cost will be $1.9 billion for staffing, the DOE’s own plan estimates $1.3 billion — and these costs could be considerably lower if they redeployed teachers who are currently assigned to out-of-classroom positions to the classroom to lower class size.

The legislature passed the new law in recognition that the city’s DOE is now receiving $1.6 billion in additional state aid to finally settle the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit launched more than 20 years ago. In that case, the state’s highest court found that, because of excessive class sizes, the city’s children were deprived of their constitutional right to a sound, basic education.

Yet since his election, Adams has repeatedly cut education spending, and now threatens to cut it even more, by another 15 percent. As a result of these cuts, class sizes increased last year and will likely be larger this year. Hiring enough teachers to meet the law’s requirements will be a challenge in any case, but it will be impossible to achieve if the administration’s repeated cuts and hiring freezes are implemented.

Yet in the end, smaller classes would likely strengthen teacher quality by lowering teacher attrition rates, especially at our highest-need schools, as studies have shown.

In his op-ed, Bloomberg claims that creating the additional space necessary to lower class size will cost $35 billion, which is misleading. DOE did include this estimate in its original May 2023 draft class size plan. However following pushback by critics who pointed out that this figure bore no relation to reality, they deleted that inflated estimate in their more recent July class size plan. If DOE equalized or redistributed enrollment across schools, this would likely save billions of dollars in capital expenses. Right now, there are hundreds of underutilized public schools, sitting close by overcrowded schools that lack the space to lower class size.

Bloomberg, echoing an erroneous DOE claim that funds spent on lowering class size will not help the highest-need students, wrote: “Under the new mandate, only 38 percent of the highest-poverty schools would see class sizes shrink, compared to nearly 70 percent of medium- to low-poverty schools … it won’t help the students who need it most.”

Actually, only 8 percent of schools with the highest poverty levels (with 90 percent or more low-income students) fully complied with the class size caps last year, according to an analysis by Class Size Matters. Thus, 92 percent of these schools would see their class sizes shrink if DOE complied with the law, rather than the 38 percent that Bloomberg claims.

Moreover, by solely focusing on schools with 90 percent poverty levels or more, his claims are misleading. A piece in the education publication Chalkbeat attempted to make a similar argument, by using class size data provided by DOE that shows that 68 percent of classes in the highest-poverty schools met the class size limit. This is far different than Bloomberg’s claim that 68 percent of these schools are achieving the limits in all of their classes.

In addition, the class size data, analyzed in conjunction with DOE demographic data, shows that there are many more NYC public schools in the other two categories summarized by Chalkbeat, “Low-to-Mid Poverty” (schools with 0-75 percent low-income students) and “High Poverty” (schools with 75 percent to 90 percent low-income students), than those in their “Highest Poverty” category. Most importantly, these two categories of schools enroll a supermajority of our highest-needs students.

In fact, 79 percent of low-income students, 78 percent of Black students, 74 percent of Hispanic students, and 74 percent of English-language learners are enrolled in these other two categories of schools, while only 21 percent to 26 percent of these students are enrolled in the “Highest Poverty” category.

This further indicates that without a citywide mandate to lower class size, smaller classes would likely never reach most of our most disadvantaged students.

Indeed, the highest-needs students, including students of color, low-income students, and English-language learners, have been shown to gain twice the benefits from smaller classes in terms of higher achievement rates, more engagement, and eventual success in school and beyond, which is why class size reduction is one of very few education reforms proven to narrow the achievement or opportunity gap. Thus, by its very nature, lowering class size is a key driver of education equity.

There is also no guarantee that the smaller classes in our highest poverty schools will be sustained without a legal mandate to do so. In July, DOE officials omitted the promise in their May class size plan that schools that had already achieved the caps would continue to do so, as pointed out by a letter signed by over 230 advocates, parents, and teachers. In fact, we found that fewer of the schools in every category achieved the class size caps last year compared to the year before.

Only 69 schools citywide fully met the caps in the fall of 2022, compared to 89 in the fall of 2021, and the number of students enrolled in those schools declined from 18,248 to only 13,905, a decrease of nearly 25 percent. Fewer still will likely do so this year.

So given that the data does not back up his claims, why is Bloomberg so apparently enraged at the notion that public school students would be provided the opportunity to benefit from smaller classes.

One should recall that when he first ran for mayor more than 20 years ago, Bloomberg himself promised to lower class size, especially in the early grades. His 2002 campaign kit put it this way: “Studies confirm one of the greatest detriments to learning is an overcrowded classroom … For students a loud packed classroom means greater chance of falling behind. For teachers, class overcrowding means a tougher time teaching & giving students attention they need.”

Yet class sizes increased sharply during the Bloomberg years, and by 2013, his last year in office, class sizes in the early grades in public schools had risen to the highest levels in 15 years. By that time, he had long renounced his earlier pledge, and had proclaimed in a 2011 speech that he would fire half the teachers and double class sizes if he could, and this would be a “good deal for the students.”

Bloomberg’s main educational legacy in New York City was a huge increase in the number of charter schools as a result of his decision to provide them free space in public school buildings, and his successful effort to persuade state legislators to raise the charter cap. During his three terms in office, the number of charter schools in the city exploded from 19 to 183.

Since leaving office, Bloomberg has continued to express his preference for charter schools, and has pledged $750 million for their further expansion in the city and beyond. A close reading of his op-ed suggests that one of the main reasons for his vehement opposition to the new law is because lowering class size may take classroom space in our public schools that, in his view, should be used instead for charter schools.

Indeed, he concludes the op-ed by saying “it would help if Democratic leaders were more supportive of high-quality public charter schools,” and goes on to rail against a recent lawsuit to block the Adams administration’s decision to co-locate two Success charter schools in public school buildings in Brooklyn and Queens — a lawsuit filed on the basis that it would diminish the space available to lower class size for existing public school students.

Of the $750 million Bloomberg pledged for charter expansion, $100 million was specifically earmarked for Success Academy. Regarding the lawsuit, launched by the teachers union along with parents and educators in the affected schools, Bloomberg writes, “It was an outrageous attack on children, and thankfully, it failed.”

Misleading people about the value of small classes to teachers and students as well as about class size data seems to be an attack on opportunities for New York City public school children, who deserve better. Class Size Matters hopes these efforts fail.

Categories Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Class size, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, New York, New York City

Carol Burris: Charter Schools Can No Longer Claim to Be “Public Schools”

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2023 //
4

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, wrote an article in The Progressive about a new law in North Carolina that makes clear that charter schools are NOT public schools.

She writes:

When an Oklahoma state school board approved what would become the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school, opponents of the proposal called it “deeply un-American” and “a flagrant violation of long-standing constitutional law.” An Oklahoma parents group and a handful of state and national civil organizations filed a pair of lawsuits to block the new school. Creating a taxpayer-funded religious school “turns on its head the concept that charter schools were supposed to be public schools,” American Federation of Teacher president Randi Weingarten argued.

Indeed, they were supposed to be public schools. But anyone who has been watching the devolution of charter schools could see this coming from a mile away.

The magical transformation of what should be a public school to a taxpayer-funded private school is not a trick confined to Oklahoma.

Charter schools, which were originally proposed to be district-run, innovative public schools, have since morphed into national charter school chains, Christian nationalist schools, and facades for for-profit corporations.

From charter schools in churches with websites displaying crosses to “faith-friendly” charters, the charter industry has been flirting with religiosity for years. Under former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the federal Charter School Programs were given the green light to award grants to religious organizations that own or operate charter schools.

During the 2021-2022 school year, 20 percent of all charter school students were enrolled in a school run by a for-profit company. This allowed these companies to evade laws and regulations by using a nonprofit school as a facade. And it is but a small hop over a line drawn in the sand to move from the federal government funding a religious organization to run charters, to funding charters that provide religious instruction in classrooms. It only takes a strong breeze, and the sand lines disappear altogether.

The magical transformation of what should be a public school to a taxpayer-funded private school is not a trick confined to Oklahoma, nor does the hocus-pocus turn solely on the question of religion.

Even as quasi-religious and perhaps overtly religious charter schools are on the rise, there is another effort intent on blurring the line between public and private.

A recent bill passed in North Carolina, a state in which a large proportion of charters run by for-profits, dismisses other features that determine whether or not charter schools, in fact, deserve the title “public.”

Charter schools are supposed to be “free and open to all” without discrimination or favor. But HB 219, passed by a Republican supermajority legislature over the veto of Democrat Governor Roy Cooper, allows charter schools to charge tuition and grant enrollment privileges to certain students. With the bill’s passage, North Carolina’s under-enrolled charter schools can now enlist both foreign and out-of-state students on a tuition basis. How will under-enrollment be defined?

Since the bill also allows nearly uncontrolled expansion of existing charter schools, finding space for tuition-paying students will not be difficult. Who will pay the tuition bill—the state, the foreign nation, or the family? North Carolina left that question unaddressed, but the likely outcome will be families, which favors the wealthy.

Not only does North Carolina challenge the definition of a charter school as a free school, but it also flaunts the idea that charters are open to all. The new law erodes equal access to charter schools in the state by giving enrollment privileges to special groups, allowing charter schools to shape their student bodies.

Please open the link and continue reading this important story.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Equity, Extremism, North Carolina

Free! A Journal About Education and Democracy

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2023 //
12

Take advantage of an offer of a free publication about education.

A special issue of Education Policy Analysis Archive (EPAA) just came out, featuring articles by members of the International Academy of Education (IAE). EPAA is a free, on-line journal, published simultaneously in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Access is at https://epaa.asu.edu/index.php/epaa

This special issue was edited by Fernando Reimers of Harvard and features the following articles: Critical thinking and the conditions of democracy by Nicholas C. Burbules; Education and the challenges for democracy by Fernando Reimers; Race, class, and the democratic project in contemporary South African education: Working and reworking the law by Craig Soudien;Speculations on experiences in public education and the health of the nation’s democracy by David C. Berliner; Challenges in fostering democratic participation in Japanese educationby Yuko Nonoyama-Tarumi; Civic education, citizenship, and democracy by Lorin W. Anderson; and Education in a democratic and meritocratic society: Moving beyond thriving to flourishing by Ee-Ling Low.

Categories Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

Florida: Judge Throws Out DeSantis’ Gerrymandered Map

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2023 //
44

Florida used to have four Black members of Congress. Ron DeSantis took personal charge of redrawing the state’s districts and changed the lines to make them more Republican, eliminating three Black seats. A judge just tossed DeSantis’s map as unconstitutional. The decision will be appealed.

The Miami Herald reported:

A state judge struck down North Florida’s congressional districts Saturday, rebuffing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ open defiance of anti-gerrymandering protections, finding the governor’s map illegally reduced Black voters’ electoral power.

DeSantis had wagered the state’s Fair Districts Amendment against the U.S. Constitution, arguing mandatory protections for Black voters violated the Equal Protection Clause. Second Judicial Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh flatly rejected that gamble, rendering a decision that could reverberate from the halls of Tallahassee to the streets of Jacksonville, paving the way for a new, Democratic district where Jacksonville’s Black voters have more influence.

Marsh refused to bite on DeSantis’ claim that the state’s Fair Districts Amendment violated the U.S. Constitution, saying DeSantis’ secretary of state and the Legislature didn’t even have standing to make such an argument…

DeSantis conceded that his map did not meet the state’s “non-diminishment” standard, which mandates that new districts must not undermine the voting power of racial minorities. The protection mirrors language in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and the state argued Marsh should strike down that protection as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. At a hearing last month, Marsh questioned why Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody wasn’t defending the state’s Constitution in the case.

He also expressed sharp skepticism that he could make such an expansive ruling. Marsh said that if he ruled for the state, “this court will be the first in the country to say that even the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional.” If the Florida Supreme Court sides with DeSantis, it could have national implications. It means the court, a majority of whom DeSantis appointed, would go further than the U.S. Supreme Court has in advancing a legal argument, pushed by many conservatives, that it’s inherently wrong to take race into account, even if it’s done to preserve the political voice of Black voters.

DeSantis’ veto of the initial map and the GOP-controlled Legislature’s decision to adopt his new one sparked an historic protest in the Florida House where Reps. Angie Nixon (D-Jacksonville) and Travaris McCurdy (D-Orlando) led a sit-in to disrupt the proceedings. After that protest, DeSantis vetoed all of Nixon’s appropriations in the current budget, and legislative leadership put her office in the basement of the Florida Capitol. [Bold added.]

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article278906479.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Elections, Equity

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

Jan Resseger: Ohio’s New Budget Reflects “Opportunity Hoarding”

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2023 //
2

Jan Resseger writes frequently about education in Ohio. Her major concern has always been the common good. She describes the latest state budget as “opportunity hoarding.” It includes a welcome increase for public schools, but an even bigger increase for private schools.

She writes:

This blog has focused recently on the fraught political debate about public school finance as part of Ohio’s budget—passed on June 30 and signed into law on the 4th of July. Two years ago, the Ohio Legislature failed to implement a long-awaited Fair School Funding Plan in a stand-alone law. Although a new formula must be fully enacted for the state to allocate adequate school funding and distribute it equitably, the legislature chose to phase in the formula in three steps—making its full implementation dependent on the will of the legislature across three biennial budgets.

Despite efforts this year by the Ohio Senate to undermine school finance equity, the second step of the Fair School Funding Plan was, thanks to House Speaker Jason Stephens and his coalition, enacted fully in the new budget.

Ohio’s new budget and the political fight that led up to it has epitomized what Princeton University sociologist and acclaimed author of Evicted, Matthew Desmond defines as a fight about “opportunity hoarding.” Desmond devotes a chapter of his new book, Poverty, by America, to “How We Buy Opportunity”:

“Among advanced democracies, America stands out for its embrace of class extremities… What happens to a country when fortunes diverge so sharply, when millions of poor people live alongside millions of rich ones? In a country with such vast inequality, the poor increasingly come to depend on public services and the rich increasingly seek to divest from them. This leads to ‘private opulence and public squalor’…. As our incomes have grown, we’ve chosen to spend more on personal consumption and less on public works. Our vacations are more lavish, but school teachers must now buy their own school supplies. We put more money into savings to fuel intergenerational wealth creation but collectively spend less on expanding opportunity to all children… By 2021, government spending on all public goods… made up just 17.6 percent of GDP… Equal opportunity is possible only if everyone can access childcare centers, good schools, and safe neighborhoods—all of which serve as engines of social mobility… Opportunity can be hoarded… not only by abandoning public goods for private ones, but also by leveraging individual fortunes to acquire access to exclusive public goods, (like) buying yourself into an upscale community.” (Poverty, by America, pp. 106-112)

Policy Matters Ohio’s press release about the new Ohio budget might have been copied right out of Desmond’s chapter on opportunity hoarding: “Years of underfunding in our public sector have taken a toll which has been compounded by stagnant wages for many workers… Ohio tax revenues consistently beat estimates, in large part due to rising incomes spurred by federal support for COVID recovery, and a tight labor market. Instead of putting those dollars to work strengthening programs that ensure Ohioans share in the prosperity they help create, lawmakers once again prioritized giveaways to private interests, as well as tax cuts for the wealthy and big business.”

Policy Matters Ohio summarizes some of the details: “The operating budget includes a $1-billion-per-year income-tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy, does nothing for Ohioans in the lowest-income 20%, and temporarily increases taxes for some middle-income households. According to modeling provided by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy… 85.4% of the value of this billion-dollar cut will go to the richest 20% in Ohio… The budget also reduces the state’s main business tax, the Commercial Activity tax… The governor signed off on a $2-billion giveaway to private schools through voucher expansion… Kids will have continuous Medicaid coverage through age 3, greatly reducing gaps in care and supporting healthy kids and babies. However, the conference committee removed provisions that would have extended health insurance coverage for kids and pregnant people to those with incomes up to 300% of poverty…. The bill that made it to Governor DeWine’s desk raised wages for the direct care workforce to $18 over the biennium. The mandate was removed by the governor and replaced with only a promise to work toward implementing an increase. Child care workers did not even receive that… The elements of this budget that benefit the majority of Ohioans pale in comparison to the great need.”

Likewise, the private school tuition voucher expansion shifts the entitlement to wealthy families. Making students in families with income at 450% of the federal poverty level ($135,000) eligible for a full voucher, and students in families with even higher incomes eligible for a 50% or 25% or a minimal 10% voucher as family income gets higher—only exacerbates a current trend that tilts Ohio voucher use to middle and upper income families. These are families who were previously ineligible because their incomes are too high.

Please open the link to read the rest of her post.

Categories Education Reform, Equity, Ohio

Peter Greene: Oklahoma Superintendent Tries to Define “Woke,” But Can’t

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2023 //
86

Peter Greene discovered that Ryan Walters, the State Superintendent of Education in Oklahoma, attempted to define “Woke” on a far-right website. WOKE is one of those new terms of opprobrium, like “critical race theory,” that Republicans despise but can’t define. Peter eagerly read Walters’ effort to defund Woke, but came away disappointed. It seems that Woke is whatever you don’t like. You may have seen the stories recently about Walters insisting that the Tulsa race massacre of 2021 had nothing to do with skin color, although as the Daily Beast reported, “white mobs killed as many as 300 Black residents and burned some 1,600 homes and businesses in what was known as Black Wall Street.”

Peter Greene writes:

Oklahoma’s head education honcho decided to pop up in The Daily Caller (hyperpartisan and wide variation in reliability on the media bias chart) with his own take on the Big Question–what the heck does “woke” mean? (I’ll link here, because anyone who wants to should be able to check my work, but I don’t recommend clicking through).

Walters tries to lay out the premise and the problem:

Inherent to the nature of having a language is that the words within it have to mean something. If they do not, then they are just noises thrown into a conversation without any hope of leading it anywhere. And when the meaning is fuzzy, it becomes necessary to define the terms of discussion. To wit, the word “woke” has gained a lot of popularity among those of us who want to restore American education back to its foundations and reclaim it from the radical left.

I’m a retired English teacher and I generally avoid being That Guy, particularly since this blog contains roughly sixty gabillion examples of my typo issues, but if your whole premise is that you are all for precise language, maybe skip the “to wit” and remember that “restore back” is more clearly “restore.”

But he’s right. The term “woke” does often seem like mouth noises being thrown into conversations like tiny little bombs meant to scare audiences into running to the right. However, “restore American education back to its foundation” is doing a hell of empty noising as well. Which foundation is that? The foundation of Don’t Teach Black Folks How To Read? The foundation of Nobody Needs To Stay In School Past Eighth Grade? Anyone who wants to talk about a return to some Golden Age of US Education needs to get specific about A) when they think that was and B) what was so golden about it.

But since he doesn’t. Walters is also making mouth noises when he points the finger at “opponents of this movement.” If we don’t know what the movement is, we don’t know exactly what its opposition is, either. Just, you know, those wokes over there. But let’s press on:

Knowing that many such complaints are made in completely bad faith because they do not want us to succeed, it would still be beneficial to provide some clarity as to what it means and — in the process — illustrate both the current pitiful state of American education and what we as parents, educators, and citizens can do about it.

Personally, I find it beneficial to assume that people who disagree with me do so sincerely and in good faith until they convince me otherwise. And I believe that lots of folks out on the christianist nationalist right really do think they’re terribly oppressed and that they are surrounded by evil and/or stupid people Out To Get Them. It’s a stance that justifies a lot of crappy behavior (can probably make you think that it’s okay to commandeer government funds and sneakily redirect them to the Right People).

But I agree that it would be beneficial for someone in the Woke Panic crowd to explain what “woke” actually means. Will Walters be that person? Well….

In recent years, liberal elites from government officials to union bosses to big businesses have worked to co-opt concepts like justice and morality for their own agendas that are contrary to our founding principles and our way of life.

I don’t even know how one co-opts a concept like justice or morality, but maybe if he explains what agenda he’s talking about and how, exactly, they are contrary to founding principles or our way of life, whatever that is.

But he’s not going to do that. He’s going to follow that sentence with another that says the same thing with the same degree of vaguery, then point out that “naturally, this faction of individuals” is after schools to spread their “radical propaganda.” Still no definition of woke in sight. No–wait. This next start looks promising–

Put simply, “woke” education is the forced projection of inaccurately-held, anti-education values onto our students. Further, to go after wokeness in education means that we are going after the forced indoctrination of our students and our school systems as a whole.

Nope. That’s not helping, either. “Projection” is an odd choice–when I project an image onto a screen, the screen doesn’t change. There’s “projection” when I see in someone else what is really going on in me, which might have some application here (“I assume that everyone else also wants to indoctrinate students into one preferred way of seeing the world”) but that’s probably not what he has in mind. I have no idea how one “forces” projection. “Inaccurately-held” is also a puzzler. The values are accurate, but they’re being held the wrong way? What does this construction get us that a simple “inaccurate” would not? And does Walters really believe that schools are rife with people who are “anti-education,” because that makes me imagine teachers simply refusing to teach and giving nap time all day every day, except for pauses to explain to students that learning things is bad. I suspect “education” means something specific to him, and this piece (aimed at a hyperpartisan audience) does seem to assume a lot of “nudge nudge wink wink we real Americans know what this word really means” which would be fine if the whole premise was not that he was going to explain what certain words actually mean.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Fraud, Gender, History, Hoax, Hypocrisy, Oklahoma, Politics, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism

“Democracy”: The GOP War on the Founding Fathers’ Vision

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2023 //
19

A blog reader who identifies as “Democracy” argues that today’s Republican Party, which prizes individualism over the common good has abandoned the vision of the Founding Fathers.

It appears that Ron DeSantis and the entirety of the Republican Party is in direct opposition to American history and the United States Constitution.

The Founders envisioned a democratic society “in which the common good was the chief end of government.” They agreed with John Locke’s view that the main purpose of government –– the main reason people create government –– is to protect their persons through –– as historian R. Freeman Butts put it –– a social contract that placed “the public good above private desires.” The goal was “a commonwealth, a democratic corporate society in which the common good was the chief end of government.”

The Preamble – the stated purposes – of the Constitution, reads

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

In Article I, Section 8 of that document, the legislative branch is given broad, specific powers (among them taxing, borrowing money, regulating commerce, coining money and regulating its value, etc.). Indeed, Article I, Clause 1 gives Congress the power to tax for “the common defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Clause 18 of Section 8 stipulates that Congress had the power “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.”

Two Supreme Court decisions early in the republic’s history –– both unanimous –– supported and cemented a broad – liberal – interpretation of the implied powers of Congress.

Republicans call them “socialism.”

In 1819 (McCullough v. Maryland) the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the U.S. government was “a Government of the people. In form and in substance, it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit.”

The Court explicitly reaffirmed that one of the critical purposes of government under the U.S. Constitution is to promote the general welfare “of the people.”

In that case, Chief Justice Marshall wrote this about the necessary and proper clause:

“the clause is placed among the powers of Congress, not among the limitations on those powers.” And he added this: “Its terms purport to enlarge, not to diminish, the powers vested in the Government. It purports to be an additional power, not a restriction.”

In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) Chief Justice Marshall wrote this about the Congressional commerce power:

“This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution.”

The history of the United States, and the Constitution, over time, reflect progressive changes. The American Revolution was a progressive movement inspired by the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers; conservatives opposed it. The early expansion of voting rights to those who didn’t own land was progressive, and conservatives of the day fought
against it. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory, a purchase that doubled the size of the fledgling United States, rested on a liberal interpretation of constitutional authority. U.S. government funding of roads and canals relied on a liberal perspective of Congressional commerce power. Those roads and canals were instrumental to economic growth and prosperity, not unlike federal funding of interstate highways, the Internet, medical research, and health care.

And yet, the Republican Party is filled with people who basically reject all of this in favor of sedition.

As David Blight, Yale professor of American history put it,

“Changing demographics and 15 million new voters drawn into the electorate by Obama in 2008 have scared Republicans—now largely the white people’s party—into fearing for their existence. With voter ID laws, reduced polling places and days, voter roll purges, restrictions on mail-in voting, an evisceration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a constant rant about ‘voter fraud’ without evidence, Republicans have soiled our electoral system with undemocratic skullduggery…The Republican Party has become a new kind of Confederacy.

Obviously, public education has a central – critical – role to play here. Here’s how Will and Ariel Durant explained it in ‘The Lessons of History’ (1968):

“Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.”

Republicans: The New Confederacy
Categories Democracy, Democrats, DeSantis, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, History, Lies, Republicans, Trump

Michigan Passes Historic Increases for Education

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2023 //
2

Michigan is in track to make record investments in the quality of life for children and schools.

My friend Mitchell Robinson, a member of the State board of education, shared the following good news:

The State of Michigan passed a third consecutive historic education budget last night—and did so with bipartisan support, meaning the changes included in this budget can go into effect immediately.

It’s amazing to see what a state education budget can look like when you have pro-education legislators in charge–and teachers chairing the House and Senate Education Committees and the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on PreK-12.

The budget includes:

•universal school meals

•foundation allowance increase of 5% — the largest in state history

•fully funded special education programs

•expanded Pre-K programs

•student teacher stipends for K-12

The budget also appropriates $11 million to a K-5 Music Education Pilot Program that provides funding to school districts that currently do not have elementary music instruction to hire certified music teachers.

Budgets are about more than dollars—they are moral documents; and in Michigan we are showing that we value our children, our families, and our future by directing funding to programs and initiatives that strengthen our schools and communities.

edbudget2023.jpeg
Categories Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Michigan, Supporting public schools
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