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The Daily Signal Salutes Defunding of After-School Programs

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2017 //
29

The Daily Signal is published by the uber-conservative Heritage Foundation. I am on their mailing list. In yesterday’s report, it congratulated Trump for proposing to eliminate federal funding for after-school programs because they harm children. They hailed the defunding of 21st Century Community Learning Centers.

Based on a study published 10 years ago that found that participants in the programs showed no change in academic achievement, felt safer, but were involved in more incidents of negative behavior, the Daily Signal slammed the program. Maybe the kids were involved in more incidents of negative behavior than their peers who stayed home and watched television alone.

Surely it is a mistake to judge a program of after school activities by academic metrics, even if it was falsely sold as such.

Categories Budget Cuts, Students

Send a Message to Betsy DeVos: Opt Out of Federally-Mandated Testing!

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2017 //
10

Donald Trump’s selection of Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education set off a seismic reaction among parents, educators, and other concerned citizens across the nation. Never, in recent memory, has a Cabinet selection inspired so much opposition. The phone lines of Senators were jammed. People who never gave much thought to what happens in Washington suddenly got angry. Snippets of her Senate confirmation hearings appeared again and again on newscasts. It was widely known that she was a billionaire who has spent most of her adult life fighting public education and advocating for privatization via charter schools and vouchers for religious schools.

She is Secretary and has pledged that her hope is to open more charters, funnel more money to cybercharters, encourage more homeschooling, and encourage state programs for vouchers, much like the Florida tax-credit program that has funneled $1 billion to organizations that pay for students to attend mostly religious schools.

There have been many state referenda on vouchers. The public has rejected every one of them, including the one funded by Betsy DeVos in Michigan in 2000 and by Jeb Bush in Florida in 2012.

Citizens must work together to block every federal or state effort to defund public schools.

There are two ways to stop DeVos.

One, join local and state organizations that are fighting privatization. Contact and join the Network for Public Education to get the names of organizations in your state.

Two, opt out of federally mandated tests. That sends a loud and clear message that you will not allow your child to participate in federal efforts to micromanage your school. Whatever you want to know about your state’s test scores can be learned by reviewing its scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. For example, we know that Michigan students have declined significantly on tests of reading and math–especially in fourth grade–since the DeVos family decided to control education policy in their home state.

The state tests are a sham. Students learn nothing from them, since they are not allowed to discuss the questions or answers. They never learn which questions they got wrong. Teachers learn nothing from them. The scores come back too late to inform instruction, and the contents are shrouded in secrecy. The tests are a waste of valuable instructional time and scarce resources. They teach conformity. They do not recognize or reward creativity or wit. They reward testing corporations.

Say no to DeVos by opting out. Send a message to Congress that its mandate for annual testing is wrong. Revolt against it. Teach your children the value of civil disobedience and critical thinking. Defend authentic education. Resist! Opt out.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Network for Public Education, Opt Out, Parents, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Students

Chicago: Parent Discovers Massive Breach of Privacy of Student Records

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2017 //
10

A parent in Chicago discovered a massive breach of private data about students in private schools receiving special education services. The data was controlled by Chicago Public Schools, but obviously with little regard for privacy. The parent was a student Privacy activist, Cassie Creswell.

The following post is by Cassie Creswell, a Chicago parent activist from Raise Your Hand Illinois and a key member of our Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. In January, Cassie also testified on our behalf at the Chicago hearings of the Commission for Evidence-Based Policy against overturning the ban to enable the federal government to create a comprehensive student database of personally identifiable information.

More recently, upon examining expenditure files on the Chicago Public School website, Cassie discovered the names of hundreds of students along with the disability services they received at numerous private and parochial schools. She immediately contacted several reporters, and though an article in the Sun-Times subsequently briefly reported on this breach, the reporter did not mention that it was primarily private and parochial students whose data was exposed. In addition, legal claims for special education services that CPS had originally rejected were included along with student names. Cassie’s fuller explanation of this troubling violation of student privacy is below — as well as the fact that at least some of these schools and families have still not been alerted to the breach by CPS.

Cassie writes:

Once again, Chicago Public Schools has improperly shared sensitive student data, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on February 25th.

Medical data about students used to administer outsourced nursing services was stored on an unsecured Google doc available to anyone with the link. And personally-identifiable information (PII) about students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), including their name, student identification numbers and information about services and diagnoses related to their disabilities, were included in files of detailed vendor payments posted on the district’s public website.

I discovered this latter information in the vendor payment data, while in the course of searching for information about standardized testing expenditures. The files covered seven fiscal years, 2011-2016, but were only posted on the CPS website this past summer. Noticing what appeared to be a student name and ID number listed in the file struck me as surprising and likely a privacy violation. All in all, there were more than 4500 instances in the files where students’ names appeared along with the special education services they received.

Upon closer examination, it was clear to me that there was a great deal of highly sensitive student personal information that had been disclosed, with payments made from CPS to educational service providers assigned to hundreds of students with special needs attending private schools as well as public schools. Included were the name of the students, the schools in which they were enrolled, their ID numbers, the vendors who had been hired and the services they provided according to the students’ diagnoses. The funds for the payments came from public funds routed through the students’ home districts, CPS, to fulfill requirements of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for spending on special education students enrolled in private schools.

This breach has since been confirmed as violating federal and state privacy laws — at least in the case of the public school students whose personal information was disclosed and likely the private school students as well.

Categories Data, Privacy, Special Education, Students

The Nation: Teachers Are on the Front Lines to Protect Vulnerable Students

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2017 //
8

Teachers are on the front lines to protect students targeted by the Trump administration: immigrant students, Muslim students, transgender students. Never in our national history has the federal government threatened the safety and security of students. It is a new and terrible day in America.

Teachers are first responders in protecting their students.

The article reports on a march sponsored by New York’s Alliance for Quality Education.

“Those civil rights are extremely important…. People want to be protected from ICE agents and they want to be protected from homophobic bullying,” says Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance. “But they also want to be provided the quality education that’s going to open up the opportunities in life that they deserve.”

The social principle of education as a public trust resonates beyond school grounds. The March also demanded reforms to state criminal statutes that enable youth as young as 16 to be tried as adults for certain felonies. And in resistance to standardized testing and rigid math and reading standards, activists seek holistic, multicultural curricula that speaks to students struggling with structural oppression and poverty.

Allie, a young high-school teacher, attended the rally on behalf of her Brooklyn school, which serves as a last resort for “at risk” youth who have gotten caught up with jails and police. There, she says, “the kids who are having the hardest life outside of school and would need more social workers, two teachers in a room, extra help—[they] go to the schools that don’t have the resources to provide that…. They get blamed for not getting through because we’re still under this idea of the American dream where it’s their fault; they just didn’t work hard enough. And they work their asses off.”

But she learns every day from her students’ determination: They brave the unimaginable just to get to class, for a chance to get the equal education they deserve.

“I’ve seen my students over the summer begging for money to eat in the subway…. They’ll take the free lunch that they get and they’ll give it to their kid…. They are so strong. And the fact that they’re still trying to get themselves educated is amazing.”

Categories Resistance, Students, Teachers, Trump

URGENT MESSAGE TO PARENTS IN CONNECTICUT: Your Child’s Privacy at Risk!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
6

Parents in Connecticut, pay attention and take action!

The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy has sent out an urgent message to parents in Connecticut.

The legislature is holding hearings on Monday (tomorrow) on a bill that would strip privacy protections from your children.

In January, a legislator proposed to remove all privacy protections from student data. Because of outrage expressed by parents, he withdrew his bill.

But now another bill has emerged. The hearings were hurriedly scheduled. Are they trying to put something over before parents know about it?

This past week a new bill, 7207 to “revise” the student data privacy law, was introduced, and will be heard by the CT Joint Education Committee this Monday, March 6. This kind of a rush job could imply that they are hoping to pass this bill without giving parents time to react. This new bill, 7207, wants to repeal the data privacy law and delay further implementation until July 1, 2018. This would remove existing protection of school children for over a year. WHY?

The Student Data Privacy Law has been in effect since Oct. 1, 2016; it only applies to NEW contracts, only asks for transparency, the CT Edtech Commission has already done the work to implement it. WHY, would Connecticut want to now repeal protection and transparency?

Please email your comment or testimony in Word or PDF format to EDtestimony@cga.ct.gov . Testimony should clearly state your name and the bill you are commenting on: Bill 7207- AN ACT MAKING REVISIONS TO THE STUDENT DATA PRIVACY ACT OF 2016.

Connecticut citizens please contact your legislators directly. If you are not sure who they are or how to contact them you can look that up here: https://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/cgafindleg.asp

Is it asking too much that when a company contracts with a school and collects and uses and shares children’s data, that the data be kept safe and parents be able to see how that data is used, breached, and not sold?

By repealing or delaying this law, who are they protecting?

Categories Connecticut, Data and Data Mining, Parents, Privacy, Resistance, Students

Texas Kids Whup State Senator From Dallas in Debate About Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2017 //
27

A Texas State Senator debated a group of students from Richardson ISD, and as they say in Texas, the kids gave Sen. Don Huffines a whupping. The students were in grades 7-12.

He tried to persuade them they needed vouchers so they could go to private schools, and a student told him it wouldn’t work because the vouchers would never be large enough to get them into the best schools.

He got testy and snapped at her:

“Huffines countered by asking: “Do you want me to give them $15,000 so they can go to Hockaday or St. Mark’s? That’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard.”

Huffines got hot under the collar when the students took issue with him. He lost his cool. His spokesman said “he was ambushed.”


“But Meredyth Childress, a PTA member and mother of one of the students at the meeting, said the students were not political operatives looking to “ambush” Huffines. They were given articles to review about private school vouchers before meeting with the senator. “We’re very proud of the students,” Childress said. “Both sides were passionate. One side displayed the proper respect and decorum. One side did not.”

During one heated exchange, a woman told Huffines that it wasn’t right to send money to private schools that was meant to help public schools.

“What makes you think it’s your money?” Huffines responded, adding that businesses were taxpayers. “Sixty-two percent of all taxes are paid by businesses,” he said.

At one point, Huffines barked at the group: “What are you all afraid of?”

Richardson ISD Superintendent Jeannie Stone said she was proud of how the students responded and grateful they attended the event with her and the PTA.

Bottom line: the high school students were better prepared and more thoughtful than Sen. Huffines.

They knew their stuff. He was outsmarted and outclassed.

Is Sen. Huffines as smart as a seventh-grader from Richardson ISD? What do you think?

Categories Education Reform, Students, Texas, Vouchers

John Merrow: Educators Must Stop the Bullying or Face the Consequences

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2017 //
31

John Merrow reminds his readers that bullying is illegal. It is not enough simply to react or to comfort students after the fact. Only in the era of Trump would this conversation take place. Just because the president does it, doesn’t make it either right or legal.

 

Merrow writes:

 

As schools reopen in the New Year and Donald Trump’s inauguration draws near, the reality of dramatic increases in hate speech and hate behavior cannot be ignored. Educators need to know that merely reacting to offenses will not be adequate. The adults in charge need to step up and be proactive. They must draw some very clear lines about what behavior will not be tolerated. It’s not enough to offer counseling and sympathetic hugs after the fact!

 

Why? Not just for the right reason–to support vulnerable students–but also to cover their own butts, because ‘after the fact’ actions, no matter how warm and supportive, are insufficient, inappropriate and almost certainly illegal.

 

The law is very much on the side of the victims, and school authorities ought to know that they are obligated under federal law to protect young people. I am not referring to anti-bullying legislation, which differs to state to state, but to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, sometimes known as ‘That damned sports law.’ Title IX clearly prohibits sexual harassment, and, even when bullying is ostensibly directed against an individual’s race, ethnicity or religion, it almost invariably includes sexual references. Girls are called “sluts” and “hos,” boys are called “fags’ and other names. Sexual rumors and comments are frequent. And the above behavior violates the granddaddy of all laws in this area, Title IX.

 

Title IX also prohibits these behaviors outside the school, such as when personal computers are used, when the behavior is disruptive to learning or affects a student’s ability to partake of the opportunities for learning and in other opportunities provided by the school. In short, schools and school administrator, under Title IX, are obligated to stop sexual cyber-bullying. Moreover, they stand to lose federal funding if they do not. Some school districts have paid 6-figure settlements for their demonstrated failure to protect students from harassment and cyber-bullying.

 

Only this president is free to bully people and groups with impunity. You are not!

 

 

Categories Bias, Inequity, Racism, Students

Peter Greene: What if We Let All Children Have Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2016 //
10

Peter Greene wrote this column a year ago, but it remains pertinent as ever.

Reformers like to say that the student should have “a backpack full of cash” (there is a terrific new documentary with that title, exposing the harm that school choice does to children and public schools).

Peter takes that canard on:

One of the foundational assertions of the charter movement is that public school tax dollars, once collected, should be attached to the child, maybe in a backpack, or perhaps surgically. “This public money… belongs to the student, not the failing school” wrote a commenter on one of my HuffPost pieces today. And I’ve heard variations on that over and over from charter advocates.

The money belongs to the student.

I’ve resisted this notion for a long time. The money, I liked to say, belongs to the taxpayers, who have used it to create a school system that serves the entire community by filling that community with well-educated adults who make better employees, customers, voters, neighbors, parents, and citizens. But hey– maybe I’ve been wrong. Maybe that money, once collected really does belong to the student. In which case, let’s really do this.

Let’s let the student spend his voucher money (and let’s stop pussyfooting around this– when we talk about the money following the students, we’re talking about vouchers) on the education of his dreams.

Does she want to go to the shiny new charter school? Let her go (as long as they’ll take her, of course). But why stop there? Travel has long been considered a broadening experience– what if she wants to take the voucher and spend it on a world cruise? Why not? It’s her money. Perhaps she wants to become a champion basketball player– would her time not be well spent hiring a coach and shooting hoops all day? Maybe she would like to develop her skills playing PS4 games, pursuant to a career in video-game tournaments. That’s educational. In fact, as I recall the misspent youth of many of my cohort, I seem to recall that many found smoking weed and contemplating the universe to be highly educational. I bet a voucher would buy a lot of weed….

Heck, let’s really go all in. Why use the odd fiction of a voucher at all– let’s just collect taxes and cut every single student an annual check for $10,000 (or whatever the going rate is in your neighborhood). Let’s just hand them the money that we’re asserting belongs to them, and let them spend it as they wish. Maybe they’d like a nice couch, or a new iPad, or a sweet skateboard, or a giant voucher party, or food and clothing for themselves and their family.

He goes on from there. Read it and learn why that backpack full of cash is a dopey idea.

Categories Funding, Students, Vouchers

A Teacher in Nevada Gives Thanks

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2016 //
1

Angie Sullivan, second grade teacher in Nevada, gives thanks. If you want to thank Angie, a tireless advocate for her students, write her at angiesullivan0@gmail.com

 

Angie writes:

 

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

I am grateful for public schools which are central to American opportunity.

 

Public schools are the main protectors of social justice.

 

Public schools are central to democracy.

 

We educate everyone – no matter the need.

 

Public schools take all students.

 

My students are the center of my life.

 

We need to protect public schools not drown them with unfunded mandates while withholding resources. We will fail if Nevada continues to withhold resources while increasing demands every year.

 

Experiments across the USA to educate communities of color by forcing them into charters without skilled permanent labor are failing. Corporations and groups want to devalue what teachers do. It does not work. It is a scam.

 

See Detroit.

 

See the lawsuits.

 

Policy that there is no need for skilled labor and union busting did this.

 

Communities of color need to demand a neighborhood public school with RESEARCH BASED instruction. They also need to demand authentic education not just test preparation.

 

Communities of color need to demand a real permanent skilled veteran teacher. Filling at-risk schools with young folks who had five weeks of training one summer – does not work. Filling at-risk schools with large number of ARLs and Subs has got to stop. It is our communities of color without real teachers.

 

Teachers should not be temporary. Hiring warm bodies without pedagogy is a real problem in at-risk schools in Vegas.

 

Teachers know there is not a quick fix. We know literacy is hard work not a quick fad or gimmick to make someone outside the school cash. Real teachers are not on our way to a school board seat or some other position. We do not whisper in the ears of power. We do not have a public relations firm which announces all our achievements.

 

We just take care of kids.

 

We do the job – but we are tired of being abused.

 

Detroit is Vegas.

 

If we do not fight charters, this will be us at a rate of six schools in the ASD a year. Yes, ASD legislation did this to Detroit. Charters did this to Detroit. Union busting did this.

 

If our community does not stand up and demand funding for at-risk public schools – this will be us. We are being starved into failure.

 

We will be drowned in lawsuits. All students who do not have a real teacher -should be demanding one.

 

The reformer experiment has failed in Nevada. Nevada charters are failing.

 

The full data needs to be reported.

 

The reformer experiment destroyed Detroit. Detroit’s charters are failing. Detroit’s ASD failed.

 

We do not need to repeat the mistakes other places make. We need to change our laws to get our charter mess under control

 

I am grateful for public schools.

 

I am grateful for my sweet students and their families.

 

I am grateful for democracy and America.

 

Home Means Nevada.

Categories Democracy, Nevada, Students

Boston: When Will Mitchell Chester and Tommy Chang Be Held Accountable?

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2016 //
20

The citizens of Massachusetts spoke loudly and clearly on November 8 when they overwhelmingly rejected Question 2. They don’t want more charter schools. They want strong and well-resourced public schools.

 

But the state of Massachusetts and the Boston school superintendent Tommy Chang have decided to close Mattahunt Elementary School despite the pleas of the parents and the local community. 

 

The state Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester has threatened to take over the school, although state takeovers have seldom been successful at improving schools. Boston superintendent Chang says that the only way to save the school is to close it. Read that sentence over two or three times and see if it makes any sense to you. It reminds me of the saying during the Vietnam War that “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.” This is insane.

 

Test scores are low. Kids are poor. Why not come up with a strategy to improve the school? Chang, who worked for John Deasy’s in Los Angeles, seems to have no idea how to help the school other than to close it. Neither does Mitchell Chester.

 

Citizens for Public Schools writes:

 

Does Boston have to close a school to save its children from suffering harm at the hands of the state?

 

That startling question was the focus of nearly four hours of passionate debate last week, pitting 100 parents and other supporters of the Mattahunt School against Superintendent Tommy Chang.

 

In the end, the School Committee voted to close the school at the end of June to head off state takeover, even after parents said they were willing to take the risk and would join with the School Committee in fighting for their school.

 

The Mattahunt students are 95 percent Black and Latino, and over 25 percent English language learners. Many come from Haiti and have already experienced trauma and instability. School Department officials said 17 of the students came to the Mattahunt from other schools that the department closed.

 

“You would never do this in a white community,” said Peggy Wiesenberg, a white parent who came to support the Mattahunt parents…

 

All sides agreed that state intervention would be a tragedy for the children. Speakers said the state takeover of the Dever and Holland schools had hurt the children in those schools, using terms like “disaster.”

 

Have public officials in charge of education in Massachusetts lost their minds? Why would they close a school to avoid a state takeover that everyone agrees would be a disaster? Would they do this in a white neighborhood? Why are they treating these children like they are inanimate objects? Like they don’t matter? Like their well-being is unimportant? They are not doing this for the kids. Why are they doing it? What is the point? This is not education reform. This is community destruction and child abuse.

 

Where is the accountability for Mitchell Chester and Tommy Chang? They are guilty of educational malpractice. They should be held accountable.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Boston, Closing schools, Parents, Students
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