Just having finished helping to judge the first three rounds of the DC State-Level MathCounts competition, I have some sad news. Unless I missed one or two kids, it seemed that NOT A SINGLE STUDENT FROM ANY DC PUBLIC OR CHARTER SCHOOL PARTICIPATED.
Not one that I noticed, and I was in the judging room where all the answer sheets were handed in, and I and some engineers and mathematicians had volunteered to come in and score the answers.*
In past years, for example, when I was a math teacher and MathCounts coach at Alice Deal JHS/MS, the public schools often dominated the competitions. It wasn’t just my own teams, though — many students from other public schools, and later on, from DC’s charter schools, participated. (Many years, my team beat all of the others. Sometimes we didn’t, but we were always quite competitive, and I have a lot of trophies.)
While a few public or charter schools did field full or partial teams on the previous “chapter” level of competition last month, this time, at the “state” level (unless I missed one or two), I am sad to report that there were none at all. (Including Deal. =-{ )
That’s what ten years of Education ‘Reform’ has brought to DC public and charter schools.
there is a massive turnover of teachers and school administrators – a revolving door as enormous percentages of teachers break down and quit mid-year (in both public and charter schools);
these frauds are probably also true at some or all of charter schools, but nobody is investigating them at all because they don’t have to share data and the ‘state’ agency hides what they do get;
DC is still attempting to implement a developmentally-inappropriate “common core” curriculum funded by Bill Gates and written by a handful of know-it-alls who had never taught;
they implemented a now-many-times-discredited“value-added method” of determining the supposed worth of teachers and administrators, and used that to terminate many of them;
they also closed dozens of public schools in poor, black neighborhoods.
Yes, fourth-grade NAEP national math and reading scores have continued to rise – but they were rising at just about that exact same rate from 2000 through 2007, that is to say, BEFORE mayoral control of schools and the appointment of that mistress of lies, fraud, and false accusations: Michelle Rhee.
So what I saw today at the DC ‘state’-wide competition is just one example of how to destroy public education.
When we will we go back to having an elected school board, and begin having a rational, integrated, high-quality public educational system in DC?
* Fortunately, we didn’t have to produce the answers ourselves! Those questions are really HARD! We adults, all mathematically quite proficient, had fun trying to solve a few of them when we had some down time — and marveled at the idea of sixth, seventh, or eighth graders solving them at all! (If you are curious, you can see previous year’s MathCounts questions here.)
What should teachers’ unions look like 20 years from now?
Teachers unions are under attack and, in fact, they might be entering their most perilous time in decades. At the same time, as teachers in West Virginia have shown us, good organizing can always find a way forward.
This seems like a good time to consider what our unions could and should look like twenty years from now.
Today’s contributors are Brian Guerrero, Nikki Milevsky, David Fisher, John Borsos, Jennifer Thomas, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, and Shannan Brown. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Jennifer, Brian, Nikki and David on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.
Readers might also be interested in two resource collections I’ve developed:
Brian Guerrero is a Teacher on Special Assignment for the Lennox School District in Lennox, California, president of the local Lennox Teachers Association, and a member of the Instructional Leadership Corps, a collaboration among the California Teachers Association, the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, and the National Board Resource Center at Stanford:
Teachers unions are, at their core, Labor Organizations. This is true today and it will be true twenty years from now. We negotiate contracts and working conditions, salaries, and benefits, on behalf of and at the direction of our members. We grieve contract violations and make sure members are fairly represented and receive due process. We safeguard that teaching remains a viable, dignified, and desirable profession and that teachers have a say in decisions that impact their classrooms and students. We are the collective voice of teachers and other educators, and students and schools are better for the environment we help create…
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Washington Wizards forward Kelly Oubre Jr. made his only trip to New Orleans this season on Friday (March 9), and he wanted to ensure it was a memorable one. After helping the Wizards walk away with a 116-97 win over the New Orleans Pelicans at the Smoothie King Center, Oubre presented 10 Cohen College Prep high school with $1,000 scholarships, he told The Washington Post.
Oubre, who spent his early years in New Orleans and moved away at age 9 after Hurricane Katrina, awarded the grants to 10 seniors from his father’s alma mater as a way to give back to his hometown. He also made sure to show off his New Orleans roots by wearing the jersey of New Orleans Saints star Alvin Kamara to the game.
A recent report produced by a pro-charter school policy organization says that the continued rapid expansion of charter schools in the Bay Area, including Oakland, has been significantly undercut by the shortage of affordable facilities in a region notorious for out-of-control real estate prices.
To counter the slowdown, the report proposes passing state laws to “require or incentivize” school districts to close or “consolidate” public school properties and turn them over to charter school operators.
The growth rate of Bay Area charters, which reached a highpoint of 18.2 percent in 2012-2013, has fallen to an estimated 3.8 percent in 2017-2018.
The 25-page report, “The Slowdown in Bay Area Charter School Growth: Causes and Solutions,” was released in January by Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). The research was funded by the Silicon Schools Fund and supported by the California Charter Schools Association, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and National Association of Charter School Authorizers.
Among the report’s proposals:
Tighten the state law, called Prop. 39, which requires school district to provide space in public schools for charters that ask for it.
“Prop. 39 helps, but it doesn’t help enough,” the report said. New regulations, for example, could modify the current year-to-year lease agreements “allowing or requiring a multiyear Prop. 39 lease;”
Offer districts “consolidation grants” to close facilities and maximize use of classrooms at fewer school sites;
Require a district to “house charter students” before it is allowed to go to the voters to pass a school bond to build or renovate school facilities. An aggressive step would be to require districts to pay a tax to the state “as long as the district fails to consolidate or close under-enrolled district schools.”
Even more aggressively, the state could take “building ownership rights away from districts that fail to manage them efficiently.”
“The state could simply require that districts that fail to reduce costs responsibly get out of the property ownership business by having the state assume ownership, by placing the buildings into a third-party trust, or by establishing a cooperative to which charter schools have equal rights.”
An additional factor slowing charter growth may have to do with intensifying political backlash, nationally and locally, against charters, according to the report.
“Teacher unions…have stepped up their resistance strategies and are increasingly coordinating opposition campaigns,” the report said. Further, “school districts have become adept at limiting charter growth by blocking access to facilities.”
Contributing to the backlash is “the perceived (negative) fiscal impact of charter schools on local districts,” the report said.
In Oakland, there are currently about 14,000 students enrolled in 43 charter schools, compared with over 36,000 students in 86 district schools.
This means that about 39 percent of the total students in public schools attend charters, costing the district about $100 million a year in lost revenue, according to district figures.
To counter the political “backlash” against charters, pro-charter organizations – like GO Public Schools in Oakland the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) – are involved in charter advocacy and “running successful campaigns for school board races.”
The CCSA spent more than $12 million on candidates for school board and other races in 2016 and 2017, the report said.
The proposals backed by Oakland-based charter organizations are less blatantly argued than those of their state and national counterparts, but their goals are the same.
They want to close public schools so charters can acquire school real estate and students.
Utilizing the rhetoric of school reform, local charter groups have written that Oakland has 30-35 too many public schools and have recommended closing schools as way to improve the quality of education and strengthen the district’s precarious finances.
Trish Gorham, president of the Oakland Education Association (OEA), the teachers union, told the Oakland Post that she found the report similar to other charter plans to undermine public education.
“The only thing surprising is how blatant it is,” she said.
“This is the kind of playbook that charter school supporters are following to privatize public education,” she said. “Oakland has been their target for a long time.”
“The bottom line is they need more space, and the only way to do that is to close more public schools,” Gorham continued. “That has to be watched. We are not going to close schools just to give the property to charter schools.”
Adding to the school district’s difficulties in maintaining its independence and solvency, charter organizations are deeply embedded in Oakland, and the district and school board, therefore, finds it difficult to disentangle itself, according to Kim Davis of Parents United for Public Schools.
“We’re very interlaced with these charter folks,” going back to 2003, she said.
There are four main pro-charter organizations in Oakland: Educate78, GO Public Schools and its affiliated organizations, the Rogers Family Foundation and the Oakland Public Education Fund, which has its office in the district’s headquarters.
Additionally, the California Charter Schools Association plays a major role in the city, especially at election time.
ORLANDO, Fla. – Youth listened to inspirational speakers and got the chance to experience their future careers on second day of the Disney Dreamers Academy with Steve Harvey and ESSENCE Magazine on Friday.
The theme for the day was “Be 100: Great Risk. Great Reward.” Along with hearing inspirational speeches, Dreamers participated in hands-on workshops in various career fields around Walt Disney World.
The Dreamers attended the “Be 100 Breakfast” program in the morning where they learned valuable skills about networking and leadership.
Speakers during the day included former Disney Dreamers Academy alumnus and motivational speaker Princeton Parker and motivational speaker Jonathan Sprinkles.
[/media-credit] Motivational Speaker Jonathan Sprinkles speaks at the Disney Dreamers Academy
“We are starting a brand new decade of Disney Dreamers Academy and I believe we have a fresh new crop of special students who see more, they dream bigger,” Sprinkles said. “I believe we’re going to see some people get out here and change the world.”
Tracey D. Powell, Vice President of Deluxe Resorts and Disney Dreamers Academy Executive Champion, hosted programming during the day for parents.
In the afternoon the Dreamers participated in “Deep Dives” at Disney University and throughout the Disney Park. Dreamers were given a more personalized experience in small groups based on their career interests.
Sean Smith, 14, who is attending the Dreamers Academy from Basking Ridge New Jersey participated in a Deep Dive with engineers from Walt Disney World
“It’s really a lot of fun and I’ve met at of people,” he said. “The speakers were really inspiring and it changes you to hear their stories and makes you a better person. We’ve learned so much.”
[/media-credit] Sean Smith participating in a “Deep Dive” at the Disney Dreamers Academy
The day ended with a networking event where Dreamers were able to network with professionals including guest speakers and Disney executives and partners from
On Saturday, the Dreamers are splitting up into male and female groups to participate in sessions about image awareness.
Famed educator Dr. Steve Perry, Brandi and Karli Harvey, Dr. Alex Ellis and author Sonia Jackson Myles are also hosting presentations. There will also be a celebrity panel featuring former NFL player and businessman Emmitt Smith, singer Ne-Yo, Empire start Jussie Smollett and Ruth Carter, costume designer for the film Black Panther.
Dreamers will showcase what they learned and created during their “Deep Dives” in the evening.
Gary School Board members are on high alert as a bill aimed at weakening the board’s authority has cleared another hurdle in the Indiana General Assembly.
On Tuesday, March 6, the Senate passed the bill with a 35-14 vote, two months after it passed the Indiana House. The bill now goes to Governor Eric Holcomb who will most likely approve the bill by signing it into legislation.
The Senate Appropriations Committee in February heard testimony for more than four hours on the bill, which could reduce the Gary School Board to an advisory committee that would meet just four times a year.
Representative Tim Brown
The bill’s sponsor, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Tim Brown, R-Crawfordsville, believes the bill would give struggling school districts more clarity to avoid pitfalls that struck Gary and the Muncie Community Schools, which also has been taken over by the state.
Once the bill becomes a state law, Gary Schools Emergency Manager Peggy Hinckley would no longer be required to meet with the board or receive input from its members. The new law would require her to hold monthly public meetings to update citizens on her actions. Current school board members would remain until their terms expire. They could also elect their own officers and replace members who resign.
Last August, the state takeover law stripped the superintendent and school board of their authority. The board was limited to meeting just once per month. Since then, multiple board members have criticized Hinckley and expressed disappointment of their reduced role. Former Board President Rosie Washington resigned in December and School Superintendent Cheryl Pruitt’s last day was February 2.
The bill also affects Muncie Community Schools, another troubled school district that was taken over by the state. Under the bill, that district will be operated by Ball State University.
Under Hinckley, Gary Schools is struggling to reduce debts totaling over $100 million. Since Hinckley was appointed last July, she has been at odds with board members and some parents who don’t agree with her decisions as emergency manager. Hinckley says cuts are necessary to keep the district afloat.
Last month, Hinckley decided to close the 79-year old Wirt-Emerson School of Visual and Performing Arts in the Miller neighborhood. The Indiana State Board of Education approved the decision on March 2, making this year’s graduating class the last one in Wirt-Emerson’s history. Some 225 students are enrolled at Wirt-Emerson.
In a letter, Miller Citizens Corp. President George Rogge said the closing won’t represent a savings if students decide not to attend West Side or the recommended middle school, Bailly.
Hinckley said she is considering closing Gary’s storied Roosevelt College and Career Academy, which is managed by EdisonLearning Inc.
Last January, Hinckley appointed veteran member Nellie Moore as president of the Gary School Board, over the protests of three other board members, who walked out of the meeting.
School administrators across the country have a choice to make this week. Judging from pre-emptive censorship efforts in two districts, some of them are going to get it wrong.
To mark the one-month anniversary of the Feb. 14 deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., students nationwide plan to walk out of school for 17 minutes to demand their state and local representatives address gun violence. Students, who are among the organizers of the ENOUGH National School Walkout on March 14 and a separate day-long National School Walkout on April 20, are using social media to rally classmates. In a statement posted to Instagram and Facebook, student organizers—who hail from more than a dozen states—call their joint efforts “part of an escalating force in a longer fight.”
Yet, in at least two school districts, administrators are seeking to silence student voices with threats of discipline. In a now-deleted public Facebook post, Superintendent Curtis Rhodes of the Needville Independent School District, near Houston, warned against student participation in any type of protest during school hours. He threatened a three-day suspension for any participating student because, he wrote in the post, students “are here for an education and not a political protest…”
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
From attacks on voting rights to police killings of unarmed civilians and growing inequities in earnings and wealth, the civil rights gains of the past six decades are facing threat after threat. But one front in the fight for full equality—meaningful access to higher education—is particularly urgent. With 65 percent of jobs soon requiring more than a high school diploma, the need is greater than ever, especially for African Americans and other communities of color.
More than 50 years ago, Congress passed the Higher Education Act (HEA), intending to open the doors to higher education by providing students with financial assistance and low-interest loans. Conventional wisdom has traditionally held two things: 1) Higher education is the great equalizer; 2) It is okay to take out debt for the tickets to upward mobility: a college education and a home mortgage. These life decisions—and the struggles and sacrifices that made them possible—helped to build and grow the Black middle class.
Now, aspirations for advancement are colliding with the discriminatory legacy of the financial crisis. Our country’s student loan bill has skyrocketed. Student debt is now the second-largest source of household debt after housing. Forty-four million Americans have $1.4 trillion in student loan debt. One reason: Since the 1990s, the average tuition and fees at our universities have jumped an average of 157–237 percent depending on the type of institution.
As with the Great Recession, people of color, poor people, and predatory institutions are at the center of this socioeconomic catastrophe. They must also be at the center of the solutions.
We must face up to the fact that students of color are more likely to borrow for their education and, unfortunately, to default on these loans. Even Black college graduates default on their loans at almost four times the rate of their White counterparts and are more likely to default than even White dropouts.
This increased risk of defaulting on student loans is the direct result of inequities in financial resources, as well as discrimination in hiring, salaries and, all too often, social capital. In 2013, the median White family had 13 times more wealth than the median black family and 10 times more wealth than the median Latino family. African American students tend to take out more debt than their White counterparts, and both Blacks and Latinos are more likely to default than Whites. Since Blacks with bachelor’s degrees earn only 79 percent and Latinos only 83 percent of what their White counterparts earn, African American and Hispanic students have a harder time repaying their loans.
Further contributing to the crisis, Blacks and Latinos comprise 41 percent of the students at the high-cost, low-quality, for-profit colleges. These institutions frequently fail to prepare students for high-salary jobs, instead saddling them with exorbitant debts that they can’t repay.
How then can we address these challenges? Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wants to ease regulations on the loan servicers and for-profit colleges that have gotten us into this mess. U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) of the House Education and Workforce Committee would take this effort even further. Her proposal for reauthorizing the HEA, the “PROSPER Act,” would ensure that students will have to borrow more to get a postsecondary education with the very real likelihood that they will never pay off the debt. This would all but guarantee that predatory, for-profit programs would continue to rise exponentially right alongside our national student debt bill. Efforts to make student aid more costly for students rather than hold institutions accountable for what they do with the aid reflects either a catastrophic misunderstanding of the root causes of this issue or something more disturbing: the blatant effort to recreate the system we had before the HEA was enacted. In this system, traditional college was by and large only accessible to the wealthy, who were usually White.
Fixing our broken student debt system should not mean un-doing years of progress since the HEA or saddling marginalized groups with a lifetime of debt. Instead, we need to hold student loan servicers, debt collectors, and institutions of all kinds accountable for their practices. African Americans, Latinos and low-income students from all backgrounds need more income-based grants, loans, financial assistance, and admissions policies that tear down barriers of color, culture, and class, not support them.
Helping college graduates to repay their loans isn’t the only challenge. The challenge is enabling and empowering all our young people to make their fullest contribution to our country. This is, in the last analysis, a debt that all Americans owe to ourselves and our nation’s future.
Wade Henderson is a founding board member of the Center for Responsible Lending. You can follow Wade on Twitter @Wade4Justice.
Arizona Middle School Principal, Dr. Jason Jones, was summoned to the school’s brand new library building on the morning of Monday, March 5, because there was some kind of a “problem.” The truth was, the still empty building was where his staff had huddled with Riverside County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Judy D. White to surprise Jones with the 2018 Riverside County Principal of the Year award.
“This is crazy. I usually have bunches to say. Now I don’t know what to say,” Dr. Jones said in response to the cheers of his staff. “It’s such a joy being here at Arizona. I love this school and I love this community. I appreciate all of you (staff). I couldn’t do it without you.”
The surprise was made even more special because the county superintendent handing him the award was Jones’ teacher when he was in middle school. The two have kept in touch ever since.
“I’ve known her since I was just a kid. To have her here to give me this award is so exciting,” Dr. Jones said.
Dr. White, noting that Jones was much shorter when he was in her middle school class, read comments from Jones’ colleagues that included how proud they were that their Alvord Unified School District middle school is an AVID National Demonstration School, and gave him credit for the school’s “robust” after-school program.
“Some people serve as principals and they are leaders, but we also want to congratulate you for making an impact on the community,” Dr. White said.
Alvord USD Board President Julie Moreno said the smiles on the faces of the school staff were proof that Jones is well-liked.
“Your staff’s happy faces and their joy means you are their leader,” Moreno said.
A resident of Beaumont, Dr. Jones has served in education for more than 15 years, and as principal at Arizona Middle School for three years. During his brief tenure as principal at Arizona Middle School, Dr. Jones has not only increased student academic performance at a rate far above the state average, but he has also improved student attendance, reduced suspensions and expulsions, enhanced after-school learning, and developed a mentorship program for at-risk students with the Riverside County District Attorney’s office.
“I have always believed in education and educational access for all. As a result of this confidence, I understand the need for leadership that calls people toward a vision of possibility and hope,” Dr. Jones wrote in his application. “I am committed to serving as one who labors daily toward equitable opportunities for all students and communities.”
The full list of categories and honorees for the 2018 Riverside County Educators of the Year is as follows:
School Counselor – Jodi Spoon-Sadlon, Elementary School Counselor, Murrieta Valley Unified School District (named on February 21, 2018)
Site Support Employee – Susan Hall, Teacher on Special Assignment, Murrieta Valley Unified School District (named on February 21, 2018)
Confidential Employee – Cheryl Anderson, Executive Assistant to the Superintendent, Riverside Unified School District (named on February 26, 2018)
Principal – Dr. Jason Jones, Principal, Arizona Middle School, Alvord Unified School District (named on March 5, 2018)
Certificated Administrator – Dian Martin, Director of Learning Support Services, Perris Union High School District (named on March 1, 2018)
Classified Employee – Lindsay Brancato, Attendance Technician, Val Verde Unified School District (named on March 1, 2018)
Classified Administrator of the Year – Karl Melzer, Instructional Publication Center Manager, Hemet Unified School District (named on February 15, 2018)
The Riverside County Educators of the Year are selected from the more than 36,000 educational employees in the county. The rigorous application process starts with nominations by teachers, classified employees, and school district administrators throughout the county. Applications are then submitted to the Riverside County Office of Education, where an outside selection committee selects the honorees before the county superintendent announces the honorees.
Along with the 2018 Riverside County Teachers of the Year, the Educators of the Year will be honored at the Riverside County Celebrating Educators Luncheon at the Riverside Convention Center on Tuesday, May 22.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Wednesday, two students at Birmingham’s Huffman High School were victims of gun violence, one of whom was killed. Victims were male and female, both 17. Birmingham police are conducting an active investigation of the shooting.
Congresswoman Terri A. Sewell (D-AL) releases the following statement:
“My heart is breaking for those hurt and killed in the shooting at Huffman High School.” said Rep. Terri Sewell. “I cannot imagine the grief of the parents who lost their little girl today to gun violence. She was a part of our community’s future. Tonight, my prayers are with her, the other victim, and their families.”
“We have a responsibility to protect our schools from gun violence, accidental or otherwise. Every year more students and teachers, sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters are killed in school shootings – we need to do everything in our power to make this incident the last. We cannot settle for symbolic gestures in Congress when our children’s lives are at stake.”
(This is the first post in a two-part series)
