Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Educators oppose Trump plan to scrap teacher-support program
Alyson Klein, Education Week
Federal funding for educator quality helped a small district outside Boston cut down class sizes for beginning teachers. A cadre of Delaware districts used it to help teachers better personalize instruction for students. And the school district in El Paso, Texas, which is always on the lookout for teachers with expertise in working with English-language learners, has used some of the money for recruitment. Those activities—and thousands of educators’ jobs—could be in jeopardy if Congress takes President Donald Trump up on his proposal to get rid of the Supporting Effective Instruction State Grant program, better known to school districts as Title II, after the portion of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that governs it. Eliminating the $2.3 billion program could hamper implementation of the law’s newest version, the Every Student Succeeds Act. It also could lead to teacher layoffs and make it tougher for educators to reach English-learners and other special populations and to make the most of technology in their classrooms, educators and advocates say.
Trump says DeVos is ‘highly respected’, U.S. education is ‘so sad’ — and there’s more
Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post
President Trump was asked Tuesday about his education priorities and how he would address “the disconnect” between skills that companies are looking for and what young people entering the workforce are able to offer. This is what he said: 1) “If you look at so many elements of education, and it is so sad to see what is coming, happening in the country.” 2) He really likes charter schools and doesn’t think they are “an experiment” anymore. 3) The Common Core State Standards has “to end” because “we have to bring education local.” 4) Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is “doing a terrific job,” is “highly respected” and has “a tremendous track record.
Teachers talk politics to students, despite divisive atmosphere
Madeline Will, Education Week
Months after the 2016 presidential election, a majority of educators say that national politics have created a sharp divide among students, leaving teachers grappling with how to handle classroom conversations about controversial issues. But most said they aren’t shying away from politics, despite the topic’s contentious nature. That’s according to a survey conducted in February by the Education Week Research Center. More than 830 K-12 teachers and other school-based instructional staff members who are registered users of Education Week’s edweek.org website responded to an email invitation for a survey about their experiences teaching about controversial topics in a time of division.
Language, Culture, and Power
The trauma of facing deportation
Rachel Aviv, The New Yorker
Georgi, a Russian refugee who came to Sweden with his family when he was five years old, could talk at length about the virtues of the Volvo. His doctor described him as “the most ‘Swedeified’ in his family.” He was also one of the most popular boys in his class. For his thirteenth birthday, two friends listed some of the qualities that he evoked: energetic, fun, happy all the time, good human being, amazingly kind, awesome at soccer, sly. Georgi’s father, Soslan, had helped found a pacifist religious sect in North Ossetia, a Russian province that borders Georgia. Soslan said that in 2007 security forces demanded that he disband the sect, which rejected the entanglement of the Russian Orthodox Church with the state, and threatened to kill him if he refused. He fled to Sweden with his wife, Regina, and their two children, and applied for asylum, but his claim was denied, because the Swedish Migration Board said that he hadn’t proved that he would be persecuted if he returned to Russia.
Deported students find challenges at school in Tijuana
Claudio Sanchez, NPR
As President Trump moves to fulfill his campaign promise to deport millions of immigrants who are in the country illegally, they’ll most likely include Mexicans whose children were born in the U.S.. Over half a million of these kids are already in Mexico. Researchers call them “los invisibles”, the invisible ones, because they often end up in an educational limbo of sorts. Most don’t read or write in Spanish, so they’re held back. Many get discouraged and stop going to school. In some cases schools even refuse to enroll them. In the border city of Tijuana, however, there’s a model program designed to help these children.
Most college head chaplains are Christian. At USC, a Hindu leads the way
Rosanna Xia, Los Angeles Times
Varun Soni straightened his shoulders and grasped the podium, his dark suit flanked by the stately white robes of priests and ministers. A beloved professor had been stabbed to death. As USC’s head chaplain, it fell to Soni to help the hundreds gathered outside that day to process their loss. And so he spoke to them of the stories he’d collected, the pain he’d shared, the grief he had witnessed. And he offered words to help them, though not from the Bible or any other religious text.
Whole Children and Strong Communities
Fighting hate in schools
Tovia Smith, NPR
Hate incidents can happen anywhere: the mall, the church, the office. But, in the wake of the 2016 election, hate’s been showing up a lot in school. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in the months following the election more hate incidents took place in America’s schools than anywhere else. Hundreds of elementary, middle and high schools have played host to an array of troubling events, from sophomoric stunts to much worse: a hijab pulled off a Muslim student, physical fights with racial epithets flung, even violent threats. Educators in Massachusetts, as elsewhere, are struggling with what to do.
Can poetry revolutionize the parent-teacher conference?
Alex Zimmerman, The Atlantic
On a recent Tuesday evening, two sixth-grade teachers at Manhattan’s West Prep Academy offered up a poem by Langston Hughes and described how to begin unpacking its meaning. The teachers glanced around the purple-tiled classroom to make sure everyone had their pens and pencils out to mark up copies of “Dreams” with notes. It was exactly the kind of lesson the teachers might have offered on an average school day. But this time, instead of a room full of middle-schoolers, they had a different audience: their students’ parents.
Exploring the intersection of mental health and creative expression
Priska Neely, KPCC
In a nondescript hotel ballroom on Thursday, about two dozen women — some artists, some therapists, some educators — worked together to build human-sized sculptures out of packing tape. The participants went through drama therapy exercises to identify meaningful physical poses. Next, they worked in groups to mold sticky-side-up tape to various parts of their bodies, then pieced together a sculpture in that pose. The sculptures weren’t just for fun. They were part of a workshop meant to help the participants learn to re-claim positive body images.
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
A new look at the lasting consequences of student debt
Anya Kamenetz, NPR
Recent college graduates who borrow are leaving school with an average of $34,000 in student loans. That’s up from $20,000 just 10 years ago, according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In that report, out this week, the New York Fed took a careful look at the relationship between debt and homeownership. For people aged 30 to 36, the analysis shows having any student debt significantly hurts your chances of buying a home, compared to college graduates with no debt. The cliche of “good debt” notwithstanding, the consequences of borrowing are real, and they are lasting.
California ‘student success’ initiative slow to increase community college completion rates
Larry Gordon, EdSource
California has seen no substantial increases in community college completion rates despite passing a much-anticipated reform law and spending nearly $890 million in subsequent state appropriations, all aimed at bolstering student progress. Backers of the reforms, however, say signs of positive change are evident and that improvements will accelerate in the near future. The 2012 Student Success Act sought to increase the share of community college students who earned a certificate, an associate degree or transferred to a four-year college within six years.
At U-Va., a ‘watch list’ flags VIP applicants for special handling
T. Rees Shapiro, The Washington Post
The University of Virginia’s fundraising team for years has sought to help children of wealthy alumni and prominent donors who apply for admission, flagging their cases internally for special handling, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. The records from the U-Va. advancement office, which oversees fundraising for the prestigious public flagship, reveal nearly a decade of efforts to monitor admission bids and in some cases assist those in jeopardy of rejection. U-Va. denies that the advancement office held any sway over admissions decisions. But the documents show the office kept meticulous notes on the status of certain VIP applicants and steps taken on their behalf.
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
White parents still want to live near mostly white schools — and in LA, it shows
Kyle Stokes, KPCC
Slightly fewer Americans live in racially isolated neighborhoods than in the past, but the average white child in the U.S. wouldn’t know it. White kids in the nation’s largest cities continue to live among mostly white neighbors — in large part, according to a new University of Southern California study, because white parents want to live in communities served by predominantly white schools. The study is part of a new attempt by USC associate professor of sociology Ann Owens to link education researchers’ findings about the demographic makeup inside the nation’s classrooms — where racial segregation remains a persistent problem — with research on where people in different racial groups choose to live.
Long Beach Unified accused of underfunding ‘high-needs’ students
John Fensterwald, EdSource
Long Beach Unified failed to account for or misspent $41 million that should have been used to expand and improve services for students receiving extra money under the state’s funding formula, according to a complaint filed Tuesday by the nonprofit law firm Public Advocates. The group filed a separate complaint against the Los Angeles County Office of Education for approving the district’s spending plan last fall. The district is demanding that Long Beach, the state’s third-largest district, amend its Local Control and Accountability Plan, or LCAP, as the document is called, to justify how it used the money or to reallocate it to comply with the spending law. In return for receiving additional “supplemental” and “concentration” dollars for “high-needs” students – low-income children, foster and homeless youth, and English learners – the Local Control Funding Formula requires districts to spend the money on these students.
Riverside colleges want to create a college pipeline for foster youth
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, KPCC
The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s office has awarded $2 million to community colleges in Riverside, Norco and Moreno Valley to turn around low college-going and high school graduation rates among foster youth. “There have really been no coordinated services that usher foster youth through the secondary school system and transition them smoothly and seamlessly through higher education,” said MaryAnn Doherty, director of grants for the three-campus Riverside Community College District. Starting this summer, each of the three colleges plans to hire a specialist who will visit high schools in the Riverside area to help students enroll in and succeed in classes that will help them get into college. The specialist will work one-on-one with foster youth, starting in the 9th grade, to usher these students though the college application and financial aid process.
Public Schools and Private $
DeVos’ charter visit: A sports-focused school backed by Pitbull
Evie Blad, Education Week
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will make her first announced charter school visit since taking on her new role when she tours SLAM Charter School in Miami this week. But before the scheduled Thursday visit to SLAM, the secretary made an unannounced stop with first lady Melania Trump and Queen Rania of Jordan at an all-girls charter school, Excel Academy, in the District of Columbia. DeVos’ visits come as charter advocates watch to see how the highly scrutinized cabinet official—an outspoken advocate of vouchers and tax credit scholarships for private schools—addresses school choice in her work.
Could fragile peace between political rivals ultimately lead to changes in California’s charter school oversight?
Kyle Stokes, KPCC
The California Charter School Association and the state’s teachers unions may deeply disagree on a lot of issues, but they at least agree on this: charter schools ought to be subject to the state’s open records law, just like any other public school. That agreement-in-principle forms the basic framework of two bills that have surfaced recently in Sacramento, raising the possibility that California lawmakers might enact changes to the state’s structure for charter school governance and oversight this session.
Indiana Senate OKs bill giving voucher schools appeal option
Education Week
Indiana state senators have endorsed an education bill knocked by critics as easing accountability standards for the state’s private schools that accept vouchers. The bill by Republican Rep. Robert Behning of Indianapolis creates a way for private schools to immediately begin accepting vouchers and allows the state Board of Education to grant poorly performing schools a delay in consequences.
Other News of Note
Secretary DeVos has secret Russia meeting with potential grizzly
Kevin Welner, NEPC (April 1 edition)
As part of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s campaign to promote educational vouchers, she held a secret meeting last week with Boo Boo Medvedev, a Russian bear who is said to have close ties to bear leadership throughout the northern hemisphere. Tensions between the two camps had flared following reports that DeVos had urged American teachers to open fire on members of the bear community. As a result, the powerful bear lobby had threatened to maul politicians who pretended not to know about recent studies of vouchers in Louisiana, Ohio and Indiana, all showing negative test score effects—in some cases, surprisingly large.