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Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Dyslexia, once the reading disability that shall not be named, comes into its own in California
Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource
Jamie Bennetts created a spreadsheet of every child’s reading scores in the small Knightsen Elementary School District a few summers ago, identified the laggers and greeted them in the fall with state-adopted reading interventions. She was new to her job as a reading interventionist, a position she sought after the unnerving experience of teaching 7th-graders, many of whom she’d taught as 1st- or 2nd-graders, and discovering that the 6- and 7-year-olds she’d known as poor readers were still reading poorly at 12 and 13. “I was stunned to find a lot of kids hadn’t made a lot of progress since I’d left them,” she recalled. She was stunned again by the unsuitability of the reading programs that came with her job. “They stunk,” she said. “They were too broad, too general, not diagnostic and not prescriptive.” She talked her district into paying for her to get trained in interventions for children who have dyslexia, the No. 1 reading disability in the United States.
Safety first, science second for the eclipse in L.A. schools
Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
It was safety first, science second — in many cases, a distant second — in Los Angeles schools during the solar eclipse Monday. And some teachers and administrators felt that — out of a lack of preparation and an excess of caution — the L.A. Unified School District flubbed a highly teachable moment. A lot of students across the nation’s second-largest school system were unable to watch the eclipse and were kept inside, often with blinds drawn, and escorted under umbrellas if they had to step outdoors. The natural phenomenon was treated more like a natural disaster. Safety, of course, was a serious concern, given that looking directly at a solar eclipse can cause permanent vision damage. The event was not ignored — students in classrooms across the district probably watched on school TVs and computers or their own smartphones. But some say the school system acted too slowly to make sure as many students as possible could witness the big event in person.
The legal landscape for transgender students
Evie Blad, Education Week
Schools must consider a patchwork of local, state, and federal policies when determining their obligations to transgender students in areas like access to bathrooms and locker rooms.
Language, Culture, and Power
Tucson’s Mexican studies program was a victim of ‘racial animus,’ judge says
Maggie Astor, The New York Times
Arizona school officials were motivated by racial animus when they acted to shut down a Mexican-American studies program in Tucson’s public schools, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. In a 42-page ruling, Judge A. Wallace Tashima concluded that the elimination of the program in 2012, on the premise that it violated a state statute enacted two years earlier, infringed on students’ First and 14th Amendment rights. The court has not yet scheduled a hearing on what to do next. “The court is convinced that decisions regarding the MAS program were motivated by a desire to advance a political agenda by capitalizing on race-based fears,” wrote Judge Tashima, of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona.
Spanish-speaking teachers getting special training to meet California’s demand for more bilingual teachers
Theresa Harrington, EdSource
Native Spanish speakers who have been teaching in English-only classrooms are the focus of specialized training in many districts across California to meet the increased demand for bilingual teachers. “We have a lot of teachers who at one point were bilingual who are now teachers of English-only classes,” said Maria Maldonado, Fresno Unified’s assistant superintendent for English learner services. “Our bilingual teachers need a lot of support. Many are native speakers of Spanish, so their Spanish is quite causal. We want high-level academic language.” Fresno and many other districts throughout the state are adding back bilingual programs as a result of the passage last November of Prop. 58, which ended a mandate for mostly English-only classes for students who come to school speaking other languages.
The student who raged against my politics
Sarah Carr and Mallory Falk, The Atlantic
During the first few weeks that Ashley Lamb-Sinclair taught 15-year-old Connor Cummings’s sophomore English class, the two of them had a great rapport. But their relationship changed dramatically a few months later, when Lamb-Sinclair returned from maternity leave. It was 2012, an election year, and the teacher started getting pushback from some students at North Oldham High School, located in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky, about her liberal leanings. Connor was a ringleader of the resistance. On one memorable occasion he erupted during a heated class discussion, shouting something along the lines of, “Liberals like you are ruining the country.” All of Lamb-Sinclair’s efforts to talk through differences with Connor that year proved in vain. It wasn’t until years had passed that the two of them had a frank discussion about what had transpired in the classroom that spring. And Lamb-Sinclair learned that, for Connor, the outbursts and rage were about far more than politics.
Whole Children and Strong Communities
Mothers’ responses to babies in distress can help predict future bonds
Priska Neely, KPCC
Mothers’ responses to their babies in times of stress can predict how strong the bond between mom and child will be many months down the road, new research out Tuesday shows. The new study, published in the journal “Child Development,” focuses on the emotional and physiological response of mothers during times of distress. The study looked at 127 pairs of ethnically and economically diverse moms and babies and monitored their interactions at six and 12 months. “It was expected that mothers responding in more challenging caregiving contexts in particular would be predictive of infant attachment,” said Ashley Groh, lead author of the study. “Because the relationship is especially about infants’ confidence in their caregivers in times of uncertainty, in times of challenge.”
A summer rich in history for students who looked, listened and questioned
John Fensterwald, EdSource
History is all around yet often invisible, with stories and sites waiting for the curious to discover them. This summer, 30 Bay Area high school juniors and seniors got the opportunity to compress lessons from four decades into four weeks of study through tangible, personal encounters with history in their own backyards. Naomi Maruoka, a student at Castro Valley High School, saw the name of her great-grandfather at the Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center in San Francisco. He had been interviewed about his experiences at an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Jose Mascorro, who attends James Logan High in Union City, learned about his 98-year-old neighbor, Bert Perez, who worked with Cesar Chavez to organize workers and stop a highway from going through Union City. “It’s eye-opening when someone who lives close to you had a major impact in your city. I see him outside doing yard work,” he said. Chosen from 85 applicants, the students, from 18 high schools, tracked down New Deal-funded neighborhood centers that provided jobs, hope and a paycheck during the Depression. They explored maps that showed how discriminatory mortgage practices shaped the demographics of their neighborhoods. They listened raptly as 95-year old Betty Reid Soskin, a docent at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, described heroism and racism during the war. They searched old photo albums and attics for an object, relic or family totem that visualized their family’s migration.
How student internships saved a Chicago school
Chris Berdik, The Atlantic
One May morning, 22 stories above Chicago’s Wabash Avenue, Aurice Blanton ignored the stunning spring view of Lake Michigan. He had work to do. He toggled his computer between a budget spreadsheet and his color-coded schedule, double-checking figures for an upcoming meeting with his supervisor at CNA Insurance. Blanton, a high-school senior, was interning for the firm’s information-technology group. He liked the spreadsheet work, he said, not because of a newfound love for insurance or accounting, but because it has taught him that he is more capable than he thought. “This was something I never thought I could do,” he said. “I hated math. Numbers used to intimidate me.” The day’s other meetings included lunch with CNA’s senior vice president of corporate communications, a mini-lesson on project management, and a check-in with the staff member serving as his mentor.
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
Understanding transitional kindergarten: A quick guide
Ashley Hopkinson, EdSource
Transitional kindergarten is an option for younger children, who are not old enough for kindergarten, to gain social and academic experience. The program, like kindergarten, isn’t mandatory but children must have their 5th birthday by a certain month to even qualify. EdSource has compiled the following FAQ to highlight the top things parents should know about transitional kindergarten programs. Why is transitional kindergarten only for children with fall birthdays? What are the benefits for younger children who enroll in transitional kindergarten? What’s the difference between transitional kindergarten and preschool? Read more below to find out about California’s public school option for some of its youngest children.
More community college classes offered at high schools, with some hiccups
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, KPCC
Administrators at Torrance schools like the new partnership with El Camino Community College so much that they’ve added new college classes – including engineering design and digital electronics – at their high schools during the school day. “We see huge value of this, having kids get a leg in to that kind of rigor and expectation of college level work is phenomenal,” said Kati Krumpe, the chief academic officer for the Torrance Unified School District. Last year, she said, about 200 Torrance students took dual enrollment classes. This year, about 125 more signed up. El Camino College certifies that the classes meet their requirements and that the school district’s teachers instructing the class have advanced degrees to qualify to be a community college teacher. The students earn high school and college credits. Partnerships like this between school districts and neighboring community colleges are part of a growing movement by educators across the state to improve the transition between high school and college.
Oldest kids in class do better, even through college
John Ydstie, NPR
Children who start school at an older age do better than their younger classmates and have better odds of attending college and graduating from an elite institution. That’s according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Many parents already delay enrolling their children in school, believing they’ll do better if they’re a bit older. It’s sort of “academic red-shirting,” says one of the study’s authors, David Figlio, an economist at Northwestern University, using a term that originated in college athletics and refers to recruits who are held out of games for a year. The study focused on differences between Florida children born just before and after the Sept. 1 cutoff date for starting kindergarten. That means the youngest children in any class were born in August and the oldest in September of the previous year. Figlio and his co-authors found that, on average, demographically similar September-born children performed better than their younger August-born classmates, all through their academic careers.
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
One more way high-poverty schools get less: Teacher pensions
Liana Loewus, Education Week
Teachers who work at high-poverty schools and with mostly students of color are paid less than their peers at affluent schools with mostly white students—but the disparity is worse than people think, argues a new paper from Bellwether Education Partners, a Washington-based consulting firm. That’s because retirement contributions are often left out of analyses of what it costs to employ a teacher. Max Marchitello, a senior analyst at Bellwether and the report’s author, looked at 10 years of data on the salaries and pensions of Illinois educators, and then compared those with student demographics. “I wanted to pivot and put students at the center of the debate” about pensions, he said in an interview. And considering that most people’s eye glaze over at the mention of the word pension (actuarial tables, it turns out, aren’t exactly enticing), it’s possible this could be a useful tactic in getting more attention to issues around pension reform. Marchitello found that “after accounting for teacher pensions, the disparity in school-level personnel expenditures between high- and low-poverty schools increases dramatically,” according to the report, which was released today. That pattern was also true when looking at race: Schools with the highest percentages of black and Hispanic students put less money toward teacher retirement.
High-achieving, low-income students: Where elite colleges are falling short
Elisa Nadworny, NPR
When Anna Neuman was applying to college, there weren’t a lot of people around to help her. Students from her high school in Maryland rarely went on to competitive colleges, the school counselor worked at several schools and was hard to pin down for meetings and neither of her parents had been through the application process before. The only thing her parents told her was that she would have to pay for it herself. “It was really stressful,” Neuman recalls. “I was like: ‘What is going on?’ None of my friends knew anything — their parents didn’t go. It was just us Googling stuff.” Neuman’s experience isn’t isolated: Nearly 1 in 4 high-achieving, low-income students apply to college completely on their own, according to a new report by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (which is a financial supporter of NPR).
UVA’s troubling past
Kara Vought, The Atlantic
Just 10 days after violent clashes tore across Charlottesville, Virginia, college students there headed to their first day of classes of the fall semester. Many of the University of Virginia’s nearly 17,000 undergraduates arrived with a purpose: to recover their school from white supremacists who had put a national spotlight on their town. This recovery has been described in terms of reclamation: UVA’s Student Council president, Sarah Kenny, told freshmen gathered at Sunday’s convocation that a student-led vigil held a few days earlier enabled students to “reclaim the lawn,” while Monday night’s Black Student Alliance march sought to “reclaim these grounds built by our ancestors from the taint of white supremacy.” Reclaim what, exactly?
Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago
Public Schools and Private $
L.A. school board narrowly rejects taking stand against new state science and math school
Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
A proxy struggle between backers and critics of charter schools came before the Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday, and charter supporters prevailed. The odd element was that the issue at hand was a proposal for a new school that was not defined as a charter school. The topic of debate was a resolution to go on record as opposing a bill before the state Legislature that would establish a new state-sponsored campus in Los Angeles focused on science, technology, engineering and math. Local philanthropist Eli Broad is a strong backer of the idea and willing to contribute funding toward the project, according to the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Three board members — George McKenna, Scott Schmerelson and Richard Vladovic — voted for the resolution. They oppose such a school on the grounds that it would operate very much like a charter without being subject to the L.A. Unified School District’s approval or oversight.
Why charter schools have lost support from Democrats
Jeff Bryant, AlterNet
Netroots Nation is arguably the most important annual event in the progressive community, and a barometer of what’s on the minds of the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” At this year’s event in Atlanta, the headline-making happening was Democratic primary candidate for Georgia governor Rep. Stacey Evans being shouted down by protesters holding signs saying, “Stacey Evans = Betsy DeVos” and “School Vouchers ≠ Progressive.” Protesters circulated leaflets comparing Evans’ past votes on education-related bills to positions DeVos espouses. This included her support for a constitutional amendment in 2015 that would allow the state to convert public schools to charter school management, her support for a “Parent Trigger” that would allow petition drives to convert public schools to charters, and her support of a school voucher program. After Evans was shouted down, National Education Association vice president Becky Pringle took the stage and demanded progressives “stand in the gap for our children” when conservatives slash education budgets and attack the most vulnerable students in public schools. She received several standing ovations. Jeff Bryant talked with Pringle about the significance of the protests and the possibility of a powerful new education movement emerging from the progressive community.
Other News of Note
Do laptops help learning? A look at the only statewide school laptop program
Robbie Feinberg, NPR
It was the year 2000 and Maine’s governor at the time, Angus King, was excited about the Internet. The World Wide Web was still relatively young but King wanted every student in the state to have access to it. “Go into history class and the teacher says, ‘Open your computer. We’re going to go to rome.com and we’re going to watch an archaeologist explore the Catacombs this morning in real time.’ What a learning tool that is!” Fast-forward a couple of years and that dream became a reality. Maine became the first, and still only, state to offer a statewide laptop program to certain grade levels.