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Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Education secretary Betsy DeVos has already affected public education
Alia Wong, The Atlantic
A 40-second scene on Saturday Night Live this past weekend featuring Kate McKinnon as the beleaguered Betsy DeVos, now the nation’s education secretary, blew up almost instantly on social media. The scene could’ve easily been just a blip, buried within the remarkable skit that had the affable Melissa McCarthy playing the role of Sean Spicer, the White House’s pugnacious press secretary. But McKinnon’s cameo as DeVos made its own headlines. Perhaps it was because the SNL comedian so flawlessly, and efficiently, embodied the most glaring criticisms of the Michigan billionaire-turned-Cabinet member. McKinnon’s DeVos failed to answer a reporter’s question about growth versus proficiency, as DeVos did during her confirmation hearing; McKinnon responded that she doesn’t “know anything about school.” She alluded to her desire to funnel public-education money into private schools, namely Christian ones. And she finished off with DeVos’s now-infamous comment about the need for guns on campus to protect students from grizzly bears.
Betsy DeVos has been confirmed. Now the fight really begins
Zoe Carpenter, The Nation
Several years ago, billionaire Republican donor Betsy DeVos wrote that she’d “decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence.” Instead, she and her family would concede the point: “We expect a return on our investment.” DeVos, whose family has given as much as $200 million to the Republican Party, collected her return on Tuesday, when the Senate voted—barely—to confirm her as secretary of education. With two Republican senators splitting with their party, the Senate deadlocked at 50-50, and Vice President Mike Pence had to cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of DeVos.
Worsening teacher shortage puts more underprepared teachers in classrooms, report says
Fermin Leal, EdSource
The number of underprepared teachers working in California’s public school classrooms has more than doubled in just three years, a key indicator that the teacher shortage continues to worsen, according to a new report from the Learning Policy Institute. For the 2015-16 school year, California issued 10,200 intern credentials, permits and waivers. These candidates had not yet completed, or sometimes even started, teaching preparation programs, according to the report, “Addressing California’s Growing Teacher Shortage: 2017 Update.” In recent years, the state issued an increasing number of these temporary credentials from fewer than 5,000 in 2012-13, to just over 6,000 in 2013-14 and more than 7,600 in 2014-15.
Lawsuit targets key funding source for teachers unions
Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
A conservative group has joined with eight California educators in a lawsuit filed this week that seeks to eliminate the right of unions to collect mandatory “agency fees” from teachers — even if they are not full members. Similar litigation challenging the fees failed last year when the Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4, leaving the current policy in place. If this latest litigation were to reach the court following the confirmation of an appointee by President Trump, teachers unions could lose a key source of funding. Agency fees, which are employed by unions in 23 states including California, are meant to cover the cost of representing teachers in such things as salary and benefit negotiations. Teachers can opt out of the portion of membership dues for activities labeled as political, but they still are on the hook for about two-thirds of the total. For Los Angeles teachers, full union dues are $988 per year.
Language, Culture, and Power
Meet a school of immigrants with a complex connection to Donald Trump
Madeline Will, Education Week
A famous California property that President Donald Trump once owned and fought to keep in a lengthy legal battle is now a multicultural K-12 campus of community schools that, in many ways, is antithetical to some of the president’s pronouncements. The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, a campus of six Los Angeles public schools, sits on the site of the famous Ambassador Hotel, where Sen. Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968. According to the Los Angeles Times, a Trump syndicate bought the property for $64 million in 1989 with plans to build a 125-story office tower—which would have been, at the time, the world’s tallest building.
California student, who was detained 23 hours at LAX and then deported, returns to U.S.
Kate Mather, Los Angeles Times
Sahar Muranovic’s hands trembled as she waited for her sister. The 27-year-old scanned the crowd Sunday morning at Los Angeles International Airport, hoping that her family’s anxious, weeklong ordeal — which began when her older sister was detained, then deported — would soon come to an end. Television cameras crowded around Muranovic. Her sister’s friend fiddled with Facebook Live, ready to broadcast the reunion to friends and family scattered across the globe. Muranovic stood silently as she clutched a bouquet of flowers. “Oh my God,” she said suddenly, her hand covering her mouth. “Is that her?”
UC Berkeley — home of the free speech movement — finds itself under fire from left, right and Trump
Teresa Watanabe, Peter H. King and Deborah Netburn, Los Angeles Times
UC Berkeley was just mopping up after what appeared to be a small group of violent protesters from off campus shut down the speech of conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos — an appearance that university leaders had staunchly defended despite hundreds of requests to ban him. Then came the tweet from President Trump, which in an instant both blurred the facts and exacerbated the tension. “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?” Trump tweeted early Thursday. On Thursday, university officials, who had worked hard to make room for free speech, found themselves squeezed between outrage on both the right and the left. Also further inflamed was the already roiling UC debate about campus free speech — not just as it concerned Yiannopolous but also a host of hot-button issues, including anti-Semitism, Palestinian rights, sexual harassment and racism.
Whole Children and Strong Communities
The healthy-lifestyle curriculum
Reyna Gobel, The Atlantic
At Perea Preschool in Memphis, Tennessee, a teacher introduces mango to a circle of 16 4-year-olds for the first time. Another day, the children discover pumpkin during a play activity. Most of these children come from impoverished families where lettuce is considered a luxury item. According to Vicki Sallis Murrell, a professor of counseling, educational psychology, and research at the University of Memphis, parents are making tough choices between a $1 head of lettuce and five boxes of macaroni and cheese. “In the middle of a food desert, grocery stores with reasonably priced, quality produce and fish are difficult to find,” Murrell said. But parents are making sacrifices to provide healthy food for their families because they know their kids want and need it. “If my kids didn’t go to Perea, they wouldn’t want to eat vegetables,” said Scharica Martin, a former Perea parent. But because all three of her children attended the school, healthy food is one of her family’s biggest budget items.
Schools take on sex trafficking
Maureen Magee, The San Diego Union-Tribune
A 16-year-old girl from San Diego was among those rescued during a recent two-day anti-human trafficking operation that resulted in hundreds of arrests across the state. The high school student is one of an estimated 8,000 to 11,000 girls and young women who fall victim to sex trafficking each year in San Diego alone. The issue has become so pressing that schools now regularly educate teachers — and sometimes students — about the problem. The idea is to inform educators, teenagers and parents about the disturbing trend, arming them with information — including how to spot warning signs on campus and at home.
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
House votes to overturn ESSA accountability, teacher-prep rules
Andrew Ujifusa, Education Week
The House of Representatives voted Tuesday to overturn regulations crafted by the Obama administration for accountability under the Every Student Succeeds Act, as well as those for teacher-preparation programs. If the ESSA resolution overturning the accountability rules is successful, it could have far-reaching consequences for the U.S. Department of Education, state officials, and local district leaders. These rules address school ratings, the timeline for identifying and intervening in struggling schools, indicators of school quality that go beyond test scores, and other issues. A Senate resolution to overturn the ESSA accountability rules is also expected in the near future. The Obama administration released a draft version of the ESSA accountability rules in May, and finalized them in November after considering public comments. That final version granted states more flexibility in some areas than the May draft on issues like summative school ratings. However, last month, the Trump administration hit the pause button on the implementation of these final rules. The final teacher-prep rules were issued last October.
Deadline approaches for free community college in San Diego
Gary Warth, The San Diego Union-Tribune
San Diego high school students have until the end of the week to apply to attend San Diego Community College District classes for free. The district’s San Diego Promise program is open to students graduating from the San Diego Unified School District and pays enrollment fees and books not covered by financial aid. The program also will accept 75 students from San Diego Continuing Education in the San Diego Community College District and 10 students from the Monarch School for the homeless. The community college district has funding for 600 incoming freshmen this year, and only 425 have applied so far. Students have until Friday to apply to the program at www.sandiegounified.org/promise.
Universities try new way of providing aid to boost graduation rates for low-income students
Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, The Washington Post
Several public universities are taking part in a pilot program to provide small-dollar grants to help low-income students complete their degrees. The five-year project is a collaboration of Temple University and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, which will use a nearly $4 million grant from the Education Department to examine and build out completion aid programs at up to 10 universities. Schools across the country have experimented with ways to prevent students from dropping out or taking longer to graduate when money dries up. Georgia State University, for instance, has been lauded for its Panther Grants, which award an average of $900 to cash-strapped students. Cleveland State University started a similar program four years ago, offering a $200 tuition discount and $200 book stipend to students willing to take a full course load of 30 credits to graduate on time.
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
Big stakes for K-12 as federal budget process gears up
Andrew Ujifusa, Education Week
Congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump, aiming to break years of fiscal gridlock, could make significant changes to the U.S. Department of Education’s budget—changes that might include major cuts. There are conflicting signals about whether they’ll impose big cuts that hit students in special education, educators in teacher training, and other beneficiaries of federal education programs. Budget sequestration, the mandated caps on spending that have defined the fiscal environment in Washington in recent years, may not make the headlines it used to. But lawmakers still have to decide if they want to end that constraint for education and other domestic programs—and if so, how those budgets will look for what’s left of fiscal 2017 and for fiscal 2018, which begins Oct. 1. Dramatic reductions in spending appear possible. A recent report from The Hill newspaper indicated that a 2017 budget blueprint from the Heritage Foundation, a leading policy voice on the political right, could form the basis for the Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget.
The number of hungry and homeless students rises along with college costs
Kirk Carapezza, NPR
There’s no way to avoid it. As the cost of college grows, research shows that so does the number of hungry and homeless students at colleges and universities across the country. Still, many say the problem is invisible to the public. “It’s invisible even to me and I’m looking,” says Wick Sloan. He came to Bunker Hill Community College in Boston more than a decade ago to teach English full time. He says it felt like he quickly became a part-time social worker, too. “When I first got here, I was always told that we should never miss a chance to give students food,” he says. “I foolishly thought at the time they meant Doritos and cookies. It’s protein that they’re after. It’s crazy.” Bunker Hill is home to one of 25 food assistance programs on Massachusetts’ public college campuses. That leaves just four public campuses across the state without one.
The Ivy League’s gender pay-gap problem
Caroline Kitchener, The Atlantic
Across the United States, 34-year-old women, on average, make between 10 and 18 percent less than 34-year-old men. That gap isn’t surprising—it’s actually been slowly improving in recent years. What’s striking is that, when you only consider Ivy League graduates, the gap is significantly wider. This wage disparity came to light in a study by The Equal Opportunity Project, recently featured in The New York Times, that focused primarily on socioeconomic inequality. The study showed that female Ivy League alumni make 30 percent less than their male peers. In their early 20s, Ivy League women keep up with men. They graduate with higher GPAs and start at similar salaries. But somewhere between age 26 and 34, their male classmates advance professionally at a pace they don’t match.
Public Schools and Private $
The battle over public education is raging, but it’s immoral to use students as pawns
Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times
Nationally and locally, the war for control of public schools has escalated. Betsy DeVos was confirmed as President Trump’s Education secretary Tuesday, despite having displayed a shocking lack of knowledge about public schools, and she’s a bigly billionaire champion of more school options for students and their parents. It’s hard to argue against more options, but it’ll be interesting to see how the growth of charters impacts kids who don’t make the cut, and sad to watch their schools get left behind in the resource department. And if she pushes vouchers, it will be even more interesting to see how Americans react to having their tax dollars subsidize private schools, including religious education.
County school boards can’t solve charters’ zoning problems, court rules
John Fensterwald, EdSource
In a decision with statewide implications, a state appeals court ruled that the board of the Santa Clara County Office of Education lacked authority to override local zoning rules to locate a charter school that it had approved. The Jan. 24 ruling by the San Jose-based 6th District State Court of Appeals takes away from charter schools the option of asking county school boards to make it easier to locate their schools, especially in high-cost, densely developed urban areas like the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Most charter schools get their charters from school districts. But county school boards can grant charters on appeal, and they are allowed to authorize charters directly under special circumstances.
Other News of Note
Pittsburgh Public Schools students protest confirmation of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos
David Kaplan, WTAE
Around 250 students from Pittsburgh Public Schools skipped class Wednesday morning and gathered downtown to protest the confirmation of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, then marched to Sen. Pat Toomey’s office in Station Square. The Senate confirmed DeVos by a 51-50 vote Tuesday, with the tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President Mike Pence. DeVos is a charter school and school choice advocate who critics feel could gut public schools and their funding. “She’s an advocate for rerouting our tax dollars to charter schools rather than our already-established public schools,” said 16-year-old Serena Zets, an organizer of Wednesday’s protest. DeVos never attended public school, which is a concern for other students.
Just News from Center X is produced weekly by Leah Bueso, Anthony Berryman, Beth Happel, and John Rogers. Generous support from the Stuart Foundation allows Center X to provide this service free to the general public.
