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Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Support, strengthen education reforms in California, new report urges
John Fensterwald, EdSource
Taking stock five years into landmark changes for California’s schools, a new report calls for doubling down on efforts to deepen and strengthen “one of the country’s most ambitious equity-focused education reforms.” The lengthy analysis by the Palo Alto-based nonprofit Learning Policy Institute is mostly positive about the policy changes that former Gov. Jerry Brown set in place, while underscoring the challenges ahead. The California Way, as state leaders call the new directions, “is a story of both meaningful progress and significant need.” Students most in need are getting more resources but not enough to provide the opportunities they “need to thrive,” the report said.
School board pressures Supt. Beutner for details of reform plans
Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner works for the Board of Education, but some board members say they need to know more about where he intends to take the nation’s second-largest school system. Board member Scott Schmerelson put his concerns on the table at Tuesday’s meeting in a resolution that ultimately led the board to informally rebuke the schools chief for his lack of transparency. Beutner took his medicine, pledging “100%” cooperation in providing the board with information in the future. He said Schmerelson could expect to see reports from district consultants paid to work on a reform effort within days. In other action Tuesday, the board rejected a proposal to give schools full control over which teachers they hire. And a board majority chose to name a school after a veteran administrator whose long, meritorious service was marred by his role in allowing an employee accused of sexual misconduct to return to an L.A. Unified campus.
Talking across political differences
Heather Van Benthuysen and Erica Hodgin, Teaching Channel
What does it mean to carry out these jobs, and, in particular, what does it mean in today’s complex political climate? Today we are more divided along ideological lines than at any point in in the last two decades (Pew, 2017). And the contentious, ineffective discussions amongst politicians are mirrored in our classrooms. A 2017 study found that more than 20% of teachers reported heightened polarization on campus and incivility in their classrooms. For example, a social studies teacher in North Carolina noted: “In my seventeen years I have never seen anger this blatant and raw over a political candidate or issue” (Rogers et al., 2017). These tensions illustrate why we should consider the role of discussion in our classrooms as a necessary tool for building democratic participation. They can provide the supportive environment necessary for youth to engage in discussion of complex and controversial issues. In discussions that aim to practice democratic skills, students learn how to consider diverse perspectives in forming their own, weigh evidence, listen to and communicate opinions and arguments, and deliberate to build consensus. And because students are often exposed to more diverse political backgrounds and lived experiences in school than in any other setting, classrooms are the ideal place to learn to talk across differences.
Language, Culture, and Power
California 17-year-olds would get the vote under pair of state bills
John Wildermuth, San Francisco Chronicle
More high school students could be headed to the polls under a pair of bills that would clear the way for California 17-year-olds to vote. “This is an idea whose time has finally come,” said Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, whose ACA4 would allow 17-year-olds to vote in primary elections if they would turn 18 before the November general election. “It’s building on the feeling that we want to engage young people in the voting process.” Assemblyman Evan Low, D-San Jose, would take the idea a step further. His bill, ACA8, would drop the voting age to 17 for every election, from mosquito abatement district all the way to president. The younger voting age would not only connect more teenagers to the political process but also give their concerns a better chance to be heard, Low said. “Lowering the voting age to 17 would allow teens to get a sense of the importance of voting at an earlier age,” he said. “And since young people don’t vote, politicians instead go to every retirement home possible” in search of the support they need.
What schools teach about women’s history leaves a lot to be desired
Anna White, Smithsonian.com
In the introduction to her 1970 anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful, author and activist Robin Morgan wrote that the women’s liberation movement was “creating history, or rather, herstory,” coining the popular term that second-wave feminists used to highlight the way in which women were consistently overlooked in historical narratives. Though women have made strides in countless arenas, breaking glass ceilings everywhere, the canon of American history, at least as it is taught in public schools, still has much room for reexamination and advancement. About two years ago, authors with the virtual National Women’s History Museum analyzed the K-12 educational standards in social studies for each of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. They published their findings in Where Are the Women?, a 2017 report on the status of women in the standards that dictate who and what is taught in classrooms. Their report found just how few women are required reading in America’s schools.
An equitable approach to strengthening civic education
Joe Rogers, The Center for Educational Equity
There is no democracy without educational equity. There is no educational equity without equity in civic education. There is no equity in efforts to improve civic education–the preparation of students to play active and effective roles in shaping society today and in the future–without an equitable and inclusive commitment to centering the authentic expertise and leadership of students; people living in poverty; Black and Brown people; people from rural backgrounds and urban backgrounds, and everywhere in between; immigrants; and all other groups disproportionately and routinely excluded from conference rooms, conferences, and halls of civic power. And there will be no civic-readiness equity until we accept and honor the fact that the building blocks of effective civic participation include access for all to the full range of high-quality educational opportunities, beyond the narrow band of learning opportunities that many currently associate with civic education.
Whole Children and Strong Communities
Reading fuels empathy. Do screens threaten that?
Sydney Johnson, EdSurge
Reading changes our brains. Beyond allowing humans to gather and synthesize new information, research shows it is key to cultivating empathy in individuals, too. One study finds this to be particularly true for fictional stories, which allow readers to imagine themselves as other people, in other worlds, with different ideas and challenges. The effects of reading on the brain are also strongly influenced by the medium through which we read. For a long time, that has been print. And so as digital screens begin to take the place of print books in many classrooms and households, researchers are now looking at how that impacts our ability to process information—and empathize with others.
How schools spark excitement for learning with role playing and games
Paul Darvasi, KQED
Michael Matera’s students don’t merely learn about medieval Europe, they live it. Albeit, with a few monsters and enchanted items thrown in the mix. The Milwaukee teacher’s Grade 6 history class is an ongoing role-playing game called Realm of Nobles, where students join guilds, earn achievements, make trades and wage the occasional epic battle in an imaginary medieval kingdom. Matera has played the game for years, and maintains that the fusion of history, fantasy, narrative and role-play is an effective formula to engage students in learning. “The excitement and the pride in their accomplishments are all through the roof. I love seeing kids gaining real-world skills, taking risks and learning from defeat in this gamified class,” said Matera, who wrote Explore Like a Pirate: Gamification and Game-Inspired Course Design to Engage, Enrich and Elevate Your Learners, a manual for teachers who aspire to design their classes as games. A growing number of educators like Matera are remodeling their classes by fusing game elements to their instructional environments. But, does switching grades for experience points and homework for quests amount only to cosmetic surgery? Is school merely being “reskinned” with a new paint job without fundamentally altering the age-old classroom rituals?
Adolescents have a fundamental need to contribute
Andrew Fuligni, The Conversation
No longer children but not yet adults, adolescents need opportunities to learn and prepare for their entrance into the broader society. But, as schooling increasingly extends the adolescent period and teenagers get dismissed as supposedly selfish and irresponsible, has society forgotten an important developmental need of our youth? As a developmental scientist who focuses on adolescence, I reviewed dozens of studies and found that this age group has a fundamental need to contribute to others – to provide support, resources or help toward a shared goal. Contributing helps them achieve autonomy, identity and intimacy – important milestones on the way to adulthood. As teenagers grow up, their brains are developing in ways that appear to support the increasingly complex ways of thinking and behaving that underlie giving to others. And being able to make meaningful contributions predicts better psychological and physical health among youth as well as adults. I believe it’s time to move away from outdated stereotypes of adolescents as only selfish and dangerous risk-takers and to consider how they are ripe for learning about contributing to others and their communities.
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
How a federal free meal program affected school poverty stats
Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
In 2014, schools had a new way to give students free breakfast and lunch, paid for by Uncle Sam. Instead of asking low-income families to apply for the meals, a school district could opt to give everyone free food if at least 40 percent of the student population was already on other forms of public assistance or fell into a needy category, such as being homeless or in foster care. This new “community eligibility” option was a policy change by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the school lunch program, and was intended to reduce paperwork and make it easier for schools to feed hungry kids. But counting kids who qualify for free or reduced price lunches had also been the way we tracked student poverty. There was some concern that school districts could mistakenly be reclassified as 100 percent low income overnight. New York City, for example, began offering its 1 million public school students free breakfast and lunch in 2017. More than 60 percent of the city’s students met the public assistance criteria but the children of relatively wealthy parents also attend public schools. Some school buildings don’t have many poor kids in them.
CRESST longitudinal study finds positive impacts of after-school programs
John McDonald, Ampersand
Children’s advocates and researchers have long made the case that afterschool programs are good for kids. Quality programs can provide children important access to safe and secure environments, recreational opportunities and learning supports. But maybe they can do more than that. Maybe they can help kids stay in school and graduate. Recently published research by the Center for Research and Evaluation of Student Standards and Testing at UCLA (CRESST) of the LA’s BEST Afterschool Enrichment Program finds that elementary school children with high levels of attendance in the program were less likely drop out and more likely to graduate on time than those students who never participated in the program. Specifically, the study found that higher attenders were five percent less likely to dropout and six percent more likely to complete high school on time than were matched control students in the same elementary schools who never participated in the program.
Cal State remedial education reforms help thousands more students pass college-level math classes
Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times
Rogelio Perez has long struggled with math. Had he entered California State University last year, his C grades and low standardized test scores would have steered him into a non-credit remedial math class. He would still have had to pay for the class and fallen behind at least a semester in his path toward graduation. But under a sweeping reform in the nation’s largest four-year public university system, Perez is doing college-level work in statistics and algebra, aided by 150 minutes of extra instruction every week. And he’ll get college credit if he passes — which looks likely, since he’s earning an A so far. “I feel this is a really good system because the extra review helps us understand more and in depth,” said Perez, a Cal State Dominguez Hills freshman who is the first in his family to attend college. “Without it, I’d probably have the same trouble I had in high school.”
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
$23 billion funding gap exists between white and nonwhite school districts, report finds
Sarah Mervosh, The New York Times
School districts that predominantly serve students of color received $23 billion less in funding than mostly white school districts in the United States in 2016, despite serving the same number of students, a new report found. The report, released this week by the nonprofit EdBuild, put a dollar amount on the problem of school segregation, which has persisted long after Brown v. Board of Education and was targeted in recent lawsuits in states from New Jersey to Minnesota. The estimate also came as teachers across the country have protested and gone on strike to demand more funding for public schools. “You can tell these dollars make a difference,” said Rebecca Sibilia, the chief executive of EdBuild, a nonpartisan organization focused on improving the way states fund public education. “Walk into a rural nonwhite community,” she said. “Walk into an urban nonwhite school district. You can see what that means in terms of how much that has added up over time.” The report took aim at school district borders, which it said can chop up communities and wall off wealthier districts to fund their schools with local property tax revenue, while poorer districts are unable to generate the same revenue.
Measuring diversity without holding schools accountable won’t bring about integration
Andre Perry, The Hechinger Report
There’s an adage many researchers and policy wonks live by: What gets measured, gets done. The saying suggests that measuring something enhances your ability to achieve it — except, of course, when you’re talking about integrated schools. We’ve quantified, studied and assessed the importance of diversity in schools, but it’s something we haven’t come close to achieving. While housing segregation strongly influences the composition of the student body, even in diverse cities, low-income black and brown students are increasingly becoming concentrated in certain schools. This is a result of middle-income, largely white families choosing to cluster (read: segregate) in middle- and upper-income schools and neighborhoods in their pursuit of a good education for their kids. “Income segregation creates districts of concentrated poverty or affluence, but high-income black families may be less likely than high-income white families to live in the affluent districts created by income segregation,” according to 2018 research published by the American Sociological Association.
Jane Margolis & Linda Sax: The rise and fall of gender equity in computing
Joanie Harmon, Ampersand
A photo in Jane Margolis’ office shows her as a young woman working atop a telephone pole for Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, breaking the gender barrier in the 1970s, at a time when women had yet to enter the technical fields in significant numbers. This week, the UCLA senior researcher was featured in a New York Times Magazine article on “The Secret History of Women in Coding.” Margolis conducts research on equity in computer science education through the Computer Science Project at UCLA’s Center X, focusing on gender socialization and gender, race, and educational inequity. Upon graduating from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1992, she was asked to conduct a research study at Carnegie Mellon University about the lack of female students in what was one of the top computer science departments in the nation. Margolis’ findings resulted in her first book, “Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing” (With Allan Fisher. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002). “What Margolis discovered was that the first-year students arriving at Carnegie Mellon with substantial experience were almost all male,” writes Clive Thompson in the NYT Magazine article. “They had received much more exposure to computers than girls had; for example, boys were more than twice as likely to have been given one as a gift by their parents. And if parents bought a computer for the family, they most often put it in a son’s room, not a daughter’s. Sons also tended to have what amounted to an “internship” relationship with fathers, working through Basic-language manuals with them, receiving encouragement from them; the same wasn’t true for daughters.”
Public Schools and Private $
California charter schools facing new oversight under fast track legislation
Diana Lambert, EdSource
At the urging of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a bill that will require charter schools to be more accountable and transparent is making its way swiftly through the legislature and may be the first of several bills seeking to tighten oversight of charter schools. Senate Bill 126 would require that California charter school boards comply with the same open meeting, conflict-of-interest and disclosure laws as district school boards, including holding public board meetings, opening records to the public upon request and ensuring board members don’t have a financial interest in contracts on which they vote. The bill was introduced by Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino and Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach. It passed the state Senate Thursday with a 34 to 2 vote and will go to the state Assembly for a vote as early as next week. If it passes, the law will go into effect Jan. 1.
Charter schools are a flashpoint in California’s teacher strikes—here’s where and how they’ve grown
Ricardo Cano, CAL matters
As teachers picket in the streets of Oakland in their second high-profile strike this year in California, state lawmakers are hearing their battle cry loud and clear. The state’s charter schools—privately operated public schools that are mostly non-union—are all over the Capitol agenda. Lawmakers are fast-tracking transparency legislation that would treat charter trustees like regular school boards. State education officials are studying their financial impact on school districts, a possible first step to curbing future expansion. In his State of the State address, Gov. Gavin Newsom lumped charter growth in with overcrowded classrooms, the achievement gap and understaffed schools as a “stressor” to be addressed. Both Newsom and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond were backed by California’s powerful teachers’ unions. Both beat opponents who were heavily bankrolled by billionaire advocates of the charter movement in the November election. But part of the attention also stems from the increased intensity, and national scope, of the war between unions and supporters of charter schools.
Possible conversions to charter schools mark Puerto Rico’s latest education fight
Andrew Ujifusa, Education Week
The teachers’ union for Puerto Rico and the island’s education secretary cannot agree on where the growth of charter school officially stands. On Tuesday, the Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico, or AMPR, alleged that Secretary of Education Julia Keleher has essentially kept teachers, parents, and the public in the dark about the possible conversion of 30 traditional public schools into charters. However, Keleher has responded that the allegation results from a misunderstanding or confusion about the process. The disagreement over even basic facts of the situation highlights ongoing tension between the two parties. The island’s government, with Keleher’s support, approved the creation of charters last year through a new education law, with supporters saying creating more school choice would make the island’s educational system more attractive. (The island’s public schools currently enroll just over 300,000 students.) The first charter opened in Puerto Rico at the start of this school year. However, AMPR, which is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, opposed the law, saying it would allow private interests to control what’s supposed to be public education. The law also created a new voucher system slated to start in the next school year. In a statement issued Thursday, AFT President Randi Weingarten said AMPR had received inquiries from teachers and parents who she said had “informally” learned that the 30 schools would be converted into charter schools. In a separate letter to Keleher, AMPR President Aida Díaz wrote that, “This lack of transparency and access to information contributes to a climate of uncertainty that could later foster the loss of students to the system and an exodus of professional talent. Teachers are blindfolded regarding their future. Parents are in the uncertainty with no participation on the educational processes of their children.”
Other News of Note
How Chicago’s mayoral race could upend the city’s politics (HBO) [VIDEO]
Vice News
“People are voting for mayor in Chicago today. And for the first time in a very, very long time, no one knows who’s gonna win. The guy who was supposed to win, incumbent mayor Rahm Emanuel, suddenly dropped his bid for a third term last September. You can trace this moment in Chicago back to October 2014, when Officer Jason Van Dyke shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald sixteen times. Protests helped lead to the indictment and conviction of Van Dyke. And then they helped push Emanuel to drop out, creating a power vacuum.”