Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Betsy Devos’ American carnage
Stephen Smiley, Slate
Throughout the 2016 campaign and since his election victory, Donald Trump has been spinning Americans a bleak yarn of a nation teetering on the brink of collapse. On the campaign trail, he repeatedly insisted that black voters “suffering” under Democratic control had nothing to lose by casting a vote for him. On Inauguration Day, he told of industrial decline and “American carnage.” The president thinks that public schools “deprive” students of knowledge; that inner cities are riddled with crime; that the health care system is about to implode (or perhaps explode); and that the country is losing out big league to allies who’ve been treating Americans like chumps. But this doomsaying isn’t just coming from the Oval Office. On Wednesday, at a forum at the Brookings Institution in Washington, the president’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was asked whether she would concede that when poorly implemented, the “school choice” doctrine she has championed for much of her career could have a negative effect on students. She saw no such risk.
Reports say Trump seeks teacher development cuts for coming school year
Andrew Ujifusa, Education Week
You might already have read about President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal 2018 that would eliminate $2.3 billion in Title II spending on professional development for teachers and after-school programs, while boosting school choice efforts. But that budget wouldn’t kick in until October, and would impact the 2018-19 school year. What about the fiscal 2017 budget that would fund the 2017-18 school year? It looks like Trump’s fiscal 2017 blueprint shares at least one big thing in common with his plans for fiscal 2018: The administration wants a roughly 50 percent cut to Title II grants to states to $1.1 billion, as well as the elimination of a $52 million school counseling program and the $152 million Math Science Partnerships, according to reports in both Congressional Quarterly and Politico. These K-12 cuts would add up to around $1.6 billion. Combined with proposed cuts to Pell Grants, the cuts to the Education Department budget would total $3 billion.
California’s top education official joins court fight to stop threat of fiscal penalties to sanctuaries
Carolyn Jones, EdSource
California’s public schools chief joined the legal fight Wednesday over President Donald Trump’s order threatening to cut funding for local jurisdictions that have vowed to protect undocumented immigrants. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson filed a brief in the U.S. Ninth District Court in support of Santa Clara County’s request in February for a preliminary injunction to halt Trump’s order that threatens to stop federal funding to sanctuary jurisdictions. The order could affect funding for hundreds of cities, counties and schools across the country that have declared themselves sanctuaries or safe havens.
Language, Culture, and Power
Concerns after Texas school opens ‘prayer room’ that’s attracting Muslim students
Stella Chavez, NPR
The state attorney general has raised constitutional questions about a public school’s move to establish a room to accommodate all students and their religions. The debate has embroiled the community.
Muslim schoolchildren bullied by fellow students and teachers
Akinyi Ochieng, NPR
Muslim children are more likely to be bullied in school than children of other faiths. A new survey by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) reveals that 42 percent of Muslims with children in K–12 schools report bullying of their children because of their faith, compared with 23 percent of Jewish and 20 percent of Protestant parents. These results confirm recent findings by other research and advocacy groups showing that bullying of students of color is on the rise.
UC is moving forward with Mexican initiative, regardless of Trump actions
Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times
University of California President Janet Napolitano is headed to Mexico next week to reassure leaders there that the public research university remains committed to academic collaboration — even if some of it, such as climate change research, is at risk under the Trump administration. In an interview Wednesday, Napolitano said she would build on the UC-Mexico Initiative she launched in 2014 despite President Trump’s plans to build a border wall, increase immigration enforcement and reduce federal research funding. She said she planned to tell Mexicans during three days of meetings starting next Wednesday, “Regardless of what is happening federally, the University of California remains open to academic partnerships with Mexico.”
Whole Children and Strong Communities
After therapy dog refuses to drink, San Diego Unified finds lead in water
Gary Warth, Los Angeles Times
A dog’s reluctance to drink from a bowl in a San Diego classroom led to the discovery of lead in the school’s water system, and testing of all pipes in the San Diego Unified School District will begin soon. According to a notice sent Friday to parents and staff members at Emerson-Bandini Elementary and San Diego Co-Operative Charter School 2, which share a single campus, a teacher at the charter school noticed her therapy dog would not drink from a bowl filled with water from the classroom sink on Jan. 26. The teacher then saw a sheen on the water, which led to the district sampling numerous water outlets on the campus. After detecting contaminants that exceeded the state’s allowable level, the district contacted its water provider, the city of San Diego, which has agreed to test all district properties, including its 187 campuses, at no cost.
Kids who suffer hunger in first years lag behind their peers in school
Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR
Growing up in a hungry household in the first couple of years of life can hurt how well a child performs in school years later, according to a new study. An estimated 13.1 million children live in homes with insufficient food, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Many of those children experience hunger during their first few years of life, or their parents are hungry and stressed out about food during those years – the most crucial time for a child’s development. The new study, published in the latest issue of the journal Child Development, suggests that such early experience of hunger in the family is likely to make those children less ready for kindergarten than their classmates who came from homes with enough to eat. It shows that kids who experienced food insecurity in their first five years of life are more likely to be lagging behind in social, emotional and to some degree, cognitive skills when they begin kindergarten.
Some schools trading the blacktop for greentop as an innovative way to teach science
Carolyn Jones, EdSource
Some students in California don’t have to take field trips to parks or national forests for environmental education – they just open their classroom door. To supplement their science and environmental curricula, hundreds of schools across the state have busted up their asphalt play yards and replaced them with wood chips, trees, flowers, shrubs and vegetables. The new gardens don’t just add greenery to the schoolyard; they help teachers implement California’s new science standards, which emphasize hands-on learning, and crossover between scientific disciplines.
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
Digital app helps to boost vocabulary of English learners in Napa preschools
Ashley Hopkinson, EdSource
In Napa County, where most children enrolled in state-subsidized preschool are native Spanish speakers, educators introduced an app-based program to build the vocabularies of their youngest learners, particularly English learners. That was six years ago, and the growth in children’s language skills in both English and Spanish since then prompted educators to offer the program free to all parents of preschoolers in Napa County regardless of income level, becoming the first county in the country to implement a countywide digital early literacy program.
Cal State trustees approve controversial tuition hike
Rosanna Xia, Los Angeles Times
After a heated morning of debate and impassioned statements from students, professors and lawmakers, the California State University Board of Trustees voted 11 to 8 Wednesday to increase tuition as a way to fill a looming gap in state funding. “I don’t bring this forward with an ounce of joy,” said Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White, addressing the packed meeting chamber. “I bring it with necessity.” Dozens of students stood and shouted “Shame! Shame! Shame!” after the vote was taken. Some wiped away tears, while others hugged and vowed to take their fight to lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown, who have the power to ease the system’s budget woes.
College classes in maximum security: ‘It gives you meaning’
Yuki Noguchi, NPR
More than 650,000 prisoners are released every year in the U.S., but no federal agency tracks the unemployment rate for this population. Experts say low reading and technological literacy, as well as reluctance among employers to hire former convicts, means many drop out of the labor force altogether. Low employment levels for that group cost between $57 billion and $65 billion annually in lost economic activity, according to a 2010 study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. But there are a handful of novel initiatives trying to turn that narrative around, by bringing college education and professional training, and even entrepreneurship programs behind bars. Advocates of such programs say by teaching inmates at a higher level, they reduce financial and social costs to society.
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
School closures: What do they mean for students and communities?
Sarah D. Sparks, Education Week
Under both the No Child Left Behind Act’s school improvement sanctions and the Obama-era school improvement grants, school closure has been promoted as a key way to move students to a better education. But new research suggests it may leave some students and communities in the lurch. In the decade from 2003-04 to 2013-14, about 2 percent of public schools nationwide closed, turning out about 200,000 students, according to a new study of school closures by the Urban Institute. While urban schools were disproportionately at risk of being shuttered, rural communities may have a harder time making up for their loss. Urban Institute senior researchers Megan Gallagher and Amanda Gold tracked both school closures and the development of new schools from 2003-2014, using federal data. In urban and suburban communities, schools with higher percentages of black or poor students were likelier to be closed.
The challenge of creating schools that ‘work for everybody’
Catherine Gewertz, Education Week
When the bell rings at Wheaton North High School, a river of white students flows into Advanced Placement classrooms. A trickle of brown and black students joins them. But mostly, the Latino, African-American, and Asian teenagers file into lower-rung classes. In this way, Wheaton North is like thousands of other high schools across the country, replicating along its polished hallways the inequities that mark the daily lives of minority and low-income students beyond the school’s big glass doors. Studies show, in fact, that achievement gaps within schools can be greater than those from school to school. And, like many schools nationwide, Wheaton North is trying hard to rewire the machinery that perpetuates those inequities. It’s making progress, but entrenched patterns persist.
Are high school students with disabilities prepared for life after school?
Christina Samuels, Education Week
A new, two-volume report exploring the experiences of students with disabilities was released today, and there’s enough information here to keep special educators reading for a long time. The reports compile information from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2012, which explored the characteristics and experiences of a representative sample of nearly 13,000 students, most of who have individualized education programs. The students, ages 13 to 21, and their families were surveyed in 2012 and 2013. Mathematica Policy Research and the Institute on Community Integration at the University of Minnesota led the investigation.
Public Schools and Private $
Charter leaders to Trump: Your budget should help all schools, not just ‘choice’
Andrew Ujifusa, Education Week
The federal charter school grant program was a winner in President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for education. But three big names in the charter school world say that unless Trump provides more support for a broad swath of education programs, his budget won’t help all students succeed. Achievement First CEO Dacia Toll, KIPP Foundation CEO Richard Barth, and Uncommon Schools CEO Brett Peiser wrote in a USA Today op-ed that Trump needs to think more broadly about education in his budget than just helping charters and private schools.
DeVos: Picking a school should be like choosing among Uber, Lyft or a taxi
Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post
In 2012, former Florida governor Jeb Bush gave a speech in which he likened shopping for a school to selecting milk in a grocery store: Everywhere in our lives, we get the chance to choose. Go down any supermarket aisle – you’ll find an incredible selection of milk. You can get whole milk, 2 percent milk, low-fat milk or skim milk. Organic milk and milk with extra Vitamin D. There’s flavored milk — chocolate, strawberry or vanilla — and it doesn’t even taste like milk. They even make milk for people who can’t drink milk. Shouldn’t parents have that kind of choice in schools? On Wednesday, his ally, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, did something similar. DeVos, who like Bush is a fervent believer in school choice, compared selecting a school to choosing among ride-providing options. She made the comment as part of a speech she delivered at the nonprofit Brookings Institution, which unveiled its fifth annual Education Choice and Competition Index, its ranking of school choice in the nation’s 100 largest school districts.
L.A. charter school network defends its founder’s 2013 income of $471,842
Anna M. Phillips, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles-based charter school network on Monday defended its spending practices — speaking out for the first time since The Times published a story documenting a history of potential conflicts of interest and questionable use of public money. Leading up to the publication of the story, Celerity Educational Group’s founder and former CEO Vielka McFarlane declined to speak to reporters. When The Times sent Celerity and its lawyer a list of questions about its finances, the network said it was having difficulty providing answers because many of its computers and records had been seized when federal agents raided its offices in late January. The nonprofit organization, which currently runs seven schools in Los Angeles County and four in Louisiana, remains the subject of a federal inquiry. It is also under investigation by the inspector general of the Los Angeles Unified School District. No one at Celerity, including McFarlane, has been charged with a crime stemming from the schools’ operations.
Other News of Note
Students and farmworkers are teaming up to boot Wendy’s off their campuses
Molly Minta, The Nation
Earlier this month, students at the University of Florida returned from spring break to record-low temperatures and a tauntingly blue sky. On March 16, the rolling green lawn that joins several of the university’s main buildings was filled with students enjoying the weather in warm patches of sun. About two miles east, representatives from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a farmworker-rights organization based five hours south of Gainesville, gathered with UF students at Norman Field, an expanse of grass near the area of town where Wendy Thomas, the original Wendy on whom the fast food chain’s logo is based, lived when she attended the university in the early 1980s. With tomato signs and CIW’s signature yellow flags, students and coalition members were gathered for a protest.