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Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Black Lives Matter is democracy in action
Barbara Ransby, The New York Times
Why has this generation of black activists failed to produce a Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or a Malcolm X — a charismatic, messiah-like figure who can lead a major movement? The answer is a choice, not a deficiency. The suggestion that the organizations that have emerged from the Black Lives Matter protests are somehow lacking because they have rejected the old style of leadership misses what makes this movement most powerful: its cultivation of skilled local organizers who take up many issues beyond police violence. This is radical democracy in action.
How do Trump’s K-12 campaign promises hold up a year after his election?
Alyson Klein, Education Week
President Donald Trump was elected one year ago Wednesday, promising a huge new school choice initiative, a slimmed down—or nonexistent—U.S. Department of Education, the end of the Common Core State Standards, new tax incentives to cover child-care costs, and more. So how are those campaign pledges coming one year after Trump’s upset presidential victory? Here’s a score card.
Democratic candidates for governor declare support for California’s signature education reforms
Louis Freedberg, EdSource
The four leading Democratic candidates vying to be the next governor of California say they are committed to continuing landmark education reforms initiated by Gov. Jerry Brown, who will be termed out of office next year. Whether the next governor will support the Local Control Funding Formula and related reforms has been an issue of considerable concern in education circles across the state. But in early comments on the Local Control Funding Formula, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, State Treasurer John Chiang, and former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin all say they support the Local Control Funding Formula — with some caveats. They will all be on the June 5 primary ballot next year. Their views on education are noteworthy because California’s next governor will be in a powerful position to shape education policies, just as Brown has been. The governor also appoints the 11-member State Board of Education, which has far more decision-making authority than the state superintendent of public instruction. Voters will also select the person to fill that post on the statewide ballot next June.
Language, Culture, and Power
‘College is possible’ — LAUSD teacher who is undocumented encourages Latino parents to help their children persevere
Esmeralda Fabián Romero, LA School Report
As an undocumented student in her San Bernardino high school, Maria Lopez Lozano was told by her school counselor she couldn’t go to college. She went anyway, graduated from UC Irvine, and now teaches in LA Unified. As a “DACAmented” teacher — as she called herself for being undocumented and a DACA recipient — she is determined to make sure her high school students know their immigration status will not keep them from college. “It’s very sad for me to hear my undocumented students saying they didn’t know they can go to college. They never heard from counselors or teachers or even their parents that they can have access to higher education. That means it is a failure in the (school) system,” she said.
California state board asked to reject textbooks that fall short on LGBT contributions
Theresa Harrington, EdSource
For the first time, the State Board of Education on Thursday will consider recommending history social science textbooks that include ‘fair, accurate, inclusive and respectful representations’ of people with disabilities and people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Two K-8 texts by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt were rejected by a state-appointed commission in part because the middle school text failed to detail the sexual orientation of historical figures such as literary luminaries Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, and U.S. President James Buchanan. The state board can adopt the commission’s recommendations or come to its own decision. So far, the state has received about 400 written comments regarding the textbooks, including many from people advocating for the fair portrayal of Hindus and many who are concerned about the LGBT references. Due to anticipated controversy, the board has scheduled a full day hearing before its vote.
For online schools, unique challenges in serving transgender students
Benjamin Herold, Education Week
Indiana Connections Academy faced a dilemma. Around 2013, a growing number of transgender students at the K-12 school began telling staff they wanted to be recognized by a different name and gender than was listed on their birth certificates. But Indiana Connections Academy is a full-time online charter. That means most of students’ interactions with teachers and classmates occur online, using technology platforms that display each child’s name and other information. The school couldn’t change what was displayed publicly without first wrestling with serious questions about student privacy, as well as changing what was stored in its back-end database, which at the time required students’ legal name and gender for state reporting purposes.
Finding a technical fix was just part of the ongoing challenge, according to Melissa Brown, Indiana Connections Academy’s longtime executive director. The school has also had to consider its legal obligations around serving transgender students, which have shifted over the past two presidential administrations. And just as significantly, Brown and her team were forced to navigate a broader culture war in which advocates of LGBT rights have been pitted against some proponents of religious liberty.
Whole Children and Strong Communities
Artist leads 200 students in painting masterclass on downtown LA street
Carla Javier, KPCC
More than 200 students filled a city block in downtown Los Angeles Saturday morning to learn art from one of Panama’s most prominent artists. You can’t blame them if they were a bit star-struck. Olga Sinclair, an abstract expressionist and Panama’s cultural ambassador, took to a stage on Kohler Street to lead what sponsor was billed as L.A.’s largest-ever youth painting class. The event fell short of the expected 1,000 school-age children, but several of those who attended said they were inspired by Sinclair. Teaching courses on this scale was not new for Sinclair, who holds a world record for the largest communal painting created in 2014 with more than 5,000 children in Panama. This time, though, Sinclair wanted students to paint individual works on their own canvas, inspired by music and the moment.
Competition is ruining childhood. The kids should fight back.
Malcolm Harris, The New York Times
Like the crack of a starting pistol, November begins the official college application season. But for students, this race started long ago. Many of today’s kids have lived their entire lives, from sunup until midnight, in a fierce tournament with their peers. (I was one of them. A decade after graduation, I still can’t think of a period when I’ve worked harder than in high school.) From kindergarten to 12th grade, schools brag about how “competitive” they are. That means it’s not enough for students to do their best. Whether in the classroom, on the athletic field or at home on the computer, they must always be better. Youth has become a debilitating endurance test. The thing is, we don’t even really know what we are racing for, much less how to tone down the competition. And most people don’t seem to be benefiting from this frantic contest, either as students or as adult workers. Americans are improving themselves, but the rewards keep flowing uphill to the 1 percent. Everyone tells students that the harder they work to develop their job skills — their “human capital” — the better off they will be. It’s not true. In fact, the result is the opposite: more and better educated workers, earning less.
The educators helping students through trauma
Sukjong Hong, The Atlantic
This story is part of a project The Hechinger Report did in collaboration with the local public radio station WWNO in New Orleans. The project reported on the traumatic experiences many young children in New Orleans are dealing with at home, and how some schools are turning to trauma-informed teaching to better serve these students. One of the students interviewed for the project was Sherlae, a 13-year-old student at Lawrence D. Crocker College Prep coping with a family mental-health crisis. After The Hechinger Report’s text and the WWNO radio series ran last year, the journalist and illustrator Sukjong Hong traveled to New Orleans to meet with Katy Reckdahl, a Hechinger writer, and Sherlae to create this graphic rendering of her story. Sherlae’s first name is being withheld to protect her privacy.
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
Would changes to California’s color-coded school ratings lower the bar?
Joy Removits, Los Angeles Times
After seeing this year’s standardized test scores, state education officials want to change the way those scores translate to school ratings — in a way that likely would make more schools look better. The statisticians and administrators advocating for the change say it’s necessary as they calibrate the state’s new color-coded school accountability system. The California State Board of Education will take up this issue — and other proposed changes — in its meeting Wednesday. But what officials call a technical tweak, education advocates see as a lowering of expectations for California’s students. “We should not be changing expectations for schools and districts without more data and understanding,” a coalition of 14 education organizations wrote in a letter to the board. These are the three proposed changes we’ll be watching.
Math festivals help elementary students — and their families — see math as fun
Ashley Hopkinson, EdSource
A dozen parents gathered around veteran math educator Leanna Baker, moments before students show up for what is billed as a math “festival” for students at Allendale Elementary School in Oakland. “Do your best not to give them an answer,” Baker told the dozen parent volunteers about how best to help the transitional kindergarten to fifth grade students participating in math activities arranged for that day. “We want them to be problem solvers.” Interviews by EdSource with educators at several school districts suggests that a growing number of elementary schools are hosting events like these for students and families to convey the message that math is fun and can be practiced every day in simple ways in their own lives, not just in the classroom. The popularity of the events are a response, in part, to more rigorous Common Core math standards being implemented in schools across the state, along with attempts to help students —and their parents — overcome common math anxieties.
Baby’s got mail: Free books boost early literacy
Maureen Pao, NPR
“A busybody.” That’s how Raven Judd describes her 10-month-old daughter Bailey. “She loves tummy time. She likes to roll over. She’d dive if you let her,” says the 27-year-old mother from Washington, D.C. There is one thing, though, that will get her baby girl to stop what she’s doing: when her mother reads her favorite book, the aptly named My Busy Book. “Her eyes get really, really big,” Judd says. “She gets excited and will start hitting on (the book). When I start reading out the numbers and alphabet, I turn it into a little tune, and then she starts laughing,” Judd says. That book — and the others stacked in her favorite drawer — are from Books From Birth, a D.C. Public Library program that mails a book a month, every month, to enrolled children from birth to age 5. All children in the district are eligible. “A lot of parents think, ‘Oh, my child is too young to read,’ or, ‘He can’t read yet,’ ” says Michael Linder of the D.C. Public Library. “You have those parents who aren’t aware of the importance of early literacy.” And the research says, it is extremely important.
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
California suspension and expulsion rates drop again but racial gaps remain
Kyle Stokes, KPCC
Slightly fewer California public school students were suspended or expelled during the 2016-17 than the year before, newly-released statewide figures show. The decrease comes as a range of education leaders, from local school board members to state officials, seek to curb disciplinary practices that remove children from school. Since the 2011-12 school year, this effort has helped decrease the number of suspensions by 46 percent. But students in some racial groups continue to face harsher discipline at higher rates. The disparity is most evident among black students. Last school year, 9.7 percent of black students in California schools were suspended at least once, well above the suspension rates among white students (3.1 percent), Latino students (3.7 percent) or the state as a whole (3.6 percent).
White spite: Why education is at the center of Trump’s politics of resentment
Jennifer Berkshire, AlterNet
White Rage author Carol Anderson discusses the Trump administration’s attacks on education. Jennifer Berkshire: You’re the author of the book White Rage—but I thought of another title for your book: White Spite. The history you recount is basically about how as a country we’ve systematically denied opportunity to kids of color, even if everyone else gets screwed in the process. Carol Anderson: That’s it. It’s amazing to watch, and it’s horrifying to watch. Think about Sputnik, for example, or the threat that the Soviets were going to hit the U.S. with intercontinental ballistic missiles. You’d expect that a massive national security threat would be enough to shake even the most hardened white supremacist, hardened segregationist, or hardened Jim Crow lover, out of the commitment to systematically denying millions of black children access to quality education.
How dual enrollment contributes to inequality
Erik Gilbert, The Chronicle of Higher Education
For the first time in five years, I am teaching a section of Honors World History this fall. It’s a small class with lots of opportunity for interaction between the instructor and the student. That’s right: One student enrolled in the class at the beginning of the term. I’m happy to report that that number has since steadily risen — to three. It’s still well below the enrollment 10 years ago, when honors general-education classes here at Arkansas State University routinely reached their maximum of 15. Numbers have dropped off in the regular world-history courses, too. Last semester my class had 25 students; 10 years ago it would have had 40. It’s not that our overall enrollment is down — we had record enrollment last year. Nor does this reflect some shift in students’ interests over the past decade. Then as now, most students took world history and other gen-ed courses because they had to, not because they wanted to. And it’s not just at my university. The same phenomenon is at work nationally and in other disciplines as well. There has also been a notable demographic shift compared with five years ago. The students in my gen-ed classes are disproportionately minorities, adults, and graduates of rural high schools. I am teaching fewer middle-class, suburban, white students. So what’s happened? For middle-class students who attend well-funded high schools, general education at less- and moderately-selective state universities is increasingly a thing of the past. This is especially the case for the humanities courses, but the social sciences and STEM areas are affected, too. Some of this is due to the popularity of Advanced Placement classes, but concurrent enrollment (or dual enrollment) is what’s really driving the trend.
Public Schools and Private $
The GOP has a new vehicle for school choice, but are the wealthy at the wheel?
Andrew Ujifusa, Education Week
The House GOP’s plan to overhaul the tax code includes a provision that would allow 529 college savings plans to be used for K-12 expenses, including private school tuition. It’s a victory for advocates of school choice that we previewed last August—but who uses those accounts now, and how much could they help expand choice?
Agreement paves way for L.A. Unified to approve most old and new charter schools
Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
Charter school leaders flexed their new muscle with the L.A. Unified School District on Tuesday to win district concessions on some operating rules. But they stopped short of insisting that all their demands be met, which could have led to school closures and an embarrassing public fight. Sixteen charters had risked being shut down when they indicated they would refuse to follow district rules. But the deal, announced at Tuesday’s meeting by acting Supt. Vivian Ekchian, led to recommended approvals for most of them. A key win, according to charters, is that they will no longer be forced to choose L.A. Unified as the agency that will oversee or provide services to disabled students. They should also find it easier to reach long-term agreements for space on district-owned campuses. Most significantly, perhaps, is that administrators of the nation’s second-largest school system committed to reviewing district policies and recommending which ones should and shouldn’t apply to charter schools. Those recommendations will then be voted on by the Board of Education, which for the first time has a majority elected with substantial funding from charter school backers.
Union-backed candidates win control of key district in battle over vouchers
Arianna Prothero, Education Week
A slate of teacher union-backed candidates have won control of Colorado’s Douglas County school board—ousting its pro-school choice majority in a strongly Republican area. The union victory will likely spell the end of the county’s pilot school-voucher program as well as a high-profile lawsuit that could have become a vehicle for expanding vouchers across the country. For that reason, the election for a local seven-member school board for a 68,000-student district drew outsized national interest and money.
Other News of Note
One year later
Robin D. G. Kelley, Boston Review
Donald J. Trump’s election was a national trauma, an epic catastrophe that has left millions in the United States and around the world in a state of utter shock, uncertainty, deep depression, and genuine fear. . . . But the outcome should not have surprised us. I wrote this a year ago and still believe it to be true, but it seems like each day, each week, many of us are re-traumatized by the outrageous behavior of our president and his inner circle. So while the outcome of the election should not have surprised us, the consequences of a Trump administration have proven to be worse than even I had imagined. Yet, as my own anxiety levels rise, most of my liberal friends have begun to calm down, taking solace in the fact that Trump cannot govern or that the investigation into his campaign’s collusion with Russia will lead to impeachment. This kind of complacency is very dangerous. Trump’s inability to govern actually creates the kind of chaos that allows for emergency measures and executive orders that further concentrate power in his hands, justifying war—at home and abroad. It opens the door to fascism.