Duval’s lax consequences for bad behavior or you got to be %$#@ing kidding me!!!

DCPS recently made the national news for the treatment of a serial bully who put a classmate in the hospital. A judge temporarily banned her from attending school and the superintendent fought to have her readmitted.

I guess reasonable people can disagree on the harshness of her punishment. I personally think she should be at an alternative school for kids with discipline problems for the foreseeable future. But what no reasonable person should think is that she should have been allowed to go on a class trip to Universal Studios.

When I read that her victim ran into her on the trip I first felt bad that it happened but then I was outraged by the fact the bully was allowed to go. What’s next cripple somebody and give them the key to the city. Break somebody’s leg and get a cruise.

Sadly this is not a lone example either. All over the county children don’t get the consequences they deserve for unruly behavior and this little monster was even rewarded.

For shame Duval County, you better get with it before we remember the days when kids sent their classmates to the hospital as the good old days.

Jeb Bush hates Unions more than he cares for students

Do you want to know why Jeb Bush likes charter schools, virtual schools and vouchers? It is not because they do better than public schools and it’s not because they are more innovative either. It’s because they are staffed by non-union teachers. If charter schools started to unionize then Jeb Bush would drop them like a hot potato. It is pathological with Jeb, he can’t help himself.

The latest example of this comes from a recent stop of his in Michigan which if possible is even worse off than Florida with how it treats its teachers and most vulnerable students. Bush hates unions so much he is willing to mislead, cajole and outright lie to sell his anti-union, anti-public school snake oil.

Joy Resmovits and Ashley Woods in the Huffington Post wrote about how he lauded Michigan’s charter schools which as a group are doing worse than even Florida’s charter schools. Not swayed by facts, Bush even said that Michigan’s charters were outperforming public school. Resmovits and Woods however found things differently:

But it is difficult to concisely characterize charter school quality nationwide, and the study on Michigan's schools Bush touted is less definitive than he made it sound.

That study, released in January by Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes, found that while students in Michigan's charter schools are raising their test scores more quickly than their peers in public schools, they are still performing at much lower levels. Charter school students in the state gain about two months of reading and math knowledge over their peers each year -- but 80 percent of charter schools perform below the 50th percentile of achievement in reading, and 84 percent perform below that threshold in math.

Another study -- this one by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers -- found that about a quarter of Michigan's charters fell into the bottom 15 percent of the state's schools on eighth grade math and the bottom 21 percent in eighth grade reading.

That poor performance has disappointed education advocates like Amber Arellano, who directs the nonpartisan advocacy group EdTrust Midwest.

"A lot of people here ... had hoped that charters were really going to be the solution to urban children's lack of quality options," Arellano told The Huffington Post in a January interview. "They're not. There are not enough high-performing charters here [in Michigan] to really address the educational inequities that we have here in the state. Just letting the market decide isn't the answer."

According to an EdTrust Midwest study, the operators of new schools that opened up after Michigan lifted its cap on charters in 2011 have below-average academic track records.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/jeb-bush-talks-education-mackinac-charter-schools-michigan_n_3354180.html?utm_source=Alert-

All of this begs the question, what won’t Bush say? I also have no doubt that when the education apartheid movement has finally run its course; people will consider Jeb Bush one of the biggest villains of the 21st century.

Dear Charter Schools, taking public money doesn't automatically make you a public entity; if it did, Halliburton would be its own branch of the military.

The U.S. Census Bureau says most charter schools are not public schools and a rose by any other name is still a rose but just because it has feathers and flies it doesn’t mean it is a duck.

It is way past time we stopped calling charter schools public schools and the only reason education deformers do so is they think it gives their anti-public school privatization agenda some cover. What they really are is publically funded private schools and despite numerous advantages many perform worse than their public school counterparts.

The US Census Bureau doesn’t think they are private schools: http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/11f33pub.pdf  and they aren’t the only ones.

Neither does the National Labor Board: http://www.wbez.org/news/chicago-charter-school-subject-private-sector-labor-laws-104660

Many legal scholars: http://www.wbez.org/news/chicago-charter-school-subject-private-sector-labor-laws-104660

And education policy scholars as well: http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/charter-schools-are-public-private-neither-both/

And if you still think they are, I have a bridge to sell you cheap.

Above was inspired by the Jersey Jazzman post: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/05/us-census-bureau-most-charters-

Which had the great quote: Taking public money doesn't automatically make you a public entity; if it did, Halliburton would be its own branch of the military.

In 2000, 1 in 8 schools were considered high poverty schools, now it is 1 in 5

From the Hechinger Report

Poverty is getting so concentrated in America that one out of five public schools was classified as a “high-poverty” school in 2011 by the U.S. Department of Education. To win this unwelcome designation, 75 percent or more of an elementary, middle or high school’s students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. About a decade earlier, in 2000, only one in eight public schools was deemed to be high poverty. That’s about a 60 percent increase in the number of very poor schools!

This figure was part of a large data report, The Condition of Education 2013, released by the National Center for Education Statistics on May 23, 2013. There’s a lot to chew on in it. But school poverty jumped out at me as a really depressing data point showing the growing income inequality in America.

Qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch is an imperfect measure of poverty. A mother with two kids who makes under $35,000 a year would be in this group. Certainly, that’s poor family in New York City, but maybe not destitute in Utah. I’ve also heard that many poor families feel that it is such a stigma to accept a discounted or free lunch that they don’t sign up for the program. So the poverty rates in many schools are probably much higher than the official statistics say they are.

http://educationbythenumbers.org/content/the-number-of-high-poverty-schools-increases-by-about-60-percent_161/ 

Teachers or crazy union thugs?

Duval County poised to cut most media specialists

As the school board seems bound and determined to keep nine percent, or three times what they are required to, in budget reserves, you just knew something was going to be cut. Well friends it looks like it is going to be the county’s media specialists.

The scuttlebutt is principals have a choice whether to get the Testing Coordinator/Curriculum teacher position -- or keep their Media Specialists. Based on the heavy emphasis this state puts on learning-by-testing, guess which one principals are picking?

Education Matters also received the following e-mail:

Latest news on media specialists in the budget

I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but my principal told me on Friday that all high school media specialists have been cut from the budget. She said that Title I schools will have the option of paying for the position out of their Title I funds. All of this news is such a shocking and drastic change from the plan to have a full time media specialist in every school.

I believe these cuts stem from the School Board workshop which was held last Tuesday. I heard on the news last week that the Board wants a larger reserve fund (an additional 3-5%) than is required by state law (3%). I am sure that cuts must be made in order to achieve the larger reserve fund. I don't think that the timing of the budget workshop last Tuesday and the news about cuts to our positions is a coincidence. There is another Board budget workshop scheduled for this Thursday so the budget is still in flux.

Mind you above was from a district media specialist not from a member of the district staff but if it is true it certainly is troubling and is the opposite of what the district has been saying. I also wonder how the people in Jacksonville will feel about the district sitting on 50 million dollars and cutting librarians.

For a district with a reading problem, getting rid of the county’s media specialists seems incredibly short sited.

UNFs disappointing blame the teacher agenda

I am just going to get right to it.

First no response to Jeb Bush’s desire to blow up teacher’s colleges. You would think a, hey we respectfully disagree, would come from the college that has supplied many of the state’s teachers.

Next, their round table with the JPEF to discuss teacher evaluations, first JPEF is a proponent of TFA, which has a business model the exact opposite of what we know to be best practices and hey ignore poverty much?

Finally they recognized Gary Chartand as a pillar in the community. Other than being incredibly disdainful towards teachers and their representatives, being a proponent of large class sizes and believing in race based goals I’m not really sure what good he has done for the community. I guess being rich and a republican in Florida practically guarantees you an award.

I am a graduate of UNF and up till now I was a proud UNF graduate.

Education reformers seek new victims, colleges of education.

Teachers have long been the target of the Education Reform movement but after years of abuse teachers have began to push back.  Then after the Sandy Hook and Moore tragedies it has become harder to straight up demonize teachers. Education deformers no longer feel comfortable blaming them for society’s problems especially after a few gave up or risked their lives for their children. That however hasn’t stopped the corporate reform movement; no they just switched targets going from educators to their schools of education.

Before I debunk their latest attacks I want you to first think about the amazing hypocrisy of the education reform movement. Teach for America is the darling of the ed reform movement. It takes non education majors and puts them through a five week course and then places them in our toughest classroom or what people in education like to call the exact opposite of what should be happening. Yet somehow that is supposed to be okay and college of ed graduates who spend years studying and at least a semester teaching is somehow substandard. It’s worse however as the right often uses a study by Arthur Levine, who complains about lax requirements to get into colleges of education to validate their concerns but they never mention how the same Arthur Levine rails against TFA and saying it is not the answer. This however will not be the only example of the right trying to have their cake and eat it too.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/how-to-improve-teacher-education-now-and-why-teach-for-america-isnt-the-answer/

Jeb Bush likes to take credit for Florida’s improvement over the last dozen years and there has been some modest gains the thing however is most of these gains are the results of the efforts of Florida’s teachers and the majority of them are graduates of the state’s colleges of educations not his Florida miracle which has been thoroughly debunked. These are the same colleges that Jeb Bush said he wanted to blow up at the Champions for Education meeting. Jeb Bush should not be allowed to have his cake and eat it to, not that that has ever stopped a politician for taking credit for something they had no control over while simultaneously and erroneously bashing their enemies. 

Their main argument seems to be that people who go into the college of education have low GPAs and SAT scores. First there is a lot of debate about where the education deformers got their information and its reliability http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2009/11/15/do-teachers-really-come-from-the-bottom-third-of-colleges-or-is-that-statistic-a-bunch-of-baloney/  and
 http://www.ocala.com/article/20120318/OPINION/120319723?p=1&tc=pg

 I get it though, each side could say I’ll see your study and show you one more but I want you to think about this. Only slightly over 30% of all Americans over the age of 25 have a four year degree. 100 percent of public school teachers have to have a four-year degree. So in effect the education reformers who are so critical are saying that teachers are the worst of the best.http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/education/census-finds-bachelors-degrees-at-record-level.html

Then according to the national center for education statistics, 52% of teachers have advanced degrees where only 10% of the general public does and doesn’t that shoot a hole in the poorly educated teacher theory? http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28

Once again however in their zeal to bad talk teachers they don’t realize or they do and don’t care hoping that the public will miss it, that this argument points to inconsistencies in another one of the other crown jewels of education reform, vouchers. Private schools play by different rules including the education levels that their teachers are required to have. Sure all the teachers at schools like Boles and Episcopal have bachelor’s degrees or above but what about the small private schools in strip malls or on the recesses of town, you know, the ones that advertise on their web sites that they take vouchers. Many of the members of those staffs don’t have bachelors’ degrees at all let alone degrees in the subject areas that they are teaching. Yet the powers that be aren’t calling for universal certification requirements instead they are just screaming that colleges of education are substandard.

These reformers, many of who are seeking to make a buck off education, with their most sincere faces say, if of only children had better teachers they would graduate better prepared for life. That teacher quality is the number one in-school factor that determines how children do. They say in-school mind you so they can continue to ignore poverty which is the number one factor for determining success in school. Kids in poverty don’t do as well as those who aren’t and over a fifth of our kids live in poverty and another fifth just above it.

To those education reformers who say those things I respond instead of demonizing teachers for not being able to overcome the dehabilitating effects of poverty, parental indifference and so many other factors beyond their control, I believe we should get down on our knees and thank them because the vast majority of our children would be much worse off without them.

This isn’t to say every teacher is great or graduate from a college of education made the right choices to get into the profession but when one of my kids’ acts up I don’t punish the whole class because of them but that is the road that the education reformers have chosen to take. They see a few bad teachers and instead of working to replace them they decide to kneecap the entire profession instead.

During my third year of teaching, like many teachers do to hone their craft I went back to college and was taking a nature of the learner class. One day the professor showed a couple videos of teachers and asked the class to rate them zero through four, four being the highest. One of the videos showed a rather shrill woman who I found a bit boring and short with the kids. After the video was over I turned to my buddy and said I am giving her a zero, what are you giving her? He said, one. 

At first I was a confused, I asked quite dismayed, what, how can you give this lady a one? He looked at me and said Chris, she showed up. So many people bitch and complain, blame and point their fingers at teachers not knowing what they do or go through but you know what they don’t do? I was silent. They don’t show up. They don’t go through the training and make the sacrifices. They don’t fight for better conditions for teachers, a fair wage and curriculums that give teachers and students a chance at being successful. They don’t do any of those things and as flawed as this lady was, she showed up and that is worth a point in my book. Feeling a little ashamed for my initial reaction and my short sitedness, I to gave her a one too. 

And if above doesn’t make you wonder about the true motives of the education reform movement, most of whom have never been in a classroom and none of whom have fought for decent wages and working conditions for teachers, who blame them for societies ills, and many of who’s main goal is to make a buck off of education then nothing will.

Chicago closes 50 school while spending 50 million on basketball arena.

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Free the Ed White 7!

First some background. Ed White has the most disabled kids in the county. They have something like 350 kids who receive services including about a hundred severely disabled kids in the Intellectually Disabled Unit.

Next, teacher’s evaluations have two components, the principal observation and student data. These scores are added together and that score gives you a ranking, highly effective, effective, developing/needs improvement and unsatisfactory

Last year the intellectually disabled teachers did not receive the student data portion and as a result of only having half a score they were all deemed needs improvement which is credit to them because their principal thought so highly of them. If they would have gotten student scores they would have all been effective or highly effective  On paper because this score was omitted it seems like the whole department sucks. The reality however is nothing could be further from the truth.

The District has known about this for a year too and thus far has done nothing about it and now it is costing people opportunities. One teacher told me she was going to apply for the curriculum writing team but the first question was: what was your evaluation. Another may be blacklisted from teaching summer school because he too is unsatisfactory in the eyes of the CAST, the districts evaluation tool. Until this is fixed it is a beaming black mark on all their records.

People’s livelihoods are threatened and the district has been unwilling to fix what they admitted last year was a problem.

It is shameful and it is just one more example of a district which isn’t interested in taking care of the employees that carry out the one job, teaching, that the district exists to do in the first place.