Local Control

The First Taste is Free: Ed Tech Follows Drug Dealer Sales Techniques with Schools During Coronavirus Crisis

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“Pst! Hey, Kid! Come here!”

 

Educational technologies are a multi-billion dollar industry.

 

“Who? Me?”

 

The coronavirus pandemic has closed schools across the globe, and districts have tried to solve this problem by putting their classes online.

 

“Yeah, you. I’ve got some… candy I want to give you.”

 

Nearly every ed tech company has offered help with this processes.

 
“Oh boy! I sure love candy… Wait a minute! How much does it cost?”

 

Teachers, parents, students and education activists are wary of educational technologies in the classroom, and research backs them up. Ed tech has been shown to widen socioeconomic divides, it hasn’t lived up to its promise of increasing academic gains, and – perhaps most tellingly – Silicon Valley executives restrict their own children’s use of technology and send them to tech-free schools.

 
“Nothing. It’s free.”

 

These for-profit corporations are offering limited time promotions – they’re providing additional services for free that would normally be behind a paywall.

 

“Oh goodie!”

 

Districts are jumping at the chance. They’re encouraging teachers to use apps, services and software that have never been tried before locally in an attempt to abide by continuity of education guidelines written by departments of education.

 

“That’s right. Absolutely free. But if you want some more, next time I’ll have to charge you a little something…”

 

So when the pandemic is over and classes eventually are reopened, a great deal of the technology that schools used to get through the crisis will no longer be on the house.

 

Continuing to use them will require an additional fee, and if districts end up budgeting for them, the money has to come from somewhere. So that means fewer books, field trips, tutors, classroom aides, and – yes – teachers.

 

In short, well-meaning governors, law-makers, administrators, school directors and even educators are participating in a program that in the long run may enrich private corporations but not be in the best interests of the students we’re supposed to serve.

 

I bring this up not to stop schools from using online learning during the crisis. Unfortunately that ship has sailed. Nor do I voice my objections to criticize teachers, parents or students. We all have to do what needs to be done to get through all this.

 

However, it is vital that we are aware of the compromises being made today so as to better avoid the pitfalls ahead.

 

When teachers use Zoom, Google Classroom, or any of dozens of other ed tech products during this season of social distancing, we must be aware that these should only be temporary measures. Do not resign yourself to any of this becoming the new status quo.

 

When classes resume, we can’t simply go back to normal. Nothing can ever be normal again. Normal is what got us into this mess – a society ill equipped to meet this pandemic – ill equipped to take care of its citizens, provide basic resources, equity and put people before profits.

 

The post coronavirus world must be one of universal healthcare, a social safety net for all and a robust, fully funded system of public education. We cannot allow it to be a dystopian world of edu-tech vulture capitalism where the economics of street corner drug pushers is used to dictate how public money is spent.

 
There are many clear reasons why.

 
First, education technologies are almost completely unregulated. Cybersecurity and student privacy laws are woefully out of date if not entirely nonexistent.

 

These applications collect a torrent of data on students. So do teachers, in fact, to calculate grades. However, if an educator were to share this information with outsiders, she could be sued. But if a corporation did the same thing, it falls into a legal no man’s land.

 

Each state has different laws denoting the limits of privacy.

 

The main federal law safeguarding student data privacy, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), was written in 1974 before much of these technologies even existed. It hasn’t been significantly amended since 2001.

 

So it’s left to individual districts, administrators, school boards and teachers to navigate these murky waters.

 
They end up trying to decipher the individual terms of service agreements and privacy statements with these companies that are often full of legal loopholes. In many cases, decision makers don’t even bother or give the job to school lawyers unversed in cybersecurity concerns or law.

 

While Congress has neglected its duty to regulate the industry, the matter is important enough that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) put out a strong warning. Two years ago, the Bureau cautioned consumers about the risks of classroom management tools like Class Dojo as well as student testing and remediation applications like Classroom Diagnostic Tools and Study Island.

 

The FBI warned schools and parents that widespread collection of student data involved in these applications could cause safety concerns if the information is compromised or exploited.

 

The Bureau was concerned about ed tech services because many are “adaptive, personalized learning experiences” or “administrative platforms for tracking academics, disciplinary issues, student information systems, and classroom management programs.”

 

And these are many of the same applications being used today for distance learning initiatives.

 

Education advocates have been sounding the alarm for years.

 

Commonsense.org – a nonprofit studying education issues – conducted a three-year review of 100 ed tech companies. It concluded that 74% of these businesses hold the right to transfer any personal information they collect if the company is acquired, merged, or files for bankruptcy. And since many are start-ups, this often happens.

 

The authors wrote that there is “a widespread lack of transparency, as well as inconsistent privacy and security practices” in how student information is collected, used, and disclosed.

 

Leaking student data is often not a security failure. It’s part of a company’s business model.

 

This is valuable information about one of the most lucrative demographics in the marketplace. Companies use it to help sell products targeted directly to consumers. And they can even sell student data as a commodity, itself.

 

For instance, imagine how much more effective the hiring process would be if businesses had access to applicants school attendance records. Imagine if businesses had an applicant’s entire academic record.

 

Employers could buy vast amounts of data and use algorithms to sort through it looking for red flags without fully comprehending what was being compiled. Imagine an applicant being turned down for a job because of low middle school attendance but not being able to explain that this was due to a legitimate illness.

 

There are reasons we protect people’s privacy. You shouldn’t have to explain your score on a 1st grade spelling test the rest of your life or have the need for special education services damage your credit rating.

 

Yet all of these things are possible when student data is up for grabs.

 

No one is protecting our children from this kind of mercantile future – one which will only be exacerbated if we allow educational technologies to become common place after the current crisis.

 

And tightening our student privacy laws, will not solve everything.

 

Hardly any attention is being paid to how these technologies can be used for harms unrelated to business and industry.

 

Tablets, laptops or monitoring devices such as cameras or microphones could be exploitable by tech savvy criminals – especially since many ed tech programs allow remote-access capabilities without the user even being aware of what is happening.

 

Pedophiles could use this data to find and abduct children. Criminals could use it to blackmail them. Other children could use it to bully and harass classmates.

 
It’s hard to imagine how children could be protected on such devices without increasing surveillance and thereby running similar risks. Using them will always involve a chance of endangerment so they should be kept away from the youngest and most vulnerable potential users.

 

How did we let ed tech get so out of control? Like so many problems of the pre-coronavirus world, money was allowed to dictate policy.

 

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Global venture capital investments in ed tech finished 14 times higher by the end of the decade than they started. Investments went from $500 million in 2010 to $7 billion in 2019. And insiders expect that to triple in the next decade to more than $87 billion.

 

The two biggest spenders by far are China and the US.

 

Yet enthusiasm for such technologies are not nearly as prevalent among educators.

 

A 2019 study of educator confidence in ed tech conducted by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt found that 60% of teachers were concerned that implementing technology tools could damage the student-teacher relationship.

 

Moreover, education research in the United States concluded these technologies only widen the gap between different socioeconomic groups. Global initiatives like the One Laptop per Child program, which distributed 25 million low-cost computers with learning software to children in the developing world, failed to improve language or math results.

 

Meanwhile, students seem to be telling us they prefer more old school methods of instruction. Studies have shown preference for everything from physical books over eBooks to having “ordinary, real-life lessons” and “a smart person at the front of the room.”

 

Parent Blogger Alison McDowell has studied these issues in more depth than nearly anyone else. She warns that adaptive applications become the gatekeeper of children’s educations. They only allow students to move on once they’ve demonstrated mastery on a previous academic standard – or at least once they’ve been able to guess which one answer a programmer thought correct:

 

“The “personalized learning” model conditions students to view themselves as independent operators, free agents attempting to navigate a precarious gig economy alone. Screen-based isolation and an emphasis on data-driven metrics steadily erode children’s innate tendencies to creative cooperation. Which is ultimately better for society, an algorithm that learns each student in a classroom and delivers a pre-determined reading selection that they review and are quizzed on online, or a human teacher who selects an all class reading in which there is lively debate? The first scenario forecloses creative thought in service of data generation and reinforces there is but one correct answer. The second opens up chances for students to gain new insights while limiting opportunities for digital surveillance.”

 
Ed tech may allow us to stumble forward during the coronavirus quarantine, but it is not a central part of a healthy education system.

 

It may play a limited role in remediation and augmentation, but it cannot be the fulcrum around which everything else revolves.

 
I’d like to see a new education system built from the ashes of the old where every child has the chance to learn, a system that forgoes standardized testing and corporate-written academic standards for individualization and human interaction. I’d like to see a world where charter and voucher schools are things of the past, where schools are integrated and differences valued, where teachers and learning are respected and esteemed.

 

That is not an ed tech centered world. It is a student centered one.

 

It is a world where our priorities are such that even the promise of the new and the free won’t encourage us to indulge in practices that put our children in greater danger.

 

It is a place where the pusher has no power because his product is seen for what it is – treacherous and unnecessary.

 

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How Did America’s Schools Cope with Spanish Flu vs. Coronavirus?

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They say history repeats itself.

 

And if you’ve read any accounts of the bygone days of yesteryear, the current crisis certainly appears like a rerun.

 

Look at all the closed businesses, frightened people venturing out wearing face masks or self quarantined in their homes. It sure looks a lot like 1918.

 

The Spanish Flu epidemic that swept the nation a little more than a century ago bares more than a passing resemblance to COVID-19, the coronavirus. And the ways we are trying to cope with the situation are in many cases modeled on what worked a hundred years ago.

 

For instance, when our ancestors enacted social distancing policies to flatten the curve of infection, their infrastructures were better able to save lives. When they didn’t enact such policies, death tolls were greater.

 

That’s one of the major reasons many of us today are shut in our homes waiting this whole thing out. We want to give the hospitals a chance to deal with the cases that come in without people all getting sick at once and making a run on ventilators.

 

However, history has less to say about how we handle things like education.

 

After all, our forebears didn’t have as unified a response.

 

In general, closing schools was better to stop the spread of disease than keeping them open.

 

But what about actual academics? How did our progenitors make up missed work?

 

There-in lies a tale.

 

America’s school system seems to have met the crisis in three separate ways.

 

They either closed entirely, remained open or forced teachers to educate at a distance.

 

Wait. Educate at a distance? In 1918?

 

Yep.

 

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

 

PITTSBURGH

 
Let’s begin in my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

 
City officials didn’t take the matter seriously enough and as a result, Pittsburgh ended up with the highest death rate of any major city in the country. The Spanish Flu killed at least 4,500 people – a smaller total than cities like Philadelphia, but it represented more than 1 in every 100 residents. Nearly 24,000 people sought treatment at local hospitals.

 

According to reports made to the city health department, things got so bad that at the epidemic’s worst, someone in Pittsburgh got the flu every 70 seconds and someone died from it every 10 minutes.

 

This resulted in a casket shortage across Western Pennsylvania as far away as Greensburg. Even in distant Ligonier, signs were posted along Lincoln Highway warning motorists, “You stop at your own peril.”

 

City officials were at least partly to blame.

 

Though local colleges and universities such as the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne, and Carnegie Tech all closed their doors near the start of the outbreak, city public schools initially were kept open.

 

In early October, State Health Commissioner B. Franklin Royer made the decision not to close public schools, though Pittsburgh school administrators decided that anyone who was coughing or sneezing should be sent home.

 

However, as Kenneth White put it in his 1985 article “Pittsburgh in the Great Epidemic of 1918”:

 

“Enterprising students quickly discovered that a pinch of snuff or pepper, inhaled in school, provided a sure passport to freedom.”

 
By October 22, city council reviewed a report that 27,357 children – about one-third of the student body – were absent from school. Of this number, council knew of 6,070 students who had the flu and 53 who had died. In addition, many parents kept their children home for fear they’d get sick.

 

Only then were city schools closed – about three weeks after the epidemic took hold in the area.

 

Some surrounding districts like Ben Avon had closed schools as early as October 5. But many had followed the city’s example and suffered similar consequences.

 

Pittsburgh schools reopened on November 18. Though the Spanish Flu was not completely gone, it came back in two more waves through the area – however, neither was as devastating as the first crash.

 

I can find nothing specific about how surviving students made up missed academic work. Only that they missed 19 school days of class during the closure.

 

NEW YORK CITY

 

New York City reacted in a similar fashion as Pittsburgh but with different results.

 

While Pittsburgh’s mortality rate was nearly 1 in 100, New York’s was 4.7 per 1,000. City officials recorded approximately 30,000 deaths out of a population of roughly 5.6 million resulting from influenza or pneumonia.

 

However, just like Pittsburgh, New York kept its schools open.

 

In an October 5th New York Times article, Health Commissioner Royal S. Copeland explained his logic behind the controversial decision to keep students in class:

 

“New York is a great cosmopolitan city and in some homes there is careless disregard for modern sanitation… In schools the children are under the constant guardianship of the medical inspectors. This work is part of our system of disease control. If the schools were closed at least 1,000,000 would be sent to their homes and become 1,000,000 possibilities for the disease. Furthermore, there would be nobody to take special notice of their condition.”

 

In short, Copeland figured the schools could do a better job of ensuring children’s safety than their parents.

 

In class, teachers were expected to give each student a daily medical inspection and report the results to the school nurse and/or medical professionals.

 

According to Francesco Aimone in “The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in New York City: A Review of the Public Health Response”:

 

“School nurses and medical inspectors were instructed to follow up on teacher inspections and conduct home visits on absentee students to determine whether “… they or members of their family are sick, that physical examinations be carefully made, and that dry sweeping [in their home] be discontinued and ventilation sufficient.”

 
Many disagreed with Copeland’s decision including the Red Cross of Long Island.

 

Former Health Commissioner Dr. S.S. Goldwater put the blame squarely on the teachers who inspected students with “almost criminal laxity” and found the follow-up inspections “lamentably weak.”

 

CHICAGO

 

However, a similar strategy in Chicago didn’t repeat New York’s success.

 

Keeping schools open in the Windy City more closely emulated the situation in Pittsburgh.

 

According to a timeline of preventive measures published in the American Journal of Public Health by Chicago’s Health Commissioner Dr. John Dill Robertson, city schools weren’t closed because officials didn’t think children were getting sick more than adults. They thought it would be better to keep students indoors where they could be watched for symptoms.

 

However, children ended up dying from the flu in Chicago at a higher rate than their parents.

 

Like in Pittsburgh, any student who coughed or sneezed was immediately sent home – though eventually this also came with a mandatory home quarantine.

 

SMALLER TOWNS

 
Officials were more sensible in smaller towns like Adrian and Tecumseh, Michigan.

 

In both municipalities all schools were closed by the end of October when the epidemic began there.

 

By Dec. 12 there was a plan to reopen, however that was revised as the death toll continued to rise. Schools ultimately remained closed until January 1919.

 

Schools made up the missing days of class by extending the remaining year.
They stayed open for 30 minutes beyond their usual dismissal time and held half-day sessions on Saturdays.

 

Another small town that wasn’t taking chances was Pontiac, Illinois.

 

Not only did officials close the schools, they ended up using them as field hospitals for the sick.

 

Moreover, when classes were cancelled, school age children were forbidden from leaving their homes unless they had to run an errand. Anyone with the flu was immediately quarantined in his or her home.

 

Schools were closed on October 15 for what was originally supposed to be just five weeks. However, when the second wave of the flu hit, the closure was extended.

 

Things got so bad that from December 3rd through January 1st, school buildings were used as a hospital to treat those with the flu.

 

By early January, the worst had passed and schools were reopened. Beginning on January 10, 1919, the high school held an extra session on Saturday to help make up some of the missed class work.

 

This seems to be the general pattern. Larger cities tried to push on and keep things as normal as possible – with usually disastrous results. Smaller towns took more serious precautions and limited the death toll.

 

LAKELAND, FLORIDA

 

And then there’s Lakeland, Florida.

 
Leave it to this district in Polk County to be the oddball.

 

On Oct. 10, the schools were officially closed. But not really.

 

Superintendent of Lakeland Schools Charles Jones and Polk County Board of Public Instruction Superintendent John Moore ordered teachers to continue to report to work so they could help any students who needed remediation.
Jones wrote in the local Ledger newspaper:

 

“While the teachers will meet at the school building each day for the purpose of assisting any child who is deficient in certain subjects or all subjects, yet I want it understood that the pupils may see the teachers at their homes any time for instruction.”

 

Such instruction could be given over the telephone, if necessary, he added.

 

Moore took the matter a step further saying in a resolution published in the paper that teachers who failed to report to school or help students could have their pay docked.

 

Much of this proto-distance learning involved communication in the local paper.

 

Its pages included assignments from teachers to students and even teachers home phone numbers if students needed help.
 Examples of these assignments included reading passages from Shakespeare to drawing a map of North America.

 

IMPLICATIONS

 

The strangest thing about this incomplete survey of school responses is how much our current system is acting like Lakeland, Florida.

 

Almost all present day schools are closed with students supposedly self quarantined at home. This helps flatten the curve and minimize the chances of infection.

 

However, instead of waiting for the crisis to pass before addressing any academic deficiencies, many districts are requiring distance learning.

 

Teachers are being made to go in to school buildings or work from home creating online courses from scratch with little to no training.

 

True, this doesn’t expose educators to an added risk of catching the virus, themselves, but it does seem a bit mercenary.

 

We’re in a public health crisis where thousands of people are getting sick and dying. And the thing ourschool administrators are most concerned about is continued academic performance. They’d rather keep going with whatever quality of instruction can be provided in slapdash fashion than wait until it can be provided in the best possible circumstances.

 

They’d rather risk leaving behind those students without Internet access or whose special needs can’t be met online. Anything rather than extending the school year?

 

It’s interesting to compare today’s solutions to those of yesteryear.

 

Why didn’t more districts in 1918 try to make teachers instruct students through the newspaper and over the phone? Why didn’t more districts make teachers go to school buildings and even students homes during an epidemic?

 

Are we really doing the right thing by emulating those solutions?

 

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Top 10 Things I Want My Students to do During the Coronavirus Quarantine

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Dear Students,

 

A schoolteacher without a classroom is kind of like a firefighter without a fire.

 

Or a police officer without crime.

 

But here we are – self-quarantined at home.

 

Our classroom sits empty, and everyday this week we sit here at home wondering what to do.

 

I want you to know that I’ve been thinking about all of you.

 

I hope you’re doing alright during this unprecedented moment in history. It probably seemed like a lot of fun when it first happened.

 

No school for the foreseeable future!

 

The whole thing came together so quickly that our district didn’t even have time to get together work to send home with you. And like most schools throughout the country, many of you don’t have home internet access so we can’t fairly give you on-line lessons, either.

 

So you’ve been at home with little guidance from us. Sure we have free breakfast and lunches available for pick up at the school, but you’re probably growing a bit stir crazy.

 

I know I am. (And I’m sure your folks are, too!)

 

I’m at home with my daughter trying to keep her busy.

 

We’ve been creating Mario Maker boards for each other on our Nintendo 3DS and Switch.

 

We keep trying to stump each other, and me, being a teacher, I keep trying to get her to think outside of the box.

 

“Why don’t you try making a board where you have to get a mushroom through a maze?”

 

Or

 

“Why don’t you try making a board where the walls close in?”
Or

 

“I wonder if you could beat a Thwomp in a race down a pit?”

 

We were having a really good time until I tried to get her to watch a science video. I put on the original Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” from the early 1980s.

 

My daughter loves looking up at the stars and asking me questions about the constellations. I thought this would be a perfect fit – after all, Sagan was an astronomer and can answer her questions way better than I can.

 

However, the old school effects were simply no match for today’s aesthetic. She revolted after about 20 minutes.

 

Today I won her over though with the new Cosmos series featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson. She turned to me after about five minutes and said, “Much better.”

 

We’ve been drawing and reading and playing video games and having a good ol’ time.

 

I hope you have people at home who can help you get through all this, too.

 

I’ve been getting a lot of emails recently from your folks.

 

They want to know what they should be doing to help you academically.

 

Whenever this whole thing is over – and it will be over someday soon I hope – they want to make sure you won’t fall too far behind.

 

Let me start with a word of caution.

 

We don’t know how long this self-quarantine will last.

 

We’re trying to stay home to stop the spread of this virus – COVID-19. It can be deadly to some people – even some young people like you.

 

It’s in everybody’s best interest that we wait this thing out so that the hospitals can deal with the people who get sick.

 

Then when the disease has passed, we can continue our normal lives.

 

But no one knows how long that will take. It could be a few more weeks – but more likely months.

 

It is very possible that we will not go back to school again until after the summer.

 

So it’s hard to say exactly what you should do to keep yourself in the best academic shape because we don’t know what you’ll be coming back to.

 

We DO know that we won’t have to make up some or all of the days we missed.

 

And we know we won’t (here in Pennsylvania) have to take the PSSA or Keystone tests this year.

 

But when this is over, what grade will you be in? Will you just move on to the next grade or will there be a bit of mopping up to do first? And if you don’t finish the curriculum, will you be ready for the challenges ahead?

 

We don’t know any of that yet.

 

But here are a few guidelines and some things you might want to do while you’re at home.

 

You don’t have to do all of them, but they’re some things to think about.

 

So here’s my top 10 things for my students to do during quarantine:

 

1) Finish Whatever School Work You Can

 

You may have some outstanding school work with you in your book bag. I know I sent my seventh graders home with their poetry projects. My eighth graders should either be done or have taken their projects home to finish.

 

So if you have work that’s not done, finish it to the best of your ability. You certainly have enough time.

 

2) Read a Book

 

I ask all of may students to have a self-selected book handy for sustained silent reading in class. Hopefully you brought it home. If not, take a look around the house. Maybe you’ve got a dusty tome hanging out in some corner. Or – hey – if you have Internet access, you probably have the ability to get an ebook.

 

Read something – anything you want.

 

It will while away the hours, relax you and maybe get your mind to thinking about things above and beyond how much mac and cheese you’ve got stored in the cupboard.

 

3) Keep a Journal

 

Do you realize you’re living through a moment of history? People will look back on this and wonder how people got through it. You could fill in the blanks for some future researcher. Just a description of your everyday activities, what you’re thinking and feeling, your hopes and dreams – all of it has historical value. Plus, you’ll get some practice expressing yourself in writing. And just think – a simple story about how you survived the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 could end up being taught in the classrooms of the future!

 

Make it a good one!

4) Take a Break from Video Games

 

I know some of you have built a fort out of sofa cushions, covered it in blankets and are nestled in this hideaway doing nothing but playing Fortnite or Roblox or Minecraft with friends on-line. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. You go ahead and do that.

 

Just remember to take breaks for more than just food and the bathroom. Getting lost in a fantasy world is great so long as you leave yourself a trail of breadcrumbs to get back out again.

 

Don’t forget the trail. Don’t forget there’s a world out there that needs you. Set definite limits for how long you spend in there and try really hard to adhere to them.

 

5) Watch Something Educational on TV or the Internet

 

Education isn’t limited to something a teacher told you to do. Find a video or TV show that explains something you never knew before. Youtube is great for this if you know what to look for.

 

I don’t mean to find some rant by your favorite Youtuber. I mean find something about science, history, art, literature, math, etc. Make it something you care about but might not watch just for fun.

 

You’ll be surprised at what you can find out there. The channel CrashCourse with author John Greene (“The Fault in Our Stars”) and his brother Hank is particularly informative, entertaining and far reaching. I also love John Michael Godier for all things astronomy and Composer David Bruce for discussions of music.

 

6) Watch/Read the News

 

There are extraordinary things happening every day. Knowing about them can help you prepare for what’s next and think about what we can and should be doing to make things better.

 

7) Listen to Music/ Draw/ Do Something Creative

 

I know you. You’re a bundle of creative energy bound together waiting to explode. Go do that. Whatever you enjoy doing, create something. Write a song, make a comic book, paste together a collage. Express yourself, and if you’re not in the mood for that – enjoy the expressions of others. Listen to music, read a poem, watch a movie.

 

8) Help Out Your Folks

 

We, adults, can seem like we’ve got it all under control. We don’t. We’re just as anxious, fearful and uncertain as you about this whole self-quarantine thing. None of us were around the last time something like this happened (the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic). Anything you can do – helping take out the trash, cleaning up messes, even just trying extra hard not to argue with your siblings – can be a big help.

 

9) Talk to Friends and Family about How You’re Feeling

 

No one expects you to be a robot. These are trying times. It’s okay to feel a certain way about that. Share those feelings with someone you trust. And be a sympathetic ear for them to do the same. The best way we can get through all this is with each other’s help.

 

10) Know That You Are Loved

 

My dear precious little students! There are people out there who love you so much. There are people who would move Heaven and Earth to keep you safe. I know you’re scared and bored and anxious. But remember we’re in this together. And no matter where you are or what you’re doing there’s at least your crazy English teacher who loves you very much and can’t wait to see you all again.

 

Stay safe!

 

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Public Schools Can Recover from the COVID-19 Quarantine by Skipping High Stakes Tests

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There is one plus from being sick during a global pandemic.

 

You get perspective.

 

While all the schools in Pennsylvania are closed for at least the next two weeks to help stop the spread of COVID-19 (colloquially known as the Coronavirus), I self-quarantined a day early.

 

No, I don’t think I have the virus, but I’m not taking any chances.

 

Still, sitting here at my laptop with a steaming mug of tea, I’m filled with optimism.

 

My symptoms don’t match those of the virus – no fever, no dry cough, no difficulty breathing, no runny nose or sore throat. I just sneeze occasionally, have an intermittent wet cough and feel a bone deep fatigue.

 

Probably not the culprit sending the world into shutdown mode. But best to rest up anyway.

 

I’m also filled with a deep sense of gratitude that I’m a public school teacher.

 

My last class was a rough one – 7th graders running around the room with half written poetry demanding instruction, guidance, reassurance. My morning 8th graders were likewise rushing to complete a poetry assignment – frantically asking for help interpreting Auden, Calvert, Henley, Poe, Thomas.

 

What a privilege it has been to be there for them! How much I will miss that over the few next weeks!

 

Who would ever have thought we’d go into self quarantine to stop people from getting infected?

 

It says something about us that what seemed impossible just a few days ago has become a reality. We actually saw a problem and took logical steps to avoid it!

 

I know – we could have done a better job. We could have acted more quickly and in many areas we haven’t done nearly enough (New York, I’m looking at you).

 

But what we have done already shows that human beings aren’t finished. We have massive problems waiting to be solved – global climate change, social and racial inequality, the corrupting influence of money in politics, etc. However, we CAN do the logical thing and solve these problems!

 

No matter how crazy it seems now, tomorrow could be filled with rational solutions. If only we allow ourselves that chance.

 

So my spirits are high here in my little hollow nestled in with my family.

 

But being a teacher I can’t help thinking about what’s to come next.

 

Eventually this whole ordeal will be over.

 

Schools will reopen. Things will get back to normal. Or try to, anyway.

 

The challenge will be attempting to overcome the month or more of lost schooling.

 

Some will be thankful they relied on virtual schooling to fill in the gaps. When this whole crisis began, officials chided us to make preparations for “teleschool” in case of just this eventuality.

 

I’m glad we didn’t.

 

Frankly, (1) it would have been a huge cost that schools don’t have the money to meet and (2) it would have been money down the drain.

 

There is nothing innovative about sending kids on-line to do their assignments. The majority of work that can be done that way is of the lowest quality.

 

That’s workbook nonsense that the laziest and most checked out educators of generations past gave to their students to keep them quiet.

 

We see students in China who are being educated that way finding ways around it – giving their education apps low star reviews in the app store so that they’ll be removed, etc.

 

Here in the USA, all children don’t even have access to the Internet. They rely on the local libraries to get online – not a good idea in a pandemic.

 

So most schools have had to do without.

 

School is cancelled for about a month or so, and then – hopefully – it will return.

 

The question remains – what do we do when we get back to class?

 

We could extend the school year, but families have vacations planned and other obligations. This wouldn’t solve much and frankly I don’t think it will happen unless we’re out for longer than expected.

 

I anticipate being back in school by mid April or so. That would leave about a month and a half left in the year.

 

This really leaves us with only two options: (1) hold our end of the year standardized tests and then fit in whatever else we can, or (2) forgo the tests and teach the curriculum.

 

If we have the tests, we could hold them shortly after school is back in session. That at least would give us more time to teach, but it would reduce the quality of the test scores. Kids wouldn’t be as prepared and the results would be used to further dismantle the public school network.

 

Much better I think is option two: skip the tests altogether.

 

Frankly, we don’t need them. Teachers observe students every day. We give formal and informal assessments every time we see our kids. We’re like scientists engaged in a long-term study taking daily measurements and meticulously recording them before coming to our year end conclusions called classroom grades.

 

In my classes, I think I could teach just about the same material in the remaining time if I didn’t have to worry about the high stakes tests.

 

In 7th grade, this would mean finishing up our almost completed poetry unit – having kids put together their poetry portfolios and sharing them. Then we’d begin our final novel of the year, “Silent to the Bone” by E.L. Konigsburg, talk about mystery stories, reader perspectives and how truth impacts fiction.

 

In 8th grade, we could likewise finish up poetry with some presentations on students’ favorites from the assigned group. Then we could read the play version of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” and selections from Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”We could discuss propaganda, prejudice and compare the historical perspective of Europe and the United States.

 

In both cases, we might have to forgo a year-end project, but at least we’d cover the majority of what we proposed at the beginning of the year.

 

Students would leave their respective grades with just about everything we set out to give them. They’d be prepared and ready to meet the challenges of the coming grade.

 

That seems a worthy goal to me.

 

But I hear someone ask – what about the standardized testing? Won’t students be less prepared having skipped over those assessments?

 

The answer is no. They would not be less prepared.

 

They would be better educated without a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

 

The shame is that this alteration in schedule would probably only last one year.

 

In 2020-21, we’d probably reinstate these standardized assessments.

 

This is at least a month of wasted schooling. If we got rid of all the pretests and administrator required teaching-to-the-test, we could clear up a good 9-weeks of extra class time.

 

Imagine what teachers could do with those surplus days!

 

My 8th graders could read the whole of “Mockingbird,” for one. instead of just selections. My 7th graders could read another entire novel – probably Paul Zindel’s “The Pigman.” Not to mention the addition of more women and writers of color, the extra time for creative writing, an emphasis on finding your own point of view.

 

And for me that’s the benefit of this COVID-19 crisis. It shows us what could be – what we could do if we were only brave enough to try.

 

Happy self-quarantine, everyone!

 

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Don’t Fear Summer Lee. Fear the Devil’s Bargain Labor Leaders Are Willing to Make Opposing Her

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Cancer or unemployment.

 

That’s the choice Pennsylvanians are being asked to make in 2020.

 

Do we allow hydraulic fracking to continue to destroy our environment and increase our risk of cancers and other debilitating illnesses?

 

Or do we clean things up and risk losing jobs?

 

Some labor leaders seem willing to chose the former on behalf of their constituencies.

 

That’s why the Pittsburgh-based Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council (PA AFL-CIO) voted to oppose the re-election of State Representative Summer Lee, the first black woman elected to the State House from the western part of the Commonwealth.

 

She chooses life.

 

And that might put some people out of work.

 

It’s a sad commentary on the state of the labor movement that union bosses are willing to make this trade – life for a living wage.

 

And it’s a completely unnecessary choice.

 

We can have BOTH jobs and health – if Democratic politics allow for minds open enough to see the truth.

 

Let’s get this straight.

 

Lee is a badass.

 

The Democrat represents Homestead and West Homestead – two of the three municipalities in the school district where I work as a middle school teacher. She also represents parts of Pittsburgh, Braddock, Swissvale, Rankin, Turtle Creek, Forest Hills and Churchill.

 

But the 32-year-old lawyer and community organizer is more than just a politician. She’s a local hero.

 

Just two years ago, Lee beat 20-year incumbent Paul Costa by a margin of 68-32%.

 

She helped found UNITE, a grassroots political action committee, which has successfully defeated several old guard Democrats in bed with the fossil fuel industry.

 

Most notably, UNITE was part of the effort that ousted Allegheny County Council President John DeFazio in favor of another Democratic insurgent, Bethany Hallam. Once again DeFazio’s pro-fracking and fossil fuel platform went down in flames to Hallam’s environmentally friendly policies by a margin of 54%-46%.

 

Fracking is a relatively new and dangerous method of extracting natural gas from otherwise inaccessible sources like the region’s abundant Marcellus shale. “Fracking fluid” made up of water, sand and harmful chemicals is injected in a high pressure blast into deep rock formations releasing natural gas, petroleum and other substances.

 

Fracking has been known to increase health risks like respiratory problems, a negative impact on pregnancies, and a host of other problems – and that’s not even considering the risks of spills. The process also has devastating environmental impacts including the escape of greenhouse gases, groundwater pollution and increase risk of earthquakes.

 

In Harrisburg most debate has centered around removing a Republican-backed sweetheart tax deal for the industry and not outright banning the process altogether.

 

Lee, Hallam and other UNITE Democrats are changing the conversation, yet some of the area’s labor unions aren’t coming along with these insurgent winners. They’re sticking with establishment figures.

 

The PA AFL-CIO has endorsed Chris Roland against Lee in the primary. He’s a white North Braddock councilman who supports fracking. 

 

Lee is a Democratic Socialist with a massively pro-labor campaign. She’s been endorsed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and United Electrical Workers (UE).

 

She is the only incumbent who the labor council did not endorse.

 

The only reason is her environmental stance, her race, or both.

 

Lee supports a Green New Deal and tightening enforcement against illegal air emissions from steel mills.

 

Roland has already raised $77,635 mostly from local unions. Steamfitters Local 449 and the Laborers’ International Union of North America have both given him $20,000 while the local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and Plumbers locals each gave $10,000.

 

To combat this, Lee has raised $55,789.

 

Some pundits theorize that the move to stop Lee is doomed from the start because of her incredible popularity in her district. The real motivation is to weaken UNITE’s ability to fundraise against other pro-fracking Democrats.

 

It’s tragic that the labor movement has come to such a low point with leaders like PA AFL-CIO President Darrin Kelly willing to trade the health and safety of the people living here for the promise of a paycheck.

 

Kelly has been a vocal opponent of the Green New Deal fearing what it would do to fossil fuel employment in the area.

 

In an April interview with Payday, he said:

 

“When you have a situation where you are taking away from someone’s ability to feed their family, that is not going to be looked at favorably. I am going to be against it; I’m going to be vocal against it and not welcome it in Western Pennsylvania.”

 

He seems to forget that dead people don’t need a paycheck.

 

Trading the environment and the health and welfare of our friends and neighbors for a living wage is a bad deal.

 

Moreover, labor leaders opposing environmentalists like Lee ignore key aspects of her proposals.

 

A Green New Deal would create millions of sustainable new jobs. It would require replacing pipes, weatherizing homes, expanding railways, manufacturing wind turbines – all of which would require people to do the work.

 

These would be high quality union jobs with good salaries, benefits, safe working conditions, training opportunities, etc.

 

This opens a once in a generation opportunity for new jobs to upgrade and expand the Commonwealth’s crumbling roads, bridges, energy grid, and water systems. Not only would we repair what exists, we’d build a cleaner, more affordable, and more resilient infrastructure that would be there for our posterity.

 

We need to expand access to light rail and low-emissions public transit, replace lead pipes, build a smart grid for increased wind and solar power, replace storm water systems to prevent flooding and toxic runoff, and restore wetlands and other natural buffers to protect our communities.

 

These are exactly the things our labor leaders should be concerned about doing. These are exactly the policies we need to move forward into the future.

 

It’s time to stop the necrotic paralysis of labor propping up the dying fossil fuels industry. The future is with sustainable energy.

 

If we want to actually live to see that future, we need to back policies that save our children from getting sick, that preserves Pennsylvania’s natural resources.

 

Green New Deal Democrats like Lee and Hallam are the future.

 

It’s time the holdouts in the labor movement get with the program.

 

 

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Summer Lee, Mark Fallon and me at December’s Public Education Forum in Pittsburgh.

 

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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Gov. Wolf Proposes Saving $280 Million a Year in PA With Charter School Reform

stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Harrisburg, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Schools, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, Poverty, privatization, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, Special Education, Students, Taxation, Teachers, Tom Wolf , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Charter schools waste taxpayer money.

 

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf proposes we stop wasting that money by holding charter schools as accountable as the state’s authentic public schools.

 

The Democratic governor made his most recent proposal yesterday as part of his 2020-21 budget address.

 

It’s a common sense proposal that only seems revolutionary because officials have been so blinded with school privatization fantasies.

 

Charter schools are funded with tax dollars but can be run by business interests thereby forgoing elected school boards and a host of regulations meant to safeguard children and the community’s investment.

 

The Commonwealth is infamous for allowing some of the most permissive charter school policies in the nation, which destabilize authentic public schools and force local tax increases and reductions in student services while charter operators get rich.

 

During his budget proposal, Wolf suggested three main improvements.

 

First, he wants charter schools to use a new tiered funding formula to determine how much money they get for special education students enrolled in their schools. He estimates this would save $147 million annually.

 

Right now, charters get tuition based on the average amount the local public school spends on special education.

 

This incentivizes charters to enroll (and identify) children with minimal special needs. That way, the school gets more money than needed to help students learn and operators can pocket the difference.

 

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It also incentivizes charters not to enroll students with greater special needs because operators won’t receive the money necessary to meet them.

 

This helps explain why charter schools in the Commonwealth typically enroll fewer and less needy special education students than authentic public schools do. Charters typically end up collecting $10,000 or more per student than they spend providing services, according to Education Voters of Pennsylvania, a public school advocacy group.

 

 

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Wolf’s new proposal would more closely match the level of special education students need with the funding charter schools get for enrolling them, thus removing any financial incentives for selective enrollment of these students.

 

 

Second, Wolf wants to stop cyber charter schools from collecting the same amount of money for each student as brick and mortar schools get.

 

Cyber charters schools do not have school buildings to keep up. They do not have physical classrooms, cafeterias, hallways, gymnasiums, athletic fields, etc. In most cases, they have administrative offices and laptop computers given to students to use at their own homes.

 

At present, the statewide tuition rate for cyber charter schools ranges from $7,700 to $21,400 per student per year.

 

Wolf figures that number should be a flat $9,500. That should save an estimated $133 million annually.

 

However, Wolf’s proposal is double the cost of providing a full-time education at home via computer. It reduces the waste, but his figure could still use a trim.

 

Finally, the governor proposes fixing the way we mediate financial disputes between charter schools and authentic public schools.

 

Right now, if a school district does not pay the tuition for its resident students who attend a charter school or there is some dispute between the two on tuition payments, the charter school turns to the state Department of Education (PDE) to reconcile the dispute. Wolf proposes several changes to increase fairness, accountability, and transparency in this process. For instance, he wants to require charter schools to report their expenditures and deductions so they could be included in deciding what the tuition should be at a given charter school.

 

If enacted such reforms would save $280 million a year and go a long way to fixing many of the problems with charter school finances.

 

The Democratic governor has suggested similar improvements before – even going so far as to threaten enacting some of them with executive orders if the Republican-controlled legislature continues to shirk its duty. However, yesterday’s budget proposal was the closest it has come to fruition.

 

Typically, Ana Meyers, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, saw Wolf’s proposal as an attack on her industry.

 

Wolf wants to cut funding to charters to increase it at public schools, she said, but charter schools are, also, public schools.

 

“The level of hypocrisy from our governor knows no bounds,” she said in a written statement. “Charter school students and their families are not second-class citizens. These parents pay their taxes and their children attend a PA-designated public school. There is no reason why charter school students deserve less financial support than their district peers.”

 

However, wolf’s proposal does not leave charter school students with less. It reduces waste and helps authentic public schools keep the same level of services without having to resort to local tax increases.

 

 

Charter schools should not be allowed to squander taxpayer money, and students at authentic public schools and their communities should not be forced to pay for that fiscal irresponsibility.

 

“Our charter school system is in desperate need of reform,” Wolf said. “It’s time to close the loopholes, it’s time to establish real standards, and it’s time to level the playing field.”

 

 

Wolf’s proposal doesn’t stop with his budget outline.

 

Democratic legislators are set to introduce a 120-page proposal in Harrisburg that builds on it even further.

 
The legislation – House Bill 2261 to be introduced by Rep. Joseph Ciresi (D-Montgomery), and Senate Bill 1024, to be introduced by Senators Lindsey Williams (D-Allegheny) and James Brewster (D-Allegheny), would do the following:

 

  • Require charter school trustees and administrators to comply with the same financial and ethical reporting standards as school board members and district officials;
  • Require charter school meetings to comply with the Sunshine Act;
  • Require any company running a charter school to open up their records;
  • Establish a statewide, data-driven cyber charter school tuition rate;
  • Apply the state special education funding formula used by public schools to charter schools;
  • Require charter schools to use actual accounting and enrollment in calculating tuition – backed up by PA Department of Education – to make sure payments are fair, consistent, and promises are kept;
  • Require charter schools to carry enough insurance to take care of kids and families if the charter closes or the parent company goes out of business;
  • Create a standard state framework for charter school applications;
  • Standardize the method to change charter schools’ missions and goals to reward innovation and best practices, and ensure school districts have the tools needed to evaluate changes to charters;
  • Create a state grading system for charters to allow high-performing schools even more self-determination while focusing attention on low-performing schools;
  • Stop the creation of new cyber charter schools until the existing schools improve performance and require PDE to create enrollment and performance standards.

Here’s hoping that such common sense initiatives can find bipartisan support.

 

 

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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Did Rosa Parks Really Support Charter Schools?

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They say history is written by the victors.

 

But fortunes change, and sometimes you can even reclaim a figure from the past who the last round of winners had cast in an unlikely role.

 

Take Rosa Parks.

 

She is universally hailed as a hero of the civil rights movement because of her part in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

 

Everyone knows the story. Parks, a black seamstress in Alabama, refused to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus and was arrested. Then working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other activists, she helped encourage black people throughout the city to stop riding the buses until they were eventually desegregated.

 

But did you know that 40 years later after she had moved to Detroit, Parks tried to open a charter school?

 

It’s true – from a certain point of view.

 

And school privatization cheerleaders are quick to reference her advocacy.

 

President Bill Clinton used the anecdote to sell the charter school concept in a speech to the NAACP in Pittsburgh in 1997.

 

Joe Nathan, one of the authors of the first charter school law, still likes to troll readers of this blog by bringing that factoid up in the comments.

 

Keri Rodrigues, one of the founders of the Walton front group the National Parents Union, uses it like a trump card on Twitter to shut down privatization critics.

 

The facts are somewhat more complicated.

 

CHARTER SCHOOL CRITICISM

 

Charter schools are funded with tax dollars but not bound by the same regulations as authentic public schools including the need to be run by elected school boards. In fact, they are often operated by appointed business interests.

 

Today charter schools are roundly criticized for their limited accountability, lack of local control, tendency to profit off the children they serve, ability to cherry pick students enrolled in them, propensity for draining funding from neighborhood public schools, frequently poor academic records, and inclination to increase racial and economic segregation.

 

Yet lobbyists and industry insiders insist they are civil rights reforms. Being able to tout Parks as a charter pioneer helps them make their case.

 

But did she really do this?

 

I mean Parks went to segregated schools, herself, before Brown v. Board. You’re telling me she actually advocated to start a segregated school in Detroit decades later?

 

THE FACTS

 

Parks did lend her name to a charter school proposal in 1997 that would have opened an institution named for her and her late husband, the Raymond and Rosa Parks Academy for Self Development.

 

However, according to Anna Amato, an education consultant who worked with Parks on the proposal, the Detroit Board of Education put the item on their agenda but took no action.

 

Parks then moved on to other concerns – of which she had many.

 

She spent most of her life fighting the good fight.

 

In 1957 she moved with her husband and mother to Detroit, where from 1965 to 1988 she was a member of the staff of Michigan Congressman John Conyers, Jr. She remained active in the NAACP fighting against housing segregation in the city, traveling to support Selma to Montgomery marches, developed “Pathways to Freedom” bus tours of civil rights sights, served on the Board of Advocates for Planned Parenthood, and many other actions.

 

The proposed charter school wasn’t exactly a highlight. Nor does it seem to fit with her other endeavors.

 

LEGAL BATTLE

 

But the Rosa Parks who was involved in that proposal was a very different lady than the one who refused to give up her bus seat all those years ago.

 

Parks was 84 at the time of the charter school plan and somewhat isolated from close family. When she died in 2005 at the age of 92, her estate was the subject of a bitter legal dispute.

 

The issue wasn’t the money so much as the priceless historical artifacts associated with her life.

 

Her will left most of the estate to Elaine Steele, a retired Detroit judge and friend of Parks who was also involved in the charter school proposal. She was co-director of Parks’ after-school program, the Raymond and Rosa Parks Institute for Self Development.

 

Parks, who was later diagnosed with dementia, had abruptly stopped giving interviews in 1995 and lived a mostly secluded life from then on.

 

Her family disputed that the will created in July 1998 represented Parks true intentions. They sued to challenge the estate plan, accusing Steele of using undue influence on Parks. After a protracted battle, the courts eventually sided with Steele.

 

But the picture this paints is not a friendly one.

 

We have an octogenarian Parks lending her name to numerous projects all under the direction of consultants.

 

QUESTIONABLE ASSOCIATES, QUESTIONABLE INVOLVEMENT

 
Amato, in particular, seems to have gone on to become a champion of school privatization and education technologies.

 

She made her name in Detroit pushing these policies for decades.

 

In 1994 she founded Edtec Central, an organization that helps launch and run charter schools. At one point the company operated “two specialized strict discipline academies and one alternative high school in Michigan” as well as provided support and consulting services to other local charter schools. However, there is very little current information on the organization. It’s unclear whether it is still in operation.

 

But as of 2017, Amato still was. She wrote an op-ed praising Donald Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called “DeVos Is a Hero to Detroit’s At-Risk Kids.”

 

This appears to be the woman who advised Parks about opening a charter school.

 

How much Parks was involved is hard to say.

 

When The New York Times wrote an article about the proposed charter school in 1997 by Halimah Abdullah, Parks either refused to be interviewed or was left out of it. But Amato, Steele and even Nathan were quoted at length.

 

It’s hard to believe a journalist for the Times could be such a bad writer as just not to include Parks in the article, especially in a piece titled “Rights Hero Presses Plan For School In Detroit.”

 

It’s much more likely that Parks declined to be included or was purposely left out of the loop by her circle of handlers possibly to hide her slow mental deterioration.

 

It’s understandable why Parks may have surrounded herself with consultants and caregivers.

 

In 1994 when she was 81, Parks was robbed and assaulted in her home in central Detroit. The assailant, Joseph Skipper, broke down her door but claimed he had chased away an intruder. He requested a reward and when Parks paid him, he demanded more. Parks refused and he attacked her.

 

Parks was treated for facial injuries and swelling. Though Skipper, a black man, was eventually caught and prosecuted, the incident left Parks shaken and anxious to the degree that she moved from her house to a secure high-rise apartment.

 

Another peak into her personal life was revealed in 2002, when Parks received an eviction notice from her apartment for not paying rent. Both the Hartford Memorial Baptist Church and Little Ceasars owner Mike Ilitch claimed to have paid the bill, but Steele says the eviction notice came in error. Parks family blames the incident on financial mismanagement from caregivers. When NBC news reported the story, the network noted she had been diagnosed with dementia.

 

In total, these events provide a sad look at the last years of a civil rights icon. And it’s during this late period that the charter school project was developed.

 

Was it one of Parks’ passions? It’s impossible to tell. It is at least as likely that an elderly and suggestible Parks was surrounded by people who may have been using her name to get across their own agenda.

 

PARKS ON SEGREGATION

 

Consider how out of character a charter school was to Parks former legacy.

 

In 1995 (just two years before the charter school proposal) Parks did agree to an interview where she talked about the importance of education and reminisced on the evils of school segregation:

 

“Interviewer: Was there a teacher that influenced you?

 

Parks: My mother was a teacher and I went to the same school where she was teaching. My very first teacher was Miss Sally Hill, and I liked her very much. In fact, I liked school when I was very young, in spite of the fact that it was a one-room school for students all ages, from the very young to teens, as long as they went to school. It was only a short term for us, five months every year, instead of the regular nine months every year.

 

Interviewer: What was it like in Montgomery when you were growing up?

 

Parks: Back in Montgomery during my growing up there, it was completely legally enforced racial segregation, and of course, I struggled against it for a long time. I felt that it was not right to be deprived of freedom when we were living in the Home of the Brave and Land of the Free.”

 

These do not sound like the words of a woman who two years later would push for a segregated school to be opened in her name.

 

PARKS ON DESEGREGATION

 

Moreover, this flies in the face of her work at the Highlander Folk School in 1955. Before she participated in the bus boycott, she took a two-week workshop entitled “Racial Desegregation: Implementing the Supreme Court Decision.”The idea was to learn how she could encourage youth groups to push for desegregation.

 

The workshop was her first experience of an integrated learning environment. In a 1956 interview she said that she found “for the first time in my adult life that this could be a unified society, that there was such a thing as people of all races and backgrounds meeting and having workshops and living together in peace and harmony… I had heard there was such a place, but I hadn’t been there.”
Parks took copious notes during the sessions, detailing what each speaker said and her reactions to them. In one section she wrote, “Desegregation proves itself by being put in action. Not changing attitudes, attitudes will change.”

 

Her time there was brief but transformative. It led directly to her refusal to give up her seat and subsequent history of activism. To think that someone so committed to the cause of desegregation would willingly engage in its opposite staggers the mind.

 

But a lot can happen in the intervening decades.

 

Maybe she came to think that well resourced segregated charter schools were preferable to poorly resourced integrated public schools. However, she must have realized that when schools are integrated it is harder to withhold resources. Perhaps she gave up on integration in favor of Afrocentric charters, but that would be a fundamental change in her thinking, indeed.

 

IMPORTANCE FOR TODAY

 

If Parks did wholeheartedly support the charter school project proposed in her name during her twilight years, does it make a difference?

 

Not really. After all, lots of people make bad decisions – even civil rights heroes.

 

We remember these people not because of their biggest mistakes, but because of their biggest victories, how they struggled year-after-year in the cause of human dignity.

 

More important might be an analysis of whether Parks would likely support charter schools today if she were still alive and cognitively sound.

 

In truth, it seems unlikely that she would. After all, Parks was active in the NAACP all her life. Along with Black Lives Matter and the Journey for Justice, The NAACP voted almost unanimously just a few years ago to demand a moratorium on all new charter schools because they exploit children of color.

 

It’s easy to imagine Parks leading that charge.

 

But some folks will tell you Parks ideas of segregation were different than the dictionary definition and that she would be on the side of Betsy DeVos, not modern day civil rights activists.

 

MICHIGAN’S CHARTER SCHOOL FAILURES

 

It’s no accident I bring up DeVos.

 

Like Parks, DeVos’ home is in Michigan and she has had a tremendous effect on education throughout the state, in Detroit, and nationwide.

 

When Parks’ charter school proposal was issued, the concept was pretty new. The first charter school law in the nation had only been passed in 1991 in Minnesota. Michigan didn’t jump aboard until three years later.

 

No one knew then exactly what to expect of the policy or what these schools would end up becoming.

 

Now charter schools have been in Michigan for more than a quarter century and the results are in.

 

They are an absolute disaster.

 

A 2016 report from Education Trust-Midwest, a non-partisan research and advocacy organization, found 80 percent of charter schools in Michigan scored below the state average in math and reading proficiency tests.

 

Moreover, the state leads the nation in for-profit charter schools, according to research by Western Michigan University professor Gary Miron. Grand Rapids-based National Heritage Academies, alone, operates almost 50 for-profit charters throughout the state.

 

After an intensive investigation, in 2014 the Detroit Free Press criticized these kinds of schools for their lack of financial transparency and excessive overhead costs.

 

Maybe it’s my own lack of imagination, but I find it difficult to imagine Parks championing schools that get so much worse academic results than traditional public schools. I find it nearly impossible to imagine her fighting for the right to segregate black children into “separate but equal” schools.

 

 

INCONSISTENCIES

 

 

Charter school apologists will lump Parks in with Trump and DeVos. Not with the Rev. William Barber II, Jitu Brown, Ibram X. Kendi, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Yohuru Williams, Denisha Jones, and other prominent black people who oppose school privatization.

 

They tell us that Parks name on an application to start a charter school (her signature does not appear on the document) is enough to prove her support for the concept.

 

Yet never once that I can find did Parks ever speak out on what was allegedly her own proposal. Others spoke out on her behalf, but she declined to be interviewed when the media came calling and didn’t use her iconic status to get the publicity needed to bring it to completion.

 

Can you imagine a celebrity today opening a charter school named after themselves without even releasing a statement, not to mention a press conference and media blitz? And this wasn’t in the distant past. It was only 1997.

 

But the school privatization lobby tells us that this is so. And moreover that Parks – who worked her entire life battling the forces of segregation whether it be in our schools, housing or elsewhere – somehow turned against this aim in her last years to open this school.

 

It’s quite a story they’re telling.

 

However, the possibility that a declining Parks was convinced to put her name to a project she didn’t fully understand or support is at least as consistent with the facts as the privatization narrative – in fact, more so because it clarifies many inconsistencies.

 

 

SYMBOLISM VS FACTS

 

In any case, this is all conjecture.

 

Parks’ opinion – whatever it was – only has symbolic value.

 

The true measure of charter schools are the facts about how they operate and the results they get for students.

 

They have failed generations of children across the country.

 

They truly are a civil rights issue – but not the one the school privatization lobby thinks.

 

Every child has a right to be freed from charter schools and not subjected to them.

 

Nothing would be more in keeping with the spirit of Rosa Parks than a boycott of charter schools – just like today’s civil rights organization are demanding.

 

It’s time we as a nation refuse to give up our seats in the public schools and boycott the forces of privatization and profit.

 

The only way forward is together – not through segregation and exclusion hoping that at least some of us will make it.

 

 

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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Who Will Protect My Right NOT to Pay for Your Child’s Religious Education?

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Image: Supreme Court Hears Montana State Tax Credit Case

 

 

When I was a kid back in middle school, I had a crush on this girl, let’s call her Patty.

 

 

She wasn’t the most popular or beautiful girl in class, but I kinda’ liked her.

 

 

 

Of course, she had no idea I was alive.

 

 

Or so I thought, until one day she walked straight up to my desk and started rubbing my hair.

 

 

I was shocked at first, but then I just closed my eyes and went with it.

 

 

 

I remember the soft caress of her fingers in my mop of curls. She seemed to massage every inch of my scalp. Then she asked, “Where are they?”

 

 

“Where are what?” I asked.

 

 

“Your horns,” she said. “I want to see your horns.”

 

 

“What?” I said. “I don’t have any horns.”

 

 

“Of course you do,” she said. “My pastor said all you Jews have horns but you hide them in your hair. I want to see them.”

 

 

I had never even heard that bit of anti-Semitism before Patty. But I knew when I was being ridiculed.

 

 

The laughter. The embarrassment. I think I asked to go to the bathroom and stayed until the class was over.

 

 

 

Why bring up such childhood trauma?

 

 

It has baring on a case before the US Supreme Court this week –  Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue.

 

 

Three women are suing the state of Montana for refusing to pay for their kids to attend religious schools through a defunct voucher program.

 

 

Backing the effort are far right figures and groups like The Cato Institute, The Council for American Private Education, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the Center for Education Reform – all of which have filed Amici Curiae briefs arguing that prohibiting religious schools from getting public money is somehow a violation of the First Amendment.

 

 

If successful, the case would open the door to publicly-funded private religious education across the country – not to mention siphoning much-needed money away from the public schools.

 

 

It’s bad enough that kids learn prejudicial lies from the pulpit and parochial schools. It’s worse if the victims of such prejudice have to pay for their tormentors to be thus indoctrinated.

 

 

In the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom of 1779, Thomas Jefferson wrote “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical . . . ”

 

 

I agree. That is sinful and tyrannical. Especially if those abhorrent beliefs lead to actions detrimental to the health and well-being of those being forced to pay for just such ignorance to be renewed in yet another generation.

 

 

The incident with Patty wasn’t the first or last time I suffered through religious persecution. I went to public school but the worst torment usually came from kids who had a year or two of parochial education.

 

 

For example, I can’t tell you how many times classmates asked me why I killed Jesus.

 

 

Now I’m a middle school teacher, myself.

 

 

I do my best to foster understanding and acceptance of all peoples no matter their race, gender, orientation or creed.

 

 

That doesn’t mean I squash religious discussion or opinions, either.

 

 

Kids are allowed to think and say what they choose. If they want to pray or express a religious belief, that’s fine so long as they don’t hurt others.

 

 

Though radical right ideologues decry the loss of religion in public schools, all that really means is that the adults don’t get to express their theologies. The kids have never been thus encumbered.

 

 

Even so, religious ignorance is never far away.

 

 

 

Every year before I teach “The Diary of Anne Frank” I go over the history of the Holocaust.

 

 

 

At least one student always raises his or her hand and asks if Hitler was Jewish.

 

 

I patiently explain that he wasn’t, but they insist that he must have been. After all, Father Such-And-Such said it, so it must be true.

 

 

And this is the kind of nonsense that is often taught as fact at parochial schools.

 

 

Private religious institutions are infamous for revisionist history and denying climate science. What’s less well-known is how they often try to normalize racist attitudes.

 

 

The American Christian Education (ACE) organization provides fundamentalist school curriculum to thousands of religious schools throughout the country. Included in this curriculum is the A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press textbooks. A Beka publishers, in particular, reported that about 9,000 schools nationwide purchase their textbooks.

 

 

In their pages you’ll find glowing descriptions of the Ku Klux Klan, how the massacre of Native Americans saved many souls, African slaves had really good lives, homosexuals are no better than rapists and child molesters, and progressive attempts at equal rights such as Brown vs. Board of Education were illegal and misguided. You know – all the greatest Donald Trump campaign hits!

 

 

Today these claims are uncritically being taught to children at schools receiving school vouchers. We’re using public money to increase the racism and prejudice in the next generation.

 

 

In any sane country, a case like Espinoza would be about stopping such nonsense! But the plaintiffs and their billionaire backers actually want to EXPAND IT!

 

 

The goal is to destroy facts and promote ignorance. That requires the destruction of public schools.

 

 

Kyle Olson said as much in a 2018 op-ed for National School Choice Week – a bit of propaganda he helped create in 2011 through his lobbying firm, the Education Action Group. In fact, he credited Jesus, himself, with anti-public school venom.

 

Olson wrote:

 

“I would like to think that, yes, Jesus would destroy the public education temple and save the children from despair and a hopeless future.”

 

 

These are the folks complaining that public tax dollars aren’t being allowed to fund parochial schools everywhere and where they are allowed to bankroll such schools they aren’t being allowed to do so enough.

 

 

Technically, the First Amendment doesn’t allow the government to support religious schools.

 

 

But the Espinoza crowd think that laundering the money through Tax Credit Scholarships somehow makes it all okay. A business or rich donor hands money to families to send their kids to private schools. Except that money makes a stop at a “scholarship” organization first, and the donors get to deduct their contributions from their taxes. Blogger Peter Greene tells us to think of it like this:

 

 

“I’m the state, and you owe me $100. I am not allowed to gamble, but if you give that $100 to my bookie instead, I’ll consider us square.”

 

 

It’s a shell game that pretends spending tax money before it gets deposited in the government’s account frees our public servants from following the rules.

 

 

I don’t care where it’s been, that’s my money as good as if you took it from my wallet because it’s money owed to me and every other taxpayer. That money is owed to the public good, not some ideologue’s Sunday school project, and its absence means I have to pay more to fund things we all need like police, firefighters, public transportation, and public schools.

 

 

They’re right about one thing. This is an issue of religious freedom, but it’s not about their freedom. It’s about MY freedom not to support their beliefs.

 

 

I say – let them believe what they will. It’s their choice, and they have the right to subject their children to it if they want.

 

 

But leave me out of it.

 

 

Don’t expect me to foot the bill.

 

 

I’m rightly compelled to pay for public education because it benefits everyone. It creates an educated populace capable of keeping the lights on. It creates people who know enough about the world that they can make knowledgeable decisions and vote for good leaders.

 

 

But parochial schools are exclusionary by design. Spreading their ignorance does not benefit society. It hurts it.

 

 

We talk a lot about the First Amendment, but we seem to forget what it actually says:

 

 

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”

 

 

That should be our guiding principle – religious freedom.

 

 

Let people practice their faiths however they see fit.

 

 

But respect my freedom from religion as much as I respect your freedom of it.

 

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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AstroTurf Alert: National Parents Union is Thinly Veiled Union Busting Backed by Billionaire Cash

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How do you do something disgusting without hurting your image?

 

 

If you’re the Walton Family, you hide behind a mask.

 

 

That’s what their latest AstroTurf front group is – the so-called National Parents Union (NPU).

 

 

 

It’s a way to bust teachers unions, destroy public schools and profit off of students behind the guise of a friendly parents organization.

 

 

Oh, it’s all funded with oodles of cash from the Walton family and other billionaires but they get to pretend to be nothing but supporters on the sidelines.

 

 

The people who bust unions before most of us have even had breakfast yet claim they have nothing to do with this anti-union movement. It is all the parents doing. The Walmart heirs just put up the money to let these parents live their dream of union free schools – as if schools where educators have no rights or intellectual freedom were somehow in the best interests of students.

 
The group is set to officially launch operations on Thursday, Jan. 16.

 

 

It is very different to another organization with the same name – the National Parents Union founded by Mona Davids and other New York parents. That organization which has existed since 2012 fights for the rights of students at both charter and authentic public schools and is not funded by supply side billionaires.

 

 

The NEW and unimproved National Parents Union is simply co-opting the existing organization’s name.

 

 

This shell group for corporate profiteers and union busters formally begins operating today at a meeting in New Orleans.

 

 

The site is well chosen. It’s where Hurricane Katrina allowed radical Republicans and neoliberal Democrats to demolish the public schools and replace them with a nearly all charter school district to disastrous effect. Neighborhoods were destroyed more by the redistricting than the natural disaster, many poor and minority families and teachers were forced out, and those left behind were forced to subsist on low quality schools obsessed with test prep and zero tolerance discipline policies. THIS is where NPU expects to trumpet the same policies that have devastated the Big Easy.

 

 

And it’s not just the Waltons behind the curtain.

 

 

Backers include a veritable who’s who of education disruption, school privatization, and failed programs that treat education like a floundering business that needs dismantling and fed to vulture capitalists.

 

 

We’ve got Barack Obama’s former education secretary John King who now serves as president and CEO of The Education Trust – itself an AstroTurf standardized testing lobbying firm funded by another billionaire, Bill Gates.

 

 

King has a record of union busting and corporate collaboration at the expense of children and parents. He was also New York Commissioner of Education, where he refused to fix a school system he was responsible for destroying all the while pointing his finger at teachers. He tied teacher evaluations to unproven and inferior Common Core tests, approved an obviously fraudulent charter school run by an obviously fraudulent con man, ignored and dismissed parents at various education forums, and sparked the largest opt out movement in the country.

 

 

And don’t forget Shavar Jeffries, the president of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) – a right wing school privatization lobbying firm that pretends to represent progressives. DFER is notorious for laundering billionaire cash and trying to make its initiatives look like they come from the grass roots. The organization is bankrolled by Rupert Murdoch and other conservative billionaires. It’s so antithetical to the Democratic Party platform that the California and Colorado Democratic State Assemblies voted to demand DFER remove “Democrat” from its name.

 

 

However, DFER demurred and continues to pass itself off as part of a political movement that wants nothing to do with it.

 

 

In similar fashion, NPU is lead by Keri Rodriguez. She’s on the advisory board of DFER.

 

 

But she also spearheaded an effort to set up a referendum in Massachusetts to raise the cap on charter schools in 2016. The measure would have allowed a dozen new charters every year forever, located wherever they chose. But voters overwhelmingly defeated the proposition.

 

 

All of these individuals have deep ties to the Walton Family.

 

 

You might even say they are puppets of the oligarch family.

 

 

In just 2018 alone, the Walton Family Foundation awarded more than $595 million in grants, according to its own financial reports, much of which funded the efforts of the same folks behind NPU.

 

 

Rodrigues’ school privatization lobbyist group, Massachusetts Parents United, got more than $886,000 just in two years – 2017 and 2018.

 

 

Maurice Cunningham, a Dark Money investigator, estimates the total is up to at least $1 million by now.

 

 

If we add DFER and other NPU associated groups, Walton funding tops at least $5 million for the fiscal year 2018, alone.

 

 

But somehow NPU expects us to believe this is a parent lead movement.

 

 

The facts don’t back it up.

 

 

In 2018, the country was rocked by a wave of teacher walkouts mostly in red states beginning with West Virginia. In every state parents and students overwhelmingly supported the teachers.

 

 

The movement to fight for better working conditions for educators is also a fight to increase learning conditions for students.

 

 

Teachers aren’t just fighting for higher wages. They’re fighting for smaller class sizes, more tutors, counselors and librarians. They’re fighting for more funding and resources for students. They’re fighting for relief from school privatization and high stakes standardized testing.

 

 

In short, teachers, parents and students are fighting against exactly the same kind of nonsense the Walmart heirs are hoping they can get the gullible public to believe parents actually really, REALLY want.

 

 

It’s ridiculous when you look at it.

 

 

The same company that pays poverty wages wants you to believe parents support policies that help enable low paychecks.

 

 

The same billionaires terrified their workers will unionize want you to believe that parents barely making ends meet are also horrified that people like them might have dignity at work.

 

 

The same corporation making record profits wants you to believe that hurting the people who volunteer to help your kids learn will somehow help them learn better.

 

 

A National Parents Union that’s anti-teacher and pro-corporation is like Chickens for McNuggets.

 

 

They think you’re that stupid.

 

 

And if these rich folks continue to get their way, they’ll ensure that the next generation is as dumb as they hope we are today.

 

 

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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Economists Ate My School – Why Defining Teaching as a Transaction is Destroying Our Society

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Screen Shot 2020-01-04 at 11.02.28 AM

 

 

Teaching is one of the most misunderstood interactions in the world.

 

 

Some people see it as a mere transaction, a job: you do this, I’ll pay you that.

 

 

The input is your salary. The output is learning.

 

 
These are distinctly measurable phenomena. One is calculated in dollars and cents. The other in academic outcomes, usually standardized test scores. The higher the salary, the more valued the teacher. The higher the test scores, the better the job she has done.

 

 

But that’s not all.

 

 
If the whole is defined in terms of buying and selling, each individual interaction can be, too.

 

 

It makes society nothing but a boss and the teacher nothing but an employee. The student is a mere thing that is passively acted on – molded like clay into whatever shape the bosses deem appropriate.

 

 
In this framework, the teacher has no autonomy, no right to think for herself. Her only responsibility is to bring about the outcomes demanded by her employer. The wants and needs of her students are completely irrelevant. We determine what they will become, where they will fit into the burgeoning economy. And any sense of curiosity or creativity is merely an expedient to make children into the machinery of industry and drive the gross domestic product higher to benefit our stock portfolios and lower corporate taxes.

 

 
And since this education system is merely a business agreement, it must obey the rules of an ironclad contract. And since we’re trying to seek our own advantage here, it’s incumbent on us to contain our workforce as much as possible. This cannot be a negotiation among equals. We must keep each individual cog – each teacher – separate so that they can’t unionize together in common causeand equal our power. We must bend and subject them to our will so that we pay the absolute minimum and they’re forced to give the absolute maximum.

 

 

That’s just good business sense. It’s the best way to establish this relationship.

 

 

Moreover, since we see education in terms of pure capital – human financial units flowing through a systemic framework – the same rules that govern business will govern our schools.

 

 

We can pit one student against another, one school against another, one district against another, one race, one gender – anything quantifiable can and should be placed in competition. Because that’s how you maximize outputs.

 

 

We can initiate hostile takeovers, engage in vulture capitalism where the loser schools are stripped of resources and to the victor go the spoils.

 

 

But who is the victor?

 

 

It’s getting confusing here. Do we give the plunder to the students at the schools with the highest outcomes? That’s illogical. After all, this whole process isn’t about what’s best for the students, per se. It’s about the system of profit and loss. So any profit squeezed from the defeated should go to the winners – the investor class who put forward the capital to start this whole process.

 

 

But that’s not how public school is organized. There are rules and regulations you have to follow – outdated legislation that doesn’t define the process in terms of economics.

 

 

We have to redefine those laws, rewrite them so that our goals are aligned. So we can enshrine virtues like choice and disruption over anything as old fashioned and pedestrian as the good of the child.

 

 

Thus we invent charter schools – institutions funded with tax dollars but not necessarily subjected to any other regulations – not run by elected school boards, not accountable to the public for how they spend that money or educate the children under their authority. They are subject only to the rules of the free market. The invisible hand guides all.

 

 

Thus we invent school vouchers – take that tax money and give it directly to the customer – the parents – to spend however they wish. If they squander it or are fooled by unscrupulous school systems and education purveyors, that is their fault. And, in fact, we will ensure that there are multiple pitfalls, deathtraps, blind alleys and snake oil salesmen in their way. Because competition maximizes profits.

 

 

Caveat emptor is the only rule.

 

 

Because, you see, the hidden premise in all this nonsense is that you are not the boss.

 

 

The community is not in control of this system – the business world is. Everyday people who might be parents or taxpayers or voters or concerned citizens – at best we are just consumers. It’s not our role to do anything but choose the simple, watered down options presented to us. If we try to exercise our rights through collective action – including our right to vote – that’s unfair and will be met with the rule of capital as speech until we’re drowned in it – in fact, drowned out.

 

 

This is how many people today envision teaching.

 

 

This is what has become of our schools.

 

 

This is what is being done to our children.

 

 

It’s obvious in the ways our laws are structured, the ways the media covers our schools and the ways our students are mistreated.

 

 

And it is mistreatment.

 

 

Because teaching is none of those things.

 

 

Teaching is not a transaction. It is relational.

 

 

Teaching is not about inputs and outputs. It’s about curiosity and knowledge.

 

 

It shouldn’t be governed by market forces that dehumanize all those involved into mere widgets to be manipulated in a systemic framework. Teaching should be governed by empathy, art and science.

 

 

The driving force behind any education system must be what’s best for the child. And that “best” ultimately must be defined by parents and children.

 

 

The goal of education can never be to prepare kids for a career. It must be to eradicate ignorance, to quench curiosity, to aid self-expression and guide students toward becoming whatever it is they want to become.

 

 

Measuring learning outcomes by standardized test scores can never achieve this goal. That’s like trying to monetize a rainbow or putting the ocean in a cage.

 

 
School privatization can never achieve this goal. That’s like treating human beings like cash, like thinking the rules of football can govern architecture.

 

 

And treating teachers like worker drones can never achieve this goal. You can’t entrust a whole class of people with the most precious thing you have – your children – and then treat them like dirt.

 

 

Teaching is hard to define.

 

 

It is messy and unruly and doesn’t fit into many of our society’s preconceptions.

 

 
But it is optimism made real.

 

 

It is an investment in the future. A mark of value and love.

 

 
It is the most vital and important thing a society can do.

 

 

And we’re messing it up – big time.

 

 

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

 

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