Privatization
School & District Management
Schools Evaluate Whether to Privatize Support Services
Districts' decisions about whether to contract out services or keep them in-house are influenced by myriad and often competing factors.
Privacy & Security
Opinion
Gates and Murdoch "Personalize" Learning with Larger Classes and Big Data Systems
A personalized learning environment is driven by the relationships between learners and one another, and with their teacher. That is why class size is so important. That is why it is so important to honor the knowledge, skill and culture that our students bring to school - because a respectful relationship with each student is based on our acceptance of them, and our desire to help them achieve their goals, rather than force them to meet predetermined benchmarks.
Equity & Diversity
Opinion
Jack Hassard: School Closings in Our Cities: A Deep Ecological Problem
As Deming (1994a) points out, beware of common sense when we think about such issues as ranking children by grades, ranking schools and teachers by test scores, and rewards and punishments. Deming believes that grades should be abolished, and that the ranking of people and schools should not occur. And significant to the issue of school closure, Deming suggests that taking action (such as closing a school today) may produce more problems in the future, and that a better remedy would be investigate why children in poor neighborhoods are not doing well on state mandated tests, and then do something about it.
School Choice & Charters
Opinion
ALEC Promotes Vouchers in Douglas County, Colorado
Not surprisingly, the voucher program drafted and approved by this ALEC-connected group conformed to ALEC's recommendations for a voucher program in Colorado : it uses "scholarships" given to parents for their "choice" of schools; it draws exclusively on state, rather than local, monies; it is structured in a way that claims not to run afoul of the Colorado constitution's Compelled Support Clause and so-called Blaine amendments; and it is even named the "Choice Scholarship" program, in conformity with the ALEC model legislation.
Budget & Finance
Opinion
Interview with David Bollier: Viewing Education as a Commons
Economists and politicians have long assumed that there are really only two sectors for governing things and "adding value" -- the state and the market. Markets are seen as the vehicle for economic progress while the state deals with governance and everything else. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that there is another sector - the commons - that is at least as important to our lives and well being. The commons consists of those many resources that we share - the atmosphere, water, public spaces, the Internet, scientific knowledge, cultural works, and much more - as well as the social systems and rule-sets that we use to manage them in fair, sustainable ways. It bears emphasizing that the commons is not just the resource itself, but the resource plus the community and its self-organized rule-sets, norms and enforcement of rules. I
Equity & Diversity
Opinion
Georgia Religious Schools Skirt Constitution to Access Taxpayer Funds
To be clear, what is happening here is that individual taxpayers can direct the funds that are being diverted from the state tax coffers towards their own children's tuition, or that of their friends.
Vouchers have proven to be highly unpopular with voters, as they divert scarce funds from public schools and unconstitutionally allow them to pay for religious instruction. This violates the state constitution's prohibition against tax moneys being spent "directly, or indirectly" on religious organizations. This law is an end run around the Constitutions of the State of Georgia, and the United States, and if Earl Ehrhart has his way, this week the state will toss another $30 million into the pot.
Families & the Community
Opinion
Who Will the Los Angeles School Board Represent?
This campaign is going to be fascinating to watch, because it shows the raw power of the wealthy supporters of corporate education reform, and their ability to bring that power to bear on a local school board race. The issues at stake are central to the direction of education reform. Will charter schools continue to expand at the expense of traditional public schools? Will teacher evaluations give more weight to test scores? Will seniority and due process protections be eliminated? The big question hanging over all of this is who will a locally elected school board represent? The interests of its constituents - or the billionaires who paid for their campaigns?
IT Infrastructure & Management
Opinion
John Thompson: The Head vs the Heart: Which Should Rule in Our Schools?
The contemporary "reform" movement is based on the principle, however, that educators cannot be granted the autonomy of deciding whether they commit to building trusting relationships with students or whether "In Data We Trust." The immense body of social science that describes the emotional dynamics of schooling that was to be flushed down the toilet. Test-driven "reformers" demanded that we teach primarily to the narrow part of "the Head" that processes Big Data.
Families & the Community
Opinion
Yes, Virginia, There Really IS a Billionaire Boys Club
One does not need to be a "conspiracy theorist" to connect the dots here. We have a local school board race that has become the focus of a coordinated effort on the part of the wealthy advocates of corporate reform. This is no conspiracy. It is neither secret, nor is it illegal, thanks to rulings like Citizen's United. It is perfectly legal for billionaires to, in effect, buy up local school board races. And it is perfectly legal for them to hire "journalists" to write stories largely sympathetic to their point of view. Fortunately, it is also still legal for skeptics to point out all of the above, and suggest the voters of Los Angeles might want to think twice before they vote.
School Choice & Charters
Opinion
Interview with Joshua Starr: Excellence is Not a Zero Sum Game
I have become increasingly concerned that public education in the United States is seen as a private commodity rather than a public good. Too often, value is defined as something that I have and you don't, if we both have it, it can't possibly be valuable, regardless of what the "product" actually is. The current achievement disparity between different groups of students is not only a moral imperative, it's an economic one. If we don't better serve children that are poor, African-American, differently-abled, Latino, immigrant or English Language Learners, our economy will greatly suffer because the tax base will decline substantially. I believe that communities have to define what they want from their public schools, organize systems around their vision, and then make sure that all schools within the community have the capacity to achieve it. If we continue to think of excellence as a zero-sum game we will continue to allow too many schools to fail rather than build their capacities to improve.
Policy & Politics
Opinion
Private Enterprise & Public Education
Students will be well-served if educators, parents, and policymakers recognize that public systems, nonprofits, and for-profits all have vital roles to play.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
NEA and AFT: Let's Apply the Lessons of NCLB to the Common Core
Our two major unions are one of the best vehicles teachers have for communicating with the public. Teachers have gotten on board with efforts to raise standards in the past, but we have to have our eyes wide open this time. There is going to be a major publicity campaign associated with the results we will get from the Common Core assessments. This will be yet another iteration of the wails we heard with the release of the Nation at Risk report in 1983. We have got to be prepared to mount a robust defense of the very institution of public education. Tests associated with the Common Core are going to be used to discredit our schools. We must be ready to respond.
Budget & Finance
Opinion
Digging Into Our 'Disagreements' on Schools
What we need to start with is a consensus that schools have to raise kids alongside their families; they have to join together on behalf of building a generation of strong citizens.
Law & Courts
Opinion
Teachers and Parents: Natural Allies in Defending Our Schools
Wherever the "reformers" are working to divide us, we need counter campaigns aimed at strengthening our unity. We need to make sure less experienced teachers understand the value of due process, and the reasons we object to "data-driven" evaluations and pay systems. We need to develop social and educational activities that bring generations of teachers together, so they recognize how much they have to learn from one another, and how much better they can be when they support one another and work together. We need serious outreach efforts to communicate with parents, both urban and suburban. Our public schools are community treasures, and they must be guarded by all of us working together.
