December 11, 2015
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December 11, 2015
Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Obama signs new K-12 education law that ends No Child Left Behind
Lyndsey Layton. Washington Post
President Obama signed a new K-12 education law on Thursday that effectively ends heavy federal involvement in public schools and sends much of that authority back to states and local school districts.
The disturbing provisions about teacher preparation in No Child Left Behind rewrite
Kenneth Zeichner, The Answer Sheet
The fundamental tenets of the Every Student Succeeds Act – the successor to No Child Left Behind – are now well known. It lessens the latter’s focus on standardized test scores and shifts much policy-making power from the U.S. Education Department back to the states. But many educators may be surprised to learn what it includes about teacher preparation. There are provisions in the bill for the establishment of teacher preparation academies – and they are written to primarily support non-traditional, non-university programs.
Reversing the deprofessionalization of teaching
William J. Mathis and Kevin Welner, National Education Policy Center
The current era of deprofessionalization of teaching is tied to an easy-entry, easy-exit approach to the hiring and firing of teachers and to the widespread use of standards-based testing to drive accountability. In a new brief released today, Reversing the Deprofessionalization of Teaching, William Mathis and Kevin Welner describe this landscape and offer a path to restoring teaching as a profession.
Language, Culture, and Power
The limitations of teaching ‘grit’ in the classroom
Aisha Sultan, The Atlantic
“We are asking students to change a belief system without changing the situation around them.”
Berkeley High to ‘take back the day’ after racist incident
Tracey Taylor, Berkeleyside
Berkeley High School is preparing for a special day of “communal self-affirmation” on campus Wednesday, following a racist incident on Nov. 4 and the school-wide protest that came in its wake. BHS Principal Sam Pasarow said he is supporting Wednesday’s activities which will see a slightly modified class schedule and include two assemblies.
New report discusses impact of mass incarceration on AAPI community
Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, NBC News
Asian American and Pacific Islander leaders from over 50 organizations are calling for restorative criminal justice policies and an end to the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline.
Program at Long Beach Unified aims to keep children out of juvenile hall, probation camps
Sarah Favot, Los Angeles Daily News
The Los Angeles County Department of Probation has launched an educational program for Long Beach Unified School District students who are on probation or at risk of entering the system at Beach High School.
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
Affirmative action in California
KCRW, Guest: Tyrone Howard
California voters banned affirmative action in public university admissions in 1996 when Prop 209 passed. How has it played out at California schools?
How the science on diversity and affirmative action matters to Fisher v. University of Texas, Austin
American Educational Research Association, Panelists: Felice J. Levine, American Educational Research Association; Angelo N. Ancheta, Santa Clara University; Liliana M. Garces, Pennsylvania State University; Gary Orfield, University of California, Los Angeles; Shirley M. Malcom, American Association for the Advancement of Science
On Monday, December 7, 2015, two days before the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the reconsideration of Fisher v. University of Texas, Austin, a panel of experts discussed the scientific evidence on the use of race as a factor in university admissions policies and the educational benefits of student diversity.
How a school's attendance number hides big problems
Elissa Nadworny, NPR
Every morning, the familiar routine plays out in hundreds of thousands of classrooms: A teacher looks out over the desks, taking note of who's in their seats and who isn't. On any given day, maybe there are one or two empty chairs. One here, one there. And that all goes into the school's daily attendance rate. But here's what that morning ritual doesn't show: That empty desk? It might be the same one that was empty last week or two weeks ago. The desk of a student who has racked up five, 10, 20 absences this year.
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
New York City tackles school segregation
Rachel M. Cohen, The American Prospect
Six decades after the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools are “inherently unequal,” integration may finally be coming to New York City. With 1.1 million students, New York City is home to one of the nation’s largest public school systems; it’s also one of its most economically and racially segregated.
When rich and poor learn together, kids win
Rebecca Klein, Huffington Post
With all the roadblocks thrown up by the Supreme Court, should school systems still try to pursue diversity? One district in North Carolina said yes and, as a new study shows, reaped solid rewards for the kids.
High-poverty schools often staffed by rotating cast of substitutes
Emma Brown, The Washington Post
Mya Alford dreams of studying chemical engineering in college, but the high school junior is at a disadvantage: Last year, her chemistry teacher at Pittsburgh’s Westinghouse Academy quit just weeks after school started, and the class was taught by a substitute who, as Alford put it, “didn’t know chemistry.”
Public Schools and Private $
New group names 49 L.A. schools -- more of them magnets -- as models
Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
A new organization set up to create new, higher-performing public schools in Los Angeles has released a list of 49 successful campuses that it said would serve as models. Those schools, which include charters, magnets and traditional public campuses, are viewed as stellar examples of how to educate students in the L.A. Unified School District. They are being touted by those who, at least initially, had proposed enrolling half of L.A. students in charter schools over the next eight years.
Judge says charter group cannot interfere with unionization efforts
Zahira Torres, Los Angeles Times
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge this week issued a preliminary injunction barring administrators at the city’s largest charter group from hampering efforts to unionize its teachers.
The health of democracy: Privatizing education
Julian Vasquez Heilig, Cambridge Forum
How do contemporary efforts to privatize public education square with the civic role that education has played in American democracy? Internationally recognized leader in education policy Julian Vasquez Heilig examines the variety of ways in which public education is being privatized in the name of “reform” and suggests ways for citizens to respond that both improve educational experience and strengthen the societal and civic role that education plays.
Other News of Note
San Bernardino teachers help students cope with tragedy
Kristine Kim, EdWeek
Teachers in San Bernardino, Calif., sought to make classrooms as normal as possible for students this week after 14 people were killed and 21 injured in the mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center on December 2. The district's Director of Communications, Linda Bardere, said councilors started preparing talking points for teachers as early Wednesday, the day of the shooting, in case students returned on to school traumatized.
Confronting students’ Islamophobia
Amy Vatne Bintliff, Teaching Tolerance
In preparation for reading Farhana Zia’s The Garden of My Imaan, a lovely young adult novel about an American Muslim girl named Aliya, my students and I wrote down what we knew about Muslims. I teach in a public middle school where the majority of students are white and Christian, so I expected a steep learning curve. I encouraged all the students to write down their thoughts and ideas and to be open and honest about their thinking. Sometimes I would chime in and contradict incorrect ideas, but mostly I would just record student thoughts on the whiteboard as they recorded their thoughts on our worksheet.
Just News from Center X is a free weekly education news blast edited by Jenn Ayscue.
