September 9, 2016
Just News from Center X is a free weekly education news blast.
Please
subscribe and tweet or share.
September 9, 2016
Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
In Chicago, preparing teachers for the classrooms that need them most
Lisa Stark, PBS News Hour
Teaching is extremely difficult in urban school districts. In Chicago, for example, the city is confronting one of the worst budget crises in years, and keeping good teachers is a persistent struggle. But an intensive training program nearby is using innovative techniques that anticipate the challenges teachers will face in such demanding, diverse classrooms. Education Week’s Lisa Stark reports.
Q&A with Christopher Emdin: Reaching students of color
Christopher Emdin, Teachers College; Alex Lenkei, Education Week
Following multiple reports of racial violence and unrest this summer, research conducted by educator and author Christopher Emdin on race, culture, and inequality in urban America may provide guidance for teachers and school leaders seeking to reach a greater understanding with their students at the start of the new school year. Emdin knows how it feels to be an undervalued student of color in an urban school. As a young man, he attended the specialized Brooklyn Technical High School in New York City, where he felt misunderstood by his teachers and, as a result, he disengaged from academics. Now an associate professor in the department of mathematics, science, and technology at Teachers College, Columbia University, Emdin published his second book this spring. For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood ... and the Rest of Y'all Too(Beacon Press, 2016) is part how-to guide for classroom teachers and part critical analysis of the dynamics of race in certain school settings. As the title suggests, Emdin argues that teachers, especially white teachers, should re-examine their practice to understand the impact it can have on students whose backgrounds differ from their own. Through the use of "reality pedagogy"—his teaching philosophy grounded in the idea that empathy and respect play a critical role in student learning—Emdin believes that teacher and student can navigate their differences on an equal footing.
Amid growing debate about homework, one school bans it
Morgan Winsor, ABC News
More than 550 students at a Massachusetts elementary school will have less to carry home in their backpacks this year. There will be no homework. Kelly Elementary School in Holyoke has banned homework for the year with the intention of giving students all the instruction and extra help they may need during the school day.
Language, Culture, and Power
The lasting impact of mispronouncing students’ names
Clare McLaughlin, NEAToday
Taking the attendance at the beginning of class may seem a routine if not mundane task to many educators. But to students, their name can be a powerful link to their identity. Pronouncing students names correctly – during attendance, a classroom activity, or any other time of the school day – should always be a priority for any classroom teacher. Names holds ancestral and historical significance for many minority, immigrant and English learning students. Names bring stories, which students are often forced to adapt to an “Americanized” context. That transition, however, is often painful and forces many students to take on a name that is not their own.
Preschool suspensions really happen and that’s not ok with Connecticut
Cory Turner, NPR
Every year, thousands of children are suspended from preschool. Take a second to let that sink in. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 6,743 children who were enrolled in district-provided pre-K in 2013-14 received one or more out-of-school suspensions. And that's just publicpre-K. Still more children were likely suspended from the nation's many privately-run preschools and day cares. While most suspensions come as the result of a child's disruptive, sometimes violent, behavior, experts and advocates now argue that suspending a 3- or 4-year-old, no matter how bad the behavior, is a bad idea.
In Detroit, freedom schools offer an alternative to city’s struggling education system
Zenobia Jeffries, Yes! Magazine
Now that her daughter is in high school, Moore still finds herself fighting. Because of budget cuts, after-school programs have been reduced, teachers have been laid off, and the remaining classes are overcrowded. Moore’s activism soon evolved from watching out for her own kids to advocating for the rest of the district’s children. At a community meeting earlier this year, Moore called on parents to boycott the schools. This captured the attention of local activist group Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management (D-REM), which turned to a legacy of the 1960s civil rights movement for a solution: Freedom Schools.
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
LAUSD wants preschool to be more fun, launches new curriculum
Deepa Fernandes, KPCC
With stubby legs and googly eyes, large ears and a red lightening bolt of hair, a furry green critter called “Z” is the new face of early learning for preschoolers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Z is headlining the implementation of a new curriculum -- one that moves away from previous academic-heavy preschool teaching to a play-based model that emphasizes emotional development and social interaction, according to district officials.
A closer look at test scores for English learners, magnet schools and charters
Sonali Kohli, Joy Resmovits and Sandra Poindexter
More than three million students across California traded in pencils for computers to take their standardized tests last school year. You might have read about the statewide results of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress: More than half of the state’s public school students in grades 3 to 8 and 11th grade failed to meet benchmarks for college readiness. The test is new and considered harder than previous ones — and scores did increase from 2015, the first year scores were reported. But they remained low — and certain groups, such as black students, lagged behind.
Chronic absenteeism is as high in rural and suburban schools as it is in urban areas
Kyle Stokes, KPCC
At least 225,000 Southern California public school students miss at least three weeks of class each year which, research suggests, puts them at risk of falling behind in school — if not dropping out altogether. Those students attend schools in 47 districts in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Ventura and western Riverside counties the authors of a new national analysis identified as having notable concentrations of "chronic absenteeism."
State board poised to take new direction in school accountability
John Fensterwald, EdSource
After months of drafting, revising and debating how best to measure and improve schools, the State Board of Education this week will adopt key elements of a new and distinct school accountability system. The series of votes on Thursday will meet the Legislature’s Oct. 1 deadline and will mark 2½ years since the state board suspended its simpler predecessor, the Academic Performance Index. The board expects to change components of the system in coming years.
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
By 2030, ‘no Australian child will be living in poverty’ – why can’t we promise that?
Wendy Stone, Emma Baker, Liss Ralston, Peter Phibbs, Rebecca Bentley, The Conversation
Following revelations that more than 300,000 children are living in poverty, the New Zealand government has announced the creation of a ministry for vulnerable children. This should cause Australian leaders to pause and think – how many vulnerable children live in poverty here? And should we be doing something about it? Everyone remembers Bob Hawke’s promise that: By 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty.Even though Hawke later regretted it, the prime minister’s 1987 statement was powerful and valuable. It sparked debate and told Australians, and the world, that child poverty was not acceptable and that we were going to try to fix it. It pinned a flag to the flagpole.
New evidence that summer programs can make a difference for poor children
Emma Brown, The Washington Post
During their long, languid summers, lots of children forget the lessons they learned in school. But the hot empty months pose an especially big academic hurdle for poor children, whose families might not have time or money for camps or enrichment activities. Now new research suggests that school districts can stave off the so-called summer slide by offering free, voluntary programs that mix reading and math instruction with sailing, arts and crafts and other summer staples. The research also shows, perhaps unsurprisingly, that students have to attend the programs regularly to reap the benefits.
Education Secretary says status quo in schools is ‘unacceptable’
Michel Martin, NPR; Guest: John B. King Jr., U.S. Secretary of Education
U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. discusses the department's latest rules to make school funding more equal. Republicans and teachers unions have criticized the rules.
How a single-sex school in East Harlem offered young women a path out of poverty
Pedro Noguera, The Hechinger Report
As we continue to identify ways to break down barriers to opportunity and close the college access gap, we can look to an education model that took shape twenty years ago with 56 girls in East Harlem. When the seventh-graders walked through the doors of the newly formed public Young Women’s Leadership School, their parents rejoiced knowing that their daughters would have the kind of high quality college prep education typically accessible only to middle-class and affluent families.
Public Schools and Private $
Charter debate playing out in small races with big money
David Scharfenberg, The Boston Globe
While the partisans in Massachusetts’ bitter charter debate are sinking millions of dollars into a high-profile ballot fight over whether to build more of the schools, they’re also spending sizable sums on bids to shape the state Legislature. Democrats for Education Reform, which favors charter schools, and the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which opposes them, have set aside $200,000 each to influence a handful of this week’s Democratic primary races — sizable sums in often low-dollar contests.
Los Angeles magnet school looks to launch a robot revolution
Dana Bartholomew, Los Angeles Daily News
A powerful earthquake sends tremors rippling across the San Fernando Valley, toppling buildings, sparking fires and trapping thousands of residents among the rubble. But instead of police and firefighters picking through sharp-edged debris, an army of robots is dispatched to search and rescue. At least that was the exercise last week at the first Los Angeles magnet school for robotics.
Other News of Note
Long before Kaepernick sat, L.A. teacher stood up to authority in anthem protest
Eric Sondheimer, Los Angeles Times
Hardy Williams, a physical education teacher and former Los Angeles High football coach, was getting his car repaired Saturday morning when his brother called and told him that San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick had refused to stand for the playing of the national anthem before an NFL exhibition game. “What?” Williams said. “He’s immediately my favorite player.” It was 31 years ago, in the fall of 1985, that Williams filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District and his principal at Los Angeles, Patrick DeSantis, after he was fired as a coach for turning his back when the national anthem was played before games. When he heard that Kaepernick said he was protesting “a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Williams said, “I thought it’s been a long time since somebody picked up the torch.”
Student protest blocks ethnic segregation plan in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Sarah Freeman-Woolpert, Waging Nonviolence
Students in central Bosnia and Herzegovina return to school this week, but not with the usual nerves that accompany back-to-school season. This year, high school students in the small, medieval city of Jajce are returning with a newfound sense of purpose and empowerment. Over the summer months, the students organized protests that successfully pressured the local assembly in the Central Bosnia Canton to postpone its plans for a new segregated high school teaching only Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) students. This proposed measure would extend a policy of ethnic segregation, already implemented in Jajce’s elementary schools, to the high school level.
Just News from Center X is a free weekly education news blast edited by Jenn Ayscue.
