Teachable moment, not censorship

In my almost 40 years in education, never have I ever seen off-the rail parents impact curricula as I have in the last six months. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had plenty of off-the rail parents, but none of them ever said a word about what I was teaching. It seems unrealistic that one parent can make a fuss about something being taught, and it is pulled and questioned. I would not want one parent deciding for me what my kids can and cannot learn.

Florida.

At North Shore Elementary School in St. Petersburg, a mom raised concern that her child’s school was showing the Disney movie about Ruby Bridges, a movie shown during Black History Month for years. The movie, as many say, is historically accurate and tells the story of 6-year old Ruby who, surrounded by Federal Marshals, entered her elementary school as the first Black student, thus desegregating the public schools in New Orleans.

The mom in Florida said that the use of racial slurs and scenes of white people threatening Ruby as she entered the school might result in students learning that white people hate Black people (news.yahoo.com). Right, because there’s no historical evidence of that being true.

Ric Davis, president of Concerned Organization for Quality Education for Black Students said, “Many from historically marginalized communities are asking whether this so-called integrated education system in Pinellas county can even serve the diverse community fairly and equitably” (news.yahoo.com).

Lawmakers in Florida say they don’t want books, movies, or lessons about race to create student discomfort, and speaking from the other side of their mouth, said they want facts presented honestly. What about the non-white children? At North Shore Elementary School, the enrollment is 57% white, 24% Black, 12% Black. Why, again, do white parents get to decide what history is taught?

My co-authors and I wrote a book, William Frantz Public School; A story of race, resistance, resiliency, and recovery in New Orleans, that tells the story of the school that Bridges entered on November 14, 1960. You may have seen photos showing Bridges surrounded by four Marshals. But in a single focus, the photos do not show, as the movie did (in part), the vitriolic white mothers – some with their children- who stood across the street protesting Bridges’ enrollment. There were angry mobs of protestors who yelled angry, awful epithets at Bridges, and smiled for the cameras. One mother made a casket and put a doll in it with a rope around the neck. Bridges was afraid to eat lunch every day because a parent had threatened to poison her. That’s the truth. But it was very much tempered in the movie.

I use our book in a class I teach college students, and as students write weekly journals in response to the readings, so often students will say they are angry they have never been taught the full story of Ruby Bridges until college.

Here are some of their comments:

• “I, as a young biracial woman, was never educated to the fullest in my K-12 history classes. It could have maybe been the fact that all of my educators growing up were young white males and females straight out of student teaching who had no idea the first thing about racial disparities, or poverty, or segregation, and had never been discriminated against in their entire privileged life.”
• “In general, I never knew how much this impacted Ruby Bridges because my education kept everything censored, and I wonder whose benefit that was for, mine or the United States history?”
• “As I read William Frantz Public School (WFPS), I kept learning new information. Information I believe is critical, but the thing is, I never knew this information. If this information is vital, why did I never learn it? Why did my history curriculum never show the full story?”
• “I remained ignorant to the fact because no one taught me how bad it is, but I stayed ignorant because I did not do my own research.”
• This knowledge has me struck like lightning. And the sting will forever be a reminder of the privilege of my race. I am grateful for this book I am proud to have taken this class.

To put this into perspective, when asked about their reaction to reading our book, 40.7% of students felt blindsided as they were reading about things such as Ruby Bridges, Desegregation vs Integration, (and Hurricane Katrina) for the FIRST TIME and 59.3 % of students had heard about the events mentioned in WFPS, but were NOT fully aware of the significance these events played and the impact they had on history. Many claimed that they merely “scratched the surface” when they were taught about these events.

Further, less than 15% of the students were aware of the “white-history” of education, that is – their awareness of the knowledge of how the history of education has been written and taught in favor of the white race.

About 20% of students identified that after reading William Frantz Public School, they feel compelled to do more research and become more educated about the true history of public education, urban education, and racism. As one student said, “Not as a requirement  But as a personal necessity.[The story of William Frantz]”. Another student said, “I think that by becoming more informed through this class I feel propelled to defend public education and help inform others.”

Bridges was the first Black student to integrate the public schools in New Orleans. This was six years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision acknowledging that segregation was unconstitutional. There is a great lesson in the movie, with historically accurate events. But parents are afraid their children might get the wrong message. What’s that message? These events happened. Teach them, talk about them, use them as lessons in empathy so we don’t repeat history. These are teachable moments.

These are my reflections for today.

April  7, 2023

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Recent publication: William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator. Peter Lang Publishing. Available on amazon.com

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Two sides of testing requirements for teacher candidates

Forty-seven states, including New Jersey require teacher candidates to take and pass the Praxis exams. Praxis Core is the first of the two exams. Students are tested in reading, writing, and math skills. The Praxis II exam is either P-3 (language and literacy, math, social studies, science, health and physical education, and creative and performing art), elementary (language arts, math, science, social studies), or secondary (subject-specific). Students generally take the Core exam early on in college, with the Praxis II taken no later than the end of student teaching but before they can apply to the state for a license.

At my university, students are required to pass Praxis Core before they can begin taking courses in the Education program, with the Praxis II requirement no later than one semester prior to student teaching. We do it this way for several reasons. We want to be sure students can pass before they’ve committed much time and tuition, and we provide enough time should they have to take the exam multiple times. A majority of our students are able to pass the Core (not necessarily the first time but before the deadline), and move on to take Praxis II, which also presents challenges. Generally, secondary students who have a major in their subject area have an easier time passing because their focus has been in that subject. Students who wish to be elementary teachers have a more difficult time passing the four core-subject area exams.

Lately we have seen an increasing number of students taking the Core exam 2, 3, even 4 or more times to achieve the passing score. Students pass the test by answering at least 60 percent of the questions correctly.

Every year we re-evaluate how we can better prepare our teacher-candidates to be successful with the exams. We have created tutoring sessions, organized study-groups, offered review courses designed to review the specific content area to prepare for the exam. We let students know early on in the program that the tests are a state requirement for certification, and go above and beyond to help them be successful.

https://www.nctq.org/publications/Driven-by-Data:-Using-Licensure-Tests-to-Build-a-Strong,-Diverse-Teacher-Workforce/

According to the NCTQ report, “Forty-five percent of those who take the Praxis test on elementary-level content fail on their first try. Twenty-five percent never manage to pass (NCTQ). Additionally, for teacher-candidates of color: 62% of black and 43% of Hispanic candidates fail the elementary Praxis exam even after multiple attempts (Forbes.com).

There’s often a gap between when students have had content area courses and when they take the exam, which may account for some of the high failure rate.

Emery Petchauer, an associate professor of English and teacher education at Michigan State University, noted “the really murky evidence that a score on a paper-pencil licensure exam has a direct relationship to teaching effectiveness.” (EdWeek.org).

In a time when our profession is trying to diversify, students of color often come to college and are more likely to have received poor preparation in their K-12 schooling. This may lead to test anxiety and poor performance (EdWeek.org). Petchauer noted, “the really murky evidence that a score on a paper-pencil licensure exam has a direct relationship to teaching effectiveness” (EdWeek.org). While Natalie Wexler wrote, “there isn’t much evidence that teachers who pass the licensing test are more effective, at least in terms of student test scores” (Forbes.com).

In contrast, a National Center for Teacher Quality (NCTQ) report pointed to research that suggests that teachers who have a higher passing score on licensing exams tend to see more student achievement gains in the classroom, especially for mathematics“(EdWeek.org). But Petchauer emphasized the benefits for students of color who have a teacher of the same race, too (EdWeek.org), (EdWeek.org).

Some blame teacher prep programs for not offering the content area classes students need, while teacher prep programs blame lower grade teachers for not doing a better job of preparing students for college. There is often a gap from high school to college when students have taken core content courses, which may account for some of the failure rate.

We have students this semester who were admitted to our university under the new test optional policy – so we have no indication of their SAT/ACT scores, which may help us identify early on those students who need academic assistance. That same group is also part of the pandemic group who have had their courses online for the last three semesters. As we reckon with the damage caused by the pandemic at both the P-12 and post-secondary levels, this may also account for some of the low scores.

No one would argue that teachers must be competent in their content areas, but how effective are these exams in predicting future success? While there is not a clear connection that test scores yield higher student achievement, one area where students achieve higher academically is having an experienced teacher. Teachers are estimated to become more effective with experience: those with 1 to 2 years of experience outperform students with novice teachers by 5 to 7 percent of a standard deviation (Goldhaber, 2007).

There is not one solution as there is not one problem. We must address the content competency early, recruit more students of color and support them academically – perhaps even before they come to college, and we must support teachers new to the profession to support sustainability. Sounds simple, right?

These are my reflections for today.

9/24/21

Recent publication: William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator. Peter Lang Publishing. Available on amazon.com

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Rogue Governors

By now, you’ve read about the rogue governors who have initiated no mask mandates for public schools.You can read about how these mandates are faring in Florida here, here, here, and here; and Texas here, here, here, and here.

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The secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, speaking with Mia Arias, 10, during a visit to a New York elementary school on Tuesday.Credit…Brittainy Newman/Associated Press

This week, President Biden directed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, “to take additional steps to protect our children,” including against governors who are “setting a dangerous tone” in issuing executive orders banning mask mandates and threatening to penalize school officials who defy them (New York Times).

“Unfortunately, as you’ve seen throughout this pandemic, some politicians are trying to turn public safety measures — that is, children wearing masks in school — into political disputes for their own political gain” (New York Times).

Secretary Cardona said, “I’ve heard those parents saying, ‘…because of these policies, my child cannot access their school, I would be putting them in harm’s way,”. “…and to me, that goes against a free, appropriate public education. That goes against the fundamental beliefs of educators across the country to protect their students and provide a well-rounded education” (New York Times).

Dr. Cardona said he would deploy the Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm to investigate states that block universal masking.

The nation’s most vulnerable students, namely students with disabilities, low-income students and students of color, have suffered the deepest setbacks since districts pivoted to remote learning in March 2020, and their disproportionate disengagement has long drawn concern from education leaders and civil rights watchdogs.

Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, students are entitled to a free, appropriate public education, known as FAPE, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin.

If state policies and actions rise to potential violations of students’ civil rights, the department could initiate its own investigations into districts and investigate complaints made by parents and advocates who argue that prohibiting mask mandates could deny students’ right to education by putting them in harm’s way in school.

(New York Times)

As an educator who has spent the better part of the last 18 months teaching from home, I am happy to be going back to campus in a few weeks – even with vaccination and mask mandates for faculty, staff and students, I look forward to being with my students in class. I don’t like the idea of having to wear masks, and I am fully vaccinated, so I’ll take one for the team and be happy I get to go to work. Wish others felt as I did.

**In case you’re interested, here’s a list of all US states and with their rate of vaccination.

These are my reflections for today.

8/20/21

Recent publication: William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator. Peter Lang Publishing. Available on amazon.com

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Florida… smh

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed an executive order banning mask mandates in schools, leaving the decision up to parents whether their children wear masks in school.

Meanwhile, Florida reported 134,506 new Covid-19 cases over the past week, more than any other seven-day period during the pandemic (CNN).

The average number of new daily cases over the past two weeks is 107% higher than the prior two-week period, according to data from Johns Hopkins University (CNN).

On Sunday, the state reported 13,596 new Covid-19 cases among children younger than 12 years old, according to data from the Florida Department of Health (DOH) (CNN).

There were 10,585 new cases for that age group reported the previous week, ending July 29, DOH data shows (CNN).

Florida has approved an emergency rule “that will allow private school vouchers if parents feel their children are being harassed by a school district’s COVID-19 safety policies, including mask requirements” (In the Public Interest).

A group of parents and their children with disabilities filed suit against the state of Florida Friday claiming Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ban on mask mandates in schools violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. The federal lawsuit includes 27 parents and children who claim DeSantis “does not have the authority to threaten school districts with loss of funding if they protect their students with disabilities health and rights to be in an integrated learning environment. (clickorlando.com).

In a statement on Monday, the governor said the state board of education “could move to withhold the salary of the district superintendent or school board members” if they issue rules requiring children to wear face masks. Teachers and other school staff will not be affected (bbcnews.com).

In response to President Biden’s comment that DeSantis’ decisions on Covid have not been “good for their constituents.” (Washington Post), the governor responded, “Why don’t you get this border secure? … Until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about Covid from you.” The Washington Post Fact Checker found no evidence to support DeSantis’s claim that Biden’s immigration policies are to blame for the surge.

DeSantis’ executive order says school mask guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “lacks a well-grounded scientific justification” and the decision should be based on parents’ rights to make the health care decisions for their children who are students (CNN).

Alberto Carvalho, superintendent for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, responded in a written statement: “We have established a process that requires consultation with experts in the areas of public health and medicine. We will follow this process, which has served us well, and then make a final decision.” He added, “At no point shall I allow my decision to be influenced by a threat to my paycheck; a small price to pay considering the gravity of this issue and the potential impact to the health and well-being of our students and dedicated employees” (Miami CBS).

Sen. Bill Cassidy, who is also a physician, said.“When it comes to local conditions, if my hospital is full and my vaccination rate is low and infection rate is going crazy, we should allow local officials to make those decisions best for their community (CNN).

Former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said the coronavirus doesn’t care about politics or rhetoric. “What the virus does is it preys on any divisions in society,” he told CNN. “And it is extremely disappointing to see governors around the country banning things that would save lives and keep our kids and teachers in school learning” (CNN).

Over the past week, the vaccination rate increased with more than 50,000 people in Florida getting vaccinated. This is the highest average daily rate since May 2020 (CNN).

Schools open next week.

These are my reflections for today.

8/12/21

Recent publication: William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator. Peter Lang Publishing. Available on amazon.com

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Surely help will come…

Today’s excerpt from Chapter 5, titled, “And Then it was After” outlines the damage to schools and neighborhoods in the Upper Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina.

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The storm affected every facet of life in New Orleans, including education. Approximately 80 to 85 percent of Orleans Parish school buildings were unusable after the storm. Without soliciting competitive bids, the school district expanded its contract with Alvarez and Marsal to include oversight and management of the district’s post-hurricane recovery efforts. Interim Superintendent Ora Watson and Bill Roberti, Managing Director of Alvarez and Marsal, asked the Council of Great City Schools to assess a number of public school buildings and determine which might be reopened. A team of urban school facilities administrators from around the country arrived in the city approximately two weeks after the storm. ( They witnessed firsthand what the world had watched on television. Wind had blown out windows and torn off roofs of schools. Downed trees lay on collapsed roofs, in playgrounds, and across power lines. Most schools had no electrical power. Rain and flood waters had buckled floors, buried books in mud, and led to widespread growth of mold inside school buildings. The group estimated initial repairs would reach an unimaginable amount, $800 million to $1 billion.

Hurricane Katrina ranked as one of the five deadliest hurricanes and also one of the costliest hurricanes recorded in U.S. history. Officials estimated just under 2,000 individuals died as a result of Katrina, approximately half were from Louisiana. The storm displaced over one million people throughout the Gulf Coast. In New Orleans, 70 percent of all residential housing units sustained damage, and the population of the city fell 50 percent after the storm. Total damage from Katrina reached $135 billion.

…Like many school buildings, WFPS suffered extensive floor-to-ceiling damage from the initial wind, rain, and flood waters of Hurricane Katrina, and post-storm neglect exacerbated the condition in the months and years following the storm. The roof suffered severe damage and windows were broken and blown out. Its low elevation, one foot above sea level, made the building especially susceptible to flooding, and approximately four feet of water left the first floor partially submerged. Plumbing, waste, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and electrical systems needed to be replaced or extensively repaired. Throughout the building, hardwood floors were beyond repair. Stagnant water in the building and high dew points accelerated the growth of mold and filled hallways and classrooms with a rotting stench. Paint cracked and peeled, exposing drywall to rapidly spreading mold that eventually penetrated deep into the building structure. Furnishings sustained damage from the storm and subsequent vandalism. Storm damage, in conjunction with years of deferred maintenance, resulted in exorbitant repair costs. Estimates placed the repairs for the WFPS building above $5.5 million. Orleans Parish Schools. The inability of rescue, relief, and disaster personnel to move quickly toward recovery and restoration efforts compounded the physical problems for WFPS recovery. Because the Orleans Parish district moved WFPS students to Lockett Elementary School before Hurricane Katrina, officials did not prioritize the repair of WFPS. Both the Orleans Parish School Board and Recovery School District seemed to forget about WFPS. But that did not matter, as there was little need for expediency to repair WFPS and ready it for classes. Few students remained in the neighborhoods surrounding the school and all of the school’s teachers had been fired. Charter school advocates, insensitive to or at the least oblivious to the role of neighborhood schools like WFPS, pushed to rapidly advance the opportunity to reframe public education. Once the waters receded, WFPS remained fenced off from the street. There, it waited, silent and alone. Surely, help would come. 

If you’ve been keeping up with the last few weeks of excerpts from our book, you have gotten a glimpse of the long history of the school and the crime and corruption that led to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. As the world watched the ruination of the city and its residents, noted education scholar, Gloria Ladson-Billings, was attending a conference in London. While watching the news coverage in the hotel lobby, she was asked to comment about what people were seeing in the news coverage following the storm, she answered, “Actually, the only difference between the people you are seeing on television today and their status two weeks ago is now they’re wet!”

The days, weeks, months, and years that followed Hurricane Katrina exemplify disaster capitalism – the policy of advancing neoliberal economic policies that seek profit during a time of crisis. These policies include the complete takeover of the schools whereby New Orleans becomes the first all-charter school district in the country – with questionable success.

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These are my reflections for today.

7/23/21

Recent publication: William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator. Peter Lang Publishing. Available on amazon.com

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[i] Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Now They’re Wet: Hurricane Katrina as a Metaphor for Social and Educational Neglect,” Voices in Urban Education, V’U’E’, no. 10 (Winter, 2006): 5-10.

Protection from the ‘isms’

Today’s excerpt from William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans. is from Chapter 1, titled “A Fortress at 3811 North Galvez.

William Frantz Public School: a “protection for democracy” and a “fortification against encroachment of those terrible ‘isms.’” Speakers proclaimed these exact words at the school’s dedication ceremony in September 1938, and the Orleans Parish School Board president predicted the school would be a kingdom of learning in which children would be taught right from wrong. To describe these words as foretelling is an understatement. What happened to William Frantz Public School over the next 80 years challenged the idyllic notions of the speakers.[i] Given the political climate of the time, the “isms” the speaker was likely referencing were communism, socialism, and fascism. Little did anyone know it would be racism and opportunism that would be the threatening “isms.” Racism embedded in the fabric of the neighborhood, Orleans Parish School District, New Orleans, and the State of Louisiana threatened the school in 1960, and forty-five years later opportunism extended the threat and made an onslaught against the traditions of public education. Nor could they foresee William Frantz Public School as the stage on which citizens of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the United States would fiercely debate how to best protect democracy, what would be considered right and wrong, and how to sustain public education.

This school was built as a neighborhood school for White children and named after William Frantz (1845–1930), a French Quarter jeweler who lived in New Orleans most of his life. A successful business owner and established civic leader, Frantz served as a member and at one time as vice president of the Orleans Parish School Board between 1901 and 1920.

The family of Lee Harvey Oswald was the most infamous of the neighborhood’s residents. Oswald’s mother purchased a new home on Alvar St. directly across the street from the school in 1938, the same year the school opened. Oswald’s older brothers attended William Frantz Public School (WFPS), but the family moved from the neighborhood before Lee Harvey reached school-age.

Behind this building and built prior to WFPS was Johnson Cornelius Lockett Public School on nearby Law Street for the community’s elementary-aged Black children. As was typical for many southern cities, neighborhoods and schools were designated as either White or Black, based on the racial composition.

At the time of WFPS opening, district Superintendent Nicholas Bauer not only accepted segregation but also White supremacy. Bauer had served on the Board of Curators for the Louisiana State Museum, an organization that avowed White supremacy as a reasonable tenet of government. Bauer publicly affirmed White supremacy when he stated his beliefs that educating Black students was a difficult problem because they had questionable character and academic capacity for only a fifth-grade education.[i]

Bauer and others spoke these important words, “a protection for democracy”, and “a kingdom of learning in which children would be taught right from wrong”. Between 1938 and 2018, a lot happened to show these statements not to be true. The history of William Frantz Public School is relevant to the understanding of what happened to public education – not only in New Orleans, but also throughout the U.S.

These are my reflections for today.

6/18/21

Recent publication: William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator. Peter Lang Publishing. Available on amazon.com

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[i] “Dedicate School as ‘Protection’ for Democracy—Ceremonies Are Conducted for William Frantz Building,” Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), October 6, 1938.

https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/values.html.

[i] Kennedy, “History of Public Education.”

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Pandemic capitalism

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said he wanted to spend $32 million in federal coronavirus aid to fund vouchers to help parents afford private school tuition in the upcoming school year. This is what advocates have tried to push through the Legislature for 16 years. All it took was a supportive secretary of education and a pandemic. In New Orleans, it took a hurricane.

Governor McMaster seen here at a press conference without a mask. (postandcourier.com)

One judge in the state was not having it. On Wednesday, a judge temporarily blocked McMaster’s decision to use $32 million of federal coronavirus aid to fund the vouchers. Orangeburg County Circuit Judge Edgar Dickson granted a request for a temporary restraining order until arguments can be heard next week.

Attorney Skyler Hutto argued in a court filing that McMaster’s plan violates a portion of the state constitution preventing the government from funding private or religious education.

In response to the decision, McMaster’s spokesman Brian Symmes said, “Working families in South Carolina are struggling to make ends meet during this pandemic and every parent should have the opportunity to choose the educational instruction that best suits their child’s needs” (postandcourier.com).

To me, that’s like saying Today is Friday and I like pizza.  I do not see the connection between struggling families trying to make ends meet and providing opportunities for families to choose educational instruction.

Maria Aselage, The Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston’s spokeswoman argued the court order “hurts low- and middle-income parents who want to continue sending their children to the school of their choice. Every child deserves the opportunity to learn in the educational environment that best suits his or her needs, whether it is a public, private, or religious school,” Aselage said (postandcourier.com).

Every child does deserve the opportunity to learn in an environment that best suits his/her needs but NOT at the expense of public funding for public education. Taking money away from children who need it the most is wrong. Funding private and parochial schools with federal funding is wrong. If parents/students/politicians are not happy with the quality of education, then fix it.

In a study ranking states by the quality of their public schools, South Carolina ranked 40th overall and only slightly higher than states such as Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana (thestate.com).

South Carolina is not alone in a scam to use federal funding to pay for vouchers. Nationwide, charter schools received as much as $2 billion in PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loans, says Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education. That number is likely a low estimate, as loans in lower amounts are not made public, she says (npe.org).

The PPP funds were intended to support small businesses and organizations that could not make payroll after a loss in revenue due to Covid-19. Charter schools never lost their revenue. According to Burris, “We know of no other organizations that are fully funded by taxpayer dollars, that are also receiving PPP funding. Charter schools did not have the interruption in income that prevented them from meeting payroll.” (npe.org).

Burris acknowledged, “To our way of thinking, this is really unethical. The PPP is designed to support paycheck protection. Not bonds, not adding a wing to a charter school. One purpose—to prevent the nonprofits from laying people off because they are no longer getting the income” (npe.org).

Arizona Charter Schools received nearly $100 million in PPP, and their academic ranking is 49 (wallethub.com).

North Carolina charter schools and/or their management organizations have received between $21.1 million and $53.6 million in PPP funds. North Carolina is ranked 43 (wallethub.com).

Charters seem to be good at spending money on non-academic expenses; scandal after scandal after scandal of overpaid administrators, no accountability, misappropriation of funding,… the list goes on. Many might read this and think MORE money is needed for charters, but with no accountability, there’s no measure of their academic success (which in most cases doesn’t exist). And the bottom line on charters is that they are funneling taxpayers money away from urban public schools.

And now, charter schools and charter management organizations are taking PPP money meant to help struggling small businesses.

According to a recent report from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, “…initial disclosures from the Small Business Administration of PPP loans approved between the amounts of $150,000 and $10 million are disturbing. Private schools — both religious and secular — received between $2.67 billion and $6.47 billion in forgivable PPP loans” (Hawks, Baptist News Global).

This, of course, has the secretary of education written all over it. Private schools have benefited from the federal assistance through PPP, along with the DOE regulations to assist them. The CARES Act created two funding streams for public K-12 schools: the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund and the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (Hawks, Baptist News Global).

In order to create new funding streams for private schools, DeVos and her department have misinterpreted the law by setting aside millions of dollars earmarked for public schools to create a new federal voucher program to pay for education outside the public schools and specified the CARES Act to ensure that nonpublic schools were included in the funds (ed.gov).

Charter schools claim to be public schools when they want tax dollars, but now they can be private and take money meant to keep employees in struggling small businesses. Isn’t that double dipping?  This is a clear example of pandemic capitalism- trying to get something during a pandemic that would, under normal circumstances, not be attainable – taking full advantage of the pandemic for self-serving purposes. DeVos is fulfilling one of the education policy goals of this administration; the privatization of public schools. Look at what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Here’s a link if  you would like to write to Congress to tell them to stop charter schools from getting SBA funds intended to help small businesses. I encourage you to do so.

These are my reflections for today.

8/7/20

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William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator (August 2020 release) Peter Lang Publishing.

 

Florida, Missouri, Rhode Island

This.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, in a statement requiring all Florida Pubic Schools to reopen, compared reopening public schools to reopening Walmart and Home Depot.  “We spent months saying that there were certain things that were essential. That included fast-food restaurants. It included Walmart. It included Home Depot” (CNN).

DeSantis, a strong ally of Donald Trump, made the statement after Trump said he would consider putting pressure on governors to reopen schools this fall. Florida is currently experiencing a severe COVID-19 outbreak. “I’m confident if you can do Home Depot, if you can do Walmart, if you can do these things, we absolutely can do the schools. I want our kids to be able to minimize this education gap that I think has developed,” he said (The Hill).

Florida teachers are suing, citing several factors;  the state is in the midst of a surge in the pandemic and neither the state nor the federal government has put up the money to provide even minimal safety for students and adults.

Last Friday Missouri Governor Mike Parson, said that coronavirus would infect children and we all just have to put up with it. “If they do get COVID-19, which they will,” Parson said, “they’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.” (CNN).

A new study out of South Korea suggests that while young children (10 and younger) tend to transmit the virus less well than adults, those 10 to 19 years old spread the virus in ways very similar to adults. Of the study, The New York Times wrote:

The findings suggest that as schools reopen, communities will see clusters of infection take root that include children of all ages, several experts cautioned.

“‘I fear that there has been this sense that kids just won’t get infected or don’t get infected in the same way as adults and that, therefore, they’re almost like a bubbled population,’ said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.”

Rhode Island Governor Gina M. Raimondo said that the science around the coronavirus outbreak will guide her decisions to reopen public schools. “As part of her Trump-like doctrine to return to schools, she ordered all of the school districts to develop “their own” plan for returning to the classroom.  This chaotic approach of asking beaten down administrators and faculty to develop their own plans with little support has been an exercise in futility and frustration” (Boston Globe).

Raimondo forced each of the school districts in her state to spend the summer to create multiple instruction plans — plans that most colleges cannot implement.  Instead of providing templates and customizable plans for schools to use, 30 plus districts each created at least three different plans — “now we have nearly 100 plans” (GoLocalProv.com).

Raimondo said, “We’re going to do the hard work, the painstakingly difficult work of readying our schools, our buses, our communities, to where you’ll be safer in school” (GoLocalProv.com).

Late this week the CDC released guidelines for the safe re-opening of schools. Director Dr. Robert Redfield said, “It is critically important for our public health to open schools this fall” (CNN.com).  The new guidelines favor opening schools, saying children  are less likely than adults to spread it and suffer from being out of school.  But the CDC also recommends local officials should consider closing schools or keeping them closed.

“Communities can support schools staying open by implementing strategies that decrease a community’s level of transmission. However, if community transmission levels cannot be decreased, school closure is an important consideration. Plans for virtual learning should be in place in the event of a school closure” (CNN.com).

The CDC also said, “It is important to consider community transmission risk as schools reopen. Evidence from schools internationally suggests that school re-openings are safe in communities with low transmission rates” (CNN.com).

Florida, Missouri, Rhode Island.

 

These are my reflections for today.

7/24/20

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William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator (August 2020 release) Peter Lang Publishing.

 

 

 

 

What are charter schools up to these days?

Strange News. News of the Weird. Not my terms, but appropriate to this latest edition of what are charter schools up to these days?  Here we go.

Orlando FL: In a newly released video, an Orlando police officer was seen arresting a 6-year old girl and putting zip ties around her wrists (NBCNews.com).  Police responded to a call from the school that the 6-year-old had “battered three staff members by kicking and punching them” at her school, the Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy in Orlando.

The video, released by the child’s family, shows the child being put in the back of the police car. The officer went back inside the school, where at least one employee is seen wiping away tears and asking,  “Are the restraints necessary?”  “Yes,” the officer replies. “And if she was bigger, she would’ve been wearing regular handcuffs” (NBCNews.com).

The police officer was fired within days of the incident, which occurred in September.

New York, NY: Success Academy, New York’s largest charter chain, run by Eva Moskowitz, is no stranger to bad press. This week, Liz Baker, a spokesperson for Success Academy resigned in protest. In her resignation letter, Baker said,  “I am resigning because I can no longer defend Success Academy’s racist and abusive practices”. Further, Baker said these practices are “detrimental to the emotional well being” of  its students  In the strongest statement in her resignation letter, Baker said,  “I strongly believe that attending any Success Academy school is detrimental to the emotional well-being of children.” (Chalkbeat.org). More on Eva Moskowitz can be found here.

FREDERICK, MARYLAND: The Board of Contributors of the Frederick News Post called for legalizing privately-operated online charter schools as a matter of choice. It makes no sense to legalize privately-operated online charter schools for so many reasons.  Stanford University’s CREDO produced several studies showing that academic performance in privately-operated online charter schools is consistently abysmal. They enroll as many students as possible through heavy advertising and marketing, but their graduation rates are low, their test scores are low, and their attrition rates are high (Ravitch, 2020).

While findings vary for each student, the results in CREDO’s report show that the majority of online charter students had far weaker academic growth in both math and reading compared to their traditional public school peers. To conceptualize this shortfall, it would equate to a student losing 72 days of learning in reading and 180 days of learning in math, based on a 180-day school year. This pattern of weaker growth remained consistent across racial-ethnic sub-populations and students in poverty. (CREDO).

Charter school advocates and the Secretary of Education believe that schools are like businesses and parents and students are customers who shop for education. (DissidentVoice).

To truly understand the issue with online-charter schools, here’s some information:

• More than half the states in the US do not offer cyber charter schools.
• Maryland is home to about 45 charter schools enrolling roughly 23,000 students.
• Nearly 70% of these schools are located in urban settings.
• Approximately 900,000 students attend Maryland’s more than 1,400 public schools in 24 public school systems.

The largest virtual charter chain is K12 Inc. virtual charter chain, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with revenues exceeding $1 billion this year.

Executives earn big salaries. one of K12’s founders, Ron Packard, was paid $5 million a year but has since moved on to lead other charter chains. Michael Milken was an early investor in K12 and Bill Bennett was a prominent leader until he made racist remarks that caused him to be removed (Ravitch, 2020).

GLENDALE, AZ:  Justin Dye, Principal of Heritage Elementary Charter School in Glendale was fired after an employee posted to social media a series of anti-Semitic and racist messages the principal had sent to the employee. Danielle Elkin, Heritage’s events planner made the accusation. Elkin provided screenshots of the offending posts:  “What do you get when you cross a black person and a Jewish person? The loudest/cheapest thief in town. He steals pennies, holds on to them, and then screams about it to everybody. I just made that up on the fly, what do you guys thing? Clever?” Dye wrote in a text to Elkin and her sister. Elkin is Jewish. Dye then texted: “Wait I changed my answer. A basketball player who’s too greedy to pass.”  Dye then sent another text that said: “Wait wait wait, a prisoner who refuses to spend a quarter for a phone call.” (AZCentral.com).

Elkin said she was hesitant to take her concerns to Dye’s supervisor because school executives had stood by Dye the last two years through the allegations of sexual harassment and that Dye had shorted teachers on their pay. Two years ago, Mr. Dye was accused of sexually harassing female staff and not paying bonuses to teachers who had earned them AZCentral.com).

NORTH CAROLINA: A recent study released by Duke Law School shows the cost of the state’s voucher program is $160 million dollars – money diverted from the public schools with no accountability.  Most voucher schools are religious. Since voucher schools do not participate in the state’s accountability program, their academic progress cannot be assessed.

The program is an opportunity for public funding to go to parents who want their children to go to a religious school, with no regard to the quality of the education the children receive.

Some of the  conclusions from the Duke study:

• The North Carolina voucher program is well designed to promote parental choice, especially for parents who prefer religious education for their children. It is poorly designed, however, to promote better academic outcomes for children and is unlikely to do so over time.
• The public has no information on whether the students with vouchers have made academic progress or have fallen behind. No data about the academic achievement of voucher students are available to the public, not even the data that are identified as a public record in the law.
• The State Education Assistance Authority (SEAA), which administers the program, concluded that the reporting of test scores produces no meaningful information. Therefore, the SEAA has discontinued requiring schools to produce the data and it no longer publishes any reports on test scores.
• The number of children receiving vouchers has increased ten-fold since it began: from approximately 1,200 in the first year to 12,300 in 2019-20. Although the program has attracted additional students each year, the rate of growth has been less than the General Assembly anticipated and not all of the appropriation has been spent.
•  Unlike private schools in most states with similar voucher programs, North Carolina private schools accepting voucher money need not be accredited, adhere to state curricular or graduation standards, employ licensed teachers, or administer state End-of-Grade tests.
• The amount of the voucher is small, about $4,200, not enough for a high-quality education, but just right for an inferior religious school without certified teachers. This is what the NC General Assembly wants. (Ravitch).

With much of the focus in education on the reopening of K-12 schools post- pandemic, it’s important not to lose sight on the lack of transparency and accountability in the charter sector. Mrs. DeVos keeps pushing for more public funding for more charter and voucher programs, likely because no one is watching.

These are my reflections for today.

6/26/20

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William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator (summer 2020 release) Peter Lang Publishing.

Corps members, not teachers

Today I am re-posting a blog from Mercedes Schneider @deutsch29blog about Teach for America. But before you read her blog, here’s a bit of background on Teach for America.

Teach For America was founded in 1990 on the belief in the potential of all children and their right to an excellent education. Teach For America finds and trains outstanding leaders—known as corps members—who commit to expanding educational opportunity, beginning with at least two years of teaching in an under-resourced public school. 

Sounds lofty, right? The organization actively seeks college graduates, with no requirement of a teaching degree, and not necessarily looking at teaching as a career. Graduates must attend a 5-week training where they learn about teaching in an urban environment, and commit two years of service to disadvantaged communities. The organization hopes that the personal experiences will motivate “corps members” as they’re called to either continue in education or become strong advocates for education reform in the business and public sectors.

Critics (like me) of the organization feel strongly that 5-weeks of training at a TFA institute cannot give corps members adequate time to prepare for classroom situations and cannot possibly replace the guided clinical practice (student-teaching) requirements all teachers must meet for state and national licensing requirements.

Here is Mercedes’ blog:

Teach for America’s 2020 Trainees to Enter the Classroom with Only Tutoring Experience

June 9, 2020

In this time of school closures and social distancing, teacher temp agency, Teach for America (TFA), has decided to “train” its 2020 corps members online.

As former TFAer-gone-career teacher, Gary Rubinstein, writes, pre-COVID, TFA trainees actually teach on average one hour per day over the course of four weeks during the summer, in classrooms which they share with four other TFA trainees.

As such, TFA trainees have no experience teaching even one entire school day in a classroom in which the trainee is responsible for all instruction.

And now, with the social restrictions and classroom complexities introduced by the coronavirus, TFA’s 2020 trainees will have no experience being in charge of a classroom– not even an entire classroom online.

Their big exposure to students will come in the form of online tutoring via a summer reading program offered by Springboard Collective, a nonprofit started by TFA alum Alejandro Gibes de Gac (Springboard Collective derives from an entrepreneurial pitch at TFA’s 20th Anniversary Summit in 2010. TFA offered Gibes de Gac $5,000 in seed money to fund the pilot in 2011.)

From Springboard’s June 05, 2020, press release:

Springboard Collaborative is excited to announce a joint partnership with Teach for America (TFA) to launch a free virtual learning experience for students. The program is a part of Springboard’s Learning Accelerators (SLA) program. During the months of June and July students in grades Pre-K through 4th grade will work with a Teach For America corps member to work toward measurable reading goals. Springboard Collaborative is committed to bridging the literacy gap for students and is offering this free program to 8,400 students. …

During the SLA, parents and students will be matched with a virtual teacher from TFA. They will receive customized reading tips, progress updates, e-book access, and access to the Springboard Connect web-based app.

Note the slight shift in info on the Springboard application (link name of “tfaforms”):

Through our partnership with Teach For America, families will be matched with a TFA corps member (teacher-in-training) who will be by your side from the goal-setting session in week one all the way through to the end-of program celebration. You’ll also receive customized reading tips, progress updates, e-books, and access to the Springboard Connect app!

The latter identifies the TFAer as not a teacher but a “corps member” who is a “teacher-in-training,” and it is written in such a manner as to separate the “custom reading tips,” etc. from the TFAer– (i.e., advice originates with the app, not with the the TFA trainee.) In other words, the press release leads the public into believing tutoring is happening by a “teacher,” and the actual application includes language closer to the truth.

Reading is important, and high-calibre, after-school and summer reading opportunities for underserved children are indeed valuable– but what we have with this Springboard-TFA offering appears to be little more than a slick substitute for TFA’s already-anemic student teaching.

 

My argument against this organization stems from my professional opinion that the most effective teachers in urban schools come from traditional teacher preparation programs, and include a solid foundation of theory, pedagogy, and guided fieldwork experiences in P-12 classrooms. Training effective teachers to work in urban classrooms may bring sustainability to these schools by recruiting trained, licensed teachers who are better prepared to narrow the achievement gap that exists between high and low income schools. Staffing schools with college graduates who are not required to have a degree in education or a teaching license, must fulfill only a two-year commitment before moving on, and have 5-weeks of training, as is the case with TFA is a disservice to students in urban schools, the teaching profession,  and does nothing to create the much needed sustainability of effective and highly-qualified teachers in low-income communities.

I’ve always said when middle- high-income suburban schools start hiring TFA ‘corps members’ instead of licensed teachers, I might reconsider my thoughts on the organization. Rather, TFA only places in low-income schools with minority students. Why is that? Why is it okay to match kids growing up in poverty with college graduates who lack pedagogical knowledge or teaching experience? Five weeks is not enough to scratch the surface of what teachers need to prepare for teaching – albeit in an urban district.

Hanushek (2004) said, “Experienced teachers are, on average,more effective at raising student performance than those in their early years of teaching. This gives rise to the concern that too many teachers leave the profession after less than a full career and that too many leave troubled inner-city schools for suburban ones.” 

I’m sure there are corps members who are effective in the classroom and remain beyond their two year commitment. However, children should not be an experiment.  While teacher education programs (now more commonly referred to as Educator Prep Programs or EPP’s) can certainly do more to prepare students to be effective teachers in urban environments to further support sustainability, the answer to narrowing the achievement gap and creating sustainability begins with putting highly qualified and certified teachers in the classrooms – those who have gone through much more than 5-weeks of training and with a promise to stay only two years and move on to prominent positions in educational reform. There’s a reason they don’t call them teachers.

These are my reflections for today.

6/19/20

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William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator (summer 2020 release) Peter Lang Publishing.