http://allonpolitics.allongeorgia.com/a-georgia-attorneys-open-letter-to-sen-johnny-isakson/

A Georgia attorney’s open letter to Sen. Johnny Isakson

January 29, 2017

The following article is an open letter opinion piece submitted by Georgia attorney Jane Robbins. The views expressed below do not necessarily reflect those of AllOnGeorgia.

For years parents have fought the Common Core national standards, which have survived in Georgia under the misnomer “Georgia Standards of Excellence.” The resistance transcends the standards themselves and addresses also their underlying philosophy – that the purpose of education is to create a workforce, and schools should therefore train students in “skills” rather than academic knowledge. This workforce-development philosophy also holds that it’s never too early for the government to begin this training – preschoolers are fair game.

In questioning U.S. Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos at her Senate hearing recently, Sen. Johnny Isakson adopted this children-as-widgets world view. Did Georgians who voted to re-elect the Senator in November realize they endorsed an ally of the statist progressive-education establishment?

There are numerous problems with the idea that education should be designed for workforce development. First, the practical problems – how does the government predict what jobs will exist and what skills they’ll require when students graduate? How does the government determine which students will be interested in which jobs and therefore will need what type of training, especially since many students don’t decide on a career until early adulthood? (Georgia seeks to solve that problem by nudging students toward a “career pathway” as early as grade 6, an approach of self-evident madness.)

Progressive statists also argue that the 21st century changes everything, that it’s now insufficient to give students the classical education – great literature, mathematics, history, science, art – that schools used to offer. But if that education was so deficient, how did men and women who received it go on to establish empires, create breathtaking works of art, generate untold societal wealth, and land on the moon? A student trained for a particular type of job will flounder if he heads in a different direction; a student with a genuine education will be equipped to take on anything.

More profoundly, the workforce-development model ignores that students are human beings, not cogs in a machine. It is, as Professor Anthony Esolen says, “a vision which is strictly utilitarian, man with the soul amputated.” But this is what Common Core and workforce-developers have imposed. 

Nevertheless, policy-makers on both the left and the right have adopted this view — the left, perhaps, because such a scheme maximizes government power to operate a managed economy and control individual lives, and the right because Big Business promotes any “education” system that promises a pipeline of workers who have been trained on the taxpayers’ dime.

Whatever motivates Isakson’s position on this issue, here’s what he said to DeVos at the hearing (about 1:02:14 on the tape): “We have to come up with the programs necessary to train our kids to be able to do the jobs of the 21st century.”

Disturbingly, he made this statement in the context of discussing . . . preschool. He declared (at around 1:00:26) that he wants to  “work towards requiring 4-year-old pre-kindergarten for every student in the country . . . .” It wasn’t clear if he meant requiring toddlers to be sent to preschool, or requiring states to offer such “early learning” to parents who want it. 

But either interpretation is troubling. If the former, Isakson clearly isn’t familiar with the studies showing the ineffectiveness of or even harm done by taking little ones from their parents for hours every day. (Yes, some studies suggest otherwise, but experts such as pediatrician Dr. Karen Effrem have demonstrated why their conclusions are flawed. And even if the evidence is mixed, parents have the right to protect their children from any system that may not be in their best interests.) And if he merely meant the federal government should require states to offer preschool to willing participants, where is the federal authority to do that? The Constitution gives the federal government no role – none – in education policy, so Isakson’s suggestion that states should be “required” to do anything is anti-constitutional and therefore anti-conservative.

Isakson also extolled the benefits of using state money to pay for private but government-approved preschool. “If you get the private sector making an investment in public education and have seamless standards that everybody commits to,” government can turn every private provider into a government agency. Because what are those “seamless standards” the private preschools would have to adopt? Common Core – workforce-development for 4-year-olds.

Maybe Isakson simply hasn’t thought through his positions on education. That’s unfortunate, since he serves on the Senate committee that (unconstitutionally) guides education policy. Or maybe he has, in which case his claims of being a conservative are revealed as nonsense. Either way, Georgians lose.

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Jane Robbins is an attorney and a senior fellow with the American Principles Project. She has crafted federal and state legislation designed to restore the constitutional autonomy of states and parents in education policy, and to protect the rights of religious freedom and conscience. She has published numerous works about these issues and has testified before the legislatures of eleven states. She is a graduate of Clemson University and the Harvard Law School.

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http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/01/k12_drain_this_swamp.html#ixzz4WxtSAItr

K-12: Drain This Swamp

January 27, 2017

By Bruce Deitrick Price

Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp in Washington.  This task is especially urgent in that large, malodorous part of the swamp known as Education.

The Education Establishment makes everything murky and unproductive by an endless spew of jargon, incoherent theories, goofy methods, phony research, and new names for failed ideas.  Finally, no two Americans can talk constructively about anything in education.  It's as if they are talking across vast linguistic and cultural barriers, not over coffee at Starbucks.  Education is now the fog-shrouded domain of dumbing down.  Pervasive murkiness is a big part of the reason why so much educational reform remains stymied.  Nothing moves fast in a swamp.

Here, then, is a simple formula for quickly draining the educational swamp: eliminate all the counterproductive ideas introduced over the last 85 years.  That's it.  These bad ideas, like the viruses in your computer, did not appear by accident.  They were systematically and deliberately placed in the schools by John Dewey's socialist "change agents."  The good news is that these bad ideas can be removed in that same deliberate way – just as a technician removes viruses from your computer.  Presto: schools will be better and cheaper.

Start by eliminating any reading instruction that is not phonics.  (That would include such folderol as Whole Word, Whole Language, Sight-Words, Balanced Literacy, High-Frequency Words, Dolch Words, Fry Words, and others.)  Systematic phonics teaches a simple sequence: kids learn the alphabet; they learn that each letter stands for a sound; they learn to blend those sounds.  This process moves much faster than many people might realize, given the current low level of performance.  Phonics experts say most children learn to read in the first grade, and usually by the midpoint of first grade.  If children aren't learning to read in the first grade, you know you are in a swamp.

(To accelerate reading and other academic activities, children should learn cursive handwriting.  They may or may not use this skill later in life; this doesn't matter.  Cursive serves a vital purpose in the early years of school: it makes children more precise, careful, and observant.  Learning cursive speeds up both physical and cognitive abilities.)

Discard the last vestiges of New Math, Reform Math, and Common Core Math.  Despite superficial differences, these pedagogies agree that basic skills need not be mastered, instruction should spiral wildly from one topic to another, non-standard methods should be emphasized, and if every student ends up dependent on a calculator, that's fine.  The frustration level is very high; these dysfunctional methods typically make children cry and adults scream.

The biggest boondoggle in public schools is called Constructivism.  (Like any good criminal, it's known by a bunch of aliases, such as Project-Based Learning, Experiential Method, Discovery Method, and others.)  The idea behind all these names is brilliantly perverse.  Here it is: teachers must not teach.  They can hang around in the back of the room.  They can murmur approval, but they must not teach directly to the students.  Students are expected to teach themselves.  Almost everything labeled Constructivist should be thrown out.  Teachers must themselves be well educated; they can then be let loose to do their job.

Another idea that should be eliminated, for the most part, is called Cooperative Learning.  Children work in small groups.  They think as one, create as one, and succeed or fail as one.  Here we have socialist world-building inside each classroom.  Socialists love this idea.  However, as you can imagine, students lose the ability to think independently and to solve problems by themselves.  Furthermore, teachers don't have a good read on which kids are advancing at a proper pace and which need help.

Another prejudice to discard as soon as possible is the one against memorization.  Wouldn't it be better if children actually acquire knowledge, an outcome collectivist ideologues disdain?  Apparently, their goal is that all children end up equally empty-headed and mediocre.  Ideally, children would again be able to memorize multiplication tables, poetry, dates, famous people, place names, spelling, grammar, anything they would be better off knowing.  Let education begin!

Still another content-killer is the sophistry called self-esteem.  If Mike can spell Mississippi and Ted cannot, Ted will feel bad.  This can't be allowed.  So what does the school do?  It makes sure Mike doesn't learn to spell any more long words.  The acquisition of knowledge is slowed down so slower kids will feel okay about themselves, but in return, they are locked in place forever.  Meanwhile, the smarter kids are taught to accept low goals and standards.  This one pathetic little "virus" can crush a school system all by itself.

Another in-your-face sophistry is called Multiculturalism, which is often partnered with Relevance.  Multiculturalism says kids can study only foreign cultures.  This leads to the absurdity that American children know the names of Chinese rivers but don't know the name of the Mississippi.  Relevance cuts from the other direction, insisting that children should study only the world they live in.  If interpreted narrowly, this approach keeps children from learning foreign countries, ancient history, and anything the child does not encounter every day.  In practice, anything you want to add to a K-12 curriculum can be dismissed because it's not Multicultural or it's not Relevant.  In consequence, very little is taught in our public schools.

QED: Our Education Establishment is diabolically clever.

Let's also throw out the idea, long ago popularized by "progressive" educators, that if a classroom is confused, disrupted, and not very different from a playground or lunatic asylum, the children will learn faster because it will be oh, so creative.  This might be true occasionally; more typically, this is just a sophistry in defense of chaos.  Send children outside for physical activity. In the classroom, let children run and play intellectually.  Create a mood that will encourage serious learning.  Disorderly, dangerous classrooms reveal that the Education Establishment is not serious about learning.

Our high-level educators are obsessed with social engineering, not so much with academic progress.  I believe that all these bad ideas were injected into the schools as a way of putting the brakes on intellectual success.  The biggest brake is obviously prolonged illiteracy.  If kids can't read, they can't learn.  The other gimmicks enumerated so far, when piled on top of semi-literacy, create the ineffective, horribly wasteful K-12 we have now.

You can't ask parents to be more involved when the system is incomprehensible by design.  The Education Establishment seems to love strategies that don't work, and then murkiness to cover up this tragic truth.  If we want a rebirth of education, we need far more transparency and clarity.  Only then can parents and community leaders understand what's happening to the children.  Only then can the country have the schools we need.

Bruce Deitrick Price explains theories and methods on his education site Improve-Education.org.  For info on his four new novels, see his literary site Lit4u.com.

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http://www.georgiapolicy.org/2017/01/new-study-finds-georgia-underreports-public-school-spending/

New Study Finds Georgia Underreports Public School Spending

GEORGIA PUBLIC POLICY FOUNDATION NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
January 26, 2017

Contact: Benita Dodd
benitadodd@georgiapolicy.org | (404) 256-4050 

New Study Finds Georgia Underreports Public School Spending

Atlanta – For decades, Georgia’s Department of Education has underreported by billions of dollars what the state spends on public schools, according to an Issue Analysis released today at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s annual National School Choice Week event.

The report, “Balancing the Books in Education,” by Foundation Senior Fellow and Kennesaw State University economist Dr. Benjamin Scafidi, notes that official state websites give the impression that taxpayers spend billions of dollars less on K-12 public education than is actually spent.

For example, while the Georgia Department of Education website reports spending figures of $15.665 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2016, Georgia reported a total amount of $19.158 billion in public education spending to other government agencies, Scafidi found.

With an estimated $3.5 billion in FY 2016 public school spending omitted from the state website, it seems spending per public school student was $9,020 when, in fact, the state spent $11,031 – more than 22 percent more – per student.

“Clearly, this ‘missing money’ clouds Georgians’ understanding about how much and where public education dollars are being spent,” Scafidi said.

He found that between 1988 and 2014, Georgia students saw their funds increase by 56 percent on a per-student, inflation-adjusted basis. That increase did not lead to an increase in teacher salaries (which actually declined slightly) but to a “staffing surge,” according to the Issue Analysis.

The staff increase in teachers and other school personnel surged ahead of what was needed to accommodate the student enrollment growth, and this had a large opportunity cost, according to the Issue Analysis.

“Had Georgia public schools increased the number of non-teachers at the same rate as the increase in students, Georgia public schools would have seen $1.08 billion in annual, recurring savings,” Scafidi writes.

“These funds could have been used, among other things, to give teachers a permanent raise of almost $10,000 per year or to give $8,000 education savings accounts (ESAs) to the families of more than 135,000 students.”

Scafidi points out that the underreporting has occurred for “at least the past 20 years.” He urges the Georgia Department of Education to immediately begin reporting total revenue and expenditure data for current and past years, and to provide the data “in an easily accessible, prominent and user-friendly way.”

“Government agencies already have the data, given that the information is reported in full to the federal government,” Scafidi said of his findings. “It makes no sense to withhold information or keep two sets of books. That’s inefficient and results in incomplete numbers cited in the media, in litigation and by policymakers.”

Worse, he notes, when traditional public school spending is underreported, the funds to school choice programs such as charter schools are further reduced because their allocations are tied to (and less than) that of traditional public schools.

“Without an accurate accounting of how much is already spent, too many Georgians believe the answer to the state’s education challenges lies in more funding,” said Foundation President Kelly McCutchen. “Yet several states are spending less per pupil with better results. Dr. Scafidi’s eye-opening study reinforces that transparency, wiser spending and competition through choice will improve education for Georgia’s children.”

Access the study here; to arrange an interview with Dr. Scafidi, email info@georgiapolicy.org or call Benita Dodd at 404-256-4050.

About the Georgia Public Policy Foundation: Established in 1991, the Foundation is an independent, state-focused think tank that proposes market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians.

About the researcher: Dr. Benjamin Scafidi is a professor of economics and director of the Education Economics Center at Kennesaw State University. He is also a Senior Fellow with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and a Friedman Fellow with EdChoice. Previously, he served as the Education Policy Advisor to Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue; on the staff of both of Governor Roy Barnes’ Education Reform Study Commissions; as an expert witness for the state of Georgia in school funding litigation; as the first chair of Georgia’s Charter School Commission, and as a member of Georgia’s Charter Advisory Committee. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Virginia and his bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Notre Dame.

About National School Choice Week: National School Choice Week is celebrated annually in January. Georgia Governor Nathan Deal has joined more than 600 elected officials – governors, mayors and county leaders – in issuing a proclamation to declare January 22-28 School Choice Week. A record-breaking 21,392 events are taking place across all 50 states this week to champion choice in education. 

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http://getschooled.blog.myajc.com/2017/01/24/defeated-by-too-many-students-and-scripted-instruction-a-good-teacher-becomes-an-ex-teacher/?ecmp=ajc_social_twitter_2014_getschooled_sfp

Defeated by too many students and scripted instruction, a good teacher becomes an ex-teacher

Maureen Downey•January 24, 2017

By 

Why do teachers leave the classroom?

University of Georgia professor Peter Smagorinsky is back with another interesting column today. He delves into why a dedicated and effective teacher left the profession, focusing on the number of students she was required to teach and the scripted format she was told to follow.

At the recent Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education forum, teacher turnover was deemed a critical issue facing the state in 2017.

“As with the rest of the nation, teacher attrition is a significant issue in Georgia. Approximately 70 percent of teacher hiring statewide is done to replace teachers who have left the workforce. Since 2010, 13 percent of Georgia’s newly hired teachers left after their first year. After five years, 44 percent of those newly hired in 2010 were no longer teaching,” according to GPEE.

And there are fewer new teachers in the pipeline. Between 2010 and 2015, enrollments in Georgia’s teacher education programs declined by 36 percent.

WIth that background, here is the essay:

By Peter Smagorinsky

Fiscal conservatives have often criticized government spending as “throwing money at the problem.” Public education—“government schools” in this nomenclature—is often among those considered over-resourced, as stated by Hoover Institute Senior Fellow Eric Hanushek: “available evidence suggests that there is no relationship between expenditures and the achievement of students and that such traditional remedies as reducing class sizes or hiring better trained teachers are unlikely to improve matters.”

Hanushek and others consider “available evidence” largely to consist of standardized test scores. Bill Gates, for instance, after investing a small fortune in small schools, decided that because test scores didn’t change significantly in the small schools he underwrote, class size is irrelevant. He in turn has invested additional small fortunes (now totaling over $3 billion) in initiatives predicated on the idea that large classes don’t inhibit learning, because test scores remain flat regardless of the number of kids a teacher must manage and instruct each period of the day.

These researchers and financiers rely on “big data” to inform their opinions. These studies rely on statistical evidence, and the bigger the data set, the better.

But the bigger the data set, the less the nuance.

My own research is much smaller in scope. I mostly study single cases in detail. Although some find studying small samples to have questionable potential for generalization, I find it instructive to look closely at the real people who are reduced to numbers in the sort of research that reigns over educational policy.

I recently conducted an interview with a case study participant I’ve been following for seven years, as part of a longitudinal study — a multi-year project that takes into account how one’s thinking develops over time —of how teachers develop understandings of how to teach effectively. This was the final interview for this young woman, because following a very frustrating experience in one of Georgia’s elite school districts, she has left the profession for a career in the hospitality industry.

I have reported on her here in the past, before her return to Georgia, when she taught English in a school in rural South Carolina. She taught there for three years, experiencing both joy and frustration. As she told me recently, in that district, her typical class size was 20 students. She learned all of her students’ names by the second day of school, something she worked hard to accomplish. Her motivation for teaching, she had often said, was to teach kids, more than it was to teach English.

Getting to know her students promptly helped her teach them effectively, because she cared about them as people. Not only did she know her own students quickly, she knew many other kids from hall duty and other interactions. Engaging with kids, even on the days when they had other things on their minds than school, was what had made this profession so appealing to her.

She and her husband had deliberately planned to move back to Georgia to return home to their families. Getting a job in the same district she’d attended as a student was a dream come true. She began the school year with great anticipation. By the end of one semester, she told her principal that she’d finish the year because she had committed to a contract, but wouldn’t be back after that.

In one semester, she’d gotten burned out by the work conditions of what many would regard as a desirable district for a teaching career.

Many of her reasons for leaving her job, and the profession, could be traced to a single source: an oppressive student load. In contrast to classes of 20 in which she quickly learned her students’ names and personalities, she was assigned classes that averaged 35 students, totaling about 175 for a subject, English, in which teachers should optimally assign and grade a lot of writing.

Let’s say that she took one minute each day to devote to each student assigned to her classes. That’s three additional hours a day. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day or week to teach such large numbers in caring, personal ways.

But the time per student was only part of the problem. With so many students, she had trouble learning their names quickly, taking weeks instead of days. Meanwhile, with students getting schedule changes for several weeks into each term, the idea of learning so many names of so many students who might be gone tomorrow rendered that essential value of hers obsolete.

The great waves of students produced additional problems for her as well. Out of 175 students, you’ll have some hardheads, some kids with unseen problems, some kids working long hours after school, and kids with all manner of other reasons for finding schoolwork to be an afterthought. With small class numbers, those kids can become known relatively quickly, and individual attention can be catered to provide them with an encouraging academic plan.

But with enormous classes in which students get lost in the crowd, a teacher might have far less energy for chasing down kids who are disengaged and helping them find a pathway forward in the classroom. If you don’t know them, you can’t possibly know what makes them tick. And the more kids crammed into classrooms, the more likely those kids are to be left behind.

Class size was one of two points of frustration she named. The other was the scripted curriculum that required all teachers of a grade level across the whole district to teach the same thing in the same way on the same day, every day. This teacher, in contrast, had gone through a teacher education program that had taught her how to think about teaching her discipline. Taking instructional planning out of teaching might please teachers who are less invested in the intellectual aspects of teaching.

But to a teacher who finds planning to be highly stimulating, exciting, enjoyable, and fulfilling, teaching a centrally designed instructional script is immensely frustrating. Like the reduction of real kids to test scores, the implementation of a scripted curriculum takes the engaging, interpersonal, relational career of teaching and reduces it to mechanical operation.

A teacher entrusted to exercise her judgment is always playing with ideas, tinkering with lessons, and using her intellect to teach more effectively. Teaching scripted lessons requires no judgment, only fidelity to someone else’s idea of what to do.

The teacher I’m featuring is one you would want working with your own children. She’d wanted to be a teacher since starting first grade, and had dedicated college to teacher education. She’d found her first job both stimulating and frustrating; but when she moved to a district with overwhelming numbers of students and a centralized curriculum that removed her own judgment from instructional decisions, she couldn’t do it any more.

Does class size matter? The answer depends on where you look for evidence.

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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/12/01/hillsdale-college-president-larry-arnn-getting-federal-government-education/

Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn Discusses Getting the Federal Government Out of Education

Hillsdale College

by Dr. Susan Berry1 Dec 2016281

Dr. Larry Arnn explains that because Hillsdale rejects federal funding, it enjoys the freedom to teach its students what they need to know without interference and mandates from the centralized bureaucracy that is the U.S. Department of Education.

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“Federal monies became available to colleges for general purposes around 1960,” Arnn says. “And we started not taking the money back then. By a series of steps they began to offer money directly to colleges and they began to attempt to regulate them more comprehensively.”

Rumored to have been among potential nominees for education secretary in the new Trump administration, Arnn explains that Hillsdale – which was founded in Michigan in 1844 – would not accept federal funds, a situation that came to a head during the Jimmy Carter administration, when some of the school’s students were given some form of federal aid. Eventually, Hillsdale – along with some other schools – received a demand letter from the federal government for compliance with regulations in return for the aid given to their students.

“The threat was a department of education official said, ‘We’re going to close these colleges down,’” Arnn continues, noting that, in response, Hillsdale sued the department and won the lawsuit in an administrative court. Then-Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare Joseph Califano, however, overturned the administrative judge’s ruling.

After a decade of legislation, Hillsdale ultimately lost its argument in the Supreme Court in 1984. The college had already decided, however, that rather than comply with federal demands and unconstitutional regulation, it would replace student federal taxpayer aid with private donations.

Arnn explained Hillsdale officials at the time said they “believe in the free market, and we don’t want to be a creature of the federal government, and we never have been.”

“Over the years, look what’s happened,” Arnn says, “the regulation of colleges and the regulation of everything else is very comprehensive now.”

Asked by Breitbart News about the danger of taxpayer-funded school vouchers bringing in more regulation to private and religious schools, Arnn replied, “That’s right. My position on that is what I understand to be a constitutional position.”

Arnn explained a provision in Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance “gives the biggest subsidy to education that’s ever been given.” In addition to providing the greater part of the land described in the Ordinance for private use, it also provided for a section of land to be used for public purposes for education in each township to be controlled by the states.

“So, that means the founders believed in education and subsidized it,” he states. “But, the question is how did they do that. The way the schools used to work in America is that they were run in the towns. Giving control of education to people who are a long way off from the process is a bad idea. And that’s what we do now.”

“There isn’t anything wrong with public education,” Arnn continues, “but it shouldn’t be centralized and bureaucratized in the way the whole government has been.”

Arnn says he is supportive of charter schools and, in fact, Hillsdale College currently operates 16 nonprofit charter schools around the country that provide a classical education. In 2014, Breitbart News reported on the Hillsdale Barney Charter School Initiative.

“We don’t take any money from those charter schools,” Arnn says, adding:

Whatever we do for them we raise or have. But we believe in those schools, we provide the curriculum, and we help their headmasters, we train their teachers, etc. But we only put those charter schools in states where the charter law enables the independence of the school under a local board to run the school as they please.

“The federal charter law, under the new Secretary of Education, should say the contract should allow the schools to have wide latitude to run themselves the way they want,” Arnn says, acknowledging that Betsy DeVos, President-elect Trump’s nominee for education secretary, is someone he “knows and admires.”

“If you get a charter law like that – and there are states today where the charter law is very good – then you can run a charter school under roughly the same terms schools were originally founded under in America,” he explains. “So, I don’t object to charter schools if they’re not centralized and bureaucratized.”

Breitbart News asked Arnn about states that have experienced difficulties with over-regulation of private and religious schools when vouchers are used and the state demands “accountability” of taxpayer funds, often through outcome measures such as standardized test results – the same ones required of public schools.

“Just remember, of course we have to have a government, and of course we have to have a strong government,” Arnn says. “But there’s more than one kind of such government. And what we have today is nosy government.”

“The government has the force of law, and the way it should regulate is to leave as much discretion as is possible in the hands of the people actually doing the work,” he asserts, “and that is the parents and the teachers who have much greater reason to care about the education of the kids than anybody in the federal bureaucracy.”

Asked about Trump’s campaign rhetoric regarding the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, Arnn said Congress could pass a measure to end the department and Trump could sign it.

“I don’t think they’ll do that,” he admits. “But I think what they should do is something else that will lead to that.”

He explains:

The way the system works, and remember it is a very significant fact that you can read the Constitution all day long and not find the word “education” in there. And yet, in the same summer they were writing the Constitution, Congress passed a law that we know the leading founders all supported reserving land to benefit education. So, we know education was very important to them. And we also know they did not include it in the Constitution. And that’s the reason the federal government doesn’t have direct power to just pass a law and tell everybody the things they have to study.

Arnn continued that if DeVos, who is a known proponent of charter schools, is confirmed as the education secretary, she should ensure that states allow charter schools to be run independently under local boards.

“We have to instead pass laws that give general guidance, introduce variety, and let the competition happen,” he suggests, adding that media should then report on the competition.

“It’s going to take time to fix education, and I think the way you fix it is by introducing the option of doing good schools,” he says.

Arnn agrees with the assertion that the new “bipartisan” Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaced No Child Left Behind, still provides the education secretary with substantial power over the states’ education policy and standards.

“This will be an opportunity for her [DeVos] to put a system in place for options and establish that for a long time, and then I would make the obvious comment, ‘What are we even doing here anymore? Let’s get rid of this department,’” he recommends, adding that if the plan goes well, he could foresee the education department being dismantled in five years.

“If Betsy DeVos has a lot of power, then her successor would have that, too,” he observes. “So, it would be better to get rid of her successor.”

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http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/high-school-apprenticeships-new-path-prosperity

High School Apprenticeships: A New Path to Prosperity

It’s no secret that the college degree has long been considered a path to success. It’s also no secret that those who take that pathway are more often than not ending up in the mire of student debt – and struggling to get out.

This dilemma has caused many to look elsewhere for alternatives to college, particularly apprenticeship or career and technical education. Unfortunately, these ideas are still so cutting edge, that many students must blaze the trail alone with relatively little direction and information.

But individuals like Robert Luddy are seeking to change that. As a recent profile in a Philanthropy Roundtable report explains, Luddy has established a number of engineering career and technical education programs at various private high schools in North Carolina:

“Known as the Luddy Institute of Technology, this track uses a special four-year curriculum throughout high school, and many enrolled students devote the summer between their junior and senior years to an industrial internship. From the outset, students are immersed in the fundamentals of engineering: traditional drafting techniques, then computer-aided design through SolidWorks. The basics of mechanisms, energy, statics, materials, and kinematics. The history of engineering and manufacturing. Automation, computer modeling, robotics, and flexible manufacturing systems.”

According to Luddy, the training this program enables sophomore students to earn certification “which alone would enable them to command between $40,000 and $60,000 as employees.”

But the training doesn’t stop there. By the time students graduate from high school, they have the option to either go on to a traditional college program – presumably with the credentials to hold a job and earn their own way through – or continue on to one of North Carolina’s paid apprenticeship programs, which often incorporate free college into the training.

As the report explains, apprenticeship programs like these could be particularly helpful to young men, who seem to be falling behind in today’s career world:

“Since the 1960s, educational trends have been zipping upward for females—who now significantly outnumber men on college campuses. But males have been suffering and declining on any number of educational measures. Equally, adult men have been getting battered in the labor force, with both rates of employment and levels of pay tumbling for many males.

Expanded tech-oriented training could help boys and men become more successful in K-12 education, in college, in job-winning, and in earnings trajectories—all the areas where males, especially blue-collar males, have been in eclipse.”

These revelations lead me to ask the following questions:

If Luddy is able to successfully train and certify high school students to hold a decent paying job by age 15 or 16, then why in the world are we keeping so many students in their desks for several years beyond that age? Is the drive and interest of many high school students lost (particularly in young men) when we fail to give them opportunities in high school for hands-on training? Would we see a more engaged high school environment if students were trained for real-world jobs in addition to the normal courses in the 3Rs?

Image Credit: Bureau of Land Management bit.ly/1mhaR6e

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http://stopcommoncoreinmichigan.com/2016/11/stop-cc-mi-respectfully-request-president-elect-trump-drain-swamp-pull-plug-betsy-devos/

Stop CC in MI respectfully request President-elect Trump to “drain the swamp” and pull the plug on Betsy DeVos

Karen Braun

We, the leadership team at Stop Common Core in Michigan, respectfully ask President-elect Donald Trump to immediately remove Betsy DeVos’s name from consideration as Secretary of the Department of Education.  We do not make this request lightly but with considerable knowledge regarding her negative influence in Michigan as a proponent of Common Core.

Michigan turned red for Trump for the first time since the 1980’s.  A large number of voters in Michigan were attracted to the Trump campaign because of his emphatic message against Common Core.  Michigan voters know that most Republicans in our state say they are against Common Core but do nothing to stop it.  We believed Trump would be a different kind of Republican and “drain the swamp” in education.  We believed that until the nomination of Betsy DeVos.  DeVos is part of  “the swamp” in Michigan.  She represents both a special interest AND as an influential Republican fought EVERY effort to stop Common Core in Michigan with her money and political influence.  

We respectfully submit that Betsy DeVos’s recent claim that she is against Common Core is not an accurate representation of her actions regarding  Common Core or the competency-based centralized education system the standards help build from prenatal to career.  We have done our “homework” as she encouraged; we support our claim with the following reasons:

1.  Betsy DeVos funds and serves on the board of the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP).
DeVos founded GLEP in 2001 and served as chair until 2008; she currently serves as a board member.  GLEP is a special-interest education political action committee.  One of the stated priorities of GLEP is “implementing” and “maintaining” Common Core “high standards” reform.  The GLEP document “The Conservative Case for Common Core” clearly articulates their support of Common Core.  No retraction has been issued.  Only after President-elect Trump nominated DeVos for Secretary did she attempt to distance herself from the pro-Common Core position of organizations such as GLEP.   She wrote on her very new web page Q & A,

 “Have organizations that I have been a part of supported Common Core? Of course. But that’s not my position,”

DeVos cannot distance herself from GLEP and their position that easily.  As a founder and major donor, DeVos’s mission IS GLEP’s mission.   Now that the standards are implemented in Michigan, GLEP’s mission is to maintain the so called “high standards” and build the assessment and accountability framework around them.

2.  Betsy DeVos and GLEP are lobbyists for Common Core. 
DeVos is a business woman who advocates for education reform in Michigan.   DeVos and GLEP lobbied the Michigan legislature to implement and maintain Common Core and related reforms.   Former MI State Representative, now State School Board member-elect,  Tom McMillin recently spoke to our team about DeVos and her claim that she is against Common Core.  McMillin, a strong opponent of Common Core, recalled that in 2013 DeVos specifically told him she was for Common Core during the very contentious legislative debate to stop implementation.  With the help of DeVos and GLEP,  resolution (HR-11) was abruptly passed through the Senate on a voice vote.  The hasty vote allowed Common Core to continue.  GLEP publicly applauded the resolution and the continued implementation of Common Core.

3.  DeVos and GLEP seek to influence elections in order to continue implementation of a Common Core aligned centralized education system. 

DeVos appeared very depressed and unhappy at the 2016 Republican National Convention during Trump’s acceptance speech. (Photo credit: Tami Carlone)

It is not a secret that Betsy DeVos or GLEP seek to influence elections with endorsements and campaign assistance.  Like all investors, DeVos expects a return on her investment.  Candidates who receive a GLEP endorsement face intense pressure to continue the reforms she desires.  Those reforms include the continued implementation of Common Core or so called, “high standards,” accountability, and school choice.

DeVos did not initially get on board the Trump train. Trump’s anti-common core rhetoric did not match her own position and agenda.  She indicated she would work on down ballot races and to push school choice.   The DeVos definition of school choice is the freedom to choose which Common Core aligned charter school will test and track your child from cradle-to-career. Local and parent control do not exist in DeVos’s education reform model.  Data and government funding drive the decision.  In a nutshell, school choice is centralized control to meet the demands of the state and regional business not the dreams of the child.  If confirmed, DeVos will hire people who share the same vision of common core aligned centralized education system to help her run the Department of Education.   The exact opposite of his goal to “drain the swamp.”

4.  GLEP director Gary Naeyaert threatened legal action against Stop Common Core in Michigan.

Screen capture of email Naeyaert sent to Melanie Kurdys threatening legal action.

In 2014, we began talking about DeVos and GLEP and why their endorsements matter.   We were also tracking candidates who were “for” and “against” Common Core.  We began a roll call of the candidates and noted if they received the GLEP endorsement on our website.   We explained our reasons clearly.  We believed there was “a high correlation between those who accepted the GLEP endorsement and their future votes on legislation.”  On June 8, 2014 we received an email from Gary Naeyaert requesting that we refrain from referencing GLEP or their endorsements in any future communication.  We did not reply.  On June 9, we received a second email:

“Let me be as clear as possible. If you continue to make false statements about [our] organization, you will be hearing from our legal counsel.”  – Gary Naeyaert, Executive Director of GLEP.

These are the intimidating tactics of a bully who is determined to get his way and silence any opposition.  After the 2014 election, Naeyaert bragged on Twitter about the results and sent Karen Braun the following tweet,

@SpunkyBraun If tonight’s election results are a referendum on #CommonCore, looks like we’ll continue implementing them. #miprimary

— GLEP (@GLEP_MI) August 6, 2014

Naeyaert’s actions occurred under the leadership of Betsy DeVos.  Threatening ordinary grassroots moms that oppose DeVos or GLEP and bragging about continued implementation of Common Core is NOT the kind leadership needed if President-elect Trump is serious about fulfilling his campaign promise to get rid of Common Core or removing federal intrusion in education.

5. DeVos or GLEP  have NOT reached out to the Stop Common Core in Michigan team.
They do not owe us a phone call or a follow-up tweet.  But one would think that after fighting us for so long and threatening legal action that either DeVos or Naeyaert would have made some attempt to reach out and let us know they changed their position. They have not. The first time we heard about Betsy DeVos’s new position on Common Core was last week when she posted her statement after the nomination.  Now is not time to trust our children’s educational future to a candidate whose only evidence that she is against Common Core is a single statement on a recently created web page.

6.  DeVos and GLEP have NOT supported Michigan legislation SB 826 or HB 5444 to Repeal and Replace Common Core.
Legislation to repeal and replace Common Core and related assessments was introduced in the spring of 2016.  Neither DeVos nor GLEP have expressed support for the bills.  In fact, GLEP  partnered with pro-Common Core Governor Snyder and others in the Michigan Coalition for Higher Standards to OPPOSE the bills.  The bill quickly passed the Senate Education Committee but has not been voted on by the full Senate.  We believe that GLEP and the coalition’s opposition to SB 826 is a significant reason it has not passed.

7.  Betsy DeVos supports  “high standards” on a national level.
DeVos, like Huckabee and many others, knows that the term “Common Core” has become toxic.  In her statement, she now makes the claim she is against it while still supporting “high standards.”  A change in terminology does not mean a change in mission.  DeVos has never renounced national common “high standards” but understands that they are a necessary component of her goal to deconstruct local/parent control in education.  If Betsy DeVos is confirmed, it is appears that national common “higher standards” will continue unabated regardless of what they are called.

8.    Betsy DeVos’s nomination was praised by stalwart common core advocates Jeb Bush and Michigan Governor Snyder.
Jeb Bush, an unwavering supporter of Common Core, praised the nomination of Betsy DeVos.  That should not be a surprise to anyone.  DeVos serves on the board for Bush’s Foundation For Excellence in Education.   The nomination was also praised by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.  Bush and Snyder have been vocal in their support of Common Core and a “new vision” for “prenatal to life-long learning” seamless education pathway.   Few grassroots activists who are truly anti-Common Core have praised her nomination.  That is telling and speaks louder than any recent website statement about the true vision of Betsy DeVos.

9.   Betsy DeVos will continue the push toward a “new vision” in education.
In his praise of DeVos, Bush referred to her ability to take bold leadership in a “new education vision.”  We very much doubt that he is referring to Trump’s promise to get rid of Common Core which is the opposite of Bush’s plan.   When a pro-Common Core advocate talks about a “new vision” it usually means more control not less.  Common Core (or any common national higher standard) is a necessary component of a new education system.  This vision is  often referred to as school choice.

Betsy DeVos is one of its strongest advocates.   The goal of school choice is a competency-based education system federally-funded in partnership with private organizations and businesses.  Federal dollars and student data follow the child from prenatal to career.  When government funding and data follow the child so does government control over the child’s life.

10.  Betsy DeVos’s recent statement against Common Core is insufficient to counter the weight of evidence over many years during which she worked to see Common Core and related reforms implemented in Michigan.  We have no confidence that she will stop Common Core at the national level and every reason to believe she will continue to “fill the swamp.”

We respectfully ask President-elect Donald Trump to immediately remove Betsy DeVos from consideration as Secretary of the Department of Education.  After her immediate removal, we invite Betsy DeVos to join the grassroots efforts in Michigan to undo the damage common core and P-20 (prenatal to life-long learning) competency based education has brought to our state’s educational system under her very persuasive influence.

The Stop Common Core in Michigan Leadership Team

Melanie Kurdys

Deborah DeBacker

Tamara Carlone
Michelle Frederick

Category: Uncategorized

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http://missourieducationwatchdog.com/parents-and-professionals-protestingpetitioning-against-ipads-in-school/

Parents and Professionals Protesting/Petitioning Against iPads in School

Gretchen Logue•January 14, 2017

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From Forbes and Do iPads Belong In Schools?

How much money has your school district spent on providing every student with an iPad?   Kirkwood School District in Missouri will have spent $1.775 Million for an iPad for each student (approximately 5,500 student population):

Here is a FAQ link (undated) explaining what will happen if the parents refuse to pay the $28 insurance fee, if the iPad is lost/stolen, and is left at home.  For those readers familiar with the ‘nudge’ technique, students and parents have little choice but to use the iPad for their education.  The reasons given for iPad use:

Q:  Why iPads?

A:  iPads represent our purposeful transtion to and recognition of the personalize learning environment which defines the current educational focus. The iPad responds to an environment characterized by:

• active and interactive learning

• personalized, student-centered experiences

• enhanced teacher management of classroom time and space

• flexibility and responsiveness to student needs

Students will develop

• multi-faceted communication skills

• media literacy

• an electronic body of collected work reflecting ongoing growth in skills and creativity

Q: How was this decision made?

A:  During a three-year exploration, iPads were considered as one option in moving our district forward to provide high quality experiences for our students to utilize technology for learning.  Approximately 40 teachers, representing all schools, were included in the process through their involvement in the Technology Leadership Group.  Last spring, at a district-wide technology visioning meeting, teachers, administrators, district technology experts, and board of education members were invited to learn about data collected by the TLG, and give input into the future of instructional technology.  Personal, portable devices were strongly endorsed as a result of that process.

If your district has instituted an iPad plan and it has been in place for several years, the district should be providing the taxpayers with the data showing how the students have developed multi-faceted communication skills, media literacy and detail the ongoing growth in skills and creativity.  If claims are made that such an expense and technology will improve educational outcomes, then the taxpayers paying for this decision should be afforded the information that these premises were true.  If the outcomes have not improved, then should the district modify its statements and reconsider its policy on providing iPads for all students and determine if this technology can actually improve achievement.  As Kirkwood considers itself a ‘data driven’ district and receiving rewards for its data results in such programs as Missouri Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support (MO SW-PBS), this should not prove to be too difficult a task.  Every program should have verified results and the technology program should certainly have research/data on its effectiveness.

The concern about iPad use is not only in Missouri, but in school districts throughout the country. Parents are not only worried about the increased use of technology and its cost and effectiveness, but many are troubled by the amount of computer/iPad use both in school and out of school for homework.  From The Atlantic and Why Some Schools Are Selling All Their iPads:

For an entire school year Hillsborough, New Jersey, educators undertook an experiment, asking: Is the iPad really the best device for interactive learning?

It’s a question that has been on many minds since 2010, when Apple released the iPad and schools began experimenting with it. The devices came along at a time when many school reformers were advocating to replace textbooks with online curricula and add creative apps to lessons. Some teachers welcomed the shift, which allowed their students to replace old poster-board presentations with narrated screencasts and review teacher-produced video lessons at any time.

Four years later, however, it’s still unclear whether the iPad is the device best suited to the classroom. The market for educational technology is huge and competitive: During 2014, American K-12 schools will spend an estimated $9.94 billion on educational technology, an increase of 2.5 percent over last year, according to Joseph Morris, director of market intelligence at the Center for Digital Education. On average, he said, schools spend about a third of their technology budgets on computer hardware.

…After receiving teacher and student feedback from the 2012–2013 school year, Hillsborough sold its iPads and will distribute 4,600 Chromebooks by the fall of 2014. The students in Harmsen’s class had been on Hillsborough’s iPad pilot team, and Harmstead admits she was a little disappointed when the district chose to go with Chromebooks. She said being on the pilot iPad team transformed her classroom approach after 24 years of teaching and made her a digital-education advocate. But now that she’s spent a full year using the new device—a pared-down laptop that stores files on the Internet—she agrees with the decision.

Other iPad pilot teachers came to see the benefits of laptop capabilities, too. “At the end of the year, I was upset that we didn’t get the iPads,” said seventh-grade science teacher Larissa McCann. “But as soon as I got the Chromebook and the kids started using it, I saw, ‘Okay, this is definitely much more useful.’ ”

 While nobody hated the iPad, by any means, the iPad was edged out by some key feedback, said Joel Handler, Hillsborough’s director of technology. Students saw the iPad as a “fun” gaming environment, while the Chromebook was perceived as a place to “get to work.” And as much as students liked to annotate and read on the iPad, the Chromebook’s keyboard was a greater perk — especially since the new Common Core online testing will require a keyboard. (MEW bolded)

Another important finding came from the technology support department: It was far easier to manage almost 200 Chromebooks than the same number of iPads. Since all the Chromebook files live in an online “cloud,” students could be up and running in seconds on a new device if their machine broke. And apps could be pushed to all of the devices with just a few mouse clicks.

From The Washington Post and I gave my students iPads — then wished I could take them back:

One of my saddest days in my digital classroom was when the children rushed in from the lunchroom one rainy recess and dashed for their iPads. Wait, I implored, we play with Legos on rainy days! I dumped out the huge container of Legos that were pure magic just a couple of weeks ago, that prompted so much collaboration and conversation, but the delight was gone. My students looked at me with disdain. Some crossed their arms and pouted. We aren’t kids who just play anymore, their crossed arms implied. We’re iPad users. We’re tech-savvy. Later, when I allowed their devices to hum to glowing life, conversation shut down altogether.

I knew that the lure of the screen would continue at home each night. Many of the students had screens at home already, but this one was different: It was their very own, it was portable, and it carried the stamp of approval of teacher, school and district. Do the adults in their homes still feel the authority to tell them to put that screen away and go outside and play?

Districts all over the country are buying into one-to-one tablet initiatives, and for younger and younger students. These screens have been rebranded “digital learning devices,” carrying the promise of education success for millions of our communities’ education dollars. Yet there is some evidence that tablets can be detrimental to learning.

A study released in September by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development looked at school tech initiatives in more than three dozen countries (although not the United States) and found that while students who use computers moderately show modest gains over those who rarely do, heavy technology use has a negative impact. “Students who use computers very frequently at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes, even after accounting for social background and student demographics,” the report concluded.

We have also known for years — at least since the 2012 report “Facing the Screen Dilemma” from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood — that screen time for younger children in particular comes with a huge opportunity cost, depriving them of hands-on learning, time outdoors and “face-to-face interactions with caring adults.” Digital-savvy parents in Silicon Valley made news way back in 2011 for enrolling their children in steadfastly screen-free schools. They knew that their kids would be swiping and clicking soon enough, but there are only a limited number of childhood years when it’s not only really fun to build with Legos, it’s also really good for you.

From Psychology Today and Five Reasons iPads Should NOT Be In Classrooms:

1. There is no evidence they improve learning

2. iPads only add to the financial problems of our education system

3. iPads are distracting

4. Onscreen reading is NOT comparable to traditional reading

5. Children need less screen time, not more

and the money paragraph from the article: In the five short years since the iPad was invented, it has shaken up the education system- for better or worse. As journalist H.L. Mencken once quipped, ‘for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.’ There is no simple game plan for such a multifaceted and diverse agenda as an education system, where one size can never fit all cultures, ages and abilities. Perhaps however, before a parent or teacher hands over an iPad to improve or accelerate learning, they should ask first what precisely the outcomes are that they wish to achieve.

The latest school district parental push against iPad use is in Cupertino, California.  From iPads ignite furor in schools:

District officials and many teachers tout the iPads as innovative learning tools. Students, it seems, are thrilled to have them. But many parents in the affluent district—including some software engineers, Apple employees and a brain researcher—question the benefit of the devices, and hundreds have signed a petition to limit their use.

They say the iPads have introduced new worries, from privacy to video-game distractions, sowing family discord over screen time. And they resent being asked to pay hundreds of dollars for school equipment that state law says is the district’s responsibility.

“iPads are entertainment devices,” said Noemi Berry, a network engineer and mother of a Lawson Middle School seventh-grader and two other children. “They’re not designed for education, and they’re very hard to restrict. I have a 12-year-old boy who has a horrible screen addiction problem.”

Below is the petition from Cupertino parents with their concerns, requests and additional links about hacking, psychological concerns and financial burdens on school districts:

  https://www.change.org/p/limit-ipads-to-classrooms-an-option-parents-want-from-cusd

CUSD ipad petition

When you are examining your school district budgets and appeal for more money, perhaps a good start determining what can be pared down might be the technology expenses.  It’s a burgeoning industry paid for by the taxpayers.  From Results of the 2016 National Digital Curriculum Strategy Survey:

The survey found that 78 percent of students nationally have access to a computing device for a good portion of the school day or the full school day. It also forecasts that district spending on hardware, networks, and major system software will see a slight increase in 2017, rising to $16.2 billion.

The top three digital device trends the survey found were the following: 1) tablets are losing popularity; 2) Chromebooks have had the most significant gain in popularity, a trend that is likely to continue; and 3) there is no agreement among schools about the best device based on the age of the student. Further, even though schools cite 79–91 percent network coverage in classrooms and common areas, it’s not enough to support the burgeoning use of digital curriculum. The networks are considered “unreliable” by most teachers.

The Survey found that 86 percent of schools and districts expect to be spending more on digital curriculum in the new year. 56 percent of respondents say teachers already use 50-75 percent paid resources over free open-education resources for their digital learning objects. However, billions in spending on curriculum overall has yet to move from paper textbooks into digital: 80 percent of respondents said district curriculum budgets still haven’t shifted from paper-based resources.

2016 was also the highest year on record for digital curriculum spending. A 25 percent jump was due to years of non-adoption of textbooks in several states, causing more digital acquisitions at the same time that the market reached an inflection point of saturation of devices.

If increased technology has not increased academic achievement and/or outcomes, then school board members must be asked why they vote for large expenses without research/data proving they will indeed educational outcomes.  If they vote to implement these technological expenses, taxpayers must hold them accountable when they ask for more money ‘for the kids’.  Who knows if Chromebooks will be successful in the intended outcomes?  It’s more and more likely that iPads are a thing of the past (it’s difficult to use them for Common Core assessment testing) so will the next expensive item on school board agendas for technology be Chromebooks?  Where is the research/data showing their effectiveness in raising student achievement/outcomes?

Just what is the agenda of school districts utilizing unproven technology and millions of taxpayer dollars to reach seemingly unattainable USDOEd goals of student achievement?  What character education lesson does this impart to students?  And for those parents aware of what this technology really imparts….data mining….that’s another concern addressed time and time again on this website.  Watch for an upcoming post on how school districts have been threatened by hackers for ‘ransomware’ when student personal identifiable data was stolen.  Additional budget line items you should be watching for from your school district is how much it will budget for ransom to retrieve stolen data and security programs to protect the technology that hasn’t quite delivered what it promised.

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