Donors Choose Monday: Ukuleles

 Okay, this has turned out to be more sporadic than I originally planned. Bt I'm still committed to making regular attempts to supporting public school teachers in small ways (beyond just yapping about policy issues). Yes, Donors Choose sometimes includes requests for funding that absolutely should be coming from the local district, and no, I don't have any way of checking to see if the teacher is an admirable professional and not a putz. That's all right-- I'm still going to keep doing it, and encouraging you to join me. 

Teachers should have support and assistance, and Donors Choose remains a not-bad way to do that. So.

This week I've picked a school in the Waynesboro, VA system. Wenonah Elementary is a Title I school and Ms. Gilmer is a first year music teacher who is trying to round up a set of ukuleles. I am a sucker for ukes, though I can't play myself, and for programs that give students a chance to become musicians, a skill that can enrich the entire rest of their lives. Don't care if it raises test scores, and I don't care if it's not on employers' list of in-demand skills. Being able to make music is a life-altering existence-improving activity, and ukes are a great tool for elementary kids.

So you can go to this page and chip in. Doesn't have to be a lot, but it's an easy way to support a new teacher and her students.

ICYMI: Well Aren't We Off To A Grand Start Edition (1/10)

Well, that was a week, wasn't it. What a hellacious shitshow (sorry, Mom). But despite the the dumpster fire burning brighter than ever, we still have things to read, because while governments may rise and fall and grind to a halt and play stupid games with stupid insurrectionists, you know what still keeps on keepin' on? The post office and public schools.

Republican Cowards Betsy DeVos and Ted Cruz  

Yes, there's tons to read about Betsy DeVos on her way out, and you've probably read all of it, but you might have missed this take from the politics editor at TeenVogue, the surprise source of solid political commentary these past four years. No punches pulled.

Betsy DeVos's Greatest Hits

Okay, just one more. Valerie Strauss at Washington Post has a nice synopsis of DeVosian specialtude over the past four years. 

Will pandemic impact further reduce teacher pipeline?

Maureen Dowd in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, saying nothing that will surprise you, but with details and reporting to make it a little more real.

You literally just did history

Chalkbeat talks to Colorado's teacher of the year about teaching in times that get extra interesting.

Stupid and Clumsy from Grief  

Lisa Eddy blogs about her week. It's personal and moving and a fine piece of writing.

Voucher Vultures Face FBI Raid  

While other things have been happening, the FBI raided some members of the TN House GOP over a plot to pass Gov. Lee's voucher scheme in 2019. Andy Spears has the story.

Do schools spread Covid

For a change of pace, try this reasonably balanced look at what we know, courtesy of Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat.

Reform PA cyber charter authorization and funding

Eric Wolfgang with an op-ed in the Courier Times, repeating what we all know-- PA's cyber-school rules need to be overhauled with a flamethrower.

Reforming Educational Authority

Andy Smarick is a reformster, but he's also a classic conservative and as such brings some interesting ideas to the table. You'll disagree with parts of this, and it's not a short easy read, but it's a useful perspective on what has happened to the way we run school systems.

Unlearn Chait's False Opinion About Charters

Jonathan Chait once again was given space to unleash his opinion about charter schools (without any accompanying caveat that his wife is a charterista). D. Julian Vasquez Heilig pointed out the many problems with Chait's piece, using the clever weapon of actual facts.

ExamSoft's proctoring software has a face-detection problem  

Yet more crappy student surveillance software in action. The Verge has the story. Three guesses what sort of faces the software has trouble with.

The Ridiculousness of Learning Loss

John Ewing at Forbes with a fully-exasperated explanation of why the learning loss panic is bunk.

Kafka Narrates My Online Teaching Experience

From the New Yorker. You can use a laugh this week.

Watch Out: K12 Has Changed Its Name

Back in November, when most of us were pre-occupied with a few other things, K12, Inc, the giant cyber-school company, went and gave itself a new name-- Stride, Inc. The rebranding came with some new acquisitions, but underneath it all, K12 is its same old self.

K12 is a big fat for-profit cyber-edu-biz operation-- in fact, the biggest and fattest. They were founded by Goldman-Sachs banker and McKinsey alum Ronald Packer with financial backing from junk bond king Michael Milken, who Wikipedia calls "convicted felon, financier and philanthropist (and, fun fact, he was pardoned by Donald Trump in February of 2020). Andrew Tische (Loews) and Larry Elison (Oracle) also tossed some venture capital in the kitty. Oh, and Dick DeVos, too. K12 was launched in 2000, with William Bennett as the public-facing face of the company. Packer is still the CEO of the company.

You'll note that  none of the top names in the company have actual education expertise, but that's okay, because K12 is a for-profit company that sells an education-flavored product, not an actual school.

Over the years, K12 has been caught in all manner of naughty behavior. Here's a fairly brutal shot they took from the New York Times way back in December of 2011 detailing how K12's schools are failing miserably, but still making investors and officers a ton of money. Former teachers routinely write tell-alls about their experience, like this more recent guest piece on Anthony Cody's blog. In 2012. Florida caught them using fake teachers. The NCAA put K12 schools on the list of cybers that were disqualified from sports eligibility. In 2014, Packard turned out to be one of the highest paid public workers in the country (as in, people paid with tax dollars) in the country, "despite the fact that only 28% of K12 schools met state standards in 2011-2012."

That low level of achievement is the norm-- so much the norm that even the bricks and mortar sector of the charter world pointed out that cyber-schools are deeply terrible. In Pennsylvania, K12 (like all our other cybers) has never earned a satisfactory rating. But what cybers do have going for them is the huge amount of charter lobbying money being spent in Harrisburg. In fact, K12 and Connections have spent more money on Harrisburg than on any other state in the union. That might fit in with the same discussion involving PA being the most cyber-friendly state in the union.

The election of Trump in 2016 fed some investor exuberance in the cyber sector, with K12 showing fairly spectacular growth. By which I mean stock value growth--their actual attempts to educate students and behave ethically were as bad as ever. Earlier that same year they got in yet another round of trouble in California for lying about student enrollment, and during the Trump years they still had trouble keeping all of their schools open. And they even had one school staff unionize. In 2017, they made Kevin Chavous President of Academics, Policy and Schools; Chavous a former politician, helped launch DFER, served on the board of Betsy DeVos's American Federation for Children, and helped Bobby Jindahl whip up a voucher plan for New Orleans.

The pandemic has obviously been a help to K12, but still--well, they landed a big lucrative contract in Miami-Dade county (after a big lucrative contribution to an organization run by the superintendent) and made such a technomess out of it that Wired magazine wrote a story about their "epic series of tech errors."

So why rebrand now?

The company PR says that Stride, Inc, reflects its "continued growth into lifelong learning" regardless of students' ages or locations. The company has already acquired Tech Elevator, a coding bootcamp provider, and MedCerts, which does certification training for healthcare and medical fields. Meanwhile, the K12 portion of the business had been renamed Fuel Education, and is now K12 Learning Solutions. The whole shuffling was done, according to a spokesperson, "to further simplify the brand structure and to better align with the company's core K-12 offerings." Totally nothing to do with criticism of the brand by, well, everyone. 

And they are still bearing down hard on their primary product, and by "primary product" I mean "marketing." Here's the Valdosta Daily Times running, unchecked, a piece about an EdChoice (you know--the choice-promoting advocacy group that used to be the Friedman Foundation, as in Milton Friedman) survey discovering that 70% of parents think online learning is awesome (news to the hoards of folks demanding that school buildings reopen) and going on to cite the awesomeness of Stride products specifically. Here's an actual paragraph from an alleged news story:

“What the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare is our nation’s dire need for more effective online learning options,” said Jeanna Pignatiello, Stride’s Senior Vice President and Chief Academic Officer. “Thousands of students, families, teachers, and school districts across the country have turned to Stride K12-powered schools to find high-quality, personalized learning solutions that meet their needs during this unprecedented time. And the evidence is clear—these are programs that work.”

Meanwhile, the new Stride website promises "Inspired learners. Empowered educators. Prospering partners." Want to place bets on which one of the three they will actually deliver?

So if you hear about Stride, Inc, in your neighborhood, be aware that it is the same old K12 wolf in a swiftly stitched-together set of sheep suits, with far less interest in actually educating students than in grabbing some of those sweet, sweet tax dollars. 

Betsy DeVos Bails Out

Well, she finally had enough.

DeVos blamed Trumpian rhetoric for the riots, called it an "inflection point" for her, and became one more GOP Trump-fluffer to suddenly discover her shock and outrage for exactly the same kind of shit that he's been doing for four years. I mean, there's something deeply disingenuous about watching someone throw gasoline and matches around for four years and only getting all pearl clutchy and knicker twisty when the completely predictable fire actually starts.  

She also said "Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us. I believe we each have a moral obligation to exercise good judgement and model the behavior we hope they would emulate." Which is as true today as it was when President Pussy-grabber talked about shithole countries and very fine people on both sides. It's an odd time to suddenly grow scruples. But at this point, I guess the wounded lame duck can't really do anything for her. The full letter can be read here. It actually starts with another rehearsal of her "accomplishments" as ed secretary.

She helped build this. She stroked his ego, gave him credit for having a hand in education policies when he mostly ignored the department. She is just one of the many enablers who taught him that he need not consider the consequences of his actions, words, behavior, ever. Walking away now with a sudden attack of ethical whirlies doesn't change the work she's done over years to build up this circus.

When you make a deal with the devil, sooner or later the bill comes due. DeVos signed up for this clusterfest because she smelled a chance to make her policies everybody's policies. Is  she now hedging her bets? Ducking out before she gets asked to exercise the 25th amendment? Trying to avoid possible accountability for any of this mess? Getting out before someone asks her to actually do something to clean up the mess? Just bothered that rioting mobs are declasse? Who knows.

At any rate, she's gone, a whole 13 days ahead of schedule and a whole four years too late. It will have virtually no effect on anything, other than adding to the picture of rats deserting a sinking ship. If only the ship weren't the US government. 

Becky Pringle said, "Her complicity, cowardice, and complete incompetence will be her legacy." But Randi Weingarten was pithier, with "Good riddance."

I know the news will be all over the eduverse, but I want to make sure you don't miss it. The MAGAs will call her a traitor; she'll never hear them from the comfy confines of her vast mansions, where she'll sit and figure out how to get back to the business of dismantling public education. She's not going away, but at least she won't be running the federal ed department any more. Hasta la vista, baby.

In Seattle, A Tough Back To School Choice

Seattle's school board made a decision, just a few weeks ago, to re-open face-to-face school for pre-K, kindergarten, some special ed, and 1st grade students. It's a good example of the kinds of re-opening challenges that parents and teachers are facing, the kind of thing that is being pushed out as a "plan" by a major district.

Parents received an e-mail inviting them to complete a "survey" and commit themselves to either continuing at-home instruction via computer, or sending their child back for in-person learning on March 1st.

The e-mail was sent out January 5th. The decision must be made by January 10th. 

The e-mail includes a link to a FAQ page that is not, well, as helpful as it might be. For one thing, the tone is perhaps not unpleasant, but certainly brusque. For instance, on the matter of the deadline.

Can I change my decision after March 1?

The decision a family makes by January 10 will continue through the end of the 2020-21 school year.

What if I change my mind before March 1?

January 10 is the deadline so staff can begin to finalize logistics and schedules. If you have completed the survey but change your mind prior to January 10, please retake the survey before the closing date.

Some of it is just unclear. If you were facing this decision, you'd probably want to know how many people your child would be sharing a classroom with, but the answer to the question "how large will the classes be" isn't really an answer:

Kindergarten and first grade classrooms will support a 1:15 teacher-student ratio.

Okay-- but a classroom with six hundred students and forty teachers would fit that criterium. Preschoolers are promised a maximum group size of 6-10.

Will classrooms of students interact during the day? "All classroom cohorts will stay together throughout the day," is, again, not actually an answer. Lunch will be eaten in the classroom. Classrooms will have less furniture, but will remain "joyful and engaging." The district is working with architectural firms to create "cohort zones." Some plexiglass shields are now installed in the offices. They're still trying to figure out phys ed class and other specials.

Testing? Well. no. SPS will do health screening by "attestation" which is fancy talk for "put everyone on the honor system" and also for "a clever way to cover the district's legal butt." The health screening will be some version of parents and staff filing a statement saying "I swear that I'm perfectly healthy, as far as I know." This won't help when someone is asymptomatic, but it will help if anybody tries to sue the district for creating spreading events.

Busing? Students will wear masks and the windows will be open or "adjusted as much as possible to maximize outside air flow." When the bus gets back to the main lot, it will be wiped down. 

Will teachers be vaccinated? Again, a non-answer answer that the state health department has scheduled teachers for Phase 2 vaccination. Will that be before March 1? Who knows. But the district will provide teachers with masks. 

Meanwhile, the district is hiring 80 more custodians and two cleaning services. Three times a day wipedowns of "high touch" surfaces. And they say they've done evaluations and upgrades on all the HVAC systems and filtration. 

So the plan is one part actual plan, and a few parts a stated intention to have a plan that meets certain criteria but which doesn't actually exist yet. And parents have until Sunday to decide if they're okay with this, or not. 

It has some gaping holes, and while many districts had the same gaping holes last March, school leaders should be getting smarter about this stuff. Like, what's the protocol if a teacher or student becomes symptomatic during the day? What's the protocol if a class or a member of a class has been exposed to someone who tests positive? What has the district done about the huge increased need for staffing? For instance, if one first grade class becomes two (one in the building and one distance), do they intend to do the right thing and have a separate teacher for each? What's the substitute teacher situation look like? And, of course, what if community spread is bad in Seattle on March 1 (and teachers haven't been vaccinated yet)?

It's not the worst plan I've seen. The district just up the road from me just decided to go back in the building full time starting next week, and if you want to talk about a plan that is not actually a plan and having no contingencies for anything, they're right on top of it. 

And the need for a firm commitment from parents is understandable from a planning perspective. But if parents change their minds after the deadline, it's not clear to me what a district could do or how they can win the inevitable lawsuits. Maybe that's why their answer to "what if I change my mind" is so vague and off-point--because they know the real answer is "If you change you're mind, we'll have to let you do it, but boy will it be a big pain in our institutional tush." And it looks like that tush is in some pain already. We'll see how it feels on January 11.

About Teachers4OpenSchools

You may have run across a shiny new group on line that is agitating for teachers to be back in the classroom-- Teachers4OpenSchools.

The arguments are the usual ones, from the legitimate concern about mental health to the learning loss baloney. There's not much of anything new here, and not the kind of balance we find in a piece like this one.  But I'm always curious about these little pop-up goups, and the website is pretty opaque about who, exactly, is happening here. But poking around the site, I found two teachers who are apparently acting at least as spokespersons for the group.

One is NYC teacher Stephanie Edmonds, who runs the Youtube channel Class Disruption, where you can find vidcasts like this one, in which she explains what Ibram X. Kendi gets wrong about equity issues and also describes how lefties like emotional language "that may not exactly align with reality" while righties prefer reason and statistics and things that reflect reality (though she "doesn't subscribe" to the whole left-right thing). Power. Vibe. She's a little rambly. She was the president of her college's Libertarian Club. She wants unity and the media is hurting it. She's a history teacher who uses the 1776 unites materials. She has a very distinctive voice, sometimes. She's been a teacher since the fall of 2016.

Her compatriot is Catherine Barrett. We've encountered Barrett before, as a teacher voice on the Speak Out For Teachers website. Barrett a few years back was part of #RedforEd in Arizona until she became a GOP political operative for Doug Ducey, attacking the #RedforEd movement. She also turned up as chair of a group pushing a Classroom Code of Ethics in Arizona, proposed gag rule for teachers in the wake of #RedforEd; that proposal turned out not be an Arizona thing, but an anti-teacher move cooked up by activist David Horowitz and pushed out across the country. Speak Out For Teachers is a creation of the Center for Union Facts, a part of the bunch of dark money conservative groups run by Richard Berman, who  takes a scrappy win ugly approach to fighting unions. 

Right now Speak Out For Teachers is featuring on its page big bold letters proclaiming "Teachers Want To Get Back In The Classroom But unions are standing in the way."

So how did Edmonds and Barrett get together? Well, Edmonds has a big internet footprint, and Barrett is well-connected, so anything's possible. The stated goals of Teachers4OpenSchools are kind of rambly, from getting all schools open to empowering teachers to making a more equitable education system. And they acknowledge there is not a one-size-fits-all solution, though apparently their range of possible solutions does not include keeping buildings closed. 

There may be an argument to be made for opening some schools for some time under certain community conditions with certain supports and resources, but Teachers4OpenSchools doesn't look like the group to make it. 

MO: GOP Rep Tells Teachers To Take A Hike

So here's a jolly exchange from Twitter on Saturday.

Get a different job. No one owes you anything.

— Justin Hill (@HillForMissouri) January 3, 2021

That's Justin Hill, a Missouri GOP rep from the 108th district, showing his love and support for teachers in his state. He was a cop before running for office, so you'd think he'd know something about public service, but maybe not so much.

He's had a few ideas to offer before. While the Missouri legislature was working on some Covid relief, Hill decided to complain about feeding school students:

“Our school districts have become glorified lunch rooms,” said Rep. Justin Hill, R-St. Charles. “They’re not educating children, but they certainly are going to get money to hand out free food.”

The bill would give $75 million for the School Nutrition Services Program to reimburse schools for school food programs.

“This is an embarrassment,” Hill continued. “This is such an embarrassment; I am ashamed to even be having a vote for $75 million in food. When we have children sitting at home and their parents are at work, the children are playing, frickin’ Minecraft or whatever at home, and they’re not getting an education.”

Hill's not a fan of spending tax dollars. He also hung out with the Save Our Country Coalition, a hyper-right group formed by ALEC, FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots and headed by Art Laffer, famous wacky economist. Last fall, Hill joined that group in opposing federal spending to help prop up states.

Hill is himself an ALEC member (in 2018, he was their Legislator of the Year), and his runs for office have been backed by folks like Reed "School Boards Should Be Abolished" Hastings and the Missouri Club for Growth, plus David Craig Humphreys (a well-heeled MO businessman). And he's one of the reality-defying legislators still cheering on the January 67 challenge to Presidebnt-elect Biden's defeat of Beloved Leader, and is filing a resolution in the MO House calling on other states to investigate the imaginary fraud.

So as you might guess, that terse response to Ms. Piper (who is no stranger to some political wrassling) was not a one-off, and the conversation didn't get much better. Responding to another teacher, Hill argued that "everyone is struggling" and teachers shouldn't complain "especially while many are being paid while not working." Then this:

Consider starting a t-shirt business.

— Justin Hill (@HillForMissouri) January 3, 2021

It's excellent advice, since many Missouri teachers make less than folks working in retail. The state has a mandated $25K starting salary, and many school districts barely beat that seriously low bar. The bar might be so low in part because it hasn't been raised in fifteen years; Missouri teachers leaving the profession (or the state) cite the lousy pay as a big reason. Missouri consistently ranks near the bottom of states for average pay, and is next-to-last (thanks, Oklahoma) in starting pay. And as you can see, legislators like Hill are really, deeply concerned about this issue. 

Piper, for her part, responded to the t-shirt post with a cheery "You bet." You can order this shirt on Etsy right now: