Friday Reading List: GREAT School Funding Charts and a Counter-Productive Fight Over Vouchers

Hayley Glatter of The Atlantic looked at the relative progressiveness/regressiveness of school funding formulas across the states:

In states where districts are more economically segregated, policymakers have an easier time targeting funding to the neediest students. Because poor children benefit more than their wealthier counterparts from increased per pupil funding, a correctly tuned targeting formula could be an important step toward closing the achievement gap. According to a new report released by the Urban Institute, a social- and economic-policy nonprofit in Washington, D.C., the degree to which funding is targeted is inconsistent among states. In three states—Nevada, Wyoming, and Illinois—non-poor students attend better funded school districts despite state and federal government efforts to level the playing field.

Glatter shares some remarkable charts illustrating the disparities, which came from a recent study by the Urban Institute:

The chart on the left includes federal funding, while the one on the right shows how states would distribute resources absent federal involvement. Perhaps the most striking thing about these charts are the states where the local system is super-regressive, while the state system compensates by being hyper-progressive. At the risk of oversimplifying the analysis here, those seem to be places where socioeconomic segregation and opportunity gaps are high; where districts are small and plentiful; and tax policy at a statewide level reflects some level of equity. Those states are concentrated in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, and the level of intra-state division in these places is remarkable. I'd love to hear how other folks interpret these results, and whether there are any big themes I'm missing.

Earlier this week, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten and Stand for Children chief executive Jonah Edelman co-authored an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times:

Although our organizations have sparred and disagreed over the years, such is the danger to public schooling posed by Trump’s embrace of vouchers that we are speaking out together on this issue. The Trump-DeVos effort to push vouchers, or something equivalent through tax credits, threatens the promise and purpose of America’s great equalizer, public education. At a time when low-income children make up the majority of public school students, we as a country must do more to support families, teachers, administrators and public schools. Trump’s plan would do the opposite.

Weingarten and Edelman go on to explain their reasoning for opposing vouchers, which closely tracks my own. Erika Sanzi of Good School Hunting was frustrated with the show of unity:

While many of my own friends and colleagues seem comfortable working within this dynamic and are ready and willing to embrace union leaders when it suits them, I simply refuse to go there. Unions exist to put the interests of adults first. As a former member of the teachers’ union, I have seen it first hand. Randi Weingarten’s primary responsibility is to her members and those members all happen to be grown ups. So when the interests of children and the interests of the grown ups are at odds, which happens very often in education, Randi will adhere to her job description and protect the adults. At the expense of kids. Every single time.

Sanzi is correct that Weingarten's legal obligation is to protect the interests of her members, and at times those interests do not intersect with those of children and families in public schools. I'm worried that Sanzi's final point overstates the issue, though, and I also worry that Weingarten and Edelman are elevating the voucher fight beyond where it needs to be in the public consciousness, which is counterproductive.  The antagonistic formulation above is a recipe for another decade of educational gridlock, which would be a giant waste of time and energy. Vouchers constitute a tiny part of the overall education policy landscape, and there exists little evidence that the Trump-DeVos administration has either the inclination, or the skill, to expand vouchers in a way that would truly undermine the foundations of public schooling. Choice advocates  and the unions alike should spend 1000% less time sniping over the voucher issue, and 1000% more time improving the overall quality of charter and traditional public schools.

Have a great weekend!

Thursday Reading List: Research on Educators of Color and Data on Virtual Schools

Marilyn Rhames is in Education Post with a discussion of the hurdles facing Black teachers in the American education workforce:

According to the [Harvard Educational Review] study, “Black applicants were significantly less likely than their White counterparts to receive a job offer. Further, they find evidence of workforce segregation: when hired, Black teachers were significantly more likely to be placed in schools with large populations of children of color and children in poverty or schools characterized as struggling" ... According to the study, Black teacher candidates in Fairfax County Public Schools were more likely to have advanced degrees, such as a master’s, and almost two more years of school teaching experience than White teacher candidates. Yet, in 2012, Black teachers made up 13 percent of the candidates and got only 6 percent of the jobs, while White candidates accounted for 70 percent of the candidates and got 77 percent of the jobs.

This mismatch manifests in school districts across the country, and the disparity can seem even more acute in schools that serve large numbers of children of color. Rhames shares some anecdotes to animate the data, which will sound familiar to folks who have worked in public schools. 

Elsewhere, in The Hechinger Report, Emmanuel Felton examines the effect of Hurricane Katrina on the community of Black educators in New Orleans:

Pre-Katrina New Orleans schools were a bit of an anomaly. In 2003, just 15 percent of teachers in large urban districts across the country were black but in New Orleans, teaching was largely a job done by black women: 71 percent of teachers were black and 78 percent were women. The demographics of the city’s teacher workforce have changed drastically since: in 2014, black teachers comprised a little less than half of the city’s teacher corps. In the years following Katrina, New Orleans became a mecca for new teachers. Before Katrina, the city’s teachers had an average of 15 years of classroom experience. Now the majority of teachers have less than five years of experience ... While the black community was hit harder by the firings because so many teachers were African American, the researchers did not find a racial disparity in who was rehired after the storm. In fact they found that black teachers were slightly more likely to return to New Orleans schools than their white peers. 

There's no easy way to talk about this data. Local activists have been raising this issue for years, during which time many reform leaders either dismissed or downplayed the importance of the shift. Given the emerging mountain of evidence that students of color are more likely to thrive in classrooms led by educators of color, leaders in New Orleans and beyond should think of this as an academic achievement issue, in addition to a political one.

Some educators in Philadelphia are taking a proactive approach to cultivating diversity and inclusion among teachers. Sharif El-Mekki describes that work in Philly's 7th Ward:

Seventeen Black men who were leading classrooms and schools in Philadelphia launched The Fellowship-Black Male Educators for Social Justice. Our initial goal was hardly to create a formal organization. We came together over a monthly dinner at a Black-owned restaurant in west Philly to problem-solve and celebrate wins, to collaborate, and to support each other. We met to ensure our students’ success. And, to facilitate our own learning ... Today, we are proud to be gearing up for our 7th BMEC (Black Male Educators Convening). Despite the name, these convenings are not solely for Black men—although our focus is. Our convenings (and membership to The Fellowship) are open to anyone who is committed to the idea of diversity in our classroom and school leaders. We welcome all who want to engage in problem-solving to rectify decades-long issues that negatively impact our children.

El-Mekki himself is the leader of a charter school, although the network includes leaders from traditional district schools as well. There's a lot to like about this project. Most importantly, The Fellowship addresses a legitimate issue that has vexed education leaders in other cities. In addition, this network is a model for how teachers can collaborate across district and charter models, which is rare in places where significant political tension exists across sectors.

Finally today, Matt Barnum is in Chalkbeat examining the kind of virtual schools that excite United States Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos:

In addition to advocating for school vouchers, DeVos has also long backed virtual schools, a small but swiftly growing sector of schools. For-profit virtual school companies are tightly connected to [DeVos family backed American Federation of Children, or AFC]. The two largest such groups, K12 and Connections Academy, were among the chief sponsors of the conference ... John Kirtley of AFC praised the company, saying, “They’re doing great things in digital learning.” And although the research evidence for blended or personalized learning models is mixed, the handful of studies of fully virtual schools point to a clearer verdict: students in such schools perform dramatically worse on standardized tests relative to similar students in traditional schools, according to a study of thousands of virtual charter school students in 18 states.

Barnum also has been dogged in documenting the dismal results attached to voucher programs. I love innovation, I support personalization, and I embrace change where change is necessary. The evidence, however, demonstrates that DeVos's top educational priorities are often worse for students than the status quo. There is no reason to support such initiatives, and perhaps more importantly, her continued advocacy of dubious ideas creates enormous credibility problems for anything she - or her administration - embraces. Sad.

Have a good day!

Wednesday Reading List: The Cleveland PD Thinks Lying on a Resume is a Worse Offense Than Child Murder

Timothy Loehmann, the police officer who killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland in 2014, got fired yesterday. Adam Ferrise of Cleveland.com has the story:

Timothy Loehmann's ouster from the department was not the result of November 2014 killing the child, but for his failure to disclose the fact that he was asked to resign from the Independence Police Department after a supervisor raised concerns about his ability to be an effective police officer ... The union that represents [Loehmann] filed an appeal of the discipline within hours of McGrath's announcement. Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association President Steve Loomis, whose public statements about Tamir's death often drew the ire of civil-rights leaders, said he is confident that an arbitrator will overturn the discipline. "This is nothing but a political witch hunt," Loomis said. "We're not going to stand for it. They didn't do anything wrong."

I don't know what makes me angrier: that Loehmann was fired for lying on his job application, and not for KILLING A CHILD; or that his union is calling this a "political witch hunt." For the Cleveland police department, it seems that resume accuracy is a more important value than the lives of Black children.

Monique Judge of The Root looks at another instance of specious concern for Black lives:

The Journal of Political Philosophy has come under fire for its June issue, which dedicates more than 60 pages to a three-author “symposium” on the Black Lives Matter movement that does not include any actual black voices. The journal has since apologized for not including the work of black philosophers, but as Inside Higher Ed reports, the incident has drawn attention to the fact that the journal has a poor record of including black scholars and, prior to the symposium issue, did little to include scholarship on issues of race.

Unfortunately, this kind of stuff happens all the time, and not a single person at the decision-making table says, "Hey, you know what might be a problem here?'

People have blindspots. White folks, in particular, often have a very particular leadership shortcoming, wherein they fail to understand the lasting impact of race on power structures within professional fields. The omission described above provides a uniquely poignant vignette about the downstream effects of that lack of awareness.

In other news, Caroline Preston of The Hechinger Report describes the academic consequences of a fragile foster care system:

As of September 2016, roughly 428,000 children were in foster care nationwide, a number that’s increased recently, in part because of the opioid epidemic. By the time youth in foster care reach their junior year, more than a third will have switched schools at least five times. The consequences for young people are significant. With each move, students lose an estimated four to six months of academic progress. The reasons for these low success rates are manifold — trauma from the abuse and neglect that foster children routinely suffer, the absence of dependable adults in their lives and a lack of financial support. Frequent, disruptive school moves compound the problem. Child welfare agencies have historically paid little attention to schooling when they move youths to and from foster homes.

While schools can work to accommodate students whose lives are interrupted by the foster care system, it's hard to see how schools alone can solve for challenges like these ... outside of having a radically top-down system of identical schools, wherein switching from one school to another would be inconsequential. But that's pretty much the opposite of American schooling. New federal rules require schools to provide transportation for students whose lives are driven by foster care placements, and despite the Trump administration's rollback of schooling regulations, these protections remain in place.

Finally today, Eric Gorski of Chalkbeat studied STRIVE Prep, a Denver charter school that is working to serve many more special needs students:

When STRIVE Prep Lake opened in 2010, Gibbons said STRIVE set out to build a school that was “truly of the neighborhood, serving all kids.” That meant not only serving students with disabilities or students who do not know English, but also taking a stand about “backfill,” an issue that divides charter advocates. Some charter schools across the country do not replace students who leave, avoiding a potential drop in test scores and the disruption of adding new students. But STRIVE Prep Lake decided to take students at mid-year and in all grades. That practice that has since spread to all STRIVE schools.

Read the whole article, as it confronts some of the academic and operational tradeoffs that are necessary when a school wants to serve all children. The best charter schools have done a nice job demonstrating their effectiveness in getting many more socioeconomically underrepresented students ready for college. If charter schools want to continue to thrive as a part of a robust public system of education, they must deliver on the promise of serving all children, particularly those with special needs.

Have a great day!

Tuesday Reading List: Quality Matters in Childcare, Equivocation on Discrimination, and People Who Shouldn't Be Teaching

Hayley Glatter of The Atlantic looked at whether program quality matters in childcare:

Attending a low-quality childcare program has deleterious effects on boys, so much so that the children would have been better off staying home. According to a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research co-authored by the economists Jorge Luis Garcia, James Heckman, and Anna Ziff of the University of Chicago, it is the quality of the childcare, not simply the presence of it, that matters. Relying on data from childcare programs serving disadvantaged children in North Carolina, the researchers found a gender gap exists in the long-term outcomes of preschool and that boys are more vulnerable than girls if exposed to facilities that aren’t meeting high standards.

Policymakers often construe equity and quality as competing goals. As states expand access to early childhood education, we should be as vigilant about quality as we are about access.

In other news, Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat followed up on Betsy DeVos's questionable comments about discrimination from last week:

Betsy DeVos drew incredulous reactions this week when she said she would let states decide on the rules for voucher programs vying for federal money — including whether schools that discriminate against LGBT students could participate. But the education secretary’s position isn’t out of the mainstream among voucher supporters, or out of step with how private school choice programs work across the country. For instance, Robert Enlow of the Indianapolis-based EdChoice, a group that advocates for vouchers, emphasized that his group does not support discrimination but declined to take a position on whether private schools that receive public funds should be prohibited from discriminating based on sexual orientation.

It's possible to be agnostic about whether the private or public sector is best positioned to create quality schools. I happen to think that a robust public schooling system is essential to knitting together a sustainable democratic republic, but I know plenty of people who trust the private sector more, and not for evil or mischievous reasons. That said, I do NOT think it's possible to be agnostic on this question of discrimination. Anyone who is sentient right now can see that hate groups - particularly White supremacists - are feeling more confident in expressing their hate publicly. Given that, we must be as forceful as possible in protecting people from discrimination on the basis of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or other facets of their identities.

Speaking of identity, here's a great example of how NOT to cultivate a positive sense of identity among children, from the team at Blavity:

Just a few days ago, we covered a student, Lizeth Villanueva, who received a "Most Likely To Be A Terrorist" award. As awful and insensitive as that was, it wasn't the only insensitive and flat out rude superlative given out by the same teacher. Sydney Caesar, a student at Anthony Aguirre Junior High School in Texas, received an award that stated she was “Most Likely to Blend in With White People,” from her college-prep teacher Stacey Lockett. 

If I have to explain to you why this is not okay, you shouldn't be a teacher ... ergo the person who gave these awards should not be teaching children.

Finally today, on a lighter note, Michael Harriott is in Adequate Man giving White people advice on how attending Black cookouts:  

At a black cookout (yes, if there’s more than seven black people there, the name automatically changes from “barbecue” to a “cookout”), only the meat and the grill is supplied by the host. Everything else is brought by attendees—and no, this is not “potluck.” Black people don’t do potlucks. Potluck dinners are for Caucasian bible-study meetings where one can bring store-bought dishes. Here, you either show up with a homemade dish, or they’re gonna look at you funny. And please don’t try no new shit like potato salad with raisins or vegetarian shish kabobs. If you can’t cook, or you don’t have all the required black seasonings, just bring some cups and napkins. 

May your summer be blessed with many opportunities to act on this advice. Have a great day!

Friday Reading List: Former Department of Education Officials React to the Current Administration

Former United States Secretary of Education John King, Jr. is in U.S. News & World Report slamming the Trump administration's budget:

Yes; we believe in personal responsibility. We understand America's self-concept as the place where all people can lift themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps and improve themselves ... we recognize that you can't pull off an upset if the game is rigged against you and that those of us who were not born into privilege sometimes need a boost from our teammates ... And that's precisely why the Trump administration's recently released 2018 budget is such a deeply problematic assault on the American Dream. It eliminates many of the critical supports that give people the opportunities and tools to better their lives, particularly through a net cut of more than $10 billion to education.

What's so offensive about the Trump budget is that it couples these deep gashes in the social safety net with both increases in military spending, and huge tax cuts for wealthier Americans. One cannot claim with a straight face that this budget about fiscal conservatism; it's about cruelty to those with less.

Matt Lehrich, writing at Education Post, wonders if current Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos understands the federal role in civil rights enforcement:

In a budget hearing yesterday, Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA) pressed DeVos on whether her plan for school choice would allow federal dollars to flow to private schools even if they discriminate against LGBT students. DeVos offered her standard fare in response: those choices would be up to states ... DeVos couldn’t think of one. Here was the United States Secretary of Education saying that if a state wanted to give federal dollars to a private school that only admitted White students, that would be fine by her. Want to reject any student who’s gay or Jewish or has a disability? That’s ok too, she was implying. We’re just here to dole out the cash. Of course, such a scheme would never hold up in court. But it laid bare the moral vacuity of the commonly-professed view that the federal government should just get out of the way and let states figure it out.

Lehrich went there, didn't he? What's impossible to tell is whether DeVos truly doesn't care if schools discriminate, or whether she's oblivious to the fact that some TOTALLY WILL when given the chance. Either way, she's ...

Finally, a bit of shameless self-promotion: for your weekend read, be sure to check out the longer piece I wrote in reaction to New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu's speech about the removal of Confederate monuments from his city:

 Have a great weekend!

We Don’t Need More White Dudes in Charge of Things, But the Ones Who Are Should Be More Like Mitch Landrieu

Last week, the city of New Orleans removed four monuments commemorating the Confederacy from the city’s public spaces. The action was the result of sustained pressure from local activists at "Take 'Em Down NOLA," like Angela Kinlaw, Malcolm Suber, and Michael "Quess?" Moore.

To mark the event, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu delivered a stunning speech that is getting a lot of attention, during which he dismantled a false, yet sticky, narrative about the Civil War:

… the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it … These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for. After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone’s lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.

I debated whether to write anything about this speech, because my normal rule of thumb is:

“White dudes shouldn’t congratulate other White dudes just for doing the right thing.”

But the remarkable thing about Landrieu’s speech is that, in 2017, his ability to tell the truth about the past renders him an exceptional member of the coterie of White-men-who-still-run-shit. Landrieu mentions slavery eight times in a twenty-minute speech, while naming the rape, torture, and violence that accompanied America’s foul practice of systematic dehumanization. He calls the Confederate monuments “symbols of White supremacy,” while wondering aloud why his city offers no visual reminders that New Orleans was America’s most active marketplace for trafficking enslaved people.

In recounting these facts of history, Landrieu, with a bit of exasperation, says, “Surely we are far enough removed from this dark time to acknowledge that the cause of the Confederacy was wrong.”  

He’s right to be anxious about what constitutes “The Obvious” in America. Telling a consistent, factual story regarding this country’s history of slavery and racial violence is undermined by the same false narrative that was perpetuated by these monuments. The narrative receives the balance of its oxygen from textbooks, history teachers, cable news, and unsubtle paeans to making America great again.

This is the ACTUAL original text from one of the monuments that Landrieu ordered removed. For real. 📷: : Jonas Chartock 

It is rare for a politician – let alone a White southern one – to challenge this sanitized mythology in such stark terms. Georgia Governor Zell Miller tried in 1993, when he implored his state legislature to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state's flag, arguing that to reject his plea meant identifying Georgia with the “dark side of the Confederacy.” President Lyndon Johnson also tried during his 1965 commencement address at Howard University, asserting that “white America must accept responsibility” for “centuries of oppression and persecution of the Negro man.”

What is striking about Landrieu, Johnson, and Miller is that they all told the truth, even though that truth is a direct challenge to White supremacy, from which they all benefit, whether they like it or not. The false narrative about the American South is hard to uproot not just because White people can choose to ignore their privilege to their own benefit, but also because the myth is more appealing than the truth. There is no joy in acknowledging that your ancestors were complicit in the systematic dehumanization of millions of enslaved people, and it’s hard to find pride in hearing that your grandparents’ heroes were bigoted losers. The lies start as a coping mechanism, but after centuries of metastasizing they have become a giant dam behind which we contain the crushing power of our collective past.

As James Baldwin said, though, "To accept one's past - one's history - is not the same thing as drowning in it.”

The only way to prevent ourselves from drowning in the real pain of our collective history is to stop aggrandizing the traumatizing events of our past. Landrieu spares no words in correcting the record, but he offers a life preserver of sorts to the folks set adrift by the accurate version of the war. Towards the end of his speech, he proffers a new narrative to replace the old one:

… we are becoming part of the city’s history by righting the wrong image these monuments represent and crafting a better, more complete future for all our children and for future generations. And unlike when these Confederate monuments were first erected as symbols of white supremacy, we now have a chance to create not only new symbols, but to do it together, as one people … It is in this union and in this truth that real patriotism is rooted and flourishes.

Landrieu casts pluralism as patriotic, offering a rebuttal to the ugliest corners of our contemporary discourse.

Roadside billboard in Harrison, Arkansas, 2017.

White supremacist rally in Virginia, 2017.

The reality of pluralism in this country, however, has never matched the aspiration of its idealized form, just as the removal of the symbols of White supremacy does not mean its inevitable demise. Pluralism in practice too often means that people of color continue to be on the receiving end of institutional racism, while White folks get to celebrate having a Black friend or two. Correcting the narrative is a necessary, yet insufficient, component of making this country a more just place for people who don’t look like Mayor Landrieu.

The future of American life will be much less White than its present, and as a result its political leadership should become much less White – not to mention much less male – than its current incarnation. Many White people struggle with this idea, because they view that outcome as an inevitable loss. The only thing we have to lose, though, is a false sense of unearned superiority. We must tell different stories if we’re going to have a different America, and the next generation of American political leaders should aspire to speak the truth about our past. They should speak that truth not just so that all of us can hear, but so that all of us can see our past and future selves in the narrative. Mitch Landrieu offered both words and deeds last weekend. Neither were perfect, but they’re a good start

Thursday Reading List: Equity Lawsuits, Creative Testing, and Blurry Lines Between Public and Private

The team at Blavity reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center is bringing a lawsuit against the Mississippi state education system:

The SPLC lawsuit claims that the schools attended by the plaintiffs' children "lack textbooks, literature, basic supplies, experienced teachers, sports and other extracurricular activities, tutoring programs, and even toilet paper." The group claims that in a white supremacist effort to prevent the education of blacks, the state has effectively watered down education protections that guarantee a "uniform system of free public schools" for all children. "From 1890 until the present day, Mississippi repeatedly has amended its education clause and has used those amendments to systematically and deliberately deprive African-Americans of the education rights guaranteed to all Mississippi schoolchildren by the 1868 Constitution," the suit states.

My prediction is that we're going to see much more litigation on education funding in the coming years. Since the 1990s, state legislatures have been the preferred venues for education policymaking, while the courts have been quiet. It's hard to imagine this particular United States Supreme Court being a friendly venue for an equity suit, so keep an eye on the state courts to see which arguments hold sway among moderate judges.

Elsewhere in the South, Madeline Will of Education Week looks at a Virginia district that is experimenting with new kinds of assessment:

With classmates, parents, teachers, and even the Roanoke County schools superintendent standing before him, high school senior Bubba Smith took a deep breath and set the two-story Rube Goldberg machine into motion. The contraption, which performed a series of complicated actions to lift a banner, was part of Bubba's fourth-quarter grade for his AP Physics class ... Nestled in the heart of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, the Roanoke County district has joined 10 other districts in the state that make up a Networked Improvement Community focused on implementing student-led assessment to bring about a deeper level of learning ... The project, supported through private philanthropy, is seeding 17 cutting-edge approaches across the country that vary in size and scope, to better understand how assessment can play into a more personalized, student-centered, competency-based learning process.

I'm here for this. The education world needs to find some sort of equilibrium around testing, wherein we use standard assessments for basic skills, but use more creative instruments for deeper learning. The trend in the last generation has been towards greater standardization, so as schools experiment with methods like these, we should be vigilant against over-correction. We need some way to assess basic literacy and numeracy for young students, otherwise we will perpetuate huge opportunity gaps.

Elsewhere, Allie Gross of The Atlantic looks at the blurry line between religious and charter schooling in Michigan:

In March, Cornerstone [School] announced that starting next year, its flagship private Christian school would stop providing primary- and middle-school classes. Instead, a charter, employing the same staff and using the same curriculum, would take over. Families from the religious school would help new families get to know the new school, Brockman explained. The words “Centers of Hope” glimmered in gold typeface above her as she spoke ... Pinpointing where the religious school ended and the charter school began was difficult. Parents sitting in the room may have wondered: Am I at a meeting with Cornerstone Nevada, the flagship, independent, religious school? Or am I listening to a talk about Cornerstone Jefferson-Douglass Academy, the soon-to-open public charter school? The two entities couldn’t help but brush against each other.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, there are two kinds of policy wonks that support charter schools: innovators and privatizers. The innovators think charter schools are a critical part of accelerating change from within the construct of public schooling, whereas the privatizers want to replace public oversight of schools with deregulated market-based accountability. The innovators are committed to the idea that "charter schools are public schools," but instances like the one reported above are a giant complicating factor in that message. That's why innovators should be very concerned when the United States Secretary of Education says that the federal government should not be in the business of dictating education rules to states.

Finally today, Alex MacGillis is in The New York Times Magazine with a long profile of Jared Kushner's real estate empire:

Tenants complained about Westminster Management’s aggressive rent-collection practices, which many told me exceeded what they had experienced under the previous owners. Rent is marked officially late, they said, if it arrives after 4:30 p.m. on the fifth day of the month. But Westminster recently made paying the rent much more of a challenge. Last fall, it sent notice to residents saying that they could no longer pay by money order (on which many residents, who lack checking accounts, had relied) at the complex’s rental office and would instead need to go to a Walmart or Ace Cash Express and use an assigned “WIPS card” — a plastic card linked to the resident’s account — to pay their rent there. That method carries a $3.50 fee for every payment, and getting to the Walmart or Ace is difficult for the many residents without cars ... property managers, instead of putting pink or yellow late notices and court summonses discreetly in mailboxes or under doors, post them in public — on the front doors of townhouse units or on lobby walls or lobby doors of apartment buildings.

Read the whole thing, because the level of disrespect for vulnerable families is stunning. In particular, the Kushner-owned companies have filed hundreds of lawsuits against low-income families to collect small sums; when families are unable to defend themselves against the Kushner's formidable legal teams, courts allow Kushner and his company to garnish former tenants' wages. It seems like making the rich richer on the backs of the poor is a Trump-Kushner family value.

Have a great day ...

Tuesday Reading List: The Trump-DeVos Budget, Leave Kids' Hair Alone, and a Bold Speech

Betsy DeVos gave a speech to voucher enthusiasts last night, and Emma Brown of The Washington Post parsed the words for clues about the administration's education agenda:

Many education observers had expected her to lay out a specific policy proposal, such as a federal tax credit that would funnel public dollars toward scholarships to private and religious schools. Trump has pledged to spend $20 billion per year expanding school choice. But DeVos said nothing about tax credits or any other specific policy, saying only that Trump would propose something big — and that the administration would not force states to take part ... She also said the administration would refrain from “bribing states with their own taxpayers’ money,” a not-so-veiled reference to President Barack Obama’s initiative to offer billions of stimulus dollars to states that adopted his preferred education policies. The Trump administration, however, plans to offer $1 billion to local public school districts that agree to adopt choice-friendly policies, according to budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.

For those of you keeping score, when your political opponent offers resources to states in exchange for reforms, it's a "bribe." When you do it, it's a "$1 billion offer."

Got that?

In the meantime, Andrew Ujifusa of Education Week tells us what to expect in the actual budget documents from DeVos and the White House:

We know Trump wants to create a new $1 billion grant program under Title I spending for disadvantaged students to allow them to choose the public schools of their choice. But how would that funding work if it is outside the traditional Title I spending structure (which relies on formulas to get money to districts)? If it is optional, what will be the terms under which states would apply for the money? And would there be limits on which public schools they could use the money for?  ... Would most of the cash go for actually dispensing vouchers to students, or for research into vouchers? What would be the research standards the department would apply to voucher studies? And which students would be eligible for any voucher funds?

Despite the clear lack of detail-orientation among the top officials in this administration, it's safe to assume that there are worker bees at the department of education sorting through the plausibility of various options. For context, it was a Big Deal when the Obama administration moved almost $5 billion of federal funding into school improvement grants ... and that was amidst a historical increase in federal education spending, tied to the stimulus (ARRA) passed in 2009 to ameliorate the effects of the Great Recession. Title I is a block grant from the federal government to states, and it is distributed based on a formula. States count on that money form year to year, which means they're liable to get fussy (read: call their United States Senators) if anything significant happens to the money.

In other news, Jeremy Fox of The Boston Globe is following the Massachusetts charter school with the discriminatory hair policy:

The board of trustees of a Malden charter school unanimously voted to suspend a controversial policy that punished students for wearing hair braid extensions, a rule that many said discriminates against black and biracial students. The Mystic Valley Regional Charter School eliminated that provision of the school’s dress code for the rest of the academic year on Sunday, after meeting privately for more than two hours to discuss a letter from Attorney General Maura Healey saying that the policy was unlawful.

We've been following a spate of these stories on the blog recently, and I hear a new instance of policing Black hair in schools just about everyday. I don't have much more to say about this, except:

For a soupçon of good news, check out this speech from New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, as reprinted by The Pulse Gulf Coast. Landrieu delivered this address, as his city removed four public memorials to the Confederacy:

The historic record is clear: the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This ‘cult’ had one goal — through monuments and through other means — to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity. First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots. These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.

The whole speech is remarkable, especially coming out of the mouth of a southern politician who identifies as White. Read the whole thing. This country needs to reckon with its actual history, not a fictionalized one. As James Baldwin said, “To accept one's past - one's history - is not the same things as drowning in it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought."

Have a great day!

Monday Reading List: Betsy DeVos's 1st 100 Days Riles the Left-Right Divide in Education

The reporting team at The Hechinger Report looked at Betsy DeVos's first 100 days as United States Secretary of Education. Emmanuel Felton identifies a point of tension at the core of her agenda:

Many in conservative circles see her primary role as using the bully pulpit to advance school choice policies, but government-backed school vouchers for private schools, which is something she’s vigorously supported for decades, have really taken a beating recently. Study after study have shown that students at private schools using vouchers do no better and sometimes even worse than similar peers who remain in public schools. That helped anti-voucher lawmakers in Tennessee scuttle a voucher push there. After proposing bills each of the last seven years, pro-voucher lawmakers in that state thought that this would be their year. Lawmakers have instead promised to study how to best hold these private schools accountable and come back with a new bill next year. And that’s a state where Republicans control all branches of government. That underscores just how murky the path forward is for her policy agenda.

DeVos has made significant changes to higher education policy without Congress. Making a large new federal investment in vouchers would require an act of the legislature, though, which is unlikely. As such, DeVos is looking to carve out dollars from existing federal programs to incentivize states and districts to use their resources to support vouchers.

In an interview with Chalkbeat's Matt Barnum, the head of Democrats for Education Reform - Shavar Jeffries - calls DeVos's voucher obsession a "sideshow," while pointing out that his organization supports accountable public charter schools:

It’s not a slippery slope to support public schools that are accountable to the public, that have to comply with the same civil rights law, the same accountability standard, that have to be transparent in terms of their finances, that are non-profit, so there’s not any profit motive, there’s not any distribution of any margins to investors — but to bring innovation to public education ... We’ve seen in other domains — in the healthcare space, we see that public healthcare benefits leverage both hospitals and doctors who are run by governmental bureaucracies as well as nonprofit hospitals, as well as doctors who work for nonprofits. Same in the housing space — you have public housing run by governmental bureaucracies and then you also have nonprofit community development corporations that provide housing. To us it’s the same sort of model. We don’t see any slippery slope at all because they’re held accountable to the same rules, the same standards, the same kind of values that motivate public investment.

Read the whole interview, because Jeffries outlines a compelling case for what belongs in a progressive education reform agenda, and what does not. Vouchers enjoy minimal support within his coalition, and they don't seem to work, so he justifiably can't throw his chips in with that agenda. He also discusses the friction between the political left and right in the education reform coalition. In the last couple of years, that friction has felt irreconcilable.

Derrell Bradford, writing at The 74, thinks that folks need to put on their big kid pants and push past the tension:

A retreat from the political realities of what it takes to make change — real change, not just the kind that makes partisans happy, but the kind that actually alters culture in a way that unmakes what is broken so something better can be created — isn’t just selfish, it’s self-interested. And it ignores the most important of factors: that change of this kind, and of this scale, can’t be done alone. We don’t need new edges; we need a new center. So consider this: If your partisan values are more important to you than your education reform values, perhaps you should ask yourself if you are in the right place, at the right time, doing the thing that is best for you and your beliefs. I happen to be an ed reformer first — my moral and professional compasses point in the same direction, and I act in a fashion that is aligned around changing policy for kids. This is also to say I am a Democrat second, and being one informs my view on reform — particularly on issues of equity — but is in service to that view.

Bradford reaches back into the history of Civil Rights and reminds us that social change often requires partnership among uncomfortable bedfellows. That said, social change also requires political champions and organized power. The left-leaning political leaders who have championed reform causes - whether President Barack Obama or Senator Cory Booker or the late Ted Kennedy - have been Democrats first and education reformers second. As Jeffries points out in the earlier interview, EVEN reform-y Democrats do not support the agenda that DeVos is pushing, so there's little reason to pursue a bipartisan coalition at the federal level right now. As the say, "It takes all kinds," and sometimes politicians have to do politics.

Finally today, Anemona Hartocollis, writing in The New York Times, looks at connecting rural students with elite colleges:

Most low-income students rely on their parents for college advice, and many of them end up going to colleges that are less rigorous than they can handle, the research shows. Her organization, the College Advising Corps, places recent graduates in public high schools for two-year stints as full-time college advisers, where they make up for a widespread scarcity of college counselors and bring their own recent experience to bear on the college application process ... Some critics say that these efforts are too focused on transforming the lives of the most brilliant tier of low-income students. What about the students who are merely competent? Others say that steering all the smart teenagers to a few elite colleges may be good for those particular students, but may worsen the social and economic stratification of American society — there will be no more small-town philosopher-car mechanics.

I do not understand this criticism. Of the myriad problems facing our country, I'm not sure that the shortage of philosopher-car mechanics appears on the list of the top billion.

On a more serious note, if someone wants to be a car mechanic, s/he should become a car mechanic. But the institutional barriers to pursuing that sort of career either live outside of the formal education system, or are solved by making local investments in career education. If someone wants to be a philosopher, he or she needs access to the elite corners of higher education, and there are massive financial, cultural, and institutional barriers to that endeavor. In other words, when there are too many elite philosophers from rural America, and too few auto mechanics in those towns, I will gladly weep. Until then ... have a great day.

Friday Reading List: Conservatives Risk Hugging School Choice to Death and Other Stories

(Dear Readers: I am traveling this week, so the daily "Reading Lists" may be abbreviated. I also may post them at idiosyncratic times. Thanks for your patience!)

Reporters at The Washington Post got a preview of the Trump administration's education budget:

Funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, public-service loan forgiveness would end and hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services would vanish under a Trump administration plan to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, according to budget documents obtained by The Washington Post. The administration would channel part of the savings into its top priority: school choice. It seeks to spend about $400 million to expand charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools, and another $1 billion to push public schools to adopt choice-friendly policies.

Early report suggest that the school choice incentive fund might work like the Obama administration's signature education program, Race to the Top. Some conservative policymakers are worried about this unmitigated embrace of school choice. Here's Rick Hess in USA Today:

Trump is a historically unpopular president. In the history of presidential polling, no president has ever polled this low, this early. Trump is polarizing and crude, while his administration is clumsy and gaffe-prone. So, school choice would not only risk being branded as TrumpChoice, but it would be fronted by an unpopular and divisive president. Democrats who are open to school choice but who despise Trump might wonder if they’re missing something when it comes to school choice (this happened to plenty of Republicans who weren’t sure what to make of the Common Core, but who figured that — if Barack Obama was out front pushing it — they were probably wise to be leery).

The comparison to Common Core is a good one, as that issue enjoyed support among centrists in both parties. That said, Common Core was unpopular on both the far-right AND the far-left. I don't really understand how the rightwing base of the GOP feels about school choice. Either way, Hess is right that reformers need to back away from Trump, and fast. I just wish that Trump's flagrant sexism, racism, and anti-immigrant attitudes had been sufficient to elicit such a reaction before.

The divide over school choice goes beyond partisan politics. Whereas there is significant bipartisan agreement about charter schools, vouchers remain polarizing. The Associated Press has more in Education Week:

For two decades, a loose-knit group that includes some of the country's wealthiest people has underwritten the political push for school choice, promoting ballot initiatives and candidates who favor competition for traditional public schools ... The movement has been cleaved into two camps: those who want to use choice to improve public schools and others, like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who want to go further by allowing tax money to flow to private schools through vouchers, government-funded scholarships or corporate tax credits. The differences that once seemed minor are at the heart of a potential seismic shift in the school-choice movement.

The reporters looked at charitable donations and campaign finance reports to determine how the biggest education reform donors have split over the issue of vouchers. I buy their analysis of the funder dynamics, but the emphasis on donors is another sign that the reform coalition has suffered from overemphasizing a top-down approach to change.

Finally today, Breanna Edwards of The Root has ANOTHER story of a Black student being punished for wearing her natural hair:

The junior at the private Montverde Academy in Lake County, Fla., said that she is known for her curls but never thought she would be singled out because of them. “I received a call saying that my daughter needed to get her hair done and she wears her natural and I was kind of taken aback by it,” her dad, Eric Orr, said. Eric Orr said that a school administrator called and said that Nicole’s style wasn’t in line with the dress code.

This incident was in a private school, but we have seen this same pattern in traditional public schools and charter schools as well. School administrators - not to mention employers - need to understand how offensive it is to deny people the ability to wear their hair naturally. If your school's dress code explicitly forbids hairstyles associated with certain races or ethnicities, it's a racist policy. Period.

Have a nice weekend ...