Usually I’m a planner. I like to-do lists and calendars and vision boards and check boxes. But I’m also fond of those lightbulb moments when an idea pops into my head and I can see an entire project unfold that my students could start tomorrow. And that’s what happened when I read this article from Edutopia: In Schools, Finding Hope in a Hopeless Time, by Nora Fleming.

I have worried so much this year about my students, 7th and 8th graders I have never met face-to-face. We have been learning on Zoom all year, and while I have seen lots of growth, creativity and community in our Zoom classes, I know there has been plenty of pain and struggle that I haven’t been able to see or respond to online.

But now we are on Spring Break, and in a couple weeks we will return to a campus that will be brand new for most of my students. We will finally see each other in person! The sun is out, the CONTINUE READING: Ending the year with hope | Laura Bradley

The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) today announced a comprehensive review of the Department's regulations implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, as part of implementing President Biden's March 8 Executive Order on Guaranteeing an Educational Environment Free from Discrimination on the Basis of Sex, Including Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity.

In a letter to students, educators, and other stakeholders, OCR outlined plans to solicit the public's input on the regulations, ultimately leading to possible revisions through a notice of proposed rulemaking.

"Building educational environments free from discrimination where our nation's students can grow and thrive is a top priority of the Biden-Harris Administration," said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. "Today's action is the first step in making sure that the Title IX regulations are effective and are fostering safe learning environments for our students while implementing fair processes. Sexual harassment and other forms of sex discrimination, including in extracurricular activities and other educational settings, threaten access to education for students of all ages. As Secretary, I will work to ensure all students—no matter their background, who they are, or how they identify—can succeed in the classroom and beyond."

The March 8 Executive Order stresses the Biden-Harris Administration's commitment to the nation's students and its belief that all students should be guaranteed an educational environment free from discrimination on the basis of sex, including in the form of sexual harassment, which encompasses sexual violence, and including discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Executive Order requires the Department to review and reconsider all existing regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, and any other similar agency actions, including the 2020 amendments to the Department's Title IX regulations, formally known as the "Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance."  

The letter to stakeholders explains that OCR is undertaking a comprehensive review of the Department's existing regulations and other actions related to Title IX  by gathering the public's views and insights on the issue of sexual harassment in school environments, including sexual violence, and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This feedback will help OCR determine what additional changes to the Title IX regulations and any related agency actions may be necessary to fulfill the Executive Order.  The input will also support the Department's commitment to ensuring equal and nondiscriminatory access to education for students in schools across the nation, from pre-K-12 and in postsecondary institutions, including in extracurricular activities and other educational settings. During this review process, the existing Title IX regulations, as amended in 2020, remain in effect.

As part of this comprehensive review, OCR seeks to hear from as many interested parties as possible. To facilitate this, OCR plans to hold a public hearing  to enable those who are interested to share their views through oral comments and written submissions. More information on the hearing will be available in the coming weeks and will be posted on the News Room section of OCR's website at http://www.ed.gov/ocr/newsroom.html. After listening to the public and completing its review of the Title IX regulations, OCR anticipates publishing a notice of proposed rulemaking.

To assist schools, students, and others in better understanding OCR's expectations with respect to compliance with Title IX and the 2020 amendments, OCR will also issue a new question-and-answer document in the coming weeks. 

"Throughout this process, the Office for Civil Rights will be guided by our responsibility to ensure that schools are providing appropriate support for students who have experienced sexual harassment, including sexual violence, and that school procedures are fair and equitable for all parties and cognizant of the sensitive  issues that are often involved," said Suzanne B. Goldberg, acting assistant secretary for civil rights.  "The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights is responsible for and fully committed to enforcing Title IX's protections to ensure equal access to education for all students regardless of sex. This includes making certain that students who have experienced discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity have their legal rights fully met."

Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights Launches Comprehensive Review of Title IX Regulations to Fulfill President Biden’s Executive Order Guaranteeing an Educational Environment Free from Sex Discrimination | U.S. Department of Education

Privatization of important parts of the public sector is a great scourge of our times. No institution is more fundamental to the American Dream than public education, and it is under assault by powerful and well funded forces. By billionaires who have dreams of lower taxes and libertarians who want to destroy whatever government provides. We must fight privatization of the goods and services that belong to us.

Frankly we should join together to fight for a society where there are no billionaires and no poverty. Let us agree to take care of one another and have a fairer society, where everyone has a decent standard of living, where there is no hunger or homelessness. I recommend a book called The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, in which two British sociologists-Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett-demonstrate that societies with more equality are happier than those where great inequality persists. By contrast, scan Bloomberg Billionaires Index. I am not a socialist, but I don’t believe we should have either billionaires or poverty.

The pandemic impoverished millions of people. But the billionaire class got richer, much much richer. Senator CONTINUE READING: Saving the Commons: This I Believe | Diane Ravitch's blog

For over 40 years, George Graham Vest served first as a Missouri state Representative, next as a state Senator in the Confederacy, and finally as a U.S. Senator for Missouri from 1879 to 1903.

In a speech from August 21, 1891, Vest included a claim about history that has been echoed by many: “In all revolutions the vanquished are the ones who are guilty of treason, even by the historians, for history is written by the victors and framed according to the prejudices and bias existing on their side.”

Considering Vest’s complicated relationship with the state and country that he served, we should keep in mind that his comment represents something many people misunderstand about history: All history is biased, and history is created by whoever is telling the story.

Often associated with Winston Churchill, the adage “history is written by the victors” seems to repeat itself in times of great upheaval.

One of our most recent moments of political conflict was the siege on the U.S. Capitol in early January 2021. Less dramatic but more significant, that was CONTINUE READING: South Carolina Republicans Seek to Politicize History – radical eyes for equity

Two decades ago, research I had done on schools and classrooms in Silicon Valley during the 1990s was published as Oversold and Underused: Computers in Classrooms.  In 2018, The Flight of a Butterfly or Path of a Bullet, another book researching 41 exemplary Silicon Valley teachers who had integrated technology appeared. Since then, I have visited many classrooms where teachers used electronic devices seamlessly in lessons until the pandemic hit. Then remote instruction became the primary medium of teaching and learning.

What similarities and differences do I see between the two periods of intense activity in getting hardware and software into schools and classrooms?

The similarities are easy to list.

*At both times, policy elites including donors and computer companies urged districts and schools to get desktops and laptops into classroom teachers’ and students’ hands.

The hype then and now promised that students would learn more, faster, and better; that classroom teaching would be more student-friendly and individualized–the word today is “personalized”; and that graduates would enter the high-tech workplace fully prepared from day one.

*Teacher and student access to the new technologies expanded.

For example, in the mid-to-late 1990s, Silicon Valley companies and philanthropists gave desktops and laptops to schools while districts also purchased loads of personal computers. The influx of machines was often CONTINUE READING: A Few Thoughts about Classroom Technology Then and Now | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Based on the public health emergency due to COVID-19, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) established a nationwide waiver to support the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) while schools are responding to COVID-19.

This waiver makes the following adjustments to annual CEP deadlines:

• CEP Requirement: Data Used to Calculate Identified Student Percentage (ISP)
  • Annual Data Deadline: April 1
  • New Extended Data Deadline: Anytime between July 1, 2020. and June 30, 2021
    
    
• CEP Requirement: Elect CEP for Following School Year (SY)
  • Annual Application Deadline: June 30
  • New Extended Application Deadline: September 30, 2021

To review the complete language of the FNS CEP Waiver, please visit the USDA web page.

COVID-19 Resources

For updated information, sponsors are directed to visit the California Department of Education (CDE) COVID-19 Guidance for Child Nutrition Programs web page and the COVID-19 Frequently Asked Questions web page.

For information on waivers and communication sent out to program operators, please refer to the CDE Nutrition What’s New web page under the Disaster tab.

Background

The CEP is a four-year alternative meal counting and collection procedure included as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The intent of the CEP is to improve student access to free meals in eligible local educational agencies and high poverty schools, while eliminating the meal application process. For more information on the CEP, please visit the CDE CEP web page at CDE CEP web page.

Contact Information

If you have any questions regarding this subject, please contact your county’s School Nutrition Programs (SNP) Specialist. A list of SNP Specialists is available in the Download Forms section of the Child Nutrition Information and Payment System, Form ID Caseload.

Republicans in West Virginia passed a dramatic voucher bill that allows people to spend public education funds on almost anything. Governor Jim Justice, a billionaire, signed the bill into law.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice on Saturday signed into law the bill that school-choice advocates say will implement the nation’s broadest nonpublic school vouchers program.

Programs in other states are limited to low-income, special-needs or other subsets of students, or have caps on the number of recipients in general. But West Virginia’s program will be open to all K-12 students, including by offering public money to families who already don’t use the public school system.

Effective beginning in the 2022-23 school year, families who withdraw their children from public schools can receive a currently estimated $4,600 per-student, per-year for private- and home-schooling expenses. Families also may receive the money for newly school-aged CONTINUE READING: West Virginia Passes Sweeping Voucher Bill | Diane Ravitch's blog

Just heard from a connected source that raising the charter cap and/or reviving the “zombie” charters is still on the table in Albany, so CSM and NYC Kids PAC sent in the following memo in opposition.

Hope it’s not true but there have been too many unpleasant surprises in state budgets over the years, and the charter lobby has a lot of money to throw around.   I saw two TV ads  for Success charters in the space of five minutes last night on NY1.

 Penny Kittle teaches freshman composition at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire and has logged a few decades in public school as a reading teacher and literacy coach. She's picked up some NCTE awards, written some books, and generally done pretty well professionally. But for my money, one of the coolest things she has done starts with this story:

There were books about training birds, the history of zoos, and endangered species. I could imagine current students who would enjoy each title. This was an intriguing collection placed directly across from classics recommended by those who work in the store. There was a shelf of new fiction, one of psychology and self-discovery, and a section for business books. The store went on and on. You know: a book for anyone who might wander through this place. It’s hard not to pick lovely books up, hard not to stuff my suitcase even fuller. (I did, in fact.)
​
But I also twirled around the room for a moment and imagined clearing out the center shelves in CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: The Book Love Foundation

VOUCHERS

Scholars show how to challenge voucher discrimination

How many ways can we say it? School choice is not about parents choosing the school for their child. It’s about schools choosing which students to allow through their doors. Private schools get to choose their clients.

The law may state that private and religious schools must not discriminate in order to receive state funds, but the actual real-world actions of schools accepting vouchers shows that private schools can, and often do reject certain students based on various characteristics such as religion or sexual preference (or the sexual preference of their parents). Under other circumstances, this discrimination wouldn’t be a problem. Religious schools should be allowed to require their teachers and students to follow certain theological teachings. However, it becomes a problem when public funds are used to further such discrimination.

The simple fact is that private schools, and religious schools in particular should not be allowed to use public funds because they are not required to accept all CONTINUE READING: 2021 Medley #5 – Vouchers, Testing, and Reading | Live Long and Prosper

“A leader is best
When people barely know he exists
Of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will say, “We did this ourselves.” 
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ch

Hope y’all had a great Easter weekend. For us it was much needed opportunity to reconnect with family that we had spent significant time with since the onslaught of the pandemic. Based on my social media feeds, it was spent in a similar fashion for many of you.

The world of education policy continues to be an active one. With questions around testing, learning loss, and dark money continuing to swirl. Let’s dive in.

Currently making its way through the Tennessee General Assembly is a bill flying under the radar that could impact education policy. House Bill 159, known as the Personal Privacy Protection Act would prohibit the release of information for all 501(c) organizations, those holding nonprofit, tax-exempt status under the federal IRS code. The bill is not aimed specifically towards the education world, but it will have an impact. Hiding the money will only make it easier for those in the private sector to dismantle public education.

Over the last several weeks I’ve disclosed the influence of several non-profit education organizations that wield considerable influence over education policy in Tennessee. Groups like SCORE, TNTP, Education Trust, NEIT, and such. By looking at their tax filings, you can see some of where their money comes from, but that data lags behind by two years. HB 159 will only serve to CONTINUE READING: MORE CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON – Dad Gone Wild

I was born in 1938. I’m in pretty good health, considering my age. But one of the valves in my heart has a leak. It must be repaired. On April 8, I am having open heart surgery. The surgeon will break open my breastbone to reach my heart, then wire it back together. He assures me I will be fine, but fatigued, when it’s over.

I have tried to take it in stride, but it’s hard not to find it scary. Terrifying, actually.

To cheer me up, I keep thinking of hokey old songs that use the word “heart” in them. There are so many of them. Dozens. Scores. Hundreds. I’ve been singing Hank Williams’ “Your Cheating Heart,” and “My heart cries for you, sighs for you, dies for you, please come back to me,” “Peg of My Heart,” “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” “You’re Breaking My Heart Cause You’re Leaving, you’ve fallen for somebody new,” Doris Day’s “Once I had a Secret Love, that lived within the heart of me,” “ Hoagy Carmichael’s “Heart and Soul, I fell in love with you,” Elvis Presley’s “Wooden Heart,” Patsy Cline’s “Heartaches,” another version of a different “Heartaches,” The Charms, “Hearts Made of Stone,” Billy Eckstine’s “My Foolish Heart,” The Four Aces, “Heart of My Hearts,” Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” and many more. “Heart of My Heart” is the one I keep singing to myself; it’s a barbershop quartet song. The Elvis Presley song is adorable, Elvis like you have never seen him before.

It’s a habit in my natal family to try to turn bad news into humor.

My heart is not amused.

When the nurse-practitioner called to review procedures, she asked me what kind of animal valve I wanted in my heart. Without hesitation, I said I wanted the valve of a Longhorn steer. My heart really does belong to Texas.

One of the first people I turned to for advice about a surgeon was Checker Finn’s wife, Renu Virmani, who is a world-renowned cardiologist. She assured me that the surgeon recommended by my cardiologist was the best in New York City. The more I inquired, the better I felt about the person I chose. When I met him, he relieved my anxieties. At least some of them.

The blog will continue while I am hospitalized. I have written some in advance. Some of of my good friends agreed to write special contributions for me in my absence (most are original and never been previously published). And I expect to jump in to comment and maybe even post a few things as soon as the anesthesia wears off.

So please think of me on April 8. I will be grateful for your thoughts, prayers, and good wishes.

I’m not going away. I will be back with a stronger heart and a passion for justice. And maybe the heart valve of a lion or a tiger or a Longhorn.