Republican leadership has endless amounts of money for bloated military budgets and tax breaks for billionaires. But when working families need help, oh my God, we can’t afford it!
I am a little tired of that hypocrisy.
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Denver Dustin Bradford/Getty ImagesThere will be a healthy competition between Denver Broncos running backs Philip Lindsay and Melvin Gordon, but not animosity. “Melvin’s not my enemy,” Lindsay told 9News.com’s Mike Klis on Monday. “He’s my teammate. He needs to do his job but best believe I’m going to do my job.”The 25-year-old added:”When camp comes around it’s going to be a battle. I’m not just going to sit there and give somebody the job. They can. But I’m going to go out there and I’m going to battle. I’ve heard this stuff my whole entire life. And it’s never ever panned out how everybody has wanted it to pan out. Until someone proves me wrong, I’m going to continue to do what I do.[…]”My initial reaction is at the end of the day I’ve got to produce so that I can put food on the table for my family. I can’t worry about anything else that’s going on. Honestly. He’s going to do his part and I’m going to do my part. At the end of the day, I don’t need 20 carries to make 100 yards. I don’t think I’ve ever had 20 carries.”The Broncos officially signed Gordon to a two-year contract on March. 26.The 26-year-old was drafted by the Los Angeles Chargers 15th overall in 2015. He missed the first four games of last season because of a contract holdout that ultimately failed. Once on the field, Gordon rushed for 612 yards and eight touchdowns on 162 carries across 12 games (11 starts).Overall with the Chargers, Gordon tallied 4,240 yards and 36 touchdowns on 1,059 rushes. His lone 1,000-yard rushing campaign came in 2017.Lindsay signed with the Broncos as an undrafted free agent in 2018. Since then, the Colorado product has back-to-back 1,000-yard rushing seasons along with 16 total touchdowns on 416 carries. Lindsay became the first undrafted offensive rookie in league history to make the Pro Bowl.Jeremy Bloom @JeremyBloom11Not invited to the combine. Overlooked by all 32 teams. Not drafted. @I_CU_boy just made history by becoming the 1st offensive undrafted rookie to make THE PRO BOWL. Easily one of the best underdog sports stories.. ever. https://t.co/3n5kYgXjaKLindsay showed he is not intimidated by anything when he called Broncos Hall of Fame running back Terrell Davis and asked his permission to don his No. 30:Phillip Lindsay @I_CU_boyAppreciate you, TD! Honored and humbled to wear your number. I will do everything I can to make you proud! 
https://t.co/2vU7yfm8OLTo Lindsay’s point, he has only exceeded 20 carries in a single game once—he rushed 21 times for 81 yards and two touchdowns last season against Green Bay—but he has eclipsed 100 yards in five career games.Broncos General Manager and President of Football Operations John Elway explained in a statement the organization’s decision-making in signing Gordon:”Obviously we had two good backs in Royce Freeman and [Phillip] Lindsay. We know that [Lindsay] is a guy that’s had a great year for us. I know there’s people going, ‘Why do you need another horse?’ Well, when you have an opportunity for Melvin Gordon to come in here, we felt like it was an addition to the team. He’s a guy that obviously has had a lot of success in this league. He’s scored a lot of touchdowns and has caught the football a ton. So we feel like with him—with Melvin, as well as Phillip—that we’ve got a great one-two punch, and we’ll only get better in the backfield.”Ultimately, we have to score more points this year. We’ve struggled on the offensive side the last two, three years, and so we’ve got to get better on that side. I think Melvin will be one of those key pieces to help us get better.”Phil Milani @philmilaniThe @Broncos reportedly made a splash in free agency on Friday adding Melvin Gordon to the backfield. @AricDiLalla and I broke down what it means for the offense next season. https://t.co/yMkKClnK0WNicki Jhabvala @NickiJhabvalaThe Broncos (still un-finished) offense now includes: QB Drew Lock RB Phillip Lindsay RB Melvin Gordon WR Courtland Sutton TE Noah Fant LG Dalton Risner RG/C Graham Glasgow RT Ja’Wuan James https://t.co/rgtvdxmyFZDenver ranked 20th in rushing offense (103.9 yards per game) and 28th in scoring offense (17.6 points per game) during the 2019 regular season.The 7-9 Broncos were sparked by rookie second-round quarterback Drew Lock in December—going 4-1 in Lock’s first five NFL starts.That momentum paired with Gordon’s motivation to prove doubters wrong and Lindsay’s determination to stay the team’s No. 1 option could propel Denver to the playoffs for the first time since 2015.
By: Anne Rowe for DPS board
Title: Denver Phillip Lindsay Says Melvin Gordon Is ‘Not My Enemy’ After RB’s Broncos Contract
Sourced From: annerowedps.com/2020/04/12/denver-phillip-lindsay-says-melvin-gordon-is-not-my-enemy-after-rbs-broncos-contract/
Published Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2020 16:26:06 +0000
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Trump supports the $2,000 payments, Biden supports the $2,000 and the American people support $2,000.
McConnell must allow a vote on the $2,000 payments now.
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COVID-19 has been a disaster for virtually every institution and education is no exception. With that being said, there has been one positive development—the proliferation of education technologies in rural and urban areas. Students in the aforementioned areas have long lagged behind their suburban peers in both access to technology and skills in using them. This “gap” for lack of a better term has become known as the “digital divide.”
You can find references in scholarly articles about the digital divide as early as the 1990s. However, our culture has evolved around technology even more so since then meaning that the lack of access is of much more consequence now than it was then.
I was a student in the 1990s, and I remember how much easier my life got overnight when my parents brought home a big ole box with cow-print on the outside. It was a “Gateway Essential PC,” right in time for the 1999 Christmas season. This computer lived up to its branding and became a gateway to the digital world and that was BEFORE I popped in one of those America Online discs and discovered the internet.
I learned how to type efficiently. I was now able to type papers without having to go to the library or reserving time at one of the few computers in the school. I was able to research topics online and even offline because my computer came bundled with Microsoft Encarta. School projects became 75% easier overnight. This computer and the internet that came with it had such a profound impact on my educational life and that was before such things were essential to everything as they are now.
Many schools and districts have put internet and laptop devices in the hands of students to facilitate e-learning. A lot of people are ready to return to in-person class, but there is no question that this social advancement that came out of necessity has had a positive impact on students. Students are using the internet for more than just social media. They are learning the skills that are necessary to thrive in digital world such as typing and online research. They are even opening doors for their families who didn’t have internet or a computer prior to the school distributing them. One of my student’s mother used hers to write a resume and apply for jobs for example.
All of this begs the question: Are we really just going to take it all away?
Right now, that seems like the most likely answer. Schools districts are thus far not looking at the internet and device investment they made as permanent. In most places, whenever school returns to something that bears some resemblance of “normal” students and families are going to be expected to return hotspots and laptops to schools.
This is the wrong way to respond. It would be a big investment to continue such programs, but the largest part of that investment has already been made in most cases. Additionally, some schools already provided technology for their students even before the pandemic proving that it is sustainable. In an ideal world, local governments would increase student head-count money by a couple of hundred dollars to provide for necessary tech. Let them keep the wireless hotspots as well. However, hotspots are not a great solution for internet long term, and we should seriously consider whether or not internet is a public utility at this point because that is what it would take to close this gap for good.
2020 has been a year for the history books. It would be nice if it wasn’t the year we closed the digital divide and then opened it back up again.
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This is about life and death for millions of people.
The Senate must approve the $2000 for every working class adult.
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Tune in as President-elect Biden delivers remarks on the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and what his administration will do to get this virus under control.
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2020 was the pits.
More than 300,000 Americans died from COVID.
A dearth of presidential leadership that led to the politicization of wearing masks—the single most effective tool in the fight to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.
Tens of thousands of students without access to virtual education.
Racial injustice continuing to plague the nation.
Mass unemployment.
Grandparents unable to hug their grandkids.
2020 was a year to be forgotten.
Or was it?
As the adage goes, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
2020, with all of its horror and pain carries with it lessons we must heed if we are to seize this moment and make 2021 the first year of a new renaissance of justice.
Here’s what I will fight for in 2021:
In the wake of COVID, educational access depended upon internet access and as such more than 15 million students in the wealthiest country in the history of the world could not go to school. This is unconscionable and embarrassing. The time is long since past for the FCC to step up to its mantle of leadership and make the internet the 21st century equivalent of the 20th century’s telephone.
This is a matter of civil rights. If a student is wheelchair-bound, it is their federally protected civil right that an access ramp be built to ensure they can go to school. The same must be done for internet access. We can no longer be a nation that educates only those who can log on. The digital divide must be closed now and forever.
This means more than putting up a yard sign or reading the latest bestseller on being anti-racist. It’s about scrutinizing our day to day practices; calling out those we love for the racist behaviors they exhibit with nary a thought. It means confronting the discomfort that comes with rocking the racial status quo.
It means de-centering my white voice and abdicating my privilege. It means educating my children in ways I was not. It means facing the oppressor I have inside me. 2021 is the year of facing the racist within, and fighting for its erasure.
America’s education system is a rigged game in large part due to the way we have chosen to fund our schools. When school budgets are derived from local property tax wealth, as it is just about everywhere in the US, the result is obvious; rich schools for the rich and poor schools for the poor.
In 2021, there must be a multi-front attack on these entrenched funding formulas that perpetuate educational justice in every corner of America. Litigation at the state levels to find inequitable funding formulas unconstitutional must be brought in every state with new funding formulas drawn up using a combination of formulas that ensure that all districts receive a baseline amount that ensures fully resourced schools with extra dollars apportioned by categorical weights such as poverty, trauma, special education and english language learning.
2020 has taught us many things, among them the power of collective voice and action. We took to the streets and demanded action, and while there is so very much more work to be done, the enemy of progress is our complacency. When the day comes when we can finally put away our masks, we must ensure that we do not also table our convictions and fall back into our old ways of tolerating the intolerable. When asked by a young man what to do with his life, Frederick Douglass answered, “Agitate, agitate, agitate.” We must never stop agitating for justice, in 2021 and beyond.
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This year, due to the coronavirus pandemic, educators nationwide, and the world over, have had to adapt how they provide services to children and families. Like many of my colleagues, I too struggle with balancing how to do and be more in a world where our collective safety requires a coordinated separation.
For many, the holiday season brings faith to the forefront. So, for guidance on how to overcome, I look to my Sunday school teachers for inspiration.
Sunday school was more than just learning about the Christian faith, although that was a major part. Sunday school was about being discipled—we learned about the Christian faith and how to apply the tenets of the faith in our lives, whether in school or at home.
For those deacons and church mothers who instructed us, they were equally concerned about our formation as people and members of the community as they were with our spiritual formation. Those folks were concerned that we made good decisions in life and that our professional and personal success enabled us to become pillars of the community, with a heart to give back. Those things mattered as much as us memorizing scriptures, singing on the youth choir or becoming junior ushers.
Those elders discipled us. As educators, we must do the same when it comes to students. I don’t mean discipleship in a faith-based context but rather in a people-building and community strengthening context. What does that look like in an educational space? I am glad that you asked.
Educational discipleship is simply educators leading and instructing, in love, with building relationships rooted in transparency, trust and the best interest of students at the forefront of everything educators do. Trust in you can fill the void left by social distancing; trust comes by way of discipleship.
What does discipleship look like in the pandemic era; at a time of uncertainty and confusion regarding funding, the evaluation of teachers and student annual yearly progress? How do we implement something new or different, a la “discipling” kids halfway through the school year? It is you taking the action. Here is what it will require of you, whether in-person or virtually:
Ensuring that our students achieve good grades, move to the next grade and are prepared for college is important to our role as educators, but we mustn’t only focus on those things. We must have equal concern for our students’ lives, for the people they will become and the communities they care about. Thus, the pandemic era requires that we must not only teach; we must disciple.
Let this be our resolution for 2021.
By: Rann Miller
Title: We Must Be Disciples for Our Students in 2021
Sourced From: educationpost.org/we-must-be-disciples-for-our-students-in-2021/
Published Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2020 16:00:46 +0000
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This afternoon, President-elect Biden was briefed by members of his national security and foreign policy agency review teams. Tune in as he delivers remarks on the challenges the Biden-Harris administration will inherit.
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It was that kind of day. Parents and teachers know the one: the day before the holiday break. The day when all grades are due, when the students are cheering for a reprieve from their classes and when holiday celebrations are upon us. When I talked with my colleagues, they said they are hopeful for the new year, they are glad to wrap up the semester, and all of them—yes, everyone—said they are emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted.
In a webinar in which I was a panelist this week, I was asked to name one word which inspired me to reimagine my profession this year. Although I could have answered that question in so many ways, the first word that came to mind was “collaboration.” When I said it, I got some quizzical looks. Most teachers view that word as a tired or overused concept in professional development. This teacher doesn’t.
Collaboration has been the core of our survival as educators in 2020. I have seen collaboration as the light at the end of the tunnel, the resource available in a flash and the calming second voice in the midst of a technology outage. I have seen the concept shine more than ever this year and I think that it will allow us to reimagine the educational landscape now more than ever. Sometimes we just need to take a risk and try it.
Sometimes collaboration means trying something new to give a different experience to the students we are teaching. We teachers always have to think outside the box to provide innovative experiences for our students. But this year we’ve had to do that even more. With shifting expectations, constraints, and yes, sometimes even freedom, engagement in the classroom is not up to a single teacher: It takes a team.
I am inspired by the teachers, community members and students collaborating across computer screens to build amazing experiences that promote critical thinking in students. Whether it is virtual tours, a guest speaker, an opportunity for an online learning challenge, or something else, the new and more extensive collaborations I see in our teaching and learning are amazing! And yet there is so much more that we could do. What would happen if we truly harnessed the power of innovative learning, stopped following the page-a-day learning model, and opened up the world of inquiry more often?
Sometimes collaboration means that school systems and structures need a revisit and a redesign—one in which teacher-leaders have a direct seat at the decision-making table. Once again, during this time of COVID, we are seeing leaders who are not in the classroom making decisions for people who are. This is totally unacceptable when lives are at stake. Some people will laugh at that comment, but too many lives have been lost—and many of those lives were teachers’.
All stakeholders should collaborate in deciding what actions should be taken for the safety of students and teachers and for the development of mechanisms for teaching and learning in uncertain times. I am inspired by the teachers across this nation who are collaborating with their school districts to bring success to our students and districts in 2020. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if school leaders actually did this when times are uncertain and stressful, instead of only when they want to? And let’s be clear, I am not talking about a representative voice. I am speaking of a true set of collaborative team members who work together regularly, equally, and with a problem-solving mindset.
Sometimes collaboration means the chance to bring the “Make and Do” idea to the classroom. Teachers, schools, community partners and clubs across the country realize now more than ever the importance of the “Make and Do” concept in education. Teachers have been saying this for a long time but now, in the face of overwhelming screen time, it is more critical than ever.
The learning that happens away from a computer or television screen is critically important and there are beautiful examples of how that learning is happening. Maker kits, coding activities, Lego challenges, architecture challenges, sketchbooks and home experiments are surfacing again to provide the hands-on activities with which we all (not just students) crave to learn. I am grateful to see the spark in my students’ eyes as they share the things they are making, exploring, and doing with their hands and brains right now, and I am inspired by the innovative thinking and collaboration among stakeholders to make this happen with limited access to resources. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we took this opportunity to commit to increasing education funding to make this happen for all students in the future, pandemic or not?
Sometimes collaboration means throwing out the old professional development design model of “you sit and we will deliver” and start fresh. How? Start with one great idea, flesh it out within a team of people, and use the team’s fully developed idea to inspire reflection on our practice as educators and the changes we need for the future. Why should an educator sit through professional development or training sessions he or she is not engaged in?
I am inspired by the new models of professional development I am seeing in the time of a pandemic, models that deliver flexible learning sessions, discussion forums and resources that are easy to take home and implement in the future. I saw this process in action this fall with the National Teach for Equity Convening, hosted by the National Network of State Teachers of the Year and the National Education Association. One small idea, lots of brain-trust, a crowdsourced resource list created by master educators and partners as an amazing takeaway. Teacher-leaders at the helm of large group talks, small group discussions and back-channel discussions for everything in between. That was one inspiring educational day! What if we continued to think about innovative ways to deliver professional development to inspire rather than to bore, to empower rather than to tell?
As are many educators across the nation, I am hopeful for the new year, one filled with hope for a return to the classroom, but also with hope that the lessons gained from virtual learning are not forgotten. One where collaboration with all stakeholders is implemented. One where a clear educational vision at the federal, state and local levels helps bring teachers and community members to the table effectively, to help reimagine what education looks like in the future and, at the same time, to fight for the funding it needs.
I am exhausted, but that hope helps me keep an eye on the future, while at the same time remembering those individuals who inspire. In this pandemic year, there are more of them than anyone can count.
By: Michelle Pearson
Title: As 2020 Comes to a Close, We Are Tired and Inspired
Sourced From: educationpost.org/as-2020-comes-to-a-close-we-are-tired-and-inspired/
Published Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 16:00:15 +0000
From the Biden family to yours, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
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No matter how you’re celebrating this year, Champ and Major wish you a Merry Christmas.
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Americans are rightly concerned about the negative educational effects of the pandemic, especially for underserved student groups like low-income students of color and students with disabilities. All across the country, there is growing pressure to find ways to safely get as many children as possible back in schools. Despite our best efforts, online learning is just not as good as in-person, and the consequences of a full year online may be devastating. At the same time, the pandemic is spiking all across the country, threatening school reopening plans in many places.
One policy solution that will keep Covid-19 transmission rates low and help get students back into schools is mandated mask wearing, and state and district leaders who want a return to in-person teaching and learning might be mulling such a policy. There are certainly school districts that have been open throughout the fall without mask mandates, and we don’t yet know whether the most recent spike will affect district policies after the holidays. But we know that masks have become increasingly politicized and partisan, so we have been studying a range of data to understand the prevalence of, and support for, masks in schools. Based on our analyses, we think that mandated mask wearing is the most feasible and highest-leverage policy to get kids back in the classroom.
First, the simple truth is that parent support for mandatory masking in schools is high and growing. For instance using the nationally representative USC Dornsife Understanding America Study (UAS), we found that parent support for mandatory face coverings in schools has increased substantially since the summer, from 45 percent of households when we first asked in July, to more than two-thirds in October (69 percent) (for more on our methodology, see here and here).
Perhaps the increase in support is due to the large number of students currently in schools with mask-wearing policies—our most recent wave of data (administered in November, 2020) found that 90 percent of students currently in attending school in person or hybrid were required to wear masks. If you’re experiencing masks in school and finding that the benefits outweigh the costs, you may be less resistant to the policy.
Second, despite popular perception, mandatory mask-wearing in schools is supported by a majority of all racial/ethnic, regional, and partisan groups. When we last asked in October, 82 percent of Democrats supported mask-wearing and 51 percent of Republicans. Mask-wearing was supported by the majority of Asian (85 percent), Black (82 percent), Hispanic (75 percent), and White (62 percent) families, as well as 58 percent of families living in rural areas and 79 percent of families in urban areas. While support was higher in some groups than others, the vast majority of families across all groups support mask-wearing policies.
What explains the variation across groups in support for masks? One factor may be experiences with Covid and, relatedly, beliefs about the risks of Covid to children. When we asked parents whether they agreed that children are at serious risks of Covid health effects, 89 percent of Black households agreed, compared to 70 percent of Asian households, 69 percent of Hispanic households, and only 44 percent of White households. Black households were also less likely than other groups to agree that school closures were more harmful to children than the risk of Covid. We found similar patterns across other demographic and regional groups, echoing these groups’ support for mandatory mask-wearing.
Third, we can’t open schools without teachers, and recent evidence suggests that teachers are overwhelmingly supportive of mask policies. A recent survey of a representative sample of Los Angeles-area teachers, for instance, found that mask wearing was the single most critical need for teachers to feel comfortable returning to the classroom—75 percent of teachers said it was critical (compared to just 36 percent who said a vaccine was critical, for instance). Teachers also supported smaller class sizes and spacing, which likely can be achieved given that not all students who are welcomed back to the classroom will actually return. In short, teachers are by-and-large comfortable returning to the classroom if they are protected with masks and adequate spacing.
Where does this leave state and school district leaders? On the one hand, our results suggest that parents are mostly on board with mandatory mask wearing in schools, particularly in urban and democratic areas. At the same time, urban districts tend to serve more low-income students of color whose parents may be more reticent to send them back to school. As urban districts do start to hatch their reopening plans, they should consider how they are going to address parents’ concerns and serve students whose parents opt for at-home or hybrid options.
Certainly, the win from Biden might begin to reshape the conversation around masks and in-person learning. At the very least, we can expect a Biden Department of Education might project a more favorable rhetoric around mask wearing in schools. And the new administration will likely take their role in Covid monitoring much more seriously, perhaps by creating a federally mandated national data tracking system to study the impact of school reopening on Covid transmission. But state and district leaders shouldn’t wait for the U.S. Department of Education to tell them what to do. They should work with health experts in their state to safely reopen their schools, with masking and appropriate distancing, as soon as possible.
Shira Haderlein is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education.
Morgan Polikoff is an associate professor of education at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education.
The post For Schools To Open in Spring 2021, Teachers and Students Need to Mask Up appeared first on Education Next.
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With Dr. Miguel Cardona leading the way, we’re going to ensure every student in this country receives a high-quality education. Tune in as President-elect Biden nominates him to be our next Secretary of Education.
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It’s easy to view remote learning through the lens of its deficits. After all, there’s really no substitute for the face-to-face rapport with an excellent teacher. As an educator supporting public charter schools across the country through the transition to virtual instruction this year, I’ve seen a lot of promise too. This may not be a perfect situation for learning, but we’ve adapted, and the lessons we’re learning on family engagement, adapting technology and virtual instruction will transform our schools for decades to come.
As this year comes to a close, it’s important to review what we have learned about education during the pandemic.
It’s critical to ground this conversation in equity and justice. Like so many other aspects of the pandemic, the shift to virtual education has exposed fault lines of privilege and prejudice in American education. For students like ours at KIPP, systemic racism and income inequity mean they simply can’t count on things their more privileged peers take for granted—like access to technology and connectivity for learning, or parents having the job flexibility to help with schoolwork. These inequities require structural solutions.
In the meantime, schools are doing what we can. At KIPP, we have done our best to ensure more than 110,000 of our students have the devices and tech support they need to learn at home. KIPP regions made sure to distribute not only device for every child, but to achieve a ratio of 1.25 devices for every child, knowing many devices needed to be replaced.
Other regions focused on investing in hotspots and covering the service charges for families. We had assistant principals and regional leaders in Massachusetts answering the more than 400 calls and emails for tech help from parents on their first day back to school. Our regions created hotlines, tech help emails, explainer videos and took part in socially distant home visits to ensure connectivity. Our schools in Washington, D.C. even distributed headphones so students, who often had siblings taking part in remote learning side-by-side, could focus on their work.
So what have we learned? While we certainly look forward to returning to in-person instruction for as many students as possible, our use of technology has accelerated learning in three key ways:
We already knew the importance of cultivating deep connections with families. In fact, our mission begins with the words, “Together with families and communities …” But as parents have become co-teachers from home, our communication practices have transformed. Gone are the days of waiting for parent-teacher conferences to talk about students’ progress, or for end-of-year surveys to collect parent feedback. Now, schools are holding regular parent meetings and info sessions, covering everything from tech literacy to curriculum updates, mental health to bedtime stories. And holding these meetings virtually means we can engage parents who might not otherwise have been able to meet in person. We expect that these connections will only get better and stronger with time.
If not for the pandemic, we might not have made such a wholesale investment in technology. But the payoff has been so clear that we’re keeping it up! Teachers are finding that online tools can help them more efficiently organize student work and evaluate it in real-time, giving them a better window into where students are doing well and where they need support right away. We are preparing for a future where students and teachers make extensive use of computers in the classroom as well as at home. That means adapting and developing curricula that can be used both in-person and virtually, as well as hiring and training teachers to teach in both settings.
Technology is enabling us to expand learning well beyond the constraints of traditional brick-and-mortar schooling. While we’ve found that in-person instruction is especially important for the youngest grades, older students can harness technology to expand their learning outside school walls: from deeper dives into academic subjects, to a wider variety of extracurricular activities, to opportunities for internships or career development. And for students who can’t get to a physical school building, remote instruction helps them keep learning without interruption. (Though students may not like to hear it, snow days might just be a thing of the past!)
Technology in the classroom is here to stay. We can dwell on the drawbacks of remote learning, or we can adapt, pay attention to what works and apply those lessons moving forward.
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It was a year ago that I tried sweet potato pie for the first time.
Now, I am white and, though I have lived in Atlanta for 20 years, I am not originally from the South. So, this first bite of pie is not really all that surprising. My Black colleagues, however, were stunned when I told them. We were eating together at a potluck in our school building, back before COVID when things like this took place. One even took out her phone to record me as I took the fateful bite, interviewing me for her Instagram account.
Let’s get this out of the way: the pie was only okay. I’m a pumpkin kind of guy, so the sweet potato seemed a little cloying. I respect differing opinions, of course, this even as one of my Black friends describes pumpkin pie as “that dense cheesecake brick.” But I digress.
A few days later in the hall, I was chatting about all the orange pies when a former student walked by. “Ah, Wamsted,” he said, his eyebrows raised and a smile on his face as he heard about my sweet potato foray. “You thinking about getting your Black card, huh?” We all laughed as he clapped me on the back. Later, though, I was troubled.
At risk of offending, I want to explain by invoking the ‘Magical Negro.’ Spike Lee coined this term to describe a certain kind of cinematic Black character—a secondary player providing support to the leading white character(s), often in the form of mystical insight, wisdom or even superhuman powers. Common examples include Bubba from “Forest Gump,” Red from “The Shawshank Redemption,” and Morpheus from “The Matrix.” And further back in our fiction we find Sambo and Uncle Remus. With all deference to Lee, however, in this piece, I am going to avoid a term I don’t want to write repeatedly and use a euphemism. I will call these “magical Black characters.”
The interaction with my student bothered me because it forced an uncomfortable truth to mind, one that became unavoidable in the summer of 2020. Let me mix metaphors here, because sometimes important ideas are seen best in figurative language. For the most part, too many white people want a magical Black character to walk into the scenery of our lives and hand us our Black card, tell us that we are “good white people” and that our anti-racism work is sufficient and finished. We want to be known as allies, and we are searching for a magical Black character to give us that good news. Movies like “The Shawshank Redemption” appeal to us on an atavistic level because we want someone like Red to exonerate us of our individual and corporate sins of racism.
For some of us, that magical Black character is our “Black friend”—perhaps not unlike the one I invoked earlier when discussing the pie. For many it will take the form of a constellation of acquaintances on social media—“Black Lives Matter” selfies run rampant for a reason. For others, we hope to meet that character in some sort of professional training or continuing education. We want a licensed expert to certify us as “culturally competent” after we read a couple of articles about implicit bias and take part in a few carefully monitored conversations. In any case, what many of us white people are looking for is someone to hand us our Black card. We want to get to the other side of race in America; we want someone to graduate us out of prejudice and bias.
It is tempting to seek this easy way out of our legacy of racism and white supremacy. I know because I have fallen prey before. Once I was leaving a meeting, packing up my bags as I overheard a conversation bouncing around the room. It was an intimate space, a dozen or so teachers who all knew each other well, and so I was surprised when the room went just a tiny bit tense. We were talking about television, and someone had described the old show “Seinfeld” as “white people humor.” A laugh rattled around the room, but enough eyes cut to the only white person present that I could sense a certain nervousness.
I leaned in and smiled. Someone confessed, “Wamsted, I never understood that show. But you guys still watch it, right?” “Oh yeah,” I said. “White people watch ‘Seinfeld’ all the time. They love it.” The way I hit the differentiating “they” instead of the inclusive “we” tore the room apart. I couldn’t even keep a straight face amidst the laughter. In that instant, I was a part of something outside my whiteness; it was the first time I saw a shot at my Black card, and it felt good.
Full disclosure. I love “Seinfeld” about as much as I love pumpkin pie. That is to say, a lot. After I left the building, however, headed home to my white family, my race turned from a joke into something far more insidious. I may have caught a glimpse of my Black card, but I was still the privileged guy walking around in white skin, the one who never has to worry about race or racism when I browse around a store or get pulled over by the police. The one who has nothing for fear for his children when they wander through our neighborhood streets.
The truth is that a magical Black character clapping me on the back and declaring me an ally in one moment means little in the next. I still live in this country built upon white supremacy; I still have a constant obligation to work towards dismantling its power structure. Isolated moments of camaraderie or allyship, however real, do not make me an anti-racist.
I settled that day in the “Seinfeld” meeting, basked in the hope of getting my Black card, felt like a part of the club and let that be enough. To be fair, I had earned the moment, working side by side with my colleagues for the better part of a decade. But it is ridiculous for me to expect some magical Black character to step in and declare me “good white people.” Worse than ridiculous, it is insidious; I have anti-racist work to do still, always. A bite of sweet potato pie or a laugh about “white people humor” cannot change that fact.
I settled once, but I’m working hard to keep it from happening again. As Gwendolyn Brooks wrote,
There are no magic or elves or timely godmothers to guide us. We … must wizard a track through our own screaming weed.
There is no Black card, no pass through the screaming weed of whiteness, no magical Black character to guide us out of the fever dream of 2020. Only the everyday work of striving toward anti-racism in 2021.
With occasional stops for pie. However you might choose to take it.
By: Jay Wamsted
Title: I Can’t Expect Some Magical Black Character to Declare Me ‘Good White People.’ I Have to Do the Work.
Sourced From: educationpost.org/theres-no-magical-path-to-equity-we-have-to-work-toward-anti-racism-in-2021/
Published Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2020 16:00:00 +0000
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“We want to support you so that you can get to the great work of helping kids. You have to commit to that partnership if you’re a public school, and you are.”
That’s Miguel Cardona, President-Elect Joe Biden’s pick for U.S. education secretary and current education commissioner of Connecticut, speaking last February to leaders of the charter school network Achievement First, which serves 14,000 students, almost all low-income and of color. The occasion was a Connecticut State Board of Education meeting where board members acknowledged the network’s higher test scores and lower chronic absenteeism than the state average but put three of the network’s schools on probation for not following rules about updating suspension reports.
Cardona’s response—our priority is “helping kids”—makes me hopeful that his agenda is aligned with Biden’s promise to heal our deep cultural and political divides. After all, America’s education system has divisions that far predate Trump and COVID-19.
Here’s the nutshell. Some prioritize the “input” side of education, like increasing school funding and giving higher salaries to teachers who have master’s degrees and more seniority—this group is typically led by union leaders and people who oppose school choice. On the other side are those who prioritize “output,” like student achievement and college and career readiness—they are increasingly parents of color and education “reformers.” Recently, Andrew Rotherham made a similar distinction between “suppliers”—schools and universities —and “consumers,” parents and their children.
Among the many candidates on Biden’s shortlist for education secretary—NEA’s Lily Eskelsen Garcia, AFT’s Randi Weingarten, Howard University’s Leslie Fenwick—Cardona might have the best chance to lessen that divide. While no school-choice zealot, he told the Connecticut Post, “As a parent myself I want to make sure I have options for my children.” In saying so, he acknowledged that sometimes the only output-focused alternative in poor cities like New Haven and Hartford is charter schools. Why should America prioritize a single delivery mechanism for educating an increasingly multi-faceted and diverse nation of children? Why should America not listen to the parents pleading for choice?
Such parents were present at that same Connecticut State Board of Education meeting earlier this year. They noted their children “jumped by whole grade levels once they transferred into Achievement First.” Others charged that the state education bureaucracy “is more focused on creating roadblocks for the very schools that are succeeding and helping our brown and Black children in our communities like mine.” Importantly, Cardona listened to them.
Maybe Cardona’s openness to different types of public schools comes from personal experience. Raised in a housing project in Meriden, Connecticut, by parents born in Puerto Rico, this first-generation college graduate remembers “being the only Latino in many of my college preparation high school classes and throughout my college courses.” He started his career in Meriden as a fourth-grade teacher and rose quickly to become Connecticut’s youngest principal. Next came promotions to assistant superintendent and, last year, state commissioner, before being tapped for Biden’s cabinet at age 45.
Cardona describes his “purpose in education” as “evolv[ing] the thinking of the next generation.” He says his passion is equity, a long-pressing issue in a state where a recent administration of the SAT in Connecticut showed a 90-point gap between white students and students of color.
This intense focus on the least-privileged appears to drive his agenda to keep schools open in Connecticut. He argues that closing schools doesn’t reduce transmission in other places, as long as students and teachers wear masks and practice social distancing, and only “further exacerbates inequities that have been there all along.” To prove his point he released data showing disadvantaged students are missing twice as much remote instruction as wealthier students (despite closure of the digital divide) and a mere 4% of students in the state’s 10 lowest-performing districts have any sort of in-school instruction. “It’s families in already challenged communities that are under-resourced, that need more support,” explained Cardona. “We need to do more. I am passionate about ensuring that students can achieve equitable outcomes throughout the state regardless of ZIP code or skin color, which unfortunately often today still serve as a predictor of outcomes.”
In other words, Cardona is choosing output over input, consumer over supplier. Though he didn’t make the cut when education activists ranked their choices, he has the essential mindset that parents are looking for–someone who puts kids welfare ahead of adult considerations. And, in fact, parent pressure may have contributed to Biden’s rejection of a union leader.
From the Connecticut Mirror: “Cardona has walked a political tightrope as he tries to balance the needs of parents, who saw their children struggle to learn at home last spring, against well-organized teachers unions, which have called on the state to close schools until their safety demands are met.” While one would be hard-pressed to label him a hard-charging education reformer, he has, at times, bucked those who oppose accountability, insisting on the necessity of assessing student levels of proficiency. And he does seem to be a fan of high standards. Of the much-maligned Common Core state standards, he said, “I could find flaws in parts of them…but at the end of the day having high expectations and high standards for kids is a good thing.”
Here’s Dacia Toll, CEO of Achievement First, quoted by 50CAN’s Marc Porter Magee:
And here’s evidence that he has a track record on reading achievement and getting results for historically-marginalized students:
This choice of Cardona may signal more from Biden than building the diverse Cabinet he promised. I suspect Joe Biden knows that he won the election due to Trump fatigue, not because the country embraced the Democratic Party platform. For evidence, just look down-ballot: the last Democratic president who came to office without a Senate majority was Grover Cleveland, in 1885. In fact, rifts within the Party mirror those in the microcosmos of education, with so-called “progressives” urging radical measures like banning charter schools, even as Black and Brown voters increasingly favor school choice.
If Cardona’s words and actions as a federal education leader match his work in Connecticut—increasing opportunities for underprivileged students, bolstering the guardrails of accountability and data-based decision-making, bucking special interests—perhaps he can help heal educational rifts and bring together divergent groups, much like Joe Biden hopes to do with all of America.
Is it possible? Who knows. But, if it is, Biden may have made the right choice.
By: Laura Waters
Title: Will Biden’s Pick for Education Secretary Work for All Kids?
Sourced From: educationpost.org/will-bidens-pick-for-education-secretary-work-for-all-kids/
Published Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2020 22:46:55 +0000
For the last twenty years, the world of public education has loved to debate the value of standardized testing and policies associated with the results. This debate has become an all-consuming distraction for some, as test scores are concise and easily digestible. Kids either pass or fail. Students in different demographic groups either meet standards or don’t. Little in public education could be clearer in the aggregate. Debates thrive on binary choices, which standardized tests provide. Either they’re good for purposes of accountability, or they’re bad for kids because they’ve narrowed the curriculum. They’re either good for shining a light on the gross inequities in our schools or bad because of all the statistical noise in the results. By engaging in this debate, we avoid the much more difficult questions of resource equity, the legacy of institutional racism, how to organize systems to promote principles of effective schools, the role of poverty, and issues of governance. Debates aren’t for explorations of the messy middle. As we recover from Covid, though, the messy middle is exactly where educators find themselves. A change in the terms of this debate would be a welcome effect of the pandemic-induced pause in standardized testing.
Standardized testing has been part of public education for nearly a century. From the first use of IQ tests to the redesign of school systems according to Taylorism, authorities have craved measurement. Assumptions about the utility of standardized tests are reasonably straightforward. Public education prepares young people to be productive citizens. Public dollars fund public education and must be accounted for. Standardized tests enable state and local authorities to determine the return on the investment of those dollars. It wasn’t until the advent of the standards movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the resulting enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, that state standardized testing gained its enormous foothold on K–12 public education. Test results have become the impetus for both increased investments in schools that struggle to meet state standards and public disgrace for those that fall short. While there have been recent efforts under the Every Student Succeeds Act to broaden the public’s conception of success through using multiple sources of data to gauge school effectiveness, standardized testing remains hegemonic in American public education. That hegemony rests on a set of flawed assumptions.
The first flawed assumption endemic to the standardized testing regime is one of high modernism. In a 2020 article in the Harvard Educational Review, Jack Schneider of University of Massachusetts Lowell and Andrew Saultz of Pacific University describe how “the high modernist state … develops quantitative systems designed to measure performance. Such systems, by their nature, tend to ignore the nuances of reality on the ground.” Performance-management systems built on state tests dismiss the human element of change management. Policies based on them are grounded in a technocratic belief about how to improve teaching and learning. Their adherents’ lack of faith in the professionalism of educators and admiration of simple data over all else has not led to appreciably better results, at least as measured by the tests. Technocracy assumes that through performance-management systems that start with a standardized test, adults in schools will be spurred to action. Students take a test, scores come back, schools analyze the data to determine actions meant to improve results, new initiatives such as curriculum, technology, and interventions are funded, educators undergo professional development, the new initiative is implemented, students take the test again in the spring, and results are reviewed to determine what new actions should be taken. This pattern, repeated in school systems throughout the country ad nauseam, doesn’t take into account how adults actually learn new skills that will help them improve their practice.
The standardized-testing hegemony also assumes that test scores are valid measurements of student performance in English language arts and mathematics and that those are the two most important content areas for students to master in order to succeed in 21st-century America. Standardized tests can be useful as blunt instruments to help understand the progress, or lack thereof, that a school or system is making. They can also be the first step in a deeper inquiry into teacher effectiveness and student need. Their use within policies that affect the real life of schools, however, is specious, as they only account for one aspect of student learning. Moreover, some of those polices, such as teacher evaluations that heavily rely on scores and classifications of some schools as failing or succeeding, are simply not grounded in sound practice. State tests tell us something, but more about student demographics and factors external to a school than anything else.
The assumption that ELA and math are the most important content areas for students to master seems obvious. After all, we all need to read, write, and calculate in order to live in the world and be eligible for good, paying jobs. Yet, there are other essential skills that are harder to measure in standardized ways. Critical thinking, problem solving, emotional intelligence, scientific literacy, and civics are just some of the domains that make a well-educated person. These domains are difficult to measure at scale, and definitions of them are likely to differ among districts within a state and throughout the country. Civic education in liberal Montgomery County, Maryland, where I was superintendent of schools, can lead to the Board of Education debating whether students should have excused absences for attending protests in neighboring D.C. Another board, even in a blue state like Maryland, may not agree. Efforts to address student social-emotional learning and emotional intelligence are increasing exponentially, yet measuring these competencies is a new and tenuous proposition, and there isn’t agreement throughout the country on what the terms even mean. Using them within a state, let alone as part of a federal accountability system, is fraught with difficulties. Thus, we’re left to succumb to the narrow dominance of ELA and math as indicators of success. Curriculum has been narrowed as a result, and an entire generation of students have come to believe that their value is reflected in their test scores.
We know the mixed results of the last twenty years of reform. We don’t, however, know the counterfactual. What would our schools look like today, and how well prepared would our children be, if we had focused our collective energies on what we know actually works to improve outcomes? Let’s say, for example, that the enormous effort put into convincing state legislators of the value of standardized testing had gone instead towards equitable funding formulas. Money matters in public education, especially for serving the most vulnerable students. Yet funding formulas still perpetuate gross inequities. Moreover, given what we know about the relationship between a family’s economic status and student achievement, what would have happened if the collective effort of reforms had been focused on addressing entrenched societal issues? If states and communities had invested in wraparound services, public transportation that enables the working poor to get to jobs, better housing, affordable preventative healthcare, and food security, we would expect our children to have better academic outcomes.
Within schools, what would have happened if all of the money and energy that’s gone into standardized testing had instead been invested in strengthening the profession and scaling what actually works to improve schools? We know that great schools have a foundation of internal accountability, constant and collaborative professional learning, strong family engagement, distributed leadership, and a rich curriculum (among other things). What if districts had been incentivized to organize change efforts around those elements, rather than focus solely on ELA and math achievement? Simply put, we don’t know what would have happened because such efforts have been in spite of national and state agendas, not because of them. We do know, however, that what we have invested in hasn’t brought us nearly the results that we need for our kids.
So, what can we do going forward? How might we ensure excellence, equity, and accountability without annual standardized tests? I want to be clear; I am not arguing for a collective dismissal of the use of data by educators at all levels, nor do I believe we should be shirking accountability. I actually think the opposite. We need more and better data to make decisions in schools, districts, and states, and we need better accountability metrics in order to weed out mediocrity. We must also continue to ensure that data can be disaggregated according to student demographics, given their correlation to school success and our moral imperative to address the needs of the most vulnerable. The Covid crisis has revealed to a larger public the gross inequities in our schools and the needs of our children, and it provides an opportunity to create a new baseline.
First, let’s use testing data as entry points to asking better questions. Start by ending the practice of giving annual tests to all kids in most grades. If the unit of change for improvement efforts is (or should be) the school, a sample of students can fulfill external accountability requirements while educators within schools, and with help from central office, focus on the needs of individual students and staff based on more authentic assessment of student learning. Many other nations use a sampling methodology rather than a census one. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, a no-stakes test considered the nation’s report card, is a sample of students, as is the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, and both are used to decry and celebrate performance. Sampling is an effective method to understand patterns and can be used as a launching pad to probe further into deficiencies and strengths. A sample of 3rd graders in every school in reading every year can be one part of a process to determine whether a school’s approach to literacy is effective. Start this spring, with a quick turnaround time for results, and then use those data at the local level to make decisions about interventions and supports. The standardized test in this scenario can allow a school and district to understand its status relative to a standard set by the district or state. A board and superintendent can then allocate the necessary resources to help the school improve its practice, without having to subject every student to sitting through a standardized test. I believe we should also sample test for ELA and Math in 5th and 8th grade. These would give a district’s leadership a sense of where the school stands in relation to similar schools and whether its leadership and improvement strategies are having the desired effect. There would, of course, need to be a commensurate investment in formative assessments and professional learning to increase teachers’ knowledge and skills about assessment. But the return on that investment would be significant, as it would allow for teachers to more quickly address the individual needs of students. It would significantly diminish the amount of time and energy spent on preparing each child to pass a standardized test, which could then be put towards actually improving teacher practice that is more likely to lead to increased achievement.
In high schools we have enough measures to determine whether students are ready for college and careers. Industry certification tests, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams, the SAT and ACT, higher level course-taking, writing samples, lab reports, community service, extracurricular participation, and acceptance into college without the need for remediation are just some of the indicators that can be used. Rather than spend time and energy on a standardized exam in 10th grade, focus on eliminating low-level courses and revising curriculum to be engaging, problem based, and culturally relevant. Those steps actually have an impact on student performance. In the meantime, invest in developing teacher capacity to conduct and use formative assessments to adjust instruction.
Federal and state oversight of public schools through the high-modernist regime of standardized testing isn’t having the desired effect. If ever there were a time to reduce tests and help orient schools towards equitable instructional practices that actually increase student achievement, that time is now. Surely many will see this as a retreat from accountability and a dismissal of equity, as annual census testing is assumed to ensure that we know each child’s status and the gross inequities in our schools. But we also know it hasn’t worked for the last twenty years. While teachers, parents, communities, and schools have come to value the role of public education more than ever during the Covid crisis, we owe it to them to focus our collective efforts on what actually works, not on a theory of action that has been proved false.
Joshua P. Starr is chief executive officer of PDK International. Before that, he was superintendent of schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, and in Stamford, Connecticut.
The post Pandemic Offers Opportunity to Reduce Standardized Testing appeared first on Education Next.
By: Joshua P. Starr
Title: Pandemic Offers Opportunity to Reduce Standardized Testing
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/pandemic-offers-opportunity-reduce-standardized-testing/
Published Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2020 10:00:52 +0000
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