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FTH2022 Supported Organization: VoteBeat

The last few decades have seen the gutting of local news reporting in the US. As deep reporting and investigative journalism are increasingly concentrated in just a few cities across the country, local-scale failures and corruption have been misreported or overlooked entirely. This lack of local reporting has meant that, when elections come around, voters unequipped to make informed judgments about what the local issues are, or which local candidates can be trusted.

Votebeat was created in 2020 to combat a shortage of local news reporting on electoral issues and election integrity. VoteBeat reporters embed for three-month stints in local nonprofit newsrooms that provide expert knowledge of their communities. In addition to providing critical coverage of election-related issues at all levels of government, VoteBeat seeks to revitalize political reporting at the local level.

You can support VoteBeat as a creator in the 2022 FTH auction (or as a bidder, when the time comes to donate for the auctions you’ve won.)

#fth2022 #fanwork charity auction #supported org #votebeat #chalkbeat

Our public education system was just sold to the highest bidder, and low-income communities of color are at risk of losing the most. DeVos’s agenda to redirect public funding for school vouchers, virtual charter schools, for-profit charter schools, unaccredited private schools, and schools that regularly discriminate against children is a direct attack on one of our country’s last universally-acknowledged public goods, education. We will continue to reject DeVos’s attempts to weaken the rights of our children and parents, and we will fiercely defend our public education.

Kesi Foster of the Urban Youth Collaborative and Natasha Capers of New York City Coalition for Educational Justice | Chalkbeat “New Yorkers celebrate, mourn and buckle down as Betsy DeVos is confirmed as U.S. education secretary”

#betsy devos #devos #education #us #politics #chalkbeat #journalism #nyc schools #Kesi Foster #Urban Youth Collaborative #Natasha Capers #New York City Coalition for Educational Justice #Educational justice #new york

Two years after busloads of migrant children began arriving in Chicago, many have landed in schools where most don’t speak Spanish. Custodia

#chicago #chalkbeat #venezuela #bilingual #migrant

It’s not enough to quote Martin Luther King Jr. and point to stories of Black success.

To understand why Critical Race Theory, or CRT, and the 1619 Project — a New York Times magazine series about how slavery has shaped the U.S. — draw the ire of many Republican legislators, we can look to the late Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire for guidance:

Conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did [none of those things]. Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors as a profound violation of their individual rights.

But it is not oppression.

It is entirely plausible that the lawmakers passing these bills feel that any restriction to or challenge of teaching and learning from a Eurocentric lens is a profound violation of their rights and those of their constituents, specifically because they’re white. That would explain why so many white people levy the claim of reverse racism on CRT or the 1619 Project.

There’s anxiety regarding America’s changing demographics and perceived direction, but the reality is that, even in this increasingly diverse nation, power and authority remain largely in the hands of white people. Roughly 80% of all teachers and administrators in U.S. public schools are white. These are the individuals who set the tone for what is taught and how it is taught.

By contrast, white students make up only 46% of American public school students

…

I’ve heard these arguments numerous times from colleagues and superiors alike who didn’t understand the need for things like culturally relevant pedagogy and culturally responsive texts, more Black and Latinx teachers, and a Black Student Union. I’ve heard it in personal conversations with white people. I’ve heard it from some Black people, too.

But as a teacher and student of history, I am well aware of the truth of our society’s white supremacist roots, its racist systems, and its white spaces. It is responsible, for example, for white teachers suspending Black children at disproportionately high rates.

…

I also understand that white teachers may be unaware of the systemic racism within the Constitution or the nation’s history oppressing Black and brown people outside of its borders, such as in Haiti and its role in overthrowing governments in Black and brown lands like Hawaii. I never learned those truths in school. Why would teachers and parents and politicians be comfortable with history lessons they were never taught and ones that debunk much of what they always believed to be true?

So what is the solution? Thankfully, there are some things that district leaders can do.

First, they must really invest in their professional development programs — ones that teach about historical truths surrounding white supremacy and racism and ones that teach educators how to apply this knowledge to their content area and the grade levels they teach.

Second, district leaders must identify teachers willing to teach — or willing to learn how to teach — these necessary truths to students in all content areas. It certainly doesn’t hurt to hire more Black teachers. Not that white teachers can’t do it, but speaking as a former Black social studies teacher, I wanted to teach about racism, enslavement, and the Africans who arrived in the Americas before African enslavement, and I wasn’t scared to do it.

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Certainly, some will disagree with these suggestions, just as my children disagree with eating their vegetables. However, it doesn’t stop me from putting the vegetables on their plate, nor should we fail to teach the truth of American history.

[@mitigatedchaos]

#rann miller #chalkbeat #why crt bans are pointless and futile

The Curious Case of New York State School Accountability Changes

There are about 2.6 million students who attend schools in New York State. 1.1 million of those students are in New York City, the nation's largest school district. In a nation with 50 million children in public schools, that means about 5% of all children in the country go to a New York State public school. So, when New York makes a major change to the way it holds public schools accountable, people notice. And the state did precisely that on January 17th, 2019. As reported by Andrew Zimmerman of ChalkBeat: State officials released a new list of struggling schools Thursday including 124 in New York City, the first round of designations under a new method of identifying low-performing schools. Eighty-four of the city’s schools are on the lowest rung — known as “Comprehensive Support and Improvement Schools” — and will be required to craft improvement plans approved by the state. The remaining 40 schools are only in need of “targeted” support and will face less intense oversight. The lowest-performing schools were identified partly because they were in the bottom 10 percent of schools across the state on a combined measure of growth and proficiency on state tests — the biggest factor that went into their rating. Zimmerman notes that state test scores factor more heavily into the new formula than they did historically. He is also quick to point out some of the incongruities that follow the changes. For instance, there are schools that were doing pretty well according to the old metrics but are now listed as among the worst in the state according to the new metrics. Subtle changes in standing are to be expected; strange changes merit pause. One example is Central Park East 1, an elementary school in East Harlem.

How can that be? How can it be that a school that does well by official measures one day suddenly performs so poorly the next? The tests themselves didn't change very much. So what is going on? It is reasonable for students, parents, and the public to ask such questions, which are not just about the schools themselves, but equally about the integrity of the state's method and motive. In response to his school's poor labeling, the principal of Central Park East 1, Gabriel Feldberg, penned a letter to his community explaining what appeared to be going on. For him, the state seemed to be choosing to calculate their new ratings using some odd math. He explained:

In short, Feldberg argues that Central Park East 1 was doing pretty well by official measures, not perfect but decent. The school's strange reversal of status seems to stem from the way the state formula counts test scores. In the past, the scores of children whose families opted out of the tests were not significantly counted in the formula. Now they appear to be, though the state education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia, previously disputed such assertions. Some are suggesting that the changes in measures are intentionally designed to punish schools with high opt-out rates. Others say that refining the quality of public education for all communities requires these kinds updates to the way quality is calculated. The state has a responsibility to offer greater context, making their measures and their motives more transparent. If state officials want to cool the heat that is building around this issue, they can do two simple things. First, they can publish the formula (with annotations) they are using to calculate these new ratings. Show the public precisely where these scores are coming from and how they compare to the previous model. Second, the state can offer statewide school-level data about opt-out rates. Let me clarify that one. The state already provides data on district-level opt-out rates. (See here.) However, district-level data can mask which schools are actually opting out. Having school-level opt-out data will allow the public to see for themselves whether there is a correlation between opt-out rates at individual schools and which individual schools are now being labeled unsuccessful. On a final note, what New York is experiencing is rooted in the fact that we as a nation do not have a shared understanding of the purpose of public education. And without that clear vision, educational progress will always be stunted. The case of Central Park East 1 offers a valuable example for the rest of the nation. We must radically reimagine the very questions we are asking about our public schools. After all, the right answers to the wrong questions are wrong answers--no matter how you measure it. Read the full article

#centralparkeast1 #chalkbeat #gabrielfeldberg #nysed

Rise & Shine: DeVos places halt on special education ruling - Chalkbeat Indiana

New Post has been published on https://www.topbreaking.news/education/rise-shine-devos-places-halt-on-special-education-ruling-chalkbeat-indiana.html

Rise & Shine: DeVos places halt on special education ruling - Chalkbeat Indiana

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Rise & Shine: DeVos places halt on special education ruling Chalkbeat Indiana PRESSING PAUSE: The U.S. Department of Education is placing a two-year pause on an Obama-era rule requiring states to study how school districts identify and serve minority students with disabilities. Chalkbeat. GRAND MARSHAL: Thirteen-year-old Ella …

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