In Brief [5-5-22]
the kinda weekly review of education advocacy, news, and progress
Today’s crisis always obscures tomorrow’s catastrophe. The more time, energy, and resources we devote to clear and present dangers, the more likely we are to allow emergencies in the making to go unchecked.
- Michael R. Bloomberg, Annual Philanthropy Letter
STARTERS
TAKE ACTION: Please take a moment to #ThankABlackTeacher.
INCLUSION IS AS INCLUSION DOES: Every morning I wake up proud of the work brightbeam and edpost (the organizations I am blessed to lead) do on behalf of children. We work hard to focus the public’s attention on improving classroom instruction, increasing educational opportunities, and ensuring every child of every background can be affirmed in public schools.
I stand by our work. I’m also honest when we get something wrong.
With all of our intentional attention to diversity, imagine my internal confusion when it hit me yesterday that we have absolutely zero content in our pipeline for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
How can that be?
May has been the month to celebrate the “the histories of Americans hailing from across the Asian continent and from the Pacific islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia” since 1992. So, this miss isn’t because our team was caught off guard. It wasn’t because something fell through the cracks. To my knowledge, we have never done right by this annual celebration, and I am ashamed to admit it.
The contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in our country are foundational and worthy of deep reverence. Their continual erasure from conversations about race and diversity is unacceptable.
I’ll make it plain here and now, there can be no excuse for contributing to Asian invisibility. We will do better. Soon.
TAKE ACTION: Support Stop Asian Hate.
UNDOING ROE: The editors of JSTOR have put together a collection of articles published over the past seven years that teachers can use in the classroom to help students understand the long-running fight for reproductive rights.
Here is a sampling of the subjects they cover.
In 1588, Pope Sixtus V issued a papal bull officially classifying abortion, regardless of the stage of fetal development, as a homicide.
Abortion was first criminalized in the U.S. in the mid-19th century. A key argument was that too many white women were ending their pregnancies.
Hildegard von Bingen (b. 1098), a German nun, was a woman of many talents: abbess, composer, mystic, writer, philosopher, and, perhaps most surprisingly, medical provider. And although it may sound implausible to the modern ear, Hildegard the Catholic nun—who is now sainted—also prescribed medicinal abortions.
One scholar chronicles how communities have banded together to help each other with abortion care even when it’s against the law.
The madness of John Roberts: The Supreme Court’s pro-choice decision in June Medical Services v. Russo illustrates the Chief Justice’s embattled relationship with precedent.
UNEQUAL PAIN: As you might expect, women in minority groups would be the most impacted by a Roe reversal.
TAKE ACTION: Donate to Planned Parenthood.
EDUCATORS
EDUCATION JOURNALISM: Public Agenda has a new project dedicated to understanding how the stories told in media impact teaching and teachers.
Verbatim…
Education journalism shapes public perception of teachers and helps shape policy priorities – intertwining the media, K-12 education, and the contours of teaching in many significant ways. To foster more insightful journalism, Public Agenda’s Teachers in the News project provides an unprecedented analysis of education media coverage, alongside findings from a survey of teachers and parents, and interviews with teachers and journalists.
Here is a sampling of their findings:
Teachers and parents believe that media coverage affects teachers.
Newspapers rarely discussed teachers in-depth or included teachers’ voices.
Newspapers covered non-academic factors that affect learning more than any other topic.
National newspapers started covering evaluation less and quoting teachers more around 2015.
Both local and national newspapers most often portrayed teachers engaged in the work of teaching. National newspapers more often portrayed teachers being evaluated than local newspapers did.
Depictions of teachers being evaluated in national newspapers began declining after 2015, while depictions of professional development and compensation began increasing.
See all ten of the findings here.
LEADERS OF COLOR: Where is the pipeline of principals of color? Good question. Glad you asked. Sharif El-Mekki and I discussed this issue with Jean Desravines, the CEO of New Leaders.
PHILLY: There are 1,200 fewer Black teachers in Philadelphia than 20 years ago.
ALABAMA: Half of the teachers here leave the field within three years. The state is ranked 50th in education and it is behind most states on a host of other measures.
But, they still find the time to be homophobic and anti-charter school.
Here’s yet another candidate for Alabama’s top office who sees hatred as a campaign strategy.
FLORIDA: Teacher asks “So, Gov. DeSantis, how much of Florida’s racist past do I have to hide from my students?”
CALIFORNIA: File this under “can’t make it up.” A teacher says he’s being fired for performing a common basketball move on a student.
Verbatim….
As far as he knows, his dismissal stems from an after-school practice with a Black student in which he practiced a common street basketball move that involves bouncing a ball off another player’s head.
MISSOURI: The Grain Valley school district instructed its teachers to remove pro-LGBTQ+ stickers that marked their classrooms as a “safe space.” After public outcry, they are going to hold public listening sessions on the issue. This change moves them from 1952 to approximately 1981.
NEW YORK: Dozens of teachers are accused of having fake COVID vaccination cards.
MASSACHUSETTS: This state is at the top of the public school heap, but teachers don’t like their jobs. “According to Merrimack College's survey, approximately 42% of teachers felt they will leave the profession within the next two years and only 12% of teachers felt satisfied with their job.”
STUDENTS & PARENTS
MATH PEOPLE: My brother Dr. Charles Cole wants you to stop blocking young people from learning math that is relevant to their lives.
A MESSAGE FROM CAPTAIN OBVIOUS: New research covered by New York Times journalist David Leonhardt shows that “remote learning was a failure.” Now, cue all the insufferable “I told you so” folks to squawk on the Twitters. None of them seem nuanced in thought enough to consider the reasons some districts might have closed longer than others, including the condition of facilities, the age of staff, and parent hesitation. See the victory lap at the New York Times.
Verbatim….
One of the most alarming findings is that school closures widened both economic and racial inequality in learning. In Monday’s newsletter, I told you about how much progress K-12 education had made in the U.S. during the 1990s and early 2000s: Math and reading skills improved, especially for Black and Latino students.
While the folks pelting school districts with hot rocks for keeping schools closed, not everyone feels Leonhardt’s piece or the study tells the full story.
LOST TIME: Want to close the “learning gap?” McKinsey & Company has ideas.
PARENTOLOGY: What parents think about education depends on which parent advocacy group you ask, and how their polling questions are constructed. Some say parents are adequately satisfied with their traditional public schools and teachers, while others say parents are irreconcilably frustrated and they are ready for a full-blown reset of the entire system. The good people at Bellwether have created a Parent Perception Barometer to help us read between the lines (and Tweets).
PARENTOLOGY II: Parental burnout is a growing public health crisis. Not surprisingly, moms are most at-risk.
ODD BITS
WHO ARE YOUR LEADERS: Ed Week says that school boards have a major diversity problem.
Verbatim….
One thing local school boards can’t claim is that they reflect the diversity of our student bodies. Despite Black and brown students now comprising north of 50 percent of public school enrollment, just 14 percent of school board members identify as people of color. That’s not merely a demographic mismatch, that’s disenfranchisement.
SHOUTING DOWN ACHIEVEMENT: What happens when school districts are embroiled in culture war nonsense? It negatively impacts student achievement, according to a new study.
From The 74, Verbatim….
In a study of student test scores, a political scientist reveals damage to math achievement following high-profile controversies around cultural issues in school districts. Fairly modest on average, the effects resulting from debates specifically focused on race and evolution are somewhat larger, and they may result from the strain imposed on educators by enervating fights over competing values.
TUTORING: “A new FutureEd analysis suggests that more than 40 percent of school districts and charter organizations—and two-thirds of the nation’s largest systems—are planning to put a portion of their federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER III) money toward tutoring and academic coaching.”
ICYMI: Another message from Captian Hella Obvious, there is a substantial difference of opinion among racial subgroups when it comes to the question of how much public schools should teach about racial inequality.
CARRY A BIG GIFT: The perennially underfunded Stanford University receives its largest gift ever: $1.1 billion from John Doerr.
EXPLAINED: What are standardized tests and why do we need them?
PODCAST: How Oakland Is Tackling the Reading Crisis (ft. Lakisha Young, Dirk Tillotson, and Kareem Weaver).