Six on History: Schools
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Click here for Detailed Search Help Thanks John Elfrank
I am Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University. I was a high school social studies teacher (14 years), district superintendent (7 years) and university professor (20 years). I have published op-ed pieces, scholarly articles and books on classroom teaching, history of school reform, how policy gets translated into practice, and teacher and student use of technologies in K-12 and college.
My most recent research projects have been a look at how I taught history 60 years ago in two high schools and how history is taught today in those same high schools–Teaching History Then and Now (2016). Inside the Black Box of Classroom Practice appeared in 2013. Jane David and I finished a second edition of Cutting through the Hype in 2010.
A study of Silicon Valley exemplary teachers who integrated technology into their daily lessons–The Path of a Butterfly or a Bullet: Integrating Technology in Classrooms--was published in 2018.
"The city’s teachers union put mayoral candidates Eric Adams and Andrew Yang in the hot seat during the final forum to determine its mayoral endorsement — and peppered them with questions about past statements on charter schools, teacher tenure and school reopenings.
The United Federation of Teachers is the last big union to give an endorsement in the race and Comptroller Scott Stringer, who has been polling behind Yang and Adams, is thought to be a favorite for the nod when the union decides next week. Former city attorney Maya Wiley may also be in the running as both candidates have laid out teacher-friendly platforms and have courted the union’s backing."
Comptroller Scott Stringer is thought to be a favorite for the nod when the union decides next week.
"If you have a few minutes to do some research, you might wonder about the connections among these three links:
First is from the extreme rightwing group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), funded by DeVos, Charles Koch, and major corporations. ALEC has 2,000 members who are state legislators. They get a free trip every year to a posh resort, where ALEC gives them model legislation to introduce in their state to promote the libertarian, anti-regulation, anti-government agenda.
Second is an article in the conservative journal Education Next about “reimagining civic education for the digital age.” It promotes the organization iCivics, a digital platform to teach civics.
Third, read about the award by the Trump Administration’s National Endowment for the Humanities and Betsy DeVos’s U.S. Department of Education of $650,000 to the curriculum and advocacy group iCivics and several university partners, to design a “roadmap” to guide teachers, publishers, and state officials on how to create integrated history and civics content."
If you have a few minutes to do some research, you might wonder about the connections among these three links: F...
"Republican lawmakers in Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri and South Dakota filed bills last month that, if enacted, would cut funding to K-12 schools and colleges that provide lessons derived from the award-winning project. The South Dakota bill has since been withdrawn.
Some historians say the bills are part of a larger effort by Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, to glorify a more white and patriarchal view of American history that downplays the ugly legacy of slavery and the contributions of Black people, Native Americans, women and others to the nation’s founding."
"According to our analysis, in FY 2019, the DOE overspent by $21 million on lease subsidies for 39 charter schools by paying them more than their base rents. We also found that DOE has been leasing eight buildings directly for charter schools, rather than asking them to rent the buildings themselves, and thus has made itself ineligible to receive an estimated $8 million in state reimbursement in FY 2020 alone.
The DOE payments for charter school lease subsidies also increased sharply by 41% from FY 2019 to FY 2020. In many cases, this was triggered by ballooning charter school rent that needs further explanation. For example, the rent skyrocketed at all three sites that housed Hebrew Language Academy Charter Schools: at the school in Manhattan, the rent increased from approximately $148,000 to $2.9 million in one year; while more than doubling at one site in in Brooklyn from $931,000 to $2.5 million and increasing by more than 13 times at another Brooklyn site from just over $80,000 to $1.06 million.
DOE has also been paying rental subsidies for eight charter schools whose Charter Management Organization or affiliated organization owns their own space, at a cost of $11.6 million in FY 2020. In some of these cases, the rents of these charter schools also grew dramatically, raising questions about whether these rents were fairly assessed or were hiked for the purpose of self-dealing.
In one especially startling example, we found that the rent for the two Success Academy charter schools housed at Hudson Yards increased from approximately $793,000 to over $3.4 million – more than quadrupling – despite the fact that the space is owned by the Success Charter Management Organization. (The picture of that facility is above, from the cover of the report.) This increase in rent allowed Success to charge the DOE over $3 million in rental subsidies for those two schools alone in FY 2020. ... "