Six on History: Schools
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By Kaitlin Smith, September 28, 2021
In addition to the growing pool of curricular resources that we offer at Facing History for teaching about Latinx history and contemporary life, there is a wide array of cultural institutions offering meaningful learning opportunities for both teachers and students. As we wait for the construction and opening of the forthcoming National Museum of the American Latino on the National Mall, there is a rich array of resources that can aid teacher and student learning about Latinx histories and contemporary life.
Teaching Learning Technology
290 Hagedorn Hall / 119 Hofstra University / Hempstead, NY 11549
(P) 516-463-5853 (F) 516-463-6196
"A couple of years ago I made my annual ophthalmologist visit with the high tech gadgets, the doc said, “You’ll need cataract surgery down the road, they’re not ripe yet.” Ripeness is an interesting concept; in addition to cataracts ideas also can become ripe.
A “ripe” idea may be driving dollars and programmatic assistance into schools to the “truly disadvantaged” students.
At the height of Johnson’s Great Society the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965) allocated significant federal dollars to states and on to school districts and schools. While the law itself has morphed to No Child Left Behind to the Every Student Succeeds Act Title 1 of the law provides supplemental funding to schools. In New York City Title 1 school budgets can reflect about 10% of the total school funding. (Check out a history of ESSA here).
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act uses census poverty numbers and allocates dollars to states that in turn drive dollars to school districts and the formulas are decided locally.
At the district level in New York City, poverty cutoff rates are established by county and based on individual students' eligibility for free lunch. Students are eligible for free lunch if their family income is at or below 130.0 percent of the federal poverty level, as self-reported on lunch eligibility forms.
“Self-reported on lunch eligibility forms” is a low bar and a crude method of determining poverty.
Twenty years after the Great Society program William Julius Wilson in the Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass and Public Policy (1987) asks,
In the period following the thirtieth anniversary of the 1954 Supreme Court decision against racial separation . . . and the twentieth anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a troubling dilemma confronts proponents of racial equality and social justice ' a black underclass has emerged and conditions in inner city ghettos have deteriorated, despite civil rights victories and the creation of the Great Society. What went wrong? Have affirmative action and Great Society programs made things worse? Has racism intensified? Or are other factors at work?
Wilson’s findings were highly controversial. Some argue he was blaming the poor for their failure to rise out of poverty.
In “More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City” (2009) Wilson responded to his critics pointing to cultural factors in addition to inequity and poverty, countering the “blame the victim” and pointing to how housing and transportation institutionalize inequality in America.
Critics of Wilson point to racism as the underlying reason for persistent poverty.
Molefi Kete Asante, a professor at Temple University and a leading theorist of Afrocentricism posits,
Race in America is a psychological, physical and social location for determining the conditions of one’s current and future life. This is because America’s benefits and privileges have been structured around race and its markers for difference. Those markers, largely physical, identify some people as being privileged and others as being victims. As a central concept in America’s history, race has always been an arena for selecting who will eat and who will not eat or for determining the quality and condition of a group’s possibilities.
Critical Race Theory and the Black Lives Matter movement point to the prime importance of race and aver the subtext of every conversation is race.
Ibram Kendi, the author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” (2019) rejects assimilationist ideas, the belief that African-American people and spaces should strive toward a standardized white norm — as inherently racist.
There is no such thing as “not racist” ideas, policies or people, he argues, only racist and antiracist ones.
The identification of the “truly disadvantaged” and driving funding and supports and driving funds based on specific metrics and rejecting racism are not in conflict.
The Biden American Rescue and Infrastructure Plans may have more impact than the 1930s FDR New Deal and the 1960s LBJ Great Society. Nobel Prize Paul Krugman explains here.
The time is now ripe.
The Center for NYC Affairs report “A Better Picture of Poverty” (2014)
… looked at absenteeism-endemic schools through the lens of what we characterize as a “total risk load” of social and educational factors in the schools. Our goal: To identify New York City’s “truly disadvantaged” public schools. This is a concept brought forward by researchers at the Consortium on Chicago School Research (who expanded on the term by the renowned urban sociologist William Julius Wilson). Some urban schools serve students and their families who face the heaviest misery and hardship imposed by poverty and family dysfunction, and these are typically in neighborhoods most bereft of the reserves of community “social capital” that can offset poverty’s worst effects
Inspired by recent research on truly disadvantaged public schools in Chicago and Philadelphia, we devised a risk load instrument of 18 salient indicators from census data and other sources. We wanted to go beyond the yardsticks commonly used to measure poverty in the schools. When, for example, some 80 percent of public school students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, such familiar statistical brushes paint with strokes far too broad to be very useful. Read the Report here and an Education Week article here.
We can now readily identify the “truly disadvantaged.” The question: will we use the data to drive policy?
The San Antonio school district,
…. calculates a ranking for each Census block in the city, maps the level of poverty in each neighborhood, and pinpoints the areas with the greatest need. The district then reserves space for children from the poorest neighborhoods at its highest-performing schools. The district also adjusted the way it allocates resources to ensure that children with the greatest needs get appropriate levels of support. Texas adopted SAISD’s socioeconomic block system in what has been called “perhaps the biggest change in the way the state funds schools.”
Will New York State take the same action? Will New York State move from identifying Title 1 by submission of free lunch forms to “risk load factors;” identifiers of the truly disadvantaged?
The New York State has adopted Culturally Relevant Sustaining Education Frameworks (Read here) and a policy statement on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (Read here), although, there is a caveat, “The Board expects that all school districts will develop policies that advance diversity, equity and inclusion – and that they implement such policies with fidelity and urgency,” in other words, the Board can only ask, not force districts or schools.
In New York State curriculum is school district responsibility; the state can “expect,” can “urge;” however the state does not control curriculum at the local level.
The State can adopt the truly disadvantaged “risk load factors,” in the distribution of state and Title 1 funds
The time is ripe."
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For-Profit Charter Schools Provide an Entryway for Private Investors to Exploit Public Education
For-profit operators and their investors use complex business arrangements and networks of related companies to enrich themselves and do little to improve education.
By Jeff Bryant
"Charter school industry lobbyists, who appear to have lost a fight in the U.S. House of Representatives over an appropriations bill that cuts federal funding to charter schools operated by for-profit businesses, are rolling out a campaign to defend their taxpayer revenues in the U.S. Senate, but federal lawmakers may wish to consider new evidence of how for-profit charter enterprises introduce potential harms into public education.
One such potential harm, according to an in-depth examination conducted by Our Schools, stems from for-profit charter school operators partnering with private investors intent on turning quick profits from public dollars meant for educating children.
Our Schools examined the relationship between Pansophic Learning, owner of the Accel Schools chain of for-profit charter schools, and Safanad Limited, a private equity firm, originating in the Middle East, with extensive investment holdings in K-12 education, senior living, and other public sector-related enterprises.
What Our Schools found was that for-profit businesses like Pansophic Learning are providing entryways for wealthy investors from abroad to flood the U.S. with money to buy up struggling taxpayer-funded enterprises and put into place elaborate business schemes and networks of interrelated companies that hide their profiteering while doing little to improve the quality of services to the public.
A request for comment regarding Pansophic’s relationship with Safanad and the partnership’s potential for conflicts of interest that was left as a press inquiry at the Pansophic website did not receive a reply.
The combination of for-profit operators backed by private equity has become prevalent in other publicly funded sectors that have traditionally been operated by federal and/or state governments or nonprofit organizations. And the results have not been beneficial to the public or the individuals the publicly funded system was intended to serve.
For example, in the government-funded prison system, “The involvement of private equity firms, which manage large investment portfolios, presents a conflict between the financial and social goals of some investors,” reported Prison Legal News in 2019, citing two studies—one from the nonprofit Worth Rises, which advocates for “dismantling the prison industry,” and the other from the American Federation of Teachers, a national teachers’ union.
Another analysis, by the ACLU, found that for-profit prison operators backed by private investors are more apt to create profit for their investors by maintaining high rates of incarceration, which results in significantly higher social and fiscal costs to the public.
Our Schools found that this combination of for-profit entrepreneurs backed by private investors is having a similarly corrosive impact in the charter school industry.
Ron Packard and K12 Inc.
The genesis of Accel Schools goes back to 2014, when Education Week reported that Ron Packard, the former CEO of K12 Inc., had formed a new education enterprise called Pansophic Learning. K12 Inc., which changed its name to Stride Inc. in 2020, was then, and still is, the largest for-profit charter school operator in the U.S.
Packard, a former Goldman Sachs executive who specialized in mergers and acquisitions, departed K12 Inc., which he founded, at a time when the company was besieged with negative publicity.
In 2011, K12 Inc. was the subject of a scathing story in the New York Times revealing that “only a third” of the students enrolled in its online charter schools “achieved adequate yearly progress, the measurement mandated by federal No Child Left Behind legislation,” while the company employed multiple ways to “squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload, and lowering standards.”
The withering critique, which ran on the newspaper’s front page, “caused” the publicly traded company’s stock price “to drop precipitously,” Education Week reported in 2012, and prompted a shareholder to file a federal lawsuit accusing K12 Inc. executives, including Packard, of “misleading investors with false student-performance claims.”
More negative publicity came in 2013 when Politico reported K12 Inc. was one among many online charter schools that “posts dismal scores on math, writing, and science tests and mediocre scores on reading.” Another blow came that year when influential hedge fund manager and charter school proponent Whitney Tilson announced he was shorting K12 Inc. stock, betting the company would fail.
In 2014, K12 Inc. became the target of yet another lawsuit accusing the company of “misleading investors by putting forward overly positive public statements… only later to reveal that it had missed key operational and financial targets,” Education Week reported. The lawsuit also charged Packard, whose relationship to the company had become unclear, of selling off his own stock before revealing the negative financials, and, thus, earning a windfall of $6.4 million before the stock price plunged.
But as Packard disengaged from one troubled education enterprise, he started another with a financial partner that would provide the capital to quickly scale up.
As Education Week reported in 2014, Packard’s new company, Pansophic Learning, included a partnership with a holding company, Safanad Education, a subsidiary of Safanad Limited, a New York- and Dubai-based real estate and investment firm. Packard and Safanad spent an unknown sum to purchase part of K12 Inc.’s assets, mostly in higher education, and acquire an international brick-and-mortar private school. The two entrepreneurs were “on the hunt for acquisitions,” according to Education Week.
A Charter School Shopping Spree ... "
In addition, the justifiable backlash against “learning loss” has resulted in another benefit – “remediation” has fallen out of favor and now the focus is on “accelerated learning.” Though I wrote a piece in The Washington Post on what I think accelerated learning actually looks like in the classroom, in general, it appears to me that with a few exceptions, not many have actually shown in practical terms how to do it.
Hiring tutors has gotten a lot of attention as one potential acceleration strategy, but it’s pretty clear that most districts have not pulled any kind of tutoring program off in the short term and, if they do, it probably won’t be until next year.
I do think, though, that one very doable strategy that many schools are overlooking, and which could be implemented immediately, is the use of peer tutors to assist younger students.
For example, at our school I always have had one-or-two peer tutors in all my English Language Learner classes, and they have always been invaluable.
This year, however, my extraordinary colleague Katherine Bell has increased that number five-fold in each of my three ELL classes. These peer tutors, generally either my former ELL students who are now advanced or my IB Theory of Knowledge classes from last year, have provided an extraordinary amount of assistance to Beginner and Intermediate students. Their progress has clearly exceeded what would have been achieved in previous years.
In addition to having ELLs read to them daily to improve comprehension and prosody, practice oral language, develop mentor relationships to provide social/emotional, as well as academic, support, and having them practice the public presentations my students do regularly, I have created a flow of providing a mini-lesson, followed by peer tutors working in small groups to reinforce the lesson, followed by another mini-lesson, followed by peer tutors working in small groups again.
I am also providing regular training to the peer tutors on how to improve their work, and they complete weekly self-assessments.
This is not a one-way street – studies from other areas, and our own analyses in previous years, have demonstrated that peer tutors/mentors tend to increase their own academic achievement, also (see The Best Resources On The Value & Practice Of Having Older Students Mentoring Younger Ones).
The peer tutors themselves love the work – we began the year with a smaller number, but word spread and students kept on coming to Katherine Bell and me pleading (that is not an exaggeration) to join the classes. I had to put a hard-stop on new peer tutors last week.
There is a lead peer tutor in each class who meets with me each day about the plan for the day, and who then briefs the other six-to-nine others. Some of the tutors have told me that this is great practice for them since they plan to pursue a teaching career.
The Beginning and Intermediate students think it’s great, too! As research has shown, when people feel they are important – and having this number of high-quality and trained peer tutors devoted to helping them clearly does contribute to their feeling valued – they tend to want to work harder.
Yes, it does create a bit more work for me – the peer tutors themselves are basically another class that requires some preparation and care. But the payoff to students is clear and immediate and worth the extra effort on my part. And it creates so many more possibilities in the classroom!
Do you know of other schools doing something like this? If not, why not?"
"John Tanner is a blogger in San Antonio. In this post, he asks a question that I have asked myself many times: Why do ”reformers” and politicians keep funding failure? Why do they demand more charters and vouchers when neither has matched their claims, neither has closed achievement gaps or dramatically higher scores (except when they cherrypick their students)?
Tanner asks the question about test-based accountability, which Texas has embraced for decades.
He begins:
It is inexplicable to me how the failed policies of test-based accountability continue to be championed as if they have worked in the past and will continue to work into the future. The position of those espousing the effectiveness of test-based accountability can only be valid if at some point in the past all schools were essentially equal, and then good or bad educators created the disparities between what are now labeled “good” and “bad” schools. Then, the current accountability systems might reflect the efforts of those educators and the judgments would be warranted.
Of course, that is a joke. Schools never started at a level playing field. The first time anyone administered a standardized test to the universe of students in America what it showed were the effects of an inequitable society as well as the size and scope of a problem. But it was much easier for Americans to ignore the problem and instead declare that poor children were just dumber than rich children and that the cause of that was the educators in their lives. Pretending that at some point everything had been equal and then it just so happened that all the bad educators migrated towards the bad schools now serving poor children was easier than admitting the truth—that we were a society rooted in inequity and that our approach to schooling reflected that fact.
Reality is a good bit different than the test-based accountability crew would have you believe. The Coleman report pointed out way back in the 1960s that an effective, research-based approach to creating a great educational system for all students required two major policy efforts: address the ravages of generational poverty and make teaching into a position as revered as medicine and the law. So far, more than half a decade later, we are 0/2.
Now, instead, we look askance at the schools that serve students who are the victims of generational poverty and who are as a result behind their wealthier peers. We pretend that what we are seeing in these schools is not the consequences of ignoring Coleman, but of laziness and incompetence on the part of the educators in them.
And because test scores of the types used by states are designed to order students from the furthest below to the furthest above average within a content area as of a certain date (that’s a mouthful—sorry), they make for a beautiful tool for confirming the bias that schools serving poorer children became bad because of bad teachers that just need to try harder. That denies the reality that student exposure to academic content occurs in two places: inside and outside school, and that exposure differs a great deal as a direct result of generational poverty. Make no mistake—schools and teachers matter, as they will account for about 1/3 of the difference in test scores between students (and could account for more with the right supports that do not now exist). But what happens outside of a school will account for almost 2/3 of the difference. Any judgment based on a test score that fails to acknowledge that very real fact is unethical and needs to be dismissed as specious.
Read on. He nails the failure of test-based accountability."
