https://www.wired.com/story/jargon-watch-rising-danger-stochastic-terrorism/
An interesting concept that has relevance for schools.
Though stochastic bullying or stochastic cheating might be more appropo…
Category: quick links
A few things about segregation
I can’t even keep up with all the discussion, critiques, and calls for desegregating our public schools — and that’s a good thing.
Errol Louis calls out limousine NYC liberals on MLK Day:
Today’s festival of liberal self-congratulation, in which members of New York’s establishment pat one another on the back, actually isn’t very King-like. To truly follow in the great man’s footsteps would mean summoning the courage to tackle the same issue he fought and died for — unraveling our city’s web of segregated housing and schools.
Honoring King would mean finally pressing for passage of a City Council bill, bottled up and ignored in past years, that would require boards of the city’s 300,000 cooperative apartments to abide by the fair-housing laws and provide applicants with the reason they were accepted or rejected.
…
A citywide housing lottery that gave equal preference to people based on need rather than zip code would begin to break down the city’s segregated patterns. A lawsuit has been filed by the Anti-Discrimination Center, a civil rights organization, but the progressive de Blasio administration is fighting the case tooth and nail.
Our pro-segregation progressives, Errol Lous / The Daily News
Even if you develop affordable housing in a currently exclusive neighborhood, it you don’t address the social processes that lead people to sort themselves into those neighborhoods, it’s pointless. You have to address those social sorting processes as well.
DOES SEGREGATION BEGET SEGREGATION?, Dwyer Gunn / Pacific Standard
These uncomfortable facts are often lost in school desegregation thinking. Too often, integration activists propose feel-good solutions to segregated schools that run aground on the sturdy self-interest of privileged white families. If we hinge a desegregation effort on white families’ good intentions, altruism, or willingness to change their minds … we can pretty much guarantee that it won’t work.
—Some Practical — If Uncomfortable — Solutions to the Stubborn School Segregation Mapped Out by Vox, Conor Williams / the74
The NY Times editorial board calls for NYC Mayor De Blasio to fight the segregation of the city’s schools.
The Tale of Two Schools Revisited
Back in 2014, NY Times Magazine published a piece called “The Tale of Two Schools,” recounting a program to bring together students from Fieldston—an elite private high school in Riverdale—and University Heights HS—a public school in the South Bronx.
I remember this piece because it was one of the texts we used in a unit of study on segregation in NYC.
The latest “This American Life” podcast returns to this program, exploring it from the perspective of students involved in the program from both schools, asking the question, “What impact did this program actually have on the perspectives of the students many years later?”
It’s a powerful and thought-provoking episode. Give it a listen here.
Two things to read
I’ve realized that part of the reason I don’t post much anymore is that whenever I do think of something to write about (which is all the time), it just feels too big to dig into with the limited time I’ve got.
So I’m just going to start posting tidbits, whenever I can.
Here’s two awesome articles today that excited me because they are both about topics I care deeply about.
- We can draw school zones to make classrooms less segregated. This is how well your district does., Alvin Chang / Vox
Some amazing work with the interactives on this one. It tailors to the data of your own school district.
2. Public school buildings are falling apart, and students are suffering for it, Rachel Cohen / Washington Post
We need to keep banging the drum on this one. The greatest overlooked area of education reform.
Smorgasbord: NY State Test Results, Incoherency, and Teacher Shortages
NY State test results have been released: trends are positive
This year’s tests can actually be compared directly to last year’s, so inferences are slightly more valid. Statewide, ELA proficiency went up 1.9 points and math 1.1.
It will be interesting to see what narratives spring out of this. Even more interesting will be how anti-charter constituents spin the positive results from charters.
Look for all sides spinning these results in the way that suits them best.
State Education Department Releases Spring 2017 Grades 3-8 ELA and Math Assessment Results, NYSED
Speaking of measurement: How can we measure SEL?
Some interesting suggestions here from a recent design challenge:
- How quickly kids answer questions on an on-line test (too quickly means less self-control/engagement)
- Asking kids questions about a video to assess their perspective-taking abilities
Building a Modern Marshmallow Test: New Ways to Measure Social-Emotional Learning, EdWeek
It should go without saying that laptops alone do not a quality education make
You know, like, how are you actually using the laptops?
Do Laptops Help Learning? A Look At The Only Statewide School Laptop Program, NPR Ed
How we teach history depends on where we teach it
I’ve argued before that one of the biggest problems with what we teach students across our nation is that it’s completely incoherent, and we do little to nurture a collective sense of values, knowledge, and civic engagement.
Here’s that problem in action:
Virginia’s standards of learning for U.S. history to 1865 include “describing the cultural, economic and constitutional issues that divided the nation” and “explaining how the issues of states’ rights and slavery increased sectional tensions.” Alabama fifth-graders “identify causes of the Civil War from the Northern and Southern viewpoints.”
Contrast that with Delaware, where school districts set their own curriculum but a syllabus for the eighth grade suggesting what might be covered during instruction says that abolition meant that the American people could for the first time “seriously claim to be living up to their commitment to the principle of liberty rooted in the American state papers.”
In Michigan, curriculum also is decided locally, though the state’s social studies standards for the Civil War and Reconstruction in eighth grade include the instructions: “Explain the reasons (political, economic, and social) why Southern states seceded and explain the differences in the timing of secession in the Upper and Lower South.”
Civil War lessons often depend on where the classroom is, Associated Press
Teacher shortages in high needs areas, such as SPED and math, with no end in sight
One of the suggestions here for addressing this makes a lot of sense to me:
“Make teacher certification national instead of state by state. Prospective teachers must pass an exam specific to the state they want to work in. But if a teacher wants to move from, say, Pennsylvania to California, they can’t immediately apply for jobs there. By having a national certification exam, teachers would have more mobility to go where they’re needed.”
Schools throughout the country are grappling with teacher shortage, data show, CNN
One way of addressing teacher shortages in SPED: draw from the paraprofessionals
They’re already in the field. Make it easier for them to transition into teaching.
Makes sense to me. But one thing to be aware of: paras have great experience in managing behaviors and working with kids, but may not have a strong background on content.
Which is why having a strong curriculum and departmental teams that can support adaptation and implementation of that curriculum are so critical.
With principals in ‘crisis mode,’ new Washington state law taps into thousands of potential teacher recruits, Seattle Times
Schools & Ecosystems 