realclearpolitics--2019-09-08--As NY Charters Turn 20 Let Good Schools Flourish

As NY Charters Turn 20, Let Good Schools Flourish

Twenty years ago this summer, I was a founder of the first charter school in New York state: the Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem.  Ten years ago, then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised charter schools as key to education success. But this summer, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared that he “hates” charter schools. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama championed charter schools, but many current Democratic presidential candidates now disparage them. What has happened, and why?  After years of never-ending political attacks by the traditional education establishment, New York charter schools are winning academically but struggling politically. They are winning with the long under-served minority communities who best know them; African American and Hispanic Democrats nationwide support the creation of charter schools by a 51% to 35% margin, according to Education Next’s 2019 poll. However, white Democrats now appear to oppose charters by a 57% to 33% margin and, I believe, may badly misunderstand the facts. Still, the facts support charter schools. The hating should end, and the best public schools -- charter or traditional -- should be allowed to flourish.  Let’s all recall why charter schools were created in the first place.  My chief community partner in starting Sisulu-Walker was Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, the near legendary civil rights leader who had been executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King Jr.’s right hand in Birmingham and elsewhere, and chairman of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.  Walker had “come north” in 1966, and as a local minister, he had watched the traditional public schools in Harlem and other poorer communities fail year after year, decade after decade, for over 30 years. He viewed charter schools as a civil rights issue, and as the best chance to break the unending history of education failure in Harlem and elsewhere.  “As I worked on other justice issues (housing, employment), I was frustrated that I had no tools to better the school system that served the families in my congregation,” Walker wrote in the forward to the book “A Light Shines in Harlem.”  “I became convinced that quality education was the inevitable component of the struggle that I had given my life to. That’s what led me to dive into the charter school movement. I have no regrets whatsoever,” Walker added. “In my most reflective moments, I believe this is where Dr. King would be if he were still alive.”  The little neighborhood school we started – Sisulu-Walker on 115th Street -- now serves 213 children, grades K-5. It opened its doors on Sept. 8, 1999, and is both New York’s longest-running charter school and the only charter school to survive from that pioneering year.  Sisulu is governed by local civic and community leaders and is led by an outstanding principal, Michelle Haynes, who grew up near the school and began at Sisulu as an assistant teacher in the founding year 1999. Like all charter schools, Sisulu is tuition-free and open to all. Under New York’s charter school law, it receives about 30% less funding per child than a traditional public school. It has never had use of a public school building and has always had to pay rent out of its already reduced budget. About 96% of Sisulu’s kids are African American or Hispanic (many from Central Harlem, District 5); about 90 percent qualify for free lunch; about 21 percent receive Special Education; and about 6 percent are English Language Learners.  Despite always needing to do more with less, the parents and teachers at Sisulu have used the “tools to better the school system” that Dr. Walker sought, and have used them well.  On the latest state exams, over 75% of Sisulu students tested in the top two performance categories (i.e., proficient or highly proficient) in math, vs. approximately 47% for all New York state students, 46% for all New York City students and 31% for Harlem District 5. On English language arts, Sisulu kids scored about 65% in the top categories vs. 45% for all New York state, 47% for all New York City, and 25% for Harlem District 5. Just as importantly, the parents and teachers of Sisulu-Walker have had the freedom and respect that, in the past, only money could buy: the freedom to control your own future and to choose the school that your child attends.  Overall, there are now about 292 charter public schools in New York state, serving about 130,000 students, and they also outperform the traditional public schools. Charter schools had 59% math proficiency vs. the state’s 47%. They had 54% ELA proficiency vs the state’s 45%.  What causes this outperformance for charter schools?  It is not cherry-picking the “best” kids. The charter school movement was built on the idea that all children can learn, and charter schools are tuition-free and open to all by law, with a lottery used to choose students in case of a waiting list. When Stanford University did a rigorous study to compare students of equal ability and desire (some of whom won the charter school admissions lottery, and some who lost), they found that charter schools raised learning levels, often by months of learning time each year.  It is not because of an inherent opposition to unions. New York’s charter law was originally written so that large charter schools begin with a union as a matter of law, and teachers at small charters can adopt a union at will. Dr. Walker was a strong supporter of organized labor as an ally of the civil rights movement. My own past activities include work with and for many unionized schools, including successful efforts to turn around schools and save union jobs from state takeover or closure.  It is not because charter schools are “for profit” vs “nonprofit,” a perpetual red herring issue. All New York charter schools have always been nonprofit 501(c )3 charities by state law. The so-called for-profit schools were ones where the community leaders hired professional education managers to advise them, just as they hire professional lawyers (“for-profit” lawyers) or architects (“for-profit” architects). The ability to hire and fire experts empowered the local leaders, and often gave them the critical start-up support they needed. In any case, about 10 years ago, charter school opponents made it illegal in New York for new schools to hire professional education managers as a way to prevent leaders like Dr. Walker from opening schools like Sisulu ever again.  The real reason a charter school succeeds is because of the entrepreneurial energy and talents of the school community itself.  Think of the traditional public school bureaucracy of Harlem in 1999 as a giant, monopolistic machine that everyone is sentenced to use; that is delivering failing results day after day, year after year; that never gets better; and that never has any competition to get better.  Charter schools are like little islands of freedom launched around the giant machine. Each must be licensed by the state (i.e. chartered) to regulate quality, but otherwise they are free to create: to offer programs based on core knowledge, or dual language, or a longer day, or whatever best idea they can conceive. The results of each effort depend on the team running it. There is no magic bullet for success, and the “customers” (the teachers and parents) decide where to go. The good projects grow, and the bad ones are shut down. Eventually, even the staff of the state machine realizes that the local kids can do better than the system ever expected, and so raise the system’s quality and goals as well.  Here in New York, the parents in Harlem, the Bronx, and elsewhere have voted in support of charters in the most important way possible: by entrusting their children to the better performing local charter schools. There are about 50,000 names on waiting lists for admissions to New York City charter schools. The families in Harlem and elsewhere who support charter schools know these schools firsthand, while charter opponents from outside the community may be too influenced by political messaging, or campaign fundraising power, separate and apart from real-world knowledge.  How can anyone “hate” a high-performing, succeed-against-all-odds little school like Sisulu? In truth, the real opposition to charter schools is driven by the traditional education establishment’s desire to protect money and turf; that is, because “money follows the child.” Yet competition can often improve traditional public schools, and Sarah Cordes of Temple University has found that “students whose [district] schools are near charters do better, and the closer the charter is, the better these [district school] students do.” Further, a good fraction of money does not follow the child. If, for example, every child in New York City except one joined a charter school, there could be as much as $5 billion or more left in the traditional school budget with that last student.  In considering charter schools, you can look through the lens of the managers of a monopoly machine concerned with losing customers to the upstarts opening around them.  Or you can look through the lens of Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker and the pioneering parents, children and teachers who started Sisulu-Walker 20 years ago; from the perspective of good people trapped in a failing education system for decades and desperate for a chance to have the respect, voice and freedom to build a newer, better public school of their own.  “In the charter school movement,” Walker wrote, “I am continuing the work of Dr. King that has far-reaching meaning. Every American child is deserving of a quality education.”  On the 20th anniversary of New York charter schools, haters should stop hating. The best performing public schools – charter or traditional – should be allowed to flourish, for the good of children and the civil rights of all.


rightwingwatch--2019-01-31--More Bible Teaching in Public Schools What Could Possibly Go Wrong

More Bible Teaching in Public Schools: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

A national campaign to undermine church-state separation—Project Blitz—encourages like-minded state lawmakers to introduce legislation designed to move more of the Religious Right’s worldview into law—and into public schools. This week President Trump gave an endorsement-by-tweet to one specific Project Blitz goal—getting more public schools to teach about the Bible.  There are many reasons to be deeply skeptical of the current push by right-wing organizations for more Bible teaching in public schools. Religious Right activists have turned public schools into culture-war battlegrounds, routinely denouncing Supreme Court rulings from the 1960s that upheld church-state separation by forbidding state-sponsored prayer and devotional Bible readings in public schools.  One of Project Blitz’s promoters is “historian” David Barton, a Republican political activist whose WallBuilders organization promotes a Christian-nation approach to U.S. history that has been widely discredited by actual historians. Making the Bible a primary textbook in American public schools is one of the goals of Christian nationalist political operative David Lane, who hosted President Trump at one of his events during the 2016 presidential campaign.  Earlier this month, controversial Florida legislator and pastor Kimberly Daniels filed HB 195, legislation that would amend a current state law that permits school districts to offer elective Bible classes. Daniels’ bill would require every school district in the state to offer a set of courses about religion, the Hebrew scriptures, and the Christian Bible. Daniels, a self-described “demon buster” and “apostle,” has sponsored other Project Blitz legislation, including a bill to require public schools to post “In God We Trust” in “a conspicuous place.” (That legislation became law last year.) God TV celebrated the introduction of Daniels’ new bill, saying it brought Florida “[o]ne step close to seeing prayer in public schools again.”  Courts have ruled that teaching about the Bible—as literature, for example, or as comparative religion—is constitutional in public schools, but using the Bible for indoctrination or proselytizing is not. Teaching about the Bible’s role in history is permissible; teaching the Bible as if its stories are factual history is not.  In order to help school officials understand and navigate these tricky legal waters, People For the American Way Foundation worked with scholars and organizations across the political spectrum to produce “The Bible & Public Schools: a First Amendment Guide,” which was published in 1999 by the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center and the National Bible Association. The guide makes clear that teaching the Bible in public schools in a neutral and academic way requires a serious commitment to, among other things, the selection and training of qualified teachers.  It’s not easy to do correctly, especially if there’s no will or effort to do so.  In 2000, People For the American Way Foundation published “The Good Book Taught Wrong,” the results of an in-depth investigation of the way “Bible History” was being taught in 14 Florida school districts. The investigation, grounded in written course materials obtained by PFAW Foundation, documented that all of the school districts had been “violating the U.S. Constitution by teaching the Bible from a religious perspective—often assuming teachers and students were Christian—or using the Bible as if it were a history textbook or otherwise failing to provide objective and secular instruction.”  Among the details included in the PFAWF report were this question which appeared on tests in two high schools: “Why is it hard for a non-Christian to understand things about God?” Another high school exam question asked, “If you had a Jewish friend who wanted to know if Jesus might be the expectant [sic] Messiah, which book [of the Gospels] would you give him?” Another lesson asked, “Who, according to Jesus is the father of the Jews?” The answer: “The devil.”  The Texas Freedom Network Education Fund has published multiple reports on the way Bible classes have been taught in that state’s public schools.  Southern Methodist University religious studies professor Mark Chancey has documented that classes were being taught from a right-wing fundamentalist Christian standpoint, including a literal interpretation of the Bible, with materials “designed to evangelize rather than provide an objective study of the Bible’s influence.”  In addition, noted Chancey in a report originally published in 2006, Bible courses often fostered “notions of American identity as distinctively Christian,” using videos and materials from Barton’s WallBuilders. Chancey described WallBuilders’ “America’s Godly Heritage” video as “so inaccurate in its content and so unabashedly sectarian in its goals that one federal court has prohibited its use in public schools.”  Daniels’ new bill requiring all Florida school districts to offer multiple courses on the Bible includes language stipulating that the courses must maintain religious neutrality and not promote or disfavor any particular religious outlook. That’s a good thing. But as the PFAWF and TFN studies make clear, it’s one thing to require neutrality, and it’s another thing to ensure that course materials, teacher training, and actual classroom practice reflect those legal requirements.  If states continue to expand teaching about the Bible in public schools, there will be a lot of work for parents, teachers and other concerned individuals to make sure that public officials are providing oversight and accountability to ensure that schools are respecting the Constitution as well as the rights of all students.


russiainsider--2019-09-05--Russian Schools Are Anti-Family Factories Just Like in the West

Russian Schools Are Anti-Family Factories, Just Like in the West

Archpriest Iliya Shugaev, rector of the Church of Michael the Archangel in the city of Taldom (Moscow Region), author of numerous books on the problems of adolescents, shares his thoughts on contemporary Russian education.  — What would you change in the education of modern schools?  Modern education has the same drawbacks as the whole of modern Western European civilization, which is increasingly penetrating into our completely different civilization of Orthodox (including Slavic) countries.  One of these drawbacks is that in the hierarchy of values, professionalism is superior to family values.  This means that if you are a highly qualified specialist, you will be respected regardless of whether you are a good family man or not. In this society, you are needed, first of all, as a cog of a large system that creates material benefits for general happiness - in the end, an economic system.  In the field of education, this is manifested in the fact that the child is evaluated primarily on the scale of academic performance and level of knowledge, and not at all on some personal qualities, for example, the ability to love, to be a true friend. Of course, this is also taken into account, but is not in the first place.  The whole child's life revolves around success in school, starting from kindergarten, where he is already being prepared, and often simply trained for future studies at school.  As a result of this situation, the school turns into a conveyor for the production of these very cogs, not developed personalities. I don’t want to offend the teachers — they try to develop the children's personalities — but the education system itself is designed just like a conveyor belt, therefore, if the teachers manage to do something, it’s not thanks to the system, but in spite of it.  I will give two examples portraying the fact that the school does not take into account the personality characteristics of the child.  First, the gender of the child is not even taken into account. Separate schools for boys and girls completely disappeared from the 1950's. Any psychologist, and most ordinary parents, know that at school age girls are two years ahead of boys in their psychological development. The Church was always aware of this, which was why girls were allowed to marry from the age of 14, while guys were only allowed from the age of 16. At this age young people achieved complete inner maturity and willingness to start a family. Unfortunately, due to strong infantilism, this is not the case with modern youth. For example, in the seventh grade, as a rule, all girls have already entered the transitional age, while the majority of boys only enter it in the eighth grade.  So for ten years boys sit next to girls who are on average psychologically two years older. It is not surprising that during Soviet years girls were the Komsomol leaders, the heads of their classes, and the most active participants in various school events. Ten to eleven year old girls and girls within school walls receive the impression that boys are irresponsible, stupid, and lazy; that they can't be entrusted with anything, and that the girls must do everything themselves. They gain experience in leading boys, lecturing them on their behavior, rebuking them, and scolding them. They absorb a sense of superiority over males.  And with guys it's the other way around. Male pride suggests that it shouldn't be this way, but at the same time they really are weaker than the girls. In response they act up more; tripping the girls, pulling their braids, tossing their bags around. They are easily offended by the girls, and as a sign of protest they refuse to carry out their obligations. They see girls as upstarts who stuff their minds with meaningless information.  As a result, the guys get a completely different experience — the experience of shying away from duty, the experience of protesting by bullying.  And if we add to this picture that the vast majority of teachers are women, and, accordingly, the teaching style and requirements for students are those of women, then we are faced with the mass production of anti-family education. All teachers theoretically want to help children grow up and create a good family in the future, but the system does just the opposite.  I will give a second example that proves that the features of a person’s personality are not taken into account in a modern school.  I had the chance to meet a little thirteen-year-old boy whose mother and father drink. He himself does not smoke or drink. He is very worried that his parents drink, and the teachers clearly say that the boy is very kind and helpful. But, nevertheless, he does not fit into the life of this world.  He can’t learn: he often gets F's and he skips school. Not because he’s stupid, but because nothing will stick in his mind, because all his mental strength goes to reconcile with the fact that everyone else has normal parents, while his drink. After all, he has to love degenerate people, and that isn't easy!  Because of this he behaves badly in the classroom, talks a lot, and is often distracted. The teachers have to put him in a place where he won't disrupt the class, and sometimes they are forced to expel him from the classroom. And gradually the persecution begins: "You are a loser, you are stupid, you are the son of an alcoholic and will be one yourself. Your road leads either straight to prison or else to wallowing in filth as a drunk for your entire life."  And the adults are not the only ones who say this. His classmates also consider him stupid, cheeky, and generally insane.  I’m sure that if nothing changes, then another two years will pass, he will turn fifteen, and he will break loose and fall into many serious sins, because this world does not accept him. He’s uncomfortable at home, it's hard for him at school, and this makes it easier for him to break the law: “You yourselves called me a bully and a bandit. Why should I abide by the rules of a world in which I have no place? I’m not from this world, and its laws are not my laws!"  And the one to blame for the fact that he was hounded like a wolf, is the system that places the level of education over kindness and helpfulness in the criteria of a good person. If no one had harassed the boy with compulsory secondary education, but had instead sent him to work quietly, then he would have become a good worker or farmer, and no one would think he was stupid because he hadn't finished eleventh grade.  For such children, the modern educational system does not practically provide a normal path. This is the case when a conveyor disfigures any child that does not fit into the general format.  I will try to make a conclusion. What would I change in a modern school? It is necessary to make the school personality-oriented. It sounds beautiful, but is very difficult to implement. As the first stage, we should at least introduce separate education for boys and girls in large schools, and in low-grade schools all teachers should go through courses of gender and age psychology.  — What is good in the current education system? What is wrong? What does it not teach?  The good thing is that we are the heirs of a non-Western European civilization oriented towards success and quality. Our value is our teachers, who for the most part are not only wonderful people and love children, but also do not "stamp" faceless creatures out of them, trying to ensure that the school is not like a conveyor belt. But I repeat: they do it in spite of, and not thanks to, the modern education system.  The current education system does not teach independence, does not teach the basics of family life. Although I think that in order to teach independence at school, it will be necessary to change the entire education system. If there are 30 children in the classroom, then the main virtue of the student is obedience and diligence. But then we will not get mature and independent personalities. Independence training is a "private” work, here 10 students are an overload.  And for teaching the basics of family life, there’s still a lot of work to do, because I can’t even imagine what the secular concept of family life might look like.  These two gaps in education are in the very nature of modern school. After all, the school was conceived as a factory for raising children, which would take the place of artisanal education in family conditions. Therefore, the impression on the mind of the student (who is like a blank sheet of paper) and the separation of the child from the family are inevitable.  The task of education is to teach how to get information.  I note two points. Here is the first one: For a hungry man, it is better to give him a fishing rod and teach him how to fish, than just to feed him. In the first case, he will be well-fed and hardworking, and in the other, well-fed and lazy.  This can rightly be applied to study. The task of education is not to cram a child with information, but to teach him to obtain and process it. In my opinion, it is possible to calmly reduce the amount of teaching, but to teach a child to work with primary sources, extracting bits of knowledge. The knowledge obtained in this way will be less in volume, but more durable. What is easily received is easily forgotten. Knowledge acquired with difficulty will not lie on the margins of memory, but will always be active.  The second point: Education is also a great opportunity to apply knowledge. If a high school student knows the “gimlet rule”, but has not fixed a single outlet in his life, then, in my opinion, he did not receive an education.  Labor develops a person even more than theoretical knowledge. I clearly felt this at the age of 15, when my mother asked me to build a toilet in the country. At first I thought that this was the most trivial thing, and that I could easily cope. But as soon as I got down to business, I realized that there are certain difficulties. I didn’t make such a breakthrough in mathematics solving trigonometry problems as when I managed to make a “primitive” toilet.  All the tasks in the textbook are already clearly formulated: here are the conditions, here is the question. And now I stood in indecision and thought for a long time: we must set a task for ourselves, choose the conditions. In my head there were 33 options for how to make a toilet: it can be triangular, or it can be rectangular, you can make a door like that, or you can do another, this sort of window, or you can do something else.  I began to make it. The first mistake I made was not taking into account the land slope, and I had to redo some things. I continued, and again there was a miscalculation. It was necessary to coordinate the roof slope with the length of the metal sheets, otherwise it would be necessary to cut it and some would be wasted.  For the first time, I realized how difficult it is to think through everything from start to finish, all the smallest details, and then finish it all to the end, so that all the handles, covers, hooks, and eyelets are in place, and that everyone is comfortable. This was the first thing I did independently in my life. And most importantly: every five minutes I had to make the choice myself among many options, and make a decision if something did not fit. It was not at all like solving problems from a textbook.  Labor teaches us to set a clear task and solve it, and teaches us to correct mistakes if the task is set incorrectly. To increase the effectiveness of education, it is necessary to increase the share of labor training.  — Was your education better than that which exists today?  It seems to me that a feature of modern education, unlike the Soviet one, is a greater excess of information content.  Saying that the world is changing rapidly, they begin to say that the child needs to know a lot in order to keep up with life. As a result, the child receives a flood of information which he cannot digest. He can’t because first it is necessary to form a worldview in the child.  To do this, you do not need a lot of knowledge, but you need to give the child a system of values, that is, firstly, a hierarchy of values (what is important, what is not important), and secondly, a moral scale (what is good, what is bad).  Then he will learn to comprehend any new information.  He will have a holistic picture of the world, and he will be able to put every new knowledge in a certain place in his system of knowledge; he will be able to evaluate it.  In terms of knowledge, I cannot compare modern and Soviet education. As for the worldview, I am sure that I received a better education than what our children receive.  They gave us a worldview system, although, of course, it was not based on some deep ontological foundation.  For example, everyone was told that one had to be kind and honest, but only then, so as not to do to another what one does not want for oneself. But why can't I lock myself in a room, close the door with a key, pull the curtain and watch a depraved movie or get drunk quietly? Nobody sees me, I don’t do anything bad to anyone — why can't I do this? Only a believer understands why it is impossible — you offend the presence of God.  Of course, the Soviet worldview was weak in the sense of thoroughness, which is why it gradually eroded and collapsed. But even having such a worldview is better than having a head full of information, but not having a clear idea of good and evil.  Here in Russia, this website is currently the only source of income for the Gleason familyand the Silva family. Both families now live in Russia, and they appreciate your support.  To keep the Russian Faith website running, a recurring donation of even $15 or $25 per month would be a huge blessing.


skynewspolitics--2019-08-30--PM promises 16314bn schools funding over three years

PM promises £14bn schools funding over three years

Boris Johnson has said that his education spending is well in the headroom for the budget for the UK.  Boris Johnson is promising a cash boost totalling more than £14bn for primary and secondary schools over the next three years.  The prime minister revealed the increase ahead of next week's spending review, where Chancellor Sajid Javid will announce updated budgets for government departments.  In an interview with Sky News, ahead of Mr Javid's speech, Mr Johnson appeared to commit himself to fiscal rules drawn up by former Chancellor Philip Hammond.  The prime minister vowed to "continue to keep debt coming down every year" despite his series of spending pledges, including on the NHS, police and now education, since entering Number 10 in July.  Downing Street had previously said the rules, which require the government to balance the nation's books by the mid-2020s and to ensure that debt is falling as a share of GDP by the end of this parliament, were "under review".  During the Conservative leadership campaign, during which he made a pledge to reverse Conservative education cuts since 2010, Mr Johnson was also reported to have been considering loosening Mr Hammond's controls on public spending once in power.  The cash boost for schools will see an extra £2.6bn for 2020/21, £4.8bn for 2021/22 and £7.1bn for 2022/23, compared to funding levels for this year.  By the end of the period, the schools budget will total £52.2bn.  The prime minister told Sky News the objective of the money is to "level up across the country".  "The effect is - I hope - not just to give every school an increase, both primary and secondary, but to make sure the schools allowed to fall furthest behind are seeing the biggest uplift."  He added: "I can't think of anything more fundamental for society than education spending."  Mr Johnson denied, under his leadership, the Tories were ditching their commitments to fiscal discipline.  He claimed extra public spending would be funded by an intent to "grow this economy with a proper supportive approach to business and industry and enterprise".  "Wait to see what Sajid Javid announces - the fiscal headroom, the tax revenues have been coming in to enable us to make these commitments," the prime minister added.  Labour's shadow education secretary Angela Rayner claimed the government's announcement "comes nowhere close to meeting the prime minister's pledge to reverse the Tories' education cuts, let alone matching Labour's plans to invest in a National Education Service".  "Instead, it is yet another con trick by a politician who shown time and again that you just can't trust his promises," she said.  "With the chancellor only committing to a one-year Spending Round schools are being told to wait years for desperately needed funding, and the truth is that the government's figures would prove an absolute fantasy after the damage done by a disastrous no-deal Brexit.  "Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities are struggling to access the help they need, and yet today the education secretary hasn't even offered enough to cover half of the funding shortfall and not for another year.  "Today's announcement completely ignores the impact of cuts on vital services like nursery schools and Sure Start centres or adult learning and training, and school buildings will continue to crumble as cuts to capital funding continue."  :: Listen to All Out Politics on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker  As part of the government's promise, every secondary school will receive a minimum of £5,000 per pupil next year, with every primary school getting a minimum of £4,000 from 2021/22.  It will ensure that per-pupil funding for all schools can rise at least in line with inflation  There will also be £700m extra for children with special educational needs and disabilities in 2020/21.  Mr Javid said: "We said our priorities were police, healthcare and education, and that's what we are delivering at next week's spending round.  "Because of the hard work of the British people to put our finances in order, we can now invest in their priorities."  Education Secretary Gavin Williamson hailed the more than £14bn spend over three years as "the largest cash boost in a generation".  "In addition to this package, schools will receive £4.4bn over three years to cover rising pension costs and ensure they can focus their resources on the front line," he added.  Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told Sky News the government's plan appeared to be a "genuine increase" in education funding and would meet the prime minister's promise to reverse previous Tory cuts.  "It's an increase which, within three years, will be enough to restore school funding per pupil to what it was back in 2010," he said.  "It's quite a big increase, actually, over the next three years. Looked at the other way, that means there's been no increase over the 12 years since 2010 [to 2022/23].  "So, it's a clear change in direction, it's a clear increase in funding for schools and it's a significant increase over the coming period."  However, the IFS boss warned the prime minister's commitment to keep debt coming down every year could be blown off course by a no-deal Brexit.  "If the economy contracts, as the Office for Budget Responsibility, or the Bank of England or the International Monetary Fund expect it would in the context of a no-deal Brexit, then it will be very difficult - perhaps impossible - to keep to that pledge," he added.


skynewspolitics--2019-11-21--Hundreds of small, rural schools fear budget cuts will force them to close

Hundreds of small, rural schools in England are under intense financial pressure and are concerned about the possibility of closure, according to new research.  The National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) estimates there are 3,475 small schools nationally with fewer than 150 pupils. Their findings suggest that about 1,460 are worried they could shut.  Tittensor First School in Staffordshire has 76 pupils.  "It's more difficult for small schools obviously because we've got a smaller number of children but we still need to put teachers in front of classes so without the classes being full it's very difficult to be able to find that teacher," headteacher Emily Proffitt said.  "It's also difficult because we don't have the same level of leadership. So in our school for example I am the leadership.  "I am the headteacher and there's nothing underneath me in the hierarchy that means that when you're looking at making cuts there is very little to cut so we're already down to the bare bone and there's nothing more to cut in to."  Like many schools, Tittensor depends on parents to pay for extra activities or fundraising.  One parent said: "I know how difficult it is for teachers to afford even basic needs like pencils and paper and if it wasn't for the help of the Parents, Teachers and Friends Association and all the fundraising we have to do now the children wouldn't get that."  Another said: "The children are all thriving and really happy but you've got the cost of maintaining the whole building and the overheads of it so you've got to be realistic. With government cuts can it survive? Hopefully it can."  There is a £40bn budget for schools in England.  The Department for Education says that small and remote schools get additional funding of £25m. Some say it is not enough.  "The feedback we get from our survey is that school budgets are now at breaking point and have been for quite some time actually," Steven George from the NAHT said.  "The data that we collect year on year suggests that seven out of 10 school budgets are at breaking point right now and data that we are publishing today says that for small schools that is particularly true."  A spokesperson for the Conservative Party said: "We are investing £14bn more in our schools over the next three years, meaning that we are increasing per-pupil funding for all schools.  "The schools funding formula provides additional support for small schools, and this will also increase next year."  Angela Rayner, Labour's shadow secretary of state for education, said: "Labour will give all schools the resources they need, fully reversing Tory cuts and providing sustainable long-term investment."  The Liberal Democrats' spokesperson for education, Layla Moran, said: "By 2024, we'll spend £10bn a year more on schools and employ 20,000 more teachers, to build a brighter future for our children, no matter where they go to school."


skynewsus--2019-08-22--School renovation gives children places to hide from gunmen

US school renovation gives children places to hide from gunmen  US school renovation gives children places to hide from gunmen  A US school is undergoing a $48m (£39m) renovation to help protect children in case of a mass shooting.  Fruitport High School in Michigan is making some of its hallways curved to cut down a potential gunman's firing range and installing cement blocks for children to hide behind.  Walls are also being erected in classrooms, where up to 40 students can hide so any killer cannot see them as they pass, and impact resistant film is being added to windows.  District leaders were behind the design changes, which will see current school buildings renovated and new ones built too.  Fruitport Superintendent Bob Szymoniak told KCEN-TV electronic locks are being fitted to the doors, too.  "These are going to be design elements that are just naturally part of buildings going into the future," he said.  "This building will be the safest, most secure building in the state of Michigan when it opens."  "Our ask is that our community be very understanding, keep the eyes on the prize because when our high school is done it's going be magnificent."  The whole project is reportedly costing $48m, funded by a bond scheme, and due to finish in 2021.  Fruitport school posted the link to a news article about it on its Facebook page on Thursday, prompting mixed reaction.  "This is really sad that this is what our kids have to worry about," one user wrote.  Another said: "It's sad how my old high school has to take drastic measures to be sure that malicious people don't hurt any students and staff. That is how America is now. But nice work on the new school."  While one posted: "Our country has come to everybody whining about give the criminals another chance. Quit blaming the guns and start discipline children at home like I was when I was younger."  According to the local Fox affiliate station, a false bomb threat was reported at the school in December 2018.


slate--2019-05-08--A Texas High School Wants a Dress Code for Parents Guess What Kind of Parents It Targets

A Texas High School Wants a Dress Code for Parents. Guess What Kind of Parents It Targets.

At this point, it’s clear school dress codes are, more often than not, relics of “traditional” values that tend to disproportionately affect girls and students of color. Every few months some school’s unnecessarily punitive dress code goes viral. BuzzFeed has an entire video series dedicated to adults trying to navigate the school dress codes of specific states, with the simultaneously strict and vague mandates rendering half their closets unwearable. Amid all this, it’s hard to be too surprised by the lengths schools will go to eradicate the scourge of bare shoulders. Even so, a new dress code from James Madison High School in Houston announced in April managed to raise some eyebrows because of its new target: parents.  Announced in a letter, the public school’s new dress code bars parents from the school grounds if they’re wearing ripped jeans, leggings, short-shorts, mini-dresses, sagging jeans, undershirts without an additional layer, or cleavage-exposing tops. A number of other items, including hair bonnets, pajama pants, and rollers have also been banned, in a supposed effort to teach children “the appropriate attire they are supposed to wear when entering a building, going somewhere, applying for a job, or visiting someone outside of a home setting.” The strange new policy went viral when a parent said she was prevented from enrolling her daughter in school because she was wearing a T-shirt dress and a headscarf. It has since faced widespread criticism. The Washington Post reported that 58 percent of the students at Madison are Hispanic, and 40 percent are black. And as Nadra Nittle of Vox pointed out, a ban on items like hair bonnets seemed to “disproportionately target black women’s grooming practices.”  Though the school’s principal, Carlotta Outley Brown, denied that the new dress code had any discriminatory intent, her defense of the policy still manages to traffic in respectability politics: “[The policy] is about elevating standards for students who will go out into the world in the near future and seek opportunities for themselves. I do not want them to face possible barriers,” she told Vox. “Respectability politics” describes the idea that black people can disprove perceptions of their inferiority thorough their own personal behavior, like, you know, not dropping off your child at school in a hair bonnet. The thinking goes that if we don’t respect ourselves, how can we expect others to respect us? Because, clearly, respecting ourselves not only requires submission to antiquated ideas of propriety that cater to whiteness but also means black cultural traditions are inherently not “respectable.” These politics place the onus of eradicating racism on the victim of a stereotype instead of on the person who holds and weaponizes the stereotype.  Even if we accepted that premise, there’s evidence it doesn’t work. Proponents of respectability politics, who have included Booker T. Washington to Charles Barkley, have long argued that the more education black people attain, the less likely they will be to face discrimination or be treated unfairly because of their race. In fact, the opposite is true. Recent data from the Pew Research Center shows that more than 8 in 10 blacks with at least some college report they’ve experienced racial discrimination, while fewer than 7 in 10 blacks with high school or less say the same. (About 2 in 10 blacks with some college reported regular discrimination, while fewer than 1 in 10 blacks with high school or less do.) Half of all black people with some college experience say they’ve feared for their personal safety because of their race, while only about a third of those with less education say the same. This holds true across multiple surveys: A 2017 NPR report found that black people with college degrees were more likely to report being subjected to racial slurs.  The working theory behind this apparent paradox is that because college-educated black people are more likely to work and study in predominately white environments, they are also more likely to be exposed to racial prejudice. But these studies also suggest that even if black people adhere to bedrock social definitions of respectability by pursuing higher education, they still face—or are even more likely to face—the barriers that path would supposedly prevent. Dress codes like the one at Madison High School are just another rung on this creaky ladder.  In truth, racist social barriers are simply standards invented to justify racism, codes put in place to assert black inferiority. Teaching children that they can avoid bias by wearing business casual 24/7 lends undue credence to the idea that black people are somehow to blame for our own marginalization, that if we just stopped wearing sagging pants or hair rollers—in, let me reiterate, not a work-related context—that we’d get more respect. It ultimately prepares kids for disappointment, anger, and heartbreak when, even in their sweater vests at the grocery store, they still face discrimination. The solution to racism is not to put the weight of eradicating bias on the shoulders of high-schoolers, who are at school to learn, or to suggest to them that their parents are not worthy of respect because of the way they dress. James Madison High should focus on giving these kids a real education—not in the service of disproving racist myths, but because by virtue of being a child in America, that is their right.


slate--2019-08-27--How Do You Design a School for the Era of Mass Shootings

How Do You Design a School for the Era of Mass Shootings?

SANDY HOOK, Connecticut—There’s a gate to the parking lot, and a plaque stating “In Loving Memory” by the front door. Those are the only signs that I’ve arrived at the site of an unspeakably dark American moment—the Dec. 14, 2012, murder of 20 first graders and six women who taught them. I half expect the grass not to grow.  Instead, the architect Jay Brotman parks the car and we walk toward the whimsical, undulating façade of the new Sandy Hook Elementary School, fronted with a rain garden that is flush with milkweed and marsh grasses. The timber is dotted with windows; its height rises and falls like the hills around the town, with two peaked second-story hallways poking up like little farmhouses. A low stone wall marks the base. “My goal is to lead everybody to more open and accessible schools, instead of prisonlike spaces,” the architect says. “You’re not going to raise a good person in a prison.”  This may be the most scrutinized school design in the United States, the landmark project of the era in which stopping school shootings became the responsibility of architects and administrators because the U.S. Congress would do nothing. Designed by Svigals + Partners, the New Haven firm where Brotman is a partner, the new Sandy Hook Elementary opened in 2016; when I visited last week with an eye toward assessing the impact of shootings on school architecture, incoming students’ names were already affixed by classroom doors to prepare for the first day of school on Monday.  The animating theme is nature: Through the front doors, reliefs in the great entry hall call back to the ducks that frequented the demolished school’s courtyard. A tree-shaded terrace sits beyond a wall of windows. On the second floor, the hallways end in “treehouses,” cozy nooks with windows facing onto the forest behind the school.  The ubiquitous black globes of cameras in the ceiling are a reminder that this is also a school designed with the unthinkable in mind. The glass in the double row of doors is bulletproof, a feature that costs 10 times what normal glass does. Each classroom door is propped open with a wall magnet, which is connected to a centralized lockdown button that sends all doors swinging shut at once. The below-grade rain garden doubles as a moat that limits the school to three entry points and allows child-level windows to stand, on the outside, high above the ground.  Brotman is one of the architects who argues that a school designed to resist a massacre need not look that way. As school districts rush to redesign facilities for the post–Sandy Hook, post-Parkland era, it’s not clear his ideas are carrying the day. Elsewhere, frightened parents, liability-conscious administrators, and a school-safety industrial complex are pushing for an architectural posture that is more explicitly defensive, one designed to reassure students and teachers at every turn that their classrooms are ready for the horrific but vanishingly remote possibility of a school shooting.  Last week in Jefferson County, Colorado, home of Columbine, public school teacher Cassie Lopez received buckets, kitty litter, and a Sharpie to start the year. The buckets and the kitty litter can comprise a makeshift toilet during a prolonged lockdown. The Sharpie is there so Lopez can write the time she applied a tourniquet to a bleeding student.  A new high school in Fruitport, Michigan, has limited sightlines, wall protrusions for students to hide behind, and an all-seeing reception desk the architect calls an “educational entry panopticon.”  It’s an example of the ghastly protocols that school districts have undertaken as another school year begins with no movement in Washington on gun control. Armed volunteers have arrived in elementary schools. Parents have gone their own route, stocking up on bulletproof backpacks. Because the average U.S. school is 44 years old, architectural adaptations to gunfire have been slower to arrive—but now that they are being considered in the design of every new school in the United States, their impact will last for decades.  In Shelbyville, Indiana, a high school redesigned at the behest of the state sheriff’s association has teachers wearing panic buttons, and motion detectors and smoke cannons in the hallways. When it opened a few years ago, Indiana Sheriffs’ Association Executive Director Steve Luce labeled it a “paradigm change in public safety.” In a PR coup for the planners, NBC called it the “safest school in America.”  The Shelbyville school is an extreme case. It was built by NetTalon, a Virginia security company that doesn’t seem to have been able to convince anyone to replicate its prototype. But it is far from the only school where military technology drives design.  In Fruitport, Michigan, superintendent Bob Szymoniak boasts the new high school will be “the safest, most secure building in the state of Michigan,” with limited sightlines, wing-wall protrusions for students to hide behind, and an all-seeing reception desk the architect calls an “educational entry panopticon.” The firm behind the building, TowerPinkster, has built a number of school facilities—as well as jails in Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, and Midland. Matt Slagle, the architect on the project, says all this is standard procedure—and that with its emphasis on glass windows (coated in ballistic film) and open sightlines, the Fruitport school is on the less carceral end of the spectrum.  Commissions on school safety have prepared reports with standardized school safety recommendations after the shootings at Columbine, Virginia Tech, Newtown, and Parkland. But on the ground, approaches are highly localized and often dependent on the whims of one superintendent or the entreaties of a local entrepreneur.  In Charleston, South Carolina, for example, Tony Deering, a local manufacturer of bomb-resistant vehicle armor, has a new venture in bulletproof doors, incorporating “the experience we gleaned from protecting the war fighter.” Deering has offered the doors free to three district schools, which will begin installing them this year, and he hopes Charleston’s schools will be the first of many clients.  “There is this industry that is monetizing off of fear,” said Jenine Kotob, a D.C.-based school architect, when I spoke to her earlier this month. “The school security industry is now a $2.7 billion industry in the United States, and those numbers keep rising. Thinking about the building and the site in a holistic way, and not necessarily focusing on the bells and whistles that come after the fact, would probably be a better investment.”  Kotob is one of the estimated 225,000 Americans who have lived through a school shooting. One of her best friends was killed at Virginia Tech. Later, she studied in Israel and Palestine, and saw schools built for war, with features like perimeter walls designed to withstand explosives. “If America continues along a trajectory of fear, we will end up in a situation where the building and the infrastructure we’re investing in are not places we want to be. We’re talking about a building that will be standing for 20, 30, 40 years. And how we react today says a lot about who we are as a society and what our beliefs are.”  Listen to our What Next episode with Jenine Kotob on this topic:  One place where the military-educational complex is winning: a particular piece of panic hardware called a “barricade device,” which is supposed to prevent anyone from entering or exiting a classroom during a lockdown. The National Association of State Fire Marshals argues that it should always be easy for anyone to exit a room—and for authorized officials to enter a locked room. But several states have bucked that advice and changed the law to permit barricades in school settings. Those might include steel bars that secure the door to the door frame or into the floor.  In Arkansas, for example, the Legislature changed the fire code, overruling the fire marshal. Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert was subsequently appointed CEO of Arkansas-based ULockIt, which has sold barricades to dozens of schools in the state. (He had recused himself from the vote because he had investments in the firm.)  “What happens is, when these companies come in, some of them can try to take advantage of situations,” said Guy Grace, security director of public schools in Littleton, Colorado, where Columbine is located. He is also the chair of the Partner Alliance for Safer Schools, or PASS, which has argued that barricades will create more problems than they solve. “When you have an active shooter situation, I guarantee in the first couple days your inbox is going to have solutions from companies trying to market their technology.”  PASS, in turn, is criticized for being a vehicle for security tech. Its school design guidelines are “mostly from security industry folks with their products as their main concern,” Brotman wrote to me. They recommend that new schools be equipped with biometric screening, outdoor lighting optimized for video surveillance, and audio analytics that can detect “specific acoustic signatures of threat indicators, such as aggression or panic in people’s voices.”  The resistance to barricades isn’t just about fire. Far more common than school shootings is routine violence, including threats, fighting, and sexual assault. Many forward-thinking architects see themselves as responding not just to the infinitesimal threat of a shooting but the far more common incidence of bullying. “To truly create spaces where students feel safe, to a certain extent those interventional strategies have to be as unobtrusive as possible,” observes Karina Ruiz, a Portland, Oregon–based architect who chaired the American Institute of Architects’ Committee on Education. She recalled speaking to survivors of the 2017 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, who returned to a school that required passing through a metal detector with a clear backpack. “They said, ‘We are the victims—and we feel like we’re being punished.’ ”  Metal detectors have been a fixture in inner-city schools for decades, but there is still little evidence on whether they make students safer or put them at ease. There is less evidence still about the new active-shooter-exercise “start kits” that the Department of Homeland Security now releases, which are designed to help administrators prepare kids for a lockdown. In Littleton, Grace argues the twice-a-year drills are “empowering, not overwhelming” for the district’s students. “When you don’t tell them anything is where the fear factor comes into play.”  Virtually nothing is known about the utility or consequence of architectural modifications. What are the long-term effects of spending your youth in a classroom with red tape on the floor telling you where to stand when someone opens fire? No one knows. In a 2016 study, researchers from Johns Hopkins University wrote there was “limited and conflicting evidence in the literature on the short- and long-term effectiveness of school safety technology.”  Back at Sandy Hook, Brotman knows that’s true. He does his best to hide his bulletproofing, and he also acknowledges that no school will ever be completely invulnerable, not even this one. The first concern in school design should always be education, he said, even as the grim headlines fuel parental concern about security: “Parents will bring it up, and it’s up to us to help them understand it’s a priority—but it’s not the No. 1 priority.”  We were standing among the tiny, thigh-high chairs in the library as a summer thunderstorm battered the windows and filled the rain garden outside. If we’re designing shooter-proof schools, I hope they look like this. It was also clear, as Brotman and I gamed out the path of bullets in the empty hallways, that this is a small victory in a war we have lost.


slate--2019-09-14--A Simple Trick to Get Your Kid to Tell You What Happened at School Today

On a recent episode of How To!, Charles Duhigg brought a listener’s (and his own) parenting anxieties to Wendy Mogel, a clinical psychologist and the New York Times bestselling author of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee. They talked about how many parents overprotect, overindulge, and overschedule their kids—and how they can learn to chill out. Some highlights of their conversation, condensed and edited for clarity, are below.  Wendy Mogel: If we solve every small problem for our kids, we see the pattern that we’re now seeing in college students, who are attached by an electronic tether to their parents and asking them questions like “Mom, could you take a look at this apple? I’m just going to turn on FaceTime so you can see it. Should I eat this part over here, or is that not a good part to eat?”  Charles Duhigg: I want to be a fellow traveler with my kids, but I have all this advice! I have 44 years of good advice.  Mogel: Not for 2019, Charles, you don’t. We want to learn from them and then take all our life experience and blend it with their knowledge of this moment. And that’s how we make our decisions.  Duhigg: I have an 11-year-old named Ollie, and this summer he went to this camp where they fight with foam swords and they’re assigned to groups based on Greek mythology. It’s Brooklyn. But when I dropped him off each morning, I would get worried because he didn’t seem like he was socializing enough with the other kids. Some of the kids are playing swords with each other, and Ollie goes and sits on the wall. And I want to go over and be like, “No, no. Ollie, go play with those kids. They want to be friends with you. You should go be friends with them.” What should I do?  Mogel: You sound so sad, and slightly hopeless, and you felt much worse than Ollie feels when he’s watching them.  Duhigg: I’m actually the problem. It’s not that Ollie doesn’t want to go play with the other kids. It’s that he has a father who keeps on hectoring him.  Mogel: We all do this. Every single one of us does this every day as parents because it’s all trial and error. Some kids are slower to warm—they just need time to rev up and figure out how to join the group. But you just have this little snapshot, and so in your eyes, he is the lonely, lost boy who will never get to engage in swordplay. And at the end of the day, you want a little reassurance so that you can sleep through the night. “OK. Ollie, did you do any swordplay? Did you play with anybody, or did you sit by yourself the whole entire day, and actually were there tears?”  Duhigg: No, you’re right. That’s what I do. I’m the worst.  Mogel: Does he not want to go to camp?  Mogel: Yes. Just write that on a note and put it in your pocket.  Mogel: Three-quarters of the parents who come to see me are not coming about problems. They’re coming with anticipatory anxiety. “What if this is the wrong school? What if he doesn’t make friends? What if he doesn’t have a good teacher?” And then they’ll ask the children if they like their teacher. I say never, never ask your child that because someday we want them to learn how to get along with difficult people. They’re going to have an unenlightened, uninspired boss one day. This is good for them. Everything doesn’t have to be perfect for them. So if kids are having trouble making friends, what the parents can say is “Wow” or “Tell me more,” and let them speak without interrupting with advice or guidance or recommendations until they make a statement with a question mark at the end.  Duhigg: Instead of solving the problem, you just give them an opportunity to suggest new alternatives for themselves.  Mogel: And you don’t do it in an annoying shrinky-like voice. You don’t say, “Hmm,” or put your finger on your chin. You’re engaged, but you’re treating them as though you have confidence that they have the tools somewhere inside to solve this. And you can say to them, “Have you ever been in a situation like this before? What did you do? How did it turn out? What are you thinking of trying? What’s your next step? What’s your plan?”  Duhigg: Like I actually want to know what the answer is, not that I have an answer in mind and I’m waiting for them to guess it. I am actually curious—how are they going to solve this?  Mogel: You are curious, respectful, and calm. What I see so often is escalation of anxiety until the parent is at the point where they drunk-text the principal or the head of the school.  Duhigg: Those pointed questions we ask, oftentimes without understanding it, sometimes become interrogations—as you put it, that we are interviewing for pain. We’re asking questions like “Was Jimmy mean to you again today? Did you like your lunch?” Our natural instinct as parents, because we’re caring, is to try and find these moments when our kids aren’t happy and try and help them solve it. But oftentimes our kids are just exhausted.  Mogel: Our job as parents and educators of certainly girls, but especially right now young boys, is to be enchanted with their enchantment. … When you pick your kid up at school, put down your device and say, “I thought about you today when I saw anything that they talk to you about,” if you came across something that connects their passion and their great store of information that they just treasure with your day, so that they know—these emotionally sensitive creatures—that you hold them in mind when you’re not together. It means so much to them. And it’s really a magic trick. It really works.  Mogel: A surprising, sort of paradoxical way to do this comes from the brilliant research of a Norwegian child development specialist named Ellen Sandseter. Her premise is that without exposure to danger, children will be more fearful. She lists specific things that children need in order to become appropriately daring, confident, and resilient: to be at great heights from which they could fall and harm themselves, to be near bodies of water where they could drown, to be near fire, to travel at great speed. And this is the tricky one for all of us: wayfinding.  Duhigg: But there’s a right way and a wrong way to stress your kid, and we have to be mindful of the difference.  Mogel: There are signs to look for: a child who’s been previously dry at night who starts wetting, lots of complaints about tummy aches and headaches, loss of pleasure in activities that were previously very satisfying to the child, loss of exuberance. Then you can consider that your child has too much stress. If you’re not seeing those things, then we accept that it’s exactly like the way you build muscle—you have to stress the muscle, and actually tear it slightly, for it to become stronger.  To listen to the entire episode, including Duhigg’s interview with parents of an introverted kid, click the player below or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.


slate--2019-09-18--Dear Care and Feeding Whats the Best Way to Help My Sons Underprivileged School

Dear Care and Feeding: What’s the Best Way to Help My Son’s Underprivileged School?

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.  We are super excited to send our son to our neighborhood public school. It is the most diverse in the city, and it has a significant percentage of kids whose families are underprivileged. We make plenty of money. I am ready to write the checks and show up wherever we’re needed. My question is about how to discuss this with our son. I want to build a sense of community such that he understands that we help people who need help, but that he doesn’t feel “better” than anyone. How do I talk to him about this? Also, can I just donate money so he doesn’t have to sell wrapping paper? Or maybe so his whole class doesn’t have to sell wrapping paper? I can’t figure out how to navigate this territory.  —Trying to Help Without Hurting  Unless you can donate enough money to prevent the entire school from having to sell wrapping paper, I would advise against making a gift to prevent him or his classmates from participating in those much-loathed fundraisers—which can be a lot of fun and educational for the kids, no matter how annoying we find them as parents. There may be some need that you can solve without much fanfare, such as replacing a broken copy machine or purchasing enough crayons or toilet paper to last through the semester. (Yes, those school fundraisers are often for basic needs, not just fun trips or celebrations.)  His privilege should not cause him any guilt, but he should be very grateful for what he has and never take it for granted.  The influx of new, moneyed students can be both a gift (more parents who have the resources to be engaged and supportive) and a curse (rising rents, class tensions, families demanding changes that run counter to the needs and desires of longtime residents). Speak to his classroom teacher and the principal about wanting to find some ways to support the school financially; just be sensitive to the fact that both of them (especially the teacher) may be earning less than they would if they were working in a wealthier area and may be a bit touchy around the subject of money. Ask that your donations or gifts are kept confidential so as not to create an awkward situation for your son, who’d likely prefer not to be known as the rich kid. I’d actually advise against telling him about your gifts as well.  Be sure that you and your spouse are sensitive when interacting with school employees, your child’s classmates, and their parents. Please don’t be the family at the PTA meeting harping about organic lunches when there are parents there worrying over having enough money to keep any kind of food in the house at all. Take the time to learn the school culture and offer to support change where it is most needed, not where it would simply fit your own expectations or desires.  As far as speaking to your son about the obvious class differences between him and his classmates, explain that most people aren’t fortunate enough to be as financially stable as his parents are and that you all are privileged to be able to have everything you need and much of what you want. However, he must also understand that having more money than other families does not mean that you work harder or are better than anyone else in any way. Explain how you got to where you are, whether it was a matter of sustaining family wealth or being the first in your family to be highly successful. In the meantime, he must understand the importance of being kind and treating everyone with respect, no matter how different they are. His privilege should not cause him any guilt, but he should be very grateful for what he has and never take it for granted.  Also, explain that family business is personal—that includes finances. Your son should not talk to his friends about how much money his family has and should also understand that some of the things that he can take for granted (regular vacations, dining out, car ownership) may be out of reach for his classmates’ parents. Encourage him to avoid talking about those things too much and to listen to how friends speak about their own households. There’s no need to brag about getting a ton of Christmas presents or going to a fancy party if his buddies are describing very different lifestyles. That doesn’t mean he has to hide everything that makes him happy, just that he has to develop a level of class sensitivity a bit earlier in life then he may have if he were surrounded by other well-off children.  Best of luck for a great school year.  How important is it for babies to “socialize” with other babies? My infant hasn’t met any other kids his age yet. Is it bad that he spends most of his time with grown-ups? We’ve been to a local playgroup a few times and he seemed to enjoy watching older kids, though he’s a bit young to interact with them. I’m something of an introvert and homebody, so the idea of getting out and meeting other parents makes me anxious. But I don’t want my hang-ups to affect him and his development—maybe he wants to be social! Is there an age where we should make a concerted effort to be social with other kids? Should we put him in day care to meet other kids? How do we even meet other babies?  Having children requires most parents to step outside of our comfort zones at times, if not often: making corny faces, sitting through hours of YouTube videos that you’d prefer to avoid, and yes, forced social interaction with adults so that our little ones can be friends with their kids, which sucks so very much.  Lucky for you, you’ve got some time before you need to do that. A child under 1 needs social interaction, but he’s getting it from his parents, sitters, family friends, store employees, etc. Could watching a slightly older child toddling across the living room help inspire him to push a little harder to start walking on his own? Sure. Would he enjoy more time with kids? Perhaps. Is he suffering for the lack at this point? Nope. If your work schedules change and you find that day care is a necessity, that’s one thing. But if you’re able to keep things going as they are, there’s no need to enroll him somewhere just to get him to meet new friends.  I have a personal vendetta against “mommy and me” groups because 1) plenty of kids come with other parents and 2) they typically take place during the middle of the traditional workday. Alas, there may be one in your area that works for your schedule. Consider giving them another shot six to 12 months before you plan to enroll your son in preschool or pre-K so that he can get used to being around kids then. Places where families convene are also great for meeting other kids and their parents: the playground, the beach, the local YMCA. Conversations can be easily started over two kids wanting to use the same swing or sharing a ball—you may find that by then your little boy is a social butterfly and won’t need any assistance from you at all.  There’s a lot to be anxious about as the parent of such a tiny person. His friendships, however, needn’t cause you any real worry just yet. Try to relax and trust that he’ll be OK. Good luck to you!  • If you missed Tuesday’s Care and Feeding column, read it here.  • Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!  I have a 9-year-old and a 6-year-old. Due to my ongoing struggle with depression and anxiety, I have let a lot of parenting things fall by the wayside over the years: grooming, ensuring the kids have healthy eating habits, monitoring their screen time, making them help around the house. Really, a lot of stuff.  After several years of therapy and other hard work, I’m in a much better place, and I’m ready to create and/or restore some of the much-needed order that has been missing from our household. But I’m struggling to figure out just how to present new family rules and rituals without it seeming like punishment or an unfair revocation of my children’s independence or “rights.” I’m also having a hard time prioritizing which changes I should focus on, and which things I may simply be unable to take on, as I’m not 100 percent better and I don’t want to overextend myself.  I want to be able to explain why things that were once OK aren’t acceptable anymore without making them feel like they’ve been doing things wrong up until now. I also don’t want to be on their cases about every little thing all of a sudden. I’ve given them some age appropriate info about my depression and anxiety, but it’s been more along the lines of “it’s not your job to make Mommy happy” as opposed to “depression and anxiety can make you live in a way that seems fabulous when you’re 6 or 9 but is actually not great.”  Do you have suggestions on how I can explain all of this to my kids in a way that will (hopefully) get them to buy in to a new way of living?  —I’m Better Now, So You Have to Do Chores and Eat Vegetables  First, congratulations on being in a better place than you once were. By attending to yourself, you have already taken major steps toward improving the quality of your kids’ lives, even if adjusting to the changes may prove to be a difficult task for the entire household.  Start by giving them a more comprehensive (while still accessible) explanation of what depression and anxiety are and how they’ve affected your life, with particular attention to how they led you to parent in ways that you may not have otherwise. Make it clear that these issues are not your fault nor theirs—as you’ve said, it’s not their job to make Mommy happy, and they aren’t the reason that she’s been unhappy either.  Rituals and rules may seem particularly challenging at first, but they will help you reset the household. Balance out those that feel tedious—no screens after 7, say—with ones that are fun and give the kids something to look forward to: a weekly Netflix night, “Taco Tuesdays,” monthly visits to a local museum or beach.  Try to adhere to a schedule and keep it posted where the kids can see it. Keep yourself and the children accountable for adhering to it and acknowledge when you fall off (“OK, Maddy needed a little extra sleep and we were late today. It happens! But we’re gonna work on an on-time departure tomorrow”) and when you decide to make a change (“We usually come home by 7, but we’re staying out a little late today because we’re going to dinner”).  As you put new habits and practices into place, remind them each step of the way that they will make life better for the whole family. Explain that there are things that parents have to do for their children to make sure they have what they need to be happy, healthy, and successful at school, and that it was hard for you to do those things before you started getting better.  Don’t be afraid to let them know when you are feeling overwhelmed and need a moment to yourself, and set them up with a good show or their tablets while you reset. Establish regular breaks for yourself throughout the day, especially on weekends when the kids are likely glued to your side.  Finally, accept and acknowledge that this is a lifelong process. You have battled for so long and right now, things are good! That is an accomplishment to celebrate, but you and I—and the many other parents like us who are struggling to manage anxiety and depression and family life—know that some days will be darker than others. Forgive yourself for your past and for those times you don’t feel you’re being the best mom you can be in the future. Prioritize therapy and other measures you have established with your doctors in order to be well. Remember that taking good care of your children requires you to take good care of yourself too. Sending you the best wishes I can summon up.  I have a 9-year-old stepson who spends the weekends with us. My husband and I are expecting a baby in December. I plan on breastfeeding. We live in a small apartment and I’m wondering if it’s appropriate to nurse in front of my stepson, or if I will have to excuse myself and go into our bedroom with the door closed. My husband’s ex-wife is also remarried and they recently had a new baby as well. She nurses in front of her son, but my feeling is that the rules are different for me because I’m a stepmom. Are they?  —To Feed or Not to Feed  Breastfeeding is only “inappropriate” when it creates a safety hazard (while driving) or a distraction that could be avoided (while delivering a eulogy at a funeral). Should you consider covering your breasts with a nursing apron or blanket? Yes, if that will make you (and, perhaps, your stepson and his biological parents) feel at ease. He may sneak a peek out of curiosity, but he may also be less interested than the average kid because he’s seeing his mother do the same mundane, natural act in her home. Either way, it’s not a big deal. Nurse where you’re most comfortable, whether at home or otherwise.  I hate playing with my kids. They’re 3 and 6, and I find it torturous. I cuddle them and read to them and fix their boo-boos, I help them with homework and take them for walks and check on them at night, but I hate pretending to be a cat or playing Twister. All the books say that they need quality time with parents. Am I screwing my kids up for life?


slate--2019-10-10--Ask a Teacher: Why Does My Daughter’s School Hold Elections if They’re Going to Ignore the Results?

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. In addition to our traditional advice, every Thursday we feature an assortment of teachers from across the country answering your education questions. Have a question for our teachers? Email askateacher@slate.com or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.  Both of my kids attend the local high school, and at our school, each student organization holds elections to elect officers. I’m seeing a disturbing trend in which the teacher adviser of the organization doesn’t like the outcome of the election and instead decides to overrule the democratic results. In one case, the teacher outright decided to name a different nonwinning student president.  Another case involved my daughter, which is where this becomes more fraught for me. My daughter ran for president and lost the election. The teacher said the results were “close” so decided that each position should be jointly held—co-presidents, co–vice presidents, etc. I’ve asked my daughter to resign her “co-presidency,” since she didn’t win, but she’s refusing. She says she cares too much about the organization to see it fail. (Last year, only three families participated in the organization’s fundraiser, and she does not want this to happen again.)  When my kids were younger, I definitely bought into paying for a trophy for recreation soccer to make sure each child on the team received a trinket at the end of the season—but these kids aren’t 6 years old. Most of them are seniors and will soon be heading to college. With the whole college scandal fresh in everyone’s mind, I’m trying to underscore for her the concept of meritocracy—if you didn’t earn it fairly, then you don’t deserve it.  I’m not sure why they bother to have elections if the will of the students isn’t going to be considered. Should I force her to quit? Should I go directly to the administration and ask them to intervene?  You should definitely not force your daughter to quit, nor should you ask the administration to intervene, because this should be her decision. Ask yourself why this bothers you so much. What exactly do you fear? What lesson are you hoping your daughter will learn by resigning her role as co-president? What is the harm in allowing her to serve? Conversely, how might she benefit from a leadership role in an organization she cares about deeply? How might the club itself benefit from her leadership? It doesn’t sound like your daughter is “résumé building”—from your letter, she seems to genuinely care about this organization.  I fear that if you wield a heavy hand or get too deeply involved, you’ll drive a wedge between you and your daughter instead of teaching her a life lesson about merit.  I get your criticism—why hold elections if the results won’t be honored? But I’m wondering how, exactly, you know that teacher sponsors are disregarding election results. In my experience, there’s usually more to these stories once you get the teacher’s perspective than what you hear from your children or through the grapevine. Or, perhaps the issue is overblown—perhaps it has happened once but is not a rampant problem.  I share your dismay at the celebrity college admissions scandal. Honestly, it makes my blood boil. But I am even more infuriated by the immense advantages given to “legacy” applicants who currently make up one-third of Harvard’s freshman class. Do we truly live in a meritocracy? Are you sure that the student who won the election is in fact more worthy than your daughter? While we hope that students vote for the best candidate to be the president of the student council (for example), such elections are often popularity contests instead.  It’s possible the true source of your anxiety is your daughter’s “unearned” position as co-president. Or, are you bothered by larger, societal issues of unfairness that you don’t want to perpetuate? Regardless, I don’t think this issue is on par with people who pay thousands to buy their kids’ way into college, nor do I think forcing her to resign will do anything to mitigate deep-seated inequality.  After reflecting on these questions, talk with your daughter openly about your concerns. Listen to her perspective. Ask her if she thinks elections are, in fact, the best way to choose leaders for her club. While the democratic process is important, it’s not the only path to leadership. We don’t elect our bosses, for example. Many of the “team captains” on sports teams are appointed by their coaches. Maybe some of the clubs at her school should consider other processes, and she could be the leader who brings those ideas to the table.  I fear that if you wield a heavy hand or get too deeply involved, you’ll drive a wedge between you and your daughter instead of teaching her a life lesson about merit. Let the students figure this one out themselves.  Is it reasonable to expect that teachers shouldn’t yell at children? By the fifth day of kindergarten, my son had already reported being yelled at a few times, for pretty innocuous stuff like not looking at the book while the teacher was reading a story, for example. We chose a progressive private school in hopes of having our son in a happy, nurturing classroom that has a very low student-teacher ratio so it’s definitely not like the teacher is overwhelmed. But maybe my expectations are unrealistic. I mean—I yell sometimes, too.  Relatedly, I did speak to the teacher and she acted baffled that my son was scared of her and denied yelling (and I later found out that another mom also spoke to the teacher about the exact same thing with the exact same result). I believe my son. He’s an honest kid who has never gotten in trouble and has always loved school and various camps, and for the first time he’s sobbing inconsolably, can’t sleep at night, and saying he’s scared of school all the time. This teacher isn’t new to the school, and I think is well liked and does seem really nice when I interact with her. So, now what? I’ll admit that I tend to be a very involved parent. Do I just need to step back and give this time?  —Trying to Let the Storm Pass  Is it reasonable to expect that teachers shouldn’t yell? Yes. Do you need to step back and give this time? Yes again. Kindergarten has barely started, and your son has never been in school before—not like this. I have worked in kindergarten and in preschool, and the difference is pretty stark. Preschool is mostly play-based, creative, and focused on teaching social skills in addition to behavioral expectations that prepare you for kindergarten (like listening to groupwide verbal directions as opposed to individualized directions, or walking in a line, which children don’t typically experience before preschool). Kindergarten is mostly academic-based. Although there’s some leniency for teachers to get creative, they are required to meet all the Common Core state standards, which can be a lot.  I’m not saying your kid’s a liar, but there are lots of possibilities to account for his perception.  His teacher may not be yelling but rather using a loud enough voice to be heard over the noise. She may not be raising her voice at all but speaking in a manner he finds unusually firm. Or maybe she did raise her voice, but there was a valid reason (and perhaps one your child wasn’t aware of or didn’t tell you about).  Sure, there are teachers in the world that yell at kids unfairly. But less than a month into the school year, you don’t really know whether she is yelling out of anger or whether something else is afoot. Keep this situation on your radar. Stay involved and in communication with the teacher. If, a month or two into the school year, your son is still afraid of her, bring it up again. I always recommend parents approach situations like this with an “assume the best” attitude. Try something like, “My son says he’s afraid of you. Could we problem-solve together to figure out why he feels scared and help him adjust to the school environment?”  Also, as a general rule, if you’re admitting aloud that you don’t want to be that parent, then you won’t be (that parent is never aware that they’re being difficult), so I wouldn’t worry too much about being overly pushy. Instead, try to strike a balance that feels right to you between giving the teacher space to do her job and being your son’s advocate.  My 9-year-old son is in third grade. His teacher approached me with concerns that he is having trouble paying attention in class—he gets distracted, and he sometimes bothers his seatmates. (She emphasized he’s not being malicious, and that it seems to stem from boredom.) She’s tried changing his seat but still notices he’s talking or playing with his pencil, instead of paying attention.  She’s asked me to talk to him. I’m perfectly happy to do so, but I’m at a loss as to what impact she thinks this will have. He’s an active kid who gets bored easily with things that don’t immediately interest him. He is not ADHD and does not have any other different learning abilities to our knowledge (certainly no one has suggested to us that he should be evaluated for anything). He’s a smart kid who has always done well in school, but this is his first year with an “old-school” style teacher who values the “sit at your desks and let me teach you” style of learning.  I like his teacher a lot. But I’m not sure what I am supposed to do to get him to pay attention when I am not physically there. When I talked to my son about this, he asked to be changed to a different classroom (I told him I don’t have this power). He also told me that he’s spending a lot of effort trying to keep from fidgeting in his chair, as this is something he’ll get called out for in class. I should add that he’s not always the most reliable narrator. What can I do?  I agree with you it’s kind of crazy to expect a student’s behavior to change on a long-term basis because his mom spoke to him about the behavior. That is pie-in-the-sky thinking at best. This is not the way to change a student’s behavior.  What I would propose is simple:  Rather than speaking to your son as the teacher requested, propose a meeting with the teacher, your son, and yourself. Engage in an open and frank discussion about the behavioral issues that are taking place in class. As a team: • Determine the causes of these behavioral issues • Identify strategies to improve his behavior and guarantee his success • Create a system of accountability • Establish a regular line of communication so that all three parties can be informed when positive change occurs or at some predesignated point if change does not happen  I’ve already conducted several of these planning meetings this year, and they work well. The student is made aware that parent and teacher are now linked in a common cause. The student is given an opportunity to propose solutions on his behalf. Oftentimes, the reasons for the behavioral issues are uncovered in this process. Most important, a guarantee is made that as soon as a positive change takes place, I will contact the parents with the good news, and a follow-up meeting is planned in the event that change does not take place.  When teacher, student, and parent work as a team to improve behavior, real change can take place. Otherwise, the teacher is simply passing an impossible problem onto you.  I’m a teacher myself, and I’m in a situation I honestly don’t know how to deal with. I have a middle school student who has been diagnosed with autism. I’ve been following his IEP. He’s quite intelligent, and capable of doing grade-level work. However, he can be extremely aggressive and rude when he’s displeased about anything. This includes things that happen outside my class, which I may not be aware of until too late. During his episodes, he will yell (often inappropriate things), and become very disruptive. The last time this happened, he broke all of the colored pencils in my pencil box and threw them at me while I was trying to continue teaching. His para left the room to get help, leaving me alone. He threw pencils at me for around five to 10 minutes while I mostly tried to ignore him. By the time “help” arrived, he had “calmed down,” and he was allowed to remain in class.  His behavior was very upsetting and horribly disrespectful, and it seems like the consequences for him are very light. I understand that he has special needs, but it seems as though his teachers are expected to put up with treatment that no one would ever accept in any other circumstances. When I talked to his mother, she seemed more concerned with making excuses than addressing his behavior.  I don’t know what to do. I don’t want things thrown at me while I’m working. What should I do to prevent this? Do I need to talk to administration or special ed? Should I file a police report if he continues to physically harass or threaten me? I want to feel safe at work.  I’m so, so sorry this happened. That sounds incredibly stressful and demoralizing, and my heart goes out to you.  Given what you’ve described, filing a police report is probably overkill. It doesn’t sound like you are genuinely afraid for your safety but rather frustrated and angry—understandably so—with these disruptive, upsetting episodes. However, this behavior is intolerable and must be addressed immediately.  You should definitely meet with the special education teachers who work with this student, including his case manager. To prepare for this meeting, there are a few things you should do.  First, review the student’s IEP. Does he have a behavior improvement plan? If not, he needs one stat. If he does have a BIP and you’ve been following it, it’s obviously not working for him right now and needs to be adjusted. Sometimes, as students progress through school, they experience new stressors (a transition from elementary to middle school, for example) that require an updated IEP.  Next, do some light research. Review materials about autism and talk with his other teachers. Does he have similar problems in their classes? Or is he more successful? These conversations may help you suss out potential triggers or effective de-escalation strategies.  Finally, document everything. Document the accommodations you’ve provided. Document what you’ve learned from conversations with his other teachers. Document his outbursts. You will bring this documentation to your meeting with the special education department to help demonstrate a need for new accommodations.  When you’re discussing the student, keep the focus on problem solving. You want to help the student be successful. You also have other students in the class whose learning is affected by this student’s disruptions. But be patient—the case manager may need to call a meeting of the child’s IEP team or initiate a functional behavior assessment. In the meantime, they should help you craft a plan for what to do when he becomes combative again. If I were in your shoes, I might strongly request (or even insist) that he leave the classroom with his paraprofessional until he calms down if I’m not satisfied with their response.  The school has an obligation to meet this student’s needs. One of the things he needs is to learn how to deal with frustration in constructive ways. Allowing this behavior to persist will harm him in the long run.  I will be thinking of you! I am hopeful that your colleagues in the special education department will work with you to find a good solution. Please write back and let me know how it goes.

Matthew Dicks, Katie Holbrook, and Cassy Sarnell


sottnet--2019-01-20--Israel to shut UN run Palestinian schools in east Jerusalem

National Security Council said to decide on revoking permits from UN agency for Palestinian refugees, to be replaced next year by city-run schools using Israeli curriculumIsraeli officials are reportedly set to revoke permits for schools in East Jerusalem run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.Israel's National Security Council decided to revoke permits allowing UNRWA schools in the city's Palestinian neighborhood to operate, starting next school year, Israel's Hadashot TV news reported Saturday.According to the report, the UNRWA schools will be replaced by schools run by the Jerusalem municipality and under the aegis of the Israeli Education Ministry.The network said the decision was reached during a National Security Council meeting last month to discuss expelling UNRWA from East Jerusalem following US President Donald Trump's decision to end American funding for the agency.According to UNRWA, the group runs seven schools in two refugee camps that sit within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, serving over 3,000 students.Israel claims East Jerusalem as part of its undivided capital, in a move largely unrecognized internationally, and has sought in recent months to push the UN Palestinian refugee agency out of the city.Israel alleged the UN agency perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by making it harder for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to settle abroad. It also rejects UNRWA criteria, under which refugee status is extended not only to the tens of thousands of Palestinians still alive who used to live in today's Israel but also to over five million of their generations of descendants. Officials have called for the body to be shuttered and the refugees absorbed into other existing UN programs.Prior to the end of his tenure last month, Jerusalem mayor Nir Bakat detailed a proposal to expel UNRWA from the capital and have the municipality provide education, health, welfare, and sanitation services in its place.Barkat accused UNRWA of failing those under its purview and instead inciting terror activity. He also gave details of a plan prepared by a team of city officials and experts to replace all of UNRWA's functions with municipal services in the Shuafat refugee camp, founded in 1965 and home to some 20,000 residents., and said that it would no longer back the agency after decades of support. Washington has also cut other aid to the Palestinians in a bid to pressure the Palestinian Authority into negotiations with Israel."The US decision to stop funding UNRWA creates a rare opportunity to deal immediately and decisively with the PA's intention to perpetuate the 'refugee problem' and encourage incitement," Barkat said in a statement in October."There are no refugees in Jerusalem, only residents. They will receive their services from the Jerusalem Municipality alone, like all other residents," he added.Barkat proposed to expropriate or lease the existing UNRWA schools to use as municipal buildings, and in addition will construct an educational and municipal services complex near the East Jerusalem neighborhood "whose services will be far superior to those that UNRWA has provided."At the time, UNRWA pushed back against Barkat's statement, and said it was operating in East Jerusalem "with the cooperation and on the basis of a formal agreement with the State of Israel, which remains in force."There was no immediate comment from UNRWA on the report.Israel recently put forward a NIS 5 billion plan to invest in Arab parts of East Jerusalem, though much of the education funding is conditioned on adopting the Education Ministry's approved curriculum.There was no immediate confirmation of the report from the Prime Minister's Office.