ThinkProgress Logo

Stories tagged with “Education”

Education

Teachers Need A Louder Voice In Setting Education Policies

By Chelsea Straus, Guest Blogger on Jun 18, 2013 at 1:00 pm

The Common Core – a set of K-12 national education standards – were conceived of by governors, designed by consultants, and have the support of teachers across the country. Yet Republicans are standing in the way in states like Michigan and Indiana. Michigan’s State Senate passed a budget measure preventing the Michigan Department of Education from spending any money on implementing the Common Core. Similarly, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed a bill postponing Common Core implementation.

Many Republicans are mistakenly claiming the Common Core represents a federal takeover of education even though 75% of teachers support the Common Core. In fact, this kind of support for education policies is common among the country’s teachers. A report released today by the Center for American Progress documents the prominent teacher voice organizations –- like VIVA Teachers, Teach Plus, and Educators for Excellence –- and analyzes the wide-array of policies that influence work in the classroom around issues like the Common Core.

The report finds that teacher voice organizations have diverse memberships, operate under the premise that teacher voice is not monolithic, and are working to professionalize the teaching profession. These grassroots organizations began forming at a time when teachers decided they were no longer satisfied with the status quo and began expressing great interest in embracing new leadership opportunities.

Teachers are often depicted as standing in the way of change in the classroom. Yet the increase in organizations that involve teachers directly in policy paints a different picture. Teacher voice groups opened up a new outlet for teachers to express their views on pertinent education policy issues like the Common Core and many teachers are taking advantage of these groups. In fact, almost 2,700 Teach Plus teachers have attended events on the Common Core and another 400 attended webinars on the same topic.

While Tea Partiers are rallying together against the Common Core, it’s important to note that the politicians aren’t the ones whose work will be most affected by them. Maybe we should ask the teachers themselves about whether the standards matter and will improve education for all students. In a Center for American Progress video highlighting teachers’ views on education policy released today, Amelia Herbert of VIVA Teachers says, “I am really interested and concerned with the Common Core and its implementation because I believe that it can really level the playing field for students despite what neighborhood they are coming from.”

It’s time to start listening to teachers’ voices on the Common Core and other important education policy issues that directly impact their work.

Chelsea Straus is the Special Assistant for the Pre-K-12 Education Policy team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Education

Kansas Lawmaker Opposes New Education Standards Because ‘The IRS Is Spying On Us’

By Rebecca Leber on Jun 14, 2013 at 2:15 pm

The Kansas State Board of Education voted Tuesday to adopt a multi-state science curriculum that gives new emphasis to evolution and climate change science in K-12. Developed by 26 states over the past two years, the Next Generation Science Standards include teaching climate change science to children as young as middle school. Kansas, Rhode Island, and Kentucky have already approved them.

Creationists have cried foul, and one state representative distrusts education standards as a whole because he viewed them as a form of federal overreach. At a school board meeting that discussed Common Core reading and math and Next Generation Science Standards, state Rep. Allan Rothlisberg compared these education benchmarks to the IRS, which is under scrutiny for targeting Tea Party groups.

“We’ve seen in the news lately, obviously with the IRS spying on us,” Rothlisberg told the Lawrence Journal-World. “Why on Earth would we expect the (U.S.) Department of Education — which is not constitutionally authorized — to look out for our children? That’s our responsibility.” Rothlisberg serves on the House Education Budget committee.

While the board approved the standards by a firm majority, 8-2, Kansas lawmakers have worked to move science backward in the state. Even though Article 6 of the Kansas Constitution says the state board has authority over public education, the Kansas Senate passed a bill last month to block funding for both Common Core standards and Next Generation Science Standards, which ended in a narrow defeat in the House. If it had passed, it would have resulted in a lengthy lawsuit to determine which branch had authority. This spring, the Kansas House Education Committee also introduced a bill that eventually died in committee mandating that teachers question the scientific basis of global warming in the classroom.

More states are moving ahead with approval, even as elected climate deniers and creationists threaten they may respond with anti-science legislation.

Climate Progress

Will A Denier Scrub Curriculum That Teaches Climate Science To Kentucky Schoolchildren?

By Kiley Kroh on Jun 12, 2013 at 4:09 pm

The Kentucky State Board of Education approved new standards for science education, including the teaching of climate change and evolution, in a unanimous vote last week. But before becoming final, the standards are subject to review by the state’s Senate Education Committee, whose chairman, Sen. Mike Wilson, is on the record opposing the teaching of climate change in schools.

The Next Generation Science Standards, developed with officials from 25 other states over the past two years, call for introducing climate science in the middle school curriculum and teaching high school students about the role of human activity in climate change. The standards also state unequivocally that children should learn about evolution. Though the topics are often points of contention with state lawmakers and some religious groups, they are just two of hundreds of ideas designed to combat scientific ignorance and better prepare students for college.

In an op-ed leading up to the school board meeting, Sen. Wilson (R-Bowling Green) said the standards include “troubling assumptions” regarding climate change and evolution.

Wilson takes particular issue with the fact that the NGSS points to the central role of humans in driving climate change. The standards clearly state that human activity, particularly the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, is a major factor in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature. And further, that outcomes predicted by global climate models strongly depend of the amounts of human-generated greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere each year. As evidence for his skepticism, Wilson cites a letter signed by sixteen scientists questioning the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Last month a new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers found a 97 percent consensus that global warming is happening and humans are the cause. This evidence of overwhelming agreement came just a few days after it was reported that atmospheric C02 levels reached 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human existence.

Wilson’s op-ed goes on to say, “Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over a decade and the smaller-than-predicted amount of warming over the 22 years since the Intergovernmental Panel began issuing projections.”

The senator’s claim is a frequent talking point of climate deniers, and one that is overwhelmingly refuted by actual climate scientists. Ten of the country’s most prominent climate scientists collaborated to write an op-ed in the Washington Post last week outlining the enormous amount of scientific evidence that points to the increasing threat of climate change and the danger of using “isolated factoids and sweeping generalizations about climate science to defend the destructive status quo”:

Read more

Justice

Louisiana Committee Keeps Creationism Law Ruled Unconstitutional In 1987

By Rebecca Leber on May 31, 2013 at 9:00 am

On Wednesday, the Louisiana House Education Committee voted against repealing a creationism law that has been around since 1981, even though the Supreme Court struck it down in 1987.

The committee voted to remove an amendment that would have repealed the Balanced Treatment for Creation Science and Evolution Science Act, which mandates that teachers give creationism and evolution equal weight in the classroom.

One reason lawmakers have not repealed it is because they hope the Supreme Court decision will be overturned someday, according to Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education in an interview with Raw Story:

This vote is a reminder that recent battles over the misnamed Louisiana Science Education Act, and dozens of similar laws introduced across the country, are part of a larger and longer battle. Today’s efforts may be less overtly religious, but only because that’s the strategy necessary to evade court scrutiny. If today’s advocates of intelligent design and ‘critical analysis of evolution’ had their druthers, they’d be passing ’80s-style equal time laws, or the sorts of outright bans on teaching evolution which brought us 1925′s Scopes trial.

The 7-2 Supreme Court decision in Edwards v. Aguillard was decisive. “The preeminent purpose of the Louisiana Legislature was clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind,” the Supreme Court noted. Using careful language to avoid explicit mention of religion does not change that Louisiana is violating the separation of church and state.

While Louisiana refuses to repeal its unconstitutional law, it also killed a repeal earlier this month of the 2008 Science Education Act that permits public school teachers to use supplemental class materials that advance creationism.

Alyssa

The Three Best Pieces Of Advice Joss Whedon Gave To The Wesleyan Class Of 2013

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 28, 2013 at 9:53 am

The Avengers director and Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, who graduated from Wesleyan University in 1987, when his commencement speaker was Bill Cosby, returned to his alma mater this weekend to give an address of his own. It’s not an exceedingly long speech, but it’s a smart one, and I was struck by three particular insights that seem useful both for people who are graduating into these particular circumstances—and for anyone who is going into a creative profession.

1. You will not ever achieve complete peace: One of the most difficult transitions in adulthood is from an environment where your performance gets regular, affirming feedback in the form of grades, and where you get regular opportunities to recharge, to one where you have to have an internal sense of your own success and progress, and where you have to decide for yourself when you’re in danger of burnout and need a break. For today’s graduates, I can also imagine that with jobs hard to find, and economic independence even further off, it’s easier to assign extremely high value to things like getting a job, finding a relationship, or even moving out of your parents’ house that are important to feeling independent and successful, but that are really the beginnings of building a life, not the end point of it. As Whedon put it on a larger scale:

To accept duality is to earn identity. And identity is something that you are constantly earning. It is not just who you are. It is a process that you must be active in. It’s not just parroting your parents or the thoughts of your learned teachers. It is now more than ever about understanding yourself so you can become yourself.

I talk about this contradiction, and this tension, there’s two things I want to say about it. One, it never goes away. And if you think that achieving something, if you think that solving something, if you think a career or a relationship will quiet that voice, it will not. If you think that happiness means total peace, you will never be happy. Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at peace. It will always be in conflict. If you accept that, everything gets a lot better.

Read more

Health

The Government Bans Doctors Who Can’t Repay Their Student Loans From Treating Medicare Patients

By Sy Mukherjee on May 20, 2013 at 4:10 pm

Over ten percent of all doctors and nurses on the government’s Medicare and Medicaid blacklist end up on it because they defaulted on government-backed student loans. Medical workers on the blacklist are barred from treating Medicare and Medicaid patients or receiving federal reimbursements for a predesignated time period.

According to a Modern Healthcare analysis of federal records, more than 5,400 of the 51,729 people on the government health entitlement blacklist were placed on it after failing to pay an HHS-backed medical student loan. Given a still-shaky economy, some in the health care sector expect that trend to continue:

[Government data] show that one of the most common reasons for getting barred is failure to repay HHS-backed student loans: 5,417 people are currently kicked out of Medicare for that.

The number of annual exclusions related to student loans has grown steadily in the past decade, peaking at 517 in 2011 before declining again. “That is tied to the economy, and I would expect that to continue to rise,” [said Lynn Gordon, a Chicago-area hospital group partner].

The increasing frequency of default-related blacklisting could prove problematic as the Obama Administration tries to entice more medical students to become primary care and family doctors. Primary care providers and nurse practitioners will be crucial to effective Obamacare implementation, since the health law is expected to drive up demand for medical services as millions of previously uninsured Americans gain coverage.

But the ballooning cost of a medical education could end up being a major barrier to the Administration’s recruitment efforts. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges’ (AAMC) 2012 report on medical school debt, “86 percent of medical school graduates had education debt, with a median amount of $162,000″ in 2011 — a number that has been rising steadily over the years:

AAMC estimates that a borrower with the median $162,000 debt “would have monthly payments ranging from $1,500 to $2,100 after residency.”

That disproportionately affects the very primary care doctors that are integral to health care reform and the U.S. medical system at large. In a 2012 report, consulting firm Merritt Hawkins & Associates found that family practitioners, pediatricians, and psychiatrists are the lowest-paid physician groups in the U.S. with a base pay of $189,000.

While that’s still a lavish salary compared to average U.S. compensation, it pales in comparison to specialist pay — and as the entitlement blacklist numbers underscore, that contributes to a system in which care providers are banned from treating certain patients for purely financial, rather than medical or criminal, reasons.

Read more

Economy

‘We May Have To Close Schools’: Five Districts That Are Grappling With Sequestration’s Budget Cuts

By Bryce Covert on May 20, 2013 at 2:30 pm

While many public schools will be able to stave off some of the harshest impacts of sequestration with other sources of revenue, those that serve military families and Native American communities are in a much more difficult situation. That’s because they rely heavily on federal Impact Aid. That money goes to schools on or near military bases and Native American reservations that don’t collect as much in tax revenues as other public schools to help fill the gap.

Sequestration will reduce the $1.2 billion these schools normally receive by more than $60 million. According to analysis by the Center for American Progress, there are nearly 150 schools in the country relying on more than $1 million in aid. Some could see cuts in the millions of dollars.

The National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, which works closely with these communities, is conducting a survey of school districts grappling with this reduction in funding. While the full results won’t be ready for another month, the preliminary report, shared with ThinkProgress, shows that many are already facing drastic choices. One school warned that “we may have to close schools” and another cautioned that “closure is always a possibility.” Six of the nine schools it talked to will have to consider closing schools if sequestration continues past next year.

  • The Window Rock Unified School District in Arizona gets just under 60 percent of its funding from federal aid. This year it eliminated about 65 staff positions through attrition and cut down its buildings from seven to four. If sequestration continues, it will have to close schools, many of which are in areas of high unemployment and poverty.
  • The Harlem Elementary School District didn’t rehire for some positions and asked 100 employees to cut $100 from their operational budgets to deal with a 47 percent cut to the budget this year. It also canceled Kindergarten for a day, but one five-year-old still came to school because he was hungry and needed his state-subsidized breakfast. Next year it will have to dip into reserves or hold fundraisers. After that it will have to cut staff, go over the state class size limit, and look at closing schools.
  • Heart Butte in Montana, which gets over half of its funding from the federal government, cuts have forced the district to hold off on all repairs this school year. That means that there are leaks, no hot water, roofs that need patching, buses in neglect, and a playground that doesn’t comply with regulations. The school needs to install new doors and safety gates, but that is also on hold. If things don’t improve it may have to lay off teachers.
  • The Hays/Lodge Pole school district in Montana, which is losing more than half of its budget, is unable to fill a counseling spot even as youth suicides are on the rise. It also had to cut paraprofessionals, all secretaries but one, and cooks’ helpers. After next year, school officials say there will be nothing left to cut.
  • The McLaughlin Independent School District in South Dakota, which gets two-thirds of its budget from federal funding, has already implemented changes for the current school year: reducing staff to one teacher per classroom for grades three through five and cuts to the music program, P.E., and administrative positions. If Congress doesn’t end sequestration, it will have to close schools.

Justice

Columbia University Tries To Alter Scholarship Fund For Students ‘Of The Caucasian Race’

By Ian Millhiser on May 20, 2013 at 9:00 am

(Credit: AP)

Columbia University asked a Manhattan judge to allow them to change the requirements of a scholarship fund which limits recipients to members “of the Caucasian race.” The Lydia C. Roberts fellowship was created in 1920 when a woman donated her $500,000 estate to create the racially exclusive fund. Beyond limiting recipients to white people, the fellowship’s terms also require it to go to an Iowa resident, and it cannot be given to students who study “law, medicine, dentistry, veterinary surgery or theology.”

Columbia’s court filing argues that the terms of the fellowship should be altered because it is impossible to comply with its terms and also comply with laws banning race discrimination. The fellowship has not been awarded since 1997.

Alyssa

Michelle Obama Encourages African-American Students To Stop Aspiring To Be ‘A Baller Or A Rapper’

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 17, 2013 at 3:36 pm

Because this is apparently a week that involves a lot of me lowering my head slowly and deliberately to my desk a la Peggy Olson, First Lady Michelle Obama decided to trot out some very old talking points in her commencement address to the 2013 graduating class at Bowie State University:

“Today, instead of walking miles every day to school, they’re sitting on couches for hours, playing video games, watching TV. Instead of dreaming of being a teacher or a lawyer or a business leader, they’re fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper,” Obama continued. “Right now, one in three African American students are dropping out of high school, only one in five African Americans between the ages of 25 and 29 has gotten a college degree.”

But priorities should change, she said, because “getting an education is as important if not more important than it was back when this university was founded.”

While those statistics are absolutely worrisome, I’m pretty sure that the challenges of preparing a competitive resume, getting equal access to standardized test prep, navigating the admissions process, and managing the cost of financial aid are also relevant issues to this conversation. Some of those barriers have been priorities for her husband’s administration. Mrs. Obama acknowledged the odds that a number of the graduates faced to get to and complete their educations Bowie State, though she focused on the cost of tuition and difficult family situations more than other structural issues that might affect students’ abilities to get access to a college education. And she framed their success as a matter of personal will and determination. I can also see why she might have wanted to continue a conversation of long standing within African-American communities given the setting, and as part of her larger, and important historical lesson about the obstacles that black students have faced to get educated in America.

But this particular talking point, which both Mrs. Obama and the President use relatively frequently, could do more to address the structural elements that prop up a culture that values athletics over academics. Personal motivations may be a problem, but the massive public investment in college athletic facilities, the fact that coaches are some states highest-paid public employees, and the allocation of both scholarship money and admissions spots to athletes who are unlikely to complete their academic degrees before entering professional drafts. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to dismantle “the slander that a black child with a book is trying to act white,” but I’m not sure the fantasy career aspirations of black children are the only, or even the main thing, at issue here.

And if we’re going to talk personal motivations, wanting to be “a baller or a rapper” is not a dream that’s solely the property of African-Americans. America has three major televised singing competitions right now, American Idol, The Voice, and X-Factor, all of which promise that it’s possible to rise from anonymity to remarkable fame and a career in music, and the first of which actually became notorious for airing auditions of people who had neither the skills to realistically pursue their aspirations, nor the self-knowledge to recognize the gap between their abilities and their ambitions. Participation is hardly limited to African-American singers by design or choice. There are plenty of white folks who hope to make it big in the manner of Taylor Swift in the same way African-American boys might be dreaming of growing up to become Jay-Z.

The same is more true for sports than Mrs. Obama’s remarks would suggest. In Division I men’s basketball, 1,443, or 27 percent, of the 5,265 players who participated in the 2011-2012 season were white, while 3,158, or 59 percent were African-American. During that same season, in Division I baseball, the figures were most striking. 8,304, or 82 percent of the 10,093 players, were white that season. Clearly, in the college athletic programs that feed into careers in professional sports, there’s a great deal of white interest and participation, even if it isn’t evenly distributed by sport. Miami Heat star LeBron James may be an argument for skipping college in pursuit of a professional athletic career right out of high school, but so is Washington Nationals left-fielder Bryce Harper, who earned a GED and didn’t even finish high school in a classroom setting, all so he could focus on baseball instead, even though the idea that any ordinary person could emulate either of their paths is equally improbable.
Read more

Justice

Kansas Elected Official Stands By Using Racial Slur ’100 Percent’

By Josh Israel on May 16, 2013 at 12:00 pm

Kansas Board of Education member Steve Roberts (R)

Kansas Board of Education member Steve Roberts (R)

Kansas Board of Education member Steve Roberts (R), an elected official representing one-tenth of the state, defended on Tuesday his use of a racial epithet at a previous board meeting to “push the frontiers of political correctness.” After a former Topeka NAACP president advocated for more African American history in state curriculum standards, Roberts had brought up an unrelated non-binding 2007 New York City resolution discouraging the use of the “N-word” and other offensive language.

Roberts, a former math tutor who was first elected to the board last November, had delivered a monologue to the Rev. Ben Scott at the April board meeting during a discussion on history, government, and social studies standards. Roberts complained that New York City had banned the same racial slur that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had used (in quoting racist police forces and other segregationists) in his famous 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” saying:

We have to push the frontiers of political correctness and do what’s right. And so, if I were to use it clinically, I would almost use a test to see what the effect on Twitter would be. You know, ‘That Roberts guy said nigger at the state school board meeting, and he said it as, it’s probably the ugliest word in our vocabulary.’ It’s an ugly repugnant absolutely horrific word that we should rise above. But I did get it out there and I appreciate the opportunity to do it in a politically correct setting.

Watch the video:

According to Topeka Capital-Journal reports, when Scott and other civil rights leaders expressed their concern about those comments at Tuesday’s board meeting, Roberts stood by his remarks.

“I did my best to say the ‘N-word’ clinically,” he noted, adding “I’m willing to be considered politically incorrect … I don’t think that’s a bad thing.” Roberts then accused those criticizing his comments as only wanting media attention.

Older

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up