Tuesday Open Thread

The Times is reporting that John Muir Elementary's PTA is buying school supplies for all the children at that school this year.  They had taken a survey and parents said this was a big issue for them.  Buying in bulk allowed the cost to drop from $75 per child to $15 per child.

Across Washington state, schools are dropping their supply lists or trimming them down amid increasing costs of supplies — and an increasing number of families in need. 

The PTA also asked the John Muir teachers what they needed for their classrooms for the upcoming school year and then ordered all those supplies, too. 

The Times is also conducting its own annual drive for school supplies for low-income students.  Bravo to the Muir PTA for listening to its membership about how to spend that hard-earned fundraising pot of dollars. 

The state provides dollars for supplies but districts can use that money in many ways.  Some districts, including ours, use dollars for personnel like counselors or nurses.  That might be a good question for the next community meeting on the budget - where do those dollars go? 

The Haring Center announced that it will pilot a program with the City's pre-k program at the EEU. 

The EEU will be the only site in the 2016-17 school year to combine SPP with the state’s Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP) and special education all in one classroom. This is considered a pilot program to determine the finer points of including children with special needs in the SPP model. Items to be explored in the pilot project include curriculum, class size, and evaluation, among others.

This is good to hear because one issue around the City's new program was that they were only providing half-day services to special needs children, not the 6-hour day that other children are provided.

Remember how Americans don't like Congress but like their own congressperson?  NPR reports that it seems to be the same for schools.  This according to two polls. 

 In the EdNext poll, Americans' opinions of their local public schools have risen considerably over the past decade. More than half — 55 percent — give the school in their community an "A" or "B" rating, compared with just 43 percent a decade ago.

However, public opinion of the nation's schools overall, as opposed to one's local school, is much lower: Just 25 percent would give an A or B grade to American schools as a whole.

 Other findings:

• People like the idea of standards but say "Common Core" to them and they don't.
•  In the Gallup poll, just 32 percent of Republicans approve of the nation's K-12 education system, while 53 percent of Democrats feel the same. Just two years ago, both were tied at 48 percent approval. Gallup authors suggest that Common Core rhetoric is part of the reason.

One charter supporter group has put out a bounty of sorts - $100,000 -  on John Oliver after his scathing review of charter schools last week.  From Curmudgucation:

Yesterday the Center for Education Reform, Jeanne Allen's pro-charter advocacy group, announced the "Hey John Oliver, Back Off My Charter School" video contest, in which your charter school can win $100,000 for creating a video that will show John Oliver "why making fun of charter schools is no laughing matter..."

Or as the contest website puts it:

Here is a brief summary of Mr. Oliver’s presentation: “Some charter schools have been mismanaged. Ergo, ipso facto, presto change-o, all charter schools are bad, bad, bad.”

That's a sloppy misreading of Oliver's piece, which actually bent over backwards to include the opposing views of charters. What Oliver pointed out is that the charter school business is an unregulated playground for folks who are far more interested in making money than educating students. But to refute that would be hard; better to fashion a John Oliver-shaped straw man that can be easily defeated. "He said that all charter schools are bad. Here's one that isn't. Boom!"

 And yet somehow there's $100,000 out there to toss at a contest from something a political comedian said.  

What's on your mind?