Public education

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We can use COVID-19 pandemic to reinvent education

Harin Contractor

By: Harin Contractor.

 

A lot has been said about how the COVID-19 pandemic has been exacerbated by the digital divide in education, health care and elsewhere.

Overnight, millions of students were consigned to the wild wild west of distance learning at home. And we are quickly discovering the depth of the digital divide in the field of education, and that its dimensions reach far beyond the simple notion of just having broadband inside the home.

Currently, distance learning is breaking down for many reasons. Nearly three months into distance learning in Philadelphia, fewer than half of the students participated in their virtual classroom. Los Angeles’ largest school district reported 15,000 students were absent from online learning, even after many students received distance learning devices.

The lack of planning by school systems is probably the most significant failure. Surveys show that nearly 65% of teachers worldwide were completely unprepared for what the distance education transition requires, and it takes a lot: understanding the technology, updating curricula, in-home supervision especially in single-parent households, literacy and a range of other baked-in sociological factors.

Inequities, already ubiquitous in public education, are also deepening in distance education. Forty-three percent of Hispanics and 42% of African American students don’t have a desktop or laptop at home, and 33% of urban students lack home computers.

And even if students get devices from their local schools, we face a digital literacy crisis. One survey found many fifth and eighth graders are insufficiently prepared digitally.

In order to fix the distance education challenge, government, business and nonprofit leaders must come together and get our nation’s best minds focused on every aspect of the problem. The future of our education, health care and so many other institutions depend on it.

Through the CARES Act, Congress is trying to address some of the device gap and other divide challenges by appropriating $13.2 billion in grants for elementary and secondary schools. Congress wisely sees that the distance education challenge involves many issues simultaneously and appropriated funds for a wide range of purposes — curricula, computers, broadband connectivity, software and so on.

It’s a useful start, but unless the education community, parents, community leaders and students all rally to fix the underlying challenges, we will be climbing a steep hill on education this fall and beyond.

While many broadband providers have stepped up to provide $10 a month broadband internet service to low-income households — and some are even offering free service to many homes during COVID-19 — we need the flexibility on E-Rate and CARES funds to beta-test other broadband adoption strategies. For instance, we should use these funds to help broadband providers wire every single unconnected home in a community where that provider already servicing a school.

Other ideas should also be tested, including incentivizing even more low-cost broadband by returning universal service contributions to broadband providers that take such initiatives. Federal funds should also better support public libraries, which have become critical learning centers for many communities during social distancing phase of education and training.

But most fundamentally, it’s time for the government and private sector partners to set up a national blended learning, mentoring and tutoring effort. Unless we think big along those lines, students will remain sidelined this fall regardless of how much broadband connectivity and devices they have.

Big structural change ideas must include massive new digital literacy efforts in urban and rural America where the online education gaps are most stark. Policy leaders must remember that the divide is as much an adoption issue as anything else; many non-adopting homes don’t see the relevance of the internet or may prefer their mobile device.

This crisis allows us the opportunity to reinvent our education system and make it more fair and inclusive to reflect our 21st century realities.

Source of the article: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2020/07/16/opinion-we-can-use-covid-19-pandemic-reinvent-digital-education/5450925002/

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A play-based and non-didactic approach to primary education

Anurag Behar
 

Vibrant classrooms with engaged teachers are an integral part of the New Education Policy vision

Puducherry has systematically gone about starting pre-primary classes in all its government primary schools. Anyone you ask there, they point to this levelling of the playing field as a key reason for enrolment increases in these schools, and the drop on that metric in private schools. Many teachers in Puducherry, on their own initiative, have expanded the “play-based» and “non-didactic» pedagogical approach of pre-primary classes to primary classes. Both these matters, on which action is visible in Puducherry, pre-empts the draft National Education Policy 2019 (NEP).

Gomathy was teaching class 3 at the Savarirayalu Government Primary School in Puducherry. The students were involved in addition of 3- and 4-digit numbers, working in five groups of five students each. Each group had some locally made (or very low-cost) pedagogical aids to help with the exercise. Observation made it clear that each group had a mix of students based on their comfort with the exercise. Gomathy ensured that students who were at ease with the problems did not dominate the proceedings and helped others who were struggling.

Energy was flowing in the class, with kids racing to their teacher for more problem sheets after finishing one. Gomathy explained how the school’s teachers had collectively decided to adopt a “cohort-teacher» approach, meaning the same teacher teaches a cohort of students all subjects as they progress from class to class, till they move out from primary school. This system is very useful in the early classes, when the basis of learning is primarily the relationship of trust and care between students and teachers. Learning from experience, they had tweaked this system to ensure that no cohort of students is put at a disadvantage by the cohort-teacher’s limitations.

Such vibrant, adequately resourced classrooms, with engaged teachers who have an empathetic relationship with their students, are an integral part of the NEP’s vision. So is the importance of empowerment of schools to take key educational decisions. It also highlights the centrality of the role of teachers, and the importance of “professional learning communities» of teachers.

Gomathy surprised me when she told me that she had translated Chapter 14 (National Research Foundation) of the NEP into Tamil. Her initiative and competence are not limited to school classrooms. She was as a part of a collective civil society exercise to translate the entire 484 pages of the NEP to Tamil. Later in the evening at a consultation meeting on the NEP, I saw the result of this remarkable effort—neatly printed Tamil versions of the Policy. About 40 people were involved in this effort, most of them government school teachers.

Over the course of the next three days, I was in three such meetings across the country, attended mostly by teachers and activists for public education. These were lively discussions. There were several clarifications, many constructive suggestions, a few disagreements, and a widespread acknowledgement of the much-needed transformations of Indian education that the NEP lays out. With hundreds of such points of feedback, the NEP in its final form will surely be significantly improved.

In sharp contrast to such constructive engagement is the reaction of some educationists. Many have read non-existent sections and intentions into the draft. As an example, many have seen the horrors of commercialization and privatization writ in the NEP, despite the painstaking effort of the committee to underline the importance of public education. Others are exhibiting narcissism of small differences. Both sets are being irresponsible to the very causes that they have fought for most of their lives. Because most of these causes, fought and advocated by almost everyone committed to a vibrant public education system, including these educationists, are now integral to the NEP.

Such educationists also seem to be losing sight of the fundamental nature of public policymaking—always an exercise in negotiation and balance between contending perspectives. Education in our country is a tricky battlefield. Any policy initiative that manages to stick to basic principles and succeeds in avoiding egregious mistakes or surrendering to fringe interests is definitely a success. The Kasturirangan committee has done more; while avoiding such mistakes with remarkable diligence, it has actually created a blueprint for what most in education have for decades wished for.

The final word goes to one of the wisest and most competent of public administrators in the country, who wryly commented at the end of a consultation meeting with a large group of powerful people in education, “If so many people with deep vested interests are dead against the NEP, it must be absolutely the right thing to do; let’s implement it immediately.»

Until our public intellectuals of whatever hue, liberal, left, centrist or right leaning, are more thoughtful about the reality of policymaking, are alive to the political moment, and are intellectually non-partisan, policymakers will continue to be very suspicious of experts. And that is not good for society in the long run.

Source of the article: https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/opinion-a-play-based-and-non-didactic-approach-to-primary-education-1563384928852.html

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Looking to history can shape Utah’s education future

Lynn Stoddard

By: Lynn Stoddard.

During the last week of May of this year, 30,250 students graduated from 78 Utah public high schools for an average of 388 students per graduating class. In 1945, I graduated from Ogden High School in a graduating class of approximately 400 students. During the 74 years since my graduation has anything changed in our system of public education?

Except for one big thing, nearly everything has stayed the same. All six of my grandchildren who graduated this year were required to abide by the same school system and curriculum that I did 74 years ago — the one that was installed in 1892 by a “Committee of Ten” scholars. This committee recommended eight years of elementary school followed by four years of high school and a “call to teach English, mathematics, and history or civics to every student every academic year in high school. The recommendations also formed the basis of the practice of teaching chemistry, and physics, respectively, in ascending high school academic years.”

My six graduating grandchildren each attended a different high school and were all subject to the same graduation requirements: 24 credits in English, mathematics, science, social studies, arts and computer, health and physical education and five electives.

What’s wrong with this picture? The “Committee of Ten” inaugurated a system of education to standardize students with a predetermined outline of subject matter courses. Each of my graduating grandchildren achieved what was required of them and has a diploma to show it. They were all exposed to the same knowledge and skills as the other 30,244 Utah graduates.

The one huge difference between education as it was 74 years ago and today is not really a difference at all, but a window to a revolution: computers and electronic communication have shined a spotlight on human differences. Back in my day, we obtained our information about the required curriculum from books and teacher lectures. Now, with the worldwide internet, television and hand-held interactive devices, we have suddenly found new ways to learn and discovered that it is impossible to standardize students in knowledge and skills.

Technology now offers a bridge to unlimited student learning and accomplishment. The present required curriculum allows for only a small percentage to become extraordinary, “sterling” scholars. On the other hand, using computers to access the whole world of events and information makes it possible for every student to attain phenomenal knowledge and accomplishment. Each student will now be able to prove that he or she can become a genius in some area of knowledge.

What needs to be done to have this utopia of education become a reality? Before the federal government imposed subject matter standardization on the system, some schools were starting to use human standards rather than subject standards to help learners grow as powerful individuals. Teachers and parents united to help students grow in human powers such as inquiry, interaction, imagination, initiative, identity, intuition and integrity.

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By using this approach, hundreds of students in several schools discovered their genius and reason to exist as important contributors to society. With “identity” as a top priority, teachers united with parents to help students magnify their unique talents and strengths. Teachers and parents were starting to learn how to find and develop student-oriented curriculum based on the important questions and needs of students. They were starting to learn how to develop a much better student-oriented education.

We now have a choice: go back and get on the right path or continue on the subject-dominated, assembly-line path of student standardization.

Source of the article: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900075359/guest-opinion-looking-to-history-can-shape-utahs-education-future.html

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Thousands march in Morocco to defend free education

Noticias

Asia/ China/ 01.04.2019/ Source: /www.china.org.cn.

Thousands of people marched on Sunday in the Moroccan capital Rabat to defend free education and show solidarity with protesting teachers.

Organized by the Moroccan Coalition for the Defense of Public Education, the march criticizes the government’s «scheme to terminate all public services.»

The march, joined by several leaders of leftist opposition parties, denounced a bill under discussion in parliament which calls for the gradual introduction of registration fees in public institutions of higher education and then in high schools.

Proposed by the government, the bill faces objection from many opposition parties, trade unions, NGOs and even parliamentarians from the ruling Justice and Development Party.

The demonstrators also showed their support to the demands of protesting teachers, including abolishment of regional contracts and full benefits and pensions like public servants.

Thousands of teachers, who have been protesting for months, also participated in the march.

The teachers, who marched earlier on Saturday in the main streets of the capital, tried to set up makeshift camp for the night ahead of Sunday’s march.

Notably, the police started using water cannons to disperse the teachers after several warnings.

In 2016, the Moroccan government granted the regional educational and training academies the right to hire teachers as part of a larger «regionalization reform.»

Many trade unions claimed that this move means submission to international lenders, who demanded the cut in the civil service paycheck.

So far, 70,000 teachers have been hired under the new contract system, including 15,000 at the training centers.

Source of the notice: http://www.china.org.cn/world/2019-03/25/content_74608636.htm

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More school choice strengthens public education

Ron Matus

By: Ron Matus.

 

Over the past 20 years, Florida public schools have improved as much as any in America. At the same time, educational choice here revved from fringe to mainstream. That’s a point worth noting to those who keep insisting, with zero evidence, that expanding choice hurts public schools.

In his South Florida Sun Sentinel column, Randy Schultz wrote that lawmakers who’ve proposed a new private school voucher are trying to “undermine public education” and “turbocharge the privatization of Florida’s public schools.” They’re trying to make education profitable instead of better, he wrote. They’re ignoring questions and contrary evidence.

They’re not alone. Florida’s high school graduation rate now stands at 86 percent, up from 52 percent in the 1990s. We now rank third (behind Massachusetts and Connecticut) in the percentage of graduating seniors who’ve passed college-caliber Advanced Placement exams.

We now rank No. 1, No. 1, No.3 and No. 8 on the four core tests that make up the National Assessment of Educational Progress, once adjusted for demographics. Education Week just ranked us No. 4 in K-12 achievement, after a decade in which we ranked no lower than No. 12.

Schultz mentioned none of this.

Clearly, expansion of choice didn’t “undermine public education.” We have one of the biggest charter school sectors in America, one of the biggest private school voucher programs, the biggest tax credit scholarship, the biggest education savings account.

We also have, not coincidentally, some of the biggest and best district choice programs, from magnets and career academies to IB and dual enrollment. All in all, 47 percent of Florida students in PreK-12 — 1.7 million children — now attend something other than zoned neighborhood schools. And guess what? No apocalypse. Just more students getting the increasingly customized education their parents want for them.

Schultz also wrote, “No one knows how well the state’s voucher students are doing.” How odd. Just last month, the respected and left-leaning Urban Institute released a report that found students using the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students are up to 43 percent more likely to attend four-year colleges than like students in public schools, and up to 20 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees. Schultz didn’t mention this. Clearly, it didn’t fit the narrative about “unaccountable” schools.

Accountability is different for public and private schools. But it’s hard to argue that private schools don’t have enough when dissatisfied parents can, unlike parents in public schools, leave at any time. Balancing regulatory accountability with parental choice is a work in progress, but the Urban Institute findings suggest that when given discretion to determine quality, parents choose wisely.

It’s true, too, there are shysters and scandals in the private school space. More is being done to keep them out or exit them sooner. But private schools hardly corner the market on rotten apples. If somebody pieced together all the maddening headlines generated by districts and district schools, they could paint the most damning portrait. But nobody with a fair mind would do that.

Schultz seems most torqued by the possibility the new voucher may extend eligibility into the middle class. That, too, is odd. None of Florida’s other “vouchers” — which provide state support for private school tuition — are means tested. We don’t tell millionaires they can’t get state money for VPK, or a Bright Futures scholarship for college, or a McKay Scholarship for students with disabilities, because they’re too wealthy. Does Schultz’s outrage extend to those programs as well?

I’m encouraged lawmakers want to ensure low-income parents get priority for the proposed voucher. I also don’t see a mass exodus. The vast majority of middle-class parents, like me, like their public schools a lot. If some want options, for whatever reason, they should have that freedom.

One last point: The lion’s share of private schools participating in Florida scholarship programs are tiny nonprofits. The value of the tax credit scholarship, and the proposed new scholarships, is about 60 percent of total per-pupil spending for Florida district schools, which are among the lowest-funded in America. Yet Schultz concludes that what lawmakers really want to do is to make education “profitable.” That just doesn’t add up.

Source of the article: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/commentary/fl-op-com-more-school-choice-20190321-story.html

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Why teacher strikes show no signs of slowing down

Alex Caputo-Pearl

By: Alex Caputo-Pearl.

More American workers — 533,000 — were involved in strikes or work stoppages last year than at any point since 1986, according to Labor Department data released Friday. The driving force behind this remarkable development: educators who are finally fed up with years of cutbacks and government indifference to public education. The two largest labor actions of 2018 were statewide teacher strikes in Arizona (involving 81,000 teachers and staff) and Oklahoma. “Statewide major work stoppages in educational services also occurred in West Virginia, Kentucky, Colorado, and North Carolina,” the Labor Department noted.

In 2019, teachers will continue standing up for public education. Last month, 33,000 educators in Los Angeles picketed, and thousands of parents and students rallied in support. On Monday, Denver teachers went on strike for the first time in 25 years.

The Angeles teachers succeeded in winning a new contract that, in addition to a 6 percent pay increase, brings reductions in class size; more nurses, counselors and librarians; and less standardized testing. The contract also includes a mayoral and district endorsement of a state school funding measure called Schools and Communities First; a district call for a moratorium on charters; a reduction of searches that criminalize students; and an immigrant defense fund.

The Los Angeles teachers strike, the first in 30 years, was one of the most stirring events I’ve witnessed in my long experience with public education. I grew up attending Prince George’s County public schools in the 1970s and 1980s, then joined Teach for America in its first year, 1990, and moved to Los Angeles. I taught for 22 years in South Los Angeles and helped start an organization with parents and students called Coalition for Educational Justice. In 2014, I was elected president of United Teachers Los Angeles, or UTLA.

I was proud to lead the organization that is finally setting Los Angeles schools on a better pathway after years of battling forces arrayed against public education in California, as they are across much of the country.

California is the fifth-largest economy in the world, yet in measures of states’ per-pupil spending, Education Week ranked California 46th in the nation for 2017, and the California Budget and Policy Center pegged it at 41st in 2015-2016. California also permits the unregulated growth of privately run charter schools, undermining neighborhood public schools.

The over 98 percent participation in the strike by Los Angeles teachers, and strong support from parents, reinforced three basic premises: People will fight for reinvestment in public neighborhood schools and against privatization. Unions and parents will work together for the benefit of students. And strikes work.

Another teacher strike may come soon in Oakland, Calif., and mass teacher protests are planned in the state capitals of Maryland and Texas. These labor actions are essentially demands for reinvestment after decades of deliberate underfunding of public schools.

In the 1990s and 2000s, pushed by conservative think tanks and the corporatization of the Democratic Party, a bipartisan consensus seemed to emerge in Congress and many statehouses. The emphasis regarding public neighborhood schools shifted from providing adequate funding to de facto privatization through vouchers and the charter industry. Federal efforts stalled in fully funding Title I (a 1965 provision directing federal help for schools and school districts with a high percentage of students from low-income families) and the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Many states also cut education spending. Privately run schools with less accountability would now receive public money, further draining public schools of already scarce resources.

Because of ideology and economic philosophy, the current Republican Party leadership will not lead on reinvestment in neighborhood public schools. For the Democratic Party, it is time for leaders to choose a side. Several potential Democratic presidential candidates expressed support for the Los Angeles teachers strike, but few offered ways to adequately fund public schools. The preliminary budget of California’s new Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, increased spending for K-12 and community college by $2.8 billion, for a total of $80.7 billion, but that is not enough after years of austerity in a state with more than 6 million public-school students.

Parents and students supported the teachers in the Los Angeles strike because they wanted to win on matters such as class size. But they also supported the strike because it articulated some basic truths: Students aren’t getting what they need. In the richest country in the world, the issue is not a lack of money but a lack of political will. If neither political party is capable of leading on reinvestment, teachers and parents and students will continue taking to the streets to defend the essential civic institution of public education.

Source of the article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-teacher-strikes-show-no-signs-of-slowing-down/2019/02/11/5b8a6d80-2e18-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5a3c8a468298

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Impact of education financing on Nigeria’s economic growth

Racheal Ishaya

By: Racheal Ishaya.

There are currently increasing complaints about poor standard of education at a period when globalisation demands much from the educational system in terms of preparation of skillful labour force.

The major challenge of public education still remains the commitment by the government to focus on funding public education to enhance qualitative learning.

Education funding comes from different sources. The major one for all levels of government is public revenue from taxation and proceeds from crude oil.

These funds are reported to be distributed among primary, secondary and tertiary educational levels in the proportion of 30 per cent, 30 per cent and 40 per cent respectively.

To create more awareness on the issue of education financing, with the hope of getting policy change, Action  Aid and its partners in December, 2018, held a two day  meeting tagged “Breaking Barriers to Education’’ in Sokoto and Lagos.

In both cities, the meetings had in attendance representatives of the state Ministries of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Education, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Civil Society Organisations and the Association of Persons with Disabilities.

The Education Programme Cordinator, Action Aid Nigeria, Mr Laban Onisimus said in spite of  the general consensus on the importance of education, many governments were spending less on education.

“People pay taxes for basic services and in most countries around the world one of the first expectations of tax payers is that their government will invest in providing basic education.

“Indeed it is part of the fundamental unwritten contract between citizens and the state that tax money will be spent on providing public schools accessible to all children,’’ he said.

Onisimus said that most of the working population in the country were reluctant to pay their taxes because of the poor quality of public schools and other services in the country.

Onisimus revealed that the Action Aid through the Breaking Barriers Project was working with stakeholders in Lagos and Sokoto to advocate for increase in budgetary allocation to the education sector.

Similarly, Mr Chinedu Bassey from CISLAC said that poor funding of the education sector has led to under performance in the Nigerian economy.

He noted that sufficient budgetary allocation to the education sector was a problem in the country, especially during election years.

#10YrsChallenge Federal Government’s Budgetary Allocation to Education from 2009-2019

Year Budget Education Allocation
2009 N3.049 trillion N221.19 billion
2010 N4.608 trillion N249.09 billion
2011 N4.972 trillion N306.3 billion
2012 N4.877 trillion N400.15 billion
2013 N4.987 trillion N426.53 billion
2014 N4.962 trillion N493 billion
2015 N4.493 trillion N392.2 billion
2016 N6.06 trillion N369.6 billion
2017 N7.444 trillion N550 billion
2018 N8.612 trillion N605.8 billion
2019 (proposed) N8.83 trillion N462.24 billion

 

Bassey said that the government would be in a position to increase funding to education and provide better public services when it improves its revenue generation.

He said that the guaranteed way to improve revenue was for government to block illicit financial flows and other avenues for revenue leakages, eliminate multiple taxation and improve accountability for tax revenue.

Observers believe that educational expenditure has a significant effect on the Nigerian economic growth.

They say that the gains include increase in productivity, worker’s income, poverty reduction, acts as a vehicle for promoting equity, fairness and social justice.

They agreed that enhanced investment on education in the country would help supply the essential human capital which is a necessary condition for sustained economic growth.

Source of the article: https://www.nan.ng/news/impact-of-education-financing-on-nigerias-economic-growth/

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