PreK-12 Articles
PreK-12
News for educators and support staff working in early childhood through high school.
Dawn of new era for K-12 education funding
Local decisions drive plan; difficult bargaining looms
For the first time in six long years, the state budget includes more funding for education in 2013-14. In the on-time budget, Gov. Brown fended off legislative demand to reinstate programs cut during the recession and stayed true to his commitment to prioritize education funding. Though the sectors of education fared differently, all saw at least some increase in state funding.
A year of transition: Preparing for the Common Core standards
New law temporarily suspends most testing, gives educators and districts time to prepare
Tanya Golden is looking forward to changing how she teaches. “Before, my curriculum was an inch deep and a mile wide with too many things to cover. I had to keep moving even when my students weren’t ready. Now I can teach more for understanding,” says the sixth grade teacher in her tenth year at ABC Unified School District, southeast of Los Angeles.
A Tale of Hope and Caution: How three Latin American nations are defending public education
By Joshua Pechthalt, CFT President
As part of AFT’s ongoing effort to build alliances with educators and trade unionists around the world, President Randi Weingarten led an AFT delegation in May to meet education union leaders and other unionists in Brazil, Argentina and Chile. I joined them as we looked at their multi-year effort to defend and expand public education, and to develop a response to attacks.
AFT aims to ‘reclaim the promise of public education’
Remarks of AFT President Randi Weingarten at TEACH 2013
Introduction: The year that was
This year, there were many reminders of the role that educators play in the lives of America’s children.
Berkeley local unions fight for fair contract, cooking and gardening program
The faculty and classified AFT local unions in the Berkeley Unified School District rallied on May 8 before a district board meeting. With state funding to the district on the rise, educators say the district can provide more for its employees, especially since it is holding $7.9 million in its ending fund balance.
The workers are also trying to save the successful cooking and gardening program threatened by cuts to the federal program, Network for Healthy Californians.
Researcher Berliner describes how the education “crisis” is manufactured
David Berliner began criticizing the school reform industrial complex when he co-authored The Manufactured Crisis 17 years ago. He brought his case, strengthened by new statistical evidence, to delegates at the CFT Convention.
Why does Union City, New Jersey, matter in California?
David Kirp says lessons learned in this Latino community offer a narrative of hope
Editor’s note: In his new book, Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for American Education, UC Berkeley Professor David Kirp chronicles how a poor urban district transports Latino immigrant children into the education mainstream. In Kirp’s words…
Daly City elementary schools honor collective bargaining
Local 3267 commemorates significant union event
CFT Vice President Melinda Dart, president of the Jefferson Elementary Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 3267, presents a plaque to district Superintendent Bernardo Vidales. The plaque commemorates the occasion when leaders of the AFT local occupied the board room, a key moment in the history of collective bargaining in the Daly City district.
New CFT White Paper calls on three experts to describe what makes quality education
A new CFT White Paper summarizes the union’s public support for recommendations to build quality education that are based on sound research and best practices as recommended by three educational experts. The experts in the paper titled “What makes quality public education? Ask the experts. That’s what the education union did,” are widely published and have presented to CFT members and countless other progressive organizations.
CFT launches member discussion of “quality public education”
Union explores partnership of community and educators to launch quality public education campaign
Making schools community hubs is key to the union’s campaign for quality public education, CFT President Joshua Pechthalt told participants at the Leadership Conference. Connections with community members comprise the CFT’s greatest strength and he encouraged educators to mine those ties.
Seattle teachers ratchet up movement against high-stakes tests
Garfield High School teachers boycott administration of state-mandated assessment
Seattle’s Garfield High School teachers made the momentous decision in January to refuse to administer the state-mandated Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test — and it began with a discussion in the teachers’ lounge.
Members work to end high-stakes test for second graders
CFT continues efforts to abolish STAR test for state’s youngest learners
Stephanie Bernstein says her second graders are typical seven-year-olds: “They need to get up and move about every 15 minutes.”
Negotiating the new Diastat law
Puts employees in position of performing medical procedures
The passage of SB 161 last year allows administration of a prescription dose of valium by a non-medical K-12 school employee volunteer to students with seizure disorders. CFT opposed this legislation because we believed it placed school employees in the position of performing tasks better performed by medical professionals. Nonetheless, it is now law.
Opponents of evaluation bill want invalid tests to be measure of teacher evaluation effectiveness
By Gary Ravani, President, EC/K-12 Council
Showing their hand, opponents of the much-debated AB 5, A Best Practices Teacher Evaluation System (Fuentes), stated in testimony to a state Senate hearing yesterday that they are opposed to a provision that the tests used to measure academic growth be “valid and reliable” for the curriculum, the pupil being taught, and for the purpose of teacher evaluation.
The way forward: Greatness by Design
Over the past year CFT was a proud participant in developing the recommendations of Superintendent Tom Torlakson’s Educational Excellence Task Force and we applaud the results of this lengthy process.
Legislature fails to pass meaningful teacher evaluation bill
Opponents don’t care about validity of test scores, only scapegoating teachers
How could a bill that would have improved the teacher evaluation process die in the California Legislature? Assembly Bill 5, “A Best Practices Teacher Evaluation System,” fell victim to faulty assumptions and reasoning that defies logic. And our schools are poorer for it.
CFT publishes Position Paper on Charter Schools
In 1988, the late Albert Shanker, then president of the AFT, introduced the notion of charter schools to the American public in a Press Cub speech in Washington, DC. Charter schools have received support across the political spectrum.
Conservatives supported charter schools for a variety of reasons; they believed that:
Pajaro Valley community succeeds in banning carcinogenic methyl iodide
Teachers at Ohlone Elementary School were greatly relieved when Arysta LifeScience, a Japanese chemical company, announced on March 20 that it would no longer sell methyl iodide in the United States for use as a pesticide.
Arizona outlaws core Mexican-American Studies program
Tucson High School teacher recounts story of textbook and curricula ban
A few days before she traveled to CFT Convention in San Jose, María C. Federico Brummer received an email at 8 p.m. from the Tucson Unified School District. It contained a list of newly banned books that the district wanted packed by noon the next day. During class, her students watched her comb the cabinets and remove classroom sets of the affected titles.
Darling-Hammond charts path to fair teacher evaluation
Stanford education professor encourages teachers to stay the course despite difficulties
Linda Darling-Hammond applauded teachers who are struggling with classes of 35, and even 45 students, sometimes without desks or textbooks, while the misplaced focus on teacher evaluation has become a drum beat.