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Preparation strategy for NEET examination

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written by admin

The National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET-UG) is a competitive exam conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for aspirants seeking admission to UG MBBS and BDS course all over India. Nearly 10 lakh of students appear for the NEET examination. With the cutthroat competition in NEET, one needs to be well-prepared in order to get into a top medical college across the country. The syllabus has around 13,000 or more concepts, which is too vast to complete in a year. The examination requires not just hard work, but also the right technique to clear it. It is necessary to learn the right methodology if you want to crack the paper. So, here are few strategic tips which need to be followed if one desires to crack the NEETexam:

(i) Stick as per the Syllabus: We already know the vastness of the syllabus and it would be a tedious process if one goes off track. Therefore in order to cover up the syllabus, individuals need to stick to the syllabus provided for the examination. Also, cut down on extra information and focus on important topics.

(ii) Best material for preparation: The most important element to prepare for the examination is the study material. Aspirants require the right study material to prepare for the examination. There are different online courses and educational applications through which students can prepare for their examination.One such application is Byju’s, which is favoured by thousands of students in the past few years. This not only makes students a sequential study material but also makes them build their concepts visually by the method of studying through video lectures.

(iii) Study timetable is a must: Timetable can assist aspirants to plan and follow a disciplined life. It will also help candidates to create a sense of seriousness. Hence, create a realistic schedule which can be followed for your preparation. Also, remember to take small breaks in between. We are humans not machines; hence, we cannot study efficiently for a very long duration. Thus, take optimum breaks in between to refresh yourself which can be in the form of a ten-minute walk, a small nap to carry out your preparation in a best possible manner.

(iv) Practice mock test: “Practice is the key to success.” Students can practice mock tests in order to boost their confidence for the examination. Mock test is a replica of the original paper which students can practice. This would definitely help them by giving an idea about the question pattern, difficulty of examination and weightage of a topic in the exam. Through mocks, one can also analyze their weak and strong sections.

(v) Be positive: Positivity is Imperative. The effectiveness of the learning process is solely decided by the approach one takes for their studies. The attitude one has also affects the preparation. A grumbling approach can make things really difficult whereas staying calm and showing great positive behavior can easily develop a right track for learning and open to a great learning experience.

(vi) Take care of your health: It is really crucial to have a healthy state of body and mind balance. Have a proper balanced life. Take proper sleep rather than studying all night. This will make your mind more productive and happier. Also, practice meditation and yoga to improve your concentration.

These were some really important strategic tips that an individual must follow for the preparation of CBSENEETexamination.

Subscribe to Byju’s YouTube video channel to learn with engaging video lectures

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Education

Global Partnership for Education Grants US$5.6 million for Quality Education for Children in the Puntland State of Somalia [EN/SO]

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Image result for Global Partnership for Education Grants US$5.6 million for Quality Education for Children in the Puntland State of Somalia [EN/SO]Garowe, Puntland, Somalia, 23 October 2017 – The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) is pleased to announce a US$5.6 million grant for Puntland. The grant will be implemented by the Puntland Ministry of Education to address the north-eastern state’s wide ranging education needs and challenges. UNICEF is the grant agent, and the European Union is the coordinating agency for the GPE across Somalia.

The grant will focus on strengthening the Ministry of Education through capacity building and technical support to provide effective and efficient services to the most marginalized children in Puntland. It aims at strengthening the quality of teaching and learning through teacher training, producing much needed learning materials, and addressing financial barriers to access education with scholarships.

“The support from the Global Partnership for Education is highly appreciated by Puntland,” said Puntland’s Minister of Education and Higher Education, Professor Abshir Aw-Yusuf Isse. “It will help us realize our vision of a quality education system that guarantees and fosters success for learners regardless of their abilities, and responds to and recognizes the potential of all learners, enabling them to make fulfilling life choices.”

The grant will support 2,650 children from the poorest households, thereby helping families.

“This key investment in educating children in Puntland is critical for their future wellbeing and for building a prosperous and peaceful Somalia,” said Steven Lauwerier,
UNICEF Representative in Somalia. “There is a huge demand for education. Families know how important it is and we are moving forward with building on our positive partnership with the Puntland Ministry of Education.”

In recent years, primary school enrollments have increased, but with larger numbers of children entering school and limited capacities in the school system to absorb all children, more needs to be done to ensure every child gets a quality education. In Puntland there are still some 200,000 children not in school, and who need to be reached.

“GPE’s work in Somalia and Puntland focuses on strengthening their capacity to improve equity and access to quality education, and improving teaching and learning,” said Alice Albright, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Partnership for Education. “This grant will help thousands of children in Puntland go to school, stay in school and learn with qualified teachers.”

Somalia has been a Global Partnership for Education partner since 2012. Since then a total of US$14.5 million was allocated to Somalia for 2013 to 2016. The current GPE funding for Somalia is almost US$33 million for the entire country, with US$ 9.6 million for Somaliland, US$ 5.6 million for Puntland and US$ 17.9 million for the Federal Government.

About The Global Partnership for Education

The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) works with developing countries to ensure that every child receives a quality basic education, prioritizing the poorest, the most vulnerable and those living in countries affected by fragility or conflict. GPE mobilizes financing for education and supports developing countries to build effective education systems founded on evidence-based planning and policies. Its partners include developing countries, multilateral organizations, donors, the private sector, teachers, civil society/NGOs, and private foundations.

For more information visit www.globalpartnership.org and follow us on Facebook,
Twitter and Instagram

Media contact; Alexandra Humme, +1 202 458 5511; [email protected]

About the Ministry of Education and Higher Education for Puntland

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education for Puntland, is responsible for all matters pertaining to the development and delivery of education services. This includes policies on education, curriculum development, and national examinations at all levels of education, certification, supervision of schools and all educational institutions, monitoring and evaluation. This is in line with Puntland’s national development plans, which the Education Sector Strategic Plan, is aligned to and contributes to.

For more information about MoEHE and its work visit: www.moepuntland.com

About UNICEF

UNICEF works in more than 190 countries and territories to help children survive and thrive, from early childhood through adolescence. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. For more information about UNICEF and its work visit: www.unicef.org

[“Source-reliefweb”]

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Education

Mark your entry to a global market through this training

by admin
written by admin

Image result for education student

Technology has, no wonder provided numerous options of grabbing job overseas, but the right and suitable pathway to alien country is still a problem for many. Lack of proper knowledge acts a major role in this ignorance. Mostly, people prefer visiting an alien country for best of education or for head spinning job opportunity. For education you need to pass the exam and for the job you need to grab the professional course. No wonder, every addition made to your present credentials will uplift your chances of getting employed anywhere in the globe.

If you are dreaming of a job in a highly developed country, then big data and Hadoop classroom training is just for you. Data management has emerged as the most attractive job and maximum people are enrolling for the course. It’s the job opportunities that are enticing them to look for a specialized course. Hadoop administration classroom training is one such specialized course that can help you realize your dreams.

Under the training you will get complete information on the Hadoop techniques and how you can implement the min the betterment of the company. After grabbing the course certificate, you are in a position of navigating the company through the Hadoop Eco system. It will help you in managing big data across a pool of servers and computers.

Globalization has increased the work opportunities and has uplifted the business as well. With consumers scattered across the globe, the responsibility of a leaders increase in multiple folds. This calls for efficient and smart handling of the data while managing security issues of each client. A Hadoop expert helps you handle this responsible job with ease. You get to attain excellence in the learning through the techniques that are adopted by the teachers. They are an industry experts and aims at imparting best education to you.

 The training is just for 3 days. In these 3 days you will get hands on practice sessions and assignments to work upon. Cloud computing, the buzzword of the future is also targeted through the training.you learn to administer, administration through Hadoop techniques. You get lab sessions to foster easy learning. Case study is another aspect that makes training highly obligatory. When you go through the case you get a better viewpoint to analyze and that too at every step. You get a chance to make use of acquired knowledge of the training. All in all the training is about fulfilling nature, good enough to make you a Hadoop expert.

Practical and theoretical knowledge give the best of both the world through this named training. As the training progresses, so is your knowledge. The teachers who play the role of your mentor are always there to lend you a helping hand in case of any doubts and confusions. You can clear your doubt through chats, mails and phone calls. They love to answer your queries.

 

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Education

The Groups Fighting for Girls’ Education in India

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Image result for The Groups Fighting for Girls' Education in IndiaJAISALMER, INDIA—Once a year, the history lecturer Vijay Kumar Ballani and his colleagues go door-to-door in this rural village, imploring parents to send their children to a cinderblock complex that lacks classroom space, bathrooms, and desks.  He gives the same stock speech.

“Education is free, lunch is free, books are free, sanitary napkins are free,’’ Ballani tells parents, urging them to visit this government-run school on the edge of the Thar Desert, where, on a warm day late last spring, 12 teachers were overseeing the education of 260 students from first grade through high school. “Your kids will have a better life if they are educated. No one will cheat you.”

Ballani, known as “Mr. Desert’’ for his knowledge of this area, also gives tours of the golden forts and palaces of Rajasthan when he isn’t teaching or pushing villagers to keep children in school. Not surprisingly, he has better luck with boys; girls are too often needed by their families to toil in fields or care for younger children, especially in rural areas.

Now change, while slow, is coming to this country that has long left females behind, particularly here in Rajasthan, where only 52.66 percent are literate and some 350,000 are not in school, according to Educate Girls, a nonprofit aimed at getting more rural girls into classrooms. Less than half of them finish 10th grade in this pocket of northwestern India.

Here and elsewhere in this rapidly growing country, girls are increasingly the focus of new initiatives aimed at keeping them in school. All face obstacles.

The school where Ballani teaches has few amenities. There’s no playground, gym, or running water, and very little technology. And despite India’s push to guarantee a good education to all children between the ages of 6 and 14 under the country’s Right to Education Act of 2009, most students will not finish school.

“They are too poor—their parents want them to work,’’ Ballani said, while showing a visitor in and out of dusty classrooms at his school, GSSS Damodora, where students dressed in powder-blue uniforms sat on the floor awaiting instruction.

Vijay Ballani, also known as Mr. Desert, goes door-to- door in the Jaisalmer region to encourage parents to send their children to school. (Kim Palmer / The Hechinger Report)

About 65 percent of India’s students attend similar government schools, many with dismal outcomes. Just under three-quarters of students in rural India can’t subtract two-digit numbers by grade three, and only half of grade five students can read at a second-grade level, according to a recent World Bank report.  The slow pace of improvement in India’s schools some 70 years after the country gained independence from Britain remains a source of frustration, but has given way in recent years to a range of public and private initiatives aimed at boosting attendance, literacy, and the number of girls who attend school.

New literacy efforts are evolving via NGO’s like Pratham, whose mission is “every child in school and learning well,” while Round Table India claims to have builtone classroom a day for the last 10 years, including a new a community schoolserving an isolated tribal village. A summer coding camp is introducing Indian girls to computers, while new performance-based contracts known as social impact bonds are being introduced to improve learning and get more girls in schools. The government is also taking steps to provide additional non-school support (like bicycles to help students get there), and is moving toward newpartnerships and private takeovers aimed at improving teacher training and school conditions.

Still, increasing numbers of families are opting out of government schools in favor of low-cost private education options, while visionary educators are reimagining new solutions, especially for girls. In the capital city of Uttar Pradesh, one school is changing lives in an area where more than 599 million people live below the poverty line and nearly 10 percent of girls are out of school. In rural Rajasthan, construction will soon be underway for a new all-girls school that will showcase local goods and heritage handiwork in this former medieval-trading center, while combining education and economic development for local women.

Students sit on the floor in a classroom.
Students attend a government school in Jaisalmer.  (Kim Palmer / The Hechinger Report)

Just a few miles away from where Ballani teaches, Michael Daube is raising money for the new girls’ school and economic center in Jaisalmer. The charismatic American artist and founder of a New York-based non profit recently broke ground for the Rani Ratnavati Girls School, named for a royal family member credited with saving the Jaisalmer Fort.

The center will rise on a dusty desert site, in a region where some 9.7 percent of girls aged 11-14 are out of school.

“Girls’ education is very low on the list of priorities in India, and rural Rajasthan fares near the bottom,’’ said Daube, who heads an organization known as CITTA, which builds and supports development of schools and hospitals in India.

On an early spring day, Daube, dressed in flowing white, described his vision for a cooperative where 400 girls will study and work alongside their mothers and grandmothers, next to a community center that showcases the intricate hand-sewn rugs, scarves, and saris for which the region is known. Local musicians played while the royal family of Jaisalmer looked out at the barren former Indian heritage site, next to government land Daube hopes to acquire. “A small project can have a global impact,’’ Daube said.

The Manhattan architect Diane Kellogg is designing the complex, which will include an exhibition hall for female artists to display and sell their products. Girls will attend classes while local women weave and embroider their delicate handicrafts. Daube says he has drawn financial support from brands such as  Kate Spade, Barneys, and J. Crew, which have pledged to showcase projects from the women’s center as a way of keeping their faded heritage alive. Patchwork artistSantosh Rathi says he’ll work alongside them.

Students at a village school gather for a performance. (Liz Willen / The Hechinger Report)

“I will provide the old embroidered pieces so people know they existed,’’ Rathi said after the groundbreaking ceremony, pointing to quilts specially crafted to be among goods a bride’s family traditionally gives to a bridegroom’s family as part of a dowry.  “It will help keep these traditions alive and make them [the women] economically powerful.’’

CITTA has experience building both a hospital and a school in Juanga, a village in India, which now has 360 students from kindergarten through 10th grade. The school goes beyond educating children: It also teaches villagers hands-on skills like nutrition, money management, and animal husbandry. The royal family of Jaisalmer is helping with some costs; Daube and CITTA are holding fundraisersfor the more than $300,000 needed to build the Rani Ratnavati school and hope it will become self-sustaining within five years.

* * *

A privately funded all-girls high school is also reporting great success in northern India. In 2003, the Prerna Girls School began providing a low-cost option that has served over 5,000 girls from impoverished families. In her new book, Reaching for the Sky, Empowering Girls Through Education, the author and Brookings fellowUrvashi Sahni weaves in stories of many of the girls, including graduate Aarti Singh, now 25 with a master’s degree and dreams of becoming a professor.

When she first heard about Prerna, which means inspiration in English, Singh had one question: “Do they beat you?’’ That abuse had been part of her experience at a local village school, where teachers showed up sporadically. Singh never learned to take an exam and fell way behind. She is the eldest of five girls; her mother married at 16 and is illiterate. Her father drank and beat her mother and siblings so regularly that Singh’s mother once threatened to poison all her children and herself to end their misery.

Although she liked studying, Singh was discouraged from attending because it wasn’t considered safe. When her family moved to Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, they stayed in an abandoned room and moved to a local hospital at night, where they would search for empty beds. Everything changed when Singh got to Prerna. “I felt like I belonged … you can go to your teacher and talk to them about your personal problems. Discussing our lives was part of being in school,” she recounts in Reaching for the Sky.

Sahni, who also works closely with government schools on an advisory council, is often asked her opinion on improving education for girls in India. She’s convinced that having schools recognize the trauma and poverty inherent in their lives is a start, particularly in a country stratified by gender, religion, and a caste systemthat still permeates daily life.

“To change mindsets, you have to start at school,’’ Sahni said. “It’s not just about reading and writing and counting. It’s about developing a social and political consciousness. You want them to have a good life.”

Aashna Shroff started Girls Code Camp to introduce girls in India to computers. (Sathwik Pochampally)

With over 1.3 billion people, India is second only to China in population and will account for 25 percent of the world’s labor pool by 2030. Ashish Dhawan, a former investment manager who started the Central Square Foundation to boost education in India, has repeatedly insisted his country act “with a sense of urgency,’’ if it wants to become an economic superpower, and improve both the quality of its schools and teaching force.

Aashna Shroff, a 22-year-old Stanford graduate, feels that urgency. She grew up in Mumbai and was one of only two girls taking computer classes at her private high school, Chirec International. Her older sister, who studied computer science at MIT, sent her lectures and coding lessons. When Shroff arrived at Stanford, she found herself overwhelmed by opportunities she never had in India, and immediately wondered how she could help girls left behind in her country.

At government schools she visited back home, Shroff found “some might never have even seen a computer.’’ So she began working with other Stanford students and faculty to form a nonprofit Girls Code Camp, which aims to teach computer science to middle and high-school girls in India. The camps have already served about 800 girls; Aashna is now studying at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and hopes to develop low-cost education tools for countries like India.

“There are so many barriers for women in India when it comes to education,’’ Shroff said. “They get their periods and stay home for a week and fall behind. Or their parents have another child and they stop going to school and start babysitting the younger ones and become the mother of the household.’’

A group of people are gathered.
Members of the royal family of Jaisalmer, including Queen Raseshwari Singh, gather for the
groundbreaking of a new all girls school with Michael Daube of CITTA. (Kim Palmer /The Hechinger Report)

Shroff has little faith in the country’s government schools, and is skeptical that private partnerships are a viable solution, noting that financial reimbursements often aren’t timely or substantial enough and put “undue pressure on private entities to pool their resources in raising money rather than ensuring quality of education.”

* * *

Sahni, the author, also expressed skepticism about private takeovers during a talk she gave about her book before a packed crowd in Manhattan in October; she believes they have failed to deliver and lost the faith of communities.

“The private schools are not necessarily better,’’ Sahni said. “I don’t know that just becoming private will make anything different.”

Sahni is deeply involved in efforts to improve government schools in Rajasthan and elsewhere, and hopeful that improvements will be coming and is already seeing a shift. “I would definitely not give up on public schools,’’ she said.

A group of boys in a classroom; some sit at desks, and a bunch of students sit on the floor.
Inside a classroom at a government school where there aren’t enough desks. (Kim Palmer / The Hechinger Report)

Back at GSSS Damodora, the lecturer Ballani is more concerned about classroom space and equipment. He’s also hoping the school will get more qualified teachers, which are desperately needed throughout the country. India will need some 3 million new primary-school teachers by 2030 and over eight million secondary, according to UNESCO Institute for Statistics estimates.

“If we get more teachers and make a joint effort with parents and concentrate on the work of students, we can get much better results,’’ Ballani said, before the conversation turned back to a list of everything the school needs: a projector, furniture, a library, books, and clothing for colder weather.

He did get some good news on that front recently: a new donation he’s especially excited about. “We are going to have fresh drinking water,’’ Ballani said.

[“Source-theatlantic”]

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Education

Disadvantaged pupils learning watered-down curriculum, says Ofsted

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Parents have told Ofsted that preparing for exams was eating into their children’s learning time. Photograph: Eye Ubiquitous/Alamy

Disadvantaged children are being shut out from learning a rich range of knowledge, as schools restrict low-attaining pupils to “badges and stickers” rather than history or geography, the chief inspector of schools in England has said.

Amanda Spielman, the head of Ofsted, said social mobility could be at risk if some pupils were given restricted options and schools watered down their curriculum to concentrate on exam results.

“Low-attaining pupils need basic skills, as all pupils do, but they shouldn’t as a consequence be shut out of parts of the essential body of knowledge for any pupil,” Spielman said in a commentary published by Ofsted.

Her comments were based on initial results from research carried out by Ofsted, involving visits to 40 schools, discussions with headteachers and other data such as inspection reports and parent surveys.

“In a few of the schools visited, lower-attaining pupils did not have any opportunity to study a language or some arts subjects, as the school directed them on to a pathway that excluded the subject as an option, in some cases from the age of 12,” Spielman said.

“It is a risk to social mobility if pupils miss out on opportunities to study subjects and gain knowledge that could be valuable in subsequent stages of education or in later life.”

Spielman said the results showed a worrying trend of children from poorer backgrounds or more challenging circumstances being offered fewer choices at GCSE level than their better-off peers.

Restricted subject choice for low-attaining pupils “disproportionately affects pupils from low-income backgrounds”, she argued. “The focus here should be on what these pupils should be learning and what they need to do to progress. It should not focus solely on the qualification they are taking.

“This leads us back to school leaders mistaking ‘badges and stickers’ for learning and substance. It should also not be taken as read that higher scores for the school always means a better deal for pupils.

“If a pupil gains valuable knowledge, for instance in history, but does not get a grade four [C], they will still be better educated for having studied it.”

The research also found schools opting to start pupils studying for GCSEs a year early, curtailing key stage three by a year in order to improve exam results.

“This inevitably means that a considerable number of pupils will be experiencing only two years of study before dropping, for example, history or geography or a language, possibly never to study these subjects again,” Spielman said.

“And for most children, the end of key stage three is the last time they will take art, music, drama or design and technology.”

The Ofsted research also confirmed that some primary schools have been discarding the national curriculum in favour of more test preparation in key stage two.

Parents told Ofsted that preparing for tests was cutting into their children’s learning time. One school told Ofsted its pupils sat mock tests every week in years five and six, in the run-up to standardised tests at the end of year six.

Spielman said: “Testing in school clearly has value. This kind of test is intended to measure the child’s ability to comprehend. However, the regular taking of test papers does little to increase a child’s ability to comprehend. A much better use of time is to teach and help children to read and read more.”

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said pressure from the government meant schools in England would be determined to improve their performance in tests and exams.

“If Ofsted wants them to focus less on these assessments, we would suggest it lobbies the government for a change to the accountability system rather than criticising schools,” he said.

Spielman’s comments come as Justine Greening, the education secretary, announced the first details of “T-levels” – technical and vocational qualifications for sixth-formers.

The first subjects, including childcare and construction, will be introduced from 2020 with a full range of subjects including hair and beauty, catering and business, starting from 2022.

“As part of making sure that the technical education ladder reaches every bit as high as the academic one, I want to see T-levels that are as rigorous and respected as A-levels,” Greening said.

[“Source-theguardian”]

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Education

IIT JEE Main & Advanced Exam Dates Announced

by admin
written by admin

JEE Advanced 2018 official website was launched by IIT Kanpur on September 28, 2017. As per the website, it confirms that JEE Advanced 2018 will be only be a computer based test.  and there will be No paper and pen mode exam from next year.

And this year advanced exam is conducted by Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

The officials said that important updates about syllabus, eligibility and qualification criteria will be available soon. The official website is www.jeeadv.ac.in.

Eligibility: Candidates studying in class 12th or have cleared the same. Subjects for qualifying exams are physics, chemistry and mathematics. Such candidates can fill the JEE Main Application Form.

Please note that the JEE Mains 2018 is a first stage exam for JEE Advanced and consider as qualifying exam.

JEE Main is conducted by Central Board of Secondary Education. Date for JEE Mains 2018 have not been announced by CBSE yet.

JEE Main 2018 Important Dates

The dates are first published by entrancezone.com sourced from bhaskar epaper kota edition.

S.No. Events Dates
1. Online availability of application form First week of December 2017
2. Last date of online application form submission and uploading of scanned images Second week of January 2018
3. Last date of application fee payment through credit/debit card Second week of January 2018
4. Last date of application fee payment through e-challan Second week of January 2018
5. JEE Main Admit Card 2018 availability Second week of March 2018
6. JEE Main Paper 1 (Offline) 08 April 2018
7 JEE Main Paper 2 (Offline) 15  April 2018
8. JEE Main 2018 Exam (Online) Second week of April 2018
9. Answer Key and OMR sheets display Third week of April 2018
10. Answer Key challenge acceptance Third week of April 2018
11. JEE Main Result 2018 (Scores) Fourth week of April 2018
12.  All India Ranks declaration Fourth  week of April 2018
13 JEE Main Paper 2 Result Fourth week of May 2018
14. JEE Main Rank Card availability Fourth week of May 2018
15. JEE Advanced Online Exam Date 20 May 2018

Read detailed News and Updated information about JEE Main 2018 here.

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Education

Want Change In Education? Look Beyond The Usual Suspects (Like Finland)

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Global innovation in education

Suharu Ogawa for NPR

In a tiny hamlet in Tanzania, children who have never been to school, and can’t recognize a single letter in any language, are about to start learning basic math and reading. They’ll do this with the help of a cutting-edge, artificially intelligent “tutor” who can hear what they are saying in Swahili and respond meaningfully.

In the slums of Bogota, Colombia, children play with special board games, dominoes and dice games that can teach them math and reading in a matter of months. Youth volunteers in the community help bring the games to younger children.

On the outskirts of Tokyo, a kindergarten is built more like a giant playground. There is a circular park on the roof. You can reach classrooms by climbing a tree. A slide that goes from top to bottom of the building and the furniture is made of lightweight wooden boxes that the children can reconfigure themselves.

These three ideas have something in common. Each is part of a distinct global effort underway right now to identify important innovations in education and to help them spread.

The first project, RoboTutor from Carnegie Mellon University, is one of the just-announced finalists in the Global Learning Xprize, a $15 million innovation competition sponsored by Tesla founder and visionary Elon Musk. Mission: Create a software application that will enable children to learn basic math and reading independently.

The second, Literacy Education and Math Lab or LEMA, was highlighted in a recent report from the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education titled “Can We Leapfrog? The Potential of Education Innovations to Rapidly Accelerate Progress.” Brookings has cataloged 3,000 innovations from 166 countries so far.

The third, known as Fuji Kindergarten, was picked by a Finnish nonprofit called HundrED dedicated, again, to spreading the top educational innovations from the world, around the world. Today they announced their first global group of 100 ideas from 42 countries.

Something big is happening here. Governments, nonprofits, donors and educators are gearing up to try to solve two intractable, and seemingly disparate, problems — at the same time.

The first one is that not enough children are learning the basics. The second is that the basics are no longer enough. And to solve these two problems, they are working hard to spotlight and spread innovations that go far beyond Silicon Valley.

100 years behind

The first problem, and likely the most familiar, is inequality. More than a quarter of a billion kids worldwide don’t attend school, and that number hasn’t budged for a decade. The Global Learning Xprize challenge is addressed specifically at these children, who may never see the inside of a schoolhouse or meet a trained teacher.

For those who are in school, meanwhile, there is a massive gap in basic skills between the richest and the poorest. You can express this as points on a standardized test: in the United States, for example, that gap is almost 40 percentage points in math at the highest level.

Or, you can express it in years: Adults living in the poorest countries in the world are about as educated as the average for adults in rich countries 100 years ago. And, at the rate they’re going, it would take another century to catch up.

But there’s a second problem. Just learning reading and math the way it was done 100 years ago is not going to prepare anyone for the future. Up to 70 percent of the tasks in most jobs are on track to be automated, leaving only the most creative, empathetic, technically fluent, collaborative work for humans.

Students need to find motivation and meaning, and take a playful attitude that makes it safe to try and fail.

It’s as though half the world’s children were 100 years behind on learning to walk, but everyone now needs to dance.

From walking to dancing

That’s why Rebecca Winthrop of Brookings asked the question “Can We Leapfrog?” In other words, she says, “How quickly can we transform both what and how children learn?”

Leapfrogging as a concept is often associated with technology. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia and elsewhere adopted mobile communications without ever having extensive landline or telegraph networks. Kenya is a world leader in mobile payments because the system came in before people had formal bank accounts or credit cards. Social goals like sustainability can leap forward, too. This summer the nation of India, where car ownership is far behind the U.S., announced a goal to sell only electric vehicles by 2030. China is leading the world in both production and installation of solar power.

But schooling is fundamentally a human enterprise.

Change can’t just be a matter of mass-producing some technological marvel and pushing it to market. And there are many in the development world, says Winthrop, who argue that poor countries should master the basics before trying to address 21st century skills. Can you really take people who can’t walk and show them the moonwalk?

Her work argues that it has to be both/and.

“From the learning sciences literature we know that kids can learn small things,” like addition and subtraction, “on the way to big things” — like creativity and collaboration, she says. “We’re not doing poor kids any favors by the drill-and-kill method.” Projects like LEMA, the board game project that started in Latin America and is now in 16 countries, bring a playful attitude to learning, which is part of cultivating what Winthrop calls a 21st century “breadth of skills.”

Leapfrogging isn’t about supplanting traditional schools, Winthrop explains, but it does address the need to change how they do business. Even in rich countries with high literacy rates, like the United States for example, there’s a great deal of dissatisfaction expressed about education. And here’s where leapfrogging really gets interesting: Some of the places with the fewest resources can become sources for huge inspiration.

Identifying great ideas is one thing, but getting them to spread is another. It requires overcoming a silo effect, says Saku Tuominen, the Finnish innovation expert who is the creative director of HundrED.

“If you think of a teacher in Helsinki, New York, New Delhi, Stockholm, Buenos Aires, they haven’t got the faintest idea what is happening in another city on the classroom level,” he says. In fact, they often don’t even know much about what the teacher down the hall is doing.

One theme he’s identified among the innovations highlighted so far has to do with exactly that problem: thinking about new ways for teachers to collaborate and co-teach. Other professions are increasingly evolving in a collaborative direction, he notes; why not teaching?

His nonprofit offers free support in PR and consulting to educators with ideas worth sharing, and it helps identify schools that want to adopt the ideas. “We’re moving to a global world and it’s time to make education global as well.”

[“Source-npr”]

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Education

How Betsy DeVos is quietly erasing Obama’s education legacy

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos came into the Education Department with a bold vision: that parents should be able to send their kids to school wherever they wanted, by way of government-funded vouchers.

Nine months later, she’s made little progress on that goal. But her Education Department has made other, quieter changes that affect millions of students.

Many of those changes involve rolling back Obama-era regulations. It’s now harder for recent graduates of for-profit colleges to get their loans forgiven. Transgender students know the federal government isn’t backing them up as they fight to use the facilities that match their gender identity rather than the sex assigned to them at birth. And on college campuses, survivors of sexual assault wonder how seriously the Education Department is taking their claims.

So while Congress rejected DeVos’s proposed cuts of $9 billion to the Education Department, and with it, her strategy to implement school choice programs nationwide, it doesn’t mean she’s powerless. By rescinding Obama-era policies, DeVos has made an immediate mark.

A lack of protection for transgender students

M.S. is a 13-year-old girl from Virginia who loves makeup, hanging out with her friends, and keeping up her Snapchat streaks. She considers Jackie Kennedy and Hillary Clinton her role models, calling them “boss ladies,” and dreams of someday moving to California, going to UCLA, and becoming a makeup artist like her favorite YouTube and Instagram stars.

M.S., who is transgender and is identified by her initials to protect her privacy, has been living as a girl since she was in fourth grade. It’s never been an issue among her classmates or friends, she said: “They don’t see me as trans; they see me as their best friend.”

Some of the parents at her school feel differently. That started a local battle that echoed a bigger national debate, a debate in which the Obama administration sided with transgender kids like M.S. and the Trump administration with the parents of her classmates.

Since the fourth grade, M.S. has been advocating for the right to use the girls’ bathroom. For about three weeks after she transitioned, she was allowed to, until a group of parents found out.

What happened next was a school board meeting that her mother, Amy, still remembers vividly: Parents wearing “Save Our School” badges went up to the podium, calling her then-10-year-old daughter an abomination and a predator. One suggested that the school was opening the door for “bullying, rape … and possibly death.”

“It was awful; it’s probably the most alone I ever felt, being in that room that night,” Amy said. Then the board hastily voted to keep her daughter from using the girls’ restroom.

A demonstration for transgender rights, held on March 3 in Chicago, was sparked by President Trump’s decision to reverse the Obama-era policy requiring public schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity.
 Scott Olson/Getty Images

As transgender kids gained more visibility nationwide, the Obama administration released federal guidance on this issue in May 2016. Obama’s Education Department declared thatTitle IX, which forbids sex discrimination in education, protects trans students, and told schools that trans students should be called by their preferred pronouns and names and be allowed to use the bathroom that corresponded to their gender identity.

But the guidance was short-lived — 11 states sued the administration, claiming the directive wasn’t lawful and would be too disruptive for school districts. A federal judge agreed in August 2016, halting it nationwide.

Then, about a month into Betsy DeVos’s tenure, the Education Department and Justice Department sent out a joint letter to school districts rolling back the guidelines, which they characterized as federal overreach. (DeVos herself reportedly opposed the move, but the department she leads still signed on to the letter.)

Neither the guidance nor its reversal really changed anything day to day in M.S.’s school. Her district is still waiting for a court decision in the case of another transgender student from Virginia, Gavin Grimm, who sued nearby Gloucester High School in 2015. His case is still ongoing. But for M.S., knowing President Obama was on her side made all the difference.

“When Obama was president, I knew I had someone that was rooting for me and supporting me,” M.S. said. “All Trump is going to do is nothing, or say no.”

Across the country, protections for trans students are growing at the local level; Harper Jean Tobin, director of policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality, estimates that just under half of US schools now have policies in place spelling out transgender students’ rights. But only 13 states and the District of Columbia have anti-discrimination laws on the books protecting transgender students.

Rescinding the Obama guidance isn’t going to take anything away from the schools and districts that have already implemented their own policies. But it makes things more difficult for students like M.S.

More than 1,000 demonstrators marched for transgender rights on March 3 in Chicago. Jaquarrius Holland, an 18-year-old transgender woman living in Monroe, Louisiana, was murdered on February 19.
Scott Olson/Getty Images

“What the Trump administration did I think was to send a message that discrimination against trans students might be okay,” said Tobin.

Those students’ best hope lies with the courts. A federal appeals court recently decided a transgender boy from Wisconsin should be permitted to use the boys’ restroom. Grimm, the transgender student from Gloucester, is still fighting his case in the lower courts, after the US Supreme Court said it would not hear the case this year.

That decision will matter a lot for M.S., who says she wants to advocate for the trans community when she grows up. For Amy, it’s heartbreaking, especially given how much M.S. has flourished since she transitioned. Amy had braced herself for the possibility that her daughter would be bullied by classmates after she transitioned, but the opposite happened. Initially, the kids had questions, but the teasing M.S. had endured stopped. And Amy noticed something else right away — M.S. was happy.

“As a mom, I can see it now,” she said. Looking back at old pictures, “she looks so unhappy. Now the smile takes over her entire face. It was like a puzzle piece shifted for her.”

At the Office for Civil Rights, goals have changed

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is often associated with sexual harassment and transgender cases, but the scope of its work is much broader. It’s charged with enforcing the 1964 Civil Rights Act in public schools, which is supposed to make sure harassment doesn’t interfere with any student’s right to learn.

“It’s a beautiful mission; it’s a broad mandate,” said Catherine Lhamon, the chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights. Lhamon formerly served as the assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education under Obama.

Catherine Lhamon participates in a conversation on race and society with Joe Madison on October 1, 2015, in Washington, DC.
 Larry French/Getty Images for SiriusXM

Officials at the Office for Civil Rights did not respond to a request for an interview.

One of OCR’s main duties is to investigate harassment complaints from students, faculty, or families. But the Obama administration had a two-pronged approach. It tried to look for patterns with harassment and target systemic problems, and issued guidance on how schools should treat students who were gay, transgender, disabled, or had experienced sexual assault and investigate allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

Under DeVos, OCR is closing out a backlog of more than 1,000 investigations at a record-setting pace. They have said they are focused less on systemic problems, to give individual cases a faster resolution. Students sometimes wait years to get their cases investigated, and staff cuts proposed by Trump could drag this out even further. Understaffing has always been an issue at the office; Lhamon said OCR investigators had about 26 cases per person under Obama, which could go up to 45 cases per person under Trump.

“I am still sick about the length of time that it took for us to solve cases,” Lhamon said. “The office was wildly understaffed the entire time I was there. Everybody was working as fast as they could.”

Critics, including conservatives and some legal experts, saw the approach from the Obama administration as heavy-handed. In rescinding it, DeVos said she was correcting federal overreach. But Lhamon said the guidance was supposed to provide schools with answers, after her department fielded many questions from schools about their responsibilities.

“Our view was that we needed to be responsive to the people that were asking questions,” Lhamon said. “The guidance is the job of the office because it tells people what the law is and how to satisfy it.”

Lhamon said she fears that by simultaneously rescinding guidance and closing out investigations, the Trump administration is sending a message to students that they won’t be taken seriously.

“The clearest message in this administration is that student civil rights will not be protected by the federal government,” she said.

Schools uncertain about professional development funding

At the Decatur City School District in Alabama, teachers and administrators are anxiously awaiting news about the fate of a federal program called Title II.

The district gets the vast majority of its teacher professional development funds from this program, about $347,000 in federal money each year, compared to $42,828 from the state. That money is used to keep teacher training current on everything from class planning to technology to helping English language learners.

School districts across the country get $2.1 billion in Title II grants that help pay for professional development and reduce class size. The Trump administration proposed eliminating the grants entirely, and the House Budget Committee also supports the cut.

The program isn’t dead yet, as the Senate appropriations subcommittee for education rejected the cuts. Title II’s fate won’t be decided until December, when Congress is set to vote on the budget. In the meantime, the uncertainty alone is making school districts nervous.

“Across our state, everyone’s just saying there’s no way to replace that,” said Melanie Maples, chief finance officer for the Decatur school district. “We would have to eliminate a lot of the teacher training we would provide. I think for most school districts, that has been their main source of professional development for their teachers.”

In Westcliffe, Colorado, the Custer County School District is seeing a teacher shortage and a lack of affordable housing, so it is building apartments for teachers in an old preschool building that’s no longer in use.
 RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Added up, the proposed cut to Title II could impact the professional development of 2.4 million teachers. Cuts to the class size funding would result in more than 8,500 teachers across the nation losing their jobs, according to analysis from the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union.

Title II has not been without criticism over the years; many people, including Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan, have said the program needs more data to show that professional development benefits teachers.

“If you can’t answer that question in a clear and cogent way, you’ve got a problem,” said Mike Soules, president of Corwin, an education publishing company that provides professional development materials to many of the nation’s schools. “It’s an absolutely critical moment — it’s the moment of what do you believe in, where do you think dollars should be spent and why.”

Second-grade teacher Sydney Camper will be the first teacher to live in the new apartments.
 RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images

National Education Association director of teacher quality Andrea Prejean said professional development programs help mentor young teachers struggling to adjust. The nation is experiencing a teacher shortage, especially in science and math, in part due to low pay and the high demands of the job.

If the proposed cuts go into effect, “we’re not going to be able to shift almost $2.1 billion from other pots in professional learning,” Prejean said. “Every state is going to lose significant amounts of money.”

School lunch nutrition standards are relaxed

Planning a weekly school lunch menu is like putting together a puzzle. School lunch directors and cafeteria workers have federal nutrition guidelines they must follow to make sure kids eat balanced meals, but they also want to make the food tasty enough for kid to eat it.

When it’s burrito day at the Cleveland Metropolitan School District in Ohio, the district’s executive director food and child nutrition services Chris Burkhardt has to plan things out carefully. The premade salsa has a lot of sodium, so his staff cut it with diced tomatoes and pair it with low-sodium taco meat, to make sure the burritos aren’t too salty. Then he has to make sure he’s not putting too much fat or sugar into a meal to compensate for the lack of salt.

“You could get one side correct, but you could get other side wrong,” he said. “A lot of times we hit the mark, and sometimes we don’t.”

Burkhardt and school lunch directors around the country have a lot of flexibility from the federal government to plan meals. That’s because in early May, new US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced that he would put a pause on school lunch standards passed by Congress in 2012 that lowered the amount of sodium and refined grains in school lunches.

US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has lunch at Catoctin Elementary School on May 1 in Leesburg, Virginia. Perdue and Sen. Pat Roberts were at the school to unveil an interim rule “designed to provide flexibility for school meals.”
 Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Under regulations the Obama administration wrote to implement the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, public schools were required to make their school lunches more nutritious by getting rid of trans fats, setting limits on the amount of sodium, and making sure foods like pizza, bread, and pasta contained 50 percent or more whole grains. Schools were also asked to provide kids more fruit and vegetables.

Burkhardt said the whole-grain pasta was fine if it was served right after it was cooked, but “if you hold it for any length of time, it becomes a gelatinous mess. Whole grains tended to be more mealy; they had a different mouthfeel.”

When kids don’t like school lunches, districts lose money. For instance, in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest, students threw out at least $18 million worth of food per year, the district’s food service director told the LA Times in 2014.

The Obama administration started granting school district waivers to have the flexibility to use enriched pasta again. When Perdue became secretary, he also halted the standards to lower sodium before they went into full effect.

Many public health experts opposed the move. Doctors and nutritionists pointed to the fact that rates of childhood obesity have tripled since the 1970s, with about one in five schoolchildren considered obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And public health advocates were optimistic that the new school lunch standards could help put a dent in the alarming trend; one study by researchers at Harvard, Columbia, and George Washington University estimated that the healthier school lunch standards could help prevent another 1.8 million children from becoming obese.

A friendlier climate for for-profit colleges

Enrollment at for-profit colleges exploded in the decade before Obama took office. So did the debt those students held — loans they often struggled to pay back. About one in every 10 federal student loans issued went to a student at a for-profit college. But among the loans that ended up in default, or with about nine months of missed payments, 44 percent had been taken out by for-profit college students.

So in 2009, Obama’s Education Department began an ambitious effort to try to close for-profit college programs, as well as vocational programs at all kinds of colleges, if their students didn’t earn enough after graduation to pay back their loans.

A commencement ceremony for Strayer University, a private, for-profit educational institution, in May 2011.
 Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images

They ended up with a regulation known as the gainful employment rule. Vocational and for-profit college programs were judged on whether their students earned enough money to be able to repay their debts. Programs that couldn’t hit the federal government’s benchmarks would eventually be cut off from student loans.

After several court challenges, the final version of the regulation went into effect in July 2015. (In the meantime, the for-profit sector began to struggle, and several major colleges closed their doors.) DeVos plans to overhaul them, and is already dismantling key provisions — part of an overall shift in attitude at the department to be friendlier toward for-profit colleges.

In July, the department announced a one-year delay on the requirement that institutions disclose their graduates’ debt and earnings. On August 8, the department reported to Senate Democrats that it had “no timetable” for sending institutions data necessary to calculate those figures. More than 2,000 programs in trouble under the rule are also able to repeal their results.

Students in debt left in limbo

The new regulations the Obama administration wrote for for-profit colleges, though, didn’t do much for the students who had already attended them and were paying back their loans. Even if the college itself was in trouble, students were still saddled with their debt.

But after the collapse of two major for-profit college chains — Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institutes — this started to change.

Students wait in line hoping to get their transcripts and information on loan forgiveness from Everest College in Industry, California. The college was part of Corinthian Colleges, which closed in April 2015.
 Christine Armario/AP

Former students turned to a little-known provision of federal law known as “defense to repayment.” It allows borrowers to apply for loan forgiveness if they were the victims of fraud or misrepresentation by their college or university. After former for-profit college students began using that provision to argue they shouldn’t have to repay their loans, the Obama administration wrote new rules, set to go into effect on July 1, 2017, that laid out exactly when students would be able to have their debts forgiven.

The regulations also required schools that might be at risk of closing to put up financial collateral and banned arbitration agreements, which have kept many students from suing schools they believe defrauded them.

But DeVos has begun efforts to roll back loan forgiveness policies by freezing the regulation, leaving thousands of students in limbo. In addition, the US Department of Education has not approved any borrower defense applications since the beginning of the Trump administration, leaving thousands of students uncertain about the status of their loans.

Shane Satterfield is a roofer who owes more than $30,000 in debt for an associate’s degree in computer science from one of the country’s largest for-profit college companies. “I graduated in April at the top of my class, with honors,” says Satterfield, in March 2016. “And I can’t get a job paying over $8.50 an hour.” Despite pledging to distance itself from the poor business practices of the for-profit Corinthian Colleges, the new owner of the Everest career college chain has retained key members of its staff and some of its hard-charging sales tactics.
 David Goldman/AP

“They’re just sitting and the department isn’t processing them,” said Eileen Connor, the director of litigation for Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending.

Connor said that while the Trump administration has been noticeably warmer toward the for-profit college industry, predatory for-profit schools have been around for years, and many administrations have been slow to address the issue.

“I think it’s really far past time for the department to take seriously that students have rights, they’re in their loan contracts, and they can’t turn a blind eye to the fact the law has been broken,” Connor said. “It’s leaving the status quo in place, and the status quo is hurting students of for profit colleges.”

A step back on sexual assault guidelines

Last week, DeVos suddenly announced the Education Department would rescind the Obama-era guidelines that spelled out how universities should respond to allegations of campus sexual assault. The interim guidelines DeVos put in their place gives colleges the option to put a greater burden of proof on the accusers in such cases. It also gives colleges an indefinite amount of time to conduct their investigations and allows some cases to be resolved through mediation.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announces changes in federal policy on rules for investigating sexual assault reports on college campuses at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School in Arlington, Virginia, on September 7.
 J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

One of the impacts was confusion among students about what their rights were.

Elizabeth Boyle is a sophomore at Notre Dame University and a student representative for Know Your IX, an organization that advocates for survivors of sexual assault and harassment. After DeVos’s initial speech in early September, Boyle said many Notre Dame students were asking if this meant they were no longer protected under federal law.

“More confusion, more hysteria; it caused students to not know where to turn,” she said. “Knowing a lot of friends who had been assaulted themselves, it caused me great concern.”

Meghan Downey of Chatham, New Jersey, protests outside as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announces changes in federal policy on rules for investigating sexual assault reports on college campuses in Arlington, Virginia, on September 7.
 J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

In 2011, the Obama administration implemented strict guidelines for how schools should investigate and handle sexual assault allegations, when it sent out a “Dear Colleague letter”that urged universities to deal with allegations of sexual harassment and assault through the proper channels.

It wasn’t just a request; the Obama administration said sexual assault fell under the federal Title IX, which was passed in 1972 as part of a broader education law that prohibited discrimination in education based on sex. Though it mostly applied to women’s college athletics in the beginning, the Obama administration made Title IX the main line for tackling campus sexual assault; if schools didn’t comply with the guidelines, they risked losing their federal funding.

One of the most important and controversial parts of the letter established a new standard of evidence colleges were to use when finding students responsible for sexual assault. In a criminal court, someone accused of a crime has to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Many colleges, in sexual assault cases, had used a slightly lower standard of “clear and convincing evidence.” The Obama administration told colleges to instead use the “preponderance of the evidence” — a greater chance that someone is guilty than not — in their student justice systems, which is the standard of proof in a civil trial.

This lower standard of evidence and other changes prompted many in the legal and higher education communities to sound the alarm, saying the Obama administration was not giving accused parties due process and forcing schools to overreach with rules that were too broad. For instance, in 2014, a group of 28 Harvard Law School professors took the unprecedented step of writing a letter pushing back on the Obama guidance, saying it had caused Harvard’s administration to overcorrect to the extreme.

“I think they created an environment where schools felt in order to keep their federal funding, they had to change their policies to ones stacked against anybody accused,” said Elizabeth Bartholet, one of law professors who signed the letter and faculty director of Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) speaks at a rally for survivors of sexual assault, outside the Department of Education, ahead of a series of meetings that Secretary DeVos was holding with survivors and advocates for the wrongly accused on July 13.
 Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

But Obama’s initiative also won the support of many sexual assault victims and advocates, who believed they finally had a presidential administration taking them seriously and said the guidelines actually made it easier for schools to know the concrete rules they had to follow. That was reflected in the number of investigations into how schools were handling assault cases. Since 2011, a total of 439 investigations were opened into whether colleges were mishandling cases; 79 cases have been resolved, while another 360 remain open.

[“Source-vox”]

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Education

California expands Japanese internment education to current rights threats

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Japanese American children from the Tanforan internment camp in San Bruno board a train for a camp in Utah in 1942. Photo: Chronicle File Photo, The ChronicleThe films, plays and public broadcasts California now funds to enlighten students and the public about the horrors of Japanese American internment camps in World War II will soon be expanded to illuminate more recent examples of persecution — including the Muslim immigrants targeted by President Trump.

The legislation signed this week by Gov. Jerry Brown is just one example of actions by California’s Democratic lawmakers and policymakers to distance themselves from Trump. Some are mostly symbolic, like resolutions calling for congressional investigation and censure of the president, while others chart an independent course for the state in protecting undocumented immigrants and combatting climate change.

AB491, which takes effect in January, provides $3 million over the next three years for educational projects that link the mass lockup of Japanese Americans to ongoing “civil liberties injustices” against racial, religious or sexual minorities or immigrants.

As latter-day examples of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1942 internment order, the legislation cites Trump’s orders prohibiting U.S. entry of anyone from selected countries with mostly Muslim populations, and his campaign promise to ban Muslim immigration.

“It ties the World War II Japanese incarceration experience to what we see happening today,” said the bill’s author, Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance (Los Angeles County).

The bill itself declares that Trump’s actions “highlight the ongoing need for public educational activities so that no group or community is ever again unjustly targeted as Japanese Americans were during World War II.”

The Legislature passed AB491 before the latest revision to Trump’s travel ban with the additions of North Korea, Chad and government officials in Venezuela, prompting the Supreme Court to cancel a scheduled Oct. 10 hearing on the constitutionality of his previous order.

But the bill is only the most recent in a series of legislative swats by California’s majority Democrats against the Republican president.

In early September, the Assembly passed a Democratic-sponsored resolution, HR57, calling on Congress to censure Trump for his blame-both-sides response last month to the violent white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., which, the resolution said, showed he was “unfit to be a moral leader.” In addition to the Assembly’s full slate of Democrats, the measure had the support of two Republicans, Catharine Baker of San Ramon and Brian Maienschein of San Diego.

In March, the state Senate passed another resolution, SR23, along party lines, calling for a bipartisan commission to investigate connections between Trump’s campaign or administration and the Russian government. It also demanded that Trump shed light on any conflicts of interest he might have by releasing his tax returns.

More substantively, legislation on Brown’s desk, SB149 by Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, would bar presidential candidates from having their names on the California ballot unless they released five years of tax returns.

On a more far-reaching issue, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ threat to punish California as a “sanctuary state” for unauthorized immigrants drew a defiant response from state legislators, who passed measures further restricting local police from cooperating with federal immigration agents, prohibiting landlords from reporting tenants to immigration officers, and barring immigration officers from entering workplaces without a warrant. Those bills also await action from Brown.

State lawmakers have also approved $30 million in legal and financial aid to immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, whose protection from deportation Trump has proposed to eliminate. They have voted to ban contracts with the federal government to hold inmates in local jails or private prisons. And for good measure, they voted to name part of a state highway in Los Angeles County after former President Barack Obama.

“When the Trump administration is infringing on the rights of Californians, we’re not going to be afraid to challenge that, whether that’s through legislation or, as the attorney general (Xavier Becerra) is doing, through the courts,” said Kevin Liao, spokesman for Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount (Los Angeles County).

Becerra has filed arguments supporting the challenge to Trump’s travel ban and has also sued the administration over air quality, immigration and the proposed border wall with Mexico.

Brown, meanwhile, has responded to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord by convening his own international summit on global warming, in San Francisco next September, and promoting a worldwide alliance of government leaders committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The bill he signed Tuesday, AB491, expands an educational program that began in 1998 under legislation sponsored by then-Assemblyman Mike Honda, who was a year old in 1942 when he and his family were sent to one of the internment camps that held 120,000 Japanese Americans captive during the war.

Following a U.S. government apology and compensation payments to the internees under President Ronald Reagan, the California program offered grants from the state librarian’s office to community groups and nonprofits for presentations on the internment, the fears that gave rise to it and the civil liberties it violated.

The most recent grant recipients included producers of films, plays and museum exhibits on the internment, many of them designed for student audiences. A Los Angeles musical organization trained young students to perform in an opera, set in one of the camps. In San Francisco, the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, named for the Bay Area man who challenged Roosevelt’s internment order, had a state-funded media project on the impacts in California, where the largest number of internees lived.

AB491 will award funds to educational programs that draw connections between the internment and current threats to civil rights. The reference to Trump and Muslim immigrants — which drew some Republican opposition when it was added in a state Senate amendment — would allow, but not require, the librarian’s office to fund projects that compared the president’s current agenda to the abuses 75 years ago.

It’s not a far-fetched comparison, said Muratsuchi, the bill’s author. He noted that the children of Korematsu and of others who challenged the internment had recently signed onto legal arguments opposing Trump’s travel ban.

The idea, he said, is to make sure that “the lessons of the World War II Japanese American experience are remembered, and also applied and understood in the present context, whether we’re dealing with Muslim Americans or any other group that is being scapegoated.”

Source:-.sfchronicle.

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Education

Public School, Inc.: When public education turns into big business

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Image result for Public School, Inc.: When public education turns into big business

Andrew Sterling thought BASIS Tucson in Arizona was a teacher’s dream when he started working there in 2008. Class sizes at the midtown public charter school were small, teachers were experts with advanced degrees and students were bright and engaged, with few disciplinary issues.

“The kids were excellent – just amazing kids that came from seemingly a variety of backgrounds and variety of interests, quite quirky in a lot of ways,” said Sterling, who taught history and government.

Those quirky kids were the reason he later enrolled his daughter there for fifth grade. He wanted her to be surrounded by good peers. Plus, he’d get to watch her closely. But his concern was growing over the school’s changing climate.

BASIS, which started as a single Tucson charter school and grew into a network of educational facilities, began attracting national attention as an academic powerhouse with soaring test scores by the late 2000s. Riding that momentum, the company pushed to expand, adding charter and private schools nationally and internationally and multiple layers to its corporate structure.

And the pressure grew for students to score even higher to fuel that growth.

Sterling saw his students drowning in schoolwork, which increasingly focused on test results. Some students were built for it, he said. Most struggled. Many transferred out, unable to keep up.

There was a physical change, too.

In 2012, BASIS added a new custom-designed campus in the wealthy Catalina Foothills on the north side of Tucson. The school added more grades between the two campuses, and hundreds more students enrolled. By then, a new management arm of the BASIS corporation had taken over school operations.

Despite his concerns, Sterling stayed, hoping to help his struggling students. Meanwhile, BASIS kept growing.

BASIS today is perfectly poised to capitalize on growing efforts across the country to turn public education into big business. Although it is not the largest charter school network in the U.S., BASIS is one of the only to have successfully expanded into private and international operations. None of the five largest charter networks concurrently operate private schools.

BASIS expanded rapidly, mostly by leveraging its public school status to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars, ultimately paid by taxpayers, while also expanding its private school operations. And in its race to the top, critics say BASIS systematically shortchanged the students who are the most costly to educate, including those with disabilities.

Despite continued criticisms – especially regarding what some consider “cherry-picking” of students, a common complaint about some charter schools – BASIS has continued to attract parents looking for something more than a traditional public school for their children.

“We have a laser-like focus on academics,” said Peter Bezanson, CEO of BASIS.ed, the corporate arm that manages BASIS schools.

As school choice – a movement to give students access to more public education options – continues to gain momentum, companies such as BASIS are seen as the solution to public education’s ills. It brought together people from different ends of the political spectrum – former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Rev. Al Sharpton – to jointly tour the BASIS Tucson campus in 2009. BASIS is also touted as a model for public education by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

This phenomenon has spurred a nationwide debate.

President Donald Trump and his billionaire education secretary, Betsy DeVos, whose family are Republican megadonors, are among the biggest champions of school choice.

“I’m opposed to any parents feeling trapped or, worse yet, feeling that they can’t offer their child the education they wish they could,” DeVos said in a speech at the Brookings Institution in March. She compared school choice with consumers picking Uber or Lyft over traditional taxis.

“What they are trying to persuade the American public of is that public schools don’t belong to the public, that they’re consumer items,” saidDiane Ravitch, a former assistant education secretary under President George H.W. Bush, who once advocated for school choice herself.

Back then, Ravitch envisioned choice as schools within schools that could serve as labs for educational innovation, she said. But school choice became synonymous with big businesses, she said, and big businesses brought about legally questionable practices such as conflicts of interests, nepotism and putting their own interests above those of the public.

How BASIS got its start

As the movement to create independent and innovative public schools spread across the country, Olga Block, an immigrant from the Czech Republic, wanted a more rigorous education for her daughter.

Block decided to start her own school with the help of her American husband, Michael, a Stanford-educated economist. She would combine best of both worlds: the hands-on, slower-paced American learning environment and the rigorous European study habits Olga Block was used to back home.

“BASIS was essentially built on a mother’s love for her daughter,” said Bezanson, the BASIS.ed CEO.

The Blocks, who remain managers at BASIS.ed, declined to be interviewed.

The school opened in fall 1998, renting space at a synagogue in midtown Tucson. It was called Building Academic Success in School, or BASIS.

Today, the BASIS network runs 24 charter schools in Arizona, Texas and Washington, D.C., and seven private schools in California, New York, Virginia, and Shenzhen and Guangzhou, China. It has plans to open more schools in the U.S. and overseas in the near future.

As BASIS grew, so did its corporate structure. In 2009, Olga and Michael Block established a private limited liability company, BASIS.ed, to handle school operations. To manage the assets and equities of various private management arms that run the charter, private and international schools, the founders also established BASIS Educational Ventures.

Such complex corporate structures, also common to other large charter networks, limit risk and maximize profit, said Gary Miron, an expert in charter school finance at Western Michigan University and fellow for the National Education Policy Center.

“It’s just amazing that they are public schools,” he said, “but they are really private in so many ways.”

Reading, writing and reaping profits

Before BASIS’ multi-tiered corporate structure emerged, IRS disclosure forms showed that in 2008, Olga Block earned $197,507 as the chief executive officer of BASIS, which then had two schools and just over 1,100 students. Michael Block earned $156,362 in various roles.

That same year, the superintendent of the Tucson Unified School District, which served more than 56,000 students in more than 80 schools and programs, made just over $200,000.

Tax filings from 2007 and 2008 also show that the founders paid family for work they did for BASIS: Olga Block’s two daughters and her sister, who lives in the Czech Republic, were paid for public relations material design and accounting. Michael’s son, Robert, was paid for technology services in other years.

The founders’ relatives still occupy high-level management positions in various arms of the network. At least three of Olga and Michael Block’s children are on the BASIS payroll.

Arizona law requires all public officers on political subdivisions, boards or commissions to disclose conflicts of interest. It also says public officers should refrain from voting on or participating in any contract, sale, purchase or service from a relative.

The Arizona attorney general’s office said it believes the law applies to charter school officials and board members, but referred to the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools for enforcement of the law.  The charter board said it does not keep track of conflict-of-interest disclosures.

“I think it’s fairly common for family-owned businesses to employ family members,” said Bezanson, BASIS.ed’s CEO.

BASIS.ed provides everything that’s required to run a school – from supplying teachers to buying textbooks on a contract basis, he said. The difference between BASIS.ed and the nonprofit charter holder, BASIS Schools Inc., he added, is that BASIS.ed is private, which allows it to efficiently manage schools in different states.

Once BASIS transitioned to private management in 2009, few details about its schools’ finances remained public. Filings instead show millions in lump sums for management fees and leased employees, including teachers, all addressed to Michael Block, who until 2015 was a BASIS charter board member.

For the 2014 tax year, the most recent tax filing publicly available, the nonprofit housing the network’s charter schools paid BASIS.ed $15.6 million in management fees and an additional $44.3 million for salaries and benefits. In exchange for the fees, BASIS.ed says it handles tasks such as hiring administrators and teachers and buying school supplies.

A 2016 U.S. Department of Education inspector general’s report raised the alarm about charter schools using private management, saying it limits accountability.

But Bezanson said that the structure allows BASIS to run its schools more efficiently and that the BASIS charter school expansion is “wholly separate and not commingled with anything having to do with the expansion of the international or independent schools.”

Bezanson would not provide information about executives’ salaries, saying it’s a private company.

On average, BASIS paid about $3.3 million annually per school to BASIS.ed for salaries and management between fiscal years 2008 and 2014, according to tax filings. In comparison, the average total budget for a school in the Tucson Unified School District for the 2014-15 school year was about $2.5 million.

In tax filings, the fees to BASIS.ed are listed under transactions with related parties – something the Education Department’s inspector general’s report called a red flag because it could mean weak internal controls, alongside conflicts of interest and insufficient division of duties.

As it stands, though, the Department of Education does not have an adequate way to monitor charter management companies to identify and address potential risks, the report concluded.

Big borrowers

BASIS borrowed big to grow big by leveraging its charter schools’ public status, which allows it to borrow tax-free and at lower interest rates.

The network’s charter schools are funded by state governments on a per-pupil basis, like district schools, but there is no dedicated funding for charter school buildings. So BASIS turned to the government bond market to fuel its charter school expansion.

It has borrowed so much that its charter school arm, the only BASIS subsidiary for which financial information is publicly available, had about $230 million in long-term debt at the end of fiscal year 2016, according to its consolidated financial audit submitted to the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools.

BASIS borrowed largely through industrial development authorities of municipalities in Arizona, which are government-affiliated middlemen that help secure funding for projects that benefit the people of that town, city, county or state.

It used loans through the city of Phoenix and Pima County – sometimes to pay back other loans – to build and renovate schools in Washington, D.C., and Texas, using its existing charter school facilities as collateral.

In one instance, a 2016 loan for $84 million for various capital projects across the network – about $31 million of which was used for refunding a previous loan for the D.C. campus – was secured by 14 BASIS charter schools’ state funding and facilities.

The city of Phoenix isn’t fronting the money, nor is it liable for the debt, said Bezanson, the BASIS.ed CEO. The money comes from private investors.

But taxpayers – primarily in Arizona – do pay for the costs of these loans, including transaction fees and interest, through state per-pupil funding for education.

The charter network’s buildings are not publicly owned, either – they are owned by BASIS.

“That seems illogical that we would allow them to use a share of public dollars to acquire an asset with public dollars that is then owned by this private entity,” said Bruce Baker, an education professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey who specializes in charter school business practices.

At the same time, Baker said, charter schools are backed into a corner when it comes to facilities financing. Without a dedicated funding mechanism, they must seek other options.

But many of those options are the result of bad policy design and create opportunities for bad deals and bad debt, he said. Repeated borrowing and refinancing results, Baker said, in a lot of public money being sunk into transaction costs and fees.

The 2016 financial audit shows signs of what looks like financial distress for the BASIS network’s charter school arm. It ended fiscal year 2016 with negative cash flow – a deficit of nearly $23 million, according to the audit.

That distress was caused by refinancing loans for better rates and resulting prepayment penalties, said DeAnna Rowe, head of the nonprofit organization for BASIS charter schools, who previously served as executive director of the state charter school board.

Source:-salon.

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