Possibly too many things to read on AI and tech in schools

 

It's a lovely time of year in Massachusetts. 
Do get out and enjoy it.
My photo of a former schoolhouse in Belchertown yesterday.

The tabs I have open: 

Student protests in France

 Not sure about you, but I often feel that there is so much that is an ongoing catastrophe here in the U.S. that what's happening elsewhere---even within education--can be overwhelmed by just our stuff. So I hadn't caught that students in France have been protesting in what began in Paris but has now swept across the country. The reason?

Demonstrators have voiced a range of grievances, often centering on a lack of resources and opportunities for students in disadvantaged schools, despite the promise of France's national motto: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

Students have drawn attention to rundown classrooms that lack basics such as desks and chairs, become sweltering in summer without air conditioning and, in some cases, are infested with rats. Other common complaints include staff shortages and exhausting workloads. French high school students' compulsory classroom hours are among the highest in Europe.

Significant numbers of schools have been closed this week; it's estimated that a quarter of a million people were protesting in Paris. 

The way that the protests are being met by the national leadership is increasing support for students:

 Nearly 500 people were detained Tuesday, the ministry said. The widespread use of arrests, tear gas and riot-control weapons against teenagers is fueling defiance and angering some parents and teachers. Some student groups called for new protests Thursday....in the latest case, a 15-year-old boy lost a hand Monday in an incident involving a police stun grenade. 

There is video circulating online of  Saint-Denis Mayor Bally Bagayoko shielding student protestors from riot police, as well as being treated for having been tear-gassed.

Connected? Reporting this week from Boston

 At 4 PM last Friday, October 2, State House News Service sent an article entitled as follows: 

Headline reads "Ads critical of Boston Public Schools removed from T"

NBC 10 picked up the article, which you can read here. 

Saturday's edition of the Boston Globe included this column from Adrian Walker, headlined "Dark Money comes for the Boston Public Schools," in which he attempted to chase down who it was that was funding the new "Next Chapter Boston" and their $1.5M ad buy. 

This then spun over the weekend into accusations of who could possibly have made the call to pull the ads, cries of censorship, and no movement towards any discovery of who was funding the ads that would have followed Boston secondary school students on their way to school each morning. 

Should we ever get to the bottom of who funded the ads, it is, as Walker notes: 

People who suddenly pour big money into something like that aren’t just trying to “raise awareness” — whatever that really means. They are trying to influence public policy. And the public has a right to know who they are, and what they really want.

The website, for what it's worth, offers a sign-up and a letter calling for "measurable, public goals" in clear language alongside an explanation of how the budget is being used for "evidence-based instructional practices and curriculum in all subjects."
And maybe that's it. But I think that's a lot of advertising for that.

My guess as to what they want is this: I don't think it is a coincidence that these ads went up the same week that the U.S. Treasury released the rules on the federal voucher program. Massachusetts, as has been noted this week, is neither in nor out; Governor Healey had said she was awaiting the rules to decide. Her response last week was:

 “Well, you know, what I understand is that Treasury has released temporary regulations. I don’t know what that means. So, you know, what I’ve said from the beginning is this, and I’ll continue to say, we need to make sure that nothing harms public education.”

Having the local public transit scream that the largest public school system in the state was failing its students would give an extra push to any riding who might have influence on Beacon Hill as Healey is continuing to decide. 

As others, including Marketplace, have noted, it is private education that is most likely to benefit from these programs. And when we talk about private education (especially in a place like Massachusetts), we tend to think of college prep schools with brick buildings on leafy campuses. For states that already have vouchers, though, that isn't what you should think about. You should think about a few reporters at the local brew pub coming one fire inspection away from approval as a private school, as ProPublica reported this week, in a piece in which they applied to create of a private school in North Carolina, Arkansas, and West Virginia.

And even as it isn't that easy in Massachusetts, where private schools have to be approved by their local school committee, within a limited purview, the chance to use federal funds (the dollars here would have been federal tax dollars) for non-public, non-publicly-allocated and -accountable uses is deeply concerning.

And possibly was worth $1.5M in advertising. 

in search of Polaris: on last night's Board of Ed meeting

 I'd like to be able to give you some sort of meaningful summary of last night's Board of Ed meeting on the DESE strategic plan (liveblog here), but it wasn't that sort of meeting.

Polaris? This is as close as we're getting around here...

Let's walk through some main points:

Bittersweet, indeed

 From today's Globe: 

“It feels a little bittersweet,” said Anthony Clough, a policy analyst at the left-leaning Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. “How are we supposed to celebrate the culmination of this really progressive law when it hasn’t really panned out for anybody in the way we thought it would.”

 There is, of course, too much "but why aren't the test scores higher" here, but, as so often, Andrew O'Leary nails it:

“It was a long overdue I-O-U,” said New Bedford Superintendent Andrew O’Leary. “Those of us who worked in urban districts for a long time had seen the result of the fiscal inequities. It was constant budget crises and constant compromises.”

Bonus Board of Ed for September

 The agenda (which doesn't tell us much) is here. 
The livestream is here.

Martinez: setting new benchmarks for proficiency, lower to zero doesn't meet (I think)
he is just saying this aloud; it isn't shown or written out as to what he's saying...this is really hard to follow

Hey, let's talk about Burncoat

 I am intentionally posting a stub here, as I am working on this on the train outbound, and my posts go out at 3 PM. Come back for more, between today and tomorrow.

On tomorrow night's Worcester City Council agenda, we have the following: 

First a process note: This is coming from the Department of Public Facilities, not from the Worcester Public Schools. That's because school buildings, in a municipal school district, are built not by the school department (which does have its own section on the City Council agenda) but by the city itself. The school department does not run its own building projects, and the School Committee has very, very little to do with building projects.*

Now I want to remind you of where we are with Worcester's school building projects: since 2011, Worcester has rebuilt North High, South High, and Doherty, three of the four comprehensive high schools in the city. Add in Worcester Tech, which opened in 2006, that's all of the largest high schools in Worcester, in the past twenty years. 

Let's give credit where due: considering that Worcester also opened a new elementary school in there (Nelson Place, which was literally falling down, opened 2017), that is a stunning pace of building new schools. Genuinely, and I say this as someone who watches this, this is a tremendous pace.