-
Democracy Web
Democracy Web is a unique collection of online resources designed to help high school and college teachers illustrate key principles of democratic governance in a “compare and contrast” format that challenges students to think critically across cultural, historical and national contexts. The site’s key elements include country studies, an interactive map and a well-respected categorical rating system that offers an overview of the basic architecture of democracy and a framework for analysis.
-
March on Washington Lesson Plans
The year 2013 marked the 50th anniversary of one of the most historic moments in United States history – the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. On August 28, 1963, approximately 250,000 people participated in the march, which is considered to be one of the largest peaceful political rallies for human rights in history.
The Institute worked to make a special contribution to this commemoration by publishing lesson plans and materials that K-12 teachers across the country can use in their classrooms to teach about this historic event.
-
Fulfilling The Promise Of a Quality Education for All: 21st Century Career & Technical Education
This New York City conference (co-sponsored with the UFT) was designed to allow participants to share their expertise in CTE policy, practice, and research, as well as to deepen their understanding of how quality CTE can serve to expand the educational and career horizons of all students.
Countering Misinformation in the Classroom: A Media Literacy Discussion with Randi Weingarten and NewsGuard
In this Q & A style session, AFT President Randi Weingarten and Steven Brill discussed the misinformation trends NewsGuard’s analysts are encountering in the field, and the tactics educators can employ in their classrooms to counter these trends.
Literacy: Systems Matter. An Infrastructure Approach To Reading Achievement
Watch a discussion highlighting the importance of a reading infrastructure to create the conditions for effective, science-based reading instruction.
Breaking Barriers: A Conversation with Stan Litow and Randi Weingarten
Conversation with Stan Litow, author of Breaking Barriers, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door Book Discussion
A virtual conversation with Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire, authors of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, and discussant Andy Smarick.
Strike for Common Good Book Discussion
Strike for the Common Good Book Discussion with editor Rebecca Givans and Joe McCartin, Georgetown University. Monday, January 25, 2021, 5:00 pm ET.
The Teacher Insurgency: A Conversation with Leo Casey and Randi Weingarten
In The Teacher Insurgency, Leo Casey addresses how the unexpected wave of recent teacher strikes has had a dramatic impact on American public education, teacher unions, and the larger labor movement.
Saving Our Democracy
"Saving Our Democracy,” sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers and the Albert Shanker Institute with former U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, and Suzanne Nossel and AFT President Randi Weingarten.
Where Teachers Thrive: Organizing Schools for Success - Lessons for Educators in a Covid-19 World
Dr. Susan Moore Johnson discussed her new book Where Teachers Thrive and its lessons for educators in a Covid-19 world.
Andy Hargreaves Book Discussion
Virtual book discussion of "Moving: A Memoir of Education and Social Mobility" with author Andy Hargreaves.
Safely Re-Opening America's Schools
The question of how schools can be reopened in ways that protect the health and safety of students, teachers and other adult staff is not only a challenging one, but one which is dynamic and changing.
-
Tackling Chronic Absenteeism Is a Crucial Investment in the Future
Our guest authors are Kate Suchomel, the Lead Development & Communications Officer, and Jim Davnie, Executive Director, of the Minnesota Alliance With Youth.
This week, Minnesota Alliance With Youth had the opportunity to engage in conversations at the White House around addressing the issue of chronic absenteeism in our schools. At the “Every Day Counts Summit: Addressing Chronic Absenteeism and Increasing Student Engagement," Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden, along with state Governors and local leaders, highlighted the many efforts to increase student attendance and engagement and help students come to school every day.
The Alliance was invited to participate and share successes from our AmeriCorps Promise Fellow collaboration with the Check & Connect Student Engagement program in Minneapolis middle and high schools- a long standing collaboration that has resulted in significant attendance gains for Minneapolis students (the results of which are highlighted as a district-level example in the new Digital Backpack of Resources to Address Chronic Absenteeism in Your Community released by the National Partnership for Student Success).
Chronic absenteeism has become a critical issue for K-12 schools across the country, and Minnesota is struggling with exceptionally elevated rates in recent years. Statewide data from the U.S. Department of Education indicates a dramatic increase in the percentage of Minnesota schools with high or extreme chronic absenteeism, rising from 34% in 2017/18 to a staggering 71% during the 2021/22 school year.
-
How Do Vouchers Defund Public Schools? Four Warnings and One Big Takeaway
Our guest author is Josh Cowen, Professor of Education Policy at Michigan State University. His new book, The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers is forthcoming at Harvard Education Press.
Over the past two years, school voucher systems and other related schemes that divert taxpayer revenue toward private K-12 tuition have passed state legislatures at unprecedented rates. Although these recent bills became law only, for the most part, in red states, their supporters include a handful of Democrats in other parts of the country as well. And all of this comes despite a decade of evidence that vouchers have led to some of the steepest declines in student achievement on record.
Regardless of which side of an otherwise ideological or political divide voucher advocates hail from, a common talking point for both is that voucher-like systems leave public school funding unaffected.
Such claims rely on a variety of funding strategies that include drawing resources to pay for vouchers from states’ general fund commitments outside of their school aid budgets, and the use of tax credits to make expenditures rather than direct appropriation.
-
Teacher Appreciation: The Center for Research on Expanding Educational Opportunity (CREEO) Connects Equity and Justice to Education Policy and Practice
Our guest author is Melika Jalili, program manager at the Center for Research on Expanding Educational Opportunity (CREEO), UC Berkeley.
Whether it is a focus on the teacher shortage, a discussion of our public schools, or Teacher Appreciation Week, it seems everyone agrees that teachers deserve more respect and recognition. Making that recognition meaningful, by supporting educators to be the teachers they have always dreamed they could be, should be a priority for all of us.
Cue in, Dr. Travis J. Bristol, Associate Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Education, who announced the exciting launch of the Center for Research on Expanding Educational Opportunity (CREEO) at UC Berkeley last month.
-
Reading Science: Staying the Course Amidst the Noise
Critical perspectives on the Science of Reading (SoR) have always been present and are justifiably part of the ongoing discourse. At the Shanker Institute, we have been constructively critical, maintaining that reading reforms are not a silver bullet and that aspects of SoR, such as the role of knowledge-building and of infrastructure in reading improvement, need to be better understood and integrated into our discourse, policies, and practices. These contributions can strengthen the movement, bringing us closer to better teaching and learning. However, I worry that other forms of criticism may ultimately divert us from these goals and lead us astray.
At the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the largest research conference in the field of education, I witnessed the spread of serious misinformation about reading research and related reforms. In this post, I aim to address four particularly troubling ideas I encountered. For each, I will not only provide factual corrections but also contextual clarifications, highlighting any bits of truth or valid criticisms that may exist within these misconceptions.
-
Rick Hess’ Uber Driver Speaks Out
Our guest author is Leo Casey, Shanker Institute executive director emeritus.
I was out pounding the streets the other day, and a ride for Rick Hess at the American Enterprise Institute popped up on my driver’s app. Geez, I thought to myself, not him again. But I have to put food on the table and clothes on the back of my kids, so I headed over to AEI.
Ten minutes late, Rick jumps into my car, and starts in. “I want to ask you about…” I interrupted him: “Rick, before we get into what you want to talk about, I want to ask you a question first.”
-
Loc-ing students out: Darryl George, the CROWN Act, and the Need to Combat Racial Discrimination in the Classroom
Our guest author is Jasmine Payne-Patterson, a Senior State Policy Coordinator for the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) at the Economic Policy Institute.
For some students and workers, hair is a trivial wardrobe decision, while for many Black and Brown people, their hairstyle can be a consequential element of class participation and a job offer. School dress codes and “business appropriate” dress often put high stakes and severe restrictions on how Black and Brown people can express their culture and identity through their hair.
Over the last several years, lawmakers in 24 states have sought to combat this problem by passing the “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair” (CROWN) Act. The CROWN Act is a law that protects against discrimination based on hairstyle and texture in schools, workplaces, and beyond by extending the definition of racial expression to include wearing braids, locs, twists, and other culturally significant hair styles.
Yet the recent court case of Texas high school junior Darryl George reveals that even in states that have adopted versions of the CROWN Act, as Texas has, Black and Brown people can still face educational and career disadvantages for their hairstyles when discriminatory systems—in this case a school dress code—are validated by judicial interpretation that ignores the intent of the law.
-
From the Classroom to the Capitol: Teachers Can Make A Difference
Our guest authors José Luis Vilson and Dan Kliber are accomplished National Board Certified Teachers and activists.
The battle over the federal budget has dire consequences for schools across the country, particularly for those most in need of funding. Recently, some federal legislators have proposed extremely draconian cuts. The last education funding proposal from the U.S. House of Representatives would have slashed federal support for education by 30%, including an 80% reduction to Title I, which supports low-income schools. Had this proposal passed, public education as we know it could have been completely dismantled, putting over 200K teachers out of a job.
-
School District Fragmentation, Segregation, and Funding Equity in New Jersey
District fragmentation is a very important but sometimes overlooked factor shaping school segregation, school funding equity, and the relationship between them. Put simply, fragmentation refers to the fact that, in some states, there are hundreds of small districts, while other states are divided into a smaller number of large districts. For example, at the extremes, there are 67 (countywide) districts serving Florida’s 3 million public school students, whereas New Jersey maintains around 600 districts for its 1.3 million students.
-
How the Fairness of State Tax Codes Affects Public Education
Our guest author is Carl Davis, Research Director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. He was the project lead on the newest edition of ITEP’s Who Pays? report, which provides the only comprehensive measure of the progressivity, or regressivity, of state tax systems.
The vast majority of state and local tax systems are regressive, or upside-down, with the wealthy paying a far lower share of their income in taxes than low-and middle-income families. That is the topline finding of the latest edition of our flagship Who Pays? report, which measures the impact that state tax systems are having on families at every income level. Its findings go a long way toward explaining why so many states are failing to raise the amount of revenue needed to provide full and robust support for our public schools.
As we explain in the report, states with more progressive tax systems also raise more revenue on average. States with regressive tax codes, on the other hand, typically raise less. The reason for this is simple. High-income families receive a huge share of overall income, so when states choose to tax that huge amount of income at lower rates than what everyone else pays, they’re inevitably going to struggle to raise adequate revenue overall.
-
Celebrate Family Engagement All Year Round
Our guest author is Sarah Johnson, a practicing public school educator in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She has taught in elementary classrooms, coached new teachers as a Peer Assistance and Review consulting teacher, served as an Academic Content Coach, led professional development on School, Family, and Community Partnerships and helped launch the Parent Teacher Home Visit project in Saint Paul Public Schools.
It’s October. For some that means apple orchards, leaf viewing, and pumpkin spice. For educators, it also brings Parent Teacher conferences . . and a dread of all the candy and unbridled enthusiasm for that last day of the month, but that’s a different blog. Over the years I’ve seen educators approach conferences with a variety of perspectives and approaches: some excited to update families on the new learning, some worried about how families might respond to a concern, and some exhausted from the preparation and longs days. Thankfully, it’s quite rare that some take Ted Lasso’s view, shared when he met Rebecca’s mom, “Boy, I love meeting people’s moms. It’s like reading an instruction manual as to why they’re nuts.”
During my 29 years as an educator in various roles in Saint Paul Public Schools, the approach I have learned is that meaningful family partnerships* are integral to student success. Cory Jones, one of the founding teachers of Parent Teacher Home Visits explains it like this, “With a great curriculum, with a great teacher, if you leave out the home the results for that individual student will be lower.” He’s right, families and schools need to be on the same team. This October, I’d like to encourage educators to take this parent-teacher season and challenge themselves to create opportunities for meaningful family engagement year-round. If you’re an educator leading a system instead of leading a classroom, then I challenge you to find ways of supporting and structuring these opportunities year-round as well.
-
The Uses and Misues of Value-Added in Teacher Evaluations: Three Perspectives
Nationally-recognized experts, Linda Darling Hammond, Douglas Harris and Thomas Kane will present and discuss concrete proposals for how to incorporate test-based performance measures into new teacher evaluations