Newark Charter School Students Want Me To Take Down My Most Recent Article On Them… I’ll Do It, But With Conditions…

It’s been a long week for Newark Charter School.  Ever since the… I don’t know what to call it… let’s just go with the incident… it seems like some students and parents took offense to my article asking questions.  As I’ve said a gazillion times in comments, I went with what I had.  Kilroy put something up but took it down.  I read what he wrote, and if they were mad at me…  But I digress.  It seems some students want me to take down the article I put up Friday.  I’ll do it, but this isn’t just some freebie.  There has to be some quid pro quo…

This is what I want to see happen, and I will take down my article.

• The Newark Charter School Board of Directors agrees to have more than 16 minute open session board meetings.
• The same Board of Directors agrees to get rid of all enrollment preferences for the school.
• Newark Charter School begins filing, effective immediately, their IRS 990 tax filing and agrees to do so every year.
• Newark Charter School openly and publicly announces their support for Meredith Chapman as the 8th Senate District candidate.
• Newark Charter School’s board votes in the positive to switch from having the Delaware Dept. of Education as their authorizer to the Christina School District.
• Newark Charter School’s teachers will be able to organize and vote as a collective body to join the Delaware State Education Association.
• All Newark Charter School students shall have what is known as a “week of exchange”.  The NCS students shall spend a week at Christina schools while Christina students (only 2,000) of them shall be able to go to Newark Charter School for  a week.
• Newark Charter School shall stand with the Christina School District in improving all the schools in their district and begin a restoration process so NCS and Christina School District students can heal the wounds caused by over ten years of conflict between the two entities.  As well, the two will enter a practice of sharing resources and best practices so all children between the two can thrive as much as humanly possible.

and…

• Greg Meece has to go to the next Christina Board of Education meeting after the board votes on all the above and do the safety dance.  What is that?  He has to sing Safety Dance verbatim AND dance based on the video from Men Without Hats from 1983 as his public comment.  This is not an attempt to mock Greg Meece.  It is a situation that many would want to see and would go a long way towards burying the hatchet and entering a period of peace between the two.  It’s not like this hasn’t happened before.  I saw a Principal from my local school district get on roller skates and dress up as a woman during a pep rally.  So it can be done.  It might soften Meece up a bit as well.

If all those things happen, I will take down the article.  Use your voice NCS students.  If you can make it happen, I will honor your request.  As a gesture of good faith on my part, I will change the title of the article from Friday night.  Deal?

Questions we should be asking about “Future Ready” schools.

This is the question of our time. People need to wake up now. Our “trusted” leaders already know all this. If you know about this, you are either like me and other citizens who are warning everyone else or you are a participant, in which case, you are the enemy. Our children are more than data.

Wrench in the Gears

This is a follow up to my prior post regarding the danger of “learning eco-systems.”

How far are we from the day we’ll be forced to rely on online education modules to inspire and excite the minds of young people; where badge collections replace diplomas; and virtual reality games substitute for Friday night dances, track meets, spelling bees, and school plays? How much time do we have before certified human teachers are replaced by “Task Rabbit” pathway designers and AI personal “tutors?” Before we lose all expectations for privacy surrounding how and when we access our educations? Before the entirety of our educational lives becomes consolidated under a unique ID number and its associated digital shadow?

Online learning is claiming ever-larger blocks of instructional time in bricks and mortar schools. Budgets prioritize technology purchases over investments in human staff and facilities. Increasingly responsibility for assessment is being taken away from…

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You Can’t Be Anti-Opt Out and Pro-Democracy

For Delaware, I think we are talking about John Carney, Chris Coons, and Tom Carper. And don’t try to backtrack later with some promise of the digital frontier either. We will opt out of that as well.

gadflyonthewallblog

Our lawmakers have a problem.

This summer they doubled down on one of the most anti-democratic mandates in the federal repertoire yet they claim they did so to protect states rights.

Here’s the problem.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of public school parents across the country opt their children out of standardized testing.

But Congress voted to keep mandating that 95% of students take the tests.

It all happened with the much celebrated bipartisan passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the federal law that governs K-12 schools.

While lawmakers made changes here and there to let the states decide various education issues, they kept the mandate that students participate in annual testing.

They didn’t leave that to the states. Whether they were Republican or Democrat, almost all lawmakers thought it was just fine for the federal government to force our children to take standardized tests at least…

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