Educational Leadership Posts, Videos, Articles, and Resources

To download above summary, please click title above or here: 
https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/docsonly/scope-nola-infographic.pdf 

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For more on Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, please see link at bottom of post. [Selected quotes/links from research page are provided below]

"Through predatory public-private partnerships, global financiers are in the process of digitizing not only our education system, but many other aspects of public service delivery. This 10-minute video provides an overview of “Pay For Success” and social impact bonds, detailing how their operations hinge on intrusive and oppressive collection of data from our classrooms, homes, jails, and clinics.

By defining “success” in narrow terms suited to outcomes-based contracting, powerful investors will control how public services are delivered. Securitization of debt associated with program operations will turn our lives, including those of our children, into fodder for financial speculation. YouTube categorized this video as a comedy; perhaps based on the whimsical nature of the collages. After watching it, however, I’m confident you’ll see it’s truly a horror show. A slide share version of the video can be viewed here and a PDF of the script is available here."...

For full post, please see: 

https://wrenchinthegears.com/2017/11/26/gambling-with-our-futures-big-data-global-finance-and-digital-life/ 

School Privatization Explained

https://eduresearcher.com/2017/04/24/privatization-explained/ 

See also:  Charter Schools & "Choice": A Closer Look

http://bit.ly/chart_look 

"Dr. Victor Rios- UCSB Professor of Sociology

Professor Rios' 2011 book, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (NYU Press), analyzes how juvenile crime policies and criminalization affect the everyday lives of urban youth. He has published on juvenile justice, masculinity, and race and crime in scholarly journals such as The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Latino Studies, and Critical Criminology. In 2011 Professor Rios received the Harold J. Plous award at UCSB and In 2010 he received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research."...
 

For video of TEDTalk, view above or here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ5D_Je8tvo&nbsp

For Dr. Rios' website: http://drvictorrios.com/

By Serge Egelman

"In our study of kids’ Android apps, we observed that a majority of apps specifically targeted at kids may be violating U.S. privacy law: the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In response to this revelation, many companies that we named in our paper have responded by stating that they are not covered by the law because either their apps are not directed at children or they have no knowledge that any of their users are children. As a broader issue, we have also noticed that many companies appear to turn a blind eye to COPPA compliance by stating in their privacy policies that their obviously-child-directed apps are not directed at children.

As I’ll explain in this post, these excuses are disingenuous at best and outright lies at worst: for every app that we examined, the developer took proactive steps to market their apps to children under 13, and therefore appear to be subject to COPPA because their apps are “directed” at children."

For full post, click here:

https://blog.appcensus.mobi/2018/05/08/our-childrens-apps-arent-directed-at-children/ 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B18g5ywbF84_bk1nWU96OFdadE0/view 

To download click on title above or here:

http://dignityinschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Accountability-Guidelines-on-School-Pushout-and-Charter-Schools-2014-1.pdf  

The above document may be downloaded at http://restorativeschoolsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/SNR_RSVPpgxx_060316r6.pdf 

For more information, please see http://restorativeschoolsproject.org 

"Raising alarm about the lack of privacy for students and their families, the ACLU of Rhode Island today released a report showing that many school districts in the state give themselves the right to remotely spy on students through the use of school-loaned laptop computers. Under so-called “1 to 1” programs, in which a majority of school districts in the state participate, a private vendor provides free laptops or tablet computers for the school year that students can use at home. With this program, however, the ACLU found, students and their families are often required to surrender basic privacy rights.

The ACLU report, entitled “High School Non-Confidential: How School-Loaned Computers May be Peering into Your Home,” highlights that, in many districts, policies allow school officials to remotely access the student laptops at home – including the computer’s webcam and microphone - at any time, and for any reason. 

The ACLU’s privacy concerns are not hypothetical, as the report highlights the widely publicized case some years ago involving a Pennsylvania school district that surreptitiously took more than 50,000 screenshots of students via remote access to the webcams of their school-loaned laptops. Given this and other important issues, the report concludes that RI state legislators should adopt a standard policy to protect the privacy of students and their families.

The 12-page ACLU report looks specifically at the policies of the 22 local school districts where laptops are provided to students for home use during the school year. In addition to raising concerns about the authority school officials give themselves to remotely access the laptop’s webcam and microphone, the report identified several other related troubling trends:

• In loaning students the laptop computers or Chromebooks to use at home, school districts require students and parents to acknowledge they have no expectation of privacy whatsoever regarding the device at any time – even if students are allowed to use it for non-school reasons and parents are encouraged to use it too.
• Only a handful of school districts affirm that they will not remotely operate the computers’ camera or audio recording mechanisms.
• Most school district policies allow school officials to remotely access and or search the content of the devices at any time – including files, web history and other information – in the absence of any suspicion of misconduct.
• The majority of policies also allow school administrators and teachers to physically inspect the devices at any time and for any reason.
  
  

“School officials simply should not have the right to use a computer lending program as an excuse to spy on families in the privacy of their own homes,” said Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU of RI, “but that is precisely what their policies allow.” Added ACLU of RI policy associate Marcela Betancur, “In surveying the school districts for this report, I was shocked to see their complete lack of respect for student and parents’ privacy rights. In order to protect those rights, this report makes clear that the state needs to adopt uniform standards for school districts who participate in 1 to 1 programs.”

The report notes that while the 1 to 1 programs are quite beneficial, “too many schools require students – and their parents – to give up any rights to privacy to participate in the program.” Also noteworthy is the report’s finding that only six RI school districts accommodate poorer families by providing free or reduced insurance coverage for the devices. 

The report lays out several policy recommendations, including restricting remote access to the content of the devices, banning remote activation of the computers’ webcam or microphones, implementing standards for searches that are based on reasonable suspicion of misconduct, and providing low- or no-cost insurance coverage for needy families.

The full report is available here.

For main announcement: 
http://www.riaclu.org/news/post/aclu-of-ri-report-highlights-school-officials-ability-to-spy-on-students-at 

"MIT grad student Joy Buolamwini was working with facial analysis software when she noticed a problem: the software didn't detect her face -- because the people who coded the algorithm hadn't taught it to identify a broad range of skin tones and facial structures. Now she's on a mission to fight bias in machine learning, a phenomenon she calls the "coded gaze." It's an eye-opening talk about the need for accountability in coding ... as algorithms take over more and more aspects of our lives."

https://www.ted.com/talks/joy_buolamwini_how_i_m_fighting_bias_in_algorithms?language=en 

Topics of new toolkit include:

• Data Resources to Strengthen Your Advocacy 
• Public Records Act Requests
• School-Wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports
• Restorative Justice and Restorative Practices
• Social Emotional Learning
• Trauma Sensitive Strategies
• LCAP Advocacy to Support Positive Alternative Practices
• Effective Monitoring & Implementation Plans
• Movement Building Resources 
  
  

Available for download at: http://www.fixschooldiscipline.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/comm_toolkit_final.pdf 

For more information, please see: http://fixschooldiscipline.org 

"Abstract: 

Amid public critiques of Wall Street’s amorality and protests against sharpening inequality since the financial crisis of 2008, the emergent discourse of philanthrocapitalism—philanthropic capitalism—has sought to recuperate a moral center for finance capitalism. Philanthrocapitalism seeks to marry finance capital with a moral commitment to do good. 

These strategies require new financial instruments to make poverty reduction and other forms of social welfare profitable business ventures. Social impact bonds (SIBs)—which offer private investors competitive returns on public sector investments—and related instruments have galvanized the financialization of both public services and the life possibilities of poor communities in the United States and the Global South. 

This article maps new intrusions of credit and debt into previously unmarketable spheres of life, such as prison recidivism outcomes, and argues that contemporary social finance practices such as SIBs are inextricable from histories of race—that financialization has been and continues to be a deeply racialized process. Intervening in debates about the social life of financial practices and the coercive creation of new debtor publics, we chart technologies meant to transform subjects considered valueless into appropriate, even laudable, objects of financial investment. 

Because their proponents frame SIBs as philanthropic endeavors, the violence required to financialize human life becomes obfuscated. We aim to historicize the violence of financialization by drawing out links between financial capitalism as it developed during the height of the Atlantic slave trade, and the more subtle violence of philanthropic financial capitalism. Though the notion that slaves could be a good investment—both in the profitable and moral sense of the word—seems far removed from our contemporary sensibilities, the shadow of slavery haunts SIBs; despite their many differences, both required black bodies to be made available for investment. Both also represent an expansion to the limits of financialization."

Kish, Z., & Leroy, J. (2015). Bonded Life: Technologies of Racial Finance From Slave Insurance to Philanthrocapital. Cultural Studies, 29, (5), 630–651 

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2015.1017137 

https://www.academia.edu/9075062/_Bonded_Life_Technologies_of_Racial_Finance_from_Slavery_to_Philanthrocapitalism

Version above is adapted slightly from original at https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BMsfE0E6cC2iSFakQZDG0xTGWUbv6k2Z3OrvJrgbrDk/edit#slide=id.g1b42b64795_0_372. To download, visit link or click title above. 

What most helps young people thrive in a challenging academic environment? Answers from students bear out what research has found: social and emotional factors constitute a crucial underpinning for learning.
 

In recent WKCD interviews at School of the Future in New York City, middle schoolers gave their own examples of how everyday interactions between students, peers, and adults affected how they learned in the classroom.

Their descriptions reflected some key unspoken questions that adolescents bring with them into a school environment:

• Will I able to do the work here? Will I be smart enough?
• Will I be safe here? Will I be teased or made to feel bad somehow?
• Will I get to help decide what happens to me here?

NOTE: For years WKCD has gathered, most of all, the voices and vision of high-school-age youth—although we did publish the popular Fires in the Middle School Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from Middle Schoolers by Kathleen Cushman and Laura Rogers (The New Press, 2008). In the months ahead, we aim to include more voices and perspectives from the middle grades.

For main page, please click on title above or here: http://www.whatkidscando.org/featurestories/2012/12_this_is_my_place/ 

"Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN) began as an ad-hoc coalition of immigrant rights activists and advocates in 1987 under the name Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Services (NIRRS) in order to develop a Santa Clara County response to the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. For over a decade, the NIRRS was central to statewide campaigns against all the anti-immigration legislation and ballot initiatives that followed.

In 1998, NIRRS changed its name to Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN) and received seed funding to hire staff and establish the county’s first-ever multilingual information hotline. Since that time, SIREN has grown to include policy analysis and advocacy, community education, citizenship application assistance, and community and service provider trainings."

For more information, please see: 

http://www.siren-bayarea.org/