Does it Matter that Trump’s Pick for Education Secretary is a Big Donor to Republican Senators?

Money in politics is nothing new. But where that money comes from can be an important factor in determining the legitimacy of the democratic process. That’s why we have campaign finance laws and a long history of trying to make sure big money doesn’t influence decision-making (too much). 

Enter President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, billionaire Betsy Devos. According to the Washington Post, Devos and her family gave over $800,000 to Republican senators – many who are tasked with vetting her for the job. From the Post: 

During the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, DeVos and her relatives gave at least $818,000 to 20 current Republican senators, including more than $250,000 to five members of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), according to a Washington Post analysis of Federal Election Commission records. …

To money-in-politics watchdogs, the DeVos family’s contributions create a conflict of interest for senators now charged with judging Betsy DeVos’s fitness to helm the Education Department.

“She’s acknowledged that her family gives, and gives a lot, because it’s aiming to buy influence,” said Robert Weissman of Public Citizen, who said the scale of the DeVos family’s political donations is unusual for a prospective Cabinet member. “Against that backdrop, how are the senators supposed to evaluate her nomination in an unbiased way? They can’t.”

Watchdog groups are calling for these senators to recuse themselves from the confirmation hearings. But this is not a new issue. The Post notes that President Obama’s pick for commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker, donated about $20,000 to Democratic senators who then voted on her confirmation four years later. 

DeVos also has quite a different vision for public education than the current administration – one that would likely include more public money for school vouchers (which could include religious schools) and charter schools. This then begs the question – are these watchdog groups asking for the senators to recuse themselves because they took money, or because the confirmation involves a person who’s opinion is different from theirs? 

Partisanship takes many faces. If we’re going to shed light on only one dark corner, that leaves less light in the other. The whole room should be lit up. 

(Photo via PublicDomainPictures.net)

Wow… Check Out This New Tech That Helps Kids With Dyslexia to Read

This is cool. It’s a device that you scan over text and it reads it to you. I’ve never used it, and I can’t endorse it, and I can’t even say that this is anything much different from technology that’s already out there. (Smart phones will read text, for example). 

But I love that two people with dyslexia are out there trying to innovate, trying to do something different, trying to change people’s perceptions of what it means to have dyslexia. The founders are husband and wife team, Jamee and Payden Miller.

Side note: The company behind the Read ‘n Style pen, Hidden Abilities, recently won an Award for Entrepreneurship by the co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak. 

Here’s a little explainer from the Hidden Abilities website: 

The idea for the Read ‘n Style pen began when Jamee was in elementary school. Like many others, she struggled with reading. When Jamee had homework, she went to her mom for help, and the two of them would sit at the kitchen table taking turns reading. Jamee would read a page out loud and her mom read the next to her. They would repeat this process back and forth until they were finished. When it was her mom’s turn to read, Jamee would follow along with her, reading the words on the page as her mom pronounced them out loud. Seeing the words, then listening to them pronounced helped Jamee understand what she was reading, improved her spelling, and built her vocabulary.

How Many Prisoners Have Dyslexia? We Don’t Know, But It’s Probably A Lot

Roughly one-third of prison inmates are functionally illiterate. 

That’s according to a new survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. 

That’s one out of every three people behind bars has trouble reading, or grasping concepts presented in what they read. Compare that with the general population, which is roughly one out of four.

The results are even worse for math skills – over half of all prisoners can’t do basic things with numbers. 

But what’s most fascinating is the absence of key data. There’s not a single mention of the word “dyslexia” – even though it’s likely the reason why a large portion of prisoners can’t read well enough to get or maintain a job. 

Dr. Sally Shaywitz works at the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. She estimates that about 20 percent of the general population has dyslexia. Others guess between 10 and 15 percent. It’s not really known because there’s no consistency behind diagnostic procedures, and there’s no universally recognized definition of dyslexia (though there have been efforts to change that), which is a condition where people have trouble connecting sounds with letters and words on a page.

So if 20 percent of the general population is functionally illiterate, according to the NCES report; and by Shaywitz’s estimate, 20 percent of people have dyslexia, it would not be a huge leap to connect this illiteracy to this condition. 

By comparison, if more people in prison can’t read, it’s highly likely that more people in prison have dyslexia, which also comes with a unique set of strengths, such problem solving ability, spatial awareness, and out-of-the-box thinking. 

In fact, there are many successful entrepreneurs who have the condition. Some say it’s because of dyslexia that they’ve found success. 

This means that our failure to understand dyslexia, and the failure of school systems to try to understand it on their own, has undoubtedly caused many students to fall into a life of antisocial behavior. It’s a large, and completely undiscussed, contributor to the rampant school-to-prison pipeline. 

Maybe one day there will be data to support this. And when that happens, you can bet I’ll be one of the first to report on it. 

Ninth grade

beeps-bravely-through-her-fear:

Ninth graders will tell off-topic lunatic stories with such intensity and passion that you can’t help but get caught up in their nonsense.

They are silly and scared.

Ninth graders will wait to whisper-ask if they can use the bathroom. They will also fart with abandon while giggling. They are afraid to say the word “sex” but gleefully discuss Melanthius’s mangled genitals in The Odyssey.

Ninth graders will leave cough drops on your desk when you are not feeling well. They get nervous if you’re absent, even if you tell them the day before “I am going to be absent tomorrow.”

Ninth graders are slowly understanding the world around them. “If they’re lying about the buggers in Ender’s Game,” they say, “does that mean all governments lie to keep their people under control?” You are quiet. They put their head down.

You are going to break their hearts this year.

Ninth graders blush when talking to you. They might be a little in love, in a removed, chaste way. You are an aunt, a wise cousin, a mysterious neighbor. They will crimp their hair and draw on their wrists. They like that you’re a nerd. They imagine meeting your dog. They want to perform for you.

Ninth graders cry when Tom Robinson is killed. They get so angry at Capulet and Tybalt. They hate Napoleon and wish for Snowball to come back to run the farm. They think Telemachus whines too much and that no one should be handicapped like in Harrison Bergeron. They believe George and Lennie could’ve run.

“But this was written a while ago,” they reason. “Things are different now.”

That one kid picks his head up. “Not that different.”

Ninth graders will one day be older. Please, please. You need to save this world. I am counting on you to save this world.

Great look into a freshman class! 

Study Suggests Listening Skills Can Predict a Child’s Ability to Read

Researchers from Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory found that a 30-minute listening test given to three-year-olds is a strong predictor of how well that child will learn to read. It can also help figure out if the child will develop a learning disability. 

Nina Kraus, director of the lab, says this is a big step forward toward better understanding the complex mechanisms associated with reading and listening to sounds.  

Kraus told KQED that this discovery could help schools and parents figure out how to allocate resources early on.

“There are excellent interventions we can give to struggling readers during crucial pre-school years, but the earlier the better,” said Kraus, a professor of communication sciences, neurobiology and physiology in the School of Communication. “The challenge has been to identify which children are candidates for these interventions, and now we have discovered a way.”

Kraus suggests parents and teachers can create spaces that would help some vulnerable children overcome any literacy challenges they might face. Here are some things you can do, according to KQED: 

1.  Reduce noise
2.  Read aloud
3.  Encourage children to play a musical instrument
4.  Listen to audiobooks and podcasts
5.  Support learning a second language
6.  Avoid white noise machines
7.  Use the spread of technology to your advantage

Here’s Kraus giving a speech called “Breaking the Wall to Neuro-education: How the neuroscience of sound, language and music shapes human communication.”: 

(Photo via HearingReview.com)

How Are Kids Learning in a ‘Post-Truth’ World?

It’s official – Oxford Dictionaries have named “post-truth” as the word of the year for 2016. It’s an adjective, meaning: “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

  From the Oxford University Press: 

The concept of post-truth has been in existence for the past decade, but Oxford Dictionaries has seen a spike in frequency this year in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States. It has also become associated with a particular noun, in the phrase post-truth politics.

Here’s a graphic that explains it a little: 

Soooo, what the heck does that mean for schools? Canadian teacher Andrew Campbell wrote an insightful piece about this very idea. Here’s a snippet: 

There’s considerable evidence that, contrary to conventional wisdom, people do not naturally seek truth. Rather than gathering facts and forming opinions based on evidence, most people form opinions and then accept or reject facts based on whether they confirm their beliefs. …

A second factor is the existence of filter bubbles. Eli Pariser first explained how search algorithms use personal information (e.g. location, past click behaviour, search history, etc.) to shape what information is provided to users. This means that a search is likely to provide results that confirm what you already believe, even if what you believe is wrong. …

Currently, most educators seem to be walking their students into a Post-Truth future. Schools embrace the role of filter bubbles and the democratization of expertise, teaching students that using Google is an essential 21st Century Competency and encouraging the use of social media as a trusted source of information.

If, however, we believe truth is important, we must formally and explicitly begin to teach students about the digital world they are entering. All citizens need to be aware about the role algorithms play in what they read on their screens, and there’s no better group to start this with than students…

We also need to start helping students understand the value of a free and independent media. … Students must become thoughtful activists of Internet content. Algorithms are built on user behaviour, so if we change our behaviour we can change what we see.

This is a real thing that’s happening. Emotional reaction has replaced informed decision-making. That’s always been a problem, but it’s exacerbated by an over-saturation of information that preys on stereotypes and fears. Schools are ground zero for mitigating this dangerous trend, and teaching students how to think critically, and for themselves, is step one in this process. 

Check Out This Ad for a Special Education Director in Las Vegas

You can’t make this stuff up. One of the hardest jobs in the education world, and the demands are three short sentences long. I hope this charter school finds much more than they’re looking for. 

Check out the ad for yourself.