Co-Founder/Co-ED of @MESACharter | Father & Husband | Believer & Advocate for parent choice in schools | Kids deserve normalcy | New Yorker | Tweets mine.
Jun 4, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
A brief 🧵 on class size. Intuitively, I understand why people think it’s a great intervention, but like with many things in education, it’s more complicated than that. 1/ ny.chalkbeat.org/2022/5/31/2314…
"When you reduce class sizes, you need to form more classes.. [If] the new teachers [a school] hires are of average capabilities, that could be a downgrade in teacher quality if the existing teachers were talented veterans. 2/
Those arguing for schools to stay remote cite mostly two reasons: safety and staffing. These are related, but not the same. Let’s briefly look at each: 1/7
If schools close for a week, do the cascading effects make people safer or more exposed? Many parents will either have to lose a week’s wages to care for their kids or pay for childcare. For those at the economic margins, that additional $ is consequential. 2/7
Dec 30, 2021 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
One of the hardest things for me to wrap my head around is how people who genuinely care about equity in education also advocate for remote instruction. Here are three districts that are going remote through (at least) mid-January: 1/
Patterson, NJ:
👉 95% Students of color
👉 22 % English Language Learners
👉 15.5% Identified Special Education Eligible
👉(% eligible for free lunch not available)
2/
Dec 12, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I decided to start a thread of school-based COVID restrictions that make no sense even by their own internal logic. I’ll throw out a few, but feel free to add your own. It’s like the 12 days of Christmas, but for people who say “kids are resilient.”
1. Everything in this article. If actually exposed to a positive case in school, these vaccinated wrestlers wouldn't have to quarantine. But they're not allowed to wrestle against asymptomatic competitors who *might* not be vaccinated? nytimes.com/2021/12/09/nyr…
Dec 11, 2021 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
My first job in schools was as a college counselor in a BK charter school. I knew I had been really fortunate that my family had the resources to send me to high-quality schools, and I believed all children deserved a great education. I still do—it’s my life’s work. 1/
When I started, I thought the SAT was meaningless. It was just a proxy for income. I thought of “test prep” and “learning” as two completely different things. Since high SAT scores would help our students get into college, we hired Kaplan to provide tutoring. 2/
Dec 4, 2021 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the disconnect that can occur between policy-makers and practitioners (as a school leader, I’ve been both). A policy can be extremely well-conceived, but if it can’t be well-executed it’s ineffective at best and harmful at worst 1/X
Right now in NYC schools, everyone—adults and children—is supposed to wear a well-fitting mask at all times. I’m not sure what this is like in other buildings, but from what I’ve seen, it’s not happening. 2/X
Nov 13, 2021 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
If you support the most restrictive masking policies in schools—masking children under 6, masking outside during recess, making kids eat outside in the cold or face forward silently—whose health is it you’re protecting? 1/X
Are you protecting young kids? We’re really lucky. Unvaccinated kids are safer at than vaccinated adults. With recent approval of the vaccine for children, they’ll be even safer. But they were pretty safe already. 2/X newsweek.com/vaccine-childr…
Nov 2, 2021 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
Today, like many others, I took the #masklikeakid challenge. Was it the worst experience of my life? No. It was annoying. The mask grew itchy & damp. I had to repeat myself so ppl could understand me. I was delighted to take it off when I was able to. Some thoughts: 1/X
As @appletozuchinni notes, it’s not truly possible to mask like a kid. I have agency. No one is going to yell at me if it slips. I know I can always stop doing this. I also don’t have sensory processing issues, auditory issues, or many other challenges that so many kids do. 2/X
Sep 1, 2021 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
I see this article getting a lot of play here, and want to dive into the complexities a bit. Some of it is really sound, and some of it is quite alarming. Thread that may be a bit more wonkish than the usual ed policy stuff I post. 1/X
nypost.com/2021/08/31/nyc…
The “new concept” of student assessment being described is actually pretty old. It’s called Standards-Based grading. We’ve been using it MESA since we opened. Standards are broken down into learning goals, and students are graded based on their mastery of learning goals. 2/X
Aug 21, 2021 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
This is sad, but while it is new for district 15, a comparatively white, wealthy, district, this is a trend that has been long coming and is bigger than COVID. CAUTION: PROBABLY TOO LONG THREAD 1/X
For years, lower-income districts have been losing school enrollment due to gentrification and competition from charters. Of the 12 school districts in Brooklyn, 9 had lower enrollment in 18-19 than in 13-14. In 7 of those districts, the decline was double figures. 2/X
