Category Archives: Failed schools education college corruption

Public School Costs/Results

Posted on by

It would be important for all owners of real estate regardless of whether there are school aged children to ask some hard questions of the respective school system. Chicago is a symptom of a big problem where results are quite questionable.

The Real Cost of CPS Borrowing: District Now Owes $38,000 per Student

ManhattanInstitute: By all accounts, Chicago Public Schools has made significant academic progress over the last 15 years. Since 2003 the district’s proficiency rates on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam have more than doubled in math and have nearly doubled in reading.

But this progress is now threatened by severe financial mismanagement. The district faces a budget crisis driven by the rising cost of past, unpaid bills that is crowding out spending on today’s teachers and students.

CPS’ budget crisis was not created overnight. For more than a decade, the district has struggled with a widening structural budget deficit. Since 2001, inflation-adjusted spending per pupil increased by nearly 40 percent. In 2001, CPS spent close to $12,000 per student; in 2015, $16,432. Yet revenue has not kept pace: CPS per-pupil revenue has not matched per-pupil spending, with revenue falling short, on average, by $1,000 per pupil since 2001. More recently, the revenue gap has widened to nearly $3,000 per year.

CPS has papered over its annual shortfalls by borrowing vast sums from bond markets. As a result, CPS bonds are now rated as “junk” and the district has to pay a huge premium to get anyone to buy them (three times the rate for benchmark government bonds).

What’s more, by failing to make the necessary pension contributions, CPS has borrowed even larger amounts from its current and former teachers through the pension fund—today the district owes the fund billions upon billions. CPS owes bondholders and the pension fund more than $38,000 for every student, up from less than $10,000 in 2001.

Rising debt service costs are beginning to take a real bite out of district resources. And CPS has scrambled to keep pace while protecting classroom spending. Since 2011, CPS has made nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in budget cuts “away from the classroom,” with administrative and programmatic spending hit especially hard. Nevertheless, from 2001 to 2015, annual per-pupil inflation-adjusted spending has been hit hard as well:

  • Spending on textbooks has declined by 36 percent.
  • Spending on classroom supplies has fallen by nearly 60 percent.
  • Budgets for elementary school sports (coaching stipends and equipment) have been cut by the millions.
  • Annual per-pupil spending on capital repairs and replacement has dropped by 55 percent.

Because the majority of a school district’s spending is on salaries and benefits, there is only so much that can be cut beyond that. Which is why Chicago’s teachers are feeling the budgetary pressure. Since 2001, CPS teacher salaries, as a share of total CPS spending, have fallen by more than 10 percentage points, while pension contributions have jumped, from 2 percent of total CPS spending to more than 10 percent.

Teachers’ retirement benefits have also been reduced. Changes for new teachers instituted in 2011 represent an average total compensation cut of about 10 percent compared with teachers who began working before the changes took effect. For career teachers the drop is even larger—representing a reduction of more than 40 percent of the total potential benefit value.

There are only three ways to right CPS’ sinking financial ship: Secure additional revenue, reduce teachers’ retirement benefits, or cut services for current students. Start with revenue. Given that the Legislature is mired in a long-running budget standoff, securing significant additional state aid seems unlikely. Raising more local revenue faces another constraint: Chicago’s property tax increases are capped at the rate of inflation.

As for cuts to retiree benefits, the Illinois Supreme Court has prohibited pension reductions for all but future hires, thereby disallowing even the modest changes to teachers’ benefits. For these reasons, major service cuts to Chicago’s public schools—however undesirable—appear most plausible.

Did you Know the EPA has a SuperFund?

Posted on by

     

EPA’s Superfund program is responsible for cleaning up some of the nation’s most contaminated land and responding to environmental emergencies, oil spills and natural disasters. To protect public health and the environment, the Superfund program focuses on making a visible and lasting difference in communities, ensuring that people can live and work in healthy, vibrant places.

There are well regulations. Since when are they followed?

Superfund Regulations

The National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (NCP) defines the organizational structure and procedures for preparing for and responding to discharges of oil and releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, and contaminants in the United States. The NCP was developed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in response to the congressional enactment of The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) of December 11, 1980, as amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA), and by section 311(d) of the Clean Water Act (CWA). This page contains links to other EPA Web pages with simplified explanations of the Superfund regulatory process. Other links access Code of Federal Regulations that document the technical considerations and requirements of CERCLA and the NCP.

Enforcement activities related to the Superfund Division at EPA Headquarters is overseen by the Office of Site Remediation Enforcement (OSRE), a division of the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.

The history of the Superfund: Since 1980, EPA’s Superfund program has helped protect human health and the environment by managing the cleanup of the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites and responding to local and nationally significant environmental emergencies. Below you will find a timeline highlighting some of the most notable milestones in the history of the Superfund and other cleanup programs.

So are they going to pay for the spill that contaminated the river or for the water crisis in Flint, Michigan?

There are secret meetings too!

STAR CHAMBER: EPA Holding Secret Meetings to Decide How to Dole out Billions in Illegal Slush Funds by

Two internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) committees secretly control how billions of dollars are spent, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has found.

Congress appropriates about $1 billion annually for EPA’s Superfund program, and the agency has accumulated nearly $6.8 billion in more than 1,300 slush fund-like accounts since 1990.

No mention of that on their website but check this out:

Supplemental Environmental Projects at Ammonia Facilities in Arizona and California

ammonia sign

Ammonia Sign

Two ammonia refrigeration facilities have volunteered to complete Supplementary Environmental Projects (SEPs), that will benefit their surrounding communities, as part of enforcement settlements with EPA. The SEPs will enhance the emergency response capabilities of local fire and hazardous materials response teams in the immediate areas of the facilities and will also include compliance outreach in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Dole Packaged Foods in Atwater, California (map) and Rousseau Farming Company in Tolleson, Arizona (map) both had releases of ammonia in 2006 and failed to immediately notify the proper authorities, violations of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act (EPCRA), and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA). In addition to the release reporting violations, Dole failed to develop standard operating procedures for the ammonia system where the release occurred, constituting a violation of the Clean Air Act (CAA).

“We are pleased that both Dole and Rousseau have acknowledged their violations and recognized their responsibility to improve safety practices in their communities. Supplemental environmental projects are an excellent mechanism for companies to demonstrate good corporate citizenship and to fulfill their responsibilities under the law” -Daniel A. Meer, EPA Region 9’s Response, Planning and Assessment Branch Chief

As part of the SEP, Rousseau will spend $15,000 on 14 suits for the Tolleson Fire Department to use when responding to chemical fires. This is in addition to a $65,045 penalty. Dole will spend a total of $86,930 for the penalty and $12,000 on a compliance training and $53,000 on emergency response equipment for Merced County.

DOJ: Lawyers Behind the N. Carolina Bathroom Lawsuit

Posted on by

Radicals….throughout the whole Justice Department but here are the backgrounds of those who Loretta Lynch has assigned to sue North Carolina on the bathroom (genderless) lawsuit. Terrifying….

The Justice Department sent out the guidance letter to public schools in several languages and that document is here.

This is a matter placed under Title IX, Sex Discrimination.

By the way, make sure you use proper words as you could be sued in this regard as well.

A sign marks the entrance to a gender-neutral restroom at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vt.

These Are the Radical DOJ Lawyers Suing North Carolina Over Transgender Bathroom Use

By J. Christian Adams

PJ Media published the Every Single One series in 2011. The series documented the Obama administration’s hiring of radical lawyers to fill the career ranks in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

Every single one of the new attorney hires were radical leftists or partisans.

Since 2011, the situation has only gotten worse. Much worse.

The Civil Rights Division exercises enormous power over the everyday lives of Americans: they are involved in employment, education, housing, religious liberty, abortion, prisons, policing, and much, much more.

The radical beliefs of these radical lawyers have turned into radical administration policies.

The most recent example? The lawsuits aimed at North Carolina intended to create a federal civil right for men to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.

We have already provided the resumes of the new lawyers who will oversee the 2016 elections. Now let’s meet the ones who want to oversee bathrooms.

———————————-

The complaint filed by North Carolina had Justice Department lawyers from the Employment Litigation section as well as other DOJ Civil Rights Division sections.

Chief Delora Kennebrew

The Employment Section is headed by Delora Kennebrew.

Kennebrew hails from Savannah, Georgia. She was president of the Black Law Student Association at Mercer University’s law school in Macon.

Under Kennebrew, the Employment Section has pursued case after case against fire departments and other municipal entities, forcing them to abandon qualification tests where blacks and Hispanics scored lower than whites. Other settlements have forced municipalities to pay tens of thousands of dollars for using qualification tests for fire and police jobs.

One case she oversaw against Austin, Texas, forced the city to set aside 30 jobs for black and Hispanic applicants.

Kennebrew is listed as the point of contact in the letter North Carolina received from the Justice Department this month. That means she is the central manager on the matter.

Kennebrew is most certainly a member of the Senior Executive Service. That means that an incoming Trump administration can move her after January 2017 to any other federal agency in any part of the country, such as the National Weather Service in Duluth.

————————-

Candyce Phoenix

Candyce Phoenix is also on the complaint suing North Carolina.

Her resume noted her senior thesis was devoted to a “case study of race and FedEx field,” the football stadium where the Washington Redskins play.

Phoenix majored in “Comparative Ethnic Studies” at Columbia, where she was a columnist for the student newspaper. You can read her writings here. Her favorite topics? Race, race, and race.

In a column titled “Hear Ye, Hear Ye, All Negroes,” she wrote about President George Bush’s “bogus” visit to Howard University:

[Bush] was ecstatic to be able to visit the Negroes on such an important occasion. Needless to say, Bush was not well received, which was to be expected given his recent two percent approval rating among African Americans. One of my classmates said it best when she complained that having Bush on campus was “like inviting the master to the slave cabins for dinner.”

Phoenix also penned “It Was Raining Oreos,” which refers to former RNC Chairman Michael Steele with a racial epithet. She wrote “What I Learned from White People at Howard” (she learned the best ones are “race traitors”). She also wrote “I’m Black,” which stated: “Our curriculum places disproportionate importance on white scholars and effectively denies the importance of scholars of color.”

Yes, yes, we heard it all before. But these are the sort of views held by lawyers earning six-figure taxpayer-funded salaries to fundamentally transform America.

The race-soaked discontent with America no longer is confined to crackpots on campus.

Candyce Phoenix Candyce Phoenix

Phoenix’s qualifications didn’t end with her tiresome critical race studies dogma. She was an activist from the start. Phoenix served as the “United Students of Color Campus Liaison” at Columbia — a real office.

She served as the events chair for the American Constitution Society, a left-wing lawyers club that has mostly failed in its efforts to match the heft and influence of the Federalist Society. She worked with the left-wing “Election Protection” organization, which funnels potential plaintiffs toward civil rights organizations.

She also did a stint with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, an organization that routinely fights election integrity laws like Voter ID. (Thankfully, those efforts have recently failed, such as in North Carolina.)

Now, buckle up:

After a Danish cartoonist was nearly murdered by an Islamist with an axe, Phoenix wrote to the Washington Post:

[D]o Muslims really have avenues to express their discontent by what we consider normal democratic means? And if they do, do we listen?

Phoenix started at DOJ less than a year ago, which means she hasn’t vested into civil service protections and can also be moved by a new administration.

Alisa Philo

Philo, hired in October 2015, was co-president of Women of Stanford Law, an organization with a “Social Justice Committee” that organizes “donation based efforts and social justice programing” at Stanford Law School.

Alisa Philo

Philo clerked for First Circuit Court of Appeal Judge Sandra Lynch (appointed by Clinton) and federal Judge Keith Ellison (Clinton). Philo also began her tenure at Justice less than a year ago; she too has not vested her employment.

———————————

Nadia Said

Said was a fellow at Equal Justice America, but her real Civil Rights Division bona fides came from her time spent at the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.

The Chicago Lawyers’ Committee was originally designed to end official discrimination, but it has since morphed into a Tides Foundation, Soros-funded leftist organization pushing radical legal theories.

The group has opposed election-integrity measures. It has deployed teams of lawyers to polling locations ostensibly to protect voting rights, but in practice to aid Democrats.

—————————–

Christina Cheung

Christina Cheung says she worked as a political consultant prior to her hiring at the Justice Department in 2015. Since becoming a Justice Department lawyer, she has also become a Hillary Clinton donor. When working with Gloria Allred in private practice, Cheung was involved in attempts to torque campus sexual assault cases against universities such as Boise State.

Christina Cheung

That complaint said colleges are required to “take proactive measures to prevent sexual harassment and violence,” and that “the mere presence” of an accused perpetrator on campus “gives rise to a sexually hostile atmosphere.”

—————————

Richard Sexton

Sexton came to the Justice Department from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision. While at the EEOC, he brought cases against businesses such as Service Master, Terminix, Subway franchises, and prison management companies.

Richard Sexton

————————————

Catherine Sellers

Sellers worked at “Legal Voice,” a group in Seattle dedicated to “transgender rights,” “protecting reproductive justice,” and “advancing economic justice.”

The resume Sellers submitted to the Justice Department for employment consideration documents her time at the Yale University Art Gallery. Wrote Sellers:

Recruited diverse student groups to co-host gallery events and organized “Yale Liberal Party debate on art repatriation, Day With(out) Art” event recognizing LBGT artists and a collaborative tour focusing on women’s issues.

She was involved in the Immigrant Families Advocacy Project, a group dedicated to providing legal services to illegal aliens.

See below: the Justice Department does not want you to see her entire resume. They redacted a portion pertaining to “interests”:

Catherine Sellers

———————————

Kunti Dudakia Salazar

Kunti Dudakia Salazar was an A-team leftist activist before she came to the Justice Department in June of 2015. She graduated summa cum laude with a Woman’s Studies degree from UCLA. There, she was active in both the African student union as well as the Indian student union. She also won the Constance Coiner award for “research on feminist/working class issues.”

Kunti Dudakia Salazar

At law school in Berkeley, she was a founding member of the “Women of Color Collective,” a group dedicated to providing “a supportive space for African-American, Asian-American, Latina, Native-American, and other women and transgender students of color.” Hard to imagine that could have been in short supply at Berkeley.

The Facebook page for the organization toggles between farce and frightening, reframing the student experience through the lens of race and oppression.

She also worked for the Henderson Center for Social Justice on issues “regarding black women, mental health and incarceration,” and served as the “activist coordinator” for the “Berkeley Critical Race Studies Scholars Society.”

She worked for the ACLU in Los Angeles on “racial profiling” and “police misconduct” issues.

The Justice Department also redacted her interests, as well as the name of a professor — David Sklansky — with whom she worked on a law review article.

Dudakia Salazar began her time at the Justice Department in June 2015, and thus her probationary period has not yet ended.

—————————-

Stay tuned to learn about the other Civil Rights Division sections suing North Carolina over trans rights.

Psst, Another Scandal, Thomas Pickering/Panama Papers

Posted on by

Who is Tom Pickering? He is the fella that Hillary tapped to do the Accountability Review Board Report on Benghazi. And, thanks to my buddy Clare Lopez, former CIA, she authored a white paper on ol’ Thomas and his pro-Iran lobby.

Pickering was also part of a secret group to lobby the lifting of sanctions on Iran. The White House lobby operation for Iran was huge, well funded and full of collusion.

Well, there is more to Mr. Pickering.

Panama Papers detail how ex-ambassador helped Russian company

McClatchy:  WASHINGTON ~ MarisaTaylor: As Russian software company Luxoft prepared to offer shares on the U.S. stock market, its executives turned to a well-known U.S. diplomat.

Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who also served as undersecretary of state for political affairs under President Bill Clinton, agreed in May 2013 to be a director of Luxoft Holding Inc. a month before the company’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

 

The relationship between Luxoft and Pickering, whose diplomatic career spans six presidents and four decades, is detailed in the massive Panama Papers leak and comes amid a global debate over the role of offshore companies. Luxoft is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.

Pickering is the highest-level former U.S. official to be identified as involved in a Panama Papers offshore company so far. The papers, which were leaked from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca to an international group of reporters, including the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and McClatchy, have already revealed that former and current world leaders had offshore companies and have led to criminal inquiries around the globe, including in the United States.

However, nothing appears illegal or unethical about Pickering’s role, experts said. Pickering said in an interview that he had disclosed his role on Luxoft’s board to the State Department as required under government ethics rules.

“I disclosed about 150 interests, including that I was on this board,” he said. “It is a Russian company and – obviously for tax reasons or otherwise – incorporated itself in Tortola, the British Virgin Islands. That I knew. And I didn’t see any problem with that.”

He also said he’d donated his compensation from the company to charity.

Luxoft declined to comment. “As a public company we do not respond to unsolicited enquiries of this nature,” Natasha Ziabkina, general counsel of Luxoft Group, wrote in an email to McClatchy. “Any material information about our company is disclosed through our publicly available securities filings.”

Pickering said he’d also disclosed his role and had donated compensation when he served until about four years ago on the board of TMK, a Russian manufacturer and exporter of steel pipes for the oil and gas industry.

 

“I’ve been very careful in my dealings with the boards,” Pickering said.

Pickering said he had been approached to be on Luxoft’s board years before the company went public on the British and American stock exchanges, by a Luxoft executive he’d known while he was senior vice president of international relations for Boeing Co. from 2000 to 2006. Boeing was a client of Luxoft.

“I got to know them and I got to know the man who ran Luxoft,” Pickering said. “Years ago, he said if we go on the London market or on the U.S. would I join their board. I said in principle I would.”

 

After the company went public in London, Pickering said, he looked into the company and decided to join the board. He also serves on Luxoft’s audit committee.

Pickering was appointed director of Luxoft Holding at a time when the company still had ties to one of Russia’s biggest banks, VTB Bank. Rus Lux Limited, the VTB-linked company, had a 10.2 percent stake in Luxoft.

Luxoft has generally performed well since its formation. It was among the best-performing major Russian companies on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. And earlier this month it reported that its fourth-quarter revenue had increased 23.2 percent over the previous year.

In the Mossack Fonseca documents, Luxoft reassures the law firm in December 2015 that Rus Lux had sold its shares before the U.S government sanctioned VTB in July 2014. The U.S. Treasury Department issued the sanctions against VTB and other Russian banks in response to Russia’s role in the Ukrainian conflict.

“Rus Lux Limited was a minority shareholder a long time ago,” wrote Ziabkina, general counsel of Luxoft Group. “They fully divested and sold their shares in Luxoft Holding in November 2013 before the sanctions took effect.”

New York University law professor Stephen Gillers said he didn’t see any ethical problem with Pickering’s relationship with Luxoft.

“What else is new?” asked Gillers. “Yes, people sometimes use their former government experience to do exactly this.”

Jay Ritter, a University of Florida business professor, said Luxoft’s inclusion of Pickering on its board was not unusual for foreign companies gearing up for an initial public stock offering in the U.S.

“When you’re dealing with a company in Russia – whether they’ve got to set it up in the British Virgin Islands or not, there’s a required leap of faith for investors,” said Ritter, an expert on IPOs. “Appointing someone like Pickering to the board gives a certain amount of credibility because he’s got his personal reputation at stake. Presumably, he doesn’t want to get involved with something that’s obviously sleazy.”

Pickering has served as the U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria and Jordan, and to the United Nations.

Luxoft also disclosed his role in its public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has its operating headquarters in Switzerland.

State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to comment on the Panama Papers.

Kirby said Pickering was required to file financial disclosure forms with the State Department because he served as one of 25 members of the first Foreign Affairs Policy Board.

The board was launched in December 2011 to provide the secretary of state and senior department officials with independent advice on U.S. foreign policy.

Pickering served a two-year term on the board from December 2011 to December 2013. He returned to the board in 2014 and remains a member. Members of the Foreign Affairs Policy Board do not work full time as members of the board, but in an advisory capacity.

The former ambassador also chaired the Accountability Review Board, which investigated the 2012 fatal attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including an ambassador. The panel concluded in its December 2012 report that security at the facility in Benghazi was “grossly inadequate,” leading to the suspension of four State Department officials. They were reinstated by Secretary of State John Kerry in August 2013.

Pickering continued to offer advice to the Obama administration, according to emails that the State Department released during a controversy over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Pickering wasn’t compensated for any position, Kirby said.

 

Meanwhile, the Refugee Crisis in Germany

Posted on by

Attacks on refugee homes soar in Germany: official data

BERLIN (AFP) – Germany recorded nearly 1,000 far-right offences targeting refugee shelters last year, a five-fold annual rise amid a record influx of asylum seekers, the government said Monday.

Presenting the figures, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said he did not expect a lull in 2016.

Some 923 offences against refugees and refugee facilities were recorded in 2015, against 175 the previous year, according Interior Ministry statistics on political crime in Germany.

These included 177 acts of violence — including three attempted killings — and hundreds of non-violent acts such as painting graffiti, the use of Nazi symbols and incitements to hatred.

“The refugee topic was of course the focus of politically motivated crime” last year, when Germany took in over one million asylum seekers, the minister told a Berlin press conference.

“A decline in the number of political crimes is not to be expected in 2016 unfortunately,” he said, adding that in this year’s first quarter there had been 347 crimes against refugee centres.

De Maiziere said that in 90 percent of far-right crimes the perpetrators were men, that three quarters were aged 18 to 30, and that most lived close to the crime scene and nearly half were previously unknown to police.

Far-left offences increased by 18 percent in 2015 to 9,600, including 2,246 acts of violence — an increase of nearly 35 percent — mostly targeting right-wing political opponents or police.

**** Forcing a positive spin on a real bad condition where teachers face difficult conditions. A 4 part series.

Inside Syrian Refugee Schools: Syrian Children in Germany

Brookings: Posted on the main entrance to a small village school in Germany is a plain piece of paper with clear black writing. It requests the help of school families to provide for the “new arrivals,” to please send in coats and shoes. At this school, the new arrivals are 14 refugees and asylum seekers. The paper is covered in its entirely with tape, making it waterproof and durable. It is not going anywhere soon.

Despite the permanence with which school staff perceives the presence of refugees and asylum seekers, the situation is anything but stable. On the day that we visited, a new boy arrived from Syria. His hair was slicked back, and he smelled sweetly of his father’s cologne. He joined the 13 other students in this class, set up exclusively for new arrivals. Two of them, a brother and a sister, described traveling almost entirely by foot from Afghanistan. Another Syrian girl told her teacher that the adults on her boat had intentionally punctured it, hoping for rescue and asylum and to avoid refoulement and possible death. The danger of the sea was worth the possibility of safety on dry land in Europe.

In 2015, the German government reported 467,649 formal asylum applications, as well as the arrival of many more as yet unregistered asylum seekers. A much smaller, yet unconfirmed, number of asylum seekers has been granted refugee status, which presents a possible pathway toward permanent residence.

More than one- third of these asylum seekers have origins in Syria. Despite the legal and administrative limbo in which Syrian refugee families find themselves in Germany, all Syrian children with asylum status can access German schools.

As occurs in so many countries with large influxes of refugees and asylum seekers, German schools are now overwhelmed. Schools do not have enough teachers. And, as we documented in Lebanon, teachers in Germany also lack training in how they might meet the needs of their new students, with little knowledge of how to work with language learners or overaged students, or to address issues of trauma. Perhaps they should take Languala German Lessons in Delhi or maybe take online course instead.

However, as we also observe in Lebanon and other refugee-hosting countries, German schools are developing multiple, flexible approaches to educating refugees and asylum seekers. We visited two such models in central Germany: One school integrated the children into existing classrooms and another created a separate classroom for children of all ages.

The first school had been serving migrant children, primarily from Turkey, for decades. The school itself exuded a sense of stability, its golden bricks standing three stories, in stark contrast to the surrounding stucco and concrete of post-war construction. The teacher in the class we observed had more than 10 years of experience working with German language learners and children in economic and legal limbo. She created situations in which children could learn about each other and also about their new home. In a cozy corner of the classroom, on chairs and cushions, students discussed what they did over the weekend. The teacher engaged with what the students shared, patiently explaining a traditional German meal that one student had cooked, what a birthday party might entail, and where a family might go walking. She even explained in Persian when one student did not understand.

The children shared universals experiences as well like Mindcraft, Barbie, and playing with brothers and sisters. When sharing was over, children quietly went back to their seats and took out folders that contained learning materials developed to suit their particular language and developmental stages. The teacher walked around the room, helping where needed, checking in, and tailoring her teaching to the very different needs of each child.

The second school, the same one with the sign asking families to send in coats and shoes, faced a different set of challenges. This school was in a village outside an urban area, close to vacant housing made available to new arrivals. The young principal didn’t have experience with migrant students, but he has made creative use of what’s available. He used funds from various sources to hire a new teacher, who had expertise in teaching German and working with students who have speech difficulties.

This teacher had a classroom full of refugee students from ages 6 to 12. Like the teacher from the first school, she focused her attention on building relationships. The day we visited, she commended a student, who was often late, for arriving at school on time. She placed a gift on the desk of the student whose mother had just had a baby. As a language lesson, she was leading the class in learning the names of the rooms in a house. A beautiful poster of a “typical” German house was at the front of the room and children took turns pointing to the rooms and using verbs to describe the activities that went on in each one. When a student used the verb “sleep” for the living room, the teacher initially said no—the bedrooms were clearly labeled. Staring into confused faces, the teacher seemed to realize that some of the students might indeed sleep in the living room.

It’s scenarios like these that teachers need training and preparation for since refugees and asylum seekers face different circumstances, both at home and in classroom, than other students.

But unlike most countries that host large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers, Germany has a stable education system with students who score among the top in the world on international assessments. Still, educating their newest students will require more teachers and also ongoing training on how to create stable, long-term learning environments where refugees and asylum seekers can thrive.