Following the school reform money
A teacher in New Jersey who blogs under the name “Jersey Jazzman” does some great work unraveling the mysteries behind school reform. Here is a piece that follows the money and shows just how interconnected the school reform community is. … Continue reading →
Why is Maryland spending millions in public funds for private school books, computers?
There's an interesting item in the 2014 supplemental budget that Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) has submitted: a request for $500,000 in "additional funds for non-public school textbooks."
What is this all about?
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Bill Ayers: Road to Atlanta cheating scandal ‘runs right through White House’
Bill Ayers, a retired professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in no uncertain terms takes aim in this post at federal school policies that led to the Atlanta cheating scandal. Ayers, a radical activist during the 1960s and ’70s, had the national spotlight thrown on him during the 2008 presidential campaign when right-wing commentators tried, incorrectly, to say he had a close relationship with then candidate Barack Obama. In any case, Ayers is a well-known Chicago educator who worked with mayor Richard Daley on school reform and who taught and did research for years at the university. He has written numerous articles and books on elementary education.
By Bill Ayers
The road to the massive cheating scandal in Atlanta runs right through the White House.
The former superintendent, Dr. Beverly L. Hall, and her 34 obedient subordinates now face criminal charges, but the central role played by a group of unindicted and largely unacknowledged co-conspirators, her powerful enablers, is barely noted.
Beyond her “strong relations with the business elite” who reportedly made her “untouchable” in Atlanta (according to this New York Times story), she was a national superstar for more than a decade because her work embodied the shared educational policies of the Bush and Obama administrations. In the testing frenzy that characterized both No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, Dr. Hall was a winner, consistently praised over many years by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for raising test scores, hosted at the White House in 2009 as Superintendent of the Year, and appointed in 2010 by President Obama to the National Board for Education Sciences. When the Atlanta scandal broke in 2011 Secretary Duncan rushed to assure the public that it was “very isolated” and “an easy
Will charter schools survive the confusing charter movement?
There has been a flood of news about charter schools recently, and in the following post, Jeff Bryant, a marketing and communications consultant for nonprofits, tries to make sense of it. Bryant is a marketing and creative strategist with nearly … Continue reading →
The new kindergarten: Kids write ‘informative’ reports
Remember back in the olden days when kindergarteners used to be allowed to learn from playing? Now, in the age of the Common Core State Standards, 4 and 5 year olds are being required to do things such as write “Informative/Explanatory Reports” and identify topic sentences.
It’s happening across the country as part of the school reform movement that has pushed down academics to the kindergarten level, entirely ignoring the fact that many young kids aren’t developmentally ready for this kind of activity. A story in the New York Post says:
Way beyond the ABCs, crayons and building blocks, the city Department of Education now wants 4- and 5-year-olds to write “informative/explanatory reports” and demonstrate “algebraic thinking.”Children who barely know how to write the alphabet or add 2 and 2 are expected to write topic sentences and use diagrams to illustrate math equations.“For the most part, it’s way over their heads,” a Brooklyn teacher said. “It’s too much for