Diane Ravitch's blog
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DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG
Are the Data Scrubbed and Cooked?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 hour ago
A reader wonders about whether the data can be trusted when there are so many reasons to inflate the numbers. She writes: “Merrow finally points out the most explosive point in this memo, one that’s being passed over in commentaries. Fay noted that specific erasure patterns occurred across many classrooms. That would indicate that systematic [...]
Voodoo Education or Zombie Education?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 hour ago
The Chalkface blog says that we have had a steady diet of “miracles” for at least the past dozen years, starting with the “Texas miracle.” He call this Voodoo Education Reform. I tend to see the ideas of the past dozen years, which were percolating the previous 20 or so years, as Zombie Education Reform. [...]
John Merrow on Chris Hayes Discussing Rhee
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 9 hours ago
A reader sent this comment and a link to Chris Hayes’ interview with John Merrow: “MSNBC’s Chris Hayes had John Merrow on his 4/12 evening show, ALL IN and the conversation was simply brutal towards Rhee….Chris very articulately pointed out how M Rhee rose to the top of the Ed Reform movement with only 3 [...]
Strauss: Time to Subpoena Witnesses in DC Cheating Scandal
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 10 hours ago
Valerie Strauss writes that it is time for a thorough investigation of allegations of cheating during the tenure of Michelle Rhee as chancellor. The leaking of the “smoking memo” to John Merrow shows that Rhee apparently was informed of likely cheating but chose not to investigate it. Many questions are unanswered: what did she know [...]
How a School Board Candidate Beat the Billionaires
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 15 hours ago
Please read this statement by Bennett Kayser. He ran against a heavily funded candidate for the Los Angeles school board, and he won. He is a public school parent. He is endorsing Monica Ratliff, because she too is running against the billionaires’ candidate. He believes that the LAUSD school board should have another independent voice. [...]
USA Today on Rhee Cheating Scandal: LINK ADDED, BLAME MY STAFF
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 17 hours ago
USA Today was first to report the cheating scandal in the District of Columbia. Here is the follow-up story by Gregg Toppo, about the memo first leaked to John Merrow. Eventually, the allegations were investigated by the DC Inspector General, who decided not to look at the erasure analysis or to interview many people. It [...]
Tennessee: Starvation Bill Deferred for Now
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 21 hours ago
Good news from Tennessee: The Legislature will not consider a bill to cut the welfare benefits of families whose children do poorly in school. At least not this year. Senator Stacey Campfield took note of the fact that several prominent Republican senators planned to oppose the bill, as did the governor. And Senator Campfield said [...]
Who Is Funding Privatization in Texas?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 21 hours ago
It won’t surprise you to know hat here is a lot of money behind the conservative agenda in Texas. But you might be interested to see the connections between the privatization advocates in Texas and national organizations like ALEC. Julian Heilig Vasquez traces the connections in his series on the Teat, in which he reflects [...]
Florida: Don’t Let a Charter Corporation Steal Your Neighborhood School
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 22 hours ago
Bill Sublette is a former Florida state representative who is now chairman of the Orange County school board. He is a Republican. In this excellent article, he explains how the parent trigger bill, which just passed in the Florida House, will allow charter corporations to grab neighborhood schools, public property paid for by local citizens. [...]
Who Holds State Officials Accountable When They Are WRONG?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 23 hours ago
In a brilliant post, Bruce Baker of Rutgers demonstrates that states are imposing teacher evaluation systems that are flawed. This is what Arne Duncan and Bill Gates demanded, and this is what states are doing. And it is wrong, it is factually wrong. Who will hold Duncan, Gates, and all those state officials accountable? Chris [...]
LA Times: Bill Gates Hath Spoken
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
The Los Angeles Times became notorious in 2010 when it commissioned its own ratings of thousands of teachers in the LAUSD and published them. The newspaper was condemned widely by educators and researchers. Even some who supported such ratings said it was wrong to publish them. The LA Times strongly defended its decision to create [...]
Schneider: Arizona, the Land of Conflicts of Interest
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
Mercedes Schneider takes a close look at Arizona, known as the Wild West of charters. What she finds is a state where the ethics laws are even laxer than those of her home state of Louisiana. The charter sector in Arizona is unregulated, unsupervised, and has a firm lock on the taxpayers’ dollars. Money rules.
G.F. Brandenburg on the Rhee “Smoking Memo”
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
G.F. Brandenburg has covered the reign of Rhee for years. Here he explains the key insights in the memo leaked to John Merrow. His summary: “(1) Rhee gave lots of money to adults who cheated (2) She put impossible pressure on principals to cheat; they, in turn, put that pressure on their teachers (3) The [...]
Breaking News: John Merrow Finds Mystery Memo in Rhee Scandal
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
Someone in the District of Columbia education department leaked a memo to John Merrow about the cheating scandal. The memo warned Chancellor Michelle Rhee about the likelihood of widespread cheating in the DC Public schools. Rhee did not act on it. She should have. The allegations were not investigated. They were brushed aside. This is [...]
Florida: The “Parent Trigger” Scam
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
In this article columnist Daniel Shoer Roth explains how parents at the Desert Trails school in Adelanto, California, were hoodwinked into turning their public school over to a charter operator. Under the Florida proposal, charters can set their own rules for eligibility, and many students will be excluded from the school that once was their [...]
Breaking News: Providence Students Win Major Victory!
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
Congratulations to the Providence Student Union, which exposed the inadequacy of the NECAP (New England Common Assessment Program) as a high school graduation test. As a result of their activism, the Boston Globe today opposed the use of NECAP for that purpose. Instead of just protesting or writing letters to the editor or to elected [...]
Do Bobby Jindal and John White Hate The Poor and Disabled?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
I read this post by Louisiana’s Crazy Crawfish with a sense of disbelief. I could not believe that any human being would expend so much effort to crush the poorest and neediest citizens of his state. Can you believe that John White is going to apply value-added assessments to determine the funding for students with [...]
Ladd to NC Legislature: Do Not Privatize Public Education
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
This article by Helen Ladd of Duke University is absolutely “must” reading. Ladd is a major economist of education. The same article might be written for many states. North Carolina was once renowned for its commitment to public education. But now the legislature is starving the funding for public education: “Per-pupil spending on K-12 education [...]
Comment by a Charter Teacher in Ohio
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
This arrived in response to the post about the poor results of charters in Ohio: “My first teaching job out of university was a charter high school in Toledo. The director’s husband was convicted of stealing public funds and sent to prison. The politically connected company that held the charter cut off the faculty’s health [...]
Comment by a Charter School Teacher
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
In a post today, a comment by a charter school teacher explains the high turnover in charter schools. “Sadly, JUST like the teachers in KIPP, I got a job in a charter school WELL before realizing what this whole “school reform” movement was all about… didn’t know the difference between charter/public/private… and it’s only been [...]
Governor Malloy of Connecticut Opposes School Funding Lawsuit
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
This is a sad reversal for Connecticut’s poorest children. As a candidate for governor, Dannell Malloy supported a lawsuit that would guarantee that the children of the state have a constitutional right to a quality education. Now that he is governor, he is trying to quash the lawsuit he once supported. Go figure.
Burris to Parents: The Common Core Assessments Are “Bunk”
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, New York, explains here why parents should take the results of the new Common Core assessments with more than a grain of salt. They will be used in New York to determine whether students ages 8-14 are “college-ready.” Can you imagine that? A test [...]
Illinois House Blocks Online Charters
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
The Illinois House moved to set a three-year moratorium on virtual charter schools after some suburban districts rejected them. I wonder if the representatives understand that the quality of cyber charters is low, test scores are low, graduation rates are low. And the quality of education is poor. But the companies make big profits.
EduShyster Skewers Mark Zuckerberg
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
Really, EduShyster has done it again. The rich, powerful, and famous end up as toast when skewered by her sharp satirical lance. In this post, she has Wonder Boy Mark Zuckerberg solving the problem of the “skillz gap” by hiring a rightwing operative to run a national campaign. This campaign will use our public schools [...]
The Big Money Behind Parent Revolution
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
You have no doubt heard the story of Parent Revolution. That is the group that wants to “empower” parents to seize control of their schools so they can turn it overto a charter operator. The founder of Parent Revolution previously worked for Green Dot charters. Then he got funded by Walton, Gates, and Broad to [...]
Gary Rubinstein Visits a KIPP High School and Finds…..
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
By now, we have all read the encomia heaped on KIPP, and we know that KIPP presumably has what Mayor Rahm Emanuel once referred to as the “secret sauce.” That is the extra ingredient that magically turns ordinary kids into scholars bound for Harvard. Gary Rubinstein, ex-TFA, went to visit a KIPP school. He didn’t [...]
Chicago: CPS Underestimates Harm to Children
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
A new report from CReATE, an organization of education researchers in Chicago, says that the Chicago Public Schools dramatically underestimated the number of children who will be affected by the mass elimination of public schools in that city. No one will ever accuse CPS of undue compassion, concern, or attention to the city’s neediest children. [...]
Should Computers Grade Student Essays?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
The New York Times recently reported on the introduction of software that is able to grade student essays and give instant feedback. It is currently being used in a number of universities; many others are likely to follow suit. The student submits an essay and instantly receives a graded response from a computer. The student [...]
Connecticut OKs Charter Executive to State Board
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Jonathan Pelto reports that the Connecticut House approved the nomination of a charter school executive to the State Board of Education. According to his account, Governor Dannell Malloy promised that if she was confirmed, the next two appointments to the state board would be individuals who support public schools, where the vast majority of the [...]
Jersey Jazzman: Is NY Commissioner John King a Hypocrite?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Jersey Jazzman is really steamed about NY State Commissioner John King. Is it because he wants to share the personal, confidential data of ll the state’s public school students with a marketing consortium? Is it because he is pushing the Common Core standards without first determining how they will affect real children? Is it because [...]
An Experienced Principal Answers Jay Mathews
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Jay Mathews wrote that he no longer believes that teachers should be evaluated by test scores. However, he went on to say that teachers should be judged by their principal, and that principal should have the absolute power to hire, pay, judge, and fire teachers at will. If we don’t like the principals, we should [...]
Is There a Corporate School Reform Movement?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
As readers of this blog know, there is a healthy discussion about what to call those who now claim to be “reformers.” In this post, Leo Casey of the Shanker Institute discusses whether there is any such thing as “corporate reform.” Larry Cuban says there is not. Let’s review what I often refer to as [...]
Where the Wolf Voucher Study Went Wrong
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Mercedes Schneider, who holds a Ph.D. In statistics, analyzes Patrick Wolf’s evaluation of the voucher program in Milwaukee. Wolf acknowledges that the voucher program may not have raised student achievement but claims that it increased graduation rates. This “success” was qualified by a high attrition rate. In the initial study, he said that the attrition [...]
Florida Parents Unite to Fight “Parent Trigger”
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Florida parents are united in opposition to a “parent trigger” bill that would advance the interests of charter corporations. Florida already has hundreds of charter schools, many of them run by for-profit corporations. Thus far, the Florida legislature has heard testimony from the California organization Parent Revolution (heavily funded by the pro-privatization Walton Family Foundation), [...]
Connecticut: Why Not Hold “Reformers” Accountable!
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Sarah Darer Littman wonders why some officials are not held accountable. She points to the example of State Commissioner Stefan Pryor and Bridgeport Superintendent Paul Vallas, both of whom used ingenious ploys to avoid competitive bidding on contracts. Shouldn’t accountability be applied uniformly for all public officials?
Petrilli on Testing and Accountability: Mend It, Don’t End It
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Most of the readers of this blog are educators. Most don’t like high-stakes testing and the idea of punishments and rewards based on test scores. Many are ready to throw them both out as an assault on teacher professionalism. Many admire Finland, for example, where standardized testing is a non-issue and American-style accountability is unknown. [...]
Wendy Lecker: Why Do State Officials Ignore the Laws?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Civil rights lawyer can’t understand why state leaders in Connecticut get to choose which laws to follow. They seem to follow the advice of NYC former chancellor Joel Klein, who responded to complaints by saying, “Sue me.” Why the disdain for the law?
Reader: Washington Post Editorial Page Vs. Public Schools
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
This comment was posted by a reader: The Washington Post editorial page has a lengthy recent history of misrepresenting the truth about American public education. Worse, it continues to support and advocate for “remedies” that do little to improve schooling. The lead education editorial writer, Jo-Ann Armao, has made the claim that American public education [...]
Why Test Security Won’t Solve the Problems Created by Bad Policies
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
This article by Daniel Denvir is the best article I have read to date on the Atlanta cheating scandal. The “no excuses” mantra is at the root of policies that incentivized cheating. Atlanta is only the tip of the iceberg. There will be more, and most will go undetected. What distinguished Atlanta was the thoroughness [...]
Bobby Jindal Admits a Mistake
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal backed off his big Thatcherite idea of reforming the tax code. He wanted to eliminate income taxes and corporate taxes and raise sales taxes. That way, the poor would subsidize the rich. But his poll numbers plummeted, and legislators told him that his plan would be defeated, even by his faithful [...]
Indiana University Students Plan Anti-Testing Strike
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
Students at Indiana University’s education school will go on strike on April 11 and 12 to protest the excessive and toxic testing in K-12. As they say in their statement, they are the children of No Child Left Behind. Read the entirety of their statement. Here is an excerpt: “As striking students at Indiana University, [...]
Congratulations, Carol Burris, New York Principal of the Year!
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
Readers of this blog are familiar with the writings of Carol Burris, principal of South Side High a school in Rockville Center, New York. Her fellow principals across the state just named her Principal of the Year.. Carol is a dedicated, passionate educator who is a leader of the fight against the state’s educator evaluation [...]
Bruce Baker Challenges the Logic of Privatization
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
Bruce Baker of Rutgers is one of the wisest and sharpest critics of the privatization movement (aka “reform”). In this post, he analyzes two favorite terms of the privatizers: “relinquishment,” which means “give up,” abandon your antique belief in public education, turn your school over to private management and get over it. The other is [...]
Jonathan Kozol Will Be Honored by FairTest on May 9
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
If you live anywhere near Cambridge, you should plan to attend this FairTest event on May 9 when FairTest will honor Jonathan Kozol. FairTest will present Jonathan with the Deborah W. Meier Award for Heroes in Education for his lifelong commitment to education, children, and human rights. Jonathan is indeed a hero in education. He [...]
Will Connecticut Put a Charter Operator on State Board?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
Jonathan Pelto asks whether the Connecticut House of Representatives will approve the nomination of a charter school executive to the State Board of Education. Governor Dannell Malloy nominated Andrea Comer, the chief operating officer of a charter school to the state board, where she will exercise influence over issues that directly affect her organization, as [...]
Why Texas Is Sick of The Testing Mania
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Texas is fed up with the testing obsession. The state has handed over nearly a billion dollars to Pearson in recent years, even as the Legislature cut $5.4 Billion from public education. For an insiders’ view of the revolt against high-stakes testing in Texas, read Jason Stanford. He says only two people in the state [...]
The Washington Post Is Wrong About Texas
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
The Washington Post has a great education blog, Valerie Strauss’s The Answer Sheet. I wish the editorial board would read The Answer Sheet. . Instead, they wrote this absurd editorial, chastising Texas for backing away from test mania. At present, Texas spends more on testing–$100 million yearly to Pearson –than any other state. Students in [...]
Why the “Alabama Accountability Act” Is a Hoax
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Larry Lee is an Alabama native who cares about public schools. He has a particular interest in rural schools and community schools. He is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education. This is his analysis of the recently passed “Alabama Accountability Act,” which enacted tax credits and is a stealth voucher [...]
Jay Mathews Reverses His Views About Teacher Evaluation
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Jay Mathews has been a strong supporter of using test scores for teacher evaluation. No longer. He describes his change of view here. Jay writes: “I used to think student test score gains were a good way to rate teachers. I don’t think that any more. Grading individual teachers with scores is too approximate, too [...]
Uh-Oh, Bad News for Ohio Charters
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Ohio is very friendly territory for charter schools. Governor Kasich loves charter, vouchers, and virtual schools. But the charters are not doing so well. Read the following comment and the link with it: I have been following your work closely since reading your most recent book a few years ago. My local paper, the Akron [...]
Who Sold Out Children’s Privacy?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
In 2011, when the U.S. Department of Education revised the regulations governing FERPA to allow third parties to access children’s data without the consent of their parents, the Council of Chief School Officers weighed in. Here is. Comment by Sheila Kaplan, whose organization (educationnewyork.com) is devoted to student privacy issues: “Here’s Council of Chief State [...]
Robert Shepherd: Why I Oppose the Common Core Standards
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Robert Shepherd is an experienced author, textbook publisher, and assessment developer. He writes: Here’s why I oppose across-the-board standards that are, de facto, mandatory: Standards tell us what we are supposed to teach at what grades and roughly in what order, and the require that the same material be taught to everyone. What’s wrong with [...]
Crazy Crawfish: What Gates’ Data Warehouse Will Cost Us
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Crazy Crawfish, who worked in the Louisiana Department of Education, here explains what the data warehouse funded by the Gates Foundation ($100 million) and created by Rupert Murdoch’s subsidiary Wireless Generation will eventually cost parents, schools, and districts: SEAs, state agencies, not schools, are giving the data away. The reason some are doing it quicker [...]
Georgia: Missing Dropouts Discovered by Investigative Reporter
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Myra Blackmon, who writes a column in the Athens (Georgia) Banner-Herald, has discovered an amazing and well-hidden secret: Most of our nation’s dropouts did not drop out of high school. She looked at Georgia’s high school graduation rate and did some fact-checking. The graduation rate is supposedly 67%, but many students who did not drop [...]
Why Is the US Department of Education Weakening FERPA?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
In the past few years, the privacy protections built into federal law have been weakened by the U.S. Department of Education to allow third-parties to access confidential information about students. The Electronic Privacy Information Center summarizes the chronology. It has filed a lawsuit and is fight the Department’s new policy, which will give the private [...]
Beyonce and Jay-Z: Their Trip to Cuba
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
I have been listening today to news reports that certain Florida politicians are very angry that Beyonce and Jay-Z went to visit Cuba. That’s ridiculous. I bet they had all the visas they needed. Good for them. As readers may recall, I visited Cuba in February. I had a great trip, visited artists and museums, [...]
Update on Louisiana Legislature
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Mike Deshotels reports on what is happening in the Louisiana legislature. Bear in mind that Governor Bobby Jindal proposed to “reform” taxes by eliminating the personal income tax and the corporate income tax, shifting the entire tax burden to the sales tax. This is a very unpopular proposal, which appears to have driven his poll [...]
School Board Shenanigans in Hillsborough County, Florida
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Here is an article in the Tampa Tribune that is remarkably supportive of public education. This writer, Steve Otto, understands that the Florida legislature is determined to dismantle public education in Florida. At the same time, he notes that the school board in Hillsborough County (where Bill Gates dropped a hundred million or so to [...]
Jeff Bryant on the United Opt Out Protest
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Last weekend, United Opt Out sponsored a protest rally in front of the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. The event was called Occupy the DOE. Jeff Bryant of North Carolina reports on the protests here. I spoke on Thursday afternoon of the first day. The crowd was small, which was not surprising, because [...]
Newark Students Protest Budget Cuts
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Watch this video of Newark high school students. They know what is happening to their schools. They are fighting back with the only tool they have: Not with millions conferred by the Walton Family Foundation or the Gates Foundation or Mark Zuckerberg or Democrats for Education Reform. With a student-made Youtube. Student power can stop [...]
Jersey Jazzman: Why X Months of Learning is a Phony Metriv
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Jersey Jazzman is a music teachers who loves to dissect the latest claims with hard cold fact and reasoned analysis. In this valuable post, he explains why pundits and policymakers shoud stop reporting test score increases as “X months” of growth. Why? Because it is nonsense.
How StudentsFirst Turns Facts into Myths
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Matthew Di Carlo dissects the latest effort by Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst to sell the idea that evaluating teachers by test scores is accurate, unbiased, and necessary. Di Carlo analyzes the “myths” and discovers that some of them are facts. This is embarrassing. Rhee really needs to hire a competent research department.
Who Put the State Education Departments in Charge?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
American education has always been characterized by the principle of federalism–until now. Federalism meant a careful balancing among districts, states, and the federal governments. Schools had a fair amount of autonomy within that framework. The federal government role was to level the playing field by providing resources for the schools with large number of poor [...]
A Dallas School Board Member Joins the Honor Roll
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
When I went to Austin for the Save Texas Schools rally, I also participated in a panel discussion about school reform at the LBJ School of Public Policy at the University of Texas. There I met Carla Ranger, a member of the Dallas school board. As I listened to her speak, I was overwhelmed with [...]
California Charter Founders Convicted of Embezzlement
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
The founders of Ivy Academia in the San Fernando Valley in California were convicted of embezzlement and a variety of other charges stemming from their use of $200,000 in school funds for personal expenses. From the LA Times: “”This message is going to resonate throughout the charter school community,” said prosecutor Sandi Roth. “You can’t [...]
Guess Who Knows How to Close the Achievement Gap?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
This just arrived in my email. An advertisement for Pearson’s virtual charter business, Connections. Proven Virtual and Blended Learning Do you need to close achievement gaps within your district? Do you need to reduce costs on instructional and technology solutions? Are you searching for a solution to help you meet the Common Core State Standards? [...]
The Educational Marketing Game
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
A reader offers this comment about the education marketplace: Better and cheaper aren’t even issues in the disruptive Educational marketing game. Only profit matters. Especially if you capture regulatory control, you can degrade quality to reduce cost, then mandate public funding to maximize profits. There’s no public sector, and no free market, to stop you. [...]
Why Support Public Schools?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
An excerpt from a comment by LG: “Public schools are the last bastion of our American public culture. Without them, those with the privilege of being born into better economic situations will eventually be the only ones who would be educated. Taken to its end, that kind of trend would set us back to [...]
New York Teacher: “I Quit”
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
Gerald J. Conti’s eloquent, passionate letter of resignation ignited public discussion in Syracuse about the toxic, malicious changes now imposed on our public schools by federal and state policy. Private schools treasure dedicated, experienced teachers like Mr. Conti. But reformers insist on taking all autonomy out of their hands; standardizing their work; giving them a [...]
Indiana Teacher to Legislature: Please Save Public Education
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
This came from a teacher in northern Indiana: Dear Indiana Politician: I am a public school teacher. I am a breast cancer survivor. I dreamed as a little girl of the day I would be a teacher. I never dreamed as a woman that I would one day be a cancer survivor. So now I [...]
Jersey Jazzman Educates Margaret Spellings About Data
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
Jersey Jazzman never sleeps. I get that. He is so outraged by the constant torrent of nonsense in the media that he has to deconstruct it. In this post, he throws up some clay pigeons and knocks them all down, one by one. The big one is the stuff put out by Margaret Spellings to [...]
History Is Written by the Winners
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
As the adage goes, history is written by the winners. Today, in the United States, it is written by and for the 1%. Or is it the .0001 percent? How important is it for all fifth-graders in the state of Tennessee to know these names? A reader writes: “Bill Gates & Sam Walton just wrote [...]
Indiana: Stop Voucher Expansion
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
In Indiana, new legislation would offer vouchers to children who never attended a public school. This eliminates the fiction that vouchers are going to “save children from failing schools.” This is a message from Julian Smith in Induana. He offers a sample letter. Or, write your own. Subject: Fwd: Two Minute Task #8 HB 1003 [...]
Who Cares About the Children in Atlanta?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
The Daily Howler notes that most of the mainstream media completely ignored the Atlanta events or barely mentioned them. Only Chris Hayes had a panel on the subject, and two of the three panelists were a waste of air time. One was a clueless parent, and the other was a paid mouthpiece for the hedge [...]
Jersey Jazzman: Why Leonie Haimson Is a True American Hero
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
As readers know, the corporate reform smear machine went after activist Leonie Haimson last week. She has been an outspoken champion for class size reduction. She has been NYC’s leading critic of the Bloomberg administration’s policy, most especially, its love of testing and closing schools. She has also been relentless in challenging charter school co-locations [...]
Parents Defeat Parent Trigger in 3 States
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
Parents mobilized to defeat the so-called “parent trigger” in three states. They referred to it as the “corporate empowerment” bill. It could also be called the Corporate Enrichment bill.
Is inBloom Engaged in Identity Theft?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
The Gates Foundation spent $100 million along with the Carnegie Corporation to create a massive database consisting of confidential information about students. The database will be created by Rupert Murdoch’s subsidiary Wireless Generation. It will go onto a “cloud” managed by amazon.com. Several states and districts have agreed to turn over their student data. Last [...]
Alabama: Hold Football Coaches Accountable for Failure!
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
Larry Lee, an Alabama native and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education, has a great idea. He decided that the best way to demonstrate the foolishness of the Alabama Accountability Act was to translate it into terms every Alabama reader would understand. He wrote a satire in which he urged [...]
How to Close Public Schools: A Guide
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
Just in case you have been wondering what is the best way to shut down your local public schools, the Broad Foundation has thoughtfully provided a guide to help you. It has assembled all sorts of useful information about how to deal with community opposition, how to engage stakeholders, how to make your case, how [...]
FairTest: An All-New, Improved SAT, “With Tail Fins?”
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
FairTest has been a watchdog for the testing industry for many years. The latest news is that the SAT will be overhauled (again), this time to align it with the Common Core standards. No big surprise, since the head of the College Board, David Coleman, was the lead player in developing the Common Core standards. [...]
Is This Even Possible?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
A reader writes: “Yes, a lawyer is the acting interim Superintendent, Joe. His name is Dorsey Hopson. Before coming to Memphis, he was general counsel for the Atlanta Public School system (during the same time as the cheating scandal).” Yes, it is true Will he be called to testify about the organized cheating and the [...]
Best Comment of the Day (So Far)
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
The comment below draws attention to a debate that followed Dr. Mercedes Schneider’s methodological dissection of Patrick Wolf’s Milwaukee study. Wolf holds an endowed chair in school choice in the “department of education reform” at the University of Arkansas. The Wolf study initially reported a staggering attrition rate of 75% from the voucher schools, which [...]
The Myth of Charter Waiting Lists
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
One of the arguments advanced to expand charter schools is that they have long waiting lists. Or so they say. But no one knows how many are on those lists. This reporter in Chicago started digging and discovered that the list is not real. The Chicago charters say there are 19,000 kids waiting. It is [...]
Why I Apologized for Something I Did Not Say
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
A number of readers have written to ask why I wrote an apology to Michelle Rhee when I had not been the one to speak the offending words (“Asian bitch”). I wasn’t even present when the words were spoken. Frankly, the story focused on the negative, rather than the reasons that the rally was happening. [...]
Methodological Flaws in Milwaukee Voucher Study?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
School choice advocates now stand on shaky ground. Their own funded evaluations show that students in voucher schools do not get higher test scores than their peers in public schools. So they fall back to the next line of defense, which is to say that the voucher students have a higher graduation rate. In the [...]
Keeping an Eye on Reform Leader ALEC
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is the key organization today in education reform. Forget party labels. ALEC–funded by big corporations and enrolling some 2,000 state legislators–is calling the shots on charter schools, vouchers, right-to-work legislation, online charter schools, and many other topics that are at the forefront of “reform” in such far-right states as [...]
Cody: Time to Hold Bill Gates Accountable
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
For the past several years, three billionaires have foisted untested, unreliable, metrics-driven, in humane teacher evaluation policies onto our nation’s teachers. In this misguided effort to find a yardstick to reduce teacher quality to a number, no one has been more energetic than Bill Gates. As the anti-high-stakes testing movement grows, and as the wreckage [...]
Another Photo of Mitzi
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
Mitzi was rescued from a kill shelter. http://t.co/IBP5PS8MHN
Here is Mitzi
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
I don’t know how to import photos to the blog. Maybe someone will tell me how. So I took her picture, emailed it to Twitter, and copied the link. http://twitter.com/DianeRavitch/status/320168597035036674/photo/1
John White’s Deputy Stays Five Months and Leaves: a Broad Academy Story
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
What happens in Louisiana is definitely different from what happens anywhere else. It is not Louisiana culture, which is definitely unique. It seems to be something about John White, who is not a native. With the support of Governor Jindal and the state board of education controlled by Jindal, John White answers to no one. [...]
NC Legislators Decide Not to Establish a Religion
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
A group of Republican legislators in North Carolina decided against introducing legislation that would allow the state and its counties to establish an official religion. They planned to argue that the Constitution prevents Congress from establishing a religion, but not states or counties. There was enough outcry to persuade them to hold off.
An Apology to Michelle Rhee
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
Yesterday I participated in the first day of Occupy the DOE, where parents and teachers spoke out against DOE policies that demand high-stakes testing and school closings. In my own presentation, I urged the DOE to stop its punitive policies and instead to follow the positive agenda of the Network for Public Education. According to [...]
Anthony Cody: Can We Trust Bill Gates?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
Anthony Cody read Bill Gates’ article in the Washington Post, in which he said it is time to reduce the emphasis on high-stakes testing. Anthony wondered if Gates means it. Anthony writes: “No one in America has done more to promote the raising of stakes for test scores in education than Bill Gates….You can read [...]
A Brilliant Analysis of the Failed, Punitive Ideas Called “Reform”
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
Believe it or not, the Chicago Tribune published one of the best articles I have read about the disaster that is called education “reform,” but in fact is education destruction. I say, believe it or not, because the Tribune has been one of the nation’s loudest cheerleaders for the policies that this column decries. Robert [...]
Atlanta’s Lessons for Reformers
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
This smart blogger read all the investigators’ reports from the Atlanta cheating scandal. He or she realized that Atlanta was doing everything that reformers say is important. The educators there were focusing on test scores above all else. The teachers who got higher scores got bonuses and those who did not, got humiliated. Incentivizing the [...]
