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Thursday, June 13, 2013

Diane in the Evening 6-13-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:






Lucy Calkins Gathers Feedback on Pearson Exams

Students in New York recently completed a battery of tests aligned with the Common Core and developed by Pearson.
The tests remain secret though some bootleg copies have circulated. They should be released for public review.
Although educators were not allowed to disclose the test questions, Lucy Calkins of Teachers College created a website where educators could register comments about the tests. She received over 1,000 comments.
Some of them:
Many teachers complained about the emphasis on meta cognitive skills, as opposed to understanding the 

Bridgeport Parent: Public School Leaders Should Support Public Schools

This Bridgeport parent activist has an old-fashioned idea. She believes that those who are paid to run public schools should support them. The current superintendent of schools in that Connecticut city is Paul Vallas. She reviews his record in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, where he closed many public schools and opened large numbers of privately managed charters.
The same might be said of many other superintendents today, who see their job as advancing private control of public assets.

New York’s Evaluation Nightmare

Arthur Goldstein, aka Néw York Educator, describes the vain and convoluted effort to create a teacher evaluation system in Néw York. A pinch of this, a heavy dose of testing, and the computer will tell us which teachers are great and which are the stinkers.

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 6-13-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

mike simpson at Big Education Ape - 2 hours ago
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: [image: Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch] Pennsylvania: Now We Know the Truth About Cyber Charters by dianerav Rhonda Brownstein, the executive director of Pennsylvania’s Education Law Center, says that it is time to stop trusting the claims of cyber charter promoters. For years, they have promised that students would get “innovative” education and that wondrous things would happen when virtual charters became reality, butPennsylvania now knows that none of that turned out to be true. Pennsylvania has ... more »