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Friday, June 28, 2013

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 6-28-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

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Maureen Reedy: Great News for Brooklyn’s Chess Champions!

Ohio master teacher Maureen Reedy has great news for the championship chess team at I.S. 318 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
She writes:
Great news! The national championship chess team of I.S. 318, a public school with a high poverty rate in NYC, will live on!
Please consider a contribution to combine with the $20,000 being raised by the tireless efforts of my friend, Fred 

Tennessee Parents and Teachers Use Social Media to Lambaste Kevin Huffman

This from a reader in Tennessee. Be sure to open the links and see the hilarious cartoons:
“This week, two separate Fire Kevin Huffman FB pages went up:
1. https://www.facebook.com/RemoveKevinHuffman?fref=ts
(Check out the cupcake cartoon posted today. :)
2. https://www.facebook.com/TdoeCommissionerKevinHuffmanHasToGo
Also, a new petition started by some West Tennessee moms (called the Momma Bears) is up and running:

Faculty and Students at U. of Minnesota Oppose TFA

Faculty and graduate students of education denounced a plan by the University of Minnesota by the university to create a partnership with Teach for America.
To put it mildly, the statement they issued was blistering.
They said, in part,
“Teach for America contributes to creating more exploitative and precarious working conditions for teachers, often displacing career educators and decreasing job opportunities for our Initial Licensure Program teacher 

NCTQ: Set to Solve the Problems of Syria and Obesity Next

Now that the National Council on Teacher Quality has ranked nearly 2,000 teacher education programs without actually visiting them or meeting their faculty, bigger challenges are ahead.
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NCTQ to Tackle Syria and Obesity Next
By Isaac Prilleltensky, Dean of the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Miami, Florida
The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), an organization much loved by Deans of Education around the 

Parent: A Sad Graduation Day at Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, CA

Parent Chrissy Guzman-Alvarado is a parent  at Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, California. This is the school–the only school in California–where the billionaire-funded “Parent Revolution” has been able to wheedle enough parents to sign petitions to close the school and hand it over to a charter school. When some parents who had put their names on the Parent Revolution petition asked to withdraw their signatures, the organization went to court and won a ruling that signing a petition was like an election and they couldn’t rescind 

EduShyster Discovers Hogwarts University for Education Reform

Just when you thought that you had heard it all, that “education reform” couldn’t get any zanier, EduShysterdiscovers that 50CAN is offering a Hogwarts University of Reform.
You won’t believe the faculty–many of whom unfortunately are deceased–and it won’t surprise you to learn that 

Diane in the Evening 6-27-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

mike simpson at Big Education Ape - 7 minutes ago
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: The Latest NAEP Report: Don’t Believe What You Read about It by dianerav Today the federal government released the NAEP 2012 “Trends in Academic Progress.” This is known as the Long-Term Trend report. These tests seldom change in content. They are given every four years to national–not state–samples of students at ages 9-13-17. The reports say that achievement is stagnant, but it is not true. What is truly stagnant are the scores for the past four years. There were big achievement gains from 1971-2008 for whi... more »