All Week 8-10-13 @ THE CHALK FACE knows SCHOOLS MATTER
YESTERDAY
Innocence or Guilt?: Looking Beyond the Individual | the becoming radical
How does Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader inform the many scandals in the education reform era? READ: Innocence or Guilt?: Looking Beyond the Individual | the becoming radical.
State Assessment Results: "It Just Doesn't Matter"
Reblogged from SCHOOLS MATTER @ THE CHALK FACE: Even though we opted our oldest out of the third grade state assessments last year, an error occurred and her blank math test answer form was scanned and sent on to the New York State Education Department. As a result, we received a Parent Report from NYSED […]
AUG 08
Thought Dreams
I’ve nearly completely extricated myself from my daily reading and commenting on Facebook and Twitter. I’m a retired public school teacher. I’ve virtually stopped writing about education and the continuing destruction of our public schools. I live it everyday now as a consultant in the classrooms. I’ve been traveling a lot over the last few […]
Hasta la vista, Testing?
The dust has not settled yet from the release of the first year scores from New York State’s Common Core aligned assessments for Grades 3-8. The media talking heads, bureaucrats, and public are trying to frame what the results mean for New York’s schools. Read here for some excellent commentaries about the scores from […]
Ohanian on Achieve, Inc. and the Common Core
A clip from Susan writing at The Daily Censored–see the rest here: Reading the press release, I wonder: HOW to get people to raise up against the oppressive phraseknowledge-based economy, a term rolling off the tongues of the “haves” as an excuse for their refusal to acknowledge the vital skills possessed by people making things work […]
Another Reason Why School Reformers Should Listen to Students
Most of the big education stories this month have been rooted in the situational ethics of school “reformers.” Common Core testing is essentially an experiment being imposed on children without the consent of their parents. This week we’ve see what happens when New York does something that no ethical teacher would do – impose tests […]
NYT Editorial Sinks to New Low
Dear Mr. Rosenthal, This is why I have decided to cancel my subscription to your paper today. Many people I know have already done so, but I’ve been holding out because of my love for the good journalism that goes on at the paper. As a teacher, parent and thinking individual, this editorial today about […]
TFA: “It’s just one unverifiable anecdote after the next”
While it may be overly optimistic (which I am rarely accused of being) to suggest that the shine is wearing off the Teach for America brand, it is clear that credible challenges to TFA are being acknowledged more often, including resistance from within the organization itself. Some evidence-based challenges have come from Gary Rubinstein, Katie […]
The New York Emperor Has No Clothes
The parents of NY’s students will have to put an end to the testing regime once and for all, the teachers can no longer protect themselves or the children in their classrooms from this Common Core testing insanity masquerading as education reform. From NYC Public Schools Parents: Shock Doctrine: five reasons not to trust the […]
Who’s Lying to Whom? Duncan, Bloomberg, and the Rotted Common Core
Yesterday Mike Bloomberg called the new test score basement that all NY schools have rushed into “very good news,” and he blamed the media for noticing that it was happening. With State and City schools–at least the ones with poor kids–once more crushed under the boot (Rochester had 5% of kids passing reading and math) […]
AUG 07
New York Is Freaking Out Over Test Scores
Yikes, it was on the CBS evening news!!! NY city test scores went down!!! OMG, the sky is falling. Meanwhile, the new Common Core standards and the new version of standardized multiple choice bubble in tests has NYC parents with their panties in a wad. State test scores expected to drop dramatically from tougher reading […]
Catholic Schools Against the Common Core
What exactly is in the Common Core Standards and which standards are a deal breaker for states or Catholic schools when taking money from the federal government? I’d like to know the amount of money the federal government sends to Catholic schools across the country. But looks like the largest Catholic teacher organization (NCEA) has […]
Made in America: Segregation by Design | the becoming radical
What connects a Barbara Kingsolver poem, The Great Gatsby, and the lingering mechanisms of segregation in the U.S.? Please read to examine: Made in America: Segregation by Design | the becoming radical. Tagged: segregation
Governor Corbett Handpicked Government Careerist and Education Reform Lobbyist to Head State’s 14 Public Universities? Vote Tomorrow. by Sean Kitchen
http://www.ragingchickenpress.org/2013/08/06/governor-corbett-handpicked-government-careerist-and-education-reform-lobbyist-to-head-states-14-public-universities-vote-tomorrow/ Governor Corbett has allowed a corporate coup’ de tat to occur within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. On Monday August 5th, PASSHE’s Board of Governors announced that a vote for the new Chancellor will h
Chicken Little and the Emperor
Yesterday, I was working in my room and decided that I would stop down and discuss my recent “Math Module” training. I knocked on his open door and said as I almost always do “Can I bother you for a minute?” He turned, looked at me and I could tell immediately that he was not […]
AUG 06
Do you think the accountability hacks get sexual gratification from pummeling teachers?
Seriously. There has to be some kind of fetish with this stuff, some kind of sexual fantasy. This from The Answer Sheet. Do you have any idea how humiliating this poor woman does any good whatsoever? This kind of public display of humiliation of an educated person does absolutely no good, I’m serious. I think that’s […]
Twas the Night Before Scores
Twas the night before scores And all across the state Teachers waited to hear their fate The scores will be lower Was predicted long ago Now we all wait to see just how low NYSUT says the scores are a baseline For informing instruction When in reality The scores mean destruction For teachers and students […]
Duncan: Heading off disaster?
Two back to back items from New York City based media appeared in my twitter feed today from a press call with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Duncan was talking about the new Common Core state assessment scores in New York which will be released to the general public tomorrow. School administrators already have the […]
Mental Health and American Children Who Are in Chronic Poverty
Cynthia Lamy’s American Children in Chronic Poverty is a must-read for all service providers, as well as educators. A first post reviewed synthesis of an amazing body of social science research in a way that informs comprehensive planning for all sorts of anti-poverty efforts. This post will focus on her findings that are most important […]
AUG 05
The sky is falling & so are the Common Core test scores.
In New York State the new Common Core aligned state assessment results for third through eighth grade will be released on Wednesday. State education officials are warning schools to expect “lower student proficiency levels“. Diane Ravitch reported today that an administrator from a “high-achieving school” found a significant drop in their student scores on the […]
Check out @adambessie at his latest, automated teaching machine
Speaks for itself. Via Truth-Out. Tagged: adam bessie, truth out
Short article from NYT Sunday Review by Robert Putnam
It’s a short read, a good one. It got me thinking. Take a community, any kind. Institute “school choice.” You have families with children, who could once bond over their children’s educations, broken apart, separated, because one family sends their kids to one school and the neighbors, to another. Maybe the kids can bond over, […]
Educating American Children Who Are in Chronic Poverty
Since America failed to win the War on Poverty, we have become used to a series of reports that promising programs have only achieved modest results. Whether we are discussing Head Start, housing vouchers, reduced class size, or increased spending for education or social services, it has become easy to over-simplify and say that nothing […]
AUG 04
Response to Joe Nathan’s hawking for tech industry profits
Charter charlatan Joe Nathan has made a decent living pushing privatization and pimping poverty. A regular participant in the active comment section on the Professor Diane Ravitch’s blog, Nathan can always be counted on for advocating neoliberal education reform and corporate profits. Today was no different, with Nathan effectively defending the demise of school libraries […]
Education Reform Takes Notes From The Multi-Industry Playbook On Corporate Ownership
All multinational corporations use the same playbook to push privatizing a public good– whether it’s a human resource like clean drinking water or food; or a public service like education. The similarities between the various industrial giants aren’t coincidental. Each stage in their endeavors is part of their shared ideology, and their strategies, therefore, […]
NEA Appeasement in Wisconsin: Withdraws from Battle When Most Needed
The Koch Brothers’ stooge, Gov. Scott Walker, has led the charge in Wisconsin to eliminate any political opposition to rolling back American economic and social systems by a hundred years at least. As Rachel Maddow has reported, the key to achieving a one corporate party rule is to eliminate unions, which represent the only significant […]
Charleston P&C: How Media Fails Education
The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC) has a long history of endorsing every education reform movement that doesn’t have any credibility: Teach for America? Sure. Charter schools? You bet. So it comes as no surprise that the P&C has penned an endorsement of SC’s move to reform teacher evaluation, by framing the issue as something […]
AUG 03
John King to Superintendents: Be “Judicious” When Deciding Whom to Fire
New York Education Commissioner John King sent this Field Memo to district leadership on August 2, letting them all know that the results of the Common Core-aligned state standardized tests would soon be released. Finally! He also had some things to say that are quite troubling. If you remember, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and […]
Just a quick thought on teaching as a “calling.”
It isn’t. Well, not exactly. It shouldn’t, at least, be framed entirely that way. A “calling” to me implies religious or spiritual significance. For teachers, are they expected to walk through hot coals, endure a thousand lashes, for the sake of the children? After all, they are flesh and blood human beings with needs, desires, […]
How Education Reform Works Today in Four Simple Steps. By John Stoffel
How Education Reform Works Today in Four Simple Steps 1. Fund research (often with taxpayer support). • Tell researcher your hypothesis. • Have researcher gather data. • Have researcher compare data to your hypothesis. • Have researcher change data to match your hypothesis. 2. Fund three groups with imposing names • 1st group warns nation […]
The Little Blue Engine that shouldn’t. Take a seat.
I want you to read the following poem by Shel Silverstein, one that is the inspiration for a new “reformy” organization called Blue Engine. The little blue engine looked up at the hill. His light was weak, his whistle was shrill. He was tired and small, and the hill was tall, And his face blushed […]