Schools Matter:
Schools Matter All Week
An EdWeak Interview with Melinda Gates?
I have asked repeatedly a key question about Bill Gates and his hobby of education reform:If Bill Gates had no money, who would listen to him about education reform? No one–the same as who should listen to him now.Now we have an EdWeak interview with Melinda Gates, which forces an additional question:If Melinda Gates weren’t married to Bill Gates, who would listen to her about education.Again, the
YESTERDAY
Chess in school: A good move or patzer move?
Submitted to the Sun Sentinel (Florida), Oct 19Working with an organization called First Move, three Sunrise schools plan to include formal instruction in chess for second and third graders believing that it "provides big academic benefits," ('City incorporating chess at three elementary schools," October 19). Neither the article nor the First Move website mention any evidence that
Cut Testing Budget and Hire School Nurses
Hiring school nurses, improving the health and well being of children in the poorest neighborhoods who need eyeglasses, dental care, and regular checkups, not to mention expensive medicine for asthma, would lead to higher test scores.Will this incident in Philadelphia change policy?It depends on how far Pearson and McGraw Hill and gang can keep their Golden Goose laying all those golden eggs as Co
Basketball Hero Bobby Heaton and the 13 Filthy Rich Who Bought Indiana Public Education
By Doug Martin Whenever he gets the opportunity, Indiana State House 46 district member Bobby Heaton (who lives in Terre Haute) likes to let everyone know that he played basketball with Larry Bird back in the good ole days at Indiana State University, but nowadays Heaton is a Walmart team player, dribbling out school privatization for the filthy rich who don’t even live in Indiana, let alone his d
OCT 17
First In-School Reform? Teacher Autonomy
The reform agenda has focused almost entirely on in-school only so-called reforms.That paradigm is essentially flawed since the greatest barriers to in-school learning by students and effective teaching by teachers are out-of-school poverty and inequity.However, once we address social reform, in-school reform must begin with teacher autonomy; consider this about Finland:Teachers in Finland – trust
Diane Ravitch and Reformers' Feelings
When Diane Ravitch, in Reign of Error, discusses charter schools, she makes it clear that not all charters impose a “no-excuses” mentality. When discussing the reformers’ public relations machine and its “well-honed message,” she analyses their language and writes, “when they speak of “no-excuses,” they mean boot camp culture.”In a rational world, Ravitch’s careful distinctions, as in the above se
OCT 16
New York Times Editorial Fails Another Fact Check on Charter Schools
The NYTimes Editorial Board is one of the most reliable voices for the corporate education losers who continue to double down on testing accountability policies and privatization schemes that now have decades of evidence to substantiate their failure. Today's entry is on charter schools, which has this nugget: The editorial states:
"A study published earlier this year shows that the typic
A CorpEd Quandary: How to Reward Teachers in High Poverty Schools With a System That Punishes Them for Working There
Always looking for an opportunity to support corporate ed reform school losers, the Memphis Commerical-Appeal has an editorial today in support of Mississippi’s attempt toestablish merit pay for its teachers. The editorial board offers no research to support its support, and the editors use the same conflicted rhetoric that CorpEd losers use to call for rewarding teachers based on test scores
Diane Ravitch Documents the Danger of "E-land"
In Reign of Error, Diane Ravitch writes, “Some - a small but important number – believe they are acting rationally by treating the public education sector as an investment opportunity.” Who can argue with that conclusion?Ravitch is tough on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his chief of staff, Joanne Weiss. Ravitch did not put words in Weiss’s mouth, however, when the director of the Race to
OCT 15
John King Gives Uncommon Schools a Free Pass on Teacher Evaluation Scheme
Before he was Commissioner of Ed in New York, John King ran the KIPP knock-off charter chain, Uncommon Schools, which depends upon the same forced winnowing techniques to run off low test scorers, ELLs, and special ed students.Now King is giving his former chain gang charters a pass on the Rube Goldberg teacher eval system based on the monstrous TN system. Story from the Daily News:State Education
Memphis Ready to Turn Over $23 Million Head Start Budget to Corporate Cronies at Porter-Leath
We posted on September 30 about Shelby County Mayor, Mark Luttrell, and his cozy relations with fellow corporate pol, Mark Threlkeld, who presides over the Board of Trustees of Porter-Leath, a non-profit corporation that is building an empire on backs of young victims of the Zero Tolerance Era. The former Orphan AsylumPorter-Leath's history goes back to the 19th Century, when it served as home of
Diane Ravitch's Balanced Appraisal of Charters
Diane Ravitch, in Reign of Error, argues that school reform heedlessly replaced the old-fashioned geographically-based system of public education with a competitive market-based system that includes traditional public schools, private schools, privately managed charter schools, for-profit providers, and virtual schools. The roots of this movement, she argues, are “fundamentally libertarian” but, t
Hess, Please Begin the Moratorium
I recently called for a moratorium on white men pontificating on race, class, and gender—prompted by a series of blogs by Michael Petrilli. So when I read Rick Hess's "Teachers Deserve (But Have to Earn) Their Seat at the Table," I immediately asked myself a few things: (1) Is this April 1?, (2) Has Hess finally become the unintentional self-parody I have predicted?, and finally, (3) Sho
OCT 14
Philadelphia Photographer Captures School Closings
From Newsworks:Photo exhibit opening this week chronicles the 'decline and destruction' of Philly public schools"It's like a visual documentation of what was once a public-school system. This is the beginning of the decline and the destruction of it."--Harvey Finkle, photographer, Philadelphia School Closings Photo Collective and Public School NotebookThe display's 20, mostly color photo
Technologies Foster Conformity
In a college essay circa 1837 on the "pleasures and privileges" of a literary life, Henry David Thoreau begins with a quote out of Horace stating that every writer loves the grove and flees the city...This love of retiring from the hurry and bustle of the world has, in all ages, closely adhered to those minds most devoted to study and elevated by genius. Such an one "will gladly sna
Remembering Columbus
from Glen Brown's blog:Celebrating "Free Market" Style with Christopher ColumbusFrom Columbus’ first expedition log: “They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword; they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them
"creative sales techniques to 'move' students to higher levels of achievement"
Somewhere down the road we will look back on this era of efficiency fixation in the same way we now view the eliminators of waste of the early 20th Century schools, who took principles of "scientific management" and tried to map them onto schools, thus elaborating a system of education based on the efficient transmittal of info bits.Today's example for the future history books on educati
Should Diane Ravitch Be More Careful to Not Hurt Reformers' Feelings?
By now, I’m about the only slowpoke who hasn’t taken a stand on Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error. Those who object to her indictment of “corporate reform” have had time to catch any possible error of fact or logic. If there is a rebuttal to Ravitch’s statement that “it is difficult to find education organizations that have not been funded by the Gates Foundation,” surely it would have been made by n
OCT 13
Value-Added Testing and the Masking of Inequality
This article was previously posted at The Answer Sheet on October 4.This post is comprised largely of excerpts from The Mismeasure of Education that have been re-arranged to answer this question: “Will value-added testing do as little for the nation as it has for Tennessee?”By Jim Horn and Denise WilburnAs White House staff, congressional aides, and a small contingent of think tank insiders huddle
OCT 12
The Head Start Enron Trader Initiative: The Arnold Foundation in Indiana, Louisiana, NYC, Texas, and Beyond
By Doug MartinThe national news has painted Enron’s retired trader and hedge fund manager John Arnold as a Jesus figure since he and his wife announced they were going to cover the government costs of funding Head Start during the government shutdown (better known as the good cop/bad cop ploy by both parties to throw senior citizens, kids, and the poor and middle class under the bus), but the Laur