NY: “We Are Listening but Going Full Steam Ahead Anyway”
New York is not known as a Tea Party state, but it does have large numbers of suburban moms and dads who care about their children and who are well-educated. Here is an account of State Commissioner John King’s public forum in Mineola, Long Island, where hundreds of angry parents and educators turned out to reject the state’s Common Core testing. How many more public beatings will John King subj
Mercedes Schneider Refutes Silly StudentsFirst Blast at Me
Some guy who works for StudentsFirst–the organization that promotes vouchers and charters and wants to strip teacher of all due process–wrote a criticism of me on Huffington Post because he doesn’t like the way I interpret NAEP data. This is silly because I served on the NAEP board for seven years and know its strengths and limitations. NAEP was designed to serve an audit function, never to be use
Bill Mathis On the Vermont Success Story
Remember the song, “Kids! What’s the Matter with Kids Today?” from “Bye, Bye, Birdie?” Watch this. It’s wonderful, and it reminds of how every generation thinks that the younger generation is rotten and declining. Bill Mathis is a former superintendent in Vermont and now serves as a member of the state board of education. He has steadily opposed the Bad News Club, which constantly bashes the schoo
Chronic Stress Is Not Good for Children
A mother writes: Environments of chronic stress are not exclusive to Title I schools in Texas. My daughter attends 3rd grade an Exemplary school in a university area of highly educated and involved parents. We are beginning to observe the over emphasis on rewarding performance, fear of making mistakes, perfectionism, and a lack of nurturing social and emotional development. Work is mostly independ
Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Randi Weingarten: Stop Testing Little Children!
Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Randi Weingarten have co-authored a terrific article about why little children should not be subjected to standardized testing. They write: Young kids learn actively, through hands-on experiences in the real world. They develop skills over time through a process of building ideas. But this process is not always linear and is not quantifiable; expecting young children to kn
Note to Arne from an Angry White Suburban Mom
A comment from a reader in response to Arne Duncan’s statement that white suburban moms are angry because the Common Core tests just showed them that their child is not so brilliant and their school is not so good: “This angry, white, suburban mom IS angry–but it’s not because I was delusional that my children are “brilliant” or that our suburban public schools aren’t that good. We have funding is
Tom Loveless: Be Wary of Ranking States by NAEP Gains
Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution doesn’t like it when politicians play games with education statistics. In this post, he gives a lesson in the interpretation and misinterpretation of NAEP scores ranking the states.
Arne Duncan to White Suburban Moms: Your Kids Are Not As Smart As You Thought
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told a meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers that the suburban revolt against Common Core has a simple explanation: white suburban moms are discovering that their children are not as brilliant as they thought, and their schools are not as good as they thought. Here is a description of his remarks and the rationale behind them. According to blogg
LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH ALL WEEK LONG Diane Ravitch's blog 11-9-13 -13 #thankateacher #EDCHAT #P2
Diane Ravitch's blogLISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH ALL WEEK LONGDIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG mark as readNew York’s Teacher of the Year Is Not Rated “Highly Effective”New York’s Teacher of the Year testified to the State Senate Education Committee that the education evaluation system made it impossible for her to be rated “highly effective” because of the “dysfunctional implementation” of the Common Core standar