Politico: Arne Duncan’s Ambitious Agenda Hits Speed Bumps
Stephanie Simon describes the political minefields that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has run into as he seeks to remake American education. She does not mention that Duncan’s program dovetails with No Child Left Behind, which is now widely acknowledged to be a failed approach. Nor does she mention that Duncan’s tenure in Chicago, where he honed his present ideas about reform, was unsuccessfu
Network for Public Education Will Hold Its First National Conference on March 1 & 2 in Austin, Texas
The Network for Public Education will holds its first annual conference at The University of Texas at Austin on March 1 & 2, 2014 - the weekend before the world famous South By Southwest EDU Festival. Diane Ravitch will deliver the keynote address and NPE Board members Anthony Cody, Leonie Haimson, Julian Vasquez Heilig and others will take part in the discussions. All are welcome! As we are
Florida Will Release Teacher Ratings to the Media
In her invaluable blog called VAMboozled, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley discusses Florida’s decision to release teacher data evaluations to the public. While she does not question the decision to make the ratings public, she explains that the ratings are fundamentally flawed. My view: the ratings are so flawed and so misleading that they should not be made public. They are not only inaccurate, but the
Jury Trial in Philadelphia Hears Fraud Charges Against Charter Founder
Charter school founder June Brown is on trial in Philadelphia for collecting multiple salaries from the charter schools and management firms she opened. Brown is accused of defrauding the four charter schools she founded of $6.7 million and then conspiring with two former administrators to obstruct justice by orchestrating a cover-up. Meanwhile, business leaders in Philadelphia hope to open more c
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Mazinger G, a member of the unaccredited EduShyster Academy, here explains what happened in Rhode Island when a “reformer” took control of the state’s pension funds. What happened when the state treasurer Gina Raimondo adopted. New strategy of investing the state’s pension funds into “alternative” investments? “There has been much hullabaloo about Gina’s investing Rhode Island’s $7 billion state pension fund she manages into her *own* firm, just because it charges enormous fees and has no public track record. OK—so it’s true that in the finance industry it is considered somewhat unseemly to d
The state board of education in Texas turned down an application from Great Hearts Academy to open a charter school in Dallas. Great Hearts had already been approved by the state commissioner. The Arizona-based chain already has approval to open a charter in San Antonio. The state board expressed concern about the chain’s commitment and ability to serve low-income students. The article in the Texas Tribune says: But since the board’s approval of Great Hearts’ initial Texas campus [in San Antonio], doubts about its model have grown. While tuition-free like a traditional public school, it does n
Another public forum in the suburbs of New York City, and another nearly unanimous display of outrage towards the policymakers in New York state. Commissioner John King has made clear again and again that nothing said at these public forums will change his course of action. He will stick to the Common Core and the testing no matter what parents and teachers say. And so will the Board of Regents. Of course, this display of disdain toward the public only serves to raise the temperature, and speakers were plenty heated by the knowledge that no one was listening. According to the report linked her
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New Study Proves High Value of Experienced Teachers
Mathematica Policy Research released a study that proves that experience matters. Some readers thought the study was about merit pay, but it was not. Merit pay has never worked. Merit pay studies usually compare one group of teachers matched to a similar group. One group is offered a bonus if they can raise test scores, the other is not. The bonus is supposed to incentivize the teachers to push th
The Meaning of “Personalized” Learning
All too often these days, we hear certain buzz words: “personalized learning,” “individualized learning,” “customized learning.” Usually they are used all together, as in “personalized, individualized, customized learning.” Buyer beware! What these words usually signify is that some corporation is selling a computerized learning program with pre-set questions and answers. The students will click t
Don’t Be VAMboozled! Review Finds DC Impact Study Is Full of Holes
Some weeks back, the media reported that the District of Columbia’s infamous teacher evaluation program–known as IMPACT–was successful, based on a paper by researchers Thomas Dee and James Wyckoff. The takeaway allegedly was that VAM (value-added measurement) works and that DC is right to judge teacher quality by student test scores. But Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, one of the pre-eminent national exp
Anyone Know What “Second Order Change” Is?
A letter from a teacher. “Second Order Change” sounds eerily like “creative destruction.” Wipe out everything that is and start over. See what happens. Then do it again: Things are heating up again in Baltimore County. The teachers association just filed a grievance against the school district. Here is the link to the article in the paper here. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/educatio
Help This Video Go Viral!
I am reposting this because when I first posted it, the link didn’t work. It is a 3-minute video made by public school parents in Néw York City. My son Michael, the father of a second grader in a Brooklyn public school, is one of them. He is not in the video but he is very active in ParentVoicesNY. Do you want to know what parents really think? Do you want to know what students really think? Don’t
ALEC’s Next Meeting: DC, December 6
ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) is the corporate-controlled organization that is pulling the strings on behalf of the privatization movement. Its next meeting will be held in Washington, D.C., on December 6 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel on H Street. Here is the agenda. If any reader of this blog attends, please send a report about the model laws that are adopted to destroy public educa
LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 11-26-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: Jason Stanford: What Texas Moms Can Teach Arne DuncanJason Stanford explains why it won’t be easy for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to “walk back” his insulting remarks about “white suburban moms.” When defenders of the testing industry in Texas tried the same tactic, they succeeded in strengthening the backlash against high-s