Paul Wellstone More Prescient on Education in 2014
Nine years ago, New Year's Eve 2005, the year I started blogging at SchoolsMatter, I was a graduate student in education and I posted Paul Wellstone's speech from Teacher's College Columbia University in 2000. At the time, before No Child Left Behind became law, Wellstone was a lone voice in Congress, a lone voice in the wilderness in a sea of corruption and ignorance about education policy. Wells
Walmart's Walton Foundation Doubling Efforts to Privatize K-12 Education
The Walton Foundation remains the leader in the support of school voucher programs, which have consistently demonstrated their failure to provide quality education. What they do provide is consistent with Walmart's plan to offer cheap and shoddy products to the poor. If you have any option of buy anywhere else in 2014, exercise your option.From the Washington Post, a clip:The Walton Family Found
To Common Core Enablers: The Friend of My Enemy Is My Enemy
Common Corers talk of the need for internationally-benchmarked standards and curriculum. By this they pretend to mean relinquishing the wafer-thin, NCLB-inspired drive-by curriculums that demand that students ingest an endless stream of subject matter infobits that are later excreted or regurgitated on command, whereupon the remains are probed and dissected for signs of meaning among the digitize
TFA/KIPP Teacher Talks of Shame, Isolation, Burnout
From Cloaking Inequity:Graduating from college, I was energized and ready to take my place on the front line of education reform by becoming part of the Teach For America Corps. Many entering corps members are captured by the convincing sales pitch of TFA recruiters on campus. While I did meet with one of these recruiters who reinforced my decision to join, I had also spent time in my undergradua
12-29-13 Schools Matter
Schools Matter: Use of Value-Added Is "Parochial and Ineffectual"Tennessee is the test site for every crackpot, over-the-top corporate thought disorder that is translatable into a ed industry scheme that fronts as education policy. The state has TFA lawyer and the former Mr. Michelle Rhee, Kevin Huffman, running the schools from Nashville as Commissioner, and earlier this year Huffman