The Answer Sheet:
Why it’s (long past) time for social and emotional learning
Washington state judge draws key distinction between charter, traditional public schools
Millions in private money poured into Common Core promotion
MoCo Supt. Starr calls for online civility after being targeted by obscene tweets
All Week @ The Answer Sheet
Why it’s (long past) time for social and emotional learning
Sacramento City Unified School District Superintendent Jonathan Raymond, who is leaving his job at the end of the month after four years, wrote the following response to a recent column by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on the average performance of U.S. 15 year olds in reading, math and science on the 2012 Program […]
The person de Blasio is likely to tap to run NYC schools
The list of names that New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has considered for chancellor of the country’s largest school district has been long, but it appears that he has settled on one — at least for now. Knowledgeable sources say that de Blasio is likely next week to name Carmen Farina, a close […]
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A Washington state judge just ruled that part of the state’s new charter school law is constitutional and part of it isn’t. The most interesting part of the decision isn’t which is which, but why there is a distinction in the first place. The case on which King County Superior Court Judge Jean Rietschel ruled […]
It cost money to implement and promote the Common Core State Standards. Here’s a post about where some of the funding is coming from, written by award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York. Burris has chronicled on this blog the many problems with the test-driven reform in New York (here, and here and here and here, for […]
Montgomery County Superintendent Joshua Starr just released an open letter to parents (see text below) about starting a communitywide conversation about online civility after he and his family were the target of threatening and obscene tweets this week when he was deciding whether to close schools because of the bad weather. Starr also is creating a […]
YESTERDAY
Education Dept. to recognize same-sex marriages for federal financial aid purposes
The U.S. Education Department announced Friday that the federal government will now recognize all legal same-sex marriages for the purposes of applying for and receiving federal financial aid. Here’s the statement from the department: As part of the U.S. Department of Education’s ongoing efforts to implement inclusive policies that reflect the diversity of American families, […]
Mike Huckabee walks back his support for Common Core
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has now put himself on the list of potential Republican candidates for president in 2016, which explains, perhaps, why he is backing off his once outspoken support of the Common Core State Standards initiative — even while insisting that his original backing made sense. Huckabee wrote a letter dated June 3, […]
How U.S. schools misteach history of racial segregation
Here’s an important post by Richard Rothstein about how the United States fails to face up to its racial history — in and out of schools — an issue underscored by the late Nelson Mandela’s insistence that reconciliation in South Africa be underpinned by truth-telling about the nation’s past. Rothstein is a research associate at […]
Let them eat grit
For some time now “grit” has become one of the new mantras of education reform and schools are somehow supposed to teach students how to have more. Here’s a piece on why this is nonsense, from Joe Bower, a teacher in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, who seeks to explore progressive forms of education. This appeared on his blog,” […]
DEC 12
The most important unplanned lesson for teachers
The American University community in the nation’s capital was on lockdown for some time on Wednesday night after a man with a gun was spotted on campus. Here is a post about how one faculty member and her class handled the situation — and the larger issue of whether and how teachers are prepared to […]
Are MOOCs already over?
Are MOOCs already over? It may seem like an odd question given that the Massive Open Online Courses have been touted as the future of higher education, and that it seems like just yesterday that the country’s major universities were rushing to create courses to grab their share of the expected global market. New data […]
Secret policymaking on school reform is on the rise
Education reform policy around the country is increasingly being made in secret or without public input — and with a lot of private philanthropic money. A number of recent stories reveal the extent to which policy makers and school reformers are going to push their reform agenda to expand charter schools and vouchers in an […]
College Board’s effort to have ‘fun’ by sending cow stickers to schools falls flat
The College Board just tried to have a little fun with high schools but some college admissions counselors are less than amused. The organization sent out to thousands of high schools around the country stickers with pictures of a cartoon-like cow and the words, “Gee Whiz” — a reference to a critical reading question on […]
DEC 11
StudentsFirst gives NY ed commissioner a friendly audience for Common Core forum
New York State Education Commissioner John King was on a “listening tour” this fall to ostensibly talk with the public about the Common Core State Standards and school reform but it got cut short when people in the crowd challenged him. Some forums were cancelled, but he is back on the circuit — and on […]
The 10 school districts with the most charter school students
A new report on charter schools says that charter school enrollment around the country has grown 80 percent over the past five years — but represents only 5 percent of total public school enrollment (a statistic that may seem surprising given all of the attention that school reformers give to charters). The report, which is issued […]
DEC 10
A critique of Common Core math standards
I recently posted a piece on the future of high school math education and the Common Core State Standards on math, which was the work of a coalition of mathematicians, statisticians, teachers and curriculum developers, that elicited a lot of interest. The following response takes a critical look at that piece and the Common Core […]
The link between early childhood education and PISA scores
There’s an interesting connection between early childhood education and the results released last week from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment, on which American 15-year-old students performed about average in reading, math and science among some 65 countries and school systems. Here to explain is Kris Perry , executive director of the First Five Years Fund, a […]
DEC 09
Education activists protest, rally in scores of cities
Today parents, educators, students and activists around the country are staging a “Day of Action” with scores of coordinated events in more than 60 cities that sponsors hope will draw national attention to the problems of corporate-influenced school reform and to build a national movement to change the public education conversation and to increase funding […]
Who de Blasio really wanted as NYC schools chancellor
(Update: Statement from Darling-Hammond) New York City Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio is considering a number of candidates to be his new public schools chancellor — a decision that is one of the most visible and important he will make as he staffs his new administration — and it seems like every day there is a […]
DEC 08
D.C. Mayor Gray needs a history lesson on apartheid
D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray, while speaking about the legacy of the great Nelson Mandela, drew parallels between the inhuman system of apartheid that lasted for decades in South Africa and the citizenship restrictions that D.C. residents are forced to live under in the nation’s capital. Here’s what he said on Friday: I think there […]
How to get effective teachers in the most needy schools
We just lived through PISA week, complete with newly released scores from the 2012 Program of International Student Assessment and the avalanche of media coverage about the results. Here’s a post on education beyond PISA by Jeff Bryant, an Associate Fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and the owner of a marketing and communications […]
Education innovation: A case study in what not to do
The $1 billion initiative by the Los Angeles public schools district to give an iPad to all 650,000 students and teachers for home use has been nothing short of a mess, plagued by poor planning and bad execution. You can read about it here. Here’s a new look at what went wrong from Larry Cuban, a […]
DEC 07
Video: Maya Angelou’s moving tribute poem to Mandela
Here is a poem that Maya Angelou wrote and delivered as a tribute to the great Nelson Mandela, who died Thursday at the age of 95. Watch it. It is worth the four minutes and 40 seconds it will take to listen.
Four reasons it would be shocking if Kaya Henderson becomes NYC schools chief
Articles about the possibility that Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio will pick D.C. Schools Superintendent Kaya Henderson as New York City’s new schools chancellor are popping up in the New York press, apparently fueled by a recent phone conversation that de Blasio initiated with Henderson. Nobody’s reported definitely what the discussion was about, but that hasn’t […]
Why the ‘good school’ vs ‘bad school’ debate is all wrong
Here’s an interesting look at what we mean when we talk about school and schooling, and how school reform has affected the meaning of both. This was written by Anne Pomerantz, senior lecturer in educational linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education. By Anne Pomerantz Philadelphia’s NatIhanial Hawthorne Elementary is now a condominium […]
The dangers of PISA envy
This was PISA week, for anybody who slept through it and managed to miss the avalanche of coverage about the newly released results of the 2012 Program for International Student Achievement, which showed U.S. students scored average in reading, math and science. Naturally there were many calls to look for best practices from the countries […]