Right On, Pittsburgh
.“I really don't see Teach for America as a program to help us,” said new Pittsburgh Public Schools board member Sylvia Wilson, a former teacher and former official with the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers.D.C. 'A DIFFERENT CITY'
The latest round of testing madness shows that poorer urban school districts once again score lower than wealthier suburban ones. Anyone surprised here? Some testing mavens like Arne Duncan, are spinning the results of the 2013 Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) as an improvement for districts like D.C., where scores went up a few points. But "these huge cities still perform dismally," writes Huffinton's Joy Resmovitz.
"It's not a causal model," said Mark Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes of Research, who used to oversee the Education Department's research arm. "I get very leery when people say that 'This shows that X happened, DCPS is doing everything right and we should be learning, it's had spectacular gains since 2003' -- we really can't do that. Demographics in D.C. have changed. The city is a different city."Proof once again that if we REALLY want to improve measurable learning outcomes and
