Best and worst education news of 2013
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| THE BEST |
Here’s a brief look back at the best and worst education news of the past year.
These are the six best, from my perspective of course; please put your nominations in the comment section below!
These are the six best, from my perspective of course; please put your nominations in the comment section below!
1. The nationwide revolt against excessive, hi-stakes and low-quality testing grew stronger, which will only further intensify as other states adopt the Common Core aligned exams, as occurred this year in New York – which has prompted huge parent protests and a growing opt out movement.
2. The opposition to the rigid and developmentally inappropriate Common Core standards was increasingly evident among experts and educators left, right andcenter. Critics have rightfully asked, where is the evidence for these standards, why weren’t they piloted before being imposed on the nation, and why were so few educators and parents involved in their development?
3. Prompted by the behemoth of inBloom Inc., along with the NSA surveillance scandal, there was a rising awareness among parents of how schools, districts and states have been sharing their children’s personal data with a wide array of vendors without their consent. See this important report, just published by Joel Reidenberg of Fordham Law School, which surveyed district practices and found huge problems in the care with which they treated highly sensitive data. The widespread sharing of personal student data without consent was facilitated by the US Ed Department, which eviscerated the regulations pertaining to student privacy in 2008 and 2011 – but as this blog post argues, the federal law known as FERPA itself was inadequate given the technological developments of the 21stcentury. Yet even as eight of nine states have now pulled out of inBloom, and with New York (hopefully) withdrawing under pressure in 2014 (be sure to sign the petition!), the myriad threats to student privacy through states and districts amassing huge amounts of personal student data and providing it to third parties for a variety of purposes is not going away – as our analysis of Code.org and the ALEC anti-privacy bills also suggests.
4. Candidates were elected from coast to coast – including Bill de Blasio as NYC’s mayor, Monica Ratliff and Sue Peters to the Los Angeles and Seattle school boards respectively, who appear to understand the damage done to our public schools by the current fad of free-market competition, unregulated privatization,