Wednesday, August 21, 2013
“EDUCATION REFORM” EFFORTS HAVE US GOING BACKWARDS – I HAVE A SOLUTION | Teachers Fight Back
“EDUCATION REFORM” EFFORTS HAVE US GOING BACKWARDS – I HAVE A SOLUTION | Teachers Fight Back:
“EDUCATION REFORM” EFFORTS HAVE US GOING BACKWARDS – I HAVE A SOLUTION
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The average ACT score for this year’s graduates dropped to 20.6, the biggest drop in a decade for Illinois. In addition, the national average dropped below 21 for the first time in eight years. ACT and state officials attribute the drop in Illinois to a change in who is included in test results. For the first time, ACT included students who take the test with extra time, (those with various disabilities). Illinois had the highest percentage of students getting accommodations – 10 percent of test takers – in the country. Nationwide only 4% of students got extra time.
I understand why the drop in Illinois, but what about in the nation ? Test scores of “extra time” students had been included for a while in much of the nation. Why the drop nationwide ? Could “education reform” be failing, or are the tests just getting more difficult ?
If we are going backwards, I have a radical solution to turn things around. I suggest we allow TEACHERS to decide how the curriculum should be implemented. We should let TEACHERS decide how best to motivate their students. We should let TEACHERS decide on their own student discipline plans. We should let TEACHERS
Hoping for a visit from the money fairy Southern California charter school leader running for state superintendent | Pass / Fail | 89.3 KPCC
Southern California charter school leader running for state superintendent | Pass / Fail | 89.3 KPCC:
Southern California charter school leader running for state superintendent
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| Waiting on Eli OR |
| Hoping for a visit from the money fairy |
Marshall Tuck, a leader of Southern California’s charter school and reform movements, launched his campaign Wednesday to become State Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Tuck’s calling himself an innovator – pointing to his years running the Green Dot group of charter schools, and nearly two dozen L.A. Unified schools in former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools.
“If we don’t create the right conditions - which really start in Sacramento - for superintendents, principals, and teachers locally, we’ll never be able to educate our kids. And that’s at the core of why I got into education,” he said.
The state superintendent heads the California Department of Education, which enforces policy for California’s K-12 public schools. Education policy is created by the State Board of Education.
Tuck is seeking support for his candidacy from philanthropist Eli Broad, and another former city mayor, Richard Riordan. Both have made big donations to grow charter
The Common Core and the Common Good - NYTimes.com
The Common Core and the Common Good - NYTimes.com:
The Common Core and the Common Good
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: August 21, 2013 2 Comments
America, we have a problem.
Related
School Standards’ Debut Is Rocky, and Critics Pounce(August 16, 2013)
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Our educational system is not keeping up with that of many other industrialized countries, even as the job market becomes more global and international competition for jobs becomes steeper.
We have gone from the leader to a laggard.
According to the Broad Foundation, an educational reform group, “American students rank 25th in math, 17th in science and 14th in reading compared to students in 27 industrialized countries.”
And we have gone from No. 1 in high school graduation to 22nd among industrialized countries, according to a reportlast year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
That same report found that fewer than half of our students finished college. This ranked us 14th among O.E.C.D. countries, below the O.E.C.D. average. In 1995 we were among the Top 5.
Some rightly point to the high levels of poverty in our public schools to adjust for our lagging performance, but poverty — and affluence — can’t explain all the results away.
As Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, explains in her new book, “The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way,” American students are not
Claiming and Teaching the 1963 March on Washington | Common Dreams
Claiming and Teaching the 1963 March on Washington | Common Dreams:
(Photo: Zinn Education Project)August 28 will mark the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Publicly associated with Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, this march brought more than 250,000 people to the nation’s capital. The day went down in history as a powerful show of force against Jim Crow segregation. Over time this great event has risen to levels of near mythology. The powerful speech by Dr. King, replayed, in part, for us every January on Martin Luther King Day, has eclipsed all else—so much so that too many people believe that the March on Washington was entirely the work of Dr. King. It is also barely remembered that the March on Washington was for freedom and jobs.
Claiming and Teaching the 1963 March on Washington
(Photo: Zinn Education Project)August 28 will mark the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Publicly associated with Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, this march brought more than 250,000 people to the nation’s capital. The day went down in history as a powerful show of force against Jim Crow segregation. Over time this great event has risen to levels of near mythology. The powerful speech by Dr. King, replayed, in part, for us every January on Martin Luther King Day, has eclipsed all else—so much so that too many people believe that the March on Washington was entirely the work of Dr. King. It is also barely remembered that the March on Washington was for freedom and jobs.In fact, The Americans, a high school history text by publishing giant Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, tells students that the march was called simply “to persuade Congress to pass the [1963 civil rights] bill.” In reality, the demand for jobs was not a throwaway line designed to get trade union support. Instead it reflected the growing economic crisis affecting black workers.
Indeed, while Dr. King was a major player, the March on Washington did not begin as a classic civil rights march and was not initiated by him. There is one constituency that can legitimately claim the legacy of the march—one that has been eclipsed in both history as well as in much of the lead-up to the August 2013 commemorations: black labor.
Initiated by A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the march became a joint project with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Randolph and other black labor leaders, particularly those grouped around the Negro American Labor Council, were responding to the fact that the black worker was largely being ignored in the discussions about civil rights. In addition, the economic situation was becoming complicated terrain for black workers.
As historian Nancy MacLean has pointed out, the elements of what came to be known as deindustrialization—which was really part of a reorganization of global capitalism—were
School vouchers aren’t just bad policy—they’re unpopular, too | American Civil Liberties Union
School vouchers aren’t just bad policy—they’re unpopular, too | American Civil Liberties Union:
School vouchers aren’t just bad policy—they’re unpopular, too
Year after year, PDK/Gallup releases an annual poll of public attitudes toward public schools, and it consistently finds that a majority of those polled oppose allowing students and parents to use taxpayer-funded vouchers to attend private schools. This year's poll, released today, found that 70 percent of Americans oppose funneling taxpayer dollars to private schools for tuition, the highest level of opposition to vouchers ever recorded.
We've long advocated against taxpayer funds being used for private and religious school. Here's why.
Vouchers harm religious liberty. Religious schools, which receive the overwhelming majority of taxpayer-funded vouchers, not only require all students to receive religious instruction and attend religious services, but also integrate their religious beliefs in everything they teach students (just one alarming example: a science textbook, in order to support creationist beliefs, claims the Loch Ness Monster is a living, breathing dinosaur). Thomas Jefferson and James Madison knew it was wrong to use taxpayer money—even three pence—to support religious education, because doing so amounts to
Keep Your 'Disruption' Out of Our Schools | Diane Ravitch
Keep Your 'Disruption' Out of Our Schools | Diane Ravitch:
Judith Shulevitz recently wrote a brilliant essay on "disruption" as a business strategy.
Keep Your 'Disruption' Out of Our Schools
Posted: 08/21/2013 3:08 pm
Judith Shulevitz recently wrote a brilliant essay on "disruption" as a business strategy.
As we know, mega-corporations believe they must continually reinvent themselves in order to have the latest, best thing and beat their competitors, who are about to overtake them in the market.
They believe in disruption as a fundamental rule of the marketplace.
By some sloppy logic or sleight-of-hand, the financial types and corporate leaders who think they should reform the nation's schools have concluded that the schools should also be subject to "creative disruption" or just plain "disruption."
And so we have the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, underwritten by billionaire Eli Broad, sending out superintendents who are determined to "disrupt" schools by closing them and handing them over to private management.
Unfortunately, Secretary Arne Duncan agrees that disruption is wonderful, so he applauds the idea of closing schools, opening new schools, inviting the for-profit sector to compete for scarce funds, and any other scheme that might disrupt schools as we know them.
He does this believing that U.S. education is a failed enterprise and needs a mighty shaking-up.
First, he is wrong to believe that U.S. public education is failing. That is untrue. I document that he is wrong in my new book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and The Danger to America's Public Schools, using graphs from the U.S. Department of Education website.
Second, "disruption" is a disaster for children, families, schools, and communities.
Think of little children. They need continuity and stability, not disruption. They need adults