Jon Stewart rips bill allowing teachers, parents to hit kids hard enough to bruise
Put this in the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff category: A legislator in Kansas was pushing legislation to allow teachers and parents to whack kids hard enough to bruise. Why? Out of the mistaken belief that beating up children is an effective disciplinary method. The good news is that a legislative committee just killed the bill, but there is […]
How some school ‘data walls’ violate U.S. privacy law
After I wrote last week about “data walls” in public schools that often include lists of students and their test scores, readers asked whether such public displays of academic “achievement” — without parental permission — violate the federal student privacy law known as FERPA (technically the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act). One privacy expert says that such […]
Anti-testing groups form alliance to bring sanity to education policy
With resistance to standardized test-obsessed school reform growing around the country, three dozen local, state and national organizations and individuals have now banded together in an alliance to expand efforts to bring sanity to education policy. The alliance, which is called Testing Resistance and Reform Spring, will support a range of public education and mobilizing tactics […]
A deeply misguided lawsuit about teachers and students
An important trial is under way in California that is ostensibly about one thing — protecting students — but is really about attacking teachers unions and the due process rights for teachers. This post about what is really going on with Vergara v. California was written by Ben Spielberg, a Teach For America alum and […]
2-20-14 The Answer Sheet
The Answer Sheet: #ResistTFA popular on TwitterA student-led campaign against Teach For America took to Twitter this week and has been proving to be popular, at one point more so than tweets with the Olympic hashtag. The Twitter effort is being led by Students United for Public Education, a grassroots, student-led organization founded by Stephanie Rivera, a Rutgers University Graduate School of […