Parent of dying boy has to prove her son can’t take standardized test
Andrea Rediske’s 11-year-old son Ethan, is dying. Last year, Ethan, who was born with brain damage, has cerebral palsy and is blind, was forced to take a version of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test over the space of two weeks because the state of Florida required that every student take one. Ethan wasn’t the only […]
Charter experiment ‘spinning out of control’ in Durham County
What is happening in Durham County, N.C., is exactly what charter school critics have long feared: the destabilization of the traditional district system. Ned Barnett, the editorial page editor of the News & Observer wrote in this piece that the spread of charter schools in the county since the state legislature lifted the cap on […]
J.K. Rowling, please keep any Harry Potter afterthoughts to yourself
Shortly after the last Harry Potter novel — “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” — was published in 2007, author J.K. Rowling revealed that one of the main characters, Hogwarts headmaster and master wizard Albus Dumbledore, was gay. There was no indication in the books that this was the case, so her disclosure left one wondering […]
One thing Bill Gates could do that would actually help kids in school
Bill Gates has spent billions of dollars on education reform efforts, such as evaluating teachers with student standardized test scores and the Common Core State Standards, with not much to show for it. Here’s an idea for how he could spend money in a way that would actually help kids do better in school. This […]
A teacher exposes ‘value-added’ idiocy
VAMboozled is a blog about teacher evaluation, accountability and value-added models written by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, associate professor at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. The following post was on her blog, from a teacher in Arizona who is not identified. The teacher reveals the idiocy of the “value-added” method of evaluation teachers, involving the […]
@ The Answer Sheet 2-3-14
The Answer Sheet: Superintendent on school reform: ‘It is not working’Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy has just asked for a “pause” in implementation of a controversial new teacher evaluation system that uses student standardized test scores to assess teachers as well creation of a task force to study the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Is “a pause” the answer? You might think Mal