Virginia Senate votes to cut number of SOLs, delay A-F school grading
The Virginia legislature is on its way to delaying some school reforms pushed by the former governor, Bob McDonnell, and reducing the number of Standards of Learning tests students are required to take. The state Senate on Tuesday passed bills to reduce by about 25 percent the number of SOLs students take — from 34 to […]
America’s school funding problems, state by state
A new report on school funding reveals how uneven and unfair public school funding is in states across the country. The report, titled “Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card,” looks at funding data from 2007 through 2011, analyzing the condition of state school finance systems with a focus on the fair distribution of resources to the […]
Ravitch: The ‘White House’s obsession with data is sick’
Education historian and activist Diane Ravitch has been blasting the Obama administration for a long time for education policies that have expanded the importance of standardized tests and promoted the privatization of public education. She was just in Washington to talk with U.S. legislators about the dangers of corporate-influenced school reform and she made some of her […]
Text of report detailing $100 million-plus needed for Common Core tests in Maryland
I recently wrote about a Maryland Education Department report that said the vast majority of schools in many of the state’s counties are not technologically prepared to give new online Common Core-aligned standardized tests, and at least $100 million will have to be spent by 2015 to get ready. The report, done for the state legislature, […]
Yes, teacher morale really is low — despite a report to the contrary
The Center for American Progress, a Washington D.C. think tank, released a report recently that declared that teachers really aren’t all that dissatisfied with their jobs, despite, apparently multiple polls that show morale has plummeted. In this post Barnett Berry looks at how much sense that report really makes. Berry is the founder, partner and […]
Obama smacks Bill O’Reilly on school vouchers
President Obama often says things about school reform that suggest he hasn’t read up on the effects of his policies, but he knew his stuff on vouchers cold during an interview with Bill O’Reilly, effectively smacking down the conservative commentator’s wishful thinking with the facts. The Obama administration has steadfastly opposed vouchers, which use public […]
@ The Answer Sheet 2-4-14
The Answer Sheet: J.K. Rowling, please keep any Harry Potter afterthoughts to yourselfShortly 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