Latest News and Comment from Education

Monday, March 17, 2014

3-17-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter:





Carol Burris Corrects More Duncan Lies from Massachusetts
Boston's CorpEd rag, the Boston Globe, quoted Arne Duncan's recent lie that 40 percent of MA high school grads attending 4 year colleges take remedial courses.  Did it occur to Globe's Scot Lehigh to do a little fact-checking?  Oh, I forgot, his is a column, so any lie repeated is totally fair.Correction from The Answer Sheet:. . . .What is “staggering” is the gross inaccuracy of the claim. Here a


Duncan Warns Data Predators to Whom He Gave Privileges in 2009
At the behest of the Silicon Valley billionaires and the testing giants, the Obama Administration gutted FERPA protections for children in schools soon after coming into office, so that now corporate privateers and data predators have rich feeding grounds to collect, sift, and mine student and teacher data for whatever purposes they see fit.With parents and school boards with their hair on fire ab

The common core and testing fever

Sent to the Oregonian, March 19, 2014Brett Bigham suggests that we need more standards and less testing ("Common Core Standards are not insidious: Guest opinion," March 16).  The Common Core,  however, is requiring an astonishing amount of standardized testing, far more than No Child Left Behind (NCLB) required. The new tests include the usual end of year tests, but in more subjects and


3-16-14 Schools Matter
Schools Matter: Call Your State Senator Tomorrow in TennesseeLocal TV news in Knoxville has typical coverage below of the move by the TN House last week, which voted overwhelmingly to delay implementation of Common Core testing. Note that Mike Edwards, who leads off the "fair and balanced coverage," is the President of Knoxville Chamber of Commerce, a Board of Director member of the Tene