NYC: Emergency Rally Thursday at Noon
Emergency meeting on Thursday on behalf of the 97% of New York State students who are not in charter schools: Anyone who can make it tomorrow should do so. The state budget is hitting crunch time, with the Charter lobby spending millions on behalf of privatization and the 3% in charters, while firmly controlling both the Governor and the State Senate. Support must be given to Speaker Silver and t
Michigan: Ellen Cogen Lipton: We Will Bear Witness
Representative Ellen Cogen Lipton has been one of the most outspoken critics of Governor Rick Snyder’s Education Achievement Authority. The EAA was created to gather up the low-performing schools in the state and put them under a single leader, in this case, the Broad “trained” superintendent John Covington. There have been numerous accounts by students and teachers of mistreatment and abuse, poor
Ohio: Denis Smith on Charter School Governance: Part 2: Who “Owns” Charter Schools?
Denis Smith is a retired school administrator who worked both as a sponsor representative for charter schools as well as a consultant in the state charter school office. In this five-part series, he offers his perspective about charter school governance and how this mechanism designed to provide transparency and accountability for public entities is sorely lacking and may in fact be the “fatal des
Please Watch Bill Moyers & Co. This Weekend on PBS
On Tuesday, I taped an interview with Bill Moyers. The show will air six times this weekend on PBS stations across the nation. Bill has become an expert on ALEC, having done important programming (see here) about that shadowy corporate-funded organization that is promoting deregulation of the public and private sectors and encouraging privatization. Given his interests and mine, we had a great con
A Veteran Teacher Defends the Teacher at the Center of the Vergara Trial
The Vergara trial in Los Angeles is an effort funded by a very wealthy man to eliminate due process for teachers in California. The theory of the case is that when teachers have tenure (due process), then it is hard to fire bad teachers. Thus, the civil rights of minority students are violated by the very concept of due process, because more of those who teach them should be fired. But tenure ties
Governor Pat Quinn: Paul Vallas Does Not Support Charter Schools
Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois surprised many people by choosing Paul,Vallas as his running mate for re-election. Vallas once headed the Chicago schools. He headed the Philadelphia schools, where he launched a major experiment in privatization, which was widely judged a failure. He left Philadelphia with a large deficit. He then was selected to take over the New Orleans district after Hurricane K
Sir Michael Barber Unveils Stale Ideas for Massachusetts for Bargain Basement Price of $250,000
EduShyster has outdone herself with this brilliant post. It is the story of how the business leaders of Massachusetts got hornswoggled by some fellow named (Sir) Michael Barber, who works for Pearson and does big thinking for them. [NB: As an American, I don't recognize titles other than Mr., Miss, Mrs, and Dr.] You know, of course, that Massachusetts made a “grand bargain” between its politic
Kevin Welner: Why Legislators Adopt VAM Formulas They Don’t Understand
Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center, wrote this commentary in response to the complaints of teachers who are evaluated by the scores of students they never taught. Few people can understand the complex algorithms underlying VAM scores, and the people who wrote these formulae can’t explain them in pain English. Yet teachers are fired or get a bonus if their incomprehensib
Pre-K Makes Sense, But Some on the Right Don’t Want to Believe the Evidence
Grover Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution has become the GOP’s go-to guy for proclamations against universal pre-kindergarten. Whitehurst was education research director for the George W. Bush administration, and he provides the ammunition for those who say that pre-kindergarten has no lasting benefits and “doesn’t work.” His arguments are useful for those who don’t want to pay the price of s
Peter Greene: Forget About Ridiculous Expectations
Peter Greene, always a font of common sense, explains how we replaced “the soft bigotry of low expectations“ with the “hard tyranny of ridiculous expectations.” He writes: “We have, for instance, substituted the expectation that every third grader will read at grade level no matter what. In some states (I’m looking at you, NY) we raised the standard for proficiency arbitrarily. And we have just ge
Our Education Spring Goes National: Report from Fairtest
Say no to high-stakes testing! Say no to data mining of your children , Say no to corporate reform! Say no to those who want to monetize our children! Here is a report from Bob Schaeffer of Fairtest: Anyone who still believes that the resistance to testing misuse and overuse is confined to a few big cities and “liberal” activists, should click through this week’s news clips. In fact, testing p
Our Education Spring Goes National: Report from Fairtest
Say no to high-stakes testing! Say no to data mining of your children , Say no to corporate reform! Say no to those who want to monetize our children! Here is a report from Bob Schaeffer of Fairtest: Anyone who still believes that the resistance to testing misuse and overuse is confined to a few big cities and “liberal” activists, should click through this week’s news clips. In fact, testing p
A New Website about Education Issues
A new website launched recently to aggregate articles about education. It is called “Realcleareducation,” associated with “Realclearpolitics.” I have found some good articles in the site, which does a national sweep of education news. But just like my blog, which is pro-public school, pro-teacher, and pro-parent, as well as anti-privatization and anti-high-stakes testing, the new site has a poi
NC Loses Another NBCT Teacher
Governor Pat McCrory and the Legislature in North Carolina are doing their best to get rid of the state’s's star teachers, and they are succeeding. The state is losing large numbers of experienced teachers, because of low salaries. Teachers’ salaries have been flat for six years and are now 46th in the nation. This National Board Certified Teacher quit, and she wrote a letter to the governor to
LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 3-25-14 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: Massachusetts Kindergarten Teacher: I QuitI am really sorry to have to publish posts like this. I don’t want to see any teacher quit, especially the veteran teachers who are needed to help new teachers learn the ropes. And yet, there is a massive outflow of teaching talent from our public schools, caused by the soul-deadening testi