NPE News Briefs ← from The Network for Public Education:
NPE News Briefs
from The Network for Public Education
Obama and Duncan Plan to Control Teacher Institutions with Their Failed Ideas | Diane Ravitch’s blog
With the Obama administration’s latest policy pronouncement, the federal grip on American education grows tighter and stupider every day. The latest: the administration plans to reward the best teacher-training institutions and drive the “worst” ones out of business. This is like Race to the Top for teacher preparation programs. What are their measures? Of course, ...read more
Arne-Ology & the Bad Incentives of Evaluating Teacher Prep with Student Outcome Data | School Finance 101
As I understand it, USDOE is going to go ahead with the push to have teacher preparation programs rated in part based on the student growth outcomes of children taught by individuals receiving credentials from those programs. Now, the layers of problems associated with this method are many and I’ve addressed them previously here and ...read more
North Carolina May Drop Common Core | Diane Ravitch’s blog
The North Carolina legislature is deciding whether to back out of the Common Core standards. As a critic of the Common Core, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I would be pleased to see a state that won Race to the Top funding telling Arne Duncan “No, thanks,” we don’t take orders ...read more
Cutting Through the Hype: Principals as Instructional Leaders | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
Jane David and I wrote a book called Cutting through the Hype: (Harvard Education Press, 2010). This is one chapter on principals. I have updated some references and language. Effective manager? Savvy politician? Heroic leader? School CEO? Reformers press for principals who can not only play these roles but also raise test scores and do ...read more
AFT asks Pearson to stop ‘gag order’ barring educators from talking about tests | The Answer Sheet
BY VALERIE STRAUSS April 25 at 6:00 am American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is sending a letter (see below) to the executives of Pearson, the world’s largest education company, asking them to stop a ”gag order” that is part of their $32 million contract with New York state to design new standardized tests ...read more
Children With Terminal Diseases Have to Take the Test, But Voucher Kids Don’t | Scathing Purple Musings
From St. Augustine Record reporter Marcia Lane: A Senate subcommittee approved an amendment on Tuesday expanding the voucher program, known as the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, adding it to a bill that helps parents of disabled children get additional educational services. Opponents say the plan is going to hurt public schools and the state’s ...read more
Alexandra Miletta: edTPA: Good Thing or Bad Thing? Part 1 | Diane Ravitch’s blog
A few years ago, the Powers-That-Be decided that the biggest problem in American education was the teachers. McKinsey said that other nations attracted the top performing graduates of the most prestigious universities into teaching, while our own sorry teachers came from the bottom of the barrel. In the hunt for perpetrators of what was wrongly ...read more
Nonprofit Charters Turn Taxes into Profits for Board Members | janresseger
Yesterday the Economic Policy Institute published a stunning new report that examines Rocketship Charter Schools and the financial backers tied to the success of the Rocketship chain of schools. The report’s author is political economist Gordon Lafer, who examines Rocketship Charter Schools in the context of Wisconsin, where corporate lobbies such as the Wisconsin Policy ...read more
College Perp | EduShyster
Is harsh discipline really the best way to prepare low-income minority students for college? Quick reader: what is the best way to prepare low-income minority students for college and 21st-century success? If you answered *an obsessive focus on the students’ smallest behaviors (particularly infractions of the uniform variety) paired with plenty of harsh discipline for ...read more
A Hero Superintendent in Oklahoma Defies the State, Exempts Two Students from Tests | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Donna Dudley, superintendent of Moyers public schools in Oklahoma, made a conscious decision to defy the state. It should not have been an extraordinary decision because it was what a decent human being would do. Two of her students suffered a terrible loss the weekend before the state tests. Their parents were killed in a ...read more
Gary Rubinstein: Did Arne Duncan Find a Miracle School in Denver? | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Gary Rubinstein is quite the sleuth when anyone makes a claim about educational results that seem too good to be true. A few years ago, he helped me pin down some whoppers when Secretary Arne Duncan, President Obama, and then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed they discovered miracle schools that had a 100% graduation rate, or ...read more
APR 24
Washington Becomes First State To Return To No Child Left Behind | The Huffington Post
Two years after Washington state largely ditched the No Child Left Behind Act, the much-maligned federal education law will be in full effect there yet again for the coming school year, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Thursday. Last August, the Education Department placed Washington, Oregon and Kansas — and later Arizona — on ...read more
What inBloom’s Shutdown Means for the Industry | EdSurge News
In less than two years, inBloom went from being a sort of Holy Grail for student data services to a sacrificial lamb that has brought data and privacy discussions to the forefront. On Monday, April 21, inBloom CEO Iwan Streichenberger announced on the nonprofit’s homepage his “decision to wind down the organization over the coming ...read more
Arne Duncan brings hammer down on Washington state, pulling its ‘No Child’ waiver
BY VALERIE STRAUSS April 24 at 6:08 pm The Education Department is for the first time yanking one of the waivers it gave to states that exempts them the most onerous parts of the flawed No Child Left Behind law. As a result, Washington state will now have to comply with all parts of No ...read more
Organizing Resistance to Teach for America | Rethinking Schools Online
BY KERRY KRETCHMAR AND BETH SONDEL In July 2013, we were two of the facilitators of the “Organizing Resistance to Teach For America and Its Role in Privatization” people’s assembly at the Free Minds, Free People conference in Chicago. Our goals were to learn from those fighting for equity in communities and help connect the ...read more
It’s not just wing-nuts! Slate gets liberal opposition to the Common Core all wrong | Salon.com
By Jeff Bryant Is education too difficult a subject for some liberals? Lots of other topics are easier to write about for sure: What to say about the minimum wage? Raise it! Same-sex marriage? Yes! Unrestricted gun ownership? Bad! Granting undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship? Good! But for lots of controversies in the education ...read more
Chicago Again Imposes ‘Reconstitution’ As Though It Will Cure School Ills | janresseger
by janresseger The school board in Chicago will turn three more schools over to the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL), its contractor of choice, when the turnaround ax falls this spring. Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, began his career in Chicago, where he launched the turnaround options that have now been prescribed ...read more
Choice, Small Schools, and Trade-Offs | Deborah Meier – Bridging Differences
By Deborah Meier on April 24, 2014 10:45 AM Today, Deborah Meier writes to Mike Klonsky, who joined her on the blog this week. Dear Mike, We most often argue about strategy rather than principles. But maybe there’s a principle behind our differences in strategy. I’ve always had a hard time when asked, “Well. what would ...read more
How, after 60 years, Brown v. Board of Education succeeded — and didn’t | The Answer Sheet
BY VALERIE STRAUSS The 60th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling is almost upon us and it’s a good time to take a look at whether it succeeded in its mission: to end segregation in public schools. Here is an important report about what has and has not been accomplished by ...read more
Save Our Schools NJ Complains That Public Schools Are Recruiting for Charters | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Camden, New Jersey, is one of the state’s impoverished small cities that is under state control. It may be the poorest district in the state. It is rhe lowest performing. The Chris Christie administration appointed a 32-year-old inexperienced young man (Teach for America alum) with some time working in the New York Department of Education ...read more
Superintendent defies state after she says students testing exam | OKCFOX.COM
The superintendent for a small Oklahoma school district took to Facebook after a testing exemption for two students whose parents were killed was denied by the state. Donna Dudley, superintendent for Moyers Public Schools, says she went against Department of Education rules and allowed the students to not the take the test, even though she ...read more
“Common Core: Building the Machine” | Diane Ravitch’s blog
This is an interesting documentary on the Common Core, featuring some of its strongest supporters at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (as well as guest cameos by Jeb Bush and Bill Gates) and some of its strongest critics, notably Sandra Stotsky and James Milgram, both of whom served on the “validation committee,” but refused to ...read more
Wendy Lecker: Why So Many Segregated Charter Schools in Connecticut? | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Civil rights attorney Wendy Lecker calls out the charter sector of Connecticut for its unabashed practice of racial segregation. A new report from Connecticut Voices for Children finds that charter schools are hyper segregated and that they exclude children with disabilities and English language learners. Don’t expect the State Commissioner of Connecticut to care: he ...read more
APR 23
City school principals spend $830G to ‘buy out’ teachers from grading state exams | NY Daily News
You’ve got to pay to grade. The principals of 278 city elementary and middle schools spent $830,000 out of their budgets to keep teachers in their classrooms rather than send them to grade controversial state-mandated English Language Arts exams this month, according to the Department of Education. Under the head-scratching policy, principals are damned if ...read more
Breaking News: NC Judge Blocks Anti-Tenure Law | Diane Ravitch’s blog
A judge in Guilford County, North Carolina, ruled that the district and Wake County do not have to comply with a state law intended to take away tenure. It’s not yet clear whether e the ruling applies statewide or only to the districts that opposed the law. But for now, teachers view it as vindication ...read more
Opinion: Why Common Core tests are bad | CNN.com
By Nicholas Tampio Editor’s note: Nicholas Tampio is assistant professor of political science at Fordham University. He is the author of “Kantian Courage: Advancing the Enlightenment in Contemporary Political Theory.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. (CNN) — In a few weeks, the New York State Education Department will ...read more
CTU’s Karen Lewis on today’s decision by the CPS board to wage war on African-American students, teachers and parents. | Fred Klonsky
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) released the following statement upon news that the Chicago Board of Education voted to “turn around” three elementary schools on the city’s South and West sides. The move will transfer the schools’ authority to a politically connected business organization with ties to city hall: “Today’s hostile takeover of three of ...read more
MEAP test ‘is not an option’ for next school year, State Superintendent Mike Flanagan says | MLive.com
By Brian Smith on April 23, 2014 at 3:04 PM LANSING — Lawmakers may want students taking the Michigan Educational Assessment Program test next school year, but State Superintendent Mike Flanagan says the state’s old test “is not an option.” The Michigan Department of Education has been preparing schools to transition to a replacement test ...read more
How anxious are kids about taking standardized tests? This anxious. | The Answer Sheet
BY VALERIE STRAUSS If you have any doubt that kids feel pressure to do well on high-stakes standardized tests, consider this. A counselor at an El Paso elementary school, in an effort to allay student fears about having to take the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness tests this week, held conversations with students ...read more
Who are they kidding? The excuses of NY State Education Department and Pearson for the prominent trademarks in the ELA exam fall flat | NYC Public School Parents
Deborah Poppe, of West Hempstead, Long Island, said her eighth-grade son was similarly puzzled by a question, which drew complaints for a second straight year, about a busboy who failed to clean some spilled root beer — Mug Root Beer, to be exact, a registered trademark of PepsiCo. ‘”Why are they trying to sell me ...read more
Greet the Hedge Funders and Cuomo with a Picket in the Pines! | Diane Ravitch’s blog
When the union-busting Wall Street crowd gathers with Governor Cuomo at their pretentious “Camp Philos,” there won’t be any public. School parents or teachers there. The few willing and able to fork over $1,000 were told they were not welcome. So Cuomo and his buddies want to “reform” public schools without the voices of those ...read more
EduShyster Visits Arne Duncan’s Alma Mater | Diane Ravitch’s blog
EduShyster visited the University of Chicago Lab School, where Arne Duncan was a student from K-12, thirteen years. She met his favorite teacher, who has been teaching for 49 years. She searched for the secret sauce that makes him tick. She would have been better off searching for whatever ingredient led him to look upon ...read more
A Guide to the Many Phases and Faces of Race to the Top | Politics K-12 – Education Week
By Alyson Klein on April 23, 2014 10:01 AM Race to the Top started out as a competition among states that agreed to embrace certain K-12 education redesign principles—but it didn’t stay that way. The program has gone through a dozen iterations since it first debuted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. ...read more
Parent to Obama: Let me tell you about the Common Core test Malia and Sasha don’t have to take but Eva does | The Answer Sheet
I get a lot of e-mail from parents and teachers who wonder if President Obama, whose children go to the private Sidwell Friends School, knows what is actually going on with all of the standardized testing in public schools. Here’s an open letter to Obama explaining what he is missing, written by Rebecca Steinitz, a ...read more
Florida’s Largest For-Profit Charter Chain Under Federal Investigation | Diane Ravitch’s blog
The Miami Herald reports that the U.S. Department of Education’s Inspector General is reviewing the business practices of the Academica charter chain, a for-profit and highly profitable charter chain. Ironically, at the same time, the charter-friendly Florida legislature is considering legislation that would weaken district oversight of charter school corporations. The charter industry makes subst
Common Core propaganda fails: Well-financed education “reformers” fight common sense | Salon.com
For years, elites in big business, foundations, well-endowed think tanks, and corporate media have conducted a well-financed marketing campaign to impress on the nation’s public schools an agenda of change that includes charter schools, standardized testing, and “new and improved” standards known as the Common Core. These ideas were sold to us as sure-fire remedies ...read more
APR 22
Confessions of a Teacher in a “No Excuses” Charter School | Diane Ravitch’s blog
This manuscript was sent to me by a teacher who worked in a “no excuses” charter school in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, New York. Her descriptions of the classroom practices there are vivid and often chilling. The children are treated in a manner that demands robotic responses. What is demanded of them is total obedience. They ...read more
CCSS Politics Make the Daily Beast Sad | CURMUDGUCATION
Nobody can accuse the Daily Beast of being unclear about its position. “The Incredibly Stupid War on the Common Core” says the headline, followed by the subheading, “An unholy alliance between the Tea Party and the teachers’ unions threatens to derail the most promising education reform in decades.” So right off the bat, we know ...read more
Statement on inBloom’s overdue demise | NYC Public School Parents
Today’s announcement that inBloom is closing its doors will hopefully make government officials, corporations and foundations more aware that parental concerns cannot be ignored, and that they must stop foisting their “solutions” on our schools and classrooms with no attention given to the legitimate concerns of parents and their right to protect their children from ...read more
11 problems created by the standardized testing obsession | The Answer Sheet
BY VALERIE STRAUSS Ron Maggiano is a veteran teacher who won the Disney Teacher Award for innovation and creativity in 2005 and the American Historical Association’s Beveridge Family Teaching Prize for outstanding K-12 teaching in 2006. After a 33-year teaching career, he resigned last year from West Springfield High School in Fairfax County, Va., where he ...read more
It Is Spring and Big-Money Conferences on School “Reform” Bloom | janresseger
I was educated in the public schools of small town Havre, Montana, and my children were educated in the public schools of inner-ring suburban Cleveland Heights, Ohio. I am a strong believer in public education—publicly funded, universally available, required to accept all children who present themselves at the door, and accountable to the public. A ...read more
Another “oops” in Newark school plan | Bob Braun’s Ledger
The “One Newark” plan is a disaster for the city’s families. Now, even the district leadership all but admits it by again postponing crucial deadlines. Parents who were promised a “match” with a new school this week won’t be getting it until next month. Other parents won’t know until days before school opens. And to ...read more
NCAA Will No Longer Accept Credits Awarded by 24 K12 Virtual Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch’s blog
The NCAA announced that it will no longer accept credits awarded by 24 virtual charter schools, all of which are operated by Michael Milken’s corporation K12. This is huge. All of these virtual schools are highly profitable. The K12 corporation, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, receives full tuition for each student; ...read more
Teachers’ Licenses No Longer Jeopardized by THE Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) | VAMboozled
On Friday, April 12th, the Tennessee Board of Education met and rescinded much of the policy that ties teachers’ licenses to their value-added, as determined by the growth in their students’ performance on tests over time as calculated by the all-too-familiar Tennessee Education Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS), and its all-too-familiar mother-ship the Education Value-Added Assessment ...read
NCAA Bans K12 Inc. Online Charters: No Rose Bowl, No Final Four | Cloaking Inequity
The NCAA has banned K12 Inc. In the future, athletes that are relying on K12 online coursework will no longer be eligible to play college sports. The NCAA will stop accepting coursework from these schools starting with the 2014–15 school year. Coursework completed from Spring 2013 through Spring 2014 will undergo additional evaluation on a case-by-case basis ...read more
Teacher candidates to face new performance assessment | catalyst-chicago.org
Some students and educators in teacher preparation programs say they were caught off-guard when the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) approved a single-source contract two months ago with NCS Pearson Inc. to administer a new performance assessment required for teacher certification. Starting in the fall of 2015, teacher candidates must pay the national testing ...read more
Pearson Crashes in Florida During State Testing | Diane Ravitch’s blog
I am getting reports of computer servers crashing in various states. Whose nutty idea was it that all testing must be online? Was it to make data mining easier? Ir to enrich the testing companies and vendors of software and hardware? News from Colleen Wood in Florida: Colleen Doherty Wood 904/591.3207 50thNoMore.org / @50thNoMore Diane ...read more
Oklahoma: Reform Fatigue Sets In | Diane Ravitch’s blog
After years of enacting reform after reform, and after years of defunding the public schools, Oklahoma legislators are stepping back and thinking twice what they have wrought. It is not pretty. They passed a law saying that third graders would be held back if they didn’t pass a test, but they are rethinking that. They ...read more
The Week That Was – Oklahoma School Reform Comes Crashing Down | @ THE CHALK FACE
BY JOHN THOMPSON Six days into the week that may mark the end of test-driven school “reform” in Oklahoma, our state may foreshadow the way that corporate reform collapses nationally. As the parent/volunteer leader of Central Parent Legislative Action Committee, Meredith Exline says, “the trend in Oklahoma is not isolated. ‘I really feel like any ...read more
What does the SAT measure? Aptitude? Achievement? Anything? | The Answer Sheet
BY VALERIE STRAUSS April 22 at 4:24 pm Back in the day, the day being June 23, 1926, the very first Scholastic Aptitude Test was given to some 8,000 young people, most of them male, who labored for three hours and 45 minutes on problems in nine areas: definitions, math problems, classification, artificial language, antonyms, ...read more
Mike Klonsky’s SmallTalk Blog: ‘The reform movement in US is led by a bunch of Ivy Leaguers, obsessed with data.’
Quotable Jiang Xueqin In December, China stunned the world when the most widely used international education assessment revealed that Shanghai’s schools now outperform those of any other country—not only in math and science but also in reading. Some education experts have attributed these results to recent reforms undertaken by the Chinese government. Jiang Xueqin has ...read more
Mouthpiece for Malloy & Education Reform industry responds to possible Pelto candidacy | Wait What?
As we discuss strategies to keep Governor Malloy and his administration from spending four more years undermining teachers, privatizing our public education system and moving Connecticut in the wrong direction, it is clear that we can count on the Malloy political operation and its allies in the corporate education reform industry to reiterate why our ...read more
Teachers Are Losing Their Jobs, But Teach for America’s Expanding. What’s Wrong With That? | The Nation
Even the organization’s own recruits are uncomfortable with its explosive growth. Alexandra Hootnick April 15, 2014 TFA underscores the importance of its recruits’ success as teachers, frequently touting positive new statistics and research. But its corps members’ impact on low-income students is only the short-term, experiential part of the organization’s more important long-term mission: to ...r
$100 million Gates-funded student data project ends in failure | The Answer Sheet
BY VALERIE STRAUSS April 21 at 2:00 pm A controversial $100 million student data collection project funded by the Gates Foundation and operated by a specially created nonprofit organization called inBloom is shutting down after failing to achieve its goals. After most of the original state partners with inBloom withdrew their support, the final straw ...read more
FairTest: Computer Test Failures Are Common | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Florida had widespread problems with its FCAT, delivered–or not–by Pearson. Pam Stewart promised to seek damages from Pearson. Remember the bad old days when teachers tested students, graded the tests, and students got immediate feedback. Now state officials trust Pearson more than teachers. Who peddled the idea that all testing should be done online? Here ...read more
APR 20
New Report Rebukes Central Feature of ‘Race to the Top’ | Common Dreams
The central feature of the Obama administration’s $5 billion “Race to the Top” program was sharply refuted last week by the American Statistical Association, one of the nation’s leading scholarly organizations. Spurred on by the administration’s combination of federal cash and mandates, most states are now using student test scores to rank and evaluate teachers. ...read more
Why Doesn’t the New York Times Understand the Controversy Over Common Core? | Diane Ravitch’s blog
In story after story, the New York Times consistently misses the essence of the controversy surrounding Common Core. Today’s New York Times gives its lead article on page 1, column right, top of the fold, to the battle raging within the Republican party, about the Common Core. On one side is Jeb Bush, standing up ...read more
APR 19
Malloy administration recruits “Dream Team” to sell Common Core to Connecticut teachers | Wait What?
Initially Malloy and his team wanted to run a $1 million Connecticut taxpayer funded pro-Common Core advertising campaign. But when a political firestorm forced them to back down, the Malloy team came up with a different publicly funded campaign to sell the Common Core. This time the brainchild is from an out-of-state company hired by ...read more
Naison: Obama’s Scorched Earth Policy is Destroying Public Education in the Cities | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Perhaps someday historians will figure out how the Obama administration pulled the wool over the eyes of so many people about its plans for urban schools. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama named Professor Linda Darling-Hammond as his senior education advisor. She went on national television to describe the progressive policies he would pursue if ...read more
Two Americas: George W. Bush and Neil deGrasse Tyson | the becoming radical
“This country was founded on the idea of concentrating wealth in the hands of a few white men,” Mychal Denzel Smith asserts in “We Built This Country on Inequality,” adding, “That that persists today isn’t a flaw in the design. Everything is working as the founders intended.” Smith’s claim has two parts that challenge the ...read more
Representative Raul Grijalva Warns that Obama’s Market-Based Policies Endanger Public Education | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He sees right through the Obama education policy and recognizes that it is a continuation of George W. Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind. In this astonishingly candid interview with Josh Eidelson in Salon, Rep. Grijalva lacerates Race to the Top, high-stakes testing, ...read more
Clergy warn Christie: Your Newark school reform is a mess | The Answer Sheet
BY VALERIE STRAUSS New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (Eduardo Munoz/REUTERS) Dozens of members of the clergy in Newark have warned Gov. Chris Christie (R) that school reform efforts by his appointed superintendent are causing so much controversy and “unnecessary instability” in the city that they are “concerned about the level of public anger we see ...read more
