Good Advice for Duncan and King from a Graduate Student at NYU
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and State Commissioner of Education John King spoke at the Wagner School at New York University. This comment came from a graduate student at that institution. Her insight was so on target that I thought I would share it. She writes: “I am an NYU Wagner graduate and a public school parent. I was unable to attend Commissioner King’s speech and Secretary Duncan’s
Why Brandeis Disinvited Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Withdrew Its Honorary Degree
How strange that a university founded by Jewish philanthropists would offer an honorary degree to a woman who fights for gender equality and then withdraw its offer because protestors said she was “Islamophobic.” Here’s What I Would Have Said at Brandeis We need to make our universities temples not of dogmatic orthodoxy, but of truly critical thinking. By AYAAN HIRSI ALI April 10, 2014 6
NYC Public School Parent Leaders Rally Against Governor Cuomo and Charter Favoritism
Last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo and the State Legislature passed a budget bill that allows charters to have free space inside public schools, even though the charters are private corporations. Not only that, the charters that are already located inside public schools may expand as much as they want, pushing public school children out of their buildings. In some cases, the charters will push out
Commissioner John King’s Message to New York: I Won’t Back Down
State Commissioner John King, with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan by his side, spoke this morning at New York University and sent a message to New York’s parents and educators: We are on the right track and we won’t back down! On the same day he spoke, elementary school principal Elizabeth Phillips published an op-ed article in the New York Times explaining that the state tests were too long
A Wacky Los Angeles Story: Who Needs Science Teachers?
A highly regarded high school science teacher at Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts was suspended in February because someone thought that his students had created inappropriate projects that looked sort of like weapons. The teacher Gregg Schiller was suspended after two students turned in devices that could shoot small projectiles. Schiller reports daily to a district administrative o
Shhhh! New York’s Most Closely Guarded Secret
The deepest secret in New York used to be the disappearance of Judge Crater. Judge Crater disappeared one night in 1930 and was never heard from again. But now the state has an even deeper, darker, more consequential secret: what was on the Common Core tests. Principals and teachers have complained about the tests but they are under a strict gag order not to reveal their contents. In this post,
New York Principal Explains Why the State Tests Were Terrible
Parents and teachers in New York are angry bout the state tests. There are protests and demonstrations taking place outside many schools. Last year, when the state gave the first Common Core tests, the scores plummeted. Only 31% of the students in grades 3-8 passed because the passing mark was set artificially high by State Commissioner John King, who sends how own children to a private Montessori
Kirabo Jackson: Teachers’ Effects on Non-Cognitive Skills Matter as Much or More than Test Scores
What if we have been looking for the wrong qualities in teachers? What if test scores matter no more than non-cognitive behaviors, skills, and learnings? Kirabo Jackson of Northwestern University has published a study showing that test scores may not be the most important measure of teaching. Consider the findings of this North Carolina study in 2012: This paper presents a model where teacher ef
You Too Can Score High-Stakes Tests as a Kelly Temp!
We previously learned that Pearson hires people to score tests by advertising on Craig’s List. Now we find that other testing companies are hiring test scorers through Kelly Temps. So you thought your child’s make-or-break test was scored by a retired teacher. Think again. The odds are that the written answers will be quickly skimmed and scored by someone with a BA working for just above the mini
Education Law Center: States with Most Unequal Funding Won RTTT Grants
The Education Law Center noted in 2012 that there was a pattern to the distribution of Race to the Top grants: The states and districts with the most unequal funding won a large share of RTTT grants. ELC writes: Since 2009, the US Department of Education’s (USDOE) Race to the Top (RTTT) initiative has given billions in federal funds to states conditioned on launching various education reforms. The
Forbes: Can Paul Tudor Jones Save America’s Public Schools?
When Mayor Bill de Blasio was being hammered by $5 million of emotional attack ads accusing him of “evicting” 194children from one of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy schools in Harlem, the Mayor called Paul Tudor Jones to plead for a truce. Paul Tudor Jones is a billionaire hedge fund manager who is heavily invested in privately-managed charter schools. He manages $13 billion in his business. Bei
Michigan: For-Profit Charter District Can’t Make Payroll
A few years ago, Michigan governor Rick Snyder decided that the best way to fix the financial problems of districts in deficit was to put them under the control of an emergency manager to straighten out their finances. Some districts, however, are so poor that they don’t have enough money to educate their children. It is the state’s duty to help them. In 2011, an emergency manager decided to give
Schneider Schools Sol Stern on the Common Core
Many years go, when I was a Fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, I got o know Sol Stern, who has been at that think tank for many years. Sol has an interesting history. Back in the radical 1960s, he was an editor at the leftwing Ramparts. At some point, he had a political-ideological conversion experience, and he became a zealous conservative. He is a journalist, not an educator. He wri
A Review of Some Top Charter Chains
Amanda Potterton of Arizona State University presented this paper at the recent annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Now that these charter chains are going national, it is a good time to review them. Potterton writes: Last November, I wrote a commentary published in Teachers College Record about two “highly performing” charter school management organizations (CMOs) in
Indiana: Low-Income Students Get Higher Test Scores in Public Schools Than in Charter Schools
In recent years, Indiana has gone overboard for charter schools, believing that they held the secret to raising the test scores of low-income students. But blogger Steve Hinnefeld analyzed the passing rates by income levels and discovered that public schools outperform charter schools in Indiana. He wrote: “I merged Department of Education spreadsheets with data on free and reduced-price lunch
LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 4-9-14 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: John Thompson: Chetty and Kane Are Out of Touch with Real WorldJohn Thompson, teacher and historian, here reviews the testimony in the Vergara trial of economists Raj Chetty and Tom Kane. They are believers in economic models for judging teacher quality. Thompson concludes they are seriously out of touch with the real world of teac