Parents and Students Demonstrate Against Tests at Dozens of NYC Schools
Today, parents and students rallied against the state tests at dozens of schools across New York City, unassuaged by State Commissioner John King’s claims that the tests were better this year and consumed less than 1% of the year. Little children that had sat for three hours of reading tests did not take comfort in his words, and parents demanded transparency. “The protests, which drew hundreds o
Peabody (MA) School Committee Calls for Investigation of State Commissioner
The Peabody School Committee unanimously passed a resolution calling for an investigation of whether State Commissioner Mitchell Chester has a conflict of interest as national chairman of the PARCC governing board. Some people in the Bay State are still angry that school officials dropped the state’s successful standards and assessments in exchange for $75 million in Race to the Top funding. Some
If Washington State Loses Its Waiver, Then What?
Arne Duncan may withdraw the waiver he extended to Washington State because it failed to adopt a test-based teacher evaluation system, as he demanded. The first question is, what this will mean for Washington State, should Duncan withdraw the waiver? If the state reverts to the requirements of NCLB, then very likely every school and every district will be a “failing” school or district and theref
Teacher: Another Example of Common Core Madness
A teacher describes a new start up–open the link and see if you can find a teacher in the lineup of leaders–funded by Rupert Murdoch and aligned with the Common Core. Thar’s gold in them thar hills! She writes: “You probably know about this outfit already, but take a look at the team members of Teach Boost. Quite telling. I am enraged. (By the way, we are not K-12 educators. We teach at-risk yout
Paul Horton: Why Is Public Television Against Public Schools?
Paul Horton, a history teacher at the University of Chicago Lab School and fervent advocate for public education, asks why public education continues to lavish so much favorable attention in the leaders of the privatization movement while disregarding dissenting voices or–worse–treating our nation’s public schools shabbily. He suggests that the Republican attack of public funding of PBS may have
Michael Fiorillo: My Definition of an Ethical Charter School
In response to an earlier post, reader Michael Fiorillo offers his definition of an ethical charter school. Bear in mind as you read this, that the original charter concept was that it would be a school that took on the most difficult and challenging students, like dropouts, and had the freedom to try innovative ideas, then shared those ideas with the public schools. It was not supposed to have th
Paul Rosenberg: How Phony Scare Tactics Drive the Movement to Privatize Public Education
Paul Rosenberg writes on Salon about the well-honed Fox-News style tactic of “crying wolf,” “the sky is falling,” we are in an “unprecedented crisis” to achieve political ends, in the present case, the privatization and monetization of public education. In urban districts, the privatization is gobbling up public schools and turning them over to private corporations–both for-profit and non-profit.
Beardsley: More Evidence that VAM is a Sham
Audrey Amrein Beardsley has been studying William Sanders’ value-added assessment system for a decade or so, and she is no fan of his methodology. Here she explains why. William Sanders has argued that his methodology is not volatile, but Beardsley and other critics say otherwise. TVAAS or EVAAS is highly controversial, yet Arne Duncan praised it and claimed that Tennessee made great strides becau
Linda Darling-Hammond: Why the Status Quo Movement Has Nothing to Do with Civil Rights
The corporate style reformers–the cheerleaders for charters, vouchers-and high-stakes testing–like to claim that they are leading the civil rights movement of their day. They imagine themselves locked arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King, Jr., in their efforts to end collective bargaining rights, to eliminate teacher due process rights, and to privatize public education. I am not sure if they actu
Sherm Koons: Down the Rabbit Hole with PARCC
Sherm Koons left this comment. Check out Sherm’s blog, Tales from the Classroom. He is a veteran high school English teacher in Ohio. Down the Rabbit Hole with PARCC. It’s taken me a while to begin to wrap my head around what’s really going on with PARCC and what makes it so absolutely wrong, but standing in the hall after school today talking to some fellow teachers I think got a glimpse. As we
Lubienski Refutes Walmart-funded Voucher Advocates
Last year, Christopher Lubienski and Sarah Theule Lubienski published a book called “The Public School Advantage,” which shows through careful scholarly research that public schools have inherent advantages over private schools, especially p charter schools and voucher schools. In doing so, they stirred up a hornet’s nest. In this post, Chris Lubienski responds to Patrick Wolf and Jay Greene of t
Robert Shepherd: The Remarkable But True Tale of the Birth of Common Core
Robert Shepherd, a frequent commenter on the blog, is an experienced veteran in the world of education publishing, having developed curriculum, textbooks, and assessments. He writes: The New York legislature just voted to dump inBloom. But Diane Ravitch’s first post about that subjected noted, wisely, that inBloom was dead “for Now.” Don’t think for a moment that Big Data has been beaten.
What is an Ethical Charter School?
The blog known as “Better Living Through Mathematics” ponders the criteria of an ethical charter school. That would be a school that doesn’t kick other kids out of their school. And a school that enrolled the same proportion of students with disabilities and English learners as neighborhood public schools. That would be a school that has a fair discipline policy, suspending no more than neighbor
LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 4-10-14 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: Education Law Center: States with Most Unequal Funding Won RTTT GrantsThe 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