Ras Baraka Elected Mayor in Newark
In a major setback for the Chris Christie administration, City Councilman Ras Baraka was elected Mayor of Newark tonight with 54% of the vote. School closings were a major issue in the election.
More Proof: VAM is a Sham
The centerpiece of Race to the Top is evaluating teachers by test scores. The students of good teachers, Arne Duncan and Barack Obama believe, get higher scores. If they have low scores, it is the fault of bad teachers. There was no evidence for their beliefs, other than the speculations of economists and statisticians. Real teachers never believed the theory, because they know that many favors af
Education Activist Elected Head of Massachusetts Teacher Association
Barbara Madeloni, who led the fight against outsourcing teacher credentialing to Pearson, was elected president of the Massachusetts Teacher Association, will take charge of a union of 110.000 educators “Until last August, Madeloni directed the Secondary Teacher Education Program at the University of Massachusetts. “While UMass said her employment ended as part of a move to reduce the use of adjun
Troy LaRavierre: Hero Principal of Chicago
Troy LaRavierre, principal of Blaine Elementary school, one of the highest performing schools in the city, decided he had had enough. He wrote a candid letter to the Chicago Sun-Times blasting the administration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose political interference and disrespect were unprecedented in his career. This is a man of courage. He won’t be silenced, not by Rahm Emanuel or anyone else who
Another Report Finds VAM is Flawed
A new report prepared by Andy Porter, dean of the graduate school of education at University of Pennsylvania, and Morgan Polikoff of the University of Southern California caution about value-added-measurement, basing teacher evaluation on test scores, because this method has “a weak to nonexistent link with teacher performance.” Why are at least 30 states using this flawed measure? Because Arne Du
InBloom Is Dead but the Battle for Student Privacy Will Continue
Benjamin Herold of Education Week describes the short life of inBloom, the audacious venture funded by the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation to the tune of $100 million. The venture collapsed because of parent opposition to sharing their children’s confidential data to a firm that would provide access to vendors of products and services to schools and students. For some strange reason,
TFA: The Kids Are Not Alright
When asked about Teach for America, I always answer that the recruits are terrific, very smart, very idealistic, but the organization is greedy, self-serving, and power-hungry. This commenter disagrees. He/she thinks that the recruits should know better. She/he thinks that if they are smart, they should know they are being used by an organization that is using them to build its power base, and the
Jack Schneider and Pat Jehlen: Test Scores are a Lousy Way to Measure School Quality, But…
Jack Schneider of the College of Holy Cross and Pat Jehlen of the Massachusetts’ Senate Committee on Education have a sensible article about the use and misuse of test scores to measure school quality. As they point out, test scores are highly correlated with socioeconomic status, so schools that serve low-income students look like “bad” schools even when they are doing a good job of educating t
Schneider Reviews a 6-Minute Video Starring Bill Gates
Mercedes Schneider has been working hard to understand Bill Gates’ view of the origins, development, andurpose of the Common Core standards. In this post, she reviews his short speech at the American Enterprise Institute, an institution to which he has generously contributed. She must have watched this six-minute video repeatedly because she discovers nuances and contradictions in his version of
TFA Alum: Why I Am Ashamed
A comment from a reader: “I’m ashamed of doing TFA and I was a 96 Corps Member. I don’t put TFA on my resume or fess up to it unless directly asked, because I value my reputation as a dedicated, knowledgeable, lifelong educator. I have spent 18 years watching Corps Members come and go. So many things have disappointed me about TFA over the years, but my recent experiences as an instructor in thei
5-12-14 LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH Diane Ravitch's blog #thankateacher #EDCHAT #P2
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: Why the Common Core Standards for Grades K-3 Are WrongA group of early childhood educators explain here why the Common Core is inappropriate for children in grades K-3. This statement is an excerpt from their joint publication “Defending the Early Years.” The first mistake of the Common Core is that it “maps backwards” from what