Latest News and Comment from Education

Sunday, May 4, 2014

5-4-14 Schools Matter

Schools Matter:








Randi to the Barricades Once More
Randi Weingarten was donning her rain gear today as she protested a meeting of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) and the profiteering loser swine who get rich through corporate welfare privatizing strategies. Randi's dramatic photos and angry shouts would be much more compelling if AFT did not support and enable the primary corporate strategies that all the DFER guys were discussing today indo
The Myth of the Non-Profit Charter School
The AFT, NEA, and all their non-profit corporate hangers-on attempt to minimize their support for the total compliance segregated charter chain gangs by trying to distinguish between the "bad" for-profit charters and the "good" and the more numerous non-profit variety.  There are 2 principle reasons this distinction is as phony as the idea that Dennis and Randi support the inte

Teacher Vows to End the Madness
Posted at WaPo:By Ralph RattoToday was the first day I was ever ashamed to be a teacher.Today I finished administering the sixth day of New York State Common Core assessments. I was a facilitator in a process that made my 10-year-old students struggle, to the point of frustration, to complete yet another 90-minute test. I sat by as I watched my students attempt to answer questions today that were


"Pressing needs" in American education
S. Krashen  Diane Ravitch recently observed that there has been a big hurry to implement the Common Core. In 2009, she urged the authors of the Common Core to field test it before implementation, advice they did not follow. Again in 2010, at the White House, she urged field testing, but officials "quickly dismissed the idea. They were in a hurry. They wanted Common Core to be rolled out as qu


5-3-14 Schools Matter All Week
Schools Matter:  Schools Matter All WeekFour years of math?Sent to the Washington Post, May 2, 2014.Maryland will now require all high school students to take four years of math ("Maryland to require math for all years of high school; universities also adjust rules," May 2).The fourth year, moreover, must be "non-trivial," such as algebra 2, trigonometry, pre-calculus, calculus