12th grade NAEP scores: Does the common core deserve the credit?
Sent to the Hartford Courant, May 7, 2014It is a premature to give the "new academic standards" of the common core credit for Connecticut's good performance on the 12th grade NAEP reading test ("State Students Excel On 'Nation's Report Card'," May 7). First, the improvement was not uniform: Grade 8 scores increased less than grade 12 scores, and grade 4 scores stayed the same a
Where Do TN Schools Stand After Two Decades of the Sanders VAM Fertilizer Treatment?
After two decades of value-added nonsense posing as a school improvement plan, 70 percent of Tennessee teachers are being evaluated based on test scores that belong to someone else, and the state's 12th graders are ranked one step from the basement in terms of proficiency in math and reading. With Bill Sanders now out to pasture, will his flawless algorithm for diverting attention away from educa
SPLC says don't read tacit support for Common Core into their condemnation of reactionary hate groups
"In short, the real literacy crisis occurs whenever we deploy a pedagogy that asks our students only to consume texts and not to produce them as well." — Richard E. Miller Profiteering members of the testing industrial complex, and right-of-center Democrats were quick to embrace the release of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report that correctly takes issue with right wing extrem
5-7-14 Schools Matter
Schools Matter: KIPP's Gritsters Get Hammered for Amoral Character GoalsCapitalism is neither moral nor immoral; it is amoral. There is no room at the bottom line for pious judgments of right or wrong that might affect the balance sheet. Capitalism is about the accumulation of capital to make more capital and nothing else. There was a time in our not-so-distant past when capitalists chose to ma