Diane Ravitch's blog
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DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG
I am writing this from my hospital bed. I am at a rehab center after getting a total knee replacement. I keep thinking how dumb I was. I didn’t hold the railing as I went downstairs and landed full-force on my knee, tearing out every major ligament. Now there is some titanium thing in there, a long row of metal staples, and standing on that leg is painful, almost as painful as bending it. All day
Richard Rothstein: The Promise of Brown May Yet Be Saved
Richard Rothstein deeply believes that racial integration is essential, yet recognizes that school integration has been losing ground. This was inevitable, he argues, because the federal government has failed to use the powers it has to promote housing integration. Rothstein is hopeful that a shift in the political winds could bring to office an administration committed to integrating American so
Teacher in Utah to Lawrence Kudlow: Take My Job, Please
Speaking on Morning Joe (MSNBC), Lawrence Kudlow complained that the average teacher makes $120,000. This is not true. The national average is about $56,000. This teacher in Utah earns far less. He/she writes: “Every year since 2008 in my district in Utah, I have had more students with DECREASING salary. Because of the lack of will of the legislature to properly fund education, contract days ha
As segregation grows worse than it has been for decades, the problems are worsened by current “reforms.” School privatization intensifies segregation, high-stakes testing creates cause for closing struggling schools instead of helping students. As Wendy Lecker writes, there is a growing grassroots to prevent the corporate takeover of public education and to turn schools into profit centers. The v
Cross-Posted on Huffington Post
This is the article that appeared at 9 am on Congress reviving a dual school system. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/will-congress-revive-a-dual-school-system_b_5343445.html
Donna Brazile: Privatization Is No Substitute for Integration
Donna Brazile, Democratic Party strategist, laments the nation’s retreat from school integration in recent years. Vouchers and charters are no substitute for integrated schools with equitable resources. She cites the example of Milwaukee, which has had vouchers and charters since 1990. Today, Milwaukee has low performance on national tests, and neither the voucher schools nor the charter school
Larry Kudlow Thinks Teachers Make $120,000 Yearly
Media pundit was interviewed on the Morning Joe Show where he asserted that teachers make $120,000. This, apparently, is an outrage, showing what leeches teachers are. Apparently you can say anything on these talk shows because they are about opinions, not facts or information or knowledge. Of course, he was wrong. Rebecca Klein writes on Huffington Post that the average teachers’ salary is $56,3
Rhode Island Supreme Court Rejects Equality of School Funding: Sorry, Kids!
Almost sixty years to the day of the U.S. Supreme court’s historic Brown decision, the Rhode Island Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit against the stste’s inequitable funding system. The court said it was “deeply concerned” and acknowledged that the funding disparities hurt poor urban children most, but passed the buck. “Not our problem,” the court said. Here is a summary from the Education Law Cen
The Mistake of the Southern Poverty Law Center
I think there are plenty of well meaning people on different sides of the Common Core issue. It serves no useful purpose to divide people into good guys and bad guys. This is one of those tangled questions where we do best to debate the pros and cons of the Common Core, without challenging the motives of those with whom we disagree. No doubt, there are some who seek to make profit or who are trou
Will Congress Commemorate the Brown Decision by Reviving a Dual School System?
Congress is considering new charter legislation, awarding more money to the charter sector, which will operate with minimal accountability or transparency. The bill has already passed the House of Representatives with a bipartisan majority and now moves to the Senate. Make no mistake: on the 60th anniversary of the Brown decision, Congress is set to expand a dual school system. One sector, privat
Community Groups File Civil Rights Complaints Against Destruction of Public Schools
Grassroots community groups in Néw Orleans, Newark, and Chicago filed complaints of violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the Justice Department and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. They seek an investigation of racially discriminatory school closings in their communities. They wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary Arne Duncan: “Journey for Justice is
YESTERDAY
Rally to Save Public Education, Saturday, MAY 17, 2 pm, New York City [DATE Fixed]
Taking Back OUR Schools Rally & March – NYC Metro May 17 @ 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm On the steps of City Hall “Declaration, Protest, Successes, and Call to Action” Calling all NYC Metro Area community activists, the “voices of resistance”, families, students, civil rights advocates, voters, immigrant families, policymakers and legislators, union members, teachers, faith leaders, and all communities t
Your Chance to See “Rise Above the Mark” in Chicago!
The marvelous film, created by educators, “Rise Above the Mark,” will be shown at Mary Gage Peterson Elementary School, 5510 N. Christiana Ave, Chicago on Thursday May 29th at 4:30 pm and 7:00 pm. Following each viewing there will be a panel discussion about the challenges raised and any action steps we can take. Please help us spread the word. Thank you! “Rise Above the Mark” was made by public
Arizona State Superintendent: More Money for Vouchers and Charters than for Public School Kids
Arizona’s public schools are among the most severely underfunded schools in the nation. Arizona has the misfortune of having a state superintendent who doesn’t like public education. If it was up to John Huppenthal, he would give everyone a voucher and shut down public education. As it happens, students who go to charter schools get more funding than those in public s hools. Vouchers were supp
Pearson: We Need Better PR
Pearson, the multi-billion British publisher, plans to launch a new PR offensive to push back against the anti-testing and anti-Common Core groundswell. Pearson has been steadily buying up every aspect of American education: it recently won the contract to adminster the Common Core test called PARCC, which is worth at least $1 billion; states using Pearson tests buy Pearson textbooks; Pearson boug
GOOD NEWS: NC Court Overturns State Law Ending Tenure
North Carolina Superior Court Judge Robert H. Hobgood ruled that the state’s effort to eliminate teacher tenure was unconstitutional. “Superior Court Judge Robert H. Hobgood ruled this morning that the state’s repeal of teacher tenure, also known as “career status,” and the 25 percent contract system that would award temporary employment contracts to those who relinquish their tenure, are both un
Laura Chapman: Gates and Arne Love Big Data
Reader Laura Chapmam reminds us that the corporate-government combine wants Big Data. The demise of inBloom is only one stop in a long journey that invokes hundreds of millions of dollars and a foundational belief that what can be measure matters most: Chapman writes: The bare bones infrastructure for data-mongering was expanding in 1990, jump-started by a concerted effort to standardize vocabul
Anthony Cody: How Will Big Data Transform Education?
Anthony Cody recently read Simon Head’s Mindless: Why Smarter Machines Are Making Dumber Humans. This book, Cody says, shows how society is organized to benefit corporations, not people. He then includes a video clip from the CEO of Knewton, who claims that education is ripe for data mining. He says: “Education happens to be the world’s most data minable industry by far. And its not even close….
Parents and Educators to Protest Cuomo-Anti-Public Education Agenda
Say NO to Cuomo’s Anti-Public Education Agenda. Cuomo’s heart belongs to the hedge fund managers. He does not care about public school kids. He is the lobbyist for the charter industry. PROTEST CUOMO’S FAILING EDUCATION AGENDA AT DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION! Come protest at the Dem state convention where Cuomo will be re-nominated for Governor a week from Thursday! PROTEST GOVERNOR CUOMO’S FAILING EDUCA
New York Daily News: Telling the Truth about Charters
While the New York Times and the New York Post continue to recycle the press releases about the awesomeness of charter schools. One newspaper’s reporters tell the unvarnished story. While the editorial board of the New York Daily News, owned by billionaire Mort Zuckerman, continues to dispense charter Kool-aid, the reporters at the News distinguish themselves by writing story after story about out
The Great Colorado Promise, Not Yet Delivered
Four years ago, I was in Colorado to discuss education policy. This was in the heady early days of Race to the Top (which Colorado did not win, despite its whole-hearted embrace of everything Arne Duncan wanted). On one occasion, I was scheduled to debate State Senator Michael Johnston, the darling of the “reform” crowd. Johnston had written a bill that was coming to a vote that very day. His bill
Sydney Miller: Why I Quit TeachNola in New Orleans
Just as there have been many public resignations by teachers in public schools who feel beaten down by mandates and by the high-stakes testing regime, there is now an emerging genre of resignation letters by young people who joined short-term programs like Teach for America. This one, by Sydney Miller, is poignant and beautifully written. Sydney was part of TeachNola, which brought in young gradua
Gerri K. Songer Compares ACT and PARCC and Finds They Both Are Rotten
Gerri Songer compares ACT and PARCC and finds them both wanting , both developmentally inappropriate. She begins that she used to think that ACT “is a dreadful attempt to assess student learning. Now that PARCC has hit the scene, ACT is beginning to look significantly better!” Songer shows that both tests are beyond the cognitive levels of most high school students. She then argues: “Albert Eins
MAY 15
Rhode Island House May Not Pass Moratorium on High-Stakes Test for Graduation
Just a couple of hours ago, I posted a story about the Rhode Island State Senate’s decision to impose a three-year moratorium on the use of a standardized test as a high school graduation test. The vote was 29-5. The test is called the. New England Comprehensive Assessment Program and bears the appropriate acronym (NECAP, pronounced “kneecap”). The test was not intended to be a graduation test; it
Rhode Island State Senate Approves 3-Year Ban on High-Stakes Testing
Yielding to demands by students and educators, the Rhode Island State Senate voted a three-year moratorium on high-stakes testing. The bill must still pass the House and win the Governor’s okay. The bigger problem is that the moratorium kicks the can down the road. If it is wrong to use a standardized test for high school graduation, it will still be wrong in three years.
Leonie Haimson: Six Charter School Myths
In her testimony to the New York City Council Education Committee, education activist Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters exploded several common myths about charter schools. First is the myth that they are public schools. They are not. They are private corporations with contracts to run schools, exempt from most state laws and from most state oversight. In court after court, the charters thems
Jeffrey Aaron Snyder: The Trouble with Grit
Other writers have criticized the concept of “grit” on grounds that it seems to suggest that poor kids are poor because they don’t try hard enough, and that this shifts the responsibility for poverty for the economic system to the individuals. So many privileged kids seem to float through life on a soft pillow that it is hard to credit their success in school or life to grit, since their families
Ted Mitchell, Leader in Privatization Movement, Confirmed as Undersecretary of Education
One of the nation’s leaders of the privatization movement, Ted Mitchell, has been confirmed by the. u.S. Senate as Undersecretary of Education, the second most powerful job in the U.S. Department of Education. Mitchell most recently was CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, which collects millions from philanthropies and venture funds and invests the money in creating charter chains and for-profit
NYC: A Teacher Explains the Utter Uselessness of High-Stakes Testing
At a rally against high-stakes testing in New York City, high school teacher Rosie Frascella explains the uselessness of high-stakes tests. The students get no feedback about what they did well and where they need to improve. As their teacher, she learns nothing about how well or poorly they did and why. The tests are useless other than for data for bureaucrats nd for the bottom line at Pearson. T
North Carolina: A Legislator Expressing Contempt for Teachers
The following comment came from Bridget in North Carolina. That state has been taken over by an extremist legislature and governor who are intent on driving experienced teachers out of the state and replacing them with Teach for America or other low-wage workers. When Jim Hunt was Governor of the state, he raised teachers’ salaries to meet the national average. Today, NC teachers rank 46th in th
Will Bunch: They Will Never Catch the Real Culprits in Philadelphia
Authorities are closing in on educators who cheated on tests in Philadelphia. But columnists Will Bunch predicts they will never touch the real culprits, the people who designed the system of high-stakes testing. He favors punishing those who cheated, and he agrees tat cheating should never be tolerated. But the true malefactors of test cheating will walk away scot-free: “Let’s be clear: While t
Julian Vasquez Heilig: Uncovering Lies in Arne Duncan’s Graduation Rate Miracle Story
Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor at the University of Texas, deconstructs another one of those miracle stories that turns out to be too good to be true. Secretary Arne Duncan is collecting high-fives for a solid leap upwards in the high-school graduation rate, but Heilig says that what he is reporting is manipulation of graduation rate data. Heilig uses Texas as an example. He shows how stat
MAY 14
Carol Burris on the Slow, Noisy Death of Common Core
Carol Burris says that Common Core is dying “the death of a thousand cuts.” Its supporters claim that the critics represent the extreme right, notably the Tea Party. Of course, the Tea Party is vociferous against the Common Core, but they are not alone. In Néw York, the Tea Party does not have a large presence, yet opposition is strong, coming mainly from suburban parents. The Chicago Teachers Uni
Laura Chapman: “Student Growth” is Lipstick on a Pig
Laura Chapman says it is no improvement to substitute student growth in test scores for plain old test scores. Both reduce teaching and learning to multiple choice test questions. She writes, in response to this post: “Instead of judging schools solely by test scores, they might be judged–at least in part–by student growth.” This is not an improvement of any kind, but the precise language from Ra
Salon Notices Charter School $100 Million Scam
Did you think that the mainstream media would completely ignore major report on $100 million in charter school fraud, corruption, and abuse? I did not see coverage in the Néw York Times or any other print publication. I did not see coverage on the networks or cable news stations. But Salon picked it up. Salon recognized this as a story of white collar crime. A story of entrepreneurs ripping off
Peter Dreier Interviews Bill Moyers
This is a great interview. How I wish there were hundreds more journalists like Bill Moyers. Here Peter Dreier of Occidental College interviews Bill Moyers, who is our greatest living journalist. Here is a small sample of a fascinating exchange: “Q: We’ve always had an upper class in America. What’s different now? “Moyers: The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-c
FairTest: Anti-Testing Momentum Grows
Opposition to the testing madness of the Bush-Obama administrations continues to escalate, as parents, teachers, and student react to excessive testing across the nation. Here is the Fairtest update: An increasing number of stories report criticism of Common Core tests and rising opposition to other high-stakes standardized exams. This week’s clips include updates from 20 states, several excelle
Our Brilliant Students: Stop Bashing Our Kids
I used to be one of those people who complained that the younger generation was not as smart as my generation. I met adolescents who had never heard of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” or some other piece of literature that I thought was central to our literary tradition. Or, I noticed that all the cash registers were computerized to compensate for cashiers who didn’t know how to make change. It
Gerardo Barboza: Translation Into Spanish of Letter about OECD and PISA
Gerardo Barboza has translated the letter of protest against league tables into Spanish. He writes: Dear Dr. Ravitch, Please find the translation of the “Open letter to Andreas Schleicher, OECD, Paris” into Spanish language at http://www.englishincostarica.org/cartaabierta.html. It is my contribution to the invaluable efforts made by you and the distinguished group of scientists and academics ar
Is This the Real Reason that Cuomo Wants a $2 Billion Technology Bond?
A reader posed this question about Governor Cuomo’s reason for promoting a $2 billion bond for new technology. He wrote this after seeing that Pearson and AIR are dueling over control of PARCC assessments, which will ultimately provide several BILLIONS in revenue to the testing corporation with the contract. Pearson recently won the PARCC contract, being declared the sole bidder. AIR is suing: T
Gerri K. Songer: Standardized Testing Does Not Produce Good Education
Gerri K. Songer is a literacy specialist and Chair of Illinois Township High School District 214. Here she reminds us of the limitations and misuses of standardized testing. ################# Songer writes: What good is a dot that is not connected? Common Core State Standards (CCSS) proponents assert that consistent, rigorous education standards are key to a competitive business climate. Yet, adv
MAY 13
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
MAY 12
New York Times: Can Charter Schools Teach Public Schools Their Secrets?
Who Needs to Learn from Whom? What Public Schools can Teach Charter Schools About Teaching All Students. The New York Times published a story about what public schools can learn fro charter schools. But the most important lesson is to be careful which students are admitted. The role of charter schools in public education continues to be a subject of heated debate. The House of Representatives rece
Chutzpah in Louisiana: Crazy Crawfish Will Run for State Board Seat
Jason France, better known in the blogosphere as Crazy Crawfish, plans to run for the seat on the state board of education now held by Chas Roemer, son of a former governor, and brother of the head of the Louisiana charter school association. Jason is one brave man. He is a Crazy Crawfish, and all those who want to see a change in Louisiana’s heedless, madcap, irresponsible privatization should su
Why the Common Core Standards for Grades K-3 Are Wrong
A 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 is needed for high school graduation and ignores the kind of learning that is developmentally appropriate for young child
Christine Langhoff: Massachusetts’ “Churnaround” Plan is Not Working
Reader Christine Langhoff sent the following information about some “turnaround” schools in Massachusetts. Having won “Race to the Top” funding, the state has taken Arne Duncan’s advice to fire everybody and start over, which seems to be his deep thinking on how to improve schools, not through collaboration and steady work, but through fear tactics. She writes: The state of Massachusetts has r
Peter Greene: Can We Make a List of the Things That Every Educated Person Should Know?
If you ever watch The Food Network or something similar, you have probably seen Chef Bobby Flay and his “throw down” with a competing chef. Sometimes Bobby goes into a little known neighborhood and challenges a local chef who is famous for a regional dish, sometimes he takes on another famous chef. And you never know who will win. In this post, Peter Greeene, Pennsylvania high school English teac
Gene Glass: The Strangest Academic Department in the World
The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville has an academic department in its College of Education & Health Professions that is one of the strangest I have ever seen. It is called the Department of Education Reform, and the strangeness starts right off on the department’s webpage: edre/uark.edu There one sees that the department is the “newest department in the College of Education and Health
Update after Knee Surgery
I haven’t been able to write before now. The pain after surgery was so bad that I was kept on various drugs to keep me sedated. I spent two days in the recovery room, then moved to a regular room. But my health remained fragile, On Sunday, the surgeon sent me for a CT scan, where I learned I had a blood clot in one of my lungs. My greatest fear about surgery was triggering a clot, which could go t
MAY 11
OECD Sponsors School Level Tests to Foster Test Mania and Its Own Control
The OECD has created tests that schools can administer to their students in order to compare them to the nations of the world. Some schools have gleefully administered the tests, happy to discover how their students compare to children of the same age in the rest of the world. Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg, a visiting professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education this year, warned that it w
What Would Happen if You Let Joy Enter the Classroom?
From Bellevue, Nebraska, watch a video of classes where joy, caring, and compassion have crowded out rigor and grit. Nothing said about being a global competitor. Nothing about college and career readiness. Just the joy of learning and sharing and caring.
Who or What is the “American Federation for Children”?
This is news you need to know. The American Federation of Children is a rightwing organization that spends heavily to promote vouchers and to support candidates in state and local races who support vouchers. When Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin was under siege for attacking public sector workers, he was honored (along with Michelle Rhee) by the AFS. The AFS is funded by the DeVos family, whose
Why Empathy for Children Matters
A reader posted this comment: It is obvious that the designers and supporters of CCSS do not have empathy for children. Narcissism is on a spectrum and intensifies with chronic stress. This is evident in how the Common Core Environment has created systemic Narcissism from the top down: The antithesis of narcissism is empathy. If you have unconditional love for children and can be an empathic,
Innovation Ohio: State Shortchanges Public Schools, Favors Charters
A new report from Innovation Ohio shows that the state regularly Shortchanges public schools to favor charters. Charter operators give generous campaign contributions to the governor and legislators. “Proponents have long claimed that community or ‘charter’ schools are the cure for much of what ails Ohio’s education system. If only parents had more “choice” over where their children attend school
Why Congress Can’t or Won’t Abandon the Failed NCLB
Thanks to Mercedes Schneider for bringing this article to my attention. If you have ever wondered why Congress refuses to abandon or revise or do anything to the failed No Child Left Behind, this article explains why. NCLB declared that all schools would have 100% proficiency by 2014. Even in 2002, after the law was signed, it was already obvious that many members of Congress did not believe t
MAY 10
The Magical Numbrt of 12
Today this blog reached the number 12 million page views. That means that in the past two years of its existence, someone has read articles posted here. Some were written by readers, some by me. Together, we have provided support and encouragement to one another, as well as resistance to privatization and attacks on students and educators.p But the number 12 has another meaning for me personall
Teachers Are Artists
Bryan Ripley Crandall, director of the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University, has high praise for teachers. He says they are the artists of our age. They deserve our praise, our gratitude, our admiration. He writes: “Teaching is a unique profession that requires an expertise in history, research, lived experiences, language, culture, sociology, psychology, mathematics and the huma
Paul Karrer: Who Are Those Bad Teachers?
Paul Karrer, who teaches fifth-grade in Castroville, California, takes a look at our policymakers’ obsession with bad teachers. Who are they? How can they be found out and fired? Here is one example of a bad teacher: “The Low Score bad teacher — Education reformers want high-stakes testing to be a prime determinant in teacher evaluation. But if one looks under the tests, interesting facts pop up
Anthony Cody: Why CTU Rejection of Common Core Matters
Anthony Cody hails the Chicago Teachers Union for its unanimous vote to reject Common Core. This vote is important for many reasons. First, it undermines the repeated (and false) claim that almost all teachers favor CC. Second, it recognizes that CTU is worried about the standardization and double-duty testing, as well as the loss of creativity that CC will bring. Third, Cody believes that the
Is TFA Recruiting in the Bathrooms at the University of Michigan?
A blogger named Democracy Tree reports that TFA is putting up recruitment posters in the toilets at the University of Michigan. Probably it is to recruit teachers for the financially strapped Educational Achievement Authority, where 27% of the teachers are TFA. The blogger reports: “Yep, that’s Teach For America (TFA) hustling young adults while they pee — Geez, talk about lowbrow recruiting ta
America’s Highest Paid Government Worker: Scandalous!
You have heard about the scandalous salaries and pensions paid to government workers. Here is the top-paid government worker in the nation: Ron Packard, CEO of online virtual charter corporation K12, founded by junk bond king Michael Milken and his brother. Packard was paid $19 million between 2009-13. Packard recently stepped down as CEO to start his own business. He remains on the board of dire
Anthony Cody: Why Computers Can’t Grade Student Essays
The new frontier of education consists of figuring out a way to cut costs. Or, failing that, figuring out a way to make money for investors while laying off teachers. That brings us to the subject of computer-graded essays. Think of the savings if a computer can grade essays so teachers can do something else or be laid off! Anthony Cody learned of a professor at MIT, Les Perelman, who has figure