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‘If you truly cared’ — angry president of largest teachers union sends message to school reformers
It’s been a bad week for teachers unions — what with a California judge tossing out state statutes providing job protections for teachers and attendant publicity, including an article in Politico Pro with the headline, “The Fall of Teachers’ Unions‘. But let’s face it: Headlines have been screaming for years that teachers unions were “under […]
Superintendents on Common Core: ‘Slow down to get it right’
The American Association of School Administrators just released a new report calling for policymakers to slow down the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and aligned standardized tests because educators need more time to “get it right.” Last week, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said it now supports a two-year delay in using student […]
‘ I have very real concerns about the sustainability of public education’ — Virginia teacher’s ‘painful’ decision to quit
Josh Waldron is an award-winning teacher in Waynesboro, Virginia — or rather, was an award-winning teacher in Waynesboro, Virginia. In the following sobering post, Waldron explains why he made the “tough decision” to leave the classroom after six years, during which he won four teaching awards. It isn’t that he didn’t love teaching. He did. […]
YESTERDAY
It’s Friday the 13th. Keep your paraskevidekatriaphobia in check.
If you suffer from friggatriskaidekaphobia, otherwise known as paraskevidekatriaphobia, today isn’t a great day for you. It’s Friday the 13th, and the phobia is all about a blinding fear of this day — however irrational it may seem. (But you can take heart; it’s the last Friday on the 13th day of any month in 2014, although 2015, […]
Mother of 7 in jail because her kids skipped school dies in cell
A 55-year-old Pennsylvania mother of seven, sentenced to serve two days in jail because her children were absent too much from school and she couldn’t pay some $2,000 in truancy fines, was found dead in her cell. The Associated Press reported that District Judge Dean R. Patton, who sent her to prison reluctantly, blamed a judicial […]
One thing we can learn from Shanghai: How to develop teachers
Shanghai has been No. 1 on the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, two straight times — in 2009 and 2012 — though it is now considering pulling out of the exercise in part, officials say, because they don’t want to place so much emphasis on standardized tests. That sounds refreshing. And here’s another lesson […]
JUN 12
AFT’s Weingarten smacks Arne Duncan about his praise for Vergara decision
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten just sent a letter (see below) to Education Secretary Arne Duncan blasting him for his statement praising a California judge’s decision to throw out five state statutes that provide job protections to teachers. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu handed down a ruling in Vergara vs […]
Real learning doesn’t ‘look like 6-year-olds slumped in chairs … staring at iPads’ — parent tells school board
Massachusetts parent Tassia Thomas gave the following testimony to the Cambridge School Committee — a panel of seven members that sets policy and oversees Cambridge Public Schools – earlier this month. It appeared in Cambridge Day, which said it had lightly edited her comments for publication. Here’s what she said: I am disturbed by the lack […]
New York Gov. Cuomo may face primary challenge from progressive Democrat
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, seeking re-election this year, recently secured the endorsement of the progressive Working Families Party, which had been expected to back a challenger but sided with the governor after he made a series of promises about meeting their political agenda. But a good number of party members are unhappy with the […]
California PTA urges sane homework loads
Race to Nowhere is a film produced and co-directed by Vicki Abeles about the consequences young people face today as a result of being over-scheduled, over-tested and pressured to achieve. Since the film came out in 2010, Abeles, an attorney and mother of three has been advocating for sane homework policies. In this post she […]
JUN 11
A silver lining in the Vergara decision?
A decision by a California judge on Tuesday to strike down — pending appeal — five state statutes that provide job protections to teachers has deeply troubled many teachers and teacher activists concerned about the effect on the profession should the ruling stand. Here is a detailed look on what might be a silver lining […]
A summer reading list from college admissions counselors
Here is a rather unusual summer reading list. It was assembled by Brennan Barnard, director of college counseling at The Derryfield School in Manchester, New Hampshire, who asked college admissions deans and high school counselors to send him recommendations of books that are great summer reads for parents, students and everybody else. The list includes books about […]
Assessing learning without tests
In this era in which standardized tests are the be-all and end-all of accountability, it may seem impossible to imagine a teacher evaluating how well students are learning without giving them a test. Joanne Yatvin actually did it and she explains it in this post. Yatvin is a past president of the National Council of […]
JUN 10
Is this the beginning of the end of teacher tenure?
Teachers’ unions just got whacked by a California judge who bought the specious argument offered in the “Vergara trial” that state laws giving tenure, seniority and other job protections to public school teachers deprive students of their constitutional right to an adequate education. Though he stayed his Tuesday decision striking down five state statutes on teacher […]
One sweet video: Soldier back from Afghanistan surprises son at school
My Post colleague Ovetta Wiggins wrote this story about an Army soldier who returned from Afghanistan to surprise his son at a school Career Day at a school in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Watch Dellion Sitladin, Sr., who hadn’t seen his son for almost a year, walk in on Career Day event at Langley Park-McCormick Elementary. […]
Gates Foundation backs two-year delay in linking Common Core test scores to teacher evaluation, student promotion
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation issued an interesting letter (see below) on Tuesday saying that it now supported delaying by two years using student standardized test scores in high-stakes consequences on teacher evaluation and student promotion while schools are learning how to implement the Common Core State Standards and new Core-aligned standardized tests. Coincidence […]
Why math fills so many of us with dread
If you are someone who suffered from math anxiety, you may not believe that it does not have to be a permanent condition. That’s what author Annie Murphy Paul, who concentrates on how we learn and how we can do it better, explains in the following post. Paul is a contributing writer for Time magazine, writes a weekly […]
There are no miracle schools, but there are a lot of really good ones
For two decades, Ellie Herman was a writer/producer for television shows including “The Riches,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Chicago Hope” and “Newhart.” Her fiction has appeared in literary journals, among them The Massachusetts Review, The Missouri Review and the O.Henry Awards Collection. In 2007, she decided “on an impulse” to become an English teacher. She got a […]
JUN 09
Blue-collar and service work takes more smarts than you may think — author
Mike Rose is a respected education scholar on the faculty of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and author of a number of books, including “Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education,” “ Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America,” and “Why School? Reclaiming Education for […]
How much Bill Gates’s disappointing small-schools effort really cost
For five years it has been said that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent more than $2 billion to fund an initiative to create small high schools in an effort to increase student achievement and graduation rates, all based on the premise that smaller schools were more conducive to learning and retention than larger […]
Ravitch: Time for Congress to investigate Bill Gates’ role in Common Core
The critical role that Bill Gates played in the creation and implementation of the Common Core State Standards initiative is the subject of this story by my Post colleague Lyndsey Layton. She explains how Gates was persuaded in 2008 by Gene Wilhoit, then-director of the Council for Chief State School Officers, and David Coleman, at the […]
JUN 08
Did Bill Gates fund an ‘educational coup’?
My Post colleague Lyndsey Layton has written an illuminating story about the role Bill Gates and his money played in the Common Core State Standards initiative and its adoption by 45 states and the District of Columbia. In great detail, she explains how on one summer day in 2008, two men — Gene Wilhoit, then-director of […]
‘Sweat shop’ kindergarten: ‘It’s maddening’
Last week I published some kindergarten schedules from school district Web sites that showed just how much kindergarten has changed in recent years as the drive to push curriculum down through the grades has gathered steam. Rather than learn through structured play, which is how experts say young children learn best, 5- and 6-year-olds are […]
Just ask the teachers
One of the central features of corporate school reform is that those driving it haven’t bothered to seriously ask teachers to offer their solutions to improving public education. Meg White, an assistant professor in the School of Education at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, looks at this omission in the following post. […]
JUN 07
School’s eighth-grade graduating class had 9 sets of twins (but school didn’t realize it)
The eighth-grade graduating class of a middle school in suburban Chicago had nine sets of twins — that’s 18 out of 268 students, or a little over 7 percent — but officials didn’t realize it until a parent figured it out last month. The Chicago Tribune reported in this story that three sets of the […]