Schools Matter:
Schools Matter All Week
Open letter to Ellie Herman, or how Green Dot's Marco Petruzzi's special education policies hurt everyone including their own administrators
"It is not legally or morally acceptable that these so-called "schools of choice" that are concentrated in urban communities and supported with public funds, should be permitted to operate as segregated learning environments where students are more isolated by race, socioeconomic class, disability, and language than the public school district from which they were drawn." — COPA
Following Rhonda's Advice: Be a "Little Badass"
With salary and benefits at $550,000 a year, it won't be easy to pry Weingarten from her offices at AFT. But following the advice she offered teachers at the convention, here are a few ways teachers might be a "little BadAss":1) Stop paying union dues until Lily and Rhonda (aka Randi) resign.2) Disrupt every meeting of AFT and NEA with pro-children and pro-education pickets.3) Write let
YESTERDAY
Hechinger Report Pulls Out the Stops to Save the Gates Core
Below are funders of the Hechinger Report, and yesterday's hosannas for Common Core by Hechinger make it clear that the kinder and gentler corporate ed reform propaganda sheet has kicked its coverage up a notch. The piece is written a Taylor McGraw, TFA alum and Eva Moskowitz chain gang employee.If you decide to read it, note how the piece frames the Common Core as a liberation document at the for
JUL 10
Weingarten Riding High on Teacher Union Dues
Mercedes Schneider has another solid piece on the secret society memberships and sordid political machinations of Rhonda (aka Randi) Weingarten, the corporate manufactured president of the AFT. Seems that Randi recently plunked down 30K to join and another 100K promised every year to wine and dine with ostensibly liberal billionaires. Your union dues at work!Not that Rhonda couldn't afford to pa
JUL 09
The State Board of Ed, the Uneducated Educated, and the Unelected
By Doug Martin Despite letter after letter and a strong physical presence in support of our democratically elected supt. of public instruction, the Pence/state board/CECI trio today set the ball in motion to steal more power from Glenda Ritz to carry on the billionaires' corporate-theocratic agenda I detail in my book Hoosier School Heist. The whole attack against Glenda Ritz is, in essence, an a
A Teacher's Take on Common Core
From Labor Notes:. . . .There’s debate among teachers about the idea of replacing the status quo, state standards, with national ones. But the implementation has been roundly unpopular.Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted the national standards, which cover English and math. Students will be tested on them every year, kindergarten through 12th grade.Lessons at all grade leve
JUL 08
The input that matters most
Sent to the Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2014Joshua Lipshutz ("The legal road map to better schools," July 8) points out that "...the easiest inputs to measure are not necessarily those that matter most to student learning." Vergara judge used one that doesn't matter: Teacher quality as measured by gains on standardized tests. A number of studies have shown that rating teacher
The Gild Is Already Off the Lily, But She is Golden for Gates
No sooner was the NEA president's office cleared of the sickly sweet stench of corrupt corporate lackey, Dennis Van Roekel, than a new CorpEd chief enabler was enthroned as head of the nation's largest dress-up-and-go-to-lunch teachers' professional organization.Enter Stage Right, Lily Eskelson Garcia, with her guitar and plenty of cute protest songs to titillate teachers who prefer to dance to th
Doug Martin's Letter to the Indiana State Board of Education, July 8, 2014
Dear State Board of Education: As you seek to dismantle public education and democracy, I want to remind you of my book, Hoosier School Heist, which is becoming quite popular. Although it's hard to determine (since I don't have billionaires behind me to pay for someone to track the data), my educated guess is at least 250,000 people know about this book. The FBI even reads Hoosier School Heist
Duncan's Latest Party Balloon Just Got Popped in Tennessee
When NAEP reported in May that Tennessee high school seniors finish next to last in NAEP proficieny in the latest testing derby (just behind West Virginia), it took some of the glory from the earlier report on NAEP scores for grades 4 & 8 that Kevin Huffman and his band of TFA lawyers plastered on every available wall space at the TN State Department of Education--even the elevators. But Huffm
The Meaningless Moratorium Has Ended Before Anyone Knew It Began
The union misleadership stooges of the NYSUT have signed on to a Gates-approved moratorium that just ended. Under a plan that Cuomo will sign into law, teachers, as the headline goes, get a "break" from teacher evaluations based on test scores. Or, rather, they got a break in 2012-2013 and 2013-2014. The moratorium is over before anyone could celebrate the big victory that Weingarten,
Email the Indiana State Board of Ed: Another Power Grab in the Works
by Doug MartinOnce again, former conservative radio show host/free-market Christian/current Indiana Governor Mike Pence and his corporate theocrats on the State Board of Education (made up of Koch Brothers-connected Indiana Policy Review Foundation fake scholars, former Christel DeHaan operatives, and hedge fund Democrats, among others) are seeking to strip supt. of public schools Glenda Ritz of m
JUL 07
Kindergarten Achievement Tests Before Kindergarten
Riverdale and Horace Mann are now using a new test to make sure that only kids who can afford IPads and tutoring get in. Could you pass the test? Which flag completes the pattern?
JUL 06
Ravitch Waves Goodbye to Common Core and Throws Kisses to Dennis and Randi
I read both of Diane Ravitch's books that she wrote after her conversion experience and subsequent surrender of her honored chair with the boys at Hoover/Koret/Fordham, and I kept looking to find out the real history of American corporate education reform, the one that Diane had ignored in every one of her books prior to her conversion. What I found in her newer books was more or less a watered d