NYC: Public School Principals Given 24 Hours to Clear Space for Eva’s Charters
Only one charter chain gets special treatment in New York City, and that is Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies. Principals have beenr told they had 24 hours to clear and clean the space where her schools will co-locate rent-free. The city hired hundreds of workers to get the space in order. The 1 million children who attend public schools are second-class citizens. Eva’s 7,000-10,000 students ar
Why Don’t Reformers Care About Child Poverty?
Corporate education reformers often say that poverty is just an excuse for bad teachers. Michelle Rhee said that often, but seven years after she took charge of the D.C. Public schools (and was replaced by her deputy Kaya Henderson), D.C. remains one of the nation’s lowest-scoring districts. Arne Duncan has often called poverty an excuse. Wendy Kopp and Bill Gates have said that if “we” fix schoo
Peter Greene Explains What Campbell Brown Doesn’t Know about Schools
Peter Greene here reviews and refutes Campbell Brown’s article in the New York Daily News about why she is bringing a Vergara lawsuit in New York. Campbell Brown was once a CNN anchor; her husband advised Romney and is on the board of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst New York. She is a fierce critic of teacher unions, tenure, and seniority. The lawsuit gives her an opportunity to act on her passionat
The Best Way to Motivate People Is….
In an article in the New York Times, two scholars explain how best to motivate people in every line of endeavor. Amy Wrzesniewski is an associate professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management. Barry Schwartz is a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College. They make a distinction between internal motivation and instrumental motivation. Usually, psychologists contrast int
How Statistics Can Be Manipulated Any Which Way
Mr. Anonymous, an education policy analyst who is working towards his doctorate, wrote the following cautionary story about the use and misuse of statistics for political purposes. He requires anonymity for the usual reasons, mostly fear of retaliation for speaking up. He writes: The Common Core and Departments of Education: Lies, Darn Lies, Statistics and Education Statistics Numbers have taken
Paul Horton Chastises the Chronicle of Higher Education about the Common Core Standards
The Chronicle of Higher Education regularly publishes laudatory articles about the Common Core standards. Paul Horton wrote a letter to the editor. Here it is: http://chronicle.com/blogs/letters/common-core-standards-are-the-tip-of-a-corporate-iceberg/ Common Core Standards Are the Tip of a Corporate Iceberg To the Editor: In response to recent several columns that embrace the Common Core
New York: An Insider’s View of the Test Scores
This personal report about setting the cut scores for New York’s Common Core 11th grade ELA test was written by Dr. Maria Baldassarre Hopkins, Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Nazareth College. The cut score is the passing mark. Professor Hopkins writes: My name is Maria, and I am not a psychometrician. There. I said it. Apparently it took me a while to get it through my thick sk
Anthony Cody: Can We Motivate Students When They Face Bleak Futures?
Anthony Cody is confused by the contradictions of the corporate reform movement. “On the one hand, we have a seemingly utopian project with bold pronouncements about the boundless capacity of all students – even those with serious learning disabilities – to succeed on ever more difficult tests. On the other hand, we have tests that are apparently intentionally designed to fail in the realm of two
Edushyster Visits the National Charter School Conference
EduShyster (aka Jennifer Berkshire) girded up her loins and attended the riotously happy National Charter Schools Conference. There she found that it was all about the numbers–growth, test scores, dollars: “The numbers that are adding up, of course, refer to the growing number of charter schools, their students, and their scores (their scores!), not to mention the swelling ranks of advocates, po
LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 7-7-14 Diane Ravitch's blog #thankateacher #EDCHAT #P2
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: The Same Old Miracle School in Chicago, with a High Attrition RateA few years ago,I wrote an article in The New YorkTimes about “miracle schools” that weren’t. I called out Mayor Bloomberg, as well as Arne Duncan and President Obama for making grandiose claims about schools that allegedly graduated 100% of their students or saw dra