NPE News Briefs ← from The Network for Public Education:
NPE News Briefs
from The Network for Public Education
The Failure of Test and Test and Test Some More | Diane Ravitch’s blog
This teacher expresses frustration with the policymakers’ obsession with testing, thinking of it as a form of instruction and a measure of instruction, and as a measure of teacher quality and school quality. In New York, for example, State Commissiomer Zjohn King recently a bounced that he would release more questions and more results earlier. ...read more
Tennessee’s Fool of Merit | EduShyster
Accountability for thee but not for me… By Joe Nashville During EduShyster’s last visit to the Volunteer State, we were left to wonder if the sword of punitive accountability cuts both ways. Fortunately, if you’re a Tennessean who puts students first, the answer is still no. In fact, Kevin Huffman, aka the TNeduCommish or K-Huff, seems ...read more
New problems for “Dr.” Carter in New London. His tenure at CPS and AUSL? Anyone? Anyone? | Fred Klonsky
The troubles for “Dr.” Terrence P. Carter keeping mounting up. He was a slam-dunk choice for New London, Connecticut’s superintendent of schools until his resume turned out to be phonier than a World Wrestling Federation match. The board put the hiring on hold until they could investigate whether he really got a Ph.D. from Stanford. ...read more
Stephen Colbert to Campbell Brown: ‘Why are we blaming the teachers? Maybe it’s the dumb kids.’ | The Washington Post
Stephen Colbert welcomed Campbell Brown to “The Colbert Report” (see video below) on Thursday night to talk about her support for a lawsuit just filed in New York that seeks to eliminate tenure and other job protections for teachers. The Comedy Central host didn’t give the former CNN anchor turned anti-union activist a free pass, asking ...read more
A teacher asks Arne Duncan a gutsy question. Here’s the answer. – The Washington Post
What question would you ask to Education Secretary Arne Duncan if you had the chance? Patrick Hayes, a fifth-grade teacher in Charleston, S.C., and director of EdFirstSC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group working to empower people who care about public schools, got that opportunity recently when Duncan had a video chat with hundreds of Charleston ...read more
JUL 30
“Ineffective,” Veteran, Primary Grade Teacher in Tennessee Resigns | VAMboozled
As per a recent article in The Tennessean, it seems yet another teacher has resigned, this time from the 1st grade – a grade in which teacher-level value-added normally does not “count.” This teacher, a 15-year career 1st grade teacher, was recently categorized as “ineffective” in terms of “adding value” to her students’ learning and ...read more
The Day: Was New London Superintendent’s Cover Letter Also Plagiarized? | Diane Ravitch’s blog
The Day reports that the language in the cover letter submitted by Terrence Carter to be superintendent in New London contained language identical to a cover letter written by another job applicant in Michigan in 2011. When will this charade end? If he fabricated his résumé and plagiarized his job application and cover letter, what ...read more
UPDATED: Court rules school voucher money can flow before final decision on program’s legality | The Progressive Pulse
*CORRECTION: A previous version of this story omitted the news that Judge Hobgood also ruled in favor of allowing Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate leader Phil Berger to intervene in the case and defend the school voucher program. Superior Court Judge Robert H. Hobgood ruled Wednesday that the state can begin to disburse school voucher funds ...read more
The Best Article About Tenure Ever, Explaining Campbell Brown’s Law | Diane Ravitch’s blog
We all know, or should know, about Campbell’s Law. That is a social science axiom that says: “The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social ...read more
Teacher Under Construction | EduShyster
Stephanie Rivera talks teacher prep, the importance of a diverse teaching force and why, if you want her to stop teaching, you’ll have to carry her out of her classroom… Edushyster: You’re about to begin your student teaching through the teacher prep program at Rutgers. Since we know for a fact that teacher prep is useless, why ...read more
Moms winning the Common Core war | Stephanie Simon – POLITICO.com
By STEPHANIE SIMON | 7/29/14 5:06 AM EDT Updated: 7/29/14 12:24 PM EDT The millions have proved no match for the moms. Supporters of the Common Core academic standards have spent big this past year to persuade wavering state legislators to stick with the new guidelines for math and language arts instruction. Given the firestorm ...read more
Rachel Aviv: How NCLB Harmed Children, Teachers, and the Meaning of Education | Diane Ravitch’s blog
If you have not read Rachel Aviv’s “Wrong Answer” in The New Yorker, drop everything and read it now. Aviv tells the story of the Atlanta cheating scandal through the ideas of one man, one teacher, who cared deeply about his student. Step by step, he got sucked into the data-driven obsession with test scores, ...read more
Why One School District Is Throwing All of its Student Laptops Away | Alternet
Inside Hoboken’s combined junior-senior high school is a storage closet. Behind the locked door, mothballed laptop computers are strewn among brown cardboard boxes. Others are stacked one atop another amid other computer detritus. Dozens more are stored on mobile computer carts, many of them on their last legs. That’s all that remains from a failed ...read more
NAISON: What the BATs Told Duncan and His Staff | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Wow! This post will knock your socks off, unless you work for the U.S. Department of Education. The post was written by Mark NAISON, one of the co-founders of the BATs. (I don’t know why, but my iPad always converts Mark’s last name into all-caps.) The Badass Teachers Association held a rally outside the U.S. ...read more
JUL 29
ALEC Agenda in Dallas: Evisceration of Medicaid, School Privatization and Expansion of Gas Exports | The Progressive
ALEC holds its 41st annual meeting in Dallas, Texas starting on Wednesday, July 30, 2014. At this largest of its three annual national conferences, state legislators from across the country will meet with corporate and special interest lobbyists behind closed doors to vote on “model” legislation to change state laws. Numerous agenda items are reviewed ...read more
David Berliner Responds to Economists Who Discount Role of Child Poverty | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Erik Hanushek, Paul Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann take issue with David Berliner and Gene Glass’s view about how high levels of child poverty in the U.S. affect our students’ performance on international assessments. In the following post, David Berliner responds to their critique. Criticism via Sleight of Hand David C. Berliner Hanushek, Peterson and Woessmann ...read more
To ALEC in Texas: School Vouchers are Poppycock | Cloaking Inequity
ALEC is meeting in Texas right now with a “shameless” agenda to privatize public education. Who is ALEC? In December 2012 Cloaking Inequity first profiled the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC is a national organization “composed of legislators, businesses and foundations” with great influence and connections to extreme think tanks and supported by funding from corporations that a
Arne Duncan Drops in Unexpectedly on Meeting With BATS at US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights and Gets an Earful! | With A Brooklyn Accent
On July 28, 2014, following the BAT Rally outside the US Department of Education, a delegation of BATS went up to the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights to share some of the main issues that BATS had with Department Policy. Representing the BATS were Marla Kilfoyle, General Manager of BATS. Dr Yohuru Williams of ...read more
Badass Teachers Meet with Duncan and Staff | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Politico.com reports that representatives of the BATs met with Secretary Duncan. “BADASS TEACHERS OUT IN FORCE: Several hundred teachers, parents and students sang, danced and demonstrated outside the Education Department on Monday, protesting federal education reform under the Obama administration. The rally was hosted by the Badass Teacher Association. On the list of grievances: The ...read more
Teachers Occupy the US Department of Education in Washington, DC | M. Shannon Hernandez
I boarded the Amtrak early Sunday morning in New York City and headed into Washington, DC. The weekend had finally arrived where teachers from across this nation were going to show our solidarity and use our voices to fight for public education. Educators, parents and students from 35 states occupied the U.S. Department of Education ...read more
School puts nearly 100 kindergartners in one class in a teaching experiment – The Washington Post
By Valerie Strauss July 29 at 4:01 AM (No, the headline is not from The Onion.) Brenda Scott Academy of Theater Arts is a high-poverty preK-8th school in east Detroit that is part of the Education Achievement Authority, a district run by Michigan authorities for schools identified as being the lowest-performing. Brenda Scott has an ...read more
JUL 27
I didn’t leave my political party, my party left me | Jonathan Pelto
I’m often asked why, considering I’m a life-long Democratic, I am “leaving” the Democratic Party and running as an independent for Governor. I start by explaining that as hard as it is to run as an independent, I thought the institutional barriers to winning a Democratic Primary were even greater. But then I add that, ...read more
House OKs bill that allows private charter school education management companies to keep their employees’ salaries secret | The Progressive Pulse
House lawmakers approved legislation Friday that allows private, for-profit management companies that run charter schools to keep their employees’ salaries secret, even though they are paid with public funds. The bill also fails to provide protections for LGBT students, even though an earlier version did. While the bill, SB 793, or Charter School Modifications, clarifies ...read more
Why the Election in Georgia Matters | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Bertis Downs is a native of Georgia and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education. He writes: This is the best electoral news in a long time– Georgia Democrat Valarie Wilson won the runoff for state school superintendent, and it wasn’t even close: http://bit.ly/Us7qNi I am proud to be one of ...read more
Pearson Set Cut Scores for NYS | CURMUDGUCATION
Over at lohud, actual journalists like Gary Stern have been working long hours trying to pry loose some facts from the state of New York, and it’s worth the while of folks from all states to see what they’ve dug up because it’s a bright red warning flag about how the CCSS-linked testing program actually ...read more
Lisa Graves: Will the Koch Brothers Buy American Politics? | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Lisa Graves was one of the creators of the website ALECExposed. She has followed the money, and she here describes a dangerous threat to American democracy by the billionaire Koch brothers, ALEC, and others who seek control by the super-rich. They want to bust unions and privatize schools. Graves says that progressives must stand together. ...read more
Are Researchers Who Helped Popularize VAM Having Second Thoughts? | Larry Ferlazzo
Two-and-a-half years ago, economists Raj Chetty, John Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff published an extremely influential and well-known study that popularized Value-Added Measurements as a teacher evaluation tool and has caused huge damage to teachers, students and their families. You can see a collection of commentaries on their study here. They have also been public advocates ...read more
JUL 26
Five U.S. innovations that helped Finland’s schools improve but that American reformers now ignore | The Washington Post
By Valerie Strauss Finnish educator and scholar Pasi Sahlberg is one of the world’s leading experts on school reform and educational practices. The author of the best-selling “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland?”and a former director general of Finland’s Center for International Mobility and Cooperation, Sahlberg is now a ...read more
Chris Christie to mayor: ‘I’m the decider and you have nothing to do with it’ – The Washington Post
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is consistent — at least when it comes to espousing total indifference to what Newark residents want for their state-operated public school system. Christie just bragged (see video below) that he told new Newark Mayor Ras Baraka that Baraka’s views on education reform don’t matter a whit — and ...read more
Nominee for New London, Connecticut, Superintendent Job Will Not Step Down | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Jon Lender of the Hartford Courant, who has broken story after story about sham practices in the state’s charter industry, describes the process of trying to verify the “doctorate” of Terrence Carter, the nominee for superintendent of the New London schools. The search firm hired by the school board seems to have conducted its research ...read more
HuffPost: How the Koch Brothers Are Bringing Their Ideas to High School Students | Diane Ravitch’s blog
The fabulously wealthy Koch brothers have developed a plan to teach their libertarian ideas to high school students. It is sort of like tobacco companies teaching students that smoking is good for you. They have used their vast resources to identify like-minded teachers, to train them and to supply course materials. Their program, called Young ...read more
Charter Schools USA Nets $2.9 Million Haul For Two Louisiana Schools | Scathing Purple Musings
Small wonder the wife of Charter Schools USA CEO Jonathan Hage was touting their test scores in an Orlando Sentinel opinion piece last month. Sherry Hage and her husband take in a lot of taxpayer money to run schools. Consider this story from Marsha Sills in The Advocate LAFAYETTE — Two new charter schools opening on opposite sides of ...read more