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Stephen Colbert to Campbell Brown: ‘Why are we blaming the teachers? Maybe it’s the dumb kids.’
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 […]
What do standardized tests actually test?
What exactly do standardized tests test? In this post veteran educator Marion Brady answers that question and its consequences for teaching and learning. Brady has written history and world culture textbooks (Prentice-Hall), professional books, numerous nationally distributed columns (many are available here), and courses of study. His 2011 book, “What’s Worth Learning,” asks and answers this q
JUL 31
A teacher asks Arne Duncan a gutsy question. Here’s the answer.
(Update: Video added; wasn’t visible in earlier version) 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 […]
How many colleges mishandle sexual assault cases — and what to do about it
A bipartisan group of senators just introduced legislation in Congress that is aimed at curbing sexual assaults on college campuses. The legislation would force school officials to be more transparent and accountable in dealing with sexual assaults, including requiring better training for on-campus personnel who investigate cases and participate in disciplinary procedures. Schools that fail […]
JUL 30
Campbell Brown’s anti-union group uses union slogan (update)
(Update: Adding comment from Brown’s group) Campbell Brown doesn’t hide her disdain for teachers unions. She has frequently railed against them, and formed an anti-union advocacy group that filed a lawsuit in New York this week seeking to eliminate job protections for teachers in the state. That’s why it is somewhat amusing that her group, the […]
Respected science publication is fooled by The Onion
It’s one thing for an Iranian news agency to mistakenly cite as fact a piece in The Onion, a satirical humor publication, as actually happened in 2012 when the Fars News Agency referred in all seriousness to an Onion story about a Gallup poll that supposedly showed more rural white voters in America would rather […]
JUL 29
School puts nearly 100 kindergartners in one class in a teaching experiment
(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 extended calendar and won’t end its current school […]
JUL 28
50 Virginia college presidents protest Obama’s planned school rating system (update)
(Update: Adding statement from Education Department) Fifty presidents of public and private nonprofit colleges and universities in Virginia have signed a letter (see text below) to Education Secretary Arne Duncan expressing “serious reservations” about the Obama administration’s “misguided” development of a school rating system that could include data such as how much students earn after […]
That kid in class who utterly infuriated me
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,” she wrote, to become an English teacher and […]
‘Education reform’ now a pejorative term to many progressive Democrats
Earlier this year I published a post about how the Democratic Party has been split for years over the issue of corporate school reform. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have been Democratic leaders of the dominant reform movement which seeks to transform public schools through standardized-test-based “accountability” and the expansion of charter schools. […]
JUL 26
The stages of your vacation from work and school
The stages of your vacation from work. (Via @phdcomics) pic.twitter.com/VCwJfTYJCo — Donalyn Miller (@donalynbooks) July 26, 2014
Students catch school superintendent plagiarizing part of commencement speech
(Update: Adding statement from school panel that fined superintendent) The usual pattern for the detection of plagiarism is for an adult to catch a student copying from someone else’s work. But in Newton, Mass., it was two new high school graduates who discovered that the school district superintendent who spoke at their graduation had “borrowed” […]