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Friday, March 1, 2019

Catch Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all



Angie Sullivan Blasts Nevada Legislators and Power Brokers Who Refuse to Fund the Public Schools

by dianeravitch / 1h
Angie Sullivan is a firebrand on behalf of children in Nevada. She is a first grade teachers in Las Vegas (Clark County), which most people think of in terms of glitz and glamour. But the children she teaches are poor and many barely speak any English. Her school is underfunded. Angie writes frequent email blasts to every legislator and she does not mince words. On April 27, thousands of teachers
Rhode Island: Can You Fire Your Way to Higher Scores?

by dianeravitch / 2h
The testscores came in and Rhode Island got bad scores. RI still uses PARCC, which is guaranteed to faiil most students. First the State Commissioner of Education Ken Wagner resigned. Now the Providence Superintendent is stepping down. Will that raise scores? https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190226/providence-schools-superintendent-to-step-down

YESTERDAY

Breaking News from Los Angeles: Board Votes to Ask Voters to Approve New Taxes for Schools

by dianeravitch / 14h
From the Los Angeles Times: The Los Angeles Board of Education has voted unanimously to place a parcel tax on the June 4 ballot in hopes of capitalizing on a recent teachers’ strike that attracted broad support for local schools. If approved, the tax is projected to raise about $500 million a year, enough to close all or most of the gap between what the district is spending and the revenue it rec
Los Angeles: When You Go to a School in a Violent Neighborhood

by dianeravitch / 22h
Whats it like to go to a school in a neighborhood where violence and murder happen often? Sonali Kohli and Iris Lee write about kids growing up in dangerous neighborhoods. How does it affect the survivors? Some suffer physical wounds, all suffer psychological wounds. https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-edu-school-safety-deaths-nearby/ Gun control would help. Gun confiscation would help too. Th
Sign a Petition to Change the Charter Law in California

by dianeravitch / 23h
Allies who met at the Oakland conference of the Network for Public Educare are petitioning to regulate charter schools so they don’t harm public schools. Dear Friend of Public Education: On behalf of Educators for Democratic Schools , and Wellstone Democratic Club Education Committee (both active in Oakland) we are writing again to those who participated in the California Caucus of the NPE confer
National Education Policy Center: Has the Tide Turned Against Vouchers?

by dianeravitch / 1d
The National Education Policy Center asks whether the tide has turned against vouchers. i would argue in response to their question that there was never a tide favoring vouchers except among politicians who took campaign contributions from voucher supporters or who ideologically hate everything public. No public referendum on vouchers has ever endorsed them. The latest was in Arizona in 2018, whe
Linda Darling-Hammond at AASA: Testing Is Not Reform

by dianeravitch / 1d
The newly appointed chair of the California State Board of Education Linda Darling-Hammond spoke to the national conference of the American Association of School Administrators (the School Superintendents Association) and denounced the American reliance on high-stakes testing as a reform strategy. If America wants to be the world leader in education, then it should look to other countries as a mo
Wrench in the Gears: Incentivizing Pre-K Online Gaming

by dianeravitch / 1d
If you are a parent or grandparent, you know that little children need less screen time, not more. In this alarming post, blogger Wrench in the Gears quotes from transcripts where some deep thinkers (including Nobelist James Heckman) discuss ways to lure the little ones online, to give them digital badges, and scheme to come up with the right ways to sit them in front of computers. She begins: “T

FEB 27

MIchael Cohen’s Statement

by dianeravitch / 1d
TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL D. COHEN COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FEBRUARY 27, 2019 Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan, and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here today. I have asked this Committee to ensure that my family be protected from Presidential threats, and that the Committee be sensitive to the questions pertaining to ongoing investiga
Peter Greene: TFA Takes Control of Lorain, Ohio, Schools

by dianeravitch / 1d
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2019/02/oh-lorain-ceos-purge-announcement.html Peter Greene wrote a brilliant essay about Ohio’s response to the economic collapse of Lorain, which wa to put a czar in charge of the public schools, with unlimited power to do as he wished without any oversight. That czar—David Hardy—has limited education experience, having gotten his start in TFA. The teaching st
Expose: Trump’s Obsession with the Russia Investigation

by dianeravitch / 2d
The New York Times published a remarkable piece of investigative reporting about Trump’s obsession with the Russia investigation and his efforts to stop it. The article is worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. After it appeared, Trump tweeted that the Times is “the true enemy of the people.” The only media he likes are sycophants. He hates the First Amendment. It is behind a pay wall. To read the whole sto
D.C.: A Rating System Designed to Destroy Public Education

by dianeravitch / 2d
This is not a well-known secret: every distribution will always have a bottom 5%. In D.C., under the control of the Mayor, the school system had adopted a rating system that is guaranteed to produce winners and losers. The losers are set up for privatization. Parent activist and blogger Valerie Jablow thinks this stinks . She’s right. She writes: It’s not merely that the relativity of the STAR ra
New York City: Why the Renewal Schools Program Failed

by dianeravitch / 2d
Leonie Haimson explains in this testimony why NYC’s Renewal Schools Program failed, after spending nearly $800 million. The one Reform it refused to make in the city’s lowest performing schools was to reduce class size. And that, she believes, was a fatal flaw. This testimony was made almost a year ago. in case the formatting doesn’t make sense, here is the link: https://www.classsizematters.org/

FEB 26

Chicago: Two African American Women Will Be in Run Off in Mayor’s Race

by dianeravitch / 2d
Tonight, history was made in Chicago. Two African American women won the top two slots. Chicago’s next mayor will be an African American woman. Farewell to Rahm Emanuel; your disgraceful historic legacy will be closing 50 public schools in a single day. William Daley, the business establishment’s candidate, came in third. Au revoir. Paul Vallas, school privatizer supreme, trailed the field. CHICA
Oakland: Rightwing Toadies Put “Lies in the Skies” About OEA President

by dianeravitch / 2d
As Oakland teachers were striking, the rightwing propaganda machine hired a private plane to spread lies about Keith Brown, the union president. During the teachers’ demonstration, the plane flew over them trailing a banner saying that Brown is paid $350,000 a year. Lie. He makes a teacher’s salary. Maybe the Koch machine confused him with a charter school leader.
Oakland Strike: Teachers and District at Odds About Privatization

by dianeravitch / 2d
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Statement by Keith Brown President, Oakland Education Association, on Status of Contract Talks I do not believe that it is helpful to bargain contracts through the media. Up until now I have refrained from discussing details to give the negotiating team on both sides room to bargain. However, after seeing a series of misleading reports come out of the administration today, I
“Arizona Republic” Wins Prestigious Polk Award for Investigating Charter School Scandals

by dianeravitch / 2d
Arizona blogger David Safier reports that an investigative team of reporters at the Arizona Republic has won a prestigious Polk Award, one of the highest honors in American journalism, for its fearless reporting about charter school scandals in the state. Safier writes: The Arizona Republic’s thorough, ground-breaking stories about charter school corruption and profiteering have received scarce p
Tulsa: Broadie Swarm Alert!

by dianeravitch / 3d
This comment was posted by a reader who teaches in Tulsa. It was written in response to a post on the blog that Broadies have now taken charge of all the top positions in the District of Columbia schools. The Broadies use unusual titles because they lack the credentials to hold jobs that require certification. A Broadie, for the uninitiated, is someone “trained” in the top-down management philoso
Peter Greene: Is Shelby County (Memphis) Approaching a Death Spiral Due to Charters?

by dianeravitch / 3d
Peter Greene writes here that the invisible hand of the market doesn’t work well for schools. There is no magic in the market. Shelby County in Tennessee is overwhelmed with charters and of course they want more. He writes: “Shelby County is running up against two of the fallacies embedded in most charter school policy. “One is the modern charter policy lie– the notion that you can run multiple p
John Thompson: Oklahoma’s “Staggering” Teacher Exodus

by dianeravitch / 3d
John Thompson writes from Oklahoma: The Tulsa World’s headline nailed the big picture, “‘Staggering’: 30,000 Oklahoma Teachers Have Left Profession in the Past Six Years, Report Shows.” The World’s Michael Dekker cites State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister who explained, “The loss of 30,000 educators over the past six years is staggering — and proof that our schools must have the resources to suppo

FEB 25

Good News: New Jersey Legislators Drop Bill to Expand Testing

by dianeravitch / 3d
Bob Braun, veteran education journalist, reports that the New Jersey Assembly leaders pulled the bill to expand PARCC testing bee cause they didn’t have the votes to pass it. The protests of parents and teachers must must have been heard. Twenty-six states signed up for PARCC in 2010, which was designed to fail most students with artificially high passing marks. All but five states have dropped P
Trump’s Nominee as Ambassador to the U.N. Will Be a Laughing Stock, Writes Max Boot

by dianeravitch / 3d
Max Boot, who now writes a column for the Washington Post, says that U.N ambassadors have typically had distinguished careers before they were nominated. Not so the latest nominee. Kelly Knight Craft was chosen to be U.S. ambassador to Canada, and now to the United Nations, because she and her third husband, the billionaire coal baron Joe Craft, are mega MAGA-donors. According to The Post , they
Wisconsin: Governor Evers Seeks to Freeze Voucher Enrollments and Charter Expansion

by dianeravitch / 3d
Recently elected Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has proposed freezing voucher enrollments and charter expansion. Neither charters nor vouchers have been more successful than public schools. Milwaukee, which has both, is one of the nation’s lowest performing school districts on the NAEP. Republicans in the legislature have vowed to protect privatization of public funding. They are determined to eli
Bob Braun: Will New Jersey Disgrace Itself by Hanging On to PARCC Testing?

by dianeravitch / 3d
Bob Braun covered education and other topics for New Jersey’s leading newspaper, the Star-Ledger, for half a century. Today, as a blogger, he excoriates his former employer—and the New Jersey Legislature—for their efforts to keep PARCC testing alive. The decision, he writes, will be made for political, not educational, reasons. He begins: “Today, the Legislature will sell out New Jersey’s childre
The Year of the Public School: 2019!

by dianeravitch / 4d
This is a message from theNetwork for Public Education. 2019 will be the year of the public school, with your help and support. “From West Virginia to California teachers are boldly standing up for themselves, their students and their schools. Teachers are walking out due to a lack of sufficient funding, which has resulted in the deterioration of salaries, fewer services for children and increase
ProPublica: Will the Sackler Family Be Held Accountable for More Than 200,000 Opioid Deaths?

by dianeravitch / 4d
Those of us in the field of education know the billionaire Sackler family as major funders of charter schools. Jonathan Sackler funded ConnCAN, then 50CAN, and sits on the boards of other charter promotion corporations. But in the wider world, the Sacklers are infamous for their ownership of Purdue Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures and markets OxyContin, the drug believed to be responsible for


Gary Rubinstein, G.F. Brandenburg: TFA Celebrates Research Showing That Its Members Are Ineffective Teachers

by dianeravitch / 4d
Gary Rubinstein was a member of one of the first cohorts to join Teach for America. He decided to make a career of teaching, unlike most of those who enter TFA. He is now one of its sharpest critics because he knows the 
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