Please Note that NYC Department of Education Is Infested with Broadies, Not Bugs | Diane Ravitch's blog

Please Note that NYC Department of Education Is Infested with Broadies, Not Bugs | Diane Ravitch's blog

Please Note that NYC Department of Education Is Infested with Broadies, Not Bugs

I received a complaint about the wording of the title accompanying the post by Leonie Haimson. Leonie’s post was titled: “Leonie Haimson: Warning! The New York City Department of Education Is Infested with Broadies, TFA!”

Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (and Foundation) [net assets: $44 million] was offended by the title. He asked me not to refer to people as “bugs,” because an “infestation” of Broadies and TFA implies bugs. I wrote the title, not Leonie. I have been writing snappy titles ever since I worked as an editorial assistant at the now-defunct Democratic Socialist magazine called “The New Leader” in the early 1960s (where it was always “Five Minutes to Midnight” somewhere in the world.)

So out of deference to Mike’s wishes, I want to make clear that people who are Broadies and TFA are definitely not bugs.

The term “infestation” usually refers either to pests or parasites. But not always.

They might be zombies. There is such a thing as a “zombie infestation,” like when a whole lot of people trained by Eli Broad or Wendy Kopp (neither of whom was ever a teacher) arrive to kill your school and scatter the children. I googled and found that “zombie apocalypse” and “zombie infestation” are interchangeable. There are numerous references to “zombie-infested” as an adjective and “zombie infestation” as a noun. The CONTINUE READING: Please Note that NYC Department of Education Is Infested with Broadies, Not Bugs | Diane Ravitch's blog

Big Education Ape: NYC Public School Parents: How corporate reformers have become embedded in the Office of District Planning - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/12/nyc-public-school-parents-how-corporate.html

Common Schools and the Nationalistic Aims of Public Education in the U.S. | Dissident Voice

Common Schools and the Nationalistic Aims of Public Education in the U.S. | Dissident Voice

Common Schools and the Nationalistic Aims of Public Education in the U.S.

This article is part of a project that critically analyzes the historical and present day purposes of U.S. public education. Related articles focus on the history of Secondary Education, the undemocratic nature of Local Control and the finacialization of education via Impact Investing, Social Impact Bonds and Personalized Learning. The point of this project is to further expose the underlying social control function of U.S. public education and the interests it has consistently served over time, which cannot be extracted from the undemocratic nation-state it was designed  – and continually redesigned – to preserve. 

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Over the past forty-years education reform policies intended to marketize, privatize and ultimately financialize the U.S. education system have spurred significant resistance across the political spectrum. Often galvanized by claims that reform policies undermine public education as a vital institution of U.S. democracy, many progressive public education advocates call to “save our schools” and return them to their original common good design. Within this “good ole days” or “Make America Great Again” narrative, romanticized notions of the original Horace Mann Common School movement are often referenced. This storyline is premised on the belief that the current attack on public education is therefore an attack on American democracy, which presupposes that the United States was founded as a democracy and struggled to remain so thereafter. While the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers often reproduce this storyline as they collude with education reformers, many individuals and groups who actively oppose education reform policies also disseminate this tale.

In a 2014 interview with Bill Moyers, education historian Diane Ravitchadvanced this storyline when expressing her concerns about the future of public education by claiming, “I believe it is one of the foundation stones of our democracy: So an attack on public education is an attack on democracy.” In a 2013 blog posting, Jeff Bryant of the Education Opportunity Network claimed, “the earliest advocates for public schools – Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Horace Mann – all agreed that democratic citizenship was a primary function of education.” In 2016 the National Education Policy CONTINUE READING:  Common Schools and the Nationalistic Aims of Public Education in the U.S. | Dissident Voice

Education Research Report

Education Research Report

Education Research Report

Math Pathways: Expanding Options for Success in College Math

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

Download This report, released in collaboration with the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness, explains a new model of college math education that has come to be called math pathways. Three prominent examples of math pathways – with research evidence on their effectiveness – are included.

Transitions and Alignment From Preschool to Kindergarten

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

Download This special report – focused on early learning and kindergarten – examines effective transition programs and practices, and the importance of alignment across basic pedagogical components.

50-State Comparison: State Policies on School Discipline

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

Recent data show significant disparities in the application of suspension and expulsion based on race, gender and disability status. The emergence of these data, coupled with research showing the long-term negative impact of removing students from the learning environment, has prompted many state education leaders to re-examine their school discipline requirements. This has led to legislation aim

50-State Comparison: Teacher Leadership and Licensure Advancement

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

On the path to strengthen teacher pipelines, support excellent teaching and improve retention, many states have developed opportunities for teacher leadership and advancement. While most states offer advanced licenses to encourage ongoing learning and growth within the teaching profession, many are now also including supports and incentives to encourage more teachers to become leaders in their cl

50-State Comparison: Developmental Education Policies

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

Developmental education assessment and placement policies guide how students may demonstrate college readiness and are placed into college-level courses. States and postsecondary systems use a variety of measures to determine a student’s college readiness. Often, policies require that students submit scores from a national, standardized test. Some states and postsecondary systems allow students t

Governance in Early Childhood Education

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

Download This Education Trends report examines the different structures and strategies — including the creation of state offices, the consolidation of others, and collaboration and coordination across several state agencies – used in the states to govern early education. State examples and policy considerations are included to provide insight and help address the many challenges policymakers face

Too much credit given to most recent teaher for improved student learning

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

The federal Race to the Top competition provided significant impetus for states to adopt value-added models as a part of their teacher evaluation systems. Such models typically link students to their teachers in the spring semester when statewide tests are administered and estimate a teacher's performance based on his or her students’ learning between the test date in the previous school year and

What Constitutes Prudent Spending from Private College Endowments?

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 3h

This study examines how private colleges and universities choose to spend versus reinvest resources in endowment funds that have suffered investment losses. The analysis takes advantage of a market downturn and public policy shift, which together revealed how colleges define prudent spending. Investment losses during the financial crisis of 2008 left many endowment gift funds below their original

Positive Effects of Court-Ordered Finance Reforms

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 3h

This study provides new evidence about the effect of court-ordered finance reforms that took place between 1989 and 2010 on per-pupil revenues and graduation rates. Seven years after reform, the highest poverty quartile in a treated state experienced an 11.5 percent to 12.1 percent increase in per-pupil spending, and a 6.8 to 11.5 percentage point increase in graduation rates.

DEC 31 2018

Teacher Characteristics, Student Beliefs, and the Gender Gap in STEM Fields

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

This article uses data from the U.S. High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 to investigate the relationship between high school students’ beliefs about female abilities in math and science and their teacher gender, beliefs, and classroom behaviors. Estimates are obtained by comparing the same ninth graders between math and science classes, thus controlling for student fixed effects. Students were

College Students’ Reflections on Their High School Peer Crowds

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

High school peer crowds are fundamental components of adolescent development with influences on short- and long-term life trajectories. This study provides the perspectives of contemporary college students regarding their recent high school social landscapes, contributing to current research and theory on the social contexts of high school. This study also highlights the experiences of college-bo

The impact of Social Security on retirement timing: comparing covered and non-covered teachers

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

This study documents an important role for Social Security income in workers' retirement timing. About 40 percent of public school teachers are not covered by Social Security. This provides an opportunity to analyze the causal impact of Social Security on retirement timing by comparing covered and non-covered teachers. Using individual-level data from the American Community Survey, we find robust

DEC 27 2018

Distinguishing between students who guess and those who know

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 5d

Measuring the knowledge of students in online courses poses a number of challenges. Researchers from the Higher School of Economics and the University of Leuven made improvements to the model for assessing academic achievements and published their results in the journal Heliyon . Several systemic factors make it difficult for the developers of online courses to assess students' proficiency accura

The Effect of Grade Retention on Adult Crime

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 5d

This paper presents the first analysis in the literature of the effect of test-based grade retention on adult criminal convictions. The rsearchers use math and English test cutoffs for promotion to ninth grade in Louisiana using administrative data on all public K-12 students combined with administrative data on all criminal convictions in the state. They use the promotion discontinuity as an ins

Schools of choice less likely to respond to inquiries from students with low achievement

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 5d

School choice may allow schools to “cream skim” students perceived as easier to educate. To test this, researchers sent emails from fictitious parents to 6,452 schools in 29 states and Washington, D.C. The fictitious parent asked whether