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Teacher Burnout in the Pandemic
by dianeravitch / 20min
The New York Times published an article recently by Natasha Singer–one of the best reporters on education issues in the Times –about the toll that the pandemic is taking on teachers. An extraordinary number say the burden of teaching remote classes and in-person classes is not sustainable. Large numbers of teachers are planning to retire, or have retired. All this fall, as vehement debates have r
Trump Loses Six More Court Cases
by dianeravitch / 1h
Trump’s legal team lost six more court cases Friday, even as he continued to insist that he had won the election. Even judges appointed by Trump have rejected his claims of fraud, presented without evidence, in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and Wisconsin. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nevada-trump-lawsuit-dismissed/2020/12/04/844d420a-3682-11eb-a997-1f4c53d2a747_story.ht
YESTERDAY
Carol Burris: DeVos Gave $1.2 Million of Federal Funds to a Soccer Club to Open a Charter School
45by dianeravitch / 22h
Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education (NPE), keeps close watch on the federal Charter Schools Program. Two reports by NPE (linked in the article below) have demonstrated that the program, with an annual budget of $440 million, is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse. Nearly 40% of the charters it has funded either never opened or closed soon after opening. In this arti
Matt Farmer: (Who’s Gonna) Pardon Me?
24by dianeravitch / 22h
Matt Farmer, Chicago lawyer, friend of teachers, and occasional country-western singer and composer, has written a new song. I remember Matt well from his days when he held a mock trial for billionaire Penny Pritzker . He conducted it at a meeting of the Chicago Teachers Union. Billionaire Penny Pritzker was named as Secretary of Commerce by President Obama. He also wrote a song for billionaire R
Farhad Manjoo: The Pandemic Brings Good Times to Billionaires
by dianeravitch / 23h
Farhad Manjoo is an opinion writer for the New York Times. In this column, he says that the wealth of American billionaires has grown dramatically during the pandemic. We know that millions of Americans are facing hunger, poverty, and evictions. Inequality is expanding. He writes: When I called up Chuck Collins on Tuesday afternoon, I found him glued to one of the grimmest new metrics documenting
Bob Shepherd: The Standardized Testing Hoax
56by dianeravitch / 1d
Bob Shepherd, a frequent commenter here, has been a curriculum writer, as assessment developer, a publisher, and a classroom tea her. As frequent readers of this log know, he is also a polymath, with a broad, nearly encyclopedic range of knowledge. In this essential post , he explains why standardized testing is invalid and useless for accountability purposes. They do not measure what they claim
DEC 03
Nancy MacLean: How the Koch Network Fosters Disinformation
38by dianeravitch / 1d
If you have not read Duke Professor Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains , you should. I reviewed it for the New York Review of Books here. It describes in great detail how the Koch brothers created an academic foundation for their extremist libertarian views. In this paper, MacLean goes into new detail about the workings of the Koch network and its efforts to undermine democracy. The Koch network
Houston: Why HISD Should Have the Best Teachers in the Nation By Now
21by dianeravitch / 1d
Audrey Amrein Beardsley writes here about Houston’s experience with value-added evaluation of its teachers . The Houston Independent School District (HISD) contracted with William Sanders’ SAS to provide a model to calculate the “value-added” of its teachers from 2007-2017. Teachers objected that the method of calculating their scores was opaque. They couldn’t learn how to improve their practice
Texas: Republicans Fighting to Defund Lobbying for Public Institutions, Including Public Schools
24by dianeravitch / 2d
The big battle this coming year in the Texas Legislature is about whether public agencies will be allowed to lobby for their interests. No one argues that private interests should be banned from advocating for what they want. Only public agencies—like public schools—would be banned because they use public money. You can see where this is going. Supporters of public institutions would be gagged an
Trump Delivers 46-Minute Rant Against Election, Insists He Won All States
26by dianeravitch / 2d
Our democracy is under attack by the man who took an oath to protect the Constitution. Donald Trump gave a 46-minute speech denouncing the outcome of the election, which he insists was fraudulent despite the fact that his own Attorney General concluded that the Department of Justice did not find evidence of widespread fraud that would change the outcome of the election. Trump’s legal team has fil
DEC 02
News from the Network for Public Education
26by dianeravitch / 2d
Thanks to the energetic leadership of Marla Kilfoyle, who is former executive director of the BATS, the Network for Public Education has developed a strong grassroots network. Here is her report: The Network for Public Education Grassroots Education Network-November 2020 Newsletter The NPE Grassroots Education Network is a network of over 155 grassroots organizations nationwide who have joined to
Growing Consensus that Young Children Can Safely Return to School
by dianeravitch / 2d
The New York Times reports that scientists are converging on a consensus that it is safe for young children to return to school. After a summer of uncertainty and fear about how schools across the globe would operate in a pandemic, a consensus has emerged in recent months that is becoming policy in more and more districts: In-person teaching with young children is safer than with older ones, and
Grantland Rice: Advice to Trump
48by dianeravitch / 3d
I learned the famous saying by Grantland Rice, probably in junior high school: “It matters not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game.” That was a lesson for life. Donald Trump never learned it. He’s a sore loser. Hillary Clinton lost a far closer race than Trump. She collected three million votes more than Trump. She lost the electoral college because of razor-thin wins by Trump in
QAnon Conspiracists Target Georgia
by dianeravitch / 3d
Led by Trump and his base, QAnon conspiracy theorists are targeting Georgia in their effort to overturn the 2020 election. We are heading into Cloud CuckooLand in American politics. This story by Drew Harrell explains why Georgia election official was so angry. Read it to the end. It appeared in the Washington Post: In her legal quest to reverse the reality of last month’s election, President Tru
Georgia: Election Official Condemns Trump’s Attacks on Election: “This Has to Stop”
21by dianeravitch / 3d
Georgia has a Republican Governor and Republican state officials. The presidential election was conducted under the auspices of Republicans. Biden won the election by a small margin. Trump insisted on a hand recount, and it confirmed that Biden won. Trump has demanded another recount. Trump has taken to Twitter to excoriate Governor Kemp for refusing to change the results. He and his proxies have
DEC 01
Bill Barr: No Widespread Fraud in 2020 Election
by dianeravitch / 3d
The Boston Globe reports that Attorney General Bill Barr said that the Department of Justice has not discovered any widespread fraud. Whatever they have found has not been enough to change the outcome of the election. Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential electio
Andrea Gabor: We Need Civics Education!
21by dianeravitch / 3d
Andrea Gabor, the Bloomberg Professor of Business Journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York, writes here about the importance of civics education , especially in a time when democracy is under attack by a defeated president and the leadership of the Republican Party. Put Civics Back in the Classroom, Right Now Has there ever been a better time to resume lapsed efforts to tea
ProPublica: Trump and Barr Want to Restore Death by Firing Squad
24by dianeravitch / 3d
ProPublica has been collecting evidence of Trump’s “midnight regulations,” the last-minute rule changes he and his cruel administration want to impose before they leave office. https://projects.propublica.org/trump-midnight-regulations Most egregious perhaps is the rule change that brings back execution of prisoners by firing squad or execution. This from an administration that claims to be pro-l
Paul Bonner: Testing Does Not Help Students
45by dianeravitch / 4d
One of the blog’s readers left the following wise comment in response to the organizations who support the resumption of standardized testing as soon as possible: I was a principal in Alabama for 8 years. In that time there were 4 different state tests administered with little in common. Meanwhile, our district gave 3 different tests that they used to judge the schools. The preponderance of stand
NAEP 2021 Has Been Canceled. State Tests Should Also Be Canceled.
200+by dianeravitch / 4d
The accountability hawks have decided that NAEP testing must be canceled this spring because of the pandemic, but the burdensome, useless, meaningless annual testing of every single student from grades 3-8 should not be disrupted. Betsy DeVos proposed canceling NAEP, and the director of the National Center for Education Statistics complied. There will be no NAEP 2021. This is backwards. If we wan
NOV 30
Trump Legal Team Asks Federal Court to Overturn Michigan Election Results
20by dianeravitch / 4d
The Detroit Free Press reported today that Trump lawyers asked a federal court to set aside the certified election results and give the state’s electoral votes to Trump. They never give up, despite their many losses and their lack of any evidence of fraud. Are these billable hours? There must be a reason they ignore their humiliating setbacks and soldier on. Trump continues to insist that he won
Michigan: The One Republican Who Stood Up to Trump
by dianeravitch / 4d
When the Trump team and the president himself pressured Michigan Republican officials to overturn the vote in their state, only one man said no. He said he had to follow the law. He was a hero of democracy. His name is Aaron Van Langevelde. “We must not attempt to exercise power we simply don’t have,” declared Van Langevelde, a member of Michigan’s board of state canvassers, the ministerial body
Mike Klonsky: The Supreme Court’s Dangerous Decision
by dianeravitch / 4d
The Supreme Court has taken a dangerous rightwing turn since the addition of Trump’s three religious zealot. Poor Chief Justice John Roberts has lost control. He is no longer the deciding vote. In the latest decision, he joined with the Court’s three liberals in a vain effort to say that public health requires all of us to accept limits and restrictions, even houses of worship. Several people twe
The Washington Post Berates Unprincipled Rubio
by dianeravitch / 5d
The Washington Post published an editorial by Fred Hiatt, editor of the editorial page, excoriating Senator Rubio for his unprincipled remarks about President-Elect Biden’s first appointments. He seems to think they are too well-qualified, too well-informed, too well-educated to serve. Let’s say you’re a Republican senator who claims to support democracy and U.S. leadership in the world. Let’s im
Brianna Keillor Takes Down Marco Rubio for Mocking Education
by dianeravitch / 5d
After President-Elect Biden announced his new national security team, a group of experienced, highly competent professionals, Senator Marco Rubio mocked them in a tweet, mostly because they are well-educated. Presumably he’s trying to grab Trump’s mantle as champion of the uneducated. Brianna Keillor of CNN shredded Rubin’s baloney , pointing out that the Trump administration included many Ivy Le
NOV 28
Trump’s Rush to Cripple the Federal Government
27by dianeravitch / 7d
Timothy O’Brien, a biographer of Trump, wrote the following at Bloomberg News: Now that Donald Trump’s administration has allowed Joe Biden’s team to formally begin its transition into the White House, the president is running out of overt ways to disrupt an election he clearly lost 18 days ago. His flimsy and misbegotten lawsuits challenging the vote are all but deflated and he’s been less activ
Happy Birthday, William Blake!
24by dianeravitch / 7d
From Garrison Keillor’s “The Writers’ Almanac”:* It’s the birthday of poet and artist William Blake ( books by this author ), born in London (1757). He was four years old when he had a vision that God was at his window. A few years later, he went for a walk and saw a tree filled with angels, their wings shining.
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all