Oh Say Can You See Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

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

Oh Say Can You See Diane Ravitch's blog 

A site to discuss better education for all

Politico Education: More States Picking Up College Costs

by dianeravitch / 32min

Politico Morning Education reports that the movement to make community college tuition-freeis spreading. http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2017/05/19/states-picking-up-fight-for-free-college-220405 “STATES 

Bill Phillis: Betsy DeVos is Clueless about the Common Good

3by dianeravitch / 15min

Bill Phillis read Betsy DeVos’s prepared remarks at the Brookings Institution and it occurred to him that she literally doesn’t know what she is talking about. Bill is a retired deputy superintendent of schools for the state of Ohio and he works 

John Thompson: Demoralization in the Schools of Oklahoma and the Nation

by dianeravitch / 6min

John Thompson, historian and teacher, submitted this article: The Oklahoma City Public Schools is being clobbered by state budget cuts that could approach $50 million over two years. Anyone who doubts that money matters should take 

Anthony Cody: Activists Fight Corporate Media with Short Videos and Powerful Message

by dianeravitch / 4min

Anthony Cody, co-founder of the Network for Public Education and retired teacher, describes the day nearly three weeks ago when education activists from across the nation met in a grimy warehouse in Brooklyn to tape videos about the fight for better schools and against privatization. I posted a request on the blog inviting people to join the audience. Several readers asked if the day would be liv

Republican Health Insurance Bill Threatens Billions in Special Education Funding

5by dianeravitch / 1h

The legislation passed by the House of Representatives aims to cut Medicaid by $880 billion over ten years, and a relatively small but significant chunk of that money pays for special education services in schools. The new law would cut Medicaid by $880 billion, or 25 percent, over 10 years and impose a “per-capita cap” on funding for certain groups of people, such as children and the elderly — a

South Carolina: A Principal Resigns Rather than Lie to His Staff and Families

14by dianeravitch / 2h

This story appeared on the blog of Patrick Hayes’ EdFirstSC. In Charleston, South Carolina, Principal Jake Rambo was ordered to evaluate his teachers based solely on the test scores of their students. Not multiple measures. Standardized tests. He refused. He was told that he was being transferred to another school because of his school’s test scores. He said he didn’t want to leave his school. He

Cloaking Inequity: What NAEP Reveals About Charter Schools Vs. Public schools

9by dianeravitch / 3h

Julian Vasquez Heilig, a scholar at California State University in Sacramento, reports on a research project comparing the performance of charter schools to public schools, using state scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP is administered by the U.S. Department of Education and governed by a nonpartisan board appointed by the Secretary of Education. Since members

Bianca Tanis: New York’s New Standards Are Bad News for Young Children

6by dianeravitch / 3h

Bianca Tanis is a teacher of special education in a K-2 classroom in the Hudson Valley of New York. She is also a member of the board of NYSAPE (New York State Allies for Parents and Educators), the statewide group that has led the Opt Out movement. In this post , she excoriates New York’s new standards and says the New York State Education Department ignored the voices of early childhood educato

YESTERDAY

Great New Documentary–“Backpack Full of Cash”–is Finished and Ready for Screenings in Your Community

21by dianeravitch / 22h

Sarah Mondale and Vera Aronow announce that their long-awaited film “Backpack Full of Cash” has been completed, and they are now taking it to film festivals and community screenings. This is the film that tells the story of the dangers of public school privatization and the undermining of public education in many districts. Dear BACKPACK Friends and Supporters, We want to share some good news. BA

Good News from Texas!

6by dianeravitch / 23h

The State Senate in Texas is still pushing vouchers, even though the last voucher bill was overwhelmingly defeated in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The senate, under the thumb of Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (former rightwing talk show host), inserted a voucher program into a budget bill and sent it to the House. The Speaker of the House, Joe Straus, issued the following stateme

Peter Dreier: How Big Money Hijacked Democracy in Los Angeles

12by dianeravitch / 1d

Peter Dreier, a professor of political science at Occidental College, gives his political analysis of the Los Angeles school board election. He writes: [Nick] Melvoin and his billionaire backers dramatically outspent school board president Steve Zimmer’s campaign, making the District 4 race the most expensive in LAUSD history. Political pundits will spend the next few days and weeks analyzing the

Jennifer Berkshire: The Prophets of Privatization

15by dianeravitch / 1d

Jennifer Berkshire (the writer formerly known as EduShyster) is one of the best education writers on the national scene. In this article, she describes the evangelical roots of the present school-choice movement, as personified by Betsy DeVos. You will meet some very peculiar people who loathe “government schooling” and prefer to home school their children. Some will be familiar to you, like the

Peter Greene: The Tawdry Story Behind the Latest Florida Charter Scam

12by dianeravitch / 1d

I recently posted a story about Eagle Arts Academy Charter School in Palm Beach, Florida, which seemed to be in chaos. There was financial mismanagement, constant turnover, and multiple snafus. Peter Greene dug deeper and exposed the back story. He calls it “ Florida Charter Scam: Part 23,174.” He writes: “Gregory James Blount was a 40-ish-year-old former model and events producer who was working

Trump’s First Education Budget: Deep Cuts for Public Schools, Good News for Charters, School Choice

44by dianeravitch / 1d

Trump unveiled his first education budget , and it contains many cuts to popular programs in public schools. But it has a bonanza for private alternatives to public schools. The Washington Post obtained a draft copy of the new budget, which has not yet been submitted to Congress. Funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, public-service loan forgiveness would end and hundreds o

John Merrow: “The Canary in the Mine” and Test-Based Accountability

10by dianeravitch / 1d

John Merrow has been covering education for decades, most recently as education correspondent for the PBS Newshour, and he has learned quite a lot, most of which he puts into his forthcoming book, Addicted to Reform (out on 

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

10 Things Parents Just Don't Understand About Teachers - Teacher Habits

10 Things Parents Just Don't Understand About Teachers - Teacher Habits:

10 Things Parents Just Don’t Understand About Teachers

I’ve eaten at hundreds of restaurants in my life, but I’ve never worked at one. My wife was a waitress in college, so when we go out to eat and I complain about something, she’s usually able to offer me a logical explanation. The table next to ours received their food first because they ordered soup and sandwiches and we ordered pizza. That family was seated ahead of ours because a table for four opened up, but there isn’t yet room for our party of six. The restaurant may appear sparsely populated, but our food could be taking a long time because there’s a backlog of take-out orders.

Until you do a job, you can’t appreciate all that goes into it.  It’s this fact of life that accounts for many of the misconceptions parents have about teaching. So here are 10 things parents might not know.

We Have Less Control Over Things Than You Think We Do

The state adopts standards that we have to teach. The Board of Education approves programs that we’re required to use. The district’s administrators are under pressure to improve test scores, and that filters down to us. We may be “there for the kids,” but we’re also employees of our districts. So while we may want to teach your child other things and in other ways, we usually have less autonomy than you suspect. When you complain about our math program,  you put us in a difficult position. We might very well agree with you, but saying so would be unprofessional.

 We Do It All Ourselves

 We don’t have office assistants. Any communication that comes home from us was typed by us. Because we have many urgent things to do, we likely typed that newsletter in ten minutes and read it over once before hitting print. If we make the same grammatical or spelling10 Things Parents Just Don't Understand About Teachers - Teacher Habits: 

Reformed to Death: Discipline and Control Eclipse Education | radical eyes for equity

Reformed to Death: Discipline and Control Eclipse Education | radical eyes for equity:

Reformed to Death: Discipline and Control Eclipse Education

An enduring gift of being a student and a teacher is that these experiences often create lifelong and powerful personal and professional relationships. Reminiscing about these experiences, however, is often bittersweet because we are simultaneously reminded of the great promise of education as well as how too often we are completely failing that promise.

After writing about my two years as as a co-lead instructor for a local Writing Project summer institute, the former student I discussed called me, and we found ourselves wading deeply into the bittersweet.

She has in the intervening years been a co-facilitator in the same workshop where I taught her now more than 15 years ago; she also has worked in many capacities providing teachers professional development and serving as a mentor to pre-service teachers completing education programs and certification requirements.

As we talked, the pattern that emerged is extremely disturbing: the most authentic and enriching opportunities for teachers are routinely crowded out by bureaucratic and administrative mandates, often those that are far less valid as instructional practice.

In my chapter on de-grading the writing classroom, I outlined how the imposition of accountability ran roughshod over the rise of the National Writing Project (NWP), which embodied both the best of how to teach writing and a gold standard approach to professional development.

What is best for teachers and what is best for students, however, are mostly irrelevant in the ongoing high-stakes accountability approach to Reformed to Death: Discipline and Control Eclipse Education | radical eyes for equity: