On ESSA and Party Crashing | Save Maine Schools

On ESSA and Party Crashing | Save Maine Schools:

On ESSA and Party Crashing

I Can’t help but think of good ol’ Tom Vander Ark tonight.

Back in 2010, Vander Ark wrote the following in a blog post on why he believed, at the time, that the reauthorization of ESEA should hold off just a few more years:

 “The world will be different a year from now: 20 states will be well into Race to the Top implementation, hundreds of i3 grantees will be hard at work, the Common Core will have been adopted and new assessments will be in development. The Department has the biggest boldest grant program in history. They should let it reshape the landscape before attempting to adjust the law that will frame the next decade. “

Sure enough, as Vander Ark has been busy investing in charter, online, and digital learning companies, giving presentations on how to unbundle the billion-dollar education market, and advising the Foundation for Excellence in Education and ALEC on policy plays to bring his dreams to fruition, the landscape has indeed shifted.

Just in time for today’s passage of ESSA, most state departments of education are now thoroughly under the thumb of corporations and related billionaire-controlled foundations.

 “It will unleash a flood of excitement and innovation and student achievement that we haven’t seen in a long time,” said Senator Lamar Alexander said in today’s article in the New York Times on the passage of ESSA. “But it will come community by community, state by state, rather than through Washington, D.C.”

If by “flood of excitement,” Senator Alexander means investors slapping each On ESSA and Party Crashing | Save Maine Schools:

CT Republican Strategy 101 - Snatching Defeat out of the Jaws of Victory - Wait What?

CT Republican Strategy 101 - Snatching Defeat out of the Jaws of Victory - Wait What?:
CT Republican Strategy 101 – Snatching Defeat out of the Jaws of Victory

Political observers and students of Connecticut politics are fond of noting that while many Connecticut voters are perfectly comfortable splitting their tickets, the Connecticut Republican Party has had a tendency to nominate state-wide candidates who, when the critical moment arrived, were unable to gather the support of a majority of those who cast their votes on Election Day.

In the 2014 gubernatorial campaign, Dannel Malloy won a second term in office despite the fact that a majority of voters had an unfavorable opinion of him.  In the hours leading up to Election Day 2014, the Quinnipiac Poll reported that 49% of voters had an UNFAVORABLE opinion of Malloy, while only 43% had a FAVORABLE opinion of the first term governor.

However, although the political table was set for a Republican victory, the Republican Party’s nominee squandered the opportunity to build a coalition and message that would have earned him enough votes to win.

Had the Republican candidate for governor been former state senator John McKinney or Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, the outcome might have been different and Connecticut might now have a Republican Governor.

But the ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory was alive and well.

The Republican Party’s commitment to reducing their chance of winning federal and CT Republican Strategy 101 - Snatching Defeat out of the Jaws of Victory - Wait What?:

Letter to the Roseville City School District | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Letter to the Roseville City School District | Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Roseville City School District Embraces Chromebooks, But At What Cost?

A Case Study of a California Father Fighting His Daughter’s School District Over Digital Privacy

Katherine W. was seven years old, in the third grade, when her teacher first issued Google Chromebooks to the class.

Katherine’s father, Jeff, was concerned. It wasn’t because he had a problem with technology. In fact, Jeff and his family are technology enthusiasts. “We bought a house in this area primarily because of the school district. And one of the things that excited us about the school was the use of technology,” Jeff explained during a recent interview with EFF.

That enthusiasm waned when the school retired its former laptops and brought in Chromebooks for the students instead, also assigning each third grader a profile in Google Apps for Education, Google’s cloud-based education suite. Chromebooks may have been cheaper, but Jeff feared they might come at the cost of his daughter’s privacy.

Roseville City School District, near Sacramento, is one of the many districts now issuing mobile digital devices to students. In fact, one study estimates that nearly a third of middle and high school students in the United States are using mobile devices like laptops and tablets issued by their schools.  

When Jeff learned about the Chromebooks being offered to third graders, he acted quickly and was able to negotiate with his daughter’s teacher so she could use a different computer and not have to use a Google account. But as third grade came to a close, Roseville City School District made clear that there would be no exception made the next year.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law that protects students’ “educational records,” including personally identifiable information. The data that students often use to log into a Chromebook or Google Apps for Education—like name, student number, and birthday—is covered by FERPA. Under FERPA, this data generally can’t be shared with third parties—including Google—without written parental consent.

But Roseville City School District never sought written consent from Jeff or his wife. The district provided no details about the types of devices students would be required to use or the data that would be collected on students. Rather than allowing Jeff to sign his daughter up for the Chromebook program, the district consented on his behalf, making the device mandatory for Katherine—with no ability to opt out.

Many people—including Jeff—assumed that the law would prevent Google from collecting data on his daughter for advertising purposes. But the truth is more complicated. While Google is legally forbidden from creating a profile on Katherine when she’s using the school-sanctioned Google Apps for Education tools (which include email and document sharing), it can collect data as soon as she uses other Google services that aren’t part of the student-specific suite—including YouTube.

This means that Katherine is required by the school to use Google with a personalized Google Account, and Google can create a profile of her and use it for advertising purposes the moment she clicks away from the Google Apps for Education suite.

But it’s even worse. When schools issue Chromebooks, Google’s browser Chrome comes with Chrome Sync turned on by default. So instead of storing sensitive data—like browsing history—locally on the device, Chrome syncs that data to the cloud and allows Google to collect and indefinitely store sensitive data about students’ use of Chrome to browse the Web.

With EFF’s guidance, Jeff started a dialogue with the Roseville City School District over the summer to try to resolve the issue before his daughter started fourth grade. He emailed the district superintendent, the principal, and the technology director, outlining his concerns. Jeff even offered to buy a different laptop for his daughter, but the school refused. Finally, after several emails and a tense meeting later, the district agreed to provide Jeff’s daughter with a non-Google option for fourth grade—but once again declared that such an accommodation would not be possible for fifth grade.

That’s when EFF reached out to the district. Our legal team drafted a letter to the Roseville City School District to outline the privacy concerns associated with school-issued Chromebooks. The letter urged the district to permit “all students – if their parents so decide – to use alternative devices, software and websites, for the upcoming school year and every year.” The district refused to meet with us to discuss the issue.

For Jeff, the biggest concern isn’t just the data Google collects on students. It’s the long-term ramifications for children who are taught to hand over data to Google without question. It’s normalizing the next generation to a digital world that’s less private by default, and built on proprietary software.

As Jeff explained it, “In the end, Google is an advertising company. They sell ads, they track information on folks. And we’re not comfortable with our daughter getting forced into that at such an early age, when she doesn’t know any better.”

Learn more about the privacy problems of school-issued digital devices. Are you a parent, teacher, or school administrator concerned with the privacy risk of school-issued devices? Tell us about it.Letter to the Roseville City School District | Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Image courtesy Jeff W.

Letter to the Roseville City School District

 roseville_letter.pdf



Letter to the Roseville City School District | Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The Public Trust is Broken - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial Voice

The Public Trust is Broken - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial Voice:

The Public Trust is Broken

Congress has made so many mistakes, the public trust is broken. The trust has gotten so small, it crumbled under the weight of a corrupted lawmaking process.

Our congressional representatives have proven themselves to be untrustworthy, repeatedly, by passing laws that put the interest of corporations ahead of doing what is right for the People of this country.

We shouldn’t trust those who have proven themselves untrustworthy.Instead of feeling an obligation to serve the public, most of our representatives are acting in a manner that demonstrates how little respect they have for us, our opinions, and for meeting the needs of our country. The Gallup Poll trends have demonstrated a steady decline in our trust —of our government.

And unfortunately, what we have witnessed through the process of replacing No Child Left Behind has added one more seed to our growing mistrust.

The shenanigans that produced the Every Student Succeeds Act speaks badly for congress. The process was deliberately exclusive of the public.

There was no transparency or public debatewhen No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was written into law partly because of the shock this nation experienced due to 9/11. Is it speculation that those in power, then, took advantage of the opportunity that a crisis presents?

“Since bills pushed through Congress during chaotic crises are most assuredly destructive of liberty and its sister, sovereignty, one can easily and generally tell the motive and morality of the individuals vying for its passage.”

We do know for sure that black families in particular and civil rights groups in general wereThe Public Trust is Broken - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial Voice:

So, Teacher, You Don't Want to be "Political"? That's No Longer An Option

So, Teacher, You Don't Want to be "Political"? That's No Longer An Option:

SO, TEACHER, YOU DON’T WANT TO BE “POLITICAL”? THAT’S NO LONGER AN OPTION

I know, you are in the teaching life to teach, to instruct, to give to the next generation.  So am I.  But, I have come to some stark realizations lately:

1.  If you are a public school teacher, you are involved in politics right now, whether you acknowledge it or not.  Professional writers and pundits have been hired and paid handsomely to attack public school teachers and our representative organizations as their full time job.  And in case you missed it, they are attacking you, too.

2.  Even if you don’t like the idea of being involved in some sort of job collective, like being active in your union, your critics will lump you together with all other teachers anyway.  Sorry, your critics won’t let you out, no matter how much you want to be seen as that virginal, non-collective, not-dirty-with-politics, nice-smelling teacher.

3.  Critics will want you to forget that your democratically-elected union leaders at the local, and state levels have been, and in many cases still are in the classroom, teaching every day.  They will begin presumptive statements with phrases like “greedy union bosses”and hope that you forget that your “bosses” are still certified teachers, deeply committed to the profession.

4.    If your union falls apart, you will be on your own to negotiate a job or contract up against big-money interests who have teams of staff lawyers just waiting to overwhelm you if there is ever any legal action that you may bring.  Don’t believe me?  Ask any number of professionals, including doctors and nurses who work for huge hospital corporations.  Remember, school administrations operate in collective ways, also, not just teachers.  And they won’t stop even if all teachers unions go away.  It is in their best interest to act collectively.  Hmmmmm…Maybe it’s in our best interests, too.

5.  If you have any concern for the poorest of your students, you will So, Teacher, You Don't Want to be "Political"? That's No Longer An Option:

Every Student Succeeds Act - Lily's Blackboard

Every Student Succeeds Act - Lily's Blackboard:

Every Student Succeeds Act

A new national education law—the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)—will be signed into law by President Obama this week, setting a new course for our schools.

It’s sobering to think—painful, actually—that a U.S. high school student graduating in the spring of 2016 would have spent his or her entire k-12 school career under No Child Left Behind. Ending this woeful, 14-year chapter in U.S. education history has been a long time coming, but we finally got there. The NCLB era has officially come to a close!

First, a big thank you goes out to our elected representatives in Congress for getting the job done, but let’s be clear:Ending NCLB would never have happened without the inspiring and herculean efforts of educators across the country. As the real experts, they knew before anyone else that NCLB and its corrupting, excessive testing culture of blame and punish was a disaster for our students. Parents jumped on board, but politicians—holding on too tightly to misconceived notions of “accountability”—were slow to come around. But the evidence that NCLB was broken was overwhelming and getting rid of it became practically the only thing Republicans, Democrats, and Independents agreed on.

So everyone knew the law wasn’t working, but what would take its place? Or would Congress keep kicking the can down the road? This past year, educators were relentless in lobbying and persuading their representatives to actually take action and create a new and better ESEA. And guess what? They listened.

Is the Every Student Succeeds Act perfect? No; no law ever is. But it represents a historic step, not only because it closes the NCLB era, but because it also kickstarts the original ESEA’s commitment to providing more opportunity for all students.

Throughout this long reauthorization process, educators focused on three priorities: 1) including student and school supports in state accountability; 2) reducing the amount of standardized testing in schools and decoupling high-Every Student Succeeds Act - Lily's Blackboard:

Broad charter plan comes heavy attack at LAUSD board meeting - LA School Report

Broad charter plan comes heavy attack at LAUSD board meeting - LA School Report:

Broad charter plan comes heavy attack at LAUSD board meeting

Jackie Goldberg declares war outside the school board meeting.

The Broad Foundation plan to expand charter schools in LA Unified made an ominous debut before the LA Unified board yesterday as one opponent after another ripped into it as unwanted, unnecessary and destructive to the district and public education in general.

The widespread attack came in several forms after the board postponed voting on a resolutionfrom Scott Schmerelson that would put the board on record as opposing the plan. The delay enabled the board to adjourn earlier so the members could reconvene their private discussions on finding a new superintendent.

“We have been here since 8 in the morning and will be meeting until about 11 tonight, not that I’m asking you to have sympathy,” said school board president Steve Zimmer, explaining to the audience why some resolutions were being delayed.

While no one from the Broad foundation or its offspring now developing the plan — Great Public Schools Now — was invited to speak, the effort was a target all day, illustrated in stark terms by former school board president Jackie Goldberg as she addressed a coalition of community organizations at an anti-charter rally outside district headquarters. “This is war! We need to do battle right now,” she said. “We don’t have the money, but we have the numbers, we have the people!”

Those remarks echoed much of what transpired inside the building, where one of the first orders of business was nine union leaders representing employees of the district, standing together and telling the board, “we affirm out commitment to the resolution,” as Juan Flecha, president the administrators union, put it. The group included Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the teachers union, UTLA, which has emerged as the staunchest opposition group to the GPSN plan.

Later, the board granted Schmerelson 10 minutes for a parade of supporters to speak, starting with several students from Roosevelt High School, who referred to the “Broad-Walmart plan,” a sure sign that their remarks were scripted by UTLA, the only group that consistently describes the effort in those terms.

The last of the speakers was Goldberg, who served eight years on the board through 1991, the last two as president. In a screeching lecture that went well beyond the Broad charter plan comes heavy attack at LAUSD board meeting - LA School Report:

NEA - U.S. Senate ushers in new era in public education with historic vote

NEA - U.S. Senate ushers in new era in public education with historic vote:

U.S. Senate ushers in new era in public Education with historic vote

NEA welcomes bill to create greater opportunity for every student to succeed

WASHINGTON - December 09, 2015 -

The U.S. Senate today approved S. 1177, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a bipartisan and bicameral bill to reauthorize the federal education law known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill into law as soon as this week.

“Today, the U.S. Senate took a bold and historic step to usher in a new era in public education,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García. “This is a deserved victory for public education because the Every Student Succeeds Act will ensure all students have equal opportunity to a high-quality public education regardless of ZIP Code.”

Students and educators have lived with the unintended consequences of the failed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) for more than 14 years. NEA members have waged anunprecedented mobilization and advocacy campaign on behalf of the nation’s students in an effort to turn the page on the failed NCLB law and to bring in a new federal education law that provides more opportunity for all students.

“Educators will have a seat at the table when it comes to making decisions that affect their students and classrooms,” said Eskelsen Garcia. “This legislation begins to close the opportunity gaps for students by providing a new system that includes an ‘opportunity dashboard’ with indicators of school success and student support. Not only does it reduce the amount of standardized testing in schools, but it decouples high-stakes decisions and statewide testing so students have more time to develop critical thinking while educators do what they love — inspire a lifelong love of learning.”

For NEA’s members, the stakes couldn’t have been higher. The extraordinary effort to get Congress to rewrite NCLB, which NEA launched in earnest in February with its “Get ESEA Right” national campaign, and peaking this past summer when both legislative chambers passed their respective bills, resulted in a unprecedentedbipartisan and bicameral compromise and eventual bill language in late November. The bill sailed through the U.S. House with a vote of 359 in favor to 64 against.

Leading up to ESSA’s passage, educators mobilized across the nation, using face-to-face meetings with lawmakers, phone calls, petitions, emails and social media to urge Congress to bring the joy of teaching and learning back to the classroom and help close opportunity and resource gaps so that all students have access to a well-rounded education. NEA national leadership, along with state and local affiliate leaders, board members, staff, and educators nationwide, made nearly a half million individual contacts to members of Congress.

“We applaud the U.S. Senate for listening to educators and getting the job done for students,” said Eskelsen García. “We commend Congress for putting students and educators ahead of politics especially in an era of political gridlock. We urge President Barack Obama to swiftly sign the bill into law.”

Follow us @NEAMedia

The National Education Association is the nation’s largest professional employee organization, representing nearly 3 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators and students preparing to become teachers. Learn more atwww.nea.org.

The National Education Association is the nation’s largest professional employee organization, representing nearly 3 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators and students preparing to become teachers. Learn more at www.nea.org.

CONTACT:  Miguel A. Gonzalez

202-822-7823, mgonzalez@nea.org

How the Every Student Succeeds Act Will Really Change No Child Left Behind-Era Schools - The Atlantic

How the Every Student Succeeds Act Will Really Change No Child Left Behind-Era Schools - The Atlantic:
The Bloated Rhetoric of No Child Left Behind’s Demise
What replacing the despised law actually means for America’s schools

How does the Every Student Succeeds Act reverse the course of K-12 education in the United States? The headlines say it all: It “Restores Local Education Control.” It “continues a long federal retreat from American classrooms.” It “shifts power to states.” According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, it represents “the largest devolution of federal control to the states in a quarter-century.” The Every Student Succeeds Act, according to The New York Times, represents “the end of an era in which the federal government aggressively policed public school performance, and returning control to states and local districts.” But for all the breathless hype, the legislation seems unlikely to produce many changes that are actually visible on the ground.

The Senate on Wednesday approved the Every Student Succeeds Act, the bill that will reauthorize the nation’s 50-year-old omnibus education law and make the “pretty-much-universally despised” No Child Left Behind obsolete. The legislation, which has already gotten the Obama administration’s tacit approval, is being touted by observers and policymakers from both the right and left as a product of rare bipartisan compromise. “I think this has turned out to be a textbook example of how to deal with a difficult subject,” Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, who co-wrote the legislation, told Politico. “When we come to a bipartisan consensus like this, I think the country accepts it a lot better.” Democratic Senator Patty Murray, another architect of the act, tweeted: “It’s not the bill I would have written on my own, it’s not the bill Republicans would have written. That’s compromise.”  

The most conspicuous manifestation of that bipartisan give-and-take is what’s being highlighted by news outlets and pundits across the country: Schools will still be held accountable for student performance, but states can determine the nuances of how that will take place. They’ll have to use “college-and-career ready” standards and intervene when those expectations aren’t met, but states will get to design their own standards and intervention protocol. They’ll still be required to administer annual testing in certain grades, ensure at least 95 percent of students participate, and disaggregate data based on students’ race, income, and disability status, but they can use other factors on top of testing to assess student performance, and the details of how the testing happens and how the scores are interpreted are up to states.

The overthrow of No Child Left Behind, which has been up for reauthorization for years, is certainly cause for excitement. The George W. Bush-era law required schools to administer annual tests in certain grades in an effort to identify and elevate the achievement of underperforming youth. It was also loathed for its one-size-fits-all approach to education reform, its promotion of teaching-to-the-test, and its harsh system of sanctions. Republicans grew to despise it for how much it allowed the Department of Education to micromanage states and school districts (especially when Obama rose into office). And given how little power the Every Student Succeeds Act gives to the federal government, it may feel, particularly among those on the right, as if the nation’s schools are about to experience a major makeover—as if the next era of public education will mark a How the Every Student Succeeds Act Will Really Change No Child Left Behind-Era Schools - The Atlantic:

CURMUDGUCATION: ESSA: All New Baloney!

CURMUDGUCATION: ESSA: All New Baloney!:
ESSA: All New Baloney!

ESSA has just cleared Congress, and the Department of Education is already giving us a look at the freshly sliced baloney that they will be serving at the Ed Reform Buffet. From Twitter, just now:

Let's count all the ways this is wrong, because it helps us understand just how USED's vision is messed up.

Holds all students to high academic standards?

The federal government cannot hold all students to a high academic standard. The mind boggles at even attempting to imagine how that would work. John White, Acting Pretend Secretary of ED, will stop by my classroom and go over my students' work with them? He'll engage in spirited motivational speeches to get my students to try extra hard.

The federal government is a dozen layers of management removed from interacting with students. They cannot "hold them" to anything. The most they can do is to try to force those of us who actually deal with students to prove, somehow, that we're holding the students to high standards, and then either carrot or stick us for what they think they know.

But the feds don't have any idea how to do that, just as they don't have any idea what "high CURMUDGUCATION: ESSA: All New Baloney!:

While Team Malloy says full steam ahead on the Common Core and Common Core Testing Mania… - Wait What?

While Team Malloy says full steam ahead on the Common Core and Common Core Testing Mania… - Wait What?:

While Team Malloy says full steam ahead on the Common Core and Common Core Testing Mania…

Veteran Connecticut educator Ann P. Cronin says that in this new post No Child Behind Act  (NCLB)Environment, “CT Must Reject The Common Core.”

Educator, public education advocate and education blogger Ann P. Cronin posts her writing on her blog, Real Learning CT. 

Her latest piece entitled, Post NCLB: CT Must Reject The Common Core, cuts through all the “education reform” rhetoric and lays out the harsh truth.  The Common Core and Common Cores testing frenzy is undermining public education in Connecticut and across the country.

The time has come to dump and replace it with a system of standards designed to provide ALL students with the knowledge and skills they need to live fulfilling lives.  Such a set of standards must be developed by educators and those who understand childhood development, not by those who seek to profit off of our children and the resources we taxpayers devote to public education.

Ann P. Cronin writes;

With the end of No Child Left Behind, states will have the flexibility to continue with the controversial Common Core State Standards or not. This is Connecticut’s opportunity to put a good education in place for our students by rejecting the Common Core. However, Alan Taylor, the Chair of the 

While Team Malloy says full steam ahead on the Common Core and Common Core Testing Mania… - Wait What?:

Why it’s worth re-reading George W. Bush’s 2002 No Child Left Behind speech - The Washington Post

Why it’s worth re-reading George W. Bush’s 2002 No Child Left Behind speech - The Washington Post:

Why it’s worth re-reading George W. Bush’s 2002 No Child Left Behind speech

It was on Jan. 8, 2002 that then president George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law, promising a new start for students in low-achieving schools. It was a “historic” moment, he said, and America’s public schools would be all the better for it.

The reality of NCLB never matched Bush’s hopes, in part because the law mandated the impossible goal that all children would be proficient on reading and math tests by 2014, and because President Obama came into office in 2009 and actually took the already identified problems with NCLB — high-stakes tests — and made the situation worse. Now we are at the point where NCLB is almost dead; the Senate passed its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act, on Wednesday, following last week’s approval by the House. Obama said he will sign the bill, which as my colleague Lyndsey Laytonreports here, will send significant education policy-making power back to states and local districts while maintaining limited federal oversight of education.

[Senate passes new national education legislation]

But it’s worth taking a look back at that moment when NCLB became law — when Bush put pen to paper at Hamilton High School in Ohio and spelled out his vision for the initiative that he hoped would enshrine him as the “education president” — and the marked similarities to what happened then, and what is happening now.

NCLB was a bipartisan bill that Bush and his Republican supporters in Congress crafted with none other than Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, the Democrat that the GOP loved to hate. Later, Kennedy got angry because NCLB was never fully funded, but without him, there might have been no NCLB.

ESSA is a bipartisan effort that would not have succeeded without the collaboration of Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the head of the Senate education committee, and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the panel’s ranking member.

NCLB was hailed by Bush as a civil rights achievement because it was designed to force schools to pay attention to slighted populations of students. Current Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who in fact did not get everything he wanted in this bill, still called it a civil rights win for the same reasons. (Critics would argue that neither were.)

NCLB was passed by Congress in December 2001 — just a few months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — and Bush made mention of terrorism in his NCLB speech. The ESSA passed Congress amid a national debate about terrorism.

When NCLB passed, it was hard to find a critical comment, with effusive praise coming from legislators of both parties and various education groups (though there were a few). The praise for ESSA is just as effusive from various constituencies. It is not hard to project that in hindsight, some folks will be sorry they hadn’t paid more attention to ESSA when it was being created, as was true with NCLB.

Here’s Bush’s speech. Read it and see what the hope was vs. today’s reality, in which achievement gaps have not measurably narrowed, school choice has spread but with highly mixed results, and teachers feel as if they have spent years under siege from reformers.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much.

AUDIENCE: U-S-A! U-S-A!

THE PRESIDENT: Okay. I know you all are anxious to get back to class. (Laughter.) So please be seated. (Laughter.) Thank you for such a warm welcome. It’s great to be in the home of the Big Blue. (Applause.) Hamilton High School. I want to thank you all for coming. I particularly want to thank my friend, the Governor of the great state of Ohio, Governor Taft, for being here. (Applause.)

I want to thank Tracy Miller for being so hospitable. (Applause.) I want to thank all who have come to witness this historic moment. For those of you who have studied the history of our government, you know most bills are signed at the White House. But I decided to sign this bill in one of the most important places in America — a public school. (Applause.)

We’ve got large challenges here in America. There’s no greater challenge than to make sure that every child — and all of us on this stage mean every child, not just a few children — (applause) — every single child, regardless of where they live, how they’re raised, the income level of their family, every child receive a first-class education in America. (Applause.)

And as you know, we’ve got another challenge, and that’s to protect America from evil ones. And I want to assure the seniors and juniors and sophomores here at Hamilton High School that the effort that this great country is engaged in, the effort to defend freedom and to defend our people, the effort to rout out terror 

Why it’s worth re-reading George W. Bush’s 2002 No Child Left Behind speech - The Washington Post:

AFT: Every Student Succeeds Act Opens New Chapter for Education | American Federation of Teachers

AFT: Every Student Succeeds Act Opens New Chapter for Education | American Federation of Teachers:

AFT: Every Student Succeeds Act Opens New Chapter for Education

WASHINGTON—Statement by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten on Senate—and final congressional—approval of the Every Student Succeeds Act:

"Today's Senate vote of 85-12 on the Every Student Succeeds Act represents a significant course correction acknowledging that more than a decade's worth of education reforms based on test-and-sanction policies was a failure. The new law will give us the chance to press the reset button so public schools can be places where teachers want to teach, parents want to send their kids and students are engaged.

"Congress maintained the best of the original intent of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—funding for poor kids—while slamming the door on federally prescribed high-stakes consequences of testing. While the new bill doesn't solve all problems, it opens the way for districts across America to give teachers the latitude to teach so their kids can reach their God-given potential.

"For years, educators, parents and members of our broader communities were the canaries in the coal mine, crying out that hypertesting was hurting students, demoralizing teachers and frustrating parents. We will continue to be vigilant as work shifts to the states to fix accountability systems and develop teacher evaluation systems that are fair and aimed at improving and supporting good instruction. This new bill promises the creation of better accountability and support systems, and our students, their parents and their educators deserve nothing less.

"The bipartisan leadership and true partnership of Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) were instrumental in getting us to today's vote."

# # # #

The AFT represents 1.6 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.

- See more at: http://www.aft.org/press-release/aft-every-student-succeeds-act-opens-new-chapter-education#sthash.8VxZNM7z.KPTUhBW9.dpuf

Just the Facts, Ma’am | EduShyster

Just the Facts, Ma’am | EduShyster:

Just the Facts, Ma’am

STATE AUDITOR SUZANNE BUMP PERFORMS AN AUDIT OF HER AUDIT

I sit down with Massachusetts State Auditor Suzanne Bump (which is a lot more exciting than it sounds…)

EduShyster: First of all, allow me to congratulate you. You took the top spot in a category that I like to call *most read audit by people who have never read an audit before.* I’m talking, of course, about youraudit of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), specifically, their oversight of the state’s charter schools. What did you find?

Suzanne Bump: What we found was that DESE was using subjective standards, that there wasn’t an even application of standards when they were, say, renewing the charters of schools. We looked to try and determine whether the data they were putting out relative to student demographics was accurate, whether waitlists were accurate. This is information that guides DESE’s policy making and we found it to be unreliable because the state never verifies it. Data reliability testing is the first thing you do in auditing. You can’t reach proper conclusions if we can’t rely upon the data and we found that we couldn’t rely upon the data. That’s a warning to DESE that they shouldn’t be either. 

EduShyster: I think I can explain what happened. Charter schools are laboratories of innovation, as unique as snowflakes, so of course it wouldn’t make sense to apply a uniform standard to them. Am I onto something here?

Bump: If they’re failing to meet certain standards, then the penalties should be the same no matter what the institution is. Or there should at least be explanations as to why that’s not the case. The schools should all be treated the same way and they’re not, and there’s no explanation given. Different schools would be given a pass on certain deficiencies. Other schools would be directed to take specific actions. There would be conditions attached to some charters that you would think would be applied to others that had committed the same transgressions.

EduShyster: I want to ask you specifically about the charter school waiting list, as it figures prominently in your audit and is the centerpiece of a campaign to lift the state’s cap on charter schools. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, the waiting list has been Just the Facts, Ma’am | EduShyster:

A Premature Celebration in DC | The Merrow Report

A Premature Celebration in DC | The Merrow Report:

A Premature Celebration in DC

Why Is Washington Celebrating Kaya Henderson’s Five Year Anniversary?

Last month Kaya Henderson celebrated her fifth anniversary as Chancellor of the public schools in Washington, DC.  Five years at the helm of an urban district is a milestone that few big city superintendents achieve, and she has been praised for hanging in and for calming down the storm created by Michelle Rhee, whose 3+ year reign was marked by numerous controversies, included the massive scandal sometimes called “Erasergate,” when USA Today investigative reporters found that thousands of student answers were changed–and almost always from ‘wrong’ to ‘right.’

The Washington Post, a consistent cheerleader for Henderson and her controversial predecessor, celebrated Henderson’s anniversary with a largely laudatory article that included praise from two members of Washington’s education establishment, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the long time Executive Director of the Great City Schools, Michael Casserly.  The latter called Henderson “one of the most effective and popular school leaders any place in the country.”  As the Post put it, “Unlike her predecessor, whose turbulent style and top-down approach made A Premature Celebration in DC | The Merrow Report: