Badass Teachers Association Blog: Don’t Treat Schools Like Competitive Businesses by David Negaard

Badass Teachers Association Blog: Don’t Treat Schools Like Competitive Businesses by David Negaard

Don’t Treat Schools Like Competitive Businesses by David Negaard

Originally posted at: https://www.civilbeat.org/2019/03/dont-treat-schools-like-competitive-businesses/?fbclid=IwAR0COMqiueZzgJf8UNZBdYU5WpcYnS24UzhunPQxoIRIUpJYBWxLtUMf2MU

Once more for the people in the back: Schools aren’t businesses, kids aren’t product, employers aren’t schools’ customers or clients, and standardized tests aren’t quality control. It is not schools’ primary function to produce (compliant, obedient) employees for the titans of industry, but rather self-actualized citizens who think critically and effectively and can create a better future for themselves and for all of us.

The purpose of public schools is to elevate all students. All public schools have the same basic goal and do not and should not compete with one another for resources, for students, for anything. Neither should public school students compete with one another for opportunities or status.

Whether schools or students, when they compete, there are winners and losers, and that is contrary to the premise of public education. Neither schools nor students should be subject to Darwinian “survival of the fittest”  pressures. Competition (fostered by so-called “school choice” and “accountability” initiatives) pits would-be allies — schools, principals, teachers, even students — against one another and “may the odds be ever in your favor.”

Recently, HawaiiKidsCAN, a branch of venture capital-funded “50CAN: The 50-State Campaign for Achievement Now,” published a critique (“analysis”) of Hawaii public schools based on 50CAN’s “four dimensions of a healthy and dynamic learning system.” Among the “lenses” they use CONTINUE READING: Badass Teachers Association Blog: Don’t Treat Schools Like Competitive Businesses by David Negaard

Choosing Democracy: Sacramento Teachers Uprising ? #Unite4SACKids #WeAreSCTA #WeAreCTA #strikeready #REDFORED #SCTA #CTA

Choosing Democracy: Sacramento Teachers Uprising ?

Sacramento Teachers Uprising ?

The #RedForEd Wave has already swept through Los Angeles and Oakland this year, with thousands of brave educators going on strike and leading massive movements to fight for the soul of public schools. Is Sacramento the next big fight of the Educator Uprising?

Frustrated and fed-up by continued deceit, disrespect and outright violation of their contract, Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA) voted to authorize a strike over egregious unfair labor practices and unlawful activity by Sacramento City Unified School District’s superintendent and school board. With 70 percent of SCTA members voting, 92 percent approved a strike to stop the district’s unfair practices and unlawful behavior, SCTA leaders announced Friday.

The SCTA bargaining team offered to meet with SCUSD at the end of the month to give the district an opportunity to correct its ongoing unlawful behavior. If SCUSD’s conduct and unfair practices continue, the executive board is authorized to set a strike date, likely in the next month.

“It’s truly unfortunate that teachers may be forced to strike to get Superintendent Jorge Aguilar, Board President Jessie Ryan and other district leaders to obey the law, including things as simple as agreeing to meet with us and honoring agreements they signed 15 months ago,” said Sacramento City Teachers Association President David Fisher. “What kind of example are they setting for the 40,000 students in our district?”

If 2,800 Sacramento City educators do indeed go on strike, it would be the first #RedForEd-era strike in the country over unfair labor practices and a school district reneging on a contractual agreement. SCTA says SCUSD’s continued unlawful activity is giving them no choice but to take direct action. These transgressions include:

• Refusing to honor the collective bargaining agreement approved by both sides in December 2017, which included class-size reduction and increased numbers of school nurses and psychologists, violating the contract;
• Refusing to meet at reasonable times and places with representatives the educators have elected to have represent them, and attempting to dictate who the teachers have represent them at the bargaining table;
• Making unilateral and unlawful changes to the wages and working conditions of teachers without bargaining;
• Failing to send district representatives to the bargaining table who have the authority to negotiate on behalf of the district, rendering bargaining meaningless.

SCTA has also challenged the legality of recent school board actions to lay off 400 educators in light of alleged violations of the Brown Act’s open meeting requirements (detailed here and here). Additionally, SCTA has questioned SCUSD’s gross fiscal mismanagement—the district stands on the brink of state takeover due to insolvency, particularly in the aftermath of a scathing audit by the State of California’s Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team. If all that wasn’t enough, there are also serious unanswered questions about potential conflicts of interest by Superintendent Aguilar and other top district administrators. Recently, the California Joint Legislative Audit Committee directed the state auditor to conduct a forensic audit of SCUSD due to growing concerns of fiscal mismanagement.

Follow SCTA on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news on this fight.

Choosing Democracy: Sacramento Teachers Uprising ?

CURMUDGUCATION: Accountability Beyond the Bubble

CURMUDGUCATION: Accountability Beyond the Bubble

Accountability Beyond the Bubble

Accountability has always been an educational buzzword, and the modern reformy era has put accountability on a high, if somewhat cockeyed pedestal. Testing? Not testing? Running test scores through models soaked in magic VAM sauce? Regular school visits, inspections and audits? Administrators and school boards that actually pay attention? A big fat stack of state and federal regulations and reports thereon? So many fun things are on the table these days.

But as with many reformy subjects, what's really being discussed is accountability for large, urban districts. Those districts face a unique set of challenges, all of which boil down to these districts just being too damn big.

That gets us models like "Filling out a bunch of paperwork that may or may not have any connection to reality" (spoiler alert-- it's "not") or "Creating and administering instruments that purport to measure something that is alleged to be a proxy for the thing we really want to measure" (spoiler alert-- it doesn't). This gets us highly politicized grandstanding as well as representative bodies that may or may not truly represent poor and powerless neighborhoods-- the very neighborhoods that need schools that have strong and responsive support.

There's a good accountability model you can find out here in rural spaces and small towns. It's the living in the community you serve model.

I taught in a small town for almost forty years; in fact, I taught at the same school from which I graduated. I live in the town, a smallish place with a steady drain on our population, but not many new folks moving into town. I cannot take a step without encountering a former classmate, student, student's parent, or student's offspring.

This has always meant a special level of accountability. If I assigned something that folks disagreed CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Accountability Beyond the Bubble

Charter Moratorium on Tap: Update on Legislative Effort in California | Cloaking Inequity

Charter Moratorium on Tap: Update on Legislative Effort in California | Cloaking Inequity

CHARTER MORATORIUM ON TAP: UPDATE ON LEGISLATIVE EFFORT IN CALIFORNIA

First, a charter moratorium bill was filed this morning in California SB 756. I knew the spot bill would be a moratorium, but of course I couldn’t say that publicly before it happened. Here is how it reads now.

The Charter Schools Act of 1992 authorizes the establishment and operation of charter schools. Existing law generally requires a petition to establish a charter school to be submitted to the governing board of a school district, and, under specified circumstances, authorizes a petition to be submitted to and approved by a county board of education or the State Board of Education. Existing law prohibits the governing board of a school district from denying a petition to establish a charter school unless it makes written factual findings in support of one or more specific findings.

This bill would express the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation containing specified policies relating to charter schools on or before January 1, 2020, and would prohibit, notwithstanding any other law, the approval of a petition for the establishment of a new charter school until June 30, 2024, unless those specified policies are enacted. The bill would require, during the 2023–24 school year, the Legislative Analyst’s Office to publicly issue a report that answers specified questions relating to charter schools and the effects of the moratorium, or, if applicable, the specified policies enacted by the Legislature.

This is HUGE. The NAACP’s call for a charter moratorium could become law in California!

Legislative staff also provided the following update on other charter legislation.

Assemblymembers O’Donnell and Bonta are pleased to announce that they have decided to combine their separate charter school reform bills into one joint bill.  In light of the many recent questions trying to distinguish the difference between the bills as they relate to fiscal impact, it seems the most strategic thing is to combine the bills so there can be one bill on the fiscal impact of charter schools on school districts.

AB 1505 will be amended tomorrow to include the elements from AB 1508. Assemblymember Bonta will also be added to AB 1505 as a joint author.  AB 1508 will be amended to be a different topic in education and heard at a later date.

The amendments to AB 1505 will go across the desk tomorrow.

• Allows school districts to consider fiscal, academic and facilities impact of charter school petitions on the neighborhood schools and the district.
• Authorizes countywide charter schools to be approved by counties if school district approval is obtained first.
• Require charter petitions to provide a clear explanation of why proposed model cannot be accomplished within the school district structure of neighborhood public schools.
• Requires charter school teachers to hold the CTC credential required for their assignment.
• Changes the petition approval timeline from 30 to 60 days and 60 to 90 days.
• Require charter petitions to include a description of how the school will achieve a balance of special education students and English learners.

The bills will be heard on April 10th during a special order of business at 1:30pm.

Will California pass legislation this year that will be a model for the rest of the nation? I think so.

If you’d like to file support letters for AB 1505, AB 1506 and AB 1507 they are due Tuesday by 5pm, in order to be reflected in the analysis.

p.s. I know what 1508 will be too and it’s even better than a moratorium. 

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Charter Moratorium on Tap: Update on Legislative Effort in California | Cloaking Inequity

How “illegal” teacher strikes rescued the American labor movement – VICE News

How “illegal” teacher strikes rescued the American labor movement – VICE News

HOW “ILLEGAL” TEACHER STRIKES RESCUED THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT

Organized labor in the U.S. is having a moment. Sen. Bernie Sanders recognized a staff union for his campaign, the first presidential candidate ever to do so. Kamala Harris, the California senator running for president, unveiled her first big 2020 policy plan, which is all about taxing America's hyper-rich to give heavily unionized public-school teachers a $13,500 raise.

As if confirming Big Labor’s new clout, President Trump took time this month to attack UAW Local 1112 President David Green by name on Twitter, saying he should “get his act together and produce,” a big moment for a guy who represents laid-off auto workers in Lordstown, Ohio. The broadside got Green on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, and a visit from another 2020 presidential candidate, Beto O’Rourke.

The nation is paying attention to labor again, and for that America has one profession to thank more than any other: the public school teacher.

In 2018, 485,000 workers participated in what the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies as a “major work stoppage,” up from just 25,000 in 2017. It was the first major increase in work stoppages in three decades, and it was nearly entirely driven by 379,000 teachers and other education workers, who accounted for 78 percent of all those who went out on strike.

But while teachers — with their #RedforEd movement — brought new attention to labor, healthcare, fast-food service, graduate student, and hotel workers also went on strike. Marriott employees, for example, led a strike against the nation’s largest hotel chain in December and won San Francisco housekeepers a pay bump and some workplace protections.

By their sheer numbers, teachers breathed new life into the stagnating U.S. labor movement — even with nationwide union membership at historic lows. Union membership stood at 10.5 percent in the U.S. in 2018, down 0.2 percent from 2017, and down by nearly 50 percent since 1983, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track.

“In recent decades it has become much harder to organize a union in the U.S.,” said Julie Greene, a history professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. “That makes this recent burst of organizing and successful striking particularly significant.”

Despite mostly flat union membership rates, the number of workers participating in labor strikes hasn’t hit this high in a generation. To put it another way: There may not be many strikes happening, but their size is huge. More than 24,000 workers participated, on average, in each major work stoppage in 2018. That’s tens of thousands more workers than your typical strike.

Polls are also showing a generational attitude shift: 47 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds want a “militant” labor movement rooted in a multi-racial working CONTINUE READING:How “illegal” teacher strikes rescued the American labor movement – VICE News

In Classrooms: Social Justice Humanitas Academy (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

In Classrooms: Social Justice Humanitas Academy (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

In Classrooms: Social Justice Humanitas Academy (Part 3)

I come into the Ethnic Studies class just as Sasha Guzman, wearing a denim jacket over a T-shirt and jeans, is walking around the room checking on small groups of students at each table. The 19 ninth graders wearing ID lanyards are tapping away on their Chromebook keyboards or reading screens. Guzman has taught for 16 years in Los Angeles Unified School District, the last five at SJHA.

The period which lasts one hour and fifty minutes had begun a few minutes earlier before I arrived and students know what they are to do since it is written on the side whiteboard:

AGENDA                                                HOMEWORK        

* Choose narrative                            *Academic paragraph due 2/28 by midnight

*Write academic paragraph

The spacious room has the obligatory clock and flag and a printer sitting on a table in the back. Playing softly in the background are Spanish songs. Posters are on the four walls and door of the room. Above the door is one that says: “A Proud Member of the Facing History and Ourselves Schools Network.” On the door is another that says “Protect DACA.” Propped against a wall nearby is a print of a woman with the inscription “Viva La Mujer.”

On another wall are two posters that hang in every SJHA classroom:

Three to five students sit at tables facing one another. The teacher’s desk is in a corner at the front of the room. When students have questions, they address her as Ms. Guzman.

The teacher has loaded software content on their tablets about the current assignment. Students have to choose a story from political activist, America Ferrera’s Americans Like Me. Judith, a student sitting nearby, shows me which CONTINUE READING:In Classrooms: Social Justice Humanitas Academy (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Breaking News: Donald Trump fired Betsy DeVos this morning on Twitter | Cloaking Inequity

Breaking News: Donald Trump fired Betsy DeVos this morning on Twitter | Cloaking Inequity

I just saw this this tweet from Donald Trump! As it was rumored recently, Betsy DeVos has finally been fired!

Who do you think Trump will nominate next for Secretary of Education now that DeVos is on her way out the door? Michelle Rhee? Rhee was said to be in the running the last time around and the rumor was that she was seen leaving the White House during the transition. Do you think Trump might even consider appointing Linda Darling-Hammond because Obama decided against her? Considering the fact that Trump is wanting to kill Obamacare again in recent days, perhaps he might see this as the ultimate slight.

Why the firing today? Perhaps because DeVos thinks huge class sizes are good for children—watch Anthony Cody in the background after she fumbles around and makes this fact-free statement,

or inability to answer questions,

or answering questions inanely,

or general disinterest and lack of knowledge about education,

I bet she got brownie points for doing this,

and this,

Alas, Betsy DeVos is no longer the U.S. Secretary of Education. At least until tomorrow. #FakeNews

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Breaking News: Donald Trump fired Betsy DeVos this morning on Twitter | Cloaking Inequity

A Life Lesson: Don’t Cheat Yourself. Read the Whole Book. | deutsch29

A Life Lesson: Don’t Cheat Yourself. Read the Whole Book. | deutsch29

A Life Lesson: Don’t Cheat Yourself. Read the Whole Book.

I just finished grading this semester’s major essay for my senior English classes.

My goal was to have each student read a book– cover to cover– and write a paper on that book.

Sound simple?

Not so much.

We are in an age in which the technology at our fingertips makes cheating ourselves out of an education marvelously easy:

Read the summary. Copy and paste someone else’s words and pass them off as your own. Rearrange them a bit if you like. Or pay for an online subscription to browse prewritten papers, and choose one to pass off as your own. Or if you’re a more sophisticated cheater with some cash in your pockets, pay someone you’ve never met to write your paper for you. Just send the ghostwriter a copy of your assignment and a credit card number and consider it done.

I am pleased to note that of the 118 essays I collected and graded over the past three weeks, only three evidenced academic dishonesty. However, this chiefly-positive result is tied to some notable, proactive strategizing to curb such cheating. For example, I compose writing prompts that are not readily answered by using summary websites or prefab papers for purchase. Too, I require my students to pass an interview with me in which we discuss the book that the student is supposed to have read. Finally, students must also be able to hold a conversation with me about their own paper, with the understanding communicated upon issuance of the assignment that students must pass their book and paper interviews in order to receive credit for their papers.

Passing these interviews is only difficult for those who have not read the full book and/or not authored their own papers.

When I explain my system– the efforts I undertake to help assure that students CONTINUE READING: A Life Lesson: Don’t Cheat Yourself. Read the Whole Book. | deutsch29

Teaching Intolerance | The Jose Vilson

Teaching Intolerance | The Jose Vilson

TEACHING INTOLERANCE

You’re not even supposed to be this public.

You stood out in a space that was 80% people of color. Your scruff and leather coat belied your notoriety. The managers and custodians stopped mopping to whisper to their co-workers as you passed by with the tacky cell phone pose. New York natives know not to gawk at people we’ve seen on TV, regardless of our perception about them. “Famous people” generally stroll through our city with little interruption from those of us who’ve been here before gentrification. They can buy their groceries, watch their movies, and dine at the local restaurant with little interruption. Perhaps you knew this about us and thought shopping with us on this quiet Sunday morning wouldn’t arouse much attention.

But I’m surprised lasers didn’t stream out of my eyes like Cyclops, burning your groceries and your scalp with equal force.

Even as you perused the produce, I couldn’t shake the images of you across the news, the braggart shaken off his pedestal. You’d spent years representing the worst of us only to have SWAT teams appear in your offices. Then, you re-emerged, ready to tell the country how you partook in sins. You helped foist a burgeoning dictator to the pinnacle of our executive branch and willingly provided white supremacy another level of prominence in a society already rife with suppression and disenfranchisement.

For years, you hid behind your profession, as if to say the suffering you’ve brought to millions across CONTINUE READING: Teaching Intolerance | The Jose Vilson

CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos, Class Size, and the Reformistan Bubble

CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos, Class Size, and the Reformistan Bubble

DeVos, Class Size, and the Reformistan Bubble

I almost feel sorry for Betsy DeVos. Her two big news breaks this week are not entirely her fault.

First, there's the Special Olympics fiasco. It appears that the budget office made the hugely unpopular cut, and DeVos stood by it like a good soldier, right until Donald Trump threw her under the bus and canceled the cuts (that were never going to get past Congress). But now DeVos is the one who gets to carry that policy albatross around her neck, right next to her grizzly-shooting merit badge, even though she did previously, in fact, give Special Olympics her own salary.

Okay, but that's the last time I'm going under that bus for you.

Then there's the business of students benefitting from higher class sizes. Make no mistake-- this was awful and stupid and just all-around bad (though by no means the worst thing to come out of her mouth at the hearings). But it's not really fair to hang this one on DeVos-- the idea of the super-teacher crammed into a room with a gazillion students has been on reformsters' preferred policy list for at least a decade.

I wrote about this almost exactly four years ago ("Super Sardinemasters: Paying More To Teach More"), then as now leaning on the work of Leonie Haimson at Class Size Matters.

The big class with a great teacher idea seems to have made its public mainstream debut in a 2010 Bill Gates speech to the CCSSO. Not surprisingly, Arne Duncan was shortly thereafter talking it up.

We spent billions of dollars to reduce class size,” Duncan told ABC’s Andrea Mitchell in 2011, when CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos, Class Size, and the Reformistan Bubble

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Snowy Relapse Edition (3/31)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Snowy Relapse Edition (3/31)

ICYMI: Snowy Relapse Edition (3/31)

The weather outside is, in fact, frightful. So here's a list of things to read inside today.

Teen Boys Ranked Their Female Classmates Based On Looks, And The Girls Weren't Having It

It's a great story, in part because it's about working the issue out, not just getting somebody in trouble.

Small District Reaps Big Profits With Chart Fees

There are a lot of things wrong with California's charter system; here's an explainer for one of them. Are you a small district with money problems? Become a popular charter authorizer and you can make a bundle.

The Digital Expansion of the Mind Gone Wrong

Daniel Willingham looks at three areas where technology was going to make education so much better-- and why none of them lived up to the hype.

Experts Call for an End To Online Preschool

Please.

NJ Tax Money Disappearing Into Charters

A look at charter fraud and waste in the Garden State.

Six School Voucher Myths

A quick debunking of some common voucher talking points.

Trump, DeVos. Special Olympics

The NYT breaks down the wheels within wheels of this massive cluster


Betsy DeVos Told Us Her Real Plan


All Special Olympics and class sizes, Nancy Bailey picks out the most concerning DeVosian quote that tells us what she wants to do.

The Single Most Telling Sentence

If Bailey tells us what DeVos wants to do, Valerie Strauss picks out the sentence that explains why she wants to do it. This is probably my top DeVos hot take of the week.

School Freedom Plans Aren't About Schools Or Education

Leon Galis with a pretty good explanation of why some reformsters and public ed defenders don't seem to be on the same planet.

A Parkland Teacher Speaks Out   

One of the most shameful failures of any school system-- public, private or charter. A teacher talks about the follow-up failure after the murders. I'm sorry I have to send you to the 74 to read this, but schools have to do better.

Don't Cry Over the Death of Arizona's Charter Reform Bill. It Was a Joke.

Well, that's disappointing.

Charter Schools Are Closing, But DeVos Wants More  

USA Today ran this piece, and it doesn't even include a quote from Mike Petrilli.

How One Couple Made Charter Millions

If you want a specific example of how California's lax charter oversight allows fraud, waste and profiteering, here's a perfect example from the LA Times.CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Snowy Relapse Edition (3/31)

DeVos, Class Size, and the Reformistan Bubble

by Peter Greene / 22min

I almost feel sorry for Betsy DeVos. Her two big news breaks this week are not entirely her fault. First, there's the Special Olympics fiasco. It appears that the budget office made the hugely unpopular cut, and DeVos stood by it like a good soldier, right until Donald Trump threw her under the bus and canceled the cuts (that were never going to get past Congress). But now DeVos is the one who get

ICYMI: Snowy Relapse Edition (3/31)

by Peter Greene / 1h

The weather outside is, in fact, frightful. So here's a list of things to read inside today. Teen Boys Ranked Their Female Classmates Based On Looks, And The Girls Weren't Having It It's a great story, in part because it's about working the issue out, not just getting somebody in trouble. Small District Reaps Big Profits With Chart Fees There are a lot of things wrong with California's charter sys

YESTERDAY

Is CTE Good News Or Bad News

28by Peter Greene / 1d

In the last two decades of education reform, a great deal of emphasis has been put on sending high school graduates to college. President Obama in his 2009 State of the Union address proclaimed that by 2020 America would " once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world" (though he hedged that a bit by later saying simply that everyone would need some kind of post high sc

Squeezing the Clock

100+by Peter Greene / 1d

Put this on my list of Things I've Noticed Since Retiring From The Classroom. In a teaching day, every single second counts. Teachers squeeze the clock till it screams. Five minutes left in the period? Just enough time to review the main concept from yesterday. Three minutes between classes? More than enough time to pee and swing by the office to pick up my mail. Twenty-five minute lunch period? I

MAR 29

What Did We Learn From DeVos Hearings This Week?

300+by Peter Greene / 2d

So during Betsy DeVos's terrible horrible no-good very bad week of hearings, what did we learn? Opposition Parties Matter This is the third budget in which DeVos tried to zero out Special Olympics. The third. So why so much fuss this time around? Perhaps because somebody made her go before Congress and explain herself (or not) in some exchanges that made for insta-viral hits. Just imagine what it

MAR 28

What To Look For In A Teacher School

38by Peter Greene / 3d

Robert Pondiscio just reviewed a new NCTQ book for high school students about how to become a teacher. I haven't seen the book, so I'm in no position to comment on it, but it does remind me that we don't spend nearly enough time talking about teacher prep, not from a policy point of view, but the point of view of high school students who want to end up teaching some day. I am not the person to co

MAR 26

The Red Flags In Kamala Harris's Pay Raise Proposal

50by Peter Greene / 4d

I was so determined not to get into the 2020 election this early, dammit. But the Kamala Harris teacher pay raise proposal hit my screen this morning, and there I was on twitter. I've addressed the larger concerns with the proposal here , but there are other concerns that are less interesting to the Forbes audience. When I read the Harris op-ed in the Washington Post, I thought, "Hmmm. Well...." W

Education Scholarship Tax Credits and Undercover Boss: Feeling Good While Fixing Nothing

48by Peter Greene / 4d

You remember Undercover Boss. The mostly-reality show shows a high-level executive putting on a disguise and going out into the trenches of the company. There, they'll meet real employees--often employees with touching hard luck stories. At the end of the episode, the boss meets the employees and metes out a sort of justice--"You get a car, you get a college fund for your kid, you get retraining,

MAR 25

I Will Not Like The Democratic Nominee

70by Peter Greene / 6d

And you probably won't, either. The Trump Presidency is going to be the gift that keeps on giving, and we'd all better start adjusting now. 2016 was a disorienting mess, a confluence of so many surreal elements that we could all be a little fuzzy-headed. But 2020 will be time for cold, hard reality, and Democrats and public education voters had better start adjusting now so we don't get sidetracke

OK: Bogus School Efficiency Report

63by Peter Greene / 6d

EPIC charter schools are boasting about the results of a new efficiency study of Oklahoma schools, and there are so many layers of deep-fried baloney here it takes a minute or two to dig through them. But when charter boosters start talking about "accountability" and "transparency," this is the kind of bullshit that makes their claims less than believable. The very top layer is the least important

MAR 24

ICYMI: My Brother's Birthday Edition (3/24)

by Peter Greene / 7d

It's my brother's birthday today. I'll have to tell you my brother's story someday-- it's an object lesson in how predicting a child's future when they are still in school is, in fact, a fool's game. In the meantime, here is your weekly batch o'reading. If More Teachers Were Men Another way of looking at the issues surrounding teacher policy as the result of teachers being mostly women and teacher

MAR 23

Goodhart's Law And The BS Test

49by Peter Greene / 8d

When discussing the problems of test-based accountability, we've long used Campbell's Law as the go-to framer of the related problems. For the absolute top of the field, get a copy of The Testing Charade by Danielk Koretz . Campbell's law is not very pithy, but it illuminates beautifully: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to

Stop Talking About Student Achievement

200+by Peter Greene / 8d

If I told you that my student had achieved great things in school this year, what would you imagine I meant? Maybe she started reading longer books with heavier vocabulary and deeper themes. Maybe she not only read them, but spent time thinking about the ideas they contained. Maybe she improved her technical facility and musicality when playing her flute. Maybe she conducted an impressively compl

MAR 22

Foolish Canadian Grit

35by Peter Greene / 9d

Proving that dumb knows no national boundaries, Ontario's Education Minister Lisa Thompson this week defended the plan to increase class size by making this observation : This woman. "When students are currently preparing to go off to post-secondary education, we're hearing from professors and employers alike that they're lacking coping skills and they're lacking resiliency," Thompson told CBC Rad

MAR 21

TN: Taxation Without Representation

21by Peter Greene / 10d

Tennessee's Governor Bill Lee has set a brick on the gas pedal of the school privatization bus, and that bus is driving right through the powers of democratically elected school boards. Lee's very first budget proposal was unveiled at the beginning of the month, supported by Lee's deep, insightful observation "Choice is good." The budget has big money for vouchers; Lee is going with the education

What Education Reformers Get Wrong

81by Peter Greene / 10d

Hard to believe that it took until now for a big voice in the reformster world to write a post entitled " What education reformers believe, " but last week Mike Petrilli (Fordham Institute) did the job. It's not entirely thorough (we'll get to