Sunday, August 26, 2012

Diane Ravitch Kippers for Dinner? Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog:

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This Made My Day!

A reader commented:
There have been many times in history when the evidence and discoveries by researchers and scientists (such as Galileo and Darwin) was suppressed by those in power. This is one of those times.  

The peer-reviewed unbiased research in biology, neuroscience, education, and social science corroborates a humanistic, child-centered, constructive approach to how we raise and educate our children.  It’s amazing how the biological research into the workings of the brain supports 


Elect This Woman to the Assembly in New Jersey

Marie Corfield is a teacher in New Jersey who is running for a seat in the state Assembly.
I have met her and I can tell you she understands education and cares passionately about kids.
She deserves your support.
New Jersey is a state now controlled by a governor who insults teachers and their unions. He glories in his


Hey, KIPP, Here’s An Offer You Can’t Refuse

Jersey Jazzman has a district to give to KIPP for the challenge: Camden, New Jersey.
The stars are aligned.
Chris Christie wants to take away any control from the citizens of Camden anyway.
The Democratic boss is an ally of Christie and won’t put up any resistance.
Chris Cerf, the acting commissioner of education, is a Broadie and he would certainly support the transfer of


CNN Interview: Curious and Curiouser

On August 18, I was interviewed by Randi Kaye on CNN as a follow up to her sympathetic interview with Michelle Rhee.
She was prosecutorial and asked question after question as if she were channeling Rhee.
The interview was not posted online until a week or eight days later, long after the other interviews in the same


A Memphis High School Teacher Dissents

The Memphis public schools are about to merge with the Shelby County schools into a single district.
The guiding document was written by a 21-member Transition Planning Commission.
The director of the TPC happens to work for the reform group Stand for Children, now best known among educators for its efforts to crush the Chicago Teachers  Union.
Several articles about Memphis have appeared on this blog. The TPC proposed, for example, that the proportion


Gerald Coles Responds to Jonathan Schorr about KIPP

In my initial post about KIPP, I described a critique of the KIPP charter school network by Gerald Coles, an educational psychologist.
Coles raised questions about the reliability of the research on KIPP and about the selection of students.
I suggested a challenge to KIPP, that it should take an entire impoverished district to test its theories, if such a



The Greatest Education Error of All Time?

Justin Snider has written an interesting article in the Hechinger Report.
What if we find out years from now that whatever we are doing is simply wrong?
Why are we doing so many things now in education that have no evidence to support them?
If this were medicine instead of education, would anyone tolerate the experimentation that is being done to the