Latest News and Comment from Education

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

MORNING UPDATE: LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 12-12-12 Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog:

Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch





When Silence is Not Golden

EduShyster gets amazing tips.
This is a description of the typical day of a child in a new “no-excuses” school.
She answers questions with a programmed response.
She walks in silence.
She does exactly what she is told.
The teacher speaks in scripted language.
The child obeys.
What did this child do to 


Will John Dewey High School Survive?

Gail Robinson writes about education in New York City. This post is about the fate of John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, about which I posted earlier.
In this article, published in June, she detailed the dreams and anticipated demise of John Dewey High School. Once it was seen as the cutting edge of progressive reform. Over time, the school became a dumping ground for students excluded from other schools, and city officials expected the school to die a quiet death. Dewey was one of 24 schools slated to close over the summer, but the execution was stayed by a judge.
But WAIT! I just received an email from an anonymous student who insists that John Dewey WILL NOT DIE.
He writes:
Hello Ms. Ravitch,
I am a student at John Dewey High School, as you may know, JDHS is one of the schools the NYCDOE


Yong Zhao on TIMSS Results

The release of the latest international test scores has set off a new round of wailing and gnashing of teeth about America’s schools.
Yong Zhao has a completely different take on the scores and what they mean. It is a long post but well worth reading.

A Scholar Joins the Honor Roll

Bruce Baker of Rutgers joins the honor roll, not as a champion of public education, but as a champion of honesty, accuracy and integrity.
Scholars must go where the evidence takes them, not where it is popular or politically expedient,
Today, Baker is outraged that the Néw York state education department continues to press for adoption of its

The Good News on TIMSS Tests

GF Brandenburg has a great post on the latest TIMSS test.
It puts paid to the customary hand-wringing (did you hear that, Wall Street Journal?) about the international test scores.
No crisis.
The real question, aside from the horse race, is whether the scores mean anything at all. The US came in last 

Hats Off to TFA!

Teach for America is an amazing organization. It has a board of directors with some of the most powerful corporate leaders in the nation. In its twenty two years, it has sent about 33,000 young college graduates to teach for a while in the nation’s neediest schools. This year, about 10,000 corps members started teaching.
Wendy Kopp often says that the TFA mission is not to replace the nation’s teachers, which is clearly impossible at the rate of 10,000 per year or even double or triple that number, but to produce leaders. It is interesting to note 

Brilliant! Opposite Day in Ohio with StudentsFirst

This may be the best blog post of the year. Read it. It is priceless!
Welcome to Opposite Day in Ohio!
Veteran educator Maureen Reedy explains what “education reform” meant on Opposite Day.
This is the day when StudentsFirst came to the Ohio Legislature to tout the virtues of charter schools, even 

Diane in the Evening 12-11-12 Diane Ravitch's blog

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 3 hours ago
Diane Ravitch's blog: Karen Lewis: Where Corporate Reform Is Going by dianerav A Comment from Karen Lewis about the simultaneous deluge of “reforms,” none of which is grounded in research or experience: “Any decent researcher knows that when you change more than one variable in an experiment, you have to do some pretty heavy lifting in order to determine which one had more effect than another. So in Chicago we have a new evaluation, Common Core, a longer day and year, a new contract, school closings and the usual suspects Teacher: Please Hear Me, Mayor Bloomberg by dianerav ... more »