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Friday, March 29, 2013

Diane in the Evening 3-29-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

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







Astonishing Details of Atlanta Indictments for Cheating

The New York Times has an extended story on the indictments of educators for their alleged participation in cheating on tests.
Ex-superintendent Beverly Hall was one of 35 Atlanta educators indicted in the biggest cheating scandal in public school history.
A third-grade teacher agreed to wear a wire for the investigators:
She “admitted to Mr. Hyde [the investigator] that she was one of seven teachers — nicknamed “the chosen” — who sat in a locked windowless room every afternoon during the week of state testing, raising students’ scores by erasing wrong answers and making them right. She then agreed to wear a hidden electronic wire to school, 


G.F. Brandenburg Asks: If Indictments in Atlanta, Why Not D.C.?

G.F. Brandenburg is a retired math teacher who has a habit of plain speaking and a math teacher’s ability to get right to the point. His ability to dissect false claims using data is almost unparalleled; I say “almost,” because another math teacher, Gary Rubinstein, is good at this too.
In this post, he asks whether today’s indictments in Atlanta might be followed by similar indictments in the District of Columbia.
This is the question that many readers have raised.


Breaking News: Former Atlanta Superintendent Indicted

report in the New York Times says that Dr. Beverly L. Hall was indicted by a grand jury for her role in the Atlanta cheating scandal.
The story says, in part:
“Investigators laid blame for the biggest standardized-test cheating scandal in the country’s history on the superintendent, Dr. Hall, who led the 50,000-student school system from 1999 until her resignation in 2011. Dr. Hall, who was hailed as National Superintendent of the Year in 2009 for her role in making Atlanta’s once-failing urban school district a model of improvement, had “emphasized test results and public praise to the exclusion of 


LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 3-29-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 3 hours ago
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: [image: Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch] Naison: Why I Won’t Let TFA Recruit My Students by dianerav Mark NAISON is a professor of African-American Studies at Fordham University. In this article, he explains why he will not permit TFA to recruit in his classes. First, he became angry when he discovered that the organization gave preference to Ivy League graduates over his own students, who had grown up in many of the communities where TFA was placing its recruits. But this is what his rejection came ... more »