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Monday, March 18, 2013

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 3-18-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

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What You Have Been Waiting For: The Cla$$room of the Future

EduShyster has captured in one small post the essence of the classroom of the future.
Here it is.
We will go where no nation in the world has ever dared to go:
Schools where happy teachers (all of them Excellent) have classes of 100 or more students, each one enjoying a customized, personalized education on their own tablet.


This Is What School Reform Does Not Look Like

Once again, New York City’s Panel on Educational Policy (formerly known as the Board of Education) rubber-stamped the closing of 22 schools.
After nearly a dozen years of mayoral control, the authorities showed how hollow “reform” is. The closings never end. Success is nowhere in sight.
The representatives from Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens propped a moratorium on school closings and “co-locations” of charters into public school space, but their pleas were ignored. Michael Mendel of the UFT 

Jindal and Scott in Trouble with Voters

Bobby Jindal’s poll numbers have dropped sharply. In 2010, he had favorability ratings of 58%.
His positive rating is now down to 34%, making him one of the most unpopular governors in the U.S.
In Florida, Governor Rick Scott’s approval ratings are down to 33%.
This is good news.
Voters are paying attention.
The people of Louisiana and Florida are not pleased by governors determined to eviscerate the public sector. Instead of improving basic public services, they are outsourcing and privatizing them.

Jersey Jazzman Wonders About Rahm’s Brain

As Jersey Jazzman reports, on some days Rahm Emanuel blames poor test scores on children’s home environment. On other days, he blames it on teachers.
What is he thinking?
Here is what Chicago is thinking: Rahm’s approval rating is down to 33%.

How CTU Confronted Antagonists in the Democratic Party

This is a stunning analysis of the relationship between labor unions and the Democratic Party.
It is a must-read.
Many in education have been baffled by the bipartisan consensus around Republican ideology. Micah Uetricht is not baffled. He says without hedging that “Democrats have swallowed the Right’s free market orthodoxy whole. Much of the party appears to have given up on education as a public project.”
Teachers unions, he writes, have been unable to articulate a coherent response to their abandonment.

Broad Foundation Bails Out State’s Emergency District

Michigan created an “Educational Achievement Authority” in which it clustered the state’s lowest performing schools. Of course, it is corporate reform-speak to identify the schools with the lowest test scores and say they are part of an “achievement” district. But, hey, it is only words.
Seems the EAA needed an infusion of cash, so the Broad Foundation plunked down $10 million to keep it going. This makes sense because all of the schools in the EAA are controlled by John Covington, who “graduated” from Broad’s unaccredited superintendent’s academy in 2008. Covington previously was superintendent of the Kansas 


Jeb Bush Will Bring Tale of “Florida Miracle” to Maine

On March 22, Governor Paul LePage will host an event for Jeb Bush and his merry team of market-model crusaders in Augusta, Maine.
Bush will present the full range of ALEC-inspired “reforms” guaranteed to bring privatization and for-profit 

Why Obama Does Not Understand VAM

Obama’s former budget director Peter Orszag recently wrote an article claiming that teachers should be judged by the test scores of their students. He read about the Raj Chetty study and the Gates MET study, and that was good enough for him.
From what he writes, it is clear that he knows nothing of the research critiquing those two studies. Hundreds of 

Model Legislation to Protect Student Privacy

If you live in NewYork, contact your elected state officials. If you don’t, find a state legislator to introduce similar legislation. Our children’s personal data must not be released to inBloom (Gates and Murdoch) to give or sell to marketing corporations.
Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters reports:
Great news! on Wednesday, Assemblymember Daniel O’Donnell introduced a bill, A6059, to protect student privacy that would block the NY State Education Department and DOE from sharing our children’s confidential 

How Rhee and Allies Failed in DC

A blogger took a close look at the latest report from DC on proficiency rates. As Matt Di Carlo andante others have repeatedly shown, proficiency rates are notoriously easy to manipulate by moving the cut scores and other tricks.
But in DC, one fact is undeniable
: the rates went up in Affluentt districts and down in poor ones.