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Sunday, April 7, 2013

Diane in the Evening 4-7-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

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







Indiana Teacher to Legislature: Please Save Public Education

This came from a teacher in northern Indiana:
Dear Indiana Politician:
I am a public school teacher. I am a breast cancer survivor. I dreamed as a little girl of the day I would be a teacher. I never dreamed as a woman that I would one day be a cancer survivor. So now I am both and proud that I am.
I write to you today as both, for you see there are times these days that my role as an educator are more 


Jersey Jazzman Educates Margaret Spellings About Data

Jersey Jazzman never sleeps. I get that. He is so outraged by the constant torrent of nonsense in the media that he has to deconstruct it.
In this post, he throws up some clay pigeons and knocks them all down, one by one.
The big one is the stuff put out by Margaret Spellings to put down New Jersey.
Since New Jersey is one of the nation’s top performing states, JJ doesn’t take kindly to the former Secretary’s misreading of NAEP data, nor the praise for Newark’s charters.


History Is Written by the Winners

As the adage goes, history is written by the winners.
Today, in the United States, it is written by and for the 1%. Or is it the .0001 percent?
How important is it for all fifth-graders in the state of Tennessee to know these names?
A reader writes:
“Bill Gates & Sam Walton just wrote themselves write


Indiana: Stop Voucher Expansion

In Indiana, new legislation would offer vouchers to children who never attended a public school. This eliminates the fiction that vouchers are going to “save children from failing schools.”
This is a message from Julian Smith in Induana. He offers a sample letter. Or, write your own.
Subject: Fwd: Two Minute Task #8 HB 1003 Vouchers
As you are probably aware, HB1003 will be coming to the Senate floor for a vote next week.
This is a battle we can and must win. These guys may want a reason to vote no, and blitzing them with a compelling thought may make a difference if we do this together, share with others, and ask them to do the same. The contacts, meetings, and emails have already had positive effects. Let’s keep the pressure on right up 

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 4-7-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 2 hours ago
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: [image: Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch] Is inBloom Engaged in Identity Theft? by dianerav The Gates Foundation spent $100 million along with the Carnegie Corporation to create a massive database consisting of confidential information about students. The database will be created by Rupert Murdoch’s subsidiary Wireless Generation. It will go onto a “cloud” managed by amazon.com. Several states and districts have agreed to turn over their student data. Last year, the U.S. Department of Education quiet... more »