Thursday, June 27, 2013

Why it’s time for a reset of education reform

Why it’s time for a reset of education reform:


Why it’s time for a reset of education reform


It’s the end of a difficult school year, and the education world is in some turmoil. Here’s a piece about where we stand by Jeff Bryant, an associate fellow at theCampaign for America’s Future and the owner of a marketing and communications consultancy that serves organizations including Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders and PBS. He writes extensively about public education policy at The Education Opportunity Network, where this appeared. He was also involved in the creation of the  new Education Declaration to Rebuild America, which has been signed by nearly 30,000 people. You can follow him on Twitter at jeffbcdm
By Jeff Bryant
The end of another school year is leaving a bad taste in many people’s mouths. A steady diet of government austerity and top-down “accountability” mandates have left numerous communities across the country with a severe case of sour stomachs over how their schools are being governed.
As the school year closed in Michigan, hundreds of protestors gathered at the state 

Fireworks at Chicago school board meeting

Here’s a short video showing what happened when some Chicago public school students went to Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting to protest budget cuts and the largest mass school closing in American history. At about 1:57 into the video, the … Continue reading →

What's good for the goose apparently isn't for the gander


What's good for the goose -- educators in this case -- apparently isn't good for the gander -- top administrators at New York City's Education Department.
The Wall Street Journal reports in this story that at the same time that city education officials were pushing controversial new evaluations for teachers and principals and insisting that educators must be held accountable, the people who run the department weren't getting formal job assessments. The paper filed a 2012 public records request seeking evaluations of the department's senior staff and got an answer.
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