Best of the Ed Blogs - National Education Policy Center

National Education Policy Center

Best of the Ed Blogs

Shanker Blog: How Much Segregation Is There Within Schools?

by elaine / 7min

Our national discourse on school segregation, whether income- or race-/ethnicity-based, tends to focus on the separation of students between schools within districts. There are good reasons for this, including the fact that 

Ed in the Apple: Bill Gates’ Quest for the Mythical Magic Bullet: Next Quest: Algebra 1

by elaine / 12min

From Small High Schools to Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) to Value-Added Measurements (VAM) to the Common Core State Standards , the Gates Foundation has been searching for the magic bullet, a vaccine for curing education, and the “cures” have proven fruitless (See links above) The next magic bullet is a cure for Algebra 1, the course viewed as standing in the way of graduation and success

Teacher in a Strange Land: It’s the Right Time to Stop the Overdose of Standardized Testing

by elaine / 12min

A bit of personal history: I live in the first state to launch statewide standardized assessments, back in 1969-70. Every single one of the 32+ years I taught, in every school, at least some of my Michigan students were taking state-sponsored standardized tests. Honestly, I didn’t think about it much. In the 1970s, we had the MEAP test for 4 th , 7 th and 10 th grades—two to three days’ worth of

Our Schools: How Online Learning Companies Are Using the Pandemic to Take Over Classroom Teaching

by elaine / 12min

Experts warn the rush to outsource teaching to private companies is bad for students, teachers, and taxpayers. Opening schools during a pandemic in an underfunded urban district like Providence, Rhode Island, where buildings are in miserable physical conditions , is already a huge undertaking, but the situation is made worse when district leaders bring in private contractors who know nothing abo

Nancy Bailey’s Education Website: Selling Charter School Class Size as “Innovative Medical Experimentation” During Covid-19

by elaine / 12min

Efforts to destroy public schooling in America have not disappeared during the pandemic. While Education Secretary Betsy DeVos displays her hatred for public education, especially with Fairfax County public school teachers, DC Charter Schools are advertising innovations during the pandemic. They’re promoting smaller class sizes as innovative medical experimentation. Their innovations, however, a

Curmudgucation: AI: Still Not Ready for Prime Time

by elaine / 12min

You may recall that Betsy DeVos sued to say, often, that education should be like hailing a Uber (by which she presumably didn't intend to say "available to only a small portion of the population at large). You may also recall that when the awesomeness of Artificial Intelligence is brought up, sometimes in conjunction with how great an AI computer would be at educating children. Yes, this much s

Answer Sheet: Going Back to School: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

by elaine / 12min

Going back to school during the coronavirus pandemic has elicited a jumble of emotions for teachers, students and parents, who have both wanted to see kids back in school buildings but also have feared the risk of contracting covid-19. This post reports on the experiences of people who have returned to school for the 2020-2021 school year in various school districts. It was written by Carol Burr

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Whatever Happened to Authentic Assessment?

by elaine / 12min

No Child Left Behind drove a stake into its heart. OK, that is a bit dramatic but the standards, tests, and accountability movement that began in the early 1980s, picking up speed in the 1990s, then accelerating to warp drive with the passage of NCLB brushed aside this Progressive instructional reform called “authentic assessment.”* Pick your metaphor but, save for scattered teachers across Amer

Janresseger: COVID-19 Widens Inequality Among America’s Young People, But So Far, There is No Plan to Address It

by elaine / 12min

What are all the ways the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown obstacles in the paths of America’s poorest young people? The numbers are staggering. Hardship is so overwhelming that it is almost impossible to grasp the deeper meaning of the data in the reports from major policy organizations. Here is the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities : “Households with children are more likely to have trouble a

Hack Education: Cheating, Policing, and School Surveillance

by elaine / 12min

I have volunteered to be a guest speaker in classes this Fall. It's really the least I can do to help teachers and students through another tough term. I spoke this morning to Jeffrey Austin's class at the Skyline High School. Yes, I said "shit" multiple times to a Zoom full of high school students. I'm a terrific role model. Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today. I am very f

Curmudgucation: Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney

by elaine / 12min

Back in April, NWEA (the MAP test folks) issued a "report" about what we've taken to calling the Covid Slide , which is sadly not a cool new line dance, but is instead an important tool for people in education-flavored businesses who want to try to panic school districts and bureaucrats. Now Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) yesterday threw their weight behi

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: When Algorithms Give Real Students Imaginary Grades (Meredith Broussard) (Guest Post by Meredith Broussard)

by elaine / 28d

Meredith Broussard ( @merbroussard ) is a data journalism professor at New York University and the author of “ Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World .” She is working on a book about race and technology. ” This op-ed piece appeared in the New York Times on September 9, 2020. Isabel Castañeda’s first words were in Spanish. She spends every summer with relatives in Mexic

Jersey Jazzman: The School Reopening Gamble

by elaine / 29d

In the next week or so, schools districts all over the country will reopen their buildings as their new year begins. During our pre-service training, a teacher colleague of mine described the process as a “grand experiment.” But he’s wrong; it’s not an experiment. It’s a gamble. An experiment, by definition, is a controlled, scientific procedure designed to gain knowledge. When a researcher cond

Janresseger: Framing a New Website Forced Us to Reconsider Public Education’s Core Principles

by elaine / 33d

This week the Northeast Ohio Friends of Public Education launched a new website . If you live in Central Ohio in Columbus or Marion or Chillicothe—or Southwest Ohio in Dayton or Cincinnati or Middletown—or Northwest Ohio in Toledo—or Southeast Ohio in Athens or along the Ohio River, you may not imagine that this website will be of interest to you. And if you live in another state, you are probab

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Can Covid-19 Take School Reform in a New and Different Direction?

by elaine / 33d

Covid-19 offers the opportunity to think anew and differently about the direction of schooling in America. Chances are it won’t happen. Consider mandated state tests. U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos said states 

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