Thursday, June 23, 2011

In Response to @MattYglesias: How Would an Education Progressive Run a School District? - Dana Goldstein

In Response to @MattYglesias: How Would an Education Progressive Run a School District?

by Dana Goldstein

In response to my Ravitch profile, Matt Yglesias has written a characteristically pointed post asking, "What does Diane Ravitch think we should do to improve education in the United States," and answering, "I have no idea."

I obviously cannot speak for Ravitch, but I can point to a few things she's written and said on this question, and offer some of my own thoughts.

This past Monday, Ravitch tweeted the following: "I wish KIPP would take over a complete urban district so people would stop suspecting them of skimming, attrition." This gives a hint as to what Ravitch would do if she were an urban superintendent. She respects KIPP's focus on providing disadvantaged students with a traditional academic curriculum and a structured day, but she is curious to know if the high test scores that follow are transferable to all poor children, not just the ones whose parents are motivated enough to enroll them in a lottery.

I think that as a superintendent, Ravitch would hire principals who really care about what students learn in a

Notes on my New Profile of Diane Ravitch

by Dana Goldstein

The cover story of this week's Washington City Paper is my longish profile of Diane Ravitch, the leading education historian and former George H.W. Bush appointee who, in recent years, has switched sides from standards-and-accountability reform to progressivism.

Ravitch has led a very full and interesting life. She grew up in Texas, where she was a teen drag racer, and got her start in journalism at The New Leader, a democratic socialist magazine. Tragically, she lost a son to leukemia in the 1960s, which contributed to her lack of sympathy toward the counterculture, which she believed had too much contempt for valuable cultural institutions. A friend of Al Shanker's, in the late 1980s Ravitch visited the newly-liberated countries of Eastern Europe to speak to nascent teachers' unions.

Ravitch gets a lot of attention for changing her mind on issues like testing and charter schools, but on some other questions, she has been quite consistent. She's always been a defender of teacher professionalism and a critic of the idea that teachers alone are to blame for failing schools. She's always been wary of the outsized

Shanker Blog » Student Surveys of Teachers: Be Careful What You Ask For

Student Surveys of Teachers: Be Careful What You Ask For

by Esther Quintero

Many believe that current teacher evaluation systems are a formality, a bureaucratic process that tells us little about how to improve classroom instruction. In New York, for example, 40 percent of all teacher evaluations must consist of student achievement data by 2013. Additionally, some are proposing the inclusion of alternative measures, such as “independent outside observations” or “student surveys” among others. Here, I focus on the latter.
Educators for Excellence (E4E), an “organization of education professionals who seek to provide an independent voice for educators in the debate surrounding education reform”, recently released a teacher evaluation white paper proposing that student surveys account for 10 percent of teacher evaluations.
The paper quotes a teacher saying: “for a system that aims to serve students, young people’s interests are far too often pushed aside. Students’ voices should be at the forefront of the education debate today, especially when it comes to determining the effectiveness of their teacher.” The authors argue that “the presence of effective teachers […] can be determined, in part, by the perceptions of the students that interact with them.” Also, “student surveys offer teachers immediate and qualitative feedback, recognize the importance of student voice […]”. In rare cases, the paper concedes, “students could skew their responses to retaliate against teachers or

School Tech Connect: The Questions You Never Get To Ask

The Questions You Never Get To Ask

by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)

totally unrelated picture of Scout

I like Linda Lutton. She doesn't always ask the questions I would ask, and although this interview with ~~rags-to-~~ riches-to-more-riches heiress-turned-subprime lending titan Penny Pritzker is full of softballs, Lutton is really a very credible reporter on the whole. So this isn't a criticism of Linda Lutton; she can go ahead and ask whatever the heck she wants.

My problem is always with the questions that don't get asked and followed up upon. If I had a microphone and five minutes with Penny, or really anyone involved in making decisions on behalf of the public, here's what I would try to get at:

What were the characteristics of the schools where you sent your own

Administrative Turds | Mr. Teachbad's Blog of Teacher Disgruntlement

Administrative Turds

by mrteachbad

If you are a regular or semi-regular reader of this blog, you know that, as a group, the administrative class at my school suffers from Diminished Interpersonal Capacity Syndrome or DICS.

This is a terrible condition that causes people to relate to others as if they were not truly human and to treat them poorly for no good reason. The organization New Leaders for New Schools has been identified as a carrier of DICS. Beware.

In celebration of the end of another year, and in the spirit of data collection, I would like to share with you some sobering numbers from my school. I believe these numbers are a direct consequence of DICS, but more research is necessary. Here we go:

My school is fully staffed with around 85 full-time teachers. It’s a big school, but not giant.

Just for fun I decided to try to list every teacher who has taught here since I started in 08/09. So that’s three years. Using my memory, yearbooks and old room and phone directories, I came up with a pretty big list. Then I started talking to other people from other departments. Forgotten teachers started coming out of the woodwork.

This Week In Education: Media: City Paper Declares Ravitch The "Anti-Rhee"

Media: City Paper Declares Ravitch The "Anti-Rhee"

by Alexander Russo

Folks on both sides of the education debate are taking a look at City Paper's cover story on Diane Ravitch, which names her the "Anti-Rhee."

Those who are critical of Ravitch seem to be enjoying the somewhat unflattering photo. Those who support her point to the sidebar raising issues about Rhee having been in danger of losing her political base. There's an interesting sidebar about who's joined Team Rhee since she left Washington, including many names you've read about here and a few you haven't.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Ain't gonna work on Arianna's farm no more

Ain't gonna work on Arianna's farm no more

by Mike Klonsky

I must admit I liked the slightly larger following I got from posting at Huffington and I will miss the interaction I had with many new friends who read my stuff and left comments of their own. I'm also generally a fan of the new media and the somewhat (more on that later) greater freedom it offers for critical writers like myself. I have long given up relying on the analog media which has made itself obsolete and has put thousands of skilled journalists out on the street.

All this being said, my parents didn't raise no scab. Even though my Guild membership expired years ago, I don't cross picket lines, real or virtual. Problem with this one (or with me) is that I didn't know about it until I heard something at the Netroots Nation meeting last week and then read this piece by Mike Elk from ITT.

In response to what labor leaders see as an exploitative situation, on March 17, the Newspaper Guild (TNG) and the National Writers Union (NWU) both called for bloggers to refuse to blog at the Huffington Post and join an electronic picket line against the publication. The unions are

New Report Offers Roadmap for Success in K-12 STEM Education

nsf.gov - National Science Foundation (NSF) News - New Report Offers Roadmap for Success in K-12 STEM Education - US National Science Foundation (NSF)

New Report Offers Roadmap for Success in K-12 STEM Education

With funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council reports on effective approaches in teaching science, technology, engineering and mathematics

Photo of children playing with space-filling blocks.

Recommendations include devoting adequate instructional time and resources for K-5th grade science.
Credit and Larger Version

June 23, 2011

From educators to leaders in industry, there is broad agreement that U.S. schools have a crucial challenge in improving teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) among students from kindergarten through high school. A background in STEM is not only essential to many current and future careers; it is also a means for citizens to understand and participate in an increasingly complex world--from understanding the challenges of environmental sustainability to addressing the need for alternative sources of energy.

The NRC report, "Successful K-12 STEM Education," is a response to a request from a member of Congress, Rep. Frank Wolf, to identify the characteristics of highly successful K-12 schools and programs in STEM. The report was prepared by a committee of educators led by Adam Gamoran of the

Will you help Senator Sanders expose the Koch Echo Chamber?

EXPOSE THE KOCHS: The Koch brothers fund multiple think tanks and academic centers to promote their ideology and grow their profits, a Brave New Foundation investigation reveals. Let's create an echo chamber of truth by using YouTube's SHARE tools above to protect Social Security and counter the Koch billions. http://KochBrothersExposed.com/socialsecurity

Schools Matter: KIPP's Underwhelming College Completion Rates Are Even More UnderWhelming

KIPP's Underwhelming College Completion Rates Are Even More UnderWhelming

by Jim Horn

Rupert Murdoch’s education czar, Joel "McChoakumchild" Klein, has a blog post at Valerie Strauss’s page today that touts, once more, a sketchy report published by the KIPP Home Office on KIPPster college graduation rates:

KIPP followed its 8th grade graduates, who were overwhelmingly from poor (85%) and minority (95%) families, and found that, ten years later, 1/3 of them had graduated from college, a rate that was about four times their expected graduation rate and the same as that of white students.

Let me see if I can offer a little context for this claim.

In the SRI study (2008) of five KIPP schools in the Bay Area, researchers found

Paul Mulshine, Amoral Self-Indulgence & New Jersey School Finance « School Finance 101

Paul Mulshine, Amoral Self-Indulgence & New Jersey School Finance

by schoolfinance101

On most days, I can simply laugh off a ridiculous Paul Mulshine column in the Star Ledger. Most of his claims regarding education, taxation and the intersection of the two range from flat-out incorrect to wacky and misguided. But Mulshine’s claims in his column on Wednesday June 22^nd necessitate a response.

For several years, I have been a professor where one of my primary responsibilities has been to train future school administrators. I believe strongly that well-informed well prepared and knowledgeable school administrators can and should play a critical role in guiding public education policy. As one might figure from the name of this blog, my emphasis is on teaching school finance – an inherently political and divisive topic that often pits one district against another or even one school against another. As a result, I believe it is particularly important that leading voices in education policy in a state understand not only how policies affect their own district and children but how those policies affect children statewide – that local school administrators can think beyond the boundaries of their own school district and local constituents, and be mindful of the good of the public as a whole.

Any local school administrator would likely want to find ways to manipulate the state formula for allocating aid in

WISCONSIN: DEMOCRACY IN OUR HANDS | Dailycensored.com

WISCONSIN: DEMOCRACY IN OUR HANDS

Sheila Parks, Ed.D.

I cannot watch enough videos of the people in Wisconsin as you bold, brave, most decent Wisconsonites are out in the streets – resisting, doing non-violent civil disobedience/direct action, dissenting, protesting, rising up, standing up to and speaking and singing truth to power in the face of Walker and his cronies.

What is happening in Wisconsin now is a model for the whole country. Not only your honorable actions, but also what Walker and the thugs behind him are trying to do in Wisconsin.

I am writing to tell you not only how much I respect and admire you, but also how very concerned I am about the recalls, scheduled as of this writing to start on July 12. They are to be done on the same electronic voting machines that could have rigged the elections in the first place as well as the Supreme Court recount. See here for information on hacking of all electronic voting machines by geeks, professors and students – both optical scammers (not a typo) and DRE’s/touchscreens – to say nothing of all the fraud and error of the electronic voting machines in real time – some lowlights: FL 2000, GA 2002, OH 2004, the list goes on and on.

Taking some liberty with the words of the late Bishop Helder Camara

Why Are D.C. Police Arresting Journalists at a Public Meeting? - E.D. Kain - American Times - Forbes

Why Are D.C. Police Arresting Journalists at a Public Meeting?

by E.D. Kain

Reason’s Jim Epstein was arrested after a meeting of the D.C. Taxi Commission yesterday, following his filming of the arrest of journalist, Pete Tucker, at the same meeting. Tucker’s crime? Snapping a still photo of the proceedings on his camera phone. Here’s Epstein’s account of what happened next:

A few minutes later, as I was attempting to leave the building, I overheard the female officer who had arrested Tucker promise a woman, who I presumed to be an employee of the Taxi Commission, that she would confiscate my phone. Reason intern Kyle Blaine, overheard her say, "Do you want his phone? I can get his phone."
(The woman who was given assurances by the officer that she could have my phone can be seen at the end of the video telling me, "You do not have permission to record this!")
As I tried to leave, I was told by the same officer to "stay put." I told her I was leaving and attempted to exit the building. I was then surrounded by officers, and told to remain still or I would

Labor-Funded Progressive Leaders Cross Huffington Post Picket Line - Working In These Times

Labor-Funded Progressive Leaders Cross Huffington Post Picket Line

Monday
Jun 13, 2011
3:03 pm

By Mike Elk

The Newspaper Guild called for bloggers to boycott the Huffington Post in March of this year. (guildfreelancers.org)

Last week was a milestone in journalism, as the Huffington Post exceeded the New York Times in Web traffic and cemented its role as a main rival to the Gray Lady. It was also noted that the combined AOL-Huffington Post newsroom staff of 1,300 people is now bigger than the Times' 1,200-person staff. While much of the debate about the rivarly has focused on Huffington Post’s adoption of savvy Internet tactics versus the more old-school Times, very little of the discussion has focused on where the two newsrooms differ the most: their labor practices.

The Times' newsroom staff is entirely unionized, while the AOL-Huffington Post staff is entirely nonunionized. Also unlike the Times, which insists on paying every professional writer (even op-ed contributors), the Huffington Post

Don’t cross the digital picket line. Don’t blog for Huffington. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Don’t cross the digital picket line. Don’t blog for Huffington.

JUNE 23, 2011

by Fred Klonsky

Bloggers! Join my brother Mike. Don’t cross the digital picket line. Don’t blog for Huffington.

AAPSS : Diane Ravitch: The importance of evidence-based data in education reform

AAPSS : News

Diane Ravitch: The importance of evidence-based data in education reform

Tue, Jun 21 2011

Thank you so much, Dan, and thank you to the members of the Academy. I want to thank my family, who is here, and also the Moynihan family – wonderful to see you again. I do want to say at the outset that I have divided my prize money amongst three organizations that I care a lot about. One is called the Save Our Schools March, it is being organized by national board-certified teachers. They will be marching on Washington on July 30th, I will be speaking to them—they are getting half my prize. The other two organizations, and their representative is here tonight, is a group called Parents Across America, and those are parents who are very unhappy with the direction of things that I am unhappy with, and Leonie Haimson is here to represent Parents Across America and also the third group, which is called Class Size Matters – Class Size Matters being the most outspoken and rigorous and dedicated group of parents in the city, constantly arguing that class size does matter, the budgets should not be cut, teachers should not be laid off, that there are other kinds of economies that can be made rather than laying off six thousand teachers. So, that is where my money is going.

I want to tell a story about Dan Rose, and he is a little bit afraid of this because I

Rhee the Reformer

TeacherSabrinaFSP on Apr 1, 2011

A Seuss-style interpretation of Michelle Rhee's "Erase to the Top" scandal.

For more stories, commentary, and evidence from the other side of school reform, follow me @TeacherSabrina on Twitter!

School officials worry about student populations with new census figures - NorthJersey.com

School officials worry about student populations with new census figures

THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2011 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY JUNE 23, 2011, 11:09 AM

MANAGING EDITOR

SOUTH BERGENITE

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The elder population of South Bergen has strayed from the county trend of increasing overall and actually declined from 2000-2010 while more younger children are living within local borders. The shift may spell trouble for schools in coming years, which are already exasperated by student population increases in recent years.

According to new U.S. Census figures on local level demographics released late last month, while median ages in all South Bergenite coverage area towns either remained steady or slightly decreased, the overall amount of seniors 65 and older dropped dramatically in some cases while the amount of small children, those at pre-kindergarten ages or younger, have risen in all but one town.

Lyndhurst, a town which is reeling from the defeat of a recent middle school referendum to help alleviate overcrowding in existing schools, had 147 more children under the age of five last year than it had in 2000. A total of 1,106 pre-elementary aged children lived in the township last year, which was about 5.4 percent of the township’s total population. In total, Lyndhurst’s population rose 1,171 to make it the only local town to eclipse 20,000 residents. Lyndhurst’s elder demographic, 65 and over, decreased by 221

'A Return to the Past...With A Wrinkle' - Bridging Differences - Education Week

'A Return to the Past...With A Wrinkle'

by Deborah Meier

Blog, June 23, 2011

Dear Diane,

Yes, yes to your declaration of "where we stand" on Tuesday. I can quibble with a word here and there—a "can't" vs. a "shouldn't," and an overly enthusiastic endorsement of the schools of yesterday which so appalled me when I started teaching in 1962. It's wise to remember past achievements, but the pre-war schools of America also played a role in the sorrier part of our national history.

I'm a revolutionary in spirit—this cannot continue! But I'm a "reformist" in practice since it is, in fact, the fastest way to get to where I want to go. And, indeed, there are times, I believe, when it's best to close a school and rebuild. But when and how is an issue we haven't discussed. Let's take that on next year.

But, of late, I have a new worry! The corporations have already launched a new round of attacks on postsecondary education. Hardly their first attempt to muscle in to the money to be made in this field, as well as the opportunity to impose their ideals on the nation. Yes, its not just the dollars they see. I grant the fact that, like me, they have a vision. It's just not mine.

The argument's in favor of everyone going to college—regardless of their real interest and preferences—if they

Educators Endorse Teacher Ed Rankings From NCTQ, U.S. News - Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings (usnews.com)

Educators Endorse Teacher Ed Rankings From NCTQ, U.S. News

By ROBERT MORSE

Posted: June 23, 2011

The National Council on Teacher Quality's National Review of Education Schools, which is being done in partnership with U.S. News, is well underway. The goal of the review is to rate more than 1,000 of the largest teacher preparation programs in the United States by awarding grades based on each program's performance in 17 different standards on key elements of the design of a teacher training program, including the selectivity of their admissions, how well schools prepare teachers to teach reading, and classroom management training. The current goal is to publish the results in fall 2012.

Here's an update on the project: NCTQ has posted a great deal of information on its website

''Michelle Rhee, Inc.''

by admin

Written by Alan Suderman for the Washington City Paper. Read the original here.

“Billionaire Eli Broad told New York magazine that StudentsFirst planned to raise $50 million for start-up costs from 20 individuals and eventually spend $200 million a year. Those are jawdropping numbers at first blush, but not much of a stretch for Rhee when you consider her background.

That’s because a fair amount of Rhee’s time in D.C. was spent hitting up big-dollar philanthropists to help raise more than $60 million in private funds to help pay for a new contract that emphasized merit pay and de-

''As Michelle Rhee links arms with the right, allies worry''

by admin

Written by Suzy Khimm, for the Washington City Paper. Read the original here.

“For those who viewed Michelle Rhee as an anti-union bully, the past few months have offered lots of chances to say “toldya so.” Soon after resigning as the D.C. Public Schools chancellor in October, Rhee began appearing with Republican governors who were busily making war on public-sector unions.

But if longtime Rhee critics felt vindicated, another group has been less sanguine: left-leaning education reformers who worry that her moves could help tie education reform to a larger conservative agenda to crush

Diane Ravitch, the Anti-Michelle-Rhee - Washington City Paper

Diane Ravitch, the Anti-Michelle-Rhee - Washington City Paper
Diane Ravitch, the Anti-Rhee
Michelle Rhee went from DCPS to national crusader. Along the way, a 72-year old historian became her top critic

By Dana Goldstein on June 24, 2011

In the month of April, Diane Ravitch, the 72-year-old preeminent historian of American education, sent 1,747 tweets, an average of about 58 messages per day, many between the hours of 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.

On May 20 alone, Ravitch tweeted 99 times to her 13,000 followers. Linking to the news of a D.C. Public Schools investigation into test tampering under former chancellor Michelle Rhee, she asked: “How can teachers be evaluated by student test scores, when the scores are so often manipulated and inaccurate?” Throughout the day, she mused on the shortcomings of standardized tests, whose ubiquity in American schools she has compared—with characteristic hyperbole—to “the Chinese cultural revolution.”

“Life’s problems do not translate into four possible answer[s],” she tweeted. Minutes later, she added: “Just think: 12 years of picking the right answer, never taking a risk with a different approach to problems. Ugh.” And then: “Those who can’t teach, pass laws about how to evaluate teachers.”

Ravitch went on to note that President Obama, whose education policies she opposes, is given more time to prove himself—four years—than the average teacher, who usually gets two or three years to win tenure. By afternoon, she was on to scorning Wall Street types, writing that “teachers can do more [good] than many who collect