LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 6-12-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

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

On School Reform, Indiana Newspaper says”The Worm Is Turning”

by dianerav

The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette points to signs that the corporate reform movement is losing steam. Indiana is an epicenter of school privatization and teacher-bashing, yet even there the movement seems to be lagging. The epic defeat of state superintendent Tony Bennett was one clear indication of public opposition to his reforms. The failure of efforts to strip power away from his successor, Glenda Ritz, is another.
More signs of the movement’s weakening:
*The rebellion against the Common Core;
*The widespread criticism of state testing;
*The activism of grassroots groups like the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education, and its leader, Phyllis 

The Color of School Closures

by dianerav

Whose schools are closing? Is there a pattern?
Take a look at this graphic.
Tweet it. Share it.
And think about it. What is going on?

Local School Boards Are Under Siege, and So Is Democracy

by dianerav

David Lentini is a lawyer and school board member in Maine. I am always happy to read his informed comments. In this one, he responds to an earlier post that explained that the radical group ALEC is trying to bypass and extinguish local school boards in their pursuit of privatization.
Lentini writes:
I’ve been sounding this alarm for a long time now; it’s good to see other, more expert, commentators reaching the same conclusion.
Still, as a school board member I also fear there are many ways boards will disappear ALEC or no. Too many boards are under siege trying to balance state and federal budget cuts, increasing child and family poverty, 

Is It Fair to Move the Goal Posts?

by dianerav

In some states that are besotted with accountability, the policy leaders are convinced that students will do better if the tests get harder every year.
Florida and Texas immediately come to mind.
Would basketball players get better if the basket were raised 6″ every year? Would football players score more 

Robert D. Shepherd: Beware the Social Engineer and His Abstractions

by dianerav

Robert D. Shepherd has had a long career as an author, curriculum developer, and textbook editor. But more than that: he is a remarkably independent thinker. Here are some of his latest reflections on the Common Core:
“Ideas matter. In part, the faculties of education schools and state and local education administrators have brought the current education deform movement upon themselves by imagining that it’s a simple matter to derive and then apply, in the human sciences and humanities, generalizations of the kinds that are the goal of 

 Diane in the Evening 6-11-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

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

Missouri Education Watchdog: Lamar Alexander Educational Plans Then (1989) and Now (2013). Same or Different?

Missouri Education Watchdog: Lamar Alexander Educational Plans Then (1989) and Now (2013). Same or Different?:

Lamar Alexander Educational Plans Then (1989) and Now (2013). Same or Different?

by stlgretchen

Lamar Alexander's thoughts on revamping No Child Left Behind, 2013 from The Foundry and  No Child Left Behind: Alexander Unveils Rewrite:

Senator Lamar Alexander (R–TN), ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, has just introduced a proposal to “fix” No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

While restoring excellence in education will require more than a fix to the bureaucratic law—states should be allowed to opt-out of NCLB entirely—Alexander’s Every Child Ready for College or Career Act would improve upon existing statute in several ways.

Notably, it would allow states to make their Title I dollars portable, giving children the option to use funds at any public school of choice. Title I portability is a good goal, but it should also include the option for children to use their share of funding at a private school of choice as well.

Other improvements to Title I include the elimination of “Adequate Yearly Progress,” the well-intentioned but inappropriate federal goal of universal student proficiency in math and English by the 2014–2015 school year. The proposal maintains the requirement for states to set challenging content and achievement standards (defining levels of content mastery at 

UPDATE: Malloy at “conference” in Chicago hanging out with major education reform advocates… - Wait, What?

Malloy at “conference” in Chicago hanging out with major education reform advocates… - Wait, What?:

When it comes to our state’s economy, our elected officials are our own worst enemies…

by jonpelto

With a state-economy ranked 50^th in the nation, one would think that Governor Malloy and our elected officials who drop their economic development strategy that relies on corporate welfare to lure hedge fund companies and other corporate giants to move or stay in Connecticut.

But in the legislative session that just ended, Malloy and the majority decided to stay the course and, in the process, throw Connecticut’s hospitals under the bus.  Despite the rhetoric from the Malloy Administration that the massive cut to hospitals would have no impact, policymakers knew the consequences and turned a blind eye to the fact that the new state budget would lead to the loss of hundreds of Connecticut jobs.

The CT Mirror summarized the situations when they listed Connecticut’s hospitals as one of the biggest “losers” during the recent session.  The CT Mirror wrote:

Malloy at “conference” in Chicago hanging out with major education reform advocates…

by jonpelto

The Hartford Courant headline reads, “Malloy In Chicago Talking Education,” while the CT Mirror headline informs readers that, “Malloy in Chicago to lead NGA education forum.”

The CT Mirror explains, “Gov. Dannel P. Malloy will be in Chicago on Monday and Tuesday to help lead an education forum for the National Governors Association.”

The Courant’s take on the trip is that, “Malloy will join U.S. Sec. of Education Arne Duncan, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and North Carolina Gov. James Hunt at the event, which lasts two days. Among the topics to be discussed “building coalitions to accelerate momentum and results” and “developing and supporting effective teachers and leaders” and “reallocating resources to improve achievement and attainment.”

However, undoubtedly those descriptions were provided to Connecticut media outlets by Malloy’s press operation because it turns out they left off a few important facts…such as the truth.

What wasn’t included in the material provided to the Connecticut media was that the 

Daily Kos: June 12, 1776 - a date all Americans should know

Daily Kos: June 12, 1776 - a date all Americans should know:

June 12, 1776 - a date all Americans should know

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

because on that date, the Virginia Convention, which among other things had directed its delegats to Philadelphia to declare the colonies free of Britain and which had drafted a constitution for what would be the newly independent state, adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, largely drafted by George Mason, who later as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention would refuse to sign the document because it lacked a bill of rights protecting the people.
One can read the entire text of the document in several places, including HERE.
There are 16 "sections" listing the rights to be protected.  Below the fold I will examine doue, one of which explains to me why the the Supreme Court was wrong in the Heller decision, the other three of which are specifically relevant to the immediate times in which we find ourselves.
It is worth noting that many of the rights can clearly be traced back to other documents, perhaps as far back as the Magna Carta in the case of the right of trial by a jury of one's peers found in Section 8, and in many cases either in the Petition of Right of 1628 and/or the English Bill of Rights.  In other words, these were assumed - not only before Jefferson but well before the disputes with England stemming from what we call the French and Indian War - to be the rights of all Englishmen.
Let me first note the beginning of the document:

A declaration of rights made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free convention; which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government.

 Jefferson did not write in a vacuum  that the purpose of government was to preserve rights.  Nor was this original to Mason, who could easily find the notion in the work of John Locke.  This idea of the purpose of government is also relevant in the times in which we find ourselves, and I will return to it in time.

Michael Kirst, father of new school funding formula, looks back and at the work ahead | EdSource Today

Michael Kirst, father of new school funding formula, looks back and at the work ahead | EdSource Today:

Michael Kirst, father of new school funding formula, looks back and at the work ahead - by John Fensterwald

by John Fensterwald

It was the morning after the evening of the last revision, and the father of the Local Control Funding Formula looked upon all that the governor and Legislature had made, and declared, “Hey, not bad.”

Michael Kirst

Michael Kirst is relishing the all-but-certain passage later this week of the comprehensive school funding reform that he co-designed. That was five years ago, and, after many twists and iterations, the final version, negotiated over the weekend by Gov. Jerry Brown, Assembly Speaker John Pérez, D-Los Angeles, and Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, ended up quite like the one published in April 2008. The framework – with base funding, a supplemental grant for every low-income student and English learner, and extra dollars again to districts with the highest concentrations of those targeted students – was in the paper that Kirst co-wrote with former California Secretary of Education Alan Bersin and then Berkeley Law Center professor and now state Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu.

“It is extremely rare in policy analysis that 80 percent of what you recommend is put into law,” Kirst, a professor emeritus at Stanford, said Tuesday. “Usually you hope policy makers will consider half or less.”

But in this case, paternity won’t end with conception. Kirst, who’s also president of the State 

Adult ed, regional occupational centers, partnership academies get reprieve - by Susan Frey

by Susan Frey

Once-threatened programs that prepare high school students for careers and adults for jobs or college appear likely to get at least a two-year reprieve under the compromise budget plan negotiated between legislative leaders and Gov. Jerry Brown. Under the compromise, districts that currently have adult education programs or are involved in regional occupational centers, which provide hands-on...

School Discipline Changes Urged In Federal Complaint Against Dallas Truancy System

School Discipline Changes Urged In Federal Complaint Against Dallas Truancy System:

School Discipline Changes Urged In Federal Complaint Against Dallas Truancy System

by Joy Resmovits

Ashley Brown, a Dallas high school sophomore, missed four days of school after her grandmother died. Shortly after that, a teacher taking roll missed the short-statured student and accidentally marked Brown absent. Then Brown missed school because she was suspended for an altercation. She missed another day when she was suspended for being late to class, because she was in the restroom.

The next thing she knew, the county truancy court summoned her. She owed mounting fines. "I was very worried because my family cannot pay those types of tickets," Brown, 16, said in an interview. "I'm on the honor roll. I'm academically prepared. For them to penalize me because of these mistakes -- wow."

Brown is one of 36,000 Dallas students who have faced truancy cases in the last year. In 2012, Texas adult courts prosecuted 113,000 truancy cases, more than twice the number pursued in the other 49 states combined.

That statistic, and the penalties children and parents face because of Dallas County's Truancy Court, is why 

UPDATE: Can a boy wear eyeshadow and lipstick to middle school? | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com

Can a boy wear eyeshadow and lipstick to middle school? | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com:

Get Schooled: Can a boy wear eyeshadow and lipstick to middle school?

 By Maureen Downey

Rules related to adolescent dress and appearance can be a minefield for middle and high schools. While the main focus used to be hemlines and necklines, schools today face much more complicated questions on what constitutes a distraction and what constitutes legitimate self-expression.

Can boys wear skirts? Can girls have multiple piercings?

In this case, the question is whether a boy can show up for school in makeup.

Christ Martin, 14, wore face makeup on the last day of middle school in St. Petersburg, Fla. His mother believes it is within her son's rights to wear makeup. The school reportedly disagreed.

As reported by the Tampa Bay Times :

After years of struggling to feel comfortable in his own skin, Chris Martin — who chooses not to label his sexual orientation — decided to wear black eyeliner, eyeshadow and lipstick on the 14-year-old's last day in the eighth grade. But as soon as he got to Meadowlawn Middle School on Wednesday, administrators told Martin he was violating the dress code. They wanted him to change his shirt and wipe off the makeup. The two 

Get Schooled: Should schools offer free breakfast for every student?

Does it make economic sense to provide all students – even those from wealthy homes -- free breakfasts at school to combat hunger and ensure kids start the day off right?
A new national movement encourages districts to offer every student a free and nutritious breakfast. Charlotte-Mecklenburg just became the ...

Has Technology Killed Cursive Handwriting? | toteachornototeach

Has Technology Killed Cursive Handwriting? | toteachornototeach:

Has Technology Killed Cursive Handwriting?

by aristotlethewise

Has Technology Killed Cursive Handwriting?

by Vignesh Ramachandran

Think back to the last time you wrote in cursive — you know, that fancy penmanship you may have learned way back in grade school, complete with elegant loops, curls and flourishes.
These days, with our fingers tapping on QWERTY keyboards, Evernote taking the place of sticky notes and tablets replacing paper notebooks, a question arises: Has the rise of technology led to the fall of cursive handwriting?
In the United States, somewhere around the third grade, cursive handwriting instruction has long been a sort of milestone, or right of passage. But in recent years, the nation’s Common Core State Standards — which at least 45 states and the District of Columbia, have voluntarily adopted — took out the requirement for cursive instruction in K through 12 schools. It has stirred quite the debate, since it’s up to each individual state to decide whether cursive is important enough to teach its own students. In recent months, North Carolina legislators 

Sign This Declaration For A Positive New Direction For American Education

Sign This Declaration For A Positive New Direction For American Education:

Sign This Declaration For A Positive New Direction For American Education

by Jeff Bryant

The growing revolution against top-down education mandates based on high-stakes testing and standardization has been building over the months into a widespreadEducation Spring.

Every revolution needs a declaration calling for a positive, new way forward.

This week, the Education Opportunity Network, the Institute for America’s Future and the Opportunity to Learn campaign released such a declaration.

Please sign the Education Declaration and share it to show your commitment to an education our children deserve.

In this video, I explain what’s behind the declaration and what we hope to accomplish.

An Education Declaration to Rebuild America is necessary because current policies are blatantly harmful to school children, families, and their communities.

More and more people are realizing this every day.

In Seattle, Chicago, Texas, Philadelphia, Newark and New York – teachers, parents, school children, and public school advocates are speaking out in spontaneous and organized protest of education mandates.

These flashpoints of resistance are driven by common grievances.  Teachers, students, and parents believe their schools are being deprived of the resources that are necessary to give students a quality education. They see that even the resources that are provided are very unfairly and inequitably spread. And they object to increasingly being disempowered and not having a voice in how their schools are governed.

The Education Declaration to Rebuild America addresses those grievances by calling for significant new investments – particularly in early childhood education, personal learning plans for K-12 students, and supports to address the out-of-school factors that influence learning.

The declaration appeals for new funding and resources to be more fairly and equitably 

UPDATE: James Meredith asks 21 tough questions about school reform

James Meredith asks 21 tough questions about school reform:

How to curb cheating in schools

by Valerie Strauss

In one minute and 44 seconds, Eric Anderman, professor of educational psychology at The Ohio State University, explains in this video why too much focus on testing increases the likelihood that students will cheat. The answer: Focus on learning and … Continue reading →

James Meredith asks 21 tough questions about school reform

By Valerie Strauss, Published: June 12, 2013 at 6:00 amE-mail the writer

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I am delighted to publish the following original piece by civil rights icon James Meredith, whooffers 21 questions every American should ask of their politicians, educators and school reformers.

In August 1963, Meredith graduated from the University of Mississippi as its first black graduate after engineering an epic civil rights victory involving the Supreme Court, the president of the United States, the state government of Mississippi, and 30,000 U.S. combat troops. In 1966, he was shot while leading the March Against Fear, which helped open the gates of voter registration to thousands of black citizens in the South. Two years later, he earned a law degree from Columbia University. Last month, he was awarded the Medal for Educational Impact from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, the school’s highest honor.

Meredith’s latest book is “A Mission from God: A Memoir and a Challenge for America,” written with William Doyle, who wrote this piece with him.

By James Meredith with William Doyle
In my recent book “A Mission from God,” 

A big unexplored idea in school reform

by Valerie Strauss

What’s worth learning and how best to teach it? This is the core of the following post by Marion Brady, a classroom teacher for years who has written history and world culture textbooks (Prentice-Hall),  professional books, numerous  nationally distributed columns … Continue reading →

NYC Educator: Bill Gates Colonel Sanders Makes Nice to Teachers Chickens

NYC Educator: Bill Gates Colonel Sanders Makes Nice to Teachers Chickens:

Bill Gates Colonel Sanders Makes Nice to Teachers Chickens

by NYC Educator

Colonel Harlan Sanders came back from the dead this morning to announce a major change in policy. Apparently, for some time, his chickens had been unhappy about their living conditions, and he felt that this was having a negative effect on the quality of the image of his brand.

"When you buy Kentucky Fried Chicken, you need to know it's a quality product," said the Colonel, after having inspected one of his packing facilities. "It's important we reach out to everyone  and get their view."

We attempted to get the viewpoint of said chickens. A spokesperson for the American Federation of Chickens stated, "It's always important to have a seat at the table, particularly when it's you who's going to end up on the table. We will negotiate for a solutions-based agreement with the Colonel, who will be keynote at our AFC convention. As stakeholders, we are always open to reasonable negotiations that benefit our members."

The Colonel was delighted to speak at the convention. "As everyone knows, this is a partnership. I'm a little confused by the AFC's 

UPDATE: The in box + A word to readers. | Fred Klonsky

A word to readers. | Fred Klonsky:

Michael the magician.

by Fred Klonsky

House Speaker Mike Madigan just put on a magic show.
He waved his wand and turned SB2404 into SB1.
Reports Rich Miller at Capitalfax:

House Speaker Michael Madigan gutted Senate President John Cullerton’s pension reform bill today and replaced the language with an amendment which appears to 

Ten minute drawing. I wasn’t going to just follow orders.

by Fred Klonsky

Click on image to enlarge.

Latest adventures in Bizarro World.

by Fred Klonsky

On Friday I turn 65 years old.
I have my Medicare card. My IEA Retired membership card. My reduced fare CTA pass should arrive any day now.
Since I have been working with my trainer, Mike, my internal balance is vastly improved.
But it is the outside world that feels out of kilter.
As I have pointed out, Illinois politics has been and remains a Bizarro World.
It is where the Republicans vote against diminishing public pensions, but where the leaders of the Democratic Party-controlled state government and the union leadership argue over how.

The in box. Karen Lewis on the Five-Year plan.

by Fred Klonsky

Karen Lewis:

“Our schools communities do not lack inspiration, they lack revenue. It doesn’t matter what new initiatives CPS concocts from year to year if it has no way to appropriately fund them (i.e., the longer school day). Chicago has to break its addiction to tax breaks and find ways to generate revenue for our schools. This so-called five-year plan is once again done in the silo of CPS without any stakeholders at the table. It is still widely driven by testing and a complete lack of democracy.
“It is amazing that CPS’s first impulse, no matter who heads it, is towards an autocratic, top-down approach that people who actually work with kids are expected to implement 

A word to readers.

by Fred Klonsky

Counting page views and site visits only matters to me as a measure of whether this blog is providing a service, is interesting to read and look at, is entertaining and motivates action. We are pleased that many teachers and activists want to comment, share information and have told us that they enjoy reading Tony at the Red Line Tap.You seem to appreciate that I am including my art, personal essays and photographs.
At the beginning of April we hit the million site visits mark.
We have had 150,000 more site visits since then.
In May, during the debate over Illinois pension reform, we had 75,000 site visits, averaging 2,300 a day, seven days a week.
Along with the Illinois Retired Teachers Association, a few other bloggers and activists we were alone in voicing