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

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

Defending Kids Diane Ravitch's blog

A site to discuss better education for all

Ohio: ECOT Uses Taxpayer $$ to Fight Accountability

1by dianeravitch / 34min

The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) has collected hundreds of millions of dollars from Ohio taxpayers to pay for online schooling st home. The owner of ECOT makes large campaign gifts to legislators. The “school” delivers 

New Mexico: TFA Alum Takes the Reins as State Chief

1by dianeravitch / 9min

Many teachers in New Mexico were relieved when Hanna Skandera resigned as Commissioner of the Public Education Department. Skandera never met the minimum legal requirement to hold the post; she had never been a teacher. She was a protege of Jeb Bush and wanted to bring the Florida model of high-stakes testing, accountability, and privatization to New Mexico. She subscribed to her mentor’s radical

Denver: I’m With Tay for the Denver School Board!

1by dianeravitch / 1h

Denver has a seven-member school board that is completely controlled by corporate reformers from Democrats for Education Reform and others with no stake in the schools other than to push more testing and more privatization. 

Jeff Bryant: Why Is There Bipartisan Support for Charter Scams and Corruption?

2by dianeravitch / 41min

Jeff Bryant points out an irony that should enrage every taxpayer and citizen: Both major political parties love charter schools, despite the numerous scandals that accompany unregulated, unaccountable charters. http://educationopportunitynetwork.org/charter-schools-do-bad-stuff-because-they-can/ Here is a part of his great piece on the malfeasance that is now commonplace in the charter industry.

Steven Singer: A Radical Proposal to Provide an Excellent Education for Every Child

7by dianeravitch / 1h

Steven Singer finds that there is a missing ingredient in the present discourse about School Reform. Reformers think they have made great strides if they open more opportunities for choice. What reformers have not been willing to do is to guarantee that every child has the right to an excellent education. We know what excellent education looks like. It is the education that the 1% demand for thei

YESTERDAY

A Question for Facebook Users

41by dianeravitch / 12h

I have had complaints from regular readers that they are unable to put my blog posts on Facebook. A reader wrote this earlier today: “When I try to share your blog from Word Press on Facebook only your name shows up many times. Just tried it with your messages about Arizona and James Wilson. Does Zuckerberg not like you? I don’t know if others have this problem but I think you are being censored.

New Jersey: The Plot to Preserve Christie’s Control of State Board of Education Thickens

11by dianeravitch / 19h

I wrote earlier that Chris Christie, evidently the most unpopular governor in New Jersey’s history, is dumping the president and vice-president of the state board of education so he can continue to control education after he has left office. If he has his way, his cold, dead hand will strangle public education long after he is replaced. I got more information from a member of Save Our Schools NJ,

Indianapolis: Public Protest on Tuesday Against School Closings and Privatization

5by dianeravitch / 20h

Parents and teachers will gather in Indianapolis on Tuesday to protest the ongoing corporate assault on public schools. 5:15 pm in front of IPS headquarters It is NOT about the kids. It is NOT students first. It is all about the money transferred from public schools to private bank accounts. “Community coalition to demonstrate Tues at IPS. The group intends to challenge the Mind Trust/Stand for C

New Jersey: Lame Duck Governor Christie Deposes Leaders of State School Board

9by dianeravitch / 21h

With time running out on his term as Governor, Chris Christie removed the president and vice-president of the state school board. Critics said he was trying to lock in his control of the board long after his tenure in office. Christie has battled with the teachers union and favors privatization of public education. Although New Jersey is one of the top performing states in the nation, Christie re

Scott Sargrad: Invest in Public Schools, Not Vouchers

9by dianeravitch / 22h

Scott Sargrad is in charge of K-12 education policy at the Center for American Policy. CAP has been one of the leading advocates for privately managed charters. This article explains in lucid pros e why vouchers are a terrible strategy and how they actually harm most children who use them. He could have written the same article about charters, which suck money and top students away from public sc

James Wilson: It Is Wrong to Expect All Students to Meet Requirements Designed for Elite Students

21by dianeravitch / 23h

James Wilson believes that it is harmful to youth to expect all to meet the same rigorous academic standards. Some will excel in career and technical education or other fields. He writes: “The imposition of the University of California A-G entrance requirements on all high school students is inappropriate and extremely harmful. The UC system was constructed to be a system of elite universities fo

Arizona: Acute Teacher Shortage, 22% of Teachers Not Fully Qualified

19by dianeravitch / 1d

After years of underfunding public education and diverting money to charters and vouchers, Arizona is coping with an acute teacher shortage. “On a Saturday in late April, Principal Theresa Nickolich gave her best recruiting pitch to every person who walked in the door. “Come teach at Clarendon Elementary School in the Osborn School District, she told the candidates at the job fair. “You’ll be par

SHOCKER! Massive Charter Scandal Stretches from Ohio to Florida

53by dianeravitch / 1d

The Akron Beacon-Joirnal reports on a multi-state charter scandal. “The founder of an Akron-area charter school company is accused of using thousands of dollars parents paid for student lunches and uniforms and millions more from 

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

Students, Staff React to Connecticut School-Funding Turmoil - The Atlantic

Students, Staff React to Connecticut School-Funding Turmoil - The Atlantic:

Inside Connecticut's Education-Funding Turmoil
Talk about money and test scores often obscures the hopes and struggles of the people who form under-resourced school communities.

Late last summer, my family relocated from a more urban area to a small, tree-lined town in Connecticut, renowned for its great schools and colonial town center. The move meant our eldest daughter, just entering second grade, would have access to a top-rated school district. The school she attends has opened up a world of experiences: smaller classes, daily “specials” like art and music, and access to amazing cultural and enrichment activities that appeal to her curious spirit. I am buoyed by the high-achieving, cheerful school community she is a part of, but also made uneasy by how different her experience is than what is available a few towns over, in “underserved” districts such as the one I graduated from and the one my mother taught in for nearly 30 years.

Often known for its picturesque New England towns and wealth along the Gold Coast commuter line to New York City, Connecticut is a small state with one of the largest gaps between rich and poor in the country. Twenty minutes tend to separate leafy mansions from struggling inner cities, or bucolic homes from decaying industrial outposts. With income disparity has long come de facto racial segregation, acknowledged in the 1996 Sheff vs. O’Neill decision that called for the desegregation of the majority black and Latino Hartford Public School system, the district my mother served for decades.

Two decades later the changes prompted by that decision have often come up short for neighborhood schools. In an echo of the Sheff vs. O’Neill decision, Judge Thomas Moukawsher of State Superior Court in Hartford recently ruled on a lawsuit filed in 2005 by some of Connecticut’s most underserved districts, Students, Staff React to Connecticut School-Funding Turmoil - The Atlantic:

CURMUDGUCATION: Making Cybereducation Creepier

CURMUDGUCATION: Making Cybereducation Creepier:

Making Cybereducation Creepier

Do you think that cyber-education is just kind of creepy, with students sitting alone in the glow of a computer screen, navigating hundreds of little standardized quizlets and activities, their every keystroke and answer compiled in an undying data file that will follow those students around forever.


 Do you find it hard to imagine how it could be worse? Well, a company called LCA Learning has found a way. They've come up with a program called Nestor which adds a whole new feature to online learning-- while you're watching the course, the course is watching you:


The idea, according to LCA founder Marcel Saucet, is to use the data that Nestor collects to improve the performance of both students and professors. The software uses students’ webcams to analyze eye movements and facial expressions and determine whether students are paying attention to a video lecture. It then formulates quizzes based on the content covered during moments of inattentiveness. Professors would also be able to identify moments when students’ attention waned, which could help to improve their teaching, Saucet says.

First, the software will not "formulate" quizzes-- it will pull quiz questions out of a bank of questions according to an algorithm. Let's just stop talking about algorithms tied to question banks as if they're artificial intelligence. They aren't any kind of intelligence.

But lets think about the rest of this picture. You have to keep your face in place, and mimic whatever the computer thinks an "interested" face looks like (and as anyone who has taught for CURMUDGUCATION: Making Cybereducation Creepier:

Lewiston Mom Knocks it Out of the Park – Save Maine Schools

Lewiston Mom Knocks it Out of the Park – Save Maine Schools:

Lewiston Mom Knocks it Out of the Park

The following letter, written by Karen McClure-Richard of Lewiston, Maine, appeared in our local newspaper this morning.  It was written in response to the superintendent’s call for an improved state test, and it’s awesome.

This is a response to Bill Webster’s guest column about the MEA tests (June 18). I find his change in opinion on that test very interesting. As a parent, I have spent the past five years advocating that school leaders take a hard look at the over-testing of students. Much of what Webster discussed in his column could have come directly from the many emails I have sent the Lewiston School Committee through the years.

Sadly, while so much focus has been on the one state-mandated test, I have been seeing an increase in the amount of time being spent on numerous assessments that are used multiple times per year, starting with even the youngest students in kindergarten.

Parents do not have access to that information. Teachers continue to say that little, if any, of the data gleaned from those assessments helps guide their instruction, as there are far too Lewiston Mom Knocks it Out of the Park – Save Maine Schools:

Putting the ‘i’ in School – Have You Heard

Putting the ‘i’ in School – Have You Heard:

Putting the ‘i’ in School
Have You Heard Episode #20: Personalized Learning and the Disruption of Public Education

Fantastic news, listener. The cure for what ails our long failing public schools has finally been found and it’s personalized learning! Except that as our special guest, Bill Fitzgerald, breaks down for us, a more accurate term for this miracle cure-all is *algorithmically-mediated learning, which is about as appealing as it sounds.This episode of Have You Heard looks at what’s behind the huge push to reshape public education along *personalized* lines, why disrupters like Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates and Reed Hastings would do well to revisit the history of #edtech, and the strange bedfellows aligned behind personalized learning, including advocates of religious education (see DeVos, Betsy) who seek to control the content of what kids learn. It’s Have You Heard #20! Note: complete transcript of the episode is available here.

 Putting the ‘i’ in School – Have You Heard: